text:
Three tiers in my beer: ‘Prohibition’ to show how modern booze system evolved

Watch the full episode. See more Ken Burns.

Another ballyhooed Ken Burns history documentary series is going to be on PBS, and this one’s got a rather democratic (small D) appeal.

“Prohibition” will chronicle America’s “great failed experiment” from 1920 to 1933 when the country outlawed booze, though it didn’t stop many Americans from getting their lips on a bottle or three of it. The documentary also will show how the country’s modern, state-based “three-tier” alcohol distribution system developed.

Under the 70-year-old system, producers must sell alcohol to distributors (basically wholesalers) who then sell to retailers. There are some exceptions to the system (such as with in-state wineries and breweries), but generally, beer and spirits must go through distributors.

The system was set up over concerns about producers directly owning saloons and thus furthering intemperance in society. Critics of the system say it raises alcohol prices and hinders the free market and should be done away with.

The Colorado Beer Distributors Association is helping underwrite Burns’ documentary with Rocky Mountain PBS.

They like the current system.

“The American system works to get vast choice and variety to market, to ensure that only safe product reaches consumers and to assure that licensed retailers, licensed distributors and producers are all held to the highest standards to make sure laws are upheld,” said Steve Findley, president of the association.

The three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary series begins at 8 p.m. Sunday on Rocky Mountain PBS stations.

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The Best Calculator Ever

By Julianne Dalcanton | April 2, 2008 1:22 am

I’ve written before about my husband’s affection, or rather, obsession with Apple. Like all good converts, he feels compelled to proselytize, particularly about my perceived need for an iPhone. “But honey, you can check your email!” “Hey look! Google Maps knows where you are!”. I remain unconvinced.

However, the other day, he nearly got me:

“Did you know it can emulate the HP-15C?”

Be. Still. My. Heart.

The HP-15C is simply the finest piece of handheld computing technology ever. (Take that Steve Jobs). I got my first 15C back in high school, and it was the only calculator I used for the next couple of decades. I could operate it in the dark. I lost it in an airplane seat back pocket and have never gotten over it.

hp15c_front.jpg hp15c_back.jpg

I suppose in the intervening years we’ve gotten used to irrational devotion to electronic gadgets, but the 15C had to have been one of the first targets, at least in geeky circles. If you mention the 15C to a nerds of a certain age, our eyes grow misty at the utter perfection of it. It was a calculator that simply got everything right.

The genius of the 15C is multifold. First is the form factor. It’s essentially the same as an iPhone, held in landscape mode, with a nice weight that fits well in the hand. The buttons are large and well separated, and there are no more or no fewer than you could want. (In comparison, modern HP calculators are crammed with a thicket of unusable little buttons. Ick.) Second is the glory of reverse polish notation. The 15C operates with a memory stack, which when operating with RPN allows you to perform complex calculations with no need for parentheses. Third is the 15C’s unnatural durability. A former dog of mine literally mangled a friend’s 15C, and it continued to work in spite of the large teeth marks denting the keys. Fourth (and most critical for getting me through years of physics labs and observing runs) was that it’s programmable. That’s no big deal these days, but huge in the early 80’s. Spreadsheets were hardly widespread, and when one timed balls going down ramps or any other such repeated trial, doing repetitive calculations was a breeze on the 15C.

Now, am I alone if my love for the 15C? No, indeed. On Ebay, a 15C in good shape can go for hundreds of dollars. (And if you buy one, it’ll still work. I’m guessing one will not say the same about the iPod in 30 years.). There’s an on-line petition begging HP to bring the 15C back.

And, there are people out there writing emulators for it to run on the iPhone. If you ever see me with an iPhone, this will be why.

CATEGORIZED UNDER: Computing, Gadgets
  • Trent

    I wonder how much more stuff you and/or your husband like on this list:

    apart from Apple products.

  • Trent

    Actually, not restricting the list to your (and/or your husband) but all authors of this blog I’m fairly certain that the following are stuff you all like:

    * #93 Music Piracy
    * #92 Book Deals
    * #91 San Francisco
    * #90 Dinner Parties
    * #89 St. Patrick’s Day
    * #88 Having Gay Friends
    * #87 Outdoor Performance Clothes
    * #86 Shorts
    * #85 The Wire
    * #84 T-Shirts
    * #83 Bad Memories of High School
    * #82 Hating Corporations
    * #81 Graduate School
    * #80 The Idea of Soccer
    * #79 Modern Furniture
    * #78 Multilingual Children
    * #77 Musical Comedy
    * #76 Bottles of Water
    * #75 Threatening to Move to Canada
    * #74 Oscar Parties
    * #73 Gentrification
    * #72 Study Abroad
    * #71 Being the only white person around
    * #70 Difficult Breakups
    * #69 Mos Def
    * #68 Michel Gondry
    * #67 Standing Still at Concerts
    * #66 Divorce
    * #65 Co-Ed Sports
    * #64 Recycling
    * #63 Expensive Sandwiches
    * #62 Knowing What’s Best for Poor People
    * #61 Bicycles
    * #60 Toyota Prius
    * #59 Natural Medicine
    * #58 Japan
    * #57 Juno
    * #56 Lawyers
    * #55 Apologies
    * #54 Kitchen Gadgets
    * #53 Dogs
    * #52 Sarah Silverman
    * #51 Living by the Water
    * #50 Irony
    * #49 Vintage
    * #48 Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops
    * #47 Arts Degrees
    * #46 The Sunday New York Times
    * #45 Asian Fusion Food
    * #44 Public Radio
    * #43 Plays
    * #42 Sushi
    * #41 Indie Music
    * #40 Apple Products
    * #39 Netflix
    * #38 Arrested Development
    * #37 Renovations
    * #36 Breakfast Places
    * #35 The Daily Show/Colbert Report
    * #34 Architecture
    * #33 Marijuana
    * #32 Vegan/Vegetarianism
    * #31 Snowboarding
    * #30 Wrigley Field
    * #29 80s Night
    * #28 Not having a TV
    * #27 Marathons
    * #26 Manhattan (now Brooklyn too!)
    * #25 David Sedaris
    * #24 Wine
    * #23 Microbreweries
    * #22 Having Two Last Names
    * #21 Writers Workshops
    * #20 Being an expert on YOUR culture
    * #19 Traveling
    * #18 Awareness
    * #17 Hating their Parents
    * #16 Gifted Children
    * #15 Yoga
    * #14 Having Black Friends
    * #13 Tea
    * #12 Non-Profit Organizations
    * #11 Asian Girls
    * #10 Wes Anderson Movies
    * #9 Making you feel bad about not going outside
    * #8 Barack Obama
    * #7 Diversity
    * #6 Organic Food
    * #5 Farmer’s Markets
    * #4 Assists
    * #3 Film Festivals
    * #2 Religions their parents don’t belong to
    * #1 Coffee

    Let me know if there are stuff on this list you actually do *not* like! :)

  • Dr. Goulu

    You forgot to mention the HP-15C was equipped with a nuclear battery or a way to extract energy from the Void, I’m not sure anymore. The fact is I never saw one with an empty battery. Mine lasted for more than 20 years before it was destroyed by a fire in my office…

    Anyway, you can react to the lost of yours :
    1) sign the petition on
    2) with this emulator, you won’t need to invest in a Mac :

  • Bob

    Well, if you have a blackberry, you can get the Pocket 10C SE emulator. It’s not the 15C, but the nice thing is that the Blackberry has nice keys, and the emulator uses most of them in an intuitive layout. And when using a calculator, I have found that there is nothing like good tactile feedback. Take that, iPhone!

  • Zeno

    I carry a 15C in the pocket of my briefcase and it goes with me practically everywhere. It is my precious.

    To make things even better, my students never try to borrow it. They are heathens who do not know the true religion of RPN. My precious stays safe with me.

  • John R Ramsden

    Trent (#1 or #2), although your list is evidently intended to summarize the tastes of left-wing trendies, surely it’s possible to love one’s calculator and be as right wing as Attila the Hun or even Ann Coulter?

    Oh wait, Apple Macs were mentioned too. Hmm, yes I see what you mean now 😉

  • Scott G.

    I received my HP15C as a gift from a friend around 1986. I still use it nearly as my sole calculator (I might have replaced the batteries once). I have a TI89 on my desk, but I will usually ignore it completely and grab my old friend for any serious calculations. At school, I love when folks ask me to borrow my calculator and gladly let them – for the 30 seconds it takes until they realize they have never even heard of RPN, much less know how to think in it.

    I was looking through that Things White People Like list the other day – oddly enough, almost none of it fits me, or fits badly (e.g., I like Netflix, but not for Indi films; I love bicycling, but my bike is way under $5k.).

  • Phased Weasel

    I was the only one I knew in middle school with a reverse Polish notation calculator. Fools!

  • Count Iblis

    My father still uses his HP 11c. I learned to program in that calculator when I was in primary school. I remember that if the program becomes too long you’ll start to lose memory addresses.

    Later I bought the HP 28s calculator I still use it today.

