Four Random Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. I am no proponent of the leftish fad of pushing insects as a major source of protein, but I am both an adventurous eater and a fan of cicadas.

So it is that the next time we take the kids to the local aquarium, I will be looking for cicadas on the snack bar menu of the neighboring insectarium.

I agree with the chef on the short video that the odds of these being good are high in New Orleans. But I wonder if I've missed my chance, given that we are now past a long-anticipated, historic emergence of cicadas.

2. If you've never taken an IQ test, but have taken the SAT or the ACT these tables for converting SAT and ACT scores to IQ might give you an idea. (Note that the SAT conversions are for older versions of the exam.) Since college entrance exams measure fewer abilities than IQ tests, it's a rough estimate.

That said, my scores on the exams indicated an IQ in the 125-130 range. I guess, since I haven't taken an IQ test, they're about equally good or bad as an estimate!

3. If you've ever been perplexed by what I now know as sPoNgEbOb cAsE, here's your chance to learn what it is and why it's being used.

I bet principle is a less familiar term than differential these days...

4. Whether or not you've ever wondered how a car differential works -- or even know what one is for that matter -- this video (also embedded above) does a great job of explaining the problem it solves and how the device solves it.

-- CAV

How to Get Fired as a Cat Sitter

Short of Killing the Cats

Yes. This is mostly a rant.

tl;dr: Don't assume any job is as easy as you think it is? Make a point of using/advocating alternate communication channels when at an impasse? Emphasize the hell out of looking at instructions?

***

Ahead of the holidays, I thought we'd bring our kitten, Seymour, with us and leave Lucinda at home, with a sitter to check in on her every few days.

We ended up leaving both cats together with a sitter, though, because they get along so well and Seymour had adjusted to his new home in no time flat.

For all the non-cat owners (and especially for dog owners) out there, cat sitting is a very low bar: top off the food and water, change the litter, and pet them or play with them for a while if they want. (Cats frequently hide when unfamilair people are around.) It's house sitting with a couple of extra chores thrown in and the remote possibility of needing to take a cat to the vet in an emergency.

This doesn't require daily hours-long visits because you don't have to walk cats or worry about them going nuts and chewing up everything in the house.

And so, contrary to my very careful past screening of baby sitters, which included interviews and checking with references, my hiring process was relatively lax: We hired a young adult we heard from a mutual aquaintance would be interested.

Nothing seemed off when the sitter came by to pick up the house key and meet the cats. I showed her around and told her what I needed done. I told her I'd have a list in the kitchen in case she needed her memory refreshed about anything. Our (and the vet's) contact information would be there in case she needed it. She'd also be checking mail, bringing in packages, and a few other minor things to secure the house and make it look occupied for the eight days we'd be away.

We came back to zero food or water in the bowls and litter that looked like it hadn't been changed at all. Thanks to security cameras (which keep coming in handy in ways I'd never imagine), I knew while we were away that she was coming at the requested 2-3 day intervals, but I kept having to reset the home alarm remotely because she wasn't doing that ahead of leaving.

It was insanely hard to arrange a time for her to come, give me my key back, and get paid, despite her having a phone and both of our numbers. It was more than two weeks later, after she apparently blew off my texts -- but further inquiry showed that she thought I was ignoring hers. ("He left me on red." A case of iPhones not playing nicely with Android? This wouldn't be the first time.)

The icing on the cake came when I (finally) settled.

"The only thing I forgot to do was take out the trash," she said.

"Oh, that's fine. Trash day was on Christmas anyway, and we were back right before the next one."

Where I had once marveled at her selective reading of my instructions, I now knew she hadn't read them at all, since I had excused her from taking out the trash after realizing when that was.

What did we learn?

Two and a half weeks later, I feel like I paid a hefty ransom for my house key and the knowledge that I need to find a cat sitter ahead of our next prolonged trip. See the tl;dr above for what I have been able to glean from this bizarre episode, and feel free to make other suggestions as to what might have gone wrong.

-- CAV

Coming Soon: Trump Stickers on Pumps?

