Smart Phones fink on their owners

According to the Wall St Journal, some popular smart phone applications, (apps) transmit the owner's location, contact information, and website choices to advertising companies. In short, buying the app makes the owner vulnerable to tracking, stalking, spamming, identity theft and undercover photography.

Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Went to see it in Lincoln this afternoon. Things are a little slow today, and we had the entire theater to ourselves. The movie is OK, but not great, just barely drawing even with the first Narnia movie. The ship Dawn Treader is wonderful, looks totally real and has the neatest cabins and decks and lookout spots. The story is down to Edmund (Skandar Kaynes) and Lucy (Georgie Read). Peter and Susan are too grownup to return to Narnia this time. Acting is quite passable. Costumes are very good, especially Lucy's. If you are a Narnia fan, you need to see it. If not, it's a decent fantasy movie, as good as the last Harry Potter.

DADT vs Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)

The UCMJ was adopted in the early 1950's and it defines gay and lesbian as "sodomy" and a court martial offense. The UCMJ is the working criminal law for all the armed services. It's an act of congress, and the executive branch cannot change it. The Clinton era Don't Ask Don't Tell did NOT change the UCMJ. Clinton figured he didn't have the votes to do that.
Don't ask Don't Tell told commanders not to snoop and gay and lesbian troops to keep it quiet. But it was still "sodomy" and a court martial offence.
Amid all the hoopla surrounding this week end's revision, I still haven't heard if Congress actually revised the UCMJ this time, throwing out the articles on sodomy. Your news media at work...

Defeat of 2000 pages of Omnibus Spending

And a good thing too. It killed $8 billion or more of pork. Compared to the $1.3 trillion in the whole package, the pork isn't all that bad, but killing it is a good thing. We also killed funding for Obamacare, another good thing. The Senate ought to approve the House "continuing resolution" today. A continuing resolution is less damaging, it says in effect "You agencies can continue operating using last years budget." This means no spending increases, a good thing. The 2000 pages of "omnibus spending" undoubtedly had all sorts of spending increases buried deep inside.
Even better, some pet Congressional spending projects like the extra engine for the F35 jet fighter may die. Or at least give in incoming Republican Congress another chance to kill them.
The other good reason for killing the omnibus spending bill was nobody really knows what is hidden in the 2000 pages. I'm sure the staffers who wrote it tucked in all sorts of things that I might not approve of.
We should never allow omnibus spending bills. We should pass one appropriation bill for each agency (Defensive, Homeland Security, Agriculture, etc). Then resulting appropriation bills will be smaller, and people have a fighting chance of reading them, understanding them and critiquing them. There are plenty of people who know the ins and out of a single government agency. Nobody knows the ins and outs of the entire US government. When you take the appropriations for the whole government, mix them together at random, omit a table of contents, and make it 2000 pages long, nobody can figure out what it means. I think such bills should be voted down just cause they empower bureaucrats to do anything they want to.

Does the Iphone add to the trade deficit?

Apple's blockbuster Iphone is made in China. Last year Apple imported $1.9 billion worth of Iphones from China. Making the US-China trade deficit worse by $1.9 billion.
But, the Chinese merely assembly the I-phones. They have to import all the parts. Of the $178.96 wholesale cost of the Iphone, China only gets 3.5% or $6.50 a phone. 6% of the cost comes from US made parts, nearly twice the value add of China. The big hitters are Japan (34%) Germany (17%) and South Korea (13%)
But the Commerce Dept just credits the full price of the Iphones to China, since that's where they come from. Nobody has the time or expertise to do a manufacturing cost breakdown of every imported manufactured product.
From a standpoint of computing the US trade deficit it probably doesn't matter. Whether you charge the Iphones all to China, of split it up by national content, it's still an import. To us, it doesn't matter all that much who the trade deficit is with, it matters that we have such a deficit.
To the Chinese it matters a good deal. The Americans are pressuring China to revalue their currency upward to reduce their trade deficit. If the Iphone costs were partly laid upon Japan, Germany and South Korea, it would help the Chinese resist American pressure.
The most interesting thing is the narrow slice of value add given to China. For that little work, I'm surprised Apple makes them in China. Better to make them at home, under Apple Corp control. It's easier to keep the quality up in your own factory. And, you keep your technology to yourself, rather than sharing it with a potential competitor.

Republicans, the party of the working man

I did a lot of door to door campaigning as a Republican candidate this fall. It got so I could make a pretty good guess about the political sentiments just by looking at the house as I walked up to knock on the door.
Manicured green lawn, a BWM or Prius in the driveway, carefully maintained house, figure a Democrat. Shaggy lawn, with a few weeds and some kids toys, a pickup truck, some do-it-yourself home repairs in progress, figure a Republican.
I did better in Bethlehem, which has a lot of residents who work for a living, than I did in Franconia, which has a lot of wealthy retired folk.

Winter's back

I got 8 inches of new snow on the porch, and it's still floating down. It's 18 degrees F (seasonable) and the sun is trying to break thru the clouds.