The Apple watch EKG function


Apple released a bunch of software updates yesterday — 10.14.2 of Mac OS; 12.1.1 of iOS; and 5.1.2 of watchOS. The updates for the iPhone and the Apple watch enable the long-promised EKG function on the Apple watch 4.

I’m going to guess that thousands of people who’ve never seen an electrical graph of their own heartbeat before (including me) saw that for the first time today. It’s easy. You press your right finger against the stem of the watch, and the back of the watch has electrical contact with your left wrist. That forms a circuit that goes across your heart. In 30 seconds, the watch creates a simple EKG. The test is intended only to detect atrial fibrillation.

The iPhone saves a record of all your EKG’s. If you request it, the iPhone app will create a PDF of the EKG that you can use to start a conversation with your doctor. I used that PDF to create the image above.

Lucky for me, the watch didn’t detect a problem.

I’ve had the Apple watch for about three weeks now. I have become very fond of it, not only as a timepiece but also as a communications device and fitness coach. If I’ve been sitting at the computer for too long, it taps my wrist and tells me that it’s time to stand up and move around for a while. It has encouraged me to walk more, knowing that it counts every step and that I’d like to have a good report at bedtime. I am still trying to understand how to make use of its “heart rate variability” function (as are many watch wearers). But heart rate variability is a complicated subject for another day, after I understand it better.

Three times, I have triggered the watch’s fall detector. In all three cases, I was slapping my hand against my leg — for example, when I was on the deck yelling at the squirrel to get off the roof. I replied to the watch’s prompts and told it that I had not fallen.

Honestly I would feel a little insecure now without the watch on my wrist. That, I’m sure, is just what Apple was aiming for.

The yield curve and the coming Trump recession



A Facebook meme

One of the first rules of managing your money is never to give, or to accept, advice about money. I’m not giving any advice in this post. But I am suggesting that now is a good time to take a good hard look — according to one’s own lights — at the state of the U.S. (and the global) economy.

Yesterday, the yield curve on U.S. treasury bonds (2-year notes vs. 5-year notes) inverted for the first time since 2007. We all know what happened in 2008. An inverted yield curve, of all economic indicators, has proven to be as reliable a predictor of economic downturns as exists.

Here are some articles:

Bloomberg: The U.S. Yield Curve Just Inverted. That’s Huge.

Reuters: Dollar drops as U.S. Treasury yield curve inversion sparks recession fears

Forbes: The Yield Curve Just Inverted — Sort Of — And That Is A Sell Signal For Stocks

Am I blaming Trump? Not necessarily. Just as Trump gets zero credit for the past few years of economic growth, he may not get the blame for the next recession. Economic cycles and their causes don’t usually have a great deal to do with who is in the White House. But how a country responds to an economic downturn, though, is very important. Trump has plenty of room to screw up on that.

Back in the 1990s, as I got old enough to get serious about money and retirement, I did my best to study up on economics, investing, and economic cycles. I watched very carefully as the Dot-Com boom of the late 1990s turned into the enormous bubble burst of 2001. And as the housing and mortgage bubble grew during the Bush-Cheney years, I watched with horror (because I was very close to retirement). That bubble burst in 2008. But I landed on my feet without losing a nickel of my retirement money, because I knew the bust was coming.

During periods of economic growth, risk is less risky. Lots of people make money. But when an economic downturn is looming, it’s time to go defensive. Going defensive means taking a look at your investments. Is your money in the right places? Going defensive means taking a hard look at the economy, trying to figure out where the trouble spots are, and trying to figure out one’s vulnerabilities.

When big players in the stock market (often called “strong hands”) realize that the market is unsustainable and is going down, there is a huge retail effort to transfer stocks to “weak hands.” Weak hands are then forced to sell in a panic and absorb most of the losses. That’s why professional investing advice is often so corrupt. There is a famous (and possibly apocryphal) story about J.P. Morgan, who said that he knew it was time to sell his stocks when his shoeshine boy started talking about buying stocks. It’s true that the stock market is not the economy. But the economy and the stock market do tend to run on parallel tracks.

We all need our own crystal balls, because everyone’s situation is different. I’ll have more posts in the future on economic conditions. But, for the moment, I have only one point to make. That is that the warning lights are flashing that the time has come to go defensive. Thanks to globalization, we’re all in pretty much the same boat these days. Readers in Europe have plenty to think about, too, such as Brexit in the U.K., or the recent outbreak of economic discontent in France, which has forced President Macron to reverse course on fuel taxes.

As for me, I’m going to plant an extra-big garden next spring.


Update: Just after I posted this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down almost 800 points. The media are focused on a connection to American trade with China. But I suspect that it has much more to do with investors spooked by the yield curve, as large institutions unload stocks and go defensive. The Dow may well regain most of these losses tomorrow morning, as often happens. But this kind of churning in the stock market is typical of what occurs at this point in the economic cycle.


Update 2: This advertisement appeared in my Facebook feed a day after I wrote this post. This kind of deceit is typical at this point in the economic cycle. As “strong hands” work to sell off their holdings for as high a price as possible, retail efforts intensify to sell stocks to “weak hands,” who are not aware of where we are in the economic cycle and are left holding the bag. Notice that this ad is targeted at older people, and that Facebook knows my age.


Update 3: Here is what Fox watchers are being told:


Meow


Hay bale sculptures are a thing around here (we grow lots of hay). Obviously there are even competitions, because there was a sign beside this sculpture saying that it had won first prize in something. It’s in Mayodan, North Carolina.

Those of you who are not up to date on agricultural machinery may not know that hay from large fields is often baled into large, very heavy rolls these days. These rolls are too heavy to be moved by one human being. But the smaller, rectangular bales are still produced, too. This cat sculpture combines both types of bales. And a lot of black paint.

