Category: Uncategorized

My white Facebook friends continue to express their outrage that a white woman was fired by Akima LLC for giving President Trump the finger (BBC). There are exhortations to call up Akima and demand answers (“#Resist”). Who are the targets of this hatred? The owners of Akima are “the Inupiat people of northwest Alaska”. So my virtuous Hillary-supporting friends are trying to set Native Americans on the path of righteousness.

Let’s hope this doesn’t turn Native Americans against the cause of immigration!

[Note that I have non-white Facebook friends as well, but they tend not to express outrage on Facebook (and seldom in real life either; I was around some Chinese immigrant physician-moms the other day and they were the opposite of outraged by media reports of sexual harassment, e.g., asking “What are all of these women doing in married guys’ hotel rooms?”).]

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Friends have been asking about the crash of an Icon A5 seaplane in which former baseball star Roy Halladay died (USA Today).

From a quick Google search it seems that Mr. Halladay learned to fly in 2013 or 2014.

The FAA’s online Airmen Registry shows HARRY LEROY HALLADAY III holding a Private certificate (the lowest of three levels) with ratings for single-engine land (e.g., Cessna 172), multi-engine land (e.g., Beech Baron or King Air), and Instrument Airplane (“instrument rating,” enabling flight through clouds with assistance from Air Traffic Control). He also had a “sport endorsement” for “Airplane Single Engine Sea,” presumably related to flying the Icon A5. The certificate was issued on November 16, 2016, suggesting that he had been signed off to fly the Icon A5 on that date.

The certificate and ratings that Mr. Halladay held represent significant experience and achievements, so this was not a situation in which a raw novice was at the controls. That said, seaplanes and amphibians tend to require a higher level of skill to manage. For example, if you land an amphib with the gear down in water by mistake, for example, that’s a life-threatening accident. By contrast, a gear-up landing on an asphalt runway is life-threatening only if the flight school owner runs out and strangles you. The airport is a much more structured environment than a lake or bay. You’re not going to hit a submerged log on a paved runway.

The above-referenced USA Today story says that he’d owned the plane for less than a month. One of the biggest factors for safety is “time in type.” A pilot with 30,000 hours may not be safer than one with 3,000 hours total time, but a pilot with 500 hours in a type of airplane will be statistically much safer than a more-experienced pilot with just 10 hours in that airplane. On the third hand, articles indicate that Mr. Halladay had previously been a renter of the Icon A5, so his experience with the plane might have included 50 hours of training and rental over the preceding year.

The Icon A5 includes a flight data recorder, unlike most small planes, and therefore there should be some answers fairly soon about what happened. Seaplanes can be tough to land in glassy water due to the difficulty of perceiving height above the water. Thus it might be interesting to know if the water had been flat calm at the time of the crash.

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Another Election Day question…

“Marco Rubio: Tax Reform Should Help American Families” (nytimes) tries to sell the latest Republican tax proposal on the grounds that, compared to the current system, there will be more handouts for Americans with children under age 18. The discussion is framed by pointing out what money-sinks children can be:

According to federal data adjusted for inflation, from 1960 to 2015 the average annual cost of raising a child in a middle-income family rose by over $11,000. It’s now estimated that middle-class parents will spend more than $230,000 over the course of their son or daughter’s childhood — and that doesn’t even include college tuition.

[The Senator and the NYT Editors don’t explain the arithmetic here. The cost is $11,000 per year higher over 18 years. That’s a total of $198,000. If we subtract that from the current cost of $230,000 we find that the cost to parents back in 1960 was only about $32,000 in today’s mini-dollars. Does that make sense given that food and clothing are cheaper than ever? (and, of course, the paper does not have the bad taste to point out that an American who has sex with a dermatologist can get $230,000 per year in tax-free child support, depending on the state) Senator Rubio also claims that this $230,000 is more than it costs to buy a house, which sounds wrong to those of us living in on the sacred coasts of righteousness, but is close to being true nationwide according to realtor data (median existing single-family home sold for $246,800 in September 2017; used condos sold for a median price of $231,800).]

The article goes on to say that some Americans aren’t having as many babies as they would in a world where children were cost-free (i.e., paid for by someone else). This is a serious problem in a country with a population of 325 million that, apparently, seeks to overtake China and India.

My comment:

“Having kids is one of life’s greatest experiences.” [the article’s first sentence]

Hard to argue with this, but then why can’t we parents pay for our own kids instead of asking childless Americans to pay yet more for them? The childless already pay for a share of K-12, right? When we go to a restaurant with our kids ([a] mercifully infrequent [event]) we don’t say “This must be one of life’s greatest experiences for the childless people in this restaurant” and then go around asking other diners to chip in for our meal. Yet that is exactly what the government is doing via a tax code that makes the childless give up a higher percentage of their income.

