More Galbraith August 16, 2007March 8, 2017 iPHONE BATTERIES Emerson Schwartzkopf: ‘The iPhone uses a lithium-based battery, so you really don’t need to do that constant power-up/power-down cycle at the start; that’s for rechargeable NiMH batteries. The best advice I’ve seen so far is to maybe do that every 30 charges or so, because a constant topping-off may be OK for the battery – but it can effect the ability of the device itself to judge how much power the battery holds. (Apple itself recommends a full charge cycle every month.) It’s why you may have had a device in the past that showed full charge for a long time, and then dropped to nearly nothing very quickly. . . . What’s also interesting is that Apple recommends an operating temperature range of 32°F to 95°F. This is one of the most-limited operating ranges I’ve ever seen for a device. It suggests (my opinion here) that Apple struck a compromise by accepting less temperature endurance to get more minutes of operation. You also have to remember that the iPhone is constantly ‘on’ as a computer, which is going to heat the thing up – and heat is a drain on batteries.” RW Cox: “Turn off the WiFi unless you are using it. That thing sucks a lot of power.” Bob Fyfe: “Here is a website from Apple with tips on extending the iPhone’s battery life. The key points are to turn off the features that you aren’t using: WiFi, Bluetooth, equalizer, etc. And don’t let the unit get hot – “keep it out of the sun or even a hot car (even the glove box)” – as that degrades the battery.” ☞ Helpful! MORE GALBRAITH This quote last week elicited a lot of response: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” — John Kenneth Galbraith Here’s some more: G. Latimer Schmidt: “The JKG quotation was right on. Your correspondent had a typically conservative reaction not to ‘get it.’ John Kenneth Galbraith was a great man who understood the greed and perversions of market capitalism and moreover (especially today), the appropriate role and value of involved government. Here is another Galbraith quote someone cited recently over the ‘debt crisis’ and all the new debt instruments: ‘As to new financial instruments, experience establishes a firm rule… that financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design, one that owes its distinctive character to the aforementioned brevity of the financial memory. The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version. All financial innovation involves, in one form or another, the creation of debt secured in greater or lesser adequacy by real assets. … All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.’ ” ☞ The great man would have been dismayed but not surprised to see negative amortization mortgages, “no-doc” mortgages (where no one verifies your stated income), and all the other brilliant financial innovations that this week have the financial system tottering. (It will probably right itself, and a recession may even be avoided; but neither of those things is by any means guaranteed.) Brent Stapleton: “I want to jump in about conservative/liberal thinking, rationalizations, and actions. Conservatives generally emphasize the individual/family as the problem and answer to society’s problems. They note that, ‘He is weak morally,’ ‘She has no ambition,’ ‘What we need is a leader with integrity,’ ‘If we can just get rid of Saddam Hussein’ and on and on. They also often see wealth, no matter how obtained, as a marker of virtue, and if anyone is poor in the US, it is a sign of weakness. They feel that governmental programs (and NGOs) to help those needing another chance are wasteful, not helpful, and often deleterious. They feel that those with wealth are themselves best able to determine how best to use that wealth and thus abhor taxes and emphasize individual donations. Liberals tend to see humanity less as a collection of individuals and more as a related and very similar large family or community. While recognizing differences in how individuals think and act today, they see those differences as a reflection of their genetics and life experiences. Instead of seeing the suicide bomber as subhuman, they are curious about what might cause humans much like themselves into taking such actions. I particularly recommend The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, by Philip Zimbardo, about the impact of social setting and systems on behavior. Liberals note that wealthy individuals and the corporations run by wealthy individuals seem to have at least as much propensity for bad behavior as the middle and lower classes and the impacts of the bad behaviors of the wealthy and powerful often have great negative impact. They are less likely to judge the wealth of a nation by the GNP and more by how many live in poverty. They see government and nonprofits as a tool of prevention, both primary and secondary, and that prevention is the least wasteful method of improving the lot of humanity. They are more willing to tax themselves (and others) and may view that as a significant portion of their donations. These liberal/conservative differences lead to the differences in solutions to mankind’s problems. If there are a few “bad apples” in Iraq, make them into a deck of cards and eliminate them. If in our attempt to do that we create the social setting and situation which creates many more “bad apples,” maybe we would be better off holding off. If crime is caused by “bad apples,” once again identify and eliminate. If crime is related to poverty, lack of education, lack of meaningful work, etc. then work harder on the root causes. These are the differences between charity and social justice (see here). We clearly need both. Liberals and conservatives have much to learn from each other. There is a correct proportion, a healthy balance. I have been closest to it in my work with Habitat for Humanity and it feels good. It is just that we have swung so far to the right.” ☞ Have I got the best readers, or what? I should be paying you. And at the risk of turning such a thoughtful post partisan, I would suggest that the center of gravity of the Democratic Party – the Clinton/Gore team for example – did learn a lot (to the distress of the most liberal wing of the party), moving to the center on trade and welfare reform; introducing competition by encouraging charter schools; raising taxes on the rich – but only a very small way back toward the rates of the Eisenhower era. But that at the same time, the Republican center just moved further and further to the right. Sure, there are some moderate Republicans. But none in the House or Senate leadership; none on talk radio; virtually none in the Republican think tanks. Carl Granados: “Conservatives like Michael Albert love to use the term ‘other people’s money’ as if only Liberals ever use it. Doesn’t he even conceive that we are paying for our needless wars, our welfare for the rich, our no-bid contracts to Halliburton, and the pork the GOP have increased – all with others people’s money? Are modern conservatives so naive that they think we are not spending people’s money when we use the national credit card to pay our bills and therefore pile up our debt? Both conservatives and liberals use other people’s money, DUH! The difference is how they use it. As for who is the most compassionate, they need only read a little history to see that without Liberals there would be no middle class and that whenever conservatives come into power the number of poor and homeless goes up (I won’t even mention the increase in corruption, bribes, ‘special interest money,’ size of government, government controlling people’s personal lives, and other things conservatism is supposed to decrease). What is compassionate about this?” Marissa Hendrickson: “I think we liberals support taxes as a way to help those in need because we know that even generous charitable giving always ends up focusing the most on photogenic, appealing causes, and cannot be counted on to fill all the holes in the market. But we still do give when we can.”