Never Use "Cruise Control" on a Wet Road

The blog author got the notice below by email from a friend today:

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

A 36 year old female had an accident several weeks ago and totaled her car. A resident of Kilgore , Texas she was traveling between Gladewater & Kilgore. It was raining, though not excessively, when her car suddenly began to hydro-plane and literally flew through the air. She was not seriously injured but very stunned at the sudden occurrence!

When she explained to the highway patrolman what had happened he told her something that every driver should know –

NEVER DRIVE IN THE RAIN WITH
YOUR CRUISE CONTROL ON

She thought she was being cautious by setting the cruise control and maintaining a safe consistent speed in the rain. But the highway patrolman told her that if the cruise control is on when your car begins to hydroplane and your tires lose contact with the pavement, your car will accelerate to a higher rate of speed making you take off like an airplane. She told the patrolman that was exactly what had occurred.

The patrolman said this warning should be listed, on the driver's seat sun-visor - NEVER USE THE CRUISE CONTROL WHEN THE PAVEMENT IS WET OR ICY, along with the airbag warning. We tell our teenagers to set the cruise control and drive a safe speed - but we don't tell them to use the cruise control only when the pavement is dry.

The only person the accident victim found, who knew this (besides the patrolman), was a man who had a similar accident, totaled his car and sustained severe
injuries.

NOTE: Some vehicles (like the Toyota Sienna Limited XLE) will not allow you to set the cruise control when the windshield wipers are on.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Verified by Snopes at:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/wetroad.asp

Digital Movies Rapidly Replacing 35mm Film

Samantha Murphy, TechNewsDaily senior writer, November 17,2011

The standard 35 mm film we're all used to seeing in movie theaters will be replaced worldwide by digital technology in the next few years, and the hit blockbuster film "Avatar" is to blame for the shift, according to a new report.

A report from the IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service said that 35 mm film, which has been the dominant projection format in movie theaters for more than 120 years, is nearing the end of its life, as the majority of cinema screens in the U.S. are expected to go digital in 2012.

In fact, IHS expects 35 mm will be replaced by digital technology globally by 2015, the report said. By the end of 2012, 35 mm film in movie theaters is expected to decline to 37 percent on a global scale, which is a dramatic decline from 68 percent of global cinema screens in 2010.

"Movie theaters now are undergoing a rapid transition to digital technology, spurred initially by the rising popularity of 3-D films," said David Hancock, head of film and cinema research at IHS.

"The release of 'Avatar' in December 2009 represented the pivotal moment for digital cinema, with digital technology forming the bedrock of the modern cinema environment," Hancock added. "Before 'Avatar,' digital represented only a small portion of the market, accounting for 15 percent of global screens in 2009."

After "Avatar," digital film technology grew 17 percent in both 2010 and 2011, compared to single-digit increases during the previous years. "Avatar" also increased the demand for digital 3-D technology.

In the U.S., IHS expects that there won’t be any mainstream usage of 35 mm film in 2013. Western Europe
is expected to change to digital by the end of 2014, and the rest of the world will then be under pressure to follow the trend, the report said.

"While the era of 35 mm will end at this time, there will still be some older films circulating in print for some cinemas," Hancock said. "Ironically, these last prints may have a high value as they circulate among a relatively small number of theaters dedicated to keeping the legacy of traditional film alive."

http://www.technewsdaily.com/3433-digital-movies-replace-film-2015-report-finds.html

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Reach TechNewsDaily senior writer Samantha Murphy at smurphy@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @SamMurphy_TMN 

Positive Quiddity: Air Travel Safer than Ever

Deaths from air travel are at a record low, as Joshua Freed and Scott Mayerowitz of the Associated Press report. There have only been 153 fatalities in the last ten years, two deaths for every 100 million passengers flying commercially, as calculated by the Associated Press from government accident data.

Although the airline industry survived terrible financial losses -- $54.5 billion in the last ten years, safety remained a priority and actually improved in the United States. Some nations remain significantly riskier for flying – Russia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia today have notably high rates of air crashes. Africa, which has three percent of the world’s air traffic, had 14 percent of the world’s fatal crashes.

Worldwide, 2011 was the second safest year on record to fly, with 507 persons dying in crashes. Seven of the twenty-eight planes in fatal crashes occurred on airlines prohibited from flying into the European Union due to known safety issues. The safest year worldwide was 2004 with 323 deaths, but there were fewer passengers that year.

Significant factors for the improved air safety:

• New aircraft and their engines reflect what was learned from previous mistakes. Accident investigations have changed procedures to avoid repeating past errors.

