Sunkist Complex

The Debt Ceiling Part 1

2011-07-28T21:19:00.010-06:00

EDIT: I'm probably not going to do the follow-up to this anymore considering it's all over and the motivation is gone.

Disclaimer: I do not profess to be an expert on the topic of the debt ceiling, however I have been able to spend the time to read quite a bit about it and the debate surrounding it. This is just an attempt to de-mystify some aspects of it.

With all the talk about the debt ceiling these days, it's easy to get confused. The deadline for raising the limit has been changed multiple times and both parties have seemed to swap their positions a couple of times. This is without even mentioning that the debt ceiling is a completely arbitrary limit that is unique to the United States. There has also been a lot of apocalyptic talk about the idea of not raising it, without anyone seeming to go too much into specifics. I'm going to try to sort all these out, and make this as simple as I can.

Until 1917 Congress had to approve each specific increase to the debt individually. At that point, because of the US involvement in WWI, Congress created 'caps' to different types of debt to make it easier to fund the war. Starting in 1939 Congress eliminated the need for separate caps, creating the debt ceiling we have today. The limit was originally only $45 billion dollars, however over the years it has been raised over 100 times, including 7 times during President Bush's time in office. The current ceiling is set at $14.25 trillion dollars. This is a completely arbitrary limit which is why we have been able to raise it so many times, and can still in the future.

The current deadline for raising the limit has changed multiple times essentially because of procrastination by congress and credit rating companies giving the US the benefit of the doubt. The original deadline was calculated to be the end of March. It was then moved because we hadn't hit the ceiling yet. We actually hit the ceiling in May, though the Treasury was able to cease certain 'low priority' spending to make room for paying other bills. It was around this time that the deadline of August 2^nd was made, and they have kept to that deadline since. The 2^nd is the day when the Treasury will start having to play triage with our spending, deciding which of our interest payments, social security, medicare/medicaid, and defense spending to stop paying. Ceasing payment on any one of these things will have immediate and possibly devastating effects that I will get to in a moment. Recognizing the implications of passing that day without having a deal, the credit rating agencies have made it known that if we don't have a deal by then, they will lower the credit rating of US debt.

If the credit rating of US debt is lowered the effects will likely be intense and far spread. This is because of the current rating the US debt holds, and the historic attitudes surrounding the debt. The US has never before defaulted on its debt, leading to it being considered the most secure investment there is. It's considered so secure that it is often referred to as the 'risk-less rate of return'. Because of this almost all other forms of debt are tied to the US debt. When the interest rate on the US debt rises, so do interest rates on almost everything else. This has the potential to severely effect the ability to borrow for everyone. It also has global implications. Brazilian loans are tied to US debt, and a default here would negatively impact those loans. China, who holds $1.5 trillion of US debt would be catastrophically impacted should the US default, potentially losing the entire value of that debt.

All of that isn't even mentioning that the entire cause of the latest recession was the realization that sub-prime mortgage backed securities were not as safe as had been assumed. This lead to a reassessment of portfolios that took the economy in a downward spiral. A downgrade in the rating of US debt could lead to the same type of reassessment that was around the sub-prime mortgage backed securities. Given the ubiquity of US debt, due to its image as completely secure, the subsequent upheaval in the market could lead to not only a recession, but potentially a full fledged depression.

Let's recap at this point. The debt limit is an arbitrary limit currently set at $14.25 trillion. It has been raised over 100 times without much incident. August 2^nd is a real deadline that has real consequences if it is not met. Up through this point US debt has been considered the safest investment, leading to it's widespread use. Almost all interest rates are tied to US debt. If the US defaults, its interest rate will rise, causing all interest rates to rise, reducing the ability to borrow. There are global consequences as most countries own US debt that could potentially become worthless if we default. Taking into account similarities in the sub-prime mortgage caused recession and the current crisis, it is not unreasonable to assume that a default would cause another recession or possibly even a depression.

I'll leave it at this for now and will try to follow up with an analysis of the political aspects of the debt limit debate in the next couple of days. Hopefully I won't have to if a deal is reached, though I remain pessimistic at this point. If you have any questions/corrections at this point I'd be glad to respond.

For more reading:

Wikipedia - United States Debt

Washington Post - Beyond a Default: Catastrophic Calculations

Why Can't We Raise Taxes Again?

2011-05-14T22:22:00.011-06:00

There is a large emphasis on the federal budget and debt this year due to the budget debate for last year's budget and the looming debt ceiling. A lot of discussion has gone around that we need to cut spending (LOTS!) to get some control on it. There are definitely things that could be cut, especially in our bloated defense budget. Subsidies to big businesses that are making record profits are another place to look. There are two main problems, however, with the way the discussion is happening .

The first major problem is the complete refusal of too many politicians to even consider raising any taxes at all. This is a very flawed position. In the 2010 federal budget there was only about $660 billion in discretionary spending. As of May 6^th this year the public debt was $14.32 trillion.^[1] Even if we cut all discretionary spending, the debt would continue to rise, as we're running a deficit of over a trillion dollars. Nothing short of a near-complete gutting of the services the federal government provides would be able to solve the deficit and eliminate the federal debt. This is not only unlikely to the point of impossibility, it is also contrary to the interests of us as a nation. Any serious plan to tackle the debt and deficit problem MUST include tax increases. There is no other way around it.

