September 12, 2013 The Atlantic reports on Voyager 1 reaching interstellar space. I wrote software for a very small part of this project -- but it is still one of the more long-term activities of my life.
UPDATE: A commenter asked for some detail on my involvement with this project. It is one of the weird little parts of my life. During my first year of college at USC, I was frantically looking for a part-time job so that I could stay in school. Tuition was not a problem: the combination of the California State Scholarship and financial assistance from USC covered the entire $2910 annual bill. (Yes, and pterodactyls still roamed the skies.) Books were not too bad -- typically about $300 a year.
The problem was that I needed enough money to cover my rent, groceries, utilities, and gasoline to drive my heap of a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu station wagon back and forth to USC. I received a modest $200 or so a month check from Social Security as a college student dependent on a disabled parent. That was not quite enough to cover the bills. It was close.
But unskilled jobs were in short supply. It was 1975, and the economy was in some respects as bad as it is today. I could not get a job flipping burgers, or any other unskilled job. Nothing was available in the Santa Monica/West Los Angeles area where I lived.
Suddenly, a full-time job opened up with the school district. They needed a computer geek, and I thought: Hey, the first semester was really easy: easy A in English, freshman chemistry, Introduction to Film, and a B in first semester calculus. (This was the hard calculus sequence for physical science majors.) So I took the full-time job...and attended school full-time second semester. And this was not easy. In fact, after two months of doing this, I concluded that it was not practical to define database requirements eight hours a day (and partly at night) and take classes mostly in the daytime at USC. So I quit the day job.
And I forgot that the Social Security check would be cut off as soon as they saw that I was earning a decent wage. But by the time that happened, it was June, and it was impossible to get it turned back on, now that I no longer had that full-time job, so the need to find some sort of job was that much more severe. And all summer long: Jack-in-the-Box? McDonald's? I even applied for a job as a projectionist at an adult movie theater. (No, I had not been in audio-visual club in high school, so I had no idea how to run a projector, but I was sure that I could learn.)
Time was getting short, but it turned out that while I lacked the skills and capabilities to flip burgers, there was one job that I could get at 18: Jet Propulsion Labs. On Monday, I saw a newspaper ad by Telos Computing, one of the companies with a contract to supply software engineers to JPL. I sent my resume. Wednesday they had me come into the office in Santa Monica. That afternoon, I drove out to JPL in my incredibly 1970s powder blue leisure suit, and Friday, they called me, and told me to start work at JPL on Monday. I was paid $1200 a month, mostly because that is what I asked for, and I was even then a pretty articulate if nerdy and introverted sort.
I wrote software for the near-real-time telemetry processing system for what was then called the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn project (MJS), but was later renamed to Voyager. It was a really cool experience. When they hired me, I do not think I was qualified to do the job; by the time they fired me, almost a year later, I actually was qualified to do the job -- and it certainly opened many doors for me in later years.
Jumat, 13 September 2013
It Is All Bush's Fault!
A very sad story about a 19-year old airman who committed suicide on Guam in 2011 using her service revolver. The parents are claiming the Air Force failed to do what they should have done. I have no opinion on Air Force responsiblity, just sorrow that it happened. But one of the comments captures progressive irrationality so well:
Not to denigrate Ms. Anderson, but the U.S. military has lots of screwed up members thanks to the Bush-era policy to recruit anyone who walked through the door, including junkies, drunks, dropouts, mentally ill, criminals, etc. They even filled out the recruitment papers for them, and lowered the training standards!Yeah, a 19-year old who entered the Air Force at least two years into Obama's time in office, and it is Bush's fault!
Elk Gets The Final Revenge
VERNAL, Utah (AP) -- An elk slain in Utah had its last revenge when its antler punctured the neck of the hunter who'd brought him down.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports the 51-year-old hunter snagged the elk Saturday east of Vernal.
Uintah County Undersheriff John Laursen says the man was trying to roll the 600- to 700-pound animal over when the antler stabbed him behind his jaw.The hunter survived, but somewhere, the spirit of the elk is laughing.
Not A Positive Sign For The Health of State and Local Governments
Traditionally, municipal bonds have had lower yields than corporate bonds because many (although not all) munis are exempt from both federal income tax, and state income tax for the state in which the political entity exists. (Certain categories of munis that are "private activity bonds" are not tax-exempt, and to add to the confusion, I understand that Puerto Rico munis are exempt from not only federal income tax, but state income tax in every state -- probably because of the weird legal status of Puerto Rico.)
Why lower yield? Because you are not going to pay federal income tax on the dividends, and if you are a resident of the state from which the bond comes, no state income tax. A 5% yield on a tax-exempt muni is better than a 5.5% yield on a corporate bond for most taxpayers.
But I see that this is not the case now. There are a lot of A-rated munis with higher yields than A-rated corporate bonds. I think some of this is an expression of perceived risk from the munis, especially the high yielding munis from California, Illinois, and New York.
