A serial accumulation of memory, incident, consideration, reconsideration, personal discovery and attempts at truth.
It is intended for my attention and that of other interested persons
If that changes, I will extensively re-edit.
Warning:
I attempt to use inductive logic.
In Antigua, Guatemala, visitors can browse markets, sip espresso
at a working coffee farm, eat regional food and hike up volcanoes.
Travel and Vacations
I have no reason to visit Guatemala.
If I were to visit I would want to spend far more time than a day and a half.
There are beaches and forests as well as native and colonial ruins.
The cloud forest is worth learning. Rushing would be wrong.
So far, under a million birds have been culled, a small part of
the 240 million raised a year. But farmers must destroy entire flocks to
keep the virus from spreading.
Turkeys; Avian Influenza; Agriculture and Farming
I am not terribly concerned.
A flock or not a flock is your choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza
I am enjoying the hawk that is around.
The jays were after it yesterday.
Policy makers, particularly in Europe and India, are considering
rules that could hurt consumers and start-up Internet businesses.
Net Neutrality; Computers and the Internet; Telephones and Telecommunications
The net is.
Routers read each packet label and send it to the next router along the rout.
Dividing the packet stream adds layers of complexity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Infrastructure
The man charged with killing three Muslim college students will
face a death penalty trial after prosecutors told a judge they had
strong and incriminating evidence.
Capital Punishment; Muslims and Islam; Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides
The identification of the No. 2 commander in the Lord’s Resistance
Army followed his exhumation in a Ugandan-led military expedition, a
person involved in the recovery operation said Monday.
War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity; Human Rights and Human Rights Violations
Rebekah Fergusson and Farhad Manjoo | Apr 8th 2015
The technology columnist Farhad Manjoo asks whether the Apple
Watch’s new Taptic interface will give us an alternative to constantly
checking our phones.
Watches and Clocks; Wearable Computing
The phone is the connection.
The watch does not affect the connection to the server.
The watch is a ringer.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/telephone+ringer
China has the world’s largest Coast Guard fleet, with more ships
than Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines combined, a
report shows.
Defense and Military Forces; Ships and Shipping
Business is reluctant to sanction the Chinese.
Sanctions are coming.
Getting them through the General Assembly will be a project.
By KATY RECKDAHL and BENJAMIN MUELLER | Apr 9th 2015
Mr. Durst entered his plea at an arraignment in New Orleans, the
first formal airing of state charges that have snarled his efforts to go
to Los Angeles to answer murder charges.
Extradition
A defense lawyer will always advise a plea of not guilty.
The change was revealed in federal court in the case of a
transgender woman housed in a men’s prison who said the state illegally
cut off her treatment.
Transgender and Transsexuals; Prisons and Prisoners; Hormones
Georgia will not fight this battle in the civil war.
Reconstruction was not as successful as it should be.
Government guidelines say they shouldn’t, students say they should. The pros and cons.
Colleges and Universities; Sex Crimes
A campus is not a voluntary community.
The population is selected from applicants.
Membership is controlled by the administration.
Choice belongs to the administration.
Students can serve to establish the facts.
An analysis of recent company reports, however, finds that the
widest gap exists between the chief executives and workers of Disney,
Oracle, Qualcomm and Starbucks.
Executive Compensation; Wages and Salaries; Labor and Jobs; Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010)
Way back in
1996, on the 100th anniversary of the New York Times magazine, the Times
had a clever idea: they asked a number of people to write essays
pretending to look backward a century from the perspective of 2096.
Sadly, most of the writers were too uptight and dignified to comply;
they wrote blah-blah-the-decades-to-come stuff. But I threw myself in
with a little piece titled White Collars Turn Blue.
As the title suggested, one theme of the essay was a pushback against
the notion that advancing technology would mean ever-growing demand for
highly educated workers; I argued that computers would take over many of
the cognitive tasks we find difficult, but that human beings would
continue to be wanted for jobs that require common sense, including many
forms of manual labor.
Or as one friend described it at the time, my thesis was that we’ll always need maids and gardeners.
And it’s happening. I missed this paper by Beaudry, Green, and Sand when it was first circulated, but it’s right on that issue:
[W]e argue
that in about the year 2000, the demand for skill (or, more
specifically, for cognitive tasks often associated with high educational
skill) underwent a reversal. Many researchers have documented a strong,
ongoing increase in the demand for skills in the decades leading up to
2000. In this paper, we document a decline in that demand in the years
since 2000, even as the supply of high education workers continues to
grow. We go on to show that, in response to this demand reversal,
high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have
begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers.
An obvious implication
is that belief that income inequality is all about, and can be fixed
by, education is even more wrong than you thought".
There are two big lessons from GE’s announcement
that it is planning to get out of the finance business. First, the much
maligned Dodd-Frank financial reform is doing some real good. Second,
Republicans have been talking nonsense on the subject. OK, maybe point
#2 isn’t really news, but it’s important to understand just what kind of nonsense they’ve been talking.
