Quick Hitts

My disdain for Consumer Reports started in the late 70’s, when I was an audio salesman. They frequently gave lousy products a “Best Buy” rating.

Back then audio was getting better on an almost daily basis.  All receivers and amplifiers had Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) down to a fraction of a percent.  It was amusing to hear people insist they could hear the difference between .05% THD and .03% THD.  It was like claiming, “Most people can’t read the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes from 200 yards away, but I can.”

With the exception of some very high-end equipment attached to high-end speakers, the difference between receivers was inaudible.  There was one notable exception – the Pioneer SX series.  The most popular model was the SX-780.  The phono preamp (which was used to power an ancient artifact called “the turntable”) was as hissy as a nest of angry vipers, and the FM reception sucked.  Virtually any other receiver in its price range was superior, and it didn’t require a trained ear to hear the difference.  Consumer Reports gave it a Best Buy rating.

The most variable component in an audio system has always been the speakers.  These days even inexpensive speakers can sound impressive, but back then there was a huge variation in sound.  Customers who had grown up listening to crappy speakers were often most impressed with “tinkle boomers,” speakers specifically designed to impress inexperienced listeners with a shrill high-end and a thumpy bass.  Better quality, smoother-sounding speakers provided a more realistic sound and a much better listening experience, and it took some time to explain and demonstrate the difference to customers.

CR’s speaker ratings were all over the place.  They’d give equally high marks to tinkle boomers and great-sounding speakers.  It was as if they’d thrown the model names into a hat and plucked them out at random.

Many customers would come into the store carrying their beloved Consumer Reports and insisting on buying based on their ratings.  At first, I’d try to steer them away from crappy recommendations, but I learned my lesson quickly.  People would get upset, sometimes outright angry, when you dared to contradict CR.  One customer angrily waved a rolled-up copy of CR in my face and yelled, “These people have never lied to me!”  From that point on, when someone came in carrying a CR I just sold them whatever crap they recommended and moved on to the next customer.

My next gig was selling computers, and CR continued its fine record of recommending garbage.  The Leading Edge Model D got their best buy rating, despite the fact that after two or three hours of use it would overheat and lock up.  I seem to recall them also giving a high rating to Coleco’s horrible Adam, but I can’t confirm that.

As the years went by I continued to be amused by their mistakes and stupidity.  I remember a test of primers, where they painted samples and then tested them raw, without any paint on them.  It should be obvious that’s not the way primers are designed to work.  They rated a car unacceptable because if they were driving at high speeds and tried to make an abrupt turn, jamming the steering wheel in an instant, it didn’t perform well.  Because, yeah, we all try to make 90-degree turns at 60 MPH.  Milwaukee’s Best was at the top of their list as the best-tasting beer.  And their over-the-top attempts to tip over a Suzuki Samurai were appalling.

About ten years ago I was a computer tech for a large R&D center.  The company’s products include home appliances.  I was fixing a computer in an engineer’s office during a meeting.  They were trying to decide if they should degrade the quality of their refrigerators to get a better rating from CR.

Engineers have been tweaking and honing the performance of home appliances for decades, so there isn’t much room for improvement.  The performance of refrigerators or freezers varies according to the temperature of the outside environment.  Obviously, higher temperatures require more energy.  More importantly, a box designed to work best in a 68-75 degree range isn’t going to perform as well in 90 degrees. That would require a box designed to work in the hotter environment.

CR was testing in a 90-degree room, and the company’s refrigerators weren’t performing well because they were designed to be most efficient at normal room temperatures.  The engineers were discussing the merits of redesigning their refrigerators to work best at 90 degrees, degrading their performance in more realistic temperatures, to get a better Consumer Reports rating. There was some speculation that competitors who had earned better ratings were doing just that.  The meeting adjourned without them reaching a decision.

So not only was CR giving bad advice because of their crappy testing procedures, they were contributing to devices being downgraded to win their approval.

