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A friend’s Facebook post:

We passed by Womrath, Bronxville’s bookshop, which still manages to stay in business despite Amazon. … I said to [the owners] that I appreciated that their window display featured mostly female authors. I had decided not to say anything, but then I figured that window dressing also deserved reinforcement. “That wasn’t intentional,” the woman proprietor responded. “We had no idea,” the man proprietor echoed.

Some things are getting better.

Is it obvious that things today are better? (Let’s assume that “more female” = “better”) I pointed out Hawthorne’s 1855 complaint:

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash-and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the ‘Lamplighter,’ and other books neither better nor worse?-worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the 100,000.

If female authors were not featured by booksellers in 1855, why would Hawthorne have complained? And if bookstores are featuring certain authors, shouldn’t we assume that they are motivated by profits to feature books most likely to sell? Therefore it is really the customers who shape what goes into the window. Who are the customers? “The Most Likely Person to Read a Book? A College-Educated Black Woman” (Atlantic) says “Women read more books than men.” I said

This reminds me of a guy who complained to my friend about the gay-themed ads that he was seeing on Web pages. My friend had to gently inform him that ads were based on his browsing history…

Should we be patting ourselves on the back for being more enlightened than Americans of the dusty past? The Wikipedia page regarding The House of Mirth (1905):

Charles Scribner wrote [Edith] Wharton in November 1905 that the novel was showing “the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner.”

A 1936 nytimes review of Gone with the Wind did not think the female gender ID of the author was worth highlighting. The book sold 30 million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.

All of the Facebook authors’ commenting friends, most of whom are American humanities professors, agreed with the proposition that the featuring by a book merchant of female authors was an exciting new development. None expressed skepticism or asked for data.

Readers: What’s your theory about why these folks would be so interested in (a) devaluing the commercial achievements of female authors in the old days, (b) believing that commercial interest in the works of female authors is currently on the increase?

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“New York City Caps Uber and Lyft Vehicles in a Crackdown” (nytimes):

New York became the first major American city on Wednesday to halt new vehicle licenses for ride-hail services, dealing a significant setback to Uber in its largest market in the United States.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly by the City Council will cap the number of for-hire vehicles for a year while the city studies the booming industry. The bills also allow New York to set a minimum pay rate for drivers.

This is being sold as a way to reduce inequality:

“More than 100,000 workers and their families will see an immediate benefit from this legislation,” Mr. de Blasio said, referring to the city’s army of for-hire drivers.

I wonder if the effect will actually be to increase inequality. There might be a small increase in income for Uber drivers. Presumably Uber itself will capture most of any increase, in the same way that taxi medallion owners capture all of the value of any taxi fare increase, with the drivers continuing to earn a (low) market-clearing wage. But if prices to consumers go up, the result will be kicking middle-class New Yorkers back to walking, waiting for the bus, being jammed into subway cars.

If, as promised, street congestion is reduced that will increase the mobility of a New Yorker wealthy enough to purchase a Bentley and hire a chauffeur. But the mobility of the non-rich, especially those who aren’t physically fit enough to walk long distances, stand for hours each day waiting for public transit, etc. will be reduced by higher prices:

Ride-hail apps have become a crucial backup option for New Yorkers swept up in the constant delays on the city’s sputtering subway, as happened on Wednesday when signal problems again snarled train lines across a large swath of the city. Ride-hail services have also grown in neighborhoods outside Manhattan where the subway does not reach.

Readers: What do you think? Is this “help the struggling Uber driver” regulation mostly going to help Uber shareholders and help the rich in New York distinguish themselves from the proletariat?

[An interesting data point from the article:

The taxi industry has also been decimated by Uber’s rise. The price of a taxi medallion, which is required to operate a taxi in New York, has plunged from more than $1 million to less than $200,000.

]

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Folks: I have an 11×17 flatbed Epson scanner (latest version). It came with Epson Scan 3.49a software, which does not seem to have been updated for nearly a decade. This sometimes gets into confused states on Windows 10 and won’t start, won’t show a preview window, and/or crashes. Plainly Epson does not want to be in the desktop software business.

I’m an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber. Epson does seem to keep the drivers for this scanner reasonably up to date. What’s the most sensible approach to scanning photos, artwork, etc.?

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I hate to be like a Facebook user and post a link without comment, but here’s one from the Onion: “Young Girls Creeped Out By Older Scientists Constantly Trying To Lure Them Into STEM”

the nation’s young women are being utterly creeped out by scientists twice their age constantly attempting to lure them into the study of science, technology, engineering, and math. … The poll also revealed that some scientists also seem to have a thing for young black and latino boys.

