Still around

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a variety of reasons.

For a long time it seems that all the readers were trolls from Russia or Italy.  Today the bulk of the readers were from the United States.

An indicator of usage seems to have stuck and wasn’t increasing at all.

I spent more of my time posting comments to articles on the New York Times, the Washington Post, and some times on the Star Tribune and Duluth News Tribune.  The Post is wide open, posts immediately, and rarely deletes a comment.  The Times reviews comments before posting them.  The Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune have much less space and might edit beyond all recognition.  I’ve just about given up on the Duluth News Tribune.

Maybe lots of my readers are “Trump weary” and get enough of him via TV and daily newspapers.

I’ll try to post a wider range of articles.  If you ore a relative or a friend, send me your thoughts.

Why bother?

In a galaxy far, far away, I started this blog with the hope of earning a few dollars every so often.

At first, most readers were from the U.S. and Canada.  Now I get dozens of visits from Russia or Italy.  These are probably trolls who are hoping I will click on their URLs which they hope will trap me into some nefarious scheme.

The few dollars never got to the level at which Google would send me a check.  With only a few dollars to go to that level, the meter stopped.  Then Google sent me an email that I hadn’t made certain changes or something or other.  I’ve long forgotten how to edit the site and really don’t want to figure out how to do it again.

If you’ve been a long time reader, I thank you.

Maybe I’ll post something else here now and then; maybe I won’t.  Che séra, séra!

Hello to my Duluth readers.

Every so often somebody in a store or coffee shop will recognize my face and ask if if i am still writing.

And sometimes a person will ask me if I’m still writing for the Duluth Reader.  I answer this question with “Are you still not reading the Reader?”

I gave up on writing for the Reader when the editor/publisher bumped me too many times.  I had started writing again when he asked me at a public event to write again.  I don’t remember how long it was before he didn’t publish my articles again.  After he published none of my articles for four issues, I gave up writing for him at all.

I also have given up on writing letters to the Duluth News Tribune.  Chuck Frederik often rewrites any he publishes, sometime changing the meaning of what I wrote.

I also have given up writing letters to the Star Tribune.  Changing the meaning has happened with the Strib also, but not very often.

In the case of both papers, it is a gamble if any letter will be published, and so why should I bother.

I do get most of my sidebar comments to New York Times articles published.

I get all of my sidebar comments to the Washington Post because they have “instant gratification”: only the most egregious comments are pulled.

Both of these national papers allow comments to comments.  One does put oneself out there to other writers who take a complete different views.

Also, I should note that I am not “popular”.  I generally get less than ten likes, compared to 20 to 50 likes or even more.

Of course, I should also admit that I get almost no comments to articles I write here by anybody who knows me.  Most of my readership is trolls from Russia or Italy (Russian trolls masquerading as Italians).

So, if you know me and like anything I write here, please tell me the next time you see me.  Better yet, tell a friend.

Even if you don’t tell me that you read anything I write, I will see a blip in readership from the U.S. and a few other countries.

And of course, a big thank you to anyone who reads this blog regularly.

U.S. Tax Preparation, special interests making our life miserable

I posted the following comment to “Filling taxes in japan is a breeze, why not here?”, T.R. Reid, New York Times, 2017-04-17.

When we lived in Italy and Sweden (1968-1974) we filled out four-page forms for those countries' taxes. And then we had to at least fill out a two-page form for the U.S. But we didn't have much investment income then.

I have tried tax software, but their question format takes longer than doing my own spreadsheet. I tried the Free-Filer that the IRS site links to, but it doesn't provide instant recalculations like my spreadsheet does.

Maybe I shouldn't say this because some lobbyist will get Congress to take this benefit away: the IRS does provide fillable PDF forms that you can fill out offline instead of handwriting the data.

I should have added to my comment the old adage: We have the best Congress that money can buy!

If...

Some have said that “if” is the biggest word in the English language.  It certainly does have a lot of import on our thinking, be it blame, regret, or thankfulness.  Our lives are certainly filled with choice points of our own doing or the actions of others.  “If my teacher hadn’t suggested,,,, then I might not have…”  “If I hadn’t asked for a raise, would I have ever gotten one.”, and on and on.

