User:Traal

My name is Traal, after that other Traal. I've had this handle since roughly 1990 on Phoenix-area Galacticomm BBSes.

People I Admire

 * John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods
 * Lieutenant Commander Ernest E. Evans who, on October 25, 1944, charged a vastly superior Japanese battlegroup intent on disrupting the beach landings at Leyte.
 * Stanislav Petrov, who literally saved the world from mutual assured destruction on September 26, 1983.

Userboxes I've Created
Feel free to add the following userbox to your own user page:

Originally it was the global userbox user ix-hrung, but it got deleted 10 minutes after I created it because nobody was using it at the time except me. (Go figure.) Once enough people are using it, the global one can be reinstated.

Arizona
Arizona is famous for:
 * The Grand Canyon is in northern Arizona.
 * The Hoover Dam is on the Arizona-Nevada border.
 * Tombstone
 * Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.
 * Meteor Crater is near Winslow, east of Flagstaff
 * The AH-64 Apache attack helicopter is built in Mesa's Boeing plant next to Falcon Field.
 * The Navajo Nation, the largest Native American tribe in North America and famous for the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII is mostly in Arizona.
 * Joe Arpaio is sheriff of Maricopa County.
 * Thunderbird - The Garvin School of International Management
 * Phoenix is headquarters of:
 * Apollo Group, Inc., the parent company of the University of Phoenix, the nation's largest private university.
 * Best Western
 * PetSmart
 * U-Haul
 * more...
 * Scottsdale is headquarters of:
 * Alcor Life Extension Foundation
 * Cold Stone Creamery
 * Dial corp.
 * Go Daddy
 * P.F. Chang's
 * Taser International
 * Tempe is headquarters of:
 * First Solar
 * US Airways
 * Arizona's largest employers are Wal-Mart, Honeywell, Banner Health, Raytheon, Intel, Albertsons, Bashas, Wells Fargo, Kroger, and Target.
 * Arizona's chief exports are cotton, citrus, beef, copper, and high-tech. And snowbirds in the spring.
 * Prescott is the birthplace of Jay Miner, father of the Amiga.

Semiconductor fabs and R&D locations in Arizona
 * Freescale (Chandler, Phoenix, Tempe)
 * Intel (Chandler)
 * Marvell Technology Group (Chandler)
 * Microchip Technology (Chandler, Tempe)
 * Motorola (Chandler, Tempe)

Other things I like about Arizona
 * The weather (in the fall, winter, and spring)
 * No riots. Just demonstrations.

Arizona is infamous for:
 * The heat (in the summer)
 * The illegal immigration controversy
 * Hit-and-runs (see the map here)
 * Road rage
 * Really bad public transportation
 * Poor standardized test scores
 * Urban sprawl (almost as bad as Los Angeles) and the urban heat island effect
 * Phoenix's brown cloud, a layer of pollution containing smog and dust, which frequently violates EPA air pollution standards
 * Tap water. Phoenix came in dead last in Men's Health Magazine's March 2007 ratings of the water in 100 cities . I can't stand the taste, so I drink only RO or bottled water as even carbon filtering isn't good enough. And the tap water is cold in the winter and warm in the summer.
 * High incidence of auto thefts.
 * Expensive commutes.
 * Pedestrian fatalities.
 * Bicycle fatalities (#9 in the nation for bicyclist fatalities per 1 million of population according to NHTSA)
 * Lack of after dark activities (#23 out of 25 cities in the USA), culture (#24), food/dining (#24), and interesting people (#24), according to Travel+Lesure Magazine's America's Favorite Cities 2007.
 * Unwalkability. Phoenix ranks #26 out of 30 metropolitan areas in walkability.
 * Kidnappings.
 * Lack of traffic safety laws

