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I went to a dinner party at which one topic of discussion was an impending government shutdown. A man in his 70s maintained that this was going to be a terrible event. I asked “Why would it be worse than all of the previous government shutdowns?” (Wikipedia has a list of 18 since 1976). His answer was the Republicans and Democrats in Congress had less of a “dialog” than before. I estimated that there was no way that the shutdown could last more than 45 days, on the grounds that “All politicians love to tax citizens and then spend the money; they just have a few disagreements around the edges.” I said that no previous shutdown had lasted more than 21 days (yay, smartphone!) and therefore 45 days would be a real statistical outlier. He persisted in arguing that American politics is completely different (and worse) than at any time in the past. (This was Cambridge, mind you, so 100 percent of the blame for the degradation is due to “crazy Republicans.”)

The government does seem to be shutting down, thus proving this guy right so far. But on the other hand I’m wondering why the situation seemed so much more dire to the oldest person at the table than to the younger guests. He’d lived through at least 17 previous shutdowns, not to mention a world war, and somehow everything that turned out all right.

Other old people that I know have access to the same news as young and middle-aged folks yet they are much more concerned about unusual weather and foreign conflict. If they are freaked out about floods I might point out that most of the world is enjoying sunshine. If they are freaked out about U.S. economic stagnation I will point out that the world is still improving because China is much more populous and their economy is growing robustly. If they are freaked out about the fact that various people in the Middle East hate each other I will point out that there are lots of peaceful parts of the world. None of my “look at the places that the news media isn’t bothering to cover right now” statements have ever helped.

So… for the readers…

• Am I correct in that the same events are more worrisome/upsetting to older Americans?
• If so, why? Given that they have fewer years of life expectancy, shouldn’t the potential for long-term damage be less frightening?

One of my theories is that people have only a fixed number of things that they can worry about. A person between 30 and 50 may use up all of his or her potential for worrying with job- and kid-related concerns. He or she simply doesn’t have leftover slots to care about Syria, Congress, the melting of assorted continents, etc. Once comfortably retired, however, and all children settled in their own homes, a person will naturally fill up those worry slots with issues from the media.

If my theory is correct the only sensible way to live in retirement is with a complete ban on news media.

[Oh yes, back to the shutdown. I’m going to go on record with a prediction that the future will look like the past. The average length of a previous shutdown was about 8 days. So I will predict that this shutdown lasts 8 days. If it lasts until the end of October I am going to invite all of my readers to join me at Margarita’s for a Taco Gigante on my dime! If it goes beyond the 45-day limit above, they won’t be doing Taco Gigantes anymore so I will host a blood donation party at Children’s Hospital in Boston.]

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I’m going to try to lose some weight this fall, so I’m swearing off McDonald’s and all of that fattening fast food. I’ll be having sit-down cooked-to-order lunches and dinners at Margarita’s instead. A press release indicates that they are bringing back a special taco for National Taco Day (October 4). Here’s what the weight-/health-conscious consumer will receive:

The two-pound goliath is hand-crafted, made-to-order and presented in distinctive tongue-and-cheek Margaritas style. The Taco Gigante is made with a crispy 12-inch tortilla shell and comes stuffed with lettuce, refried beans, Mexican rice, seasoned chicken, taco beef, pork carnitas, bacon, salsa fresca, cheese and queso sauce. Topped with crema, pickled jalapenos, picante sauce and hacienda sauce, the $9.99 gargantuan is worthy of its title.

I don’t want to overeat so I’ll be asking them to make mine without the lettuce.

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A friend and I enjoyed the fine craftsmanship and lack of exploding superheroes in the movie The Spectacular Now. If you need to be reminded about all of the space on the planet that is being unjustifiably taken up by white men, go see the film right now. The basic white guy prototype in the movie is a selfish drinker/doper who abandons his responsibilities to the wife and kids, either by running away or overdosing and dying. Younger white guys simply drink. White guys who are too young to drink sulk on a sofa and play video games. Occasionally a white guy will become financially successful, in which case he is a stuffed shirt/blowhard. A final, but rare option for a white guy is to be a failing small businessman.

Not all of the male characters are reprehensible. There is one male high school student who shows some promise; he is black. There is one male teacher who cares about the students; he is black.

Most of the women in the film are strong, smart, prudent regarding the future, and trustworthy.

