Alembic has just built a prototype run of active guitar cables. 'Looks impressive.

I published my version of the active cable here over eight years ago:

Don Tillman: FET Preamp Cable

I still use this a lot today, and I still think it'd make a great product. I don't know what specific technology Alembic is using for theirs, but it's very cool to see this and I'm sure they did a great job.

The Alembic cable looks even more like my very original prototype Preamp Cable... Lessee, I have it around here somewhere...

Okay, 'found it. Here's a picture of my original prototype, built, oh I dunno, around 1994 or thereabouts.

The guts of the FET Preamp are inside the plug on the right. It's phantom powered. The little aluminum box contains a 9V battery, and the phantom power circuit. There's a power switch on the side. The output goes to that phone plug epoxied in place, so you can just hang this off a guitar amp input jack. The jack on the side is a second parallel output for a tuner.

(It turns out that this particular package wasn't very good as some guitar amps don't have the physical space for a box dangling off the input jack. I was using this with a Fender Twin Reverb at the time, and that's got a sloping panel. My current Mesa/Boogie Lonestar Special wouldn't work with this at all. And the extra connection to the tuner is sloppy at best. So I dropped this packaging scheme early on and went with the "MXR Box" style approach.)

Note that this is not the same as the Winter Solstice, December 21st, the shortest day of the year, because the oribt of the earth is not circular, it's elliptical, and the earth moves a little faster during the time when it is closer to the sun than when it is further away. Check these out:

Wikipedia: Analemma

Analemma dot com

Sunrise Sunset dot com

Douglas Dodds: Analemma, My Analemma

Wikipedia: Kepler's laws of planetary motion

And in celebration of Analemma Day, and of Johannes Kepler, I got my kids a Kepler Elliptical Orbit Pizza:

The cool thing about a Kepler Elliptical Orbit Pizza is that all the slices are guaranteed to have the same area. (Ba-da-bing.)

Excellent.

With socialized medicine in the news these days, I'd like to draw your attention to these articles which present some important reasons why it's a bad thing. The authors all accomplished individuals with significant experience in and around the fields of medicine and health care.

Dr. Scott Atlas:
10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care

A fascinating, concise, well written and well referenced article explaining why American health care doesn't actually suck like the Obama administration claims it does. Dr. Atlas is a Professor of Radiology at Stanford University Medical Center, and the author of over 100 scientific papers.

Popular Mechanics:
Inventor Dean Kamen Says Healthcare Debate "Backward Looking"

Dean Kamen is the inventor of the Segway, and the guy personally responsible for an awful lot of medical innovations.

Charles Krauthammer:
Health Care Reform: A Better Plan

Dr. Charles Krauthammer's take on health care is simplified down to two points.

John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,
Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit

John Mackey, the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, offers some, uh, tasty and nourishing ideas.

"Read it all", as they say. These are exceptionally well thought out articles.

There are a lot of recent articles about the "success" of the Cash for Clunkers program, as indicated by the number of applicants and the money being dispersed. But the goal of the program was not to disperse money, but rather to reduce pollution. (Remember? Saving the Earth?) We've seen absolutely no evidence of that. So no, it's not successful.

In the New York Times, Aug 7, 2009, Mathew L. Wald's article Doing the Clunker Calculus, seriously questions the success of the Cash for Clunkers program:

In the Associated Press, Seth Borenstein writes in Cash for Clunkers Effect on Pollution? A Blip how the potential environmental advantages of the Cash for Clunkers program are negligible:

For CNN, August 7, 2009, Peter Valdes-Dapena's article Trucks Win in Cash for Clunkers Game describes how the government's "arcane measurement method" makes the results of the Cash for Clunkers program look better than it actually is:

Of course the New York Times, the Associated Press and CNN are all heavily biased toward Obama, so it's especially surprising that they would let this out.

Always looking for the silver lining, in the Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2009, Kevin Helliker writes The Killer App for Clunkers Breathes Fresh Life Into 'Liquid Glass' and describes how sodium silicate, the chemical used to kill clunker engines, is selling like hotcakes.

More Orwellian Doublespeak

The proper title of the law is the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009. Now I understand how difficult it can be to make a clever acronym work out work ("CARS", get it?), but the words recycle and save in the title simply do not apply as absolutely nothing is being recycled or saved. It's exactly the opposite; good cars are being destroyed and rendered incapable of being recycled.

Before this legislation, the automobile was the most recycled consumer product in America -- it got repaired when it broke, it got replacement parts when they wore out, it got sold to new owners, several times, and when it was finally junked as a vehicle, the old parts are used to repair other cars, and then the metal is melted down and reused. But this law is, in practice, an anti-recycling law. The car cannot be repaired, it cannot be resold, and the major components (engine, transmission, and related parts) are legally and physically kept from being recycled.