Things to do in Phoenix
 * Bondurant Racing School, with 1-day events available at Phoenix International Raceway and Firebird International Raceway, starting at $250
 * Fighter Combat AZ - do a mock dogfight in a real plane against a friend
 * Warbird Rides Arizona Wing CAF - ride in a B-17, for $425
 * A number of companies offer balloon rides in the Phoenix area
 * Waterworld Safari (formerly Waterworld, USA) in Phoenix, Big Surf in Tempe, and Golfland SunSplash in Mesa
 * McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale
 * Hike up one of the Phoenix Mountains (Camelback/Piestewa Peak/North Mountain/Shaw Butte), Peralta Trail in the Superstition Mountains (for a view of Weaver's Needle), South Mountain, or Pinnacle Peak

Likes

 * Diversity
 * Walkability (in some areas)
 * The weather (for the most part)

Neutral

 * The high cost of gas (good for hybrids and alternate forms of transportation)

Dislikes

 * Crime (in some neighborhoods such as City Heights, Clairemont Mesa)
 * Cost of housing (especially buying instead of renting, especially Mello-Roos) in proportion to income
 * Freeway congestion (especially the I-5)
 * Bad schools (allegedly, in some areas)
 * Political corruption
 * All the potholes
 * May Gray and June Gloom
 * Poor support for bicycling according to The League of American Bicyclists
 * "San Diego ranks third in the nation in the percentage of traffic fatalities that are pedestrians (22.5%). The region is also among the highest in the state in the percentage of pedestrian crashes (20%) involving hit-and-run drivers."
 * Scary public transportation: "I took the orange line from El Cajon to downtown one day and it was the most terrifying, disgusting experience of my life. It was full of drunk homeless people urinating on themselves & unemployed thugs arranging drug deals by phone. Never again."
 * Unsynchronized traffic lights
 * Urban sprawl in Mission Valley and northwards
 * Poor traffic signage: missing freeway exit numbers, signs approaching freeway onramps don't indicate compass directions or the lane you need to be in in order to get onto the freeway in that direction
 * Not a global city

Yearly Events

 * Tour of California (February)
 * U.S. Open (golf) (June)
 * Comic-Con International (late July)
 * Coronado Speed Festival (late September)
 * Miramar Airshow (early October)
 * World Invitational Joust

How to Choose a Country to which to Immigrate

 * If quality of life is important, check the List of countries by Human Development Index
 * If freedom is important, you might check the Index of Economic Freedom
 * If income equality is important, check the List of countries by income equality
 * If minimizing your impact on the environment is important, pick a country on the List of Kyoto Protocol signatories
 * To avoid violent crime, check the List of countries by murder rate
 * Meanwhile, try to pick a country that welcomes foreigners

Keyboard
These days, computer keyboards need the following additional keys/buttons:
 * Multiple select (on Windows, the CTRL key is used for multiple select; in MacOS, the apple/⌘ button is used)
 * Block select (because SHIFT isn't self-explanatory)
 * Copy (Windows is CTRL-C; MacOS is ⌘-C)
 * Paste (Windows is CTRL-P; MacOS is ⌘-P)
 * (optional) Cut (Windows is CTRL-X; MacOS is ⌘-X)
 * Degree sign (°)
 * Sleep
 * Lock workstation (Windows-L)
 * Minimize current window
 * Go to next/previous window (Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab)
 * Go to the next/previous field in a form (to replace Tab/Shift Tab)
 * Left and right double and single quotes
 * Something to make entering latin characters easy
 * Several reprogrammable buttons for things like the euro symbol
 * Mdash (—)

Some keys can be removed:
 * Only one of ENTER or RETURN are needed
 * Pipe (|) - this can be moved to one of the reprogrammable keys
 * Carot (^) - who uses this, other than programmers?
 * Curly braces ({ and })
 * Scroll lock
 * SysRq
 * Prnt Scrn

My Politics
I advocate:


 * States' rights (move more power from the federal government back to the individual states)


 * Self-sufficiency of the states: end Federal money to the states.


 * Separation of corporation and state. Modify the concept of corporate personhood.


