Month: May 2013

Folks:

The last time that I had full-time W2 employees in Massachusetts I remember it as a paperwork nightmare, despite the fact that I used ADP (I think) to create the checks. I think we had to send checks periodically to five different government agencies (one for federal tax withholding, one for state income tax, one for unemployment insurance, one for worker’s comp(?), and one that I can’t remember anymore).

I’m current planning to hire a full-time photographer/videographer and a full-time journalist. What’s a good service that I could use to pay these folks on a standard W2 basis without it becoming a burden? And what are the laws and regulations regarding health insurance? With Obamacare in place I can simply tell them to sign up with a state-mandated insurance program of some sort? Any other big changes since the 1990s when I was last enmeshed in this forest of bureaucracy?

[This dovetails a little bit with my March 2011 posting about Web-based accounting systems. I never acted on putting in a real accounting system so maybe I could combine that with the W2 service.]

Thanks in advance!

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Folks:

I’m interested to find out what people think are the most interesting legal and social issues raised by Google Glass. Here are a few that I will put forward for to get the (comment) discussion started….

1) Distracted Drivers. Will states ban wearing Google Glass because drivers might be watching Bugs Bunny instead of paying attention to the road? Will self-driving cars that can manage to stay in a freeway lane and crawl along at 10 mph or Google Glass catch on faster?

2) What if there is an accident and one driver captured it all on video with Google Glass? Will a court prefer to watch the video rather than listen to eyewitness testimony? If so, is that really a change from a lot of court proceedings currently where surveillance video is a factor? (Many other kinds of litigation also depend on notoriously unreliable eyewitnesses and/or biased witnesses.)

3) Does this relate to or conflict with state laws against audio/video recording without other folks’ consent? Will it become legal to walk around recording everything but the recordings can’t be admitted in court? Will states require Glass wearers to mount a huge red tally light on top of their heads to inform the public that a recording is being made?

4) What about laws preventing citizens from taking pictures? There are “no photography” signs at various places, e.g., in the TSA security lines at airports. The government also harasses people who take pictures of buildings occupied by government workers, e.g., this guy who was questioned in 2007 for an example. Will it become illegal to walk through the airport wearing Google Glass? What if you have a vision disability (e.g., 20/200 vision) and those are your only eyeglasses? Would it violate the Americans with Disability Act for the government to make you grope around blindly because they were worried that you might take a picture without holding a camera? Or will the government force Google to add a database of geographic locations that cannot be photographed and prevent any open-source or third party software being installed on the device that would circumvent the database of locations where Google Glass will refuse to record?

5) Finally, what about fraternity parties? If the sorority members show up wearing Google Glass will the Animals have to be removed from Animal House?

 

 

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A reader kindly forwarded a story that is related to my Women in Science article. This is from an identical twin in England. The author is a postdoc. Her twin sister is a medical doctor. A rare controlled experiment for Larry Summers and friends, with identical genetic endowments.

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If you need to wash down a hot dog from the food court at Costco, here were a couple of different wines available this evening in Waltham. The 2010 Chateau Haut Brion was offered at $1342 per bottle to enjoy in 2020, but the 2010 Chateau Margaux is ready to drink right now for just $1188 per bottle.

(I’m not sure if the Boston economy is booming or if we are simply experiencing inflation. The local Bank of America ATMs have begun dispensing $100 bills, e.g., three $100s and five $20s for a withdrawal of $400. The clerk at Costco said that the Chateau Haut Brion had been selling well and obviously the store thinks that the six remaining bottles of Chateau Margaux will find local homes.)

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Folks:

A variety of information is available as a stream of text messages. What if one wanted to collect these into a file or database? What’s the best way to do it. I don’t want the messages coming to my phone.

One idea is to sign up for a Google Voice account. This yields a virtual phone number that can receive text messages. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to export them from Google Voice.

Ideas?

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I’m headed to Denmark soon. The country often features in “happiest place on earth” books and Americans sometimes get interested in what this country, whose population is about the same as the greater Boston area, can teach us (see this April 20, 2013 nytimes article for example and this posting be Senator Bernie Sanders). One thing that might be hard to apply is that people are simply happier in smaller countries, an argument made in A Pattern Language where, a maximum country population of 10 million is suggested (otherwise the leaders become too remote from the people and it is impossible for an average citizen to have any influence on the government; consider the situation of someone in Hawaii or California who wants to talk to the bureaucrats in charge, a 6- or 11-hour airline journey away). In theory we could try to capture some of the Danish magic by turning federal power over to the 50 states, but in practice the federal government has been taking programs and power away from the states for 100+ years.