  • chemicalscum

    I know it is not a real substitute and you have probably already tried it, but the The Museum of HP Calculators has a HP-15C emulator for PC’s:

    It includes source code, Linux and Windows binaries so you should be able to run it on your Linux system straight off. It hasn’t been tested on a Mac but I guess it should be possible to get it going under X11 maybe its a task you could give your husband to get going on his Mac.

    I never really got into RPN though I did try it for a while using an old Linux RPN calculator program a few years ago. I never had an HP calculator in my youth, anyway when I was an undergraduate student we used slide rules and teletypes to access a computer.

  • Glenn McDavid

    See Free 42 for an emulator that runs on other handheld devices. In particular

    What if HP put the logic and display of a 42S in the compact and convenient form factor of a 15C? You’d have the 42C

    which you can have on the Zaurus X/Qt and Nokia 770.

  • loonunit

    And for persons of my generation, RPN was a horrible prank our professors would spring on us if we foolishly forgot to bring calculators to our exams.

  • jackd

    The business geeks are just as crazy about the HP 12C.

    This is waaay down the food chain from the landscape HPs of yore, but I’ve got a TI-55 III obtained in 1985 or ’86. Still on the original batteries.

  • rob

    ahh…the 15C. I was always jealous of those that had one. i myself have the 11C. at least i think it is–the label fell off years ago and i have had to replace the rubber feet on the back. it is about 23 years old. i wonder how long that is in iphone years? 72.26?

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  • Ron H

    I still use my HP11C, My HP48G sits to one side – little used due to it’s complexity. The HP25 (Hmm not a 25C but real close) is also used a lot.

  • chris

    hi glen (#11),

    on a zaurus you can run maxima. i know this is kind of religious, but prefering a upn calculator over a complete cas is… well.. religious i guess.

  • Annika Peter

    My dad has that calculator and wears it in the pocket of his shirt every single day. No one would mistake him for anything but a science professor.

  • Robert

    My first contact with HP calculators was my dad’s HP25 which I learned to use at some point. And for many years after had a desktop HP calculator. I don’t know which model it was but according to it must have been something like a HP 9820A. The feature I remember is that it hat a “Spiel gut” sticker on it > This sticker was usually found on wooden toys of high pedagogical value.

    Later, in high school, my physics teacher, had an HP calculator which could read little magnetic strips: You could store time and your location and declination and rectascention (sp?) of some celestial object in some registers and then read in three strips and it gave you coordinates in which direction to look. I was quite impressed.

    A bit later, I got my own HP 32S which I still have (here on my desk). I can second this feature that the RPN prevents to much desire from other people to borrow it but I think it soon needs some new batteries (and I vaguely remember of having them changed once already in the past). Unfortunately, by now it also has a few faulty pixels.

    I have to admit I do not use it too often as I try to do physics order of magnitude estimates in my head as a sport. And when I need more than half a significant digit I tend to use calcoo which is more handy as it is permanently open on my (computer) desktop whereas the HP 32S is in a drawer. In addition you can configure it to have a virtually infinite stack (rather than the four levels of the original HP’s). It happened only a few times but I consider a finite stack depth to be a bug rather than a feature even though the HP manual lists an application where the finite depth is actually used. IIRC it’s computing the powers of 2: Press

    and then * as often as needed.

  • sam

    what about the TI-1250?

  • PAgent

    I still have and use my beloved HP 11C that I bought when I was an undergraduate for the princely sum of $75. In the intervening 22 years I have replaced the batteries *once*. Best. Calculator. Ever.

  • Martin Gale

    Finance quants have a similar unbounded affection for the HP12C (the 15C’s sister ship).

  • Ian B Gibson

    RPN calculator, binary clock, unix operating system, Lisp programming language, LaTeX document processing – the high road is a lonely road!

    Although admittedly binary clocks are just showing off, rather than being superior like the other examples I gave.

  • Costanza

    Ahhhhhh, the 15C. I began w/ HP when I was given the fabulous 11C as a birthday gift (Pardons if I don’t say which one). Ok, I’ll give myself a time stamp…it was a tremendous struggle to give up my slide rule (how many out there have ever used those? I still do…), but HP won in the end. Eventually I managed to get my hands on a 15C….all 3 calculators still cook (in a number crunching sense).

    Oh, Re #3: the energy DOES come from the vacuum.

  • John R Ramsden

    Costanza (#24) wrote:
    > how many out there have ever used those? I still do…),

    I don’t use slide rules these days; but I snaffle any I see for sale in junk shops and charity shops, and have now accumulated several dozen of all shapes and sizes.

    This is partly because they are nice things to own per se, and also of course they’re becoming rarer all the time and thus more valuable.

    The only one I haven’t come across yet is an ingenious sounding (and possibly mythical ?) complex number slide rule someone described to me some years ago. It comprised a helical slider embedded in a cylinder, with a sliding clear plastic outer cylinder, all with suitable graduations.

  • Count Iblis

    The HP 28s is not so energy efficient. I need to change the batteries every few years. It works on 3 N-Cell bateries, that we can’t get here in Europe in the regular shops. They only sell them at shops where they sell batteries for cameras and there they charge 15 euros for three N cell batteries (in the US they only cost $ 0.50 ) :(

  • Jim Harrison

    I’m not a 15C fan, but reading all these fond memories of an old technology, I’m struck with how many hardware and software products get worse as they are supposedly improved. The latest version of WORD for Mac is one case in point, but the same phenomenon occurs in games. The new editions have new features, some of which are actually functional; but the net effect of hanging a zillion doodads on the original product is often to produce a slower, less playable product. The latest version of EA’s golf game is downright decadent, the electronic equivalent of the Mexican Baroque.

    I know this is an old story and hardly limited to computer stuff–college textbooks often get worse from edition to edition, for example, which has even provided a business opportunity for publishers like Dover who make money by raising the dead. Why it happens is also pretty clear. From the producers point of view it is good to put out an excellent product, but it is imperative to put out a new one. And just as diabetes eventually makes your feet fall off, chronic marketing has a host of bad consequences.

  • Jon Hendry

    “Trent (#1 or #2), although your list is evidently intended to summarize the tastes of left-wing trendies, surely it’s possible to love one’s calculator and be as right wing as Attila the Hun or even Ann Coulter?

    Oh wait, Apple Macs were mentioned too. Hmm, yes I see what you mean now ”

    Actually, Rush Limbaugh is a big Mac user, and Karl Rove has an iPhone and for one of the primaries was seen on the Fox News set sitting at a MacBook Air for his political analysis gig.

    Some things transcend mere earthly politics.

  • Gareth Rees

    I inherited my HP-11C from my grandfather. He’s dead now, and whenever I use it, I think of him, and remember him teaching me to program it when I was six years old. It’s a gadget that spans the generations.

  • Eugene

    Here is the Mac OS emulator for Hp-15C

    20 bucks. but it’s worth it.

  • Z

    I’d much prefer if Wolfram somehow managed to get a version of Mathematica running on the iPhone

    THAT would be a truly compelling reason to get one.

  • Sili

    I miss my TI86 – no way near as durable as that. Gave out after ten years. I did once get a graph calculator, but I returned it when I couldn’t figure out how to use it.

    Don’t get me started on HPs though. Much too non-intuitive for simple little me.

  • Carl Brannen

    Hah! I own two of these though I only know where one is right now (nightstand next to bed). They used to be quite cheap, $29.95 if I recall, and I bought three of them at the University of Washington calculator store. Whenever I look at it, I idly wonder how much longer the battery will last.

    One of the cool features is that it has a huge number of storage locations. “recall xxx” is the command to recall a constant associated with the key “xxx”. I keep my favorite constants in various locations and use 0-9 for temporary storage.

    Way back in the day, there were other companies that sold RPN calculators. I had a Corvus which was considerably cheaper. Mine also had an amusing collection of chip defects that caused it to make errors that were occasionally noticeable. If you arranged for an even digit in the 7th location, i.e as in 555.555055, and you cycled the number through the stack, it would come back with that single digit changed to odd, i.e. as in 555.555155.

  • Nousha

    looks so complicated :)

  • andy.s

    All you brilliant quants posting here and yet you don’t realize that thanks to teh Intertubes, Nothing Is Ever Completely Off the Market:

    Get thee to EBay

    Go! And let the bidding wars begin!

  • catman306

    My HP 15-C has had a tough life, so the ‘2’ button sometimes fails to register. And my battery had to be replaced about 10 years ago. ‘Best calculator ever’ is really quite an understatement. Yeah, HP needs to start making these again so younger people can realize the beauty of RPN. I drove 200 miles to get one of the last ones in stock about 1990. I’ve never thought about that excess till this moment. I still have the manuals.

  • Trip Russell

    wow.. these calculators were built to last!

  • RogerF

    HP15C the Best Ever? Naturally! There is no competitor.

    The 15C was my second HP calculator – obtained after my HP35 died – they were both incredibly expensive by local standards which is why I (as an impoverished student & then engineer) sweated over each purchase decision – would it be the right one?

    The 15C is still my constant companion – in the briefcase every night so that I always have it at work or home! Rock solid, robust, and only one battery change in 20+ years. Used every day at work as well.

    I brought a 42S years later when the 15C was temporarily lost – wrong form factor, lightweight and fragile in comparison with the 15C. Gave it away to a colleague when I rediscovered the 15C. But it broke within a few years.

