Muddled TV Dialogue: More Solutions

The sound customization menu (right) on our Sony Bravia

As we noted last month, television viewers who are not hearing-impaired are turning on closed-captioning:

But your TV is just one of the culprits. The rest of the problem lies within virtually every other step of the audio process, from a studio’s production choices to the device used to watch the content.

In addition to closed captioning and turning up the volume on all sound, newer TVs can amplify speech. On the Sony purchased this year I adjusted the "Voice zoom" from 0 to 4 (picture top).

Go to Settings > Display & Sound > Sound > Sound mode > Dialogue. On the company’s Bravia TVs, there is also Voice Zoom, which lets you adjust how much you would like the dialogue to stand out. Open Settings > Display & Sound > Sound > Sound customization > Voice Zoom.

The WSJ lists buying headphones, investing in speakers, and/or the aforementioned boosting dialogue feature as solutions to unclear speech. As in many aspects of life, tech caused the problem and is providing the solution.

Re-Foaming

Regifting is a breach of etiquette in some circles, but re-foaming should be universally lauded.

We have received over a dozen deliveries for Christmas, but rather than immediately tearing down and recycling the boxes and packing materials we are re-using them for shipments of our own.

Some of these, like plastic foam, are non-recyclable, and it's an environmental benefit to use them for as many purposes as possible before they enter the landfill.

Whatever your views on recycling or the environment, dear reader, re-foaming can't hurt and may help. Here's hoping that you are surviving the busy-ness of the Season.

The Endeavor Was a Partial Success

Yesterday's post described how our tankless water heater had stopped working because the thermal fuse had been triggered. (The fuse is a single-use wire that had to be replaced and is marked by the red arrow in the picture.)

The heater itself is a marvel of compactness compared to a conventional 50-gallon tank. However the design is not conducive to an easy repair. Replacing the fuse, a $20 part, requires the removal of the entire internal apparatus. Several plumbers quoted over $1,000 for the job.

Even if the fuse was replaced successfully, there was a distinct possibility that the heat exchanger was damaged. That was an $800 part (the brass box in the upper half of the picture), and we were quoted $3,000 to replace both the thermal fuse and heat exchanger.

Some helpful contractors suggested that I simply buy a new heater at a cost of $4,000-$5,000, depending on the model. The life expectancy of a tankless water heater is 15-20 years, and even if we were to repair our 14-year-old appliance we might have to replace it anyway in 3-5 years.

Not liking the choices I was given, and sensing that I was being ripped off by plumbers who view all Peninsula homeowners as rich patsies, I decided to take a shot at fixing the thermal fuse myself. Even if I ended up paying someone $thousands, I could see little harm in trying.

To make a long story short, dear reader, the endeavor was a partial success. I overnighted the part from the manufacturer and took apart the water heater. The work was much more involved than DIY Internet videos and instruction manuals imply. There were dozens of connectors, screws, and subassemblies that had to be marked and sorted as they were taken out. Eventually I was able to remove the old fuse and wrap the new one around the heat exchanger. When I put everything back, the unit wouldn't start; even the error-message panel was blank. It was time to call in a professional.

I contacted a large San Jose contractor recommended by the manufacturer. The technician came the following morning. Before disassembling the unit, he decided to see if what I had done had some value. He rechecked all the connections and tightened some that were loose. He plugged in the heater, and it turned on! Hot water was back.

The technician suggested that the issue was probably a grounding wire that I had not secured properly. I was happy to pay his invoice of $275; his fee for a fuse replacement would have been $1,150. I tipped him and sent him on his way.

Meanwhile, I won't forget to scale the pipes.

Wishful Thinking

2 gals. vinegar recirculated for 1 hour

When the temperature drops below 50°F--yes, we who were born in Hawaii are wimps--the worst appliance to go out may be the hot water heater. (One can get through a furnace failure by adding enough layers and blankets.)

Our 14-year-old tankless water heater flashed an unfamiliar message--error code 14--that meant that the thermal fuse had been triggered due to an overheated heat exchanger (HE). The problem was likely caused by scale build-up in the pipes.

I spent a moment being mad at myself for believing the plumber who told me three years ago that annual flushing with vinegar was unnecessary; Foster City didn't have hard water and we wouldn't have scale. Before I called a repairman to replace the thermal fuse (expensive) and/or the heat exchanger (very expensive), it couldn't hurt to flush the water heater.

