Category: Informative

FAQs: Compact Fluorescent Lighting

NewMexiKen was looking for information on using CFLs with dimmers and found a whole bunch of stuff we all should know as we make the move to Dairy Queen lights.

FAQs: Compact Fluorescent: Lighting

You are phasing out those incandescent bulbs, aren’t you? If every one of the 110 million American households replaced just one 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to provide power for 1.5 million people.

Here in New Mexico, PNM is offering rebates on CFLs. I noticed bulbs were particularly inexpensive (after the rebate) at Costco. And the rebate is at the register, not some nonsense you have to mail in.

But read the FAQs. Use of CFLs is tricky in some instances (recessed lighting for example).

Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag

NewMexiKen’s seven regular readers may remember my post on feeding the birds — What’s the deal about feeding birds? I had wondered whether it was OK to sporadically feed wild birds; would they become dependent on my handouts and starve if I was away.

So yesterday I dropped into the Wild Bird Center, a store specializing in outdoor bird stuff — feeders, birdbaths, books, feed. I was told that the birds that flock to my backyard to eat the seed I put out are “professional birds” and that their profession is finding food. Not to worry, they’ll show up if I make it easy for them, but they’ll do just fine if I stop, too.

So I bought a 20-pound back of bird seed for $15. On with the show.

These look really useful

Designer notebooks Field Notes are soft-cover, pocket-sized memo books for jotting ideas, making lists and sketching. Each 3.5×5.5″ Field Notes book contains 48 pages of graph paper and from all appearances, will survive your back pocket a lot better than the stiffer Moleskine.

Check ’em out at Lifehacker. There’s a $5 dollar off deal from the company in a comment if you buy three packs of three notebooks (otherwise it’s $9.95 for three notebooks, plus shipping).

Where the money goes

In the fiscal year that ended just over 11 months ago (FY 2006) the federal government spent $2.655 trillion.

Here’s where the money went (in billions):

Department of Defense $499 18.8%
Homeland Security 31 1.2%
International Affairs 36 1.4%
All other discretionary 451 17.0%
Social Security 544 20.5%
Medicare 325 12.2%
Medicaid and SCHIP 186 7.0%
All other mandatory 357 13.4%
Interest 227 8.5%
Total $2,655

“All other mandatory” spending includes retirement programs other than Social Security, education and training programs, community grants, food stamps, farm subsidies, veterans benefits, etc. SCHIP is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“All other discretionary” spending includes everything else the federal government does except defense, international affairs, homeland security, and social service programs. That would be agriculture, parks, printing money, courts, congress, prisons, space exploration, air traffic control, regulatory agencies, etc.

As you can see, only 38.4% of federal expenditures are considered discretionary. The remainder are entitlements — the Congress set up a program, established eligibility, and the rest is just distribution.

(Rounding keeps the total from being exact.)

Where the money comes from.

Where the money comes from

In the fiscal year that ended just over 11 months ago (FY 2006) the federal government took in $2.4 trillion.

Here’s where the money came from (in billions):

Individual income taxes $1,043.9
Corporation income taxes 353.9
Social insurance and retirement receipts 837.8
Excise taxes 74.0
Estate and gift taxes 27.9
Customs duties 24.8
Miscellaneous receipts 45.0
Total $2,407.3

Excise taxes incude taxes on alcohol, tobacco, fuel, telephones, air transportation, etc. Miscellaneous receipts are fees you pay, such as $20 to visit a national park or $97 for your passport.

Put another way, 43 cents of every dollar came from income tax, 15 cents from the corporation tax, 35 cents from Social Security and Medicare taxes, and 7 cents from the rest.

Oh, and the government borrowed $248 million billion from our children and grandchildren.

Where the money goes.

