Monday, October 31, 2011

In the Belly of the Beast

No asset is safe. Everything has its vulnerable heel. Gold: Depression and confiscation. Cash: Inflation. Real Estate: Depression/Deflation/Stagnation. Stocks: Deflation/Depression/Stagnation. Growth and lack of growth in the economy, in part of the economy or in the currency all have a bruising impact on something. No asset is safe.

From 1920 to 2009 the stock market has returned 10% annually with a deviation of about 20%. In the 2000s it has returned -1%. For some perspective, in the 1930s it returned -0.1%. From October 1992 to September 2011 a fund I follow returned 9.47% annually; the S&P returned 7.74% for the same period.

This fund held a meeting last week to discuss the world, this country and the fund. It was held in New York amide the peculiar Wall Street demonstrations which colored several of the speeches. Indeed, there seemed to be an element of soul searching in the meeting as if the people there were trying to understand themselves and their purpose better. In the next several days I will summarize the thoughts of some of the excellent speakers on these subjects.

The conference was keynoted by Roger Lowenstein, the author of "When Genius Failed." He is a sharp, broad thinker but his talk was general and in some respects surprising. First, he denigrated several accepted concepts--diversification, liquidity and short term markets. These are not investments in the economy, they are hedges against it. All of these notions have moved the investor into less productive investments for both individuals and the economy. Leverage he feels is flat out madness. Wall street has one purpose: It collects capital for growth. Any subsidiary purpose is minor and can be a distortion. Inflation is always a threat but it it no more evident than in education where degrees are progressively devalued.

More tomorrow.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Sunday Sermon

The gospel is the "whosoever exalts himself shall be humbled" gospel. In this gospel Christ ridicules the Pharisees for their preoccupation with appearance ("They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes"), urging people to listen to the words of the teachers but ignore their actions. It is a gospel filled with dichotomies: Words versus action, words versus meaning, and the main dichotomy the difference between the concerns of life and those of the spirit.

It seems a bit funny, Christ's dismissing the Pharisees, but later in the chapter it get harsh. The Pharisees "devour the houses of widows", are "blind guides", "full of rapine and uncleanliness", "whited sepulchres ("beautiful but full of dead men's bones")," "serpents, generation of vipers."

This is a lot worse than ridicule; this is serious condemnation. They "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." They tithe mint and leave out the "weightier things of the law, judgment and mercy and faith." It is this debate between the concerns of life and those of the spirit that moves this gospel. The translators of the word are no better than anyone else; it is the word that is the point. Any earthly teacher pales in the presence of the Real Teacher. Gold itself is valueless; it is the altar that sanctifies the gold.

It is meaning that gives value to words. It is the spirit that brings significance to life. It is eternity that brings value to the temporary.

Now, these phylacteries ......

Saturday, October 29, 2011

cab thoughts 10/29/11

If you have no capacity to self assess, no capacity for dissatisfaction with yourself, you cannot learn. The interview question "What would you improve about yourself" is always ducked as self incriminating or modified to be "veiled bragging" (I work too hard") but it is a crucial assessment.

Aaron Smith, the Steeler defensive end, has a neck injury and his career may be over. He is the best defensive end on the Steelers I can remember, better than Greenwood.

The U.S. public school system K-12 since 1970 increased employment 10X the increase in school enrollment. That is hard to explain.

Pinker's research (from Harvard) shows that battlefield deaths were 500 per 100,000 people before nations formed; 70 per 100,000 in 19th century France (Napoleon and more); 60 per 100,000 in the 20th century; and just 0.3 per 100,000 currently. There is some research stating IQs are up 30% since the turn of the century in 1900 (it sounds like a non sequiter to compare IQs of different ages) and Pinker thinks the decline in battlefield deaths is because we are smarter. Comparing IQs of different times seems inherently contradictory to me.

The U.S. spends more money per student K-12 than any developed country except Switzerland.
The notion that education money is inherently an investment in our future rings a bit false.

Leadership does not work on the insane, the wicked or the irremediably stupid.

Interesting thought from Frum on Bush:
"I once made the mistake of suggesting to Bush that he use the phrase cheap energy to describe the aims of his energy policy. He gave me a sharp, squinting look. Cheap energy, he answered, was how we got into this mess. Every year from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, American cars burned less and less oil per mile traveled. Then in about 1995 that progress stopped. Why? He answered his own question: Because of the gas-guzzling SUV. And what had made the SUV craze possible? This time I answered, “Um, cheap energy?” He nodded at me. Dismissed.
But if Bush was no energy free-marketeer, neither did he share the crusading zeal of the environmental Left. For Bush, the point of energy conservation was not for Americans to USE less, but for Americans to IMPORT less. For him, energy was first and foremost a national security issue. He had warned in 2000, “As a result of our foreign oil imports skyrocketing, America is at the mercy more than ever of foreign governments and cartels.”
Source: The Right Man, by David Frum, p. 65-66 Jun 1, 2003 "

Friday, October 28, 2011

Free Time! Occupy the Ballpark!

