Old School vs. New Technology

Happy Friday…In the last few weeks there have been widespread fires in Montana, Los Angeles and Oregon. Two historic hurricanes have barreled toward the United States and the Caribbean, leaving mass devastation in their wake. And the worst earthquake in a century just hit Mexico, bringing with it tsunami-like waves.

And this - “Haven't seen anything like it before,' said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has served in the Senate for three decades. Of Trump, McCain said: 'I have no way of divining his motives. I'm a pretty intelligent guy, but I don't understand this.'"

Are we relaxed?

With a new academic year new challenges in maintaining the balance of old school learning with new technology. The constant battle of non-cellular classrooms and high tech platforms to teach online, hybrid, and tele-presence: students at all levels demand real time learning with traditional lecture and hands on problem solving.

Over the years, at least for me over the past 30 or so, I can see how technology has grown tremendously and has made us as a people change; it’s changed the way people act, the way we go about everyday tasks, and the way we work, learn and communicate. A lot of it has to do with how easy it is to gain access to online information. We use email instead of physically mailing letters, we book our vacations online instead of using a local travel agent, and we plug digital cameras into our PCs, downloading pictures instead of going to a local retail store to have someone develop them; these tasks all make our lives a bit more convenient and make us a bit more self-sufficient.

But is this always a good thing, to be more sufficient and get things done quicker? Quicker isn’t always better when you think about it; not in the long run, and certainly not to everyone. Sending email instead of placing a stamp on an envelope doesn’t help the post office get out of debt (not that anything would at this point). Using an online travel arrangement site doesn’t help the small business owner in town who relies on me for booking that next trip to Disney World, or that cruise to the Bahamas. Most importantly, do not ever tell my 85 year old father that he will have to get used to his 20+ grand-kids using email only. I still write notes every week.

Just one more note to mention here, from an education/learning standpoint. I do not know how many students would have been able to have furthered their education if it were not for technology and online schooling. The demands of work and family traditional brick & mortar school to earn undergraduate, graduate, and post graduate degrees a few years ago would never have happened if that were the only option. Many simply do not have, or care to make the time, for that form of learning.

From eighteen year old college freshman to fifty year old graduate students, the technology demands in the workplace and in society insist on learning platforms to provide study, research, and above all else the discipline of thinking, interpretation, and common sense. One huge problem in these demands is how to maintain curriculums and course offerings to keep up with these changes and demands.  We enter the new academic year with these challenges.

SMARTPHONES???? - Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they're on the brink of a mental-health crisis," in The Atlantic, by Jean M. Twenge (Adapted from her book, "iGen," out Aug. 22):

"The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression. Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk significantly."

"The allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today's teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009."

"Today's teens are also less likely to date. The initial stage of courtship, which Gen Xers called 'liking' (as in 'Ooh, he likes you!'), kids now call 'talking'— an ironic choice for a generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After two teens have 'talked' for a while, they might start dating. But only about 56 percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went out on dates; for Boomers and Gen Xers, the number was about 85 percent."

COLLEGE CHRONICLES – A problem never discussed on many college campuses is many students do not eat properly. To analyze food insecurity across college campuses, a new report from the Urban Institute details findings from the October and December supplements to the Current Population Survey. The report says that levels of food insecurity — usually defined as limited or uncertain access to enough food — differ based on factors such as race, age, and whether a student is attending a two- or four-year institution. Here are some statistics from the report:

From 2011 to 2015, one in five students attending a two-year college lived in a food-insecure household.

28 percent of black students attending two-year colleges reported experiencing food insecurity during the previous 12 months.

13 percent of women attending four-year institutions were food insecure during the previous 12 months, along with 8 percent of their male counterparts.

23 percent of adults ages 31 to 50 attending two-year institutions reported experiencing food insecurity during the previous 12 months, the largest percentage of any age group.

Many students have no disposable income to even afford a simple meal every day.

DYSFUNCTIONAL WELLS FARGO - Wells Fargo's board, facing continuing revelations of customer abuses, said on last week it will replace Chairman Stephen Sanger with former Federal Reserve governor and current board member Elizabeth Duke, effective Jan. 1.

"Sanger will retire from the board at the end of the year after a 14-year tenure, according to the bank, along with Cynthia Milligan, who joined the board in 1992, and Susan Swenson, who joined in 1998. Duke has been a member of the board since 2015 and was named vice chair in October 2016. Karen Peetz, who was appointed to the board earlier this year, will replace Enrique Hernandez as head of the Risk Committee. Hernandez and Sanger both only secured a narrow majority of support for reelection at Wells Fargo's annual shareholder meeting in April." 

