[262nd] Learning From Europe/No Break From Food, Even on a Day Off/The iPhone Goes To War

[박범(Frank)]

늦어서 죄송합니다.

이번주는 양이 좀 많아요.

자료들도 좀 긴 편이고 어째 질문거리도 많게 되어버렸습니다.

그래도 뭔가 얘기할게 많을테니 좋겠죠?

============== 1차 수정 : 20100115 1817

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TN 262nd topic.doc

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Op-Ed Columnist

Learning From Europe

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 10, 2010

As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn’t? But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

Actually, Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.

In any case, the statistics confirm‎ what the eyes see.

It’s true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980 — when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe’s didn’t — America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!

Or maybe not. All this really says is that we’ve had faster population growth. Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there.

What about technology? In the late 1990s you could argue that the revolution in information technology was passing Europe by. But Europe has since caught up in many ways. Broadband, in particular, is just about as widespread in Europe as it is in the United States, and it’s much faster and cheaper.

And what about jobs? Here America arguably does better: European unemployment rates are usually substantially higher than the rate here, and the employed fraction of the population lower. But if your vision is of millions of prime-working-age adults sitting idle, living on the dole, think again. In 2008, 80 percent of adults aged 25 to 54 in the E.U. 15 were employed (and 83 percent in France). That’s about the same as in the United States. Europeans are less likely than we are to work when young or old, but is that entirely a bad thing?

And Europeans are quite productive, too: they work fewer hours, but output per hour in France and Germany is close to U.S. levels.

The point isn’t that Europe is utopia. Like the United States, it’s having trouble grappling with the current financial crisis. Like the United States, Europe’s big nations face serious long-run fiscal issues — and like some individual U.S. states, some European countries are teetering on the edge of fiscal crisis. (Sacramento is now the Athens of America — in a bad way.) But taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own.

So why do we get such a different picture from many pundits? Because according to the prevailing economic dogma in this country — and I’m talking here about many Democrats as well as essentially all Republicans — European-style social democracy should be an utter disaster. And people tend to see what they want to see.

After all, while reports of Europe’s economic demise are greatly exaggerated, reports of its high taxes and generous benefits aren’t. Taxes in major European nations range from 36 to 44 percent of G.D.P., compared with 28 in the United States. Universal health care is, well, universal. Social expenditure is vastly higher than it is here.

So if there were anything to the economic assumptions that dominate U.S. public discussion — above all, the belief that even modestly higher taxes on the rich and benefits for the less well off would drastically undermine incentives to work, invest and innovate — Europe would be the stagnant, decaying economy of legend. But it isn’t.

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they’re down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11krugman.html

Questions)

1. The author of this article is an eminent economist who writes columns like this so that he can influence a kind of political processes, even though this is not a direct way of deciding or changing policies.

- Do you think you have an interest in politics?

- Have you ever felt that politics is very important to yourself? If the answer is yes, what was it?

- Have you experienced anything that can be called 'political activities'? If you have, what was it?

- If you have any policies that you want to change, feel free to talk about it.

2. U.S. is a country that has a big gap between the rich and the poor, compare to Europe nations. And apparently it seems that the difference comes from the way of taxation and tax rates. Let's say a welfare state is an antonym of rich-poor gap.

- Do you think a welfare state is desirable? Why do you think so?

- Do you think that a progressive taxation is desirable? Is it the only way to be a welfare state? If you have alternative way of taxation, tell me about it.

3. Year 2010 could be a terrible year, since we have very few holidays in 2010. (There is no holiday in 6 months!) In U.S., they can have 4-day off, because they regard a holiday system somewhat different from ours. For example, if Tuesday of second week in March is holiday, they take off from Saturday to Tuesday, total 4 day off.

- What do you think about this system? Let's talk about pros and cons of this system.

- If we take this system, what could be changed?

4. I think you would sympathize with this statement - "people tend to see what they want to see"

- If you have any happenings that you made a (stupid) mistake, since you misunderstood something - which was turned out to be not true - , then let me know what happened.

Sunday Routine | Drew Nieporent

No Break From Food, Even on a Day Off

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: December 18, 2009

Just because Drew Nieporent, the Manhattan restaurateur whose mini empire includes Nobu and Tribeca Grill, has a Sunday off doesn’t mean he takes a break from his passion for food. Mr. Nieporent, 54, who started working in restaurants when he was 16, says his Sundays revolve around eating and football-watching at his home in Ridgewood, N.J. He sees his wife, Ann; his son, Andrew, 22; and his daughter, Gabrielle, 18, at meal times.

