July 2008 – Page 5 – Gavinsblog.com

Websites To Save You Cash During The Irish Recession

DoubleViking makes a list of 11 websites that will save you cash.

Can we create a similar list for Ireland? My first suggestion would be:

Pumps.ie – A collaborative website that allows users to input the price of petrol and diesel at any petrol station throughout Ireland, thus giving you the cheapest places to fill up your car.

ESB calculator – Helps you see how much particular units are costing you and how to change your electricity habits.

Make sense of cards – Get your debt sorted out, calculate how much can save by playing the rate tart game.

Please give more in the comments and I’ll add them in.

Giant telescopes could be built from Moon dust

A novel idea:

Dust – often thought of as an impediment to lunar exploration – could be put to good use to build giant telescopes on the Moon – perhaps some large enough to fill entire craters, says a team of US researchers.

The team, led by Peter Chen of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US, has devised a simple method to create a concrete-like substance using a mixture of carbon nanotubes, epoxy and a crushed rock material that NASA uses as a stand-in for Moon dust.

Using the mixture, they built a 30-centimetre disc. Then they added more liquid epoxy to its surface and spun it, coating it with aluminium in a vacuum. They believe the process could be scaled up to produce 20- to 50-metre-wide telescopes on the Moon.

Hitchens is waterboarded

Believe me, it’s torture, says Hitchens.

Which returns us to my starting point, about the distinction between training for something and training to resist it. One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.

You may find this video distressing.

Subs go a wanderin'

Roy Greenslade talks about more subs losing their jobs. CITYAM are sacking their entire subbing team. I linked to the Orange County story earlier this week.

Jeff Jarvis talks about it here.

So I’d suggest that publications should put all their articles online before publication in wiki form and enable the public to edit and annotate them (you may choose which edits to take). Why would the public do that? Why do they make Wikipedia? They’re generous if you give them a chance.

I’m not quite sure how that would work. As Jonathan Este comments:

You might say that reporters can do all of that, but I have been around newsrooms for many years in both capacities and let me tell you right now, most of them can’t.

Not that reporters could not be trained to do so. But getting the public to edit material prior to publication sounds almost impossible. Who decides when it’s finished? Who decides when it’s good enough? Who decides what to leave out? If the publication was online only then fair enough, but print publications also have deadlines, and someone needs to make a call.

Roy gives his views on the subject in an article in the Evening Standard. He notes:

Lawson Muncaster, City AM’s managing director, says: “Having looked at how things work on the Continent, and drawing on my experience at Metro International, I believe the sub-editing function is obsolete. I believe writers can take responsibility for filing copy that is readable and correct with a headline. That’s why we’re going through the process [of letting subs go].”

On the other hand, his paper has hired more page designers, and they are sure to play a crucial role in easing the sub-editorial tasks for writers.

All written work, whether it be a novel, a poem or a news story, often benefits from a second, even third, eye. But the removal of subs doesn’t mean that copy will be published unread. Executive editors will still act as quality controllers.

I doubt that this radical step will happen overnight. Indeed, I think there will be a lengthy transition phase which is likely to involve some form of outsourcing.

I think that’s fair enough. Most of the subs I know, including myself, are also trained in page design. The skills are interchangeable. But as Greenslade says, written work benefits from a second (or third) eye. Greenslade also mentions the Independent’s outsourcing drive. But as far as I can gather, that outsourcing has not been as successful as hoped.

Disclosure: I am a sub-editor and page designer.

Betancourt rescued

The Colombian authorities say they have rescued Ingrid Betancourt and three American hostages held by Farc rebels.

Good news, for a change.

TV viewers average age hits 50

Good news for digital natives, bad news for newspapers and TV stations.

According to a study released by Magna Global’s Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets’ average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That’s the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago — and the first time the nets’ median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo.

Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS — the oldest-skewing network — has remained fairly steady.

“The median ages of the broadcast networks keep rising, as traditional television is no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set,” Sternberg wrote.

Where are all those young people gone? They are online. Where are the advertisers going? Online. Where are people watching TV? Online.

Where are print newspapers going? To oblivion, eventually.

Mugabe's millions

The ‘crackdown’ on Mugabe continues, laughably. Now he might not be able to print his zillions of dollars:

The Munich-based company that has supplied Zimbabwe with the special blank sheets to print its increasingly worthless dollar caved in to pressure on Tuesday from the German government for it to stop doing business with the African ruler.

Giesecke & Devrient — a secretive, family-owned Bavarian company that once made its money churning out worthless cash for the doomed Weimar Republic in the 1920s — has been airlifting tons of blank notes to the Zimbabwean capital Harare. The company, which has been doing business with the African nation since before Mr. Mugabe took power in 1980, is one of the few sources in the world for the specialized paper that is so important in an age when computers and laser printers have made forgery easy.

Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, phoned Karsten Ottenberg, Giesecke & Devrient’s chief executive, Tuesday to complain about the deliveries, according to a German diplomat. On Friday, Germany’s development minister denounced the company’s dealings with Zimbabwe as “terrible” and sent a fax demanding that they stop.

A Nation in Debt

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has a nice roundup of the US debt mess in the current issue of the American Interest. She has some startling statistics too:

Between 1989 and 2001, credit card debt almost tripled, from $238 billion to $692 billion. By fall of 2007, the amount of revolving consumer credit had reached $937.5 billion, a 7 percent increase over the previous year.