Given that there are more voters (the childless and those with adult children) who will pay for this compared to the number who will enjoyed the reduced tax rates, I’m wondering why this is a selling point.

Childless Americans don’t voluntarily go around to those with children and offer money, do they? If not, why would a majority of childless Americans vote to have the government take money from them and give it to Americans with minor children?

Most of the top-rated comments on the piece demand yet more handouts or complain that others are richer:

So if you value families, Senator, how about paid family leave, quality prenatal care and healthcare throughout a child’s life, and universal childcare and preschool? And how about quality K-12 schools and educational opportunities, not just for the elites but for all Americans, investing in the future of our country?

The mom’s [sic] I talk to tell me that daycare runs about $15,000 a year per child. If we really want to help families, how about funding daycare like those awful freedom robbing socialist European countries do? We can’t do that here because that would entail federal spending and the federal government isn’t supposed to spend money on the little people. We give them paltry tax breaks which doesn’t cover the cost of daycare or health insurance and other socialist programs that all other modern industrialized nations provide.

For someone who is currently deciding on whether or not to have a second child this article really angers me. My husband and I make a good living, but we are both self employed. Our insurance is going up next year and premiums will be over 1k a month. We don’t quality for tax credits for health care and we would have an out of pocket cost of over 7k for having another baby. This is on a silver plan. After having a baby we would need extra childcare which would cost us at least 1200 a month on top of preschool cost for our son. We don’t need a measly $2k tax credit, we need affordable childcare, affordable healthcare and paid parental leave. Being from a Northern European country originally, my husband and I have decided to move to Europe in 2019. Unfortunately, the United States is not a good place to raise a family.

A $2,000 tax credit won’t do much. If you really want to help working families, provide them with affordable healthcare, childcare, and education. That will require a tax increase on the wealthy, not the huge tax breaks you’re giving them now.

If your party would do something about the problems you mention here, like a mandatory living wage, daycare as part of public education (thus free), paid family leave, free community college, a functioning healthcare insurance system as opposed to sabotaging it), perhaps things would be a lot better.

And kids over 18 going to college, while still dependents, don’t qualify for the child tax credit making the loss of the personal exemptions even more onerous to the family finances. [at least in Massachusetts the child support profits can continue to flow until age 23]

Keep the inheritance tax – families with that much money do not need our help.

You mention student loans in the very first para. Why not do something about the cost of college education as your Democratic colleagues want to do? Affordable college education can not only help parents but will make the country competitive in a global market.

As someone graduating college and looking to embark on my own “American Dream” the increasing pricetag of raising kids is a point of real concern for me. Because having children is a top priority in my life I want to do so without continual financial anxieties, yet with the new proposed tax plan and the current infrastructure, it seems to be increasingly difficult. It affects my career choice, place of residence, pregnancy timing and everyday spending.

The last one is my favorite. The author identifies him/herself as “Luke Yeager” from Boulder, Colorado and therefore the implication is that someone named “Luke” will be pregnant. He/she says “having children is a top priority in my life,” but not such a high priority that Luke wants to work to support the prospective brats: “I want to do so without continual financial anxieties.” Maybe Colorado doesn’t offer free housing to those with kids and zero income? Luke needs to come to Massachusetts and discover the miracle of means-tested public housing (sometimes in newly constructed luxury commercial apartment buildings), Masshealth (our Medicaid), food stamps, etc. We will be happy to pay for as many children as his pregnancies produce. If he and his adult partner have two children and don’t want to stay home all day playing Xbox they can earn up to $78,150 per year and remain in Boston public housing (chart).

There are a few NYT readers guilty of “maybe we don’t have infinite money” thoughtcrime:

Households of childless couples or single men and women already have their taxes used for public education and related expenses which are significant. Yes, I can see the collective good there. But to add further tax burdens/costs to those who, by great measure, choose not to have children out of being financially responsible and realistic of their earning powers to have to finance the raising of children by shouldering further tax breaks for those that choose (or recklessly) have children is starting to approach a point of grossly unfair. Add food assistance programs and healthcare….we’re talking real money. The single or childless household is being unfairly burdened.

In general, individuals and societies who can most easily afford more children tend to have fewer of them and vice versa. Thus, I question the proposed correlation between fertility rates and taxes. More importantly, we have an appalling rate of child poverty in this country (about 20%). Supporting the education and welfare of these children should be the top priority, not encouraging everyone to have more of them.

i’m all for helping to defray the cost of child-rearing, but as a happily single and childless fully self-employed adult, i need some help with payroll taxes, too. right now, i have zero confidence that i will ever live to collect social security. lifting the income cap on the payroll tax would save that program for all american workers, those with children and those without.