I’d been wondering about this

The MAGIC gamma-ray telescope team has just released an eye-popping preprint (following up earlier work) describing a search for an observational hint of quantum gravity. What they’ve seen is that higher-energy gamma rays from an extragalactic flare arrive later than lower-energy ones. Is this because they travel through space a little bit slower, contrary to one of the postulates underlying Einstein’s special theory of relativity — namely, that radiation travels through the vacuum at the same speed no matter what?

Scientific American

Maybe Einstein’s theories are like “his” videos. They “were never designed to make [us] smarter, only happier.”

The New Yorker

Just about everything in last week’s New Yorker is superb — including Elizabeth Kolbert on bees, Michael Specter on spam, Jeffrey Toobin on murder in Seattle and Louis Menand on biography. (Alas, John McPhee’s essay on the U.S. Open is not online.)

ICE

NewMexiKen posted an item a year ago pointing out that emergency personnel (police, fire, EMT) often search a victim’s cell phone contacts for the “ICE” contact — In Case of Emergency.

So, right now when you’re thinking about it, get your cell phone and, even if your emergency contact is already listed, enter their number again under the name ICE.

Besides, ICE (short for Iceman) always was a better nickname than Maverick or Goose.

Stumbling on Happiness

Last week NewMexiKen read Daniel Gilibert’s Stumbling on Happiness. This is an informative and funny book by a Harvard psychologist that explains how our brain, mind, memory and emotions work — and why they lead us to such poor decisions about what makes us happy.

As Malcolm Gladwell has written about the book, “If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me.”

Trust me, too.

First, because Gilbert is an amusing writer, throwing in unexpected delights.

Emotional happiness is like that. It is the feeling common to the feelings we have when we see our new granddaughter smile for the first time, receive word of a promotion, help a wayward tourist find the art museum, taste Belgian chocolate toward the back of our tongue, inhale the scent of our lover’s shampoo, hear the song we used to like so much in high school but haven’t heard in years, touch our cheek to kitten fur, cure cancer, or get a really good snootful of cocaine.

… [O]r trying to predict how proud you will be of your spouse’s accomplishment without knowing which accomplishment (winning a Nobel Prize or finding the best divorce lawyer in the city?) …

“There are many good things about getting older, but no one knows what they are.”

Second, because Gilbert writes about us, human beings, “the only animal that thinks about the future.” Able to think about the future, we make predictions; we make predictions so that we can control our future. Gilbert explains we are captains of a boat on “the river of time.” We get pleasure from controlling the boat. We also get pleasure from controlling the destination, the place that will bring us happiness. The problem is, our future destinations are “fundamentally different” than they appear.

The book explains why. Happiness itself is subjective. Our imaginations are defective — our memory unknowingly fills in details that didn’t happen and forgets details that did; we base too much on the present; we rationalize outcomes, good becomes better, bad becomes worse. We are unable to recall our real feelings once an event has passed.

Stumbling on Happiness is not a self-help book. You may learn how you make decisions about future happiness, even why you make those decisions, but not how to make better decisions — at least not directly. But just learning may be a good start.

That and This

“Despite what we read in the popular press, the only known symptom of ’empty nest syndrome’ is increased smiling.”

Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness, a fascinating and entertaining book NewMexiKen will write more about later.

Trivia time: What’s the longest un-dammed river in the lower 48 states?

The New West Network tells how that river kept its course. (Thanks to Coyote Gulch for the pointer.)

It’s the Yellowstone.

At Freakonomics Blog Steven D. Levitt suggests you might want to invite your enemies over if you live in Missouri, where a new law says that “people are not required to retreat from an intruder and can use deadly force once the person illegally enters their home, vehicle or other dwelling, including a tent.” Who’s to say whether you invited them in or they entered illegally?

Do you know the Stroop Effect?

The Stroop Effect is one of the most-studied phenomena in psychology. The test is easy to administer, and works in a variety of contexts. The simplest way to see how it works is just to look the following two lists. Don’t read them, instead say the color each word is displayed in, as quickly as you can:

Stroop

Source: Cognitive Daily, which has more.

