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Posts tagged 'UK'
Two Words You Might Not Know Were Acronyms
I am on the road but trying to stay in the blogging habit so this is a bit of a throwaway. But anyway...
You probably know words like SCUBA, SNAFU, laser, lidar, and sonar are all acronyms. But here are two you might not know about:
The first word is "posh," which generally means a luxury experience (or Beckham's wife). But it was originally an acronym for ship voyages from the UK to India. Because it was a hot trip and there was no air conditioning, the best cabins were on the north side of the ship (at least above the equator) or the east side of the ship (ie facing away from the heat of the afternoon sun). This would be the port side going to India and the starboard side coming home. So to get the best cabin you asked for port out, starboard home or "POSH".
The other word is "Pakistan" which is the name of the country that split from India in 1947. As India was approaching independence, Muslims (who were quite numerous all over in India but particularly in the northwest and the far east) proposed the new states formed form the old British Empire in India include a Muslim state. They were seeking a state made up of the Muslim-majority whole provinces of Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Indus, and Sind. This forms the acronym PAKIS-tan with the "tan" meaning "land of". The word Pakistan also means "land of the pure" in Sanskrit. It was a powerful piece of branding.
As a postscript, these 5 provinces were all in the west. The original Pakistan also included parts of the state of Bengal in the east which formed East Pakistan. East Pakistan was actually more populous than the West but the West tended to dominate the country's leadership, leading to E. Pakistan breaking away in the early 70's to form Bangladesh. The entirety of these 5 states in the acronym were not included in the final borders of Pakistan. In particular, Kashmir was divided between Pakistan and India and has been the site of a lot of fighting between the two countries over the last 70 years (queue Led Zeppelin song).
Tags: Bangladesh, blogging, borders, East Pakistan, far east, India, Led Zeppelin, SCUBA, SNAFU, UK
Category: Other | Comments Off on Two Words You Might Not Know Were Acronyms
Largest Cities in the World, By Year
I encourage you to click through to an animated visualization of the largest cities in the world, by year.
A few surprises, but the biggest one to me was how long Naples hung around on the list.
The fall and rise of the Chinese cities is also interesting. People seem to get freaked out by China's growing prosperity, a fear for which I have zero sympathy -- people exiting poverty in China is an unalloyed good. But here is a thought for context. I can't absolutely prove that it is correct but I am pretty sure it is true. The history of the world is that, with the exception of the 200 years from about 1800-2000, China has for 4000 years been the largest economy in the world. Chinese prosperity today is not some aberration, it is a return to normal.
Update: OK, I think I got it to embed:
New project:
A "Bar Chart Race" animation showing the changing ranks of the 10 biggest cities in the world since 1500.
Fascinating to watch giant cities vanish after falling in conquests, and amazing that three UK cities were in the top 8 in the late 1800s. pic.twitter.com/KglMZbYobr
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 18, 2019
Tags: china, economy, twitter, UK
Category: History | Comments Off on Largest Cities in the World, By Year
In the Absolutely Most Predictable Scientific Finding Ever, Solar Roads Are Found to Suck
Long-time readers know that solar roads are like catnip for me -- I can hardly think of a better example of a technology that makes absolutely no sense but gets so much passionate support and funding. If you are not sure why, here is a primer on why they are predictably awful.
So it turns out that the solar roads I was sure would not work have actually now been built and... they don't work.
One of the first solar roads to be installed is in Tourouvre-au-Perche, France. This has a maximum power output of 420 kW, covers 2,800 metres squared and cost €5 million to install. This implies a cost of €11,905 per installed kW.
While the road is supposed to generate 800 kilowatt hours per day (kWh/day), some recently released data indicates a yield closer to 409 kWh/day, or 150,000 kWh/yr. For an idea of how much this is, the average UK home uses around 10 kWh/day.
The road's capacity factor – which measures the efficiency of the technology by dividing its average power output by its potential maximum power output – is just 4 percent.
In contrast, the Cestas solar plant near Bordeaux, which features rows of solar panels carefully angled towards the sun, has a maximum power output of 300,000 kW and a capacity factor of 14 percent. And at a cost of €360 million, or €1,200 per installed kW, one-tenth the cost of our solar roadway, it generates three times more power.
There is much more. I am embarrassed to say that when I slammed solar roads all those years, I actually was missing an important problem with them:
Unable to benefit from air circulation, its inevitable these panels will heat up more than a rooftop solar panel too.
For every 1 degree Celsius over optimum temperature you lose 0.5 percent of energy efficiency.
As a result a significant drop in performance for a solar road, compared to rooftop solar panels, has to be expected. The question is by how much and what is the economic cost?
I will add this to the list, thanks.
When I write stuff like this, I get the same kind of mindless feedback that I get when I point out operational issues at Tesla, ie "you are in the pay of the Koch brothers" or "you have no vision." Well, I am actually putting solar on my roof and will get (hopefully) 45,000 KwH per year, which is about a third of the energy they get from this road but installed for a bit over 1% of the cost of the road. And the panels are all ideally angled and placed, they are up in the air with absolutely no shade on them at any time of the day, and they don't have any trucks driving over them.
Tags: feedback, solar, temperature, UK
Category: Energy, Science | Comments Off on In the Absolutely Most Predictable Scientific Finding Ever, Solar Roads Are Found to Suck
A Little Bit of Model Railroad Progress
It has been a while since I blogged on my model railroad but unfortunately real life intervened and cruelly prevented me from working on my hobby for a while. I have been making progress recently and thought I would post what I have been working on. Believe it or not, there are one or two readers who actually write me for updates.
One thing I can do even when I am busy is make progress hand building turnouts. These are some small #5 turnouts built with code 40 rail (perfect for eyesight destruction). No way I could to this without the fabulous Fast Tracks construction jigs.
I built the main line out of code 55 flex track and am hand-building all the sidings and branch lines with code 40. This lets me get the main line up and running fast while still being able to hand build some track, often the track closest to the front of the layout. Below is the code 55 flex track main line after some test painting. The one thing I do not like about flex track is that it always looks so uniform. Even on good mainline track the rail and ties vary a lot in color, so I spray paint a base coat and use brushes to hand paint individual tiles and rail sections different colors to get some variation.
The switch in the foreground below is the first code 40 hand built track I have put on the layout. It is a bit of a pain to join code 55 to code 40, so I wanted to experiment some. Eventually I inserted a code 55 rail joiner in the mainline track, and the crushed the other end flat and soldered the code 40 rail to the top. With some trial and error, this got both the rail tops at the same height. I really love the look of real wood ties and the color variation you get naturally, which I accentuate some.
The biggest recent progress was I painted the back drop. Since this is Phoenix I wanted some low haze but no clouds, so I used the tried and true method of blue at the top of the background and white and the bottom and blending them in between. Came out pretty well, though this picture does not really do it justice because the lighting is not quite right yet. I need to try it with a better camera. The biggest problem I had was a classic Phoenix problem where the paint was drying too fast. One of the hardest problems is that the Phoenix sky on certain days is so deep, deep blue that it looks unrealistic, even in real life, so I did not use the actual color for the top of sky that I see from my front yard, I backed it down a bit.
Oh, you can also see that I have put in the lighting. As an experiment I used led light strings. This avoids the directional shadow problem but I am not totally convinced I am happy with it yet. I also have fluorescent lights installed for night effects, though I still struggle with the OBA / fluorescent paper problem here. Anyone who has a source for matte (not gloss) OBA-free photo paper that is not too think (I often have to bend and shape the paper for projects) can certainly email me. Paper models like these are more popular in the UK than in the US, but I have come to really like them in certain applications. They just don't look good in night scenes when brick walls glow under black light.
In the plan I have locations vaguely blocked out for industries but I had not yet tested the sites against actual buildings I have in inventory or would like to put in. Below I have a half-built grain elevator I was testing locations for.
That's it for now. I am starting my big building project which is a scale refinery. We actually don't have a refinery in Phoenix (closest is Yuma I think) but I worked in one years ago and love the look of them, especially lighted at night, so dammit I am going to have one.
Tags: Fast Tracks, Phoenix, running, UK, US
Category: model railroading | Comments Off on A Little Bit of Model Railroad Progress
Addressing the Pro-Tariff Arguments
Don Boudreaux and and Mark Perry have been doing a great job making the case against Trump's trade sanctions. But it is always a danger only to learn about opposing views from those who disagree with you, so in the spirit of Bryan Caplan's "Ideological Touring Test" I wanted to address directly some of the arguments in support of Trump's sanctions.
I followed several links to this article by Spencer Morrison. After reading the whole thing, I fear I have made the intellectual error of choosing a poor representative of the opposing side's argument, but I am committed now, so here goes.
Consider that China steals more than half a trillion dollars in American intellectual property every single year. This is one of the reasons America's trade deficit with China is so massive. For example, in 2010 Chinese companies stole high-speed rail designs from American firms, thereby depriving them of hundreds of billions in potential revenues. Such theft occurs in nearly every industry, whether it's software programs or branded consumer goods. And the worst part? We let it happen.
I find the author's figure absurd, and likely untrustworthy given his example. Following his high-speed rail design "theft" link one quickly finds that 1) Americans were not involved at all, which is not surprising since we really don't have high-speed rail manufacturing industry or expertise in this country; 2) the technology seems to have been acquired or copied legally; and 3) the real competitive issue for non-Chinese companies seems to be that the Chinese have extended and improved the technology.