A few days ago I was visiting relatives, and my mother-in-law was going through her mail.  She handed me the latest issue of Consumer Reports, saying, “I know you don’t like these guys, but they have GPS’ in this issue.” (I’ve mentioned getting one.)

They also reviewed freezers.  Remembering the engineering meeting, I turned there first, and in the second paragraph they explained their testing procedures.

They tested them in a 90-degree room.

Minnesota is really going overboard with their smoking restrictions.

H/T to the always entertaining Fail Blog.

It’s difficult for the human brain to comprehend the extreme distances in astronomy.  Can you really envision a light year?  How about the difference between a hundred light years and fifty parsecs?

This video, by George Hrab, should help clarify things, and make it easier for you to understand astronomical distances.

A couple of weeks ago I noted a new tactic from Obamacare fans: writing off the arguments against it, and the people making those arguments, as stupid.  The Sunday Times Union, known to locals as the Times Useless, featured an article berating questions about socialized medicine (of course he didn’t call it that) as dumb and trivial.  They need to be brushed aside, he said, to concentrate on getting this implemented.   When you know you’re right you there’s no need for robust debate with foolish people who disagree.

But more recently I’ve seen the race card played.  I’m surprised it’s taken this long.  If you’re ever doing well in a debate with a far lefty there’s an 82% chance that they’ll find a way to call you a racist.  (They also have a tendency, far more than right-wingers for some reason, to put words in your mouth and then condemn you for something you never said.)  Once they convince themselves that you’re a racist they can write you off as a worthless human being, which lets them avoid straining their little brains trying to address the points you’ve made.

One of the earliest examples of this was Janeane Garofalo on Keith Obermann’s show.

Although asking Janeane to say something intelligent is like asking a Rock Band fan to play a Vinne Moore tune on a real Stratocaster,  this is an excellent example of how the far left thinks.  She lumps everyone who disagrees with her into one big clump, declares the clump racist, then launches into some pseudo-science babble about limbic brains.  It is impossible to overestimate her smugness and self righteousness.  And her attitude and beliefs are all too typical on the far left. (BTW, if she were in possession of a clue she’d know that Tea Parties started during the Bush administration.  It’s hard to get much whiter than Bush.)

I’ve heard several TV commentators, while discussing Obamacare, say “America isn’t ready for a black president.”  I’ve seen it repeated in several forums.   The fact that we elected him highlights the stupidity of the statement, but more importantly, it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.  It’s just the left using their favorite tactic for shutting down the debate.

MSNBC took it even further, cropping a shot of a black man carrying a gun to hide his race, then going on a diatribe about racism.  Here’s their report:

Here’s the original clip:

Disgusting, isn’t it?

(By the way, it’s a semi-automatic, not a machine gun.  I remember the days when journalists tried to get their facts straight, before they were were replaced by reporters chosen for their cup size.)

We’re also being told that all the disruptions and protests at town halls are fake, orchestrated by right wing organizations.  They don’t reflect the sentiments of “real” Americans.  The Real Americans are the ones chanting for socialism, you see.

Yes, there is organization on the right, as there should be.  But the lefty supporters aren’t spontaneous grassroots citizens who just happen to show up either.  The next time you see an Obamacare rally, look at the signs.  Nearly all anti-Obamacare signs are handmade.  Most of the signs supporting it are professionally printed.  What does that tell you?

Planting supporters in meetings nothing new – both sides have always done it.  But it appears the left is doing far more planting this time around.  Congress weasel Shelia Jackson Lee (D) even planted a phony physician in one of her meetings.

Dr. Roxana Mayer claimed to be a pediatric primary care physician, and she sang the praises of Obamacare at one of Lee’s meetings.  Just one little problem – she wasn’t a doctor.  She was never a doctor.  She was an Obama campaign volunteer who played a doctor on TV.

And that Montana Town Hall that LM Obama presided over?  Read what people from the town had to say about what really happened.

But the bottom line, dear readers, is if you are opposed to Obamacare, you’re a racist.  And stupid.

Just like me.

