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Some choices are even tougher than Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump…

We’re using a conventional wood-frame house as a combination of office and home. It was built in the late 1960s with perhaps 10 inches of fiberglass between the rafters. There are cathedral ceilings everywhere, hence no possibility of insulating an attic (no attic! Also no basement; architects back then were smart enough to foresee that America would become less cluttered and there would be no need to store anything). The basic shape of the house is the same as a double-wide trailer home. (But of course Zillow estimates the value at about $1 million due to the proximity to Boston and the general impracticality of building anything new in Massachusetts.)

A local architect suggested putting nail-base foam panels on top of the existing roof deck. This gives 3.5 inches of foam and and then another 0.5″ of OSB to which shingles can be nailed. Apparently this is a fairly common retrofit insulation technique for old-yet-modern-style houses like this one. There would be some foam injected into any gaps between the panels.

We then have a choice of whether to do ice-and-water shield over the entire roof or just the lower 6′. The advantage of not doing the whole thing is that maybe water vapor would have a better chance to escape?

On top of the ice-and-water shield we then have to pick shingles. This is where I am hoping to get answers from readers! Consumer Reports tested shingles in 2009 and found that high-end Owens Corning Berkshire Collection and CertainTeed Grand Manor were the best (strongest). Owens Corning Oakridge and CertainTeed Landmark were pretty good at about one third the price. The roof is only about 3750 square feet including budgeted waste, so I don’t think that the shingle price difference will be that large in the overall context of the project.

What do folks who’ve been through this recently have to say? How did you choose a shingle and what did you choose?

One more idea: Should we try to hold out for another year and get the Tesla solar energy tiles? It looks like a good product, but I wonder if it will be shipped within my lifetime. Also you probably wouldn’t want to do the north side of your house with these, right? So then you are supposed to find matching non-solar shingles for the north side?

[Note that this continues the theme of why you want to rent rather than buy; the brain of the homeowner is entirely filled up with boring stuff.]

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Bill Burr tells Americans to chill out regarding the election result:”If you liked Obama did he call you at all in the last eight years? Did he ever put a sandwich on your table?”

Separately, our local school superintendant sent out an announcement of a talk titled “How to talk with your children about the election and its aftermath”:

From the campaign, through the election week and now to the next phase, people have repeatedly asked the question, “How do I talk to my kids about this?” Please join us for a discussion around these issues. The conversation will be facilitated by Hedley Q. Shrinker, PhD, a licensed psychologist (and Happy Valley parent) who has worked with parents and families in ordinary times as well as in extraordinary times (9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Boxing Day Tsunami).

Some closeted non-Hillary-supporters drafted questions for the good doctor:

• How do we explain to Devon and Courtney that they’re going to inherit twice as much money if Trump is able to persuade Congress to eliminate the estate tax?
• How do we explain to Kate that she won’t need to create offshore intellectual property vehicles the way that Apple has because Trump is going to lower the corporate income tax rate?
• How do we tell Marina that she won’t need to stock up on guns and ammo because Trump will preserve her Second Amendment rights?

One friend noted that “I talked to my kids about Trump. They are not white so they are supposed to be scared. I woke them up and said ‘Guess what? Trump won.’ [The 7-year-old girl] said ‘Well, Hillary does lie a lot.'”

Related:

• Bill Burr on average people criticizing the accomplished (about halfway through)
• Bill Burr on Steve Jobs
• Bill Burr on old people and racism

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Shiva Ayyadurai sued Gawker/Gizmodo because the site “cast doubt on his claims to have invented email in 1978” (Huffington Post). Gawker went bankrupt (Gizmodo) and had to wind up its litigation. Hulk Hogan got $31 million based on a jury award of $140 million (i.e., the jury decided that Hogan was more injured by publication of a sex video than if he had been killed; presumably his future earning capacity was less than $140 million). The inventor of email got $750,000 for a case that he probably would have lost, but the lawyers trying to clean up Gawker’s affairs for the Chapter 11 proceeding couldn’t wait that long.

[How do I know that Gawker was right in saying that Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email in 1978? It was in 1976 that I got my present email address: philg@mit.edu, morphed slightly from “philg@mit-mc” after development of DNS (see RFC 733 for how email addresses looked back in 1977). Based on my personal knowledge, therefore, Shiva Ayyadurai invented email no later than 1976.]

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My Facebook feed is lit up with hatred for a person I had not previously heard of: Steve Bannon.

The “Government Official” “U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren” Facebook page contains a denunciation from Ms. Warren:

Donald Trump just made one of his first big decisions as President-Elect: appointing Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor. … He told his ex-wife that he didn’t want their daughters going to school with Jewish children … Bannon’s appointment shows that so far President-Elect Trump is embracing the same kind of ugliness and divisiveness as he did throughout his campaign.

