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Folks:

A variety of information is available as a stream of text messages. What if one wanted to collect these into a file or database? What’s the best way to do it. I don’t want the messages coming to my phone.

One idea is to sign up for a Google Voice account. This yields a virtual phone number that can receive text messages. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to export them from Google Voice.

Ideas?

I’m headed to Denmark soon. The country often features in “happiest place on earth” books and Americans sometimes get interested in what this country, whose population is about the same as the greater Boston area, can teach us (see this April 20, 2013 nytimes article for example and this posting be Senator Bernie Sanders). One thing that might be hard to apply is that people are simply happier in smaller countries, an argument made in A Pattern Language where, a maximum country population of 10 million is suggested (otherwise the leaders become too remote from the people and it is impossible for an average citizen to have any influence on the government; consider the situation of someone in Hawaii or California who wants to talk to the bureaucrats in charge, a 6- or 11-hour airline journey away). In theory we could try to capture some of the Danish magic by turning federal power over to the 50 states, but in practice the federal government has been taking programs and power away from the states for 100+ years.

Another challenge is income. The Danes measure out as having a more enjoyable lifestyle but that lifestyle produces only $37,700 in GDP per capita (CIA Factbook). Running U.S. local, state, and federal government costs about $21,000 per year per American (CIA Factbook GDP times 42 percent). So if we had a Danish level of economic productivity and our American system of government spending on health care, military, nation-building, etc. the required tax rates would be about 58% (i.e., workers would be permitted to choose how to spend 42% of their earnings).

Senator Sanders implies that it would be easy to import ideas from Denmark. If we make health care universal and free our spending will suddenly drop from 18 percent of GDP to 11 percent. But what if our spending is high because Americans are not competent at delivering health care? If we organize 75 of Americans into trade unions, everyone will make more money implies Sanders. But he doesn’t address the fact that American managers are historically too oriented toward the short term and/or too foolish not to bankrupt unionized companies with pension commitments (see this posting about General Motors). Maybe unions result in sustainable business in Denmark because Danish managers are smarter than American managers and/or because a Danish manager cannot make $100 million/year on the basis of some short-term results.

With a realistic view towards our own limitations and what we have managed to accomplish as a country thus far, what ideas for political and social organization could we import from Denmark?

[Update: coincidentally, yesterday’s New York Times carries an article on the subject of whether the U.S. can be like the Nordic countries: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/why-cant-america-be-sweden/ ]

Folks:

A friend of mine owns a record company and asked for advice on a camera system to record interviews with musicians. These will be in a recording studio or an office. He wants to use an on-camera shotgun-style microphone rather than a lav mic. It seems to me that the criteria are the following:

• good performance at higher ISOs due to the low light
• availability of a fixed normal-perspective lens at a reasonable price
• ability to use an external microphone

I came up with the following recommendation:

• Nikon D5200 (Canon equivalent has inferior dynamic range and sensor score on DxOMark)
• Nikon 35mm f/1.8G lens (no Canon equivalent lens; Sigma 35/1.4 is a good lens but expensive and heavy)
• Nikon 27045 ME-1 Stereo Microphone

The microphone recommendation is the one that I am least sure about. It doesn’t seem likely to isolate the subject as well as a true shotgun mic. On the other hand, perhaps the interviewer’s questions should be audible as well even if the camera is not pointed at the interviewer.

Do readers have a better idea?

I met a young father who is just starting a job as a teacher in the Cambridge Public Schools ($26,337 spent per pupil back in 2009; expenses forecast to rise at 3 percent per year so the 2013 number should be $29,642 if the number of students remains constant (note that these numbers do not include capital spending)). The union contract says that teachers with a master’s degree would start in 2011 at $46,541 and, after 10 years and a few continuing education credits, be earning $85,048. Working hours for elementary school teachers are from 8:10 am until 2:35 pm, 183 days per year. The elementary school teacher also gets a lunch period and “no less than forty (40) continuous minutes of daily, duty free preparation time.”

“I’m very excited about this job,” said the father, who then added that he and his family were moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, across the river from Cambridge and a truly hellish commute via the MBTA (Green Line into Boston and then Red Line back out). I asked why he didn’t move to Cambridge instead, so that he would be able to walk to work. “I would never want my children to attend the Cambridge Public Schools,” he replied.