Another interesting statistic is the proportion of lower income people who play state lotteries. Households earning less than $12,400 a year spend $645 a year on the lottery. By comparison, households earning $62k-$124k a year spend $373 a year – proportionately far less.

Interestingly she suggests four pro-thrift ideas. Thrift is, I think, a word almost unknown to Irish people. The concept of thrift has also been lost in the Celtic Tiger malaise. It is worth quoting these four ideas:

Re-establish a public education campaign. During World War II, Americans saved at extraordinarily high rates—about 25 percent on average. This impressive display of thrift and sacrifice was driven primarily by the war, but it also had a more proximate source: The U.S. government, collaborating with civil society leaders, actively stressed the importance of saving for the war effort while also providing a specific new savings tool in the form of war bonds. Perhaps the time is right to re-establish a pro-thrift public education campaign. Similar campaigns to reduce drunk driving and smoking and to encourage seat belt use appear to have had a demonstrable impact on people’s behavior in recent years. Why not thrift?

Challenge “consumer spending” as a main solution to economic problems. Whether it is a national security crisis like 9/11 or worrisome economic news, our leaders in recent years seem increasingly determined to insist on the catchall economic salve of prodigious consumer spending. Hence, for example, the 2008 tax rebate legislation. But this is, at best, partial and misleading advice in a society marked by dangerously high levels of debt and dangerously low levels of saving. Perhaps it is time to balance the message of more spending with a message of more saving and wealth building.

Create a thrift savings plan available to all Americans. Since 1986, the U.S. government’s Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) has permitted Federal employees to build wealth and save for retirement by systematically placing a portion of their earnings into diversified stock-and-bond index funds. These funds are managed by an independent board, with oversight from the public and private sectors. The expense ratios on TSP funds are low (0.06 percent), making them cheaper than similar commercially run funds. Currently, the TSP boasts 3.7 million participants, manages assets of approximately $225 billion, and is widely viewed across the political spectrum as a major success. Federal policymakers and others should consider offering this same wealth-building opportunity to all working Americans.

Build new thrift institutions. New, community-based thrift institutions can stand as attractive alternatives to payday lenders and other anti-thrift institutions. If we are serious about confronting the debt culture, building these new institutions is our most urgent task. They must possess three core traits: Functionally, they must provide opportunities and incentives to save and offer credit at affordable costs for prudent purposes; structurally, they must be broadly democratic and organized as not-for-profit cooperative or mutual organizations; geographically, they must be accessible to low-income Americans.

Re-purpose the lottery. State lotteries are the most egregiously anti-thrift state-run institutions in America. Because lotteries typically enjoy broad support by politicians and the public, it would be hard, if not impossible, to outlaw these operations at present. But it is possible to re-purpose the lottery, at least in part, as a thrift-promoting institution. In every state lottery outlet in the United States, a customer should be able to purchase “savings” tickets as well as lottery tickets. In this way, a comprehensive public apparatus devoted to encouraging everyone to become a bettor would simultaneously become an apparatus devoted to encouraging everyone to become a saver. It ought to be an easy sell: “Every ticket wins!” because, in fact, every single savings ticket would improve the financial well-being of the purchaser.

Incidentally, are there any statistics about our National Lottery? Besides the fact that most of the charity money goes to the constituency of the then Minister for Sport?

Operation Iranian Freedom

Back to Iran again. Geoffrey Kemp writing in the National Interest is hoping that for the sake of America’s interest, Israel is not planning to strike Iran.

Could or would Israel try to drag the United States into such a confrontation? The answer is no, unless this is what the Bush administration wants to happen. The indications are that while some White House advisors may still contemplate such an action, it would be far more difficult to convince the secretaries of defense and state that another Middle Eastern war would serve American interests.

As was brought up yesterday, if Israel were considering a strike, they could wait until the near end of the Bush lame duck administration, and the beginning of an Obama/McCain one, thus avoiding the issue Kemp raises above.

Deterring terrorists

Shmuel Bar, who is director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, writes in the latest edition of Policy Review. The subject of his essay is what Israel has learned about deterring terrorists. It’s a good read, and he even manages to quote one Gerry Adams.

While it is true that the individual suicide bomber cannot be deterred, the main conclusion of this article is that deterrence towards terrorist organizations is possible. Israel has achieved temporary and fragile deterrence vis- à-vis Hezbollah and the Palestinians over the years. There is no doubt that some periods of relative quiet have derived from a desire not to provoke an Israeli reaction to a terrorist attack that would neutralize any benefit from such an attack. This occasional tactical deterrence has been achieved not by the threat of force or by an image of Israel ’s capability (after all, the terrorist organization is, by definition, struggling against a much stronger adversary), but by actual application of force and by inducing the fear that the force would be reapplied and even increased.

Deterrence of this type is difficult to distinguish from disruption or from operational considerations that dictate when and where to perform acts of terrorism — as opposed to deterrence that deals with whether or not to do it. Deterrence in such cases does not take effect immediately after force has been applied, but after a period of situation estimate, and after some time its effects begin to wear off. One may say that effective deterrence has an element of dramaturgy; a gun that fires in the first act is no longer relevant for dramatic purposes in the last act. The “audience” gets used to the shots and the deterrence is eroded. Hence, it is necessary from time to time to refresh the awareness of the terrorist leadership that the state will indeed employ force. To paraphrase a well-known expression of classic deterrence, the state that attempts to deter terrorism must “ speak loudly and periodically use a big stick.