Half-Way

For several days now whenever we have let Anise outside to run around and get out some of the crazies she has been trying to get under our deck and, failing, barking animatedly. This is the same thing she does when there is a rabbit out of reach (in the neighbors yard, across the street) and she is excited by the possibility but frustrated by the circumstances. This morning she found a way under the deck and shortly thereafter a rabbit did emerge. A very small rabbit.

I have no idea what transpired under our deck this morning. The rabbit that emerged had a small amount of blood around its mouth and one eye appeared to have been permanently damaged. It was making small, pathetic squeaking sounds and was laid out on its back, chest heaving but otherwise unmoving.

What do you do with a half-way dead infant wild rabbit?

We couldn't leave it laying there but we had and have no interest in a baby rabbit for another pet. We choose to give it shelter for the morning, to try to make it as comfortable as possible. We fully expected it to be dead within the hour and made a home that would be easy to bury when the time came. I found a spot in our basement that they dogs can't get to and where its nice and cool. I left two ice cubes in the improvised water tray we were using along with a portion of a leaf of lettuce and small strawberry before I went to school that morning.

This evening when I returned it was still alive. It seemed to be resting and though not moving around in traditional rabbit style, it was clearly still able to move. We're going to try to assess the situation more clearly this evening.

The end game isn't very clear to me. Do we hope to nurse it back to health and set it free? Where is its mother? What if it has been permanently injured in a way that will make it impossible to survive on its own?

Its hard to say what were going to do with this little fur-ball our dog thrust into our lives.

Its not clear from the photo but the little guy is only a few inches long, more like a mouse than a rabbit.

Basil Goes to the Barber

We've got two outdoor-oriented trips in the near future that our dogs will be joining us on and to cut down on the amount of bramble that Basil collects in his fur, we took him and for a haircut (and bath, ear-cleaning, and nail trimming). We hope this well also help him be more comfortable in the coming hot summer months. Take a look at these very professionally done before-and-after photos.

Just the Simple Truth (Mostly)

Check out this little article I stumbled upon in my blogger reading today: Just the Simple Truth. For those of you who are a little bit more lazy here's a pertinent part where the author is quoting President Obama: "But after the Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program-but we didn't pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in upaid-for tax cuts-tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade." Let's parse this paragraph and look at the basic assertions the President is making in this speech, stripped of their rhetorical ornamentation.

1. Both parties were involved in "fiscal discipline" during the 1990s. (I believe this is a reference to balanced budget we had for a few years in the late 90s.)


2. Spending increased significantly during the 2000s thanks to two wars and Medicare part D.


3. Tax cuts during the 2000s prevented a lot of revenue from being collected from those in the highest tax bracket.

Assuming my interpretation of item one is correct, all of these assertions can be shown to be true.
I don't want to get into the policy angle of whether the extra spending on wars and Medicare was a good idea or the decision to reduce tax income as a whole. Clearly, though, we can say that this combination did not end up working out well in terms of balancing the budget. I know there are plenty of people out there that are philosophically committed to trickle-down economics but in this case the lower taxes rates didn't generate more tax dollars and the budget got way out of balance. Its worth noting that Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan's assertion that "the more you tax something, the less of it you get" may be true; our budget wasn't balanced through the 2000s, though. It didn't seem to work for that decade.
Here's my main point: assuming the above three facts are true, their validity is a red herring in the larger problem of our national debt. Here's one of many graphs you can find online showing our annual federal deficit over the years, this one in terms of GDP rather than just dollars (to try to level out effects of economic growth).