I have so many “if’s” in my life that got me to this moment of typing on a laptop that I could probably fill this issue of the Reader.  And you would have fallen asleep by the fourth page.

One of my early if’s is if my parents hadn’t divorced, would my mother have moved us in with her aunt and uncle?  That determined where I started school.  If my great aunt and uncle hadn’t bought a house on the other side of the city, would I have have gone to a second elementary school.  At that school I met many others who would become life-long friends.

I did lose those contacts when my mother decided to rent an apartment on the other side of town.  By the time I started high school, she remarried and we moved back to the other side of town.

That house was in a school attendance area different than the area many of my old friends were in.  I made the choice of asking for an exemption to go to that smaller school to be with my friends again.

One of the math teachers at the smaller school punctuated his remarks with “When you go to Case…” meaning Case Institute of Technology.  Five of us started as freshmen there a year or two later.

But would I have been able to afford the $750/year tuition?  The assistant principal suggested that I apply to the Huntington Fund for a scholarship.  I did and was granted a full scholarship.

With my job at Kroger’s, suggested to me by one of the friends I met in the second elementary school and with whom I still correspond, I was able to afford books and bus fare across the city to Case.

Shortly after we moved back across the city, I attended a Methodist Church within a half-hour’s walk and was active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF).  This continued into my Case years.

I don’t know the exact cause, but I started losing interest in my engineering studies.  I ran for president of the area MYF council and won.  Also on the council was the daughter of a doctor.  After I flunked out of Case, I started dating her.

We both went to Ohio Wesleyan the following fall, she as a freshman and me as a junior.  Despite my flunking out of Case, the Huntington Fund kept funding me.  They had long dropped their maximum scholarship to $500, and I had to take out student loans to supplement it and my own part-time job earnings to make the $1,100 annual tuition.

I got good enough grades in mathematics that Case took me back in the graduate program with a full fellowship in the computer center which included a $75/week salary!  I also married that sweetheart from two paragraphs back.

I don’t think you want to put up with two thousand words of all the twists and turns of the next fifty plus years, but I have many, many “If I hadn’t done this, would this interesting thing have happened.”  I’ll try to collapse those into the few paragraphs remaining of my space.

We chose to move to Minnesota and my employment with Univac because we liked canoeing.  After five years I became restless and managed a transfer to Europe.  We started in Switzerland for a few weeks and then lived in Italy for the next two years.

I became unhappy with the management in Rome and transferred to Sweden.  We liked Sweden so much that we stayed four years.  But then my wife decided our kids should go to junior high in the United States.  Another “if” I must stick in is that my wife met an American women on the subway who had a cabin in Brimson.  She extended an open invitation to visit them.

I gave a wishy-washy description of my interests to my previous bosses at Univac in Roseville, and so we didn’t move back to Minnesota.  Instead I wound up in “exile” in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.  I was “rescued” when Univac needed people to work on a new computer in Roseville.  That computer was cancelled and I was put on another project, on which I didn’t shine.

Meanwhile, the microcomputer revolution started and I jumped into it.  I blew that too and wound up as a bus driver.  But my wife was doing quite well in her work.  What we didn’t do well on was co-ordinating when we would take our annual BWCA visit.  With the background of a whole bunches of “if’s” we finally visited our friends in Brimson and did so annually.

Yikes, what if I could have 2,000 words!

Our son went to Japan and when we visited him we missed an annual visit to Brimson.  We went in fall instead and found property for sale.  We bought it, and a few years later had built our own cabin.

This time my wife engineered the transfer and we moved from the Twin Cities to Duluth to be nearer our cabin.  But she found more and more things to do in Duluth and has less time to spend in Brimson.  And we’re both getting older and mowing lots of paths and cutting firewood seems to take longer and longer.

We have lots of memories of all those if’s and we know lots more if’s are coming.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
- Robert Frost

Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-01-07 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/01/06/6522_if.

Audacious Amount of Audio Appreciation

I sketched out a couple of paragraphs on what I enjoy listening to now, but then memories flooded in about the wide varieties of audio experience I have had during my life.