The top marginal tax rate in the US is currently at 35% for someone making $200k or a couple making $250k a year. This is historically very low. Except for a brief period during Bush Sr.'s presidency where the top tax rate dipped to 28% (of course the cutoff point on income was lowered greatly to around $30k per year) the last time the top rate was lower was at the start of the 1930's. ^[2] One argument going around against raising taxes talks about an ever increasing tax burden which as we can see from the above just isn't true. It is hard to measure exactly how much a tax increase or decrease will affect government revenue, so I'll just give the example of how much it was estimated the 'Bush Tax Cuts'(a lowering of the top marginal tax rate from 39% to 35%) cost the federal government in revenue. The high end estimate (the only estimate that was done) of how much they cost over 10 years is 2.1 trillion dollars.^[3] Assuming this trend would hold, (Which again is hard to predict exactly due to the finicky nature of finance.) repealing the Bush tax cuts would raise roughly 200 billion dollars a year, or around 6 times the amount that Congress actually agreed to cut in April.

Another place to look at in raising taxes is the capital gains tax. Capital gains have always been lower than traditional income taxes, due to the idea that investors need incentives to invest in entrepreneurial activity. Capital gains taxes are split into two categories, short term and long term. Long term applies to any assets held for over a year. Short term are taxed at the traditional income rate, for the rest of this post when I talk about capital gains I will be referring to long term. Capital gains taxes however are significantly below income taxes, with the bottom two brackets at 0% and the top 3 brackets at 15% (brackets based on traditional income). The difference between income and capital gains taxes for the top bracket is more than double(15% for capital gains 35% for traditional income). I would imagine that gap could be narrowed quite a bit and still provide enough incentive for investment.

The last one I will mention is corporate taxes. If you've been paying attention to news in recent months you'll have noticed that there are several large corporations that not only paid nothing in taxes, but got sizable refunds from the government. GE a company that made $5.1 billion in US profits, $14.2 billion worldwide profits not only paid nothing in taxes, but received $3.2 billion from the federal government.^[4] Currently the top corporate tax rate is 35%, however there are a myriad of loopholes and most corporations do not pay anywhere close to that. If we took the corporate tax code, and cut out most if not all of the loopholes, I could even see lowering the tax rate. For example I would rather see the effective tax rate(what is actually paid in taxes) go from 10% to 15% by eliminating loopholes and lowering the tax rate to 15% than I would in seeing the effective rate changing the same amount just by raising the tax rate to 40%. The numbers in the last example were chosen randomly, I'm not sure what the actual effective tax rate is for corporations. Also while only tenuously related to corporate taxes, subsidies for corporations is somewhere else to look. I don't think companies such as oil companies that are making record profits year after year need the subsidies they receive from the US.

The second major problem is who and what are getting blamed for our economic problems and who and what are being asked to sacrifice to fix them. It doesn't take an economist to tell you what has caused the federal debt to skyrocket and the deficit to rise over the last decade. It all boils down to three things, not that any one of these is a sole cause, but combined together were disastrous. The first is the Bush tax cuts, again while it may have been fine without the other two, combined helped cause the problems we're seeing. The second one is the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This isn't saying anything as to the justifications or validity of those wars, however wars cost money, and you don't pay for wars by cutting taxes. The third is the economic collapse and subsequent bailout of large corporations and banks. Without the two previous reasons, or even if we had financed the wars with tax increases, perhaps we would have been able to handle the bailouts without going broke. Or maybe we didn't have to do as much bailing out as we did? Those are the three reasons the federal debt is so high and deficits have been rising. To be fair, there are more reasons, as economics is fairly complicated, and have tendrils in all aspects of life, however, these three are the main causes.

Following the above I find it ridiculous that people have attempted to put the blame on public sector unions. Disregarding whether you think they are more trouble than they worth, are worth every penny, or not worth a rusty nickel, the idea that they are to be blamed for any economic insecurities would be laughable if it wasn't being taken so seriously. In Wisconsin, the governor and most of the legislature went after not only public union worker's wages and benefits, (on which the workers were willing to accept cuts) but also after the existence of the unions themselves; all in the name of balancing the budget. This may have been more believable if it wasn't for tax cuts for corporations passed just a month earlier. ^[5] This is a case of someone taking the crisis and using it to push an unrelated ideological agenda (in this case fighting against unions).

There are cases of cities attempting to end or get around nonprofit's tax exempt status.^[6] In no way are nonprofit's related to budget shortfalls and there is no reason to go after them. Nonprofits provide valuable services to the communities they are in, which traditionally have been recognized in the form of a tax exempt status. The idea being that they provide as much if not more benefit than they would if they were paying taxes. I doubt there's any less value being produced by these nonprofits, so why do they need to start paying up now? Also why is it okay to talk about raising taxes on nonprofits, but you can't talk about raising them on millionaires, billionaires, and corporations making billions of dollars in profits?

This whole dilemma is ridiculous. When did we become so afraid of raising taxes? To have an effective, adult conversation about the budget, raising taxes has to be a potential option. There are no two ways about it. You cannot have a workable, realistic solution to the budget and debt problems without increased taxes being part of that solution. Given the way sentiments are on Capitol Hill, our congresspeople need to hear from us that we are okay with raising taxes, and that they need to represent us all, not just the big money interests.

¹ Wikipedia: United States federal budget
² Truth and Politics: Top US Marginal Income Tax Rates, 1913--2003
³ Tax Foundation: How Much Did the Bush Tax Cuts Cost In Forgone Revenue?
⁴ MSN Money: GE's corporate tax bill: Zero
⁵ Daily Reporter: Wisconsin Legislature passes tax cut
⁶ NPR: Cash-Strapped Cities Put The Squeeze on Nonprofits

Justice Department's Decision to Not Defend DOMA

2011-03-03T15:56:00.004-07:00

This post is intended to be a simple explanation of the recent announcement by the Department of Justice(DOJ) and what it means. I will attempt to present only facts and keep from expressing opinion in the main body of the post. That being said, for the sake of openness I will say that I am opposed to Defense of Marriage Act(DOMA) personally, though as stated before I will attempt to keep this post only to the facts so that you can understand what exactly this decision means.