Two hours later--et voilà!--there was no error code 14, the water heater fired up, and hot water poured from the spigot. We had lucked out. Maybe the thermal fuse was still intact. Maybe it was merely emitting a warning signal. (This is a textbook example of wishful thinking, dear reader.)

Three days later error code 14 came on and stayed on. No amount of flushing or rebooting would activate the water heater.

To be continued....

Market Segmentation: Too Far?

Candace Cameron Bure will leave Hallmark
to make movies for Great American Family.

For over five years I've been watching Hallmark movies. The plots lack in suspense. Most conflicts are resolved happily, there are no really bad guys except in the murder-mystery movies, and love always wins over career opportunities and peripatetic inclinations.

To be perfectly honest, I often run the Hallmark Channel as a form of background music when I'm doing something else, like composing this blog post.

Hallmark movies are rife with religious values, e.g., lead characters are always volunteering to help poor orphans, but there are very few explicitly Christian movies on the channel. Church scenes are limited to weddings and funerals, and the words "God," "Jesus," or "Lord" are absent from scripts. The audience is often left to infer that characters are religious by their actions and the values they espouse.

Now some of the biggest Hallmark stars are leaving for a faith-based network: [bold added]

These days, the genre that Hallmark pioneered is everywhere, from major streaming platforms like Netflix to more niche channels like the Food Network and HGTV. While the movies may differ, most share an abiding reluctance to dwell on Christianity.

Great American Family enters the scene with the opposite point of view. With a name that conjures red-state pride and content that embraces faith, the channel is presenting itself as the choice for Christians who think Hollywood is ruining Christmas. Mrs. Bure, a former child star best known as D.J. Tanner from “Full House,” is the religious influencer who serves as its face...

The channel’s formula is what [CEO Bill] Abbott calls “soft faith,” a Christian message he said is there for viewers who are looking for it but doesn’t aim to proselytize. Great American Family also offers holiday films that follow conventional secular story lines: The New York advertising hotshot who falls in love while trying to sell the family farm, the luxury travel blogger who stumbles into romance at a bed-and-breakfast, and the like.

Your humble blogger has long had an aversion to shows that are overtly message-y. Lead characters on network shows sometimes launch into speeches against business polluters, real estate developers, racists, and -phobics who condemn others for "being different." Once the writers' agenda is revealed, then it's clear that the characters are there to serve the agenda.

I won't watch shows where the plot is subservient to ideology, even though I might agree with aspects of the ideology. I'll check out the Great American Family network, but it will be on a short leash.

Walden by the Bay

The car-free Great Highway during summertime
when the livin' is easy (Chron photo)

San Francisco's movement to ban automobiles from certain streets was burgeoning.

When the sun's shining and the weather's warm, walking or biking along the car-free Great Highway next to Ocean Beach is a pleasurable experience. Ditto for John F. Kennedy Drive, the main East-West artery through Golden Gate Park. Families with children don't have to worry about speeding vehicles or breathing in their pollution.

Now that a cold, wet winter is upon us, some San Franciscans are having second thoughts. [bold added]

A group of merchants on San Francisco’s Valencia Street abruptly canceled this weekend’s “Shared Spaces” road closure and outdoor festivities due to rainy forecasts — and a growing contention that banning cars is bad for business.

Among them is Valencia Cyclery bike shop owner Paul Olszewski, who sent a mass email to his neighbors late Thursday. Cutting off motorists from using the street lessens the chance of making a sale in inclement weather, Olszewski said...

Such comments marked the latest point of friction for Slow Streets and Safe Spaces, programs that embraced the idea of blocking automobile traffic to lure more people outside during pandemic lockdowns. Now these efforts face an uncertain future, as San Francisco and other cities struggle to revive their economies...

Jonah Buffa, president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association and owner of the barbershop Fellow Barber, said he’s hearing concerns from a number of store owners who feel the Shared Spaces events have outlived their use, particularly in cold and inclement weather.

He harbors his own doubts about the viability of Shared Spaces. A couple of weeks ago Buffa said he stepped out of his shop on a Friday evening, after crews had shut off the three blocks to traffic.

“I saw one person wandering in the middle of the street, and a few cyclists using it,” Buffa said. “I think there would have been more business if the streets were open to traffic.”

Ambling from store to store on a sunny day in a road-cum-park is living a dream. But the dream will disappear if San Francisco Thoreauvians force the stores to go out of business.