My earliest strong memories are listening to the Saturday serials on the radio: Captain Midnight, Sky King, and Tom Mix.  My brother and I did get our decoder whatevers and write a few “secret” messages.

The Cleveland Public Schools did bus elementary students to Severance Hall for matinee concerts of the Cleveland Orchestra.  I don’t remember any particular pieces, but I do remember falling asleep.  But the fine arts were not completely lost on me.  I think it was WDOK that broadcast some classical music.  I remember trying to decide whether I liked piano pieces or violin pieces better.  I think it was piano: more notes!

Radio was not all music.  We can’t forget sports and news.  Jimmy Dudley and Jack Graney broadcast the games of the Cleveland Indians on WJW and then other stations.  I can’t remember much of news broadcasts, but I remember my mother’s aunt wanting to be sure she didn’t miss Walter Winchell: “Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America … and all the ships at sea…” She was so eager to hear every word of Winchell that she made us change the station five minutes before his program began.  One of my own favorites was “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”.

Then Rock ’n’ Roll exploded among teenagers.  I think I may have had a 45rpm of Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”.  Elvis Presley followed with "Blue Suede Shoes" and "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog".  The British returned with another revolution: The Beatles!  I know I have an LP of "Yellow Submarine", but my favorite song was "Strawberry Lane".

The Boy Scout troop I was in had a scoutmaster who was a master of song.  We would probably do three or four songs at every meeting: "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt", "Marching to Pretoria", and the "Worms Crawl In" among dozens of others.

I did try to join the choir in high school.  The music teacher played a note on the piano and asked me to repeat it.  End of audition!  Church choirs were far more generous.  Either it was not politic to turn volunteers down or it was just to increase the number of male voices.  Fifty years later I took voice lessons and made amazing improvement.  Thanks, Curt!

When I was in Italy, a taxi driver sold me a 45rpm with “Chi non lavora non fa l’amore” (“He who doesn’t work doesn’t make love”).  It was the lament of a striker who hadn’t worked two out of three days.  My real favorites in Italian pop were the San Remo Festivals.  Even after I moved to Sweden, I bought a few more.  One of the song titles I remember is “Baci, baci, baci” (“Kisses, kisses, kisses”)

Many people in the U.S. have talked about “dour Swedes”, but I met very few of these when I lived in Sweden.  Just listening to all the upbeat traditional dance music should dispel that notion.  One of my early linguistic mistakes was thinking that there was a popular song about crayfish (kräftor).  No, it was about no powers (krafter) could keep the singer away from his beloved.

Wherever we lived, we went to concerts and plays, either occasionally or by subscription: “Aida” at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome; operas in Swedish at Operan, symphonies, and park concerts in Stockholm; Philadelphia orchestra; Guthrie in Minneapolis; and Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra in Duluth.  This is only a partial list of what we found enticing enough to buy tickets for.  Reading the Reader Weekly listings, I bet one could find three musical events to choose from each night of the week.

Over the years we have accumulated a wide variety of music, whether on LPs or CDs.  Our stereo system seems to be failing, and so we listen to fewer LPs.  CDs we can play on our computers (for now).  The question is should we have the LPs converted, or is it cheaper to by new CDs or download the albums from iTunes.

When we drove to Madison, Chicago, or other points east, we would listen to Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR).  Besides the classical music, they had a program called “To the best of our knowledge” (“TTBOOK”).  It was mostly interviews with authors whose books related to the two subjects of the week.  Since I could also get an WPR station clearly at our cabin, I would often make a point of listening to some part of the broadcast.

Then I discovered that podcasts for TTBOOK were available from iTunes.  Now I listen to one hour in my car on the way to our cabin and one hour on the way back.

I use other podcasts to try to drown out the intrusive music at the Essentia Health Center: “Godmorgon Världen” from Swedish Radio, “Science” from American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the French version of United Nations Radio.

Interestingly,  I almost always have some aural accompaniment outside the house, whether MPR or a podcast, but I almost never listen to the radio in the house.

