| Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! |
[Oct. 20th, 2010|09:05 am] |
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
MetaFilter 10/14/10 at 7:11 AM kliuless
America's Deepening Moral Crisis - Income inequality is at historic highs, but the rich claim that they have no responsibility to the rest of society. They refuse to come to the aid of the destitute, and defend tax cuts at every opportunity. Almost everybody complains, almost everybody aggressively defends their own narrow and short-term interests, and almost everybody abandons any pretense of looking ahead or addressing the needs of others.
The Problem with Inequality
The biggest problem with runaway inequality, however, is that it undermines the unity of purpose necessary for any firm, or any nation, to thrive. People don't work hard, take risks and make sacrifices if they think the rewards will all flow to others. Conservative Republicans use this argument all the time in trying to justify lower tax rates for wealthy earners and investors, but they chose to ignore it when it comes to the incomes of everyone else.
It's no coincidence that polarization of income distribution in the United States coincides with a polarization of the political process. Just as income inequality has eroded any sense that we are all in this together, it has also eroded the political consensus necessary for effective government.
Wealth and an American paradox - Why are Americans mostly opposed to redistribution? Here are a handful of plausible explanations forwarded by scholars:
"Anti-statism." Americans have been historically suspicious of and hostile to government (although they have accepted many pragmatic programs, like Medicare). Therefore, they may wish that inequality was much less than it is, but they will not empower the government to do something serious about it.
Opportunity, not outcome. Survey data show that many Americans generally do support government actions that widen opportunities for economic advancement, especially through education. Most Americans may believe, then, that in a society of equal opportunity, unequal outcomes can be reduced or at least tolerated. (Unfortunately, the belief that the U.S. is particularly open to upward mobility is empirically incorrect.)
Race trumps: In the U.S., issues of economic inequality have been tangled up with issues of race, because blacks have disproportionately been poor and the likeliest recipients of government assistance. Research suggests that this prospect leads whites to resist government action, even action that might benefit themselves.
Ideology of self-reliance: Americans have been historically committed to emphasizing individual independence and self-reliance; increased government action threatens to create dreaded "dependency." In practice, Americans have comprised that ideology when conditions demanded – in the Great Depression, for example; or in accepting disaster relief. But these values make for deep resistance to any major new initiatives.
Constricted horizons: Some have argued that political discussions here are so narrowly bounded that Americans may see and resent great inequality but cannot really imagine that things could be (and are elsewhere) different. When, for example, the free-enterprise Obama health plan is seen by so many as an extreme, socialistic program, when our tax rates on the wealthy are described as confiscatory, or when Sweden is depicted as some sort of totalitarian state, it would seem that Americans are operating with blinders on.
Does Inequality Make People More Conservative? - Yes, according to some new research from Nathan Kelly and Peter Enns... Their first main finding: increases in inequality are associated with a conservative shift in mood and increasing opposition to welfare... Their second main finding: increases in inequality are associated with a conservative shift among both the wealthy and the poor.
BONUS
Time's running out for job growth - The U.S. does not have the luxury of waiting indefinitely for job growth to resume. Already we're at the absolute limit: any longer, and most of the unemployed will be long-term unemployed and, to a first approximation, unemployable. This country simply can't afford an unemployable underclass of the long-term unemployed — not morally, not economically, and not fiscally, either. [1,2,3,4]
Young, Educated, and Unemployed: A New Generation of Kids Search for Work in their 20s - The Lost Generation: What it's like for 20-somethings to go in search of meaningful work — and not find it. [1,2,3,4]
The Left Right Paradigm is Over: It's You vs. Corporations - The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights... But the battle lines between the two groups have barely been drawn. I expect this fight will define American politics over the next decade. [1,2]
Hegel on Wall Street - Nothing but fierce and smart government regulation can head off another American economic crisis in the future. This is not a matter of "balancing" the interests of free-market inventiveness against the need for stability; nor is it a matter of a clash between the ideology of the free-market versus the ideology of government control. Nor is it, even, a matter of a choice between neo-liberal economic theory and neo-Keynesian theory. Rather, as Hegel would have insisted, regulation is the force of reason needed to undo the concoctions of fantasy. [1,2]
America's Shame - The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones. [1,2]
The Final End of Bretton Woods 2? - The time may finally be at hand when the imbalances created by Bretton Woods 2 now tear the system asunder. The collapse is coming via an unexpected channel; rather than originating from abroad, the shock that sets it in motion comes from the inside, a blast of stimulus from the US Federal Reserve. And at the moment, the collapse looks likely to turn disorderly quickly. If the Federal Reserve is committed to quantitative easing, there is no way for the rest of the world to stop to flow of dollars that is already emanating from the US. Yet much of the world does not want to accept the inevitable, and there appears to be no agreement on what comes next. Call me pessimistic, but right now I don't see how this situation gets anything but more ugly. [1,2]
From currency warfare to lasting peace - The "international currency war" mentioned by Brazil's finance minister poses massive dangers for the world trade and financial systems. This column by one of the world's most respected international economists argues that there is a better way. The G3 should engage in quantitative easing so they all can export more to each other. For the emerging markets, the danger lies in inflation, asset bubbles, and trade retaliation. To shield their key manufacturing sectors, they should encourage the domestic demand for manufactures. [1,2]
Blaming China Won't Help the Economy - [T]he dominance of free-market thinking in international economic management is over... the United States must adapt to an environment where exchange rates and trade imbalances are managed consciously and have become a legitimate subject for debate in international forums like the Group of 20... Outside America ... a strong conviction now exists that some new version of global capitalism must evolve to replace what the economist John Williamson coined the "Washington consensus." ...governments must deliberately shape market incentives to achieve objectives that are determined by politics and not by the markets themselves, including financial stability, environmental protection, energy independence and poverty relief. [1,2]
Will America come to envy Japan's lost decade? - Whether we like it or not, we are "built to grow" and we use the fruits of that growth to buy off interest groups as we go along. Japan in contrast has greater capacity to stifle these grabs for new redistributions because their politics is more of an insider's game. Imagine a future world history where, fifty years from now, we look back and decide that Japan was the one country that made a semi-success of near-zero growth.
How Facebook is Killing the Economy - We are in the year 2025. Because of advances in production technology, much of the path from extracting the required renewable resources through to the production and distribution of most of the items we demand can be accomplished with automated methods overseen by a small cadre of engineers... I don't know exactly how this economy works, but I can tell you that it is not working well.
The End of Finance? The monetisation of everything - I know it's wrong, or at least deeply problematic, to adopt a teleological view of history: to say that History has an End, or Purpose, and is inexorably driven by deterministic Iron Laws towards that End, with perhaps an occasional hiccough along the way. But I can't stop myself... Why is it taking so long? The answer of course is that the technology of promising is imperfect... But we learn from crashes in the monetary technology, just as we learn from bridges falling down and rockets exploding. We revert to an older, more familiar technology temporarily. But then History Marches Forward again, and the monetisation of everything progresses further towards its inexorable End. [1,2]
What Does Cutting-Edge Macroeconomics Tell Us About Economic Policy for the Recovery? - That is is what I take to be the guts of Niall Ferguson's read on today's economic problems... Public spending putting people or artificially inducing private employers to put people to work will backfire. I, by contrast, take my stand with John Stuart Mill's 1829 critique of Jean-Baptiste Say (1803). Mill pointed out that people in the aggregate can and do spend less than they earn on currently-produced goods and services... Then you do have a general glut -- an excess supply of pretty much every kind of currently-produced good and service and of currently-employed labor. It happens whenever you have a substantial excess demand for financial assets... in the end, Say bowed... Until we see actual, real signs that expansions of government balance sheets are impairing investor confidence in government promises-to-pay, it seems to me that it would be extremely foolish not to continue to attempt to boost production and employment by expanding government balance sheets. I want to see the money that stimulative policies are impairing confidence--and not just listen to arguments that stimulative policies ought to be impairing confidence. [1,2]
The cost of being unbanked - Candice Choi has a great first-person story about the cost of not having a bank account... check-cashers and payday lenders are likely to be around for a long time yet, acting as yet another tax on poverty.
The solution to the mortgage mess - There are three main ways this can be done. The first is to refinance the current loan, possibly through HAMP. The second is for the banks and the homeowners to negotiate a principal reduction. And the third is to allow a short sale of the house.
How To Cut the Budget Deficit - Kudos to Bill Galston at the Brookings Institution and Maya MacGuineas at the New America Foundation for putting on the table a credible plan to get the federal budget under control. I don't agree with each and every one of their proposals — no one would — but their plan is both specific and sensible. It sets out an achievable goal and has the potential to reach it. And while it gores just about every ox in the budget, it equitably distributes the necessary pain.
Toward a New American Century - Immigration reform, investments in human capital, and a saner housing policy can help restore U.S. economic leadership.
More Preschool, Please - If you're looking for projects that are likely to have really high ratios of benefits to costs, these are your babies. [1,2,3,4]
American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress - Citing a desire to gain influence in Washington, the American people confirmed Friday that they have hired high-powered D.C. lobbyist Jack Weldon of the firm Patton Boggs to help advance their agenda in Congress. Known among Beltway insiders for his ability to sway public policy on behalf of massive corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, and AT&T, Weldon, 53, is expected to use his vast network of political connections to give his new client a voice in the legislative process. Weldon is reportedly charging the American people $795 an hour. [1,2]
The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America - Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they're doing it behind closed doors. [1,2]
Global power: On top of the world - Why the West's present dominance is both recent and temporary. [1,2]
Red Plenty - It's a fictionalised account, or a non-fiction novel, about the project in the early 1960s to use computers to plan the Soviet economy. A key figure is the genius Kantorovich, who invented the mathematical technique of linear programming in 1938. (We follow his mind as the idea dawns on him, on a tram.) He and other real characters such as Kosygin and Khrushchev mingle with fictitious characters – some based on real people, some not, but all convincing. It's a bit like reading a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, Neal Stephenson, or Ursula Le Guin – or maybe a mashup of all them; full of arguments between passionate and intelligent people, diverting (in both senses) infodumps, and all about something that actually happened – and, more significantly, about something that didn't happen, and why it didn't. [1,2]
TR and the city of history - For Roosevelt, the literary historian's major talent is not for writing but for empathy. She must look at data, at potsherds, at memoirs, at the whole quantity of available evidence and then by an effort of imagination put herself in the place of people whose whole world has long passed... The engineers and the builders could make us a city, Roosevelt says, and it could be a city safe and clean to live in, with modern sanitation and all our material needs met: but would it be a city worth living in? Would we have anything to draw us out of ourselves, and into the lives of our fellows? Roosevelt fears not. He also fears that not only the historical profession, but the whole nation, is heading in this direction, which is where his second metaphor comes in. The historical profession that despises history as literature is America in the Gilded Age, gripped by "the hard materialism of our age." The only hope is something like Rooseveltian progressivism: "the strange capacity for lofty idealism which must be reckoned with by all who would understand the American character... a peaceful people who ... surely possess an emergency-standard far above mere money-getting." [1,2]
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that is all; cheers :D
http://www.metafilter.com/96645/Look-on-my-works-ye-Mighty-and-despair |
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| Another Anti-Government Politician Who Loves Government Money |
[Oct. 20th, 2010|09:04 am] |
Another Anti-Government Politician Who Loves Government Money
Right Wing Watch 10/18/10 at 12:22 PM Brian
Stephen Fincher, best known for his role in the “Fincher Family” singing ministry, is now the Republican nominee in a top Congressional race in northwestern Tennessee. He is running as a livid critic of “wasteful government spending,” and says that “when a Tennessee family has to make tough decisions, they sit down and prioritize spending. Government just spends and borrows and taxes.”
Despite all of his heated anti-government rhetoric, it appears that when Stephen Fincher has to make tough decisions about family spending, the only decision he makes is: how much money should I request from the government?
Republican Stephen Fincher, who has spoken against government spending and "bailouts" in his congressional campaign, applied for and received a $13,650 grant from the state Department of Agriculture last year, records show.
The state grant is in addition to federal farm subsidies of at least $3.2 million he and his wife have received over the last 10 years, a major target of his Republican opponents before his Aug. 5 primary election victory.
The state grant, awarded during the state fiscal year that ended June 30, has not been previously disclosed publicly. The grant to help buy grain hauling and storage equipment is part of the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program, a cost-share grant created by the state legislature in 2005 to help improve farm income. The state pays up to half the cost of implements and equipment under several categories.
Fincher is another case of Tea Party Republicans who hate government except for when it helps them. For example, Rand Paul bashes Medicare, but doesn’t want to cut Medicare payments to doctors like himself; Sharron Angle and Joe Miller criticize government involvement in health care, but don’t mind having government insurance for their families. And a new Center for Public Integrity report details the Republican Congressmen who consistently criticize the stimulus, but then request and publicly credit themselves for winning stimulus money in order to help their reelection bids.
One would hope that Fincher would come clean about the money he receives from the government in a public debate or forum. Unfortunately, Fincher refuses to participate in any debate because he is upset that his opponent criticized him!
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/another-anti-government-politician-who-loves-government-money |
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| Joe Miller, Tax Cheat |
[Oct. 20th, 2010|09:03 am] |
Joe Miller, Tax Cheat
Crooks and Liars Yesterday at 6:15 PM karoli
Alert: Tax wonkery ahead, but it's a BFD, especially when it exposes tax cheating by a man who wants to be the next Senator for the state of Alaska.
It's not news to hear that sole owners of corporations shift money around to minimize taxes. 99% of the time they do it in a legal fashion, and are in compliance with IRS regulations. There's nothing even morally wrong with that -- it's fair to use the tax rules to minimize tax liability, as long as one plays by the rules.
In tax land, there are two basic kinds of income: passive and active. Passive income comes from investments primarily in the form of interest, dividends, and rents. Active income is "earned"; that is, one works and is paid. Active income received by a sole owner of a corporation is subject to Social Security taxes; passive income is not.
According to Bonsai66 at Daily Kos, Joe Miller has been shifting his active income over to the passive column by overcharging himself for rent on office space he owns. In his financial disclosures filed recently, he lists his office as an asset, for which his law practice pays rent. That's fine and well. It basically shifts pockets but here's the kicker: The rent has to be reasonable and based on market prices for similar properties.
Miller reports the value of his office between $50-$100,000 on his disclosure. He also reports rental income on it of $50-$100K. He reports earned income from the law practice of $59,000 or so. The property is valued at $25,000, which means:
Joe Miller's LLC is paying Joe Miller 2-4 times the fair market value of the property in rent on an annual basis;
Joe Miller is reducing his earned income by excessive rent payments;
Joe Miller is intentionally underreporting his earned income to reduce the amounts he must pay in income tax and in FICA/FUTA payments to the federal government.
