Quick Roundup 321

Monday, April 14, 2008

Posting Irregularities Likely Ahead

Multiple deadlines loom and I'm behind. If I skip a day or two here this week, that would be why.

Seventeen 1041 Days, Nonstop, without Repeating a Song!

I base this on a guesstimate of three minutes of play time per song.

Mobile phones, iPods and other consumer devices may soon be able to hold a hundred times more information than they do at present thanks to a breakthrough in storage technology.

Scientists at IBM say they have developed a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs - or 3,500 films - and cost far less to produce.
They're saying this technology will be available within a decade!

Monique Davis Apologizes to "Rightless" Rob Sherman

Monique Davis, who sounded like she was ready to string up some God-damned atheists last week has "apologized" for her disgraceful remarks.
[A]fter being on the receiving end of a week’s worth of public criticism, Davis called [Rob] Sherman yesterday to apologize.

Sherman says Davis told him she "took out her frustrations and emotions on me and that she shouldn't have done that." Sherman says Davis' explanation was "reasonable" and that he forgives her.

According to Sherman and State Rep. Jack Franks....Davis claims her outburst was triggered by learning shortly beforehand ... that there'd been another Chicago Public School student killed.

State Rep. Jack Franks was chairing the hearing that day and says Davis' outburst was uncharacteristic, adding "she was having a bad day." [bold added]
I have a hard time, erm, believing that Davis took an entire week to calm down enough to apologize to someone who plainly had nothing to do with the school killing. Maybe my social intuition isn't so hot, but this strikes me as the kind of thing you patch up within a day or so if you really mean it.

During her outburst, she was clearly upset about guns in schools, and she directly blamed Sherman's "philosophy" for that type of destruction generally.

"Sin Tax" on Beer in California

The idea sounds DOA, but the fact that this was brought up at all -- and why -- is a bad sign:
San Jose Democrat [Jim Beall] on Thursday proposed raising the beer tax by $1.80 per six-pack, or 30 cents per can or bottle. The current tax is 2 cents per can. That's an increase of about 1,500 percent.

Beall said the tax would generate $2 billion a year to fund health care services, crime prevention and programs to prevent underage drinking and addiction.

"The people who use alcohol should pay for part of the cost to society, just like we've accepted that concept with tobacco," Beall said. [bold added]
Notice how the unchallenged premise that "society" ought to be cleaning up after irresponsible individuals transitions so smoothly into all individuals owing "society" in advance for their personal decisions.

The fact is that the state should have never gotten into the business of subsidizing the medical care of people who ignored well-known risks and smoked themselves sick or permitted themselves to become addicted to alcohol.

-- CAV

Updates

Today
: Corrected number of days of music without repeating a song. (HT: Dismuke)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think your math is off. A half million songs at three minutes each would take 1041 days (plus a few hours) of constant playing to play through. That's basically 2.85 years.

That is a LOT of music.

As an illustration of just how amazing that is in terms of storage, a half million three minute songs would be equal to 250,000 double sided ten inch 78 rpm records. Standard 78 rpms weighed a half pound each - which would mean that one would have 62.5 tons of 78 rpm records to store the same amount of music that one could carry around on such an mp3 player. It would require 2083 feet of shelf space as well to store that many 78 rpms.

In LP format, that would result in about 41,666 standard 12 inch LP records. Since I primarily collect 78 rpms, I don't know the weight and shelf space requirements for LPs off the top of my head - but that's still a lot of records.

In CD format, that would be about 20,275 CDs

That is simply amazing.

Gus Van Horn said...

"I think your math is off."

I think you're right.

In my calculations, I inadvertently divided by 60 twice, being used to working with seconds!

C. August said...

"Posting Irregularities Lie Ahead"....

I think I saw this sign in the mountain roads outside of Boulder this weekend. I wasn't quite sure what to do with that info as I drove the rented Hummer, so I just kept going.

Yes, Hummer H3. It was hilarious, and fun to drive. (the rental company SWORE that they only had the full-size SUVs at full price, and we were stuck with it.) Driving through SUPER green Boulder, with an activist on every corner, I loved that I was driving one of the most impractical cars ever.

On an even more unrelated tangent, there was a guy wandering around Boulder with an actual 6' tall cross, a la Jeebus, with slogans and Bible sayings scrawled all over it, and himself. I thought he and the Scientologist were going to get into it, but they turned the other cheek(s).

Gus Van Horn said...

Next time you're in that "H3 with activists" situation, swerve towards one while leaning on the horn for me! (i.e., "Have a blast" for me!)

Unknown said...

Yo, Gus, you write, "Next time you're in that 'H3 with activists' situation, swerve towards one while leaning on the horn for me! (i.e., "Have a blast" for me!)"

You've got a cruel sense of humor at times. I like it.

Gus Van Horn said...

Yeah! I'm ready to move to "Blue America", buddy!