Enjoy whatever you like, but please don't insist I listen too.  I shouldn't hear your earbuds over mine, your car radio over mine, or your concert in the park over my stereo in the parlor.

Also posted in the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/07/09/5610_audacious_amount_of_audio_appreciation

Sprechen vous svenska?

Let me guess.  You may be one of those who claim to never have been good at foreign languages, but I bet you know the meaning of each of the words in the title of this article.  Not only that, you probably know which language each is from.

Maybe the reason you are “not good” at foreign languages is that you didn’t care for the way you were taught a particular language.  Maybe you rebelled at the way it was taught and didn’t let it soak in and use it.

I myself have had mixed feelings about each of my language experiences.  For example, I forgot almost everything I learned in high school Latin, but I retained enough of my two years of college French to read books, magazines, and newspapers and to have simple conversations.

The first time it was really important was when I transferred to Europe as a Univac employee.  Supposedly I was to move to Italy.  I got an Italian grammar book and started studying from it.  “Oh, wait, before you go to Italy you will spend several weeks in Basel, Switzerland.”  So, I got a German grammar book and started studying German.

I had all my travel arrangements made for me.  The last leg was a train from Zurich to Basel.  When I got to Basel, there was nobody to meet me.  Where do I go from here on a Saturday?  I knew we were to work at Sandoz, the big pharmaceutical company, and so I looked up Sandoz at a public phone.  When I reached Sandoz the guard spoke only German and French.  As best I could I explained my situation in French.  He said he would look up the Univac people in the computer room.  Within an hour or so one of the hardware guys came and got me.  It was only once I was in the hotel that I met the software guys I was to work with.

I have many anecdotes about learning German (Hochdeutsch) and Schweizer Deutsch, two different languages.  Ja jo! Wie goht’s!

One, I learned enough German to read some of the newspapers and to read the directions on starting the computer - drucken… (push…)

Two, I didn’t learn enough German to get in and out of East Berlin on my own.  The end story is that I had ten East German marks I was not supposed to leave with.  My Swiss companions were in a discussion with the guard behind the counter.  I kept swiveling my head towards whoever was speaking.  Finally, the guard looked at me and said, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”  I replied, “Nein!”  That cracked everyone up.  After I put my ten marks in the Red Cross jar, we were on our way out through Checkpoint Charlie.

When I finally arrived in Italy, I slowly learned more Italian.  It didn’t help that our work language was English.  I did start reading Italian newspapers and books and speaking Italian where I could.  I spoke it to my barber and I think I bought my car using Italian.  One difficulty was at some office where I wasn’t getting across to the clerks.  One exclaimed, “Questi stranieri!” (“These foreigners”).  I understood her, but I don’t remember if I made any reply.

After two years in Italy, I requested and got a transfer to Sweden.  Again I bought a grammar book or two and started reading newspapers.  Newspapers are wonderful for learning foreign languages because of the names and events in the news and the large number of similar words.  By my second year in Sweden, I disappointed a small group I was to supervise by stating that we would speak Swedish.  My rationale was they had many chances to speak English, I had few for Swedish.  After a year, many of my colleagues said I spoke “flyttande Svenska” (fluent Swedish), even those who didn’t report to me.  On the other hand, there were many who disagreed.

When I came back to the States, I decided to take German at a community college.  I added a couple more semesters when I returned to Minnesota.  Darned if I can remember much of what I learned in class.

This same phenomenon happened when I took Russian long before I left for Europe.  I still had notions of getting a PhD, and one of the requirements was to have some familiarity with two foreign languages.  I took a year of Russian in summer school.  I did B or better work, but I didn’t enjoy it.  The basis for each lesson was a short conversation we were supposed to memorize and recite with a classmate.  I’ll never forget the first sentence of the first conversation: “Привет Нина! Куда ви идёте?”  “Hi, Nina!  Where are you going?”  I didn’t go back for a second year.  For awhile my Russian handwriting was better than my English handwriting.  I still do recognize many Russian characters, but I have made no real effort to study Russian anymore other than look at the headlines on some online Russian newspapers.