For any expense to be deductible, it must represent an amount which is 'reasonable and customary'. Clearly rent payments which exceed fair market value by a factor of at least 2 are not reasonable, nor are they customary. On a 703-square foot office, that translates to nearly $3/square foot at the low end, and $6 on the high end! A quick survey of Craigslist listings for office leases in that area shows that to be far greater than similar lease rates.
Joe Miller is intentionally overstating his passive income to dodge what he rightfully owes in Social Security taxes. It may be a Tea Party value, but it's also illegal, and should be investigated by the IRS as soon as possible.
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/joe-miller-tax-cheat |
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| I Want the Facts: Ray Griggs' I Want Your Money reviewed |
[Oct. 20th, 2010|09:02 am] |
http://mediamatters.org/research/201010190033
I Want the Facts: Ray Griggs' I Want Your Money reviewed
Media Matters for America - Research Items Yesterday at 5:26 PM S.E. & D.S.
In his documentary I Want Your Money, filmmaker Ray Griggs employs an all-star cast of right-wing misinformation propagators who fill the film with long-parroted and thoroughly debunked conservative myths about U.S. economic history and President Obama's economic policies.
Griggs falsely claims Obama "doubled" the FY2009 deficit
Griggs: "[I]t's clear that Bush did not leave President Obama a $1.4 trillion deficit. It looks like President Obama and the Democrats Congress more than doubled it." Griggs compares the deficit in Obama's first year to that of Bush's last in office, claiming that "President Obama and the Democratic Congress more than doubled" Bush's deficit. From I Want Your Money:
GRIGGS: What's the true story behind the $1.4 trillion deficit Obama claims he inherited in 2009? Well, let's take a closer look at that. During President Bush's last full year in office in 2008, the federal deficit was $600 billion. Obama steps in and adds quite a bit to next year's budget. First, he and the Democratic Congress pass the stimulus bill -- $787 billion, which $242 billion was spent in '09. Subtract that from the $1.4 trillion, and you get a deficit of right around $1.1 trillion. But the Democrats also passed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill. Oh yeah -- take off $60 billion for the auto industry. Then there was the $8 billion expansion of the SCHIP health insurance program, and another $3 billion for Cash for Clunkers, and I'm sure I did not find all the new spending. But it's clear that Bush did not leave President Obama a $1.4 trillion deficit. It looks like President Obama and the Democratic Congress more than doubled it.
$1.2 trillion of $1.4 trillion deficit was already projected before Bush left office. The CBO projected on January 7, 2009, that, including spending authorized under the Bush administration for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and government takeovers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the deficit that year would total $1.2 trillion. According to the CBO, the actual FY 2009 deficit was $1.4 trillion.
NY Times: Obama policies are "responsible for only a sliver of the deficits." According to a budget analysis done by The New York Times, "Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies -- together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama -- account for 20 percent" of the increase between the FY2008 and FY2009 budget deficit estimates. The Times analysis also stated that 70 percent of the increase was due to a combination of economic hardships, including "the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists' assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years" and "new legislation signed by Mr. Bush ... like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit."
CBPP: "By the time CBO issued its new projections on January 7, 2009 -- two weeks before Inauguration Day -- it had already put the 2009 deficit at well over $1 trillion." An analysis of the federal budget deficit by James Horney and Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that "the events and policies that have pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration's control."
Film pushes falsehood that health care reform will dramatically boost federal deficit
Voegeli falsely claims health care reform will increase the federal deficit. In I Want Your Money, The Claremont Institute's William Voegeli said of President Obama: "So he's complaining about the deficits, but then doubling them, and now with health care tripling, and has plans for unending deficits."
CBO has consistently said that health care reform law will reduce deficit by $143 billion over next ten years, and by more in second decade. The CBO determined in March that the two health care bills signed into law that month "would produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period." The CBO estimated a further reduction in the second decade after enactment "with a total effect during that decade in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP." In an August 24 letter to Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), CBO director Doug Elmendorf "confirm[ed]" those findings:
First, we can confirm the estimate of the overall impact on the federal budget of the major health care legislation enacted in March. Specifically, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA (Public Law 111-148) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152) will produce $143 billion in net budgetary savings over the 2010-2019 period.1 That figure includes $124 billion in net savings for the health and revenue provisions of both laws and $19 billion in net savings for the education provisions of the Reconciliation Act.
Griggs uses misleading statistic to minimize effect of stimulus
Griggs misleads with "$250,000 per job" figure. From I Want Your Money:
OBAMA: That is why the single most important part of this economic recovery and reinvestment plan is the fact that it will save or create up to 4 million jobs.
GRIGGS: Broken down, that's $250,000 per job.
Calculation ignores other tangible benefits stemming from the package. In judging the package solely by dividing the Act's "price tag" by the number of jobs created or saved, Griggs ignores other tangible benefits stemming from the package, such as infrastructure improvements and investments in education, health, and public safety. An November 2, 2009, Associated Press "fact check" article reported that a similar statistic, determined by "divid[ing] the stimulus money spent so far by the estimated number of jobs saved or created" is "highly misleading," in part because that calculation "ignores the value of the work produced":
First, the naysayers' calculations ignore the value of the work produced.
Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output - a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid.
Calculation ignores effect of increased GDP. As Baker and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman have noted, such calculations also ignore that increased GDP caused by the package results in higher federal tax receipts, which, as Baker noted in his blog for American Prospect, "should be subtracted from the cost to the taxpayers":
Okay, let's do the reporters' work for them. First, where do the Republicans get this number? They divide the the $825 billion cost of the stimulus by 3 million jobs that President Obama had originally pledged.
Their arithmetic is right but both numbers are wrong. First, the projections from the Obama team is that their package will create 4 million jobs, not 3 million. Furthermore, it is important to note that this over 2 years, not one year.
The cost is also wrong, or at least misleading. If we assume that the stimulus will work as planned, then it will boost GDP by approximately 1.5 times the amount of spending or $620 billion a year. If GDP rises by this amount, then it will translate into roughly $155 billion a year in higher taxes/lower spending than if we didn't do the stimulus. This is money that should be subtracted from the cost to the taxpayers.
So, if net out the increased revenue from the growth generated by the stimulus we end up with a 2-year cost of $515 billion which will generate roughly 8 million job-years. That comes to about $65k per job year, less than one-fourth of the Republicans' number.
Similarly, in his January 25 New York Times column, Krugman noted that "the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts":
As the debate over President Obama's economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan's opponents aren't arguing in good faith.
[...]
First, there's the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.
It's as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.)
The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 -- and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.
Griggs excuses Bush's spending increases by falsely suggesting it was mainly for war in Iraq
Griggs claims spending "went up more under Bush than any other president in the last 40 years, due mostly to the war in Iraq." From I Want Your Money:
GRIGGS: Unfortunately [Bush's] economic policies were not so good. He got half the Reagan equation right: the needs for tax cuts to spur economic growth. But he and the Republican Congress missed the other half: control spending. Spending went up more under Bush than any other president in the last 40 years, due mostly to the war in Iraq. The total federal budget increased by one trillion dollars from 2001 to 2006.
Spending on Iraq accounts for approximately 21 percent of the increase in spending under Bush. According to "The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update," published by Congressional Budget Office in August 2010, between FY2003, when the Iraq war began, and fiscal year 2009, the last budget submitted by the Bush administration, spending on the war for defense activities, indigenous security forces, diplomatic operations and foreign aid in Iraq, along other services and activities, totaled $648 billion. A comparison between CBO's budget outlook from January 2001 and historical data from Bush's budget for FY2009 shows that spending during the Bush administration had risen by a total of $3.16 trillion above CBO's projection. This means that Iraq accounts for approximately 20.8 percent of increased spending during the Bush administration.
The data:
Looking Forward FY2002
Actual, as of FY09 Budget
Increase over final Clinton projections
$ spent on Iraq
Percent of increase due to Iraq
FY2002
$1,923
$2,011
$88
$0
FY2003
$1,984
$2,160
$176
$49
27.84%
FY2004
$2,056
$2,293
$237
$88
37.13%
FY2005
$2,137
$2,472
$335
$59
17.61%
FY2006
$2,184
$2,655
$471
$95
20.17%
FY2007
$2,243
$2,730
$487
$123
25.26%
FY2008
$2,320
$2,931
$611
$140
22.91%
FY2009
$2,396
$3,107
$711
$94
13.22%
Total:
$17,243
$20,359
$3,116
$648
20.80%
CBO: Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update - August 2010
The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2002 to 2011
Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2009 - Historical Tables
All dollar amounts in Billions
Moore falsely claims "[g]overnment spending does not create jobs"
Moore: The stimulus plan is one of the great hoaxes of all time. It did not work." From a clip of Wall Street Journal senior economics writer Stephen Moore in I Want Your Money:
MOORE: The stimulus plan is one of the great hoaxes of all time. It did not work. Government spending does not create jobs. It just creates debt, and it creates a lot of inflation, and that's what we're seeing right now. And so this $800 billion spending plan that Barack Obama and the Democrats passed in 2009 was a catastrophe.
CEA: ARRA raised employment "by between 2.5 and 3.6 million." In its fourth quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [ARRA] of 2009, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) stated that "as of the second quarter of 2010, the ARRA has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.5 and 3.6 million. These estimates are broadly consistent with the direct recipient reporting data available for 2010:Q1."
CBO estimates stimulus increased employment by up to 3.3 million jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in August that as of the second quarter of 2010, the stimulus "[i]ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million."
IHS/Global Insight estimated job impact of 1.7 million by early 2010. PolitiFact.com stated on February 17 that "[u]sing updated estimates provided to PolitiFact, IHS/Global Insight estimates that 1.7 million jobs will be created or saved by the first quarter of 2010." The CEA report also cites this estimate from IHS/Global Insight.
Moody's economy.com estimated 1.9 million additional jobs by early 2010. The PolitiFact post further stated that "[u]sing updated estimates provided to PolitiFact ... Moody's economy.com estimated that 1.9 million jobs will be created or saved" by the first quarter of 2010. The CEA report also cited this estimate from Moody's economy.com.
Macroeconomic Advisers estimated 1.8 million additional jobs by early 2010. The CEA report stated that Macroeconomic Advisers estimates that the Recovery Act raised employment by 1.8 million as of the second quarter of 2010, citing an analysis provided to CEA.
Moody's study shows "the effects of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising 2010 real GDP by about 3.4%." A recent study by Alan Blinder, a member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and Mark Zandi, the co-founder of Moody's Economy.com, simulated the "macroeconomic effects of the government's total policy response" to the recent economic downturn and found that "the effects of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising 2010 real GDP by about 3.4%, holding the unemployment rate about 1½ percentage points lower, and adding almost 2.7 million jobs to U.S. payrolls."
Wall Street Journal: 70 percent of economists surveyed said stimulus helped. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 12 that 38 of the 54 economists it surveyed "said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act boosted growth and mitigated job losses, while six said the legislation had a net negative effect."
ABC News: Most on panel of economists "think the economy would be worse" without the stimulus. ABC News reported on February 18 that "most" of the economists on its panel "think the economy would be worse today without the big aid package, which totaled $787 billion and was signed into law by President Obama on Feb. 17, 2009."
NABE: 83 percent say stimulus raised GDP. A February survey of 203 members of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) found that, "[e]ighty-three percent believe that GDP is currently higher than it would have been without the 2009 stimulus package (ARRA)."
History revised: Film claims Reagan cut taxes for all, ignores his tax increases
Gingrich, Wilson: Reagan cut taxes, resulting in economic boom. From I Want Your Money:
GINGRICH: So Reagan came in and dramatically lowered the tax rates in the United States, which was still a 70 percent top rate when he became president. And he steadily brought it down, and the result was a tremendous boom, but he combined the tax cuts with two other things: He really dramatically reduced regulation, there was a lot less red tape on business when Reagan was president; and he was a cheerleader for entrepreneurship. He liked business people; he liked entrepreneurs; he liked small business, and he made people feel good about going into business.
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PETE WILSON (former California governor): Ronald Reagan understood, so what he did was, he gave the American people tax cuts, and it worked like a charm. In fact, he gave us, I think 90, over 90 months of consecutive economic growth.
Reagan raised taxes repeatedly after 1981, including "the largest tax increase in U.S. history" at the time. In a July 9 article titled "What Would Reagan Really Do?" Newsweek reported that, in 1982, Reagan was responsible for "the largest tax increase in U.S. history," and he repeatedly increased taxes in the years following:
It's doubtful, for example, that a contemporary Reagan figure would seek to solve every problem by cutting taxes. In 1981, the former California governor swept into office promising to slash taxes to their lowest-ever levels--and with the Economic Recovery Tax Act, that's exactly what he did. When Reagan arrived in the White House, the top marginal tax rate was 70 percent; by 1987 it was 38.5 percent (roughly the same as the rate under Bill Clinton). But while today's conservatives continue to call for lower taxes in the name of the Gipper--Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, for example, pressures Republicans to sign a "no new tax" pledge every election cycle--there's simply no evidence in Reagan's record to suggest that he would've followed his signature achievement by pushing for ever lower rates.
In fact, much the opposite. In 1982, Reagan agreed to restore a third of the previous year's massive cut. It was the largest tax increase in U.S. history. In 1983, he raised the gasoline tax by five cents a gallon and instituted a payroll-tax hike that helped fund Medicare and Social Security. In 1984, he eliminated loopholes worth $50 billion over three years. And in 1986, he supported the progressive Tax Reform Act, which hit businesses with a record-breaking $420 billion in new fees. When it came to taxation, there were two Reagans: the pre-1982 version, who did more than any other president to lighten America's tax burden, and his post-1982 doppelgänger, who was willing (if not always happy) to compensate for gaps in the government's revenue stream by raising rates. Today, a truly Reaganesque leader would recognize (like Reagan) that the heavy lifting was finished long ago; last year, for instance, taxes fell to their lowest level as a percentage of personal income since 1950. And he would dial back the antitax dogma as a result. [emphasis added]
Krugman: Reagan lowered income tax but raised payroll taxes, increasing total tax burden for "many middle- and low-income families." In a 2004 New York Times column, Krugman wrote:
But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.
The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.
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Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility; or at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.
For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent; but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.
Economics revised: Documentary attributes '80s boom to tax cuts
As cited above, I Want Your Money speakers Gingrich and Wilson credit Reagan's tax cuts for the 1980s economic boom. In reality, economists credit the economic expansion during that period to lowered interest rates.
Federal interest rates dropped throughout early 1980s recession, but are already currently at near-record lows.The recession began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982. The federal funds rate peaked at 20 percent in late May 1981 and dropped to 9.5 percent by mid-October 1982, while the discount rate peaked at 14 percent in early May 1981 and dropped to 9.5 percent in mid-October 1982. By contrast, the current federal funds rate is between zero percent and .25 percent, while the primary discount rate is at 0.75 percent and the secondary discount rate is at 1.25 percent.
