Dakota Today

**Vertical turbine windgenerator, Mt. Rushmore, and the SciGuy Blog

Sometimes the search engines that stumble onto Dakota Today find other stuff that is very interesting. Somebody was searching for Mt. Rushmore and a list of the names of the men who worked on it. That search engine also found a post on the idea of "Mt. Rushmore of Science"
LINK--Mt. Rushmore of Science

Interesting, but of course somebody had to think Reagan should be added to deface a mountain. My own prejudice would suggest "honoring" Reagan by naming a toxic waste dump after him and saving a couple toxic dumps for "honoring" the junior George Bush.

Looking around at The SciGuy Blog by Eric Berger among a number of other interesting posts, I found the following on a "Maglev" vertical wind turbine. Also along with the original posts there are many interesting links on wind energy in the comments following the post. Take some time looking around at them. The link to the "power company" may point more to a scam than actual science, but I really don't know. I do know that "maglev" is more than a magician's trick.

LINK-- Science Blog On "Maglev" vertical windgenerator

You might also want to bookmark the link while you are visiting and also want to remember Dr. George Olah's ideas on "Beyond Gas and Oil: The Methanol Economy" concerning the distinctions relating to portable fuels and not so portable..like hydrogen.

***Stay tuned even if "static" from a vertical wind generator turbine is unlikely to interfere with local pixels for some time--- Doug Wiken

**Software I use advertisement here at Dakota Today

I have a few ads on Dakota Today. There are the Google ads which I never click on myself directly here because Google thinks that runs up the hit count unfairly, and then there are a few for software. Firefox is free and I put a free link here for the free software. Firefox and Thunderbird seem to get better all the time and allow customization through some really handy add-ons which usually work.

A night or so ago, I clicked on an ad here for THE JOURNAL and the ad link did not work. So I got around to getting the links corrected and moved it to a more prominent place. Over the years, the ad got slid down, down and down. Even so, there had been about 1200 hits on the ad, but no purchases unfortunately

DISCLAIMER--THE INFO BELOW IS INFLUENCED BY AD CONTENT AND MY USE OF SOFTWARE.

But, such failure to purchase is readers loss as well as mine. Click on the ad now moved to the left column and try the 45-day-free download, or buy it now. I don't believe you will be disappointed. The program is really handy if you are a data packrat or if you just want to keep a daily diary. Set up "looseleaft" style folders to keep track of cars, warranty info, family birthdays, whatever or categories for stuff other than a "diary", but collected on a daily basis...or use it to write a book. Well, enough of this.

**Stay tuned, but check out the software delights and now back to the regularly unscheduled news and views-- Doug Wiken

**End SD gambling with cash. State-issued Gambling debit cards

In the past week or two of July, 2007, several SD blogs have been filled with speculation about another blog and another blogger and embezzlement from political consulting firm Hildebrand Tewes. Today, the Sunday, July 29, 2007 Rapid City Journal has a front page story titled "Blogger's theft tied to video lottery".

Read that story or almost any SD blog or online newspaper today for more details.

When you get done with catching up with all the gossip and sanctimonious prattle about Clean Cut Blog, Chad Schuldt, The missing $100,000, and Steve Hildebrand, you might consider what can be done by the State of South Dakota to reduce the social and personal damage and family tragedy that can result from gambling and gambling addiction.

This is not the first such case to hit the newspapers and when SD ran one of the biggest unintended social science experiments, the problems with legal gambling were writ large in the increase in sales tax revenue coming from grocery stores, clothing stores, etc and also from the crime statistics which showed a reduction of crime in a number of areas when a constitutional challenge shut down video lottery for a time.

So, let us end gambling with cash or personal checks in South Dakota. Allow gambling only with state-issued debit cards that can be "recharged" only at county treasurer's offices. The state can peal off its gambling blood money right off the top and forget about taxing the actual casinos until it gets around to taxing the income of corporations and partnerships. This solves a number of problems.

**Stay tuned, but you must remember that South Dakota legislators specialize in "solutions" that only seem to solve problems which involve any big "oxen" getting gored by legislation which actually works.--- Doug Wiken

**Who owns ya, baby?

The largest local discount merchandiser here is Pamida. It has an interesting history with roots back to Gibson stores in Iowa and then with the guys in Omaha where the PAMIDA acronym comes from their names, then to an employee group then to Shopko, then Shopko-Pamida gone to a Sun Partnership and then Pamida and Shopko again split into separate entities..apparently. Pamida store list in region: LINK--Pamida stores in 57580 area

So, want to know who owns the Pamida stores now? My guess is it is one of those partnerships that through the benefit of convenient tax loopholes pays next to nothing in federal taxes. Of course, I may be wrong on this and the news I read about Congress thinking that partnerships are just too big a tax loophole may apply to something else.

Whatever, below is a link to the list of companies owned by a Florida-based group of investment partners.

LINK--Sun Capital Partnerships List This link may not actually take you to the list. The "Partners" may be a menu option on the opening page instead.