  • Ben

    I never had one of these and regret it, because I already had a TI programmable calculator and was too cheap to spring for another. I have a newer HP RPN calculator now, but the shape isn’t as adorable and the larger display uses the batteries up. Side note: my father bought the TI programmable calculator to teach me how to program; this was shortly before home computers dropped from insanely expensive to merely high-priced-for-16K-memory. The TI-57 was the least expensive model with a conditional branching instruction. I still have it and it works, although the rechargeable battery pack is long dead. This story sounds absolutely dinosauric, but I’m not _that_ old.

    Last week I was at the WIYN telescope and they had a couple of HPs on the desk for the observers’ use, which are probably older than the telescope.

  • Ben

    By the way, I really do not like the site. I don’t mind making fun of my demographic (wine-sipping Democrat elitist Appletards, or whatever we are). What bugs me about that site is that it stereotypes “white people” taste as affluent educated yuppie taste, and by implication, stereotypes non-white people taste as _not_ affluent educated yuppie taste. That ticks me off. There are plenty of non-white middle class people and affluent educated yuppies, with their own affectations and pretensions, but stuff like that site needs make them invisible to make its joke. I lived just outside D.C. for a couple of years, where there is a large prosperous black population and many ethnic communities, and there you’ll see lots of non-white people shopping at Whole Foods, drinking fancy coffee, riding expensive bicycles, typing on Apples, and doing most of the things listed (except maybe listening to David Sedaris).

    Yeah, I know, the site is a joke. But it’s a crappy joke. End of rant.

  • Count Iblis

    Z wrote:

    I’d much prefer if Wolfram somehow managed to get a version of Mathematica running on the iPhone

    You can already run Mathematica from any location as follows. You buy one of these handheld computers with internet connection. Install VNC and log on to your PC at the office :)

  • Mike

    I wrote an HP-15C (ish) emulator for the old Mac OS way back when, after my real 15C was stolen. It was shareware, and the absolute best payment I got for it was when someone sent me their own 15C, which I’m proud to say I still have.

    My programming masterpiece for this device was an “animated” hailstone sequence, the *3+1 … /2 game. (excuse me, the 1 ENTER 3 * + …. 2 / game).

  • Russ Brooks

    Funny you mention this, Julianne. I was at the OS X Terminal window not too long ago, and I accidentally typed “dc” rather than “cd” to change directories. The cursor sat there waiting for me to do something, so I realized that “dc” was a program of some sort. Additional research revealed that “dc” stands for “Desktop Calculator” and is one of the oldest UNIX applications in existence, predating even the invention of the C programming language – and still exists in our Macs to this day. Needless to say, Desktop Calculator is a “Reverse Polish Notation” calculator. This spawned a bunch of research about RPN which I logged to my blog:

    The article has some good links to other legendary RPN machines and some classic pics. Enjoy!

  • Philip Downey

    When I was about 7 years old (this would be the late 70s), I was given my first calculator, a small black Commodore with white buttons. I found it last year and it, with its original batteries, now about 30 years old, still worked. I was shocked.

  • JMG3Y

    Sharp EL-5100S Scientific Calculator (just pulled it out of my “archive” to check the number)

    Being of slide rule vintage, I’ve had a lot of different calculators, including HP’s and TI’s that I programmed, over the years but the Sharp was one of the best for just getting the job done, PhD and all, pre-laptop.

    I have a HP 10C, quite similar to the 15C except maybe for the battery which has to be changed every 3-5 years. I got it in France in the early 80’s and on the back it is still written: Fin de la guarantie: 29.06.1984. But it is still working perfectly and I use it every day. For the 2 previous decades I had a slide rule which I still have somewhere in a drawer.

  • Frank

    Being a computer guy, I bought a 16C Back In The Day. I still have it. I still use it occasionally. Working at Google, I’ve pulled it out once or twice just to impress the kids. :-)

  • Tim May

    The first HP-35 was just appearing when I was still in college. Way too expensive for me…I think it was $350 or $395. But it was amazing…I used to play with it in the campus bookstore.

    A year later, at a little company called Intel, I could afford one–with my own money, that is. The HP 25 had just come out, at a more affordable $150-175. It was my constant pocket companion for a year. I taught myself statistics, for analyzing experiments (Student’s T, Poisson distribution, etc.) And RPN was utterly natural, allowing rapid-fire calculations.

    By 1976 I decided to get an HP-67. Still my favorite for so many reasons. I practically wore out the keys doing calculations related to a chip problem we were having (alpha particles causing memory errors).

    Later, I replaced it with an HP-41C, but it wasn’t noticeably better, and by then I had a home PC (a Processor Technology SOL), and minicomputers at work, and less need for doing lots of calculations, so the era of HP calculators faded a bit for me. I did get an HP 11C, for portability, then an HP 28S (hated it), and, finally, some variant of an HP 48.

    Mostly I use the Mac’s calculator, set to RPN and Scientific mode, so it’s like some mutated version of HP calculators. Works pretty well.

    I’m long gone from Intel, by the way, and now favor Haskell over either Mathematica (which I used for a while) or Lisp (ditto).

    The iPhone looks interesting. Maybe when the 3G iPhone 2 hits the shelves, I’ll get one. And then rediscover the HP 15C?

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  • Sven DiMilo

    Man this is weird–I just mentioned my trusty HP15C last week over at Mark Chu-Carroll’s blog Good Math, Bad Math. I got mine my first semester of grad school because it did linear regression; I thought it was sent from Heaven. Still have it, still use it, though mostly for checkbook balancing these days.

  • etbnc

    Uh oh, I can’t find my 15C. I’d better sign that petition!

  • Martha

    I have an HP 11C that I bought in 1985. I can’t live without it (as an architect, it comes in very handy) and no other calculator will do. And I haven’t ever changed the batteries. Ever. (That still doesn’t make me want an I-Phone, but then I still have my 11C.)

  • Luc

    Hey, I am looking into buying a calculator for my Blackberry. I can choose from the 10B, the 10C and the 12C. Which one do you recommend? Thanks.

  • Greg

    Bought my HP15c in the early 80’s and I use it all the time. I love it!

    Thin. Elegant. Well built. RPN. Wonderful. When HP was still an electrical engineering company. The real HP is now Agilent.

    My iMac has an RPN calculator.

  • Jeff

    The HP15C was truly a classic – it was part of a series: HP41C, HP10C, HP11C, HP12C, HP15C & HP16C. All used precisely the same custom-designed 56-bit (!) HP microprocessor – the only difference between them was the final metal mask layer which slightly customized the microcode with the largest difference being between the 41 and the 10-seres. The clock rate of the 10-series is slower than the 41 in order to save power and and all are in the 100 KHz range which was slow even in its day (which was typically 2-6 MHz (20-60x); compare than with 2-6 GHz today – 1000x). The design of this family actually dates back to the mid-1970s yet the business brother of the 15C, the 12C, has remained in production. I still have and use my HP 16C – which has boolean and digital calculations.

    HP calculators have only gone down hill since the late 90s. Sadly at the turn of the millennium HP decided it wasn’t worth the effort to do much product R&D anymore. To quote their director of supply chains in 1999: “We’ll let Intel do our hardware R&D, Microsoft will do our software R&D and we’ll own the supply chain”. HP Corvallis calculator operations had already been moved to Australia and not long after in 2001 the Australian operation was shutdown and the calculator division was moved to Singapore. At that point calculator design and manufacture was largely outsourced.

    The result was the “return to the market mediocre” loss of RPN. Only market demand seems to have resulted in a grudging implementation in the latest versions. At this point you’d have to hold a gun to my head AND pay me to even accept possession of a new HP calculator, which is quite a reversal for someone who was an early and long-standing PPC member, 30-year user of HP calculators and 10-year veteran of HP itself! They are *so* bad. The sad part is they’ve lost the very thing that allowed the higher product margins which funded the features which locked-in engineering students and elite users who could afford the prices. Break the cycle and you have to compete with the dogs!

    The best hope for having a revived 10-series is to look to non-HP sources – i.e. the enthusiasts and hackers. This community has historically been amazingly technical. Back in the day these folks “discovered” synthetic programming which is a back door into the HP41’s firmware. I was a hardcore synthetic programmer back in college. Several calculator enthusiast groups on the web have voiced a desire (and sort of started) attempts to create from scratch RPN/RPL calculators in the original HP spirit.

    I think the biggest problem is they are probably biting off too much to both create the hardware and extend it. Reproducing an HP 15C with modern components without trying to go too far beyond is quite doable and probably with some impressive speed/power performance. A single current FPGAs could trivially implement the entire hardware of a 10-series which originally had several ICs (the original 10-series used an early form of surface mount).

    It’s always about time however. For example I’ve completely reverse engineered and built HP-IL (calculator networking for the HP41, HP71, HP75) from the ground up with modern off-the-shelf components but I haven’t had time to do much with it let alone document and publish how to do it.

  • Ferval Lankman

    On a whim, I did a Google search for a very specific attribute of my HP11C: I have never once changed its batteries since receiving it as a gift during my junior year of high school (’85-’86). It’s interesting to see that so many others have had the same experience.

