NASA, Obama, and a use for this 'hope' malarky

As usual, SHEAm has scooped me in his quick round up of what's going on in the world and what's interesting. There are a few of his little news items that I had intended to write about, most importantly the NASA issue.

NASA- Tim noted that we had a bit of a heated discussion about this very topic last night. Which brings to mind a random tidbit - my new favorite restaurant is Fago de Chao! I had been before for private events, but really last night's dinner was great. And I think I've had enough meat to last me the rest of the year.

Anyway, though it might generally run counter to what one would expect from my ideology, I am a great proponent of expanding NASA funding. We are facing a virtually unprecedented financial crisis, have two wars draining what is left of our federal funds, etc. But given the great 'accidental' discoveries that have come out of our space program thus far and the general human instinct to explore and discover, I think it is vital that we continue to properly fund our space programs.

While I think one of the very few good things that Bush did was to reestablish some goals for our floundering space program: returning to the Moon and eventually a manned mission to Mars. Both are great goals and sound policy. However, instead of continuing to innovate and invest in new technologies, he insted directed NASA to virtually revert to the old Apollo system of single use vehicles. While I acknowledge the great flaws that were found in the shuttle program, let's also recognize that the shuttles are nearly 30 years old. Think just of the general technological shifts that have altered every day life in the last 30 years. Everything from our cars, to our phones (cell phones in general, let alone iPhones!), HD television, all digital TV, etc. Imagine the progress we could make with returnable/reusable vehicles if we properly invested.

The other great argument for this kind of ambitious reinvestment is the entire 'hope' or 'national pride' argument. While I was a very great skeptic of Obama's seemingly empty, useless promises of hope and change, here is an area where that can really matter. It has become cliche to reference JFK's pledge to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's (a deadline we only barely maintained), but it really was a moment of intense national pride. Maybe without the spectre of the Soviet Union to really challenge and invigorate us we don't have the motivation to succeed, but I'm hoping this will change. To quote Jimmy Carter (whom I fear Obama may just emulate too much), we're in a bit of a national 'malaise'. A space program that does more than just send up telescopes and build a useless, out of date space station would be a great step toward reestablishing that national pride.

Regardless, I hope that President Obama follows through with his pledge to NASA and redirects some of the billions wasted in Iraq every month into the space program. Granted, there are many priorities (fighting unemployment, our disastrous health care system, our declining infrastructure, etc), but I sincerely hope to see progress on this front.

Round Up ... or Round Down

Welcome to Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 ...

* The Paper of Record leads with an article regarding NASA's future, here.  Ironically enough a few friends of mine were sitting around discussing this last night - and then there was this excellent article this morning.  The article touches on two things ... the problems NASA has run into with the Ares rockets and Orion capsule - both of which I think can be expected.  We are designing a new way to get into space, this certainly won't be easy, and I think that anyone who expects it to be so is just being foolish  The bigger issue at hand in the public eye is the suspension of Space flight from 2010-2015; as a way to save a ton of money and allow NASA funds and time to properly prepare Constellation for space.  Obama has expressed his interest in keeping the Shuttle flying, in the interest of national pride (from '10-'15 we would be hitching rides with the Russians into space).  I personally don't like the idea of us not having a way to get into space for 5 years, but unless Obama is promising additional funding to keep the shuttle alive and not impact the Constellation launch date/preparedness - I am not in favor of changing anything.

Since we are on the topic ... it should be noted that Corrupt and I had quite the argument last night in regards to Shuttle versus Orion capsule.  I have no background in space policy and am certainly not a rocket scientist ... but it seems to me that we have tried this whole 'reusable' spacecraft thing and it didn't work.  I personally think this is the best technology we have on hand ... and until we are able to get some kind of plane into space, this will be the best technology.  Every country still has trouble with the whole reentry process - its just not something we know much about and not much we know how to change in regards to it.

* GMAC got $6 Billion and will convert into a bank holding company ... woot for them.

* Personalized medicine ... maybe one of these days.  The Paper of Record has the story, here, about how drugs only work for about half the people prescribed to them - due to people's genetic differences.  At some point in the future drugs may be tailored to work for you, or at least checked to make sure they do work for you before you are prescribed them.

* The Paper of Record has an interesting twist, here, on the housing crisis' effect on divorce proceedings - who gets the house?  Couples in divorce proceedings are trying to dump the house on their former spouse because they don't want to be saddled with its costs and mortgages.  And what are the houses worth ... in most places it is certainly not near the price that many people paid for them.

* Caroline Kennedy ... can we just stop this joke. No. No. No.

* The Paper of Record has an article and a City Room post about the MTA fare increases.  New Yorkers should brace for a fare hike, but they probably won't know for sure how much it will be until the late spring.  And the new fares are expected to go into effect over the summer.