This one paragraph essentially summarized the theme of the article, that technology is the key to increased well-being and that the US is poorer when they cannot monopolize the best technology. The first is true, the second is dead wrong and flies in the face of 200 years of history.
I won't spend time on the mass of the article where describes the economy in very production-based terms which I don't totally agree with, but his basic point is one I can partially accept -- that real economic growth over time comes from productivity growth. I agree that technology is part of the productivity equation, but unlike the author I also see other drivers such as trade (which he calls "noise"). Trade is a critical factor in productivity improvement as specialization and comparative advantage greatly increase productivity.
But where I think he really goes off the rails is to say that because technology is wealth-creating, we need to monopolize that technology in the US.
The core issue remains: we continue to offshore our advanced industries at an alarming pace, which will only increase the likelihood that the "next big thing" will be invented abroad. If we do not reverse this trend, we will soon be on the outside looking in.
It would be entertaining to discuss the origins of the American textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century with the author, which were largely based on spinning jenny and powerloom designs that were literally stolen from manufacturers in the UK (countries don't own technologies, only individuals and their companies do). The UK at the time had strict technology export restrictions of which I am sure the author would have been approving.
So did the UK suddenly become poorer as America built a lively cloth industry? No, in fact the UK boomed along with the US. It turns out that spreading new technology and productivity techniques around more widely made everyone richer. This only makes sense. Would the West really be wealthier if they had kept all technology from spreading, and thus were surrounded by countries dominated by subsistence farming and medieval crafts? A skeptic might argue that the UK did eventually become poorer relative to the US and upstart Germany, but Andrew Carnegie could have told you why at the beginning of the 20th century. He went back and toured manufacturers in his old home and was horrified at how little they reinvested in new technology.
Which brings me back to Chinese high speed rail, the example he started with. Clearly the Chinese have a growing high-speed rail manufacturing industry, and they DIDN'T invent the technologies originally in China. This is what trade is all about. Rather than keep technologies locked up in a secret underground bunker in the Rockies, as the author seems to prefer, it spreads technologies around the world. Production then shifts around the world based on a variety of factors such as comparative advantage in ways that are hard to predict, but seldom has a strong relationship to the country in which the technology was first invented. One place production does NOT shift, though, is towards countries whose government has artificially raised critical raw material prices through border taxes on its consumers called tariffs.
Which reminds me, if the problem is China "stealing" things like high-speed rail technology, then why in the hell are we imposing steel and aluminum tariffs? What the heck does this have to do with technology transfer? In fact, if the US really had a high-speed rail industry we were worried about, or if one were exclusively concerned with the auto industry, the author is essentially telling them "we are sorry you had your technology stolen so to help you out we going to substantially raise the prices of your two largest purchases (steel and aluminum) so that you can be even less competitive internationally." Ahh, I can feel the economic growth from that already.
If the author wants better intellectual property protections for US companies and individuals, I am generally supportive of efforts to achieve this (as long as we don't over-specify intellectual property and end up again with endless patent troll suits). For all its flaws, though, joining the TPP seems to be a better path to this end (it actually addresses, you know, intellectual property protections rather than just raise steel prices for consumers).
To conclude, I love this quote from his article because, despite being anti-trade, he in fact is echoing the pro-trade observation by Steven Landsburg.
Yet our trade policy does exactly the opposite. After the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, U.S. corn exports surged, as did our imports of automobiles. The problem is that automobile manufacturing is much more likely to benefit from disruptive technology than is growing corn—under NAFTA, the preponderance of long-run benefits went to Mexico, not the United States. The same is true with America's trade relationship with China: America's advanced goods trade deficit with China now tops $120 billion. Meanwhile, our biggest export is soybeans.
Free trade is, quite literally, turning America into China's mercantile resource colony: we buy their value-added, manufactured products, and we sell them raw materials.
This is freaking awesome! We grow and sell soybeans and get back advanced technology products. Brilliant! No wonder we are the richest nation on Earth.
Postscript: So to save the time clicking through to Steven Landsburg, here is a part of what he said (via Carpe Diem):
There are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First you plant seeds, which are the raw material from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships, and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them.
International trade is nothing but a form of technology. The fact that there is a place called Japan, with people and factories, is quite irrelevant to Americans' well-being. To analyze trade policies, we might as well assume that Japan is a giant machine with mysterious inner workings that convert wheat into cars. Any policy designed to favor the first American technology over the second is a policy designed to favor American auto producers in Detroit over American auto producers in Iowa. A tax or a ban on "imported" automobiles is a tax or a ban on Iowa-grown automobiles. If you protect Detroit carmakers from competition, then you must damage Iowa farmers, because Iowa farmers are the competition.
The task of producing a given fleet of cars can be allocated between Detroit and Iowa in a variety of ways. A competitive price system selects that allocation that minimizes the total production cost. It would be unnecessarily expensive to manufacture all cars in Detroit, unnecessarily expensive to grow all cars in Iowa, and unnecessarily expensive to use the two production processes in anything other than the natural ratio that emerges as a result of competition.
That means that protection for Detroit does more than just transfer income from farmers to autoworkers. It also raises the total cost of providing Americans with a given number of automobiles. The efficiency loss comes with no offsetting gain; it impoverishes the nation as a whole.
Tags: Andrew Carnegie, china, Mark Perry, prices, productivity, Spencer Morrison, trade, trillion dollars, UK, US
Category: Trade Policy | 65 Comments
Uber Is About To Become A Much Worse Place To Work
Here are some cool things about working for Uber:
You can work any time you want, for as long as you want. You can work from 2-4 in the morning if you like, and if there are no customers, that is your risk
You can work in any location you choose. You can park at your house and sit in your living room and take any jobs that come up, and then ignore new jobs until you get back home (I actually have a neighbor who is retired who does just this, he has driven me about 6 times now).
The company has no productivity metrics or expectations. As long as your driver rating is good and you follow the rules, you are fine.
All of this is going to change. Why? Due to lawsuits in most countries that seek to redefine Uber drivers as employees rather than contractors. One such suit just succeeded in England:
Is Uber a taxi firm or a technology company, and are its drivers self-employed or mistreated employees? These questions are being asked of Uber the world over, and last year an employment tribunal case in the UK concluded two drivers were, in fact, entitled to minimum wage, holiday pay and other benefits. The ride-hailing service contested this potentially precedent-setting decision, as you'd expect, but today Uber lost its appeal. In other words, the appeal tribunal upheld the original ruling that drivers should be classed as workers rather than self-employed.
The appeal tribunal agreed that when a driver is logged in and waiting for a job, that's still tantamount to "working time." Working time they aren't getting paid for, of course. Interestingly, the ruling also noted that Uber basically has a monopoly on private hire via an app. Therefore, drivers are beholden to them and can't reasonably engage in other work while also being at Uber's disposal.
GMB, the union for professional drivers that's behind the original case, is calling it "a landmark victory." Naturally, the law firm representing the GMB and Uber drivers feels much the same. No points for guessing who has a slightly different opinion.
Despite Engadget's usual economic ignorance that this must be all good for drivers, in fact this is going to destroy about everything that makes Uber attractive as compared to 9-5 office jobs. That is, if rulings like this don't kill the company entirely, as I have previously prophesied.
This is going to add a new cost for Uber, forcing them to pay money to drivers for dead time when they are not actually driving a passenger. Let's make the reasonable assumption that Uber's first response to this is to A) stay in business and B) attempt to keep prices to customers from rising. The only way they can do this is to minimize dead time.
Want to park at your house in an unpromising neighborhood with little business? Forget it, Uber can't allow that in the future. Want to work at an unproductive hour of your choosing? Forget it. Uber is going to have to set quotas on certain regions and hours of the day that are less productive and find a way to ban drivers from working those times. In addition, they are likely to institute some sort of productivity metric for drivers, ie something like revenue minutes as a percent of total, and then they are going to rank all the drivers and start cutting drivers from the bottom of the list. If Uber survives, it is going to be a very different company to work for, and is going to feel much more like a regular office job with a boss hanging around your cubicle pestering you about TPS reports.
Tags: Despite Engadget, GMB, lawsuits, minimum wage, monopoly, prices, productivity, risk, TPS, UK
Category: Economics, Regulation | 20 Comments
What Uber Drivers Seeking Minimum Wage Are Missing
Via Engadget:
Uber drivers have won an employment tribunal case in the UK, making them entitled to holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the National Minimum Wage. The ride-hailing company has long argued that its chauffeurs are self-employed contractors, not employees; the tribunal disagreed, however, setting a major precedent for the company and its relationship with workers. GMB, the union for professional drivers in the UK, initiated the two "test cases" in July. It's described the decision as a "monumental victory" that will impact "over 30,000 drivers" in England and Wales.
"Uber drivers and thousands of others caught in the bogus self-employment trap will now enjoy the same rights as employees," Maria Ludkin, GMB's legal director said. "This outcome will be good for passengers too. Properly rewarded drivers are the same side of the coin as drivers who are properly licensed and driving well maintained and insured vehicles."
This misses a couple of things
This might well kill Uber, such that the only "victory" here is that drivers have one less employment option and choice of work style. The latter is perhaps the most important -- why does every single job have to be punch-in-punch-out with standard benefits and holidays and work hours and work rules? Why is there no room for a diversity of work experiences from which to choose?