GE Capital was a
quintessential example of the rise of shadow banking. In most important
respects it acted like a bank; it created systemic risks very much like a
bank; but it was effectively unregulated, and had to be bailed out
through ad hoc arrangements that understandably had many people furious
about putting taxpayers on the hook for private irresponsibility.
Most economists, I
think, believe that the rise of shadow banking had less to do with real
advantages of such nonbank banks than it did with regulatory arbitrage —
that is, institutions like GE Capital were all about exploiting the
lack of adequate oversight. And the general view is that the 2008 crisis
came about largely because regulatory evasion had reached the point
where an old-fashioned wave of bank runs, albeit wearing somewhat
different clothes, was once again possible.
So Dodd-Frank tries to
fix the bad incentives by subjecting systemically important financial
institutions — SIFIs — to greater oversight, higher capital and
liquidity requirements, etc.. And sure enough, what GE is in effect
saying is that if we have to compete on a level playing field, if we
can’t play the moral hazard game, it’s not worth being in this business.
That’s a clear demonstration that reform is having a real effect.
Now, the more or less
official GOP line is that the crisis had nothing to do with runaway
banks — it was all about Barney Frank somehow forcing poor innocent
bankers to make loans to Those People. And the line on the right also
asserts that the SIFI designation is actually an invitation to behave
badly, that institutions so designated know that they are too big to
fail and can start living high on the moral hazard hog.
But as Mike Konczal notes, GE — following in the footsteps of others, notably MetLife
— is clearly desperate to get out from under the SIFI designation. It
sure looks as if being named a SIFI is indeed what it’s supposed to be, a
burden rather than a bonus.
A good day for the reformers."
We don't need to know.
The accountants must tell the stockholders.
The annual report is a public record.
The Times story is disingenuous or the prosecutors are not doing their duty.
The investigation by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of New
York sends a message that nonprofit organizations can no longer assume
that they will receive minimal scrutiny.
Boards of Directors; Nonprofit Organizations; Colleges and Universities; Finances; Endowments
We do need to know. The Cooper Union board is probably guilty.
The alliance cited an effort to limit the size of delegations from
partner nations, but Western officials said an internal assessment had
found that intelligence agents were part of Russia’s mission.
Diplomatic Service, Embassies and Consulates; Espionage and Intelligence Services; International Relations
Owners of restaurants and clothing shops are looking to move on
after they were damaged or left financially crippled by a gas explosion
that leveled three buildings.
East Village Explosion (March 2015); Explosions (Accidental); Fires and Firefighters; Shopping and Retail
Once a student at St. John’s University School of Law, David
Powers failed to disclose that he had once been charged with selling
drugs; after the school rescinded his acceptance, he sued.
Drug Abuse and Traffic; Colleges and Universities; Admissions Standards; Law Schools; Law and Legislation
David Powers has encountered prejudice.
Some but far from all prejudice is unlawful.
While battling Alzheimer’s disease, Deenie Hartzog-Mislock’s
grandmother invents a wild story and the family learns to love an
imaginary man named Nick Stephanopoulos.
Modern Love (Times Column); Dating and Relationships; Alzheimer's Disease; Elderly
A perspective that was once characterized by comfort and optimism has increasingly been overlaid with stress and anxiety.
Income; Income Inequality; United States Economy; Recession and Depression
The middle class that populated the officer corps of the second world war and the G.I. bill professionals that were produced at the end of that war are gone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
Graduates who accept jobs on Wall Street have the potential to do
good and make money — if they use their talents to help solve social
problems, instead of just transferring wealth.
Banking and Financial Institutions; Labor and Jobs; Inventions and
Patents; Economics (Theory and Philosophy); Colleges and Universities;
Innovation; Stocks and Bonds
Sendhil Mullainathan has a conscience that troubles him.
It should.
He seems to be troubled by the wrong things.
Others actions cannot trouble ones conscience. Personal responsibility is a fact.
These students have learned microeconomics. Money and debt are real to them.
They are real to all individuals who do not have their own currencies accepted in the international market.
For States with their own currencies money is fiction. It is real only in relation to other money, also fictitious.
Things are worth what is paid for them.
New knowledge, new art and new citizens should be paid for.
Cory Booker, who has leaned on a fellow New Jersey Democrat,
Robert Menendez, since joining the Senate in 2013, is now standing by
him as he faces bribery charges.
Bribery and Kickbacks
There will be a trial. Until that is over Menendez is presumed to be innocent.
I may doubt it but he is not guilty until he pleads guilty or is convicted.
China has the world’s largest Coast Guard fleet, with more ships
than Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines combined, a
report shows.
The change was revealed in federal court in the case of a
transgender woman housed in a men’s prison who said the state illegally
cut off her treatment.
Transgender and Transsexuals; Prisons and Prisoners; Hormones
Environmental groups and some state lawmakers call the proposed
$225 million deal a “corporate giveaway” that “leaves us with more
questions than answers.”