 * Consensus over compromise


 * Currency reform:
 * Eliminate the penny and nickel
 * Replace the quarter with a 20¢ coin
 * Round all transactions to the nearest 10¢ ($0.1)
 * Eliminate the dollar bill
 * Make the half dollar coin smaller
 * Replace the $2 bill with a coin
 * Make the rest of the paper money easy for the blind to distinguish


 * Government finance reform:
 * Make fees collected by the government proportional to the cost to the government.
 * Eliminate subsidies in favor of user pays.
 * Make tariffs on an item proportional to how many of that item are imported into the country as a ratio of the total number consumed, and make tariffs adjust themselves periodically, automatically.
 * Eliminate protectionistic policies, except where absolutely necessary.
 * Eliminate the "throwing money at the problem" style of disaster relief (like the handling of Hurricane Katrina).
 * Eliminate financing of local projects. Help the states plan and finance interstate roads themselves.


 * Immigration reform:
 * First, streamline the green card approval process.
 * Neither expel nor grant green cards to all current illegal immigrants. It would take too many resources to do either one. Require that all illegal aliens register with the INS, and either participate in a guest worker program, apply for a green card, or leave the country.
 * Illegal immigrant kids who have spent so much time in the U.S. that they have been culturally assimilated and would feel alien in their home countries should be granted citizenship or permanent residency.
 * Scale back the H-1B visa program. Instead, prioritize technology workers for green cards if we need to.


 * Welfare and social security reform:
 * Replace the minimum wage and H-2A Visa program with government-paid moving expenses, to encourage workforce mobility.
 * Stop giving away money to the poor and to disaster victims. Instead, provide life's necessities (housing, clothing, food, medical care, mailing address, telephone, internet access) directly in boarding school style housing. People under this program would pay a percentage of any money they make to the program.
 * Abolish the social security retirement benefits, but keep the disability benefits. People who haven't saved properly can move into the boarding school welfare program (see above).


 * Election reform:
 * Eliminate plurality election methods.
 * Provide receipts with unique, anonymous ballot IDs to each voter, and publish all ballot IDs along with the way the person voted. Then anyone would be able to verify that their ballot was counted, how it was counted, and even do a complete recount of all the returned ballots.
 * Replace manual districting with algorithmic districting.
 * À la carte propositions. Lumping provisions together into a single bill when they could be split out into separate bills (in other words, riders) restricts voter choice and is therefore anti-democratic.


 * Conservation:
 * Smart growth
 * Segregated cycle facilities like this one in NYC
 * Combatting light pollution
 * Complete streets


 * Education reform:
 * Screen kids better for things like autism, and sort kids into classes based on how they learn best. Teach these kids how to deal with their unique issues. Like they do for dyslexia.
 * Test kids for perfect pitch and other aptitudes.
 * Provide mandatory classes on topics like Robert Cialdini's Six Weapons of Influence (persuasive science?), the book How to Think About Weird Things (ISBN 007287953X), The 48 Laws of Power, thought reform, logical fallacies, critical thinking, and personal finance.
 * Pay teachers based on their performance (how much their students improve)
 * School uniforms


 * Legal reform:
 * Tort reform
 * Weaken the concept of ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse)
 * Day-fines


 * Labor reform:
 * Union-busting by turning employees into contractors (and not renewing contracts of bad employees). I I respect the right of people to form unions, but I also agree with right-to-work laws (people shouldn't be forced to join unions).
 * Replace right-to-work laws with busting of worker monopolies.


 * Lifetime postal mailing addresses.


 * Energy policy reform:
 * Energy independence
 * Eliminate the 54¢/gallon ethanol tariff on Brazilian ethanol
 * Eliminate subsidies on automobile transportation


 * Switch the United States to the metric system


 * English spelling reform


 * Adopt European data privacy laws in the U.S.


 * Right to Dry


 * Bank-style queues instead of supermarket-style queues


 * Rather than restricting supply of something "bad", encourage demand for the "good" alternative. For example, fuel economy standards restrict supplies of gas-guzzlers (bad), while a carbon tax would encourage demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles (good).


 * Toll roads (with tolls proportional to income) instead of freeways


 * Market-rate parking. Read The High Cost of Free Parking


 * Public safety service reform.


