Thoughts – Page 3 – Dennis C Merritt

White Privilege & Property Taxes

The action item on most of what I read about white privilege is to “be aware.” OK. But then what?

The institution that most effectively continues to support white privilege is our public school system and the way it is funded. By property taxes.

This has two effects. One, it means people pick where they live based on the school district, thus creating de facto segregation by economic class. Two, it means kids in the poorer neighborhoods get inferior education.

Here’s my story. Back around 1969 my wife, son and I moved to a racially mixed, working class neighborhood around Boston. Our son was in a nursery school where he was one of only two white kids.

We were happy with the schools, with the staff, we were happy with our neighbors, we were happy with our neighborhood.

Then it came time for him to enroll in the public school. We learned it had the highest rate of heroin addition in the state. In the sixth grade. Sixth grade. Heroin.

And thus we became part of white flight. Moved to a white suburb we didn’t particularly fit in with. But it had good schools.

Had schools been funded on the state level instead…

Kavanaugh, EPA, Authoritarian Presidents

I was reading about the devastating effect Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh could have on the environment. He is against the EPA policies enacted to fight global warming under the Obama administration. At first glance this seems bad to an environmentalist like myself, but when I read his reasoning I understood that he was exposing the whole problem with American politics today. This one example illustrates exactly why we are moving towards an authoritarian state.

Kavanaugh’s reasoning was that the EPA had over stepped it’s bounds, and that the courts shouldn’t approve, or disapprove, the EPA’s decisions without any guidance from Congress.

First, review how it’s supposed to work. Congress makes the laws of the land, the President enforces those laws (does not make them), and the Court decides whether the laws fit within the Constitution and legal framework of our country.

So Obama got elected (he promised change from business-as-usual politics) and part of his charter was to fight global warming. He went to Congress asking for laws to help slow down carbon emissions. But Congress wouldn’t do it. So what was he to do?

He used his power to go to the EPA, which reports to him, and asked them to put in place policies to reduce carbon emissions, which they did.

Well this made him a hero to all the environmentalists who were happy to have a strong executive willing to make things happen, bypassing our dysfunctional Congress.

It also made him the enemy of those whose livelihoods depended on oil and gas.

The strength of Obama as President made him the hero of the left, but the fact that he could use his power like that made the right hate him. They felt had, that Obama had bypassed the normal political process to ram environmental regulations down corporate throats. So they gave a lot of money to the next campaign.

Trump got elected (he promised change from business-as-usual politics) and part of what he promised was to stimulate economic growth by loosening the environmental constraints on oil and gas companies. (It is too easy to slam this as all corporate greed. What is often not pointed out is that a large number of normal people are employed by the oil and gas companies, and many others indirectly benefit, such as truck drivers, the people working at the corner gas station and Northerners heating their homes in winter.)

He wanted Congress to act. But guess what? They didn’t.

So he used his power to go to the EPA, which reports to him, and asked them to abandon regulations on emissions and open up more public lands for drilling.

This made him a hero to all the leaders and followers of corporate America. And an enemy of anyone who cares about the climate and the planet we live on.

So again, authoritarian moves by the President are loved by all those who agree with his/her agenda, who are glad to see the circumvention of Congress to get something done, and hated by those who see an authoritarian figure bypassing the proper legislative channels.

So is it legal for the president to use his/her power like that? Well that’s often sent up to the Supreme Court to decide. And the politics of the issue, such as EPA climate change regulations, often overshadows the general legality which is really all the Court should be considering. If the courts don’t support the EPA actions, does that mean the courts don’t support the issue, be it emission controls or expanded drilling? Or that they don’t support the way the issue was handled?

You can expect the Supreme Court nominee to be grilled on opinions on climate change, when in reality, that should never be what’s on the Court’s mind. That’s not their job. Whether regulations were done within the framework of our Constitution is what the Court should be concerned with.

The only reason it’s not is because Congress doesn’t do its job. If Congress passed laws regarding global warming and oil and gas exploration, then the President wouldn’t have to go around Congress, and the Supreme Court wouldn’t have to decide on the most contentious issues of the day.

If Congress did its job, senators and representatives from different states, with different priorities would work together to come up with legislation that balanced the needs for environmental protection with the need for corporate growth.

If Congress would do it’s job, the people wouldn’t be so frustrated with the government, and wouldn’t elect presidents who they expect to act in authoritarian ways to get things done.

