The NASA

I find it odd that people refer to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as simply "NASA," without the article "the" in front of it. Other federal agencies that come to mind are always given the article. "The FBI," and "the NSA," and "the FDA," and so on. The second paragraph of the wikipedia article on NASA starts "NASA was established..." The second paragraphs of the wikipedia articles for the other agencies start, "The FBI's headquarters," "The NSA is directed by," and "The FDA also enforces."

Perhaps the NASA has achieved a level of personification in the public mind that the other departments have not. This personification may be related to its widely-known and widely-celebrated milestones such as putting a man on the moon, landing a shuttle, and a roving on Mars. By comparison, the other agencies just sort of muddle along. What was the FDA's man-on-the-moon moment? Declaring genetically modified food to be substantially equivalent to unmodified food comes to mind, actually.

But the big-milestones theory doesn't explain the DoD. That department has certainly had its share of milestones: from the Korea quagmire to the Libya quagmire and all the quagmires in-between. But people still call it "the DoD." Perhaps it is not enough to have big milestones for an agency to be thought of as a person; perhaps success is also needed.

Companies do not have their names preceeded by the word "the." There is obviously a high degree of personification when it comes to companies. Indeed, this personification forms the basis of corporations as legal entities. Yet, the USPS - something like a government-run company - is "the USPS" while UPS is just, "UPS."

Another factor besides personification (probably related to it) is that the NASA is commonly pronounced as a name, "Nasa" rather than "N-A-S-A." This is true of HUD as well and the wikipedia article starts a sentence, "HUD is administered by". Yet, PBS is never pronounced "pibs" nor is ever called "the PBS." Interestingly, Indian Health Service goes both ways. The wikipedia article refers to it as both "IHS" and "the IHS".

Within a company, you might find acronyms naming different teams. A common one I hear is CAB for "Change Approval Board." Here you have an acronym, very often pronounced as the word "cab" and yet always preceeded with "the" as in "the CAB approved my request to deploy Windows 7 this weekend."

If you read into the definite article as a gramatical entity, its purpose is to idicate "that its noun is a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener." This compares to the indefinite article "a" indicating a non-particular noun as in "a house."

You do not need an article in front of proper nouns as in "the Matt." So from a grammer standpoint it may be the case that "NASA" is a proper noun while "FBI" is not. However, there is no apparent reason beyond the onese proposed above why this might be. In general, I believe the designation of most government agencies defies grammar.

The Lenovo Website is Designed by Marketing Geniouses, Clearly

Question: how many processor cores does the 15" Apple MacBook Pro have? Now another: how many processor cores does the 15" Lenovo T520 have?

Go to Apple.com and Lenovo.com and see if you can find out. Here's what it involves.

At Apple.com, you click "Mac", then "MacBook Pro" and in the middle of the page, under "State-of-the-art Intel processors" it says "...now features quad-core...". That answers that.

Now over at Lenovo.com, you roll over "Products" then click "Professional-grade" (not to be confused with "Lifestyle", "Essential", or "New Product Showcase". Then, you click ThinkPad. Then you click "T-series" and then "View Series" (not to be confused with "Edge", "X Series", "SL Series", "L Series", or "W Series"). Then, you search the page top-to bottom with some mention of how many cores various models have. Nothing.

You do see "2nd generation Intel Core i series processors" and the extended description even tells you this: "Select T Series models are powered by up to 2nd generation Intel Core i7 processors with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, which features smart performance and built-in visuals for a visibly better PC experience. Learn More." But how many cores? So click "Learn More". You'll watch a stupid flash video that tells you nothing. Close the flash video.

Back on the T-series page, roll over "T-520" and click "View Models". Scan the page. Still nothing -- just mention of 2nd generation i7 again. Click "T420/T520 tech specs" and wait while your PDF plug-in loads. Read through the entire PDF. You will get detailed model numbers and extended specifications such as "2.30GHz, 8MB L3, 1333MHz FSB" but still AMAZINGLY you are not told how many cores these things have. Close the PDF.

Click "Buy Now". The next page doesn't tell you how many cores the laptops contain. Click "Customize and Buy". In selecting your processor you still will not be told how many cores the laptop has.

I have not gone all the way through to checkout, but I am fairly certain that Lenovo never tells you whether the T520 is a dual or quad-core laptop or if it has the option of either.

And don't even get me started on "Professional-grade" vs. "Essential". Maybe this evokes all sorts of philosophical insight by marketing geniuses and the dread Product Managers of Lenovo into their own product line and convinces them of their own brilliance in how they've segmented their market, but it means nothing to a consumer. And, finally, what is the difference between the L and SL series? I can tell the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro apart easily because the products are well-differentiated in the first place and because the site shows me plenty of pictures that clearly communicate the Air is about portability and lightness while the MacBook Pro is about screen size and performance.

Update: Out of concern for someone stumbling on this post in hopes of finding an answer to the question I pose, only some T510s are quad-core. None of the Core i3 or i5 processors available with the T520i or T520 are quad-core. For the T520i, there is the option of the i7 2720QM, which is quad-core. For the T520, there are the options of the same i7 2720QM or the i7 2820QM, also quad-core. But beware the i7 2720QM, that is only dual-core.