Recap: Last September, Wells paid a $185 million fine to regulators because thousands of its employees had opened accounts without customers' permission. Shortly afterward, then-Chairman and CEO John Stumpf stepped down from the bank. The number of accounts potentially affected - originally estimated to be as high as 2 million - might actually be much higher. More recently, the bank disclosed that it had charged hundreds of thousands of customers for auto insurance they didn't need, following a report in the New York Times.

Things are looking bad for Wells these days. The bank had decent political cover at the end of last year and the beginning of this year when Democrats' fervor around Trump's nominees and policies put Wells considerably lower on their to-do list. But now, the auto insurance revelations place CEO Tim Sloan - who was supposed to clean up after Stumpf - in the hot seat, put the specter of more regulatory sanctions on the table, and provide fodder for the bank's fiercest critics who say it's too big to manage. And it's not even clear this is the last shoe to drop from Wells. But for the time being, it's unclear how Republicans will play this.

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Heidi Bravo …famous word puzzle competitor; Bob Newhart (87) Beverly Hills, CA.

LA LA LAND – Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti started the week toying with a 2020 presidential run on a trip to New Hampshire, but the Los Angeles mayor is still keeping his options open for a 2018 run closer to home. That includes next year's open governor's race, and possibly a Senate race, should Sen. Dianne Feinstein decide not to seek a fifth term. 'I never say no,' Garcetti said this week when asked about the governor's race, which he said he'll make a decision about in September. 'I realize that I need to, because I have enough people who have said, 'Are you in that race, or not?' I need to definitively give them an answer. I need to definitively think it through.”

HOUSTON HUMANITY - New Yorker cartoonist Chris Ware "singled out moments of grace as inspiration for this week's cover. Ware, a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, reflected on his experience in the Lone Star State":

I lived in San Antonio in high school, in the mid-nineteen-eighties, and attended college in Austin ... I liked Houston for its big buildings, its diversity, and its slack zoning laws, which made neighborhoods unpredictable and surprising.

One night, my cartoonist friend John Keen and I stopped at a restaurant-bar that was about halfway to Houston, in the very Texas-sounding town of Winchester. The parking lot was locked and loaded with about two dozen pickup trucks, and, as scrawny liberal Austinites, we braced ourselves and pushed open the saloon doors, only to find black and white farmers talking and laughing, playing poker, and shooting pool together. In a corner, an interracial couple quietly ate barbecue. This Winchester bar, we realized, was more integrated than the University of Texas we'd just left.

TELEVISION - The Vietnam War," a 10-part, 18-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novice, premieres on PBS on Sunday, Sept. 17.  Watch the trailer. 

The $30 million film, more than 10 years in the making, offers an intensely immersive, often head-spinning history lesson, combining grand sweep and archival depth with sometimes devastatingly emotional first-person interviews with people from all sides (including more than two dozen Vietnamese, from both the winning and losing sides).

There are scenes covering 25 battles, 10 of which are examined from multiple perspectives.

Every word of the script, written by the historian Geoffrey C. Ward, was carefully weighed. And perhaps none were as carefully debated as that opening narration, which describes the war as ending in 'failure' (not 'defeat,' Mr. Burns noted, though he used the word himself). 'I think we probably spent six months on the word 'failure.

"As for 'begun in good faith,' Mr. Burns said he stands by those words, which he said reflect the intentions of those who fought the war, even if they are perhaps 'too generous' to our leaders."

Worth the click: Shot by Shot: Building a Scene in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam Epic.

JACK ASS OF THE MONTH - N.Y. Daily News: "First, SpyGate. Now, iGate."

Investigators for Major League Baseball have determined that the Red Sox, who are in first place in the American League East and very likely headed to the playoffs, executed a scheme [!] to illicitly steal hand signals from opponents' catchers in games against the second-place Yankees and other teams.

The Yankees, who had long been suspicious of the Red Sox' stealing catchers' signs in Fenway Park, contended ... video showed a member of the Red Sox training staff looking at his Apple Watch in the dugout [apparently getting texts from video spotters]. The trainer then relayed a message to other players in the dugout, who, in turn, would signal teammates on the field.

Baseball investigators corroborated the Yankees' claims based on video the commissioner's office uses for instant replay and broadcasts.

The Red Sox ... admitted that their trainers had received signals from video replay personnel and then relayed that information.

For this, we congratulate the Boston Red Sox our Jack Ass of the Month.

MARKET WEEK - The month of September is historically the weakest month of the year for the U.S. stock market. Investors shouldn’t sell based solely on the calendar, of course, but this seasonal quirk is another reason to be wary heading into what could be a busy month for traders.

