Saturday, March 31, 2012

Cab Thoughts 3/31/12

20% of the world's fresh water is in the Great Lakes. Maybe we'll fight Canada for it.

Saw a mockup of the Kennedy assassination and, while mostly obvious, it showed several interesting points. First, Jackie was really close to the fatal bullet and second, the "grassy knoll" was a very good, clean shot but certainly would have killed Jackie too. I think there is little doubt what happened, although the Tibbit shooting is hard to explain, but the grassy knoll gave a remarkable shot and, despite the talk, I had never seen the angle.

JFK apparently had chlamydia at his death. He always had a severe back pain and wore a brace. The cause always seemed a bit vague and I wonder if he could have had Reiter's Syndrome, a very rare inflammation that has a venereal source. He was a remarkable careless man.

A PEW study shows that 72% of people know little or nothing about fracking. Of those with opinions, there is a political division. Fracking, a drilling technique, has adherents and opponents based on political affiliation. Republicans supported it 73-15; Democrats opposed fracking by 33-52; and independents supported it 54-35. Doesn't this sound strange? Political positions on technology? Weirdly close to creationism/evolution debates.

Deborah Rogers was made famous by being featured as a shale gas financial expert in the NYT and Rolling Stones Magazine. She is convinced that shale gas is a ponzi scheme. New estimates put the useable gas from the Marcellus at respectively between 267 to 534 trillion cubic feet (IHS) and 460 to 634 trillion cubic feet (ICF study). This is a lot of gas. And the dropping price of gas is more proof that a lot is being produced. But these people continue to talk and continue to be quoted.

Could Tebow have gone anywhere worse for him? New York press will torture him.

30 billion dollars in phones were lost or stolen in 2011. Commonest city for phone loss? Philadelphia. Commonest city for stolen phones: Cleveland. Commonest time? 9 to 2 am. Nothing good happens after midnight.

The huge cracking plant that has been scheduled to be built in Pennsylvania was induced, partly, by the state eliminating state taxes on the plant for 15 years. This in a time where the common mantra is that taxes exert a minimal effect on peoples' decisions.

25% of the 1 trillion dollars in school loans are in default. Stafford loan rates are doubling this year.

For Profit colleges like Phoenix students incur 43 thousand dollars in debt for each student, private 23 thousand and public 16 thousand. There is a special place in Hell for those who prey on people who are trying to improve themselves and cannot.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Symbolism and Bigotry

The violence in the United States, especially among the black community, is simply appalling. On St. Patrick's Day weekend in Chicago, forty people, 40, were murdered. Now we are treated to national outrage over one murder, the Florida shooting of a black teenage boy by a Hispanic man named Zimmerman. At first the killer was white and then became Hispanic, the victim a child and now less so. But any objectivity here is random; all the national stories now have some pre-scripted scenario, some template. The huge picture will be replaced by some focused leveraged emotional narrative. Asians are bad drivers; lacrosse players kill.

Part of this distortion is the progression we have made from individuals of distinction to groups with superficial similarities. One of the characteristics of the original constitution was its preoccupation with individual qualities, individual rights. These don't work quite as well when dealing with mobs.

It may be soon reported that Zimmerman has some Jewish blood.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

An Argument for More Open Mics

Obama's "open mic" should be cautionary. It should be a eureka moment for all voters in a democracy. These people have plans and you are not included. Another example: Gingrich and the price of oil.

Because of Chinese and Indian demand, world oil consumption increases each and every year and now stands at 89 million barrels per day, after being at 82 million barrels per day a few years ago. American oil consumption has been declining for the last year and oil production in the U.S. is up for the first time in a decade.

World use up, American use down, American production up, American oil prices up. Clearly the world is buying more petroleum in the marketplace and is driving the price of oil regardless of the American demand. Yet Gingrich has a secret plan to lower American oil prices. What? Bomb India so the demand drops? Drill in the Gulf of Mexico in a minute? Just nonsense.

But for some reason if you are duplicitous and are a politician you are not a liar.

All politicians should have a wire on them all the time.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

NPR 3 Minute Story: 3-D

3-D

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. It was time.

"Burn it," she said to her handler.

She reviewed the instructions once more in her mind: Out the door and right, thirty-five steps, left, eight steps across the street, forward forty-three steps, left, four steps, turn right and stop at street edge, at the phrase "Good afternoon, Excellency" fire twice from her handbag gun directly ninety degrees left, 0 degrees up from her breast level, step into the car in front of her.

Braille instructions could be very economical. And precise.

