Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

“Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater” (nytimes) is interesting from an engineering point of view. The city of 30 million people has been sinking, leading to a New Orleans-style situation where large parts of the city are below sea level and protected by a wall. How can this work in a typhoon-prone region of the world? Should the bitcoin billionaires be trying to make their next $billion by shorting something Indonesian?

[Separately, the article is interesting for what it reveals about bias in American journalism. The New York Times stresses global problems:

[Jakarta] has to deal with mounting threats from climate change.

With climate change, the Java Sea is rising and weather here is becoming more extreme.

Climate change acts here as it does elsewhere, exacerbating scores of other ills.

all the mounting threats from climate change.

The effect on the countryside has been disastrous, with the burning of rain forests to make way for palm oil producers and textile factories causing fires so smoky they have caused air pollution to spike as far away as Malaysia, contributing to climate change.

In fact, Jakarta is sinking faster than any other big city on the planet, faster, even, than climate change is causing the sea to rise

The article says that parts of Jakarta “have sunk as much as 14 feet in recent years.” Since the phrase “climate change” appears at least 13 times in the article, global sea level rise must be pretty close to this local rate of “14 feet in a couple of decades”, right? The Times doesn’t cite any comparative data, but NASA shows a sea level rise of roughly 0.65 feet over a 130-year period.]

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Here is a story about 50 individuals who were not enthusiastic about a White Christmas in Massachusetts. Now they are living free of state income tax in Florida…

Every year it seems that young Kemp’s ridley sea turtles get caught in the Gulf Stream and travel farther north than planned. Volunteers and NOAA officials gather these lost souls from the beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and bring them to the New England Aquarium‘s turtle hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts. The turtles are cold and weak when they arrive and are gradually warmed up and fed. Once they’re healthy they can be loaded into towel-lined banana boxes for a journey to warmer waters.

Unfortunately, turtles can’t go as conventional air freight due to stringent temperature requirements (68-75F). The Turtles Fly Too organization matches up volunteer pilots with turtles and thus on December 8 my friend Tom and I found ourselves fighting winter headwinds from Hanscom Field to Tampa International. The day started around 3:00 am for the NOAA and Aquarium folks. They pulled the NOAA van into the Rectrix hangar around 6:45 am and were given a royal welcome by the full staff. Everyone helped load up the Pilatus PC-12 through the massive cargo door and Rectrix immediately towed us out on the ramp. We had pre-flighted the airplane the night before so we were able to start up and crank on the heat before the turtles could get cold. After about three hours we stopped at the Richmond Jet Center for a quick refueling and then proceeded through sometimes turbulent and/or icy clouds to Signature Flight Support in Tampa. The Signature folks had arranged for vans from four public aquariums to be waiting for us on the ramp (see the rock star welcome in the photos). Eventually the turtles should be strong enough to be released back into the ocean.

An intelligent person would have stayed two nights in Tampa and had three dinners at Bern’s Steak House. The parent of young children, however, had to get back into the turboprop for what should have been an easy trip back to Boston, but turned out to involve much more widespread and severe convection than forecast. We were able to climb over the top of nearly all of this weather, but only barely! (the Pilatus has a service ceiling of FL300 or 30,000′) We landed in the dark at around 9:00 pm. A mechanic from Tradewind reinstalled the rear bench seat the next day and the plane was ready to resume its life ferrying charter customers.

What did I learn on this trip? That it is considered a microaggression to refer to these animals as “Ridley Scott turtles.” Also that top quality FBOs such as Rectrix, Signature, and the Richmond Jet Center can pull out an extra stop or two when you use the “sea turtle” password.

Merry Christmas to everyone! And remember that if the turtles can escape the misery of the Northeast you probably can too!

More:

• see the photos
• we did it again a year later

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Last night I was part of a team of four expert reviewers at an exclusive screening (at the Burlington Mall) of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Our thoughts on the film, in no particular order…

The First Order fights just like the U.S. military during World War II. All of the officers are incompetent and make decisions that lead to defeat by numerically inferior forces. However, it doesn’t matter strategically because they can keep cranking out an infinite number of additional starships and other weapons.

Characters in the movie are obsessed with their parents and connections to those parents. Yet the film comes out of California, which led the no-fault divorce revolution that resulted in the U.S. having the world’s highest percentage of children living outside a two-parent family (some stats). If the parent-obsessed filmmakers are representative of Californians and most of them think that parents are important to children, why would they run a winner-take-all family court system in which one parent will inevitably be discarded? (unlike neighboring Nevada, a 50/50 shared parenting state)

Californians like to talk about their commitment to equality (way better than “inequality” certainly!) and how people are entitled to various human rights, e.g., to shelter, food, health care, etc., simply by showing up and identify as “human.” Yet the characters don’t accord equal rights to human lives. A whole space ship of colleagues can be blown up and that isn’t nearly as sad as if one more fleshed-out character is injured.