On February 23^rd this year the DOJ sent a letter to Congress informing them of their intentions regarding current litigation involving DOMA. (The full text of this letter is available here, I will be taking most of my information from within that letter.) This letter informed Congress that in a couple specific cases the DOJ would not be defending the constitutionality of DOMA. This is due to these new lawsuits which are to be heard in Circuits where there is not an established precedent regarding the standard of review when it comes to cases involving sexual orientation.

There are three levels of scrutiny when dealing with cases involving issues related to the 5^th and 14^th amendments. The lowest level of scrutiny, referred to as rational basis is the current standard used in cases with DOMA so far. Under this standard all that is needed to defend a statute is to show that it serves a rational, legitimate interest of the government. The second level, intermediate scrutiny or sometimes heightened scrutiny though there are some differences between the two. With intermediate scrutiny the law must further a rational legitimate interest of the government, in a way that is 'substantially related to that interest.'¹ With heightened scrutiny any intrusion caused by the law must be necessary to further the interest. The final is strict scrutiny and applies in cases that involve fundamental rights, such as free speech and racial discrimination.

As stated before, so far the DOJ has only had to defend DOMA in Circuit courts where there is an established precedent to use rational basis as the level of scrutiny in these cases. The cases that prompted this change from the DOJ are occurring in Circuits where there is no established precedent, which require the DOJ to express which level of scrutiny they believe should be applied to the case. In these cases DOJ has chosen to use heightened scrutiny as the basis for these cases.

The DOJ has come to this choice by following guidelines set forth by the Supreme Court through other cases to help determine if heightened scrutiny is necessary. These guidelines are as follows:

"(1) whether the group in question has suffered a history of discrimination; (2) whether individuals 'exhibit obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics that define them as a discrete group'; (3) whether the group is a minority or is politically powerless; and (4) whether the characteristics distinguishing the group have little relation to legitimate policy objectives or to an individual’s 'ability to perform or contribute to society' " ²

The DOJ expressed in the letter that it feels sexual orientation falls under all of those, leading to their choice to use heightened scrutiny. Following this level of scrutiny the DOJ has determined in at least one of the cases that they cannot defend the constitutionality of DOMA.

In the letter the DOJ specifically says DOMA will continue to be enforced until such a time that it is overruled by the courts or overturned by the legislature. They will also continue to defend DOMA as they have before in Circuits where rational basis is the precedent.

There is also precedent for the DOJ to refuse to defend laws as they are currently in the specific case mentioned above. Between 2004 and 2010 the DOJ has informed Congress that they will not be defending a statue 13 times. These have varied from election campaign finance laws to pornography laws. ³

¹ Wikipedia: Intermediate Scrutiny

² Justice.gov: Letter from the Attorney General to Congress on Litigation Involving the Defense of Marriage Act

³ Law.com: Government's 'Duty to Defend' Not a Given

Rant on Violent and Inflammatory Rhetoric

2011-01-10T11:16:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer: This post is a rant, and as such will likely be very long and angry. I will also make generalizations and am not going to mince my words by adding a disclaimer every paragraph saying that there are generalizations. It's also going to come across very partisan. Basically, if any of that doesn't sound fun, don't bother reading, I pretty much just need to rant.

The recent shooting in Arizona of Rep. Giffords and bystanders brought about a lot of discussion about the violent rhetoric coming from the Right. The motives of the shooter haven't been revealed yet, but either way it brought this up, and it's about time it gets talked about. Hopefully it keeps getting talked about, and something changes, although I fully expect it to be ignored within a week or so. Cynical, yes, but that's the way things seem to go.

There has been a marked increase in the amount of violent and inflammatory rhetoric coming from the right ever since Obama got elected, or maybe it was around the time of the health care debate, I'm not sure. I've watched as this rhetoric combined with lies is being leading to a dangerous idea. The idea being that the democrats are dangerous to America and must be stopped by any means possible. I'm not saying it's intentional, as I have no way to know for sure, but it sure as hell isn't responsible.

It all pretty much starts with Obama the secret Muslim from Kenya. Both of which are ridiculous pieces of non-news. Yet, they were covered incessantly by essentially all major news networks. The only thing those two lies served was to show Obama as 'other' and to make it seem that he is some kind of Manchurian candidate that's going to ruin our country. Now as far as I can remember, no high ups spread those rumors and the news mostly just discredited it. The fact it was covered so much, when it was such a ridiculous piece of news just lent it credence however, and as recently as last August at least 20% of the country seemed to believe that Obama's a Muslim.

Flash forward to the health care debate, which I just have to say, for what it is (an attempt to ensure everyone has access to affordable health care) there was a surprisingly extreme reaction to it from the Right. The largest 'controversy' over the health care debate early on was the absurd notion of the 'death panels'. In the bill it was an optional consultation on creating a living will. It was blown up into the absolutely absurd notion that there was going to be a panel of government bureaucrats that would decide on whether to 'terminate' older people and even babies with severe disabilities. This idea was spread from the highest echelons of the Right, from House Minority Leader(at the time) John Boehner to Sarah Palin.

Matters only got worse once the Tea Party got started. I have never seen such a hateful group be given so much credence. The biggest lie about the Tea Party is that it is not partisan. I've never heard of a single democrat agreeing with anything they say, and I've never heard once the Tea Party endorse any but a republican candidate. One of the big memes of the Tea Party is that of 'taking our country back', which inherently implies that someone took the country away to begin with. It seems that they just can't get over the fact that the American people elected the democrats in such a large margin in 2008.

After that things just kind of seemed to snowball. You have a guy showing up to a presidential event with a fully loaded semi automatic rifle. You've got the signs 'We left our guns at home.. this time'. There's the 'Second Amendment Remedies' of Sharon Angle, the map with gun sights on the districts of democratic representatives with the phrase 'Take them out'. You've got Rep. Giffords' challenger in the last election with his event with the description: 'Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove
Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly'.