One of the things that many Uber drivers like about Uber is that there are no set work hours or productivity expectations. Well, that goes out the window with these rules. Today, if Uber pays drivers only based on what they work, they don't really care how hard they work or how many jobs they take or where they choose to cruise or even if they choose to cruise at unproductive hours, like 5AM. Currently, if you want to drive back and forth on a country lane at 4:30AM waiting for a fare, you can go for it -- you are taking the risk. But if the company is paying minimum wage per hour, everything changes. Suddenly they must now demand minimum productivity expectations, which will include limits on working in unproductive locations or at unproductive hours. The company will start to rank drivers and cut the lowest productivity / lowest activity ones.
I went into these issues in more depth here.
Tags: England, GMB, Maria Ludkin, National Minimum Wage, productivity, risk, UK, Wales
Interesting Timing
This last Sunday, September 11, on the same day Hillary Clinton's staff were struggling to erase concerns that Hilary was in poor health after her collapse in New York, PBS Masterpiece aired a nice little movie called "Churchill's Secret". I recorded it but did not watch it last night, so only yesterday saw the connection: the movie was about a major stroke Churchill suffered circa 1953, in the midst of his second stint as Prime Minister of the UK. One subplot, and the reason for the title, was of Churchill's political staff working like crazy to (successfully) hide Churchill's stroke and incapacity from everyone -- media, the public, his own party. I wonder if PBS, likely Clinton supporters to a person, regrets the timing?
Tags: Hillary Clinton, new york, PBS, Prime Minister, UK
Category: Politics | 5 Comments
Because Everybody Knows Rich White Males Will Be Hurt the Most By Higher Fuel and Electricity Prices
Apparently, BLM is now protesting for climate action of some sort, temporarily closing an airport in the UK.
BLM has created a very hot brand, and at least for certain segments of the population, it has a lot of accumulated virtue credits. Now, everyone on the progressive Left wants to use that brand and those virtue credits, and are trying to shove their particular issues under the BLM tent. BLM is thus in the process of being hijacked. I give the movement about 60 days to get its messaging in order before its power to actually affect its original issue (police and proprietorial abuse) is at an end. That doesn't mean that BLM will go away -- if successfully jacked it may be around for decades, but it will be just another progressive shell organization. This will make its leaders more prominent and even perhaps a lot richer (think gigs at MSNBC), but it will make the goal of getting more accountability applied to police forces a dead letter.
Tags: BLM, police, UK
Category: Police and Prosecutorial Abuse | 8 Comments
UK: The Kids Are All Right Post-Brexit
There has been a lot written about "chaos" in UK government and financial markets since the Brexit vote, so much so there are supposedly folks who voted for Brexit who want a do-over.
A few thoughts:
Short term changes in financial asset prices, like bank stock prices or currency futures, are largely irrelevant in the long-term. The recent supposed "big drop" in US equities markets, for example, took the market all the way back to where it was in... March, barely 3 months ago. You will see buying in these assets in the coming days and the drop of the last few days will be largely forgotten soon. Financial markets don't react well to being surprised, but they will get over it.
I don't see how the UK and the pound are necessarily weaker post-Brexit. The US is fine. The Swiss are fine. Heck, the Swiss have to constantly fight to keep their currency lower.
Unlike other EU nations, the majority of UK trade is with non-UK nations. While trade with the EU will likely be on worse terms in the future (though the Swiss and Norwegians have pretty good deals), UK will be unshackled from the EU bureaucracy in negotiating new deals with the rest of the world. If the US President had any vision whatsoever, he would already have offered the UK a free trade deal, rather than being petty and saying the UK goes to the back of the line for exiting a transnational body the US would never join itself.
Much of the "chaos" in British government can be traced 100% to the anti-Brexit folks. The Anti-Brexit folks very explicitly refused to craft any Brexit contingency plans, using threats of post-Brexit chaos to try to up the pressure against the Brexit vote. President Obama did the exact same thing with Obamacare, refusing to create contingency plans if the SCOTUS overturned key parts of the ACA, hoping to ratchet up pressure against that outcome. Had their been at least the outlines of a plan, they would be checking down it right now. Things I would do as PM on the trade front: 1. Demand the Swiss deal from the EU for Britain. 2. Approach major trading partners with offers of free trade deals. A British commonwealth free trade zone is a great idea.
Tags: chaos, EU, free trade, Obamacare, PM, President Obama, prices, SCOTUS, UK
Category: International Affairs, International Trade | 18 Comments
Was Brexit About Racism or Tea Kettles?
Everyone on the Left is absolutely convinced that the Brexit vote was all about racism. In part, this is because this is the only way the Progressives know how to argue, the only approach to logic they are taught in college for political argumentation.
Yes, as an immigration supporter, I am not thrilled with the immigration skepticism that dominates a lot of western politics. I struggle to cry "racism" though, as I confess that even I would be given pause at immigration of millions of folks from Muslim countries who hold a lot of extremely anti-liberal beliefs.
Anyway, I would likely have voted for Brexit had I been in Britain. I think the EU is a bad idea for Britain on numerous fronts completely unrelated to immigration. The EU creates a near-dictatorship of unelected bureaucrats who seem to want to push the envelope on petty regulation. And even if this regulation were just "harmonizing" between countries, Britain would still lose out because it tends to be freer and more open to markets and commerce than many other European countries.
By supporting Brexit, I suppose I would have been called a racist, but it would really have been about this:
The EU is poised to ban high-powered appliances such as kettles, toasters, hair-dryers within months of Britain's referendum vote, despite senior officials admitting the plan has brought them "ridicule".
The European Commission plans to unveil long-delayed 'ecodesign' restrictions on small household appliances in the autumn. They are expected to ban the most energy-inefficient devices from sale in order to cut carbon emissions.
The plans have been ready for many months, but were shelved for fear of undermining the referendum campaign if they were perceived as an assault on the British staples of tea and toast.
A sales ban on high-powered vacuum cleaners and inefficient electric ovens in 2014 sparked a public outcry in Britain.
EU officials have been instructed to immediately warn their senior managers of any issues in their portfolios that relate to the UK and could boost the Leave campaign were they to become public....
Internet routers, hand-dryers, mobile phones and patio jet-washers are also being examined by commission experts as candidates for new ecodesign rules.
As a free trade supporter, the downside would be the loss of a free trade zone with the rest of Europe, but I am not sure it can be called a "free trade zone" if they are banning toasters. Britain will negotiate new tariff rates with the EU, just as Switzerland and Norway (much smaller and less important trading partners) have done.
The real crime from a US perspective is the actions of our President. Mr. Obama has told the British that by voting for Brexit, they go to "the back of the line" for trade negotiations with the US. This is, amongst a lot of stupid things politicians say, one of the stupidest I have ever heard. My response as president would have been to move Britain to the front of the line, offering them a free trade treaty with the US the day after the Brexit vote. Like most politicians, unfortunately, President Obama does not view trade as a vehicle for the enrichment of individuals but as a cudgel to enforce his whims in the foreign policy arena. Why on Earth has President Obama threatened to undermine America's strong interest in trading with the UK merely to punish the UK for not staying in the EU, a transnational body this country would certainly never join?
Tags: carbon, college, Europe, free trade, Norway, President Obama, Switzerland, UK, US
Citizens United Haters, Is This Really What You Want? John Oliver Brexit Segment Forced to Air After Vote
A lot of folks, particularly on the Left, despise the Citizens United decision that said it was unconstitutional to limit third party political speech, particularly prior to an election (even if that speech was made by nasty old corporations). The case was specifically about whether the government could prevent the airing of a third-party produced and funded documentary about one of the candidates just before an election. The Supreme Court said that the government could not put in place such limits (ie "Congress shall make no law...") but Britain has no such restrictions so we can see exactly what we would get in such a regime. Is this what you want?
As Britain gears up to vote in the EU referendum later this week, broadcasters are constantly working to ensure their coverage remains impartial. One such company is Sky, which has this week been forced to delay the latest instalment of John Oliver's Last Week Tonight HBO show. Why? Because it contains a 15-minute diatribe on why the UK should remain part of Europe.
Instead of airing the programme after Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic on Monday night, like it does usually, Sky has pushed it back until 10:10pm on Thursday, just after the polls close. Social media users are up in arms about the decision, but in reality, Sky appears to be playing everything by the book.
Sky's decision allows it to adhere to Ofcom rules that come into effect during elections and referendums. "Sky have complied with the Ofcom broadcasting restrictions at times of elections and referendums that prohibit us showing this section of the programme at this moment in time. We will be able to show it once the polls close have closed on Thursday," a Sky spokesperson told Engadget.
In March, the regulator warned broadcasters that they'd need to take care when covering May's local elections and the subsequent Brexit vote. Section Five (which focuses on Due Impartiality) and Section Six (covering Elections and Referendums) of Ofcom's Code contain guidelines that are designed stop companies like Sky from influencing the public vote. Satirical content is allowed on UK TV networks during these times, but Oliver's delivery is very much political opinion based on facts, rather than straight humour.
By the way, the fact vs. satire distinction strikes me as particularly bizarre and arbitrary.
