Computers under the control of magicians

How many of you are old enough to remember:
“The computer for the rest of us” and
“1984 will not be like 1984”

These were two of the slogans that Apple used in 1984 when it introduced the Mac.  I loved it with its WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pictures).  Almost everything you needed to know was on the screen.

Many Mac users of that time were eager for the newest operating system or newest Mac: hard drives, multi-tasking, color.

I can’t pinpoint when it all changed, but I stopped looking forward to the latest operating system.  Features that worked fine on OS P were a nightmare on OS Q.  It seemed that the gratuitous changes were made only to keep programmers employed.  Or that a new set of programmers had to do it their way no matter what most long-time customers wanted.

This has been one of those bad years for me.

Sometime in March or April, Apple made a minor update.  It did not seem like a big deal and I installed it.  I found out much to my chagrin that my Epson WF-3640 would no longer accept paper from anything but Tray 2.  I thought the machine didn’t work and exchanged it with Best Buy on a warranty.  The second one did the same thing.

After a couple of calls to Epson I learned that Apple had changed the print dialog to all the information the user needed from being on the screen to being buried under certain choices.  Once I had that info, I could print from whatever tray I chose.

Then Apple provided a gratuitous “EPSON Printer Software Update, Version 3.3”.  I downloaded and installed it.  Now my printer didn’t work at all!

A third person at Epson said it was my cable.  Well, as I talked to him, I did have my external hard drive connected, not the printer.  But when I was off the phone and had the proper connection, it still didn’t work.

I next tried the the friendly folks at Geek Squad.  I described the basic problem and they were ready to set me up with a Geek Squad account.  Each time I got near the bottom of the payment window it would disappear.  What were they ready to blame: my browser (Safari).  What?  There are dozens of payment windows that work just find with Safari.

I had to go elsewhere and excused myself.

Today, I despaired and went to Best Buy to buy another cable.  i also bought a couple of thumb drives to replace those that I “crashed” by taking them out of the USB slot before closing them.  Another story for another day maybe.

I plugged my new cable into my MacBook and into the printer.  Nothing happened.  I couldn’t print.

I didn’t keep track of the buttons I pushed on the printer and the computer, but the results varied widely as to what happened.  Eventually my Mac and my Epson printer connected properly with one another.  I really don’t want to be a scientist who keeps meticulous notes on every step and every observation.  After all, the Mac is the computer for the rest of us.  And after 58 years being involved with computers (from punched cards to rooms full of tape drives) I just want to be an ordinary user.

Then I exchanged the new cable for the old cable.  Everything worked as it should.

As a senior wailed in the computer lab when I was a graduate assistant, “That isn’t what I meant!


Playing the right game with North Korea

Maybe the best solution is to send a Korean-speaking envoy who plays jang-gi (a strategy board game). Such an envoy could probably get a better dialogue going with Kim Jong-un in a week than a year of huffing and puffing from Washington. Many in Washington would think this a fool's errand, but I think George Washington would definitely approve (see "Farewell Address", https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf).

Comment to “Kim Jong-un is not a freakish buffoon”, David C. Kang, New York Times, 2017-07-05
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/opinion/kim-jong-un-north-korea-sanctions.html?comments#permid=23152988

What is the reaction when NPR tweets the “Declaration of Independence”?

You will have to read “NPR’s tweets expose a thin grasp of American history?”  See “NewsCut: MPR News Reflections and observations on the news”: http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2017/07/self-evident-truths-our-thin-grasp-of-history/2017-07-01.

It does make me proud to be an MPR member.

Modern medical care precludes a “free market”

One of the latest to call for a free market in health care is Bert Stephens, one of the New York Times “conservative” columnists.  His latest column, “A Price for the G.O.P.’s Health Care Insanity”. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/opinion/congress-health-savings-accounts.html  He takes on Obama for creating the mess and the Republicans for making matters worse with their “fixes”.

He blames it as the “third party problem”; the consumer of health care does not shop around for the best deal but depends on an insurance company to pay the bills.

There may still be a free market in dentistry, but there cannot be a free market in health care.  Why?  What is one of the criteria for a “free market”: many sellers.  We have long ago lost many of our independent doctors: they are mostly in large clinic/hospital complexes.

In Duluth, Minnesota, we have two choices: Essentia Health or St. Luke’s.  It may still be that if you have company-provided health insurance, then your only choice may be a given clinic.  I know that we have switched clinics when we switched jobs.