As was she. Confines, structure--those things violated by fire--drew her like a moth to colorless, sometimes textured, shape. The blind have a love of geometry. With numbers, it is one of the few things in the sighted world that makes sense. She recalled for a moment her love of the wooden geometric blocks she played with as a child at the Blind School, the spheres, cones and cubes. How she hated it when one became chipped or lost its sharp edge. In her mind a circling bird of prey carved out a tight circle in the sky, the base of his cone of sight, the apex his huddled target.

Of course she had never seen a bird of any type. But she understood the cone.

In all eleven assassination attempts she had been successful in, only once had a witness ever insisted the assassin was blind. Seemingly people could not believe their eyes. They were blind to her.

She had no love for the irony; women don't appreciate irony much. But she loved the architecture, the precision required. She heard a television show once, Discovery Channel maybe, and the recorded voices of several men on a Cousteau ship watching an orca. Over a mile in the distance a shark trailed a pod of porpoises looking for placenta or miscarriages. The orca dove and the amazed sailors described him. He was not tracking the shark; he did not adjust his course. He had calculated where the shark would be in time and space and met him there in the completion of a beautiful, bloody triangle.

She did that. Usually she was more queen bee than shark or hawk; her handlers usually brought her prey to her. It was easier but unnecessary. Her understanding of angles and planes was so fine she had killed accurately from thirty yards away.

She trembled ever so slightly as she smelled the book burning. The evidence. The blind also have great regard for trust.

She opened the door, felt the sun on her face, tightened her grip on her purse and her cane, turned right and began to count.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

NPR 3 Minute Story: Homesteader

Homesteader 2 She closed the book, placed it on the table and finally decided to walk through the door. Or in the door. She was not sure which. She knew what to expect. The three "Advisers', "Advisers of The Human Experiment" they called themselves in unison--they always spoke in unison, had given her explicit description of the process, reiterated in the book in a surprisingly cartoonish way. The door would be heavy, on opening it there would be a red glow, when she stepped through she would experience that upsetting nausea of the downside of a roller coaster. Then she would be there. Apparently the River of Time and such figures of speech had a certain accuracy. Time seemed to have a kind of force or structure and intervention was like fitting a foot into a shoe too small; it required effort and caused a reaction, force for force. When she asked if it was history that had the force or rather time itself--like gravity--the three Advisers laughed uproariously and together cried "Good, Good" in either congratulations or simple approval, as with a favorite pet. The Advisers tried to explain further but usually got sidetracked, bemoaning the difficulties created by the modern world; too much was known about people now. And the social networks! The Advisers needed low profile people of quality who could be inserted into history without suspicion; they could not be missed from their time and their entrance into history should create only a ripple. On the other hand, the anomie of the modern world led to surprisingly ready defection. Unfulfilled in the present, anxious about the future, many capable people were willing to go back in time. With growing governments and corporations and shrinking individuals the past was being seen as a "time of opportunity." One could live a life. According to the Advisers, there was a long queue developing. They began to refer to them as "immigrants." Nostalgia could be proactive. Some saw a future in the past. She felt this way; she and most of her friends were loathe to bring a child in to such a confined and dangerous world and longed for a time and place where childbirth could be optimistic, regardless of how primitive. And she loved the idea of the adventure, of participating in slight improvements that might make the discouraging present more appealing. The Advisers spoke glowingly, and synchronously, about small changes in early agriculture and smelting that had worked their way to the present. A young geographer had become a minor help to Philip the Navigator. "Nothing dramatic. Just a nudge," the Advisers would say, synchronously, and smile, synchronously. Apparently that wasn't always the case--Tiberius' goldsmith who developed aluminum had not gone well--but generally people sent back adapted and, if anything, the goldsmith's lesson was, indeed, "nothing dramatic, just a nudge". Once comfortable with the inconveniences and with care of disease and awareness of war, most "immigrants" settled in well. This was good because there was no rescue, no recall. Those few entrepreneurs who hid artifacts in prearranged places for their families to retrieve and profit from in the present were tolerated. "I hope my being French isn't bad luck,' she had said, thinking of Joan. The Advisers had collectively shaken their heads and tittered. They had denied Joan of Arc was an immigrant--or Shakespeare--but always enjoyed the joke. She looked back at the book one last time and took a deep breath. She adjusted her clothes then pulled on the heavy door. There was a rose mist visible through the crack as it opened.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Holmes, but not Sherlock #2

"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." This is a famous quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes and summarizes his feeling that the law is not written in stone--like moral law--but is rather subject to circumstances. This idea looks like a problem because there is a "holy book" quality about the constitution where the foundation of equality is moral, not legal, faith-based, not logical. This leads to dangerous thinking--should a moron vote, a felon carry a gun, a pyromaniac be a fireman--and places the burden of decision squarely on the shoulders of the people whom the writers of the constitution feared.

