The United States Post Office

I think that the Post Office under charges for first class stamps. I am talking about the regular stamps you use to send a single regular letter, or in most cases a bill.

Here is my reasoning: Once, a few years ago, I was spending an evening with friends and we ordered out for sandwich delivery. Upon looking into my wallet I discovered all I had of any value was $2 in cash and four $0.37 stamps. I announced my cash situation to the group and asked if anyone would cover me. One offered to do so, and because I am the kind of person that does not like being in debt (even for $4, and even knowing I will pay it back tomorrow) I asked my friend if he would accept the stamps as payment of the debt. He asked essentially if the stamps were of the current value saying, "I put one of these on a letter and it will get delivered?" I replied, "Yes," and he agreed. So essentially I exchanged $3.48 in value (plus delay and uncertainty and lack of interest) for a $6 sandwich(plus tip).

The next step in my reasoning is what my father always told me about collectibles but extends as a rule to the entire economy. Something is only worth what you can get someone else to pay for it. The inverse of that principle is best exemplified by Starbucks, which has gotten people to pay ridiculous prices for coffee.

If you stop and think to yourself about what the Post Office actually does and their relation to the reality of communications technology, the Post Office really offers a premium service. If you need to get an original physical document or object to another location, that is a premium service given that it is such a rarity. The problem with that is that it is a rarity and if the Post Office raises their prices too much too fast then they will have fewer customers and those customers will be sending fewer things.

I really think the value of a stamp is somewhere between $1 and $2. What actually charging that value would mean to the operations of the Post Office is another matter. Unless situations like the one I described above start becoming common, where stamps are being exchanged as currency for three times their value, I think it is unlikely we will see large increases in the cost of a first class stamp.

Evamaloutions

I think the real issue is not clearly explained in debates over creationism. In discussion over changes to curriculum it becomes apparent that what is being debated is the position of science in our society and the deference due to science in examination of nature. I don't think that the scriptural interpretive preference of an obnoxiously vocal minority should have any bearing on how we regard the statements of experts on matters of fact. The point is not that fundamentalist Christians are trying to hijack our culture through the indoctrinating power of the already failing public school system, but that they intentionally avoid narrowing the issue or focusing on details because this is a discussion they loose as soon as rationality prevails.

In case you were wondering this post was not provoked by anything in particular but is tangentially related to the posts this week regarding stumbling upon websites anthropomorphizing of animals and showing that the efforts by religious fanatics to destroy science is not restricted to right wing Christian maniacs.

Posted from a Palm Treo mobile device.

Tim Russert: 5/7/1950 - 6/13/2008

Tim Russert Died of a heart attack on Friday. Tim Russert was one of the few reporters left who had the ability to speak truth to power. He could be trusted to ask hard questions about real issues to politicians and when they tried to weazel out of it with rhetoric or prefabricated statements, he would follow up with more tough questions and hold their feet to the fire. His dedication to honest journalism displayed a respect for the average people that is absent in most news coverage today in the old media. The professional respect and dedication he showed are why he is one of my heros. The world is a better place for him having been in it.

Proof: Ron Paul is Systematically Ignored

Take a look at this little tidbit. The mainstream news probably won't report this; in fact it is fairly relevant from the graphs that Ron Paul, while enjoying by far the highest search volume, is consistently and systematically ignored by news outlets.


Google Trends: Presidential "Front Runners" and Ron Paul

They cannot destroy all the evidence that "they" are trying to gain complete control. The only problem is that we have to work so hard to find it.

When Intelligence isn't Spin, Spinsters React

Since the publication on a National Intelligence Estimate about Iran and its nuclear weapon, the Bush administration, by many accounts, seems to be in full strategic retreat. However, as Dan Froomkin from washingtonpost.com reported, W has already started covering his own liability. Since he has had a few more months than the rest of the country to prepare for the release of the NIE, you can be sure that he has already appropriately adjusted his warmongering. Here is a look at how the NIE was produced.

Surprisingly, the news media is still listening to Norman Podhoretz and John Bolton about anything, and specifically in this case, intelligence. Here is a report that relies upon their opinions, yet doesn't point out the problem with citing them as experts. Norman Podhoretz, for instance, made a career of out of being a neoconservative pundit before the heyday of neoconservatism. One of his earliest and best-known works is a racist diatribe about how he hated black people. But, more relevant to the current discussion is his complete lack of experience in the intelligence community. While he may be retired now, he was an original signatory of the "Project for the New American Century," the ideological framework for W's administration and foreign policy, meaning that he is deeply invested in making sure that history has a favorable impression of the administration. John Bolton, for his part, is also intensely involved in the Project. He has made a career for being a diplomat or wandering mouth for conservative presidents. Bolton also has no experience in working in the intelligence community, but does have something of a reputation for cooking intelligence for political purposes. Since the intelligence community is notionally no longer under the thumb of the neoconservatives that make up the decision-making in the W administration, these two old warriors are now resorting to ad hominem attacks on what appears to be dissident voices within the federal bureaucracy. "But I (Norman Podhoretz) entertain an even darker suspicion. It is the intelligence community, which has for so many years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W Bush, is doing it again." Behold, the evolution of spin, now those who pushed the intelligence community to supply, what can most graciously be called, misleading intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, accuse those who are career intelligence officials of politicizing their work.

The Pentagon, for its part, has dispatched the uniformed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, to Israel to speak with their Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, and their intelligence analysts. During the whirlwind 24 hour visit, Adm. Mullen will probably explain the constitution and the fact that the President doesn't really need the support of the American people to expand the war to Iran, something that would be hard to understand for those who live in a free, demoratic society.

Reps. Peter Hoekstra (MI 2nd) and Jane Harman (CA 36th) published an op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal questioning the quality of the intelligence organization that they were notionally in charge of overseeing as Ranking Members and Chairpersons of the House Intelligence Committee. Defending the mischaracterizations of intelligence on the part of the W administration, "..., intelligence is in many ways an art, not an exact science." In summation, the entire piece reads like an apology for delivery the wrong intelligence, although they also go into a little ad homineming against the intelligence analysts who produced the report (the confidence remark).

Buried Stories

With the speeches from Bush and Romney, the shit from Iran, and more interisting things going on, news of the shooting in Nebraska is being buried at the bottom of the ticker.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-06-mall_N.htm
The only people who care are the Gun Control community.
It should be noted that the weapon USA Today reports the shooter using was already illegal.

If tazers save lives like the law enforcement community argues, where were the tazers here? Why didn't a tazer save anyone?

We are The Future

The information will be free, despite your best efforts to restrain, control, and oppress us. The balance has been shifted, and we are of equal strengths now. Scissors cutting paper, we can and are slowly tearing away at your ugly underside, muckracking and bringing your worst excesses into the light of day. The heavy hand of government is placed squarely on the back of our necks, like in the DMCA, but we can invent new media almost faster than you can catch up to it. Humanity will be integrated as a whole in a way that Gutenberg could never have comprehended. Despite your best efforts to divide us into disparate parts, unequal to your inertitude, always fighting each other.

You cannot control us, you will listen to us, the information is free.