Recharge any battery: save the environment by saving money

People are skeptical when I say economic efficiency means environmental efficiency. They often point out externalities as a counter argument, though if you defend property and individual rights, this problem can be mediated: pollute my land, and I sue you. Outside of the tort system, here's a way you, as an individual and as a consumer, can both save a lot of money and save the environment.

Don't throw away your batteries when they're dead! Any student of chemistry knows that a battery is a reversible chemical reaction. The truth is, many alkaline batteries can be recharged. Now the reason why I use the qualifier most is that some batteries are purposely designed to malfunction when you recharge them, to get you to buy more of course.

What I use is a discontinued Rayovak Recharger, which is a scaled down version of this one. I don't know why they stopped making these, but perhaps they did when people found out they could recharge any alkaline battery, as opposed to just rayovak brand rechargeables. Recently, Rayovak launched a new line of rechargeables, but I have not tested these out to see if these still work.

Ideally, any automatic recharger works (the kind that shut themselves off when they detect a full charge), but be careful testing. You can even do it yourself if you're adventurous. One thing I must point out though is that the chemicals inside the battery can irritate your skin, so if you see any sign of leakage, remove the battery with a thick paper towel and wash your hands. You'll notice a distinctive sour odor when batteries burst, which is another way of telling if they've malfunctioned. If the leakage got onto the charger or electronics, you can either wipe it down immediately or wait until it dries and dust it off. Also, if the battery stays warm a while after you've charged it, that means that the battery shorted and can no longer be used. Also, most batteries have some kind of expiration date on them, and this is a good rule of thumb as to your success in recharging the battery.

Ideally you should be able to recharge the batteries as often as you want until the battery can no longer be recharged. If you want, you can use a permanent marker and add a tally mark each time you recharge your batteries.

Good luck, have fun, and remember, safety first!

Wayne Allyn Root Speech in Chicago

Here is my video of Wayne Allen Root speaking last week, April 3rd 2008. For those that don't know, he's currently the front runner Libertarian Party presidential candidate.

You can download a high-res version of the film from bittorrent, or watch the lower-res youtube segments below:

You can also view Mr. Root debate the other candidates at the Heartland Libertarian Conference on April 5th.

Getting Windows Vista NOT to screw up networking

I recently bought a low-end laptop, and much to my surprise, it came Windows Vista instead of Windows XP. It sure looks pretty, and, in fact, I'm using to write this blog write now. However, Windows Vista has an infuriating flaw.

It won't network with Windows.

First a little background on my network topography. I run Windows 2003 Server as a router, file server, and print server. I've gotten everything, and I mean everything to read file shares on this network. I've gotten almost every Windows OS (save Vista) to work: Windows 95, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Professional 64-bit. I've even gotten openSUSE (a flavor of Linux) to read network shares using Samba, with the small exception of folders on NTFS drives.

And Windows Vista? Absolutely nothing. Yes, I can connect to the internet, but I see nothing on the network. Microsoft Help pointed me in the direction of installing the LLTD (Link-Layer Topology Discovery) protocol. Of course, it can only install in Windows XP. I forced it to install using compatibility mode on Windows 2003, and added the protocol to my network card, and rebooted the server.

Four hours of a wasted evening later, I can now not only finally see the shared files on the network, but I can also see the position of my 2003 server in my network. If it had taken one hour longer, I would have torched my laptop. Let's just say I don't expect the average home user to figure out this problem on their own, and may cause a small amount of chaos in IT departments across the country. Thanks, Microsoft.

Shuttering the Chicago Ron Paul Office

Since Mitt Romney's "suspension" of his campaign, the chance of a brokered Republican Convention this year is close to zero. Because of this, the need for a national campaign through November is over, though Ron Paul will still compete in remaining states. Since Illinois' primary was this past week, the campaign has decided to shutter all the offices here and transfer remaining campaign materiel elsewhere. So, I went over to the Chicago office to pick up some stuff and help with "striking the set". It was a somber affair mostly, akin to packing up all your things for a permanent move, where you know you'll leave behind friends and memories. Overall the office suited its purpose, sharing the ideas of liberty, and I met all kinds of interesting free-minded folks. It's good to know that independent yet generous people (all the equipment in the office was donated) are still around, and will be around for along time to come. I took some final photographs of the Chicago Ron Paul office, before it passed into history:

The Ron Paul Portrait Is Unveiled in Chicago

Yesterday, I was at an event at the Chicago Ron Paul Office, where they unveiled a new portrait of Ron Paul by the artist Caleb O'Connor. I got a chance to interview him, and ask him about his work and what inspired him.
View Larger Map

Breaching the Great Firewall of China

China, though it has gone through an extended period of modernization and economic liberalization, is still nonetheless tightly controlled by the Communist Party. The the plan is that their educated classes will too busy to think about politics when they are playing with cars, digital gadgets, and voting for the next Chinese Pop Idol. There is, however, the problem of the Internet. It is the ultimate beacon of freedom: a decentralized, hard-to-control, morass of ideas and commerce. Thus was born the Golden Shield Project, though it's more commonly known as the "Great Firewall of China".

It's aim is straightforward: to control the information passing through and circulating within the Chinese Internet. Filtering technologies allow the blocking of websites (imagine a Chinese version of Prison Planet), and search terms such as "Democracy". Personal emails can be opened and email traffic can be disrupted. But more importantly, the internet is used as a surveillance tool - if there are repeated attempts to subvert authority, IP addresses can be traced to real-world addresses. The fear of being sent to prison is usually enough for most common folk to avoid discussion of politics online.

Of course, there are ways of circumventing the Chinese Firewall. The biggest weaknesses are encrypted traffic and anonymous traffic. Two technologies that I know can exploit these weaknesses with ease, and allow the Chinese people to exercise freedoms in ways they never even thought possible.

Tor - an anonymity network

What Tor does is somewhat complicated, but the end results are fairly easily explained. The user's IP address is hidden - making the user invisible. However, the internet traffic itself can still be examined, so by looking at patterns in the data coming out of Tor's "exit nodes", a person's identity can be ascertained through the information itself. All cloaking devices have their weaknesses, just like that episode of Star Trek. The user must still take certain other precautions, such as using data encryption.

Freenet - a censorship-resistant distributed data store

Achieving complete anonymity and encryption of data might require abandonment of the traditional way internet works, such as using Freenet. Very simply put, Freenet piggybacks on the regular internet, allowing content to be distributed all over the world anonymously. Moreover, if one node is knocked out, the content remains as all the pieces are distributed everywhere. While this prevents dynamic content such as interactive websites using databases, "static" content such as text, music, movies can be stored. This would allow Chinese citizens to read books, watch movies, and listen to music otherwise banned on the mainland. It more resembles a filesharing network that way, though it is completely anonymous, distributed, and allows complete freedom of speech.

One question remains: if the Chinese Government blocks access to certain websites (including the ones that supply the above-mentioned software), how do the Chinese get their hands on these technologies? Unfortunately, the only way is to do it the "old-fashioned way" - distributing copies by CD. In that sense, you must also breach the old Great Wall of China.

Ron Paul's showing in Iowa decent, but there is a silver lining

Though Ron Paul's fifth place showing in Iowa was lower than some had hoped, there is actually some good news to be gleaned from his vote total for his future performance in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

Average polling data indicated that Ron Paul had risen to 7.6% in polls by January 2nd. With his 10% showing at the Iowa caucus, he showed that he could bring out at least a third more voters to the booths than polls indicated. Common sense says that polling will never be perfect, but on the other hand it may be true that polling really does exclude Ron Paul support because they're young, never voted before, or do not use land lines. If this pattern holds, Ron Paul will always do better than what's reported by traditional polling methods.

There are also certain elements of the Iowa population where Ron Paul trounced the competition. According to MSNBC's exit polling, Dr. Paul dominated among independents who voted Republican with 29% of the vote, and with voters who described themselves as angry with the Bush administration he scored a whopping 54%. Since New Hampshire expresses both of those demographics strongly, and plays host to the libertarian-oriented Free State Project, he stands a good chance of placing highly and even winning that state.

Another interesting fact is that Ron Paul was one of only three candidates to place first in an Iowa County (the other two being Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney of course). This happened to be Jefferson County, Iowa. If anybody knows what makes Jefferson County special, please let me know. This is definitely good news that the campaign is able to target locations where he's popular and draw out the voters. You can view how Republicans placed by county, here.

Update: here are some more predictions on Ron Paul and other Republican candidates, as well as the number of delegates assigned per candidate.