    The days of smiling quietly to myself when people asked to borrow it and ignored my warnings of “if you haven’t used one before you probably won’t be able to add 2 and 2” are long gone, but this is easily the object I would miss most if it were to disappear off my desk.

  • Lou

    I had my HP15c from 1982 to 1983. I found that there was nothing
    that could do complex number calculations better (split stack!).

  • Carlos

    I am using athe hp 15c that belonged to may father , I have using since school to college, like 12 years almost, its amazing hoy it’s work, I think I’ll never change it.

  • Chris

    I used my HP 15C in college way back in the mid-80’s. It got me through calculus, physics, modern physics, statics, and circuits before my backpack got stolen. I’m not sure when they stopped making them, but I replaced it with a 28C instead of a 15C. The 28C is great and still works, but it definitely missed something compared to the 15C.

    I’d tried several of the other RPN calculators on the iPhone (including a very nice 41C emulator), but they never felt right and I had to hunt-and-peck too much to figure out the keys. When I saw the 15C emulator, I spent $20 for it (the most money I’ve spent on a single app).

    Here’s the weird psychological thing. I haven’t touched a real 15C in a bit over 20 years, but my fingers still remembered where most of the keys were and I can tap out problems pretty quickly on the iPhone. Even without tactile feedback, it “feels” like a 15C. As geeky as this sounds, I’ve actually dug out some math problems to solve just because I’m so happy to have a 15C again…

    Once I found a scan of the 15C manual, I was all set. They really don’t write calculator manuals like that anymore, either.

  • Bob J.

    My loyalty is with the HP-25 (my first calculator – got me through college) and the 41C (I practically did backflips when I noticed it had alpha keys – used it in the Navy to do all kinds of stuff). I own four 41C’s – got a bunch for free when a previous employer was junking theirs (replaced by PC’s). HP RPN machines RULE!

  • Alex

    It’s here! HP 15C emulator, $29.99 in the App Store.

  • Mike

    Having used my 15c since 1983 it has finally died. A very sad day indeed.
    Being a Land Surveyor it had a hard life out on site in all weathers. Having dropped it numerous times and expecting the worse ,it always survived. I think I replaced its batteries about 5 times over its life, say every 5 years. I loved it due to its size which fitted perfectly in your pocket,so robust and easy to use.
    Have decided to purchase a i Phone and obtain the 15c emulator.(but its not going on site)

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« What Teachers of the Year Have to Say About Federal Education Policy | Main | John King Is Off to Disappointing Start at Ed. Dept. »

What Frustrates Me About AERA

Over the past few days, nearly 20,000 education researchers descended on the nation's capital for the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) 100th annual conference. As usual, the 2,000+ sessions included enough progressive politics and self-impressed navel-gazing to choke a horse. It had been a while, but in honor of AERA's centennial, Francesca Pickett and I revisited a once-upon-a-time annual tradition and had some fun with the convening. When asked about the piece, I wound up repeatedly trying to explain the larger frustration that prompted it. In the spirit of clarity and convenience, I'll try to articulate that sentiment here.

The thing is, the mockery serves a very particular purpose—which is mostly to try and cast into bas-relief the groupthink that suffuses AERA. I'm always struck that my AERA friends and colleagues don't see the groupthink that I do. I suspect that's because they're deeply accustomed to the ideological homogeneity of the nation's education schools. In their eyes, attendees at AERA think they're engaging in wide-ranging debate when sessions grow heated between those fixated on questions of class, race, and privilege as the defining characteristics of American education—and those who are also fixated on issues of race, class, and privilege but think the first group isn't radical or angry enough.

Now, that's not every single individual at AERA. There is a rump group of economists and evaluators who consciously try to shy away from all this. They do their thing, and crank out their studies, but certainly don't challenge the "hegemonic consensus" of AERA, figuring that they don't need the grief . . . even if they think it ought to be challenged. The result: AERA is a place where Republicans can be compared to Nazis without anyone blinking an eye and where it's a given that Obama's education policies and Democrats for Education Reform are right-wing (!).

Indeed, despite the parade of sessions that feature attention to fraught topics like immigration, there are fundamental questions that go unraised—and that cannot be raised without triggering a meltdown. To suggest that illegal (or, in AERA parlance, "undocumented") immigrants should perhaps be regarded as lawbreakers is to be branded a nut job—or a fascist. To suggest that a fascination with oppression and "privilege" has squeezed out notions of moral agency and personal responsibility is to set off a wave of eye-rolling and cringing discomfort, as attendees try to determine whether one is ignorant, willfully blind to structural inequities, or simply an old-fashioned racist.

The possibility that knowledgeable, informed, and reasonable people might actually disagree on these things is simply not part of the AERA worldview—primarily, I suspect, because it's not part of the ed school worldview. For all the talk of diversity, creating safe places for inquiry, and wrestling with uncomfortable questions, far too many scholars seem to doubt that anyone to the right of, say, Hillary Clinton can possibly have thought seriously about any of these issues.

This is all especially frustrating because AERA is the national association representing the nation's education researchers. It can and should be a place where serious questions are tackled in a serious way, and where disparate voices have a chance to fully and honestly grapple with the research and its implications, and it sometimes is. I had the chance to sit on a terrific panel organized by Vivian Tseng of the W.T. Grant Foundation, in which the Spencer Foundation's Mike McPherson, the Ford Foundation's Fred Frelow, and I talked about the role of foundations in education today—a frank, serious discussion that featured some informative disagreement and a lot of complementary insights. I also had the chance to be part of a pretty thoughtful discussion on the risks of social media in academic research, hosted by Julian Vasquez-Heilig, in which Nolan Cabrera, Sara Goldrick-Rab, and Diane Ravitch discussed our various experiences and perspectives in a collegial and useful fashion.

Along the way, though, I sat through audience questions asking how to better convince foundations to pursue a Bernie Sanders-esque reform agenda. I heard Republican governors whom I know and like denounced as cartoon villains. I heard people operating with the casual comfort of a political gathering—where speakers can make confident assertions on hotly debated questions because they know they're among the like-minded. I would wholly expect scholars to chat that way if the occasion were a gathering of campus Democrats, but it's a problem when it's the reflexive norm at a major national research conference.

Anyway, that's why I mock AERA. I wouldn't say it's out of love, exactly. But it is out of the hope that AERA can and should do better, and that it'd be a valuable and healthy thing if it did.

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Feds Challenge Sovereign Immunity in Hurricane Katrina Lawsuit

Louisiana has survived another hurricane season without a Katrina-grade catastrophe; no doubt, a source of relief for the Bayou State.

While the Northeast contemplated what exactly one does to endure the eye of the storm during August’s Hurricane Irene, the hurricane pros down south were still rebuilding from a disaster that the rest of the country has largely forgotten.

For the federal government, however, Hurricane Katrina remains much more than a plot point on “Treme;” it’s a billion-dollar time bomb.

Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in an appeal to In re Katrina Canal Breaches Civil Action Consolidated Litigation, a 2009 case in which U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval found that sovereign immunity under the Flood Control Act of 1928 (FCA) insulated the Army Corps of Engineers' from negligence claims related to their flood control projects, not their navigation projects.

In a 156-page opinion, Judge Duval wrote, "The Corps' lassitude and failure to fulfill its duties resulted in a catastrophic loss of human life and property in unprecedented proportions. The Corps' negligence resulted in the wasting of millions of dollars in flood protection measures and billions of dollars in Congressional outlays to help this region recover from such a catastrophe. Certainly, Congress would never have meant to protect this kind of nonfeasance on the part of the very agency that is tasked with the protection of life and property."

The seven plaintiffs in that Katrina lawsuit won over $100,000 each. If the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the decision, the federal government could be on the line for similar amount for ... "half a million administrative claims from flood victims alleging similar facts" reports Environmental Law Prof Blog.

The government is challenging the case in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping that the appellate court will view the Corps' sovereign immunity protection differently. Pierce O'Donnell, the lead plaintiffs' attorney in the case, told Levees.org that feds believe the cause of the failure is irrelevant to the sovereign immunity determination. "They are saying that even if the levees and floodwalls failed due to an independent act of negligence, the Corps is still immune."

The Fifth Circuit should issue a ruling by early 2012, according to the Times-Picayune. The losing side is expected to challenge the decision in the Supreme Court.

Related Resources:


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The point is, marketers should advertise on multiple search engines

Sharvanboskirk [Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

My recently released piece "Search Loyalty Is Still Hard To Find" has gotten a lot of press.  Some of it for a faulty conclusion.  I've corrected the notion that I was trying to introduce a "Google Killer" with this research on a few blogs.  Glad to see the right interpretation of our our data popping up as well!  I thought it might be worth setting the record straight from our own blog.

My primary assertion in this research is, that although Google's lead in the share of online searchers continues to grow, users find that other search engines are actually more effective for certain things — like looking up stock quotes or finding news stories. Smart marketers should most certainly advertise on Google and Yahoo! but should also target niche audiences via less expensive and more flexible media on AOL, MSN,, and Internet service providers.

