- Some notes over holidays. There were a variety of reasons I couldn't go home to Texas for the holidays. I found my apartment complex laundry facility deserted on Christmas Eve: a good day to wash clothes. I used to like to watch holiday flicks: for some reason I didn't catch two of my favorites, "Miracle on 34th St" and "White Christmas", not to mention the musical "Scrooge". Hallmark is finally finishing up its wall-to-wall 2-month holiday flick promotion. They had a dozen or more new flicks, mostly forgettable romantic comedies; probably the best of which was "A Heavenly Christmas" which has a plot line analogous to "Christmas Magic" (There is a common storyline that a new angel, to advance, must achieve some Christmas objective, and in the end we discover the new angel isn't actually a dead person but in a coma.) But there was nothing as endearing as "Angels and Ornaments", which involves a grandfather angel, who had died in a war away from his beloved pregnant wife and has a mission to help his (unknown to him) granddaughter find her one true love, who turns out to be her childhood friend and music store boss. There are parts of the story which don't make sense, like why over 40 years later, he is still separated from his beloved spouse, who died a few years after their granddaughter was born; is he atoning for some misdeed during his life? Google Play had a movie purchase discount, which I used to buy my own copy. This movie, and a few other favorites, played on Hallmark's Movies & Mysteries channel.
- New Year's resolutions. Like others I have a few resolutions over the coming year:
- Losing weight. I've been trying to lose weight I put on after 2007. I did lose about 17 pounds this past year; which makes for my lowest weight since 2013, but I have another 30 to hit that new target. For those who aren't aware, I also publish my own diet/nutrition blog. I'm not a nutritionist, but back around 2003, I suddenly realized, despite having 4 degrees (including a PhD), I wasn't as rigorously looking at the food I was putting into my own body. If you knew my co-workers, they could tell you I've passed down chances to eat pizza, and I'm more likely to eat a lower-carb protein bar or two for lunch or dinner. I almost never eat out when I'm at home. You won't find desserts or snacks on my grocery lists, no alcoholic beverages, no higher-carb foods. Obesity is a complex phenomenon which includes a number of factors, some beyond one's control, and as a researcher, I'm well aware of some of the limitations on relevant studies (e.g., standardized measures, number of participants, etc.) I plan to upgrade my fitness regime over the coming year, which should help.
- Working on certain relationships. When I was on the UWM faculty, my office was next door to a fairly well known female professor in my discipline. One day she almost proudly admitted (not in a response to my question) that she hadn't spoken to her sister in almost 10 years. I didn't have a clue what triggered that, but I thought that was profoundly sad. For many of us "smarter geeks", human relationships are complex, fragile things. Many of us didn't date a lot in high school (I was a 16-year-old college freshman and 19-year-old graduate student). There are things we had better influence and control over, like lines of computer code or scientific experiments. It's often difficult because there are individual differences, e.g., things that don't bother me bother other people and vice-versa.
- Toning down some of my interactions on social media. About 15 years ago I bid for a laptop computer and found myself caught up in a bidding war; I won the contest but probably ended up paying about $200 more than the next auction for the same type notebook. There was a time when I should have put up my hands and said "this is too rich for my blood" and walked away from the auction. There are a number of Internet trolls out there who want to have to have the last word. Like my Uncle Roger, I need to make my point and then, as the Disney song goes, "Let it go! Let it go! Let it go!"
Drones and a Copernican Revolution in Delivery Services
When I think of Amazon and Google looking at technical innovation in the high-cost delivery sector, there are immediate candidates for drone delivery: take, for instance, you need to deliver a time-critical medication but it's rush hour. Or maybe the patient is in a remote location and the roads, even if they exist, are in bad, almost unusable shape. But, as much as I like Amazon, do I need that coffee grinder ordered delivered in 30 minutes or less? And good luck flying that 45-lb. piece of luggage across town.I'm not going to go into the weeds of the economics here, but let me cite a couple of relevant notes from this piece:
In official documents, Amazon has written that 86% of its packages weigh under 5 pounds. As for distance, Walmart has noted that 70% of Americans live within 5 miles of a Walmart....In a report by ARK Invest, Tasha Keeney suggests that Prime Air could cost Amazon only 88 cents per delivery.Another piece suggests that robots could make a difference in last-mile delivery. Consider, for example, an arrangement where drones are released from vans servicing a neighborhood rather from a centralized location, or some variation of the hub and spoke distribution system.
It's easy to see how innovations like driverless cars can make a difference. For example, when I flew back to Charleston early this year, the flight got in around 1;30 AM, I only lived about a 15 mile drive from the airport. Uber had nothing and the local taxi took a long time to find a driver; I ended up getting home around 2 hours later. Driverless cars could augment existing staff, extend coverage, etc.
What's the biggest risk to innovation in the sector? Political, of course; US restrictions are hobbling progress; in fact, Amazon found Britain more receptive allowing test delivery.