“If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.” Holmes said this In Gitlow v. New York. So the current culture should have the right to rewrite the law--even if that rewrite violates the law they are working under--if they have enough votes. So, for example, the right of assembly, which has been exercised in the revolutionary's debates, can be abrogated by the assembly's vote, sort of a living by contradiction like a breathing oxymoron.

Holmes made his concepts more concrete with the “bad-man” theory of law: “[I]f we take the view of our friend the bad man we shall find that he does not care two straws” about either the morality or the logic of the law. For the bad man, “legal duty” signifies only “a prophecy that if he does certain things he will be subjected to disagreeable consequences by way of imprisonment or compulsory payment of money.” The bad man concerns himself only with “material consequences". This is viewed as a conceptual breakthrough, as if the "bad man" was previously thought to be concerned with morals and the abstract foundation of law and only now we see him as a "bad man" who doesn't. But Holmes, in seeing a law that is practical in the mind of the law's offender--who sees the law in only its practical application-- somehow thinks the law makers, who create the fabric of society, should do the same.

Behind all this is the confidence in modern man's analytic ability, his altruism, modern science and the accuracy of the softer social science. Progressivism is, regrettably, living in the past.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Sunday Sermon 3/25/12

Very disturbing readings today.

In Hebrews Paul says of Christ, "Who in the days of His flesh, with strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications.." In John, Christ says, "Now is my soul troubled."
Christ is upset? Worried? "With strong cries and tears"?

Serious problems with significant implications. Christ is not ignoring His divinity, he is solidifying His human commitment. He is not simply a divine being going through symbolic motions, He is a living being with a real human element that is not overridden by His divinity. He is suffering. This was a terrible philosophical problem for early Christians and a whole branch of Gnosticism emerged with complex explanations of how to explain a suffering God. (Christ was "occulted" during His sufferings and actually the suffering was a substitute, Christ used His powers to fake His passion. People who were present were magically deluded.)

But Christ is saying His suffering is the point. He is not just committed to helping us, He is willing to become part of us to do it. That He is experiencing everything human. And the human element is strong; Christ knows the truth of God and still, in His duality, He suffers. Clearly He sympathizes with those who reach Him only through faith.

He is more than demonstrating His commitment to us, He is demonstrating how difficult it is to be human.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Cab Thoughts for the New Year

The Romans started their year in March and numbered the following months accordingly. September is seven, October is eight. November and December: nine and ten. Eventually they added February and January, January for the Janus god with two faces that looked both forward and back. January First became the beginning, the new year. The Christians in the Middle Ages changed the New Year to Christ's birthday, December 25. It was later changed to March 25, The Annunciation. When Pope Gregory changed the Julian calendar in the 16th Century, January First came with it as the New Year. In the spirit of nostalgia, I am declaring March 25th the New Year.

Here are some resolutions:

No Brown Suits.
Turn off phones when eating with another carbon unit.
Do not wear pajamas out of the house.
Do not mix drinks.
Do not drink mediocre beer or wine.
Do not chew gum.
Do not drink something just because it is in front of you.
Do not drink from a bottle. Use a glass.
Always be polite.
Never criticize another family member in public.
Get enough sleep.
Wake up early. If you would seize the day, you must get up first.
Good habits make life easier; then not everything has to be decided.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Job Nonsense

We lost 10 million jobs peak to trough in the last recession. We are still down 7 million jobs from the high. But, from a strictly employment view, it is actually worse than that because we need 125,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. That is 1.5 million jobs a year. If we grew at 3 million jobs a year, it would still take over 4 years (until some time in 2016) to get back to the level of unemployment (4.5%) that we saw in 2007.

The notion that the government can somehow meet this demand with meaningful production is fatuous. Simply silly.

It would be interesting to hear a politician say in a campaign, "I am going to create policies that allow the GDP to grow 4% annually throughout my term in office."

We could create a party game to find as many ways as possible to explain why a politician would never, ever, say that.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

The U.N. Answers to a Higher Power

A Norwegian group just reported that their efforts to audit several U.N. agencies failed because the U.N. refused to open their books.

According to the consultants who prepared the two-volume draft study on behalf of the Norwegian development agency known as NORAD, the refusal meant that the agencies, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNICEF, failed “grossly” to live up to the “credo of adherence to transparency” that both agencies claim to follow in their work.