The Sorry State of AV Receivers

Here are what I would consider to be 4 basic features any AV receiver should have:

1. Play audio through speakers and TV simultaneously. Important for people like myself that find TV speakers do a good job producing mid-range voice and therefor compliment other speakers nicely.
2. When receiver is off, last-used source is still passed thru to TV. When you get home from work and want to flip on CNN, the receiver should not need to be involved.
3. If unit supports A and B speakers, they should be easy to toggle. This has to do with receivers that lack A and B speaker ports officially, but allow you through convoluted menu selections to use suround rear speakers as just another set of stereo main speakers. Expose this feature with simple front-panel switches.
4. Phono jack for turntables. This has been a feature of receivers since the beginning. I guess I could understand abandoning the senior citizens. But this feature is also useful for the new crowd of LP enthusiasts. Today, vinyl record sales are growing faster than digital and many entry-level turntables require the phono jack.

Recently, I purchased the 4-star rated Pioneer VSX-520-K receiver from Amazon. Everyone seems to love it. I thought it was a piece of junk. It lacked every single one of the features above. I didn't even realize the above were "features." Now I know. I guess wheels are features of cars, too.

I bought the receiver because it was one of the few that includes 3 HDMI inputs for less than $200. The reason for posting about it, rather than just returning it (which I did) is because it was one of those rare purchases that actually angers you by how stupidly it was designed. The thing has eighteen different surround modes from "Concert Hall" to "Laundromat" (none of which I would ever use), it has bluetooth connectivity (as if iPods have bluetooth), and of course the super-important Pioneer "room calibration technology." But when it comes to the basic operating features it is completely incapable. The anger also comes from the fact that I believe the designers know darn well the above items are basic features and have purposely withheld them from the entry level model.

I would be willing to bet this is Pioneer's new strategy. My guess is that many of these electronics vendors are having a harder and harder time enticing consumers to the mid and high-end receivers with fancy surround modes, new types of jacks, and sound-shaping algorithms. So what do they do? They just flip the feature list on its head, giving away the bells and whistles with the cheap units and making you pay up if you want to do basic operations. The geniouses at HP should do this with laptops. Put fancy graphics cards in the low end laptops, but take out the battery. You have to buy a $1500 laptop if you want to be able to use it without a powercord. It's brilliant!

Well we'll do just fine without a new receiver for now. I won't buy one unless it has the features above for less than $150.

Big doin's in Madison

Good riddance to public unions. I suppose I probably take a harder line than most on the issue; I actually believe you should give up way more rights than just collective bargaining when you choose to work for the state. I'd like to see the conditions of working for the state become so awful that basically no one wants to do it anymore. Far too many bright, hard-working friends of mine have gotten sucked into non-productive government positions. They could be helping to create wealth and prosperity in our economy but instead they're helping the military kill more efficiently or pushing paper in Washington or teaching government history classes. I can't convince them to leave the public sector, but maybe if the public sector were made into hell, they'd chose to leave on their own.

Not that there aren't good points on both sides of the issue. Mike Konczal for one points out that with everything that's been happening over the last 3 years, and all the bad actors truly responsible for the mess we're in, to pick on unions is kind of ridiculous:

I’m proud to see Wisconsin be the place where people draw the line and call BS on the attack on public workers, state budgets, and austerity amidst a financial, foreclosure and economic crisis where the government’s response has had the protection of banks, bondholders, creditors, Wall Street and the top 1% at all costs as the driving tenant, a class war driven by the rich.

I desperately want to agree with Mike and just leave it at that. But I take so much pleasure in seeing the Republicans ignore the protests and just calmly pass their union-busting bill. Why? Why do I take pleasure in it? I'm no partisan.

Ultimately, I think it's because what Mike said about the class war is so true. Everyone knows the top 1% has us by the balls and that they've been taking whatever they want from the treasury for the last 3 years. But that's not what aroused these energetic activists with their special-made orange t-shirts and their posters with fancy logos on them and their cheater doctors' notes. No, for the last three years these people have just been sittin' around watching treasury get robbed and doing nothing about it like the rest of us. The bailouts and handouts, the back-room deals, the looking-the-other-way has done nothing to stir these people. But all of sudden their untouchable job security is threatened, their daily guaranteed work routine so unimaginable to those of us privately employed is called into question and they think they need to turn Madison into the next Cairo? Give me a break.

We're all losers for not fighting what's going on in this country, but that goes for these losers in Madison, too. These people aren't fighting in a class war against the top 1%. They're not fighting for the middle class or workers everywhere and certainly they're not fighting for me. They're fighting for themselves, pure and simple. Sure people are getting bussed in, but the real protesters, the teachers ditching classes, don't give a crap about the big fight. They just want their guaranteed paycheck (even a smaller one will do) and to hell with whatever's left in the treasury.

They'll say its about drawing a line, that it is about the bigger picture, but it's not. If these people really cared about the big picture, the so-called class war, they'd be sleeping in Washington or New York, not Madison.

So the pleasure comes from welcoming the protesters back into the fold. Welcoming them back into the larger 99% of the country that's getting raped and pillaged and hasn't figured out yet how to respond. We in the 99% don't go rampaging around state capitals demanding guaranteed paychecks. We wait and we ponder and try not to steal from one another in the meantime. Our time will come, but by then we won't need orange t-shirts and fancy posters. That's not how we in the 99% like to role anyway.

War for All Time

"I am talking about genuine peace... not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."
- Kennedy, 1963

"We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth. We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes."
- Obama, 2009

How sad to have the later man in office. How sad we haven't had a real peace president in the last 46 years. How sad to see the Nobel Peace Prize go to a man who's too weak to defy the war machine.