Under the president’s plan, spending will top $4 trillion this year alone, and consume 28.5% of our nation’s economy. His plan would mean a $1 trillion increase to the already unsustainable spending growth of our nation’s entitlement programs — including a “down payment” toward government-controlled health care and education; a $1.5 trillion tax increase to further shackle the small businesses and investors we rely on to create jobs; a massive increase in energy costs for families via cap and trade. Moreover, the Obama plan would result in an exploding deficit, a doubling of the nation’s debt in five years, and an increase of that debt to more than 82% of our nation’s GDP by the last year of the budget. This approach will ultimately debase our currency and reduce the living standards of the American people.

Instead of doubling the debt in five years, and tripling it in 10, the Republican budget curbs the explosion in spending called for by the president and his party. Our plan halts the borrow-and-spend philosophy that brought about today’s economic problems, and puts a stop to heaping ever-growing debt on future generations — and it does so by controlling spending, not by raising taxes. The greatest difference lies in the size of government our budgets achieve over time (see nearby chart).

Continue to read on The Wall Street Journal Opinion Article

This article is written by Mr. Paul Ryan, from Wisconsin, who is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. It talks about the Republican’s alternative plan to Obama’s “European-style big government” that “works to accomplish four main goals: 1) fulfill the mission of health and retirement security; 2) control our nation’s debts; 3) put the economy on a path of growth and leadership in the global economy; and 4) preserve the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.”

I decided to try the whole Twitter thing. Here’s my page. Scott’s Twitter. I can’t promise much updates yet (until I get my iPhone). It’s been fun to follow Lance Armstrong on his biking come back. But, the best one that I’ve found is Christopher Walken’s page. He is hillarious! Some examples:

I spent $40.00 on a bag of food for a dog that eats extension cords. That’s still probably cheaper than a bag of extension cords I suppose.

I buy a bottle of Green Tea with ginseng nearly every day but I don’t remember why. I don’t like tea and can barely taste the ginseng.

I posed for dozens of photos in California last week. I closed my eyes or made a face in nearly every one. Sorry. I amuse myself this way.

A curious man asked if I was waiting for something as I stood on the curb. I said, “No. I’m ice fishing.” Oddly enough he accepted that.

I lost my trusty old Minolta G400 that I had for quite some time. Over the years it sure took some great photos from all over the world. I’m still hoping to find it somewhere… Recently, I’ve been using my Canon Digital Rebel XT (lenses: Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 EF IS USM, Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II, Canon 18-55 f3.5-5.6 EF-S USM). However, it would be nice to get a compact camera. I started looking at point & shoots again last night when I saw that Amazon was selling the Canon PowerShot SD770IS 10MP Digital Camera for about $160. I’ve been very happy with the quality and performance of my Rebel XT so knew that I could trust the quality of the SD 770IS. It is the most popular P&S on Amazon and has gotten terrific reviews. I think it has okay manual controls (or as close to manual as you can get with a P&S, meaning independent adjustment of shutter speed, film speed, and aperture). However, after reading the more technical discussions on the dpreview forums, it became apparent that the camera is good but not that wide. I’m also a little weary of companies continually bumping up the megapixels without changing the technology behind the underlying sensor. Packing more megapixels into the same sensor just means that there will be more noise. Fortunately, the SD 770IS does come with a newer, faster processor than my Digital Rebel so it is able to fix problems with noise quite well. I was almost thinking about going ahead and buying the SD 770IS since Amazon is offering it at that price until it is sold out. That camera, I think, has a very stylish body, is compact, and has traditional Canon quality. However, I value picture quality and improvements in underlying sensor technology rather than just strict megapixel improvements. For example, a 6MP DSLR will take better photos than a 12MP standard point & shoot because the sensor is much larger. See here and here.

FujiFilm gets this: “There is strong demand in the digital camera market to increase the number of pixels on a sensor, which, all too often, is used as a convenient yardstick for image quality [...] As the photodiode gets smaller, the problems of increased noise, blooming and clipping increase.”

Fujifilm has unveiled the FinePix F200EXR digital compact, incorporating its new 1/1.6” Super CCD EXR sensor. The camera is the first to use the company’s EXR technology that can use the sensor in three different ways to optimize resolution, dynamic range or low-light performance. The F200EXR has a 3.0″ LCD, 5x optical zoom, dual image stabilization and HD (stills) output. An EXR Auto mode lets the camera select which of the three sensor modes is used or the user can make that decision themselves.

Here’s FujiFilm’s introduction of the FinePix F200EXR. Here’s a description of how the Super CCD EXR sensor works. Youtube has a video of it. It is has a pretty nice looking body too and is still compact. However, it is pricey; Amazon has it for pre-order at $399. However, good quality + solid construction means that it will last me a long time. I’m hoping the price drops so that I can get it as a birthday present in July.

The Found on Smugmug blog had a great entry called “See Spray” that showed beautiful pictures of sailboats in the San Francisco Bay.

