If Your Reading This You Don't Live In Egypt

According to AP reports, about half past midnight, the internet went dark in Egypt. Can you imagine it. Is something like that even possible. Well in a country with near tyrannical rule, perhaps, but could it happen in a place like our beloved USofA.

"It can't happen here," said Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer and a co-founder of Renesys, a network security firm in Manchester, N.H., that studies Internet disruptions. "How many people would you have to call to shut down the U.S. Internet? Hundreds, thousands maybe? We have enough Internet here that we can have our own Internet."

Well thank goodness. If the internet went dark, how could I tweet, or Facebook, or Skype, or blog, or eat, or even live..........

Well I guess the good news is we'll never know.
If you want to read the full text of the article, it's over at yahoo here: CLICK

Challenger: 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years ago today, the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed during launch in front of a world wide television audience. For people of my generation, the Challenger disaster is a "Where were you?" moment. Like the Kennedy assassination for our parents, or 9/11 for our children, that day in January, 25 years ago, was perhaps the first time we experienced a common loss with the rest of the world. More than just the loss of those seven brave individuals that stepped on the launch platform that morning, we all lost a bit of innocence that day.

I remember sitting in the floor of my bedroom that morning. It was a school day here in Virginia, but as is likely to happen in late January, we were snowed in. The shuttle launches were always news back in those days, but with Teacher In Space Christa McCauliffe on board, they interrupted the regularly scheduled network broadcast to cover the launch. For most of the time it was just background noise. My friends and I were playing Scrabble and having a blast. I had just landed a triple word score and was in the middle of more than just a little gloating when we all heard, "We have a major malfunction."

By the time those words were spoken, the bulk of the Shuttle Challenger had disintegrated. We turned to the television screen to see what was going on. All that was left of our nation's spacecraft was the two solid rocket boosters, twisting up into the atmosphere. It wasn't until moments later during a replay that we actually saw the "fireball" that engulfed the shuttle. I remember being confused. "How could something like this happen?' I asked. As the newscasters replayed the video over and over, speculating as to the cause and what exactly we were seeing on our screens, we stayed glued to the broadcast. The crew identities and biographies soon followed and my confusion was quickly replaced by a deep sense of loss. I felt for their families. They were just doing their job and something entirely unfathomable had happened.

As we returned to school and in the months that followed, that day immediately made it's way into the small talk lineup. After your weekend plans, or who you were talking to, everyone asked about the Challenger broadcast. "Where were you?" "Can you believe it?" Soon we were all engaged in actively mourning a group of people we didn't even know. In the end, I believe we were mourning the loss of our invincibility as individuals and as a country.

For most adolescents, loss is something that happens to older people. Some of us had lost a grandparent or even two, but few of us had lost a parent, and almost none of us had lost a friend. In some ways, that's what the loss felt like. It felt as though we had lost someone close to us. But in each other we had companionship and a shared understanding for what we were going through. Even if we didn't hang out together after school, or have the same class schedule, we all shared in the tragedy. Hard to say if we were all changed for the better, but we were definitely changed. For our country, a successful space program was a tremendous testament to America and its citizens. But on that morning in January, all that changed, and we all felt a little bit of that.

It was nearly three years before the Space Shuttle lifted off again. Numerous Q&A sessions, informal and formal investigations, and thousands of hours of news coverage passed the months between the launches. Some even saw the disaster as the end of space travel entirely. But we did fly again. The Space Shuttle Discovery took to the air in September of 1988 beginning 19 years of uninterrupted shuttle flights. We were back in the space, but those of us that were around back then would never be the same.

BCS Math is the New "New Math"

Back when I was in school, the craze sweeping through the classrooms of middle America was something they were calling "New Math". Fortunately for me, I was already past the stage of school where the "New Math" was being taught, but I came to understand that is was a re-imagined ways of adding and subtracting numbers. It never made sense to anyone, and it was eventually abandoned. Today the Bowl Championship Series released it's "New Math" problem for 2011.

"College football conferences will get a record take of about $170 million from this year’s Bowl Championship Series games, including a new high of $24.7 million for the five conferences that don’t get automatic bids to the BCS bowls."