• Information is shared more thoroughly and efficiently than before. Databases allow pilots, airlines, manufacturers and government regulators to track the accidents and the near misses. Some statistics are kept runway-by-runway to spot opportunities to improve safety.

• Safety audits by outsiders such as the International Air Transport Association, an industry group that began its audit program in 2003. In addition, airlines demonstrate to the industry and to other airlines t6hat maintenance and safety procedures are proper – a method that has also decreased insurance rates for airlines by ten percent over the last decade.

• An experienced workforce that has been working for decades, especially in North America and in Europe. Experience makes for better split-second decisions and for more thorough training of younger employees. As an example, former US Airways captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger spent thirty years as a pilot and was praised for his safe ditching of a plane in the Hudson River in 2009 after multiple bird strikes stalled both engines shortly after takeoff. [All passengers were recovered after the water landing with no fatalities].

• Luck. It takes just one accident of a large aircraft to ruin the safety trend for a year, but this has not occurred lately. Very large capacity aircraft, such as the Airbus A380, are coming. These planes have a very large passenger capacity.

The most recent fatal crash in the United States was Colgan Air Flight 3407, a regional carrier flying as "Continental Connection." That crash, in 2009, killed 49 people as well as a man in a house, which was hit by the plane. All fatal crashes in the U.S. in the last ten years happened on these regional airlines, which are separate companies with smaller planes under such brands as "United Express," "American Eagle" and "Delta Connection."

The last large airline crash in the United States was American Airlines Flight 587 in 2001, which crashed just after taking off from New York, killing 265 people.

There have been some close calls – in April, a Southwest Airlines Aircraft ruptured a five-foot section of its fuselage, causing a loss of cabin pressure. A year earlier, another Southwest plane came within 200 feet of colliding with a small private aircraft at an airport in California. An American Airlines jet landing in the rain in Jamaica in December of 2009 was unable to come to a halt on the runway; it crashed through a fence, crossed a street and stopped o the beach. In December of 2005, a Southwest jet skidded off a Chicago runway; there were no passenger fatalities, but a 9-year-old boy was killed, though he was riding in a passing car at the time.

The bad economy may have indirectly made flying safer. In a boom time, airlines grow quickly and there is pressure to create new captains. In the present environment, they spend longer assisting and learning from the present captains.

Summarized from:

http://news.yahoo.com/never-safer-fly-deaths-record-low-163448033.html

The Mystery of Attacks by "The Birds"

Dan Vergano of USA Today reported on December 27^th that the real mystery of bird attacks in Monterey Bay in 1961 that led to the Alfred Hitchcock motion picture The Birds may have been solved.

Ocean environmentalist Sibel Bargu from Louisiana State University has examined stomach contents of turtles and seabirds which were gathered in Monterey Bay in 1961. They have found that 79% of the plankton in the samples have algae which make toxins. In a report published in Nature Geoscience, Bargu states that the chief toxin is is a nerve-damaging acid, one that results in confusion, seizures and death in birds.

A similar event involving contaminated mussels caused four deaths on Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada, in 1987.

Raphael Kudela, a plankton expert at the University of Southern California and author of a 2008 report on the Monterey Bay incident of 1961, inferred that the toxic acid was a likely cause of the event. He also noted that septic tank leaks could have fed these algae, although farm fertilizers have been blamed as the cause for years.

The USA Today article notes that leaky septic tanks were indeed installed in a housing boom in the Monterey Bay area in the early 1960s.

Summarized from:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/story/2011-12-27/hitchcock-birds-mystery/52246616/1
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

"The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier

"The Birds"is a famous novelette by Daphne du Maurier, , first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. It is the story of a farmhand, his family, and his community, who are attacked by flocks of seabirds who have organized themselves into avian suicide warriors. The story is set in England shortly after the end of World War II. By the end of the story it has become clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault.
The story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name, released in 1963, the same year that The Apple Tree was reprinted as The Birds and Other Stories.

In 2009, Irish playwright Conor McPherson adapted the story for the stage at Dublin's Gate Theatre.

