Stormy's Corner

Cheating: A Social Network to Help You Cheat

The New York Times has an article about a new type of social network that is used to help people fabricate excuses, For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi. Complete strangers will pretend to be your boss or your doctor and call girlfriend or your work for you. Before you dismiss this as bizarre, you should know that thousands of people have signed up for this service!

However, before you sign up yourself, think, can you trust people that are looking for people to lie for them?

Minimum Wage Poll: What do you think?

What do you think is the minimum wage that you could live humanely on? Remember that the numbers below are pretax (the ones I gave in other posts were post tax) and that most minimum wage jobs come without benefits like paid time off and health care.

What do you think is a "liveable" minimum wage?
	$5.15/hr ($893/month)
	$7.00/hr ($1213/month)
	$10.00 ($1733/month)
	$12.00 ($2080/month)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

News topics over time

The following tool lets you see what percentage of the news bandwidth a topic has compared to the rest of the week. For example, you can see that news articles about Bill Clinton have been growing in number all week - probably because of his book that's about to come out. All items are in alphabetical order. stamen: google news

Online Polling Tools

I was looking for free online polling tools and I found the following, none of them perfect. Let me know if you know of any others.

1. pollhost.com. Good: you get to keep and edit your polls, lots of options. Bad: it leaves a huge whitespace in my blog entry.
2. blogpoll.com. Good: lots of options, best looking. Bad: it changes the background color of my blog, you can't edit a poll once you've created it.
3. poll123.com. Bad: You can't show the ongoing results to your readers.
4. blogpolling.com. Bad: You can't show the ongoing results to your readers.

This was not an exhaustive study or evaluation as I was just looking for a few features such as easy to create, free (or very cheap) and show results in weblog or at least to weblog readers.

Kerry Proposes Raising Minimum Wage

John Kerry is proposing raising the federal minimum wage to $7/hour! While I still think it should be higher, that's a big step. As the article says, it "would provide a family with enough money to buy 10 months of groceries or pay for eight months of rent." I figure it would be about $320 extra a month after taxes.

A new type of preventative medicine

If you were a woman and you were told there was a 100% chance that you would develop breast cancer if you didn't undergo a full mastectomy, would you? How about if there was a 90% chance? Or a 25% chance.

What if there was a 90% chance you would get kidney disease if you didn't get a kidney transplant? Or a 90% chance that you would be blind if you didn't get an eye transplant? Or just a 90% chance that you would need glasses?

How far does it go?

In this article, the author debates having both breasts and ovaries removed after getting the results of some genetic testing.

No more waiting for the bus!

In Leicestershire you can find out where a public bus is at all times. No more standing around waiting for the bus, wondering when the next one will come.

"And in Leicestershire mobile phone users can send a text message containing a six-digit code unique to their bus stop to a local bus company.
Within 30 seconds a text message is sent back giving the location of the bus."

Here's the article.

P.S. Cell phone users in Europe and Asia use text messaging a LOT. Much more than in the US.

Teleporting becomes reality

Scientists are finally doing the impossible, teleporting, moving an object from point a to point b without actually moving the object, and yet they conclude by saying that teleporting a human is impossible. "I cannot imagine it. As far as I can see, it's not going to happen." You're telling me that people that made the impossible, possible, think that further impossible things are unachievable? Thank goodness for science fiction which will never stop believing the impossible is part of our future.

The New York Times > Science > Scientists Teleport Not Kirk, but an Atom

TIME.com: Meet Joe Blog -- Jun. 21, 2004

There's an interesting article about weblogs and how they are changing the way we get news, TIME.com: Meet Joe Blog -- Jun. 21, 2004. They also have a short history of blogs and a list of the top five blogs, according to the author.

Finding Roomates Online: roomster.net

We've seen online dating, online networking, and doggie networking, now we have a roommate finding service: Roomster.net

University Diversity Plan in Texas Is Working

Texas has a law that guarantees admission to public universities to the top 10% of any high school graduating class. While the law has a lot of critics, it sure has been a success from a diversity perspective. According to Diversity Plan Shaped in Texas Is Under Attack, at the University of Texas at Austin, "Of the 6,341 students who have sent in deposits so far, the university classifies 3,536 as Anglo, 298 as African-American, 1,146 as Hispanic and 1,128 as Asian. (In addition, 23 are classified as Native American and 210 as "other.")" It's also been a success from an academic standpoint: "Bruce Walker, vice provost and director of admissions at the University of Texas, said data collected by the university showed that students admitted under the 10 percent rule consistently get better grades than other students."

Minimum Wage

We had an interesting after dinner conversation last night. Yet another new Super Walmart is moving into town and we were discussing if they were good or bad for the local economy. The majority of the room was in favor of Super Walmart saying it would bring cheap goods and lots of jobs to the area. While I agree it will bring cheap goods and lots of jobs to the area, I believe it will replace small businesses and higher paying jobs with minimum wage jobs.

Minimum wage jobs are evil. Not only can you not live well off a minimum wage job, they rarely come with paid time off, sick time off or benefits. So any accident or health problem kills you, financially speaking.