I would write more about the film but a buddy of mine is coming over and I need to crack open another 6-pack and bottle of oxycodone for him…

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… in terms of draining the battery. My iPhone 4S used to last about 24 hours before needing a charge. After the iOS 7 upgrade it lasts from 8 am until about 4 pm.

This reminds me of first-generation Android phones.

Separately, the photography interface on iOS 7 seems to have gotten better for sharing photos. After taking a picture from the Camera app you can touch it and then share it. On the previous versions it was necessary to back out into the “Photos” app before sharing. For taking pictures, however, the interface is worse. There are on-screen controls for the flash, HDR, etc. that make it hard to compose the image (by obscuring the virtual viewfinder). I can’t see any way to hide these controls and look mostly at the image to be captured.

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As a recent college graduate I found that stores open 24 hours per day were an unmixed blessing. I could write code until 2:00 am, stop by a store on my way home, and pick up a pint of Haagen-Daz coffee ice cream for immediate consumption. Now that my life is more intertwined with family it turns out that CVS being open all night simply means that the window for potential required errands has been expanded. Visiting D.C. this weekend I had the opportunity to make a late-night visit to CVS to purchase a toothbrush for one of my traveling companions; she had neglected to pack hers in Boston. As I walked back through a pouring rain I reflected “How could this [non-electric] toothbrush have cost $6.29? It contains the same amount of plastic as a toy that comes free with a Happy Meal.” Later, I poked around on the Web and discovered that hotels can buy those toothbrushes (admittedly crummy) that they give away to guests for less than 10 cents. A Colgate-branded toothbrush is about 45 cents (quantity 144).

So Question 1 for tonight is how is it possible in our competitive economy for a toothbrush to cost $6.29?

Question 2 is why there aren’t high quality generic LEGO bricks available. The LEGO patents have expired (and in fact perhaps should not have been very broad (source)). Given how popular LEGO is with kids, and the number of kids in the U.S., and the supposedly ruthlessly competitive nature of our economy, why aren’t there huge boxes of LEGO-compatible bricks available for slightly more than it costs to mold and package them?

Our economy is efficient enough that people buy generic versions of heart medicine. Why hasn’t a similar market developed for generic LEGO? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_clone lists a bunch of clones, but none seem to be popular or cheap enough that you could start building living room furniture out of the bricks.)

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Folks:

I went to see Blue Jasmine, the latest Woody Allen movie, the other night. One friend fell asleep. The other said “The more time that passes since I saw it the less I like it.”

None of the women in the movie seem to have close female friends. The main character spends all of her energy spending money on luxury brands or trying to find a (second) rich guy to live off. The male characters are pretty shallow and usually sleazy (cheating on wives) as well though at least some of them have buddies. None of the guys would be an argument against Vladimir Putin’s recent op-ed pointing out that Americans in general are not exceptionally bright or wise. The research for the movie seems to have been weak. A Sunday afternoon party in San Francisco has everyone wearing jackets and ties (maybe some Bay Area folks who travel in higher social circles can comment on that, but even the wealthier folks out there don’t seem to dress up on weekends during the daytime).

Arguably an interesting part of the movie would be the descent into madness of the main character, the wife of a Wall Street swindler, but we see only before (uber-materialist out shopping) and after (uber-materialist broke and crazy).

Who wants to defend this movie, which has received very favorable reviews, as a work of genius?

[p.s. My favorite Woody Allen movie is the 1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors]

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Young people have been roaming the City of Cambridge recently, in preparation for an upcoming election for members of the City Council. This page says that the job involves showing up for meetings on Monday evenings at 5:30 pm for about nine months every year. The Council has no power regarding anything involving the public schools, i.e., the most expensive and least functional part of the city. Most actual decisions in Cambridge are made by a city manager and his staff and/or by a school committee and school system bureaucrats (sample). Why the intensive campaigning? “The job pays $75,000 per year,” one candidate explained (a rounding error compared to the outgoing city manager’s $5 million retirement package (source)).

My vote is for Logan Leslie, a veteran of our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures, who is young enough that he might question the status quo. His description of Central Square is plainspoken compared to the usual fluff that we get from politicians:

“Central Square isn’t safe or clean. Its large community of vagrants openly drinking, urinating, and taking drugs is an embarrassment. It’s a hotspot of crime. Many women who work in Mid-Cambridge or Cambridgeport are terrified to walk home from the T station at night. And it all goes down right across from our City Hall, steps from Harvard and Kendall Squares.”