Plot Summary

Farm worker and war veteran Nat Hocken notices an unusual number of birds behaving strangely along the peninsula where his family lives, which he attributes to the coming winter. That night, he hears tapping at his bedroom window. When he opens it, he is pecked in the knuckles by a frightened bird. Some time passes, and the tapping resumes. As Nat opens the window again, a number of birds strike him and disappear. He hears screams from his children's room and rushes to them, only to find a swarm of small birds flying around their room. Nat fights them off with a blanket until dawn, when they fly away, leaving about fifty dead birds on the floor. He reassures his wife that the birds were restless because of a sudden change in the weather. The next day, Nat tells his fellow workers about the night's events; but they give it little importance. As he goes to the beach to dispose of the dead birds, he notices what appear to be dark clouds over the sea but are actually tens of thousands of seagulls waiting for the tide to rise. When Nat gets home, he and his family hear over the radio that birds are attacking all over Britain, presumably because of the approaching winter. Nat decides to board the windows and block up the chimney. Later, he goes to pick up his daughter, Jill, from the school bus stop. Then he sees his boss, Trigg, with a car and asks for him to give Jill a lift home. Trigg cheerfully claims that he and some others are unfazed by the announcements and plan on going out and shooting the birds. He invites Nat to come along, but Nat rejects Trigg's offer and continues home. Just before he reaches home, the gulls descend, attacking him with their beaks. Nat reaches the cottage with minor injuries. Soon massive swarms of birds are diving for the house. A national emergency is declared on the radio, and people are told not to leave their homes. The birds continue to crash mindlessly against the cottage. During dinner, the family hears what sounds like gunfire from planes overhead, followed by the sound of the planes crashing. The attacks die down, and Nat calculates that they will only attack at high tide. The next day, when the tide recedes, Nat goes out to get supplies from the neighbors. There are piles of dead birds around the houses, but the birds still alive simply watch him from a distance. Nat goes to the farm where he is employed and finds Trigg and his wife dead. Later on, he also sees the postman's body by the road and realizes there are no signs of life from any of his neighbors' homes because they have all been attacked and eaten by the birds. Nat returns home with the supplies; and, in a few hours, the birds resume their attack. The story ends as Nat smokes his last cigarette while the birds continue their siege.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(story)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
A cogent summary of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film) 

Huge Entitlement Liabilities Calculated by GAO

Bryan R. Lawrence is the founder of an investment partnership in New York. He wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post that was published December 28, 2011.

Lawrence notes that the Government Accountability Office issued a financial statement for the federal government on December 23, the Friday just before Christmas. It was released at a time when it was correctly calculated not to get much press, and it didn’t. Lawrence thinks it should be looked at closely.

Since 1997, the USA has been one of a very select group of countries that publishes a financial statement based on "accrual" basis accounting rather than mere "cash basis" accounting. [Accrual accounting is required for financial statements carrying the audit opinion of an American certified public accountant, as cash statements are correctly regarded as inherently misleading. Every single annual financial statement from every corporation in America that issues stock or has significant bonds is prepared using the accrual basis – the blog author]. GAO prepared the latest statement, and it has a reputation for fair and impartial work.

The GAO uses the professional technique, "net present value," to determine the amount of liability the government has for for future Social Security and Medicare promises. "Net present value" is the total value of streams of expenses in the future, discounted at a reasonable rate to the present time, something like figuring out the current value of a mortgage indebtedness by adding up and discounting all the future mortgage payments.

And here’s what Lawrence says about the calculation: "In fiscal 2011, the cost of the promises grew from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion. To put that in context, consider that the total value of companies traded on U.S. stock markets is $13.1 trillion, based on the Wilshire 5000 index, and the value of the equity in U.S. taxpayers’ homes, according to Freddie Mac, is $6.2 trillion. Said another way, there is not enough wealth in America to meet those promises.

"If the government followed corporate accounting rules, that $2.9 trillion increase would be added to the $1.3 trillion cash deficit for fiscal 2011 that has been widely reported. And a $4.2 trillion deficit is something that Americans need to know about. "

The Treasury department, on the other hand, though acknowledging the importance of accrual accounting, only uses accrued figures in its "Citizen’s Guide" for benefits of government employees and veterans. The massive present value of promises to the American people at large are excluded.

The cost would have been a lot worse but for two assumptions that the GAO found questionable but did not apply estimates to improve the accuracy of the financial statements.

Lawrence notes that the annual increase in present value indebtedness for Social Security and Medicare is partly due to an ageing population in the USA. The Medicare numbers for the present value of the obligation are probably understated, because the GAO is following the actual text of the Medicare law, which requires cost controls on reimbursements to doctors – which legally should undergo an immediate 27 percent cut.
This drastic action, though part of current law, is "very unlikely" according to Lawrence.

The Medicare future estimates from the government assume that ObamaCare will reduce health cost growth by 1.1 percent per year, although the GAO has doubts about that and so do the trustees of the Medicare board.

