Jefflog

I’m checking out eMusic.com today and am so far enjoying what I see. $10 a month gets me 40 song downloads, all in the MP3 format with no DRM attached.

What’s the catch, you might ask? Aside from the downloads being 128Kbps MP3’s (which sound okay but definitely not as good as the original CD), all of the albums come from independent labels.  Don’t go looking for the big names here. Although you can find some famous musicians on the site, most of the albums are from smaller outfits. This doesn’t bother me, since I generally listen to stuff out of the mainstream anyway, and there seems to be enough there I enjoy. I’m listening to Echolyn’s The End is Beautiful right now and loving it.

Oh, and if you’re using Linux, you’re out of luck; you have to use a special downloader application that only runs on Mac and Windows. That’s a shame, although once you download your tracks, at least you can transfer them to your Linux desktop and listen to them now that the MP3 codec has been licensed for GStreamer.

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Update: I have learned that the MP3’s that you get aren’t 128Kbps, but have a variable bit rate that is typically between 160Kbps and 220Kbps. They are also encoded using the LAME encoder, which is generally considered to be the encoder with the best quality. As a result, the files do sound quite good.

I’m checking out a new Firefox extension for blogging created by Performancing.com that seems to be pretty sweet. The editor appears in the bottom half of the browser screen, allowing you to browse the web while editing, and the editor is much better than the web-based one in WordPress. Of course, it works with other weblog software as well. My initial impressions have me giving this extension a big thumbs up.

Happy Christmas Eve everybody. After putting Maggie to bed, Hong and I lit a fire in the fireplace, got us some bowls of gumbo, and had a quiet dinner on the couch listening to Christmas music on the radio. We capped it off with a reading of the Christmas story from Scripture. What a great way to spend the night before Christmas.

As for Christmas Day, we have no gifts for each other, nor do we have any gifts for Maggie. We’re not against Christmas gifts per se, but we already have most things we ever wanted, so why fight the traffic now? Maybe we’ll get something for each other next month. Our plans for Christmas include lunch at a Chinese restaurant, followed by quality family time.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

I’m used to seeing snow on the ground for weeks in January and February, but not as early as December. Where is global warming when you want it?

On the plus side, we bundled little Maggie up yesterday (“like a tick about to pop!”) and let her walk around in the snow. She loved it.

It seems like every time a sports team wants a new stadium, civic leaders bend over backwards to find millions of dollars to help pay for the stadium. Among other things, they frequently cite that the new stadium will pay for itself through increased economic activity. Our local leaders recently pushed through something similar to build a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts (even though the current building is only 22 years old and the typical lifespan of a stadium is 30 years.)

I always thought the “increased economic activity” line was a bunch of bull, because while it might bring some additional tourists to your city, it’s also taking dollars away when your residents travel to other cities with stadiums to see the team play away. Today I found a paper that confirms my suspicions. From the abstract:

Local political and community leaders and the owners of professional sports teams frequently claim that professional sports facilities and franchises are important engines of economic development in urban areas. These structures and teams allegedly contribute millions of dollars of net new spending annually and create hundreds of new jobs, and provide justification for hundreds of millions of dollars of public subsidies for the construction of many new professional sports facilities in the United States over the past decade. Despite these claims, economists have found no evidence of positive economic impact of professional sports teams and facilities on urban economies.

(Emphasis mine.) Note that this study only concerns itself with the economic consequences of the stadium, and not the additional civic pride that might come as an intangible benefit. I wouldn’t mind it as much if politicians offered this as the reason for funding the stadium, but it’s annoying when they pass it off as something that will pay for itself.

I’m proud that my local township leaders stood their ground and voted against the proposed 1% sales tax hike on restaurants to fund the new stadium.

Charlie Munger (the right-hand man of legendary investor Warren Buffet) recently made some interesting comments about investing in Chinese stocks in a recent interview in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance:

Should people be investing more abroad, particularly in emerging markets?
Different foreign cultures have very different friendliness to the passive shareholder from abroad. Some would be as reliable as the United States to invest in, and others would be way less reliable. Because it’s hard to quantify which ones are reliable and why, most people don’t think about it at all. That’s crazy. It’s a very important subject. Assuming China grows like crazy, how much of the proceeds of that growth are going to flow through to the passive foreign owners of Chinese stock? That is a very intelligent question that practically nobody asks.

Headed out to Target yesterday, and they had this stand-up arcade machine set up in the front, for sale for about $460. (Incidentally, that’s about the same price that Target.com is selling it for once you factor in the shipping cost, and then you’d get it delivered straight to your door.)

It looks like it would be a lot of fun, except that the monitor looked kind of small. Further research showed me that it’s likely just a GameCube or PlayStation with this cartridge plugged inside of it. The only real advantage to having the cabinet is to get the quality joysticks (a serious must if you want to play Robotron: 2084). It would probably be better to get one of those consoles along with this joystick controller and do without the cabinet entirely.

There also seem to be several companies online offering custom-made arcade cabinets, but the cabinets alone tend to run for more than the entire Midway system.

Hong said that if we wanted to get it, we’ve have to stick it in the garage as we don’t have any other room in the house for it. I disagree; I’ve got the perfect spot for it, right in my home office…

We got our first big snow of the season yesterday. Thankfully both my wife and I work from home so we don’t have to go out in it.

Aspirin: Not Approvable

Under the strict rules the FDA imposes on new drugs, it’s likely that drugs like aspirin and acetaminophen (Tylenol) wouldn’t be approved, cited as being too dangerous.

Of course, the advantage that those two drugs have is that they’ve been around long enough that doctors are aware of the most severe side effects. When you’ve got a patented drug to bring to market, you don’t have 30 years to test it for all of its side effects. Also, when you’re paying $25 a day for your medication, you have an expectation of it being safe.

Nevertheless, it’s a real shame that there are probably lots of beneficial drugs in the lab that will never make it to market because of “potential” side effects. The FDA regulations might be killing more people than they are protecting.

Hong talked to her folks in China a few days ago and heard that nobody is buying chickens or eggs in town for fear of catching the avian flu. This is in the northern part of the country, where the flu hasn’t really spread to chickens and no humans have contracted it yet. I feel sorry for all of the chicken farmers there. If the flu doesn’t kill your animals, the consumer fear surrounding the flu will drive you to bankruptcy anyway.