Author: NewMexiKen

Online Banking

Functional Ambivalent has discovered that his bank is not sending his payments to his creditors as quickly as they claimed to be. Interesting.

NewMexiKen realized there was a float in the bank’s favor when you use electronic banking. They deduct the amount when they make the payment, not when the check is cashed. I figured that was my cost for the service (there are no other charges). There is so little interest paid on my checking account it hardly mattered to me if my mortgage payment, for example, was deducted from my account when the bank wrote the check or when the mortgage company deposited it. And actually, with electronic banking, I tend to pay bills closer to the due date because I can enter the transaction when I get the bill, but with a payment date weeks later when the bill is due.

But F/A says his bank wasn’t paying the bills on time — and that it was using paper checks and ground mail for transactions one would assume were electronic. Has anyone else seen this? Are we all being scammed? Or is F/A just using the wrong bank?

Survival of the most religious

Now here’s an interesting twist — religion as a Darwinian survival tactic.

In his book Darwin’s Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York state, says that religiosity emerged as a “useful” genetic trait because it had the effect of making social groups more unified. The communal nature of religion certainly would have given groups of hunter-gatherers a stronger sense of togetherness. This produced a leaner, meaner survival machine, a group that was more likely to be able to defend a waterhole, or kill more antelope, or capture their opponents’ daughters. The better the religion was at producing an organised and disciplined group, the more effective they would have been at staying alive, and hence at passing their genes on to the next generation. This is what we mean by “natural selection”: adaptations which help survival and reproduction get passed down through the genes. Taking into account the additional suggestion, from various studies of twins, that we may have an inherited disposition towards religious belief, is there any evidence that the Divine Idea might be carried in our genes?

Excerpted from Robert Winston, Why do we believe in God? in The Guardian.

Best Pretty Good Joke

Donald Rumsfeld is giving President Bush his daily briefing.

He concludes by saying: “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.”

“OH NO!” the president exclaims. “That’s terrible!”

His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.

Finally, President Bush looks up and asks, “How many is a brazillion?”

A Prairie Home Companion

Pretty Good Joke

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, “Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can’t figure out how to get it started.”

Her boyfriend asks, “What is it supposed to be when it’s finished?” The blonde says, “According to the picture on the box, it’s a tiger.”

Her boyfriend decides to go over and help with the puzzle.

She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says:

“First of all, no matter what we do, we’re not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a tiger.”

He then takes her hand and says, “Second, I want you to relax. Let’s have a nice cup of tea, and then… (heaving a big sigh) …let’s put all these Frosted Flakes back in the box.”

From A Prairie Home Companion

Resolution

Just over half of the visitors to NewMexiKen (55%) are viewing the page(s) at 1024 X 768 resolution. Remarkably, 14% are looking at it at 800 X 600 (they have black and white TVs and AM-only radios, too). And one percent see it at 640 X 480!

Just more than 20% view NewMexiKen (as I do) at 1280 X 800 (or a variation). The remainder (9%) have even higher resolution, as high as 1680 X 1050.

NewMexiKen read today that a larger monitor is the single greatest factor to improving productivity among workers who rely on computers.

82% of you are using Internet Explorer. You might want to give Firefox a try, or Opera. In NewMexiKen’s opinion both are superior to IE, though, as with all things, there is admittedly a learning curve.

95% of you are using Windows, 4% Mac, 1% Linux.

Almost six percent of the searches that lead to NewMexiKen are for the largest college stadiums. Three percent are for Omarosa nude or naked.

About Happiness

[L]ottery winners and paraplegics revert to their usual level of good cheer or grumpiness within a year following the event that changed their lives.

NewMexiKen wasn’t certain what to make of the happiness article (in the blog entry below) and the findings it reported, though I was favorably impressed and found it all intriguing. So I did a little research. The quotations above and below are from Professor Seligman’s website, Reflective Happiness:

The scientific fundamentals most Americans equate “happiness” with are cheery emotion, a Goldie Hawn smile, and boundless optimism. Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson do not share our definition of happiness, and many thoughtful people throughout the world view our have-a-nice-day mentality as empty-headed and heedless. Positive Psychology is intended as a serious and universal approach to understanding and building emotional well being, and it is decidedly not focused on shallow, self-indulgent pleasures.