CBO: "Lower interest rates after mid-1982 permitted the recovery to begin." An August 1983 CBO report, titled "The Economic and Budget Outlook: An Update," concluded that "[l]ower interest rates after mid-1982 permitted the recovery to begin":
The Economy At Mid-1983
Recovery started in December 1982 from the deepest postwar recession, the second of two since 1980. Both recessions were brought on by monetary restriction aimed at bringing inflation under control. Lower interest rates after mid-1982 permitted the recovery to begin. Real GNP grew at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the first quarter and at an 8.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 1983.
The report concluded: "A dramatic decline in inflation, a fall in interest rates from levels that were extraordinarily high to levels that are merely high, and the stock market boom have contributed to the improvement in economic conditions."
Reagan economist suggests interest rate cuts drove economic recovery. Michael Mussa, a member of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in an essay for American Economic Policy in the 1980s (University of Chicago Press, 1995) that when the Federal Reserve cut the discount rate a half percentage point on July 20, 1982, it "signal[ed] the beginning of what would become a four-and-a-half-year period of quite rapid monetary expansion. During this period, interest rates, both short and long term, would be driven significantly lower, and the U.S. economy would substantially recover from the devastation of both inflation and recession."
Krugman: "Right now, the interest rate is zero. The Fed can't rescue us this time, and that's why we can't do the things we did in the '80s." Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said during the February 6, 2009, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe that "in 1982, when the economy was deeply depressed, the Federal Reserve said, 'OK, we've got to do something about this,' and they cut interest rates from 13 percent to around 7 percent and the economy took off." Krugman continued: "Right now, the interest rate is zero. The Fed can't rescue us this time, and that's why we can't do the things we did in the '80s. We have to have an approach that harks back to the things that worked very well in the first four years of the New Deal until Franklin Roosevelt was persuaded to go orthodox all over again."
Similarly, in a January 14, 2009, Rolling Stone article headlined "Letter to Obama," Krugman wrote:
Compare the situation right now with the one back in the 1980s, when [Paul] Volcker [then chairman of the Federal Reserve] turned the economy around. All the Fed had to do back then was print a bunch of dollars (OK, it actually credited the money to the accounts of private banks, but it amounts to the same thing) and then use those dollars to buy up U.S. government debt. This drove interest rates down: When Volcker decided that the economy needed a pick-me-up, he was quickly able to drive the interest rate on Treasury bills from 13 percent down to eight percent. Lower interest rates on government debt, in turn, quickly drove down rates on mortgages and business borrowing. People started spending again, and within a few months the economy had gone from slump to boom. Economists call this process -- from the Fed's decision to print more money to the resulting pickup in spending, jobs and incomes -- the "monetary transmission mechanism." And in the 1980s that mechanism worked just fine.
This time, however, the transmission mechanism is broken.
First of all, while the Fed can still print money, it can't drive interest rates down. Why? Because those interest rates are already about as low as they can go. As I write this letter, the interest rate on Treasury bills is 0.005 percent -- that is, zero. And you can't push rates lower than that.
Moore claims the New Deal failed; economists say otherwise
Stephen Moore claims in I Want Your Money that the New Deal "failed" because unemployment was "still 15 percent before World War II." However, New Deal programs slashed the unemployment rate by 10 percent, and economists attribute the slowed recovery to President Franklin Roosevelt's return to fiscal conservatism in 1937.
Moore: New Deal failed, unemployment was still high before World War II. From I Want Your Money:
MOORE: Well, one of the things that I find so frustrating is how the Left has rewritten the history books and written a fairy tale about what's actually happened in American history, and one of my favorite examples of this is the New Deal. Everyone thinks the New Deal was a great success, right? Franklin Roosevelt, all the programs that saved the economy during the Great Depression. Well, the reality is a little bit different from that fairy tale. If you look at the statistics, Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression. He took office in 1933, launched the New Deal and all of these new programs. We doubled the amount of spending, we doubled the national debt over those years, and this was supposed to put America back to work, right? But the most amazing thing is eight years later, by 1940 right on the eve of World War II, eight years after we had put in place the New Deal, the unemployment rate in the United States was still 15 percent. That would be like 50 percent more Americans being unemployed than are today, and yet we still label the New Deal a success. [emphasis added]
Krugman: Roosevelt was "eager to return to conservative budget principles ... precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits." In a November 10, 2008, New York Times column, Paul Krugman criticized "a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse," and stated:
The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.
That said, F.D.R. did not, in fact, manage to engineer a full economic recovery during his first two terms. This failure is often cited as evidence against Keynesian economics, which says that increased public spending can get a stalled economy moving. But the definitive study of fiscal policy in the '30s, by the M.I.T. economist E. Cary Brown, reached a very different conclusion: fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful "not because it does not work, but because it was not tried."
This may seem hard to believe. The New Deal famously placed millions of Americans on the public payroll via the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. To this day we drive on W.P.A.-built roads and send our children to W.P.A.-built schools. Didn't all these public works amount to a major fiscal stimulus?
Well, it wasn't as major as you might think. The effects of federal public works spending were largely offset by other factors, notably a large tax increase, enacted by Herbert Hoover, whose full effects weren't felt until his successor took office. Also, expansionary policy at the federal level was undercut by spending cuts and tax increases at the state and local level.
And F.D.R. wasn't just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion -- he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.
What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs. [New York Times,11/10/08]
Baker: FDR "worried about the whining of the anti-stimulus crowd ... when the proper goal of fiscal policy should have been large deficits to stimulate the economy." In a January 6 column, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote: "In reality, any careful reading showed that the New Deal policies substantially ameliorated the effects of the Great Depression for tens of millions of people. The major economic failing of the New Deal was that President Roosevelt was not prepared to push the policies as far as necessary to fully lift the economy out of the Great Depression." Baker continued:
Roosevelt was too worried about the whining of the anti-stimulus crowd that he confronted. He remained concerned about balancing the budget when the proper goal of fiscal policy should have been large deficits to stimulate the economy. Roosevelt's policies substantially reduced the unemployment rate from the 25 percent peak when he first took office, but they did not get the unemployment rate back into single digits. [Alternet.org, 1/6/09]
DeLong: "[M]ore 'orthodox' economic policies" and attempt "to move the budget toward balance ... provide ample explanation of that downturn." In a November 17 post on his personal blog, University of California-Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong wrote, "Private investment recovered in a very healthy fashion as Roosevelt's New Deal policies took effect. The interruption of the Roosevelt Recovery in 1937-1938 is, I think, wel [sic] understood: Roosevelt's decision to adopt more 'orthodox' economic policies and try to move the budget toward balance and the Federal Reserve's decision to contract the money supply by raising bank reserve requirements provide ample explanation of that downturn."
Griggs falsely claims Bush's first veto was over spending
As TPM Media documented, in I Want Your Money, Griggs falsely claims that Bush "brought out his veto pen for the first time in his Presidency" as a result of Democratic spending initiatives:
GRIGGS: During the Democrats first two years in charge, the deficit went from 160 to over 400 billion dollars. The spending was so great that President Bush brought out his veto pen for the first time in his Presidency.
BUSH: I kept my promise by vetoing it.
CNN: "President Bush used his veto power Wednesday for the first time since taking... saying that an embryonic stem-cell research bill 'crossed a moral boundary.'" On July 19, 2006, CNN.com reported that President Bush had employed his veto "for the first time since taking office 5 1/2 years ago" on an embryonic stem-cell research bill. |
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| Butterscotch and Whiskey Bars - Feast Your Eyes |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|07:35 am] |
Butterscotch and Whiskey Bars - Feast Your Eyes
Slashfood Yesterday at 10:00 AM Alexa Weibel
Filed under: Recipes, Comfort Food, Feast Your Eyes
Though we've never been able to choose sides on the vanilla-versus-chocolate debate, blondies as unique as these render the traditional brownie somewhat uninspired.
Frites & Fries' recipe for Butterscotch and Whiskey Bars inventively pairs the dulcet butterscotch with a not-so-subtle dash of whiskey (a quarter cup!), adding a pleasurably harsher nuttiness to what becomes a complex, sweet-savory confection. The grown-up recipe aims to please both those with a penchant for sweets and those with a weakness for whiskey -- and provides an easy, soul-warming wintery treat.
The flexible blondie serves as a vessel to showcase whatever ingredients you favor, from cranberry and white chocolate, to coconut and lime. What are your favorite blondie additions? Share your recommendations in the comments!
Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://www.slashfood.com/2009/11/02/butterscotch-and-whiskey-bars-feast-your-eyes/ |
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| 1.6 Million E-Books On a Laptop |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|08:20 am] |
1.6 Million E-Books On a Laptop
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter Yesterday at 2:53 PM Dick Eastman
Brewster Kahle of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive (also known as "the Wayback Machine") has announced that all 1.6 million books scanned and digitized by the Archive will soon be available for reading on XO laptops built by the Cambridge, MA-based One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation. I wonder if there is a commercial follow-on product in the works.
The One Laptop Per Child Foundation has already placed more than one million ruggedized laptops into the hands of schoolchildren in dozens of third-world countries. These laptops can network with each other and, if available, with an Internet connection as well. The one million, six hundred thousand books already scanned by the Internet Archive are being reformatted to work with the OLPC laptop's smaller than normal screen. The XO laptop reportedly is an excellent book reader and now will have millions of books available in financially strapped locations that do not even have a library nor the funds to build any location capable of storing millions of printed books. Now all the books will also be available to the roughly 750,000 to 1 million schoolchildren who are using XO laptops today.
The books included nearly all the out of copyright classics in English as well as in a number of other languages.
I have to wonder if a similar effort could be made for genealogy books. In fact, there are such efforts underway today. The Lee Library at Brigham Young University has already digitized tens of thousands of family history books and placed them online at no charge. (See http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc.) All you need is an Internet connection and a computer. Commercial services, including NewsBank, HeritageQuest Online (a division of ProQuest), Footnote.com, Ancestry.com, and others already offer digitized books, often at modest prices. Google Books, the Internet Archive, and others are making all kinds of books available online at no chanrge, including genealogy and family history books.
I suspect that we will all soon have access to hundreds of thousands of genealogy books, far more than could ever fit into any single library. These will be available in your home at any time of the day or night. There will be no need to travel to a distant repository.
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/10/16-million-ebooks-on-a-laptop.html |
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| Slow Coker Rice Pudding |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|08:23 am] |
Sorry it has been so long since I blogged on here!
Found this recipe for Slow-cooker Rice Pudding, thought I'd share it...
Jeff
"This was the weekend I finally caught up with all the clipped recipes I've been putting aside to try. I weeded through them and placed them in a separate binder so that I can add them to the cherished "favorites" binder if they make the cut.
Having made friends with the slow cooker, I decided to try this very simple recipe taken from The Gourmet Slow Cooker, Vol. II as reprinted in First magazine.
Servings 7-8*; 5 WW pts (based on 7 servings)
1 cup brown Arborio rice, rinsed (I only had white Arborio)
5 cups 2% milk
1/2 cup honey
1 tbs pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I easily quadrupled that; you can never have too much cinnamon)
dash salt
In a slow cooker, combine all the ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 4 hours, or until creamy. Serve warm or chilled.
*I only got 7 servings because I used the old slow cooker and used the "3" setting instead of between "1" and "2" and I burned the serving on the bottom.
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TASTE NOTES
I prefer my rice pudding with raisins, but I knew Larry wouldn't touch it if I put in those sweet, plump lovelies. This is a very dense rice pudding, almost pink in color because of my love of cinnamon. As a sidenote, studies have revealed that a phytonutrient in cinnamon called methylhyudroxy chalcone polymer can spur a huge acceleration in sugar metabolism, a side bonus. The honey sweetened it perfectly. If you like a custardy rice pudding, this one isn't for you. It reminds me more of the one you're likely to be served in a diner. I liked it and will try to reduce the calories a bit more next time.
http://arlene-thefoodoflove.blogspot.com/2009/10/slow-cooker-rice-pudding.html |
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| Make Freezer Jam as an Easy Alternative to Canning [Saving Money] |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|08:50 am] |
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Getting started with canning isn't as hard as you might think, but boiling jars in a stove might be a tad too much production just to save some great fruit. The halfway solution? Cut it up and make freezer jam. Traditional canning requires both enough heat to sterilize jars and create a vacuum seal when closed, along with enough confidence to know you did everything right and that your last-of-the-summer peaches will be safe to eat at room temperature four months from now. Freezer jam, on the other hand, requires just straight-edged glass jars or nearly any kind of freezer-safe plastic, along with some pectin, and enough time to chop and mix your fruit and pectin together. Along with keeping certain summer fruits fresher than if one had canned them, writer Stephanie Stiavetti says freezer jam makes the tykes happy to get sandwich variety, and saves her a good chunk of change. If you have children in the house, you might also notice yourself spending less on lunch fixings because decent store-bought jam demands a pretty penny these days. When I make freezer jam, the cost comes out to around 50 cents per 8-ounce container, and I have to say that the taste of homemade jam blows grocery store brands out of the water.
Tell us what you've saved from spoiling in your own freezer in the comments.
 
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/U5KirrT0OBU/make-freezer-jam-as-an-easy-alternative-to-canning |
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| How To Conduct A Free Criminal Background Check Online |
[Sep. 17th, 2009|09:34 am] |
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 There are many times you need to trust someone without really knowing much about the person. Babysitters, new neighbors, school teachers, employees, tenants and landlords, janitors and plumbers are just some of the examples where we associate with people and even invite them into our homes. But what would you do if you found out that the person had a criminal record?
There are several paid services online where you can find out details of somebody’s shady past. In most cases, so-called ‘”free” sites are simply marketing tricks to get you to pay for the information you really need. However, since everything at MakeUseOf is truly free, here is how you can perform a free criminal background check online without paying a dime. Note that this is valid only for US residents.
Criminal Searches allows you to:
- Search criminal records by first and last name, optionally filtered by US state
- Search criminals in a neighborhood
- Search sex offenders in a neighborhood
- Sign up to receive alerts on criminal records of up to 5 names
- Get criminal statistics based on types of crime, ethnicity, gender and age
Search by Name
Criminal search results are categorized into Behavioral, Business, Drug & Alcohol, Sex Related, Theft & Robbery, Violent, and Traffic/Other. Not surprisingly, you will notice that criminals like to change names and the site shows you all the different names associated with that person.
Clicking the View Details button will take you to a detailed page with the free criminal background info about a specific individual. Where available, you can see information that can help identify a person such as age, height, race, eye color, hair color, etc.
A list of all offenses is seen along with details of each offense such as date and place of conviction, the verdict and sentence.