Oh, sure, if we can’t get into one of these clinics or decide an out-of-town clinic is a better choice, we can drive a few hours or stay overnight to visit other clinics.  My wife couldn’t get into a dermatologist in Duluth and so drove to the Twin Cities.  We have had several friends who have stayed in Rochester to use the services of the Mayo Clinic.

There are certain specialties that are available outside the clinics, such as eye care.

A clinic may give you a choice of doctors, but you are often limited to those who have current openings in their schedule.  If your doctor leaves the clinic, the clinic may assign you to the next available doctor  I don’t remember if I chose my first cardiologist, but I know I was assigned to another when my then current cardiologist went elsewhere.  When my cardiologist decided that I needed heart surgery, I was assigned all the subsequent surgeons.

Another consideration is our knowledge of the available doctors.  Do we know who is available?  Do we know their credentials and reputations?  A free market includes having all the information to make a decision.  Very few of us will take the time to get the information, or, if we get it, have enough knowledge to make a decision.

Free Healthcare for politicians

I left this comment on “The Blood on the Tax Cuts”, Timothy Egan, New York Times, 2017-06-30.  As of this posting, it had not been accepted.

They don't care about this plan because they get free, unlimited care at Walter Reed Hospital. And the President gets his free, annual check-up by an Admiral or a General.

Quote of the Day: Ideas vs. Ideologies

“What unifies [a large social movement] is ideas, not ideologies.  There is a difference between the two; ideas question and liberate, while ideologies justify and dictate.” - Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming: Paul Hawken, ©2007

Unfortunately, we seem to have politicians who have ideologies rather than ideas.  A great deliberative body cannot have ideologies.  How can one deliberate when one has fixed ideas and doesn’t want to be confused with the facts.

Wasn’t it Pete Seeger who sang about the best politicians money can buy and that we elect them again and again.  Not quite: “What did you learn in school today" has “elect them again and again” but not “money can buy”. See http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Pete_Seeger:What_Did_You_Learn_In_School_Today%3F.  It was Morey Amsterdam who said, "Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.”  See http://likesuccess.com/topics/3033/finest.

http://www.blessedunrest.com/ hasn’t been updated since 2008.  However, see http://www.paulhawken.com for current updates about his activities.  The homepage features his latest book: Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.  Maybe I’ll read it when I finish Blessed Unrest.

Abraham Lincoln would have been a loser

I've never understood why people who don't give a dime or time to a political party get to choose the party candidates. Good thing we didn't have television or party primaries when Abe Lincoln was nominated by his party to run for president.

See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/opinion/sunday/the-problem-with-participatory-democracy-is-the-participants.html.

Quote of the day: Chess vs. Tic-Tac-Toe

"The Chinese are playing chess, while Trump is still trying to master the rules of tic-tac-toe."
Comment from MGB to https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/opinion/trump-china-asia-pacific-trade-tpp.html

Other comments include Trump claiming to be a master negotiator even as he loses on many deals.

At least P.T. Barnum gave his “suckers” something for their money.  All we get from Trump are “yuge” promises, like Trump Care being far better than Obama Care.

Getting sick is only for the rich or the well-insured

See my post "Modern Medicine and Let Them Eat Cake Politicians" about the cost for the medical personnel for my open-heart surgery. It was  $20,280.50 of which I had an out-ot-pocket expense of $50.50.

This week I received the statement for the hospital stay and some of the rehabilitation.  It was $131,088.04.  Insurance paid all but $600 of it.

Without this insurance, somebody earning $9/hour would have to work over 14,565 hours or 1,821 days or 364 weeks or seven years.  On the other hand, Marissa Mayers earned $900,000 per week as she sold off Yahoo!  She could have paid the costs of five open-heart surgeries each week and still have had $150,000/week left over.

I’ll let you judge how a medical bill like this would affect your own finances.  My guess is that without insurance, many of you would have to take out an extended mortgage on your house or sell it out-right.

Heart disease only affects one family.  Consider what would happen if someone who had a communicable fatal disease didn’t get treated because the family could not afford the necessary care.  It has happened down through the centuries and still happens around the world.

It’s around here someplace

This was a saying in my wife’s family about lost objects, and we still use it.

In April I went to our cabin by myself.  I unlocked the cable across the drive and hung the lock from my pants pocket.  I forgot all about it until I was ready to leave.  I couldn’t find it.