The eternal elegance of good technology



The signal strength dial on a Collins 75A-4 receiver, circa 1952

Uh-oh. This is a nerd post.

Every so often, I have a maintenance day for my collection of obsolete technology. Stuff gets dusted. Stuff gets turned on and exercised. Batteries in portable devices get charged. Little fixes gets done. These things are like pets. Like pets, they like to be photographed. Unlike pets, they hold still for tripod shots with long exposures.

To keep working and for a long life, many devices actually need the periodic exercise. Failure to periodically use my IBM Selectric III would be one of the worst things I could do to it. Capacitors in old radios and other electronics need tend to deteriorate unless they are energized and charged periodically. Batteries require maintenance. But old devices, like old pets, also need to be (and like to be) petted and loved. They are intelligent machines from some incredible engineers. I have been known to say that engineers were some of the best artists of the 20th Century. A collection of old technologies is in many ways an art collection.

Strangely enough, pretty much all my old technology works. I realized today that my Pioneer SX-9000 receiver-amplifier (about 1972) is sitting idle and needs to be used. It works fine, but all of its dial lights are burned out. On eBay, for the SX-9000 and many other classic amplifiers, one can buy brand new LED replacement bulbs for the dial lights. For $19.95, I ordered a set of bulbs. I’ll soon make a project of opening up the SX-9000, dusting it out, replacing the bulbs, and moving it to a place where it can be connected to good speakers and still be heard.

I didn’t get to all my old pets today. But they’re still loved, so maybe tomorrow.


A Monroe 650 calculator, with Nixie tubes, which just calculated the square root of 2. This is my go-to calculator when I’m doing my taxes.


An Astatic D-104 microphone


A 10-point “Delegate” typeface for my IBM Selectric III. My IBM Selectric is long retired from the San Francisco Examiner and bears a nameplate for The Typewritorium, a San Francisco typewriter business that may still be in operation, though I think it has moved.


An analog measuring device with a very long history


The fine-tuning dial on the Collins receiver, which has 21 tubes and weighs 35 pounds


A Tektronix 2430A oscilloscope, totally cherry and shipped from San Francisco when I moved. It was retired from the data center of the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, where I believe it was used for calibrating the read-write heads on early “wash tub” disk drives.


The somewhat dusty interior of the Collins 75A-4 receiver


A Civil Defense CDV-700 Geiger counter, in perfect working condition. There were times when winds from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan (2011) blew this way. The Geiger counter reported a significant (but not dangerous) increase in the North Carolina background radiation.

Let’s hear it for the P.O.


Many things have vanished in rural America. Jobs and people (particularly young people) are at the top of the list. One institution that remains is the U.S. Postal Service, which has shown a remarkable ability to change with the times.

Though I lived in San Francisco for 17 years, much of my life has been spent in rural America, with a rural mailbox. I feel sorry for people who open their mailbox and mostly find bills. I get some of those, too. Still, after all these years, opening the mailbox each day and seeing what’s inside is like a tiny Christmas that comes every day.

When I was a boy, I eagerly awaited the little packages that brought fresh chemicals or glassware that I’d ordered for my chemistry set. I often ordered little doodads that were advertised in comic books. For years, I received regular catalogs from the U.S. Government Printing Office, and I ordered little books and pamphlets on all sorts of subjects. Everyone received a Sears catalog. As a teenage nerd, I got lots of electronics catalogs such as Allied Radio and Electronics. When I was older and had friends, and when those friends began to scatter, it was the post office that kept us in touch — letters typed on manual typewriters and mailed in legal-size envelopes, always with commemorative stamps for better presentation. Many of those old letters from friends still survive in trunks in the attic, which I refer to as the archives.

Everyone has email these days, so letters in the mailbox are, sadly, a thing of the past. But opening the mailbox is still a tiny Christmas. Amazon Prime, of course, is the new Sears catalog. All those boxes bother me (though of course I recycle them). But Amazon Prime does greatly reduce the amount of driving one has to do. Since the mail carrier drives through every day anyway, there are efficiencies there in maintaining rural supply lines.

What started me thinking about the reliability of the post office was the unreliability of UPS and Fedex in rural areas. Fedex can hardly ever find me. (The truth is that Fedex drivers don’t try very hard, because they obviously detest rural deliveries.) UPS does a better job here, but not much better. UPS and Fedex are just not efficient for rural delivery. Whereas the U.S. Postal Service knows its rural customers because they deliver every day.

Rural Free Delivery has been the rule in the U.S. since about 1900. Before that, people had to go to a post office to pick up their mail. Still — and this is just as true today — mail carriers don’t deliver mail to every rural door or driveway. Mailboxes are often clustered to make delivery easier. If your home is remote (as mine is), then your mailbox may be some distance away. My mailbox is half a mile away. I can stop and pick up the mail if I’m in the car, or I can walk a nice woodland trail to pick up the mail, just over a mile round trip.

The use of First Class mail continues to decline. But, since 2014, Postal Service revenue from online retailers has been steadily increasing and is making money for the Postal Service.

Not too long ago, I was saying to a friend that rural living today is a privilege. Obviously people need jobs, and they need reasonable commutes. Rural living is not very efficient for most working people. For retired people like me, rural living is efficient, if one stays off the roads as much as possible and especially if one grows at least some of one’s food, as many rural people used to do. It’s shocking to reflect on the fact that the world’s population is now twice what it was when I was born. That is just too many people, so it is a great gift — if you like peace and quiet and nature — to live in a place where the population actually is declining rather than growing. The U.S. Postal Service is as necessary to rural life today as it was in 1902.