jg – Gerz Physics

I have been interested in pensions since the debacle at GM in the 90’s and early 00‘s. General Motors might have been a well run company at some time earlier, but through my formative years I was exposed to the Corvair problem, reluctance to install seatbelts, gas-gusselling cars during the ’73 oil embargo, billions lost with Saturn, and the subsequent purchase of Hummer & Saab, etc. But the cut that hurt them the most was the good-willed, but ultimately devastating medical and retirement pensions brokered in the ’60’s. In 2005 GM’s medical pension ALONE cost the company $5 billion. By 2008 General Motors was not a viable business without bankruptcy and a government bailout. The biggest losers were not the investors in GM’s stock and bonds, but the employees that were stiffed from contract negotiated benefits that could no longer be afforded.

I first became more than interested in pensions at GCC in 2005. At that time the police staff at GCC was negotiating the same pension benefits as their brethren in the surrounding municipalities. I wrote several emails to the classified staff before the contract was ratified(available here) giving my thoughts and related links (letter 1). In the intervening years I have gathered 50 or more links to articles from around the world concerning the cities, counties, or states that are having great difficulty affording their police pension obligations.

Here we are in 2011 and things have gotten worse for pensions. The Trillion Dollar Gap was published this year. It was conducted by the PEW Research Center, which you may be familiar, as they sponsor many informational telecasts on PBS. Please pay attention to California and Wisconsin details. The recent travails for union workers in Wisconsin look to be political more than financial, but the overall outlook is quite bleak. Also, the medical pension information is alarming.

iPad and the Textbook Revolution

jg — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:07:56 +0000

Why you and your students will be using an iPad, Kindle, or another e-reader in less than 5 years
Very few instructors in higher ed will state that the cost of the textbooks required for their courses is cheap. New physics hardcover texts at the at our Bookstore are as follows:
P110 (one semester) Conceptual Physics: Hewitt $145
P 105 (one semester) College Physics Vol 1: Serway, $124
P106 (one semester) College Physics : Vol 2: Serway, $124
P101 (one semester) Physics for Scientists & Engineers Vol 1:Serway, $153
P102 & P103 (two semesters) Physics for Scientists & Engineers Vol 2, $153
A bit expensive, don’t you think? Still this does not compare to a text I purchased at CSULA in 1990. A Brief on Tensor Analysis: Simmonds, $99. Why do I remember the price? At a compact 92 pages (including index), how can I forget? BTW: the Simmonds text is now available at Amazon for $45.

The price of ebooks should be much smaller without:
1. the printing costs of paper, ink, and the labor involved.
2. transportation
3. Markup at different distribution levels.
Even with the elimination of these factors there is a chance that ebook text prices may still be too high. How could publishers overcome this dilemma? In a word, rentals.

At the moment iTunes allows you to not only buy a movie, but if you did not want to own it you could rent it. Over the 2009 holidays I rented Children of Men and Bend It Like Beckham. After viewing Children of Men it disappeared from my hard-drive. We never had time to view Bend It, and after 30 days it too disappeared. Extrapolate this to textbooks. A physics e-text may be priced at $125, but to rent it for 20 weeks the cost drops to $40. I don’t believe this will be an exclusive for iTunes or Amazon, here is an opening for any e-retailer. If you have problems believing that publishers will go along with this idea, just think about this. Publishers get NO profit from the sale of used books.

There are other boons to the student in regards to e-texts:
1. They always have ALL of their texts with them. This can be practically impossible with a student taking 4 or more courses per semester.
2. The e-text readers will morph into usable internet devices reducing (but not eliminating) the need for a laptop.
3. e-texts will evolve into d-texts (d for dynamic). This is my name for books with motion (think F = ma with moving examples), and links to publisher sites with interactive material related to concepts in the d-text. Pearson already has a great site for their Walker physics text.

The last subject would be the cost of the Kindle, iPad, e-book, etc. For this breakthrough to work the student has to believe they are getting a bargain. The device has to not only work as a book, but also:
1. Tweet, Facebook, and MySpace
2. internet search
3. play games
4. play music
5. play videos

At the moment the iPad seems to fit the bill, but this story’s ending has not been written.