If the government’s plans stay on track, Britons will, within three years, begin to receive cards containing personal details, together with a digital photograph, fingerprints and an iris scan. A nation that has not possessed identity cards since 1952 will, in a step, acquire the world’s most complex system.
Yearly Archives: 2005
Pink Floyd Live8 Video Clip
The Classic Rockers Pink Floyd can be seen performing “Comfortably Numb” in this Quicktime Video.
Wisconsin Low in Job Quality
Wisconsin’s overall job quality ranked 39th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2003, based on the research released Thursday. The study used government data to define job quality by the average wages paid per industry and occupation.
Compared with the national mix of industries, Wisconsin had smaller shares of workers in fields such as information; finance and insurance; and professional, scientific and technical services, all of which pay higher-than-average wages nationwide, said Tom Rex, associate director of the research center at Arizona State’s W.P. Carey School of Business.
Winer & Searls on the Evils of DRM
Doc Searls and Dave Winer (mp3) have some useful comments on the evils of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). Craig Burton calls it EBWU (evil, wrong, bad and ugly).
The Dark Age of Innovation?
We are fast approaching a new dark age. That, at least, is the conclusion of Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon’s Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. And like the lookout on the Titanic who spotted the fateful iceberg, Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead. His study will be published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Wisconsin Press Gives Kohl a Pass?
Joel McNally asks some timely questions about the mainstream media’s coverage (or lack thereof) of Senator Kohl (and Feingold, frankly):
It would be remarkable for any local sports owner to be protected by such a shield of invisibility, but it is nothing short of astounding when the owner also happens to be one of the state’s top elected officials. It’s not as if the press doesn’t know where to find the guy. He has a public office in Washington, D.C. And when he’s in Milwaukee, he eats breakfast almost every morning at Ma Fischer’s restaurant.
It has to be a conscious decision on the part of reporters not to ask Kohl questions about anything he’d rather not talk about.
There are actually a number of important votes that our media should be asking both Senators about.
Why do they run from these stories? McNally raises some very interesting questions. Read the whole thing.
A Glorious Wisconsin Travel Weekend
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The weather does not get much better than this. And, no mosquitoes…. Visiting or thinking about a local trip, travel Wisconsin is a useful site. These photos (click to view a larger version) are a quick reminder on this 4th of July weekend that we all have much to be thankful for.
Doing Less With More
Capt Dan Ward, USAF (pdf) on the pitfalls of overfunding:
Let me get right to it: the Department of Defense acquisition community today has too much money. There, I’ve said it, and it feels good. It may be a career-limiting opinion, but after 10 years in this business, I can confidently (albeit naïvely) conclude we have too much money. More important, I con- tend this overfunding is limiting our ability to innovate, which has negative consequences for America’s warfighting capabilities. Now that I have your attention, let me explain how I reached this conclusion:
Property Taxes Biggest Share of Income in Milwaukee and Madison Areas
The other part of the state where the property tax burden was high was Dane county, according to WISTAX. The city and town of Madison led the area with property taxes at 8.8% and 8.2% of income, respectively. Five suburbs surrounding Madison also made the top-50 list: McFarland and Mt. Horeb (both 7.4%); Sun Prairie (7.3%); and DeForest and Stoughton (both 7.1%).
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In a separate part of the report, WISTAX notes that the property tax-to-income ratio is much like a political “heart monitor.” When property taxes relative to income climb above 4%, discontent begins to grow. The study cited several periods in the postwar era when property taxes were unusually high and led to a major change, either in politics or in policy-making. Most recently, this occurred in 1993-94, when property taxes completed a 14-year rise, hitting 4.8% of income. Then, a bipartisan majority in state government imposed school revenue limits and first committed the state to providing two-thirds of local schools’ revenues.
The Price
Looking forward to July 4th, I came across this article by James H. Warner, a Marine Corps Officer who spent five years and five months in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp:
the first of June, I was put in a cement box with a steel door, which sat out in the tropical summer sun. There, I was put in leg irons which were then wired to a small stool. In this position I could neither sit nor stand comfortably. Within 10 days, every muscle in my body was in pain (here began a shoulder injury which is now inoperable). The heat was almost beyond bearing. My feet had swollen, literally, to the size of footballs. I cannot describe the pain. When they took the leg irons off, they had to actually dig them out of the swollen flesh. It was five days before I could walk, because the weight of the leg irons on my Achilles tendons had paralyzed them and hamstrung me. I stayed in the box from June 1 until Nov. 10, 1969. While in the box, I lost at least 30 pounds.