Saving the Whales and Lobster Dinners

During last month's birthday we treated ourselves to our first lobster dinner in a year.

The enjoyment of the meal, however, was slightly tinged by reports that North Atlantic right whales were dying because of entanglement in the trap lines that lobster fishermen use. Now it appears that this problem may be solvable through technology:

Mr. [Rob] Martin is one of more than two dozen lobstermen now testing new, ropeless fishing gear designed to protect the North Atlantic right whale, a docile giant whose numbers in recent years have plunged, from an estimated 481 individuals in 2011 to 340 in 2021. The endangered whales can have trouble feeding or breathing—sometimes with deadly results—after becoming entangled in the ropes that secure the lobster traps to the buoys.

The hope is that the ropeless gear will help ensure the whales’ survival while keeping the fishing industry afloat.

Several kinds of ropeless gear are being evaluated in the program, which includes a total of 30 lobstermen actively testing the gear and 20 who are waiting to join their ranks. The program aims to identify which gear works best and might be scaled up for broad commercial use.

WSJ illustration: the lines are stowed on the traps and rise to the surface when pop-up buoys, inflatable
bags or buoyant spools are activated by a signal from a boat. Then the traps are hauled up.

The incentive is more than academic:

A federal judge ruled in July that NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] hadn’t done enough to protect the right whale and in a subsequent ruling gave agency officials two years to come up with a plan to reduce whale deaths by 90 percent.

The whales vs. lobster industry dispute has become heated because of the lack of direct evidence that the lines are the cause of the whales' decline. "Researchers rely on indirect evidence, since most dead whales aren’t found." Meanwhile, we applaud the NOAA for funding, designing, and testing solutions where both sides can win.

We'll treat ourselves to another lobster dinner this Christmas season.

“The eyes are truly the window to our souls”

Maybe her eyes can tell us what she's thinking

The nature of consciousness has long been a fundamental question of human existence, and it's no surprise that scientists are employing scientific methods to improve our understanding of the subject.

For example, human beings are not "conscious" when they are asleep, so one criterion of consciousness is that a person must be aware of objects in the person's surroundings: [bold added]

[Researchers] used a combination of artificial intelligence, mathematics, and a close examination of the eye movements of individuals as they were shown images of people’s faces.

As it turns out, they found that important clues are revealed in the eyes. When people were shown clear images, their eye movements showed a distinct pattern that indicates they were aware of their surroundings. However, as the subjects were presented with progressively dimmer images of faces, the pattern of eye movement changed. Tracking these changes, [Yale Prof. Hal] Blumenfeld said, allowed researchers to discern whether the subjects actually perceived the face or not without asking them.

“The eyes are truly the window to our souls,” he said. “We can tell if people are aware of something by simply looking at their eyes.”

The eye-tracking tool allowed researchers to explore the amorphous dividing line between consciousness and unconsciousness, a state most obvious as we awake from sleep. People become progressively more aware of their surroundings as slumber recedes, a process that is controlled in a region of the brain known as the thalamus.

Ultrasound waves directed at the
thalamus can "jump start" coma
patients (Medindia)

The Yale researchers found that when people awake the thalamus discharges a brief pulse which jumpstarts the transition to consciousness. However, this activity is only a first step in a series of actions throughout the brain that leads to full awareness, they found. For instance, that initial pulse from the thalamus may fail to activate other neural networks, keeping the individual unconscious of most surrounding stimuli. However, the pulse can also activate neurons involved in processing visual cues in the frontal cortex, which in turn amplifies circuits involved in arousal and attention. At the same time, signals irrelevant to the event are turned off.

To those of us who have friends or relatives who regularly experience visual and/or auditory hallucinations, the research into consciousness and awareness can't proceed fast enough.

But for those like your humble blogger, whose brain is healthily grounded in reality (!) and is concerned about scientists being able to read thoughts through eye movements, wearing sunglasses is strongly recommended.

A Premium Business That Didn't Tend to the Basics

2013: the $85 Meat Board
Top to bottom: Broccolini fried in lard, pork chops,
rib-eye steak, lamb chops, goat, tri-tip, Italian sausage

During our infrequent trips through the North Bay we liked to stop at the Belcampo Meat Company in Larkspur. In 2013 the quality of the food and excellence of the staff seemed to justify the premium prices:

The Belcampo Meat Company is "a farm, a processing plant, a butcher shop, and a restaurant [that manages] the entire production chain to bring you delicious, safe, healthy, organic, and humane meat"...