Related:

• “GE’s ‘woman scientist’ ad is just plain creepy” (NY Post); see also “Stocks for the long run: GE since 2001” to see how well the passionate feminists at GE have done for investors

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Park of the magic of EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) is camping out next to the light aircraft in which one flew in. We figured that we’d get some good sleep between 8 pm when the airport officially closes via NOTAM (for the event; ordinarily this is a 24-hour airport) and 7 am when it opens again. It turns out that the warbirds go on “dawn patrol” at around 6:00 am, however, and earplugs are no match for the sound of 50 T-6 and P-51 Mustangs departing from a runway that is 500′ away.

Here’s a review of the Coleman Dark Room 6-man tent that we used…

Plus: There was a thunderstorm one night with 40 mph winds and heavy rain. The high profile of the tent makes it vulnerable to the wind, but we stayed inside and braced ourselves against the corners so the tent did not collapse. Only a bit of rain came through the door seams. Exceeded expectations for a $99 Costco purchase ($155 at Amazon).

Minus: there are plastic rings at the four corners of the tent that are critical to pitching. One of these broke in half during the first pitch. They are about 1/5th as strong as they should be (my last tent was LL Bean and lasted for 15+ years). We managed to get things working (sort of) with an extra stake.

Additional minus: Coleman was not easy to reach by phone for support. After 15 minutes of hold time and a 5-minute conversation, they sent an email demanding various photos, including one of the receipt (but who keeps paper receipts from Costco when the Costco computer stores them?). I responded to this asking “Do you really need a receipt?” and they didn’t reply. So I contacted them again via chat. They actually do demand the receipt before sending out any components. So now it is time to take the entire mess and dump it at Costco because it is basically useless without the 25-cent ring that broke and that Coleman won’t replace.

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In the comments to “Who will pay to see a movie about black guys being attacked in the family court system?” I responded to a reader who suggested that single parenthood was a particularly black or uniquely black phenomenon. I pointed out

Whites seem to be at least as eager as non-whites to profit from having children, regardless of their income level. Angelina Jolie had a net worth of $275 million when she became a child support plaintiff (see “Cash value of Angelina Jolie’s children: roughly $50 million tax-free“)

As it happens, Ms. Jolie is in the news today: “Angelina Jolie accuses Brad Pitt of shirking child support in new court filing” (NBC). The single-mom-by-choice previously won primary parent status (see Bravo) and now apparently is passionate about turning a profit on her time with the kids (or her time having the nannies watch the kids play on their iPads?). I have not seen anything to indicate that Ms. Jolie identifies as black.

[How would this be adjudicated in neighboring Nevada? Absent an agreement to the contrary, Jolie and Pitt would share parenting on a 50/50 basis. Legal fees regarding custody would be $1,000 instead of $10 million. Max child support profits would be $13,380 per child per year. It is tough to understand why more Hollywood starts don’t live in Vegas and take a Pilatus into Santa Monica as necessary for their work. Maybe not for the first marriage, but after being sued once in California courts they don’t learn?]

Readers: Let’s look in the mirror before we throw rocks at various subgroups of our fellow Americans!

[My full comment:

That joke is mostly on white people. They laughed when their black neighbors availed themselves of the “marry the government” option in the 1960s. Then whites blew up their own nuclear families starting in the 1970s with the no-fault divorce revolution and plenty of whites also found the “marry the government” strategy. It is still true that the percentage is higher in the black community, but the majority of Americans who were raised outside of a two-parent household are whites (highest percentage among wealthy nations; see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/InOurEconomy )

Whites seem to be at least as eager as non-whites to profit from having children, regardless of their income level. Angelina Jolie had a net worth of $275 million when she became a child support and alimony plaintiff (see http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/09/21/cash-value-of-angelina-jolies-children-roughly-50-million-tax-free/ ).

The abortion sales that we learned about (see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ChildSupportLitigationWithoutMarriage for how this works in the states that don’t have caps on child support) were by white Americans represented by white American attorneys.

So… it may be fun for white Americans to feel superior to black Americans, but if you choose single parenthood as a yardstick with “more single” as the “worse” end, white Americans are inferior to nearly every other group of humans on Planet Earth.

]

Related:

• “Divorce tips from the Brangelina uncoupling” (CNBC)

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I was recently invited to “a unique evening contributing towards uplifting women and children” and the keynote speaker works “for greater diversity in tech”. Tickets were $300 per person. Due to our resolution to stay home every evening until our youngest child turns 18, I wouldn’t have been able to go. However, I couldn’t resist a question:

If the mission is “uplifting women and children,” why invite men? If women and children need to be “uplifted” then presumably it is men who have kept them down? Why have members of an oppressive class at a meeting devoted to ending oppression?

The organizer’s response:

Because sadly those oppressors still make 20 cents more on the dollar than the women…..

