Category: Uncategorized

Teach for America started out, I think, with the idea of improving the education received by Americans, especially those from poor families. But the organization now weighs in on the immigration issue: “Teach For America Urges Congress To Pass The DREAM Act”. The press release says “The Trump administration announced today that the DACA executive order is being rescinded. The reversal of DACA runs counter to our core values…”

I wonder if this means Teach for America has discovered that Americans are too hard to teach. Thus they’re now advocating organizationally for as many immigrant children as possible?

Related:

• Smartest Kids in the World Review
• Michelle Rhee (unionized teachers’ nemesis is a Teach for America alumna)

Full post, including comments

(and no costume required)

I wonder if this story about a venture capitalist at the TED conference will boost demand for tickets:

Steve Jurvetson, who started his career in Silicon Valley as a wunderkind founder of one of its marquee venture capital firms, has become one of its highest-profile investors, … But on Monday, he crashed to earth way more swiftly than his career had rocketed skyward two decades ago.

His partners at DFJ spent a weekend pondering his fate, sources said — first placing him on a leave of absence last Saturday, then voting him out on Sunday, and then finally informing some of the firm’s top limited partners at a golf-filled gathering, along with some portfolio companies, on Monday.

“He’d sort of create a soap opera for himself,” said one of the women who dated Jurvetson, who requested anonymity to protect her career. “He lied to us.”

The pair carried out a consensual affair as Jurvetson’s marriage wound down, the woman said, and saw one another about once a month. They would sometimes attend professional conferences together, but she described their relationship as “one hundred percent personal.” She said she also saw other men at the time.

A second woman who dated Jurvetson told Recode she was searching for career opportunities in venture capital and startups. The woman, who declined to give her real name out of professional concerns, said she only later realized he was also dating the first woman, although she herself was also seeing other men in what she described as an off-again, on-again relationship with Jurvetson.

Several of the women met one another at the TED conference in Vancouver, where Jurvetson is a regular, in the March of 2015, one of the women said. That conference is said to be a flashpoint in the Jurvetson drama, as several women dating him discovered that they were not alone in their personal involvement with the investor.

If the environment at TED gets too hot, where can this guy meet some more career-oriented women?

Jurvetson, meanwhile, spent his week trying to move on. He attended Tesla’s glitzy truck unveiling by Musk on Thursday evening as a VIP.

Maybe this will revive interest in law school:

DFJ’s external investigators at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett discovered from at least two women…

(i.e., a fully trained lawyer can get paid to do the kind of “investigation” that was formerly standard for high-school sophomores)

Readers: What do you think? Does this suggest that TED is more debauched than Burning Man?

Full post, including comments

“F.C.C. Plans Net Neutrality Repeal in a Victory for Telecoms” (nytimes):

The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

“We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the F.C.C. fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone,” Erin Egan, a vice president at Facebook, said in a statement. “We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle.”

In some ways this is a yawn because it takes us back to where the Internet was for decades. But, on the other hand the Internet didn’t always have the addictive services that it has now.

What if Verizon were to offer a plan to businesses that limited access to non-work sites, e.g., Facebook, to 15 minutes per day? That would be illegal under the regulations adopted recently, but legal if the current FCC revokes them.

A lot of companies, of course, run firewalls that block Netflix, Facebook, et al., on their wired and WiFi internal networks. But if the company provides a phone with unlimited LTE data maybe there is no current practical and legal way to stop employees from spending time on these services during the workday (because the handheld device gets Internet service without going through the company’s Facebook-blocking firewall).

[What do my Facebook friends say about this return to the 2014 rules? “This is huge. This is terrible. This is the beginning of the end. This is fascism. … This is the beginning of censorship the likes of which we have never seen.”]

On the third hand, how would it be possible for Internet providers to block particular sites as the New York Times suggests? If consumers are using a VPN service (example) then how would the ISP have any idea which sites were being visited? Even if consumers aren’t using a VPN service, wouldn’t censoring sites expose an ISP to the risk of losing lucrative municipal monopolies? Time Warner doesn’t want a city council deciding to allow Verizon FiOS to compete, right? Why give politicians a chance to take money from Verizon, give Verizon a license, and say that they’re doing it in the name of free speech?

Finally, why would we expect a change to net neutrality laws to result in significantly higher rates paid by consumers? If the Internet providers are monopolies (which they are in a lot of places, including Cambridge, Massachusetts (part of Komcast Kountry)) and they’ve read an Econ 101 textbook they are already extracting the maximum $$ from consumers via their Triple Play plans.

Related:

• How many times do we have to pay for the same Internet service? (net neutrality)
• Wikipedia on the history

Full post, including comments

Happy Black Friday.

On a recent trip to the mall, a friend stopped in at Brookstone to shop for gifts for her brothers. Her husband and I relaxed in the massage chairs. It occurred to me what Harvey Weinstein’s next job could be… endorsing massage chairs! (The ads could run next to Al Franken ads for a doorknob/door-knocker manufacturer.)