Over the years I’ve put a little bit of effort into learning some bits and pieces of Finnish, Ukrainian, Greek, Dutch, Icelandic, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Japanese.  I’ll finish this with my Japanese joke: “Watashi-wa nihongo-ga wakarimasen.”  I say it well enough that Japanese relatives laugh at the contradiction: “I don’t understand Japanese.”

If you’re over 50 and enjoy languages as much as Mel does, join him for “Jolly Polyglots” in the winter quarter of University for Seniors at UMD.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-08-28 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/28/3970_sprechen_vous_svenska

Capitalism and socialism - let's get our definitions straight

A survey polled people on how they felt about capitalism and socialism - positive or negative.  But did the pollsters give a definition of these two terms or ask respondents to give their own definitions?  I think not.

See "Is Rush Limbaugh's Country Gone?", Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times, 2012-11-19.

Capitalism is gathering  resources to do something, whether it's to start a neighborhood grocery or to start an airline.  Capitalism is not the buying and selling of stocks and schemes based on the stock; that is finance.  Finance can raise capital, but the secondary markets of that capital are not capitalism.

Socialism is the government providing all the resources to do something and controlling how those resources are used.  I don't think there is a country in the world where that happens for all projects.  Even China has private capital ventures.  Social welfare is the government providing various safety nets or investments that help people with needs that "capitalism" doesn't provide to everyone.  Most developed countries have capitalist economies supported by social welfare programs.

Think of LM Ericsson in Sweden, Nokia in Finland, Siemens in Germany, and FIAT in Italy.  These large capitalist companies aren't going away.  Well, maybe Nokia will go away but that's because of technology, not government interference.

And many of these social welfare programs depend on a large number of private organizations, large and small.  Germany has hundreds of insurance companies underpinning its health care.  England has thousands of physicians in private practice who provide government listed services.

What I find ironic is that proponents of "capitalism" don't understand how "socialism" makes "capitalism" work better.  If there weren't government-provided roads, sewers, schools, and yes, regulation there would be chaos.  Chaos is something capitalists do not need or want.  If there wasn't government-sponsored research, many new ideas would never even reached the capitalists who would implement them into products.  If there is a good public health care system, then corporations don't have to fund them directly at great inefficiency.  Wasn't it G. Richard Wagoner of General Motors who said that he wasn't an auto executive but a health care executive?  See "U.S. Firms Losing Health Care Battle, GM Chairman Says", Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, 2005-02-11.

Be careful how you define things.  If you define things incorrectly or too narrowly, you may miss out on many opportunities for a better society.

If corporations are persons, why aren't they taxed like persons?

The right wants to get rid of corporate taxes but wants corporation to be treated as persons with regards to "free speech" and political contributions.  If corporations are persons, why aren't they taxed like persons?  That is, their tax rates should be the same as individual tax rates. If an individual is taxed on worldwide income, shouldn't corporations be taxed on worldwide income?  Currently, they are only taxed on "repatriated" income.

I lived in Europe from 1968 to 1974.  I've long thrown away my tax returns for those years, and so I can't verify my memory.  I do know that I had to file U. S. income tax and pay any due amount after any foreign tax credit.  When I worked in Italy, the tax rate was lower than it was in the U.S.  And so, I had to pay to the U.S. Treasury the difference.  When I worked in Sweden, the tax rate was higher than it was in the U.S.  And so, I did not have to pay any money to the U.S. Treasury.

As an ex-pat employee of an international company, I did get reimbursed for the difference.  And I had to report that income on the next year's U.S. income tax forms.

So, if corporations are persons, shouldn't U.S. corporations pay U.S. taxes on all their net income?  With credit for foreign taxes, of course.

The Russians are coming! I wish most of them would go away.

In "Добро пожаловать в мой русский посетителей" I speculated that many of the Russian visits to this blog may be spammers looking for email addresses.  I may have gotten that partly right.

I read that "referral spam" has become quite common on blogs with small audiences.  The idea is that the little-guy bloggers, like me, are so eager for traffic that they check out some of the linking sites to see what has been written about them.  These sites can be pornography or other traps to suck in users.

