Monthly Archives: October 2004

Recent Rental Cars

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I’ve rented a variety of cars recently. Car magazine does a nice job of rating autos using their “Good, Bad & Ugly” approach. Here goes:

  • The Good

    Mazda6. Excellent handling, mileage, four cylinder engine overworked, turning radius not great (reminds me of the soon to be retired Taurus’s poor turning)

    Toyota Camry Machine like, excellent quality, could use some style.

    Nissan Altima Points for some style, decent handling, V-6 reasonably fun

  • The Bad:

    2004 Toyota Avalon Terrible handling… difficult to read dashboard

    2004 Ford Mustang. I assume the 2005 will be much, much better

  • The ugly

    Ford Expedition Hard to see the point, very big, poor mileage, essentially a very expensive pickup truck.

Political Jihad and the American Blog – Jay Rosen

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Jay Rosen takes a useful look at Journalism & Big Media (or MSM – Main Stream Media to some). I like this:

  • The real job of journalism is to help make the public lfe of the nation work well.
  • For journalists, the rise of citizen comment on the Internet should be something to celebrate and learn from.
  • The bias discourse has descended into meaninglessness, which doesn’t meant the press isn’t trapped by its own preconceptions.
  • The survival of Big Media is not critical, the survival of journalism is. There’s a big difference between those two.
  • Bloggers "who care about facts and ideas," and there are many of those, should be wary of the Orwellians on their own side, who are themselves engaged in propaganda– the charge they are most likely to hurl at others.

Interesting Spin on City Tax Hike….

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Judith Davidoff:

City taxes on an average house in Madison would increase $82 under Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s proposed 2005 executive budget.
That means the owner of an average $205,359 home would contribute about $1,597 to city operations, exclusive of county, MATC or school taxes.
Overall spending under Cieslewicz’s budget would increase 3.6 percent, though the property tax levy is going up 5.4 percent.
Brasser said that was due to the reductions in state aids and other revenue sources, as well as having less in reserves to plug the budget hole.
Last year the city had $4.7 million in reserves from the mayor’s hiring freeze.
“When all other revenue sources don’t keep pace with the inflation in our expenditures, the property tax is what has to make up the difference,” Brasser said.

Ideally, this article would include some history – spending and tax increases over the past decade vis a vis population growth, inflation and city employment, among others. If find this obfuscation disingenuous….
If you have views on this, send them to mayor@cityofmadison.com (keep in mind that our total property tax increase will include school and county increases as well).
UPDATE: Dean Mosiman summarizes the Mayor’s tax increase plans.

(more…)

National ID Card?

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Declan McCullagh:

Rep. David Dreier wants to force all Americans to carry a national ID card around with them. The California Republican is not about to describe his new bill in those terms, but that’s the reality.
Dreier’s legislation would prohibit employers from hiring people unless the job applicants first obtain new federal ID cards with their photograph, Social Security number and an “encrypted electronic strip” with additional information. Any employer who fails to comply faces hefty fines and prison terms of up to five years.
Dreier is smart enough to realize that these federal IDs would be immediately forged, so he takes the next step of linking them to an employment eligibility database that’s queried by card readers whenever the ID is swiped. The employment database is required to include “all such data maintained by the Department of Homeland Security,” combined with what the Social Security Administration has on file.

Decline of the US Creative Class?

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Richard Florida discusses [$6.00 PDF] America’s looming creativity crisis. Timely article, given WTN’s recent report.

The strength of the American economy does not rest on its manufacturing prowess, its natural resources, or the size of its market. It turns on one factor–the country’s openness to new ideas, which has allowed it to attract the brightest minds from around the world and harness their creative energies. But the United States is on the verge of losing that competitive edge. As the nation tightens its borders to students and scientists and subjects federal research funding to ideological and religious litmus tests, many other countries are stepping in to lure that creative capital away. Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and others are spending more on research and development and shoring up their universities in an effort to attract the world’s best–including Americans.