I looked every where I had been.  In the the car, in the cabin, in the grass on all the paths I had been on.  Nada!  So, I used a lock from one of the sheds.

Each time I’ve visited since then I’ve taken another look.

I had resigned my self to buying another lock, but just hadn’t been to my favorite hardware store.  When I did, I would have to send a new key to the guy that plows our drive.

I was mowing the grass near the road yesterday and a neighbor stopped to chat.  After several minutes my wife came to investigate why she didn’t hear the trimmer.  As she came near the cable post she exclaimed “Mel!”  I wondered if she had fallen.

No, she had found the missing lock.  It was partially buried where I had run over it after it had fallen off my pocket.  Several passes over it with the car had buried even more.  She was attracted to it because the hasp did not look like any natural object.

The lock was full  of soil and sand.  We had to soak it and swish it in water several times.  By the time we were ready to leave, we could open and close the lock without a problem.

Sometimes he who hesitates finds stuff, around here someplace.

Health care for corrupt governments?

Why is it the Republicans want to cut back on health care for their own citizens but feel it is important to spend billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to care for corrupt governments?

Pro-lifers are anti-safety?!?

How is it that the party that puts such emphasis on being pro-life wants to gut safety regulations because the latter are anti-business?

Safety regulations reduce worker injuries and deaths.  How can a pro-life party be so anti-life once a child is born?  It figures.   It doesn't want to provide health care for the already born.  It doesn't want to put any restrictions on gun control; guns are very anti-life.  It wants to sell more and more weapons to other countries.  It wants to increase the nuclear arsenal; nuclear weapons kill thousands of unborn children.

I think many of these pro-life politicians took the hypocrite oath: first do harm.

Global warming caused by warming oceans?!?

A recent argument I’ve seen is that it is not carbon dioxide that is causing global warming but warmer oceans.  See http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/23/rick-perry-got-tongue-lashing-from-american-meteorological-society-did-deserve-it.html.

Although the author, Roy Spencer, is a meteorologist, I question his attacking climate scientists for using global warming to get funding.  Spencer defends Energy Secretary Rick Perry for stating that the “control knob is the ocean waters and this environment we live in."

Ocean waters are responsible for global warming?  How do ocean waters get warmer?  Increased under-ocean volcanic activity?  Hotter sun?  Or maybe it is hotter air, caused by carbon dioxide not letting warmer air dissipate!

Could it be that Rick Perry has ties to oil companies?  See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/perry-oil-industry-energy-department/.

Note also that Spencer is a meteorologist, not a a climatologist.

Quote of the day: Why vote?

"Hillary Clinton didn’t inspire anyone. Why the hell stand in line if it’s just to vote for more of the same?"
- Unnamed union official
"Can the Democratic Party Find New Voters?", Timothy B. Edsall, New York Times, 2017-06-15

The only reason I voted for Clinton was that she was not Trump.  I can name several female politicians I would rather have seen on the ballot.  Maybe we'll see one of them on the presidential ballot in 2020.

Terrorists in haystacks

“Terrorists do not wear a special uniform.. They are like other people, like other youths. They are not easy to recognize. Sometimes, finding a terrorist in the 14 million population of Tehran is like finding a needle — not in a haystack, but in 10 haystacks.”
Mahmoud Alavi, Iranian intelligence minister
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/11/world/middleeast/iran-kurds-terrorist-attacks.html

The Shia and Sunni differences have are similar to the Protestant/Catholic differences of Northern Ireland.  However, some Iranians take a more tolerant view of extremists.  For example, Jalal Jalalisadeh, a former member of the Iranian from Kurdistan takes a stance that many around the world could emulate.  Salafis are an ultra-conservative group in parts of Iran. “They were peaceful. As long as the Salafi groups are not taking arms, they must be tolerated,” ibid.

"A child killed in a bombing while eating ice cream in Baghdad is the same as child killed in a bombing while attending a pop concert in Manchester.”
Shasta Aziz, Globe and Mail, 2017-06-05
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/countering-extremism-requires-political-honesty-from-theresa-may/article35204868

Do not call terrorists Muslim or Islamic.  They are no more "Muslim" than the Ku Klux Klan is “Christian”

Hypocritic oath and an ignored reading

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

U.S. Constitution, Article VI

Somehow, we have a Congress that gave an oath to the Koch brothers and made sure they passed the religious anti-tax test of Grover Norquist.