Now the story has little depth so far and maybe the Norwegians were on a fishing expedition--no pun intended-- and had no right to the information but these agencies who pretend to be our agents certainly behave strangely. Unless, of course, they see themselves as "special."

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

A Political Landscape in Oil

In response to complaints the local water had been contaminated by fracking, the EPA announced in January it would conduct water testing of as many as 60 water wells, in Dimock, Pennsylvania. The driller involved, Cabot, was furious that the national EPA was investigating a specific local problem. The environmentalists were thrilled.

Now the tests are back from 11 wells showing the water to be safe. Cabot is thrilled; the environmentalists are furious.

In this country, the results do not matter. The agenda matters. And the agenda is not based on the results.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Zombies and Their Discontent

The March 8, 2012 issue of NYT Book Review has a review by Bill McKibben on fracking and western Pennsylvania gas drilling. It is remarkably disappointing as it is filled with the usual canards about the influence of Cheney and Halliburton, Imhofe and the global warming cat-fights and now "Gasland" and its misrepresentations. The problem is that these innuendos and lies are never revealed, never corrected but blindly stumble on, somehow ingrained in reporting if not the national mind. It is perhaps more significant that there is an upsurge in movies and shows about zombies.

The problem starts with the sources. He relies upon "Gasland" and the New York Times Drilling Down Series that the Times Public Editor twice rebuked as misleading and inaccurate. He repeats the Drilling Down claim that Pennsylvania's waters were contaminated with radionuclides, this in spite of the studies by the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection and almost a score of private bottlers that showed there was no radionuclide contamination in Pa. streams and drinking water. None. The Pittsburgh Water and Sewage Authority monthly publishes the same thing.

Then there is the Dunkard Creek fish kill of 2009. According to McKibben, as reported from "Gasland," this is attributed to gas drilling discharges despite the conclusion by the EPA, Pa. Fish and Boat Commission and the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection that the fish kill was caused by a coal mine discharge which resulted in algae growth that killed the fish. There was even a consent agreement with the coal company, to the tune of $70 million, to build a plant to treat the discharges upstream to prevent future such events.

It is only a matter of time before people start wondering if such inaccuracy is accidental.

Monday, March 19, 2012

State of the Culture

Cultural levels are difficult to measure. Elizabethan theaters had cheap standing room for the average guy. When Charles Dickens spoke on his American tour the lines for tickets were endless and egalitarian. When a Macbeth play in New York was controversial, there was a riot and thirty people were killed. Londoners wore black armbands when Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes.

It is easy to point somberly at rappers or soccer riots and decry the cultural condition. But the problem with culture is not what it is, it is what it is not. Culture can be broad and accepting but it also should be the center and source of civic virtue. It has become only broad and accepting. But without some cultural unity, some concepts held in concert among all those under the broad and accepting aegis of the society, the society will be nothing more than isolated shards at best and competing tribes at worst. The Greeks had a minor goddess, Homonia, who was the goddess of concord, unanimity, and oneness of mind. Her opposite number was Eris (Strife). This notion of unity in a political setting recurs in Greek thinking and is a centerpiece of The Republic where people of different status and abilities are unified over their happiness with the essentials of the makeup of the state. They are at peace with the State's ideals.

The ancient Greeks taught civic virtue. It's time for us to consider that.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Sunday Sermon 3/18/12

Today's reading is pithy but, when set against earlier Lent readings, is a virtual bumper-sticker of directness.

Nicodemus, a Greek name but a Pharisee, earlier in the chapter comes to Jesus "by night." Perhaps he, like Joseph of Aramathia, is fearful of how his devotion to Christ will be seen by his contemporaries. He admits first off that Jesus "art come a teacher from God." Christ says the famous "unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus misunderstands and Christ distinguishes the "born again" phrase--literally physical birth--from spiritual rebirth. He again is not speaking literally and says so.

Again Christ is juxtaposing the physical world--definable and measurable and understandable--with the spiritual world, faith based and outside of science and logic (versus illogical.)

Christ gives the shocking image of Moses' bronze snake being raised--like the Cross!--and then tells the more shocking truth: Christ is here to save the world, not just the Jews. (This, to a Pharisee!) Then "the judgment: because the light is come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light." So when given the option, men lean towards the dark.

So Nicodemus comes by night to tell Christ His works imply He is from God and Christ tells him that His message is not exclusive to Israel and that man has a tendency towards evil inherent in him. Faith and spirituality, an area where logic is not defied but rather does not apply, is necessary to come to Christ and effort is necessary because because our nature.