Another challenge is income. The Danes measure out as having a more enjoyable lifestyle but that lifestyle produces only $37,700 in GDP per capita (CIA Factbook). Running U.S. local, state, and federal government costs about $21,000 per year per American (CIA Factbook GDP times 42 percent). So if we had a Danish level of economic productivity and our American system of government spending on health care, military, nation-building, etc. the required tax rates would be about 58% (i.e., workers would be permitted to choose how to spend 42% of their earnings).

Senator Sanders implies that it would be easy to import ideas from Denmark. If we make health care universal and free our spending will suddenly drop from 18 percent of GDP to 11 percent. But what if our spending is high because Americans are not competent at delivering health care? If we organize 75 of Americans into trade unions, everyone will make more money implies Sanders. But he doesn’t address the fact that American managers are historically too oriented toward the short term and/or too foolish not to bankrupt unionized companies with pension commitments (see this posting about General Motors). Maybe unions result in sustainable business in Denmark because Danish managers are smarter than American managers and/or because a Danish manager cannot make $100 million/year on the basis of some short-term results.

With a realistic view towards our own limitations and what we have managed to accomplish as a country thus far, what ideas for political and social organization could we import from Denmark?

[Update: coincidentally, yesterday’s New York Times carries an article on the subject of whether the U.S. can be like the Nordic countries: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/why-cant-america-be-sweden/ ]

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Folks:

A friend of mine owns a record company and asked for advice on a camera system to record interviews with musicians. These will be in a recording studio or an office. He wants to use an on-camera shotgun-style microphone rather than a lav mic. It seems to me that the criteria are the following:

• good performance at higher ISOs due to the low light
• availability of a fixed normal-perspective lens at a reasonable price
• ability to use an external microphone

I came up with the following recommendation:

• Nikon D5200 (Canon equivalent has inferior dynamic range and sensor score on DxOMark)
• Nikon 35mm f/1.8G lens (no Canon equivalent lens; Sigma 35/1.4 is a good lens but expensive and heavy)
• Nikon 27045 ME-1 Stereo Microphone

The microphone recommendation is the one that I am least sure about. It doesn’t seem likely to isolate the subject as well as a true shotgun mic. On the other hand, perhaps the interviewer’s questions should be audible as well even if the camera is not pointed at the interviewer.

Do readers have a better idea?

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I met a young father who is just starting a job as a teacher in the Cambridge Public Schools ($26,337 spent per pupil back in 2009; expenses forecast to rise at 3 percent per year so the 2013 number should be $29,642 if the number of students remains constant (note that these numbers do not include capital spending)). The union contract says that teachers with a master’s degree would start in 2011 at $46,541 and, after 10 years and a few continuing education credits, be earning $85,048. Working hours for elementary school teachers are from 8:10 am until 2:35 pm, 183 days per year. The elementary school teacher also gets a lunch period and “no less than forty (40) continuous minutes of daily, duty free preparation time.”

“I’m very excited about this job,” said the father, who then added that he and his family were moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, across the river from Cambridge and a truly hellish commute via the MBTA (Green Line into Boston and then Red Line back out). I asked why he didn’t move to Cambridge instead, so that he would be able to walk to work. “I would never want my children to attend the Cambridge Public Schools,” he replied.

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With the recent federal budget adjustments, our military still gives us two wars (in various states of disrepair) but no air shows, I was saddened to learn as I tried to plan a trip for my nearly-4-year-old daughter to the Quonset (Rhode Island) Air Show. I had taken to her an air show a year ago and the 2.75-year-old child pointed to the sky and said “That airplane is doing aerobatic flying.”

Supposedly the military air shows come back in 2014. I’m not sure that I understand the sequestration process that well. Is there suddenly going to be a lot more money in 2014? And it is selfish to hope that our government stop giving suitcases of cash to foreign dictators in favor of local pomp and circumstance?

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Dear readers:

I’d like to host a helicopter, airplane, and Internet discussion in Copenhagen the morning of June 8 (10:30 am?). We can talk about anything that I’ve posted about in this blog. I’m especially eager to meet with pilots to talk about how flight training (for helicopters and airplanes) and private aviation works in Denmark. Maybe a Danish reader will email me to suggest a place near Kongens Nytorv or at the University of Copenhagen.

Please email philg@mit.edu if interested in joining.

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