You cannot deny a man a stick, who lives in the woods.

Newspapers have been sighing this dying gasp: "But, where will you get your investigative journalism?" To which I've always cynically replied, same place we've gotten it since watergate... no where. Part of the point of investigative journalism is secrecy and the incapability of information to get out. Now with photo cell phones, everyone with $100 and a 7-11 can become part of the information flow. If watergate were to happen nowadays, it'd be some maid snapping pictures rather than a journalist who couldn't sleep.

Well, here we go. All the US and canadian journalists were thrown out of Iran before the election (probably because they knew they would have to steal the election) but the information network we built (ie the Internet) simply cannot be stopped. This tremendous access to information delivery systems has made the old investigatory measures less necessary, and in many ways less effective. Everything is becoming more transparent. Modern bloggers can see through walls and hear through doors that no flatfooted ink monkey could have ever dreamed of achieving. And as technology gets better, so will this effect.

Print is dying because it's already been replaced... in every way... by better stuff. Instead of paying a few people with limited connections to investigate, we've made the entire world our reporting team. The news media outlets get it. half the time they're citing the net. Print needs to catch up or die. And then where will we get information that's 1-100 days old?

On elevation

There's been a quiet debate over the choice to put elevators or escalators into a building. Elevators are safe, they take people in wheelchairs, large loads, strollers, etc with the same aplomb. The down side is that they don't work without power.

Escalators, on the other hand, turn into a set of stairs when the power is turned off. Their down side is that they use power constantly, even when they're not in use, until they're turned off completely.

Okay, so, here's an idea for some entrepreneur, for what it's worth:
Create a wide-step escalator that has a button at the entrance point. A wheelchair can enter the stationary step, hit the button and be taken exactly to the exit point (and no further). Add a 20 second delay to insure that someone else doesn't activate the thing while the chair disembarks. Then, people who don't need it, can "take the stairs", and those who do, get escalated at whim.

Someone really creative might make that button a "stop/start request" button. The stairs would have weight or laser sensors to let them know if someone is on, and they keep rolling, only while needed, then automatically shut down when not in use. The button at the entrance would then either stop the escalator while running or start it up while not running. If it's used to start running, it runs through the above, single trip cycle before starting it's auto-roll again.

To Whom it may concern....

While on my evening stroll I came across an interesting site: a white car parked in front of the El Pollo Loco at 912 N Vermont. I checked the time, it was 6:15, and since that area is part of the 4-7 anti gridlock zone, it was the ONLY car parked on Vermont. Naturally, it was causing traffic backups as people dodged out of that lane to go around.

As I approached the car, I noticed it was an LA City college campus security vehicle (funded by the Sheriff's department). Well, now, as a cab driver, I heard my share of "you're supposed to set an example" speeches, so I decided to wait and see if this was the right time to deliver one of my own.

So I leaned up against car #67 with license plate CA exempt 1051619 for a few minutes until someone appeared. An officer in white with 2 bags of chicken did appear around 6:40. In that time waiting, another vehicle (civilian), inspired by the police car, had parked behind him, in full view of the 'anti-gridlock' and 'no parking 4-7 pm' signs.

I asked if the officer had the time. He did. I pointed out that quarter to 7 was in fact well between 4pm and 7pm. But he brushed past me. I checked his badge number #77 and tried to point out that the El pollo loco had it's own off-street parking lot but he rolled away.

So, I went to LACC campus security to report him, where I found the car AGAIN.... parked in a Red Zone. And, of course, the officer in question was the post commander. So naturally, reporting him would do no good.

After 2 years of putting up with the construction of that ridiculous parking lot, and the avarice in which parking tickets are issued on my street, I think it's time that someone tell this clown that he's not king of his private hill.

Earth Day

I know You're probably getting inundated with Earth-this green-that. And If you've read this blog, you know how I feel about plastic. So, here's a little Earth Friendly tip that will save you money, and save the planet:

Get a safety razor. They're still pretty cheap, the only thing you throw out is Metal, and the blade refills are cheap in 100 packs. I just got this one, and I couldn't be happier. And If you REALLY want to get jiggy, you can always get a straight razor and strop and throw out nothing. Works for anyone who shaves.

The Zen of Dow

For a very long time, the Dow industrials hovered around 1000. Then because of Reganomics, or Voodoo Economics, the Dow tripled in one term, leaving us with the first major bubble. If popped, leaving Bush Sr with the mess to clean up. His term ended with an even higher mark than when he came in.

Then there was Clinton. Because of Y2K, the clinton years were blessed with a bubble that was known to have a fixed end date, plus a couple of financial wizards making for unbridled prosperity for precisely his term. Once the threat of the y2k bug was over, the computer market deflated (much the way a blister does when the burn is gone) and the market should have returned to about 4000. But it didn't, because Dubya wanted to keep things moving upwards. And they did everything to prevent what is happening right now.