If Congress was doing it’s job, the political fights would all be at the state and local level as people elected those to represent them in Congress. There wouldn’t be one winner-take-all battle for the presidency.

But Congress isn’t, and the populace is going to keep leaning towards more and more authoritarian leaders. And you can be sure, those leaders are going to do everything in their power to solidify their hold on government, like make sure they get Supreme Court justices that won’t overturn their actions.

Black Panther & Obama

In my lifetime I’ve seen the polite word for people of African descent go from “colored” to “negro” to “black” to “African American.”

I have a real problem with the last one. There is culturally a huge difference between an individual whose ancestors were brought over in slave ships 200 years ago, and someone who has recently entered the country from Africa.

The descendents of slaves, the people we commonly refer to as blacks, have grown up with all of the history of racism in this country, with what their parents lived through, and their grandparents, and… They will have a cultural attitude that reflects that background. And that attitude will include an edginess about racial relations brought on by that history, as well as the current climate in the country.

By contrast, someone who grew up in Africa, or is a second generation immigrant, does not have that family history. Does not have that edginess. Such a person comes to this country with the same optimism as any immigrant group–Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Asian…

Such a person has grown up in a country where, as Richard Pryor once described, the drunk is black, the shopkeeper is black, the policeman is black, the crook is black, the judge is black, the mayor is black…

I have known a few Africans in my life, and there is nothing about their attitude, their composure, their view of life that fits into a stereotypical view of American Blacks. There has been a freshness to them, a sereneness, a can-do attitude. They have that optimistic America-is-a-land-of-opportunity attitude that immigrants often have.

It’s said Obama was our first black president. I don’t think that’s quite accurate. He is of Kenyan descent, a second generation immigrant. He didn’t exhibit any of the edginess that exists between American Blacks and Whites. He was able to look at issues of racism from a more detached, intellectual place. A more innocent and idealistic, less threatening place.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe using the term African American to unify the image of American Blacks with their ancestors is brilliant, and the best way to get both Blacks and Whites in this country to finally let our racial history slip into the past.

African Life & Technology

I’m from America. Over the last year or so I’ve been discussing technological innovation in Africa with Abel Viageiro of Mozambique. (Read his blog at www.abelviageiro.com.)

Key to these discussions is an understanding of what is different, and what is the same between situations in Africa and in the Western world. Understanding that is critical for understanding which technologies might work, and which won’t.

This short exchange with Abel introduces some of the fundamental differences between African society and ours that affect the impact of various technologies.

After reading an article in National Geographic, I asked this of Abel:

“I have such difficulties with understanding Africa. There’s a picture in the latest National Geographic of “subsistance fishermen” on the shores of Lake Tankanyika. The article talks of the poverty, but yet, the people look well fed, and have decent clothing. Not like pictures of people living through a famine. Are they desperate people? Or happy? Are their basic needs met? Do they really need all the stuff of modern life? It’s hard to get a grasp from here, I’m guessing it’s different in different places, and different for different individuals.”

Abel, who often explains the relationship between African reality and technical possibilities made these comments:

Quite interesting…

Subsistance Fishermen

The “subsistance fishermen” do have income …. they are productive people … when you do have income in Africa ….you have more probability of finding a partner and supporting a larger family, which can provide support in old age – in rural or impoverished settings

Income doesn’t come just from “regular job as you know it from the western world” — some have “assets, land, cattle, remittances – which set them apart from their peers —

For “subsistance fishermen” – some have boats, others work for those who own the fishing boat – at the end of the day they have a “some income” – on a day-to-day basis, irregular or erratic – but it is some kind of income that makes a difference in their lives.

Desperate People? Happy?

Desperate, No. it is hard life, but it is human nature – to feel “like worth doing something” to contribute to society — fishing for them – is a way to bring protein, food, fish to their community – they probably feel proud and respected – for they feel their community depends on their hard work, effort and sacrifice at sea …

Happy? It depends – happiness is relative — and momentaneous. The gap between one’s reference point and one’s perceived reality determines happiness

Basic Needs

Are their basic needs met? => Well, that is where the challenge is …

They can go to sea, work hard, make some money — (actually little money a day) — but their basic needs can not be met effectively because “the Government and Western donors and system have set the rules of the game.”

To the greatest extent, all services are based on Western models. This includes water services, sanitation services, energy services, health services, and transportation services.

Where This Fails

The “subsistance fishermen,” for example, don’t have monthly salaries. They earn on a day-to-day basis – and yet billing for water services is based on the Western “monthly, quarterly, early bill pay” system.