The simple truth that isn't acknowledged by the President or stated in the article I linked to is that the "fiscal discipline" that resulted in a budget surplus for a few years at the end of the 90s was an aberration. From 2011 all the way back to the 1960s it is clear that this period of time is the only one where we had a balanced budget for any significant length of time. It appears there are a few toe-dips into balanced-budget territory over the last half-century but they are minor and are in no way equivalent to the massive overspending that happened in all the remaining years.
We have a systemic problem. For many years now, our country has not been living within its means and this is a trend that we cannot afford any longer. We need to get serious about our problem and make some hard choices. We can not continue to borrow money for government programs and somehow expect to never have to pay it back. There are good programs that are working well that we will need to cut; there are tax breaks that seem fair and good that will have to be removed. We are so far in debt and it is unreasonable to expect that we can get back to living within our means without making significant sacrifices. Our expectations and lifestyles covertly subsidized through our government in the form of low taxes and expensive government programs are unsustainable.
I'll end with the political finger-pointing. Republicans, you have abandoned any claim of being fiscally responsible based on your performance this past decade. I know you believe in lower taxes but you have to also believe in lower spending as well. In fact, during times of national crisis like the launch of our war on terror, you might even need to increase taxes to pay for the military activity or cut other programs so that our budget can stay balanced. Wars don't pay for themselves and emergency overspending for a few years needs to be followed with determined underspending to pay all that debt back.
Democrats, specifically President Obama, its hard for us to take you seriously as a man determined to balance the budget. You inherited a difficult situation in 2008 and choose to try to spend your way out of it. You and your allies are the ones responsible for the spike in the national deficit at the far right-hand end of the graph. You too need to find a way to generate huge budget surpluses to counter-act the huge spending we just went through.
To both parties I say this: I have a house that is always falling apart, a car that needs repair even more regularly and family members who get sick. I understand that there are months that we need to spend more than we make because of these emergencies that pop up. But you know what happens next month? We spend less to make up for it and replenish any emergency savings that has been depleted. Nobody would let me overspend for 35 out of the last 40 years of my life and call me fiscally responsible. They wouldn't lend me a dime.

Season Change

I just turned off the gas to our furnace and turned on our the fan to cool the house off this morning. I think its officially the start of the warm season.

I didn't quite get the timing right this year with the amount of kerosene that I bought for our indoor heater: there's about half a gallon left in the tank of the heater. I guess I'm just going to have to burn it off outside; I doubt the house will be cold enough in the next month or two to justify using it.

This "shoulder" period between winter and summer (I hear some people call it "spring") is the best few weeks to live in Wichita. The highs during the day are not astronomical and the lows at night are cool enough to feel a tiny bit chilly. The trees are starting to bloom, grass everywhere is getting green, and I don' need to bundle up to walk the dogs in the morning.

This is much different than summer here, which is oppressively hot and humid. Nobody wants to be outside and its hard to image how people lived here without air conditioners. The overnight lows are often 80'F; it just never cools off. Being in the city probably doesn't help; maybe outside of town where the wind and blow more to cool things off would help.

Renewable Energy

I'm officially in my first semester of my PhD at Wichita State studying power systems and am taking a class this semester on renewable energy integration. There is debate in some circles regarding the necessity of using these renewable energy sources; much of this debate tend to be centered around the urgency of regulating carbon emissions from traditional power sources.

Another perspective, the one that I think about often, considers the fact that non-renewable energy sources have a severe and obvious limitation: they are not renewable and will run out at some point. All of these fossil fuels are produced by geological processes that we cannot reproduce or replicate in an economically feasible way. These natural resources are a blessing in that we have found ways of relatively easily converting them into a variety of specific refined fuels. The raw resources will run out at some point, though. Unfortunately, the ease of extraction and refinement of fossil fuels have resulted in relatively low costs and promoted the expansion of the use of these fuels. The seemingly limitless supply of fossil fuels leads makes it easier and easier to continue to use them and harder and harder to try to look for alternatives. For decades now Presidents of the United States have got it right in saying that we as a nation are addicted to oil.

The reality, though, is that these fossil fuels will run out at some time in the future and we are so dependent on them that it is hard right now to even imagine our way of living without the pervasive and ready access to fossil fuels. Nearly 100% of our transportation infrastructure from cars to aircraft to cargo ships use only fossil fuels. Most of the electricity in the United States is produced by burning fossil fuels; even electric cars use fossil fuels, albeit in an indirect manner. Even as gasoline fuel prices continue to rise, we in the United States have not reached the point where we are ready to consider serious changes in our lifestyle. We complain; talk is cheap.

To those of you who think the day where we will reach critical levels in our fossil fuel supply is many decade (or even a century) away, well, you may be right. For all of our sake, let us hope that this is the case; we need the time to make these renewable energy sources viable alternatives to the existing system. This brings me to my first point: now is the time to invest (heavily) in these alternative systems. If we wait until the situation is urgent, until we are critically low on fossil fuels to start looking for alternatives, we'll be too late. Gradual change is almost always easier to manage than rapid change. A change this large cannot occur easily and there are many technical and operational challenges that still need to be overcome. As a self-declared representative of all technical professionals in this field I plead with you: give us this time to get this right. This means investing in the technology long before it is profitable and spending the money to research how we need to change our system to accommodate the coming reality.

