Coursera Math Class

I'm enrolled in my second Coursera course - Pre Calculus.  My math skills are waning and this course provides the convenience and price (free, except for your time) I'm looking for in a remedial math course.  It's being taught by two Ph.Ds from UC-Irvine. 

It's a nine week course and class starts Sunday, October 6, 2013. 

Here's the link in case you're interested: https://www.coursera.org/course/precalculus

Obama touts benefits of ACA (but not costs)

Here’s the scene: Speaking from the Rose Garden, our president, flanked by a few poor souls who lack health insurance, decried that Republicans were trying to thwart some Americans’ access to healthcare.  The implication is “why would anyone want to deny someone access to healthcare?”  Why, that’s inhumane!  The president went on to say that thanks to him, these folks now have access to affordable care.

I guess we’re to believe that benefits such as healthcare flow like honey from government coffers.  “Why, without someone in Washington fighting for us, we’d have no healthcare!” many might proclaim.

The undeniable and inescapable fact, though, is much less appealing:  the government must first take from Group A and then give to Group B (here, in the form of health insurance).  Some will be made better off ONLY at another’s expense.  If I robbed John at gun point and used the stolen cash to visit the dentist, I’m still a thief.  Theft is theft.  However, our government can perpetrate the same crime except now it’s legal theft.  What was once considered outright stealing has been deemed humanitarian, compassionate, civilized, etc.

  

A more honest approach would have been for the president to man-up, face the cameras and accept partial responsibility for the lousy economy and lack of jobs – jobs that could have provided these folks with affordable health insurance.

A Visit to the DMZ

Our (big) boss visited the Korea field office last week, and we made a special trip to the DMZ.  While we were visiting the Joint Security Area or JSA (the famous blue houses behind us), we noticed a group of North Koreans atop the building behind us looking our way.  I couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking?

At the South Korean DMZ - Sept 2013

Our tour guide (a U.S. Army soldier) told us that he’s only seen North Koreans gather like this once or twice.  He explained that the border isn’t open to ordinary North Koreans – for good reason.  They’d all attempt to flee. Only high-ranking officials within the DPRK visit the North-South border.  I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during their visit.  What were they talking about?  Were they showing the people how much better off they have it compared to the South?  It was a very curious sight.

On a (possible) Gov't Shutdown

A co-worker asked my opinion regarding a possible government shutdown. 

I said this:

I want to live somewhere such that if the government shuts down, no one notices.

New Wireless Router

Today, I upgraded my wireless router.  My old router was a Linksys E2500.  It performed well enough, but didn’t use the latest standard – 802.11ac.  I was suckered in by the promise of faster internet service.  And who doesn’t want a wider, faster path to the superhighway?

My new router is a Belkin AC1200, and it set me back $154.98 from the Post Exchange.  Not a bad price, but Amazon may carry it for slightly cheaper.  The box claims this little fellow will improve speed up to 2.8 times over routers running 802.11n.  That’s a bold claim and would represent a dramatic increase in speed if true.  I decided to test both routers, at three different times, and compare the results.

 

I used a service located at www.speedtest.net.  It’s a free site, and the test will check both your download and upload speed.  I was mainly concerned with download capability and, therefore, didn’t include the upload results in the chart below.  However, if you must know, my average upload speed saw no improvement.  This is likely the result of my ISP restricting my upload ability and not a router limitation.  So, how did we do?

On average, download speed using the new Belkin improved by about 112 percent.  That would make this router just over twice as fast but a little short of the 2.8 claim.  However, doubling my speed is no small potatoes, and I can tell a difference already.  Tonight, I plan to watch an NFL game (replay) and look forward to cruising around the Net using my new Ferrari, er, I mean Belkin.

Apple's Jobs

This purpose of this post is to illustrate the complete nonsense espoused by those who moan and complain that Apple provides needed job skills and life-sustaining compensation to some of the world’s poorest people.  Some folks want every facet of Apple’s supply chain to be staffed only by people who live below Canada and above Mexico.  Anything less means Steve Jobs is a terrorist scoundrel bastard.

 

Well, here are a few labor statistics to counter that argument, courteous of Apple, Inc.

•          50,250 American Apple employees.
•          26,000 U.S. retail employees, with 250 stores in 44 states. 
•    4,000 retail employees in the Greater New York area alone!

•          10,000 U.S. based AppleCare Advisors. 
•    I don’t suppose having Americans answer the phone when you call Apple tech support counts for much.

•          80,000 + worldwide Apple employees. 
•    Well, maybe Apple is a jobs program after all.

In total, Apple estimates that it has created or supported over 598,000 jobs over the past several years (and at zero taxpayer expense).  Apple is a prolific innovator that has changed the world with its products.  Entire industries exist today (app economy) that did not exist ten years ago – all compliments of Steve Jobs and Apple employees.  To label Steve Jobs anything less than brilliant is mere foolish gibberish.

Additional Commentary on Apple

To complement Brad's discussion of the effects of raising labor costs, I'd like to add a couple of my own observations.

1) In general, if people lament the movement of employment opportunities in low-end manufacturing from more developed countries to less developed countries, they should question why companies have an incentive to establish factories in poor countries. After all, while the costs are lower, the quality of labor and capital is also lower. But the important factor is the disparity between cost and quality. If the U.S. labor market didn't have as many restrictions as it did (minimum wage, mandatory benefits, unions), American firms could afford to employ people for low-value-added manufacturing and still generate benefits for the stockholders.

2) When people complain that American companies use foreign labor, and demand the companies bring the employment back to the U.S., they tend to ignore the benefits for the poor country of those factories. That poor people want to work in such low-paying jobs is evidenced by the fact that they do indeed work there, and firms need have no worry about attracting sufficient labor. While working conditions at these factories are often not desirable, especially from a 1st world point of view, they are much better than the conditions that would otherwise prevail. For example, subsistence farming, prostitution, construction out in the elements, and so on. This is how industrial development progresses. This is how rich countries became rich. Shouldn't the poor countries have similar opportunities?