The article concludes with “Raising children is the most important job we will ever have.” (he does not cite Bill Burr on how it is also the toughest)

Readers: What do you think? Is it strange that people vote to have the government make everyone do something that practical nobody does voluntarily? (and Happy Election Day if you’re voting!)

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Happy Election Day to readers who are in states with elections.

One feature of U.S. politics in the past few decades is endorsements of politicians, and media coverage of those endorsements, by Hollywood celebrities. For example, Kevin Spacey previously made the news for talking about the “greatness” of Barack Obama, for endorsing Hillary Clinton, and for righteously condemning Donald Trump. Today, however, he is in the news for allegedly having done some stuff that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton probably wouldn’t want to publicly support.

Now that celebrities are in the news as potential sexual harassers will we at least be freed from having to hear about their political beliefs?

[Foreign readers: what happens in parliamentary systems? Do people in Germany get excited when a German actor endorses a German political party? Does the media give a lot of coverage to the voting plans of German movie stars?]

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The latest Republican tax proposal would be the best thing that ever happened to America’s divorce litigators. From “The Tax Bill’s Fine Print: Tuition, Medical Expenses and Alimony” (nytimes):

Divorce would become a bit more burdensome for the ex-spouse who paid alimony because it would no longer be a deductible expense. But the party receiving the payments would no longer need to pay tax on the income received.

Alimony profits may be fixed by custom or statute, but in any case are always a function of the lawsuit loser’s pre-tax income. Awards of 1/3 to 1/2 of the target’s income are common. Currently, for example, a plaintiff (“dependent spouse”) who wants to have sex with new friends might obtain 50 percent of the former sex partner’s (“breadwinner spouse”) income as alimony. This ends up working out to be a loss to the Treasury under our progressive tax rate structure because there are two $100,000 per year taxpayers instead of one $200,000 per year taxpayer. The loss will typically be larger because, while the payor is almost surely going to claim the deduction, the successful plaintiff is statistically unlikely to report the $100,000 in income at all (see “Litigation, Alimony, and Child Support in the U.S. Economy” for a summary of a 2014 U.S. Treasury Inspector General study).

If plaintiffs are rational economic actors there will be a huge rush to the divorce courts as soon as this law goes into effect. Obtaining 50 percent of the defendant’s pre-tax income but on a tax-free child support-style basis would mean, in the high-tax states that tend to favor alimony, getting nearly all of the defendant’s practical income (e.g., the defendant might pay 40 percent of his or her income in taxes and 50 percent to the plaintiff and have roughly 10 percent left over to spend; top marginal tax rates in the U.S. range from about 43 percent to 52 percent). If a plaintiff can lock in an alimony award under a state’s old system, but pay no tax on the alimony under the federal government’s new system, that would be a dream outcome.

Another potential motivator for divorce and never-married custody/child support lawsuits is that the IRS rule has been that the winner parent also gets any tax deductions or credits associated with children. So the loser parent pays all child-related expenses with after-tax income while the winner parent gets the tax breaks that are promoted as assisting parents who incur child-related costs. For a successful child support plaintiff, the result is a 0-percent tax bracket up to moderate levels of income (“moderate income” is typical because cutting back working hours to part-time is a common response to winning a divorce or custody lawsuit). It looks like this system remains in place under the proposed tax system, which includes child-related tax credits that would be harvested by the winner parent.

[Separately, the way that the Times phrases the change is interesting. Having potentially nearly 100 percent of one’s income taken away by the government and a plaintiff is “a bit more burdensome” than the current system where perhaps 75 percent is taken. And perhaps whatever burden is suffered by the defendant is not worth worrying about because there will be a corresponding benefit for plaintiffs: “But the party receiving the payments would no longer need to pay tax on the income received.”]

Readers: Is there any chance of this bill passing? Why is Congress only now getting around to this? If they had the votes to monkey with the tax code why couldn’t they have done it back in February, for example?

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From the fall newsletter, recently made available online:

• Eddie and Amanda Kisfaludy flew an R44 newscopter around Greenland as part of a UK-to-San Diego trip!
• The R66 (turbine-powered) newscopter is now certified, unfortunately with an HD camera system rather than 4K (i.e., you might get better footage with a $3,000 DJI Inspire 2 drone).
• Robinson pushed its 800th R66 out the door to a customer in China.
• Peter Wilson and Matthew Gallagher, both of the UK, flew an R66 around the world (121 days; 32,000 nm; 43 countries).