Worse, even if they set aside the money to pay the bill – Government controlled or delegated management by companies belonging to elite or westerners – multi-national companies – fail to even deliver high quality water services to the poor, both rural and urban.

Why? Because they try to run a large water supply and distribution network – in the same manner like back 150 years ago.

Accessories are still produced the old way – not leveraging on 3D printing, for example …..

There is no online monitoring, intelligent monitoring & control, quality testing, hydraulic models, information systems…

Western Mentality

Saying that these advanced technologies are needed is often criticized with the statement it is necessary to “walk before you run.”

I disagree, and see an opportunity for massive technological leapfrogging.

To pretend you can just lay pipes in the ground, connect a pump and fittings, and connect clients at service connections points – and there you have the water grids extended to serve the “subsistance fishermen” community simply doesn’t work.

This is what is being done and the result is ….no effective supply and demand management — and payments not appropriate for the “subsistance fishermen” community.

They would be better served by “shorter billing cycles and smaller payments towards bill – and water running all day – “a remote controled, connect valves- with sensor based metering or “sensor data fusion or smart metering” – would do the job for – consumer monitoring usage and payments – saving water, etc

Stuff

What stuff you mean?

TV – Yes they probably need – after all that a way you can get informed, and source of life long learning these days —

Radio – yes, they probably need – that is way to get informed in local languages – radio is cheaper

An electric kettle THAT can help heat their water faster. Yes, they need that one too — they can use wood or charcoal – smoky

A third of all premature deaths were the result of using smoky fuels such as wood and coal for heating homes or cooking and using dirty diesel generators for electricity, all well-known hazards.

The WHO ranks the problem as one of the worst health risks facing the poor. In low-income countries, such as those in Africa and Asia, indoor smoke from cooking has become the sixth biggest killer. Between now and 2020, the adoption of new, low-emission advanced biomass stove technologies, or a mix of clean fuel and biomass stoves, could avert 600,000 child pneumonia deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, said the WHO

“Just hard to get a grasp from here, I’m guessing it’s different in different places, and different for different individuals.”

It’s simple. To say “walk before one runs” is to say Africa should aspire to be where America was, say 100 years ago.

Time has changed, globalization is a reality – there is no point in claiming that “Africa is better off living the way the American or European rich people lived back 100 years ago…

No running water, no toilet that uses water for flushing (off-side sanitation or clean toilets)

America as it was 100 years ago, when technology was meager, financial ruin was one downturn away, war was ongoing in Europe, and the choices that Americans have come to expect—in their cars, clothes, food, and homes—were preceded by a monotonous consumer economy. In 1915, Americans walked everywhere (or took a streetcar, if they lived in cities), lived in three-generation homes that they rarely owned, ate almost as much lard as chicken, and spent Friday nights dancing to player pianos. In short: Everything was worse, except for the commute.

I would ask the same question for America 100 years ago: Were they desperate people? Or happy? were their basic needs met? Did they really need all the stuff of modern life?

Africa Today

What happens is that the riches of natural resources of Africa, capitalism, multi-national, NGOs, have pushed a lot of Africans into the sitution of “elderly Americans 100 years ago” – at adult age or very young age

For the elderly in America 100 years ago: For those who did make it to old age (something of a feat back then), Social Security didn’t exist, and in bad times, poverty among the old was so bad that contemporaries wrote of growing old as if it were a dystopia—the “haunting fear in the winter of life.” In 1938 a writer with the American Association for Old-Age Security said “our modern system of industrial production has rendered our lives insecure to the point of despair.” The industrializing economy was no country for old men or women. As families moved off farms into cities and suburbs, it became harder for some old people to find work in factories, which ran on limber sinews and sweat.

A Better Approach

==> To change that scenario for Africa “massive technological leapfrogging and technological empowerment has to happen”

Digitization of key sectors: Water, Sanitation, health, energy, agriculture, transportation & logistics, m-commerce ….

But few understand what I am thriving for, except you ..that helped me visualize http://www.abelviageiro.com/intelligent-water-for-developing-countries /

Hope I have shed some light on my perpective – though biased to my own stubborness – on “high tech, hybrid AI SYNDROME” AND DREAMING MENTALITY…

But I SEE no viable future without “massive technological leapfrogging” to solve the basic biggest problems!

Democrats Better?

Let me say up front that I despise everything about the way Trump is running his presidency, and most vehemently how he divides the country. Even more than him, though, is the contempt I have for the Republicans in Congress who back him up.