When you take all of these things, which I've only gone for the major indisputable ones, there are many many more, it forms a very dangerous picture. You start with the idea that the president is not an American, and that he is a Muslim, which as has been shown from the protests over the so called 'Ground Zero Mosque' that many Americans can't make the difference between Muslim and terrorist. So you have a non-American possibly terrorist president, who is pushing health care which you're told will involve the government saying it can kill your grandparents. You've got the 'take our country back' meme showing that shows the previous idea is given some merit. Then you have all the talk of 'Second Amendment Remedies' and gun talk. Honestly, I'm surprised there hasn't been more violence.

There is proof this kind of rhetoric can provide the violent response. All you have to do is look at abortion. You take one side that says the other is killing babies. A truly horrific idea that would make anyone want to stop it. Then you get the activists making wanted posters for abortion doctors. Then you get the death of Dr. Tiller. It's a formula for violence that always works.

There isn't much we can do either. It is incredibly difficult to target this speech without risking free speech. The best thing to do is to see this rhetoric, call it out. Say, 'This is not ok, there is a way to say this without the violent imagery'. It makes me sad that I have only come across one republican that can see that this isn't alright. Every other response seems to be some variant of 'Yes, this is a tragedy. There is no way that our rhetoric had anything to do with it, and we will NOT tone it down.'

I think I'm done with the rant now, and I'd like to apologize if I offended any of you who read this, but this is the way I see what's going on.

Lemon Pudding Salad

2010-12-27T22:24:00.003-07:00

I promised a couple people on Thanksgiving that I would share the recipe for the Lemon Pudding Salad I make every year on here. Took me a while (because I forgot =S) but here it is:

Lemon Pudding Salad

4 small pkg Lemon Pudding
5 c. Milk
2 15 oz can Mixed Fruit
1 20 oz can Pineapple (tidbits or chunks)
1 8 oz container Cool Whip
2 Bananas

Beat pudding mix and milk with whisk 2 minutes. Let set 5 minutes.

Drain mixed fruit and pineapple. Add to pudding.

Mix in cool whip.

Slice bananas and add before serving.

Weekly Website #4

2010-10-10T11:01:00.001-06:00

Week 4! Yay, I found another one. ^_^

This week's website is more part of another website that I haven't really explored yet... BUT, it can be summed up in about four words:

Old Looney Tunes Cartoons!

Going to that site ("http://fearocity.com/theater/looneytunes/main.html") will forward you to a random cartoon, (Title # instead of main) all of which are old looney tunes cartoons! I don't think I need to explain why this is awesome, so I'll just leave it at that. Go watch them and enjoy! ^_^

Weekly Webiste #3

2010-10-03T11:33:00.003-06:00

Third week of Weekly Website! (Again having cheated by writing this the first week and waiting to post it...) I wonder if I can keep this up after this one since I don't have any more in mind at this point. >.> I'm sure I'll figure something out. ^_^

This weeks website is:

Wallbase

This website stores hundreds of thousands of different wallpapers. (As in desktop backgrounds for your computer, not real wallpaper) It's a great site for people like me who love customizing the way their computer looks and are constantly changing it. To start out just go there, then either type in a search term like "Lego" or something, switch the search type to color and enter in "purple", or hit the "Random" button and have it generate random wallpapers for you to look through.

Another thing to note after starting your search. On the next page on the top there are color coded buttons "Safe" being green, and "Sketchy" being yellow. You will probably want to click on the yellow one to eliminate some wallpapers you probably don't care to see. Then click on the curled arrow on the right side of the screen to refresh your search.

Now you are ready to look through a huge database of wallpapers and find a new one to go on your desktop! ^_^

Weekly Website #2

2010-09-26T11:20:00.002-06:00

Week 2 of my Weekly Website! (Though technically I kind of cheated, since I wrote this last weekend, and just haven't posted it until today) Still, I have successfully done it two weeks in a row! =b

This weeks Website is:

Down for everyone or just me?

This one is another really simple one with only one function. You type in a website into the input box and it will tell you if they can access that website from their end. This can be useful in a couple of ways:

To know if the website is not working or if its just your connection.
If you are at school and it's not working you can find out if it's blocked by a filter.
If you are in a foreign country that might have a filter system. (e.g. China)
Um... yeah, that's all I can think of at the moment.

I've gotten some decent use out of it, pretty much just for the first use. Hopefully someone else can too. ^_^

Weekly Website

2010-09-19T04:11:00.005-06:00

Today I am introducing my Weekly Website little feature thingy. Basically, every Sunday I'll try to make a post introducing a website. They'll range from simple ones like today's, to more complex ones like TED that I covered in the past. I came up with this mainly because there are lots of little websites I want to share with everyone and to try to get into blogging more. ^_^

Enough with the intro now on onto this weeks website, a very simple one:

Rainy Mood

This is a very simple little website with only one useful function. (That I have found at least ;) ) All it does is once you open it, it starts playing a 30 minute track of high quality rain that loops. I really enjoy it, because it doesn't rain here very often but I absolutely love the rain, and so I can have it going in the background to boost my mood. Pretty simple, hope someone else can get some little use out of it or something. ^_^

Washington DC

2010-09-02T19:15:00.002-06:00

This past weekend I was woken up to a surprise invitation to go to DC with my dad. At first I replied with, "No, go away! Let me sleep." It made me realize that, if somebody woke me up and asked me if I wanted a million dollars, the first thing I would say would probably be, "Do I have to get up?" Of course, I ended up going. I don't think I could refuse an all expense paid trip, especially to someplace like DC! We ended up taking off out of Salt Lake International Airport just four hours after I woke up. It was pretty crazy, waking up without any plans, then going to sleep on the other side of the country.

