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Last Saturday night Casey and I attended the Britney Spears Circus tour at its stop in Grand Forks. It was quite the experience, and easily one of the city’s biggest events of the year. I’m glad we were able to see Britney once, but I don’t think I’d go again if she came back to town in the future.

As the countdown hit zero and the giant video screens wrapping the center stage lit-up, it was clear what we were about to see: Not a concert, but a show. And looking at it from that perspective, it was pretty good. It was a spectacle in every way, with its dancers, circus performers, the audio/visual experience, and, of course Britney herself. In many ways, it reminded us of the Cirque du Soeil Delirium show we in Grand Forks three years ago, though not nearly as ambitious.

And though Britney’s music was always playing, it wasn’t the focus of the show — it was the backdrop that drove the her and the other performers. In contrast, we saw Green Day in concert just two months ago, where the band’s music was front and center for two straight hours.

So, I think that sums-up the Britney Spears Circus experience:  It’s not really a concert, but a good — not great — music show. I don’t think the performances would ever stand-up on their own, but then again, I don’t think anyone is expecting them to. The event is all about Britney, and everyone knows it.

Come in with those expectations, and when the lights come up at the end, I think you’ll walk away satisfied with the show.

When we got home from our Labor Day weekend at Casey’s parents on Monday, not only was our TV showing static instead of cable television, our TiVo service was inactive — effectively turning the machine into an electronic doorstop. No, this wasn’t some sort of horrible mix-up. This was our family’s final step in breaking-up with cable TV.

For nearly six years, we subscribed to our cable company’s Basic plan, which offered about 70 different channels. Then, over time, we started noticing more and more channels slipping away into their Preferred package. “Upgrading” to this plan would have not only required a digital cable box, but cost 50% more than what we were paying per month.

So after talking it over and realizing how few of the channels we actually watched, Casey and I decided to downgrade to the cable company’s unadvertised Limited plan, which offered a dozen channels of actual programming (subtracting local channels and the TV Guide channel) for less than $20/month. Sure, we missed the Discovery Channel, TLC, and the Food Network at first, but the others went unnoticed.

Since making that switch, we slowly noticed that PBS kids programs were taking a larger and larger share of the TiVo’s storage. And after moving from Thompson to Grand Forks in July, the boys usually watch a show or two right away in the morning, and not much else after that. Casey and I rarely have the TV on in the evening after the boys are in bed — we’re much more likely to be talking, listening to MPR, reading a book, or reading or writing on our laptops.

Don’t get me wrong — there are some amazing TV shows on right now that I really enjoy. It’s just that the internet has become our primary delivery method for video content. Between Hulu, Netflix’s “Watch Instantly”, YouTube, and BitTorrent, there are enough shows and movies available online to last several lifetimes. And whatever we currently can’t get online takes just a day to two to receive via postal mail from Netflix. There’s simply no reason to pay for cable anymore.

According to a Nielson report from earlier this year, Americans on average now watch five hours of television per day.  That’s over 75 days per year of forgettable B-grade movies and sitcoms you’ve already seen a half dozen times before, endless pundits spewing partisan venom on 24 hour news networks, and watching attention-starved people live out their simulated lives on “reality TV”.

So instead of wasting my time on the garbage, when I am looking for something to watch, I have a backlog of great TV series I can pull from whenever and wherever I want. Life’s just too short for bad TV.

This morning I once again had the opportunity to invoke Berberich’s Law:

Not only did someone write the blog post I meant to write a month ago on the seldom mentioned relationship between health care and what we eat I, but it showed up as an op-ed in the New York Times by Michael Pollan. An excerpt:

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet. That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.

The ubiquitous availability of cheap calories is probably the major factor in this country’s obesity epidemic. Trace that back to its root cause, and you’ll end up at farm policies enacted by the Nixon administration that poured agriculture subsidies into commodities in order to drive down the price of food. Those policies worked, and ever since, we’ve been awash in an ocean of processed foods based on corn, soybeans, and wheat.

According to the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database, here is the breakdown of farm subsidies by program for the years 1995–2006:

As you can see, farmers receive far more money from the government for growing corn than any other crop. And in sustaining this policy, American citizens are artificially driving down the price of processed foods to the point where a fast food hamburger is cheaper than a pound of fresh vegetables. No wonder Americans gain so much weight.

Although the link between the food we eat and obesity and chronic disease is rarely mentioned in the debate over health care reform, Pollan seems optimistic about the impact it might have (if something eventually gets passed in Congress):

The moment these new rules [standard levels of coverage, the elimination of pre-existing conditions] take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits. When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system — everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches — will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before.