Meliorist, take note.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Cab Thoughts 3/17/12

The year after the Fukushima disaster both Japan and Germany, the world's third and fourth economies, closed 60 nuclear plants, 12% of the world's total. 52 of 54 nuclear plants in Japan are now off-line and Germany, after closing 8 plants in 2011, will close its remaining 13 plants by 2022. Clearly this source of energy will not be pursued by major world economies in the future.

The WSJ reported this week that the U.S. had over 250 gas plants in construction. We are also retiring coal plants hand over fist, plants that are more than 40 years old and pollute heavily. We are replacing them with modern, new plants that often are fueled by gas and that pollute often 95% less. This is the result of gas finds, not policy. The goofy Obama administration would have closed those plants whether the gas was available to replace them or not. That has not stopped the Democrats from taking credit for it. Nor has it stopped the Republicans from attacking the plant withdrawals even though they are now replaceable with more efficient plants.

A quiz. It is generally believed that the 1980's boom that extended into the late 90's was the direct result of Volcker's tight monetary policy. Who appointed Volcker? Reagan, right? Nope. Carter.

Japan generated one third of its electricity from nuclear power before Fukushima. Closing the nuclear plants would be equivalent to the United States' closing almost all its coal-fire plants. This incredible event, the closing of 1/3 of its energy sources, has been achieved by Japanese sacrifice. Sacrifice. Remember, they were very efficient to start with.

The hockey story about the frozen clock has been met with disinterest so far. It has real potential. The game is subservient to the business and that frozen clock was bad for the game but good for business.

Has any American ever dominated the winter sports like Lindsey Vonn?

These polls are not worth much but, if anything, Obama may be a popular man but he does not run a popular administration. One wonders how long a guy can manage a government that has long range benefits with short term discomfort. Sooner or later the short term will win out. It always does.

Is Apple dumbing down Siri? Siri is "less intelligent and less useful than it was five months ago." Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak noticed Siri's answers have gotten more perplexing, too. "I used to ask, 'What are the prime numbers greater than 87?' and it would answer," says Wosniak. "Now instead of getting prime numbers, I get listings for prime rib or prime real estate." Why? Apple is likely devoting less processing power to each of Siri's questions now that demands on the iPhone 4S are so high. So the end-point here is....?

Friday, March 16, 2012

Unadulturated Natural Gas, Adulterated Republican

As much as I hate government "good ideas", this conference, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy held in Oxton Hill, Md., was very interesting, with the Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy particularly exciting. $30 million dollars will be made available for high energy density tanks for CNG and low cost home refueling. 2500 people were there for an event that hopes to generate thought and action for energy technology breakthroughs. Now, this is not much money when compared with the government's bio-fuel and solar panel adventures but it is at least something and may imply an understanding of the area's importance, if not the degree.

We are awash in natural gas. If you do a search before 2008 for natural gas discovery stories, the only one was Haynesville in Louisiana. All the talk was about building new importing facilities.The Bakken, the Marcellus, Utica all, miraculously, came to be realistic gas sources within the last four years. They are now planning to reverse those port facilities and make the gas importing sites exporting. We might be saved.

Storage of the fuel is more complex than conversion but we have a lot of this fuel, should use it and perhaps this is an early good sign. That said, it is difficult to understand the thinking of any lawmaker, but especially the Republicans, who voted against New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act (NAT GAS) this week, a bill aimed at encouraging the adaptation of natural gas as a transportation fuel. This bill, known as the Pickens Bill, has some annoying qualities and certainly subsidizes some businesses, especially Pickens' . But denying that this kind of thing is routine in Washington is simply insincere purism and all of the bill's opponents should suffer for it.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Debt, Practiced Sincerity and Astonished Reneging

As of March 1, 2012, the national debt was 15.57 trillion dollars. But the government has other financial obligations, like the promises it has made.

If the government were a business it would have to include as debt what it had promised in the future, as well. A way of calculating that would be to estimate what amount would have to be put aside into interest bearing accounts and dedicated to those expenses, expenses like federal employee retirement, veterans benefits, social security (excluding social security taxes), and Medicare. If one does that, the debt is 60.9 trillion dollars.

60.9 trillion dollars.

Now, the government is not a business and the comparison is not complete. And the government can print money. The point is that the 60 trillion dollars debt is simply not going to be paid. Anyone looking at this would have to know that the government is meeting at nice restaurants trying to figure out how to avoid paying these debts. Smiling. Looking concerned. Speaking with sincerity. But smilingly, sincerely trying to figure out how to avoid paying what they owe and promised. Promised to us. The citizens. Printing money is one way. But the obvious way is to start with arbitrary disqualifications and then expand them. So some promises are broken and then more and more. Sort of a slow motion betrayal.