We went mainly to visit Elizabeth and Cody, who just moved out there for a semester, though seeing some of the sights was definitely part of the agenda. The first couple of days we were there, I mainly stayed with them at Cody's dad's house. There was a large gathering on the national mall and it was packed quite full, so I was kind of avoiding that. Monday was the first day we ended up going into the city. We walked along the mall and saw the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial, World War II Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol Building from the outside. That was a fun day, but it was really hot and muggy so we were all exhausted by the end of the day. I even think I may have gotten heat exhaustion.

The next day we were a little smarter and planned it out, and more importantly, planned out to be inside most of the day. We started off going to the Capitol Building again, but going inside and we took a tour. That was pretty interesting, we got to see a lot of statues and the old Supreme Court chamber. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping it was though, to go into the parts that are in use on a tour it sounds like you need to talk to your congressperson beforehand. After we finished the tour, we ate in the Capitol Visitors Center restaurant/cafeteria. The food there was pretty good, and not excessively pricey. Following a delicious meal we took a tunnel (yay for staying out of the heat!) over to the Library of Congress. I really, really enjoyed the library. We couldn't actually go into any of the reading rooms, but just the Grand Hall alone was breathtaking. I can't really do it justice, so I won't try, but I will say that it was probably the highlight of my entire trip.

Once we finished at the Library of Congress we walked down to the National Archives. Sadly, we were out in the heat for that wasn't so fun. It didn't take too long to get there though and when we got in we got to see a copy of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights! That was pretty cool too. There was quite a bit more in there but it was getting late so we went home for the night.

The next day was a little more scatterbrained, we didn't end up heading out til around noon. We started out at the Capitol Building eating lunch there again. Afterward we, having learned our lesson the day before with the archives, got back on the metro to go to the National Museum of Natural History. That was really fun, I ran around looking at the exhibits. I got to see the mammals, most of the gems, and a bit of the human section. I also got to see a film on the IMAX screen they have there. It was about a gathering of sardine schools and a large variety of predators near the wild coast off south east Africa. It was pretty fascinating, and reminded me of when I was little and wanted to be a marine biologist. The whole experience there at the museum reminded me how much I love science. (Specifically the physical sciences, I haven't forgotten my love of the social sciences.) As we were leaving my dad offered to buy me a souvenir, so I picked up a stuffed animal white tiger cub which is just adorable, I love it.

Then this morning I woke up at five AM there, (3 AM here) got driven an hour and a half to the airport then took a four hour flight home, came to my second (technically the third day) of class, which wasn't that great but you can't always have the great classes. Anyway, it was an awesome trip and I had loads of fun, but I'm definitely glad to be home now.

C++ and Project Euler

2010-08-25T02:41:00.004-06:00

A couple weeks ago I decided that I wanted to learn C++. Not out of any kind of fascination about programming, (though I have enjoyed it over the years) but mainly because there is a program I want that doesn't exist. Well... that's not entirely true, parts of it exist spread about but none of them are perfect, and that's the problem. The program is a mix of a dock program combined with possibly a keystroke launcher and would also probably replace the alt tab feature. It would also allow me to quickly and easily turn off my computer. Needless to say, having just barely started learning C++, I am very far from this goal. It doesn't matter so much however as I'm sure it will be useful at some point, and I'm enjoying it.

Over the weekend I went up to Salt Lake to hang out with my dad for a couple days. His company was having a party at Lagoon and he had invited me to go up. I of course immediately said I would, because I mean, hey, it's Lagoon! Since I had woken up at something like four o'clock that afternoon, I decided to go up to his place and spend the night to ensure I would be awake in time to go. I didn't arrive until pretty late but I still got to talk a lot with my dad, mostly about his work. He kept apologizing for it, but I didn't mind because I was really interested. His main problem he was working on had to do with some of the files of the program he works on not getting sent to the translator when changing it to a different language, leading some of the program to still be in English. He had figured out it was because of the name of the files and the way another part of the program chose the files to send to get translated. It got late though so we both went to bed.

The next morning I got to go to work with him, something I have always very much enjoyed, though I couldn't tell you exactly why. He introduced me to most of the people there and I got to listen to him talk 'shop' with some of the other programmers and even sit in on a scrum meeting. When he was talking to one of the programmers he mentioned that I was teaching myself C++ and they talked a little bit about different programming languages before we took off. It got me thinking about whether I made the right choice on the programming language to learn. So, a couple days ago I went about to find the answer.

Naturally, the first step was to google 'what programming language should I learn'. I clicked on one of the first links and read a blog post that it was essentially determined by what you wanted to do. It didn't really list C++ on it anywhere but it did mention C# for Windows programming. I'm not sure I'm going to stick with a Windows operating system forever though, so I figured I might as well stick with C++ since it is portable to Linux. I got distracted however, by a link to Project Euler. It's a site with a lot of math and computer programming problems dealing with numbers so large that you generally need a computer to solve them. (e.g. finding the sum of all prime numbers below 2 million, which is over 100 billion) So far I've solved 10 of them, though one of the latest (the one I just mentioned) I'm sure I could have done better as they are supposed to take no more than 1 minute for the computer to solve, but my program took over 15 minutes. I've been happy so far though with my progress and it's been fun. The favorite thing it's led to so far is the program I wrote to determine if a number is prime or not. My solution is pretty inefficient as it divides the number by everything from 1 to itself, but it works and that was cool. (I tried having it divide the number by everything from 1 to half of itself but for some reason it kept saying 4 was a prime number, probably because of a < instead of a <= but mneh, how often do I need to calculate all the primes between 1 and 2 million anyways? )

Halloween - Belated

2009-11-04T22:12:00.002-07:00

This Halloween I dressed up for the first time in several years. I didn't really do much, but hey, Halloween is an excuse to put on fun costumes and demand candy. I'm not really the richest person around right now, so I gave myself a $10 limit on my costume. I ended up doing better than that, clocking in at only 4 dollars! Here's my costume:

Me and my mom put it together from a hoodie from DI and an old bent umbrella that I got to mutilate. >:] I got the instructions from the web, and overall it turned out great. It was fun to make and to wear!

