Sounds From The Basement

Beetle in the Boonies

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Digging For The Second Avenue Subway Line

Ocean Pier: 1904

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The Continuous Onward March of Technology

Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls

By JENNA WORTHAM

Liza Colburn uses her cellphone constantly.

She taps out her grocery lists, records voice memos, listens to music at the gym, tracks her caloric intake and posts frequent updates to her Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The one thing she doesn’t use her cellphone for? Making calls.

“I probably only talk to someone verbally on it once a week,” said Mrs. Colburn, a 40-year-old marketing consultant in Canton, Mass., who has an iPhone.

For many Americans, cellphones have become irreplaceable tools to manage their lives and stay connected to the outside world, their families and networks of friends online. But increasingly, by several measures, that does not mean talking on them very much.

For example, although almost 90 percent of households in the United States now have a cellphone, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, according to government and industry data.

This is true even though more households each year are disconnecting their landlines in favor of cellphones.

Instead of talking on their cellphones, people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do — browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages.

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Great Idea That Will Never Happen

The Ultimate Congressional Reforms
Bruce Bartlett, 04.30.10, 6:00 AM ET

Congress' dysfunction is becoming so obvious and overwhelming that radical reforms are necessary. I think a key reason for the dysfunction is that neither the House nor the Senate is constituted the way they were originally designed by the Founding Fathers. Members of the House represent far too many people today and senators no longer represent the states as states.

Article I of the Constitution says that no congressional district should have more than 30,000 people. In the first Congress there were 65 members of the House, based on an estimate of the population in 1787. In the 1790 census the U.S. population was 3,929,214, and the size of the House was increased to 106--meaning that each congressman represented about 37,000 people. The voting population was much smaller because women and African Americans could not vote. Consequently, a member of the House knew a high percentage of voters personally, and they knew him.

As the nation grew and its population rose, the number of House members also increased, although Congress never even tried to maintain a ratio close to one member per 30,000 of population. After the 1910 census, the size of the House was increased from 394 to 435, at which point each congressman represented 211,000 people.

Even though adding new seats from time to time made reapportionment much easier, since no state had to lose a seat, Congress permanently fixed the number of House seats at 435 in the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. At that time, each House member represented 282,000 people. Were that ratio to exist today, the size of the House would have to more than double to about 1,100 representatives. Apparently, a key motivation for fixing the size of the House was so that henceforth reapportionment would be automatic.

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We Are Not Greece

We’re Not Greece

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the crisis in Greece is making some people — people who opposed health care reform and are itching for an excuse to dismantle Social Security — very, very happy. Everywhere you look there are editorials and commentaries, some posing as objective reporting, asserting that Greece today will be America tomorrow unless we abandon all that nonsense about taking care of those in need.

The truth, however, is that America isn’t Greece — and, in any case, the message from Greece isn’t what these people would have you believe.

So, how do America and Greece compare?

Both nations have lately been running large budget deficits, roughly comparable as a percentage of G.D.P. Markets, however, treat them very differently: The interest rate on Greek government bonds is more than twice the rate on U.S. bonds, because investors see a high risk that Greece will eventually default on its debt, while seeing virtually no risk that America will do the same. Why?

One answer is that we have a much lower level of debt — the amount we already owe, as opposed to new borrowing — relative to G.D.P. True, our debt should have been even lower. We’d be better positioned to deal with the current emergency if so much money hadn’t been squandered on tax cuts for the rich and an unfunded war. But we still entered the crisis in much better shape than the Greeks.

Even more important, however, is the fact that we have a clear path to economic recovery, while Greece doesn’t.

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Chester Park: 1906