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Canon DR-C240 Review

by philg

I got a Canon DR-C240 scanner to replace a Fujitsu ScanSnap that had launched a denial-of-service attack on my USB subsystem (previous post). This is the latest and greatest Canon model that is supposed to have a flexible paper feeding system. It costs about twice as much as the Fujitsu.

It took about 15 minutes to get the software installed and everything plugged in.

I decided to test the scanner with a batch of stuff sent home in an end-0f-year bag with a kindergartener.

The scanner won’t go any wider than 8.5 inches, so some 9″-wide construction paper could not be scanned. The scanner could have been a lot more useful if it were just slightly wider.

A stack of slightly odd-sized cut paper was not scanned in order. The default is to scan at low resolution and in black and white. I had to go into Canon’s CaptureOnTouch software to change the settings to “full auto” from the default of “Text.”

Although there was laser-printed large text on each page with the name of the month, the Canon software decided that the January page should be rotated upside down. The software lets you delete blank pages before saving a PDF but not rotate any. I had to reopen the file in Adobe Acrobat (full version; not included with scanner) in order to un-rotate the page.

After you laboriously change the defaults in the CaptureOnTouch application and then try to scan a second stack of paper pressing the start button on the scanner… you find that it has gone back to its old “text/B&W” mode. You need to manually edit the setting for that button.

A document that had been stapled was fed through more reliably than I would have expected from the Fujitsu.

Some legal-size documents were scannable but the autorotate function failed to orient them correctly, despite the fact that they had some pre-printed block letters on them that should have been easy to detect.

A stack of four documents that started out as 8.5×11″ pieces of paper but had various folded edges scanned reliably (might have been a problem on the Fujitsu), but the resulting file had three spurious blank pages.

Some previously stapled skinny documents scanned nicely.

Blank page detection is spectacularly bad. I also scanned some business documents that had been partially highlighted. Whenever there was bleedthrough of the highlighter the scanner decided that the reverse of the highlighted page was non-blank. It doesn’t seem as though the software is looking for bleed-through or comparing a candidate blank page to the reverse.

OCR seems to be enabled by default when saving documents as PDF.

Verdict: The paper transport mechanism is more reliable than the Fujitsu, but it is not perfect. Blank page detection is so unreliable as to be a serious time-waster. You need to have the full version of Adobe Acrobat to go with this scanner (plus a lot of patience) so that you can clean up after its not-very-smart autorotate software.

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Who else saw the last Grateful Dead shows?

by philg

I joined a streaming Grateful Dead party in Cambridge last week. I had lost track of the band since attending a live concert at the Stanford University Amphitheater in 1982. We looked up Trey Anastasio and discovered that he was in many ways a fitting replacement for Jerry Garcia, right down to the problems with drugs and the law (though Anastasio seems to have avoided becoming entangled with the alimony and child support system; the first paragraph of the core section (“Sixth”) of Garcia’s will begins with instructions for paying off former sexual partners; one of them described her payments as “salary” (SF Gate)).

Some waggish tweets notwithstanding, e.g., “Deadheads will be telling their grandkids about this show–when they see them next weekend,” we were surprised at how many young people were in the audience. Quite a few were barely out of kindergarten when Jerry Garcia died. How did they become fans of a band that hadn’t existed in their teenage or adult lifetimes?

As an incipient old guy myself I was thrilled to see so many turn out to see guys in their 70s up on stage. At the same time, when I got home and streamed down some 1970s Grateful Dead songs from Rhapsody it was hard not to agree with our Deadhead host’s admission that “no question that they were better then,” though he added “I was a lot more energetic then too.”

Separately, the economics of the concerts were interesting. At the announced face values of the tickets (i.e., ignoring the high prices in the secondary market), revenues from just two of the concerts would have exceeded, in nominal dollars, the original $13 million construction cost of Soldier Field. Can we also infer from the popularity of these concerts, both live and streaming, that the U.S. economy is in pretty good shape? You can’t fill a stadium like Soldier Field with one-percenters. The alternative to spending the money to buy tickets and travel to Chicago is to listen to a younger/better/intact Grateful Dead for free (or $10/month). If that many people chose to spend the big bucks does it not show that there is a lot of disposable income kicking around?

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What prejudices are socially acceptable in the U.S. right now?

by philg

A self-described “Cambridge liberal” friend on Facebook linked to an article on a divorce initiated by actress Jennifer Garner against her husband Ben Affleck. The article notes that “Affleck’s ‘workaholic’ mentality didn’t sit well with Garner, who is usually home with the pair’s three children, Violet, 9, Seraphina, 6, and Samuel, 3.”