Some of these sites are obvious and I couldn't figure out why they would be referring to my site.  Those I didn't even check. Russia is known as a large source of spam, but most of my email spam is Turkish or Japanese.  So I assume that most, if not all, the references to my blog from Russia are spam referrals.

I am certain that none of the Russian visitors know me; the few Russians I know have my email address or can get it from friends.  No Russian sent me email about my blog.

Gosh, I might say the same thing about French visitors.  The readers from France has gone from one or two a week to four or five a day.  None of my friends living in France have mentioned anything.  Claude, Christian, and Birahim, are you reading this?

I also had a recent spike in visits from Italy, but I had an explanation for that.  Our son was in Milan on business.  Thanks, son, for reading your father's ramblings.

Externalities - the market component forgotten by "free marketers"

A true free market is defined by many buyers and sellers, complete information to both buyer and seller, freedom of buyers and sellers to enter and leave the market, and no externalities.

In other words, ideal conditions that will never happen on any large scale in any functioning society.

Externalities are something that happen with almost all commercial transactions and are ignored at a society's peril.

I was thinking about externalities as I walked a short distance from where I parked my car to the post office. Rather than park twice, I parked in front of the liquor store and walked to the post office with my package. As I walked I thought about all the proposed post office closings.

Many of these closings will mean that many people will have to drive farther to a post office. The customer travel time is one cost of this change. Second, is the increased fuel usage. Third is a possible longer wait at the post office, more customer time. If we use more fuel, then the cost of gas can go up because of higher demand. If we keep using gasoline, we will need more oil. Because access to oil is considered a "national security issue", trigger-happy politicians would stump for yet another costly war. For want of a post office, a war was lost.

Sure, this is a far-fetched scenario, but a similar lack of looking at the bigger picture permeates our "free market" society. We shouldn't abandon a "market economy" because of its flaws, but we should at least recognize these flaws and their added costs.

Now, how many externalities are there in my driving to buy those heavy wine bottles shipped from Italy?

This won't happen in America

As I wandered the world via newspapers, I came across a Rubygate story in Le Monde, a French newspaper.

You may have heard about Rubygate, the charges against the Italian prime minister, Sergio Berlusconi.  He is accused of paying $10,000 to an underage belly dancer.  I'll let you dig out the details.

Back to Le Monde.  It had a video in the middle of all the French text of a "commercial" made for the new Italian women's group "Se non ora quando" ("If not now when").  Essentially, many Italian women are tired of being second-class citizens.  Sympathetic men welcome.  The video is in Italian, without subtitles or dubbing.  See "Le 'Rubygate' fait descendre les Italiennes dans la rue", Le Monde, 2011-02-09.   How often do you would you see this much in a foreign language in American newspapers?

Well, as of a few minutes ago, even the New York Times has not carried much news about the charges and nothing about the million women who have turned out around the world in support of Se non ora quando".  However, see "Ruby, un milione di donne nelle piazza urlano indignate: 'Se non ora, quando?'" Il Messaggero, 2011-02-13  ("Ruby, a million women in the squares shout indignantly, "If not now, when?")  The demonstrations are being held in over 230 Italian cities and 30 other cities.

The New York Times has nothing about "Se non ora quando" and nothing about the demonstration of 200-300 outside Ruby Tuesday's in New York.  I found out about his in Il Messaggero, "New York, la polizia ordina: 'Manifestate davanti al ristorante Ruby'"

Oh, I should point out that my headline didn't mean that thousands of women across the country wouldn't demonstrate for more dignity.  I meant that few, if any, American newspapers would report so much in a foreign languages.  Of course, few American papers report much foreign news beyond wars and politics.

Global warming and borders

The Swiss and Italians may be changing their borders slightly. Il Messaggero reported on March 18 that global warming is causing glaciers to retreat - "Erosione ghiacciai: Italia e Svizera verso la revisione dei confini"

The border problem is that it is defined by treaty as the demarcation of the watersheds. As the glaciers change so changes the flow of melt water to either side.

I've often said that borders are determined by armies rather than cultural or economic interests. Franco Narducci, who presented a draft law to the Italian Parliament, said, "Once armies determined borders; now experts determine borders." - my translation