And again to those of you who think that fossil fuels aren't running out soon I would add this: our society has mis-estimated the bounds of limitless resources in the past. The prevailing opinion for much of the time the Pacific Northwest was settled by white-folk was that both the forest and the fish were effectively infinite. These natural resources seemed so expansive and seemingly immeasurable that there was no effort to moderate their use. The trees and the fish were harvested for many decades until their numbers dwindled so severely that it was clear there were limits to what we thought of as limitless. Now, to preserve these resources for future generations, we try to limit their consumption, especially in the case of trees where it takes several decades to naturally replace what we use.

Considering the non-renewable nature of the fossil fuels we have become highly dependent on and our increasing appetite for them, the day is coming when they will become so expensive so as to be unaffordable. On that day, the lifestyle we in the United States have come to expect will come to a halt. The only way this can be avoided is to prepare now for this eventuality and rebuild our energy infrastructure to be re-orientated around alternative energy sources. The future we want is one where fossil fuels never become expensive because the demand has been radically reduced due to viable alternatives becoming better economic choices. Gasoline would never become prohibitively expensive because nobody will have a use for them; better alternatives will exist. The future we want is one we can create if we choose to start preparing for it now.

National Budget Visualized

Here's a great visual depiction of the budget President Obama has proposed, put together by the NY Times. Items of notes:

• According this this USA today graph, this budget is still larger than the federal income. We are still spending more than we make, like we have for several decades now. Under Obama's budget, we are going to add $1.1 trillion to our debt.
• Our interest on the existing national debt is s$474 billion this year, up 14% from last year.
• It is clear that the biggest spending is, as I have often asserted, in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense (ignoring the interest on the national debt since we really can't do anything about that except pay it).
• Most of the money in this budget is considered "mandatory" spending, meaning that previously enacted legislation (such as the Social Security Act) requires a certain level of spending. New legislation could be passed to overturn these mandatory spending requirements (such as a End Social Security Act, to make up an example) but the money funding the programs created by previous legislation is not up for grabs as a part of the regular budgeting process.
• The big spender not in the mandatory spending pool (called "discretionary" spending) is defense spending. Defense spending is the only one of the Big Three that can be changed without passing additional legislation.
• During the Bush years it was common for the normal budget to be augmented by "emergency" spending bills to fund the wars. This money is outside of the normal budget process and thus does not show up in the kind of graph the NY Times has put together. I don't know whether President Obama has any emergency spending legislation he is going to propose or not.
• Finally, just to be clear, the President doesn't officially get to set the budget for the year; he can only sign or veto a spending bill that Congress passes. Obama's budget is an opening bid in what will be probably a long negotiation before a final bill is arrived at that all parties can live with.

Short

Below is a fantastic little short movie that I'm watching on a regular basis now because it reminds me so much of where I grew up and what I love about it.

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

This Week in the Weather

A week ago it was 70 degrees outside. Today the high was 28 degrees. In the past week we had several inches of snow, some relatively fierce winds, and two days when Wichita State University cancelled classes. One of my professors who has been at the school 25 years says he can only remember one other time the school has closed due to weather.

It has been a cold week.

On the upside, pictures of the dogs in the snow are always kind of fun.

Seen today in the neighborhood

Tron: Legacy

I convinced my brother in-law that we should go see "Tron: Legacy" while he was in town recently and we choose to lay out the big bucks and go see it at the newly opened IMAX. Oh, and it was in 3D. The only 3D movie I'd seen before this was "Avatar" and while it was nice, I wasn't convinced that it was worth the extra three or four dollars. This opinion was reinforced by commentary I had read around the web that "Avatar" had the best implementation of 3D as it was actually filmed with two cameras while most of the other 3D movies had been made so in post-production.

I didn't have high expectations of "Tron: Legacy" and was just hoping for an entertaining show: lots of cool looking things on screen with the thinnest of plots to hold the excitement together. Seeing it in 3D IMAX was a novelty, I reasoned, something new to try out. My preconceptions were more or less accurate but were understatements of the reality. "Tron: Legacy" in 3D IMAX an experience more than a movie. I can't say that the plot was superb or the extremely well-written but nearly every other aspect of the film is excellent. The use of 3D is very well done and adds much to the movie, much more than I remember in "Avatar". The visuals are stunning, integrate well with and strongly develop the style of the movie, and are exceedingly enjoyable. Costumes and sets were similarly unique and impressive.

The surprise to me, though, was the the music and sound. This was more than good use of orchestral scoring; it was an embrace of synthesized, manipulated, stretched and compressed alteration of traditional music into a unique sound that, again, adds so much in defining the style and feel of the whole film. I don't feel that the audio overshadowed the visuals just that they were not neglected in light of all the effort of making a visually stunning movie. I'm tempted to buy the score of the film because it was so unique and powerful.