I hope he’s right. If this country were able to achieve real farm policy reform, it could have a huge positive impact on the health of our country. Looking back at the table from above, if we eliminated only subsidies for corn, wheat, and soybeans, we could easily pay for the entire 10-year cost of the health care reform bill proposed by the President. And if these commodities were no longer fictitiously priced, the option of growing real food may suddenly become a lot more attractive and profitable.

Last Wednesday afternoon (August 19, 2009), five small tornadoes touched-down in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota. Among the damage — pretty minor by tornado standards — was the cross steeple that sat above Central Lutheran Church for over 80 years.

Wednesday also happened to mark the beginning of the 2009 ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) Churchwide Assembly, where delegates debated — and ultimately voted to pass — a series of resolutions that would allow ELCA churches to hire gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy. The timing of the two events led some to draw a natural conclusion. Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis) pastor John Piper:

The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.

I can understand the temptation by Christians to classify events like this tornado as warning signs from God — especially when it involves something as controversial as homosexuality and the church. However, I think the idea that we can interpret natural events as divine messages is a risky one.

The problem is that when it comes to this sort of thing, some major cherry picking occurs. When a tornado destroyed the entire town of Northwood North Dakota two years ago yesterday, I don’t remember anybody claiming it was because the residents were sinful, or because they did or didn’t hold a particular belief. But somehow, when a cross was broken off the top of a church in a storm, it’s to be taken it as a warning from God? Why one and not the other?

Greg Boyd, pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, provided a thorough rebuttal to Piper in a blog post last Friday. Here’s an excerpt, but I highly recommend reading the entire thing:

According to the National Weather Service, the United States is hit by about 1300 tornados each year, on average. Does John discern a pattern that these tornados tend to strike places that are more pro-gay, or even just generally more sinful, than others? I did a little research, and it turns out that the place where tornados tend to strike the most frequently and do the most damage is in the Bible Belt, with Oklahoma topping the list. And, interestingly enough, it turns out that those states that have the most progressive stances toward gays (e.g. Massachusetts, Vermont, New York) are among the states that typically experience the least tornado damage. Doesn’t this fact by itself completely undermine John’s speculation as to why a Minneapolis church steeple was damaged?

Boyd also addressed the event in a Q&A session at his church last Saturday evening. I’ve included a portion of it below, or you can view the entire video at Vimeo.

Interestingly, a similar debate between Piper and Boyd occurred a little over two years ago when the I-35 bridge collapsed.

Personally, I think that if you want to identify specific natural disasters as warning signs from God, then you need be prepared to do the same for all of them. Otherwise, we are left to determine which ones are sending a message and which ones are not. And I don’t think any human can claim to hold the qualifications for that job.

Because of that, I’m in agreement with this statement from Boyd:

In the fallen world in which we live, towers sometimes randomly fall; bridges sometimes randomly collapse; and tornadoes sometimes randomly do property damage – even to churches. That’s all there is to be said about it.

Last week we witnessed SIGG, maker of aluminum water bottles, lose the admiration and trust of its core customers in a single day when it admitted that for years, its products contained Bisphenol A (BPA) — despite giving the impression that they did not.

Update (8/26/2009): Via The Consumerist,  it appears that SIGG has created a voluntary exchange program (i.e., not a recall) which allows you to send in your old SIGG bottle in exchange for one with the new BPA-free EcoCare liner. All you have to pay is the postage to send it to them. For information on how to exchange your bottle, send an email to liners@mysigg.com.

Update 2 (9/1/2009): Via an email from SIGG, here is the direct link to their bottle replacement program.

I’m glad to see them respond so quickly and effectively. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been reading of great articles on the web lately, and I thought I’d share some of the best with you, my dear readers. Enjoy.

• Totally Wasted — Mother Jones’ epic special report on the War on Drugs. Damning evidence that our country needs a major shift in drug policies.
• The Great American Bubble Machine — Rolling Stone magazine takes on Goldman Sachs and shows how it turned the U.S. into its own personal pump-and-dump scam to create pure profits for already wealthy individuals. I still get angry just thinking about this one.
• How American Health Care Killed My Father — If you read only one article on the health care system, read this one. David Goldhill does a deep exploration of the health industry and shows why the current proposals for reform will serve to cement our broken system in place. Please — read this article.
• Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food — Time magazine’s take on the hidden costs of America’s cheap food is a great introduction to the topic. For further reading, I recommend Food Inc and Michael Pollan’s books.
• Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle — If you’re a fan of Fiji Water, you might not want to read this one. Because once you find out you’re supporting a military dictatorship, you probably won’t want to buy another bottle. Update: Via the comments, Fiji Water has issued a response to the Mother Jones article I linked to that is worth reading (as are the comments on that page).

Dropbox is one of my favorite little pieces of software. It’s practically invisible, silently keeping your dropbox folder synchronized on all the computers you have it installed on (Windows, Macintosh, or Linux). I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Because Dropbox is so easy to use, it’s easy to forget that it’s also very powerful. Here are two three advanced ways I’m using this great utility.

