Popcorn (non) innovation

Microwave: Popcorn setting
Bag of popcorn with instructions: Do not use popcorn setting on microwave.

More middling ruminations

The Financial Times had some interesting assertions which I would really like to see some data on but unfortunately the article lacks links to any of them:

In short, the middle-skilled jobs that once formed the ballast of the world’s wealthiest middle class are disappearing. They are being supplanted by relatively low-skilled (and low-paid) jobs that cannot be replaced either by new technology or by offshoring – such as home nursing and landscape gardening. Jobs are also being created for the highly skilled, notably in science, engineering and management.

By supplanted, I assume the author means that there is a literal hollowing out of the middle so if I were to plot a histogram of all occupations-wage combinations I would literally see twin peaks, which I have yet to see.

… According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 per cent. Some have moved from claiming unemployment benefits to disability benefits, and have thus permanently dropped out of the labour force.

Now here is something that I have often wondered about - does the unemployment rate fall over the course of the recovery because people are leaving the job market at a higher rate rather than the fact that there is greater job creation or an increase in the job finding rate?

Creativity, leadership and assholes

There were more assholes here than I have ever encountered in any single article.

Steve Jobs was a visionary, a brilliant innovator who reshaped entire industries by the force of his will, a genius at giving consumers not only what they wanted, but what they didn't yet know they wanted.

He was also a world-class asshole.

… middle managers and wannabe masters of the universe who are currently devouring the Steve Jobs biography and thinking to themselves: "See! Steve Jobs was an asshole and he was one of the most successful businessmen on the planet. Maybe if I become an even bigger asshole I'll be successful like Steve."

Running along similar lines MR summarizes some parallel research into teachers and assholes -- I mean teachers and creative students.

One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority (e.g., Bachtold, 1974; Cropley, 1992; Dettmer, 1981; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, 1963). The reason for teachers’ preferences is quite clear creative people tend to have traits that some have referred to as obnoxious (Torrance, 1963). Torrance (1963) described creative people as not having the time to be courteous, as refusing to take no for an answer, and as being negativistic and critical of others. Other characteristics, although not deserving the label obnoxious, nonetheless may not be those most highly valued in the classroom.

….Research has suggested that traits associated with creativity may not only be neglected, but actively punished (Myers & Torrance, 1961; Stone, 1980). Stone (1980) found that second graders who scored highest on tests of creativity were also those identified by their peers as engaging in the most misbehavior (e.g., “getting in trouble the most”). Given that research and theory (e.g., Harrington, Block, & Block, 1987) suggest that a supportive environment is important to the fostering of creativity, it is quite possible that teachers are (perhaps unwittingly) extinguishing creative behaviors.

Substitute creative with assholes and voila!

All creative people may be assholes but not all assholes are creative. Just because some assholes are creative doesn’t mean we should allow assholes to become bigger assholes or to foster a culture of assholism.

Comcast/Xfinity and Verizon

The other day a Comcast rep knocked and asked whether we’d be interested. They’re offering some specials which definitely beats the Verizon package we have. Given my past experience with Comcast I asked whether their “new” fiber optic lines would allow them to get a line into our house. Of course, he didn’t know. I really didn’t expect him to since he wasn’t the technician who had to do the job. The last time a tech came up he couldn’t find a cable tap.

It is unfortunate that I have to reconsider my attachment to Verizon. Certainly in the early stages of FIOS we have been extremely satisfied. Of late, we have been losing our Internet connection (though not our phone connection). The support on the phone has been great (with and without accents) and the only horrible thing about calling Verizon is the fact that I have to go through this inane robot who tries to diagnose the connection problem and comes up blank (every time!) and the only solution has been for them to reboot the system.

I once asked why it was such a recurring problem and I didn’t get a very clear answer - something about a maintenance software that runs on the weekends that didn’t finish its job. Well, that ain’t much of a maintenance program is it?

I’m tempted to have both carriers for redundancy - is that even possible? I tried Googling having two ISPs but drew a blank.

Technology and my discontents (again)

I had voiced them previously, but I can’t help voicing them again (a different set of compalints this time) because I succumbed to the lure of electronics again.

Got a 10-inch Samsung Galaxy tablet despite my not so positive experience with Android based devices. My conclusion has not changed. Those who claim that their tablet can replace their laptop for work tasks aren’t doing real work. Unfortunately, it was an expensive lesson for me and egads (!) I’m thinking that I should have gotten a multi-touch Kyros instead. (These weren’t out at the time.) On top of the $400 tablet, I blew another $100 on a bluetooth keyboard, a stylus, a folio case, HDMI connector, and a USB connector. The last 4 items were all included in the earlier version of the Kyros I got - all at $170. The one thing that the Samsung has going for it that the Kyros didn’t is the battery life and the camera. That Kyros version I had was also a resistive touch which was almost unbearable and no access to the Android market. It also ran Android 2.1 and the sound while it was pretty good is definitely not as good as on the Samsung.