Free Criminal Background Check by Neighborhood
When you search an address or a neighborhood area for criminals, you get a Google Map mashup with the locations and types of criminals in that area. You can use the usual Google Map controls to move, zoom in/out, etc. Click on any of the offenders to see brief details from where you can jump to the full details of that person. For example, here is a map of criminals in Trenton, NJ:
Sex Offender Search
The Sex Offender search works in similar fashion, showing you a Google Map with locations of registered sex offenders. A search in Los Angeles for example revealed 77 registered sex offenders. Detailed information on each offender is seen on the left, when you click any offender icon in the map.
Advanced Search
If you know more details of a specific person you suspect, you can use the Advanced Search that allows you to do a free criminal background check using middle name, address, age range, or even date of birth.
Criminal Statistics
The statistics section of the website with pretty pie charts is compelling for anyone with even a passing interest in crime studies. The crime category chart allows you to further dig into each type. For example, Theft and Robbery can be further segmented into Stolen Property, Burglary, Fraud, Larceny, and so on.
Suspect someone? Want to check how safe is your neighborhood? Go to Criminal Searches and find out.
Important: Please be careful to use this website as a starting point. Remember that free checks work only on publicly available information and may not always be comprehensive. If your safety is at stake, it is best to get paid professional services before placing your faith in someone.
Also note that harassing anyone on the offender registry database is a misdemeanor and can be punished both by a fine and jail time.
You can also check out previously profiled SpotCrime for crime reports in your neighborhood and Family Watchdog to get a map view of the National Sex Offender registry. Did you find Criminal Searches useful? Liked this post? Tell us in the comments!
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/IxiuzhI8V8k/ |
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| Access US-Only Services Like Hulu, ABC Or Pandora With UltraVPN |
[Sep. 15th, 2009|08:13 am] |
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Many companies and organizations limit their services on the Internet to users of a specific country. This is especially true for streaming based services that stream media like music or videos over the Internet. It usually comes down to usage rights as the main reason for the limitation. Others say the limits are there to save money and bandwidth as the target audience is usually also limited to the countries the services are allowed in.
One of the best ways of accessing these services from outside the supported countries is to use a VPN, a virtual private network. This is helpful for citizens on holidays who want to access the services abroad but also – obviously – for users from other countries who want to access the services.
UltraVPN was discovered by Nakodari from Addictive Tips and we have to say that it is one of the easiest solutions right now. It works great currently and gives access to Hulu, Pandora and all the other US-only websites and services out there. The streaming quality is excellent unlike that of other free competitors (like Hotspot Shield). Our guess however is that it is only a matter of time – thanks to popularity – before the performance of UltraVPN will get a dent or two as well.
Installation is a breeze. All the user needs is to create an account at the UltraVPN website (only username and password required). The VPN setup is available for Windows and Mac OS. The username and password have to be supplied on startup. The vpn service will notify the user that the computer has been connected to it. What’s left is to access the websites and services to test the speed and quality of the service.
Head over to the Ultra VPN website to download the client, create an account and access additional information about the virtual private network. The vpn service has been successfully tested with Hulu, ABC and Pandora.
Tags: abc, hulu, mac software, pandora, ultra vpn, virtual private network, vpn, windows software
Related posts
http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/15/access-us-only-services-like-hulu-abc-or-pandora-with-ultravpn/ |
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| The Secrets of iTunes LP [ITunes] |
[Sep. 15th, 2009|08:12 am] |
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 You're never gonna buy an iTunes LP, but you wanna know what's inside those flashy 600MB attempts to revive albums, right? Spoiler, from Jay Robinson: A bunch of HTML and PNG files in a custom archive format. But no DRM.
You can actually dive right in yourself by changing the .ITLP extension to .ZIP, giving you full access to the files inside. What's interesting is that it does all of the animation using HTML 4.01, CSS and JavaScript—no Flash. Also "missing" is DRM—your iTunes account is just recorded inside the file. Oh, and probably the best tip? Check out the custom visualizers inside of each album, they're great. Lots more tidbits, like accidental leftover files, here: [Jay Robinson via DF]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/cYqreAtEsyo/the-secrets-of-itunes-lp |
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| Ancient Man Used Stone "Sat Nav" 5000 Years Ago [GPS] |
[Sep. 15th, 2009|08:11 am] |
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 New research is suggesting that Stone Age Britons were arranging hilltop monuments in an elaborate grid of isosceles triangles—allowing travelers to navigate the country without maps. Apparently, these markers included famous sites like Stonehenge and The Mount.
Basically, these stone markers were a like a primitive GPS—and the accuracy was quite astounding. Researcher Tom Brooks explains: 'The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across on each side and yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance. 'So advanced, sophisticated and accurate is the geometrical surveying now discovered, that we must review fundamentally the perception of our Stone Age forebears as primitive, or conclude that they received some form of external guidance.  Yes, "external guidance." Egyptians, Mayans, Stone Age Britons—it's got to be aliens. Either that, or Google has invented time travel conquer ancient landscapes starting with "Pangea Maps." [Daily Mail via Digg]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/XdWUg6bb6v4/ancient-man-used-stone-sat-nav-5000-years-ago |
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| 7 Alternatives to SparkNotes & CliffsNotes For Book Summaries |
[Sep. 14th, 2009|08:19 am] |
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 Summer is finally winding down and it’s time for many students to get back into school and continue with their studies. For those who aren’t fans of literature, this means that dreaded reading assignments are on their way, with quizzes, tests, and book reports around every corner.
Sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes are often hailed as lifesavers for those reading-intensive classes, providing quick, easy-to-read study guides and summaries of books that students may not have even bothered to read at all. Still, these websites aren’t just for lazy bums, as they do make for great tools with understanding and analyzing the text.
If they don’t cover the book you’re reading, all hope is not lost. Check out these seven great alternatives to SparkNotes & CliffsNotes.
With over 460 free study guides, book notes, and chapter summaries, PinkMonkey is a great resource for students.
Along with detailed summaries, which include informative notes for further explanation, other helpful features like key literary elements, overall analyses, and study questions are offered.
Shmoop is one of the best sites on the Web for learning about not only literature, but also other school topics like U.S. history, poetry, civics, biography, and even current bestsellers. The website provides a brief “in a nutshell” introduction to books as well as in-depth summaries. Other features include exploring the story’s themes, quotes, characters, and literary devices, along with plot analysis and study questions.
According to Shmoop, most of its writers are Ph.D. holders candidates from top universities, so it’s all top-notch content.
If you find the book you’re reading on JiffyNotes, it’s worth looking into. While the website’s design isn’t that great, it’s the content that counts.
The site’s study guides focus on literary analysis and include chapter summaries and other unique pages like “Points to Ponder” and “Did You Know?”
GradeSaver is another great place for students in need of help. A well-written summary and analysis is provided for the book’s chapters, with other helpful additions like a glossary of terms, character list, and major themes.
You can even test yourself about the literature. GradeSaver features quizzes to assess your knowledge of the book and hopefully prepare you for the real deal in class.
BookRags has a sizable collection of free literature summaries and study guides. Along with chapter summaries, the site covers author/context, plot summary, major characters, objects/places, and quotes. Important topics about the book are also tracked and analyzed throughout the summaries.
Keep in mind that all of this is free and you don’t have to pay for BookRags’ premium service.
Like JiffyNotes, Bookwolf’s design isn’t very appealing, but again, content prevails. The website goes straight to the point, offering full chapter summaries and interpretations of popular books, avoiding additional features that are common elsewhere.
Bookwolf’s literature notes are still worthwhile if you find the title you’re looking for.
At just over 300 summaries, WikiSummaries boasts a collection of mostly classic books and novels.
As a wiki, the site isn’t the biggest and greatest, but does offer good content, relying on its community for contributions and continued expansion.
Remember, don’t plagiarize! You’ll get caught. Here are some plagiarism checkers to help you out. Students should also be sure to check out these handy online learning tools and the 10+ Web tools to save your butt in school.
Do you use these websites for your assignments? What are some of your favorites and have they helped you? Let us know in the comments.
Image Credit: austinevan
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/Lj1QyefuV5A/ |
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| Magical short story podcast about Google Book Search, data visualization and the Olde Curiousity Sho |
[Sep. 11th, 2009|08:01 am] |
This week's story on the Escape Pod science fiction podcast is a remarkable tale called "Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store" written by Robin Sloan and billed as a "short story about recession, attraction and data-visualization" and it is fabulous. It's a fantastic, magical realist tale about Google Book Search, magick with a K, an olde curiousity shoppe, and the power of data-visualization. The story was initially self-published on Sloan's blog and was recommended to the Escape Pod editors by a friend, who read it, loved it and bought it. If you enjoyed Ben Rosenbaum's The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale, you'll love this.
IT'S 2:02 A.M. ON A COLD SUMMER NIGHT.
I'm sitting in a book store next to a strip club.
Not that kind of book store. The inventory here is incredibly old and impossibly rare. And it has a secret--a secret that I might have just discovered.
I am alone in the store. And then, tap-tap, suddenly I'm not.
And now I'm pretty sure I'm about to snap my laptop shut, run screaming out the front door, and never return.
* * *
I SHOULD START AT THE BEGINNING.
I lost my job in the slumped-over spring of 2009. I applied for dozens of replacement gigs but was rebuffed, again and again. And I took only the coldest comfort when the companies doing the rebuffing were, themselves, forced out of business months later. I probably couldn't have turned them around single-handedly. Probably.
The job I lost was at the corporate headquarters of the New Amsterdam Bagel Bakery. I designed bagel marketing materials. Menus, coupons, posters for store windows, and, once, an entire booth "experience" for the bagel industry trade show.
I also ran the website.
Now, months into my unemployment, I'd started watching for "help wanted" signs in windows, which is not something you really do, right? I was taught to be suspicious of those. Legitimate employers use Craigslist.
EP215: Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store (podcast)
Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store (text)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/GjS_GlG-ctw/magical-short-story.html
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| DNA Bingo - How to Win Big by Scott Norton |
[Sep. 11th, 2009|07:51 am] |
The following article was written by Scott Norton and is republished here with his permission.
Using DNA tests to break through brick walls in family history is pretty easy. It's like Bingo: you match the numbers and you win. Your goal is to match the numbers of your DNA test with others and compare pedigrees. Most of the people I've helped have opened new doors, and some have made a real breakthrough. Here are step-by-step instructions to make DNA work for you. (If you need advice or direction about DNA and Family History, there is information at the end of this article.) Here's how we do it. Step 1: Before you get a DNA test, check out how many others with your surname have already taken tests. If your test matches a number of these tests, you can compare your history with theirs. They might have more information than you or come from a different branch. The least you get is a confirmation of your paper research, and you just might break that brick wall. The two best data bases for DNA family research are Family Tree DNA (FTdna) and Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF). They each have their strengths and weaknesses. FTdna has the largest data base with 165,013 Y-DNA records and 5547 surname projects. SMGF has 33,000 Y-DNA records with pedigrees. This is a good place to mention that the DNA tests we are looking at only follow the male line. We are looking at your father, father's father, etc. If your name is Peterson and you have an ancestor 10 generations back, all of his male descendants will have matching DNA. This doesn't work so well for female lines. Let's see how FTdna works.
- Follow this link to FTdna's surname search function. You'll find the search function on the right hand side of the screen – and be sure to select "sounds like" with the drop down menu.
- Key in your surname, and you'll see how many tests they have on file that relate to your name. This tells you how many chances you have to match. Below the top list are the surname projects that contain the listed names. I put in surname-Peterson and got a gazillion name matches, but only 43 Petersen and 125 Peterson. In the surname projects, the Peterson project has 85 tests.
Click on the surname project that best fits your surname. Now you have to do some detective work. You need to find the DNA results of the surname study, and these are posted differently for each surname. FTdna should have standardized this, but they didn't. What you are looking for is a list of DNA tests with links to a pedigree. Every surname project does it differently, so you have to search around. You want to know how many tests they have on file and where the links are to pedigrees. Keep looking: pedigrees are sometimes filed under patriarchs. What you are looking for is a pedigree that links to your own. This tells you what your chances are of getting a match. It also tells you how much the others know about your family line. Here's the important facts about FTdna. They have the most DNA tests by far. Most of the tests are from people in the US. This is a big help for finding your family links in the US. But FTdna is not the best for outside the US. They have done specialized tests of various groups, and they are doing the National Geographic Genographic study of 100,000 people worldwide; however, most of these don't have pedigrees and so are of limited use for genealogy. FTdna is also great for helping you link up with people who match you. Now let's look at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF). If your family research leads you outside of the US or England, you should look at SMGF because they have taken the effort to travel the world to sample almost each genetic group and bring home pedigrees. This is great stuff.
- Follow this link to SMGF. You will have to register with SMGF to search their database. It's safe and allows you to save your searches. This is really nice.
- Next find the link that says "Search the Y-Chromosome Database". If you already have a DNA test, you can compare your DNA against the Sorenson data base. They even let you arrange the order of markers to match the protocol for the company that did your test. This is very nice, too.
If you don't already have a test you can search by surname. Leave the default markers in place when you make the search. I searched on Peterson and came up with about 80 useful matches. Most of the SMGF DNA tests have a useful pedigree linked to them. You should be able to quickly find a pedigree that links with yours. If you find a DNA test that links with yours, you probably won't be able to access the marker values because SMGF only displays what doesn't match and not the values for each test. So, if you know your DYS marker values, you can compare directly. But if you don't, you can still evaluate the number and value of tests in your surname group. Step 2: You can't play DNA Bingo without a DNA test. You should order a test with at least 25 markers and hopefully 37 to 67 markers. The reason for this is the resolution of the test. At 12 markers, you might match 50 people and not be related to any of them. At 25 markers, you will know if you are related or not. At 37 and 67 markers, you have a test that will determine if you are related to someone, even if they have a different surname. Lets look at your options.
- If your research turns up a link with someone in your pedigree that has already taken a test, you may not need to get a test yourself – if you can can link up with him and help him relate his test numbers to others and you get the same result. If you have any doubts about the paper research that links you, you should still get a test and make sure you match.
- If you find you need a DNA test, I suggest FTdna because they have the biggest data base to link with, and they have an extensive set of tools to help make that connection. I really don't have a second option for a test. There is no other data base that is particularly useful. But your biggest help will be the coordinator for your surname project. This is the person you need to know. He can help you link up with the families that match your DNA test so that you can compare pedigrees. Every surname project has a different way of presenting the DNA results, so your best bet is to contact the coordinator to get the most out of his information.
Consider buying a DNA test for someone else. Let's say you have a pedigree that you suspect connects to yours. Locate a person from that pedigree, and buy a test for them. The results you get will either prove or disprove the connection. Let's say you suspect that you link with a certain family in England. Track down a male from that family and buy them a DNA test. If you match, you just confirmed your hunch, and now you can focus your research. Let's take a look at some examples.