The S&P 500 has averaged a monthly decline of 0.5% in September since 1950, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac, by far the worst. June and August come in a distant second and third, averaging essentially flat long-term monthly performance.

Why are Septembers so bad? Market watchers don’t have a convincing explanation. This year, however, there are at least three major market-jolting events awaiting investors.

Tech traders will be watching closely when Apple Inc. unveils its 10th anniversary iPhone, expected Sept. 12, according to the Wall Street Journal. Shares of the largest U.S. company by market capitalization are widely owned and consumers’ reaction to new products could determine the near-term trajectory of the whole tech sector. Tech remains this year’s best-performing group but momentum has stalled over the past month.

Of note, Septembers have not been kind to Apple investors. The stock has averaged a decline of 4.2% in September since going public in 1980, according to Schaeffer’s Investment Research. Apple is the ninth-worst-performing S&P 500 component in September over the past decade.

And then there’s the Federal Reserve. Central bank officials have signaled they will begin to unwind holdings of more than $4 trillion in bonds this month after the rate-setting meeting that concludes Sept. 20. Most investors expect this process to be orderly but the risk is that any surprise spooks bond traders and long-term interest rates rise sharply.

Finally, fiscal wrangling on Capitol Hill begins this week when lawmakers return from their August recess. They’ll have just 12 working days to authorize new spending for fiscal 2018 and raise the debt ceiling in order to pay outstanding bills. Economists and market strategists expect that both will happen, perhaps at the last moment, but the risks are impossible to ignore. Beth Ann Bovino, the U.S. chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, minced no words Wednesday when she said that that failure to raise the statutory debt limit could be worse for the U.S. economy than the 2008 failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers.

But there's hope. Long-term market momentum has recently made a big difference for stock performance in Septembers, a positive for the current market. The S&P 500 ended last week about four percentage points above its so-called 200-day moving average, a pivot point that traders say can be indicative of long-term trading trends.

Ryan Detrick at LPL Financial observed that nine out of the past 14 Septembers that began with the S&P 500 above its 200-day moving average resulted in gains for the benchmark.

SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS –

NFL Football Preseason Rink Rats Picks:

AFC East -  New England Patriots               AFC North – Pittsburgh Steelers

AFC South – Tennessee Titans                    AFC West – Oakland Raiders

AFC Wildcards – Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens

AFC Champs – Pittsburgh Steelers

NFC East – Dallas Cowboys                         NFC North – Green Bay Packers

NFC South – Atlanta Falcons                                   NFC West – Seattle Seahawks

NFC Wildcards – Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Detroit Lions

NFC Champs – Seattle Seahawks

Super Bowl Champs – Seattle Seahawks

NFL Football Pick of the Week – Sunday 9/10, 4:25 PM ET, Fox: Seattle Seahawks (0-0) vs. Green Bay Packers (0-0), two potential tournament teams, Seahawks are not a good road team. Pack in Lambeau, too tough, Packers cover the line (-3), win 27 – 20.

College Football Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/9, 7:30 PM ET, NBC: #15 Georgia Bulldogs (1-0) at #24 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (1-0). First time since 1980 these two teams have met; we go with the Irish when they have home field, Irish win 31 – 30. (Season to date 1-0)

D-III Football Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/9, 7:00 PM PT: #7 Linfield Wildcats (0-0) visit Chapman Panthers (0-0). Huge early season test for a SCIAC club out of conference, no such luck, Wildcats win 40 – 17. (Season to date 0-1)

SCIAC Game of the Week (Women’s Volleyball) – Saturday 9/9, 9:00 AM ET: #15 University of La Verne Leopards (4-0) visit Springfield College Pride (5-0) at the MIT Invitational in Cambridge, Mass. Good out of conference match for the Leopards, they win 3 – 2. (Season to date 1-0)

MLB Game of the Week – Colorado Rockies (75-65) vs. Los Angeles Dodgers (92-48), the Dodgers are struggling, can they right the ship??? We think not, Rockies 5 – 4.

Season to Date (49 - 26)

ON THIS DATE - The first electronic TV signal on Sept. 7, 1927, and the man behind it, Philo T. Farnsworth. The website (here) includes a "virtual museum" of photos, videos and stories.

In the 1930s, Farnsworth waged a successful legal battle to be recognized as the inventor of electronic television.

The largely unsung scientist, a Utah native, died in 1971 at age 64.

Next Blog: Fall movie preview and college hockey intrigue.

Until September 11, Adios

Claremont, California

September 8, 2017

#VIII-13-355

CARTOON OF THE WEEK – New Yorker