Saturday Morning Links

WSJ Links, Weekend Edition

Section D: theme for the day -- cutting the "cable cord." There's a little blurb on how to stream some television shows that are not available through Apple due to "rights."

Fortunately, there's a simple workaround: You can connect most newer laptops to a TV using the right cord. The MacBook Pro with Retina display is my favorite laptop entertainment hub. It supports Airplay Mirroring, a feature for wirelessly beaming what's on your computer to a television using an Apple TV (or perhaps one day to the Apple-designed TV set that the company is reportedly testing). But the laptop's display is so beautiful -- its resolution is higher than most TVs'  -- that you may not feel the need for a bigger screen. 

Even without Retina display, I think my MacBook Pro is more enjoyable to "watch" than the "old" television set provided me wherever I travel.

Section C: theme for the day -- high state college costs. States passing the costs on to the students and families.

Wow, wow, wow: books, books, and more books. Reviews.

It starts with "celebrating the forgotten man of the DNA quest." I have read two or three books on the discovery of the helix and thought I knew the story pretty well, but it turns out there was a fifth man: Raymond Gosling. My wife and I go back and forth on whether Rosalind Franklin deserved an equal amount of credit for the discovery. My wife does not waiver in her feelings; I go back and forth.

Too many books to even begin listing.

Section B: 

Hmmm, there's an interesting little graphic on page B1 -- and now I'm interrupted by Norah Jones' "I'm Feeling the Same Way (All Over Again)" -- ah, the stories that could be told, but won't -- but I digress. Where was I? Ah, the interesting graphic on page B1 in which Ford is challenging the EPA on the way the latter calculates mileage. When the story first broke, I sided with the EPA, thinking Ford massaged the data. But over the past 24 hours, perhaps starting with a story and comments regarding the Bakken, I'm siding with Ford on this one. Maybe more later. But back to the graphic. The caption: "hybrid cars' maximum speed on electric-power varies significantly." Again, these are the maximum speeds these hybrid cars can get on electric power alone (MPH for one mile):

• Toyota Camry Hybrid: 25 mph
• Toyota Prius V: 25 mph
• Honda Accord Hybrid EV mode: 45 mph
• Ford C-Max, EV Mode: 62 mph

I find those figures ... well .... well ... appalling. Did anyone know? The Toyota Prius max speed on electricity alone? 25 mph.  Tell me again, the EV is going to replace the conventional gasoline engine any time soon. [See comments below: again, this seems very, very counter-intuitive. The Prius gasoline engine kicking in at 25 mph.]

Another coal-fired electricity utility about to bite the dust: Edison Mission, with a photograph of its coal-fired power plant in Chicago. I assume the President is breaking out a bottle of champagne. I don't have a dog in this fight; just an observation. Page 3. There is a story on Best Buy on that page also, but I didn't read it. I think the writing is on the wall for that BBS also.

Section A: of course we know what the headline story will be. Sometime ... nah, not now.  Okay, one random thought. Everyday, there must be a thousand (perhaps I exaggerate, but not much) highway "jobs" in Massachusetts -- some of them major projects, most of them filling potholes or re-covering residential streets. And something I've never seen in North Dakota: no matter how small, how trivial the work, the law must require a uniformed policeman (or two, or more) to be on site. In most cases, I have no idea why a uniformed policeman is needed. There are crossing guards at every school. But I don't recall anything as horrific, ever, in a crossing walk, or anything as horrific, ever, at a worksite repairing a residential street as what happened yesterday in Newtown. It's not like this is unexpected (Columbine, 1999). [I wrote that this a.m. around 10:00 local time. Now I see this article over at Drudge, about 5:35 pm tonight:

Government officials told the Washington Guardian on Friday night that two Justice Department programs that had provided more than $200 million to schools for training, security equipment and police resources over the last decade weren't renewed in 2011 and 2012, and that a separate program that provided $800 million to put police officers inside the schools was ended a few years earlier.

Criminal. Exactly what I said! Incredible. Sad. This won't be mentioned on the Sunday morning talk shows. The media will give the administration a pass on this. We don't have cops in schools but we have cops at every construction job in Massachusetts, no matter how trivial.]

Right-to-work:

Whenever I post a note about right-to-work states, etc., I get one or two comments, but I can't post them because they provide no links to their sources and/or add nothing to the discussion. For those looking for a source, here's a nice story on page 3 of the front section: states that bar mandatory union dues tend toward more jobs.

But lower wages.

So, what is one to do? The graphic is most illustrative. It certainly suggests all the emotionalism surrounding unions has little to do with wages. Look at the graphic. Employer cost per owrker per hour, for September 2012:

• Northeast (not one right-to-work state): $33/hour
• South (almost 100% right-to-work): $26/hour
• West (pretty much split 50/50): $30/hour
• Midwest (pretty much split 50/50): $28/hour

Even without "qualifiers" the differences in wages are not that great, but the delta seems correlated more with standard of living/cost of living than with unions. These employer costs will go significantly (?) with ObamaCare, they say.

I'm beginning to think it's less about $/hour and more to do with other issues -- perhaps productivity?

By the way, that headline, "the states that bar mandatory union dues tend toward more jobs but lower wages" tells one nothing. I would assume that where there are larger industrial factories, there are more unions.

Related:

• Right-to-work isn't all it's cracked up to be, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr: Michigan's unions were already putting themselves out of a job.
• An inspiration and a warning from Michigan, the state's turn to worker freedom shows the waning influence of Big Labor. 
• Calpers's bankruptcy ploy: the fund wants to stop broke cities from reworking pensions. Okay.

Military health care: This is interesting: something I don't think I've ever seen in the WSJ -- cliff talks avoid military health plan; Tricare's costs have grown sharply, but potential savings aren't on the table; veterans resist calls to carry heavier burden. Photo with amputee. I believe rates are going up.

Now, about the benefits of marijuana (but gloss over the downside): Portenoy's complaint: a pain-drug champion has second thoughts.

Wow, it's going to be a long weekend of reading.