Richard Florida Links: All The Web | Clusty | Google | Teoma | Yahoo

X-Prize Winner

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Way to go, Burt Rutan & the folks at scaled!
Here’s a useful question for all of our federal candidates: Why not save the billions we’re spending on the antique space shuttles and redirect it to math & science education. It’s clear that the era of hugely expensive manned flight is nearing an end.
Video…. Alan Boyle | Clusty | Google | Teoma | Yahoo
Bryan Bell has posted some gorgeous images from Monday’s flight.

iPod users are “thieves” – Microsoft’s Ballmer

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Andy McCue:

Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece – at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: “We?ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen’.”
“Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use,” he said.
However, Ballmer conceded it isn’t going to be an easy battle to win. “Most people still steal music,” he said. “We can build the technology but there are still ways for people to steal music.”

Microsoft would rather that we have only one choice – their DRM (Digital Restrictions Management Software). Learn more about DRM here…..

Why Spend taxpayer $’s when we don’t Capitalize on what we have now?

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WTN’s recently released report [5.6MB PDF]includes these highlights:


  • Academic research and development activities in Wisconsin total about $883 million in the latest year. That includes the UW System, the Medical College of Wisconsin, other private colleges and universities, the Marshfield Clinic?s research arm and the research programs of the Veterans Administration hospitals.
  • Academic R&D is responsible for more than 31,000 jobs, directly and indirectly, in Wisconsin. That is according to an economic multiplier used by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Association of American Universities.
  • Academic R&D represents an area where Wisconsin performs well versus other states in attracting federal dollars. Wisconsin is 15th nationally, even without the inclusion of the Marshfield Clinic and the Veterans Hospitals.
  • Academic R&D in Wisconsin has continued to grow, even as the economy retrenched in 2000-2003. In the last year alone, for example, R&D conducted in the UW System grew by $47.5 million.
  • Academic R&D in Wisconsin could be at risk unless state support for the infrastructure supporting such research is maintained. Other states are investing in their infrastructure because they believe it makes sound economic sense.

The report contains these recommendations:



  • The governor and Legislature should continue to invest in capital improvement programs such as BioStar and HealthStar, which leverage the assets of the UW-Madison and help to create spinout companies and jobs.
  • The governor and Legislature should begin, in the 2005-2007 state budget, the process of restoring state support for UW System operations. Although many states have experienced similar budget difficulties, the erosion in the UW budget has been relatively steady for years and cannot continue if the state wants to protect its investment.
  • The governor and Legislature should create a Wisconsin Innovation and Research Fund to help secure federal and corporate grants by providing small matching grants to UW System and private college faculty who collaborate with business on R&D.
  • The UW-Madison, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic should re-examine already strong collaborative research relationships to look for more opportunities to joint attract research funding and conduct science. Incentives to conduct inter-institution and interdisciplinary research should be established. This is similar to an approach being followed in Minnesota, where the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic have recently announced joint initiatives.
  • The governor and the Legislature should establish a commission, similar to the Michigan Commission on Higher Education and Economic Growth, to explore other options and to more deliberately track ?best practices? in other states.

Judy Newman interviewed local scientists, along with other interested parties.
I continue to believe the primary issue for us is not money, rather risk taking. We’ve certainly spent a great deal of academic research, only to see WARF license the technology to firms such as California based Geron, among other non Wisconsin entities.
These licensing activities beg the usual question: why should the taxpayers continue to pay when the fruits go elsewhere, similar to the long time discussion of our brain drain (two of my four UW roommates are in Colorado and California….)?
My View: Why spend more taxpayer money when we don’t capitalize on what we have now! I can’t imagine yet another government level technology council….
UPDATE: Tom Still (Report Editor and President of the WTN) sent me a followup email:

Jim — Thank you! It’s good to get the information out and let people debate how to set priorities. I appreciate your thoughtful approach.
— Tom

Send him yours: tstill at wisconsintechnologycouncil.com