Californians also like to talk about their passion for science and hatred for those who are “anti-science”. Yet they’ve made a movie in which the vacuum of space carries sound waves and bombs fall under the influence of Earth-style gravity regardless of where in the universe they happen to be.

As with previous Star Wars films, the movie doesn’t make obvious economic sense. They have capable robots, but people still lust after money. Why isn’t there an infinite supply of everything? Population growth does not seem to have kept up with the improvements in tech. In fact, there is no place in the entire universe that is as crowded as today’s Los Angeles or San Francisco. The richest people in the galaxy are arms dealers, but why should they make more than a normal return on investment? The First Order seems to be the legitimate government and also the consumer of 99 percent of the weapons. Why wouldn’t they run their own arms factories or use low-bid contractors?

Why can’t these advanced folks have some better autopilots? When the goal is to have a space ship fly “straight and level” (see above for how Earth-style gravity operates everywhere!) it is necessary to have a human pilot on board. Also, why not swarms of drone attack aircraft?

Speaking of gravity, the description of the Force sounds a lot like Isaac Newton’s first theory of gravitation. Maybe the Force will turn out to be gravity?

The Star Wars screenwriter’s task has been greatly simplified compared to in the 1970s and 1980s. What would characters say when they think the entire galaxy is about to be doomed by an evil dictatorship? When the universe as they know it is coming to an end? Simply go to Facebook and cut and paste from any discussion of a proposed federal law or state election.

Related:

• Why are some people hating Star Wars: The Last Jedi?

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Christmas Eve and time to gather the extended family. From a Massachusetts case titled “Adoption of Paula”:

The mother and the father met in January, 1981, and commenced living together shortly thereafter. In addition to the parents, the household included the father’s father, his two children by his first marriage (Robert and Belinda) and Paula, the mother’s eldest daughter. The parents had five daughters in rapid succession, the first of whom, Phyllis, was born on October 11, 1981. They married in 1984.

Both parents were episodic users of drugs and chronic abusers of alcohol during their marriage. The parents’ relationship was characterized by a high level of conflict. The father physically abused the mother. He also hit the children, focusing this violence in particular on Paula, who was not his daughter. The mother was aware of his treatment of the children. After confrontations with her husband, the mother would “run” from the household. She would be absent for periods ranging from a few days to several weeks at a time. At first, she took the children with her. When the number of children increased, she would leave them behind. The care of the younger children was often delegated to Robert and Belinda, especially when the mother left the home.

Dangerous weapons were openly displayed in the home. In addition, a number of transient people, many of them adolescents drawn by the availability of drugs and alcohol, frequented the home. Some of these people also acted as caretakers for the children.

After the mother left the marital home, she became involved with a man and became pregnant by him (with Elizabeth). This man died of an overdose of heroin in July, 1989. When Elizabeth, born on March 9, 1990, was an infant, the mother participated in a residential drug treatment program at the Medford Family Life Education Center. She was terminated from the program almost immediately for violation of the program’s rules. She spent nights drinking with a new boy friend, attempted to bring alcohol into the shelter, and left Elizabeth with other program residents for extended periods of time.

At the time of trial, the mother had been living with Gerald, the father of her son, James, born on July 16, 1991, and had named him as a potential caretaker of her daughters. There were allegations that Gerald had physically abused his children by other women, and had the potential to repeat this violent behavior and that the children, with the exception of Phyllis, regarded him with reservations as a caretaker. Several people had observed episodes of his inappropriate physical contact with some of the children, and in particular with Phyllis, whose sexualized behavior placed her at high risk.

The father has remarried and at the time of trial, had three additional children by his new wife. He testified that he was not seeking custody of his children (Phyllis, Jennifer, Susan, Kimberly, and Diane), but took the position they should be returned to their mother’s custody.

That’s 13 kids total. Wouldn’t it be interesting to follow up with these children and see what kind of adults they’ve become?

Happy Christmas Eve to everyone and I hope that your dinner table is surrounded by less fractious family members than the above.

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A Chinese-American physician friend just sent us her “Happy 2018” card (not technically “Christmas card” but the order is red with white snowflakes and there is an “oh what fun” in script across the front, so I fear that this is tainted with the Christmas spirit).