Yet another installment in what has become the most commented on feature of Quick Hitts – a list of things done in the name of religion, from the asinine to the atrocious.

A new law in Afghanistan allows men to demand sex from their wives every four days, and to keep them indoors as long as they like.

Combining Islam and Nicotine Nannies can be deadly.  A Malaysian couple asked relatives for help.  He wanted to quit smoking and she wanted a cure for asthma and a liver disease.  Their four loving relatives smashed the couple’s head on a table and beat them with helmets and brooms.  Until they were dead.  When their 15 year old daughter stumbled on to the carnage they beat her almost to death as well.

In Pakistan Taliban militants are preventing the UN from administering the Polio vaccine to 300,000 children.  At last, someone the anti-vaxers can have a beer with.  Oh, wait. . .

Kentucky passed a law requiring all Homeland Security operations credit God with protecting them.  The law lists the office’s initial duty as “stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”  They’re also required to install a plaque that states  “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”

Turkey has banned Richard Dawkins’ website. Their “science” institute also banned a magazine cover story on Darwin.

In Papua New Guinea a woman was tied to a log and set on fire because she was a witch. She probably turned someone into a newt.

In Boulder Colorado Derik Bonestroo fired a gun into the ceiling of his workplace and told everyone if they weren’t a christian they were going to die.  He asked Brian Mahon if he were Christian.  Brian said he was catholic.  That was the wrong kind of christian, evidently, because Bonestroo shot him in the head.

The Rev. Joseph Illo, pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Modesto, California, sent out 15,000 letters to the members of his parish telling them if they voted for Obama they’d have to go to confession before receiving communion.

Pastor Rick Warren, who delivered Obama’s Inaugural Invocation, tells his parishioners that physical abuse is no excuse for divorce.

Headline: Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them.  Seems like a reasonable request.

In Saudi Arabia a 75 year old woman was caught with two men in her house.  One was a 24 year old man she had wet-nursed, so she considered him a son.  The other was delivering bread.  In accordance with the loving, peaceful religion of Islam she was sentenced to 100 lashes, four months in jail, and deportation.

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar rented a Jeep Cherokee and ran over students at an NC university.   He did it to avenge the death of Muslims world wide.  Evidently he missed Mosque the day they gave “how to run over people” lessons, because all his victims survived.  Because of his failure when he dies he’s only going to get the really ugly virgins.

In Pakistan Muslims opened fire on people who had gathered in a Christian church.

Now that Turkey has made honor killings illegal, Muslim women are being encouraged to commit suicide.  One girl reported her father requested she kill herself for the horrible sin of refusing an arranged marriage.

Roman Catholics are whining because they were offended by the time a Detroit Tigers game started.

In the Middle East the pope urged greater respect for woman.  Evidently the part of his brain that detects irony is malfunctioning.

Ayman Udas, a newly married woman who had the audacity to sing on television, was murdered by her Muslim brothers for the crime.

At Queen Mary University in London Muslim students have been physically preventing Hindu students from using a multi-faith center on campus.

A Saudi woman is demanding a divorce because her husband, after 30 years of marriage, peeked under her veil while she was sleeping.

About a year ago I signed up with Mozy, an off-site backup service.  For five bucks a month they back up your files on their servers, so you can restore them if you lose something.

The few times I’ve needed them it’s been a simple process.  I’d click “restore” on their software and it showed me all the files they had.  I’d pick the ones I wanted and get them back, a bit slowly, but it saved me a lot of time when I’d done something stupid, like overwrite a complex template.

This weekend I had a hard drive crash.  I bought a new hard drive and began the tedious process of rebuilding everything from scratch.

One of the first things I installed, of course, was the Mozy client.  But it doesn’t see my old files.  It just wants to back up new ones.  The only way I can get my old stuff is through a web interface.  I pick the files I want and it creates zip files of them which I can download.  It’s a tedious, clumsy, annoying and error prone process.