BAGEL AND SAUNA I'll be up at 9. I’ve got to wake up in the morning and have a bagel. I tend to like cinnamon raisin bagels with a schmear. I turn my sauna on. Sunday is really the only time I can take a sauna. I typically do it pre-bagel or post-bagel.

EYE-OPENER If there’s no Jets or Giants game at the Meadowlands, I’ll be at home post-sauna. I have to make myself a classic bloody mary. It’s very simple: You’ve got to have the right tomato juice; you’ve got to have an excellent vodka that comes from the freezer. Then you just, you put in Worcestershire, you put in Tabasco, you squeeze a wedge of lemon and you shake and that’s it.

WALK DOGS, SMOKE CIGAR I have two beautiful cocker spaniels named Chloe and Jackson. They like to walk. I light up a cigar because I’m a pretty avid cigar smoker. The size of the cigar is called a Churchill, which is named after Winston Churchill. It’s an hour smoke. I walk the dogs for about an hour. They’re very friendly and adorable, those long ears, just a very sweet disposition. It’s like a 12-to-1 walk with the cigar and then watch the game at home.

GAME FOOD Then of course you have to have the Buffalo chicken wing experience. I do them a little differently, the sauce being made with butter and Frank’s hot sauce. I bake the wings. I don’t deep fry or bread them. It’s a little bit lighter on the calorie count. The cooking is usually pretty quick. You have to limit the wings to a dozen. Anything over a dozen is gluttonous.

GRILLING AT HOME ... During the game, I’m always thinking about dinner. Sunday dinner is one of two things for me. If the weather is nice, I cook out on the grill — lamb chops, steaks. I always make a great Caesar salad. I’m a huge tomato person, so tomatoes always. When it’s in season, corn is huge. I always try to steam some broccoli rabe.

...OR DINNER OUT If I can’t grill outside, if I’m not cooking, there’s a local Italian restaurant in Midland Park called Arturo’s, or we have a Chinese restaurant called Dim Sum Dynasty. Sunday has got to be Chinese or Italian.

TV TIME We’ve got to get home for “60 Minutes.” After we’ve had dinner together, then pretty much everyone does their own thing. It’s a big night of television. “Mad Men,” I’m addicted to that show. I love “Desperate Housewives.” I’m watching on one set and taping on two others. It drives my family crazy.

LOGGING ON Then I have to hit the computer after 11 and I catch up on the gossip. There’s food blogs, political blogs, there’s my e-mails, I would say for another hour. I’ll try to look ahead at what the day is going to bring me on Monday in terms of the restaurants. I try to get to bed about 12:30.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/nyregion/20routine.html?scp=4&sq=desperate%20housewives&st=cse

Questions)

1. In this article, the writer has always something to eat whatever he does.

- If you have any pairs of food and activities which match very well, feel free to talk about it. (For example, popcorn when watching movie, or cigaret smoking after working out, etc.)

2. Long time ago, I have read an article about eating when watching TV. And it says those who do like that are easily become fat. I don't know why, but maybe watching TV makes you eat more than you expected before you start eating (or not). But I guess even if you don't eat anything while you watching TV, probably you buy and eat popcorn at the theatre. It seems that almost everybody eats popcorn and drinks soda when they're watching movies at the theater.

- Do you think it is odd for you if you don't eat any popcorn when you're watching movie? And why do you think so?

- What could be advantages and disadvantages of eating something when watching movies in theater. (It doesn't have to be a popcorn.)

3. There are some people who take photos of food and upload the pictures over their blogs, or their own homepages.

- Do you enjoy doing that? If your answer is yes, why do you do like that? If not, why do you think that other people do like that?

December 16, 2009, 1:10 pm

The iPhone Goes to War

By ROY FURCHGOTT

One Force Tracker, iPhone software from Raytheon.

Is the iPhone going to war?

On Wednesday at the 2009 Intelligence Warfighting Summit in Tucson, Raytheon, the military contractor, announced an iPhone application that tracks friends and foes, shows their positions on live, real time maps and provides secure communications.

Called the One Force Tracker, the Raytheon iPhone software can also be used by first responders like police, firemen and emergency medical technicians.

The app works on a standard iPhone, said J Smart, chief technology officer for Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems. “We are really delighted to be leveraging Apple’s innovation.”