If I were a law student in Georgetown, I would think of a more reliable way of contraception.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Book Review: Havana Red by Leonardo Padura

Heat, sweat, cooking, religion, poverty, appearance and disguise, gritty dialogue, gritty sex--these are all hung on the clothesline of Leonardo Padura's novel, Havana Red.

It is a crime novel of sorts, with a tough talking, tough living Havana police lieutenant Mario Conde, aka "The Count", ostensibly about a murder of a local mystic homosexual masquerading as a transvestite. (Not for nothing the original name of the book was "Masks.") This is the third of four novels about The Count, strangely only the third and fourth released in English. But, like so many modern detective stories, it has higher aims. Its larger theme is art, deception, bigotry and, most importantly, Cuba itself.

The Count is introduce on suspension from his job because of an unexplained dust-up with a fellow cop. Alexis Arayan, a local homosexual with important family connections is found murdered in transvestite garb and The Count is called upon to investigate. The crime leads him through the the underworld of homosexuals, the political discarded, and the creative arts (the Count has some aspirations--historically, at least--as a writer). He meets Alberto Marques, an unashamed copy of Virgilio Pinera, and he gradually overcomes his macho distaste for the man and his lifestyle as he becomes drawn into Marques' experiences as a persecuted--and prosecuted--homosexual artist. Marques guides The Count through this world like Virgil (the pun intended, certainly) and teaches The Count about the nuances of the homosexual world and their importance in the murder. In the background is Marques' terrible experiences with the State's intolerance and rigidity, the corruption of the police department now being investigated by a new and more honest State, The Count's close relationship with Skinny who was badly injured in Cuba's military action in Angola, and The Count's suffocating anomie.

While a bit overwritten, this is an enjoyable read. The Count is an acceptable creative Cuban Marlow, the people are interesting and the rather simple crime story subservient to the real star of the show, Havana. The intense, earthy yearning of Havana and its people is wonderful here; the people yearn for each-other, as do Havana and her people. The real struggle is Havana's, her significant and heady substance fighting the distorting weight of poverty, gravity, heat and the inevitable violated social and political promises. And her hopes, that with all her broken earnest pieces a perhaps imaginary lovely past can ever be reassembled.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Natural Gas and Hot Air

The March 8, 2012 issue of NYT Book Review has a review by Bill McKibben on fracking and western Pennsylvania gas drilling. It is remarkably disappointing as it is filled with the usual canards about the influence of Cheney and Halliburton, Imhofe and the global warming cat-fights and now Gasland and its misrepresentations. The problem is that these innuendos and lies are never unmasked, never corrected but blindly stumble on, somehow ingrained in reporting if not the national mind. It is perhaps more significant that there is an upsurge in movies and shows about zombies.

The problem starts with the sources. He relies upon Gasland and the NYT Drilling Down Series that the NYT Public Editor twice rebuked as misleading and inaccurate. He repeats the Drilling Down claim that Pennsylvania's waters were contaminated with radionuclides, this in spite of the studies by the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection and almost a score of private bottlers that showed there was no, zero, radionuclide contamination in Pa. streams and drinking water. The Pittsburgh Water and Sewage Authority monthly publishes the same thing.

Then there is the Dunkard Creek fish kill of 2009. According to McKibben, from Gasland, this is attributed to gas drilling discharges despite the conclusion by the EPA, Pa. Fish and Boat Commission and the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection that the fish kill was caused by a coal mine discharge which resulted in algae growth that killed the fish. There was even a consent agreement with the coal company, to the tune of $70 million, to build a plant to treat the discharges upstream to prevent future such events.

It is only a matter of time before people start wondering if such inaccuracy is accidental.

Monday, March 12, 2012

A Start-Up Company Analysis

HealthSpot is a company that hopes to offer medical services via face-to-face teleconference technology at owned/leased company designed kiosks. It will target limited disease/diagnoses and has some self-contained technology that can be used to transmit information to the physician (heart rate, bp, temp etc.). While the specifics of who will provide the medical services is as yet uncertain, they have engaged a large general medical group in Ohio to participate. It is hoped that such a service will be particularly attractive to pharmacies and the like who might benefit from being an end stage provider for prescriptions that are generated from the medical encounter.