If our life on this planet is limited by time and our enjoyment in life a function of free time, what greater inequity in life is there than the unequal distribution of free time? A mystery to philosophers and a plaything of physicists, time, in some respects, is all we have.

There is no greater example of this inequity in life, this disparity of leisure time, than the unfair distribution of time by time zones and the callousness of the fat cats who control the World Series this year, particularly last night's game. A back-and-forth battle, individual and team heroics and three astonishing comebacks from the brink of disaster were all rolled up in an eleven inning contest that might go down as one of the best in the championship's history. And where was I? Asleep, preparing to go to work the next day.

Rather than stay up late in the night on the east coast I was forced by circumstance--my job, my responsibilities, the distortions of time zones, the fatigue from my work of the day--to miss this terrific game and be excluded from the excitement and enjoyment of it as well as the participation of of the game in history. I will have no memory of the great moments, no excitement to recall and no community of fellow participants to join. Nor will I experience the positive effects of the best of sports competition, a hallmark of American culture. Instead I will join that community of those who were forced by circumstance not to participate, those people --excluded through no fault of their own--who work, are fatigued from work, who at an early morning must rise to some occasion and especially those who are victimized by the eastern time zone when the games are in the central or west.

This morning I did not wake up on third base thinking I hit a triple, I woke up in the empty stands wondering what happened.

Workers of the world, unite!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Alternative Energy Souces and the IEA

The International Energy Agency in Paris estimates that world GDP will grow at an annual average of 3.1% through the year 2030. (How they estimate these things I do not know.) Such a growth would result in an increase in oil demand from 84 million barrels a day to 103 barrels a day. 39% of this demand will come from China, 15% from India. The cost increase would be in the area of 160 dollars a barrel. (Charles Maxwell has been saying it will be double that for years.)

Another way of looking at this question in that 600 million people are responsible for most of the world's petroleum and non-ferrous metal consumption now; if 10% of the emerging nation population joins them, that is another 600 million people. That is a lot more demand.

So these scenarios should this should be a powerful incentive for alternative energy and petroleum conservation. But non-ferrous metals are integral to alternative energy. The question is, what constraints do non-ferrous metals--in cost and availability--provide alternative energy growth?

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Lee Hood #2

Synthesizers and sequencencers have developed oncogenes, the prion, epo proteins, neuroreceptors among many others.

The old systems cannot give birth to the new paradigms that are coming. The infrastructure must change first. The hostility that Cal Tech had/has to his entrepreneurship was no isolated arrogance and restricts the academic world in a way that must change.

The digital information of the genome combines with the environmental influences to create the phenotype. This is one of the many remarkable revelations of the Genome Project. There are no race genes, all the information is now accessible and proteonomics is a direct result of this technology. He loves the accessibility of this technology.

His analogy of the genotype to phenotype process is the radio. The radio receives electromagnetic waves, processes them and creates sound waves. Where does the researcher focus and what collaboration does he need?

Organ specific blood proteins are being identified that are active in only one organ (liver, brain, etc.) and these proteins change with the evolution of individual diseases. 50 have been identified so far using nanotechnology developed by James Heath from Cal Tech (a guy who might have been the prototype for the scientist from "Independence Day"). This identifying technology uses peptide protein capturing agents, not antigens.

Stem cells have been generated in the lab and have been guided into myocardial cells, heart muscle cells. Function may--or may not--follow histology.

The university must change. Historically it saw its function as education and research. It must expand to include bringing knowledge to the community and improving people's lives. This is a strong and recurring concept in his talk.

Medicine's focus will change because it should be more health and community oriented but also because the direction of research will guide it there. These new technologies will allow family evaluation, the changes small groups like families undergo and the basic norm from which it starts--the healthy individual--will lead to wellness, not illness, oriented medical care. He thinks this will require a union of multiple disciplines, an reorientation of medical thinking, a decrease in medical costs and a democratization of medical care throughout the world.

Entrepreneurship is a democratizing process, allows for more transparency of knowledge and is a logical outgrowth of the academic world. The academic world must learn this.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Notes From Lee Hood

Notes From Lee Hood Co-Founder of The Institute for Systems Biology

Lee Hood gave a lecture recently on the future of medical science. He is a serious visionary and has had significant success in science and entrepreneurship to support his reputation. He started at Cal Tech developing synthesizers and sequencers and, when Cal Tech felt that commercialization was beneath the dignity of educational institutions, took the ideas public and created Applied Biosystems, a company that continued his protein analytics and eventually was acquired for 6.7 billion dollars. He moved to The University of Washington and, with Gates' help, created a cross-disciplinary biology department whose research contributed to the Human Genome Project and the cell sorter. He currently heads the Institute of Science Biology.

