Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Microaggression alert! Last week I was ordering something from a company in Texas and the salesman signed off with “Have a blessed holiday.” (Cisgender-normative alert! I assume that this deep-voiced person named “David” identifies with the male gender, but I didn’t ask directly.)

In that Texas spirit I would like to wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas! And also make a wish of my own…

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World gives us a reminder not to judge people by teenage behavior: Humboldt “was now the most famous scientist in Europe and admired by colleagues, poets and thinkers alike. One man, though, had yet to read his work. That man was eighteen-year-old Charles Darwin who, at the very moment that Humboldt was being fêted in London, had given up his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh. Robert Darwin, Charles’s father, was furious. ‘ You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching,’ he wrote to his son, ‘and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.’”

So that’s my Christmas wish! We forgive the teenagers.

You might ask, what evidence do I have that we do not already do this? One of our flight school customers is a 35-year-old guy (surprise!). He hasn’t been able to solo because he can’t get the FAA to issue him a medical certificate that would enable him to act as pilot-in-command. From what disability does he suffer? He was arrested for DUI at age 18, i.e., 17 years ago.

Second aviation story: a 28-year-old whom we know dreams of joining the U.S. military and flying helicopters. (Me too! But of course discriminating against old people in employment is perfectly legal for the government.) At age 18 he was driving a car from which a friend shot a paintball gun at a house. He was charged with “felony vandalism of more than $5000”. This charge was ultimately reduced to a misdemeanor but just having the arrest (not a conviction) on his record means that he would need a “moral waiver” to get into the military. Despite folks talking about how the military doesn’t pay enough and/or doesn’t pay veterans enough, there are so many Americans trying to get into the military currently that no moral waivers are being issued. Had the paintball incident occurred just a few weeks earlier, he would have been 17 years old and there wouldn’t be a record of the misbehavior.

In an economy increasingly dominating by the government, there are an increasing number of areas where if you’re on the wrong side of the government you can’t work or exercise other privileges accorded to other citizens. I would like the Christmas Spirit applied so that at least most infractions that happen through age 19 can be forgiven after 5 years.

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The Dutch painting show at the MFA runs through January 18, so it is a perfect Christmas vacation activity with the kids.

Rembrandt’s “The Shipbuilder and his Wife” is worth the price of admission and the accompanying sign notes that it is owned by one person: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It is possible to live well in England if you can have a Rembrandt in your bedroom! Vermeer’s Astronomer is there, saving you a trip to the Louvre.

Try to not let the kids linger at the sign next to Jacob Backer’s “Half-Naked Woman with a Coin”. The curators note that “prostitutes earned far more than women who performed manual labor.” You don’t want to have to explain to them that having a one-night sexual encounter with a dentist in Massachusetts pays better than going to college and working!

There are signs encouraging visitors to post pictures on Facebook, etc., but cell phone service is poor in the underground galleries. The museum’s MFAGuest WiFi network was advertising its SSID and five bars of signal strength, but wouldn’t accept connections from my iPhone. Is running a public WiFi network simply beyond the skills of Americans?

I went with my mom and we enjoyed a great lunch at Bravo, so apparently cooking and serving is easier than running WiFi!

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If you have children, a house in the suburbs, and excitement consists of the big minivan trip to the grandparents’ house, grab a box of tissues before reading “Globetrotting Digital Nomads: The Future Of Work Or Too Good To Be True?” (Beth Altringer, December 22, 2015; Forbes)

Who is choosing to work from laptop in Bali?

The largest group among nomads were people like Andy, frustrated professionals in their thirties (42%) leaving corporate careers that they didn’t enjoy (often in finance and consulting) and taking advantage of the fact that those careers had helped them build a cushion of financial security. When we asked what prompted the choice to go nomadic, the specific reasons differed, but the arc was strikingly similar. They had not enjoyed their work for a long time, and a crisis—of identity, or relationship, or change of circumstance—nudged them to make a major change.

#sickwithenvy as we go into the Boston winter, of course (we are going to be suffering from a high temp of 70 degrees on Christmas Eve; #beskepticalaboutglobalwarming + #butdontbuysealevelrealestate), but I wonder if this is another example of how things haven’t panned out as early Internet users envisioned. The “death of distance” we expected back in the 1980s hasn’t panned out for too many of us. Could that change with 100 Mbit service and more immersive video conferencing? Some lawyers invited me to visit Louisville, Kentucky in early January and I was able to talk them down to a Skype session on their Fortune 500 client’s awesome network and on my Verizon FiOS connection. I will be saving quite a few hours of travel time, if not enjoying the beach in Thailand.

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Time to think about planning for 2016. Could this be the right time to quit your job?

In theory, the U.S. is a nation influenced by the Protestant work ethic, but in practice the percentage of Americans who choose to work is falling (chart). I’m listening to The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World right now. The professor says that the idea that work was somehow ennobling or inherently rewarding would have been considered laughable in Ancient Greece.

As a suburban dog walker who mostly works from home, I tend to meet other suburbanites with dogs who are home during the day. This is a rich suburb so everyone is well-educated. The two dog-walkers whom I have met most recently are both attorneys who were at least moderately successful in the working world but who now choose not to work. Both women appear to be in their late 40s and describe having working husbands. One cheerfully said “My son is now in third grade so he doesn’t need me anymore,” and went on to explain that she volunteers on a library board and is writing a mystery novel (more for personal satisfaction than with any hope of earning money via publication). With their law degrees and employment experience, either woman could easily find a better-than-average job (maybe being a junior lawyer in a big firm isn’t a better-than-average job but plenty of companies, non-profits, and government agencies hire attorneys as well).