Isn't anybody just a little concerned when the title of a piece of legislation is the exact opposite of what it does?

Also, in a similarly crazy Orwellian twist, did you know that the Hummer H3 is on the Cash for Clunkers Eligible New Cars List? I'm not kidding.

And as I mentioned previously, real clunkers, cars manufactured before 1984 are not accepted in the program, while recently manufactured cars are.

This is really sad.

One is that it's easily scammed. Sell your old car, buy a Prius, get $4500, sell the Prius on CraigsList for $1000.00 off list, buy an Escalade for, effectively, $3500.00 off.

Secondly, through some weirdness in the mileage ratings, cars older than 1984 vintage are not actually included in the program. That's right, in typical Orwellian Obama doublespeak, real clunkers are not clunkers, but late model cars are. I was especially disheartened to learn that my very own 2000 Audi A6 Avant is officially considered a "clunker" by the Obama administration.

Third, the program rewards as little as a 1 or 2 mpg improvement in mileage. Given manufacturing variations and individual driving style variations, that is deep in the noise.

Fourth, part of the program involves actually destroying the target vehicle. Yes, that's right, destroying the vehicle. The process is very specific: replace the oil with sodium silicate (aka liquid glass) and run the engine until it overheats and seizes up. Here is how it's done on a late model Volvo S80 in great condition:

YouTube: Volvo Cash for Clunkers Engine Disabling

Unbelievable that a stunningly beautiful work of engineering is destroyed for no reason whatsoever. I mean, you can't help but compare this to burning books, smashing rock'n'roll records, or the Taliban dynamiting the Buddha statues. Does anybody think for a moment this is a good thing?

Here's more:

YouTube: Cash for Clunkers: How to destroy an engine

YouTube: Cash for Clunker Engine Stop, Lynch GM Superstore

Just a reminder: Cash for Clunkers Requires Destroying Perfectly Usable Cars

For some more details, check this out:

Jalopnik's Guild To The Cash For Clunkers Bill

The original idea seems to have come from an article by economist Alan S. Blinder in the New York Times, July 27, 2008, called "A Modest Proposal: Eco-Friendly Stimulus". In it he claims that the program "holds the promise of performing a remarkable public policy trifecta -- stimulating the economy, improving the environment and reducing income inequality all at the same time".

I'm calling bullshit on economist Blinder. Yeah, I know he's got credentials up the yingyang, but this is ridiculous.

First off, the MPG rating on a car has far less environmental impact than how the owner uses the car. A driver employing a high mileage car for a lengthy daily commute will contribute far more pollutants than the driver occasionally hopping around town, even they're using a Hummer. The type of driving, smooth vs. stop-and-go, also has more of an impact. As does the driver's personal habits and the route chosen.

Secondly, the "reducing income inequality" claim (we all know that's code for socialism, but glossing over that for a moment...) is simply untrue. Lower income people, if they own a car at all, generally can't afford a new car, even with a rebate. Also, let's face it, because of a little thing called supply and demand (Could someone explain this to Dr. Blinder?) the retail price of new high mileage cars will likely increase following their demand, making lower mileage cars more affordable to first time buyers.

Thirdly, the stimulation will mostly boost the economy of Toyota and Honda, and not GM, Ford or Chrysler. (I forget, are they still made in this country?)

While I don't have Dr. Blinder's credentials, my own proposal A Modest Proposal to Improve the National Energy Policy is far superior, as it will seriously reduce gasoline pollutants, it costs nothing, and it doesn't involving trashing perfectly good Volvos.

[later addition:]

CNN reports some intersting things here [August 4, 2009, As Buyers Pull Up, 'Clunkers' Program Goes Into Overdrive]:

Got that? "Parked for ages" means that the clunkers were not polluting at all. So in these cases, the Cash for Clunkers program actually increases pollution. I hadn't considered that situation before.

And...

Which runs exactly counter to Dr. Blinder's "income inequality" claim.

Bill Bruford / Ralph Towner
If Summer Had Its Ghosts

Chase
Chase / Ennea / Pure Music

Larry Coryell
Lady Coryell

Jerry Goodman and Jan Hammer
Like Children

Phil Ochs
All the News that's Fit to Sing

By the way, I like CD Universe a lot. They have a very good selection, great prices, and if you check out the top selling listings, their customers seem to have pretty good taste in music.

Facebook: I finally joined Facebook. So now I get to say, "I am so adding you to my friends".

Facebook Fun: And to celebrate, here is Facebook, the Electric Friendship Generator, an educational film about Facebook etiquette.