So what do you have to do to find happiness?

A fascinating article on human emotions from The Sunday Times (UK). A few excerpts:

“Because our brain evolved during a time of ice, flood and famine, we have a catastrophic brain. The way the brain works is looking for what’s wrong. The problem is, that worked in the Pleistocene era. It favoured you, but it doesn’t work in the modern world.”

Although most people rate themselves as happy, there is a wealth of evidence to show that negative thinking is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Experiments show that we remember failures more vividly than successes. We dwell on what went badly, not what went well. When life runs smoothly, we’re on autopilot — we’re only in a state of true consciousness when we notice the stone in our shoe.

Of the six universal emotions, four — anger, fear, disgust and sadness — are negative and only one, joy, is positive. (The sixth, surprise, is neutral.)

*****

The more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more we need to boost our level of happiness. It makes sense that the brain of a species that has dominated others would evolve to strive to be best. …

“The things that you desire are not the things that you end up liking. The mechanisms of desire are insatiable. There are things that we really like and tire of less quickly — having good friends, the beauty of the natural world, spirituality. But our economic system plays into the psychology of wanting, and the psychology of liking gets drowned out.”

*****

In essence, what the biology lesson tells us is that negative emotions are fundamental to the human condition, and it’s no wonder they are difficult to eradicate. At the same time, by a trick of nature, our brains are designed to crave but never really achieve lasting happiness.

Psychologists such as Seligman are convinced you can train yourself to be happier.

*****

The focus of most psychotherapy is on decreasing negative emotion. The aim of Seligman’s therapy is to increase positive emotion (positive and negative emotions are not polar opposites and can co-exist: women have more of both than men).

*****

Men often complain about their wives’ volatility. Now research confirms that women really are both happier and sadder. Positive and negative emotions are not polar opposites — you can have both in your life. Women experience more of all emotions except anger. First it was found that women experience twice as much depression as men. Next, researchers found that women report more positive emotion than men, more frequently and more intensely. It all points to men and women having a different emotional make-up. Cognitive psychologists say that men and women have different skills related to sending and receiving emotion. Women are expressive; men conceal or control their emotions. Women convey emotion through facial expression and communication; men express emotion through aggressive or distracting behaviour. Does the difference lie in biology, social roles or just women’s willingness to report emotion? That’s up for debate.

Doomsday

From an article in The New York Times, Doomsday: The Latest Word if Not the Last:

Word spread quickly in some conservative Christian circles when Israeli troops captured the Old City of Jerusalem from Arab forces in June 1967. This was it: Jesus was coming.

But Jesus did not return that day, and the world did not end with the culmination of that Arab-Israeli war.

Neither did it end in 1260, when Joachim of Fiore, an influential 12th-century Italian monk calculated it would, nor in February 1420, as predicted by the Taborites of Bohemia, nor in 1988, 40 years after the formation of Israel, nor after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But after last week’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan, coming as it did after a succession of recent disasters, the apocalyptic speculation, bubbled up again with impressive fervor on many Christian blogs, in some pews and among some evangelical Christian leaders.

*****

“It’s inherently interesting,” [Craig C. Hill, a professor of New Testament theology] said. “If you have a sign out for the sermon, ‘Our obligation to the poor,’ you won’t get anybody. If you have a sign out for, ‘The Internet and the Antichrist,’ you’ll bring them in.”

Andersonville National Historic Site

… was authorized on this date in 1970. It is located in Georgia.

Andersonville NHS

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many Confederate military prisons established during the Civil War. It was built early in 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, Virginia, to a place of greater security and a more abundant food supply. During the 14 months the prison existed, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements.

Today, Andersonville National Historic Site is the only park in the National Park System to serve as a memorial to all American prisoners of war throughout the nation’s history.

Source: National Park Service

Serious money

Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot is $340 million ($164.4 million if you take the cash rather than the 30 year annuity).

Odds of winning: 1 in 146,107,962.

By the way, 41 of the states now have a lottery. Oklahoma just recently joined in.

An Apple a day

Ed Bott, author of several how-to books about Windows, has an excellent and useful blog with many helpful ideas about getting the best from your computer’s operating system. Today, however, Bott posted excerpts from an anti-Apple diatribe by Slate’s Jack Shafer — all about how the press is so enamored of Apple.