And, what the latest "separation" occuring apparently sometime in 2007 means at the local store is some clearance discounts and another movement of products from one side of the store to another apparently with the intent customers like myself will be so disoriented we will wander around the store and buy a half dozen things we would never see otherwise. My own experience suggests we will look where it was before and then go someplace else to buy what we can't find, but then in small towns, we are running out of "someplace elses".

A day or two ago, a friend said, "Monopoly and anti-trust enforcement is non-existent now". Not sure if he is right, but looking around does seem to suggest a too large element of reality in the comment.

**Stay tuned even if you feel like a hopeless pawn in the market place---Doug Wiken

**Beware of Software Scam Sites

Irfanview is really a good freeware software product. Irfan Skiljan has made a good product for viewing, editing and also with some capability of making images. The header image on this site was put together with Irfanview. So, some software scammers probably in the Phillipines are taking advantage of Irfanview and other freeware to scam unsuspecting people.

I happened to notice this a night or two ago when I did a google search for Irfanview to find the correct link for downloads. I emailed Irfan and he sent a link to the site below which discusses this. A paragraph from the blog follows:

Software scammers prey on the novice with free software

There is a company running a scam where they use the Sponsored Ads in the search engines to get unsuspecting people to purchase a membership to download software such as Adaware, Irfanview, Real Player, Macafee and other software. If you check out the website Irfanviewpack.com you will find out they are selling you a subscription for $11.98 to be able to download what is a free application from the developers website.

Source Link of above, check for more information on other "pack" scams: Unhandled Perception-- Software Developer Blog

So, help the honest software writers, but be careful of where you download the products and try to find the actual developers pages. If you are using Firefox get the addon McAfee SiteAdvisor. It puts a warning or question mark on many of the scam pages if you search Google.

The actual developer homesite for Irfanview is LINK-- Irfanview Information and Downloads

As a column in the old South Dakota Farmer magazine used as a motto: "Forewarned is forearmed".

**Stay tuned and sharp-- Doug Wiken

** The real US sports scandal and outrage

Oh, the horror of it all. The scandal of it all. The mountain of press coverage. Yup, it is a sports scandal. You might think it involves an official betting on the games he officiated. You might think it is a jock who liked to torture dogs, but nope.

The real sports scandal is that so many apparently normal people give a tinker's damn about corporations that happen to also be sports teams. That whole cable channels are devoted to sports is a national source of added desert to the "vast wasteland" that is TV. Sports "stars" are just another class of spoiled rotten celebrities...male and female "Paris Hiltons" in shorts or football padding.

And another scandal here in South Dakota. SDSU and SUSD hellbent on being in a more expensive sports league, but now finding that all the glorious predictions of income were off and by golly, they are just going to further rip off all their students with higher athletic fees whether or not they care if athletics disappears from campuses or not.. and also slash some other actual education programs to keep the adored jocks in the style to which some peculiarly warped college officials think they should be accustomed.

When is the general population going to wake up and realize we really don't need even one intercollegiate league let alone dozens of them with multiple levels of waste? When will more of us realize that an employee of a sports corporation is no more important than a local garbage man, farmer, telephone lineman, ditch digger, or doctor, teacher, or lawyer?

The vast time, money, resource and energy waste that is competietive athletics business is the national scandal, the regional scandal, and the local scandal.

**Stay tuned even if you can run a mile in less than 4 minutes..well that really is an accomplishment..I'll have to find a better example..but not tonight-- Doug Wiken

.

**Remember those "obstructionist Democrat" charges? Meet the real obstructionists.

If you are a South Dakotan, you likely remember the charges that Sen. Tom Daschle was an "obstructionist". The media parroted these charges again and again and again. Now the McClatchey group has charted "obstructionism". Digby's Hulaballo Blog has the chart and some comments. Sure seems like this should be frontpage news here in South Dakota.

LINK--Digby Hullaballo Blog on Obstructionism

Interesting for sure. From my perspective, Sen. Daschle did not obstruct enough, and even when he did "obstruct" it was more like he was steering the US back on the right track as Bush, Inc. sent the ship of state into the rocks.

Daschle failed to obstruct the Bush war in Iraq. That was a very costly failure of obstruction. But, if we are going to use "obstruct" as a pejorative term, then surely it should be applied to the current crop of theocratic, kleptocratic, Constitutional revisionist Republicans in congrees and in the Bush administration.

**Stay tuned even if it is too damn hot and that isn't music to your ears--- Doug Wiken

**Sony selling E-Ink book reader

The portable readable book that doesn't eat batteries or require a mile-long extension cord is more or less here.

Sony apparently has the reader ready to sell and claims 10,000 books in an e-library.

LINK--Sony ads for electronic book

And below is the link to the books which Sony pretty well hides on its "connect" site which is really set up to push music rather than text.

LINK--Sony E-Books library of sorts

I checked one e-book. Al Gore's "Assault on Reason". It was around $20 as a Sony e-book and about $16 in a regular hardcover version from Amazon.