(Personally I don’t feel afraid of crime in Central Square, but walking through there does lead to interesting conversations with a 4-year-old, e.g., “Daddy: Why is that man sleeping on the sidewalk?” Walking through with a Samoyed on a leash leads to all kinds of conversations and interactions with the more colorful denizens. It is kind of interesting how much of the grit that I remember from my arrival here at MIT in 1979 persists even in Central Square’s Starbucks era.)

The most plain-spoken candidate of all seems to be James Williamson, whose 2011 profile notes that “The current council get $70,000 a year each and often have other paid activities, too. In addition, each are allowed paid ‘research assistants.’ Yet they often still don’t seem to have a clue about obvious things that are going on in our community, nor do they embrace some of the obvious and simple solutions available for our more urgent problems. They’re way better at getting themselves re-elected with contributions from big corporate real estate interests. … Healy and his deputy have been in charge of all too much in Cambridge for far too long. Thirty-five years, to be exact. (That’s actually longer than Mubarak!) …”

It is not obvious why it should be hard to run the city. Harvard and MIT bring in floods of money while generating virtually no demand for city services (e.g., not too many Harvard students are arrested for crimes (and Harvard has its own police force), sign up for free health care at the Cambridge City Hospital, or ask for a free apartment from the City’s housing office). While most of the Boston area succumbs to traffic gridlock, Cambridge enjoys four Red Line and one Green Line T stations. The only thing that the city tries to do that is arguably challenging is run a high quality public school system and, of course, it is failing to meet that challenge (Boston Magazine ranks Cambridge as #88/147 in quality among Massachusetts districts and… #1 in spending (though the $26,305 per-student figure is understated because it does not include capital expenses, e.g., for renovating the school buildings)).

Related: http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2013/05/23/cambridge-public-schools-perspective-from-a-new-teacher/

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I am trying to get rid of a recently wiped Dell XPS 420 tower PC (truly huge, with vast amounts of interior space and cooling; state of the art in 2007). I was thinking that it wasn’t a bad machine, actually, with four CPU cores and 3 GB of RAM. Then someone emailed me an article about the launch of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phone, which has…. 3 GB of RAM (and 8 CPU cores, but who is counting?).

[Separately, if you want to feel better about your Canon EOS 1D C body, which at $12,000 is one of the cheaper 4K video cameras out there, note that this new Samsung phone also can record 4K video.]

So… any gamers/system builders/Linux fans out there who want this Dell XPS 420 with a phone-sized RAM?

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Verizon is trying to buy 45 percent of Verizon Wireless from Vodafone (Reuters) for $130 billion. This values the wireless portion of Verizon at about $288 billion. There are approximately 100 million Verizon Wireless subscribers. Therefore, each one of us is worth nearly $3000 in expected future profits (discounted to present value).

Should Verizon just give us the option of mailing them a check for $3000 and then they would charge us a more reasonable monthly rate? (And yes I do recognize that some of the $288 billion in enterprise value could reflect the possibility that VZ will sign up new subscribers going forward, which makes us existing subscribers worth a bit less.)

[Separately, I’m ready for a Galaxy Note III. I want to be able to read Kindle books on my phone. Who else is excited about the Note III?]

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An Israeli reader who saw my posting on divorce and child support laws in Denmark sent me an article from Israel.

The facts of the case were the following:

• a divorced father earned 13,000 shekels (approximately $3600) per month and lived in a rental apartment
• a divorced mother earned 18,000 shekels (approximately $5000) per month and owned a house
• “the children spend more than half of their time with the father,” said the judge

Israeli law has a built-in gender bias, with divorced fathers who lose custody responsible for 100 percent of the cost of their children and 75 percent of the cost where the kids’ time is divided between parents. A divorced mother with a job, however, may have to pay a share of “extras” such as vacations for children.

With these facts, the mother sought to have approximately 100% of the father’s after-tax salary transferred to her as child support (“she had sued for over 13,000 shekels a month”). The judge concluded that the mother was entitled to just 2% of what she was seeking (300 shekels per month; roughly $83) and that it wasn’t worth ordering that this small amount of money be paid from one former spouse to the other.

Israeli readers: How does it work over there? What typically happens when middle/upper income couples with kids split up? Can a parent make a substantial profit on child support payments? Would you have been surprised if this mother had succeeded in collecting 100% of her ex-husband’s income?

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