If you have not looked at bonds in a year or two:
UPDATE: Here is an Idaho bond, not spectacularly rated:
Why lower yield? Because you are not going to pay federal income tax on the dividends, and if you are a resident of the state from which the bond comes, no state income tax. A 5% yield on a tax-exempt muni is better than a 5.5% yield on a corporate bond for most taxpayers.
But I see that this is not the case now. There are a lot of A-rated munis with higher yields than A-rated corporate bonds. I think some of this is an expression of perceived risk from the munis, especially the high yielding munis from California, Illinois, and New York.
If you have not looked at bonds in a year or two:
| TENNESSEE VALLE BONDS 880591DZ2 | 5.375 | 04/01/2056 | 25 | 105.44000 | 2 | 71 | 5.062 | -- | No | $615.89 |
Yes, a 5.062% yield on a federal government agency bond.
It might still make sense (when the yields improve a bit more) to start buying. Yes, there is substantial inflation risk, especially if the economy recovers. But I think there is also substantial possibility that the economy will continue limping along, barely recovering, if at all.
It might still make sense (when the yields improve a bit more) to start buying. Yes, there is substantial inflation risk, especially if the economy recovers. But I think there is also substantial possibility that the economy will continue limping along, barely recovering, if at all.
UPDATE: Here is an Idaho bond, not spectacularly rated:
| Action | State | Ratings | Description | Coupon | Maturity | Qty | Price | Min | Max | YTM | YTW 2 | Taxable | Callable | Accrued Interest | Estimated Total Cost | |
| S&P | Moody's | |||||||||||||||
| Buy | ID | A | A2 | IDAHO HEALTH FACS REV 451295VM8 03/01/2022 @ 100.00000Continuously-Callable | 4.500 | 03/01/2047 | 10 | 88.34800 | 10 | 10 | 5.242 | 5.242 | No | Yes | $21.25 | $8,856.05 |
But note the yield to maturity is 5.242%, and it is exempt from both federal and Idaho income taxes. It is continuously callable, meaning that the issuer could at any time after 3/1/22 withdraw them, but only by paying off the face value of the bond.
Kamis, 12 September 2013
The Subtext of All Tattoos
Oversimplified, but I suspect that there is some truth to it for many young people:
Rabu, 11 September 2013
What I Wrote On A Student's Paper...
Today’s economy and state of the country is slightly more discouraging than when I dropped out of college in 1975, but it is in many respects, quite similar. Somehow, we survived the 1970s, disco, and the threat of thermonuclear war, a far more frightening prospect than what confronts us as a nation today.
Special Forces (2011): If You Liked Act of Valor, You Will Like This
I pulled this off Netflix, and I was a bit surprised. No, not U.S. Special Forces, but a French commando unit sent into the tribal areas of Pakistan to free a French journalist (and relative of a French politician) from the Taliban. This film has nearly all the strengths of Act of Valor: an exciting action film; a work of fiction, but fiction not too terribly far removed from real events; brave but human heroes; and bad guys who would have been close to unbelievably evil -- until the Taliban came along, who behave in ways that are practically cardboard cutout monsters. And yet even the chief warlord here has his moments when brief glints of humanity intrude, before the monstrousness returns.
Like Act of Valor, the film is exciting not just for the action sequences, but the exotic locales. It was actually filmed partly in Pakistan and partly in Tajikistan, which is close enough to Afghanistan to do a convincing body double. Unlike Act of Valor, these are all obviously professional actors, doing a more credible job of acting than our special ops guys did of acting in Act of Valor. (And as I said when reviewing Act of Valor -- who cares? I'm sure our special ops guys, or French special ops guys, do a better job of acting than vice versa.)
The reviews of Special Forces are overwhelmingly negative -- and I am pretty sure that politics has a lot to do with it. Unfortunately, it is subtitled, and as one of the few even half-fair reviews pointed out:
Like Act of Valor, the film is exciting not just for the action sequences, but the exotic locales. It was actually filmed partly in Pakistan and partly in Tajikistan, which is close enough to Afghanistan to do a convincing body double. Unlike Act of Valor, these are all obviously professional actors, doing a more credible job of acting than our special ops guys did of acting in Act of Valor. (And as I said when reviewing Act of Valor -- who cares? I'm sure our special ops guys, or French special ops guys, do a better job of acting than vice versa.)
The reviews of Special Forces are overwhelmingly negative -- and I am pretty sure that politics has a lot to do with it. Unfortunately, it is subtitled, and as one of the few even half-fair reviews pointed out:
But the film's U.S. commercial prospects are dim, given the widespread American aversion to subtitles, and its formulaic charms are unlikely to impress the art-house crowd.The film is rated R for its violence, and the rating seems appropriate. To its credit, a scene where someone is executed in al-Qaeda fashion is off-screen, and merely suggested.
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