1. Secure Cross-Platform Password Sync

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of pieces of software that will securely store passwords and other information you want to keep secret (credit card numbers, etc.). I stumbled upon what might be the simplest possible solution. 

Message Vault is a free/open source self-encrypting/decrypting archive written entirely in HTML and JavaScript. It’s a single HTML file encrypted with 128-bit AES encryption. You can keep it in your Dropbox folder and easily change your archive locally on your computer, plus you can view it on any computer with a web browser via the Dropbox web interface. It’s extremely secure if you choose a good password and requires no special software for viewing. It couldn’t be much easier.

Note: You could also use your Dropbox to sync a Trucrypt archive or a KeePass database file, but both require additional software to decrypt the contents inside.

2. Remotely Start BitTorrent Downloads

On occasion while at work I think of an audio or video file I’d like to download via BitTorrent. In order to take it easy on our office network though, I’ll start the download from my work computer and have our iMac at home do the real work. Here’s how that works.

The Mac OS BitTorrent client Transmission includes an option to have it watch a folder for new .torrent files and then automatically start downloading their content. That preference looks like this (it’s at the very bottom of the window):

If you wanted, you could simply set your watch folder to your Dropbox or one of its subfolders. Then, on the remote computer, you just download the .torrent file and drop it into your Dropbox. Within a few seconds, it will get synchronized with your other computer, which will then start the BitTorrent download as soon as Transmission sees the torrent file show up in the Dropbox folder.

I added an extra step in my workflow.  I’m a user of the rule-based Hazel utility that lets me trigger actions when certain events happen. In this case, I actually have my Transmission watch folder set to a subfolder of my Downloads folder for organizational. When a new torrent file shows up in my Dropbox, I have a Hazel rule that catches this action and automatically moves the file to the watch folder. Once this happens, I instantly get feedback on my remote computer, as Dropbox will inform me that the torrent file has been removed/deleted on both computers. This lets me know my download has started on the iMac.

3. Remotely Add Music to Your iTunes 9 Library

One of the least mentioned new features of iTunes 9 is the addition of a watched folder to allow you to automatically add music to your library. Add Dropbox and a Hazel rule and you’ve got the ability to update iTunes from another computer.

For this tip, I added a subfolder to my Dropbox simply called Music. This is where I move music files on the remote computer that I want added to iTunes library on my Macintosh.

Next, add your Dropbox Music folder to Hazel and create a rule called Move to iTunes that moves any music files found by Hazel to your iTunes watch folder, found at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Automatically Add to iTunes/

That rule will look like this:

To test it out, drag one or more MP3 files into your Dropbox Music folder on your remote computer. Once the files have finished syncing, you should get notified that they have been deleted from the Dropbox. This means that Hazel has done its job and moved them out of Dropbox and into the iTunes watch folder. After that, it takes only a few seconds for the songs to appear in your iTunes library.

So, there you go — two three clever uses for your Dropbox. There are lots of other tips and tricks too, if you’re interested.

If you don’t have one yet, now’s a great time to signup for a free account.

Last night, Marketplace had a great story about the strength of North Dakota’s economy in this recession. In short, our state is thriving right now:

What is happening is a combination of planning and luck that’s left the state with something rare these days: a $700 million budget surplus and a big fat tax cut. Its banks mostly avoided the subprime mess, and North Dakota worked to bring in more businesses like Microsoft. Then, prices went up quickly for the state’s traditional strengths — energy and agriculture.

So now with thousands of jobs available, North Dakota officials have been traveling out of state to try to fill them. Jerry Chavez heads a development corporation for the small city of Minot. Since the beginning of the year, his group has been making monthly visits to job fairs in hard-hit Midwestern communities.

You can listen to the whole story below.

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North Dakota’s unemployment rate for June 2009 was 4.2 percent — the lowest in the country. As of July, there were about 9,000 job openings throughout the state. Granted, many are retail and food service positions that don’t great pay or benefits, but there are plenty of good ones in government, manufacturing, and especially, energy.

It’s now clear that North Dakota’s slow-and-steady growth rate during The Bubble was a blessing in disguise. Combine that sustainable growth with growing demand for alternative energy (wind, ethanol) and commodities (oil, coal, natural gas, grain, etc.)  and I think North Dakota has the opportunity to emerge from this recession stronger than ever.

As for that $1.2 billion state budget surplus — let’s just not ask too many questions about where that came from…

After nearly two years of using a Blackberry smartphone, I thought it might be time to once again share the 3rd-party applications I’m using on my Tour 9630. Many of these are pretty common, but you might find a few that are new to you.

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Despite the wonders that are Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone, every once in awhile you get a reality check on what Apple really stands for as a company. Monday was one of those times.

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