But was it better when the Democrats had the White House and Congress?

Let’s look at the signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Obama said he was in favor of nationalized health care for all.

Congress said, that’s not the way we roll.

Here’s the main issue, if you want to subsidize health care for some portion of the population, then some other portion of the population has to bear the cost. This is a very reasonable issue to debate, who benefits, and who pays.

One way is to fairly distribute the costs over everybody, like with Social Security, or Medicare. A tax pays for health care for all. But that’s not what they did.

The cost falls on companies, most painful for the small ones, and self-employed healthy individuals, mostly in the building trades maybe? Just think about that for a second. Who are those people? Well, most likely they’re Republicans. Great! Get Republicans to pay for it!

Who benefits? Low income people without jobs that cover them. Who are those people? Well betcha that’s mostly Democrats. Yay!

So instead of national health, that’s what they did. And guess what. The people paying for it were bullshit. It totally divided the country. And the corporations brought all their money to bear to fight it. And recruited all the angry young men who were suddenly asked to subsidize health care. And we got Trump. And a Republican Congress.

I’d really love to see some way to break up our two party system, or, maybe more practically, get enough people behind Bernie’s agenda, which is to forget the Democrat vs. Republican thing, go Independent, and campaign on two issues — universal health care and free college education. Issues that would benefit people on all sides of the political spectrum.

Beauty as a Curse

Bob was an engineer at the first company I worked for. He had cerebral palsy. If you ever made cruel jokes as a kid trying to imitate such a person, well that’s what Bob was like. He walked with a shuffle, his hands were contorted and not that well controlled, he drooled a bit, and his speech was stuttering and slurred. But, as I’ve been told is common, he was smart.

When you first encountered Bob, if you had never worked with such a person before, it was uncomfortable. For about five minutes. Very quickly you learned to understand his speech, grasp the content, realize you’re dealing with an engineer about engineering things, and his whole physical handicap disappeared. I mean it was there, but no longer commanded attention.

Nobody had a problem with Bob, he was just one of the engineers.

One day our group hired Kathy. She was a programmer with a master’s degree in mathematics, and an instrument pilot. A bright, talented woman. She was also fashion model beautiful.

The men at the company simply couldn’t deal with her. Unlike with Bob, many of the typical male engineers never got comfortable talking with Kathy. They couldn’t get over being in the presence of her beauty. Guys would detour past our offices on the way to coffee, just to get a look.

There was a phone network set up and when Kathy showed up to work in her sports car, word quickly spread and many ran over to the side of the building with windows to watch her get out of her car.

It wasn’t just that she was a woman. There were other women at the lab and they got along OK, but they were, well, ordinary looking people. Kathy’s physical beauty was more of a handicap than Bob’s cerebral palsy.

Movie Twists — The Good, The Bad

There’s an art to making a movie or TV show with a twist, a surprise ending.

Consider the movies Sixth Sense and Body Heat. When you learn the twist at the end, it’s AH-HA! Your mind races through the scenes in the movie as you realize one, and then the next, all have dual interpretations. What you thought was one way, was really the other.

That’s why she never acknowledged him at the restaurant! That’s why such a classy lady was drawn to such a mediocre man!

Brilliant!

We’ve just been through two TV series that completely fail. The Five and La Mante. (No I won’t spoil the endings, and will say both were enjoyable enough to watch, even if the endings were disappointing.)

In both of these you go through episode after episode, following this false thread, then that until, finally, in the last episode, all is revealed.

So you replay the series in your mind, looking for those wonderful ambiguous scenes. Nope. No ambiguity at all. The director simply lied throughout. The scenes all very clearly said no way X is the one, don’t even think X is the one. And then at the end says, guess what? X is the one!

Lazy. Cheap.

Kids and their Electronic Devices

I, and many of my generation, are dismayed at the way the younger generation is totally absorbed in their electronic media. We don’t understand it, and think how much better our world was, how we didn’t need to be looking at our phones all day.

I guess I’m my mother’s son. When I was a young adult she used to say how she didn’t like hearing all her peers talk about how much better it was before rock and roll and TV and long hair and disrespect of the government and all. She said she wanted to know and understand what’s happening today, to listen to the music of the day.

I was at a birthday dinner where, at the table, were four of an older generation and one young adult son of the honoree. We were all talking, and he, while paying some attention, was absorbed in his phone. So I asked him what he was doing, what was so fascinating?