 * Finland-style salary-based day fines


 * Prevent caller ID spoofing by making telephone companies verify that caller ID on outgoing calls matches the owner of the telephone line.


 * Rather than abolishing payday loan stores, cities should provide free household finance classes, and perhaps make attendance a prerequisite for taking out payday loans.


 * Federal relocation assistance for poor people who wish to move somewhere else.


 * Governments should save like crazy during booms, and wait for recessions before starting expensive projects. Warren Buffett said, "...be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."


 * Food security


 * Pigovian taxes:
 * Raise taxes on anything a state is a net importer of (e.g. energy)


 * The weight-mile tax, so that truckers pay for the road wear they cause. (It's a well-known fact that a truck does 9,600 times as much damage to the roads than a car, but do you think they pay 9,600 times as much in taxes?) Then the rest of us won't have to pay so much in taxes to fix the roads, saving us money (savings #1). Faced with higher costs to ship by road, companies will move more freight by rail to save money, and those savings will also get passed on to the consumer (savings #2). Moving more freight by rail will also reduce traffic congestion, saving us money on gas (savings #3) and freeway widening (savings #4). Subsidies to the trucking industry distort the market for freight transportation, preventing the market from efficiently allocating resources.


 * Neither the electric company nor the cable company should be allowed to own the wires. Both should have to compete for your business.


 * Driver licensing reform
 * A required test for road rage in order to get a driver license.
 * A new driver license class for SUVs

List of new zip codes
Based on postal bulletins. Type in "establish a new zip" (with the quotes) and select the years you want.

Favorite Software Development Topics

 * Design By Contract
 * Open/closed principle
 * Self-documenting code
 * Fail-fast

Web Form Test
HTML Test for any web form that supposedly allows plaintext. If you copy and paste the following text into a web form, it should come back out looking exactly as it did going in:

Ampersand (and entity reference open delimiter): [&] Escaped ampersand: [&amp;amp;] Angle brackets (tag delimiters in HTML): [< >] Escaped angle brackets: [&amp;lt; &amp;gt;] Script tag: [ ] Custom XML tag: [ ]

Note that Wikipedia is buggy in this regard (see ). Notice how for example the ampersand and escaped ampersand are rendered the same:

Ampersand (and entity reference open delimiter): [&] Escaped ampersand: [&amp;] Angle brackets (tag delimiters in HTML): [< >] Escaped angle brackets: [&lt; &gt;] Script tag: [ ] Custom XML tag: [ ]

See for a Wikimedia bugzilla entry related to this.

Things I'm looking forward to

 * Video games
 * Little Big Planet (October 2008)
 * Automobiles
 * 2008
 * Aptera Motors Typ-1e (electric) and Typ-1h (plug-in hybrid) (late 2008)
 * 2009
 * Toyota's 3rd generation Hybrid Synergy Drive and the 2010 Toyota Prius (1Q 2009)
 * Miles Automotive Group XS500 (2009)
 * Think Nordic TH!NK city (2009)
 * Honda Insight (2009 for the 2010 model year)
 * ZENN cityZENN EV (fall 2009)
 * 2010
 * Honda Civic iCDTi (in the USA perhaps by 2010)
 * VentureOne (early 2010)
 * MDI MiniCAT air car (early 2010, via ZPM)
 * Subaru Impreza diesel (mid 2010)
 * Ford Fiesta (2010)
 * Acura TSX diesel (2010)
 * Loremo (2010)
 * Mitsubishi MiEV (2010)
 * Nissan Maxima diesel (2010)
 * GM Volt (late 2010 or early 2011)
 * Lithium-ion Toyota Prius wagon (late 2010 or early 2011)
 * Future/Undetermined
 * Fiat Nuova 500 (after 2010)
 * Commuter Cars Tango T100 (date TBD)
 * Piaggio HyS

Ways to get rid of non-recyclable plastic

 * Pseudomonas putida, a bacterium that converts polystyrene into biodegradable plastic
 * Thermal depolymerization and biomass to liquid to turn stuff into oil for fuel