Shadow Government has a very good interview with the Kori Schake, the author of this new book. Here is what she says about this book in her own words:

It’s a book about American power: why it’s so predominant in the international order, whether it’s likely to remain so, and how current practices can be revised to reduce the cost to the United States of managing the system. Despite clarion calls about the end of the unipolar moment and the demise of American moral, financial, military, and diplomatic power, the United States remains the defining state in the international system and is likely to be so for at least several more decades. If there were a market for state power, now would be a great time to buy futures in American power.

Here’s the first question of the interview:

SG: How does the United States end up so successful in this round of globalization?

Schake: The resilience with which Americans have found new professions as manufacturing migrated to cheaper labor markets contrasts favorably with revanchist efforts by other wealthy states to artificially preserve the eroding economic order rather than encourage and shape change. It helps that the U.S. economy is an engine of job creation, but that is a result of explicit choices about labor market flexibility. The signature advantage of the U.S. economy is the risk tolerance of its work force: the economy sheds and create jobs, and people mostly accept that the nature of economic activity is uncertain.

The adaptability of American workers mirrors the general malleability of the country. In a globalizing order in which many societies are attempting to shield their traditions from external influence, American culture voraciously seeks out and incorporates new elements that further broaden its appeal. Americans are so accepting of change and risk that we have come to exemplify what others fear: globalization is often equated with Americanization.

Click here to read the rest of the interview…

Here’s a very insightful quote that poses fighting terrorism as a luxury that most other countries don’t have: “Compared with the ravages of HIV/AIDS on the labor force, managing food scarcity caused by environmental change, or establishing basic governance and education, America’s preoccupation with terrorism appears a luxury. It is therefore in our interest to devote more attention to solving the problems we are not afflicted with but that are essential to securing the assistance of states whose help we need.” Make sure to read the whole thing!

The smartphone industry as a whole has a lot to thank for Apple. Without the innovative iPhone, smartphones would still be years behind where they are now. In the next few months, smartphones are finally being released that are comparable to the user interface on original and 3g iPhone. What’s amazing is that these phones are being compared to a UI and hardware that is largely unchanged for almost two years. Despite this, the iPhone, as it is now, still compares very well to this new breed of inspired smartphones. But, competition is a great thing and just as these phones come out, Apple will be releasing its next generation iPhone, resetting the bar higher for smartphones another two years down the line. My two-year contract expires this September and by that time (hopefully in June), the next gen iPhone will be released. I can’t wait!

More: Copying the iPhone is no way to beat it

Mark Bowden at the Atlantic has a great article on Col. Cesar Rodriguez. Mr. Bowden explains why we need more funding to replace our aging F-15’s and F-16’s; we must either pay that cost ahead of time in dollars, or during military operations with blood. The Weekly Standard calls it “nearly pornographic in its level of fighter jet detail.” The F-15’s kill ratio over more than 30 years is 107 to zero. “The F-22 Raptor was initially 144-0 against F-15s and F/A-18s in Red Flag exercises and it took until July 2007 for a fourth generation fighter (an F-16) to finally register a mock kill against an F-22.”

They call it “stimulus” legislation, but the economic measures racing through Congress would devote tens of billions of dollars to causes that have little to do with jolting the country out of recession.
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Yes, there are many billions of dollars in “ready-to-go” job-creating projects in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill. But there are also plenty of items that are just unfinished business for Congress’ old bulls.

Analysis: Stimulus bill that’s not all stimulating

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill’s $355 billion in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just $110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing given that Congress’s justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help the economy right now, if not sooner.
Read the rest of this entry »

Zimbabwe’s central bank says it will soon introduce a 100 trillion dollar note as the once prosperous country battles to keep pace with hyperinflation that has caused many to abandon the country’s currency.

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The new 100 trillion dollar bill would be worth about $300 in U.S. currency. A loaf of bread in Zimbabwe now costs about 300 billion Zimbabwean dollars — and like most commodities, the price increases every day.

Earlier this month, Zimbabwe introduced a 50 billion dollar bill as the country battles to fight cash shortages stemming from the world’s highest inflation rate. The official rate was 231 million percent as of July.

Source: CNN: Zimbabwe to print first $100 trillion note

Inflation and lack of confidence in the Zimbabwe dollar has caused many vendors to prefer the U.S. dollar, South African rand, or Botswanan pula. Doctors and nurses are even requesting their salaries paid in U.S. dollars.

 IBM scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging MRI with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI.  

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For more than a decade, IBM scientists have been making pioneering advances in
MRFM. Now, the IBM-led team has dramatically boosted the sensitivity of MRFM and combined it with an advanced 3D image reconstruction technique. This allowed them to demonstrate, for the first time, MRI on nanometer-scale biological objects. The technique was applied to a sample of tobacco mosaic virus and achieved resolution down to four nanometers. (One nanometer is one billionth of a meter; a tobacco mosaic virus is 18 nanometers across.)

via IBM Press room – 2009-01-13 IBM Research Creates Microscope With 100 Million Times Finer Resolution Than Current MRI – United States.