Okay, without the artificial, and temporary need for 100s or 1000s of geeks, and without a housing market that was clearly cheating someone, the market needs to return to the pre-inflationary levels. Wall street will have to take it's belt in a bit, and the cold war will have to finally end. Does this mean socialism for all? No, but another "new deal" is already on the table (look it up). I'm predicting that the current price of stocks at 6600 will drop another 2500 points before this all ends, then at about 4000, we'll begin a reasonably stable rebound.

But under Obama, it will NOT be like it has since the 80s, buy low and sell high will be for the people who actually do the investigations not just any scammer that can get a trading ticket. Getting rich in the market won't be just a matter of getting as much money in as possible, it will be a very hard and difficult journey. That said, I think this will also end a lot of our globalization as people will start to invest in the things they can see: local businesses and brands, and not on vague speculations like the last 30 years.

Fatwa against Ethanol!!

Okay, a couple days ago, a company called "cleantech" created a storm with the announcement pasted below stating that Islamists should avoid the use of biofuels. Okay, I won't go into the fact that I can't find a single source about this and that the entire storm seems to be based on this article alone. But I do have a couple things to say.

First Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. Just like Methanol is methyl alcohol, and isopropanol is isopropyl alcohol. They're not "derived" from the other, any more than moisture is "derived" from water. How a major news figure in the biofuel industry could screw that up is beyond me.

But lets get to the second, and much more important part, the sources of ethanol. The Muslim cleric is opening up a can of worms here that could plummet muslim countries back into the stone age. Let's ignore the fact, for a moment, that hundreds of everyday chemicals are technically "alcohols" including a little something or other in pretty much every food we eat. Let's ignore, also that ethanol is a common cleaning ingredient, and therefore is found in trace amounts on almost every surface of every product sold.

What we cannot ignore is that one source of industrial ethanol comes from deep inside the ground. Crude oil. That's right crude oil is a mix of hundreds of chemicals. To be useful for anything but a lubricant, these chemicals must be separated. The easiest way is to use their different boiling points in a process called fractional distillation.

Distillation works a bit like boiling the water off a pan of rice, the rice stays and the water goes elsewhere. FD does the same thing but on a much more complicated scale. None of the chemicals are changed, they're just separated so that you can get to a more pure version of one or more, easily. But like the rice where you can't really get rid of all the water, you can't get an absolutely pure version of a chemical through distillation.

Since one of the chemicals in all crude oil is ethanol, and nothing can be completely removed through distillation, ALL petrol distillates have some tiny percentage of ethanol in them. Therefore, this declaration does the reverse of what it was clearly intended to do. It also removes Muslims from the Petrol industry and everything to do with crude or distilled oil.

So, ban ethanol if you must, but it won't save the OPEC nations, it will devastate them. This also assumes that anyone takes the proclamation seriously. Remember a Fatwa only applies to that particular cleric's followers. Various clerics have been tossing fatwas around like monopoly money for years now and I doubt anyone is paying attention. Here's a list of some famous ones.

Muslim cleric decries biofuels as sinful
February 20, 2009
Islamic scholar calls for further study as he notes that any use of alcohol is prohibited, even as fuel.
Adaptation of biofuels could be limited in Muslim communities after an Islamic scholar yesterday called for religious groups to study whether biofuels violate the ban on alcohol in the religion.

Sheik Mohamed al-Najimi of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy told the the Saudi newspaper Shams that the prophet Mohammed prohibited all dealings with alcohol—which would include buying, selling, transporting, drinking, serving and manufacturing.

Ethanol is derived from ethyl alcohol, which al-Najimi said would fall into the prohibited category. In the process to make ethanol, sugar or starch from plants is converted into ethyl alcohol through yeast fermentation (see Tweaking corn genes to boost biofuel yields).

Biofuel "is basically made up of alcohol," he said.

Al-Najimi said his opinion on biofuels should not be considered a fatwa, or a legal pronouncement in Islam, but should prompt Islamic leaders to study the issue.

Al-Najimi said he thinks a ban on biofuels should extend beyond predominately Muslim countries to include Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad who ride in vehicles using biofuel. Many Western and Eastern governments have established mandates for biofuel to be blended in petroleum based fuel in increasing percentages (see India, EU affirm new biofuels and Ethanol blend increases while oil reaches new low).

Fire Breathing Survey

A couple months ago, a boston area man entered the hospital with burns from learning fire breathing. Unfortunate for him, but the accident may lead to some good. An attending surgeon has taken an interest in fire breathers and has been working with NAFAA to produce some clear information regarding fire breathing and the various fire arts. We ask that you support this effort in any way you can, so that we can benefit from the results of actual, scientific research in our area. The first step is a survey for fire breathers. If you have breathed fire in any capacity, you are encouraged to fill it out. If you have not, please forward to any fire breathers you may know. Here's the survey.

All data will go directly to research, it is voluntary, and completely anonymous.