I don't think "Tron: Legacy" would have struck with me so deeply if I hadn't seen it first in IMAX 3D. If you have the option of seeing it that way I would recommend it; its probably the only way I would recommend this movie. In this way the movie is a work of art; the experience of seeing it will not be replicated well onto a more conventional screen and even less so into a home setting. It will be like the difference between an original oil and a picture of the same work in an art textbook.

Its hard to compare this movie to others because it is so much more of an experience than simply a movie. There are much better films out there that don't derive their value from special effects or visual spectacle. But its hard to say that "Tron: Legacy" is better or worse than any of these because its value is so much in the presentation. Pick your favorite movie and even if you were able to see it again on the big screen right now, it would be a completely different experience than "Tron: Legacy".

Maybe that's the best way to think about it. "Tron: Legacy" has brought back something special to the movies. You will either see it in its fullest form or you won't but there won't be any second chances. Once it leaves the theater, there really won't be any way to get the full meal deal. Its like performance art in that way; a one-time experience that can't be replicated. If you can afford the $12 to $15 per ticket I strongly recommend that make an effort to go see this. You won't walk away with inner contemplations about the plot or characters but you can't help to be entertained.

It is the best movie of little consequence I have ever seen.

100% Official

As of yesterday, I have completed all the requirements for my Master's degree. I took my final test of the semester (Statistics) and received confirmation from the graduate school that all my paperwork was in order and that my thesis had been officially accepted.

The graduation ceremony was this past Sunday and I attended but had chosen not to walk, mainly because I'm staying on for my PhD making the ceremony very anti-climactic. I attended the ceremony to see a good friend of mine get his PhD and while waiting for the ceremony to start, I was thumbing through the program. There I was, listed as completed my Master's along with my thesis title. Even for me, a person who doesn't care much for ceremony, this was a little weird. I felt like I should run up on stage and get in line will all the other Master's students. I was literally just a few hundred feet away from being able to participate in the ceremony.

For me now, school will just continue for a while. Classes start up again in mid-January and I'll be attending the normal three lecture classes, just like I have for the past five semesters. Looking at my estimated schedule for the next few years, it doesn't look like things start to change much until spring 2011 when I begin taking my dissertation hours. Each semester from that point on I spend more and more time on my official schedule working on my dissertation until I complete it in the spring of 2013. At least that's how thing stand now; all of this is subject to change and probably this spring I'll be submitting more paperwork to get this schedule of mine officially approved as worthy of PhD work.

There is a hiccup that I already know of in my schedule. The Engineering and Education departments recently got together to form a program specifically geared towards graduate students in engineering who plan on a career in academia, like me. By taking four specific graduate level education classes, I will be able to earn a Certificate in Engineering Education. The problem: the engineering graduate department may not recognize any of those education courses as "counting" towards earning a PhD. This means that if any engineering student wants to earn this certificate, he or she will have to take these four courses on top of the normal course load for a PhD. Nothing is completely decided yet but it seems counter-productive to me to working across departments like this to get the program in place and then to construct additional barriers to prevent students from actually participating in the program. Methinks the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

You Balance the Budget

In terms of posts to this blog, I've written a lot about the Federal deficit and balancing the budget. This is one more item on that list.

The New York Times has an interactive feature on their website that allows everyday normal people like us to take a stab at balancing the budget and getting our national debt under control. The interface is simple: there are a list of options that each make a dent in the budget problem and you go through and check the ones that get you to a balanced budget. Its easy to use and gives you a very tangible handle on what it will take to make our federal government fiscally responsible.

Go ahead and give it a try. Spread the word. Start thinking seriously about what it will take for our government to start acting like grown-ups when it comes to money.

Cranberry Sauce

Do you make your own cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving (or any other holiday meal) or do you buy it in a can? If you don't make your own cranberry sauce you really should. Its just too easy and too fun to pass up. You can buy a bag of cranberries for a few dollars, add some sugar and water and heat it all up until the berry begin to burst. That's right, I said burst; its like making popcorn with fruit! (There are plenty of more detailed recipes out there if you feel you need more detailed instructions but really, its that simple and hard to get wrong.)

Sure, its cheaper, easier, and faster to buy the sauce in a can but the two don't really even compare. Unless you're really strapped for cash and/or time, spend the extra two bucks and fifteen minutes to make the sauce yourself. Or better yet, get some quality kitchen time with a family member or friend and recruit them to do it.

Fresh cranberries will be readily available in the US for several more weeks so don't wait. I'm betting once you try it, you'll never go back. I haven't.