The accompanying letter violates a few conventions for the genre. For example, on the merits of children being 9 and 10: “At last I can count on sleeping through the night, interrupted only by my own bladder.” On the joys of cat ownership: “They went on a spree of indoor urination after [the dog] died [age 12], anointing three couches, an armchair, and a mattress before finally winding down. We now have a hammock in the living room for visitors.”

Readers: What are the best Christmas/New Years messages you’ve gotten in 2017?

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Some of my Happy Valley neighbors were debating whether or not to organize a potluck New Year’s Day party in a town-owned building. They then got into an argument about whether this is even legal. Finally someone found a 2014 law: “An Act Relative to Potluck Events”. Thus it seems that our legislators have defined the term “potluck” for us.

I had prepared to send a message to the list “I found a 25 lb. bag of gluten and also 10 lbs. of peanuts and 5 lbs. of walnuts. I can make a gluten-nut pie for the event.” Fortunately, before I could send the email, the neighbors decided that their legal skills weren’t sufficient to interpret the potluck law and therefore the idea was abandoned.

Hope this helps if you’re organizing a holiday event…

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If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas present, DxOMark has reviewed the Leica M10. This $7,000 digital camera body puts up image quality scores similar to a 1.5-year-old compact Sony. Don’t forget to budget $2,000+ for a lens!

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… print labels from Google Contacts.

(It doesn’t seem to be all that easy from Microsoft Outlook either, requiring a “mail merge” operation.)

We would expect even the least experienced human assistant to learn that every December it is time to print contact addresses onto labels so that they can be placed on Christmas cards. How are computers supposed to take our jobs if they can’t handle the seemingly simplest tasks?

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My Facebook friends are predicting doom and gloom as a result of the new tax rates that Congress recently passed:

• The deep problems with the tax bill seem obvious to me and (most of) my FB friends.
• Traitors. History will judge them harshly.
• I saw an article the other day (can’t remember which paper, NY Times?) which pointed out a loophole in this tax bill where companies would actually benefit by moving abroad.
• This abomination of a tax bill also eliminated the alternative minimum tax for businesses. It might drive up the deficits $100-$200 billion in year one alone.
• Heartbroken
• Helping these people [photos of undocumented immigrants] should be more important than a tax cut for the rich.

The smartest minds of the media are even more down on the legislation:

• The G.O.P. Tax Bill Is Unworkable (New Yorker)
• The Most Frightening Aspect of Trump’s Tax Triumph (New Yorker): “The lies told by powerful men—and the thanks heaped on the most powerful man of all—are the language of a dictatorship.”

The $20 trillion in debt previously accumulated was just fine, but the predicted deficits due to these changes in tax rates will kill the United States economically. That’s a shame, but of course the U.S. is only a small portion of the world. Currently concerned citizens can plan a personal exit strategy, no? In fact, shouldn’t they be able to exit rich if they know about an impending collapse that other investors are ignorant of?

Let’s assume that the U.S. government is in fact starved for revenue as a result of having a corporate tax rate similar to the UK’s plus a whole bunch of crazy deductions, e.g., the R&D tax credit, that have built up over the years. That will lead to a larger deficit, right? And the larger deficit will mean the U.S. has to borrow and/or print money. So the dollar should go down and interest rates on Treasury bonds should go up? The above doomsayers express 100 percent confidence in their predictions. Can they become rich by shorting the dollar and shorting Treasuries? If so, what’s the best way for them to make crazy upside without having a big downside exposure? (i.e., what are the most efficient option-style instruments that are sensitive to big drops in the dollar and big rises in interest rates?)

[A money-expert friend suggests options on the TLT ETF for anyone certain of a collapse in Treasury bonds. He also noted that there are currency ETFs, such as UDN (option chain for this USD index).]

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In the Age of Harvey there is a lot more demand for the criminal justice system to sort out what happened between two adults in private settings such as hotel rooms and dorm rooms. The smartphone age has given the same system a lot more material to chew on. Here’s a Daily Mail story about the state’s case against a defendant falling apart in the middle of the trial due to the fact that the police failed to highlight the contents of text messages between an accuser and the accused. (Separately, note that the defendant needed to spend two years paying lawyers and preparing for potential imprisonment; imagine the sangfroid it must have taken for him to reject a plea deal!)

Readers: What do you think? The criminal justice system was set up to handle black-and-white situations where A hit B or C stole something from D and none of the evidence was in electronic form. Does the case described in the Daily Mail suggest that the system isn’t likely to fit well with shades of grey (so to speak) and evidence that is primarily electronic?

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