Every year the Senate has a public reading of George Washington’s “Farewell Address” and the next day they ignore what he wrote.  Maybe many of them stayed away during the reading or slept through it.

"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.  Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it?  Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

"In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim."

Who has the U.S. become beholden to either as a friend or as an enemy: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, North Korea, Cuba .

Modern Medicine and Let Them Eat Cake Politicians

I finally received a bill for my open heart surgery in April.  See I’m back!

The bill for the initial surgeon’s visit and the operation is $20,280.50.  The five days of hospital stay are not included.  My bill for three-plus hours of surgery after Medicare and supplemental insurance: $50.50!!

What I pay monthly for insurance is $178.90 for Medicare and supplemental insurance plus $83.70 for prescription drugs.  This is deducted from my Social Security.  My wife pays the same amount.

According to https://resources.ehealthinsurance.com/affordable-care-act/much-health-insurance-cost-without-subsidy, individual coverage averaged $321 per month and family plans averaged $833.  The annual deductibles were $4,358 and $7,983.

To pay the individual deductible, a person would have save about $84/week or two dollars an hour.  For the premiums, a person would have to save about $74/week.  Together that is $158/week or $3.95/hour.  At a minimum wage of $9/hour, that doesn’t leave much for food and rent.  Without insurance, a year’s wage of $9/hour would not even cover the above bill.

And lots of politicians and millionaires think these individuals should be happy with what they get.  I don’t wish Marie Antoinette’s fate on these “let them eat cake” thinkers, but someday there will be a widespread realization that the people at the bottom of the economic are being taken advantage of.  Let’s hope they find better “champions” than Donald Trump and his ilk.

Muslims Do Speak Out

I was listening to Swedish Radio’s weekly news podcast, “Good Morning World” when I heard a piece on “Arabs got talent” (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=438&artikel=6700503). It has 100 million viewers, a figure many programs can only dream of.

I thought it strange that I had never heard about it.  Searching the New York Times, I found a recent article that mentioned “Arabs Got Talent”, only because a network official involved in an anti-ISIS program is a “Talent” judge.

The NYT article mentions a series “Black Crows”, a dramatization of some of the atrocities committed by ISIS.  It will be broadcast during Ramadan.  Many families will spend more time watching TV than usual.   Ramadan (in the U.S.) begins begins the evening to 26 May and ends the evening of 24 June.  During this time Muslims fast during daylight hours.

See "Arab TV Dramatizes Life under Isis", Ben Hubbard, New York Times, 2017-05-16,

The only other reference in the New York Times to "Arabs Got Talent” was about an American, Jennifer Grout, who plays the oud (an Arab lute) and has learned many Arabic songs.  At the time she didn’t understand much Arabic, but according to https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/09/195954/jennifer-grout-replies-criticize-moroccan-husband/ she now speaks fluent Arabic

A few other sources for Arabic news are

http://www.aljazeera.com/
www.dailystar.com.lb
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/

Interestingly, from Morocco World News I found out about a women-led mosque in California.

Muslims do speak out; are you listening?

Deliberate deception from “The Greatest Deliberative Body”

Speak up about the usurpation of legislation by the few.  See “It’s Time to Worry about Health Care in the Senate”, David Leonhard, New York Times, 2017-05-23.

My own letter to HealthReform@finance.senate.gov was

Just over two months ago, the Senate "listened" to Washington's "Farewell Address".  Have you already forgotten his warning about factions?

The Senate has been called "the world's greatest deliberative body".  It has now become the deliberate mouthpiece of the Koch brothers and their ilk.

Be sure to send a copy of your email to your own senators, regardless of their party.

Does the Senate really believe Washington's Farewell Address?

I posted the following to “Will the Presidency Survive This President”, Eric Posner and Emily Bazelon, New York Times, 2017-05-20

Dear Reader,

Every year on Washington's Birthday, the Senate has one of its members read George Washington's "Farewell Address".  You can find a copy at https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/WashFarewell.pdf.

Your homework assignment is to read George Washington's "Farewell Address" and send both your Senators a quote that you feel is appropriate to current events.

You probably can find many quotes that support what the Senate is doing and that chastise them for not following the advice Washington gave.

Two that stand out for me are his warning about factions and the danger of foreign entanglements, both with friend and foe.