Here are some notes from his talk:
There are new major factors in the biology of the new medicine. Complexity is the greatest. There is so much information across so many disciplines that interaction between biologists with mathematicians, engineers, physicists and statisticians will be mandatory. And, according to Thomas Kuhn ("Structure of the Scientific Revolution"), progress will be slow. And development will be Darwinian. Evolution is not only slow, it builds on any success. There is no Occam's razor in the evolution of life or knowledge. Rather it is like a Rube Goldberg machine; if it works, it stays. Moreover the analysis of a Rube Goldberg machine is difficult because it is not necessarily logical, it is only functional. Third, the future will involve paradigm shifts. The rise of systems biology, the genome, protein synthesis all require new organizational plans and, the fourth, cross disciplinary science where the biologist and the engineer are partners.

More notes tomorrow.

N.B. The Internet article where the illegal alien stats were taken on the 10/18/11 blog has disappeared.

Monday, October 24, 2011

We Came, We Saw, He Died: Quotes From A Sorcerer's Apprentice

A friend wrote: "If NATO purposely bombs a Foreign Leader, I presume with intent to kill, is it now fair game for a Foreign Group to try to kill a NATO Leader?

i.e. The IRA trying to kill Prime Minister David Cameron."


According to Wikileaks, Obama tried to visit Hiroshima and apologize but the Japanese were too worried about the reaction by the antinuclear movement. Obama did send a letter of condolences to the family of the guy they killed with the drone in Yemen. So the short answer I suppose is: You can kill anyone you want as long as you're sorry.

But I don't mean to trivialize the question. I think a responsible, ethical nation should behave within certain restrictions in matters of war. First, all wars should be declared. No country should hid behind some artificial convention or union in an effort to hid its responsibilities. A group of nations at war is a collection of individual nations with a seemingly common aim. America should never go to war because the French need oil, regardless how close we might be. Under those circumstances we would be mercenaries. Good will is an asset too. (I'm speaking here of open display of war, not secret service activity.)

Second, a nation should never go to war without suffering. Displacing all the risk on to young soldiers while life at home proceeds apace is revolting and, incidentally, the essence of inflation in war as the citizens' lives do not contract.

Third, targeting leaders is a creepy displacement of conflict. Our international problems are the result of policy, not personality. (One might have an argument about Chavez.)Bush was the American leader and invaded Iraq as our representative. Hating him individually and not holding those who elected him responsible as well misunderstands the nature of the state. Believing that countries are nascent Tupperware parties waiting to be released from the jackboot of the oppressor completely frees the citizenry of any responsibility of the nation's behavior and likely will release a chaotic genie where policies will be piously manipulated by attacking the top of the national pyramid. "And just one death will make war more safe..."

Fourth, the belief one can fine tune a country by surgical strikes on leaders has a number of very disturbing qualities. First is arrogance, the certainty that one leader knows best, not for himself or his nation but for his current enemy's nation. Another culture with another history. That is serious arrogance. Second is more arrogance. How can anyone say that one can remove one person for the betterment of others? Are we the End of History? It is like a science fiction nightmare where someone goes back in time to kill Hitler and is surprised when he returns home to find Eastern Europe still smouldering and the rest of the world speaking German because the leader who took Hitler's place in history decided not to fight a two front war.

Real assassins know the truth: Assassination is the result of symbolism, hatred and, sometimes, money. There's not a lick of advancement in it.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Sunday Sermon

I have a Muslim in-law and yesterday he called to say he was going to visit our family burial plot with his wife, my niece, to offer prayers for my recently deceased daughter. He asked if my wife and I would like to come. He was visiting the grave whether we went or not. We were eager and interested to go. We drove there in his new car and lit incense and candles. He spoke about how we might honor her memory, he chanted from the Koran as we sat by the grave and after a time of silence, we all left. He murmured a prayer before he started the car.

Today's gospel is the lawyer's famous question, "What is the greatest commandment?" Christ' answer is peculiar; essentially we are to love God. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. This seems peculiar because it is so simple and yet so general. It is particularly interesting when seen in the context of its origin. The original commandment is from Leviticus in the Old Testament where the commandments are anything but general. Leviticus is filled with directions and proscriptions; it is a collection of commandments on agriculture, families, loans--it is a manual of life, a handbook for assorted life problems and moments including the most minute, things like how to sow your field and how to harvest. Christ' answer is the same answer as Leviticus but yet quite different. He is not giving a list of behaviors or restrictions, he is commanding a way of life.

Loving God, loving your neighbor as yourself are not prohibitions or constrictions, they are ways to live that should be the starting point, the center of man's life. Nothing but good will flow from it. The agriculture, the animal husbandry will take care of themselves if these basic concepts are taken to heart.

