↓
 
Home » Not going to write on politics today

Not going to write on politics today

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m taking a one-day vacation from it.

But you don’t have to. Unless you want to.

Happy New Year!

Comments

Not going to write on politics today — 36 Comments

  1. I’ve made a concerted effort to follow politics less in the last month or so and found it very refreshing. I limit my online time to an hour or two a day at most during the week and that is all devices and all topics included from sports to politics.

    The constant hysteria and over the top anger has just got to be too much. I still care about the same things just don’t need to hear about it all the time.

    And I’ve even started going places without my cell phone. Or at least going into stores or events without it. Went to a family gathering on Christmas Eve with about 30 family members and of the 20 or so adults I think at least half of them were fiddling with their phones regularly. The idea that we must always be reachable is ridiculous. Up until about 15 years ago this was the way it was and we all survived mostly fine.

  3. Griffin:

    I always take my phone with me, in case of auto emergencies and that sort of thing. But I turn it off when I’m out for dinner, visiting people, at a party, or anything social like that.

  4. Neo,

    Yeah that is the one thing I think of. But then I remember the two major car incidents I had were both in the pre cell phone era and somehow I managed.

    A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk without my phone and was gone for a couple hours and when I got home I had about a dozen calls and texts from people asking where I was. No emergency or anything just flipping out because they couldn’t get me ‘now, now, now’.

    As an introvert I find myself observing people in social settings a lot and it is really amazing the amount of attention people pay to their phones.

  5. Griffin:

    I don’t like it when people keep focusing on their phones instead of a social event in which they are supposedly participating. That said, I don’t know too many people who habitually do that.

    As far as cars go, when my son was about 8 months old (pre-cellphone days) and I was on a country road on a Sunday night at around 10 PM (he was asleep in the car seat), the electrical system of my car went bye-bye. The road was completely dark; no lights at all. I’ll skip the rest of the story except to say that fortunately we’re both okay, but the situation was terrifying for me and a cellphone would have been a tremendous help. I will never consciously leave my cell phone at home when I’m driving a car.

  6. Neo,

    I hear you. I only go without for shortish trips of an hour or two and I always take it at night or on a day trip of some kind. And of course I’m often with someone who has their phone which affects my decision also so I get my perceived benefits without the risk.

    One of the saddest things is when you see a couple in a restaurant sitting across from each other both staring at their phones and not saying a word to each other. Used to be this was kind of a millenial thing but it seems to be creeping into the older generation also.

    At the rate I’m going I’ll be living in a shack in the woods of Montana in a few years. LOL.

  7. Now that I’m in college again I’m stunned how the kids are heads down in their phones just about all the time, even during lectures. Outside of study areas I never see them studying.

    O brave new world!

  8. I had a car phone by 1980 so I have had cell phones that long and depended on them so much that I still take it everywhere but don’t use it for anything but calls. My kids won’t answer their phones so I text them but my phone works in the car by bluetooth so it is all hands free. When car phones were new, I still had a speaker and microphone.

    When I still had the trauma center, we got a case where the driver who ran a red light and was killed, had a cellphone with half a number entered.

    By the way, my first car phone was $4500.

  9. I hate when I leave for work, get halfway there, and realize I don’t have my phone.
    Although invariably, I have my laptop,
    Turn around, go back and get it, and start off again.
    Better than getting all the way there.

  10. My mobile phone is always in the car when I am out, but not necessarily on my person.
    I give people my cell phone number if they insist, but tell them I don’t look at it but a couple of times a week.
    Texting is handy when you don’t really want to spend time actually schmoozing with people just to get or give some basic information.
    As for being on the phone all the time, AesopSpouse has to clean the email inbox (synched with work computer) constantly to keep from drowning in junk.
    We make the kids keep theirs pocketed on visits.

  12. Mike K:

    I knew a very rich lawyer who had a Rolls Royce with a car phone back in the early 80s. For all I know, he had it earlier, too. It was quite an amazing thing at the time, and I bet it cost a bundle (as did the Rolls, of course).

  13. I always joked that when I sold my business, my cell phone went with it. Well, I shut down my business this year, and have absolutely loved being able to leave my phone when I go into a store, or just want to leave it off for awhile.

  14. Mine was in my VW convertible and was stolen the first night after it was installed. I figured it might be an inside job except the thief only stole the handset. The transceiver was in the trunk. They were not portable at first, then I got a phone that was the size of a shaving kit and then, finally, a “brick,” like the one Goldie Hawn is using in “Overboard.”

    Before the first cell phones, there was a mobile operator. A surgeon friend of mine, who drove all over southern California, had a mobile phone. I had a beeper that would transmit short messages before the cell phone.

  15. The original car phones were definitely a luxury. There used to be a joke about a guy who was so impressed with his new mobile phone that he called a rich friend. The friend asked if he could put him on hold as his other phone was ringing.