Richard Lambert, who led the F.B.I.’s anthrax investigation, has
sued the bureau over its conclusions and claims that doubts he has
raised led the bureau to spoil his job prospects.
Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides; Threats and Threatening Messages; Terrorism; Suits and Litigation (Civil)
Richard L. Lambert has filed suit. He has standing.
The security services will learn if they are a "shadow government".
A statement explaining the court’s remit came after growing
pressure to open an inquiry into human rights abuses in territory
controlled by the Islamic State.
War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity; Human Rights and Human Rights Violations
New rules governing CPC-1232 tank cars need to be significantly
strengthened and include more robust thermal protections, the National
Transportation Safety Board said.
Railroad Accidents and Safety; Transportation; Explosions (Accidental)
If the railroads were in good repair there would be no point in changing the cars.
Federal biologists will consider increasing Endangered Species Act
protections for the northern spotted owl, reflecting the bird’s
continued slide toward extinction despite steep logging cutbacks in the
Northwest.
Endangered and Extinct Species; Owls
Old growth forests deserve protection for themselves.
After gathering genetic data from nearly 200,000 people worldwide,
researchers found that each extra 2.5 inches of height brings a 13.5
percent reduction in heart disease risk.
Height (Stature); Genetics and Heredity; Heart; Women's Health Initiative
Genetic databases have excuses.
They will destroy the risk pools of insurance companies.
Medical insurance has become assigned risk.
The sooner we get the corporations out of the medical insurance business the better.
A limitation of studying chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or
C.T.E., has been that researchers have been able to detect it only in
tissue obtained posthumously.
The N.F.L. settlement must compensate all league players who have developed or will develop C.T.E. If they did not play in the league their compensation is others responsibility.
The N.F.L. insurers would be foolish to allow the league to continue.
The liberal legal scholar Laurence H. Tribe, who taught Barack
Obama at Harvard, represents the coal company Peabody Energy in its
challenge to E.P.A. rules.
Seekers of money advice overlook simple answers because when they
hear simple, they make the leap to easy. But sticking with good
decisions isn’t easy.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of a discredited Rolling Stone
article about a rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, issued an
apology. The university president issued a statement, as well.
A judge ruled in a case involving a former C.I.A. station chief
and a former C.I.A. lawyer and their roles in directing drone attacks in
Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions.
Prosecutors and the S.E.C. will most likely take a wait-and-see
approach on the new limitations to the law against insider trading.
Insider Trading; Decisions and Verdicts
"The first two options might be tempting because they provide the
potential for a quick fix. But the more likely course for prosecutors
and the Securities and Exchange Commission
will be to deal with the limitations that the Newman opinion imposes by
making sure future cases do not stray too far from the core of the
prohibition on insider trading."
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS | Apr 7th 2015
Amid a continuing drought, water use in the state declined by only
2.8 percent in February, officials said, well short of a reduction
target of 20 percent.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to
President Obama’s 2012 executive action granting deportation relief to
immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, upholding
a lower court’s earlier ruling.
Black and Hispanic teaching candidates have been passing an exam
at lower rates than white applicants, prompting concerns of decreased
diversity among teachers.
Tests and Examinations; Discrimination; Teachers and School Employees; Race and Ethnicity; Education (K-12)
John Hancock will become the first life insurance company to offer
a program for Americans that tracks medical information and offers
lower premiums for healthful behavior.
Life Insurance; Wearable Computing
Life insurance companies are allowed to cream the risk pool.
The suit contends that the Department of Agriculture violated
procedures by changing the way nonorganic substances are approved for
use in organic farming.
Organic Foods and Products; Agriculture and Farming; Suits and Litigation (Civil)
U.S.D.A. has studied the law and will be found to have obeyed it.
Using standard assumptions, extracting and using all our reserves
and resources would lead to a total temperature increase of 16.2
degrees.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Global Warming; Coal; Carbon Capture and Sequestration; Carbon Dioxide
This is a rough guess.
Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman professor of economics at the University of Chicago, has sketched as bright a future as his conscience allows.
The world is rapidly warming. It is far from equilibrium at present levels of carbon dioxide. Consensus is that the world is committed to four degrees at present levels.
The gain does not appear to be linear as Professor Greenstone guesses.
Gov. David Ige of Hawaii said the group building the telescope,
one of the world’s largest, had agreed to pause construction to allow
interested parties to have more discussions about the project.
Telescopes and Observatories; Space and Astronomy
Ultimately science trumps religion.
A week of delay will make no practical difference.
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is
recommending that the city pay hundreds of millions of dollars in back
wages and damages to minorities and women.
Discrimination; Wages and Salaries; Labor and Jobs
It would be cheapest to just pay and follow the rules.
The use of long-acting, reversible birth control like intrauterine
devices and implants has risen sharply among teenagers in the last
decade, new federal data show.
Birth Control and Family Planning; Teenagers and Adolescence