Christians used to be quite visible on Sunday. Sometimes a family in a restaurant would pray before a meal in a restaurant or a Catholic college student inadvertently write "JMJ" on the top of an assignment or an exam. But no more. Somehow religion in the West has become an interest or pursuit with its defined time and place.

But my Muslim nephew-in-law lives his belief.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Cab Thoughts 10/22/11

I am more and more confused by the attention paid to people publicly displaying unhappiness. Perhaps the restoration of the stocks would tap a similar need. Sackcloth and ashes is kind of nostalgic too.

I saw Mundy, the Steeler safety, pull up on a hit on a wideout, a hit one year ago he would have sought out to make. Coaching might work. Matt Cooke has been a real hockey player this year and has been assault-free.

Muller's recent evaluations of global warming look pretty convincing in favor of its existence. His evaluations were funded by the Koch brothers, certainly no friends of the position. I have seen little of it published though.

The PSA study may be the biggest blow to the popular publishing of scientific data in history. Every knowledgeable scientist I read is astonished at how limited the thinking was. I fear that scientific announcements (like Muller's above) will be viewed with the same scepticism that is given political ones.

The 911 hijacking-plane-bombing must be the worst p.r. event ever. Every day ten of thousands of people go through the airport security ritual and curl their collective lips in a collective snarl.

It seems that the problems of the overpromising welfare state and the resulting debt and stagnation has become, suddenly, the fault of Wall Street. Wall Street deserves a lot of criticisms--irresponsibility and feasting on "too big to fail" among them--but their problems only added to the existing ones.

"Responsible but innocent." (aka "The French Defense" offered by the French officials who were accused of ignoring the contamination of some of the French blood supply with HIV).While the responsibility of the big banks and traders on Wall Street in the 2008-9 fiasco is certain, legal criminal guilt might be tenuous. But if the government can't convict Countrywide employees of something they are not trying very hard.

In 2005 the U.S. imported 60% of its oil. It now imports 47%. Some of that is slowdown in the economy but production is up and so are alternatives.

North Dakota is the third largest energy producer in the U.S. and next year will bypass Alaska to become second.

Good playoffs and Series so far. Texas is really powerful deep into their lineup.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Seeking Alpha vs. NRG on EV

A Deloitt Touch survey revealed that 2 to 4 per cent of the car buying populations (multiple nations) would buy an ultr-high efficiency vehicle (Hybrid electric, clean diesel and plug-in ev). Below is a graph of U.S. UHE vehicle buying stats over the last years. It looks as if the manufacturers are fighting over a fixed market.
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/10/20/saupload_11.20.11_20UHE_20Vehicles.png
Yet:
http://johnhanger.blogspot.com/2011/10/nrg-ceo-sees-50-million-evs.html

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Income Mobility

An article on Yahoo written around a piece from the Brookings Institute on the topic of "income mobility"--the ability of someone in a lower economic quintile to move to a higher quintile--had this summation:

Not only was there less "income mobility " in the U.S. than in most of Europe but
"the American dream is less likely to come true in the USA than in any other major economy except the United Kingdom's.
A generation ago, an American family did not need to "climb the ladder" to become better off. If a family started in the dead middle of the income distribution in 1947and ended in the dead middle of the distribution in 1973, it still saw its standard of living approximately double. By contrast, middle-class incomes barely budged in the quarter century leading up to 2007."

While the Brookings Institute has its own ax to grind this, if true, is most disturbing. Income mobility is a harsh way of judging an economy; it is a zero sum game. If someone advances, someone is overcome and regresses. But capitalism's major claim is not the individual wealth of all, it is the wealth of some and the standard of living of all.

This would be a serious worry.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Discontent is its Own Reward

The Wall Street demonstrators are at a tremendous disadvantage: In a crowd you can always find someone who will make the group look bad. The bigger the crowd, the better. But there is an additional problem here. Angst does not qualify as a movement. Being worried or unhappy, although they may be common themes in mankind, does not constitute an organizing social point. It can sometimes--the French Revolution was outrage all dressed up with nowhere to go--but generally specifics are necessary.

I was watching a demonstrator being interviewed a few days ago and he stated his motive for being there was his high college student loan payments. As a guy whose grandfather did not go to grade school, I was not moved to search for the barricades.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Illegal Deficits

When a nation is running a deficit, that means the net income in taxes and fees is less than the amount the nation pays out. Another way of looking at it is that the average American is taking more money from the government than he pays out in taxes. In essence, the average American household gets in government money more than it pays.