Readers: What is on your Christmas list this year?

Here are some of my own ideas:

• Nikon D850, which an expert photographer says produces the best in-camera images of any camera he’s used, much better even than the D800/D810 (meanwhile, Nikon has had to shut down its low-end camera factory in China and the labor market for photographers is getting tougher, with the New York Times’s employment practices recently highlighted in a lawsuit)
• Sony a7R III, perhaps the same sensor as in the D850 but in a mirrorless design
• DxO One camera, a company to your friend’s smartphone to address the fact that no smartphone company is serious about making cameras (the DxO One is newly available in an Android version)
• a DJI drone (maybe the new Spark for $500? or the Inspire 2 with Zenmuse X7 for the budding Hollywood artist? (also get a coupon for sexual harassment lawsuit defense?))

Ideas that aren’t in the photo-nerd category:

• Nokia watch. It looks like a regular watch, but has a 0-100% activity dial so that your friend can be constantly reminded of his or her progress against a goal, e.g., 10,000 steps, but not have to keep checking a phone. 8-month battery life so it doesn’t become another hassle in your friend’s life.

Ideas in the flying-nerd category:

• for pilot friends with iPhones: Foreflight gift certificate
• for pilot friends: offer to go over to their hangar and send the life jackets and/or life raft in for recertification (needs to be done every 1-5 years and is a hassle)
• Aero Vodochody L-39NG(!); see Wikipedia for the vanilla L-39, a beautiful example of which, complete with ejection seats, can be purchased for $300,000 (less than an Icon A5!)

Full post, including comments

I’m thankful for a lot of things this year, but I don’t want to disfigure this blog too much with the maudlin friends-and-family sentiments that are more conventional on Facebook.

Let me try something in the old-style Thanksgiving spirit and just say thank-you to the Native Americans for not insisting that all of the Europeans who landed here return back home. Without Native American hospitality I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the use of this great continent for 54 years.

However, I wonder if we European-Americans haven’t overstayed our welcome. I haven’t kept in touch with the Native American friends whom I made while living in New Mexico, but I can’t imagine that they looked at the 2016 Presidential election and said “It is amazing that these European immigrants managed to find two such fantastic candidates.”

Maybe we can’t all clear out and leave North America to its rightful inhabitants (unless we start to do better on the PISA test, other countries probably wouldn’t want us), but could we at least clear out politically? Why not let the Native Americans set up a government (presumably they’d pick a British-style parliamentary system, as have most countries) and we non-Native Americans can agree to respect their decisions?

Related:

• We grabbed Hawaii as a coaling station; could we give it back now?
• Hawaii and immigration

Full post, including comments

My Facebook friends continue to be filled with wrath regarding the Republican proposal to cut corporate tax rates to the levels that prevail in Europe (18.9 percent, average). One friend, for example, recently cited to “The Republican War on College: For the cost of cutting corporate income taxes, the U.S. could provide universal pre-K and make tuition free at public colleges for nonaffluent students.” (Atlantic)

These same folks often cite European welfare states as examples to which the U.S. should aspire. I’m wondering if those same welfare states haven’t proven that it isn’t possible to sustain a high corporate tax rate.

The average human is reluctant to move and the average American is no longer even willing to move from state to state (see Tyler Cowen: “These days Americans are less likely to switch jobs, less likely to move around the country, and, on a given day, less likely to go outside the house at all.”). But corporate shells don’t miss friends and family when they move to Bermuda (tax-free), or Ireland (12.5 percent tax), or nowhere at all (Apple Computer’s profits!).

I wonder if we’ve already run this experiment on a smaller scale here in the U.S. among the states. In theory a lot of states have corporate income taxes. But in practice the big companies don’t need to pay this because they demand 20 years of tax-free living in exchange for locating a headquarters or factory in a state. So if our states can’t collect these taxes in practice, except on some hapless small businesses that don’t generate much profit, why is there any possibility of collecting big $$ at the national level now that world business is global?

The Europeans became experts at collecting the highest possible percentage of GDP as tax revenue to run their massive welfare states (since trimmed back, of course, and now the U.S. has caught up!). If Europe can’t make high corporate income tax rates work, why do we think that we can?

[The Facebook friends who are most vehement about the need to retain high corporate tax rates are those who have never worked as a private-sector manager. I did a little bit of questioning and it seems that there are two assumptions underlying their passion for the current tax code: (1) the supply of rich people and rich companies is essentially fixed and one need not be concerned about the U.S. getting a share of the next crop of rich people and companies, (2) corporations will not move in order to shield shareholders’ money from high tax rates (“everyone wants to be in the US” was one response). So maybe the debate is actually about whether or not corporations and business capital are mobile.]