He showed me. It was touches with his friends. It was saying, hey, they serve this beer you like to one friend, he was telling another about the menu choices, remembering fond times with them about that food, reading about where they were, what they were up to. While, to us he appeared disconnected, he was actually very much connected, in real time with a number of people close to him. Geographically dispersed friends.

It was kind of sweet.

Someone posted a picture on FB recently showing three kids playing in the mud, laughing, having a good time, side-by-side with a picture of three kids today staring at their phones. The point was how much better we had it back in the day.

Well, I liked it then, but was it better? Or just different?

The kids in the mud had that local environment around them, and the pleasure of the companies of the other playmates.

The kids with the cell phones have the whole world around them, and the pleasure of the companies of friends without the constraints of geography.

The kids in the mud could open their eyes wide and see, well the mud and trees and sky around them.

The kids with the cell phones were looking at a small portal, but through that portal was the whole world. Pictures from vacationing friends, events from all over the world, and an understanding of environmental issues way bigger than of that one muddy spot by a stream.

I’ve read that my discomfort with the cell phone world is mirrored by the young’s discomfort with National Parks. They don’t want to be geographically constrained to a raft in the Grand Canyon any more than I want to try to see the world through a tiny screen.

Over Thanksgiving I listened to my grandkids play various multiplayer online games, from war games to soccer. I listened to their excited chatter with online friends. It was no different from the chatter we had as kids running around our real neighborhood.

And the knowledge my one grandson has of the workings of International soccer, as a business, is amazing. All from these online games. He’s learned things one could never get from just kicking a ball around with friends.

(But, they do both, they are very physically active as well, playing soccer and other games with their friends in the neighborhood.)

Just saying, maybe we each live in the times that are best for us.

But, our music was better.

–Dennis

Relationship Rules

The other day, I went to print something important, and found my printouts were all on recycled paper Nancy had left in the printer.

The other day, Nancy went to print something important, and found her printouts were all on orange paper I had left in the printer.

Clearly we need some rules about printer paper.

Two choices:

1- We should each take care to make sure we leave the printer with plain white paper in it, so the next person isn’t in for a surprise.

2- We should each take care before printing to make sure the paper we want is in the printer.

What a difference in behavior between the two! The first makes each of us responsible for the other’s printing, the second makes each of us responsible for our own.

If we use rule #1, then, when someone winds up with print on screwy paper, they can get upset and mad at the other for ignoring a basic courtesy we agreed on.

If we use rule #2, then, when someone winds up with print on screwy paper, they’ll say, rats, I forgot to check the printer first.

Which rule best optimizes for a harmonious relationship?

Marketing Phone Sex

This is a post about the importance of having a rapport with the customer.

A number of years ago I knew someone, D, who was dyslexic, MIT smart, a phone hacker, and a cross dresser. He was straight, and that’s important for the story, but wanted to live his life as a woman.

This was back in the day when people like that tended to stay in the closet. Yet he yearned to be able to talk to others with similar interests. He had an idea.

Being a phone hacker he went and bought around a dozen phones, wired them together so multiple people could call in and talk to each other, and put a small ad in the back of a local paper saying people who wanted to talk about cross dressing could call this number and chat with others of a similar bent.

Well he was swamped and added more phones, and fast forward, he wound up making all sorts of money, buying a used MCI phone switch (that means a large room full of tiny wires) that let him become a phone company in his own right.

He’d expanded his chat lines to include other interests of his, such as a foot fetish and a love of overweight women. (That line was called Large and Lovely.)

His ads, his positioning, everything grew his business. The point is, he wasn’t exploitive, but rather someone who genuinely was interested in the service he was providing, a place to meet and talk with others interested in things that weren’t openly discussed at the time.

As he grew his company, a gay man got involved in the business and tried to help him grow into those markets. He started all sorts of gay chat lines, but they didn’t catch on. The two wound up having a parting of the ways, and the gay man went on and built his own company.

That second company became successful in the gay markets, where the first one hadn’t. D simply wasn’t gay. He didn’t know how to connect to gay customers.

There’s a sort of funny, maybe for software people, aside to this story. I actually knew D through my wife at the time. She was a brilliant programmer and did consulting for D’s company maintaining their billing system, which was quite complex.

I enjoyed telling people my wife worked in phone sex, and, here’s the funny part. She was a very open person and had no problem being associated with a phone sex company, but was most embarrassed by the fact that the programming she did for them was in Basic, a simple programming language that no respectable programmer would want to be caught dead using.