In no way would I argue with Google's dominance in this market (it leads significantly in terms of both consumer searches and marketer spend managed).  Nor am I expecting that Google's lead is one that will be caught up to by Yahoo!, MSN or any new entrant.  What I am arguing with this research is that alternative search engines can offer more flexible ways to reach some types of audiences.  Advertisers looking to expand their programs and increase the sophication of their paid search buys should definitely experiment on engines beyond Google.

re: The point is, marketers should advertise on multiple search

Hi Shar,You're exactly right. However, experimenting is not simple. A key reason Google dominates so much ad spend is not just because it has great media inventory, but because its AdWords interface is so familiar to marketers. In other words, everyone knows how to use the AdWords interface and the entire underlying Google advertising operating system. The tremendous familiarity with that interface makes it extremely difficult to transition to other interfaces. (I've mentioned this in past comments on this blog.) That's why so many in-house marketers fail to diversify ad spend across networks as much as they should. That's why agencies often charge or absorb the cost of training and administration of spend across other networks, often with their smaller clients. That's also why scrutiny of tiny experimental investments always goes so high -- so high that success is often sacrificed to skepticism. It makes you wonder why so many competing ad networks work so hard to create unique front-ends -- in the end, creating even more friction for advertisers trying to plan and invest media.All this leads to the law of user experience, and was brilliantly decoded in a Harvard Business Review paper called Eager Sellers, Stony Buyers. User experience of an incumbent product creates a huge hurdle to newcomers in a market. There's the real cost of switching to and managing with a newcomer product, plus exaggerated fear of those costs. All creating very real friction.That's why advertising tools are so important, especially dashboards that normalize experiences and optimization across all advertising networks -- essentially unlocking the ability of media investment to easily travel to where it will achieve the greatest return. It's all about taking user experience out of the equation when making media investments -- by making the entire experience simple and easy.This is true for the largest ad spenders, as well as the smallest. Tools that create simplicity across ad networks enable advertisers to do more in less time. In dynamic pay-per-click ad marketplaces, where insights and optimizations are perishable, tools often are the only way to achieve your goals. It's hard enough with one search-engine network, let alone the three major ones combined, or more.My intention is not to shill, but we have a great product tour on our site ( that explains in three minutes how a tool can disrupt the time and complexity of managing performance across multiple networks, or even just one.Regards,Max KalehoffVP-MarketingClickable

re: The point is, marketers should advertise on multiple search

that is right. actually i think it will be useful to experiment on the top 10 search engines.


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Monthly Archives: November 2012

Bob Mansfield, a longserving Apple executive responsible for engineering hardware such as the Macbook Air and iMac, cashed in $20m worth of stock on Wednesday.

A regulatory filing on Thursday revealed that Mr Mansfield sold 35,000 shares at prices ranging between $582.00 and $582.88, totalling $20.4m. Read more

Personal tech giftsThey say good things come in small packages and our annual gift guide shows this certainly applies to gadgets as Christmas presents this year – many of the best innovations of 2012 are small enough to fit in a Christmas stocking. We rate them for coolness and value for money with Kudos and VFM stars out of five.

 Read more

As Silicon Valley has boomed, there has been a flurry of public scrutiny of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. But one company has stayed strangely out of the spotlight: Amazon.

In a new Financial Times ebook, on sale globally today, Barney Jopson and other FT writers lift the lid on a company which has grown from online book business into overlord of a corporate eco-system over which it wields extraordinary power. Read more

Wii Console

Nintendo Wii U
Rating: 4/5

Nintendo has launched the next generation of home video consoles with the debut of the Wii U in the US, and European and Japanese launches to follow on November 30 and December 8. The unique GamePad controller is earning plaudits, but network problems and content delays are a concern.

 Read more

Ferguson illustration

Things got quite exciting in London at noon on Tuesday. First Kweku Adoboli, the rogue trader formerly employed by UBS, was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud. Then Hewlett-Packard accused the former management of Autonomy, the UK software company, of wrongdoing. The moral appeared to be, as a New York journalist wryly tweeted: “Don’t trust the British.”

 Read more

When your company has been built around a deeply ingrained product development and manufacturing process, it is hard to change. And when that process has given you a world-beating edge through any number of product and technology cycles, it is even less easy to see why you should.

Now add in another complication: Wall Street thinks you have traded away your future and you need to learn a whole new way of doing business. But there is a catch. It does not want you to give up the unrepeatable profit margins you make from your old ways.

 Read more

The co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, and founder of SpaceX talks to the FT’s John Gapper and Daniel Garrahan about electric cars for the mass market and putting people on Mars, at the UK launch of his sports car.

Back of Google Nexus 10

Google’s latest addition to its hardware range, the Nexus 10, has landed. This time Google partnered with Samsung to produce an iPad-beating spec sheet and what they tout as the ‘highest resolution display in the world’. Priced at £319 in the UK and $399 in the US, could the Nexus 10 tempt Android holdouts? Read more

Interesting commentary from around the Web on the tech story that made headlines this week.

A mere two weeks after the release of Windows 8, Microsoft surprised many when it announced the departure of Steven Sinofsky, head of Windows. While many tech observers noted a parallel between Sinofsky’s exit and Apple’s recent management shakeup, others pointed out that chief executive Steve Ballmer could be the next target. Read more

In a week of big numbers for a previously slumping video game industry, Activision has come up with the biggest one of all – $500m in sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops II in its first 24 hours.

On Monday, Microsoft announced $220m in first-day sales for Halo 4 and then revealed, on the 10th anniversary of Xbox Live on Thursday, that a record 442m hours were played on it last week. Meanwhile, Sony announced sales of the PlayStation 3 had passed 70m and Nintendo expects the Wii U to sell out when it goes on sale in the US this weekend. Read more

Lytro’s revolutionary light-field camera has received a couple of interesting enhancements to boost its appeal during the holiday season.

The Silicon Valley company announced Perspective Shift – a way of bringing total focus to a picture and moving around in it – and Living Filters – the ability to add Instagram-like effects to shots taken. Read more

How far will Google go to head off the threat of long and damaging antitrust battles on both sides of the Atlantic – and how hard will regulators push to cramp its expansive style?

The answers to those questions should become clearer in the next few weeks, as the European Commission and the US Federal Trade Commission press the company for voluntary changes in its business model to end their antitrust investigations. Rivals want radical action, perhaps even extending to a break-up of Google into separate companies that handle search and other services. The likely outcome, though, is more minimalist.

 Read more

Sony Vaio Tap

Sony Vaio Tap 20
Rating 4/5

Sony’s Tap 20 changes the concept of the home PC by stripping away most of the things we associate with familiar computing appliances.

 Read more

Zynga has announced a management reshuffle following another significant departure from its executive ranks.

The leading social gaming company said Dave Wehner, its chief financial officer, had resigned and was joining Facebook. The company lost John Schappert, its chief operating officer, and Jeff Karp, chief marketing officer, in recent months, among a string of executive departures as Zynga reported disappointing earnings and its share price plummeted. Read more

Jawbone is reintroducing UP almost a year after users’ complaints, about the health-monitoring wristband dying on them, forced it to halt production.

The new UP, costing $30 more than the original, has been rigorously tested and its components improved to prevent a repeat of the public relations and financial fiasco for the company. Read more

The developers of the Pebble smart watch made Kickstarter history in May when they raised $10.2m, the largest sum received through the fast-growing crowdfunding site. But it is now in danger of attaining an equal notoriety for delays and busted deadlines.

After missing its original September delivery date, the Pebble’s creators warned this weekend that many backers will not receive their device in time for Christmas. Read more

When the biggest beast in the jungle decides not to fight you any more, your survival chances go up a lot. That’s the message from HTC shares on Monday.

After the company and Apple announced a global settlement that includes the dismissal of all current lawsuits and a ten-year license agreement, shares in the Taiwanese phonemaker leapt up 6.86 per cent – its daily limit. But is this the turning point for HTC, which saw profits fall 80 per cent in the third quarter?

 Read more

With many major events these days, record-breaking levels of engagement on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are customary, and this week’s presidential election was no exception.

After his re-election was announced, a photo of President Barack Obama hugging his wife that was posted on Twitter and Facebook became the most liked and most popular tweet of all time. But others argued big data might have been the real winner of this year’s presidential election. Read more

When Apple filed suit against HTC for patent violations in 2010, it was the first time the California-based company had turned its legal arsenal on an Android phone-maker.

Two years, and many more lawsuits later, Apple and HTC’s decision to settle those disputes is likewise the first time that Apple has agreed a settlement with an Android-based rival. Read more

Peace has broken out in one corner of the multilateral patent war between smartphone makers, with Apple and HTC signing a global settlement and licensing agreement. Read more


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Daily Archives: March 7, 2013

The next few monthly jobs reports, including this Friday’s, will be watched especially closely to assess the balance in a rather unusual tug of war that has developed in Washington: between a dysfunctional Congress set on creating headwinds to a slowly-recovering US economy, and a central bank willing to roll out one untested measures after the other in its attempt to steer the economy towards higher growth and more robust job creation.