Warren, an attorney by training, states as fact that Bannon said this to his plaintiff. Yet the only evidence of this purported anti-Jewish statement seems to be an affidavit filed by the plaintiff herself back in 2007 when seeking custody and associated child support profits (i.e., potentially tens of millions of dollars at stake in California). See New York Daily News story, which also seems to assume as true whatever the cash-seeking plaintiff had to say. Given that there is no practical possibility of a perjury conviction based on a statement in an American family court, the fact that a typical high-$$ child support plaintiff alleges a lot worse (see the Domestic Violence Parallel Track chapter), and that this was apparently never corroborated by anyone else at the time or more recently when reporters sought to interview the plaintiff, this doesn’t seem like credible evidence of Jew-hatred.

[Elizabeth Warren was herself a divorce, custody, and child support plaintiff, having sued Jim Warren, the father of her two children (source), so she has at least some experience with family court.]

A professor friend writes

An avowed white supremacist and antisemite–Stephen Bannon–is now essentially second-in-command. Do what you can to #stopbannon … Call Jared Kushner’s NYC office and you can talk with a real live human being about his father-in-law’s appointment of an anti-semite white supremacist to a White House staff position! It’s fun! 212-527-7000! I think I will call several times!

But where did Mr. Bannon take these vows? The professor didn’t cite any statements by the guy. Her friends commented approvingly and/or with additional ideas for action. They all seemed to accept as true that Mr. Bannon has taken these vows. Certainly nobody asked “How do you know he hates Jews and non-whites?” In a comment on How do MIT students cope with the Trumpenfuhrer? one of our readers here found a couple of Breitbart articles (out of thousands? or tens of thousands?) with sensational headlines, but neither was written by Bannon and one of the Jew-hatred examples was authored by someone who says “I am a Jew who has never been to Israel and has never been a Zionist in the sense of believing that Jews can rid themselves of Jew hatred by having their own nation state. But half of world Jewry now lives in Israel, and the enemies whom Obama and Hillary have empowered — Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, ISIS, and Hamas — have openly sworn to exterminate the Jews.”

Readers: Please help me understand what is wrong with Steve Bannon and whether his hiring signals that it is time for American Jews to escape to Israel (maybe Donald Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law will give us a ride on the family B757?).

[Note that Israel’s corporate tax rate was just reduced to 25 percent. Capital gains tax rates are lower than here in the U.S. due to inflation-adjustment, the lack of a state tax, and the lack of the Obamacare supplemental tax. Thus an entrepreneur might be better off financially following forced expatriation by Steve Bannon.]

Related:

• Elizabeth Warren helps another politician raise money on a “get money out of politics” platform (unfortunately it seems as though the junior politician has lost her bid for Congress)
• a 2014 interview with Bannon (he does not take any vows of Jew-hatred or white supremacy, but does say that voters will rebel against D.C.-based crony capitalism)

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Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith says that 100 percent of the people whom Eisenhower appointed to his first-term Cabinet were without any previous experience in government (they had been business managers). The country seems to have survived. So don’t lost sleep over whom Trump appoints to Cabinet Secretary positions.

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Lawrence in Arabia quotes a letter from Aaron Aaronsohn (“Not to be confused with Aaron A. Aaronson, a fictional character in the Simpsons episode Sideshow Bob Roberts.”) to his brother, regarding an upcoming meeting with some fellow Zionists:

I told him that I was not going to London to quarrel, only to tell them their mistakes and to show them the way to do things properly.

I think this summarizes the politically-oriented posts that show up in my Facebook feed!

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While shopping for a $15 extension cord on Amazon, I found this exchange between two customers:

• Where is this made?
• It’s made where nearly everything else has been made in the last 10 years. How was your extended stay in that time capsule?

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Occasionally the New York Times does run a story about something other than the achievements of Hillary Clinton or personified evil (a.ka. “Donald Trump.”). Their “A Guide to Getting a Bachelor’s Abroad” could save an American family massive amounts of money.

[One thing that the Times doesn’t cover are the financial implications of a popular activity of college students: having sex. A female student who gets pregnant in a Common Law jurisdiction, such as the U.K. or Australia, could find herself with a cashflow that far exceeds what she could expect to earn from working with that college degree. By contrast, if she has sex with a rich German or Dane in Germany or Denmark, she will get paid less than if she’d had sex with a middle-income American. For male students, the financial consequences of a one-night sexual encounter in the Civil law jurisdictions are limited, whereas in the U.K. they could be life-changing. See the International chapter of Real World Divorce for a country-by-country analysis.]