Scary Food: My boys are very picky eaters so I'm always open to new foods they might like. This brand new recipe might be the answer: Here on BoingBoing, and here, here and here on Livejournal. Mmmm, good. I'm definitely going to make some for the guys.

Business: Hey, my company is hiring. The company is Riverbed Technology, we make these appliances that speed up wide area network communication by about an order of magnitude (!!!), and we've been successful even in a hurting economy. (I'll claim it's a mostly Obama-proof business.) The headquarters is in San Francisco, and I'm usually in the Sunnyvale office. We're looking for excellent software engineers of various specialties, and my own group is looking for folks with serious web-based UI expertise (XHTML, AJAX, JavaScript, Python). So get in touch if I've worked with you before.

Electronic Music: It's the Banjo Synth! Make Magazine Online: The Banjo Synthesizer, with more details at Electronic Peasant: Banjo Pitch to Voltage Converter.

The Onion: One of the funniest things I've seen recently is this report: Prague's Franz Kafka International Airport ranks last on customer satisfaction survey. God bless The Onion.

Local Flavor: Here's a New York Times article about Silicon Valley called Searching for Silicon Valley which is remarkable in several ways. First off, as far as I know it's accurate (ba-da bing!). It's a nice overview of Silicon Valley. And for restaurants, it mentions the upscale Evvia in P'Alto in the same sentence as the hole-in-the-wall La Costeñia, which is a tiny taqueria in a back room of a wreck of a mostly empty Mexican grocery in Mountain view. The ceiling tiles maybe be peeling off (yick), but they do make unbelievably tasty burritos.

YouTube Auto-Tune the News #1 and Auto-Tune the News #2 are very funny.

The Zappa Drummers Roundtable, Parts 1 through 7

Enjoy. (There's also an impressive drum jam at the end.)

Music Machinery: In Search of the Click Track

Just finished reading Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies. 'Highly recommended.

Renowned economist Thomas Sowell spends a chapter on each topic — urban, gender, academia, income, race, and the third world. And for each of these areas, he rips apart some commonly held beliefs with real world data. The book includes 24 pages of references, so it's not just handwaving.

The obvious question that comes up is: Why are we so freaking gullible? These are important issues of the current day, and the existence of so many commonly held beliefs that are demonstrably wrong is downright frightening.

I believe there's a natural human tendency for people to accept an explanation for things, regardless of whether the explanation is correct or not. And that's for completely Darwinian survival of the species reasons. When there are a ton of data points out there, some of the data readily available, some of it not, some of it requiring massaging, some of it requiring filtering, some of it relevant, irrelevant, accurate, inaccurate, or in between, it's simply not possible for the human mind to take it all in and analyze it in a useful objective way so as to make a time critical decisions, especially while other things are going on. So we rely on abstraction; we accept an overall explanation for the data points, and make our daily assumptions and decisions based on that explanation.

What if the accepted explanation is wrong? Then eventually enough evidence contrary to the assumption accumulates to convince the mind that it's time to dismantle the explanation and replace it with another. Or perhaps convince the mind that there is no explanation yet, and we just don't know.

Of course the cognitive act of relying on an accepted explanation, bogus though it may be, for day to day decisions will have a natural tendency to filter out contradictory data as part of its regular operation. Which means a larger than expected number of contradictory experiences are required to reverse an accepted explanation. And if the available experiences are filtered by the media, political propaganda or the word on the street, than the bogus explanation could live on permanently.

I think it's sad that the current American educational system, and with it American popular culture, seem to have lost the ability for any sort of critical thinking, accepting dogma without much evidence of confirmation. When we're told something in school, through television, books, or newspapers, do we really just accept it without demanding some degree of proof? Apparently so.

I say "American" above, but I don't mean that literally as the problem is universal. I hold America up to a higher standard and I'm more familiar with America than the rest of the world. Of course the people of each nation have naturally adopted different filters for their media input and their schooling input depending upon how much they believe the media and educational system are managed by the government, by a particular political party, or in other was untrustworthy. Or by how much their cultural value critical thinking.

America does, however, have Dr. Sowell. (Ha, I'll bet you thought I'd never get back to the original topic!) And books like this that debunk the accepted dogma are important.

Economic Facts and Fallacies at Basic Books
Economic Facts and Fallacies at Amazon
Thomas Sowell's web site

Man, oh man...

Oh and I see that Wedge has a new blog too: Memory Select: Avant-jazz radio. Excellent.

Oh wow, look at this... "Mellodrama", a documentary film about the Mellotron by Dianna Dilworth.

Mellodrama Trailer on YouTube
Mellodrama Article on BoingBoing
Mellodrama Mellotron Movie web site
Interview with Filmmaker Dianna Dilworth
Don's Mellotron Resources

Apparently the premiere screening is at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montanna on Monday February 16.