The average illegal immigrant household is instructive. There are about 13 million households of illegal immigrants in the U.S.. If one calculates the amount of money illegal households get per household from the government and subtract the taxes they pay, you get $17,000,(according to some guy named Edwin Rubenstein from a think tank in Chicago.) That calculates out to about $220 Billion dollars a year, or about 17% of the entire national deficit and about the annual interest paid out on the national debt.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Sunday Sermon

A comment on the "Render unto Caesar" gospel dismissed it as comic; when give a difficult either-or choice the answer is "Yes." It is a profound underestimation.

In it the wolves are circling. Christ has delivered three parables since his return to Jerusalem and all involve grim assessments of the organized Jewish religion and in one, the middle one about the tenants and the vineyard, he identifies himself as the Son of God. The question is asked to isolate him either from Rome or from his religious followers. While his answer is brilliant, it is seen as more clever verbal twist than cosmic. But it is not. Christ shows himself to be very understanding of our lives. Christ is willing to give the material world--the bustling business and marching political world--its place. But he reveals it as just a small place. The world has its demands, practical and real--like working on the sabbath to rescue the family cow from a ditch. Christ does not begrudge us our practical anxieties. But he follows with the hugely diminishing clincher: While you understandably must render to Caesar what is his, so must you render what is God's to God.

And so the great Caesar and giant Rome are made to throw a shadow in their little world.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Cab Thoughts

The PSA fiasco, where a task force announced guidelines for PSA testing that disagrees with just about every expert in the field, raises some specific questions but general ones too. How good are any of these studies we hear and read?

I read two Ian Rankin books recently. He is well regarded but I'll bet not in Scotland. Scotland is failing if he is correct.

The husband of "The Chinese Tiger" is Jed Rubenfeld. He has written two books, the first, "The Interpretation of Murder", is quite good. This family is so talented they have displaced my former Queen of Redistribution of Qualities, Gwenyth Paltrow.

I saw a picture of Obama's speech in Pittsburgh. Most of the seats were empty.

Romney's Mormon problem has another side. Why can't he blunt to "cult" charge and claim it's a truly American religion. After all, it was invented here. Appeal to American patriotism.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Big Guys in the NBA and the Little Guy

There is more going on than you might expect in the NBA struggle. The players want money, the owners want money but the owners want something else. They want a salary cap to ensure more competitiveness among the teams and the players do not. The impasse has resulted in the cancellation of several weeks of games and no resolution is in sight. The players and the owners are taking a financial hit but there is more. The working man. The average guy hurt by the trickle down effect of the work stoppage. Said George Cohen, Federal Mediator: "It is evident that the ongoing dispute will result in a serious impact, not only upon the parties directly involved, but also, of major concern, on interstate commerce — i.e., the employers and working men and women who provide services related to the basketball games, and, more generally, on the economy of every city in which those games are scheduled to be played." And many of these teams already have considerable community "investment."

This looks like a good spot for TARP. The federal government could guarantee a portion of salary above the cap, even an elevated playing field and create work for the little guy.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Bomber's Remorse ("The Sorrowful Men")

A secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released for the first time by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'" The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.

Samir Khan, the al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter, was killed along with the terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen. The U.S. State Department contacted his family to "express its condolences."

Whatever your political viewpoint, this is a peculiar administration.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

P.S.A., Prostate Cancer, and the NYT

The NYT and WashPo recently published the results of a review done by a task force on the value of P.S.A. testing. (P.S.A. is a protein --Prostatic Specific Antigen--made by the prostate that gets into the bloodstream depending on number of blood vessels, their permeability and age. It rises in many instances of prostate cancer, as well as other conditions that increase vasculature and vessel permeability.)The report is astonishing in a number of ways and offers remarkable insights into problems facing the United States and its fragile relationship with science.

The task force, The United States Preventive Services Task Force, is an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services. They offer opinions on medical practice in the United States. While these positions are unsolicited, they often determine the approach taken by Medicare with regard to standards in health care management and, significantly, payment for testing. (A few years ago the task force determined that mammograms should been done only every two years rather than the traditional one year. The limits of funding followed.) In this particular task force study, the complications of therapy for the prostate cancers discovered was seen as unjustified when compared to the improvement in survival rate, which was seen as slight. In essence, P.S.A. elevation was seen to result in complications from biopsies and eventually complication from therapy when the biopsy was positive and no advantage in life expectancy was seen over a ten year period.

Several of the studies were particularly interesting as they compared tested and untested groups rather than diseased and healthy groups--they used testing as a proxy for disease found. So the Scandinavian study compared groups tested for P.S.A. against those not tested for P.S.A. and compared their life expectancy over seven to ten years. Men declining biopsy as well as those with negative biopsies were included in the tested group. As elevated P.S.A. is associated with negative biopsy 70% of the time, the tested group give a muted idea of the disease. But most complications of biopsy--like blood in the semen at 50%--while harmless are reported as serious complications.