I have an external drive, but because of relying on Mozy hadn’t been very good with backing up to it.  The most recent stuff on it was about three months old.  I copied it back (using SyncBack, a very good, free program), but want to automatically replace more recent files sitting on Mozy’s servers.  I wrote to Mozy about my problem, and received a cut-and-paste reply from someone who obviously haddn’t read a word I had written.

I tried their online support chat, twice, but there was nobody there.  I gave it a half hour each time.  Evidently it’s just there as an adjunct to their “piss of the customer” program.

Yesterday I wrote their support again, with the subject “I’m Becoming An Extremely Unhappy Customer.”  I gave them a detailed account of what I needed to do, and what my problem was, and even included my home phone number to give them a chance to provide good customer service.  It’s now a day later and they haven’t bothered to respond.

I wonder if they use Google Alerts.  If they do, this might show up on their radar and spur them to action.

For now I’m grabbing my old files in bits and pieces and looking for a new backup service.  I’ve found dozens of them, with prices from the cheap to the ridiculous.  I’d really like to hear from you if you’ve had any experience, good or bad, with any of them.  Smartenize me.

Once again Big Brother is mucking around in the market, and once again the consequences are horrible.  Trade in your old gas guzzler for a new car and your Uncle will suck money out of your fellow tax payers’ pockets and stuff it in yours.

For cars a 4 MPG increase gets you the $3500 bonus, and 10MPG gets you the full $4500. If you buy a truck a 5 MPG increase gets you the full $4500 bonus.  A mere 2 MPG increase will get you $3500.

How does this suck?  Let me count the ways.

1) Buying a new car is stupid.  Nothing deprecates faster than a new car.

2) You wouldn’t visit your neighbor, stick a gun in his face, and say “I’m buying a new car.  Gimmie 4500 bucks.”  But if you take advantage of this offer you’re doing the same thing, just spreading it out across more neighbors and having the biggest bully in the world point the gun for you.

3) When you’re figuring out how much gas you’ll save with your shiny new car, be sure to figure in the energy cost of building it.  Making a new car takes the energy of about 1,000 gallons of gasoline, depending, of course, on the vehicle.  Hybrids take 1,600 gallons to build.  Do the math.  No matter how bad your gas mileage is now driving your old car for another year will do more to save the planet than replacing it.

4) Young people and poor people drive cheap cars because that’s all they can afford.  This program demands that the old cars be destroyed. The remaining older vehicles will go up in price, putting them beyond the reach of people who need a cheap car to get to a job so they can eventually afford a decent ride.  So you’re not only screwing the planet, you’re also screwing the poor.

5) Congress budgeted $1 billon for this program, but that’s already gone, so now they’re adding an additional $2 billon.  Republicans are pointing to this and saying “It’s three times the original cost.  So can you believe the Democrat’s health care numbers?”  This really pisses off the Democrats, because it’s a good point.

6) Now for the really scary part.  You won’t see this unless you fill out the online form to get your handout.  As part of the process you’ll get the terms and conditions screen, that leaglease that nobody reads before clicking the “I Accept” button.  It contains this paragraph:

This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the US Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personal, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. (Emphasis added)

That’s right folks, if you take part in this program you give Big Brother the right to read, copy, monitor and inspect every single thing on your computer, and do anything they damn well please with it.  Your financial records.  That spreadsheet where you keep your passwords.  Your once private love letters.  All your e-mail.  That clip from “The Whole Nine Yards” featuring a full frontal shot of Amanda Peet naked.  Your favorite porn.  Every MP3 file (are they all legal?).  You’re giving them carte blanche to everything everywhere in your computer, and permission to use it however they like.

And if that’s not enough to keep you from the program, you’re beyond smartenization, and too stupid to be reading this blog.

Update: It turns out the onerous language was on the dealer side, not the consumer side, so it was only the dealers agreeing to let the feds grab all their data.  Furthermore, due to pressure and bad publicity, it’s been reported that they’ve modified the language somewhat.  Thanks to John, who provided the details in the fourth comment to this article.