When will folks realize that such speech limitations are crafted by politicians to cravenly protect themselves from criticism. Take that Citizens United decision. Hillary Clinton has perhaps been most vociferous in her opposition to it, saying that if President she will appoint Supreme Court judges that will overturn it. But note the specific Citizens United case was about whether a documentary critical of .... Hillary Clinton could be aired. So Clinton is campaigning that when she takes power, she will change the Constitution so that she personally cannot be criticized. And the sheeple on the Left nod and cheer as if shielding politicians from accountability is somehow "progressive."
Tags: Citizens United, Europe, Hillary Clinton, media, Section Five, So Clinton, supreme court, UK
If I Were President, On The Day After Vote for Brexit...
I would propose a free-trade agreement with the UK. No loss of sovereignty, no stupid EU regulations and bureaucrats, no restrictions on what can be called "sausage" -- just trade. I would offer a similar deal to anyone else who wanted to leave.
Actually, when Obama visited, I would have been tempted to offer it to Britain at that time. Why was the US President so hell-bent on encouraging closer ties between Britain and Germany when he should have been working to improve the relationship between the UK and the US.
I will admit that I am not thrilled with the anti-immigration tone of the Brexit vote, but the EU is a package deal, and there is a lot of bad with the good in the package. Here is a good list of reasons to vote for Brexit (hat tip maggies farm)
Tags: EU, germany, trade, UK, US
Chicago's Guantanimo
Chicago police's use of a warehouse at Honan Square to detain suspects for secret interrogations just gets worse and worse.
Police "disappeared" more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal....
According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years. That percentage aligns with Chicago police's broader practice of providing minimal access to attorneys during the crucial early interrogation stage, when an arrestee's constitutional rights against self-incrimination are most vulnerable.
But Homan Square is unlike Chicago police precinct houses, according to lawyers who described a "find-your-client game" and experts who reviewed data from the latest tranche of arrestee records obtained by the Guardian.
"Not much shakes me in this business – baby murder, sex assault, I've done it all," said David Gaeger, an attorney whose client was taken to Homan Square in 2011 after being arrested for marijuana. "That place was and is scary. It's a scary place. There's nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something."
For whatever reason, the story does not seem to be able to generate much national heat, as partially evidenced by the fact that it takes a UK newspapers to show any initiative on the story. The Right fetishizes law enforcement, the Left refuses to take on a powerful public union, and the city is run by a mayor with powerful connections to both the President and Hillary Clinton, so essentially no one is interested.
By the way, most of these folks are being held for hours or days due to drug possession arrests (5386 of the 7000+), yet another indicator of why the war on drugs has become so stupid and counter-productive.
Tags: David Gaeger, detentions, Hillary Clinton, Homan Square, Honan Square, police, UK, war on drugs
Category: Police and Prosecutorial Abuse | 33 Comments
The Utter Economic Ignorance of Tech Web Sites
Despite my advancing years, I still like to stay on the bleeding edge of tech, at least tech gadgets (in fact I would argue that I am of an age I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who calls themselves a hard-core programmer that hasn't had to write in assembly language, as I did back in college).
So I enjoy having 20-something's regale me on new tech goodies at sites like Gizmodo and Engadget. But a running theme through all these sites is their shocking economic ignorance. A good example was yesterday at Engadget with Sean Buckley writing on a decision in California to declare Uber drivers as employees of Uber rather than independent contractors. Months ago I described a similar decision as signalling the death of Uber. Buckley writes: (my emphasis added)
If you ask Uber, none of their drivers are employees -- just independent contractors who happen to use their network to get fares. If you've been watching the news though, you know some drivers disagree: filing lawsuits both in California and the UK for the right to be recognized as employees. Those drivers just got some vindication, by way of the California unemployment office. According to the Employment Development Department, at least one former Uber driver qualifies for unemployment benefits.
According to Reuters, the EDD decided that a former Uber driver in southern California was an employee; the decision was held up twice by a administrative law judge when Uber appealed. Apparently, Uber's control over the driver was a deciding factor -- the company gets to define fares, bar drivers from picking non-Uber passengers and can even charge drivers a cancellation fee for choosing not to pick up a fare. That's "in fact an employer / employee relationship," according to the decision.
Uber says this ruling doesn't have any impact on pending litigation, but it's certainly a feather in the hat of drivers who want a more traditional relationship with the company. We'll have to wait and see how that turns out as the class-action lawsuit moves forward.
I won't repeat what I wrote here, but suffice it to say that I think Uber is a dead duck in the long run if forced to treat drivers as employees.
The amazing line to me is the highlighted one. What gives the author confidence that most Uber drivers "want a more traditional relationship with the company." Is that what you want, more timeclock-punching and 100-page employee manuals? My experience is that most Uber drivers value the fact that it is not a traditional job environment, and gives them a ton of flexibility on work hours, productivity rates, etc. And why, by the way, is it assumed that every job must offer the same kind of employment relationship? If someone doesn't like Uber, there are plenty of companies that will happily treat them like a mindless drone if that is what they like rather than being treated as an independent actor.
By the way, beyond the economic and liberty issues involved, I also think the California decision is just plain wrong in terms of the control Uber exercises. Sure Uber sets standards for its drivers, but everyone does that for their contractors. They key thing it does not do is set work hours and productivity rates. They don't care when you work and they don't care how many passengers you carry in an hour, because you just get paid when you drive a customer. Can you imagine a company that doesn't care when its employees show up for work or how hard they work when they do show up? Neither can I, which tells me that this is NOT an employer-employee relationship.
Remember the conversation a few weeks ago over the NY Times article that tried to make Amazon out to be some kind of employer ogre because it sets tough productivity standards for employees? That is what companies do when they have to pay by the hour (which is essentially how all employees, especially after Obama's most recent changes, must be paid). So if you don't like companies that set tough productivity standards for workers, then why are you trying to kill labor models that don't require those kinds of standards?
Tags: EDD, Employment Development Department, lawsuits, NY Times, productivity, running, Sure Uber, UK, unemployment
Good God, is There No Indignity Too Trivial For Government Officials to Regulate?
The Business Secretary of the UK is desperately worried that when travelling to other countries, Brits will encounter a different selection of Netflix programming from what they are used to at home. This trivial issue seems to demand a whole new regulatory and copyright regime:
Vince Cable will risk a clash with the film and music industries on Tuesday by calling for the creation of a single EU market for digital services such as Netflix.
The Business Secretary will say in a speech in Brussels that such services should offer the same content in all EU member states, for services paid for in one country to be available in the same form in all countries and for pricing offers to be replicated across the continent.
At present Netflix and Spotify, which operates a subscription streaming service for music, offers different catalogues at different prices depending on where the customer is located.
Harmonising such services across the EU would require copyright holders to change the way they license their material, which is currently carefully segmented for different geographic markets to maximise sales
Whenever Euro-regulators suggest harmonization across countries, they always assume that harmonization will lead to everyone adopting whatever the lowest current rate and broadest service offering that exists in any one country. But why? That pretty much never happens. It is at least as likely that anyone getting harmonized will get worse service at a higher price.
Tags: Business Secretary, EU, Euro, Good God, Government, pricing, risk, UK, Vince Cable, Whenever Euro-regulators
The Key Disconnect in the Climate Debate
Much of the climate debate turns on a single logical fallacy. This fallacy is clearly on display in some comments by UK Prime Minister David Cameron:
It's worth looking at what this report this week says – that [there is a] 95 per cent certainty that human activity is altering the climate. I think I said this almost 10 years ago: if someone came to you and said there is a 95 per cent chance that your house might burn down, even if you are in the 5 per cent that doesn't agree with it, you still take out the insurance, just in case."
"Human activity altering climate" is not the same thing as an environmental catastrophe (or one's house burning down). The statement that he is 95% certain that human activity is altering climate is one that most skeptics (including myself) are 100% sure is true. There is evidence that human activity has been altering the climate since the dawn of agriculture. Man's changing land uses have been demonstrated to alter climate, and certainly man's incremental CO2 is raising temperatures somewhat.
The key question is -- by how much? This is a totally different question, and, as I have written before, is largely dependent on climate theories unrelated to greenhouse gas theory, specifically that the Earth's climate system is dominated by large positive feedbacks. (Roy Spenser has a good summary of the issue here.)
The catastrophe is so uncertain that for the first time, the IPCC left estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2 out of its recently released summary for policy makers, mainly because it was not ready to (or did not want to) deal with a number of recent studies yielding sensitivity numbers well below catastrophic levels. Further, the IPCC nearly entirely punted on the key question of how it can reconcile its past high sensitivity/ high feedback based temperature forecasts with past relative modest measured warming rates, including a 15+ year pause in warming which none of its models predicted.
The overall tone of the new IPCC report is one of declining certainty -- they are less confident of their sensitivity numbers and less confident of their models which have all been a total failure over the last 15 years. They have also backed off of other statements, for example saying they are far less confident that warming is leading to severe weather.
Most skeptics are sure mankind is affecting climate somewhat, but believe that this effect will not be catastrophic. On both fronts, the IPCC is slowly catching up to us.
Tags: Climate, Climate Debate, David Cameron, gas, insurance, IPCC, Prime Minister, Roy Spenser, UK, warming
Words That Have Been Stripped of Any Meaning: "Spending Cuts" and "Austerity"
I have already written that the supposed European austerity (e.g. in the UK) is no such thing, and "austerity" in these cases is being used to describe what is merely a slowing in spending growth.