This will provide two needed aspects in the medical system, economy and convenience. Without a doubt, insurers and the government are eager for at least economy. My concern is that neither of the direct participants, physician or patient, are well motivated for either and have not shown to be willing to sacrifice personal, direct interaction in the past. The very nature of a new delivery system with its inevitable new problems and unanticipated difficulties will make the legal obsessed physicians shy. Patients balk at even well qualified PA's and NP's face-to-face; whether or not they would accept a MD at teleconference length is yet to be seen. Another question is the accuracy of the diagnostic/therapeutic encounter. Will trials be necessary?

The management side is very strong with a willingness to spend money on good designs done by companies of high quality. This has attracted adequate funding, at least initial funding, although more rounds are anticipated. IP is adequate but probably not exclusionary.

But the basic question is whether or not such a system can be driven by third party payers and by-pass the patient and physician. If it can, it will be a screaming success. The experience in the ER, which has become a primary care provider for a sizable part of the population at tremendous cost and inconvenience, is not encouraging. On the other hand, something must be done with these costs, regardless of what the public--or the physicians--want. And the government has become increasing willing to dictate changes in spite of objection. They have been willing to shut coal fire plants down regardless of consequence, are willing to raise taxes on investments even if it reduces tax revenues. That type of government is willing to legislate anything and, in that scenario, might create a success out of HealthSpot by fiat.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Sunday Sermon 3/11/12

In today's readings God gives His commandments in the old testament and allows that He will hold the children of four generation responsible for the sins of the father, Paul, praising God, says "The foolishness of God is wiser than men, God's weakness stronger than man's" and Christ whips the merchants out of the temple. Heredity of sin? God's foolishness? Christ with an edge?

Well, if you are going to have some tough ones, might as well get rid of them all at once.

There are two keys to these problems. First is God's declaration in the first reading that the sabbath is sacred to commemorate God's resting on the seventh day after making the world in six. God was tired? Six days, really? The second is in the earlier part of the Corinthian letter:
"For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void. For the preaching of the cross to them that perish, is foolishness; but to them which are saved, that is to us, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring nothing to the knowledge of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of our preaching to save them who believe. For Jews require signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

Making the world in six days, rebuilding the temple in 3 days, Christ with a whip--these are not the province of logic or science. Nor is the Resurrection. Minute analysis of this is "the wisdom of the world", which does not see the truth. It is the larger tapestry that is the essence, not the small word or work which is the focus of literalism and atheism.

It is Christ who is "The Disputer of this world." Logic and science will not let Him fit.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Cab Thoughts 3/10/12

Insurance companies have always assumed a basic return of around seven percent on debt investments to cover their policy obligations. Now, with rates under 1%, what are they going to do? Those promises have been made and must be funded. How? By reaching for yield.

Blind dreamer: The old story of the baby kept isolated from all sound so that the ruler would know that the first word he spoke would be the first language of the world and hence he would know who the first people were. It was interesting about what the blind dream. No imprinted images. But, then again, how would he know?

Warren Buffet has never liked gold as an investment. He gives lots of reasons but there is an interesting translation of his antipathy in the background of his mentor, Benjamin Graham, the great investor. Graham, probably the father of American investing analysis, was very dismissive about gold, its value and investment qualities. Why? When Graham was investing it was illegal to own gold.

So contraception is a basic constitutional right. And people, particularly women, feel alarmed and persecuted by those who offer a constitutional argument against them. At the risk of quoting myself, who threatens a woman more, a guy who just doesn't think the government should deal in these matters or this guy, a beatified Progressive? http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/02/holmes-but-not-sherlock-1.html

One wonders about the recent "bounty" question in football and whether it might be introduced as a factor to muddy the concussion waters.

"Hume is among the 10 greatest intellects of mankind. His treatise on human nature, of course, is what he's remembered for the most; Adam Smith said that Hume was the greatest intellect that he ever met, and Smith knew all the great figures of the Enlightenment. At any rate, the point Hume makes in "A Public Credit" is that when a government has mortgaged all of its future revenues, the state lapses into tranquility, languor, and impotence. And he discussed various historical situations. Hume died in 1776, not long after reading Smith's "Wealth of Nations", which was also published in 1776. What we are seeing today is that Hume was correct —and some of the intervening smaller thinkers were not."---Dr. Lacy Hunt on the defects of debt stimulus.

It is generally believed that North America was colonized around 13,000 by tribes crossing the Bering Strait at a time when weather conditions allowed a frozen bridge between Asia and North America. Early toolmaking from this period of the earliest human invaders and human ancestors on the continent has characteristic qualities assigned the name "Clovis" (after finds in Clovis, New Mexico). Researchers have analyzed American spearheads of the period, called Clovis points, and found some inconsistencies. Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean-style tools - but Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. This leads to some theories that are closer to sci-fi than academic with strange migrations and improbable boats. This is as close to an academic "make work program" as you can get.