- The Hullinger/Hollinger DNA study has 5 matching tests with pedigrees. The pedigree I did this work for had no confirmed link with Hollinger beyond their third generation. Their DNA test confirmed the link between Hullinger and Hollinger and provided a paper trail that had been lost. I combined the pedigrees to produce a super-pedigree, showing how they all connect. Click here for the Hullinger/Hollinger DNA research page. Some of the lines didn't know how they connected until we compared them. An interesting bit of information was that their DNA type or Haplogroup was J2. This is often associated with Jewish DNA. While this line of Hollingers originated in Switzerland, we turned up Hollinger family members who died in Nazi death camps, mostly from Romania and Poland. All of this gives the researcher hints on where to look next. All of the Hollinger tests match 12 out of 12 markers, and two match 37 out of 37. I call the pattern of markers a “Family DNA Signature.” When we see this pattern, we know we have a match. The Hollingers match perfectly with no mutations or shifts in the markers. I call this a "Hard" DNA Signature. Some DNA Signatures are "Soft," meaning they have some mutations. There is no known reason why some families' DNA markers shift and some don't; there seems to be no discernible difference.
- The Fancher DNA study is an example of a "Soft" DNA Signature. Each of the Fancher DNA tests has at least one shifted marker. Click here for a link to the Fancher DNA research page. The Fanchers confirmed all their paper research and confirmed a link to John Fancher at the top of their pedigree. The next step with the Fanchers is to find a DNA link to the next earliest group going back to the early 1600's. They will do this by finding a living male descendant from this line and getting a DNA test. Fanchers also match Johnstone DNA at 37 markers, strongly suggesting that these families share a common ancestor. Historically, the Fanchers would like to match the Fanshawe family of England, but so far the DNA tests do not match with Fanshawe. In this case, we'll be waiting for more tests. The magic of DNA tests is that new information comes in each month as more people test. You never know what you'll find.
If you have questions regarding your family history and DNA, you can go to my DNA Help page on Genealogy Wise and start a new discussion. That way, I can keep track of your DNA Family Signature. You can visit Genealogy Wise at http://www.genealogywise.com/group/dnaandfamilyresearch.
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/09/dna-bingo-how-to-win-big-by-scott-norton.html |
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| Genealogy Myths: Real, Fool’s Gold, or Both? |
[Sep. 6th, 2009|07:54 am] |
Family stories are a wonderful thing. They often give you insights into the lives of your ancestors. However, beware! Not all family stories are true. Many such stories are fictional. Yet, even the stories that are either entirely or part fiction may contain clues to facts. Good genealogical practice requires that we admit the fiction. But the next step the genealogist takes separates art from science. Before we discard these stories altogether, we need to mine them for nuggets of truth. Let’s look at a few of the more common “family legends” to see which ones you can mine for real gold. Myth #1: Our name was changed at Ellis Island. Fact: No evidence whatsoever exists to suggest this ever occurred. In fact, Ellis Island had rigid documentation requirements. Anyone who arrived at Ellis Island without proper documents from "the old country" proving the person's name and providing other required information was sent back at the shipping company's expense. In fact, the shipping companies obviously knew this and always checked for proper documentation before allowing any passengers to board the ship in Europe or the British Isles. Many people assume that there was a language barrier at Ellis Island and that millions were admitted under different names because immigration officials could not communicate with the newly-arrived travelers from many lands. This is also a fallacy. Ellis Island hired a small army of interpreters. The interpreters spoke the required languages fluently. Most were either prior immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants who learned their mother tongue as children. No immigrant was ever admitted until after answering multiple questions, usually through an interpreter on the Ellis Island payroll. One interpreter at Ellis Island was Fiorello La Guardia, who would later become famous as the mayor of New York City, responsible for cleaning up the corruption of Tammany Hall. He worked at Ellis Island for an annual salary of $1,200 from 1907 to 1910 and helped thousands of Italians and other immigrants enter the country. Perhaps your Italian ancestor was admitted with the help of Fiorello La Guardia. Thanks to the documentation verification conducted at the port of embarkation in Europe, your ancestors' names were known and proven before arriving at Ellis Island and were never changed there. A very few exceptions were made in 1945 and 1946 as refugees from the war-torn areas of World War II were sometimes admitted without documentation. Looking at Ellis Island records will almost always show the original names as first recorded in “the old country.” Of course, you will find major spelling variations, as many illiterate immigrants could not spell their own names even in their native languages, much less in the still-unlearned English language. You can read more about this myth at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/07/ellis_island_an.html and at http://eogn.com/archives/news0120.htm. Even so, I suggest you ponder these family stories a moment before you categorically discard them. They may hold a nugget of truth that you can use to track down your immigrant ancestors. Many family names were changed in the months or years after arriving at Ellis Island. As immigrant families settled into their new neighborhoods, many adopted “Americanized names.” Teachers, clerks, and neighbors sometimes found the original names to be difficult to pronounce; so, they frequently called these people by traditional American names. In many cases, the new immigrants or their descendants adopted the new names. Therefore, you might find yourself checking immigration records for name variants, based on clues in the stories passed down to you. Myth #2: All the records were destroyed during the war. Note: there are many variations of this one, such as “all records were destroyed in the flood,” “all records were destroyed during the fire” and many others. Fact: In short, it is essentially impossible to destroy all records in any catastrophe because records typically are stored in many different places. Census records are kept in one place, tax records are stored in a different location, and military pension applications are stored in a third location. One fire or one flood or even one war never destroys all the records. If you hear this myth, don’t throw in the towel: search on!
Myth #3: There were three brothers who came to America. One went north, one went south and the third went west...
Fact: This is an excuse used by lazy genealogists who cannot explain why the same surname exists in different places. In fact, the families probably are not related at all. It is interesting to note that nobody ever seems to know the first names of these "three brothers." I find it amusing that nobody ever mentions “four brothers” or “five brothers.” There were always three. This one is a red flag; ignore any claims of three brothers.
Myth #4: We are descended from a Cherokee princess.
Fact: Sorry folks, but North American Indians did not have royalty. There never was any such thing as a Cherokee princess or anything similar in the Navajo, Apache, Pueblo, Abenaki, or other tribes. When Pocahontas went to England, the publicists of the seventeenth century claimed she was a princess in order to create publicity. However, the title existed only in the imaginations of the early promoters. P.T. Barnum was also known to apply the word “princess” to some of his female Indian performers but, again, you shouldn’t believe everything that P.T. Barnum claimed. There has never been a princess in the Cherokee tribe or any other North American tribe. If you have an Indian princess in your family tree, she must have been born in India.
Myth #5: Our family always spelled the name as ...
Fact: The moment that you insist your surname was always spelled a particular way, you have just labeled yourself as a beginning genealogist. Name spellings have varied widely and, in fact, have only become standardized in the past 100 years or so. The people who created earlier records often were census takers, town clerks, tax collectors, clergymen, and others, who wrote down what they heard. In the days when most people could not read or write, many did not know how to spell their own names. When a clerk asked, "How do you spell that?" the most common answer was, "I don't know." A census taker late for dinner on a long, hot, dusty, summer day may not have cared whether a name was spelled STUART or STEWART. For instance, my mother always spelled her maiden name as Deabay. In old records, I have found my ancestors listed with the name of Dubé, Dube, Deabay, Deabey, de Bay, du Bay, Debay, Dubey, and other variations as well. My grandfather spoke two languages fluently but could not read or write either one. He never went to school and didn't know how to spell his own first or last names. His sons (my uncles) have since adopted three different spellings of their own last name. When speaking English, my grandfather always called himself Mike; but, when speaking French, he would tell you that his first name was Maxime. Some people called him Max. Every census takers spelled his names differently. Even William Shakespeare signed his own name in different ways: (a) From 1612 deposition: William Shackper
(b) 1612 Blackfriars deed: William Shakspear
(c) 1612 Blackfriars mortgage: Wm Shakspea
(d) His 1615 will, page 1: William Shackspere
(e) Will, page 2: Willm. Shakspere
(f) Will, page 3: By me William Shakspeare [often questioned as by a different hand] Note: there is some controversy as to whether or not all these signatures were actually written by William Shakespeare. However, assuming that he was literate, we could assume that he at least dictated the spelling. My favorite story is the man who wrote his own will in the 1600s on a large piece of parchment paper. The will was several paragraphs long. In his own handwriting, he wrote his own name three different times on the one piece of paper, using three different spellings of his own name!
Myth #6: Our ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
Fact: If every claimed Mayflower ancestor actually was on the Mayflower, that ship must have been bigger than all of today's cruise ships combined! In fact, William Bradford of Plimoth Plantation recorded the complete list of all 102 passengers in 1650. His hand-written list has survived and has been digitized. You can find it on the web in many places. About half the passengers died in the first year at Plimoth. In order to claim Mayflower ancestry, you must be able to document descent from one or more of the surviving passengers listed at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd/mayfpas.htm.
Myth #7: Our ancestor arrived on a later voyage of the Mayflower.
Fact: Sorry, folks, but the Mayflower only made one trip to Plimoth.
Myth #8: We are related to Robert E. Lee.
Fact: If all those claims are true, that must have been a very big family! In fact, the name Lee was common in Virginia and elsewhere with many different, unrelated immigrants of the name. There were tens of thousands of Lees in the U.S. by the mid-1800s, and most of them were not related to each other. Robert E. Lee was a hero of the Confederacy, and many Southerners perhaps wished they were related to him. In fact, very few were.
Myth #9: A town in England, Norway, Germany, etc. is named for our family.
Fact: Names of towns were generally created long before people started using family names (surnames). If your ancestors came from the region in question, it is more likely that your ancestor adopted the name of the town, not the other way around. The good news is that such a story may give you the name of a town that you can check for records of your ancestral family.
Myth #10: Our ancestor was a stowaway on the ship.
Fact: That's a romantic story but rarely true. If a stowaway ever was found, he normally would be sent back in chains to "the old country" on the ship’s return. Very few ever escaped and became residents of the New World. If you hear such a claim in your family, try to prove it. I doubt if you can.
Myth #11: Our ancestor was burned at the stake as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts.
Fact: No accused witches were ever burned at the stake in North America although that did happen in Europe. Nobody ever started a fire for that purpose in Salem. All of the accused Salem witches were hanged, except for Giles Cory (also spelled Corey or Coree), who was pressed to death, a particularly cruel and painful way to die. You can find more information about poor Giles Cory at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Corey.
Not all family legends are false, but they may be misleading
Family legends may provide clues, even when they are not completely accurate. For instance, when I was growing up, I was told that our Eastman ancestors came from Salem, Massachusetts, and participated in the Salem Witch Trials. After researching the family tree for a while, I was disappointed to learn that there were no families named Eastman in Salem during the time of the witch trials. Apparently, the story was false. But wait a minute; there is more to the story. It seems that the original immigrant named Roger Eastman and his wife Sarah did live about 25 miles north of Salem. Several of the Salem witch trial victims came from their town and, indeed, both Roger and Sarah dictated depositions telling how they believed one of their neighbors was innocent of the claims made against her. The depositions presumably were later read aloud in court in Salem. Another ancestor, named Goodale, did live in Salem during the witch trials, and his descendants later married into the Eastman family. So, indeed we did have ancestors in Salem, but they were not named Eastman. Also, our Eastman ancestors did contribute a bit to the Salem witch trials, although apparently not in person. While the original family legend told to me turned out to be false, it held at least two nuggets of truth confirmed with other research. Finally, I have to list one “semi-myth.” There are many variations of this, but generally, it is something like this: "We are descended from royalty." Another variation is, "Our ancestors were rich and famous." Fact: This story is probably true, even though most people who make these claims have no idea of who those ancestors were or when they lived. In fact, you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on in a geometric progression. If you go back 300 years, you have roughly 3,000 ancestors. Going back a thousand years results in theoretically billions of ancestors, more people than ever lived on the face of the earth! In reality, the same ancestors will show up in multiple places in your family tree as you have multiple lines of descent from many of these people. The odds are that at least a few of these millions or billions of ancestors were members of royal families or had money. If we could create complete family trees for thousands of years, every person on the face of the earth probably would find royal ancestors some place in the family tree. The odds of royal ancestry are overwhelming. Almost everyone is descended from kings and queens. Your challenge is to find your royal ancestors and to document your descent from them! Family legends are a fascinating part of who we are and where we came from. Many of the storytellers who passed down these tales surely believed them, and even those who didn’t must have had a strong sense of family pride. Why would your ancestors repeat these stories if not to preserve their family’s history? Be aware, however, that many family legends are false or perhaps only partly true. Ferreting out the nuggets of truth can be a fun exercise that enriches your family tree.
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/09/genealogy-myths-real-fools-gold-or-both.html |
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| The death of "locational privacy" |
[Sep. 3rd, 2009|07:55 am] |
Good food for thought in this op-ed by Adam Cohen, which picks up on the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (disclosure: a group we're all big supporters of here at Boing Boing):
A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up "locational privacy." Even in low-tech days, our movements were not entirely private. The desk attendant at my gym might have recalled seeing me, or my colleagues might have remembered when I arrived. Now the information is collected automatically and often stored indefinitely.
Privacy advocates are rightly concerned. Corporations and the government can keep track of what political meetings people attend, what bars and clubs they go to, whose homes they visit. It is the fact that people's locations are being recorded "pervasively, silently, and cheaply that we're worried about," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a recent report.
People's cellphones and E-ZPasses are increasingly being used against them in court. If your phone is on, even if you are not on a call, you may be able to be found (and perhaps picked up) at any hour of the day or night. As disturbing as it is to have your private data breached, it is worse to think that your physical location might fall into the hands of people who mean you harm.
A Casualty of the Technology Revolution: 'Locational Privacy' (New York Times via Mitch Kapor)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/PRi4eIDGZQg/the-death-of-locatio.html |
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| How To Rip & Convert A DVD Movie For Your iPod (Mac Only) |
[Sep. 2nd, 2009|07:45 am] |
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 Some people love a movie so much that they watch it time and time again. But spinning a disc over and over will surely wear it down to the point that it’s not watchable anymore.
So, instead of buying a new DVD copy every time the old one has been scratched to bits; a better solution would be to convert the movie inside the fragile physical disc into a digital file, store it inside a computer hard drive or portable media player, and watch the copy as many times as you want.
Apple has succesfully made the iPod the most well known name of portable media players, thanks to the great design, intuitive interface, and the high quality of the product. This makes the iPod the perfect home for the converted DVD movies. This article will help you effortlessly put a DVD movie onto your iPod.
The missing ripper
 No doubt the best free tool to extract the content of a DVD as a video file is Handbrake. This is like a one click solution for your DVD converting needs.