The adaptation of the iPhone to military use is somewhat unusual, as technology more often trickles from the military to the consumer market. But this is a rare case of consumer hardware and software concepts being adapted for military use.

For instance, crowdsourcing, which has volunteers use cellphones to report real-time traffic flow, could be adapted to turn each soldier into a reporting unit, delivering real-time data about position and status.

Communications resemble social sites like Facebook, in which your friends would be represented by a military unit and could be used to track the position of, and communicate with, other units.

Maps with an overlay of points of interest are familiar to every GPS user. The Raytheon app would use the same concept, but points of interest might be known sniper sites or safe fallback positions.

Field information would be transmitted to a central computer that would crunch the data, update it and push it back out to the soldiers. “This is hypothetical, but if there is a building with known terrorist activities, it could automatically be pushed to the phone when the soldiers get near that area,” said Mr. Smart.

Live information could also be used to reduce tactical errors and friendly fire incidents. “If there was another platoon that was supposed to arrive, and they were delayed or ahead of schedule, you could adapt your plan,” said Mr. Smart. “If one of the units you are counting on is redirected, you know that in real time.”

Mr. Smart also said that Raytheon was developing sensors that could be attached to phones so that they would serve other purposes. He declined to give specifics, however mobile phones have been outfitted as portable ultrasound machines, which would be useful for battlefield medicine.

Although the application that Raytheon has developed will work with an off-the-shelf iPhone, the company concedes that there would have to be alterations for the battlefield.

One iPhone limitation to be addressed is that it only carries out one function at a time unlike competing systems from Palm and Google, which can run several concurrently. If a soldier is to have position automatically reported, the GPS will have to run at the same time as other applications. Mr. Smart said it would be an easy adaptation to make. “Underneath the iPhone is a Mac OS X operating system, which is based on Unix, which gives us Unix multitasking,” he said.

But that raises another issue. Apple limits multitasking because it empties the batteries quickly. Because the iPhone doesn’t have a replaceable battery, a fresh one can’t be popped in when power gets low. Mr. Smart said that Raytheon may address that through a ruggedized phone case that would accommodate a larger battery.

Mobile phones are also known to be vulnerable to hacking attacks. Mr. Smart said that some safeguards were built in to the software, but especially sensitive transmissions could be passed through a more sophisticated scrambler that it would dock with.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Raytheon is developing other iPhone apps as well. It has also demonstrated an application that would serve to train air-traffic controllers. It would not completely replace current training, but would build skills in recalling aircraft and terrain, visual scanning, on-the-fly mathematics and rule-based decision-making, skills that also are used frequently by gamers.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/the-iphone-goes-to-war/?scp=7&sq=iphone&st=cse

Questions)

1. As iPhone has recently been released, it seems that the number of iPhone users are growing quite rapidly. Therefore, we can see that domestic competitors could have some kind of damages over their territory, something like losing their market share, decreasing sales, etc. And this is also a matter of telecommunication companies, as well as cell phone makers like Samsung electronics.

- Do you think they are getting fatal damages? How much do you think they could get?

- Could this be a national economy (or industry) problem? What could be the pros and cons of this situation? Answer this question with national point of view and user's point of view, respectively.

2. If I read this right, this article shows the GPS tracking system can be used in military situation, since it has very useful features in a battle field. But there has been a similar system already before - some telecommunications companies provided optional services which enable users finding locations of their friends, family, lovers, etc. The difference is iPhone has it in its device without any optional services.

- Suppose everybody has their own GPS, which can tell their own location, and others', too. How would you use this GPS system? What kind of purposes would you have?

- What kind of bad aspects do you see? (with same assumptions in the above question) Give some possible examples of abusing this system in bad or illegal ways.

3. iPhone is highly eval‎uated not because it has high performance, but because it has a system with a great degree of freedom, and it created new market which can produce many things. (e.g. money, culture, community, etc) In short, it does have a great system. Compare to this, Samsung electronics or other domestic companies are criticized by people by reason of that they focused only hardware performance.

- Why do you think this difference exists? Feel free to express your opinion with reasonable clues. (possible answers : culture, education, history, religion, national thing, etc.)

- And, try to think about becoming creative. What kind of things do we need to become a creative person? Tell me about it.

[준행]

우왕 새벽에 올리셨네요;; 고생하셨슴다

[재균(Jack)]

토픽좋네요,박범씨ㅋ

[박범(Frank)]

뭘요, 임재균씨ㅋ

[정영식(Yeong)]

그러게요 새벽5시.. 수고하셨습니다~~