* Want an iPhone ... you can now get them refurbished from AT&T for $99.

* The 2009 sign in Times Square will be powered by Duracell batteries that were charged from people riding bikes.  Since December 2nd, visitors to the Charmin Public Restroom in Times Square have been able to hop on a bike an help do their part to power the sign.  Overall it took 137, 228 of them.  Check it out at The Paper of Record - Bits, here.

* Also in Times Square news ... the Ball will stay lit year round!  How exciting!  Last year the bulbs were switched to LEDs, and this year they have decided to keep the ball lit and aloft all year long.  Interesting ... Via NYT - Green Inc., here.

* Also from the Green Inc. blog, here ... many cities and municipalities around the country are jumping on the bandwagon of the roundabout trend.  Also known as a traffic circle (NY), rotary (MA), and probably a bunch of other names.  For years traffic planners have known (at least the smart ones), that they are the most efficient and safe way to move traffic through intersections, especially ones with odd angles.  In theory a true roundabout should not be controlled as much as they are in DC - we have 'over-lighted' our circles to the point where they actually don't allow traffic to travel more efficiently in my opinion.  Many people find them annoying, and don't know how to drive through them - but then again most people barely can drive, so it shouldn't be a problem.  They save carbon emissions because cars are less likely to come to a full stop and less likely to feel the need to speed up as soon as the light turns green.  They also have a traffic calming effect by encouraging people to slow down.  Do you have thoughts?

* Warner Brothers and 20th Century are in a court battle over the upcoming movie Watchmen.  The Paper of Record reports, here, that a judge has agreed to hear 20th Century's suit to stop WB's release of the film, which they say they never released the rights to.  The hearing will take place on January 20th, and hopefully everything is resolved in time for its March 6th release - because it looks pretty good.

* Sad news from the CityDesk, here ... Georgetown has once again rejected the Apple store as a tenant.  Are these people stupid.  Anyone over the age of 40 should be barred from sitting on an ANC because they have no idea what is going on with the world and are just overly concerned with stifling progress and preserving a non-existent history.

... I'm sorry this keeps dragging on.

* Via WaPo ... The JCCIC (Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies) is encouraging ticket holders to take metro or walk.  Insaneeeee.  Here.

* WaPo reports, here, on how the economic downturn is effecting school districts and their plans to modernize and shift around schools.  These districts are now being forced to close schools and scale back on plans due to proposed budget cuts.

* NYT Op-Ed about the Gays, here.  Yes Corrupt, its all about the gays.  Frank Rich hopes that Obama starts acting on his promises to the GLBT community very soon.

* WaPo says that Chicago Public Schools could be a national example, with current CEO Arne Duncan soon to become our Minister of Education.  Duncan has made sweeping changes in the Chicago school system and hopefully we can see those nationally.  Rhee anyone?  Here.

The 43!!

So, I'm sure you're all familiar with Tim's scoop about the new 43 bus some weeks ago that was carried on a few other area blogs. Well both yesterday and this morning I had the pleasure of riding the new 'express' route on the 43 and... it was a good experience! I don't really have a usual time that I begin or end my commute. Some mornings I head in early, some I barely make it by 9:30 (I'm supposed to be at work by 9...), and my evening schedule is even less predictable. The one benefit this has is that I get a nice sampling of the bus at different hours.

Yesterday morning I was feeling ambitious and refreshed from my 2 week hiatus from the working world. I decided to go in early and I caught the bus at about 7:50 am. To my surprise, the first bus to come was the new 43! My usual commute time is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ minutes, down to Connecticut south of Dupont Circle. I'm pleased to report that my commute was cut in half!

Still, maybe that could be attributed to the early hour and limited traffic. Today I didn't leave until a bit later. When I got on the bus (43!) this morning I decided to time it. I got on at 8:34am and stepped off the bus at 8:50! This is during what I would consider peak rush hour traffic time.

All in all: good job Metro! Though this is a simple and seemingly obvious solution to the Dupont Circle traffic issue, I'm pleasantly surprised that WMATA took the initiative and resolved this issue.

iTunes ... eh?

I started using Lala about 2 months ago - October 21st to be precise - and have been in love with it since.  I can't recall if I had read about it somewhere, or if one of my friends had invited me - but needless to say I started using it.  I got a few of my friends to start using it as well.

Lala is basically a web based iTunes ... except you can listen to every song in their catalog once for free to get a full preview (something I really think iTunes should let you do).  After which you can purchase the 'web-song' to listen only on Lala for just $0.10, or you can pay $0.89 and get a DRM-free MP3.  If you have already bought the web version, you get a $0.10 discount on the MP3.  You also get 50 free websong credits to start, and 10 additional credits for each friend you get to join!