So off I go to the app market. One app I wanted to try out was the Economist magazine’s Android app. With the latest Android on the tablet, I figured I could not go wrong. Wrong. The Economist app only works with …. drum roll, please, Android 2.1 (or 2.2 or 2.3). What’s going on here? No backward compatibility? Well, I can see the guys at Google think this is a great idea. Not. Or perhaps app production is so straightforward that the guys at the Economist should have just recompiled a new version under the new Android SDK. Whichever it may be this state of affairs is a step backward! App guys who can keep up with Android apps shouldn’t be in the business of producing apps. Platform guys who can’t ensure backward compatibility shouldn’t be producing platforms. Oh, wait I forgot - the guys at Google don’t get platforms.

On to my next new toy, a Dell Latitude laptop with Pentium i-5 chip which is not really my toy but rather one that is on temporary loan to me. What is up with the slow start up? Otherwise I was fairly impressed with the feel of the laptop. Our old Dell Desktop circa Pentium 4 looked and felt so cheap I had decided to ditch Dell. This laptop hasn’t quite induced me to go back to Dell.

But wait, it’s the new (almost 1 year old) HP that looks and feel so cheap that I’ve decided to ditch HP. The DVD player crapped out last weekend - refusing to read DVD+R disks but will read some CDs. I’m afraid to put a movie into it. I’m not sure if the problem is Windows or HP or the player. I tried un-installed and reinstalled the drivers but no dice.

Criticism of Jane Jacobs or big city approach of Jane Jacobs?

From an interview with Catherine Thumber:

You’re quite critical of some of the urban theorists and economists who’ve conceived of ways of revitalizing cities after the 1960s. Why?

They’ve made the metropolis the ideal urban form, when that had not always been the case. I lay much of the blame for that on Jane Jacobs—as much as I admire her—who framed the intellectual response to widespread urban decline, ignoring what she called “little cities and dull factory towns,” and arguing that urbanism thrives only in large and growing cities. She influenced the next two generations of urban theorists—people like Richard Florida and Ed Glaeser—who, while they don’t ignore smaller cities, advise them to do things like develop a creative class of artists, try to attract knowledge industries, and develop a tourist trade. These are not necessarily economic strategies that will work in smaller cities. As much as Scranton is a nice small city, it’s probably never going to have a substantial tourist trade. In the 1960s, there had been a debate between Jacobs and the social critic Lewis Mumford about different visions of urbanism. In the 1920s and 30s, Mumford argued against concentrating all of our wealth and cultural riches in large cities, and for valuing smaller cities as well, including the farmland and the ecological region in which they’re set. Jacobs basically won the debate, which is why we don’t really hear about Mumford’s vision.

A summary of her arguments are here.

There are no shovel ready jobs

Not even in the government. In a recession when it seems that data gathering is more important than usual to gauge the extent and depth of the crisis, even the government statistical agencies are unable to take on these tasks that could add jobs in the way that a census year usually adds temporary jobs to the census workforce:

From Remapping Debate (emphasis mine):
In the last several months, the U.S. economy has added several hundred thousand jobs, sparking optimism among some observers that the labor market has finally started to recover in earnest. There is substantial debate, however, over whether the jobs being added are “good jobs” — those that pay a high-wage and offer job security and benefits to workers — or “bad jobs,” which don’t. There is some, mostly anecdotal, data suggesting that the jobs being created in certain industries pay less than the pre-recession jobs, but, oddly, the federal government simply does not collect sufficiently robust information to determine how the wages and benefits of new hires differ from the wages of existing employees in the same occupation.

That basic lack of data has perplexed some labor economists and policy advocates, who see such information as a crucial part of understanding the current labor market. It is true that the information would not be definitive: the existence of a newly hired employee does not necessarily mean that a new job has been created, because “new hires” would show up regardless of whether the position was actually new (if an employer fires one employee and hires another for the same job — a process known as “churn” — the new employee is a new hire, but the job is not new). Nevertheless, being able to track the wages of new hires relative to existing workers would be a valuable contribution to an understanding of the pressures facing workers and the state of the labor market as a whole, several labor economists said.
…
If the data on the wages of new hires existed and were easily accessible, many labor economists said that there were a wide variety of useful applications for it, which could end up influencing policy decisions for the better.

John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a beltway think tank, agreed. “In the best of all possible worlds our policy decisions would be informed by the data,” he said. “When we don’t have the data, we’re forced to make decisions on incomplete information, which often encourages decisions to be made based on political connections and in backroom deals.”
…
There are some practical obstacles to obtaining data on the wages of new hires at the occupational level, but economists agree that the BLS could collect that information in several different ways. The most practical vehicle, according to Kosanovich, would likely be the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is a monthly survey of households on a range of topics.

The CPS currently asks about job tenure in a biennial supplemental survey usually conducted in January. And though some industry-wide information on the wages of new hires can be gleaned from these data, Kosanovich explained that the survey size is too small to provide accurate information at the level of detailed occupations. To address that problem, questions about job tenure would need to be asked more often, or asked of more households, or both.

And according to George Long, a BLS economist with the National Compensation Survey, the obstacles to collecting the data are “more institutional than practical.”

“If we don’t provide certain information,” Long said, “it is because Congress has decided that it does not need that information on a regular basis.” Moreover, Long explained, every change that the BLS makes to its surveys must first be cleared with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as part of a 1980 law called the Paperwork Reduction Act. “The OMB is particularly concerned with ‘respondent burden,’” Long said. “They really don’t want us to ask more questions than we are required to by law.”