Month: August 2015

A friend from this Midwest sent me this… Michael Moore is selling a house that a realtor characterizes as “an appealing spot for corporate retreats” (nypost). The lakefront house near Traverse City, Michigan is 11,058 square feet and is on the market for $5.2 million. The value was listed as $2 million during 2014 divorce litigation (“MICHAEL MOORE OWNS 9 HOMES”). (Moore sued his wife in Michigan and, despite the 9 houses, apparently there wasn’t a major dispute regarding venue because the trial was also scheduled to be in Michigan)

How does this house compare to Al Gore’s? The Gore mansion is just 10,000 square feet (snopes.com).

What do readers think? Does the celebrity ownership raise or lower the value of this particular mansion?

Related:

• Business Insider article on Moore’s divorce litigation positions

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The August 10 & 17, 2015 New Yorker starts off with an article about a New York City public school, the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, where tax dollars are used to train students to think of themselves as victims:

“My girls are freaking awesome, but they’re trapped in teen-age bodies,” Kiri Soares, the school’s principal, said later. A year ago, she noticed that the girls “would have these really deep-seated feelings about unjust things that were happening to them, but they don’t always know how to identify or articulate it.” An activist friend named Cathy O’Neil suggested that Soares start the class, which they call Occupy Summer School. Union members, political economists, and organizers drop in to discuss protest strategies. … The initial idea had been to engage passersby with a bake sale at which men would be charged a dollar for a cupcake or a brownie and women would be charged seventy-eight cents. The girls hoped this would spark conversations about wage discrimination.

[Unclear if the students were also informed that if they want the spending power of a man holding Job X, the New York child support formula will enable them to obtain that by having sex with three men holding Job X. Or that, if they went to work for Hillary Clinton, they could earn 87 cents for every man’s dollar. Or even that an employee who starts off on the first day of work believing him- or herself to be a victim may have a lower value to an employer (increased risk of costly litigation, bad attitude on the job, victim attitude turning off customers, etc.).]

The same issue has an article about a country in which, at least for a manufacturing worker, there is no market-clearing wage for a man (under the 21st century draft horse theory). Some excerpts from Peter Hessler’s article on Chinese entrepreneurs in Egypt:

Lin quickly realized that people in Asyut cared little for pearls and they did not wear neckties with galabiya. But they liked women’s underwear, so he began to specialize, and soon his wife came over from China to help. In Cairo and northern Egypt, the network of Chinese lingerie importers and producers quickly grew, and eventually Lin and Chen rented a storefront in Asyut. They invited a relative and a friend to open the two other shops in town. While Lin and Chen were building their small lingerie empire, they noticed that there was a lot of garbage sitting in open piles around Asyut. They were not the first people to make this observation. But they were the first to respond by importing a polyethylene-terephthalate bottle-flake washing production line, which is manufactured in Jiangsu province, and which allows an entrepreneur to grind up plastic bottles, wash and dry the regrind at high temperatures, and sell it as recycled material.

“I saw that it was just lying around, so I decided that I could recycle it and make money,” Lin told me. He and his wife had no experience in the industry, but in 2007 they established the first plastic-bottle recycling facility in Upper Egypt. Their plant is in a small industrial zone in the desert west of Asyut, where it currently employs thirty people and grinds up about four tons of plastic every day. Lin and Chen sell the processed material to Chinese people in Cairo, who use it to manufacture thread. This thread is then sold to entrepreneurs in the Egyptian garment industry, including a number of Chinese. It’s possible that a bottle tossed onto the side of the road in Asyut will pass through three stages of Chinese processing before returning to town in the form of lingerie, also to be sold by Chinese.

… Here in Egypt, home to eighty-five million people, where Western development workers and billions of dollars of foreign aid have poured in for decades, the first plastic-recycling center in the south is a thriving business that employs thirty people, reimburses others for reducing landfill waste, and earns a significant profit. So why was it established by two lingerie-fuelled Chinese migrants, one of them illiterate and the other with a fifth-grade education?

“I just can’t hire men,” Xu Xin, who had started a cell-phone factory, told me bluntly. After many years with Motorola in China, Xu had come to Egypt in the hope of producing inexpensive phones for the local market. “This work requires discipline,” he said. “A cell phone has more than a hundred parts, and, if you make one mistake, then the whole thing doesn’t work. The men here in Egypt are too restless; they like to move around. They can’t focus.”