Apparently the same Newspeak is being applied to spending cuts in the US. How else can one match this data:
With these words from President Obama (my emphasis added)
"If we're going to raise revenues that are sufficient to balance with the very tough cuts that we've already made and the further reforms in entitlements that I'm prepared to make, then we're going to have to see the rates on the top two percent go up"
Seriously? The only small reductions in the budget were because some supposedly one-time expenses (like TARP bailouts, war costs, and stimulus spending) were not repeated. Allowing one-time costs to be, uh, one-time does not constitute "tough cuts."
Tough cuts are when we knock government spending back down to 19-20 percent of GDP. Clinton level spending in exchange for Clinton tax rates. That's my proposed deal.
Tags: bailouts, budget, GDP, government spending, President Obama, stimulus, tarp, UK, US, war
OMG -- More Smoke!
Kudos to a reader who pointed this one out to me from the Mail online. It is a favorite topic of mine, the use by the more-scientific-than-thou media of steam to illustrate articles on smoke and pollution.
Check out the captions - smoke is billowing out. Of course, what they are likely referring to -- the white plumes from the 8 funnel-shaped towers -- is almost certainly pure water. These are cooling towers, which cool water through evaporative cooling. These towers are often associated with nuclear plants (you can see that in the comments) but are used for fossil fuel plants as well. There does appear to be a bit of smoke in the picture, but you have to look all the way in the upper left from the two tall thin towers, and one can see a hint of emissions. Even in this case, the plume from the nearer and smaller of the two stacks appears to contain a lot of water vapor as well. My guess is the nasty stuff, to the extent it exists, is coming from the tallest stack, and it is barely in the picture and surely not the focus of the caption.
The article itself is worth a read, arguing that figures from the UK Met office show there has not been any global warming for 16 years. This is not an insight for most folks who follow the field, so I did not make a big deal about it, but it is interesting that a government body would admit it.
Tags: global warming, media, OMG, pollution, UK, warming
Things You Didn't Know About the European Debt Crisis
Apparently the most important issue is not the unsustainability of deficit spending, lack of fiscal responsibility, or the tough problems of balancing expensive bailouts with expensive defaults. It is making sure the timing of a Greek default does not negatively affect Obama's re-election. From the Independent (UK) entitled, "Obama asks eurozone to keep Greece in until after election day"
American officials are understood to be worried that if they decide Greece has not done enough to meet its deficit targets and withhold the money, it would automatically trigger Greece's exit from the eurozone weeks before the Presidential election on 6 November.
They are urging eurozone Governments to hold off from taking any drastic action before then – fearing that the resulting market destabilisation could damage President Obama's re-election prospects. European leaders are thought to be sympathetic to the lobbying fearing that, under pressure from his party lin Congress, Mitt Romney would be a more isolationist president than Mr Obama.
Tags: bailouts, deficit, Greece, lobbying, Mitt Romney, Mr Obama, President Obama, UK
I Find This Impossible to Understand
Most of you are familiar with the razor and blades strategy: Give away or sell the razor below cost to ensure years of profitable razor blade sales. We had a great example of this at AlliedSignal (later Honeywell) Aerospace where we pretty much gave Boeing the brake assemblies for the aircraft plus a free spare plus I think we put some cash in the box as well, all to get decades of guaranteed high price brake replacement business (courtesy in part to government regulation which made is extraordinarily difficult to the point of being impossible for anyone else to produce aftermarket parts).
So what I don't understand is, why is this company proposing to sell only the razors while inevitably leaving the blade sales to someone else:
The UK's biggest bookstore chain has announced that it will start selling Kindles alongside other digital services from Amazon. Waterstones stores will let Kindle owners digitally browse books in-store and link up with special offers, tying into the chain's plans for substantial renovations that would also include dedicated digital book areas and free WiFi.
One buys the books right from the Kindle interface. I understand the issue that browsing books online is less satisfying than in a book store (but much more convenient), but I am not sure how they are going to make money. Are Waterstone Kindle's coded to give Waterstones a share of each purchase? I can't find anything like that in the media reports, but I would certainly demand that at Waterstones. If not, this is like selling gift certificates for your competitor.
I will confess to being a book store free rider. I shop airport book stores but if I see something I like, pull out my iPad at the gate and buy it. Yes, I understand the appeal of physical books and it frankly pulled at me for years. But having just gone on a trip with 100 pages to read in the third Game of Thrones book, the relief I felt in having both the third and fourth books on my iPad rather than carrying both physically (think 800 pages or so each) was great.
Tags: Honeywell Aerospace, media, strategy, UK, Waterstone Kindle
Category: General Business | 9 Comments
OMG, Austerity!
via here
The UK line is particularly interesting, since that is the country that Krugman has declared is austerity-izing itself into a depression. As I have pointed out before, real government spending in UK has been and is still rising. The percent of GDP of this spending has fallen a bit, but there is nothing about Keynesian stimulus theory that says changes in the percentage of government spending is stimulative, only its absolute value.
Here is one thing I would love to here Krugman et. al. opine on -- at what percentage of government debt to GDP does additional deficit spending become counter-stimulative. I imagine there is an inverse relationship for deficit-funded stimulus, such that it has a larger effect at lower debt levels with a zero to negative effect at higher interest levels.
Update: From another source, here is the UK in real $
Tags: debt, deficit, depression, GDP, government spending, OMG, stimulus, UK
And We Climate Skeptics Get Called Evil
From the Gaurdian via Bishop Hill
The Guardian is reporting that UK climate change aid money has been used to fund forced sterilisation programmes in India.
Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned...
Court documents filed in India earlier this month claim that many victims have been left in pain, with little or no aftercare. Across the country, there have been numerous reports of deaths and of pregnant women suffering miscarriages after being selected for sterilisation without being warned that they would lose their unborn babies.
Yet a working paper published by the UK's Department for International Development in 2010 cited the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes. The document argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases, although it warned that there were "complex human rights and ethical issues" involved in forced population control.
Tags: Bishop Hill, Climate, climate change, India, International Development, UK, victims
MF Global: Unethical, But Perhaps Not Illegal
Investors everywhere were shocked to see that MF Global seems to have lost over a billion dollars of their customers capital. In most cases, this capital was cash customers thought was sequestered as collateral for their trading accounts. MF Global took its customers money and used that money as collateral in making risky, leveraged bets on European sovereign debt, bets that fell apart as debt prices fell and MF Global faced margin calls on its bets that it did not have the liquidity to cover.
Certainly it strikes most folks as unethical to lose the assets in your customers' brokerage accounts making bets for the house. But it turns out, it may have been entirely legal. This article is quite good, and helps explain what was going on, what this "hypothecation" thing is (basically a fancy term for leveraging up assets by using them as collateral on loans), and why it may have been legal.
In short, the article discusses two regulatory changes that seemed to be important. The first was a 2000 (ie Clinton era, for those who still think these regulatory screwups are attributable to a single Party) relaxation in how brokerages could invest customers' collateral in their trading accounts. The second was a loophole where brokerages created subsidiaries in countries with no controls on how client money was re-used (in this case mostly the UK) and used those subsidiaries to reinvest money even in US brokerage accounts.
The increase in leverage was staggering. Already, cash in most commodities trading accounts is leveraged - customers might have only 30% of the value of their trading positions as collateral on their margin account. Then the brokerage houses took this collateral and used it as collateral on new loans. Those receiving the collateral on the other end often did the same.
MF Global would be bad if it were fraud. But it is even worse if MF Global is doing legally what every other brokerage house is still doing.
Here is the minimum one should do: Diversify brokerage accounts. We diversify between bonds and stocks and other investments, but many people have everything in one account with one company. I am not sure anyone can be trusted any more. My mutual funds are now spread across three firms and, if I grow my brokerage account for individual stocks and investments (right now it is tiny) I will split that as well.
Tags: debt, fraud, investments, liquidity, MF, prices, UK, US
Speaking of Government Science...
Thank God for the Left and their scientific approach to government decision making
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration...
EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.
Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.
For three years a group of government employees actually got paid to come to the conclusion that drinking water does not prevent dehydration. Congrats.
If you want an explanation, my guess is that this is part of the Left's war on bottled water. For some bizarre reason, bottled water has been singled out as one of the evils of modern technology that will drive us into a carbon dioxide-induced climate disaster. So I don't think the EU would have approved any label claim for water. Since this is such an absurdly obvious claim that most consumers would just chuckle at (yes, consumers can be trusted to parse product claims), I almost wonder if some water company didn't just float this to make the point that no claim could be approved in the EU system.
Tags: carbon, EU, Government, Science, UK
Category: Government, Regulation, Science | 22 Comments


Women's Museum of California presents "Women's Film Festival San Diego"
The Women's Film Festival San Diego strives to educate and inspire future generations about the experiences and contributions of women through the art of film. The Women's Museum of California hosts this multi-day festival annually in an effort to provide female storytellers with a platform to share their work, connect with each other and a uniquely supportive audience. Click HERE to view all 2019 Official Film Selections.
*Click HERE to purchase a Saturday Pass ($40 before fees, includes ALL events on Saturday, 4/20) or HERE to purchase a Festival Pass ($75 before fees, includes ALL events on Friday, 4/19 and Saturday, 4/20).


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Duterte creates anti-corruption body
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MANILA (UPDATE) – President Rodrigo Duterte has signed an executive order creating the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission in a bid to rid government of corrupt public officials.