PS Sadly it did not give me the ability to fly. =(

Curse of Glenstow

2009-11-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

The morning air was damp as Darian plunged the shovel into the dirt, still muddy from last night's rain. Thick, dark clouds blanketed the sky, engulfing the mountains in their mists. Thunder was rumbling in the distance, as if to warn that the rain was not yet finished. This was to be the third grave that Darian would prepare this morning. The whole of Glenstow was frightened by what had transpired, and the piercing wails of the mourners that filled the air did nothing to soothe the fear.

A messenger sent by Father Doheny to the Church returned this morning with word that a Bishop was to be sent to aid the town. There hadn't been a bishop in Glenstow since Father Lambert succumbed to the fever when Darian was just a boy. His passing had been hard on the town, as he was very well loved by the people of Glenstow. His replacement, Father Doheny had never managed to integrate well into the community and over the years his distance wore on the town's relationship with the Church. These were dark times however, and the town was anxiously awaiting the Bishop. Where else could they turn to now, but to God?

"Darian," a firm, yet tired voice said from behind him. "Darian, you must go and rest. Let me finish the graves."

Darian pierced the earth again, removing a shovelful of mud and rocks, the load weighing on his weary arms. "No, brother. I need to do this myself."

"For God's sake man! You just lost your wife and children. You need some rest."

Darian said nothing as he continued to pierce the earth, imagining with each thrust that the world screamed out in pain, as he himself wished to do. As he worked, the rain returned, masking the tears that had begun to fall upon his cheeks. Thomas stood, watching, helpless to ease his brother's pain. He watched for a while, then took up a shovel, and together they prepared the graves to the sounds of thunder, rain and mourning.

'Dislike This'

2009-10-22T14:45:00.000-06:00

A while ago, I think it was my dad, commented on somebody's facebook status wishing that there was a dislike button. It made complete sense to me and I wondered why I hadn't thought about it before. I suppose it's just that I don't spend that much time on facebook. Once I did think of it though, it just seemed so weird to me for there too be a like with no dislike. Well, soon after I read that, I forgot about it completely until earlier today I stumbled upon an add-on for firefox that added a dislike button for facebook. I didn't install the add-on myself, mainly because it's still in the developing stage and the comments made it sound like it still needed quite a bit of work, but I found myself looking forward to having it in the future. This time as I was thinking about it, I got to looking around for ways to have a temporary dislike button feature.

The first thing I did was go through the alt character codes to see if there happened to be a thumbs down, as they have other images like faces and musical notes. (☺ ☻ ♪ ♫) Sadly there wasn't any thumbs down or up, so I started searching around on google. I quickly discovered that the discussion about a dislike button has been around for a while now, and I was surprised to realize, that quite a few people were against it. Up until this point the only use I had come up with for the dislike button was for statuses such as 'My cat just died' or 'My brother just ate the last cookie'. The arguments against it were all about how it would cause hurt feelings by disliking what someone has to say or disliking a picture because they aren't the most attractive person. On most of the internet, I would have to agree with them. On facebook however, I haven't ever really seen the same kind of hate that gets thrown around the rest of the internet. If someone were to use a dislike button in a rude way to me I would probably either send them a private message about it or just remove them from my friends, as they probably wouldn't have been that close of a friend to begin with. If someone else was getting a bunch of negative dislikes I would probably recommend they take a close look at their 'friends'.

I still think there should be a dislike button, though now it doesn't seem quite so obvious as to why there should be one. Perhaps it's some misplaced trust in humanity, but I like to think we are mature enough to handle one.

Drunk With Power

2009-10-17T18:12:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't written for a while. Let's see how long I can go before I stop again!

The other day I was playing Settlers of Catan with some friends. (Ronnie and his brother in law Baumer(spelling?)) So we were playing and Ronnie went mostly for development cards (like he always does) and got several victory point cards leading him to hit 10 points and win while Baumer and I were still both pretty far behind. We were all having fun, so we all decided to up the winning score to 12. The way the game was going though Ronnie won again in just a turn or two by playing a couple of knight cards and getting the largest army. Again we decided to continue playing, this time just kind of indefinitely.

It was at that time we introduced a new dynamic that, though we didn't know it at the time, would change the game dramatically. We decided to vote to make it so that Baumer and I could build our settlements only one road away instead of the normally required two roads, but Ronnie had to follow the normal rules. All of us had agreed to that, even Ronnie, though he was kind of iffy about it, and we were like, hmm maybe we should only change stuff with unanimous vote. It was working fairly well and we were all still having fun. Ronnie was still ahead by a bit and getting tons of cards especially on one number(5 I think) he would get 6 sheep cards. Well, we decided that we wanted in on that action so we decided to put in a modest tax, Ronnie would get 4 sheep cards and Baumer and I would both get one. This time however, he wouldn't vote for it, but we decided hey, we have a majority, and the 'bank' is over on our side. This changed the voting dynamic by switching it to majority rule.

