This looks to be an interesting event. I’d like to go, but it may conflict with other things (like the IAC in Jerusalem, if I attend that).
Category Archives: Business
Lithium-Ion Batteries
A lab accident quadruples battery life.
This reminds me of the discovery of vulcanized rubber.
Big Brother In Redmond
This seems like a good reason not to enable Cortana:
Section 7b – or “Updates to the Services or Software, and Changes to These Terms” – of Microsoft’s Services EULA stipulates that it “may automatically check your version of the software and download software update or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices.”
And they decide what is and isn’t “authorized.”
Russia Goes Reusable?
I doubt it, but Space Daily is reporting that. It’s a misleading headline and picture, though. They aren’t really resurrecting Buran. Looks like they plan on a fly-back first stage.
Income Inequality
Want to increase it? Raise the minimum wage.
There is no greater income inequality than some versus none.
California?
There is no California:
There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, each equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly, together a disaster.
Yes. It needs to be split up.
The State Of Higher Education
It’s awful. Who is to blame?
And here we arrive at a way to thread this needle of collective criticism. The one thing that Deresiewicz, Lukianoff, Haidt and McArdle all agree on, surprisingly enough, is that higher education should be a non-market institution. The point of college is not merely to cater to consumer demands, whether one defines the consumers as “college students” or “the firms that will eventually hire those college students.” A vital function of universities is to convert young people into thinkers who can critically analyze the very society that they are about to join. But when people are ponying up vast sums of money to attend these places, it becomes more difficult for college administrations to ignore the whims of their students.
Cut off the spigot. If people were really spending their own money, and couldn’t borrow it foolishly at below-market rates, much of this problem would go away. Of course, so would many universities and university departments. But it’s not clear that would be a bad thing.
Birthright Citizenship
I’m hearing that The Donald is proposing putting an end to it. That’s too bad, because I think it’s a good idea that will now be tainted by the source. Here’s what I wrote about it almost exactly five years ago:
if it were my choice, I’d much rather grant citizenship to someone who was willing to brave a desert and river crossing to get to this nation, learn the language and the civics, and work for a living, than someone born here who takes the nation for granted and refused to accept those responsibilities. Who is more deserving of the vote — the immigrant who has worked for it, or the native who spurns its requirements and demands public largesse? Or worse yet, a native who gangs with others to prey on his own neighbors? Why should someone, regardless of their behavior and level of social responsibility, be a citizen of this great nation through the sheer luck of having been born here, when many other true Americans who weren’t born here but “got here as fast as they can” are not?
Note that this isn’t about civil rights, at least not the traditional negative rights as stated in the Bill of Rights. Both citizens and civilians would have rights to free speech, rights to fair trials, even rights to bear arms if they’re not felonious, but voting is not and should not be a right — it should be a privilege, because, as noted above, it’s one that many will otherwise abuse to the detriment of their fellow residents, should they not be responsible and willing to pull their own weight, choosing instead to rob them at the ballot box.
Immigrants in fact tend to be harder working and more grateful to be here, though the Latin-American influx may be different because they aren’t necessarily coming to stay.
[Update a while later]
This isn’t exactly the same, but it would have much the same effect: Tom Tancredo is once again proposing that voters pass the same test that one must to become a citizen.
Works for me. And I have become long-inured to falsely being called a racist.
Low Oil Prices
Surprisingly to many (and dismayingly to OPEC), they haven’t shut down shale production. Many wells are more profitable at low prices than many predicted.
Dave O’Neill used to scoff at me when I said that $100/barrel oil was an unsustainable price. Of course, he used to stupidly scoff at a lot of things.
First Restaurants Raise Wages
Americans spend a phenomenal amount of money consuming food outside their homes, and a major reason is that with restaurant labor so cheap, the convenience and price are attractive to people who don’t feel like cooking. If the wages go up, that calculus shifts. And unfortunately those “rich bosses” can’t just take it out of their profits, because margins in the industry are under 5 percent, and the difference between making that profit and closing up shop can be surprisingly thin. Empty seats don’t just cost you rent; they make it hard to get good servers, because empty seats mean lost tip income. You can end up in a vicious spiral where your service gets worse, so your restaurant loses more customers, so the service gets even worse . . . and it’s time to call the bank and tell them you won’t be paying off that loan.
The economic ignorami don’t seem to understand that restaurants have competition in addition to other restaurants — cooking your own meals at home. In fact, the high cost of dining out is one of the reasons (though not the only one, also I can feed myself more healthily, and I really don’t enjoy sitting around being served by people) that I rarely eat out unless I’m traveling. With 25% unemployment of black youth, raising the minimum wage (or in fact having one at all) is a moral atrocity.