A Hurdle for Self-Driving Cars

I've been big on self-driving cars in the past, but I just saw a hurdle they'll have difficulty overcoming.

The background: in the DC area we've had snow.  Before the snow VDOT/Fairfax put down brine on the roadways.  So we get our epic 1" snowfall and the conditions of the road (frozen from a long period of freezing temps), the brine and the traffic result in the roads essentially turning white--no way to see lane markings.  Oops.  Presumably they'll give the software enough smarts to identify conditions in which the software can't work.  I hope.

The Dutch and Modernity

Visited the National Gallery of Arts Vermeer exhibition  

"Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry This landmark exhibition examines the artistic exchanges among Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries from the mid-1650s to around 1680, when they reached the height of their technical ability and mastery of genre painting, or depictions of daily life. The introduction of quiet scenes unfolding in private household spaces and featuring elegant ladies and gentlemen was among the most striking innovations of Dutch painting of the Golden Age, a time of unparalleled innovation and prosperity."

Quite crowded, since it leaves after next week.  I was struck by what it showed of Dutch society of the period: very modern.  Pictures of women writing,  lots of silk and parrots, reflecting the globalization of the time, cleanliness--people washing, tile floors and  brooms and mops to clean them, globes and maps. 

Of course, Simon Schama wrote a book which I think covered this aspect of Dutch painting--from wikipedia:

 In 1980 Schama took up a chair at Harvard University. His next book, The Embarrassment of Riches (1987), again focused on Dutch history.^[6] In it, Schama interpreted the ambivalences that informed the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, held in balance between the conflicting imperatives, to live richly and with power, or to live a godly life. The iconographic evidence that Schama draws upon, in 317 illustrations, of emblems and propaganda that defined Dutch character, prefigured his expansion in the 1990s as a commentator on art and visual culture.^[7]

 

STC Members

Saw this announcement on the NASCOE site: the appointees to the state committees of FSA.  I wasn't aware they were one-year appointments--I always thought it was a 4-year term, although the Secretary could fire a member.  That's beside the point.  I wanted to note that the appointees included a "lot" of women (meaning I didn't count the number and don't know how it compares to prior years, but it's impressive compared to 30 years ago when you'd have just a handful in the country.  (My guess is maybe 30 percent women?)

A Position on GMO's

Tamar Haspel expressed her agreement with a Mark Lynas speech, which he summarizes here:

So that’s my peace plan. To recap:

1. Environmentalists accept the science of GMO safety, and scientists in return need to accept that politics matter in how scientific innovations are deployed.
2. We drop national GMO bans and instead allow fully informed choices to be made by consumers in the marketplace via rigorous labelling and full traceability.
3. We all get over the Monsanto obsession but make a much more serious effort to start getting off the chemical treadmill and moving farming onto more sound ecological principles.
4. We agree to support public sector and non-corporate uses of genetic engineering where these can clearly contribute to environmental sustainability and the public interest.
5. We support all forms of agriculture that aim to find ways towards greater sustainability. Let a hundred flowers bloom.
6. We stop the name-calling. Let’s avoid using the term anti-science in particular. Anti-GMO activists are not opposing the scientific method in general, they are opposing a particular technological innovation.
7. Let’s make ethical objections to genetic engineering explicit and in the process recognise real-world tradeoffs about where we do and don’t use this technology.

The Tradeoffs: Estonia

I've blogged several times about the advantages of the Estonian e-government.  I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the downsides.  Estonia may well have great security, but India, which has its own similar innovative e-government initiative going, has run into problems with its Aadhaar database, according to this report from Marginal Revolution.

The bottom line is that by using a centralized data system you increase the incentives for hackers to try to access it and the potential damage from such access. 

There's no free lunch.

Are High Tax Cities Doomed?

Conservatives and libertarians like to point to migration away from high tax locations like California and the Northeast to lower tax locations like Texas and the Sunbelt.  The implication is that high taxes in the long run doom a location/city to decline and doom.   In light of that I found this excerpt from an interesting  Jstor daily piece on the invention of street lighting by a Dutch painter to be interesting:

By 1670 Amsterdam boasted 1,800 street lamps, and by 1681 2,400 lamps. Adding all these lights was a colossal and expensive undertaking, and taxes in Amsterdam rose to pay for it. But seventeenth-century Amsterdam was already famous for its high municipal taxes. This new lighting system was so popular that cities across Holland, Europe, and eventually Japan, began to implement the same.

When I Was a Boy

Neon lights were the thing.  Neon was the trademark, the signifier of life, of modernity, of jazz.  

Here's George Benson singing the song.

And here's a picture, hat tip James Fallows, which shows just how overboard we went with neon.

11 Million Americans

Never realized this--from James Fallows:

"It was because of this open secret that nearly 11 million more Americans voted against Trump last year than for him, including the three million more who voted for Hillary Clinton. (The rest were for Gary Johnson, who got nearly 4.5 million; Jill Stein, with nearly 1.5 million; Evan McMullin, with about 700,000; and a million-plus write-ins.) I

How Have My Predictions Done II

Not so well on the 2016 election--like most I expected and hoped for Clinton to win and thought the Dems would take the Senate. I did do okay noting the sort of events which could change the complexion of the Senate, although I missed Trump picking a Senator for his cabinet and the subsequent special election. (On Presidential politics I'm 0 for 2--predicting Romney in 2012 and Clinton in 2016.)

As for deficits, I thought the 2010 commission would go for a percentage cut like the old Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. I didn't see they wouldn't come to an agreement.  However, I do claim a little credit--the backup to the commission was provision for sequestration (here's the Democrats explanation).

Me and Warren Agree: ETF's, Not Hedges

We do have some money to invest, and over the years we've moved from mutual funds to ETF's and Dogs of the Dow in a balanced portfolio.  We don't have enough that hedge funds were ever an option, but I consider our investment strategy to be similar to what Warren Buffett pushes, passive investment.  From a AEI piece on his $1 million bet:

"Specifically, Buffett offered to bet that over a ten-year period from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2017, the S&P 500 index would outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs, and all expenses.As I reported last September, Buffett’s now-famous bet was actually settled early and ahead of schedule, because the outcome was so one-sided in favor of the S&P 500 index over hedge funds:"