Once we were allowed to make decisions with just the two of us, we started going a little crazy. First we could make any 2 for 1 card trade in without having to be on the proper port. Next we could have two turns each turn. (none of these applied to Ronnie, he was stuck with the original rules) Since we started to have so many cards, we decided that if a seven was rolled we wouldn't lose any cards. At this point it started getting pretty crazy. We had the whole pile of different resources so often we started counting each card as two resources instead of one. Baumer invented 'mega-cities' that gave four resources each roll. Over this time we slowly increased the tax on Ronnie. It got so bad that he ended up not getting any cards. He would only get a card if he normally received an odd amount. Finally he got enough cards to upgrade one of his settlements (by this point both Baumer and I were far ahead of Ronnie) but right at that time we decided that we would confiscate his cards and split them between us! Not too long after that we decided to stop playing.

Luckily Ronnie was a pretty good sport about it, and we all had fun. The whole time we were making jokes, like at the beginning saying that we could build closer together because we're just the peasants we don't need space while Ronnie's people needed to stay apart for aesthetics and tourism etc. Later on Ronnie was begging for wheat because his people were starving. It brought up some interesting thoughts for me, about majority rule and how a tyranny of the majority can come about. It all started out so innocently, and even with a unanimous vote. Once we started though, whenever we hit a problem we were just like "Legislation!" and Baumer and I would vote yes, not even bothering to find out how Ronnie voted half the time. Early on it was more about making it even, but once we got even and even passed Ronnie, we still didn't include him in the perks of the legislation. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was just a case of the 'it's always been that way' where once we made him the 'other' it was just easy to keep him there.

Thinking about this, I was reminded about how over the last couple years I've heard a lot of talk about majority vote, though not specifically talking about the idea. It's mainly been talk about 'the majority voted, and here is what came of it, and that's just the way it is now'. This bothered me, though to be honest, I don't know if I would have cared as much if I was against some of the things that got voted for to begin with. Thinking about it though, how just is a majority vote? Is it okay for 51% of the population to decide what the other 49% has to live with? I personally don't think so, especially so when the 49% are voting essentially to 'do nothing' rather than add legislation. However, if we say 51% isn't enough, what is enough? 60? 75? 100? Whatever is chosen there will almost invariably be someone opposed. For me, I think Rousseau had the idea when he professed two rules to regulate the relation between equality and unanimity:

"First, the more grave and important the questions discussed, the nearer should the opinion that is to prevail approach unanimity. Secondly, the more the matter in hand calls for speed, the smaller the prescribed difference in the numbers of votes may be allowed to become: where an instant decision has to be reached, a majority of one vote should be enough. The first of these two rules seems more in harmony with the laws, and the second with practical affairs. In any case, it is the combination of them that gives the best proportions for determining the majority necessary."^[1]

^[1]Rousseau. The Social Contract. bk. 4, ch. 2.

That Was A Close One

2009-07-11T19:44:00.002-06:00

Whew. I just had a close call today. It's been pretty hot here the last couple days, but earlier today it was nice and cool, there was plenty of cloud cover and a nice breeze. When it started sprinkling lightly I decided I just had to go outside and enjoy it. Naturally, I went onto the roof because that is the best place to enjoy such weather. Then all of a sudden the wind exploded. Since there are several tall trees around my house, branches started flying everywhere. It was pretty terrifying. I quickly jumped down from the roof onto our deck and rushed inside. Once the wind died down, I went back outside and took some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

2009-06-02T16:27:00.003-06:00

Sorry in advance, but here I'm going to introduce you to another possible time sink. It's called TED, and its pretty awesome. It stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. TED is a conference that happens, I believe once a year, where some of the 'world's most fascinating thinkers and doers' come together to give 18 minute talks in their area of expertise.

TED started out in 1984 as just a conference to bring together people from the TE and D worlds and share ideas. Since that time, it has evolved into quite a bit more. There are now three TED conferences each year, the original is held in Irvine, California, with a global one held in Oxford, while the last is held in India. They also introduced the TED prize in 2005. Each year, TED chooses three extraordinary people $100,000 and "One Wish to Change the World." The wish is the big part of the prize. Each winner announces their wish and the participants of TED do their best to help realize it. Some of the wishes have led to such things as: the ONE campaign, Pangea Day, a portable device to 'erase' migraines without drugs, and more that has not been completed yet.

The big boon for us however, is in TED's website, because on their website, you can watch hundreds of the talks for free. There is a huge range of topics that these talks cover, ranging almost any topics you can think of from the technology, entertainment, and design themes. All of the talks are fascinating and highly educational. I always come out of each one having learned something new, and it's awesome! There's more though, TED offers the talks in 45 other languages as well! (Besides English) I must admit however, that's a bit misleading. Not every talk has been translated into each language. The language with the most is Spanish, with 53, but they have over 100 translators working on them.

Overall, I think TED is a great site to bookmark and check out whenever you have some free time. It's a great tool in the kit of any lifelong learner.

Why I'm a Pro-Feminist

2009-05-28T15:23:00.006-06:00

I consider myself to be a Pro-Feminist. In this post, I'll explain a little bit about feminism, what it means to me, and why I consider myself one.

First of all, let me explain the 'Pro' part of it. Pro-Feminism is used in two main contexts. To state that you support the feminist movement, while not actually considering yourself a feminist. The other being used for men who are, essentially feminists. From henceforth, I will refer to the later. Basically, some feminists and pro-feminists believe that the term 'feminist' can only apply to a woman, as "Feminism is a movement and a body of ideas developed by, for, and about women." Thus, the men who would otherwise call themselves feminists had to come up with another term for themselves, and pro-feminist is one of the more popular ones. There is some debate among feminists as to whether requiring a different label for feminist men is antithetical to feminism in that in many ways feminism argues against biological determinism in gender. However, as I have privilege from being male in a patriarchal society, whether I want it or not, must acknowledge my privilege and accept the label of 'Pro-feminist'.