What other information was available to this friend? Wikipedia says that Garner sued her previous husband for divorce and that Affleck was never previously married. California child support guidelines provide higher profits for each day that a child is with a parent. California custody conventions award profitable time with children to the parent who can claim to have been “primary” during time spent as a couple (married or unmarried). In other words, if Garner could convince a judge that she had taken care of the children 80 percent of the time while Affleck was out working to pay the household bills, the most likely outcome after a trial would be that she was entitled to 80 percent custody and Affleck would be ordered to keep paying her bills for the next 15 years. (See the California chapter of Real World Divorce.) Us magazine explains that Garner waited until the marriage reached the 10-year mark before decided to pursue a divorce. That’s the line at which a judge would be able to award lifetime alimony or “a bigger share of Affleck’s reported $75 million.”

In other words, anything that the mother said about her defendant’s shortcomings as a father were potentially financially self-serving. How did the Cambridge liberal describe this celebrity news item?

“Why do we assume that great actors will make great husbands/fathers?”

Here’s the ensuing exchange:

me: What is interesting to me is that you highlight the shortcomings of the man as a “husband/father”. You don’t mention the possibility that the woman (who sued a previous husband for divorce on May 9, 2003) might have any shortcomings as a wife/mother.

Cambridge liberal: She has no shortcomings as a mother if she’s raising 3 children effectively on her own [the Daily Mail quotes Garner saying “You have to have a great nanny…” and has photos of the father caring for the children while the mother parties; also shown is a nanny; litigators such as Floyd Nadler in Illinois told us that a female parent who stays home with a nanny wins “primary caregiver” status but not so for a male parent]

me: What’s your basis for saying that “she’s raising 3 children effectively on her own”? Do you know this couple personally? Or you are relying on a plaintiff’s assertion in litigation? (keep in mind that every additional day of custody that this plaintiff [actually a “petitioner” in California] can obtain will result in additional cash paid to her under California’s child support formula)

Cambridge liberal: Based on the article’s claim that she was disillusioned with his workaholicness and that she pretty much was left to raise the kids alone.

me: is it reasonable to accept uncritically the statements of a plaintiff looking for tens of millions of dollars merely because she is a woman? What’s your basis for the idea that the parent who initiates a divorce lawsuit, thus breaking up the children’s home, is automatically the superior parent? [papers from Malin Bergstrom show the harm done to children by an American-style divorce; ironically, Garner is a trustee of Save the Children]

Cambridge liberal: I do put more faith in women than men, yes. Men have a spotty record to put it mildly. Nearly all mothers have to be good at motherhood for us to survive. Fathers on the other hand can get away with being pretty shitty at that job.

me: Would it be okay if I were to say, after hearing about a plaintiff of Race A suing a defendant of Race B, that “I am pretty sure that the plaintiff is telling the truth and is not motivated by cash considerations because people of Race B are ‘pretty shitty’ parents and ‘have a spotty track record’ as parents”?

Cambridge liberal: No that would not be ok because you’d have no scientific basis for making such claims. Human fathers, on the other hand are demonstrably worse caregivers than mothers on average, by far. [he had no research or data to cite]

Thus a guy who generally is quick to attack others for being prejudiced (against poor people, dark-skinned people, people with unconventional sexual habits, people with gender dysphoria, et al.) was happy to admit believing that fathers are inferior parents compared to mothers. (The New York Times also thought it was okay to run a personal opinion piece on the subject; see previous post.)

So that leads to today’s question for readers…. what other prejudices are acceptable in 2015 America? When it is okay to say that Group X is inferior at handling Challenge Y?

[Separately, I asked a divorce litigator about the Garner-Affleck situation. He responded “When the dust settles it will turn out that Garner was sitting on something more valuable than her acting career.” Assuming that Garner does avail herself of the California family courts, his estimate of how much of the children’s potential inheritance will go instead to pay legal fees? “$2-5 million until they age out of the child support system.” Coincidentally, I flew with a helicopter pilot on Monday who had been an entrepreneur in California. He married a woman 14 years younger than himself and paid for her medical school. As with Garner, she waited until their marriage was just over the 10-year mark and then sued for half of the value of his company, child support, etc. to supplement her wages as a medical doctor and to help support her younger lover.]

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Hitler’s thoughts on the Euro

by philg

I’m halfway through Look Who’s Back, a book in which Hitler wakes up in 2011 and, homeless and friendless, is believed to be a destitute divorce lawsuit/restraining order defendant (see the International chapter for a section on German family law). The defrosted Führer has some thoughts on the Euro:

The Reichsmark was no longer legal tender, even though others—probably some clueless dilettantes on the side of the victorious powers—had clearly adapted my plan to turn it into a European-wide currency. At any rate, transactions were now being carried out in an artificial currency called “euro,” regarded, as one would expect, with a high level of mistrust. I could have told those responsible that this would be the case.