With the recent federal budget adjustments, our military still gives us two wars (in various states of disrepair) but no air shows, I was saddened to learn as I tried to plan a trip for my nearly-4-year-old daughter to the Quonset (Rhode Island) Air Show. I had taken to her an air show a year ago and the 2.75-year-old child pointed to the sky and said “That airplane is doing aerobatic flying.”

Supposedly the military air shows come back in 2014. I’m not sure that I understand the sequestration process that well. Is there suddenly going to be a lot more money in 2014? And it is selfish to hope that our government stop giving suitcases of cash to foreign dictators in favor of local pomp and circumstance?

Dear readers:

I’d like to host a helicopter, airplane, and Internet discussion in Copenhagen the morning of June 8 (10:30 am?). We can talk about anything that I’ve posted about in this blog. I’m especially eager to meet with pilots to talk about how flight training (for helicopters and airplanes) and private aviation works in Denmark. Maybe a Danish reader will email me to suggest a place near Kongens Nytorv or at the University of Copenhagen.

Please email philg@mit.edu if interested in joining.

A Massachusetts state representative, Cory Atkins, recently proposed adding a sales tax on aircraft in Massachusetts. Neighboring states either don’t have sales tax at all (New Hampshire) or mostly exempt aircraft (e.g., Connecticut). It isn’t surprising that a politician would dream of taxing a $60 million Gulfstream at 6.25 percent and spending the resultant $3.75 million on worthy projects supervised by wise bureaucrats (cf. the Big Dig, which could have been fully funded with sales tax revenues from just 3,893 Gulfstream G-650s (8 built so far says Wikipedia)).

What is surprising about this proposed new tax is that it is put forward by a representative from a town, Concord, partly occupied by an airport, Hanscom Field. Arguably the town would be better off if the airport were shut down and the land converted to McMansions paying property tax, but a shut down is not possible due to the fact that the airport is used by the adjacent Hanscom Air Force Base and the airport is owned by Massport, which would not cede its authority and revenue source to Concord. The airport generates a lot of jobs for people involved in hangaring airplanes, piloting them, fixing them, and fueling them. A tax on airplanes would result in hangar, repair, pilot, and fuel jobs moving to Nashua, New Hampshire, a 10-minute flight away. Why would a politician want this for the town that she represents?

One obvious argument would be to minimize noise from those Gulfstreams. But if the Gulfstream lives in Nashua, along with its pilots, flight attendants, fuelers, mechanics, and hangar crew, it will need to perform twice as many operations at Hanscom Field to get a passenger off to Teterboro, Dulles, or Palm Beach. Instead of landing and taxiing to its hangar, the plane will taxi, unload, and then noisily depart for its New Hampshire home.

I’m not surprised that a politician would propose a new tax but wouldn’t one expect it to come from a politician whose district did not include airport-related businesses and employees? Even the most peace-loving Congressmen nearly always support more military spending in their own district. Could it be the one-party nature of Massachusetts politics that accounts for Ms. Atkins’s war on Hanscom Field?

Folks:

I’m planning a party to celebrate an immigrant’s recent acquisition of U.S. citizenship. Unlike the red carpet that our government rolled out for the Tsarnaev family, this Boston-area immigrant had to pay for an MBA from an Ivy League university and hand over roughly 50 percent of her income in federal, state, and local taxes over the 11 years since graduation before getting the citizenship that came so easily to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (a failing student in debt to the taxpayer-subsidized University of Massachusetts, who had previously cost Cambridge taxpayers approximately $26,000 per year as a K-12 student (given that the older Tsarnaev brother was collecting various welfare benefits in Massachusetts and was also a Cambridge Public School student, my immigrant friend was also paying for our hospitality to the Tsarnaevs)).

By accepting U.S. citizenship, my immigrant friend says goodbye to the possibility of returning to her native Russia and paying income tax at a 13 percent rate. She also says goodbye to the possibility of living tax-free in a country such as Monaco and to the possibility of living for a smallish annual fee in a country such as Switzerland. She is therefore adopting a share of our debt. I’ve got a baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie theme already planned for the core of the party but am stumped as to what to get to indicate her shouldering of our debt burden.