Another factor not considered is the target population of biopsy. Most agree that clinical prostate cancer, that is cancer that is symptomatic and/or can be appreciated on examination, does not limit the life expectancy in men over the age of 70 in most cases but does in those men under 70. However, P.S.A. elevation--when associated with prostate cancer--precedes clinical findings by 5 to 7 years. Thus the target group for physicians treating prostate cancer is men under the age of 65 or so. Another group is those with rapidly growing disease in the generally low risk populations as P.S.A. changes often reflect that. Targeting these groups is more than reasonable; in a civilized society that understands the implication of illness and feels a responsibility towards its victims, it is obligatory. Another important factor is the development of symptoms which can be decreased or eliminated by early detection; thus survival rate does not tell the whole story.

What is particularly galling about these haphazard investigations and reviews is that they are done by seemingly reasonable people, people who should know the limits of their studies and the difficulties inherent in making good scientific generalities. Perhaps the makeup of the task force is illuminating: There is no one on the task force collecting information on P.S.A. and prostate cancer who clinically evaluates or treats either.

In essence, for the sake of unbiased neutrality, expertise and knowledge on the task force were screened out.

Monday, October 10, 2011

"Ides of March" Movie Review

Directed by George Clooney (who headlines along with a powerhouse cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei and Jeffrey Wright)

"The Ides of March" is a new film co-written and directed by George Clooney, a film adapted from a play called "Farragut North," (the name of a Washington D.C. Metro stop). It is a gripping, well acted film. It opens with Ryan Gosling mishandling a political debate question in a darkened room. It is soon apparent that it is a practice setting for a future debate and Gosling is merely testing the mechanics of the debate. He is not even the candidate. Let the deception and the "Everything is not what it seems" begin.

The cast includes Gosling, Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and someone new (to me) Evan Rachel Wood. The setting is the Ohio Democratic primary between two presidential candidates and the winner probably will become the national candidate, the endorsement by the North Carolina Senator will probably deliver the nomination regardless of who wins the primary. Clooney is the modern, thoughtful and apparently moral candidate and his second assistant is Gosling. His campaign staff chief is Hoffman and their opponent's is Giamatti. The battle lines center on the competition for the Ohio votes, the Senator's (Wright) endorsement, and the complex manipulation of people by both sides as well as the inevitable secrets of explosive potential. The story ostensibly is the story of Gosling's maturity in the hard world of politics.

Everyone in this story is terrific; Wood is a special surprise and Tomei's character is defining for the story. But there are a number of problems in the story--not the acting--that hamper it. There are a number of crucial coincidences, deadly ones that generate the story. In the modern world, no story should hinge on the ability to get a phone call.

One would like a struggle in the changing characters; the process from good guy to bad guy is not an evolution, it should be a crisis that is poorly resolved. People in this story accept their circumstances. There is no struggle except in the effort of characters to extricate themselves from trouble. Goslin's development is more of a change of clothes; he merely changes style.

The notion that politics is seamy is a given in modern society; no one is surprised by it and it will not carry a plot. Hypocrisy, insincerity and moral danger are powerful in the hands of good actors. But, in itself, it is not enough. And with a title like "The Ides of March" you have set a high bar, too high here.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Sunday Sermon 10/9/11

Today's gospel contains the third of the three parables of the vineyards, all three delivered by Christ in his last weeks during his final, fatal visit to Jerusalem. The first parable is of the two brothers asked by their father to work in the family vineyard, one says he will go but doesn't and the other said he would not but eventually does. The second is of the king who sends men and eventually his son to collect profits from his vineyard and all of his emissaries are killed by the sharecroppers. The third is of the wedding guests who don't come to the wedding and are eventually replaced by people from the highways and byways. The first is pretty straightforward--as straightforward as genius is--the third is the most famous with the scary ejection of the guest who has not worn the correct wedding clothes. The second is really interesting; according to most biblical authorities this is the first major allusion Christ makes as being the Son of God and this parable is responsible for the rage of the Jewish infrastructure that leads to His crucifixion.

There is an interesting part of the parable where the sharecroppers finally explain their violence towards the king's men and, eventually, his son. They say they want to take the son's inheritance. What could all this mean?

First, the king is beyond patient; he is optimistic about the sharecroppers almost to the naive. They kill two groups of ambassadors and yet he sends his son to negotiate. Second, the sharecroppers have a motive, a strange motive but a motive. If they kill the heir they will get his inheritance. Thus it is a revolt, a revolution, but on the face of it there is no chance this will be successful; the logistics will not allow it. It is as if they are trying to create an alternative universe. How will killing the son get them anything other than destroyed? The sharecroppers are farmers trying to change a system that is written in stone. There is no chance they will succeed against the king. Their revolt is a symbolic and egocentric act doomed to fail. Their acts are monstrous specifically but tiny in the eyes of the king who can--and will--bring a terrible vengeful justice upon them. Not only is the behavior of the tenants reprehensible, it is stupid; it defies the way of the world. It defies how things are.