"There is a need to create a separate commission under the Office of the President solely dedicated to providing assistance to the President in the investigation and hearing of administrative cases and complaints, and in the conduct of lifestyle checks and/or fact-finding inquiries concerning presidential appointees and other public officers allegedly involved in graft and corrupt practices," Duterte's executive order read.
The commission was created a week after Duterte vowed to form a body that would investigate alleged corruption at the Office of the Ombudsman, an independent agency primarily tasked to investigate corruption allegations against public officials.
The President himself is facing an Ombudsman investigation into his and his family's wealth.
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said the President, having appointing powers, is not barred from conducting lifestyle checks on his appointees but "will not usurp the power to discipline certain independent constitutional officers such as the Ombudsman and judicial officials."
Under EO No. 43, the commission shall directly assist the President in investigating and/or hearing administrative cases primarily involving graft and corruption cases against all presidential appointees.
The commission shall be composed of a chairman and four commissioners to be appointed by the President.
Majority of the members of the commission must be lawyers who have been in practice for at least 5 years.
The EO states that the commission shall "have the power, on complaint or motu proprio (on its own), concurrently with the Office of the Ombudsman, to hear, investigate, receive, gather, and evaluate evidence, intelligence reports, and information in administrative cases against all presidential appointees in the executive branch occupying the position of assistant regional director or an equivalent rank and higher."
The commission may also, upon the President's instructions, investigate appointees in the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police.
It may also conduct lifestyle checks and fact-finding inquiries on acts or omissions of presidential appointees, including those outside the executive branch, on the President's orders.
"On the basis of of such fact-finding inquiries, the commission shall submit its report and recommended courses of action to the President," the EO said.
The commission also has the power to tap law enforcement agencies and make recommendations to place witnesses under the justice department's Witness Protection Program.
The commission may also recommend to the President the preventive suspension of an official upon the filing of a complaint or charge.
The EO prohibits the disclosure of records or information in connection with any investigation "when such disclosure will deprive the respondent of his/her right to a fair and impartial investigation of the case."
In 2010, then President Benigno Aquino III abolished a similar commission, called the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, and transferred its functions to the Office of the Deputy Executive Secretary for Legal Affairs.
Duterte won the elections on a platform of eradicating corruption in government. He has since fired some of his appointees accused of committing corrupt practices.
Anti-corruption push key to economic growth in Mexico – Carstens Previous Post
Commentary: Bold moves needed to weed out unhealthy attitudes about corruption Next Post
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Priya wrinkled her nose and threw the eReader down on the sofa cushion beside her. It bounced off the throw pillow and nearly fell onto the floor before she caught it. The eReader had been a Christmas present from her favourite uncle, part of a set of the latest electronic gadgets designed to improve her life. She most certainly was enjoying the features the device had to offer, from its beautiful selection of fonts to its Internet access to a wealth of images and background information—all accessible through a connection to the voice assistant he had given the family—to its clean and simple design. But most of all, she was enjoying the expansive library of classics her uncle had pre-loaded on the reader. "You will love these, Priya! Start with Jane Austen's Emma. Her characters are wonderful." Enthralled, Priya had done just that.
Her uncle had been right. She was loving it! She stole every moment she could to read, eagerly absorbing every word, every turn of phrase, growing to care for the characters, to know them as well as her brother and her best friends. Jane Austen's prose was wonderful too, her observations of humanity profound, her oh-so-polite wit sharp and lethal. Until just this moment, Priya had been completely absorbed in the story of Emma Woodhouse and her fingers in every pie in Highbury. Oh, what a great story it had been. Until now.
What on earth had Jane Austen been thinking? Emma surely could not be thinking of accepting slimy Mr. Elton. It was unthinkable! Priya picked up the novel and reread those last lines. There it was in black and white: in the carriage ride home from Randalls on that snowy Christmas eve, Mr. Elton had made his unwanted proposal, and Emma had actually promised to consider it.
What could Emma make of this? Never before had she been the recipient of such devoted affection; never had any man, and especially not one as handsome as Mr. Elton, appealed to her generous nature and sought to win her love. In the enormity of it, she fell silent, which her companion welcomed as encouragement.
"Miss Woodhouse—Emma— do not mistake me! My visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I received—indeed, your very silence now—speaks of a heart willing at least to consider my suit!" He reached for her hand, which she quickly withdrew from his grasp.
And to this, Emma could do nothing but accept.
This just could not be. "Emma!" she groaned, "Think twice! He is not the man for you!" On the window ledge by the potted plant, Xandia the voice assistant blinked its agreement. Really, Emma was destined for someone else. Frank Churchill, perhaps, who had promised to come to visit his father and new step-mother. Yes—Frank must be the man for Emma. Surely they were the couple predestined from childhood to meet and fall in love and marry. Anyone but Elton!
She sighed. She would have to return to Emma and her disastrous ideas another time. The rest of this evening was sure to be very, very busy!
There would be no more reading that night. Dev and Allie had chosen last night to announce their engagement and any hopes of settling back down with Emma had vanished in the light of the family celebration. By the time the fancy new TV was set up and congratulatory drinks poured and plans for an engagement party discussed and rejected, the clock was hinting at midnight.
Consequently, it was not until the next morning that Priya returned to her book. At last, settled back on the sofa with a mug of steaming tea at her side and Xandia blinking benignly on the windowsill, she flipped open the case to the eReader and turned the device on. The ground outside was covered in snow and she could hear the icy wind through the double-paned windows. It was a perfect day for reading.
Hah! This was fun! Emma was snowed in as well. It was Christmas in the novel, but Emma did not have to face Mr. Elton at church because of the weather. On the page, the character Emma expressed her relief at this, and on the comfortable sofa, Priya did likewise. At least Emma would have more time to contemplate Elton's offer and find some witty manner of rejecting it.
The morning tea was brought, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. She had never sought Mr. Elton's attentions, and ought to be outraged by them, and yet she could not help but feel flattered to be so singled out by so handsome a man. He wished, of course, to improve his own consequence by marrying well, and was assuredly as much enamoured with her thirty thousand pounds as with her charm, but he was a respectable man, and marrying him would allow her to remain in Highbury, near to Hartfield, wherein her father resided. She could never leave her father! This must be a point highly in Mr. Elton's favour!
"Begging your pardon, miss," a footman approached. "I know not how it arrived, this being Christmas Day and the ground too covered in snow to travel, but there is a message for you." He placed the salver at her side and bowed his exit.
What a curious matter. Emma reached for the note and broke the seal.
Priya blinked. She rubbed her eyes and read the line again. What a perfectly strange coincidence! Those were exactly the words she had exclaimed last night when Emma agreed to consider Elton's proposal. "I'm thinking like Jane Austen!" she giggled.
In the book, Emma was likewise perplexed.
It must have been Mr. Knightley, then, who had been the means of delivery, but where had he received the message? For it was not his hand on the paper. Neither, she now grasped, did he nor any other person know of Elton's offer, unless the man himself had told of it. But no, for her father just now had announced that Elton had stayed at home. How strange this all was.
"Just be sure not to accept Elton. There's someone better for you," Priya told the book with a smile. On the windowsill, Xandia blinked its green light as if in agreement once more.
Another message? Just appeared in so strange a manner, and in all this snow, and on Christmas as well? What strange work was this? Emma once more broke the seal.
The reader slipped from Priya's fingers. This must be some weird coincidence. There was absolutely no possible way her exasperated comments could make their way into a 200-year-old novel. Was there? As a joke, she asserted, "Frank Churchill has promised to visit. Perhaps he is the man for you." Xandia blinked its inscrutable green blink, and Priya glanced back down at the book. The words shifted on the screen as she read.
Once more, the footman entered with a message mysteriously received.
This was remarkable! Hardly believable! Somehow, Priya's words were making their way into the novel she was reading. Was she dreaming? Had there been something off in the food that Dev and Allie had brought over last night, or in the celebratory drinks? Too much spice in Mama's samosas? What else could explain what she was seeing? Eyeing her tea with suspicion, she turned back to the story.
Whatever the cause of her decision, Emma was now back in Priya's good graces. Emma had taken advantage of a break in the weather to sneak out to visit her sick friend Harriet, and on her walk had left a letter at the rectory in which she politely refused Elton's proposal. This was much better! Elton, of course, had reacted by getting into a snit and running away to Bath for a few weeks, supposedly to visit friends. Careful not to speak her thoughts aloud, Priya rejoiced that any relationship between Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Elton had been nipped in the bud.
With eager eyes, she continued reading the wonderful novel. With the new start of the new year, life in Highbury was getting interesting! In the second week of January, Jane Fairfax arrived in the village. She was an orphan whose beauty and accomplishments left Emma feeling a little more in the shadows than her ego desired. This ought to set up some fun interactions! And then, not so long afterwards, Emma got the most unexpected news: Mr. Elton was getting married! This was sudden—must be some floozy he met in Bath.
Well written, Miss Austen! It seemed that the author had just been waiting to get Elton out of the way before introducing the real hero into the story. It must be time to bring on Frank Churchill. And yes indeed, there in the very next chapter, Frank's father received a letter.
Priya settled back with a wide smile on her face. Everything was now as it ought to be! She went to the kitchen to refill her tea, and cast a baleful glare at Xandia, sitting on the windowsill, not a blink in sight to indicate it was even turned on. Good!