I thought briefly about getting a huge quantity of jelly beans, one for every dollar that she will have to pay back. But then I got stuck on the question of how many jelly beans to buy. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ says that debt per American (citizen or resident?) is $53,281. The JellyBelly FAQ says that there are 400 jelly beans in a pound, so that would be 133 lbs. of jelly beans. But not every resident pays taxes to service the debt. Some are too young, some are too old, some are unemployed, some are disabled, etc. The debt clock tries to adjust for that by showing “debt per taxpayer” (maybe misleading because people who don’t pay income tax still pay a lot of other taxes, e.g., property tax, sales tax, gas tax) of $148,136. What about the fact that my friend has an Ivy League MBA? Her income is higher than average and likely to remain that way. Furthermore, the Obama Administration and Congress are constantly coming up with new ways to “tax the rich”. My immigrant friend is likely to bump up against the $250,000 “you are now a rich person” threshold in a lot of future years. Should her share then be considered closer to $1 million?

We also have to consider her age, 37. She’s in her prime earning years yet by the time she turns 65 it seems unlikely that Medicare and Social Security will exist in their current forms (maybe they will be “means-tested” so that people who had higher incomes during their working lives won’t get any benefits). Does the fact that she is unlikely ever to receive these valuable government handouts mean that her share of the debt is higher? Since none of her tax payments will ever turn into checks and health care payments in her old age, unlike a lot of American taxpayers

Finally…. since the debt is growing, not shrinking, perhaps her share of the debt is actually $0. If it is never going to be paid back then nobody needs to shoulder the burden of repayment.

So… comments from readers would be appreciated. Question 1: What is the proper way to calculate the share of our national debt being taken on by a new citizen, age 37 and with a high income? Question 2: What is a fun but not crazy expensive or bulky way to symbolize this quantity at a party?

One of my pet theories, supported primarily by the fact that housing prices in Cambridge, Boston, and Brookline remained high while the farther-out suburbs of Boston have never recovered from their 2005-6 peaks, is that as the transportation system in the U.S. collapses due to congestion, people who value their time at more than $5 per hour will abandon the suburbs. Anecdotally this is supported by reports from my friends who are regular commuters: “The reverse commute is now just as bad as the standard commute”; “What took 35 minutes in 2010 now takes 1:15”; “I used to have to get to the Weston tolls by 6:55 to avoid Mass Pike traffic but now I have to be there by 6:40.”

Today’s New York Times carries a story about how suburban poverty in the New York City metro area is growing while the central cities are “prospering.”

The typical house in a Boston suburb was built between 1950 and 1975, when the highways were new and the commute time was a predictable 20-30 minutes. During peak traffic periods, which now may include weekends, what had been a 20-30 minute trip is now a 45-150 minute trip and there is no way to predict which end of the 45-150-minute spectrum will prevail on any given day. Travel times get longer every year as car ownership and use increases. What’s the value of a house from which it might take hours to get anywhere?

What do readers think? Are the suburbs finished because we’ve melted down our transportation system? Or will Google’s computer-augmented cars save the suburbs by making much more efficient use of existing roads? (And if we haven’t mustered the political will to establish congestion pricing or to tax older high pollution cars so that people have an incentive to buy cleaner new cars, how will we ever muster the political will to mandate semi-automatic cars that can cluster efficiently on highways?)

A friend has a new Private pilot certificate. He is planning a 4-hour round-trip helicopter journey, in one day, to pick up his daughter from college. With him and his daughter on board there will be two empty seats in the machine on the way back. I encouraged him to take a junior flight instructor, who would be anxious to add hours to his or her logbook, along for the ride. Here’s a slightly edited version of my follow-up email explaining the advice (from a 4000-hour pilot with an ATP certificate):

Though I was not concerned about your ability to do the trip safely, I personally try to offer a two-pilot crew to any passenger if I am able to do so. That is really the cornerstone of airline safety. Let’s assume that a pilot makes a serious mistake once every 100 hours. Sufficient numbers of these mistakes are unrecoverable that we have the accident rate in R44s that we have (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/11nall.pdf says it is between 6 and 7 per 100,000 hours for both non-commercial helicopters and airplanes). If you have two pilots and the mistakes are not correlated, the probably of both pilots making a mistake during the same hour is very low (1 in 10,000 hours). So in theory the chance of an accident should be 100X lower. In practice http://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safetystudies/SS0101.html makes it seem that the risk of an accident is about 24X lower in FAR 121 operations [scheduled airline; always two pilots] than for GA [generation aviation]. So there are some things that apparently aren’t uncorrelated or due to the pilots. But still I can think of a lot of times when a copilot has helped me and/or pointed out a mistake.