The chops and roasts were prepared skillfully. The beef centers were medium rare, while the other meats were cooked thoroughly without being dry. None of the cuts had thick marbling, but all were tender. Aging and light seasoning brought out complex flavors; a glass of house pinot complemented the dishes perfectly.

Our last visit was in 2018. The prices were higher, and the food wasn't quite as good as we remembered. (Experiences often do become exaggerated with the passage of time.) Maybe the decline wasn't a trick of memory, because the fall accelerated:

Belcampo, whose slogan was “meat you can trust — transparency from start to finish,” had been passing off lower quality meats as its own. Within six months of the controversy, Belcampo shut down in October 2021. Little public attention was paid to the Siskiyou County plant, where all of Belcampo’s popular products, from sausage to steaks, were processed...

The USDA released 81 pages of documents dating from January 2020 to November 2021, which paint a limited yet concerning picture of Belcampo’s plant: the discovery of a leaking, blood-covered box with “discolored” meat inside; mold growing on pallets; pork product giving off a “foul smell.”

Belcampo opened a restaurant in San Mateo three miles away in late 2019. It closed during the pandemic, and we never did get to try it. Initially disappointed, we turned out to be lucky.

A Lot Further to Fall

The Bay Area economic outlook is gloomy as tech companies, including some big names, announce thousands of job cuts:

Tech companies are eyeing layoffs that will eliminate jobs for thousands more workers in the Bay Area, a brutal new round of terminations poised to jolt the owner of the Facebook app, Amazon and Juul Labs.

All told, tech companies have decided to chop 2,564 more Bay Area jobs, according to official notices that the firms sent to the state labor agency.

The tech and biotech job cuts in the Bay Area: well over 10,000 in October, November and December, according to this news organization’s review of numerous WARN letters to the state Employment Development Department.

Are 10,000 jobs a lot? Numerically speaking, 10,000 is "only" 0.4% of total employment in the SF-Oakland-Hayward triangle of 2.5 million. But the impact is much greater than the direct numbers indicate.

Loss of higher-income tech jobs affects the economy more than the loss of lower-paid ones.

Companies cut back on other expenses, e.g., travel, conferences, restaurants, supplies, before turning to layoffs. Lowering these other expenses affects thousands of supporting companies and their employees in the region.

The real estate market, already slowed by higher interest rates, continues to spiral down as more residents have difficulty making rent or loan payments.

Elon Musk has shown that Twitter could lay off more than half its 7,500 employees and still function. If that's indicative of the bloat in other tech companies, employment has a lot further to fall.

For Richer, For Poorer

(Time photo)

Researchers say that couples who combine their finances are happier. [bold added]

deciding to move your money in together can have a big impact on future wealth. Couples who combine bank, credit-card and investing accounts are happier in the long term and find that pooling resources helps clear the path to traditional money milestones such as buying a house and saving for retirement, studies have found.

Married couples hold four times as much wealth as unmarried couples who live together, and researchers point to combining finances as one reason why.

Trust is one of the most important elements in a relationship, but circumstances can also dictate one's financial arrangements. For example, newly-formed older couples who have significant assets may wish to keep them separate for estate purposes, especially if there are children already in the picture.

For the record we owed $thousands in student loans and had negligible assets when we tied the knot, so it was an easy call to start off with joint accounts in everything. (In a community property state like California half of each spouse's income is the property of the other.) It's not clear whether joint finances augmented the balance sheet, but our life has been simpler because of it, and that's worth something in itself.

Final comment: this research may suffer from the basic flaw of survival bias, that is, it looks at existing couples, their financial relationship, their wealth, and their happiness. It doesn't include couples who took the risk of combining their finances and broke up. (Bet they're quite unhappy.) If these couples were included, the conclusions might not be so compelling.

Sunday Ruminations

The pasture celebrated his birthday with a "cow cake" from a Hayward bakery.

During coffee hour the air churned with friendly conversation.

Despite efforts to steer the discussion we could not hide from puns that were udderly cringeworthy.

I herd the spirit of the bovine move through the gathering, and I had a lot to chew on afterwards. 

