July 23, 2009
Cointreau . . . suddenly I want a Cointreau
Trend interpretation
From today’s “PC World High-Tech at Home” newsletter:
The Digital Entertainment Group recently reported that consumer
spending on Blu-ray discs was up by 91 percent over last year.
More consumers have been renting Blu-ray Discs, too. This news
comes in spite of another report that says consumers aren’t
interested in adopting Blu-ray. What gives?
Easy answer: if you start from a small enough installed base, small increases appear to be very significant percentage-wise.
QotD: The Gates Arrest
It needs to be said that, though I casually threw it out there, I really have no clue whether race played a role in Gates’ arrest. It’s important to say that. I don’t know what I would have done if I were in [his] shoes, but I don’t know that I’d [have] assumed [it was based on] race. I think the decision to arrest a guy for, at worst, being rude in his own house is shockingly stupid. The thought of someone like that carrying the power of life and death is mind-boggling.
That said, the wind is leaving my sails over this one and I’m not sure why. I keep getting this “doth protest too much” vibe every time I read Gates’s interviews. It’s interesting that it took his own arrest for Gates to decide to make a doc about this. Maybe he’s had a Come To Jesus moment. Who can know? Who can really know?
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “On Gates”, The Atlantic, 2009-07-22
Realizing Heinlein’s “The Man Who Sold the Moon”
Unlike in the original story, this isn’t going to be just a ploy to get advertisers to help fund the first moon shot:
“If you’re interested, the logo of your choice could go lunar for as little as the minimum $46,000 bid. (Hurry! Bidding started two days ago.)”
Update, 24 July: For a very interesting discussion of the Apollo program, and the design choices taken, see Charles Stross’s blog post. Good stuff (even if I’m way late in linking to it).
The wrong measure
The economy is struggling, employers are shedding excess workers, the banks are floundering, so what can the government do to make things better? Other than getting the hell out of the way, not much . . . but they can certainly make things worse:
Come Friday, the federally mandated minimum wage will jump from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 — an 11 percent increase. At a time when employers are laying off workers, Washington is going to make it more expensive to keep them.
If you’re a minimum wage employee, your job will pay more, but only if it still exists. These days, most companies are scrutinizing every position on the payroll to make sure it’s worth the cost. Raise the toll, and some employees will find they are no longer valuable enough to make the cut.
Economists generally agree that increases in the minimum wage cause unemployment even when the economy is prospering—something it has not been doing for the last year and a half. David Neumark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, estimates this rise will destroy some 300,000 jobs among teens and young adults.
The problem is that by trying to forcibly change the relationship between entry-level workers and employers, the government actually hurts both parties. Entry-level workers whose lack of training or aptitude makes their work less economical at a mandatory higher pay rate lose the most: their jobs and their prospects of other minimum-wage jobs. Employers lose out, too, because some work is now uneconomical to have done, it either doesn’t get done at all or is outsourced.