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A message sent to all MIT undergraduates, most of whom live with at least 400 companions in dorms, on Wednesday evening (emphasis added):

Dear Undergraduates,

Sometimes, we feel afraid. We understand that fear can be consuming. Regardless of the results of the election, or who you supported, there is a sense of fear across our campus. Together, we want to show you that you are not alone.

As a community, we are here for each other with our efforts. With the help of the MIT administration, we will strive to make sure that here, in our home, you can feel safe. We will be coordinating with them to hold an event in the next few weeks to openly voice our concerns and working with them to see what MIT can do to advocate for you. As students, we are meeting tonight at 10 PM in the UA Office, W20-401, and invite you to stop by and join the discussion. Ed Bertschinger, Suzy Nelson, and Kirk Kolenbrander will be in attendance.

First, don’t forget that we have each other – reach out to friends, peers, and student groups for support. If you find yourself needing someone else to talk to or additional help, there are a number of resources. Some people find comfort in talking to their counselors, others have close relationships with the Office of Minority Education, and others enjoy speaking with the Chaplains. From my experience, if you’re at a loss for where to go and want someone to speak with, I encourage you to try Let’s Chat. You can sign up the same day on the third floor of building 8, room 8-316, and they are open from 1-3 PM, Tuesday – Friday. With regards to schoolwork, Tamar has reached out to Dean Randall, and Student Support Services is aware that this election has affected people in different ways and is there to help support students academically. Try reaching out to professors for leniency and understanding, and S^3 is always there in the event that you either do not feel comfortable reaching out directly to professors or you feel that things are not going as they should be.

As friends and allies, we urge those of you who don’t feel this fear personally to reach out to your friends, who may feel paralyzed and afraid, and show that you care and that you support them.

As people who have felt afraid, we can offer you this. Sometimes, it is okay to close your eyes, and remind yourself over and over that, in this current moment, “I am safe. I am loved,” until you feel like you can open them again. We will all work together to make each of us stronger, to understand each other; we will all be stronger by being together.

Your peers,

[about 15 students with various official positions, such as UA (student council) president]

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Here’s a modern-day family story from Canada… “Doctor sues gay friend for child support, 16 years after he first donated sperm to her” (Calgary Herald, October 28, 2016):

Ranson and Dr. Amie Cullimore met in medical school in 1991, court documents say. After they finished school, he moved to the U.S. and then Europe while she stayed in Canada. But in 2000 she called on him to fulfil a decades-old promise: donate his sperm so she could undergo IVF and become a mother. Eventually, she would have two babies using those embryos, both of whom are now teenagers.

After the second child was born in 2002, the pair signed an agreement giving her full custody, as well as power over education and health care. It said she “would not look to (Ranson) for any financial support.”

Cullimore makes just under $250,000 a year as a gynecologist, obstetrician and university professor, the documents show, while Ranson made just under CAD$280,000 in his most recent post with the World Bank in Europe.

Unlike in some U.S. states (see Real World Divorce for which ones) it seems that the plaintiff cannot get paid retroactively for the full 16 years:

If Cullimore is successful in her case, Ranson will be on the hook for four years of retroactive child support, since 2012, as well as other expenses, including post-secondary education.

Canadian family law offers unlimited child support revenue when a sufficiently high-income defendant can be sued. The cash keeps flowing until a child is completely out of college, enabling a winner parent to profit from previous custody of a “child” aged 25 or even older (this seems to be one of those issues that hits appeals courts in Canada from time to time). Let’s see how it works out here. Dr. Cullimore can collect CAD$46,092 per year tax-free from Ranson. If she had used sperm from two different men, each with the same income as her current defendant, she would get $59,352 per year. Median individual income in Canada right now is about $33,000 per year (Statistics Canada), but that’s pre-tax. Statistics Canada says that average income for a college graduate, after two years on the job, is $45,000 per year pre-tax (source). Statistics Canada says that the median 20-year pre-tax earnings for a women with a Bachelor’s degree is $972,500 (report). That’s $48,625 per year, slightly higher than Dr. Cullimore’s potential revenue, but considering the pre-tax/post-tax difference, Dr. Cullimore’s kids are definitely worth more than the average Canadian woman’s college degree and 40 hours/week of work.

Even if we may differ with Canadians over the level of welcome given to Syrian immigrants, one thing that we can share is child support litigation strategy. The plaintiff here has a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old, both presumably parked most of the time in a taxpayer-funded public school:

“The Applicant Mother has tried to pay for all activities, including ongoing child-care costs of over $800 per month as she works 24-hour shifts (as a medical doctor [earning $250,000 per year]), but she can no longer afford to do so.”

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