First snow of the season

Its not accumulating here in Wichita but it is snowing. See for yourself

Master Hardy

It's all but official. I defended my thesis this last Friday and now just have some editing, probably a bit more formatting, and hopefully just a tiny amount of paperwork to do before I have earned my Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Wichita State. Oh, and I need to pass my classes this semester as well. On a practical level things don't change much for me, though. I'm continuing on with my PhD so I have many more semesters to go before this is all done.

We'll, here's a mostly completed, almost perfect draft version of my thesis. Feel free to read, enjoy, and ask questions. Or you can just smile and now and not worry about it. Whatever.

Basil's new trick

We've been working with Basil to train him to go and get the paper in the morning; we anticipate this trick being very handy for the coming winter months. Here's a demonstration from this morning:

The word is spreading!

David Leonhardt must have been reading my blog because, on a nationally syndicated radio program (Marketplace), echoed nearly exactly (almost verbatim) what I've been saying about what it will take to balance the budget. We've got the make big cuts in one of the following: Medicare, Social Security, or defense and/or raise taxes. The most politically fleasible option will probably involve modest changes to many or most of these.

The message is getting out! You heard it here first (maybe)!

Everyday Amazing

That's how I'd describe this video; its an example of everyday amazing. There are cooler videos out there, I'm sure and other people have done similar things but here is a pretty normal looking guy who wants to do something at least slightly extraordinary: make a spacecraft. And he does. And captures some footage that can best be described as awesome in the traditional sense of the word.

Watch it full screen in a dark room. Prepare to be amazed.

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Before Congress gets back to balancing the budget...

I know I just wrote about this a few posts ago but one of my favorite podcasts (Planet Money) mentioned a report that effectively gave a receipt showing how are federal tax dollars are spent. The categories they chose to track seem a bit arbitrary but its worth taking a look at. And the top 3: Defense, Social Security, Health Insurance.

The report also referenced a few other great websites that try to get a handle on the same data. WhatWePayFor.com lets you plug in your salary and generate a dollar-amount break-down for your tax bill and the National Priorities Project has a Tax Day page that does a similar thing in less detail.

Health Insurance and Me

I've ranted about this before: I have no love for the health insurance I currently have. There are many things to complain about but the one that is troubling me most lately is the plan's attempt to portray its bugs and difficulties as features; I'm talking about consumer-driven health-care. The theory behind these plans place the health insurance policy-holders in the role as consumer and thus place the responsibility of controlling health-care costs in said policy-holders hands. By placing the burden on the policy-holders to make the financial choices on how the health-care dollars are spent, a more direct relationship between those paying for the care and those receiving the care is formed. Financial self-interest becomes a factor in making health-care choices and the policy-holders/patients don't freely spend money when they think of it as theirs rather than the insurance companies.

I like the theory but the way my insurance is set up now it utterly defeats any attempt to make this work in practice. I found this out again when I tried to price out the total cost I will have to pay for a minor procedure I have soon. Due to specialization, fragmentation, multiple providers and a complicated billing system, it is practically impossible to determine the cost for this procedure before I actually get a bill in the mail. I can get a price for the doctor performing the procedure and I can get a price for procedure (if its at the only in-network hospital here in town but it could be at any other number of smaller clinics who charge their own prices). I can't, though, get a price for the anesthesiologist who will be helping during the procedure because nobody, not the doctor, not the hospital, knows who that will be anytime closer than a day or two before the procedure. Getting the incomplete prices I did took me three or four hours of phone calls.

To state it plainly, my health insurance company forces me to go shopping for the my health care providers and when I do, I find out that nothing has price tags. It is virtually impossible to try to manage my health care costs the way my insurance company says I should. The health insurance company wants to make it seem that by shopping around I can control my health care costs but I know this isn't true and it is hard to imagine that health insurance executives don't know this as well. Besides, would you choose a surgeon, radiologist, or oncologist you had never met to perform a one-time medical procedure because he or she was the most affordable? I can't think of anybody who would unless they had no choice. And don't even get me started on in- and out-of network, deductibles, co-insurance, co-pays, and the cyclical billing routine between medical service provider, insurance company and patient.

I've made this challenge before and I'll make it again: I double-dog dare you to try to find out the price you will actually have to pay for any given medical procedure a priori. Unless it is not much more than a simple visit to your everyday doctor where no testing is done (and what doctor do you know that doesn't want to "run a few tests" while you're there) you will not be able to get a price of any value before you actually go in.

At least I can't. Not one accurate enough to be useful, that is.