Back in the novel, Frank arrived as he had written, and before long was sitting in Emma's own parlour.
He was presented to her, and she did not think too much had been said in his praise; he was a very good looking young man; height, air, address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's; he looked quick and sensible. She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her that he came intending to be acquainted with the village, and that acquainted they soon must be.
But alas, Frank's attention seemed not to be on Emma alone, and she felt he could not quit the house quickly enough, having arrived with his father only to make the most abbreviated courtesies before departing to attend to matters elsewhere.
Wait! Frank was supposed to fall in love with Emma the moment he saw her. Wasn't he? Could be really be putting shopping for his stepmother and paying an obligatory visit to Jane Fairfax ahead of flirting with the heroine of the story? At the periphery of Priya's vision, Xandia blinked once. She scowled at it and turned back to her book. She wasn't going to do this again. Sure, it had worked once, getting Emma out of the clutches of money-grabbing Mr. Elton, but there it had been pretty clear that this was not a good idea. Perhaps Jane Austen had some other ideas of how to get Emma and Frank together. She'd read a bit more, just to be sure. Xandia blinked, Priya scowled again, then turned her back to the electronic device and settled back into the book.
As the story progressed, Frank Churchill grew quite comfortable in Highbury's society and professed his admiration for the village, his new friends, his father's house, and everything he saw. It was only a matter of time before he turned that affection to Emma, right? And yet Frank seemed to give no indication that he was attracted to her at all. He spoke gushingly about Mrs. Weston, about Ford's shop where you could buy anything and meet everyone in town, and even about his prior acquaintance with Jane Fairfax.
They had met last summer at Weymouth, which was one of those coincidences that are always found in novels, and to Emma's chagrin, had only good things to say about her.
"And how did you think Miss Fairfax looking?"—Emma had asked as she and Mrs. Weston and Frank walked into the village the next afternoon.
And Emma had stewed, since Jane Fairfax was her rival, and Priya stewed because, seriously, Frank had no business liking Jane when Emma was the heroine of the novel. But perhaps this was still Austen, merely setting up the tension so everyone would applaud when they finally got together. She kept reading, waiting for things to get turned around.
It was now the second week of February in the novel, almost Valentine's Day. Frank seemed to spend way too much time at the small apartment where Jane Fairfax lived with her aunt and great-aunt, and not nearly enough time with Emma. Really, the novel almost seemed to be changing track, focussing on that couple as the main romantic pairing. But that couldn't be, because it was called Emma, after all, and not Jane. Priya turned her head towards the window. Xandia blinked once. No. She would not. Well, perhaps, after one more chapter, if things were still not working out.
What's this? Frank went to London to get a haircut? Was this guy for real? And now he was back, fixing Jane's great-aunt's eyeglasses. No one offered to fix Priya's glasses, except the guy at the optician where she bought them, and he was paid to do that. Maybe it was time. After all, Emma had gotten Mr. and Mrs. Weston together, and had separated Harriet Smith and that farmer, Robert Martin, and she was the heroine of the book. And it had certainly worked out okay when Priya had somehow convinced Emma to refuse Elton with those strange messages. So maybe it would be okay for her to make a few more comments.
"Really, Frank," she said out loud, "Stop doting on Jane and think about Emma. She would be perfect for you." Xandia blinked once.
Ooooh! Waffles with blueberries and cream for breakfast! No matter how Priya sometimes complained about her father, Sanjay was the best waffle-maker in town. Emma could wait.
It was much later, after Dev and Allie left and the sun was sitting low in the sky, when Priya finally got back to her book. Her finger hovered over the on button on the eReader. Would her words have made it into the novel? Had the weird voice assistant her uncle gave the family somehow done the impossible again? Could she still be dreaming? Papa's waffles had seemed real enough, and the blueberry stain on her new jeans was certainly real enough. You don't drop blueberry sauce in your dreams. Her finger touched the button, and the screen flashed on. With a deep breath, Priya began to read.
The message from London seemed unequivocal. Frank received the note from his father's hand and read it with confusion and dismay.
Who would write such a thing? He could think of no man—or woman—in London or elsewhere who would put such concerns into thought, let alone onto paper. Could it perhaps be Mr. Dixon, the friend whom he had found in Weymouth who had, in turn, married Miss Fairfax's friend and the daughter of her guardians? But the Dixons were now in Ireland, departed to there from Holyhead not three weeks past! Something in his heart turned towards the lady from Hartfield, but no!—his sentiments were not to be dictated by the arrival of an unsigned message. He thanked his father for delivering the sealed missive and excused it as a letter from his aunt, who had raised him from early childhood, and begged his leave of his proud parent in hopes of walking into the village.
Oh! So this didn't work quite as Priya expected. Frank got the message, but didn't obey it. Of course! That made sense. Emma had wanted to refuse Elton, and the messages only nudged her along and gave her the confidence and determination to do it. Did Frank then really like Jane Fairfax? Maybe he did! Or maybe it was far along in the novel now that it was harder to change the direction of the story. Priya chewed her bottom lip and thought about this. Perhaps she had to put more intention into her comments to sway the characters' minds. Meddling in the classics wasn't something to be done lightly. She would have to think very carefully about what she did next.
She read a few more pages. The Coles were having a big party, and everyone in town seemed to be invited. Now this was more the thing! Jane Austen loved to make things happen at parties. In Pride and Prejudice, that's where Lizzy and Darcy first decided they hated each other (and everyone knows how that turned out!), and in Sense and Sensibility, it was at a party where Marianne discovered that the beautiful Willoughby was really a scumbag. So Jane Austen was going to use this party at the Coles to set the next bit of her plot going. Time for another cup of tea, and then back to the book.
This really was quite the bash. There was a fine dinner before the main event, which was followed by music and dancing and all sorts of Regency revelry. Harriet Smith was there, and Frank and the Westons, and Mr. Cox the lawyer and Jane and her aunts, and even Robert Martin the farmer, whom Emma had separated from Harriet. Frank was still making eyes at Jane, who was disgustingly good at playing the piano, and Mr. Knightley, Emma's neighbour, kept making strange and obscure comments to Emma about Frank. It was clear that the older gentleman just didn't like the newcomer. He wasn't… jealous? Nah! Couldn't be. Priya swiped the screen to turn another page.
"Really, man, open your eyes!" she sighed. "Look how beautiful she is, how much personality she has. You can't spend your life listening to someone practising scales so she can be accomplished. You want a woman with sparkle, and I know she likes you!" Xandia's green light blinked.
A livery-clad footman in a powdered white periwig pressed through the assembled guests, a single message with a red seal on the silver tray. The servant found Mrs. Cole, whose grand affair this evening's festivity was, and with her direction, made his way across the floor to deliver the message to its intended recipient. This, Emma observed from her situation at the fireplace where she was attending to the needs of her father. "It is pleasant here," he said to her, "for the fire is warm and there is little draught"—he brought her attention to the screen so helpfully set up by Mr. Cole for his comfort—"and I have little desire to move, although one is always more comfortable at home." When Emma raised her head again, the footman had delivered his message, although she knew not to whom, and she pondered through the evening at the importance of such a note at an event of social entertainment.
Austen had little more to say about the party, with one notable exception. Was she setting up the possibility of a relationship between Emma's friend Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax? Someone had given Jane a piano, and Mrs. Weston was wondering who it was.
This was a bit of a relief. Jane Austen did have another direction in mind for the overly perfect Miss Fairfax. Priya puffed out a breath. Now to wait and see the results of that last message. What did Frank think of it? If he also noticed Knightley's interest in Jane, he might be more willing to look at Emma again. Oh bother! This was getting much too confusing. She turned another page and started the next chapter.
The visit to the Coles afforded Emma many pleasant recollections the next day. The company had been more amiable than her expectations had led her to believe, and she was even inspired to spend an hour and a half at the keyboard in practice after hearing the superiority of Jane Fairfax's skills upon the pianoforté. She was then interrupted by Harriet's coming in; and if Harriet's praise could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted. Likewise, Harriet's heart, having been broken by the defection of the faithless Mr. Elton, was also comforted by her recollections of the evening.
Their tête-à-tête was soon interrupted once more, however, by the arrival of none other than Robert Martin, the farmer. O! How Harriet turned white, then red, and then white again! This was the man who had offered for Emma's friend not so long ago, and whom she had counselled her friend most firmly to reject, which she had done with Emma's own words! A farmer! Harriet, with her delicate beauty and sweetness of nature, was surely too good for a farmer! How she had worked upon her young friend to convince her of the justness of such a refusal, and yet now, in the man's immediate presence, Harriet looked about ready to swoon—although whether from shame or continued attachment, Emma could not be certain.
Oh no! This was not how it was supposed to go at all! The footman had delivered the message to the wrong man, and somehow the words had influenced Martin's affections. In the pages of the story, Emma had been struck dumb with shock and Harriet had started to weep. Priya had to do something.
"Tell Frank," she spoke directly to Xandia for the first time, "that his heart's desire is at Hartfield." She thought for a moment. "Frank, true love awaits you, but if you tarry, she may well be lost to you forever." The device blinked again, and the words shifted on the page under her eyes.
