Touchable Holography

Very cool video about interactive holographic displays. In the video below, it is shown how a person can "feel" virtual rain-drops on the hand while viewing falling rain drops in a 3D environment.

Holodeck, here we come!

NY Times Idea Lists

In 2005 I ran across the following page from the NY Times Magazine. It's called the "Year in Ideas", and from the prose describing the article-collection, the magazine ha an equivalent list for every year going back to 2001. The summary from the 2008 article sums things up pretty nicely:

Welcome back to the Year in Ideas issue. For the eighth year in a row, we have compiled an alphabetical digest of ideas, from A to Z (almost), that helped make the previous 12 months, for better or worse, what they were.

The lists are fascinating, and interesting, so here they are (at least back to 2003):

1. 2003 Year in Ideas
2. 2004 Year in Ideas
3. 2005 Year in Ideas
4. 2006 Year in Ideas
5. 2007 Year in Ideas
6. 2008 Year in Ideas

I wonder what 2009's list will contain...

Curing our National Spending Addiction

In last week's Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore (lead economics writer for the WSJ) wrote a very timely, and interesting, piece about how we as a society can overcome our runaway spending Congress (here).

While well written, I think the follow-up "Letters to the Editor" (here) hit the proverbial "nail on the head", offering some slight but profound tweaks to Moore's ideas.

From the WSJ:

Regarding Stephen Moore's "It's Time to Legislate a Spending Cap" (op-ed, Aug. 7): Limiting spending growth to the rate of population increase plus inflation can work for individual states, but not at the federal level. It locks in the structural deficits which currently plague us. Spending would increase regardless of the condition of the overall economy. Exempting entitlements and interest on the national debt means that welfare programs and borrowing could (and likely would) continue to increase without limit. This proposal ensures that the "cap," even if observed by Congress, would apply only to a fraction (less than half and falling) of all federal spending. Its primary impact would be on defense spending.

A far better approach would be a constitutional amendment limiting total federal spending (including entitlements and interest) to some defined percentage of the prior year's gross domestic product. This would force Congress to prioritize spending, without the easy escape hatch of claiming powerlessness over entitlements (which, of course, is a complete fiction). Moreover, it would provide Congress with a strong incentive to adopt tax and regulatory policies calculated to foster real economic growth, since only by those means could spending increase. The interests of the political class and the citizens would finally be aligned.

Laird Minor
Simpsonville, S.C.

An additional reader elaborates on some of the legalities surrounding the issues raised:

Mr. Moore's piece has a fatal flaw, the same one made by Steve Forbes in his "Flat Tax Revolution." No sitting Congress can bind the actions of any succeeding Congress.

Only an amendment to the Constitution can permanently limit what government can spend. The only way to control government is to take away the money and shut down the printing presses.

Robert Morgan Emerson
Anacortes, Wash.

So, when's the convention?

Upon further inpsection, our priorities may be a bit misplaced...

As the people of Iran struggle to gain basic human freedoms, we in the western world appear to have lost interest:

Television coverage of Iran's turmoil has fallen since Jackson's death Thursday; on the Twitter micro-blogging site, Iran remained among the most discussed topics, but fell below Jackson and comments about the movie 'Transformers 2.'

What does this say about our priorities as a society? Have we become so used to freedom and democracy that we just don't care when it is denied to other people?

See here for the full article:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090627/D9930GJ80.html

U.S. Personal Savings Rate Hits 5%

Caught this tidbit about the U.S. personal savings rate, which is the average American household's amount of personal savings as a percentage of its disposable personal income.

According to the article:

Savings jumped to an annual rate of $545.5 billion, the highest level since monthly records began in 1959. The saving rate surged to 5 percent in January, the biggest advance since March 1995, as households uncertain about the economy prefer to conserve their cash.

This is bad news for the short-term (since it tends to worsen the effects of the current economic downturn), but for the longer-term this is great news. It means that average Americans have more wealth (and by proxy, less overall debt).

See the full Yahoo! Finance Article here.

SC gov says he'll take Stimulus money, despite misgivings...

If the governor of SC had real courage, he would have stood on his principles and followed through with his threat to not take federal stimulus money. Instead, he's being bought off.

Czech president compares EU to Soviet Union

Wow! Dissent isn't easy, and sometimes it takes somebody who's been there before to know what's going on. Here's the Link: Czech president compares EU to Soviet Union