A Portuguese, a Greek, and a Spaniard go into a brothel. Who pays? Germany.

Hitler gets a job with a TV production company but there are some problems with HR paperwork:

Papers—German bourgeois officialdom with its petty, mean-spirited rules and regulations. Once more this perfidious millstone around the neck of the German people was throwing a wrench in the works. “Don’t you have a passport? No ID card? How’s that possible?” “I never had need of one.” “Haven’t you ever been abroad?” “Well, obviously: Poland, France, Hungary . . .” “OK, they’re inside the EU.” “And the Soviet Union.” “You got in there without a passport?” I thought about it for a moment. “I cannot recollect anybody having asked me for one,” I replied confidently.

21st century customs are remarked upon:

I sighed deeply and gazed out the window. It overlooked a parking lot with garbage bins in an array of colors, the reason for this being that waste was carefully separated, no doubt another consequence of the raw materials shortage. Then I chuckled to myself at Destiny’s bitter irony. If only the Volk had made a greater effort at the right time, there would be no need to collect refuse in this manner, given the wealth of raw materials in the East. All kinds of waste could have been happily tipped into just two trash bins, or even a single one.

I went back into my office and closed the door. On each desk stood a typewriter without a cylinder, in front of a television set that must have been placed there by mistake.

Out of the corner of my eye I spied a madwoman on the edge of the park who was gathering up what her dog had just deposited.

Hitler delves into the history of the PC:

And that Douglas Engelbart, well, his father had already emigrated to Washington, which is farther south than one thinks, but young Engelbart then goes to California, which is even farther south; there his Germanic blood begins to roil, and he promptly invents this mouse apparatus.

He answers questions from readers of his web site:

“Dear Herr Bertzel,” I began. “Dog breeding has in fact advanced further than the reproduction and development of human beings. … Around the world there are—and I cannot help but put it as bluntly as this—more elite dogs than elite humans, a deficit that might have been eliminated by now had the German Volk shown greater perseverance in the mid-Forties of the previous century. … Dogs are under the authority of humans, humans control their nutrition and reproduction, which means that dogs will never have a problem with Lebensraum. For this reason the aims of breeding are not always oriented toward a future battle for world domination. Consequently, the question of what dogs might look like had they been fighting for global supremacy over millions of years must remain pure speculation. What goes without saying is that they would have larger teeth. And better weaponry. … Nevertheless, the racial differences are not so dissimilar to those of human beings. Which justifies the question as to whether the canine world has its own Jew, the Jewhound, so to speak. The answer is: Of course there is a Jewhound.”

It can be none other than the dachshund. Yes, I can hear many dog owners, especially those from Munich, protesting, ‘How can this be? Isn’t the dachshund the most German of all dogs?’ “The answer is: no. “The most German of all dogs is the Alsatian, followed in descending order by the Great Dane, the Dobermann, the Swiss mountain dog (but only those from German-speaking Switzerland), the Rottweiler, all schnauzers, Münsterländers, and—why not?—the spitz, which even finds a mention in the illustrated books of Wilhelm Busch. Degenerate dogs, on the other hand—apart from those foreign introductions such as terriers, bassets, and other canine riffraff—are the Weimaraner (the name says it all!), the vain spaniel, the unsporty pug, as well as all types of ornamental dogs.”

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Greek Austerity: Government spends 58.5 percent of GDP

by philg

Journalists keep referring to the years of “austerity” that Greece has endured. Government spending has been cut so much that it is now only 58.5 percent of GDP (heritage.org). What does a country that hasn’t suffered austerity spend? Singapore’s government clocks in at 14.4 percent (same source). How about a command-and-control centrally planned Communist dictatorship? China is at 25 percent. A socialist cradle-to-grave welfare state? Sweden is at 52 percent.

Are the Heritage data wrong? If not, how is it possible that Greece continues to be cited as an example of a country where the government doesn’t spend enough?

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Apple Music: Another disappointing service for classical music listeners

by philg

I signed up for the free three-month trial of Apple Music. Do you want to listen to between 1/4 and 1/3 of the average work? If so, Apple Music is ideal. The “Classical” radio station on Apple Music picks tracks at random from five centuries of classical music. You’ll get one movement of a symphony followed by one movement of a chamber work composed a century later. Although it is nice that it is commercial-free, this is absurdly inferior to what you can get for free by streaming KING FM.