Now onto feminism itself. Feminism is a sociopolitical movement whose main goal is equality between men and women. Over time, feminism has evolved and branched apart leading to several different types of feminism. This has been caused by the constant addition of new voices into feminism, whether through women of color during the civil rights movement, or just young adults discovering feminism. Each new voice adding their experiences and questions, sometimes controversial, leading to disagreements. Overall I think I'm safe to say though, that modern feminism is now more about equality for everyone, rather than just equality between the sexes. (Yes, I do realize this conclusion is highly simplistic, but it is meant to be... If that makes sense?)

Getting into more of the meat of what feminism is, I feel the need to add a disclaimer here. From here on, I will be going into more of what feminism means to me rather than what it means in general.

Feminism relies on a key concept, one that is an echo of the founding fathers of the US; that all men (and women) are created equal. Why feminism is important, stems from this; in practice, people are treated unequally based on gender, race, and various other traits. A lot of this inequality is unintentional and in many cases hard to see. For example there are many instances in language where men are seen to be superior to women based on words we use. When we talk about a group of people, we say 'you guys', or in a broader sense 'mankind'. In both these cases being male is assumed. The female is considered to be an offshoot or subset of male, with male being the dominant part. This can be seen even in the words we use for the sexes. Man, woman, male, female, in each case the female is seen as a subset of humanity, while men are assumed to be the norm.

The goal then, of feminism, is to eradicate the inequality. This is a lofty goal, especially when we see how ingrained it is in our culture and language.(As we did above with the words) How then, when it is so ingrained are we supposed to change this? I don't know. All I know, is that I can see the inequality, and it makes my heart ache for those suffering because of these inequalities.

Here are some of the things that make me see feminism as important:

Women earn only 77 cents per dollar that men do for equal work.^[1]

1 in 3 women are beaten or abused by an intimate partner.^[2]

1 in 5 women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.^[2]

Rape is used as a weapon of war.^[2]

5,000 women are killed in 'honour killings' each year.^[2]

Those are just some of the reasons that I am a pro-feminist. I realize I've jumped around a lot this post, if you have any questions about a particular point, I'd be happy to elaborate. Also, sorry about the serious post, I'll try to get back to some humor in my next one. ^_~

^[1]Wikipedia: Male-female income disparity

^[2]UN: Violence Against Women Fact Sheet(pdf)

The Horrors of Stumbleupon

2009-05-27T14:12:00.008-06:00

Look I'm updating my blog! So soon too! Ok, lets get to the point of this post. The majority of my future blog posts will most likely be on topics found by stumbleupon. In this post, I will tell you all about stumbleupon, what it is, why its awesome, and why you should never use it.

Stumbleupon is a toolbar for your internet browser. Now, normally I am against adding toolbars to your browser because they are fraught with spyware and just aren't useful. Stumbleupon is different however, I haven't had any problems with it adding spyware to my computer, and it's highly addictive. Now, onto what it actually does.

Stumbleupon is a web based application(or a webapp) that is designed to bring you to websites that interest you. To start using stumbleupon, you go to their website, make an account(they're free) and start setting your interests. There are over 500 interests for you to choose from, however last time I checked there was a limit of 127 per account. Anyways, once you choose some interests you can start stumbling.

Here is the important part of the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Now, what stumbleupon does, is, whenever you hit the 'Stumble!' button, it will take you to a random web page that matches the interests you chose. So, say you chose Food, Art, Movies, and Photography as your interests; when pressing the button, it would take you only to sites related to those topics. Where it gets interesting is the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. See, topics like food, art, movies, etc. are pretty broad topics, and you may not enjoy every webpage related to them. So, If you enjoy a website it takes you to, you click the 'I like it!' and it will add it to a list of your favorites accessible on the stumbleupon website and will show you more webpages like that. If, however, you do not enjoy it, for whatever reason, you click the thumbs down and it will stop showing you sites like it.

As time goes on, more and more of the sites you visit through stumbleupon will be of interest to you. This is where the horror of stumbleupon comes in. It's just so hard to stop stumbling. It's so common in fact, that should you choose humor as one of your topics, you'll frequently stumble onto webcomics or pictures making jokes about losing sleep or productivity because a 'just one more stumble' mentality will take hold.

I am quite addicted to stumbleupon and am constantly finding interesting topics or articles on a myriad of interests. These will most likely be the fodder for my posts, which is why I've introduced you to this horror. Stumbleupon can be an amazing tool, but it can kill productivity and make you a slave to the toolbar. Use at your own risk.

Disclaimer: StumbleUpon is an awesome webapp and I am in no way against it, I think its awesome and you should all use it, theres nothing wrong with it at all. (Or is it making me say that to get you hooked too? You'll never know!)

I'm Starting A Blog

2009-05-26T17:06:00.006-06:00

Starting with this post, I am officially entering the world of blogging. I have for some time held off on creating a blog for several reasons. Mainly, I just didn't really think I had anything interesting to write about. To be quite honest, I still hold to that opinion. I just decided that I'd like somewhere to store my random musings where someone may possibly make use of them.

I'll be honest the main readership of this blog, if it has any, will likely be my mom and dad.(If even them.) That being said, I will probably write as if the entire world cares what I write. I don't actually think they do, I'm not quite that narcissistic, but close. ^_~ It's really just because I like writing in a somewhat grammatically correct fashion and using big words. The purpose of which is that it makes me sound all intellectual and as if I actually know what I'm talking about. =b

Once I post this blog, I will likely go out and send my family emails telling them to come check out my awesome blog and read it, and then most likely forget I have a blog and never update it again. Now, I'm not saying I intend to introduce you all to my blog then never update it, all I'm saying is it's a possibility. Nevertheless, I will try my best to update it... every once in a while.

Now that I'm done yammering on about my new blog that is quite empty, I will post this and invite you all to bookmark then forget about my blog. ^_~