I met Wang Weiqiang, who had built a profitable business in eastern China producing the white ghotra head coverings worn by Saudis and other Gulf Arabs. After more than a decade, Wang decided to start an operation in Egypt. “I have very good-quality Egyptian cotton here,” he said. “My machinery is very modern. My investment is more than a million dollars for the factory here. But during these two years I’ve lost a lot. It’s all the problem of labor—the mentality of the workers. Our factory needs to run twenty-four hours a day; it’s not just for one shift. In order to do this in Egypt, we have to hire male workers, and the men are really lazy.” He continued, “Now I reject ninety per cent of the men who apply. I use only girls and women. They are very good workers. But the problem is that they will work only during the daytime.” He intends to introduce greater mechanization in hopes of maximizing the short workday.

Hessler is a great writer and both China and Egypt are exotic lands from our point of view. I would highly recommend the article.

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Friends have been asking me “How did a metal chunk of an airplane float to Réunion? Why didn’t it sink?” Or, as Monty Python might have asked, “What also floats in water?”

I talked to a former Boeing engineer. It seems that the 777 flaperon is hollow, comprising ribs and an aluminum skin. The same riveting techniques used on the pressure vessel are used on on the flaperon and therefore everything is airtight by default and therefore water-tight. He didn’t remember if there were any drain holes in the flaperon, as there are for some control surfaces, but they would have been very small and easily clogged, thus trapping air.

Trivia: The 777 was originally designed with folding wingtips so that it could fit into gates designed for the B767. This was abandoned at some point but the idea is back with the 777X (gizmodo).

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In the western suburbs of Boston I ran into a guy of about 60 who was riding a 1970s 10-speed marked “Motobecane” and “Made in France” in big letters on the frame. Motobecane went bankrupt in 1981 and no longer makes bicycles (though you can buy Taiwanese bikes with this brand name today). No country was more enthusiastic about the early days of cycling than France (history) and it used to be possible to buy a competitively priced mainstream road bike with all-French components (Mavic or Super Champion rims, Simplex derailleurs, Christophe toe clips, Mafac brakes, TA cranks, Zefal pump, Ideale saddle, etc.).

I was reminded of this heritage once again at Verrill Farm in Concord, Massachusetts, a popular stopping point for summer road bike rides. Two very fit guys with French-made Cyfac frames parked their machines next to my Trek. One had started the ride in Jamaica Plain and the other in Foxborough, so they were both committed to 70-100-mile round trips. They said that Cyfac was a leading manufacturer of carbon fiber tandem frames for the Paralympics (a blind stoker can thus compete). Their bikes were close to $9,000 each including a lot of deluxe components. The tandem would be at least $15,000 by the time it was all done.

What do expert readers have to say about French bicycles today? Does the country make competitive products for ordinary riders? Or at least have a Trek- or Specialized-like company that is based in France and designs popular bikes that are manufactured in Asia? If not, why not?

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I recently spent two days at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. We got a healthy baby out of the deal so I am not complaining about their operation from a consumer perspective. However, I am thinking that there is an opportunity for litigators there.

Kleiner Perkins has a workforce that is 30-percent female (20 percent of partners are women) and that made them a target for legal buccaneer Ellen Pao and as well as guilty in the eyes of the New York Times, both before and after a five-week trial. What would the jury have made of an operation where 100 percent of the employees (that we saw, over a 53-hour period) were of a single gender?

Health care jobs are the best in the U.S. The chart linked from “Software engineering = meaningless job?” shows that being in health care offers the best combination of pay and meaning. If these jobs don’t pay as well as collecting child support in Massachusetts (see Kosow v. Shuman in this chapter, for example), they certainly pay more than the median Massachusetts hourly wage of $21.48 (BLS May 2014). There is great protection from foreign competition and virtually unlimited demand for services, especially since the government made it illegal not to purchase health insurance.

How can it not be a lucrative field for litigators when the maternity and labor/delivery departments were both 100-percent staffed by women? Let the defense argue that men don’t want to experience the joy of working around newborns and helping women realize their dreams of motherhood. The plaintiffs will argue that these departments created a hostile environment for men.