But there are many online discussions mentioning that converting the DVD directly using Handbrake doesn’t always give users the best result. To keep the result as good as possible, the DVD has to be ripped first to the hard drive before being converted by Handbrake.
 There’s only one name that keeps popping up as the best free tool to rip DVD: MacTheRipper.
This is a free app, but you actually have to do a little web searching to get the download link. There’s a story behind these extra steps : MacTheRipper is developed in a country where ripping DVD’s (even the ones that you legally own) is forbidden by law, so the developer had to take the down the link. To honor the developer’s goodwill, I will not include any link here either. But worry not, finding the app is not that difficult. -cough-torrent-cough- ahem. ‘Scuse me.
Rip the DVD into a VIDEO_TS folder, then open the folder as a source from Handbrake.
Choose Your Configurations
In order not to mess things up with all the complicated configurations, the first thing you need to do is to choose the resulting file you want to produce out of the (ripped) DVD.
There are some pre-configured settings that you can choose from the preset pane on the right. Choose iPod because that’s the topic today. Choose Low-rez if you only want to watch the video on your iPod, but choose Hi-rez if you are also thinking of plugging the iPod to your TV and watching the movie from the real tube.
The video configuration will always change, reflecting what setting you choose from the right pane. Unless you understand what you are doing, I suggest you don’t change anything from the configuration in the main window.
Instead, go to the Audio & Subtitles tab. I also prefer not to mess with the audio configuration, but this is the place to go if you want to add subtitles to the converted video. Just choose one subtitle from the available option.
The last step is to click the “Start” button above and make yourself some coffee while waiting for the process to finish.
If you have more than one movie to be converted, click the “Add to Queue” button after finishing the settings for one movie, then move on to the next movie. After all the movies are standing in line, you can click the “Start” button.
After the conversion process is finished, all of the converted movies will be added to iTunes and automatically synchronized to your iPod when the gadget is connected to your Mac.
Now you can safely keep those discs and enjoy the pod.
Handbrake is also available in Windows and Linux version, while MacTheRipper is Mac only.
How do you use rip your movies for iPod viewing? Do you have an easier way to do it? If so, why not show off your expertise in the comments below?
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/_6dvqhwSzaQ/ |
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| HyperEngine – The Best Free Movie Editing Software for Mac |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|08:15 am] |
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 When you buy a Mac there will be tons of software on it. One of these is iMovie. This is a basic movie editing software that comes standard on all Macs just like Windows Movie Maker comes on all Windows PCs. A great starter program but it has its limitations.
In truth, it is really only intended for basic editing of family videos or short, homemade productions. It isn’t intended for the more complex tasks such as having several audio files overlapping at once, detailed transitions and perfect timing of video and audio insertion into a final draft.
For this I suggest getting HyperEngine – AV movie editing software. It’s 100% free and it’s the best movie editing software I have seen for a Mac at no cost to the user.
Basically, it succeeds where iMovie has failed. I think it is not focused on the home user who may only ever use iMovie once or twice. This is for someone who will use their video editing software on a regular basis, for example producing a regular video podcast or producing an online mini-series.
Once you have completed the download and it is installed, run the program. You will be greeted by the home screen where you can begin editing videos. Obviously this will be blank as you have not yet imported any video.
Firstly, I’d suggest you just look under all the different tabs along the top so you know where all the extensive tools are.
Open up your video folder with the videos you want to edit. Drag them into the HyperEngine window. This will import them into the program ready to be edited. Do the same for any audio files that you want in the video.
There is a capture mode in the program which allows you to use a camera connected to your computer (such as a webcam) to capture a video that can in turn be used in the final edit. Simply click the ‘Record or Playback’ function to open the video capture screen as shown in the screenshot. It will detect any cameras you have connected to the computer for your selection. Once you have selected a camera click record to begin recording the clip. When you have finished, click stop then click ‘OK’. The video will be imported along with the others.
When you have all the media you want in the video, begin to drag them onto the timeline. There are several different levels for video, audio, subtitles, effects and transitions. So if you are dragging in a video file, drag it into the allocated space for video. Edit the length of the video to select what section you want from it by dragging the sides inwards or outwards until it is of the desired length. Do the same for all the other different types of media.
You can edit the media further by clicking on it. So for example, with text (which could be subtitles) by clicking on it you can change the size, font, colour and whether or not the background is transparent. With transitions and video you can change the look and feel such as brightness, colour mode (sepia, black and white etc..) and size.
To add in dozens of different effects such as zoom, exploding shots and wipes and swipes, position where in the production you want to add the effect and then select ‘Effects’ from the menu bar. This will open the window seen here in the screenshot where each of these effects can be altered using the easy slider bars.
When you have finished your video, you can use the ‘text’ function to add a title and credits to the film. Like in most video software programs you literally have dozens of different styles you can choose from including the traditional scrolling credits to exploding pop-ups.
As with other creation software I have wrote about here on MUO such as BlueVoda Website Builder, there are hundreds of little adjustments you can make to your film which you will discover as you go along, all of which are easy to use with slider bars and simple options. I’m still finding new little tricks here and there, but for the majority of the time you’ll be using the methods outlined above.
A piece of advice that I’ll give about this software is to step into it nice and slowly. This can cut films accurately to the millisecond and its tools are astounding for free software. Once you edit a few small productions then you’ll be able to start producing that mini-series. Take your time and concentrate on the more directorial, artsy side of thinking and you’ll have a great film with video, music, a voiceover, good audio quality, great transitions and suitable colour saturation and mode. Enjoy!
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| Top 10 Free Online Tycoon Games You Should Try |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|08:14 am] |
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There are many websites which will let you play a lot of free online games. As per your taste and mood, you can choose games of different genres like action, arcade, strategy, puzzles, sports and many more. Among them, the free online Tycoon games are quite popular.
There are many online tycoon games which will grab your attention and give you immense pleasure and satisfaction while playing them. All these games have business structures as their main theme. The storylines of these games are similar to the way real businesses are run. You need to buy things, make investments and sell your stuff.
If you are in a mood to play free online tycoon games, then you should consider these 10 best ones:
In this game you play the role of the business owner which controls a bay. It all starts with choosing a terrain on which you wish to start your business. Then you are given all the powers of a harbor master. Your primary task is to develop a harbor which can do great business as well as make it an awesome tourist spot. You can build hotels, restaurants, take your tourists to fishing, and construct yachts.
To play this game, you need to be good with time management and should have the zeal to be a great harbor master. All you need to do is make a perfect and popular harbor.
This game is very popular among the kids. You play a role of a fish breeder. Its whole layout is so colorful and this is the main reason why kids are highly attracted to it.
As a beginner, you start with a few adult and a few baby fishes. Then you breed them, feed them and sell them. You have an option to come up with new breeds. You can buy a few vitamin chemicals and interesting fish breeding supplies from the market.
This game takes you back to the time when World War II was over. You play the role of a CEO of an oil company of that time. The game is simply amazing when it comes to the tasks that the gamer needs to perform.
You start with some barren lands, where you need to search for oil wells. Once you find a few, you can drill to take out the oil which can be stored or sold. You are required to meet the yearly goals and if you fail to do so, then the shareholders will fire you. You also need to bribe politicians in the White House and clear some of the oil ordinances that would benefit your business.
This is the ultimate free online tycoon game. You play the role of overlord in this game. You have to start with a piece of land with an oil well. You can build homes, oil refineries, hospitals, airports, shopping malls, apartments, movie theatres, parks, theme parks, and many more establishments.
The theme is simple, you need to earn money by building all the establishments. In between you will charged with some taxes, or your city might fall prey to natural disaster causing massive destruction to your properties.
Have you ever felt like placing yourself into the shoes of a F1 franchise owner? Then this is the best way to live your dream.
The best thing about this game is its detail. It starts with choosing a franchise and a driver for it. Then you can upgrade each and every part of your vehicle. Your choice exists even in the selection of grid girls. This doesn’t end here; you can also have a close watch on your engineers and pit crew. If you want to keep yourself busy with a tycoon game, then this is the stand out option especially if you are a racing freak.
Youda has always been into the tycoon games. Youda Camper is one of their best products. Like most of the other Youda games, this one is also based on entertaining tourists and earning money.
In this game, you are in charge of a camp site. You start with a barren terrain and some cash. You have to set up different types of tents to accommodate people. Then you also have to build good restaurants and bars, where people could chill out. You also need to take good care of the road system.
Your job does not end with this, as you also need to advertise your camp site. You have to make an attractive camp site where tourists would come in their summer break, which would fetch you a lot of money. It is a comprehensive tycoon game and while playing, you can unlock a number of interesting items.
Coffee shops are undoubtedly the best place to hang around. But what does it take to run a coffee shop? This game gives you a chance to build your own coffee empire.
In this game, you start as the owner of a coffee shop. You have a number of milestones to achieve along your journey to expand your business. You have to expand your menu in order to attract more customers. You can increase your income by establishing more coffee shops, advertising your services and by standardizing your brand by installing the latest coffee shop equipments.
You can build your own corporate houses to coffee plants. It also allows you to enter the stock market, where you can keep an eye on your market growth. This is an amazing game to play while enjoying your coffee.
Movie theaters are one the best places to have a fun time. But running a movie theater is equally difficult. What would you do if were given a chance to run a theatre? Jot down your plans; if you are looking forward to play this game.
Your career starts with an objective to make $1 million in one year. You can run the season’s biggest hits on your screen to earn more. You have to invest some money to improve the standards of your theatre by buying the latest equipment, comfortable seats and setting a nominal ticket price. Try this game and see if you can become a cinema mogul.
Maintaining an airline company and taking it to new heights is not an easy job. You have to keep your customers happy, as they form the fundamental part of your airline empire. You need to make sure that flights are on time. You have to add all the latest technologies to your airport. You also need to maintain the quality in terms of the facilities provided by your airlines. Buy more airplanes, send them to more places and earn more money.
This game will make you feel like the king of a budding empire. You have to build an empire with workers and an army. You have to construct farms, carpenters and markets. You have to generate income by exporting the logs, food and iron. At the same time, you need to build a huge army in order to capture the nearby kingdoms. This is authentic tycoon cum strategy game, where your planning comes into play.
These are some of the best online tycoon games that I have come across and I am sure that you would love playing them. Playing these online tycoon games can be a great stress buster and the best part is that you do not even need any management degree to play them.
Do you know of any other tycoon game which we have forgotten? Let us know in the comments.
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Old Time Radio Revival Round-up |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|08:13 am] |
Old-time radio (often abbreviated as "OTR," also known as the Golden Age of Radio) refers to a period of radio programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's replacement of radio as the dominant home entertainment medium in the 1950s, with some programs continuing into the early 1960s. The origin of radio dramas in the United States is hard to pin down, but there is evidence of a remote broadcast of a play in 1914 at Normal College (now California State University at San José), and the first serial radio drama was an adaptation of a play by Eugene Walter, entitled "The Wolf," which aired in September 1922. Given the age of the programs and the fact that home reel-to-reel recording started in the 1950s (followed by Philips "compact cassettes" in 1963), it might be surprising that quite a few of these old shows have survived. Thanks in part to original radio station-sourced recordings made on aluminum discs, acetates, and glass recordings and other unnamed sources, many radio dramas and newscasts from decades past are available online, and more are being digitized and restored to this day.
Though the term "old-time radio" may be focused on the United States, the history of radio recordings and radio dramas is international. England's first broadcast radio drama was 'Five Birds in a Cage' (Gertrude Jennings), a 1915 stage play, a social comedy, which was broadcast on November 29, 1923 in London. This play is also considered the first instance of 'gay' radio, for the the inclusion of a gay character. Canada's first national radio drama, broadcast in 1931, was Romance of Canada.
Savoy Hill hosts a history of British radio dramas and the British Radio Drama History Database, where you can sort by actors, players, playwrights, years, stations, and other details. The site also has guides on radio drama writing and production. Looking for more tips on radio production? Do-It-Yourself Radio Drama is a blog post from the modern drama creators at Decoder Ring Theater. The post has loads of links for further investigation.
If you're collecting radio dramas, you might find it hard to catalog recordings, as there is no accepted agreement on naming episodes that have no 'official' titles. The OTR Researchers Group’s Wiki has a section devoted to listing shows by one distinct characteristic: First lines of dialogue.
If you happen to find an old 16 inch transcription disk, playback isn't the same as modern vinyl, requiring a custom stylus, and the material is much more fragile than modern media, requiring special handling and care.
Old-time Radio Actors
Orson Wells' radio career was previously discussed. Fred Gwynne and E.G. Marshall were remembered in reference to their roles in CBS Radio Mystery Theater (episodes are available from Old Time Radio Fans, and Internet Archive). Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding were covered before for their 4+ decades of absurdist, satirical, dry, improvisational sketch comedy. Vic and Sade's radio program was also covered. Jack Benny's Christmas Show, previously.
Collections of Golden Era Radio
Internet Archive has a whole section devoted to Old Time Radio, and it's still growing. Currently, you can listen to over 125 episodes of The New Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (not to be confused with the other radio dramatizations), The Adventures of Superman, including his real-life fight against the KKK, as heard in "Clan of the Fiery Cross." On the lighter side, there's a growing list of recordings from The Les Paul Show and a couple clips from the Grand Ole Opry.
With the ever-growing collection, Internet Archive dwarfs other collections, but some other sites focus on areas overlooked (or maybe just buried) at Archive.org. Old Time Radio (OTR) - Radio Days: A Radio History (previously) is an ever-growing collection, including Radio News, Mystery, Private Eyes, Comedy, SciFi, and more. Old Time Radio Fans (Fans plural) has the usual assortment of programs, plus a selection of old radio commercials. Jezner.com - Old Time Radio is a blog focused on OTR, with background and commentary on the episodes posted every few days.
Old Time Radio Fan is limited to the weekly line-up, where they're online for 7 days, then try your luck with The Random Hopper.
Modern radio dramas
Decoder Ring Theatre (previously) is home to two original series (The Red Panda Adventures and Black Jack Justice), as well as the grab-bag of anthology stories that is Showcase.
Darker Projects (warning: auto-starting audio) (previously) has three original projects, along with Star Trek and Doctor Who interpretations.
ZBS Foundation produces shows for purchase, but their podcasts are free of charge (previously).
ZBS Foundation was discussed previously-er as a set of links to current radio drama. Though all the links died, Archive.org remembers Seeing Ear Theater and Virtually American. Sci-Fi's Seeing Ear Theater is also on CD in 3 volumes. Not included in those volumes: Neil Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples.
http://www.metafilter.com/84459/Old-Time-Radio-Revival-Roundup |
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| Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede, one of the all-time great American comedy sf novels, will |
[Aug. 14th, 2009|09:08 am] |
Holy CRAP this is good news: Bradley Denton's incredible comic sf novel Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede is being made into a movie directed and written by Robert Rugan.