Let's just play with some numbers here. Minimum wage is $5.15/hr. Take that for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (who needs vacation?). Subtract 10% federal tax and divide by 12 months. You come up with $803/month.

I challenge you to come up with a budget that allows you to live off $803/month without any help from others. Average rent for a one bedroom apartment in my hometown is $550/month! Even with a roommate, you'd have a hard time affording a car, gas, food, utility bills, phone bill, etc. And I'm assuming you don't have any kids, medical bills or credit card debt.

And yet I was told last night that I should be glad Super Walmart only paid minimum wage because that's how I get cheap groceries and goods. Personally, I can afford to pay a few dollars more on my weekly grocery bill if it means the kids across town get to eat well too.

[6/11/04 Modified to take out social security as earnings under $11,640 are exempt.]

Research Shows Dogs Can Comprehend Words

I knew it! Dogs can understand words. Yahoo! News - Research Shows Dogs Can Comprehend Words

My dog knows all her toys and most of her human and dog friends by name. I've always said she got left behind at the level of a 1-2 year old human child. This article claims the border collie they tested, tested at a 3 year old human level. Not only does the border collie, Rico, know all of his toys by name, but if an unknown toy is placed in the middle and he is asked for the unknown toy by name, he correctly assumes 7 times out of 10 that the toy he doesn't know cooresponds to the name he doesn't know AND a month later he still remembers the name of the new toy!

Pretty amazing.

Wireless at Texas Roadstops

When driving through Texas you will soon be able to check your email at any rest stop.

TxDOT News Release

Progress Paradox

I recently read the Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook and really enjoyed it. In my mind the book had three parts. In the first part, Easterbrook spends quite a bit of time explaining how much better off we are then humans have been at any point in history. More of us eat better, work less, are healthier and have more leisure time than any other point in history. He backs this up with a lot of detail and debunks quite a few myths. It was very interesting. In the second part, Easterbrook theorizes on some of the reasons why we are almost always unhappy and why continuously strive to have more. Why do people want always bigger, better and more? One of the ideas I found intriguing is that maybe stress and the desire to accumulate things have been tied to success in the past. (The past of our species that is.) In the last part, Easterbrook details his ideas for how life could be better for more people. His main point is that the US should have universal health care coverage. He also talks about giving more to developing nations and raising the minimum wage. I recommend the book to anyone who likes to think about the state of our current society.

Smart clothes

Researchers build what they envision as wearable computers

"In the future, such an outfit could diagnose diseases and deliver medications to the wearer, monitor heart rate or blood pressure, deliver interactive games and other forms of entertainment or function as a wearable computer. " And you could download new colors and textures just as you download ring tones for your phone.

Who Let These Dogs Out? The Warden

I raise guide dog puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, so I pay attention to any articles about raising service dogs. This New York Times's article, Who Let These Dogs Out? talks about a program that has prisoners raising and training puppies and then socializing them with urbanites on weekends. The urbanites are people who can't have a dog due to too little space or too little time. Both the prisoners and the urbanites benefit from a relationship with a puppy.

How to make a digitial picture frame from an old laptop

Channel9 Wiki: JunktopRevival

Virtual Real Estate

I've been reading a lot about online gaming. The worlds are so real to people that they not only spend hours playing but they spend real money buying objects, homes and even land in the virtual world. You can check out the exchange rate for the gaming currencies on Ebay. Money in Everquest or Sims Online is worth real US dollars!

This article in USAToday, Virtual real estate boom draws real dollars, talks about virtual land in Second Life that goes for $550/acre!

"Your Next Computer", Phone or laptop?

In a recent post I talked about how I think tablet PCs and handhelds like Blackberries and iPods are going to merge. Some day in the future we'll all carry around a small device that is our only computer/music player/organizer. This Newsweek article, Your Next Computer, theorizes that your cell phone will become your next computer.

Women's pay is closer to men's in male dominated fields

In this article, Census report: It pays to be a man, discussing the difference between men and women's pay, the fact I found most interesting was the fact that women tend to earn the same as men in fields dominated by men such as hazardous waste removal. In fields dominated by women, such as nursing and preschool teachers, men earn substancially more.

Email on a memory stick | The Register

Here's a USB device, a "thumbdrive", that will let you run Outlook from the small device.

Email on a memory stick | The Register

I used to wonder when handhelds would merge with laptops, and I think tablet PCs are the answer to that. Now I wonder when USB devices will merge with tablets ...

Dividing the Sexes, for the Tough Years

I've seen and heard a lot of debate about private vs public schools and within private schools, coed vs single sex. There's an interesting article, Dividing the Sexes, for the Tough Years, in the New York Times today about a new way of dividing boys and girls in school. These schools are co-ed except for middle school. They believe that those are the years when boys and girls differ the most in terms of expressing themselves, emotional maturity and even energy levels in the classroom.

I think I found the article most interesting because I would have been a perfect candidate for their experiment as I went to an all girls' school for 7th throug 9th grade. It worked well for me, although I can't really say how it would have been different if I'd been in a coed school during those years!