It is generally an awesome experience, and is very easy to use.  To put icing on the cake you can download the Lala MusicMover to your home computer ... this allows you to then upload any DRM-free music you might have on your computer to Lala's servers - completely free I might add.  So basically you can access your music library, from anywhere.  Now you'd think that Apple would incorporate a service like this into MobileMe, but of course not.  That would make too much sense.

I think Lala really has the right idea ... a great web based system that can hold all your home music ... and I am on it all the time at work so I frequently buy web-songs and DRM-free MP3s (which I then also download to my home computer).  

The reason I decided to write about it today was because of a great TechCrunch rundown last week - check it out.  

You can also try out Lala by clicking here or by navigating to lala.com, but I'd prefer you click the link so I can get 10 additional free websongs :).

On the iTunes note ... my friend Danny e-mailed me a Lifehacker article about a program called Mojo.  I have not tried it but it certainly seems interesting.  You can download the DRM-free portions of your friends iTunes libraries - over the internet.  So its like Napster 2.0!!!  Yay.  Mojo is free and can be downloaded for both Mac and PC here.  The premium version allows you to actually subscribe to someones playlist - which is kind of cool.

New York vs DC

After visiting New York, I decided to do a comparison, New York vs DC. Naturally I have Bias categories, such as cupcakes, but it is still interesting.

Magnolias vs Georgetown Cupcake

Taste

-Magnolias cupcake, [pictured] was actually very sweet. Although on the same price range as Georgetown it lacked a good icing. They used too much convectional sugar, and not enough frosting. 

Process

Although Magnolias makes cupcakes throughout the day, and has a wait time on cupcakes (it was 30 minutes for a red velvet).  Georgetown (to my belief, and please cupcake experts correct me), only has three shifts that they make cupcakes, early morning, mid day and late afternoon. Most of their cupcakes are simply "sold out".  Magnolias reminded me of hellocupcake, and I am not a fan.

Location

Magnolias sells to customers of the Village, south of Chelsea ("the gay") district, and normally has a line of 15/30 minutes; while G-town sells to a modest 30 minute crowd in the Georgetown area

Decoration

Magnolias decorates their cupcakes a lot better than the lemon candy piece that G-town puts.

Trees

National Christmas Tree vs Rockefeller Plaza. This almost seems like a Public vs Private competitions. Rockefeller Plaza [pictured] comes from my home town (well close to it anyway), Hamilton New Jersey. It seems like all that nuclear waste seems to have done some good. It does not appear to have the same cone shape that the national Christmas tree has.  

Be your own Judge DCites

That's all for now.

Net Neutrality ... huh?

I know Corrupt is all about laws to protect the people ... so he should be all about this one, but we will have to wait to find out I guess. Net Neutrality.

Whenever net neutrality comes up in the news I just end up pissed off ... because some ISP is just stepping all over the rights of the internet.  Anyway, what got me thinking about this time was a post a few weeks ago on Google's main blog about the concept of edge caching, and a WSJ article basically saying that Google was trying to control and lock down the internet through doing so.  Edge caching is something employed by ISPs to bring frequently accessed data closer to the end users, so for instance - the top 10 YouTube videos would be edge cached on an ISPs servers, so they ISP could utilize less traffic across the whole internet (and speed up the time it gets to the end user), by just sending the user to the copy on the ISPs server.  Google asserts that their openness in regards to setting up Edge server does not violate net neutrality and I tend to agree with them.

That said ... I think net neutrality is an increasingly important issue - as we see ISPs (cough, Comcast, cough) increasingly trying to regulate the amount of data a user can access.   The assertion from ISPs is that only a handful of users account for a majority of their network traffic - which raises their costs and makes the connection slower for all users - so there solution is to throttle back connection speeds for users who exceed a data limit.  I understand these companies need to make a profit, but I also don't think we need to be entering a time when we are paying per kb of data sent over our connections.  ISPs are definitely within ther purview to charge different prices for different speeds (most already do), but the idea of a data cap is something that bothers me.  The internet is about openness - it is why it has become so prevalent - because anything and everything is on it.

It is certainly scary to think that the 'last mile' of the internet is controlled by companies that have shown time and time again that they do not care about consumers and just want to make a dime.  I feel this applies to almost every consumer-ISP with the exception of Verizon, who I just like to think is  better than everyone else -- because FiOS, just is.  But even Verizon is not pro-net neutrality.

This was a small issue when it first came about in the early 2000s, but is slowly growing.  At the rate that the internet continues to expand, and our appetite for data continues to expand - network neutrality will certainly be an issue within our lifetimes and likely very soon.  And it is a very scary thought ... that access could be cut off - and there aren't too many laws protecting us.  So far the FCC has sided with consumers, ruling that it was illegal for Comcast to cut off users access to certain file sharing servers.  We can only hope that the FCC continues to side with consumers and Congress acts soon, though I'm sure any law they pass will be weak and virtually not enforceable.