Zebra Horse

Did you say the colors or read the words?

Did you know that zebras and horses could be bred?

Source: The Underwire, which has details.

And, this from Cheers and Jeers:

Percent of single American men and women who religious conservatives say should remain celibate until marriage: 100%

Percent of single American men and women who actually remain celibate until marriage (or so they say): 11%

Sic Semper Tyrannis

The Commonwealth of Virginia ratified the Constitution on this date in 1788, thereby becoming the tenth state.

Virginia has 7.64 million people (including five Sweeties).

Virginia has 42,769 square miles, making it the 35th largest state.

The highest point in Virginia is Mount Rogers at 5,729 feet above sea level. The lowest point is sea level.

Eight presidents were born in Virginia.

Brainiac

The one thing you must read today: David Byrne sits down with Daniel Levitin (This is Your Brain on Music) for a fascinating conversation at Seed Magazine. You can also watch video from the interview.

DL: They were first discovered in Italy where a laboratory was recording from a cluster of neurons in monkeys’ brains. There was a monkey who was just sitting aside waiting his turn, watching another monkey reach for a banana and then peel it and eat it. And a clever technician noticed the cell recordings from this monkey and that his motor cortex was going crazy—the part of his brain that would be active if he were actually reaching for something and peeling it back. They thought this was strange. Do we have our wires crossed? You know, we’re measuring this monkey’s brain and not the other. They looked into all possible explanations.

They eventually replicated it with a number of different things, and it turned out that they had discovered what are now called, loosely, mirror neurons: neurons that mirror the activity of others. It’s sort of the old monkey see, monkey do. So then the question is, how does that happen? How is it that monkeys learn to imitate behavior?

DB: So when you watch a performance, sports for example, you’re not only watching somebody else do it. In a neurological kind of way, you’re experiencing it.

DL:Yeah, exactly. And when you see a musician, especially if you’re a musician yourself–

DB: —air guitar.

Bookslut

Breaking: Being Smart Doesn’t Make You Rich

Having a high IQ isn’t money in the bank, according to new research that shows smarter doesn’t necessarily mean richer.

A nationwide study shows people of below average and average intelligence are just as wealthy as those in similar circumstances with higher IQs.

In fact, researchers say the highly intelligent may be more prone to financial troubles.

WebMD

Your News IQ

[W]e invite you to take our short quiz about prominent people and major events in the news — then see how you did in comparison with 1,502 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a recent national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

You’ll also be able to compare your News IQ with the average scores of men and women; with college graduates as well as those who didn’t attend college; with people who are your age as well as with younger and older Americans.

Take the Quiz.

NewMexiKen got all nine, which puts me in the top 4 percent.

Here’s Pew’s Summary of Findings: Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions.

April 15 (another form of Ruination Day)

Click here to access IRS Form 4868, Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. You may apply for the extension electronically.

Actually filing your federal taxes is not due this year until Tuesday, April 17th. Most states, however, require filing tomorrow, Monday, April 16th.

An income tax was first collected during the Civil War from 1862 to 1872. During the administration of President Grover Cleveland, the federal government again levied an income tax, enacted by Congress in 1894. However, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year. Supporters of an income tax were forced then to embark on the lengthy process of amending the Constitution. Not until the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913 was Congress given the power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration.”

Library of Congress

Will Rogers said, “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.”

Is It Better To Be a Jock Or A Nerd?

You’ll have to click here to find out if it is “Better To Be a Jock Or A Nerd,” but here’s just a few of the facts you can learn:

– Michael Jordan having “retired,” with $40 million in endorsements, makes $178,100 a day, working or not.

– If he goes to see a movie, it’ll cost him $7.00, but he’ll make $18,550 while he’s there.

– He makes $7,415/hr more than minimum wage.

– Assuming he puts the federal maximum of 15% of his income into a tax-deferred account (401k), his contributions will hit the federal cap of $9500 at 8:30am on January 1st.