Scary topic, I know. But this’ll be fun. The only phrase to describe my reaction to Costco’s spread of Christmas lights this week is utter glee. White LED strands in a white that is a lot closer to incandenscent–not the really high-Kelvin blue, not the amber-ish stuff, no, good warm white. Runs a titch into the green, but I love it. And at $14 for a 100-light, 50-foot string, I can afford a couple. They also have colored strings with eight different colors that look just dandy. Those are a little cheaper than the whites. Despite all these technological improvements in LED Christmas lights in the last few years, there are still a few things that baffle me. The white LED strands draw 8 watts per strand. The colored ones draw 4 watts. Okay, cool. Both of them say you can connect up to three (yipeee!!!) end-to-end, and of course they have 3-amp fuses. Looks like shady math to me in there somewhere. Check it:

Power (watts) = Current (amps) X Volts
so
Current per strand = (Power per strand)/(Volts)
thus
Current = (8 watts)/(120 volts) = .06667 amps per strand

Huh. By that math, the fuse at the plug that goes into the outlet won’t experience 3 amps of current passing through it until you plug in FORTY-FIVE strands of lights. Damn, that’s pretty close to half a mile. And if we’re talking about the 4-watt color strands, that’s 90 strands totaling 4,500 feet, which is almost enough runway for a Beechjet to take off from Bend Municipal Airport.

The physists in my midst will remind me that at some point, the copper wires themselves will start to carry a pretty large resistive load and could themselves turn into “fuses”… specifically the kind known as an electrical fire. Based on my experiences with incandescent strings with 1/2-watt bulbs (the whole string was 50 watts), I could safely string six of them end-to-end… the seventh was what busted the fuse. So I’d say with these, you ought to easily (and safely) be able to get at least 10 strings (a total of only 80 watts at most!) plugged together. I’d have no problem plugging in 15 strings in series. Then again, I haven’t tested this (yet…), so if you light your house on fire trying, don’t come running to me.

I had my birthday kegger last night, complete with keg of Twilight Ale from Deschutes, the hookah, and two rounds each of Kings and Lick-it-and-Stick-it. Alas, despite the valiant efforts of my heavy-drinking friends and a good 200 pumps on the tap at the end of the night, the remaining beer in the keg (several gallons at least, sigh…) was alarmingly flat just now. Yes, there has been ice on it since last night, too. It’s almost enough to make me run out and get a CO2 tank, but that won’t do anything now and who knows when I’ll get a keg again. It was delicious, though. Hell, even mostly flat, it’s still pretty delicious. Aside from the plentiful leftover beer today, it was an awesome good time. Thanks to everyone who came out for my b-day kegger.

Addendum: Turns out I pumped so much air into the keg last night that I simply hadn’t bled enough of it out when I retapped this evening. Once I did that some more, the beer coming out is still nice and cold, and delightfully fizzy. Not quite as fizzy as it should be, but by no means flat. Victory!

In other news related to round things, I’ve pretty much had it with out-of-town drivers in my roundabouts. The most atrocious example was in the Colorado/Century roundabout last week. The guy ahead of me inside the roundabout came to a complete stop at the turn to go down Colorado Avenue. I waited patiently (sort of). Another car stopped behind me. Finally, the guy in front of me made a 90-degree right turn ever so slowly, so as not to hit the concrete barrier at the edge of the roundabout. For future reference, you can keep going around and around inside that thing if you really can’t decide where to get out. I can barely contain my excitement for multi-lane roundabouts. They better set up a practice one in a parking lot so we can all figure out the most effective ways to cut each other off.

Other things I can’t wait for: Trader Effing Joe’s. Their building is making pretty good progress now, and it looks like they’re almost ready to start putting the roof on. D thinks it will be open in December… I’m betting on March. Alley thinks it won’t be until June. Regardless, I swear I’m taking a comp day to camp out in line.

According to the Southeast European Times, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Volker said that the US would recognize Kosovo if the province declares independence. Volker sees this as “the only stable way forward in the Balkans.”

Really? Comments from Republika Srpska’s prime minister earlier linked the status of Republika Srpska with that of Kosovo. Milorad Dodik’s comments implied that, should Kosovo become independent, there would be a drive to separate Republika Srpska from Bosnia. A note to readers — I detected a strong bias in the article against Bosnian Serbs and Republika Srpska. Really, I expected better from the Washington Post.

It is unclear what Serbia’s response to a unilateral Kosovo declaration of independence will be. Both the US and the EU have asked Serbia to clarify what it will do should Kosovo declare independence. Serbia itself is asking for an explanation from the US over Volker’s comments.

For an interesting viewpoint on the Kosovo issue, check out William Montgomery’s opinion piece over at B92.

Things could get really interesting in the Balkans, and soon.

Back to my master’s thesis.

A federal judge declared parts of the Patriot Act unconstitutional today. He ruled that the portion of the law pertaining to national security letters violated both the First Amendment and the Constitutional separation of powers.

In the decision, Judge Marrero wrote that recipients of the letters were “effectively barred from engaging in any discussion regarding their experiences and opinions” about the letters. He said that the F.B.I. “must bear the burden of going to court to suppress the speech.” Because letter recipients were responsible for suppressing their own speech, Judge Marrero ruled that this constituted a violation of the First Amendment.

This is a huge blow to the Patriot Act, and a major victory for the First Amendment.

B92 is now reporting that Serbia’s goals in the Partnership for Peace program no longer include NATO membership. However, cooperation with NATO, particularly on the Kosovo issue, remains a goal.

In other news, the presidents of Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia met on Tuesday to discuss environmental issues. From the looks of the picture, it seems these guys had a great time. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes — I like to see the presidents of Serbia and Croatia together, discussing a regional issue. Hopefully these three presidents can put forth a plan to clean up the Danube. When I was in Novi Sad, we were told not to swim in the Danube due to pollution.

Apparently a B-52 bomber “mistakenly” armed with nuclear warheads flew across several states last week. Whoops.

The best quote in the article comes from Representative Markey: “Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible.”

Looks like he’ll have to rethink that assessment.

While browsing B92 today (and putting off the inevitable work I must do on my thesis), I found a couple of interesting articles. Slovenia will hold the EU presidency next year, and has pledged to make Western Balkan integration a priority. It will be interesting to see how they do this.

In other news, the Bosnian Croat party has proposed dividing Bosnia into four federal units. The comments people wrote underneath this article are really interesting. There seems to be a debate going on regarding whether this would reward “ethnic cleansing,” or whether it would allow the people of Bosnia to draw their state as they see fit.

A rift is appearing inside Serbia’s ruling coalition regarding whether or not Serbia should join NATO. Given that NATO bombed Serbia not even ten years ago, it’s interesting that this is even an issue. Tadic says some very interesting things in this article regarding Serbia and European integration.

OK. Back to work on my master’s thesis.