Buddy Holly is the story of Oliver Vale, whose mother was obsessed with Buddy Holly, and who one day discovers that Buddy Holly is on the TV, on every TV, on every station, with a guitar around his neck, standing in a bubble on the surface of Ganymede, disoriented, musical, and periodically reading out a sign saying that further information is available from Oliver, and supplying his home address.
The entire world chases Oliver at this point: cops, radio cops, televangelists and their flocks, aliens -- you name it. And Oliver begins a road-trip across America to Lubbock, Texas, there to exhume Buddy Holly's corpse and verify for himself that the famous musician is not on a distant, airless moon.
When this book came out, I was a bookseller at Bakka in Toronto, the venerable science fiction bookstore. If you were a science fiction reader in Toronto in those days, it's a damned good bet I sold you a copy of it. I hand-sold about 750 copies of that book, and would have sold more. Will sell more.
Bradley Denton is a stone comic genius and no two of his books are alike, but this is the one I love -- I worship -- as the apotheosis of a certain kind of gonzo, brilliant, marvellous thing that is to American science fiction comedy what Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' series is to British sf comedy.
To see it come back and to the big screen, too -- marvellous. Congrats, Brad, and well-deserved.
Jon Heder to star in 'Buddy Holly'
(via IO9)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/72eoydJ7OYE/buddy-holly-is-alive.html
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| How to Trace an IP Address to a PC & How to Find Your Own |
[Aug. 12th, 2009|09:12 am] |
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 An IP (Internet Protocol) address is as unique to a computer as a fingerprint is to us. An IP address enables one networked device to talk to the next. The downside of this inter-connectedness is that a logical location provided by the IP address is an open arms invitation to spammers and hackers. The art of war necessitates the importance of knowing who your ‘attacker’ is. Being able to trace an IP address to a PC is a direct way to remove the cloak of anonymity from a computer communicating with your own.
An IP address is a series of digits separated by dotted decimals and represented from 0.0.0.0 to 256.256.256.256. Currently we are following the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), although the successor ‘version 6’ has been standardized.
A good hacker will take steps to prevent his IP from being revealed. A spammer might hide behind a proxy server. It is also important to remember that locating an IP address using online tools does not reveal the physical address of the guy on the computer. The basic tools merely tell us the location of the ISP providing the connection by using publicly available information. To go beyond that and actually nail down the guy sending you the dirty emails would require the law to be in the loop.
Stefan’s post on How to Trace Your Emails Back to the Source is required reading for a very useful application of IP address tracking. An interesting comment has been made by a reader who says that he uses IP address tracing to ‘find out the origin of potential customers who send e-mails and make inquiries through his company’s website’.
In the lines that follow, I am taking Stefan’s post as a stepping stone and extending it by listing sites which serve as tools to trace an IP address to a PC. Any one should be enough but is there any harm in bookmarking a few more?
Part 1: Trace an IP Address to the Country and City of Origin
MyIpTest.com
This web service provides a whole range of geolocation services. Included tools are IP Lookup, Reverse IP lookup Email trace, Traceroute, Ping tool among others. Also of use is a handy link which you can use to get someone else’s IP. Field the IP address in the IP address location box and the results give you the geolocation info behind the address and a marker on a Google Map. A Firefox experimental add-on is also available from the Firefox Add-ons gallery.
Geotool
A single field box for the IP address or host name, and the information follows. Geotool also uses Google Maps to depict the geographical location of the originating IP address. Geotool’s Firefox add-on shows a country flag representing the location of the current IP address (or website) and gives one click quick access to detailed location and web server information.
HostIP
HostIP says that it’s a community driven project to resolve IP addresses. At present it has 8,886,729 entries in its database. You can contribute information to the database and the database is accessible to all. The site’s FAQ goes into the motivation behind the community project. The project is a buildup as an alternative to commercial geolocation databases. The site also provides a Firefox add-on which unfortunately, is not compatible with the latest version of the browser.
DomainTools
This Whois Lookup search service provides a spiffy domain name lookup service along with IP address searching. The information is comprehensive including contact data-like listed telephone numbers and email address of the hosting service. The Whois access is free while other domain tools (the Power Tools) come with the paid options.
Arul John’s Utilities
A simple box and a simple IP address tracking service. You can also add the IP tracker to your website as a Google gadget.
IP-Address
IP-Address has three information pages which are of use to us – the homepage of IP-Address detects your IP, IP-Tracer locates the source of any IP address and Email Trace which nails the location of the senders IP address. With Email Trace, we simply need to paste the email header info in the box provided to get details about the sender.
IP Address Location
The web service provides different web tools for IP addressing. With an input you can find the exact location of any IP address plus the OS used, DNS, IP address range of the country, country code and country flag. The integrated Geolocator and a world map narrows down to the city and country. Also included is a tool to check the validity of an email address. According to the site, its IP database is updated every 48 hours.
Part 2: How to Find Your Own IP Address
An IP address is akin to a home address but really, it is not as simple. Lots of geek speak and networking lingo would be required to explain what’s it’s all about. The 7 online tools covered not only give you the location of a foreign IP address but yours too as soon as you hit their landing page. There are many online services which decipher your IP address in a flash. Here are a few from the swarm -
That’s the quick and easy way. But what if you wanted to do it on your own using just your OS?
Here’s the how for Windows –
- Go to Start – Run. Type in cmd to bring up the command prompt.
- On the command prompt, type in ipconfig/all and hit enter.
- Basic information of your network interfaces is listed along with your device’s IP address.
(Please note that your IP address may be static or dynamic depending on how the DHCP server that’s assigns the IPs is configured.)
The ISP service provider knows exactly where we are located. With the tools mentioned here, at best we can find the approximate area (even though a city is a large area!). It’s still useful…and sometimes it’s fun too.
Have you ever had to use IP tracking? Tell us why and how…
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| 10 Essential Software Apps For Web Development on a Mac |
[Aug. 1st, 2009|08:06 am] |
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 Whether Macs are the best computers for web development is up for debate, but one thing can be agreed upon – there are some great software apps for web development on a Mac.
Here’s a list of 10 essential software apps for web development on a Mac.
10. TextWrangler is a multipurpose text editor that works for editing code and plain text documents. It can even open files from (and save them to) remote FTP and SFTP servers.
9. Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator. It is the first open source program to adopt Spiro curves. You can also go through their clip art collection and find dozens of images made with Inkscape that are free to use or modify.
8. Cyberduck is the all-in-one FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDav and Mosso Cloud Files browser application. Web developers often need to switch between different file systems, and Cyberduck does this without a hiccup. It works with Textmate (which has a free 30 day trial), so you can open files from Cyberduck in Textmate, edit, save and upload. Read more about FTP clients for Mac here.
7. Gimp is the second-most popular photo editing software program on the market, second only to Adobe Photoshop. The difference? Gimp is absolutely free! You can do just about everything in Gimp that you can do in Adobe Photoshop, so web developers will find this a welcome and wallet friendly addition to their software arsenal.
6. Aptana takes up where Textmate leaves off in some aspects. It is a full featured code editor, but adds the FTP support of Cyberduck, as well as important web technologies like Ajax, Adobe AIR and PHP. Read more about Aptana here on MUO.
5. Firefox is a must have for web development because of three great add-ons – Firebug, the Web Developer toolbar and ColorZilla. Firebug lets you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page; while the Web Developer toolbar adds additional tools like clearing cookies, disable CSS, display ruler and display source. ColorZilla lets you pick colors from websites or images online, so you can match them to your web designs, plus measure the distance between two points on a website.
4. JAlbum helps you make attractive photo galleries for websites. JAlbum comes with various templates built-in, but you can also customize your own template to better match a web project you’re working on. Read about 5 more Excellent Mac Apps for Graphic & Web Design
3. Colloquy is a basic IRC client that every web developer will use at one point or another. Many web platforms use IRC for support, including WordPress.
2. MAMP is what you need to manage websites locally when you are without an internet connection or want to test changes without making them live on a website. It is easy to install MAMP and have access to Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X. It is also a stand-alone program, so if you need to install it, it won’t interfere with your OSX installation. Plus, you can use it to install WordPress on your Mac.
1. iTerm is a feature-filled Terminal emulator for OSX. You can bookmark your frequently used sessions, have tabbed windows with multiple sessions and more.
Do you have any suggestions for better similar apps? Let’s hear them in the comments!
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| The State of Hackintosh: Which Netbooks to Hack [Hackintosh] |
[Jul. 31st, 2009|08:07 am] |
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 BoingBoing Gadgets' netbook compatibility chart is a great resource for putting Mac OS on netbooks. But before taking the Hackintosh plunge, here are the major contenders' strengths, pitfalls and quirks to consider, plus guides for when you (carefully) jump in.
Rob's chart, with all its scary red marks and mysterious orange ovals, has the tendency to give the impression that the outlook is fairly bleak; almost every row of "confirmed working!" ticks is broken up by at least one pesky caveat, and some netbooks on the list are not sold anymore. But your prospects really aren't so bad. Buck up, kids! Here's what that chart means, practically, with a real-world rundown of what these netbooks can offer, what they can't, and how best to try your hand at Hackintosh.  The HP Mini 1000
Status: In production
Now that the Dell Mini 9 has passed on, in retail terms, this is your best option. Main components are compatible across the board.
What you get: A well-styled 10.2-inch machine with respectable guts, a notoriously great keyboard and an increasingly reasonable price. In fact, the slightly smaller Windows-less 16GB SSD version, a prime candidate for OS X-ification, is listed on Best Buy's site for $280 right now.
What you sacrifice: I think the styling works; some people get turned off by the large bezel around the screen, though it's on par with other 10-inch netbooks. Many Hackintoshers find little gremlins after install—lack of fan speed control and temperamental Wi-Fi control, to name two—which can generally be fixed, though rarely simply. By and large, though, this is as good as OS X gets on a cheap netbook.
Resources: Install guide, with video; support forums.
 Dell Mini 9
Status: Out of production
This was, and still is, a fantastic candidate for Hackintoshing. As such, they're not that easy to find for a reasonable price. Even Dell's been getting in on the post-Mini-9 action, rereleasing the little laptop for brief period last week.
What you get: Just like the HP, Dell's Mini 9 lays claim to near-total hardware compatibility, including mobile broadband support. The fact that everything just kinda works is pretty wild, if you think about it. UPDATE: The Vostro A90, the Mini 9's equally Hackintoshable business counterpart, is still around in some retail channels.
What you sacrifice: Battery life isn't great. And since release, the Mini 9's hardware has aged a bit. That said, entry-level netbooks all more or less live on the verge of obsolescence by definition, so having a slightly older Atom processor than your friends shouldn't be much of a concern.
Resources: Our definitive install guide; support forums.
 Dell Mini 10v
Status: In production
For some time after release this Mini 9 replacement was held up by Mac driver difficulties. Now it works fairly well, and could serve as a replacement Mini 9 for some Hackintoshers.
What you get: In some ways, this is better than the Mini 9. It's a newer unit, updated to address some of the general population's broader problems with the Mini 9: The screen is slightly larger, and more importantly, the keyboard has some room to stretch. It's cheap—often cheaper than the a coveted used Mini 9—at about $300 new.
What you sacrifice: The Mini 10v is patchier than its predecessor across the board. The onboard microphone is difficult to get working, video drivers are still a little precarious, often causing crashes when external monitors are connected, and sleep and hibernation modes aren't very reliable, which is crucial for a totable netbook. If you're willing to bet on driver support improving, it's a prudent purchase. That's a big if, by the way.
Resources: The Anguish Install+Fixes Guide; User forums.
 Lenovo S10
Status: Out of production
Like the Mini 1000, the S10 is a worthy replacement for the Mini 9. Or, it was, before it was replaced by a touchier, more erratic S10-2. (More on that below).
What you get: Another capable machine, though it was—and still is—a little too expensive for what you get. Hardware works across the line, down to the webcam and two-finger touchpad scrolling.
What you sacrifice: Ethernet doesn't work, which could kill the S10's usefulness as a travel device (old hotels, etc) and the 3-cell battery is a little anemic. It too suffers from age: The cheapest version and most popular spec comes with 512MB of RAM, which will suck the joy right out of your OS X experience.
Resources: Multi-boot guide (attached to linked post in PDF); User forums.
 Lenovo S10-2
Status: In production
This bears the outward appearance of a minor update to the S10. As far as Hackintoshing is concerned, it's a major step backwards.
What you get: Compared to the S10, a better touchpad, bigger keyboard, nicer case design, slimmer profile, more default RAM, and lower price. Great!
What you sacrifice: Any semblance of usability in OS X. Adding to the lack of ethernet support, everything from sleep to external video to stability is lost, to the point that the S10-2 isn't really much of an option.
Resources: The same S10 guide, with caveats; User forums.
 MSI Wind U100
Status: Out of production
A perennial Hackintosh classic, it's still a safe choice, and fairly easy to track down used.
What you get: A Mini 9 level of compatibility, with very similar hardware. Styling is clean, but not as pleasing as the Dell, Lenovo, or HP alternatives, and the keyboard is usable.
What you sacrifice: Again, we're dealing with old-ish hardware here, and again, the three-cell battery won't run marathons. The touchpad is janky, and, I almost forgot, this guy really doesn't like them.
Resources: A whole bunch of install guides and support info.
 Acer Aspire One
Status: In production
A hugely popular, widely available and all-around decent netbook, the Aspire One is a cautionary tale: No matter how tempted you are to pick one up, Hackintosh development has come too slowly to justify buying one for that. This rule applies to other netbooks not shown, too.
What you get: An expensive-looking, cheap-as-chips workhorse.
What you sacrifice: Virtually everything, including the biggest dealbreaker of them all: Wi-Fi. Lots of netbooks don't work, but I wanted to include this one as an example: Just because a netbook is wildly popular and bolstered by a huge community of support forums doesn't mean that Hackintosh will eventually work. Some hardware and software issues are just beyond the hobbyists' purview, so don't buy a netbook with the hopes that issues will be resolved. They might not be, and you'll be stuck swapping out hardware components just to get basic features working.
Resources: Install guide with some fixes, wi-fi recommendations; user forums.
Despite losing its greatest soldier (well, almost), the Hackintosh netbook movement is still alive and well, to the point that buying one of the more compatible netbooks listed above with the express purpose of turning it into an unofficial mini-MacBook is a great idea. Take your pick.