The “sequestration” is, of course, the latest example of America’s self-made obstacles. This set of blunt budgetary cuts, which automatically went into effect this week due to Congressional inaction, will add another fiscal drag of 0.5 percentage points off gross domestic product in 2013. Coming on top of January’s tax increases and recovering (but still-weak) endogenous growth drivers, this will serve to again limit the annual growth rate of the economy to 2 per cent or less – and do so without involving a rational and durable reform to America’s medium-term fiscal dynamics. Read more


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I spent all of last night on the phone and didn’t watch the Oscars. I
did flip it on briefly and saw Sean Penn prefacing his announcement of
the Best Actor award by defending Jude Law from Chris Rock’s barbs, but
that was it. A next-day recap and a fashion slideshow
is all I need. I was thinking last night that they should have a
scorecard up in the corner during the looooooong broadcast, just like
in football games. A list of those who’ve already won, for those who
join the show late. Then all I’d have to do is flip it on, check the
score, flip it back off.

iTunes Flirting

Very, very cute story. via Makeoutcity.

Those Repressed Brits

I’m betting this British commercial would never make it on American TV. Those Brits and their office porn. (via GapingVoid) Sort of not work safe. Ironically. Or appropriately, whichever.

Google has a new movie search engine … their come-on is a bit of a bait and switch, though–on Google’s main page there is the little teaser : “New! Get ready for the Oscars. Find showtimes for nominated films.” So
I clicked. I was actually hoping to see a page that would give you
showtimes ONLY for Oscar-nominated films, but no, it’s just a general
listing for all films. The “Nominated” part you have to figure out
yourself. Disappointing. But as a general showtimes service I guess
it’s okay. They also are starting to add reviews to the entries, so I
guess Google is trying to encroach on Rotten Tomatoes‘ market now too. But Google, you are no Rotten Tomato.

I have been spending a fair amount of time in Watertown lately (okay
really I just ride the bus through it on my way to BJFF in West Newton)
and it seems like a very cool little town. Very old neighborhoody-feel,
lots of corner shops, heavy Armenian presence, lots of diners, pizza
shops, middle-eastern food shops. But this is just my bus-eye view, as
I have yet to get off the bus before my destination. Some day. Until
then I will peruse this new Watertown blog.

The New York Times has taken a position on the Larry Summers “women aren’t good at science” controversy:

Last week’s release of the long-sought transcript of his remarks is
not likely to improve things much. Dr. Summers compared the shortage of
female scientists at the highest ranks of academia to, among other
things, the shortage of Jewish farmers, and white men in the National
Basketball Association. (Coming soon: Female Biologists Can’t Jump.)

Dr. Summers’s defenders say he is being tarred for the very
intellectual openness that places like Harvard are supposed to
encourage. Even in the best of circumstances, it’s questionable whether
the head of an institution that has a bad reputation when it comes to
promoting female scientists was the perfect person to free-associate on
why women have trouble getting tenure. However, the transcript provides
the best possible refutation of the charge of political correctness.
Whatever Dr. Summers was doing at the conference, it had nothing to do
with serious intellectual inquiry. “I don’t think anybody actually has
a clue” was one operative phrase. “I don’t remember who had told me”
was another. It was every woman’s nightmare of what a university
president thinks privately about equal opportunity.

We have
been informed many, many times in the past that Dr. Summers likes to
make waves, and who could blame him? It’s fun to toss out provocative
ideas and watch as everyone’s ears redden and all eyes turn to the
daring speaker who started the hubbub. But it’s an exercise better
restricted to radio talk show hosts than the heads of major academic
institutions. Harvard is supposed to be teaching its students not just
how to start a controversy, but also how to have an intelligent

Here We Go Again

Big Brotha

I visited a site I’d never been to before and it had the following ad on the side:

I was very creeped out. How does it know me? I clicked to find out.

How does the Amazon Honor System paybox know my name?

When you look at a Web page, the words and pictures you see actually
may come from several sources. Your browser software assembles the
pieces and displays them as a single page. On the Web site you were
visiting, most of the content you saw was transmitted from server
computers used by the site’s operator. The image made up of the paybox
and your name displayed within the paybox was different–we sent it to
you directly from Amazon.com. This allowed us to recognize you by name
just like we do when you visit the Amazon.com Web site. Because
Amazon.com’s servers transmitted the image containing a paybox and your
name within the paybox directly to your browser software, the site
owner never saw the paybox or your name and never received any
information about you.

Still, I think it’s a terrible
business strategy–scaring your customers. Not all would take the time
to click through and figure out how they know your name. Privacy is a
very sensitive issue on the Internet. If I wanted to donate money I
would certainly not give it to them now, after they freaked me out like

Boston Anti-Oscars

You may or may not know that there is a local Boston film-geek society that hands out its own awards each year at Oscar time. March 20 at the Brattle, the anti-Oscars will take place. Last year Philip Seymour Hoffman was their special guest and “First Hall of Fame Inductee.” Check out the nominations–I have a feeling Filmbrain will approve:

Bad Education

Goodbye Dragon Inn

Last Life in the Universe

Lucas Belvaux The Trilogy

The Return

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring

Infernal Affairs

Nosey Parker

The Rage in Placid Lake

Lucas Belvaux – The Trilogy

Jonathan Caouette – Tarnation

David Gordon Green – Undertow

Tsai Ming-Liang – Goodbye Dragon Inn

Guy Maddin – The Saddest Music in the World

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang – Last Life in the Universe

Andrei Zvyagintsev – The Return

Tadanobu Asano – Last Life in the Universe

Gael Garcia Bernal – Bad Education

Kevin Bacon – The Woodsman

Paul Giamatti – Sideways

Tony Leung – Infernal Affairs

Jamie Sives – Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

Sinitta Boonyasak – Last Life in the Universe

Toni Collette – Japanese Story

Fatoumata Coulibaly – Moolaade

Anne Reid – The Mother

Isabella Rossellini – The Saddest Music in the World

Catalina Sandino Moreno – Maria Full of Grace

Imelda Staunton – Vera Drake

Phil Davis – Vera Drake

Alfred Molina – Coffee & Cigarettes

Peter Sarsgaard – Kinsey

Mark Wahlberg – I [Heart] Huckabees

Anthony Wong – Infernal Affairs

Cate Blanchett – Coffee & Cigarettes

Shirley Henderson – Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

Virginia Madsen – Sideways

Rie Miyazawa – Twilight Samurai

Fenella Woolgar – Bright Young Things

Coffee & Cigarettes

Lucas Belvaux^

Herzog Funnies

“It’s appalling. No wonder American women are frustrated.”

–Lena Herzog, the “beautiful, formidable Siberian wife” of Werner Herzog, explaining that American mores have become so conservative under Bush that nature documentaries now only allow “one thrust” for animal mating scenes.


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Dow dives 317 points, turns negative for year: stock market live blog recap

July 31, 2014, 9:26 AM ET

We\’re live blogging all the action in the stock market on Thursday. For a concise rundown of the day\’s trading activity, see Market Snapshot.

  • Good morning.

    Stock futures are indicating a slide by Wall Street.

    European stocks have been down on more bad news from that troubled Portugese bank,  a weak inflation reading and disappointing earnings — plus the Argentina news is hitting sentiment.

    Photo credit: Reuters

  • Losses are sizable in the early going, with the Dow falling more than triple digits.

    Dow -0.7% or -115 points

    S&P 500 -0.8%

    Nasdaq -0.9%

    Russell 2000 -1.1%

  • Up until today — the last day of July — the Dow and S&P 500 had been showing a gain for the month of July.

    With today’s selling, they’re now on pace to end lower for the month.

    Monthly performance:

    S&P 500 -0.2%

    Dow -0.4%

    Nasdaq +0.5%

    Russell 2000 -4.8% (ouch!)

  • Among the biggest losers in the S&P 500 are Yum and Whole Foods, which are falling on problems for a Chinese supplier and an earnings report, respectively.

    Yum /quotes/zigman/303422/delayed /quotes/nls/yum YUM is down 6%, while Whole Foods /quotes/zigman/80039/delayed /quotes/nls/wfm WFM is down 5%.

    The biggest loser in the S&P 500 is L-3 Communications /quotes/zigman/218529/delayed /quotes/nls/lll LLL , diving 12%.

    Read more in today’s Movers & Shakers column.

    Photo credit: Whole Foods

  • A fresh reading for the Chicago PMI hit in the last few minutes, and it was weaker than expected.

    But stocks aren’t really reacting much. Plenty of other market-moving reports today.

  • Dow Jones Newswires describes the troubles at L-3 /quotes/zigman/218529/delayed /quotes/nls/lll LLL :

    “L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL) ticked up its 2014 revenue guidance but cut its per-share earnings and margin expectations as its aerospace segment, which is undergoing an accounting review, is expected to get hit by charges.”

    Boldface added by your live blogger.

    L-3 is now down more than 13% — the S&P 500′s biggest loser by far.

    Photo credit: Bloomberg

  • A half hour into today’s session, stocks have just slumped to fresh session lows, then lifted up a bit.