On the surface the statement above looks like a windfall for college football and the teams that participate in it. The BCS and it's fearless leader Bill Hancock wants us to believe that the BCS is better for college football than anything else out there. However, upon further scrutiny, the math just doesn't prove the point it is supposed to.

The non-automatic qualifying conferences share 24.7 million dollars in revenue from the BCS. The don't each get 24.7 million, they share it. So each league gets roughly 5 million dollars. Still sounds pretty good, but once you take into account that each of the leagues has some type of revenue sharing model in place to evenly distribute money, the number drops even further. To keep my math easy, let's assume an equal split in each league, and that each league has 8 teams in it. That means that each team will net roughly $625,000. That number is a whole lot less impressive than the first one isn't it. This means that TCU will take home roughly 18.4 million dollars less than the advertised Rose Bowl payout once things are said and done.

The math doesn't look much better on the automatic qualifier side either. Let's take the ACC for example. The ACC received roughly 24 million dollars from the BCS this time around. That sounds like a pretty good payday, but once you divide that into 12 equal parts, each team only takes home 2 million dollars. Considering that a team traveling to a bowl game will have over 1 million dollars in expenses right off the bat, and that number drops even more. But those per team numbers aren't going to be anywhere in the BCS press release. They're just too small to be included in their formula.

Bill Hancock says, "...the numbers demonstrate the strength and fairness of the current system. The fact is that all of Division I football is better off because of the BCS, financially and otherwise."

Is it Mr. Hancock? If the NCAA added just one home game to the regular season schedule, most schools in the country will be just as well off, or better off financially than under the BCS, and that doesn't even take into account the windfall that a post-season playoff will provide. A big school like Ohio State or Alabama will net 6 or 7 million dollars for a home game. They certainly didn't net 7 million dollars for playing in the Capital One Bowl. Mr. Hancock, your numbers add up, but the math is still fuzzy. Let's hope that Hancock's "New Math" goes the way of the old "New Math" sooner than later.

Flying the Friendly Skies of Capitalism

The capitalist machine has come around once again. No industry, save perhaps the automobile industry, was in more dire need of a "supply and demand" correction than the airline industry. After nearly a decade, and billions and billions of dollars in losses, it appears that nearly across the board profits are going to be posted by the airlines. Yahoo.com reports "Profit margins at big airlines are the highest in at least a decade, according to the government. The eight largest U.S. airlines are forecast to earn more than $5 billion this year and $5.6 billion in 2012."

How did this turnaround come about you might ask. Well it's simple really. This turnaround has come at the expense of us, the air traveling public. In order to balance budgets, the airlines have slashed routes, grounded planes, and added fees for items that have routinely been included in the price of the ticket. Cutting routes and flights has allowed the airlines to charge more for seats. The price of tickets in the US has risen nearly 14% in 2010. Those fees that gradually starting showing up over the last few years, in 2010, they accumulated to over 4 billion in revenue for the airlines.

So the question becomes, what happens next. Does the airline industry fall in line behind the oil business and squeeze every last nickel from us, or do they do something that would benefit the flying public. Do they reinvest those profits into making the experience better for all of us? If they used that profit to ensure our bags get to where we are going, that would be a good thing. Maybe they could us it as incentive pay for pilots and crew with the best "on-time" record. Or maybe they could just use it to purchase new aircraft to replace an aging fleet. Any or all of these suggestions would take our money and invest in in such a way to make the experience better for all. In reality, I suspect we all know what will happen. Prices will continue to rise, service will continue to fall, and we will all be left wringing our hands.

Make no mistake about it. We are responsible for the turnaround. Faced with longer lines at security, higher prices for seats, and more and more fees to keep flying, that's exactly what we have done. We keep flying. The morally questionable part of the equation is that for a lot of individuals, flying isn't an optional expense. In the current state of this global economy, more and more jobs require travel. If the leisure traveler decides a ticket price is too high, they can choose not to take the flight. But for many business executives, it's not a matter of if they will fly, but when. Their choice is made for them. The airlines are profitable now, and they've got a captive audience that needs their service. That's what capitalism is built on, for good or bad.

So over the next year as you pay your $25 to check your bags, or click "Purchase" for the $200 flight you took in 2008 for $79, give yourself a hearty pat on the back. You're helping to save an industry.