Over at Reason is a piece about concerns within the incoming administration about the effects tariffs might have on gas prices, which Trump's favorite brand of snake oil is poised to increase:

Soon, a new face may adorn your local gas pump. (Image cropped from Amazon. The author believes this use of the image is protected as fair use under U.S. coyright law.)

[Alberta Premier Danielle] Smith had pitched Trump on exempting Alberta's crude oil exports from the 25 percent across-the-board tariffs that the incoming president has threatened to impose, the Edmonton Journal reported. Alas, Trump seems unmoved. "I haven't seen any indication in any of the president's public commentary or even in the comments that he had with me that he's inclined to change his approach," Smith told the paper.

...

A new tariff on that crude oil will be passed along to consumers down the supply chain. Among other things, that likely means higher prices at the pump. The specifics remain to be seen, but analysts believe prices could jump by 40 cents or even 70 cents per gallon. If those tariffs spiral into a broader trade war, energy companies are already warning about "volatility in crude oil prices, impacting refineries and downstream fuel markets, especially for gasoline and diesel." [links omitted, bold added]

Not only will Trump have thrown a monkey wrench into energy prices, but everything else, since energy factors into manufacturing and transportation.

Trump seems oblivious to the problem, but his advisors are concerned enough that a slower ratcheting up of Trump's new tax may be in the offing.

-- CAV

Will Reality Bite Trump Before It Bites Us All?

The Washington Monthly carries a headline that will surprise no one with a functioning brain: "Trump's Campaign Pledges Are on a Collision Course With Reality."

The real question on everyone's minds outside MAGA is when? and this piece argues that the answer is already, and that Team Trump will be walking back its promises while pretending not to.

This has already happened with grocery prices, and I would say that the most likely correct argument the piece makes regarding the others is for mass deportations:

They've seen the budget numbers showing that his deportation will be $100 billion-plus yearly throughout his term. The economists in the group presumably know that 7 million of those immigrants hold down jobs, so deporting them will disrupt many labor markets. The dose of economic reality here is that pulling millions of people from the workforce will create temporary shortages in the products they produce, temporarily pushing up their prices. Replacing them will force their employers to pay higher wages, pushing up prices for the long term.

So, the word from Mar-a-Lago is that Trump's immigration promises will be downsized into a plan to kick out those charged or convicted of serious crimes or links to foreign terrorism. The embarrassing part is that this will affect only 4 to 5 percent of those Trump promised to deport and was already U.S. policy under Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Good news if true, and not just because of how expensive this would be in taxes or economic impacts. Misusing the military this way would be a horrendous precedent, and I can't imagine how to carry this out absent numerous other abuses of the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike.

I am less optimistic about tariffs: If a bad idea can be someone's Svengali, tariffs are Trump's.

On this, the piece summarizes what seemingly everyone but Trump knows about tariffs. (The length and incompleteness of said summary should show why Trump doesn't understand the issue like he presumably does the mass deportation, which has the more easily-graspable flaw of super expensive.) To support its case, it cites anonymous sources from his inner circle to the effect that they're exploring less-draconian, but still-destructive policies -- rumors which Trump has already denigrated as fake news.

My take is that reality hasn't bitten Trump hard enough to keep it from also biting the rest of us regarding tariffs, but at least it seems we have a reasonable chance of being spared the disaster of an anti-immigration police state.

-- CAV

Mississippi Teaching Pennsylvania to Read?

I grew up in Mississippi, where the schools were so atrocious that my parents found a way to send us to Catholic schools on a policeman's pay.

You can imagine my surprise at the following headline from an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "To Improve Early Literacy, Pennsylvania Should Follow Mississippi's Lead."

Gob smacked.

Although I advocate complete privatization of the educational sector, I am not one to hold my nose up at improvements in government schools in the meantime, so I indulged my curiosity.

Here is what the paper calls the Mississippi model:

[I]t was the product of years of research and policymaking, followed by a decade-plus of executing that strategy in schools across the state. That included mandating phonics-based curricula; funding and then managing training for educators in proven teaching methods; and improving monitoring, accountability and intervention through assessments that ensure as many children as possible are reading fluently by the end of third grade.