Readers: If Ellen Pao had what the New York Times thought was a great lawsuit, why isn’t there a truly superb lawsuit here?

[Sidenote 1: The value of healthcare IT was on display throughout the delivery process. Mt. Auburn has achieved all of the Obama Administration’s “meaningful use” hurdles. This was our second baby to be monitored through pregnancy by the midwives at this hospital. This was our second baby where a test from this group had informed us that we would be having a boy. Yet we were asked three times by three different people, each typing at a computer, whether we knew the sex of the baby and, if so, what it was. (Separately, at what age can gender dysphoria begin? If very young, is it medically meaningful to ask “Are you having a boy or a girl?”) While sharp labor pains tortured the mother-to-be, we were asked about mailing addresses, health insurance data, etc. (the same information collected exactly two days earlier at a checkup) While suffering labor pains severe enough to merit an epidural, the mom was asked to sign a consent form for an epidural. (Why wasn’t it signed, scanned, and in the computer weeks before?) Having been given a due date by this group within this hospital, we were asked what the expected due date was.]

[Sidenote 2: At a “meet the midwives” event and some similar gatherings of expectant mothers, all were talking about their own to-be-born babies as fully human individuals, e.g., when looking at a 2-month ultrasound. They would refer to the fetus by name in some cases, talk about the child kicking, etc. Yet, given that the hospital is in Cambridge, it is same to assume that most are supporters of the Massachusetts law permitting on-demand abortion of babies at any time through 24 weeks of pregnancy (Wikipedia says a fetus may be viable outside the womb at 23 weeks).]

[Sidenote 3: New mothers are provided with a stack of pamphlets regarding welfare programs for which she would be either newly eligible or eligible at a higher level of benefits. In theory, Cambridge provides free housing for all non-working adults, but there is a waiting list and a parent with a young child gets higher priority. Anyone with a low income is eligible for food stamps, but “Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)” is available in addition for women and young children, according to the federal site. Obamacare requires insurance companies to pay for a breast milk pump with each baby, so the mother of four children will eventually end up with a stack of Medelas in the closet.]

Related:

• Thoughts on observing a birth
• Egyptian versus U.S. health care system

 

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An article in Sports Illustrated by H.G. Bissinger follows up on six men who were high school football heroes in Odessa, Texas in 1988. If we define “football star” as “most successful male in high school society,” how does that translate to success in adult society?

Two are involved in the oil industry, one working “as a lease operator for Devon Energy, overseeing roughly 50 wells,” and the other having joined his family business of “dirt excavation and building roads and platforms in the oil fields.” One became a criminal defense attorney and joined his family’s law firm. One became a “health-care consultant” for Protiviti.

Two of the six are black. Consistent with this chart, one is serving 10 years in prison after some encounters with the law, including “paternity suits were brought against him by women who thought he was now rich.” (He apparently lost at least one of these lawsuits because he was being pursued by the government for failure to pay at least one woman the court-ordered amount.) The other black former player workers as a trucker.

None of the players had enjoyed a significant college football career.

Perhaps worth showing to a high-school student who expresses disappointment at not making the varsity football team…

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“Capitalists, Arise: We Need to Deal With Income Inequality” is a nytimes piece by an old rich guy who immigrated here from Romania in 1954 and ultimately became head of a big ad agency. Readers comment that they want inequality cured with 1954 income tax rates, e.g,. 94%. They want this to kick in for incomes above about $1 million (not sure that their favored presidential candidate will go along with this; as noted in this May 2015 post, the Clintons have been earning about $22 million per year).

The old rich guy writes about how he got into elite schools: “I was invited by the headmaster of Phillips Exeter Academy to attend his school. From there I went to Princeton and the Stanford Business School.”

Nobody seems interested in the fact that the U.S. population in 1954 was 163 million, half of the present number. Thus there was a lot less competition for getting into elite schools (this was prior to the Jet Age that opened up these schools to foreign students as well).

There was a lot less country to country competition. Romania would not have been a viable location for a new business in 1954. Today it is part of the EU and ranks higher than average on economic freedom (Heritage Foundation). Romania has a lower tax burden as a percentage of GDP than does the U.S. For at least some companies or individuals it might well be a reasonable place to do business.