Like walking naked in a snowstorm, it mocks freedom. It is the rebellion of Adam and Eve. It is an attempt to replace the certainty of God with the uncertain ambitions of men.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Cab Thoughts 10/8/11

There was a lot of evidence against Ms. Knox. And she clearly lied--hugely and badly--to the investigators. But most of it seems to prove that she was there, not necessarily the killer. But being there is pretty bad.

Who would you rather have as president, Hillary Clinton or any of the Republican front runners?

Age of the average car in the United States? 10 years, 7 months. Car sales are up but may be a sign of attrition of current stock, not improvement in domestic economy.

Since 2000 the global growth rate for natural gas vehicles has been 26 per cent per year. About 1 per cent of all vehicles on planet earth now run on natural gas and most of them are light duty or cars. In the U.S. only 1 in 10,000 vehicles run on natural gas. It's clean and plentiful; why do the Americans not use it?

Bank protesters are in my neighborhood this week. I am at a loss to explain why unless they prefer areas with good coffee houses.

I oppose the collection of wealth but I also know it is rare. My idea of reasonable wealth is that earned by Franklin Raines. I want no more than that.

About 92 percent of the coal used in the United States is used for generating electricity. That makes cutting down coal use, or increasing electric vehicles without coal, difficult.

Pointless demonstrations are things only a parent can understand.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Jobs

One wonders about legacies and what they mean. Virtually every native passer-by in Rome can give some explanation of the art of the town. Among the Germans it's the composers, not the philosophers. The English revere their political leaders who forged their legal system. In Russia, even Lenin had to deal with Tolstoy. Civilized nations/cultures seem to want a personification, a symbolic representative of what is best in them. And those nations without a symbolic heritage seem sad indeed.

So what about the Americans? Washington? Jefferson? Lincoln? All strong, principled visionaries who changed their nation and the world--and practical men, not abstract and elusive academics who, in a hailstorm of opinions, were occasionally right.

There is another element, though: The innovator. Edison, Ford and now Jobs--men who knew their field, dominated it, and initiated and developed changes that improved the nation and the world. Competence, integrity, privacy without the need for the public arena. Greek heroes in every way but violence.

Not America's creators but their legacy.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Oxymoron Nation and the Dialectic of Progress

I recently bought a poison for pests and was surprised to see the packaging had changed. Not only was the poison less powerful, it was packaged in a special dispenser. Why? To reduce risks of accidental poisoning. The tremendous oil and gas findings in Western Pennsylvania has caused angst because people are fearful that the mining can not be done with risk. Drilling at a similar find in the Midwest is on hold for fear of the health of a field rodent. Nuclear power has been effectively banned by the fear of nuclear plants created by the Japanese accident.

Change entails disruption. No appendix is removed without a scar--except on Star Trek, an apt symbol of the fantastic. If we stand frozen before our decisions we will do nothing. If we do nothing we will miss opportunities at worst, we will simply erode at best. I am not speaking about breaking eggs for omelets here, I am talking about managing risk. Looking at a problem, assessing the options, then moving to fix the problem with as good a control of the downsides as possible--that is not capitalistic or dangerous, that is adult. Safe poisons, clean drilling, bloodless surgery are not.

Life is unsafe and ends poorly. The problems we as a people face are sometimes gigantic, sometimes minor but the solutions are rarely without risk. The charge, "Prove this can not happen," is a powerful deterrent to people who do not understand the uncertainties of life and the process of trial and error that is inherent to progress.

I used to think we needed business people in government; now I think we need engineers.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Liquidity Trap and the Paradox of Thrift

We are caught between these two views:

1. Economic activity is a function of production and consumption. But debt has risen perilously so anyone making a profit in these times will not expand their business or take on new workers. This has led to a "liquidity trap" where any new cash goes not for production or consumption but rather to pay down debt. Therefore the only option is to stimulate the consumption side by giving noninvestors money to spend. Therefore we should tax those who have money but will not spend it and give it to those who have no money and will spend what they are given. This will stimulate production and lead to growth.

2. Economic activity is a function of production and consumption. But the government's interference in the economy has led to flooding the country with money thus threatening inflation, constraining investment with micromanaging regulations and shunting money from areas of production to areas of ideological preference. This has led to a "liquidity trap" where available money does not go in to investment but fearfully stays in cash. Therefore the only option is to stimulate production by decreasing the size and scope of government, decrease their regulations and taxes and allow the private sector to develop. This will stimulate production and lead to growth.

So there is a lot of money available that going either to pay debt or to the mattress. The solution of one group is to add more money to potential consumers so there is a group to produce for and the other group is to decrease taxes and regulations so businesses can appear, grow, expand, etc. so that the working base grows and can increase consumption.

