There’s No Stopping Progress

Nobel Prize economist Robert Solow has died. Solow was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama. It’s an honor that was subsequently tarnished by Trump giving one to Rush Limbaugh.

As [Solow’s] work shows, technological advances, broadly defined, are responsible for the bulk of modern economic growth

https://news.mit.edu/2023/institute-professor-emeritus-robert-solow-dies-1222

Solow’s obituary in The New York Times has this amusing quote about John Kenneth Galbraith.

Mr. Galbraith “mingles with Beautiful People; for all I know, he may actually be a Beautiful Person himself.” But the book, he said, “is for the dinner table, not for the desk.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/business/robert-solow-dead.html

I think Solow’s “beautiful person” crack may have revealed a bit of the old M.I.T. vs. Harvard rivalry. Meeting the very tall Galbraith was a pivotal event for me in deciding to make Economics my college major.

Coincidental with Solow’s passing, last night’s PBS Newshour has this segment on AI’s potential effects on employment. It was mostly recorded at Boston’s Museum of Science (which is actually in Cambridge), where one of my sisters works developing educational materials.

For a deeper dive into the work of Robert Solow, there is this interview from just six months ago. It was conducted by his former student, economist Steven Levitt.

Sumpy Lives!

Sumpy, my trusty basement sump pump, has had it easy for more than ten years. He hasn’t needed to run since my next door neighbors installed sump pumps in their house.

Monday’s storm was so bad that it woke up Sumpy. He’s been running every few minutes for the past 24 hours. I’m glad he was able to hold his water until after the electricity came back on. Otherwise, if I hadn’t caught it in time to get the generator running, there would have been a mess to clean up in the basement.

I used to have a couple of PVC drain pipes that fit together to extend the outside outlet and take the water away from the house. I still have them, but as mentioned here a while ago, they were used by the landscaping contractor for the downspout drain project, so I had to improvise.

In the garage I had a long, plastic shipping tube from a video projector screen project. The tube seemed like a perfect replacement for the pipes that are now buried underground, but when I dropped it on the ground it broke in two! Despite being much thicker than the other pipes, it’s actually much more fragile.

Forced to improvise again, I knew that duct tape wouldn’t be good enough to hold the two pieces together. Then I remembered the roll of aluminum tape I bought when replacing the dryer vent.

It worked! And I was wondering if I would ever have another use for that expensive roll of aluminum tape.

I’m going to reward myself for a successful hack with an Elvis Special — a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I won’t fry it the Elvis way, but I’ll toast the bread.

Which Debit to Credit?

Hmm… if I were irresponsible I would think of my new $700 laptop PC as being free with this year’s Bank of America cash rewards money.

Congratulations! Your rewards are on the way.
Amount: $713.60

I’ll do the responsible thing and think of the money as going towards the $777 heating oil bill.

My cash rewards money is courtesy of everybody else’s bank fees.

The Dirty Little Secret of Credit Card Rewards Programs

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/opinion/credit-card-rewards-points-poor-interchange-fees.html