Following is a highly condensed summary of why so many American schools fail to teach reading properly, namely that it became fashionable in the early 20th century to pretend that children could learn to read as if each word were a hieroglyphic.

The results so far?

Since passing phonics-based literacy training and curriculum policies in 2013, Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country in fourth-grade NAEP reading scores to 21st. When adjusted for demographics, the Magnolia State is now in the top five for early literacy in America.

Image by Rain Bennett, via Unsplash, license.

Reading is an essential skill and can help a student unlock doors for himself, which is a big part of why slaveowners almost always forbade slaves to learn how to read. If a school taught nothing else well, it could be forgiven for that one thing to be reading.

Often, when countries with planned economies introduce even a modicum of market reform, at least the affected parts of the economy improve dramatically. I suspect that a similar analogy between reading and education holds true, and am heartened by this good news and hopeful that phonics-based teaching methods continue to gain traction as they prove their worth.

-- CAV

Four Recent Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

***

1. We frequently travel to visit my in-laws in Florida, and that's where we spent Christmas. On this last visit, I decided I wanted to keep my routine of walking an hour a day going during these visits. Somewhat to my surprise, I found a perfect route on my first try: A wide sidewalk along a road near their condo extends much further than I thought, based on memory.

I can now maintain my walking routine during these trips.

2. Some wins are simply good fortune or, more precisely, recognizing good fortune. Twice over the past month, misfortune struck at times I would have chosen if I saw it coming:

(1) Just ahead of Christmas travel, I noticed a problem with the family car that was going to take it out of commission long enough to require us to rent a car for the trip. This gave us added capacity (which we needed) and sure beat finding out during the trip.

(2) A few days ago, I stubbed my big toe badly. Putting on my shoe the next day reminded me, and I found a nasty bruise and a cut bad enough that I'm limiting the amount of walking I'm doing for a few days. I miss my hour-long walks, but the weather has been so cold, windy, and wet, I probably would have missed a few anyway, and enjoyed the ones I could have taken a lot less.

3. A recent review of the metrics section of my planner caused me to remember that, while taking my son to the orthodontist, I'd started reading Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I liked it, but the holiday hubbub crowded it from memory.

If your kitchen timer isn't a penguin, you're doing it wrong. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Now, I have a reading session for it each day as a metric -- which I usually complete while I'm walking. I am impressed with the book so far both for its clarity and its engaging style.

4. For some kinds of work, I use the pomodoro technique of alternating concentrated effort with short breaks. Often, I use it if I have lots of boring tasks to power through.

For a long time, I'd do a weekly review of assorted admin tasks and thinking on Friday, and laundry over the weekend.

Recently, it dawned on me that since much of the work for laundry is loading and unloading machines, it would be a good stand up and move kind of pomodoro break.

So I tried starting laundry on Friday, during my weekly review. This works really well and, as a nice side effect, weekend travel out of town is much less disruptive, because I don't have to figure out when I'm going to do the laundry.

-- CAV

No Lie: I'll Consider It.

Urban Diplomat counsels someone (scroll down) whose employer wants him to lie to get out of jury duty:

Image by Ken Lund, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

If you're not averse to white lies, the fastest way to shut your boss down is to direct one at her instead of the court. Thank her for her creative excuses, then don't use them. In Ontario, an employer is legally required to give you time off for jury duty, so the law is on your side, even if your boss is not. But take it from me: this particular act of civic duty is rarely a thrill. You'll likely find it less like watching Law and Order and more like crawling along the DVP.

I generally agree, but with a couple of issues.

First, one does not owe the truth to someone making a threat (implied here by the relationship as a work superior). Second, the I'll consider it implied by the pro forma thanks isn't a lie, white or otherwise anyway. The act of listening to the "advice" and deciding not to perjure oneself is the consideration.

In this context, thanking this lousy boss is the equivalent of I will consider it, and discard it, to borrow Jennifer Peepas's memorable phrasing from another (of many) contexts in which the phrase is surprisingly apt.

-- CAV