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Where are we with hybrid drive for powerboats?

by philg

Twelve years ago I wrote a post asking why there weren’t Prius-style powerboats. I was out the other day on a friend’s sailboat (“it was like time had stopped”) and it occurred to me to check up on this concept.

Here’s what I have found:

It seems as though we still don’t have a Prius-of-the-waves, i.e., a mass-produced boat where the propeller is sometimes driven by the internal combustion engine and sometimes by an electric motor. Matt O’Toole’s comment on the 2003 posting was “Modern generator sets are really quiet, and electric motors are very small, simple, and reliable, and don’t require a separate gearbox — just a switch to go backwards. I think the way to go about this is to forget the Prius (which has a much different set of service requirements), and use a standard marine generator set, a big bank of deep cycle batteries, an off the shelf marine charging system, and an electric motor of your choice.”

Is it as simple as this mournful chart of energy density? Is the extra weight of batteries in a boat more of a hindrance than the extra weight of batteries in a rolling vehicle such as a car? Why should weight be bad when a lot of boats (sailboats at least!) have lead ballast in the keel. Why can’t batteries at the bottom of the hull be the source of stability? (The German battery holds 40 amp-hours at 345V. They say that an 80 hp push can be sustained for about 30 minutes with two of these batteries (range chart) or a slow cruise can be maintained for hours.)

Is the problem complexity and the harsh marine environment? In some ways it is hard to beat the simplicity of a shaft bolted to the back of a diesel engine, though presumably the lack of moving parts in a solar-powered system could make it more reliable than anything where the source of energy was combustion.

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Infidelity and breadwinner status

by philg

“Husbands of female breadwinners most at risk for cheating, says study” is a CNN story on an academic study finding that men are more likely to have affairs when their wife earns more than they do while wives are correspondingly less likely to cheat. The financial incentives and intersection with state-by-state family law are deemphasized.

Let’s look at the financial incentives. Consider the pampered husband of a financial industry executive. They’ve been married for 30 years while she works for an investment bank and he paints in a home studio while nannies watch the kids. His wife is now 60 years old and about to retire. Her fertility is exhausted. Her earnings are about to cease and all of the financial value that she contributed to the marriage is now in savings and retirement accounts.

The husband thinks to himself “Perhaps it would be more enjoyable to be having sex with 22-year-old women from Craigslist.” Suppose that he indulges in this new lifestyle with at least four such women (“I think a man can have two, maybe three, affairs while he is married. But three is the absolute maximum. After that, you’re cheating.” — Yves Montand). If this leads to either spouse heading down to the courthouse for a no-fault divorce the typical U.S. state will reward him with 50% of the wife’s accumulated earnings and future pension. Should we need to look further to explain the data?

 

 

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MIT professor studies high-wage retailers

by philg

In April 2015 I wrote a post about how higher minimum wages could cause massive unemployment if more employers copied Costco. I noted that “even a casual visitor to [Costco, Target and Walmart] can notice that the work being done per employee per hour is not the same.”

Can you get ahead in academia by studying phenomena that are apparent to consumers? Apparently so! “Why ‘Good Jobs’ Are Good for Retailers” is a 2012 Harvard Business Review article by Zeynep Ton, a business school professor at MIT. She turned this into a The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits in 2014 and now the New York Times is excited about it (article in today’s paper).

Professor Ton says to business people “You can cut your labor cost as a percentage of revenue by hiring higher-quality workers and leaving the low-quality workers to competitors or SSDI.” What the New York Times hears is “Every American can be a high quality worker if paid sufficiently high wages.” Professor Ton quantifies the savings of retailers from not competing with SSDI and TANF: “Sales per employee at Costco are almost double those at Sam’s Club.” As we can be pretty sure that Costco’s per-worker labor costs (wage, health care, taxes, etc.) are not double those of Sam’s Club, this means that Costco spends less on labor than does Sam’s Club. Another way to look at this is “If you don’t have the potential to be twice as productive as a Sam’s Club worker you will not be hired by Costco.”

It is worth looking at the reader comments on the NYT piece. By cutting labor costs as a fraction of sales, Costco and similar companies should be reducing the share of the economic pie enjoyed by labor and enlarging the slide of pie enjoyed by owners of capital (e.g., the Costco shareholders and/or the executives looting from them). But the liberal readers celebrate this move in the direction of less equality because they are dazzled by the headline dollars/hour number paid to the remaining handful of workers.

[Note that the New York Times pays its own journalists less than they could make by having sex with married foreigners and collecting child support. See the discussion of Times reporter Liza Ghorbani in this August 2013 posting.]

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