    Dow -144 points or -0.9%

    S&P 500 -0.9%

    Nasdaq -1.1%

    Russell 2000 -1.2%

    Photo credit: Getty Images

  • Plenty of development are contributing to negative sentiment today:

    Wages are finally rising, and that could force the Fed to hike rates

    Argentina is effectively in default

    Before the U.S. market opened, European stocks were down on a soft inflation reading, weak earnings reports and more troubles for that ailing Portugese bank

     Credit for picture of Argentine pesos and Brazilian reals: Bloomberg

    • 10:37 am
    • Hooper: Too much uncertainty sends investors for cover
    • Add a Comment

    Kristina Hooper, U.S. investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors said investors are still digesting the GDP number and the FOMC statement from Wednesday and are nervous ahead of the monthly jobs data.

    “Markets love certainty and right now there is too much uncertainty about the Fed’s trigger points for raising rates. Instead of looking at one number, such as the unemployment rate, the Fed is looking at a mosaic of data points.

    Investors are unsure what the Fed would consider a tolerable level of higher inflation. They are also unsure when the Fed would consider the labor market as void of slack.

    On Friday, investors will pay close attention not only to the headline number in the jobs number, but also to the wage inflation, a number of part-time workers versus full-time, a percentage of long-term unemployed.

  • You get an overview of the Argentina situation in a story that we have here.

    The article contains the following nugget:

    Argentina’s “stocks and bonds had rallied this week on hopes that the two sides would reach a deal and avert default.”

  • Losses on Wall Street are deepening and the S&P 500 is at 1,945, an important level of support according to technical analysts.

    Sam Stovall, equity Strategist at S&P Capital IQ in a note wrote:

    From a technical perspective, U.S. equities are sending mixed messages. The S&P 500 remains in an overall bullish position, while it stays above support at 1944-60, with the ascending trend channel defining the larger upward trend.

    However, small-cap stock action, as well as overall market breadth, continue to signal a warning for the market. A move over 1169 for the Russell 2000 would be a near-term victory for the bulls and point to additional upside.

    Below 1140, however, we give the odds to the bears and downside action. Separately, gold is again testing support at 1287-95. We continue to project rotational price action while this support remains intact, but think a move below 1287 would tip the odds in favor of the shorts, targeting 1233-58. Resistance remains at 1316-32.

  • Getty Images

    Tesla /quotes/zigman/118681/delayed /quotes/nls/tsla TSLA shares are in retreat as the electric car company gears up to report quarterly earnings late Thursday.

    Investors will be looking for details on its GigaFactory plans, including site selection and suppliers.

    Analysts surveyed by FactSet expects Tesla to earn 4 cents a share in the second quarter.

    Tesla slid 1% to $226.49 in line with the broader market’s decline.

  • It’s halfway through the U.S. corporate earnings season.

    How have corporate earnings done so far?

    Find out what 3 market experts have to say earnings results are shaking out and pose your questions on the live video chat at noon ET today.

    Watch the Spreecast here.

    • 11:53 am
    • Only a handful of Nasdaq 100 stocks in green
    • Add a Comment

    Of the stocks in the Nasdaq 100, only six are trading higher while the rest are covered in red ink. The few that are surviving the market-wide selloff are:

    Garmin /quotes/zigman/118648/delayed /quotes/nls/grmn GRMN

    Discovery Communications /quotes/zigman/112277/delayed /quotes/nls/disca DISCA

    Equinix /quotes/zigman/89870/delayed /quotes/nls/eqix EQIX

    Staples /quotes/zigman/78299/delayed /quotes/nls/spls SPLS

    Twenty-First Century Fox /quotes/zigman/18008450/delayed /quotes/nls/foxa FOXA

    Costco /quotes/zigman/67728/delayed /quotes/nls/cost COST

    The Nasdaq 100 /quotes/zigman/12633936/realtime COMP shed 1.8% to 4,380, the worst hit among the three major indexes.

  • Synchrony Financial /quotes/zigman/30512340/delayed /quotes/nls/syf SYF , spun off from General Electric, got a tepid reception when it debuted in the market on Thursday.

    Synchrony weaved in and out of negative territory in its first couple of hours as a public company, trading near its IPO price of $23.

    The private-label credit card company sold 125 million shares to raise $2.8 billion.

  • The world is looking at Argentina, which didn’t make its bond payments Wednesday, the latest wrinkle in a years-long grudge match between the South American nation and its creditors. The situation continues to unfold, and investors continue to remains hopeful about a deal, but…

    Argentina’s Merval stock index /quotes/zigman/1467195/delayed AR:MERV  lost 6.6% Thursday, while the Global X FTSE Agentina 20 ETF /quotes/zigman/16859446/delayed /quotes/nls/argt ARGT , which tracks a barrel of companies linked to its economy, is down 4.4%. Bonds are down too.

    You can read more about it here.

    (Photo credit: Bloomberg)

  • djia

    July is starting to look like that scene from the wedding at the end of season three of Game of Thrones. I won’t give it away, but all three indexes are now in the red for the month. Here’s the intra-month losses:

    S&P 500 index: -0.9% for July; down 1.4% thursday

    Nasdaq:  -0.4% for July; down 1.7% Thursday

    Dow: -0.9% for July;  down 1.2% Thursday

  • Small caps haven’t been faring so well in July either. A note from Steven DeSanctis, head of US Small Cap Strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, highlights the following:

    “July has been one of the toughest months in quite some time for small caps, as the size segment is down over 4% and lagging the large caps by nearly 500 basis points. This is a continuation of the full year’s performance in small, as the size segment is now 8.2% behind large caps (Chart 1). This year has the making of being the worst relative performance since 1998, an infamous year for small-cap investors. When small has performed as poorly as it has versus large, one would expect a bounce, but that was certainly not the case in 1998. In fact, when the first seven months are as bad as this, small continued to trail large by another 3.6%.”

  • Here’s a little-known market indicator: Josh Brown’s hair during his CNBC appearances:

  • MarketWatch’s Tomi Kilgore has more on the “good isn’t good enough” theme, which seems to be dominating earnings season. We saw it last week in the biotech sector. Now we’re seeing signs of it in the tech sector:

    “Akamai Technologies shares  /quotes/zigman/67451/delayed /quotes/nls/akam AKAM  dropped 2.1% in midday trade Thursday, although the Internet content delivery company reported profit and sales that beat consensus analyst estimates and provided an upbeat outlook for the current quarter after Wednesday’s close….

    “The problem was revenue of $476 million, which while above the FactSet consensus of $472.9 million, was within the company’s guidance of $464 million to $478 million.Morgan Stanley analyst Jennifer Swanson Lowe said bears may be picking at the fact that Akamai snapped its five-quarter streak of beating the high end of guidance. And when a stock has surged 29% year-to-date, or about four-times better than the S&P 500’s gain, that might as well be a miss.”

    Read more here.

  • vix

    The CBOE’s Volatility Index – which often gets the nickname “fear index” — spiked on Thursday to its highest since mid-April. The VIX is up almost 20% on the day.

    There’s a whole host of discussions about whether the VIX actually has any meaning, but we’ll leave that aside for now and just note that if the VIX isn’t showing investor caution, the major stock indexes certainly are.

    h/t to Steven Russolillo, down the hall at WSJ’s MoneyBeat.

  • A word of advice from Nuveen strategist Bob Doll, who’s got a  mid-year market update at 4 p.m. Eastern:

  • More on Josh Brown’s hair, because, why not? MarketWatch reader SH Moder writes in the comments section:

    “Thanks for the laugh MW.  Had a co-manager who used to rub his fingers through the gel in his hair on bad days, so how his hair looked was always a barometer of when to stay away. “

  • hlf

    MarketWatch’s Angela Johnson writesthat Bill Ackman gave a big old “my bad” to the folks at Bloomberg for his lackluster presentation skills. His “death blow” presentation about multi-level marking company Herbalife Ltd.  /quotes/zigman/361145/delayed /quotes/nls/hlf HLF last week caused the stock to rally 25%, making it, well, pretty much the opposite of a death blow. To be fair, Herbalife stock didn’t retain much of the rise in share prices. Just look at the above chart.

    But Ackman had this to say about the whole experience:

    “It was a PR failure,” Ackman told Bloomberg. “I think we raised expectations. People were looking for the dead body and the smoking gun and instead what they got was a three-hour, detailed regulatory presentation.”

    Read more here.

  • A click gets you some more factoids on just how bad this last day of July has been, courtesy of MarketWatch’s Victor Reklaitis. A preview for you chart-watchers out there:

    “The S&P 500 has sliced through its 50-day moving average. The benchmark last closed under that level on April 15. The Dow also has undercut its 50-day line, and it hasn’t finished under that level since May 20.”

    (For some background, crossing through the 50-day moving average generally suggests a down-trend in the intermediate term.)

    But check out the full piece here.

    • 2:02 pm
    • Stocks end volatile July with a selloff
    • Add a Comment

    Stocks are sharply lower on worries about the outlook for Federal Reserve policy. Chief investment strategist Doug Roberts at Channel Capital Research doesn’t expect Fed tightening, but we could see “increased noise from the hawks on the Fed.”

  • Our screens show all of the 30 components of the Dow are now in the red. Here’s an update on the indexes:

    Dow: -1.26%

    Nasdaq: -1.54%

    S&P 500: -1.32%

    • 2:26 pm
    • Yelp shares fall on decline in new advertiser
    • Add a Comment

    Via Rex Crum:

    On Wednesday, Yelp Inc. /quotes/zigman/9021597/delayed /quotes/nls/yelp YELP  reported its first quarterly profit since going public more than two years ago. Not only did the online review aggregator move out of the red, but it reported an uptick in sales that also exceeded the estimates of Wall Street analysts.