There is a charming coffee house logic to all of this. Both sides seem sensible. Both seem concerned and sympathetic. Both sides despise each other so fortunately we can eliminate brotherly love as a deciding factor here. But despite the protests of both sides, these two alternatives are not benign choices for the benefit of "the consumer" or "the worker" or "the businessman." Someone will also be damaged by the increase or the contraction of government money. Let's also look at the other consequence of their respective unprovable dogmas.

Who will suffer the most and is it deserved?

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Will Work for Tax Breaks!

Saft Corporation received a $95.5 million grant from the Department of Energy to open a 235,000 square foot lithium battery plant in Jacksonville, FL.. Saft got economic incentives from the state of Florida and the city of Jacksonville to build the plant, and construction of the 235,000-square-foot facility was further funded by a $95.5 million federal grant from the Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, i.e. TARP!

Now here is a French company expected to create 300 jobs at $318,333.33 of taxpayer money per job...to make lithium-ion batteries for cars. This is, by most assessments, a dead end and the government looks foolish.

But, wait. It is actually more complicated. These batteries also have a U.S. Department of Defense application. The Defense Department can not rely on domestic American production for their needed products. So the government may have another motive and may have made a decision based on weakness and need.

What a mess.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Glenn Beck

I've always thought Glenn Beck an interesting phenomenon because he was so vulnerable. Not because he cried or because of his confessional quality but because he was admittedly uneducated and he tried to learn. He tried in public. He would stumble on something and devour it and then he would change his mind about something as a result. So different and refreshing, so unlike the Fox regurgitators or the numbing Hannity. His decision to go private on a subscription internet venture was gutsy too. Here is part of a WSJ article on his progress so far.

"Because Mr. Beck owns the show and the network, he could make substantially more than the $2.5 million salary he got each year at Fox. GBTV is on track to take in more than $20 million in revenue in its debut year, according to a person close to the company.
The television industry will be watching closely to see whether the TV host can preserve his popularity while migrating to the Web, where efforts to get consumers to pay to watch online-only channels are just beginning.
When Mr. Beck announced GBTV in June, the network had 80,000 subscribers. In the months since, GBTV subscribers have swelled to more than 230,000, according to people close to the network, even though Mr. Beck‘s show hasn’t yet begun.
The audience is far less than the more than 2.2 million daily viewers his program on Fox drew, on average, over its 27-month run, which ended in June after clashes with the network’s management.
But it is more than the average 156,000 people who were watching the Oprah Winfrey Network in June."

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Sunday Sermon 10/2/11

One characteristic of the modern world is the development of group thinking. Historically there was little more than national identity, if anything. Joan of Arc, travelling to meet the king for the first time, could not speak easily to neighbors in towns twenty miles away because their french was so different. Indeed, Manchester says that war was a unifying factor in nations not because it created a common enemy but because it organized a national language.

With better unification, identities formed and sometimes ethnicity trumped nationality. (See Balkans, see Black America.) But these reasonable identities could not prepare us for the new identities that were discovered/invented/smoked up in the last two hundred years. We, as a species, became thralls to economics, power and sexual urges among many others. Captivated by the surmising of bright and creative men we became slaves to the plausible.

And some of these ideas were quite captivating. Some made sense. But all of these generalities were as unproven and unprovable as string theory. Nonetheless we were ready to kill and die for them.

This modern tendency is in great conflict with two groups, religion and the English (really Scot) Enlightenment. Both emphasize the nature of man as an individual rather than a part of some group movement or evolution. Before any discussion occurs between the two philosophies of groups and individuals, that impossible bridge must be built.

And before any thought of man's relationship with man can be entertained, that personal and individual relationship between him and his soul must be encountered.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Cab Thoughts

Will the military, comfortable now with their position on gay soldiers, open their ranks to cross dressers and transgender volunteers as well?

Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by American drone in Yemen. He was an American citizen who was behind a number of terrorist attacks. Did he deserve a trial? Was he deprived of his constitutional rights?

First bin Ladin, now al-Awlaki. And Obama's popularity rises. Is it possible that the leadership in this country will be judged on its assassination success rate?

The U.S. is now importing less oil from the Middle East for the first time since 1999.There are a number of factors. We now have an increase in domestic production, the first such improvement in a long time. Mileage has improved. There is a rise in synthetic fuels and ethanol--still a dumb deal--is up. The downturn in the economy has helped too. The trajectory, if continued, will make us independent of these people in 12 years.

Some European utilities are experiencing periodic surges in their solar sources for their grid and are selling energy at a loss. This believe it or not impairs their ability to upgrade and increase their sources.

A recent article by a very bright libertarian compared the qualities of socialism to the qualities of capitalism as "envy, entitlement, and aggression" juxtapose to "commerce, creativity, and comity." Is that true?