An Arms Race in Robocalls?

My wife and I were being annoyed by robocalls.  Saw something about Nomorobo and signed up for it.  It's free for landlines (which all we needed).  The way it works requires the phone to ring once, but before it can ring again Nomorobo figures out it's a robocall and intercepts it.  So the ring-once is still a bit annoying, but at least you don't have to pause the movie, move the cat out of your lap, and get up to answer the phone, only to find it's robo.

So we've been happy with it; only the occasional call has been getting through.

But this morning two calls got through, one was even masked by seeming to come from someone in our telephone exchange (at least if we still had telephone exchanges).  So I wonder whether the robocall people have started to figure out Nomorobo's algorithms and begun to change  to counter them?

Skewing the Stats--A Greenie Crime

I wrote a letter to the NYTimes on an article in last week's NYTimes magazine:

When I read Brook Larmer’s article: “E-Waste Offers an Economic Opportunity as Well as Toxicity”Image” I was very surprised.  According to the article the US generates 42 pounds of e-waste per person per year.  For our 2-person household, our PC, laptop, cellphones and TV would barely amount to 100 pounds.  We don’t replace those items very often.  Something seemed off.

 So I did a little googling on the UN University site, finding this: “The weight of e-waste generated worldwide in 2016, including used refrigerators, TVs, personal computers and cellphones, was up by 8 percent from 2014, when the previous study into the problem was conducted.” http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201712140050.html

Turns out UNU defines e-waste as anything that uses electricity, not just electronic gear. (http://collections.unu.edu/view/UNU:6120)

Including all kitchen appliances, lamps, etc. in “e-waste” certainly gives a bigger headline figure, but are the problems in recycling appliances really the same as in handling cellphones and laptops?

In answer to my question--I don't think so.  Maybe in the future when everything is on the internet, but not now.

I should also note that this isn't peculiarly a failing of the environmentalist movement; everyone and her brother do it.

How Far Ahead Are Democrats Thinking?

There's lots of comments about the impact of Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.  There's also Democratic proposals for what they want to do if and when they are elected in 2020.  I wonder though about  this issue:

Given the decision on Obamacare (this name seems to be fading in favor of ACA--not sure why the change) by SCOTUS, what sort of constitutional basis can the Dems use for future health care legislation?  Can they fix ACA in 2021 by reviving the provisions Trump is killing?  Would such revivals find support in SCOTUS?  There would still be the 5 Justices who supported its legality but on divided opinions.  Would the Dems need to redo ACA to base it more firmly on the authority to tax?  Would they want to?

And how about the next bridge further--legislation to provide Medicare for All?

Who Runs in 2020

My cousin asked me about my opinions on who the Democrats should nominate for 2020.

I found it difficult to answer.  So far there's no one head and shoulders above the crowd.

If I had to choose, maybe Hickenlooper, the Colorado governor, but that's based on almost nothing. My feelings now are somewhat similar to my feelings in 1969-71.  We have a president I can't stand, who's not a likable person.  What the Democrats ended up doing was choosing McGovern, a very fine man, but too easily caricatured as out of the mainstream and Nixon won by a landslide.

That's my fear this time: our dislike of Trump and Republican/Trump positions will be so strong we end up with a candidate who can't win.

Why No Americans in Thai Rescue?

This is (not) serious:  I understand while we had American military--Seals--on the site of the rescue of the Thai soccer team, they didn't go into the cave.

Why not?

Could it be they're too big--Accu-weather said the tightest opening was 15 inches, which is smaller than the 2 feet I'd heard before.  Seems to me likely that Americans would usually be too big to fit through the smaller opening. 

Bottomline: we need more immigrants in the smaller sizes so our military can be ready for any eventuality.

One of the Mysteries of the Economy Is Solved

Economists are moaning about how the U.S. economy isn't increasing in productivity as fast as it used to.

There's an observation, given a name I don't remember at the moment, that increasing productivity in services is difficult: it takes roughly the same number of people and time to perform Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto now as it did 200 years ago.

But some critical areas of the economy are declining in productivity.  Back when I was young one reporter would write one article in a newspaper.  But these days, as described here, on the recent rash of stories on Alan Dershowitz,  it takes two reporters to write an article.  In the good old days, the subject wouldn't have rated one story.

The Importance of SCOTUS

Someone in the Times today wrote to the effect that the importance of Trump's choice for the Supreme Court is beyond calculation.   That's bunk.

The choice is important, but but not that critical.  There was a review in the Times of a book on the Opium War between Britain and China.  The reviewer, Ian Morris, described the writer as believing historical actors were very important, the influence of accident and personal quirks often determining how events turned out.  And that's the way the author told the story of the war.  The reviewer liked the book, but was more in the camp of historical forces.

I probably tend to be in the latter.  A metaphor: society is a big balloon filled with water.  You can shape the balloon, but only within limits.  The same applies to constitutional law and society.

The Russians Are Coming

Over the last few months I've been mostly absorbed in trying to help my cousin with her forthcoming book, "Dueling Dragons: The Struggle for Ireland 1849-1875".  That work is coming to an end, hence a recent uptick in the words published on this blog.

The lower level of activity has resulted in a decrease in readership.  Never particularly high, it's probably been down by a third or more.  That is, until a couple days ago.  All of  a sudden my daily views have jumped 3-400 percent, all of the increase seeming to come from Russia.

Easy come, easy go, is my motto.

FSA and NAP--Catching Fraud

The Rural Blog has a short piece on this:

Dexter Day Gilbert, who has farms in Alabama and Florida, pleaded guilty recently to submitting false applications under his name and others to the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. He submitted 14 false claims of loss between July and November 2016. Court documents say he began submitting the applications in March 2016. He will be sentenced in September.

Digging a bit further, the fraud (almost a million, which I find amazing) may have been in collusion (to use a currently popular term) with an FSA employee.

Liberals Love America, Conservatives Don't

The heading is click bait.

I responded to a Brit Hume tweet, later deleted, about how liberals don't love America.  I'll expand it a bit here:

IMO most liberals, like me, aren't terribly proud of America's past.  We tend to see the dark side, and there is a dark side: the ruin of Native American tribes, slavery, imperial misadventures, etc.

But most liberals, again like me, love America for its future, believing that the "arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice"; the future will redeem the past.  For the Christians among us it's a postmillennial vision, the idea that if Christians do Christ's work on earth, the world will get better and better, leading up to the eventual return of Christ.  (I'm channeling what I think were the beliefs of my minister grandfather and missionary aunt.)

On the other side, conservatives see America as having been a model for the world, the establishment of the government under the Constitution as being the great event in world history.  So they love America for its past, but are concerned about its future, as liberals thoughtlessly destroy the fabric of society which accounted for its greatness.