    The company’s stock seemed like it would rise Thursday morning. But that’s not what happened.

  • Stocks hit session lows. All three main benchmarks are looking at monthly losses.

    S&P 500 -1.6%

    Dow -1.5%

    Nasdaq -1.8%

  • For a snapshot of today’s markets, you can read our regular Market Snapshot column.

    All 10 main sectors on the S&P 500 are now more than 1%. Telecoms is down 2%, while energy sector fell 1.8%.

    Investors are beginning to worry about the Fed raising rates sooner than anticipated, given the faster economic growth. GDP preliminary numbers show the economy expanded by 4% in the second quarter.

    There are also signs that wages are seeing inflation pressure. Wage inflation can accelerate overall inflation forcing the Fed tighten its policy.

  • Dow fell 300 points or 1.8%. That sell order was serious.

  • Wow, the Dow is now on pace for its worst drop in six months — since Feb. 3…

  • A range of factors are getting the blame for today’s selloff, which has accelerated in the afternoon:

    Wages are finally rising, and that could force the Fed to hike rates

    Argentina is effectively in default

    Before the U.S. market opened, European stocks were down on a soft inflation reading, weak earnings reports and more troubles for that ailing Portugese bank

    Photo credit: Getty Images

  • So the Dow is up a bit from its session lows and showing a loss of 296 points, rather than 300.

    But the blue-chip benchmark still is on pace for its biggest drop since Feb. 3. It’s on pace to top its April 10 drop of 267 points.

    What about the S&P 500?

    It’s down 1.9% or 37 points. On April 10, the benchmark fell 2.1% or 39 points — so this will be its worst drop since then.

  • Some notable stocks are showing double-digit percentage drops.

    They include Yelp /quotes/zigman/9021597/delayed /quotes/nls/yelp YELP , 3-D Systems /quotes/zigman/5280737/delayed /quotes/nls/ddd DDD and L-3 Communications /quotes/zigman/218529/delayed /quotes/nls/lll LLL .

    Read all about it in our Movers & Shakers column by Sue Chang and Angela Johnson.

    Photo credit: Bloomberg

  • With just a few minutes to go, here’s where we are:

    Dow -306 points or -1.8%, on pace for worst drop since Feb. 3

    S&P 500 -1.9%, on pace for worst drop since April 10, when it fell 2.1%

    Nasdaq -2%

    Russell 2000 -2.2%

  • The Dow also is down for the year at this point: -0.03% YTD

  • Stocks end sharply lower; Dow dives more than 300 pts

    S&P 500 closes down 2%; Nasdaq slides 2.1%

    Dow turns negative for year, down 0.1% in 2014

    Dow falls 1.6% in July; S&P 500 loses 1.5% for month

    Nasdaq drops 0.9% in July; Russell 2000 loses 6.1%

    What stands out for this live blogger is the Dow today erased its modest gain for the year, and the 30-stock index is now -0.1% in 2014.

    Also, the small-cap Russell 2000 got hammered this month, sliding 6.1%.

    Photo credit: Getty Images

  • So the Dow did indeed end up suffering its biggest single-day drop since Feb. 3 — both in terms of points and percentage.

    Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (-39.40 points or -2%) endured its biggest single-day drop in terms of points since Feb. 3, but in terms of percentage, this was its worst drop since April 10, when it fell 2.1%.

  • Well, not every U.S. stock is dropping.

    LinkedIn /quotes/zigman/5131883/delayed /quotes/nls/lnkd LNKD is gaining after hours on its quarterly earnings report.

    Our After Hours column by Sue Chang will be updated shortly with details on all of the late movers.

    Plus Ben Pimentel will be live blogging LinkedIn’s earnings conference call.

    That’s a wrap for today’s live blog. Thanks for checking it out.

    Photo credit: Getty Images

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NetworkManager att login

Just got Kubuntu installed on my laptop. It's not bad but the panel locks up when I login to ATT wifi at Starbucks until I goto a browser and submit their online agreement. This behavior is a bit annoying so decided to try to automate the form submission with WWW::Mechanize. The script is very simple but seems to work so I decided to post it here for anyone else with similar issues.
Comments welcome.

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user-pic I blog about Perl.


text:
Thursday, August 02, 2007

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Tragedy

During the bumper-to-bumper evening rush hour on Wednesday, August 1, 2007, the 8 lane I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis spanning the Mississippi River collapsed, crushing cars and sending countless vehicles and people plummeting into the water. This horrible tragedy is one that has left the entire area and nation shaken with disbelief, paralyzed with the images of twisted steel, crushed concrete and vehicles submerged in the water. Terrorist activity has all been ruled out, but the impact of the catastrophe is no less painful then if someone purposely attacked the bridge; an unknown number of people are dead, many hurt, and a major road and shipping channel closed causing economic impact that this area has never experienced.

Minneapolis is a “small big city,” even with nearly 3 million people in the Twin Cities metro, it is a lot like Cheers; everybody knows your name. Unlike most of the United States experiencing increased transience of their residents as they move for other pastures, Minnesota remains a place where people continue to embrace neighborhood, friends and family. I often tease my husband and other friends that Minnesota ranks only second to Hawaii as the least migratory state; Over 90% of the people who are born here live their entire lives in the state. But this dedication to the state gives the people of the Twin Cities much of the same strength, fortitude, spirit, camaraderie and determination shown after the September attacks that made me very proud to be a New Yorker. Although the first reaction is always, “this kind of stuff doesn’t happen here,” it has happened here, and the people here will band together to get through this horrible time.

Kira said...

Hey Chelle,
Was thinking of you today when I saw the news. I'm glad you and Wade are okay, and I hope all of your friends and family out there are as well.

Steve said...

My wife called me on Thursday night, and said 'have you heard about the bridge'-"No, what are you talking about?"
-'Turn the TV on'.
I turned it on. My wife continued " I was ALMOST on that bridge...I only missed it because we had a computer glitch at work, and It kept from leaving on time, I take that bridge all of the time to go to the one funeral home in Northeast Minneapolis". She was REALLY shaken by this experience. A couple of guys on my rugby team were also about a 1/4 mile away when it went down.

Explosive Bombchelle said...

Some stats from ABC News:
26.2 percent of the nation's bridges are in need of repair or do not meet the highest safety standards.

Minnesota's bridges are actually among the safest; 12.2 percent of the state's bridges are rated "structurally deficient" or "functionally obsolete," ranking it third best behind Arizona (10 percent) and Nevada (12 percent.

Washington, D.C., has the country's least safe bridges, with 63 percent of the district's 245 bridges rated either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. (guess I'm never gonna get the husband to move to DC now...)


text:
Sunday, April 17, 2016

brief McMillan update from DMPED at this Tuesday's ANC5E meeting

See the ANC5E meeting agenda below.

Note under "Part VI: Information Updates" that Giles Stucker of DMPED will be providing an update on McMillan concept design for the park space (the bottom tripartite of the site).

Something that McMillanites might have interest in.

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Posted: Saturday, October 31, 2015

Blount Memorial Earns "A" in Patient Safety

Once again, Blount Memorial Hospital was recognized with an “A” Hospital Safety Score by The Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits. The A score was awarded in the latest update to the Hospital Safety Score, the A, B, C, D or F scores assigned to U.S. hospitals based on preventable medical errors, injuries accidents and infections. The Hospital Safety Score was compiled under the guidance of the nation’s leading experts on patient safety. The first and only hospital safety rating to be peer-reviewed in the Journal of Patient Safety (August 2015), Hospital Safety Score is designed to give the public information they can use to protect themselves and their families.

“We’re extremely pleased that Blount Memorial’s patient safety efforts and outcomes continue to draw recognition from The Leapfrog Group,” said Blount Memorial CEO Don Heinemann. “Each member of our organization, from our executive team members to our housekeepers, takes pride in creating safe environments and positive outcomes for our patients. Patient safety has always been, and will continue to be, our primary goal in providing health care services to our community.”

“We have a dedicated and hardworking group of employees and physicians working together to care for our patients,” said Blount Memorial’s chief medical officer Dr. Harold Naramore. “Blount Memorial employees work to establish patient safety efforts to promote positive patient outcomes every single day for each and every patient,” he said.

To see Blount Memorial’s scores as they compare nationally and locally, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at, which provides information on how the public can protect themselves and loved ones during a hospital stay. Local hospitals’ scores are also available on the free mobile app, available at

The Hospital Safety Score assigns A, B, C, D and F grades to more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. It is calculated by top patient safety experts, peer-reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. The Hospital Safety Score uses 26 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from infections, injuries, and medical and medication errors. For more information about the Hospital Safety Score or to view the list of state rankings, please visit

About The Leapfrog Group

Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps forward in the quality and safety of American health care. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey collects and transparently reports hospital performance, empowering purchasers to find the highest-value care and giving consumers the lifesaving information they need to make informed decisions. Hospital Safety Score, Leapfrog’s other main initiative, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections.

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