Fixed and incremental costs of car ownership

 * Fixed: loan servicing, insurance, parking, registration, the opportunity cost
 * Incremental: depreciation, gas, maintenance, parking
 * Other: parking tickets, moving violations, the cost to one's health of a sedentary lifestyle, environmental damage, the cost to our health of the air pollution caused by driving, the urban heat island effect, pro-automobile legislation such as minimum parking requirements

Reasons to index the gas tax to inflation

 * It isn't a raise any more than a cost of living adjustment is a raise.
 * While it will raise retail prices, it will lower the need to raise other taxes, so in the end it's a wash.
 * The gas tax is less regressive than sales taxes, because people too poor to own a car don't have to pay gas taxes, but everyone has to pay sales taxes.
 * An artificially low gas tax distorts the market for transportation.
 * Because of Peak Oil, the sooner we rid ourselves of our oil addiction, the sooner we can rebuild our cities around more efficient ways of getting around.

Suggestions for City Budgets

 * City income tax for top wage earners.

Market-Rate Parking
Parking is poorly managed. A parking lot that's completely full is a sign that the rate is too low. The city loses money not only from the parking revenue, but people who have trouble finding parking may just give up and shop somewhere else.

A parking lot that's empty is a sign that the rate is too high, and again the city loses money on parking revenue.

A parking lot with efficiently priced (market rate) parking that still doesn't take in enough revenue to pay for maintenance and amortization is a sign that there's too much available parking.

A parking lot not at 85% utilization is one that's losing money. Taxpayers deserve a good return on their investment.

Fire Services
In 2007, only 6% of emergency calls to fire departments nationwide were actual fires. Rapid-response SUVs are able to arrive at alarm scenes more quickly than fire engines and cost less than 1/3 to operate ($292,676 per year versus $936,104).

Difficult to Pronounce Names

 * Siobhan (shi-VAWN)
 * Joachim

=HSR=

The Four Stages of HSR Profitability

 * 1) Requires operating subsidies (no HSR systems currently)
 * 2) Operating at a profit, but falling behind on the construction loan (Taiwan)
 * 3) Making progress at paying off the construction loan (most HSR systems)
 * 4) Paid off the construction loan (Japan, France)

Price Estimate History

 * $45 billion (2006$) - all 800 miles
 * $33 billion (2008$) - San Francisco to Anaheim
 * $35.7 billion (2009$) or $42.6 billion (YOE$) - San Francisco to Anaheim
 * $65.4~74.5 billion (2010$) or $98.5 billion (YOE$) - San Francisco to Anaheim
 * $53.4 billion (2011$) or $68.4 billion (YOE$) - Phase 1 Blended
 * (2012) $91.4 billion (YOE$) - full Phase 1

=Parking= If a surface parking space costs its owner $68 per month, then a high school with 900 parking spaces pays over $700,000 per year for all that parking. How many teachers could a school afford to retain for $700k per year?

=Suggested Law Changes=
 * Prohibit right turn on red with a red right arrow when the pedestrian Walk or flashing Don't Walk phase is active. At other times, right turn on red is permitted (red ball or flashing red right arrow).
 * Make traffic fines proportional to the kinetic energy at the time of the infraction/collision.
 * Prohibit passing at another vehicle at a difference in speed greater than 3 mph for every foot of separation. With 6 feet wide cars in 10 feet wide lanes (so the difference between cars is 4 feet), the difference in speed could therefore be no greater than: $$4 \text{ feet} \times \frac{3 \text{ mph}}{1 \text{ foot}} = 12 \text{ mph}$$
 * Change FRAP law to "...as practicable and safe" like in Maryland.
 * Prohibit motorists from entering a crosswalk when a pedestrian signals that he/she is about to enter the crosswalk. Prohibit motorists from passing a bicyclist when the bicyclist signals that he/she is about to enter the adjacent lane.
 * Require a license to operate a bicycle above 10 mph.

=References=