How did time work in novels? Until now, Priya had imagined the continuum within the pages of a novel or other work of fiction to be at the discretion of the author, and completely independent of the reader. If a story takes place within a single day, or an hour, if you put the book down for a week in the middle, the plot still takes an hour or a day or however long the author imagined to unfold. Likewise, if you flip to the end of the book (or fast-forward through all those electronic pages), you finish the story within minutes, even if the plot is supposed to unwind slowly over weeks or months.
But what happens when the reader is somehow involved in the actual plot and even influences it in some way? Priya had imagined that her timeline would be the one controlling the action since she was real and the story she was reading mere fiction. In that case, Frank would not get her message for another few minutes at least, while a messenger or someone delivered it, and then it would take him at least fifteen minutes or more to arrive at Hartfield, depending on where he was and how seriously he took the note.
But temporal and relativistic physics seem not to work quite the same way in the strange world of participatory fiction or whatever was going on here because no sooner had Priya spoken her words to Xandia when Serle opened the music room door and announced the arrival of Frank Churchill.
At last, things were starting to get straightened out! Priya would still have to work out what to do with Robert Martin, but this was setting things in the right direction at least. She smiled and turned back to the book. Then her smile faded.
Frank fell to one knee and placed his hand over his heart, but it was not towards Emma that he faced. Instead, his words of faithful adoration and devotion were directed to none other than Harriet Smith!
Frank was professing his love to Harriet!
Emma's astonishment was beyond words! Never before had Frank so much as glanced at Harriet; he had not even, to Emma's knowledge, been introduced to her, unless by Mrs. Weston at the Coles' party. Gone was any thought of Jane Fairfax; gone was any suggestion that he—Frank Churchill, the son of her dear friend Mrs. Weston's husband—might like her. A small hole appeared in Emma's heart at that moment, and the world, once so colourful and bright, seemed to fade into shades of dreadful greys.
If matters could be made worse, at this very moment they were, for none other than Mr. Knightley now stood at the entrance to the room, his mouth agape. He had heard and seen everything! For as long as Emma had known her friend—which had been all of her life, for he had been a lad of sixteen and her neighbour even at the time of her birth—she had always thought him a model of calm consideration and regulated temper. He was no stoic, for he could be brought to anger or joy or disappointment as could any man, but these had always been emotions laid atop a moderate temperament, as a cloth is laid across a table for a meal; it dresses and ornaments the whole and can change the ambiance with the flick of a wrist, but never does it alter the essence of the able beneath it. These had been, until this very moment, Mr. Knightley's variations of temper.
But what now Emma saw etched across that face that she knew so well was a pain that reached his soul, as if the table beneath the cloth had been scorched with fire.
Was Mr. Knightley attached to Harriet, that Frank's ill-considered protestation of love should injure him so? He had encouraged Robert Martin in his affections for Harriet, but in the intervening months, had he himself developed a tendre for the young lady?
But no—Mr. Knightley looked not at Harriet Smith, nor at Frank Churchill, who was now clinging to the young woman's hand as a drowning man might grasp a rope thrown to save him. Nor were Mr. Knightley's eyes directed at Robert Martin, who as one of his tenants, had asked his counsel before offering for Harriet in the autumn.
Rather, Mr. Knightley's eyes, and the full weight of his wounded heart, were upon Emma alone.
Could it be? Could Mr. Knightley love her?
The eReader lay closed on the coffee table. The sun was down and there was nothing worth watching on television, no matter how fancy Uncle Anant's gift was. Priya didn't want to look at it, didn't want to see it, even, but her eyes kept drifting back to the elegant case no matter how many times she commanded them not to do so.
Whom did Emma love? She rather had her heart set on Frank although she had earlier confessed to Harriet that she had no desire to get married at all. But you can't love the idea of a person, and Frank in person was less perfect than Frank in Emma's imagination. Could it be…? When everything was going off the rails in that last scene in the book, when everyone was somehow being coerced into falling in love with the wrong person, who did Emma look at? It was Mr. Knightley! She might not know it yet, but Emma loved Mr. Knightley! And from his heartbreak at seeing the mixed-up couples with Emma being doted over by Robert Martin, Knightley loved her too.
That, then, was the real conclusion to the novel. Frank Churchill was just a blind. It was all about Emma and Mr. Knightley! Somehow Priya had to get the story back on track. She just had to figure out how.
The doorbell rang, but before anyone could answer it, a key turned in the lock. That must be Dev. He always rang before letting himself in to let people know he was there. Allie walked in beside him.
"Hey Priya!" Allie gave her soon-to-be-sister-in-law a hug.
This was simple, at least. Allie loved Dev, Dev loved Allie, and all was good. Priya liked Allie too. She was good for her brother and made him happy.
Their parents were in the kitchen, and soon the entire group were gathered around the dining room table with hot chocolate and chai and a big plate of snacks in front of them.
From where Priya was sitting, she could just see Xandia on the window ledge in the sitting room. The lights in there were off and the compact device was silhouetted against the darkness of the winter night outside. That little green light blinked once, then twice, the small LED light clear in the unlit room.
Was it trying to tell her something? Surely it was only a conduit. It couldn't communicate by itself. But never before had Priya seen it blink twice. What had they been talking about?
Priya's eyes opened wide. She had some thinking to do, but she thought she might, just might, be able to save the book!
Okay. This was weird. But no weirder than having her comments appear as hand-delivered messages in the novel and changing the course of the story.
The rest of the day, the long hours of the night, were hardly enough for Emma's thoughts. She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. How to understand it all! She had thought herself to be enamoured with Frank Churchill, but upon hearing him declare himself to Harriet, her heart had expressed no outrage other than surprise! Nor had she experienced any distress at hearing Robert Martin profess his attachment to her, although how that came about was incomprehensible! He was not a bad sort, and he had expressed himself uncommonly well!
No—her true concern had been for the feelings of Mr. Knightley. She felt at once what that must mean. He loved her, and she—foolish creature not to know it before now—loved him too!
How she dwelt on this all through the night. How, at last, she knew her own mind when it seemed that Mr. Knightley would withdraw from her life. He had not stopped to speak when he saw her with Robert at her feet, but had turned on his heels and had walked away as quickly as he could. What pain now lay rooted in her heart! At last the first rays of light tinged the horizon outside her bedroom window and she rose with the weariness born of a disappointed soul.
The day was February the fourteenth—Valentine's Day. This was the day when lovers would exchange sweet notes or lines of poetry expressing their admiration and hopes. Alas, there would be none for her today. No rhyme could lift the burden that now lay upon her heart.
She rose from her slumber and summoned her maid to dress for the day.
She was at her morning tea when Serle bustled in from the kitchens. "I was preparing the pies, Miss Woodhouse, when this appeared on the table right where I was about to put the apples. Don't know how it got there, but it's for you." She placed the square envelope beside Emma's teacup and disappeared back through the doors from which she had emerged.
Another message? Emma despaired of what might be inside. Frank and Robert Martin had spoken of strange messages yesterday before they had been sent home—and Emma, too, had received those unsigned notes at Christmas when Mr. Elton had pressed his suit on her. She would not open it. No—that is, she ought very much not to. But the note seemed benign enough, a simple square envelope with an unsealed drop of wax sealing the flap. She ran her fingers over it. There was something inside, something flat, to be certain, but not mere paper. And the envelope was unmarked, save for her name on the front. What an extravagance, to use an entire sheet of paper merely for the enclosure, rather than for writing. It was most curious!
Before she knew what she was about, her fingers fumbled at the seal and the wax broke, revealing a lace-edged paper heart inside the paper envelope. A valentine!
This was not a mere note of admiration! It was an offer, a proposal of marriage! But from whom? The hand was not one she knew, for it was flowery and ornate, more drawn than written. Not from Robert, surely! He was prosperous, but the lace, the fine paper, the artistry, bespoke a man of greater means. She touched the heart-shaped card and found it opened up to reveal a message inside. This was a hand she knew. Her heart began to sing.
Could it be true? Did Mr. Knightley still wish to be known to her—to have his feelings known to her? She called for her maid and was dressed at once in her warmest clothes and set out at once for the church and the old tree there.
Upon her arrival, she saw Mr. Knightley standing with a card in his own hand, similar in shape to the enclosure she had received, and also trimmed in lace and drawn with soft flowers. His smile said what his words never could. Emma knew she had not written this letter, and with the same certainty, knew her handwriting would adorn the inside of the missive.
What did she say? Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does.
From the corner of her eye, then, Emma noticed a movement at the stone arch that led to the churchyard some way distant. Tearing her eyes from Mr. Knightley, she spied two people engaged in deep conversation. Could it be?—yes! Harriet and Robert Martin! They had reconciled as well. There was something in Harriet's hand. A valentine!
And there, on the far side of the stream, where the path turned after the bridge by the low bench, another couple sat, each staring at some small object held in each hand. Frank and Jane Fairfax, too, seemed to have received these mysterious letters, and had also been brought together by some strange hand.
Priya let out a puff of air. Whew, that had been close! Xandia had managed to create the perfect valentines to bring the three couples back together as they should be. She closed the book, and then, at a whim, opened it again. The words were different. She swiped the pages back to the scene where Mr. Elton first proposed to Emma, and noted with alarm, but some relief, that Emma had refused him outright. At every step, now, the story seemed different from what she had originally read, but somehow, more right.
Never again would Priya mess around with a book. She had learned her lesson, and learned it well.
A lovely review for The Assistant!