  16. As a small town kid I think my first recollection of a car phone was the one the Arnie Becker character had on LA Law in the 1980s. Seemed incredibly out of reach for an average person.

  18. MikeK. I was in Air Force Tech School with the guy who invented that short range transceiver that linked to the car phone.
    He fought so hard to get out of the service so he could get back to making money.

  19. Griffin: Perry White had a radiophone in the old Superman TV series.
    I had a CB with a telephone handset. Looked like a car phone.
    It was impressive. Particularly to the person who busted my car window to steal it.

  20. Looked like a car phone.
    It was impressive. Particularly to the person who busted my car window to steal it.

    I drove convertibles for years and never locked them as the top was more expensive than anything they could steal. The car phone was an exception. The headset was $1500 to replace.

  22. Before the advent of cellphones the State Department used to issue us portable radios about the size and shape of a cinderblock when we were stationed to an embassy. The paging function was a unique tone, hence the nickname “whistling brick.”

    We always assumed the local government and the Soviet embassy were monitoring anything we said on them, but they were good for keeping in contact with the Marine Security Guard and the Duty Officer. When my father died the Marines managed to find me 50 miles outside Nairobi by paging me on my whistling brick. And when mercenaries invaded Cotonou in Dahomey, an embassy officer who lived near the airport and heard them shooting was able to get word to me even though local telephones were not working, and I was able to contact all embassy employees on their whistling brick and tell them to lie low for a day or two until we figured things out.

    And then we got whistling bricks that were smaller and had an encryption function. That was an improvement, but they still whistled and were too large to put in a pocket. But the Soviets could no longer understand what we were saying.

  23. But the Soviets could no longer understand what we were saying.

    When I had a top secret clearance in the aircraft industry, we assumed they had everything we called secret in 5 days. 10 days for Top Secret.

  24. Mike K:

    Very possibly. At least they weren’t getting it contemporaneously, as they would by listening to our whistling bricks.

  25. F on January 1, 2019 at 10:57 pm at 10:57 pm said:
    Before the advent of cellphones the State Department used to issue us portable radios about the size and shape of a cinderblock when we were stationed to an embassy.
    * * *
    Not in a shoe?

    Dick Tracy had a wrist-phone before ANY of you guys had your car phones.

  28. The Opium Wars are interesting as they led to the establishment of Hong Kong. Since the British surrendered it back to China in 1997, it has slid into irrelevancy. I was going to take my daughter, who was my traveling companion at the time, to see it before the handover but we didn’t go. She has been to China several times but I’m now too old.

  30. Since the British surrendered it back to China in 1997, it has slid into irrelevancy.

    Per Trading Economics, its annual per capita product at purchasing power parity is slightly higher than that of the United States. Its unemployment rate is under 3%, about 60% of the population over 16 is employed right how (same as here), and its inflation rate is only mildly elevated at 2.6% per year. It also has a current account surplus on its balance of payments, something this country hasn’t had in about 35 years. The one intractable problem from which it currently suffers is horribly low fertility (TFR is 1.2 children per woman per lifetime), a problem it shares with all of the affluent countries of the peripheral Far East bar Malaysia.

  31. But Hong Kong is still irrelevant. It is just part of mainland China. You seem to be a fan of mainland China but I am not.

  32. https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/01/01/happy-new-year-from-liberty-unyielding/

    “There are many blessings to be thankful for. Not the least of them is the blast of truth our legacy leaders daily reveal about themselves. America sees real intentions and purposes on display in a way few polities have the opportunity to. We can make use of that. Much lies in our hands — and what does not is mostly out of the power of those who would harm us.

    Stepping into a brave new world has its discomforts. But I think more and more people see the futility of clinging to the familiar old one, with its rituals and conventions that no longer represent reality, but only a shadow of what reality once was. What is preserved will be what we prize in our hearts.

    The president doesn’t always tweet or speak in defensible ways. It is what it is. His New Year greeting tweet will resonate as a watchword for 2019, however.”

    @realDonaldTrump

    HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!

  33. But Hong Kong is still irrelevant. It is just part of mainland China. You seem to be a fan of mainland China but I am not.

    The political regime is significantly different and the domestic product per capita (at purchasing power parity) is 3.7x that of China proper.

    I don’t know why me taking exception to your remark means I’m a ‘fan’ of Mainland China. China has had it’s accomplishments over the last 40 years but is also a source of anxiety.

    I’m not seeing how Hong Kong was ‘relevant’ in 1997 (when its real GDP was 1/2 what it is today) but ‘irrelevant’ in 2018. It’s a small, affluent territory. That’s just what it was 20 years ago.

  35. It’s a small, affluent territory. That’s just what it was 20 years ago.

    No. it was an island of freedom ruled by the Brits. No more.

  36. Not sure I trust Freedom House anymore, but FWIW, the ratings it gives to Hong Kong are quite different from those given China proper.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