What do readers think? Is this screed against income inequality really a nostalgic desire to go back to the good old days when the U.S. was more favorably situated compared to other countries and before immigrants forced native-born Americans to work for stuff that had previously been theirs by right?

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An Iran armed with ballistic missiles and atomic bombs didn’t bother anyone enough to block a recent international agreement. What could be more frightening than that? North American consumers paying market prices for trucks and cheese. From “Trans-Pacific Partnership Session Ends With Heels Dug In” (nytimes):

Tokyo was ready to extend major concessions on American truck tariffs but was blocked by Mexico, which wanted less competition for its own trucks in the United States market.

Canada held firm on protecting its politically sensitive dairy market ahead of elections in October, but for New Zealand, a tiny country with huge dairy exports, that was unacceptable.

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Can you think of anyone with top academic credentials who got fired from a job for underperformance, sued to get paid for having XX chromosomes, and who was tied to the world of nonstandard sexuality?

No, not Ellen Pao of Princeton and Harvard, Kleiner Perkins/Reddit, and (at least formerly) gay men.

Gretchen Kalonji, a 1980 graduate from the MIT materials science department, eventually became a professor at MIT. She was denied tenure in 1988, analogous to Ellen Pao’s failure to be promoted to senior partner at Kleiner. Kalonji sued MIT, eventually settling in 1995 for “an undisclosed amount” plus “MIT also agreed to spend at least $50,000 a year for 5 years on a national program encouraging women and minority grad students and postdocs to move onto university faculties.” (sciencemag.org)

Kalonji moved west and ended up in a same-sex relationship with Denice Denton, the chancellor of University of California Santa Cruz. Denton was described as “admired for overcoming gender and sexual-orientation biases and for taking a practical approach to social justice issues” and “ensnared in an investigation into unreported pay and perks in the UC system and was criticized after $600,000 in renovations were made to her university home.”

Denton arranged a $192,000/year job for Kalonji as the University of California’s “director of international strategy development” (sfgate; WSJ) . Denton subsequently committed suicide, leaving an estate worth perhaps $2 million. Kalonji then sued the estate for more than 100 percent of this value (argument: (1) if it had been legal for two women to be married then Denton would have married her; (2) had they in fact been married, Denton would have updated her will and left everything to Kalonji instead of to Denton’s blood relatives). (Santa Cruz Sentinel) Kalonji ultimately settled this lawsuit in exchange for roughly $750,000 in real estate (Santa Cruz Sentinel).

What do readers think? The New York Times gives all credit to Ellen Pao and, implicitly, Princeton and Harvard. But it would seem that an MIT graduate blazed the trail…

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Who has tried out the latest electric bikes?

A few questions:

• Does the overall concept make sense if what you like is bicycling? Most of the bikes seem to weigh about 50 lbs., which I guess makes them super light compared to a scooter or motorcycle, but very heavy if you want to pedal them uphill.
• Are they more or less fun on a 2-hour road ride than a standard road bike?
• Do you actually get any exercise when using one of these?
• Are they way better for mountain biking because you can maintain momentum even uphill?
• Why do a lot of them cost more than a used Toyota Prius? (maybe that is an unfair question since there are non-electric bikes that cost more than a new Toyota Prius) If this were a mass-market product would they need to cost much more than the $600 that you’d pay for a good hybrid/city bike?
• Why aren’t the big bike companies, such as Giant, Trek, and Specialized, leaders in this area?
• Are they amazingly great for keeping up with a friend who is in killer shape and is on a non-electric bike?
• pedal-linked or throttle control for the electric motor?
• is there any point in having more than three gears once the electric assist is available? Why not ditch the low gears in favor of software that automatically adds electric power if the cadence falls while the rider is putting a lot of torque in? (maybe they are already doing this)
• shouldn’t tandem bikes all have electric boost? Tandems are already crazy heavy and expensive.

It is sad that, at least for the weather-wimpy, we don’t have a long biking season here in Massachusetts (not long enough to justify a $3000 electric bike anyway!).

Related:

• gallium nitride (GaN) power electronics to lower the weight and/or extend the range

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