Related:

• “Swedish government proposes corporate tax cut to 20 percent” (Reuters), about a proposal to cut from 22 to 20 (U.S. federal plus state rate can be over 40 percent)

Full post, including comments

Here’s a career path that I hadn’t known about: UndocuAlly trainer.

From a mole within one of America’s more expensive liberal arts colleges, a letter sent to all faculty members:

Dear all,
My name is **** and I’m the Program Coordinator for Undocumented Student Initiatives… . As continuing from last year, we are offering another UndocuAlly training for faculty and staff. We encourage all to attend if possible. Please share this message with you [sic] department.
Warm wishes,
****
Dear colleagues,
Our Undocu-Ally trainings [nobody can agree if this is spelled with or without a hyphen?] have been fully attended and well received in the past year. Thank you for those who have already joined us for these. We are pleased to announce that we are offering another Undocu-Ally training in the next couple of weeks. Please sign up as soon as possible. We will have 30 spots available.

Requirements for Certification:
1. Attend the training in-full, no arriving late or leaving early. (Yes, the training is three hours long)
2. …
5. Sign Undocu-Ally commitment letter and Educator Activist decal.
​
​If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. We will be offering more Undocu-Ally trainings soon in case you are not able to make it to this one.

Apparently there is a lot of demand nationwide for people to deliver these classes. For example, see UC Berkeley’s corresponding program, which also includes a sticker of a butterfly (people are ugly caterpillars when living in a country other than the U.S. and metamorphose into beautiful butterflies once established in the U.S.?).

Full post, including comments

Here’s a Guardian article on the latest vacancy in showbiz:

Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS News after becoming the latest media figure to be accused of sexual harassment when eight women came forward to describe unwanted advances, including lewd phone calls, parading naked, and groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.

Rose, 75, whose eponymous show airs on PBS, also serves as a host on CBS This Morning and as a correspondent for 60 Minutes.

“I have learned a great deal as a result of these events, and I hope others will too. All of us, including me, are coming to a newer and deeper recognition of the pain caused by conduct in the past, and have come to a profound new respect for women and their lives.”

In short, it didn’t occur to him that it might be painful for others to witness the naked parade of his nearly 75-year-old body! Maybe his next stop will be Burning Man?

[Thanks to Jonathan Graehl for brightening my day with this one.]

Full post, including comments

“Poor Airspeed Control Caused Thunderbird Crash” (Avweb):

The U.S. Air Force F-16, assigned to the Thunderbirds, that crashed following a runway overrun at Dayton International Airport in June was more than 40 knots too fast on final approach and did not touch down until nearly 5,000 feet down the runway. The $29 million aircraft was entirely destroyed … In addition to being 43 knots fast over the threshold, … the pilot, did not pull the throttle to idle until the aircraft had flown 3,000 feet down the runway, according to the AIB.

The pilot was injured, unfortunately, in addition to the loss suffered by the taxpayer (also kind of embarrassing given that the Thunderbirds air show team members are supposed to be among our best pilots; a runway overrun is more typically associated with a weekend pilot recently upgraded to a higher-performance airplane).

I think this is a good illustration of why the time has come for my “dome light copilot” idea. With a video camera up in the dome light area, a microprocessor can see all of the same instruments and view out the window as the pilot. This avoids the multi-year certification process for anything that is truly hooked into the aircraft. The dome light copilot is connected only to power (which had previously supplied only the light) and to the audio panel. This accident might have been avoided with minimal intelligence, e.g., “hey, you’re more than 15 knots fast; why don’t you go around?” and “you didn’t touch down in the touchdown zone; how about adding power and going around?”

Related:

• “F-16 Crash Caused By Bad Maintenance” (failure due to a fuel controller overhaul done in-house by the Air Force)

 

Full post, including comments

A joint review of the last two movies that I have seen: Lady Bird and Thor: Ragnarok.

Thor has way better sets. Also, an awesome play-within-a-play that answers the question “What would you do if you’d faked your own death and then set yourself up as king?”

“Everything was real,” was my friend’s comment on Lady Bird. “The people were real, the houses were real, the cars were real,” she continued. Her just-out-of-college son agreed that it was a realistic depiction of youth. So it was six thumbs-ups for Lady Bird.

Maybe more realism that you’d want on a casual night out: The aging software engineer can’t get a job. The nurse who married and stayed married to a middle-class earner struggles financially compared to if she’d had sex with a specialist physician and collected child support. Teenagers take up a lot of room in the house and parenting them is unrewarding emotionally.

Nits: Saoirse Ronan is an accomplished actor, but she is and looks 23 years old while her character was supposed to be 17. At times the movie wasn’t super subtle. There is a teenager who loves musical theater, wants to curl his hair, and dreams of visiting Paris. Can you guess what sexual orientation will be revealed? The rich kids were cartoonishly rendered.

Readers: What did you think of these two movies?

 

Full post, including comments