Fixers, Fix Yourselves

(NuTech illustration)

Consumers who struggle with loan payments often turn to credit-repair consultants that purport to improve consumers' scores by the credit-reporting companies Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

The problem is that some fixers employ illegal methods: [bold added]

In recent years, a government website has made it easier for people to file claims of identity theft so they can remove fraudulent accounts from their credit reports...These companies file false identity-theft claims on items that bring down customer’s credit scores, like delinquent credit-card debt, often without that person’s knowledge.

The move often removes that information from the consumer’s credit reports while the claim is investigated. The practice is known in the industry as credit washing, since a person’s credit reports can look better than they really are, at least temporarily, and so can their scores...

Naftali Harris, chief executive at SentiLink, a company that works with lenders to help stop identity fraud, said many lenders tell him that 80% to 90% of the claims they receive about identity theft are fraudulent.

More details on how identity-theft protections can be exploited:

When a person provides the required paperwork to Equifax, Experian or TransUnion stating that an unpaid loan or other negative information on a credit report is the result of identity theft, the companies in many cases must remove the information within four business days if they can’t verify it is legitimate. They and the lenders can continue to look into the claim, and later reinstate the account if it’s found to be legitimate. Meanwhile, the borrower is in a better position to apply for new loans from other lenders.

There are ethical companies in the credit-repair industry who do help those who suffer from identity theft.

Unfortunately, bad behavior (e.g., cryptocurrency, misleading "news" reporting, pharmaceutical claims, nonprofit politicking) have caused the public to distrust entire industries and institutions.

Steller's Sea Cow

Steller's sea cow could weigh four tons
and had a length of up to 25 feet (Chron)

By eating kelp the extinct giant Steller's sea cow caused Pacific-Coast kelp forests to thrive:

The researchers say that the sea cow helped the kelp forest grow more robust, even when eating its weight in seaweed, because it grazed kelp near the surface of the water. That allowed more light to penetrate, encouraging more growth of both kelp and other types of algae...

“If you spend time in a kelp forest today, at least a healthy one, one of the impressions we take away is it’s dark, almost cathedral like, and the light is filtering down. The kelp absorbs most of the incoming sunlight right at the surface,” said Peter Roopnarine, coauthor of the study and a curator of geology at the California Academy of Sciences. “If the sea cow was grazing the canopy there would have been more light penetration.”

Knowledge of the Steller’s sea cow is based on fossils found from Baja California to Northern Alaska, skeletons collected when they were hunted and historic observations made in Alaska, especially by the scientist Georg Wilhelm Steller who gave it its name. The animal may have had a peak population of 200,000, according to a study published this year.

Like its closest living relative, the dugong, a marine mammal in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans that is in the same family as manatees, the beast had a long, rotund body, short front flippers and a whale-like tail. Its skin was “more the bark of an old oak tree, than the skin of an animal,” Steller reportedly observed. It also had a downturned snout for feeding on kelp while floating on the surface, Roopnarine said.

Two points:

1) It seems to be a law of nature: thinning forests on land or sea will make them stronger.

2) The age of exploration marked the end of the Middle Ages and rejuvenated Europe. However, the same philosophy that embraced a limitless world for the taking left in its wake the extinction (circa 1700) of creatures like Steller's sea cow. It's unfortunate that the error was realized centuries too late.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

A rare day when the postman opened his umbrella

It rained last month on Election Day, and a colder, wetter storm is hitting the Bay Area today:

the combination of strong winds and the risk for flooding will make for a hazardous morning for commuters across the Bay Area. Thankfully, the winter storm will quickly exit the Bay Area this afternoon, and both winds and rain will completely clear out by sunset.

Just be sure to crank up your heater tonight. This storm will leave behind bitterly cold air across Northern California that will settle over the valleys and basins of the state. The National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch from Thursday night to Friday morning for the North Bay valleys, where temperatures will likely drop down to the upper 20s...

North Bay: A deluge will set up over Sonoma, Napa, Marin and Solano counties this morning as widespread showers clog up rural roadways with rain and tree limbs. The Petaluma and Napa valleys can expect strong 30 to 40 mph gusts as the winter storm roars into the region. Pockets of valleys closer to Guerneville and Healdsburg are likely to see ponding and urban flooding as the strongest showers roll in between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

It's a triple-win: 1) the sprinklers have been turned off, saving on our water bill (over $200 per month, half of which is fixed sewer cost); 2) the augmentation of the Sierra snowpack reduces the odds of water rationing next summer; 3) I had some outdoor chores to do, and now I have an excuse not to do them.