The Sony Reader may be what seems to be what the e-book world has been waiting for, but if the e-books cost more than regular hardcovers and the format is a proprietary one, it is doomed technology already.

E-Books will be a hit when they cost a fraction of the cost of dead-tree versions. A pixel may be a terrible thing to waste, but it is also incredibly cheap to produce. Blogs are the current example of cheap production writ very large.

Guess I am going to have to again look at the TomeRaider system even if the writers of that system are loath to respond to questions and have failed to produce a simple free or cheap reader for Desktops, I am willing to pay the $30 or so for their PC program which allows reading and writing TomeRaider books, but I doubt a whole lot of people want to pay for a program to read my or anybody elses's books on their PCs even if the free Acrobat Reader works only with the bloated PDF format. And now there is an E-Pub format that will also require Adobe's expensive software.

But, take a look at The TomeRaider site anyway. Putting pages in their "books" is as simple as adding a " <New> " where you want a new page to start. Indexing pages is automatic.

LINK-- TomeRaider books and Free time-limited download

Here is an early comment on the Sony Reader and "E-Ink" system:

LINK--NYSun Blog Comment Dec 2006 First Impressions of Sony Reader, etc

And this is apparently the site of the company that invented the idea of polarized "E-Ink". Note there is a link to the Sony Reader as well as other technologies using E-Ink on this corporate site.

LINK--E-Ink Corporation

Now, if the people trying to build the $100 portable computer can get with the E-Ink system and make the $10 E-Book reader..............don't hold your breath...it took awhile before we went from Sony Beta video tape to other systems and finally DVDs.

**Stay tuned to the lowest priced reading you can find anyplace..well same price as all the other lowest price reading places--- Doug Wiken

**Work hours per vehicle manufactured

I heard today on NPR or saw on CBS TV that older US vehicle manufacturers have about $78 per hour tied up in labor and benefits for auto workers. This is versus something like $48 per hour for those combined labor costs for newer manufacturers in the US..typically Japanese owned companies apparently. Below is a link that gives an indication of the total labor hours per vehicle.

On that scale, Ford's performance stood out more prominently. For example, it required an average of 22.85 hours of labor per vehicle. That was less efficient than Nissan's industry-leading 17.07, but it was virtually even with Toyota's 21.3 and Honda's 22.77 hours/vehicle.

In contrast, GM needed an average of 30.32 labor hours for each car or truck, while Chrysler required 32.15 hours.

"Ford's right in the thick of it with the Japanese," says Mr. Harbour. "The surprises to us were the higher numbers for Chrysler and GM."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3165/is_1998_August/ai_50281208
http://tinyurl.com/2af53n

With a difference of $30 per hour, that means Ford with 22.85 hours per vehicle has about an extra $690 per vehicle compared to Honda or Toyota. The story cited above indicates Chrysler hours per vehicle are higher, but they have lower capital costs because of less automation.

It appears from information at this site that five or six Ford executives garnered around $27.5 million in salaries and bonuses.LINK-- Ford Executive Salaries ..Press Release

These six executives salaries divided by $690 means they got the equivalent of the extra wage cost from the nearly $30 per hour different labor costs on nearly 40,000 vehicles.. or about 1/8 of the rough total of 3 million Ford vehicles produced in a year.

Not sure if this means anything or not since it may mix information from several years, but it is interesting. American auto companies might be able to be more competitive on at least part of their vehicles if executive salaries and other compensation weren't so incredibly high.

One thing you are unlikely to hear from any of these companiy press releases however is how much extra cost per vehicle is tied up in executive salaries. They do like to beat up on their workers pay however.

Meanwhile, take a guess who got the major benefit of Bush tax reduction on huge income..and who didn't.

**Stay tuned even if you get $10 million per year in compensation for your backbreaking labor or acute mental strain involved in determining where you deposit all your "earnings"--- Doug Wiken

**All you/we tightwads can keep watching Public TV and listening to Public Radio

Mudville Times Blog reports that a vote in congress has retained funding for Public Broadcasting even if the Bush administration apparently thinks Faux News is sufficient.

LINK--Madville Times Blog reports on Pub Broadcasting funding

And in other media news, SD bloggers and a few others are a-twitter with news that Shawn Cable will no longer by providing breathless weather updates on stagnant air at KELO-LAND. Cable always seemed pleasant enough, but also a bit like an over exuberant puppy. Todd Epp notes at his blog that all biographical data on Cable has disappeared. The pixel world is awfully fragile and subject to instant destruction and erasure...see the book "1984" or "Brave New World" or some such of the college reading long forgotten or nearly so for more helpful information.

Good thing that just like the rooster crowing and thinking that makes the sun rise, changing weathermen at KELO won't really make a bit of difference on the actual weather.

It has seemed that all TV stations with weather need one person at least who does nothing but keep track of the weekend weather. The forecasts and current weather seems to be worst on weekends, but that might just be my misunderstanding of the weekend.

Anyway, the sun will shine tomorrow...and public radio will tell you why even if fundamentalists think the universe was really created in six days a few thousand years ago.-- Doug Wiken