Has disk drive progress stalled?

by philg

Magnetic disk drives were supposed to get more capacious, on a per-platter basis, at a steady “Kryder rate” (40 percent per year).

Now that it is time to get a monster hard disk drive to run Windows File History and try to recover from the CrashPlan debacle, I’m trying to figure out what progress has been made since April 2015 when I purchased a 6 TB hard drive for $270. If capacity had grown at 40 percent per year, with the same number of platters and roughly the same cost, this should be a 16 TB drive for $270. One can purchase a 16 TB drive from Amazon, but it costs $580 and some of the extra capacity comes from extra platters (9 versus 5 for the WD60EFRX that I bought in 2015).

If you want to spend $270 on a 5400 RPM drive, you get 10 TB, not a huge increment over 6 TB after more than four years.

Have all of the brightest minds in storage moved to work on SSD?

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Why isn’t Pete Buttigieg the front-runner among Democrats?

by philg

Readers: Please take a look at this video of Pete Buttigieg speaking in April 2017 and tell me why this guy isn’t the front runner among Democrats.

Like Barack Obama (whose victory I predicted in December 2007), he makes the challenges that face Americans seem trivial and inexpensive to address.

He’s obviously intelligent. He didn’t sue his spouse and split up his children’s family the way that former divorce plaintiff Elizabeth Warren did. He didn’t have sex with a married 30-years-older politician in order to get ahead (Kamala Harris). Since he currently claims to identify as a gay man, he isn’t likely to be accused of touching women (Joe Biden).

He doesn’t express as much contempt for Republican voters as the rest of the hopefuls, does he? (Atlantic says that he attacks Christians, but actual Christian believers are now rare in the U.S.)

He does claim credit for the success of South Bend, something much more likely attributable to (a) the trend toward urbanization, (b) population growth in the U.S. (all of the immigrants and their kids don’t tend to settle in rural areas), and (c) South Bend being home to a university. But success has many fathers!

Simply based on the above-cited video, I would be happy to vote for this guy from a purely emotional point of view. For how many other Democratic candidates can one say that?

[Separately, what is the risk that people will start referring to this candidate as “Pete Butthead”?]

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#Resist permanently on a D.C. public sidewalk

by philg

Here’s a scooter permanently parked on a public sidewalk in Washington, D.C. catty corner from the Trump Hotel (#1 ranked in Trip Advisor!):

Aside from the female sex symbol with a fist in the middle (does the use of biological sex symbols from Carl Linnaeus’s time show hostility to the transgendered?), the moped reads “Girls Just Wanna Have Fundamental Rights” and “A Girl Has No President”.

[The D.C. government (100 percent Democrats since at least the 1970s) has not seen fit to remove this obstruction to pedestrians. I wonder what would happen if a politically passionate person parked a second protest moped next to this one, reading “Build the Wall that you promised” on one side and a “Deport tens of millions of illegal immigrants that you promised to get rid of” on the other. Would the local officials be as tolerant of this use of public space?]

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Sign up today for an air-conditioned room for Oshkosh 2020

by philg

AirVenture 2020 (“Oshkosh”) is July 20-26, 2020. The reservation form for the dormitories at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh went live today. The A/C rooms sleep two for $125/night. The A/C suites sleep four for $325/night. There is a shuttle bus from the dorms direct to the show.

The fee to reserve is fairly small, so if your plans change it is not a catastrophe to forfeit. They don’t ask for a full payment until about 1.5 months prior. You can also tweak the arrival/departure dates after reserving.

(I reserved a suite, which comes with a full kitchen, so I can host reader morning coffees!)

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Democrats enjoy portraying Republicans as fearful

by philg

A Facebook friend linked to “Evangelicals Are Supporting Trump Out of Fear, Not Faith” (TIME) and the Hillarist faithful responded lovingly. The idea that Republicans are quivering fearfully is apparently delightful to them.

I wonder when this started. Has it always been a feature of American politics to portray opponents as acting or voting out of an irrational fear rather than because of a difference in interests?

If politicians truly believe this, wouldn’t they tone down their rhetoric quite a bit in order to soothe the fearful folks on the other side and try to win some votes? This is not what we observe. Is it that Democrats don’t actually believe that Republicans are fearful? Or Democrats don’t believe that any Republicans can be converted to the correct path? Or something else?

(Separately, the article opens with

On June 21, the writer E. Jean Carroll came forward with a vivid and disturbing claim that Donald Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s. She is the 22nd woman to allege that Trump committed acts of sexual misconduct. These claims are more extensive and more corroborated than the accusations against Bill Clinton

so of course I had to respond with

He raises a good point. Until billionaire Republicans (even if Democrats at the time) stop raping elderly Democrats in public places, there can never be peace between the parties.

and

Another good rule is that atheist Jewish New Yorkers are the best authorities on how Christians in the South and Midwest think.

(the editor of TIME is Edward Felsenthal))

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Is it okay to take down our Pride flags?

by philg

June is nearly over and, with it, Pride Month.