What would happen if the doctors continue to be reimbursed as they are at present and the Obamacare cost reductions do not pan out? "The result is a $12.4 trillion increase in the cost of the promises, to more than $46 trillion. Given Congress’s history with the doc fix, and the general paralysis in Washington, it’s hard to argue with the GAO’s lack of confidence in Congress’s ability to honor its own cost controls."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-dirty-secret-in-uncle-sams-friday-trash-dump/2011/12/28/gIQArtWMNP_story_1.html

Blog Author’s Comments

Corporations and entities with significant publicly-traded bonds are required to provide audited annual financial statements that use net present value to calculate the liability for pensions (in accordance with FASB 86 of 1985) and to provide net present value liability figures for the net present value of future health benefits (FASB 106 of 1991).

Government organizations, finally, were encouraged to supply this information in accordance with government auditing standard GASB 45 (phased in beginning in 2007).

Lawrence’s article mistakenly attributes the requirement for accrual accounting to the government. It was the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the participating American Institute of Certified Public Accountants that wrote and enforced these standards. This is important because now, post-September 28, 2008, under TARP I, FASB pronouncements cannot be issued until reviewed and approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, an enormous power grab indeed.  GASB 45 applies to state and local governments, but I have no knowledge that the federal government has agreed to accept these standards for its own financial reporting.

The trustees of Social Security and Medicare have their own board and, in early January of 2011, they issued a report showing, near the back in a chart, that the net present value of future Social Security and Medicare promises is already $45 trillion. Another report is due out in about ten days. This blog will report the latest figures when they are posted to the Internet by the government.

[Note: the blog author is a retired certified public accountant who for years prepared draft audited financial statements with nine-figure entries for FASB 86 retirement benefits as well as for FASB 106 retiree health benefits.]

Russia Criticizes USA Human Rights Record

The Associated Press reports that the Russian Foreign Ministry Wednesday issued a 90-page report on injustices committed elsewhere in the world. Previous American State Department accusations of human rights failures in Russia have been made in regular annual reports, and the Foreign Ministry report may be a rebuke and reply.

The Russia report also berates the NATO operation in Libya, nations of the European Union, Canada and Georgia, but the longest section, twenty pages, are taken up by American rights violations.

Specifically mentioned are

• The prison at Guantanamo Bay, "legalizing indefinite and extrajudicial custody and the return of court martials."

• Violating the rights of Muslim Americans as part of the war on terror

• Errors by American courts: "Judicial errors are the Achilles heel of American justice as concerns capital punishment." Specifically, 130 persons were sentenced to death in the last 30 years who were later cleared of the offenses, some following execution

• Setting up roadblocks to prevent independent candidates from running for office

• Permitting governors to nominate senators for open seats, even corrupt governors such as now-convicted Illinois former Governor Rod Blagojevich

State Department spokesman Mark Toner replied, "In terms of our human rights record, we're an open book."

Summarized from:

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-slams-us-human-rights-record-132909195.html;_ylc=X3oDMTNubmQwNWh1BF9TAzIxNDU4NjgyNzQEYWN0A21haWxfY2IEY3QDYQRpbnRsA3VzBGxhbmcDZW4tVVMEcGtnAzIzNWNkZDE1LWNhMWItMzgzNS1iMGU0LTUxOTQxY2MwZmM5YQRzZWMDbWl0X3NoYXJlBHNsawNtYWlsBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3

Negative Quiddity: Obamacare

Sally Pipes is CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and writes on health care. She has a book on this subject coming out next month. She also wrote an opinion piece for the December 26, 2011 Forbes magazine. Her article included the following points:

• Almost two-thirds of doctors expect the quality of medical care to decline under Obamacare, according to a survey from consulting firm Deloitte. Only 27 percent of doctors expect the law to lower costs.

• Nine of ten doctors expect insurers to raise premiums for employers and individuals. One one quarter of doctors feel Obamacare will reduce health insurance costs for consumers.
• Health are takes about $1 for every $6 in the economy – by 2020, it will account for about $1 in every $5, a fifth of the nation’s GDP.

• The Congressional Budget Office expects that Americans in the "non-group market" will see premiums rise by $2,100 under Obamacare.

• The Kaiser Family Foundation states that 2011 family premiums topped $15,000, a nine percent increase over 2010. The year before Obamacare was passed, 2009, premiums went up by three percent.

• Half the nation’s doctors expect access to care to diminish because health reform will result in the closure of hospitals.

Ninety percent of doctors fear they will receive inadequate payments and suffer higher administration costs. Less than one-quarter of doctors think paperwork requirements will ease up. Sally Pipes notes that, "Time spent wading though paperwork is also time no longer available for actually practicing medicine."

Pipes’ new book, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare, will be released in January.

Summarized from:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2011/12/26/doctors-say-obamacare-is-no-remedy-for-u-s-health-woes/