I tried a quick Google search and couldn’t find any psychology studies on whether having a job makes a person happier or not. These women, along with a lot of other Americans, are making presumably well-informed decisions that it wouldn’t make them happier to have a job, even one that they could do from home.

[Note that it is just coincidence that the two highly qualified non-workers whom I met happen to be women. I also know of plenty of  “working-age”men who aren’t either working or performing hands-on child care. Some made money in an earlier phase of life. Several sued their high-earning wives under Massachusetts family law and are now living off the proceeds of those lawsuits (while having sex with younger women). Some are married to high-earning women.]

Readers: What do we think? Were the Calvinists right or the Ancient Greeks? If working is so great, why do people who are well-qualified and who know from personal experience what it is like to work choose not to work?

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Kids on Computers is, I think, a great non-profit organization in terms of impact-per-dollar. If you have a working laptop that you need to replace with a Microsoft Surface Book, donate the machine now and get a tax deduction for 2015!

The 501(c)(3) charity also wants to redesign its web site. If you’ve got experience with WordPress and all of the modern client-side languages… perhaps this is your volunteer job for 2016! It is a great group of people and there are trips to Oaxaca. Combine Day of the Dead with Linux!

[Separately, when are they going to cut the price of the Surface Book? I don’t want a laptop where I will have to cry if I drop it. Does it actually need to cost $1900 with a feeble 8 GB/256 GB memory/SSD configuration? Lenovo does that in a Yoga 900 for $1200.]

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Tchaikovsky is nice, but what about a modern Christmas-season ballet?

Plot:

• Scene 1: Little Johnny walks over to the neighbor’s house wearing a T-shirt printed with “don’t feed me nuts” in 96-point type on both front and back.
• Scene 2: Little Johnny is on the sofa watching football on the big-screen TV. He absent-mindedly grabs a handful of cashews and peanuts from a bowl next to the couch.
• Scene 3: Dermatologist’s office equipped with a 12′-high spruce tree from which dangle pharmaceutical samples. Little Johnny is being treated for a nasty-looking skin condition.

Title: The Nutrasher.

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Christine Corbett Moran is a human oxymoron: cool physicist. She’s off to the South Pole for a year and offering readers the chance to subscribe to an email newsletter (form). Are you afraid of microwave ovens? Holding a mobile phone to your ear? Fortunately, physicists funded by your tax dollars are trying to get to the bottom of these hazards with the South Pole Telescope that looks for Cosmic Microwave background radiation (emphasis added). Dr. Moran is going to come back with the answers! In the meantime we’ll have her email updates on what it is like to live in the most extreme environment on the Earth’s surface.

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The New York Times has a story about President Obama’s speech on the NPR radio network that his government funds. It seems that the government-paid journalists are favorably impressed with the head of the government who ultimately signs their paychecks. Obama suggests that Republicans are hostile to him and his policies because of “who I am and my background.” I.e., people who disagree with him are racist. Consider the white entrepreneur whose company succeeds against all odds but now finds that she has to pay 50% more in federal capital gains taxes than under King Bush II (has gone from 15% of the gain to 24%, from a combination of higher rates plus the new Obamacare taxes). She is a racist because she would prefer to keep this money for herself or invest it in a new venture rather than give it to the federal government to spend.

I find that I can agree with President Obama. Anyone who disagrees with me is a racist!

[I have already put this to the test and discovered that racism is rampant in America. I called up an African-American friend and asked her to give me 10% of her income over and above the tax rates that she is already paying. Although I previously believed her to be well-disposed toward Caucasians, she refused to hand over 10% of her income without grumbling. She is apparently a racist.]

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I tried Mast Brothers chocolate once and concluded that a Lindt or Nestle (branded Cailler these days) bar from a gas station in Switzerland was vastly superior at roughly 1/10th the price. My Facebook friends have been posting stories about this company, the best of which seems to be from The Guardian:

despite their enormous price tag, the only great thing about these chocolate bars is their wrappers

All the Mast bars were far too chalky and bitter. The almond one tasted like bark. Or, I guess, the shells of cacao beans. The not-quite-finely-ground-enough shells of cacao beans? Is that what kept catching in my throat as I swallowed? Whatever it was, it kinda hurt.

Best of all, though? Honestly? Good ol’ Hershey’s.

A little too sweet, maybe? Sure. Especially compared to its company. A little plasticky tasting? Chemical-y? Also, guilty. But it was silky and soothing, a balm for a throat scraped raw by jagged shards of cacao bean shells. Whatever non-organic, non-bean-to-bar, probably poisonous ingredient those corporate monsters at Hershey’s HQ are putting into their chocolate that the artisans are not – “emulsifier”, I suppose – it turns to liquid deliciousness in a way that that the stuff of the artisans simply does not.

(The Guardian writer didn’t include any Swiss chocolate in his comparison.)

Readers: Who has tried Mast Brothers and wants to defend it?

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“The One Question You Should Ask About Every New Job” is a NYT article by a Wharton School professor. The young person who has never had a job is supposed to figure out the corporate culture and then decide on where to work based on which company has the best. Let’s assume that the 22-year-old can correctly make these judgment calls. Isn’t this still terrible advice? Wouldn’t the most important criterion for an ambitious young person be “How fast is the company growing?” It is pretty easy to get promoted if the company needs to promote half of the employees every year in order to accommodate growth. And perhaps a second criterion should be the extent to which the company is a leader in its industry. It is a lot easier to go from a perceived leader to the next job than from a perceived laggard.

What am I missing?

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