On June 1, a church in nearby Concord, Massachusetts added a Pride flag of equal size to their permanent Black Lives Matter flag (parishioners are so interested in black lives that they elected to live in one of the whitest towns in the U.S.!).

Can they take the flag down this evening? If so, why? Is the LGBTQIA lifestyle something to be proud of only 1/12th of the time? If the point of Pride Month is to demand additional rights and privileges for Americans who identify as LGBTQIA, why is it okay to shelve those demands until June 2020? “The Struggle for Gay Rights Is Over” (Atlantic):

Identifying as gay, bisexual, trans, or “queer”—anything but straight—is, in some milieus, a new marker of cool. In one recent survey, less than 50 percent of 13-to-20-year-olds (all part of Generation Z) identified as “exclusively heterosexual.”

But if the goal is to drive this number down to 0 percent, why is it okay to put the campaign on hold for 11 months?

More importantly, is it okay to go to Chick-fil-A tomorrow? (Maybe they should have said that they were closing on Sundays during June in observation of Pride Month?)

[Finally, why is it okay to have equal size flags for Pride and Black Lives Matter? Have the legal wrongs suffered by LGBTQIA Americans been equal to the wrongs suffered by African Americans? If so, shouldn’t there be reparations for Americans who identify as LGBTQIA or descendants of deceased Americans who identified as LGBTQIA (NYT, below, says “maybe”)? If not, shouldn’t the Black Lives Matter flag be larger or flown in a higher position?]

Related:

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Financial Planning 101

by philg

From a European friend…

Dan had worked 80 hours per week in the family business since finishing high school. Due to the long hours, at age 45 he was still single and still living at home with his father.

His father’s health was failing, unfortunately, and it was clear that the man did not have long to live. Dan knew that he would inherit a fortune upon the death of his father and decided he needed to find a wife with whom to share all the money.

One evening, at an investment meeting, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.

“I may look like just an ordinary guy,” he said to her, “but in just a few years, my father will succumb to his cancer and I will inherit $200 million.”

Intrigued and impressed, the woman asked for his business card.

Three weeks later, she became his stepmother.

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Helicopter instructor job: lots of hours; all R44

by philg

Our flight school here in the Boston area is looking for a full-time Robinson R44 helicopter instructor: full ad.

This is an opportunity to fly 500-600 hours per year in a helicopter that is much safer and more forgiving than the more common R22.

Maintenance is our school‘s biggest strength, the owner being a retired USAF officer who was responsible for maintenance of the C-5 cargo jets.

Please contact Mark (the owner), through the ad on justhelicopters.com.

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Women love Criminals

by philg

One surprise from The Last Stone, by Mark Bowden, is how successful low-income criminals are at meeting women and passing on their genetic personality characteristics:

At that point all they knew about Lloyd Lee Welch came from files. His criminal record sketched a rough time line before and after he had walked into Wheaton Plaza in 1975 with his bogus story—or so it had been considered then; now the authorities were less certain. Lloyd’s record traced a heroic trail of malfeasance. In Maryland: larceny (1977), burglary (1981), assault and battery (1982). In Florida: burglary in Orlando (1977), burglary in Miami (1980). In Iowa: robbery in Sioux City (1987). Then he’d moved to South Carolina: public drunkenness and then grand larceny in Myrtle Beach (1988), burglary in Horry County (1989), sexual assault on a ten-year-old girl in Lockhart (1992), drunk driving in Clover (1992). Then on to Virginia: sexual assault on a minor in Manassas (1996), simple assault in Manassas (1997). He’d finally landed hard in Delaware: sexual assault of a ten-year-old girl in New Castle (1997). After that the list ended. This was typical. Waning hormones or better judgment often overtook even the slowest learners by their mid-thirties, after which they avoided trouble. Either that or they got killed or locked up. In Welch’s case it was the latter. He was deep into a thirty-three-year sentence for the Delaware charge, housed at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna.

He started reproducing as a teenager, a set of children whose expenses would ultimately be met by taxpayers:

His most significant relationship had been with a woman named Helen Craver, whom he had met when he was just sixteen and she was twenty, a chubby woman who shared his appetite for drugs and drifting. They had stuck together through the 1970s, traveling and using drugs and making babies. Helen lost one child and gave birth to three during those years. After he was sentenced to a second stretch in prison in 1981, they both relinquished parental rights, and Helen went her own way. Lloyd had seen neither her nor his children since. “They’re all adults now,” Lloyd said. “I should have grandchildren by now. You would think. I mean my oldest daughter’s thirty-four years old. But do you have any idea where they’re at?” Dave shook his head. “No? And if they married, their names?” Again, Dave shook his head. “I would love to establish a relationship with them, let them know that I did love them and everything, but I thought it was in their best interest to put them in foster homes and get adopted out. Margaret at the time was six, and Amy was just turning five, and Tanya was a little baby.”