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/6XBbNy3fn30/the-state-of-hackintosh-which-netbooks-to-hack |
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| Publish Your Own Book For Free With Some Help From PublishAmerica |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|07:33 am] |
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 Just before a trip, I went into Wally World to get some stuff, and was thinking of getting a book to read while I was on downtime. Lo and behold! There was a man in a pirate suit selling a pirate book called, wait for it, “A Pirate’s Tale”. The man with the eye-patch is Gertjan Zwiggelaar, the author. Of course, fancying myself a writer, I struck up a conversation.
“Wow, self published, eh? That’s got to be expensive. I looked into it a while back.”
“No, not really. I found a publishing house that published it for free, and just takes a portion of the sales.”
“Really? That’s awesome! Who does that?”
“PublishAmerica.com. Here’s my card with the address on it.”
So I bought the book. It was awesome! Best pirate book I’ve read since Treasure Island. Okay, it’s the only pirate book I’ve read since Treasure Island, but I still recommend it.
I walked away with dreams of publishing that one book that someone said resides in all of us. PublishAmerica, you must be too good to be true. How can it be possible to publish your own book for free? But then I went to the site.
Here’s what I found…
You write your book. You e-mail or mail it in to PublishAmerica. They review it for quality and grammar and see if it will garner some sort of market. If that’s all good, they’ll talk to you about a contract. You sign the contract. They design a cover for the book. They market the book on their website and to different booksellers such as Barnes and Noble, Ingram, Borders.com and others. They also give you some advice on promoting the book yourself.
Your book sells and they send you royalty payments. No, really, that’s it! All of that and more for free, while you retain complete control over their intellectual property and rights to it, for say, movie deals or what have you.
“But Guy, I can get my book vanity published or hire an agent to take care of that? Isn’t that easier?” you ask with smugness dripping from your disdainful face.
Well, vanity publishing costs a lot of money and unless you are a superstar marketer with a genuine bestseller on your hands, your odds of recouping what you paid to self-publish are pretty slim indeed. You have to take care of getting your own ISBN, or copyrighting the book as well as the cover design and art work. Or you can pay the vanity publisher more to do that for you.
If you choose the literary agent route, then you’re looking at trying to find an agent who will take on an unknown author, and will actually work hard to get you published. Then they take a slice of what you make on the book, on top of everyone else traditionally involved in publishing taking their slice. That might work out if you sell 4 million books, yet the odds are slim on that as well.
“Okay, Guy,” you inquire with some trepidation and eagerness, “so what’s the downside?”
Well, I don’t know exactly what the percentage is for royalties. They also do not accept manuscripts from outside Canada or the United States of America. Oh, and they don’t accept books in the genres of coffee table books, screenplays/scripts/movies, theses, text-books, gift books, or books of quotes.
While they don’t publish every manuscript that comes to them, they do take more risks than other traditional publishing houses. They have published over 40,000 authors since 1996. Some of those authors have gone on to make writing their career, have movie deals and receive some pretty significant critical praise.
Really, in the years that I’ve spent trying to find a way to publish that great Canadian novel I have in my desk drawer, this is by far the simplest and least expensive route that I have found.
Have you self-published a book? Do you know of any other publishing houses like PublishAmerica? I’d love to read about it in the comments. Put your literary skills to good use and leave us a note.
Don’t think your writing is good enough? Then check out 7 Online Resources To Help Improve Your Writing.
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/wvxTzv-jy-U/ |
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| With that keyboard, I wonder what Ctrl-Alt-Del would do ... |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|07:31 am] |
Ctrl is an NBC webseries starring Tony Hale (Arrested Development's Buster, Chuck's Emmett Milbarge) as an office drone who suddenly finds that, thus far, CTRL-Z lets him undo recent events in his own life, and CTRL-B emboldens him to stand up to his boss and confess his love to the source of his crush. It was based on a short film, Ctrl-Z, starring Hale's Chuck co-star Zachary Levi as the boss. Not exactly a new concept, but nonetheless well-executed by a fairly good comic team ...
Also, as an added plus, it features a really beautiful end-credits song.
Also, it's obviously receiving no money whatsoever from NESTEATM POMEGRANATE PASSIONFRUIT RED TEA, NOW EVIDENTLY AVAILABLE IN 1-LITER BOTTLES!, despite the bottle actually magically rotating its label towards the camera in the opening scene of episode one ... subtle it ain't. Mmm, look at that CGI splashing goodness!
http://www.metafilter.com/83373/With-that-keyboard-I-wonder-what-CtrlAltDel-would-do |
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| Averting the Apocolypse on Tremont Street |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|07:24 am] |
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Deb Geisler directs us to the work of Thomas Sniegoski, who sets his "young adult" books about the battle between Good and Evil in downtown Boston:
... He lives in Massachusetts (Stoughton, I think), but he writes mostly about downtown Boston -- particularly the Beacon Hill area, where I work. In one book, his main character points out that a clear sign of the impending Apocalypse (which that character is trying to avert) is that there is no wait at the Bourne Bridge. :-) ...
http://www.universalhub.com/node/26465 |
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| Discovering Roxbury, Mission Hill Edition |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|08:09 am] |
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Yesterday, Bostonist had the excellent opportunity to be led on a walking tour of Mission Hill, learning about the area's history, architecture, and future. Sponsored by Discover Roxbury, the tour was led by some Friends of Historic Mission Hill and explored a number of notable stops, including several churches and historical homes.
Mission Hill was once called Parker Hill after the Parker family that owned much of the area (Parker Hill is where Boston's reservoir was once located), but the name gradually changed after the Mission Church (Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help) was founded in 1869. The church was part of what drew thousands of Irish Catholic immigrants to the area, doubling the Mission Hill population between 1870 and 1890. You might think of Jamaica Plain, home to the Sam Adams brewery, as Boston's beer capitol these days, but Mission Hill used to have its share of the booze: in 1900, there were as many as 25 breweries within a mile of Roxbury Crossing, and many of the churches in the neighborhood were built with "beer money." (Sadly, beer was not included with the tour, but at least the tour was free.)
We began our Mission Hill tour on Saturday at the adorably outfitted Butterfly Cafe next to Roxbury Crossing. Discover Roxbury's Derek Lumpkins (also of The Third Decade) welcomed us, then Butterfly Cafe owner Mash Abdirahman distributed materials from Mission Hill Main Streets. From the Butterfly, we proceeded down Tremont, Parker, Calumet, and St. Alphonsus Streets to a variety of local landmarks, which tour guide Mary Ann Nelson explained in detail.
The first major stop on the tour, a stone marking a distance of a mile from John Eliot Square in Roxbury, set the tone for the rest of the day. The stone, nearly hidden by an electrical box, was worn almost beyond comprehension, and formed part of a stone wall. You’d never know it was there—or realize its importance—if you didn’t make the effort to learn. Likewise, there’s a lot about Mission Hill that we would have never known if we hadn't made the effort to tour the area.
Some portions of the tour were of obvious interest: the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the Parker Hill Branch Library, Mission Hill Playground. But other areas, from German brewers’ homes to puddingstone worker housing to Calumet Square to Mission Hill Playground, represent aspects of Mission Hill that are easier to overlook. Calumet Square, for example, hosted the launch party (attended by 15,000 folks) for Maurice Tobin’s 1937 mayoral campaign, in which he beat out incumbent James Michael Curley, becoming the only challenger to unseat an incumbent in a Boston mayoral campaign. Mission Hill Playground is located near the former site of housing projects where residents were harassed in the aftermath of the Charles Stuart case in 1989. These physical spaces provide important reminders of major parts of Boston's history—good and bad—that are all too easily forgotten.
Not only did we see some great buildings on the tour, we also met a number of interesting people. A brother from the Little Brothers of St. Francis spoke to us, we were treated to a live overview of the Roxbury Community Gardens, and we even got to drink tea in city council candidate (and Northeastern econ professor) Oscar Brookins’</a> backyard. (He’s got a pretty rad swing back there.) Our fellow "tourists" were fascinating, too: many were locals who shared their memories of the area's evolution, from protests of the Southwest Corridor (local jazz singer Fulani Haynes remembered lying in the streets to block the progress of bulldozers) to the recent student influx that's blamed for raising rents in this formerly family-friendly area.
The Discover Roxbury tour of Mission Hill was entertaining and informative, and demonstrated that there are many more Bostonians who care deeply about their city—especially their neighborhood—than things like poor voter turnout might lead you to expect. Based on our experience, we strongly encourage you to step off the Freedom Trail and explore other aspects of historic Boston and its neighboring cities this summer.
Discover Roxbury's current focus on Mission Hill continues through July 18, when you can participate in a glassblowing demonstration and workshop at Diablo Glass School. Even if you can't make it out to Mission Hill, check out Boston Main Streets and make an effort to explore a new part of town that you've never been to soon. It'll be worth it.
http://feeds.gothamistllc.com/click.phdo?i=0d36585df890cab2a808ff3a7e0f39c7 |
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| Ogame – A Free Online Strategy Game of Space War |
[Jul. 12th, 2009|07:33 am] |
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 Last year, my brother-in-law introduced me to a free online strategy game called Ogame. Ogame is a massively multiplayer game by anyone’s standards. It consists of 43 “Universes,” with each universe holding many thousands of planets – each home to a particular player who wants to become the master of that particular universe. Ogame is completely free to join and play, and there’s a staff of avid gamers who moderate and maintain the entire game system. Not only do they manage technical issues such as server maintenance and software glitches, but they also serve as the judge and jury whenever player conflicts arise (and they arise fairly often).
Ogame – A Space War Like No Other
When I first started playing the free online strategy game known as Ogame, I figured I’d play for about a couple of weeks and call it good. I was on vacation from work and looking for something to pass the time with a few of my online friends. We each signed up for a free account in Universe 36, claimed our first planet, and started our slow climb up the ranks.
The opening login screen itself really captured my interest unlike any other online game I’ve ever played. While the fact that I’ve always been a sci-fi fan might explain my fascination with the graphics, the animated front page filled with fascinating and subtly moving images of space sparked my imagination. It reminded me of a game I was once hooked on as a young kid in high school called Sentinel Worlds by Electronic Arts. That sense of adventure and excitement from those long ago late-nights of game playing came rushing back to me, and I knew that Ogame already had me hooked.
Navigating Through Ogame
While there’s a lot of detail, complex game play and a lot of strategy involved in this game, overall navigating through the various control screens is a piece of cake once you get used to it. From the main screen, you have an overview of all of the planets that you’ve colonized.
Yes, there’s also an interplayer messaging system that can get pretty busy at times, especially when you’re trying to coordinate an attack of several battleship fleets between you and your buddies against another team (or “alliance”). Clicking on any one of your planets takes you to a “planetary control” menu, where you can build additional structures to further colonize your planet (and add functionality). You can access these building options by clicking on the “buildings” link on the left menu.
Or you can assign fleet production tasks to a particular planet – like building a fleet of fighters, cargo ships, or whatever else you feel you need added to your existing “fleet.” You can access your ship building area by clicking “Shipyard” in the left menu.
Just keep in mind that in many corners of this space world – the size of your fleet defines you. In Ogame, size matters. Of course, the clever players understand that all brawn and no brains just makes for an easy target, so ultimately you’ll turn to your “Research” area in order to build up your capabilities and your strength in battle.
As you build up your various technologies (all “building” activities are time-based), you’ll achieve more powerful “hits” against your opponents in battle, when spying on their planets, or the various other activities where you’re trying to gain additional resources.
The Game Play and Action
The “coolness” factor of Ogame comes down to the action. You could literally spend weeks just building technologies, fleet ships and buildings – but what good is it if there’s no action? The action in this game comes from “raiding” other player’s planets for their resources. And the addictive part of the game comes from the need for revenge when someone “crashes” your planet, wipes out your fleet, and takes all of your resources. That happens only once or twice, and you’ll discover that you’ve taken a sworn oathe of revenge, and you are officially an Ogame addict.
When you click on “Galaxy” in the left menu, you’ll see a screen like that above, where you’ll be spending most of your time, sifting through from one “system” to the next. What are you searching for? Ultimately you’re hunting for vulnerable planets – those with a code letter “i” or “I” signifying that the player has been idle for a long time. You send over your “probes” to check out whether there’s a fleet, defenses or resources on the planet – and when you see an undefended planet with lots of resources, you send in your fleet to sweep up the goods and add them to your stash. Sounds easy enough doesn’t it? That is, until one of their buddies “ninja’s” you, landing a fleet twice as large as yours on the planet just before your fleet gets there, wiping out your attack. Or someone much higher than you sends over a “deathstar” to wipe out anything you’ve got on your planet.
If you’ve a savvy and clever player, you’ll quickly team up with a good alliance of gamers and after many, many months of building up your planets, your fleet, and waging war against other alliances and other worlds, you just might become the king of Ogame… at least in your particular Universe. Once you’re done there, you’ve got dozens of other Universes that are also available for conquering.
Have you ever played Ogame, or any similar free online strategy games? Share your experiences in the comments section below.
Related posts
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/qRbbVb5dYGk/ |
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| Ancestry.com’s Genetic Genealogy Webinar |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|08:13 am] |
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On July 8th, Ancestry.com hosted a webinar called “Genetic Genealogy Made Easy.” The webinar is now posted and can be accessed at any time. One great thing about a webinar is that it can be multimedia; indeed, this webinar uses both slides and video.
The presentation is pretty basic, but a good source of information for people who are new to genetic genealogy. The following topics are covered, according to the site:
- DNA testing for genealogy works–in easy terms.
- To understand and apply your results to grow your tree.
- Ancestry.com DNA testing can continue to pay off for years.
- Women can benefit from a paternal lineage test.
- To use Ancestry.com DNA features: Groups, Transfer to Tree, and Ancient Ancestry.
Ancestry.com is planning more advanced genetic genealogy webinars in the future.
What is interesting is that the last question from the audience addressed by the webinar regards using genetic genealogy by adoptees. Whenever I give presentations, I almost invariably receive this question in one form or another. Seems to be a very common question.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGeneticGenealogist/~3/OnPMXnLuY0I/ |
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| When Mark Twain visited Boston |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|08:08 am] |
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Even back in 1869, our little streets confused tourists, as Mark Twain notes in his account of a trip here, starting with his effort to get from the train station to the hotel with the aid of a little kid who charged him 30 cents:
"Boy, why do you wind around in this way -- why don't you go straight?"
"Sir?"
"Why do you poke in and out and wind around and about in this involved and sinuous way? Why don't you go straight?"
The boy turned and surveyed me impressively for many minutes, and then said, as if to himself:
"Go straight in Boston -- ain't he innocent, though?"
He then marched on. But I had lost all confidence, and so I took refuge in the first hotel I came to and discharged James, satisfied that no virtue could abide in a boy whose ways were so crooked. In going from the depot to the hotel we passed one spot seven different times and approached it from a different direction every time.
Read more
http://www.universalhub.com/node/26314 |
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ispy1964's journal
I've found my weekend project. 