I don’t hate Apple. I don’t even hate Apple-lovers. I do, however, possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade.

Shafer goes on to say that once the newness wears off he can’t find any press references to these same products, thereby concluding they are all second-rate failures.

NewMexiKen’s computers have all been Windows (or DOS) but I love iTunes and my iPod. I read a lot of reviews and here’s the kind of thing I keep seeing. This is from Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal:

Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and much more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.

As NewMexiKen commented on Ed Bott’s blog, “Perhaps Shafer can’t find articles about the older Apple products because new ones keep coming along at a rate that Redmond cannot fathom.”

Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts

… was authorized on this date in 1966.

Wolf Trap Farm Park

Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts began as a gift to the American people from Catherine Filene Shouse. Encroaching roads and suburbs inspired Mrs. Shouse to preserve this former farm as a park. In 1966 Congress accepted Mrs. Shouse’s gift and authorized Wolf Trap Farm Park (its original name) as the first national park for the performing arts. Through a fruitful partnership between the National Park Service and the Wolf Trap Foundation, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts offers a wealth of natural and cultural resources to the community and to the nation.

National Park Service

NewMexiKen and family once upon a time lived in one of the encroaching suburbs just down the street from Wolf Trap Farm Park.

It’s the birthday

… of John Kenneth Galbraith. The economist is 97.

… of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The historian is 88. According to The Writer’s Almanac Schlesinger wrote in his autobiography that “People are likely to have read most of the books they’re ever going to read by the time they’re 25.” Really?

… of Lee Iacocca. The former Ford executive and Chrysler chairman is back on television in ads at 81.

… of Barry McGuire. The rock/folk singer is 70. NewMexiKen suspects the “Eve of Destruction” is even closer at hand.

… of Linda Lavin. Television’s “Alice” is 68.

… of Penny Marshall. The actress turned director is 63.

… of Jim Palmer. The baseball hall-of-famer is 60. We don’t see him in those underwear ads as often anymore. Palmer won World Series games in three decades (1966, 1970 and 1971, 1983).

… of Richard Carpenter. Karen’s brother is 59.

… of Emeril Lagasse. The TV chef is 46.

… of Sarah Ferguson. She’s 46.

Deadly Ecosystem … In Your Pillow

Your favorite pillow holds an entire ecosystem of disgusting bugs and potentially deadly fungi, a new study suggests.

The typical pillow contains more than a million fungal spores, researchers found. That’s several thousand spores for every little gram of material.

There’s more.

Other studies have shown pillows and other bedding harbor dust mites, microscopic spider-like creatures that feed on flakes of human skin

Yahoo! News

Try not to remember this story the next time you stay in a hotel or motel.

Oh, swell, one more thing to worry about

A passenger punched out the interior pane of an airplane window on an American West flight from Las Vegas to Florida, authorities said.

Ryan J. Marchione, 24, shattered the inner plastic shield covering the glass window and disconnected its frame about 90 minutes into the flight, according to an FBI affidavit. The outer window was not damaged and the plane did not depressurize, the airline said. …

“It appears to have come out of nowhere,” said Marchione’s attorney, Thomas Ostrander. “Perhaps it was some sort of a psychotic episode as a result of drug abuse.”

Yahoo! News

Spoilsport

Like many shoppers, attorney Stephen Diamond buys lots of stuff online. But unlike other consumers, he sues retailers that don’t charge him state and local sales taxes — and is making a profit doing it. …

Online buyers are required to pay local and state sales taxes on purchases made over the Internet, but are rarely asked to do so. States and online retailers have argued for years over whether the retailers should and could collect the taxes, but now states are becoming increasingly aggressive. This month, 18 states formed a coalition to make it easier to collect taxes on Web sales.

State laws allow for the collection of taxes on Internet purchases if the retailers have a physical presence — a “nexus” in legal terms — in the state. But different states define “nexus” differently. In some states, the regular presence of a single sales person, even a traveling one, is enough to establish a nexus. In Illinois, a retailer is considered to have a physical presence if a customer can return an item purchased online to a retailer’s physical location.

The Wall Street Journal