This is what $30 worth of groceries looks like these days. I think the cheapest thing was the only junk food I like, the turkey pies. Statistically, each of these items comes from 1500 miles away. This being the top story, that tells you how exciting today was. I was going to attend an antique motorcycle show this morning out on the beach, but even getting to the beach is a hassle. Nothing worth anything is free in Hollywood, FL.
Marion, like all of us, has a theory on the real estate fiasco. Demolish all the houses and sell the land for development. The prices would be almost the same without the houses and it would put idle construction companies to work. The now employed construction workers could afford to buy those houses. This makes as much sense as anything that’s come out of DC in years.Pension plans are the next big worry for those relying on them. That includes civil servants. As we know, these pensions are not funded, rather they rely on new money coming in to support the payments. There is not enough new money. Florida has proposed new hirers after 2014 get the risky 401(k) arrangement and has imposed a 3% hike in payroll deductions already. Like the mortgage gang, they thought the party would last forever. I believe the government will cut back their pensions and it will happen in this order: first rollback the pensions, then clean up the welfare, then freeze old-age security levels, and last, a means tests for disability.
If you are disabled or on welfare and don’t know what a means test is, you had better look it up right now. During my research on potential pension defaults, I found another statistic that I found disturbing. The average pension, meaning nurses, teachers, all those who earn under $50,000 is going to be less than $15,000 per year. That is near starvation level. I don’t believe it, there’s no reputable union that would stand for that. I’ll look again.
See this symbol? It is a badge of the mindless pursuit of wealth that characterizes the American Internet. Because I don’t accept advertising, this blog (which has thousands of monthly readers) is valued at a piddling $394.70. But, if you’ve noticed the changes in search engines over the previous year, it may remind you how I stated that in the end, content will win out. It is impossible to design a search that ignores content, though the same cannot be said of context.Years ago, I made the choice of having my public search for my blog name rather than a generic term, such as “news blog” or “sports blog”. (I chose to market the brand, not the product.) It was a valid decision since at the time nobody knew which would win out. Google seems to have realized at least the basics of my point. Thus, my rankings are rising because single topic repetitive blogs are falling. I’m nowhere near the top, but every search for this blog finds it.
Here’s a more useful symbol, the now familiar QR code. This one, says the Miami Herald, is made of black and white tiles along a tourist walk in Rio. It provides tourists with info about the surroundings. Brilliant. While reading pensions, I did the natural thing of including inflation, where I noticed since I began university, the official dollar has dropped to 16 cents in purchasing value. The unofficial dollar is probably closer to a dime. That’s why I smile whenever some smartass points out prices were lower. Hey, five cents in my day buys what fifty cents will buy today, namely nothing.
During WWII the US Army Air Force lost 414 of the gigantic B-29s. They cost $600,000 then, so today that is $8 million per airplane. For a total loss of only $3 billion, again today. That shows how militarized our economy has become. Nobody bats an eyelash at $3 billion any more. And I said the planes were lost, not necessarily shot down.
ADDENDUM
Finally, at 11:56 PM last evening, I got a logic gate memory circuit to work. I don’t expect many to follow the electronics so that’s why I often explain the only the theory, at least so far as I’ve learned it. I’m still divided over whether school or independent learning is better for this kind of thing. I’m proud of this circuit because it exhibits the basic concept of computer operation.
A light bulb and switch combination has no memory. It is either off or on. Obvious as this seems, it was under-explained in every text I read. At first glance it does seem like memory because it is remembering how you last threw the switch, right? Wrong. In an electronic sense, that is not memory. If it takes a moment to wrap your head around this concept, don’t blame yourself.Imagine if you could turn the switch from off to on and the bulb remained on even if you kept flipping the switch. Only then it is remembering your first action. You would need a second switch to turn it off and remember that condition as well. The two small breadboards at lower center right in this picture are my successful attempt. Time required: two months to the day. These circuits contain only switches and resistors, nothing fancy, no store-bought gadgetry.
You may recognize the power supply with the bright red light and knife switch, but that is a standard rig I use in many circuits. Also shown is a ton of notes I needed to figure out the wiring. Most textbooks take the shortcut of using block diagrams to represent the workings, which I can’t condone unless they also supply a wiring diagram. Block diagrams are for the lazy. It took hours to figure out the design on my own.
It still doesn’t work perfectly. The circuit keeps the last “command” in memory, but when I flip that switch back and forth to confirm operation, the intensity of the light varies. So I’m not out of the weeds yet. What’s more, this represents only one of at least four different types of memory a computer requires. This circuit has only the single function of remembering the last switch condition. It cannot remember an ongoing stream of different settings over time. But I’m getting there.
If I did work this switch in groups of eight, I would have produced eight bits and therefore a byte of information, albeit a serial byte. This leads to my remarks last day about a register. A register is a different type of memory that takes the incoming serial bits, accumulates them eight at a time, then discharges the lot as a single parallel byte. That’s why your computer has those ribbon cables inside.
Here is where efficiency comes into play. Do I make eight actions to create one byte, or am I smarter to build eight switches? Now that I have one working logic gate, it would be easy to design an input device where I type the letter “A” and send it as an eight bit signal from the get go. Which one works better? My thinking is that all these have been tried and the ones out there represent what is most economical to manufacture. So you’ll know, this topic tasks my brain to its utmost limit.
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