Personally, I feel that most of the ISPs and hardware manufacturers are not just looking for a quick profit, they are making sure that they are not getting screwed.  These companies can't continue to support the Internet without making sure their own business survive.  In that sense a company like Comcast is out to make a profit and has no concern for the consumers - they have shown time and time again they have no concern for the common good.  Cablevision is the same way.  As for the rest of the ISPs ... I have hope.

The wikipedia article regarding Net Neutrality is here.

Do you have any thoughts?

Food Coma

Here is what is making news this afternoon (or a few days ago - depending on how far I get in Reader):

* Mike Riggs over the CityDesk took PC Mag's 100 Best Blogs list and narrowed it down to 6 that he thinks are the best of the best.  While I'm not so sure about that, I don't have the time to go look at 100 blogs and decide which are the best, so I'll have to take his word on it.  Go check out his list here; and PC Mag's full list here.  (Conrad, you should check out Riggs' list, there is a cool medieval blog that I can just picture you sharing on a daily basis)

* Good news ... The great Italian restaurant formerly located in ... the Golden Triangle-ish, Galileo, is coming back!  Executive Chef Roberto Donna has signed a letter of intent with the owners of the former Butterfield 9 space.  WaPo Going Out Guru Blog has the full story - here - I don't want to just copy everything they said ... but this is really exciting.  I remember Brandon Sherr used to rave about Galileo - In fact when Friend and I came to visit him/GW in the February 2004, HomeZone @ old J Street was featuring Galileo food - it was delicious.

* Good news again ... and old news.  On Christmas Eve (I had left the post unread in Reader and just read it) the MoCo Planning Board enthusiastically endorsed Light Rail for the Purple Line.  This just a step in the right direction to making sure that the Purple Line actually gets built - and that it is LRT instead of BRT.  Via DCMud - here.

* In other LRT news, BeyondDC brings news that yesterday the Phoenix Valley Metro light rail system officially opened for business!  Finally the Phoenix metro area has rail train sit ... yay!  Excitement!  Here.

* BestBites has a post about how some restaurants including one of my favorites, Poste, have taken to bottling their own sparkling/still water.  It is a little bit more expensive, but in the end they don't have hundreds of cases of empty bottles to throw out - and they can even customize the 'sparkling-ness' of the water.  Here.

* City Room says that NYC had a record 47 million visitors last year - up 1 million from a year earlier.  And they spent $30 Billion in 2008 as well.  Cool.  Here.

* History of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree - here.  (Via City Room)

* An interesting article in The Paper of Record over the weekend about a bar that is moving - and if its patron will follow.  I had to think about this for a while, as I certainly have a good number of bars and restaurants that I frequent because they are good - and fairly close.  If they moved - even if only a few blocks - would I still go?  If they moved closer to me, of course - haha, but there are definitely one or two that I would probably go to much less often if they moved 4 or 5 blocks further from me.  Here.  Your thoughts?

* A Vegas casino with a smoking ban ... hmmm.  This is only one of two casinos in Nevada which has a ban on smoking - it's actually in Reno, not Vegas.  And people are hoping it survives - to show the major casinos that smoking is not necessary for business.  Here - via The Paper of Record.

* The Paper of Record's Motherlode blog (here) wonders what age is it okay for a child to ride the train alone?  A reporter sparked a nationwide debate when she let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone, sent her daughter on the train this Christmas - now 10.  A conductor on the train did not like this, and had the police called - though the officer eventually agreed with the mother and let the child go on her way alone - it makes you wonder ... what is an appropriate age.  The MTA says the minimum age is 8, so clearly the conductor was out of line in his concern - but still ... thoughts?  I think it all depends on the kid, but 10 seems legit - especially in the age of cell phones and constant communication.  

* The Phantom of the Opera: Part 2 -- are you kidding me.  Via Perez, here.  This sounds like crap.

* Crystal City 2.0 ... check it out at DCMud, here.  Maybe we can finally have a Crystal City that is actually friendly and is easy to drive around and walk around - and doesn't look like such a mess.  Even thinking of Crystal City upsets me.

* Do you like Narnia ... too bad.  Disney said no to the 3rd film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Via Reuters, here.

* TUAW (here) has some lovely information from Engadget ... while Apple has yet to answer my prayers HP has!  The new HP MediaSmart centers are able to act as a centralized storage server for your iTunes library ... which is necessary now that I have AppleTV.  Oh this is exciting.  Unstoppable.  It is based on Windows Home Server and has storage expandable up to 9TB, and comes standard with 750GB (599$), or 1.5TB (749$).  Amazing, but slightly expensive.

Rejoice: It's over.