There was no shortage of would-be successors to Helen:

When released from the prison stretch that split him from Helen and their children, Lloyd went back to wandering, drugs, drinking, and petty crimes. He was in and out of jail. In 1985, during one of his periods of freedom, he got married, in South Carolina—he was then using the name Mike. He started his own landscaping business in Myrtle Beach in 1989, by then living with a different woman from the one he had married. Then came his three child-molestation arrests, the last of which had earned him his current lengthy term.

Do you know that you had a child that died, a female child? Does that ring a bell? Charlene? You knew she was pregnant when you left her and went to Baltimore with some fifteen-year-old chick. You knew she was pregnant.”

“I didn’t know she was pregnant! How could I have known she was pregnant?” “I mean, you have kids all over the place.” “I do?” “Yeah. I probably know more of your kids than you do at this point.” “Wow! How many I got?” “A lot, a lot.” “Yeah?” Lloyd looked proud. “Do you remember Charlene? Cici? She was very visibly pregnant when you left her. She was twenty. You told her she was too old and you were looking for somebody younger.”

Maybe he was super charming and treated women like queens?

Every single female I talked to said you beat the shit out of her. And every dude I met told me that you like to beat up girls. Why would everybody lie?”

He had a lot of money and women were availing themselves of the unlimited child support profits that Maryland family law provides?

He had worked for a traveling carnival, which explained the wide-ranging geography of his criminal past.

Humans are supposed to be animals in which sexual selection operates. Historically, polygamy has been the norm and fewer than 50 percent of men have descendants. Biologists would say that women have selected the best quality mates.

Why did so many women choose to mate and reproduce with this criminal? What was it about him that made them think he was fitter than average? One would think that being imprisoned is the very definition of poor genetic fit to current societal conditions, yet criminals apparently don’t have any trouble reproducing.

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Does a Pride flag mean EVERYONE is welcome?

by philg

A Facebook friend shared the following post from a Conservative Rabbi:

(i.e., a prime spot for a Black Lives Matter sign (in a nearly-all-white town, of course, with restrictive zoning to keep it that way) was taken up with a different victim group’s banner)

He added “We stand for radical hospitality. EVERYONE is welcome!”

Of course, I had to ask “Would someone who advocated for strict adherence to Leviticus 18 and 20 be welcome?” (see Wikipedia for “Orthodox Judaism generally prohibits homosexual conduct”)

There was a bit of back and forth, leading me to suggest an update: “everyone who agrees with us is welcome”

A righteous congregation member replied “Do you mean to suggest that the hypothetical conservative people you reference would be unable to respect that others have different moral perspectives from them, and would make a scene harassing others, causing them to be asked to leave?”

I refined the question: Okay, so the hypothetical person comes to the “EVERYONE is welcome” temple wearing a T-shirt reading “Follow Leviticus 18/20” on the front. On the back is “Outlaw abortion after a heartbeat can be heard”. On the head of this person is a red MAGA hat. The person is carrying (not on Shabbat, I hope!) Tefillin in a Trump Hotel laundry bag in one hand and a Reelect Trump 2020 tote bag in the other hand. Will this person be just as welcome as a person wearing a rainbow T-shirt?

A sincere congregation member: I imagine such a shirt might prompt conversation, and as long as all parties engaged in conversation in good faith, I have trouble believing Mr. T-Shirt Man (as I’m now thinking of him/you) would be asked to leave.

I asked how this would be different from a Catholic Church putting out a “Stop abortions now” (an issue on which Americans disagree) and saying “EVERYONE is welcome,”

The righteous response: a key difference is that the Catholic Church promotes a moral code that is anti-abortion, and presumably could even excommunicate members who have abortions. Therefore, such signage would be hypocritical. It seems that perhaps you are perceiving there are “two sides” that are mirrors of one another, but there are crucial differences between a Catholic or Evangelical church that says “abortion is immoral” and are working to criminalize abortion—but still say “all are welcome” — and a Jewish Temple or, say, a UU church that sees abortion as a medical procedure between a women and her doctor (but not going around and foisting the procedure on others) and welcomes all comers. The former groups are trying to control / legislate others’ behavior, but the latter groups are not.

I pointed out that the LGBTQ banner was sometimes unfurled in order to control and coerce others, e.g., preventing Chick-fil-A from opening restaurants, forcing the Colorado baker to make a same-sex wedding cake, or boycotting Israel (maybe they’d rather visit one of the anti-Israel countries in which homosexual acts are punishable by death?).

Me: Circling back to the original post, would your temple be equally welcoming to the Colorado baker who was the subject of the Supreme Court case as you would be to someone wearing a Provincetown Pride T-shirt? If not, it is inaccurate to say that EVERYONE is welcome!

Congregation Member 1: exerting pressure on corporations to change their practices is not the same as legislating the elimination of human rights for certain groups of people. Apples and oranges.

Congregation Member 2: you seem to say above that a flag representing “[Jewish] gays are welcome,” is a point of view?

Readers: What do you think? Does hanging a pride flag signal adherence to a political point of view and therefore tend to exclude people who don’t agree with that point of view (e.g., Orthodox Jews, observant Muslims, Catholics, etc.)? Or is it legitimately characterized as an “EVERYONE is welcome” sign?

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