(This reminded me of the guy in the documentary who said “women may be seen as ‘sex objects,’ but men are often seen as ‘success objects'”. Would it be okay if someone ran an event devoted to “uplifting men” after noting how many are destined to come up short in our polygamous society? Also okay if the organizers decided to invite selected women on the grounds that “sadly these (female) oppressors are a lot more attractive and fun to look at than most guys”?)

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EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) includes four hangars full of vendor booths. Quite a few were populated by makers of Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs). ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot are the market leaders here, but there are roughly an additional dozen apps that offer to do the basics of providing electronic charts and approach plates as well as flight planning.

A physical flight bag contains paper charts (maps) and notebooks full of approach plates, instructions for landing at various airports when clouds are low and/or visibility is poor. Before the era of GPS there would also be a slide rule calculator for determining the time required to reach the next waypoint. In this analog world, the pilot reaches into the flight bag and selects the correct tool for the situation: chart, plate, E6B calculator, pencil and paper.

The analog world has been faithfully replicated by the software engineers behind the EFBs. Garmin Pilot, for example, has 21 top-level options available from the Home screen. Examples:

• map
• flight plan
• documents
• airport info
• charts
• trip planning
• wx [weather] text
• terrain
• weight and balance

Just as with the physical flight bag, it is the pilot’s job to reach into this suitcase and select which of these 21 options is most relevant in a given situation. With every Oshkosh the various EFB vendors introduce additional features and the result is additional user interface complexity (none of these folks seem to have developed a simplified in-flight interface; the complexity delivered to the user sitting on a coach hours before flight is the same as the complexity delivered to the user sitting in an airplane trying to determine whether it is necessary to divert to an alternate airport).

In fairness, Garmin calls this “Pilot” and not “Co-Pilot” so perhaps it isn’t reasonable to expect that the software would respond with the intelligence of a human co-pilot, dispatcher, or weather briefer. But would it be possible to build a “Co-Pilot” app on top of “Garmin Pilot” that did have some intelligence?

For example, the Co-Pilot app would start by asking the user (“pilot”) what was the goal, e.g.,

1. I want to see if it makes sense to do a local training flight
2. I want to see if I can do a day trip today from KBED to KMVY and back
3. I want to see if there is reasonable VFR weather forecast for going KBED to KGAI this weekend

For Goal #1 it would be the layered Co-Pilot app’s job to push the roughly 50 buttons necessary in ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot to get current and forecast weather for nearby airports and to check NOTAMs for runway closures, temporary flight restrictions (El Presidente playing golf, e.g.), etc. If it was towards the end of the day the Co-Pilot app would also press the buttons necessary to determine sunset time.

Readers: How tough it is to build an app for Android or iOS whose job is to drive an already-installed app? The above example is obviously a small market niche, but given how software tends to become bloatware and interfaces designed by 25-year-olds in Silicon Valley tend not to be usable for non-technical and/or older Americans I think that this kind of software could be useful in a lot of areas. Even figuring out which app to install! If the goal is to book a hotel for tonight, for example, the meta-app could figure out which of the 100 hotel-booking apps to install and then download and use one. After all, the phone owner’s goal is not to enjoy Hipmunk or the Expedia app, but rather to sleep comfortably at a reasonable price.

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A BU-affiliated friend on Facebook highlighted “Where’s Daddy? Examines Interplay of Race and a Flawed Child Support System” (BU Today):

Parents who have no reported income and those who make less than $10,000 a year account for 70 percent of the total child support debt owed, according to a study by the Urban Institute. Parents in child support default often face strained family relations, financial ruin, and in extreme cases, jail time. In his new feature-length documentary Where’s Daddy? BU alum Rel Dowdell tackles the dysfunctional child support system, which he argues is especially hard on African American fathers.

Take the case of Walter L. Scott, who was $18,000 in child support default when he was pulled over by police in 2015 and fatally shot in the back as he fled on foot. Scott’s brother said it was the threat of jail time and the loss of his job, two consequences he had suffered previously, that compelled him to run.

Where’s Daddy can be seen on Vimeo and rented or purchased on Amazon.com.

Is the premise of the movie flawed? Family court is set up to benefit children, right? Therefore adult suffering shouldn’t matter, even if the hardship falls hardest on black American men. From the “Children, Mothers, and Fathers” chapter,

“Child Support and Young Children’s Development” (Nepomnyaschy, et al, 2012; Social Science Review 86:1), a Rutgers and University of Wisconsin study of children of lower income unmarried parents, found that any kind of court involvement was associated with harm to children: “We also find that provision of formal [court-ordered] child support is associated with worse withdrawn and aggressive behaviors.” The authors found that informal (voluntary) support from fathers could be helpful to children living with single mothers but court-ordered support, even when the cash was actually transferred, was on balance harmful.