Readers: Are there any great trips left to be done by helicopter?

Related:

• Robinson R66 review
• Robinson R44 review
• Robinson R22 review

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The French verdict is in from DxOMark: iPhone X scores 97.

Compared to the Huawei Mate 10, which scored the same overall, the iPhone X has much better “zoom” (switching from the wide to the normal perspective camera?) and much worse autofocus (not great for parents of the young and restless).

The Google Pixel 2 scores only slightly higher overall, mostly because the iPhone X’s second camera/lens does way better in the “zoom” department than cropping from a single (wide) camera/lens as would be required for the Pixel 2. I wonder if this is true in low light. Certainly on the 7 Plus when capturing indoor scenes, cropping from the wide camera usually results in better image quality than switching to “2x”. It looks like the main camera on the Pixel 2 is much better for autofocus (98 versus 78). The Pixel 2 scores significantly better for video, but it simply won’t do 60 frames-per-second at 4K resolution so if the goal is capturing motion it is unclear that the two phones are truly comparable.

My take-away is surprise that the competition is so close. Apple has a vast advantage in money and engineering resources, yet they cannot beat Huawei or HTC and LG (the builders of the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, respectively). There is no getting around the physics when the case is that slim and therefore it is impossible to use a real sensor and real lens? Stuffing four more cameras in there and using them in parallel (see the Light L16) won’t help?

[I’m still sad that I can’t buy a phone that is 2-3X thicker than what is on the market today. It would still be thinner than an iPhone in a case and yet have room for a much better camera and days of battery life. Why wouldn’t Huawei do this in order to crush Apple, Samsung, Google, et al., in the photo quality department? They shouldn’t need new software. Just put in a larger sensor and corresponding lens and then feed the pixels to the same software as in a current Android device. Even if the “photo/battery nerd” phone gathered only 1 percent market share, that’s still more than 10 million devices (1.5 billion smartphones were sold in 2016). That’s roughly comparable to the entire market for DSLRs and mirrorless (source). Canon, Nikon, and Sony invest engineering and marketing resources to bring out $800 DSLRs. Why wouldn’t it be worth Huawei’s engineering and marketing resources to bring out a $1,200 “killer cameraphone”? It is so profitable to make regular phones that there is no reason to bother? (but Sony makes smartphones and they think it is also worth investing in the camera market)]

Related:

• iPhone X and 7 Plus cameras compared (links to full-res images from both)

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Azorian: The Raising of the K-129, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is a rare story about an engineering challenge (grabbing a sunken Soviet submarine off the seafloor) and I recommend it. The movie is also interesting due to the huge number of Americans who were able to keep a big secret (compare to today when people aren’t even able to have sex without leaving a large, um, footprint on social media and/or in the New York Times!).

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My exciting project for this semester is high-school geometry. In addition to learning useful everyday terms such as orthocenter, I found out that students in our local public high school can check their grades in real-time via iPASS. In addition to showing grades on recent assignments, the web-based software helpfully forecasts the ultimate grade for the class. This forecast can change after any individual homework assignment is turned in or after any quiz. A student taking five classes, therefore, can log into iPASS almost every night and see a potentially different forecast report card. The software is pitiless. Though declared failure is rare in our snowflake society, after a disastrous quiz taken in September the iPASS system will calmly forecast an F for the semester.

[Back in 1999, we built a module of the ArsDigita Community System to manage the education side of the MIT Sloan School. Demonstrating the awesome creativity that happens when MIT graduates collaborate, we called this the “Education Subsystem”. The software could show the grades students had received on recent assignments, but not provide a forecast of the ultimate semester grade. We never considered the anxiety-producing potential of a system with real-time grades!]

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Here amidst the nearly-all-white Millionaires who Hate Trump there is a small church that, a couple of years ago, decided to burnish its tolerance credentials by hiring an Indian-American pastor. He moved into the parsonage with his husband and their two children, neither of whom share any genetic material (or race) with the two fathers.

As the endowment was drained by this family (total comp, including the real estate value, of about $200,000 per year), some parishioners began grumbling about the minister’s performance. According to these folks, essentially every sermon boiled down to scolding the deplorables among the congregation for insufficient zeal regarding helping undocumented immigrants, fighting for Hillary, etc. They agreed with the minister’s political sentiments, but felt that the sermons were repetitious and boring compared to those offered by his predecessor.

When some of the folks on the congregation’s board raised questions about the minister’s on-the-job performance, he instantly shut them down with “Do you have a problem with brown people?” Game. Set. Match. (on the town’s clay courts, of course!)

Related:

• When can a church take down a Black Lives Matter flag?

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