In other words, the suffering of the adult black men ends up making their biological children worse off, not better off. In terms of spending power within the mother’s household, at the lower end of the income scale there is no difference whether the father is successfully tapped for child support. Mom is entitled to a free house, free health care, free food, and a free smartphone. If the defendant pays something, the welfare state will pay a little less (but still pretty close to the full $60,000+/year cost for a welfare family). If the defendant doesn’t pay, the welfare state has to provide anyway. At higher income levels, economists have found that mothers use child support to cut their working hours more or less dollar for dollar. So if the defendant pays, the mom has more leisure time. Spending power and standard of living within the mother’s household remains constant.

Thus the psychologists and economists suggest that the movie’s premise is not flawed. Yet will anyone pay to see this? Righteous Americans say that “Black Lives Matter” and even hang the banners outside their homes and (all-white) churches. But do they act as though the lives of black low-income men actually do matter? In our post-divorce litigation chapter we quote a legislator who actually does care:

Maryland State Assembly Delegate Jill Carter explained how it worked for her constituents: “A lot of men fall into arrearages and have to live in the shadows. They can’t drive, can’t work without their entire paycheck being garnished, and are sometimes imprisoned. Even if a man is well-intentioned, unless he wins the lottery he can’t get out of it.”

(If Carter cares, why isn’t she able to do something? The bills that she introduces to address the suffering of her black male constituents in Maryland’s family courts are voted down by white legislators, for example:

Carter has sponsored a bill for a rebuttable presumption of 50/50 shared parenting. What are its chances? “The Women’s Caucus staged a walk-off the last time the bill got out of committee.” Why does Carter keep introducing this kind of legislation? “I’m not married and I don’t have kids,” she responded. “I don’t have a dog in this fight. But from working with my constituents and clients in my law practice I can see how unfair the current system is.” Who benefits from leaving things the way they are? “Wealthy lawyers who represent people in Montgomery County,” she responded.

)

I wonder who funds a movie like this in a country where people are most passionate about the lives of the Marvel superheroes.

Related:

• Walter Scott, child support defendant, earned about $800/month

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Tennis fans and children of the 1960s will appreciate the movie Battles of the Sexes. The dialog is anachronistic, with the female tennis players of the day using 2017 gender warrior terminology, but it is still fun to see all of the 1970s cars and styles.

I wonder if the commercial failure of this movie is related to the roughly 50 percent devoted to a same-sex love story between Billie Jean King and hairdresser Marilyn Barnett. Even folks who are passionate advocates of marriage equality on Facebook don’t want to see an hour of two women in love on screen?

We have “Scarlett Johansson Withdraws From Transgender Role After Backlash” (nytimes). A cisgender actor is not allowed to play a transgender character. But in Battle of the Sexes, without any public protest, two heterosexual cisgender female actors (at least if a quick search for gossip is any guide) play two lesbian characters. Why is that okay? Or is just a difference between 2017 and 2018?

In the dialog and in the roll-out text following the movie, the march of progress in gay rights is celebrated. We learn a lot about the post-1973 lives of the characters with the exception of Ms. Barnett, who had occupied a tremendous amount of on-screen time. Why not follow Ms. Barnett? Wikipedia provides a clue:

King acknowledged the relationship when it became public in a May 1981 “palimony” lawsuit filed by Barnett

The filmmakers apparently did not want to reveal that the sweet lover of the movie turned into a family court predator.

One thing that the movie shows is how much more money our society devotes to spectactor sports in general and tennis in particular. The prize money offered even to the best men at the time was laughable by today’s standards. The nytimes article on the Barnett v. King lawsuit says “Women now compete for about $10 million annually in prize money in tournaments around the world” (compare to $25+ million in women’s prize money for the U.S. Open alone). Is it that we are crazy richer than we were in 1973? That more people spend more time watching TV so that the value of a tennis show is higher? That air travel has gotten cheaper and more comfortable so that the value of a ticket to a live match is higher and therefore there is a lot more revenue from those attending live? What?

The movie is streaming on HBO. I’d be curious to know what readers think of it.

Related:

• “I Got Gay Married. I Got Gay Divorced. I Regret Both.” (nytimes)
• “‘BATTLE OF THE SEXES’ SUGARCOATS BILLIE JEAN KING’S TRAGIC LOVE AFFAIR” (Newsweek)
• “BILLIE JEAN KING IS SUED FOR ASSETS OVER ALLEGED LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP” (nytimes, 1981, suggesting that the paper’s gossip rag incarnation is not new!)
• Karsten Braasch v. Williams sisters (a battle of the sexes with a 13-year age gap instead of a 26-year gap)

 

 

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