The growing notion of sharing costs with others is just wonderful. The second highest income earner who buys a car: Volt. The average starting salary of a Georgetown Law graduate: $165,000. So we working stiffs buy their cars, pay for their family planning, underwrite their start-ups.
What's next, their cultural events? Oh, wait...

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Timmy Lynch and Memory

One of the defining moments in my young life was Timmy Lynch's injury and his reaction to it. The two of us were playing in a high-school football game. We had a good team and Timmy was our featured running back. Timmy had just carried the ball for about seven yards up the middle. We were waiting in the huddle for him to get back in but he stayed behind, struggling to walk to us with what appeared to be an leg injury. He continued towards us, not so much stepping as throwing his leg forward and then balancing himself on it, and then stepping cautiously forward with his good leg. It was clear to me the leg was broken and he was overcoming tremendous pain in an effort to continue to play. He was eventually carried off the field on a stretcher.

Fortitude. Sacrifice. Devotion. Loyalty. I never forgot it and told my children the story when they were old enough to understand.

One of my children met Timmy this week and told him about how the event had impressed me and how I had passed it on to my children. Timmy said, "Huh. I wonder what he's talking about. I never broke my leg. Never was even hurt playing football." So one of my defining life moments is untrue and the lesson I passed on to my children is untrue. At least the specifics are.

I wonder what else my memory has forged. Or maybe it just fills in the blanks of the template.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Disrespecting Human Rights

The essence of rights is that they are intrinsic to human beings. They are how we see ourselves, our essence, our nature. Importantly they are independent of circumstance; they are not products or services and they have no motive. Tall or short, rich or poor. executive or farmer, rights apply equally. They cannot be granted and material factors, especially technology, are not a component. They are not temporal; one right does not emerge over time or become more appropriate in one epoch than another. Nor are they geographic; the rights of a man in Somalia are those of a man in New York. Rights are misunderstood. They are qualities, not aspirations. The disguising of social aims as human rights undermines the rights.

This said, only a politician completely ignorant of the nature of human rights could pen the Fourteenth Article of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which states that everyone has the right "to receive free compulsory education." Free" and "compulsory". Or The United Nation Declaration 16 that everyone has "the right to marry and to found a family." Are Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar abusing these rights? Does a childless couple have a claim? Does an unhappy bachelor have a claim against a much-married starlet?

And all of this nonsense fills the ancient proverb: With trivialization comes disrespect. But the real question is, does disrespect lead to trivialization?

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Between Barack and a Hard Place

Politics have become more difficult over the last years. The Democrats have become imitators of the old Progressive movement with high mindedness and the arrogance of leadership; the Republicans are carping and inept. But the real problem is our superficiality. Ours will be an election where crucial questions about the proper behavior of government will be decided on through the debates on birth control, talk show hosts' crudeness and forged birth certificates. I'd rather they go back to kissing babies.

In a way this degeneration is understandable: Obama offers a very polarizing view of the nation. His view is out of history. It is a different vision than Americans are used to historically and consequently inspires some significant response. The historical view of government in this country is that it is always a potential danger. Power in governmental form was seen as inherently risky, with the tendency of that power to expand and become oppressive. As the bedrock of America was liberty and freedom, this antagonistic view is understandable. Obama, and all Progressives historically, turns this on its ear. They think that the government has the potential to be a positive, productive force in the country. Obama's interview where he talked about the government's "negative" responsibilities--what, by the constitutional limits, it could not do--should be expanded and offset by positive responsibilities, what the government should do. This notion--government manned by intelligent, methodical men of vision and integrity solving problems--is the opposite of the view of the founders of the United States. As Madison said, "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." This thinking--unusual in the Western world--makes up a large part of the thinking of the American citizens and it is both deep and profound. The problem in this election is that there is no articulate candidate who believes it, and there is no candidate who believes it who is articulate. Amazingly, the Madison position has become reactionary and stupid in the eyes of its opponents. Consequently the important debate degenerates.

Progressives do not learn from failure, they think only the wrong levers were in place or the right ones were not pulled hard enough. But very wise men thought "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." That should be overturned with caution.

Monday, March 5, 2012

What Happened With the Stimulus

In Commentary magazine, two economics professors from Stanford, Cogan and Taylor, have published an analysis of the two stimulus packages, by Bush in 2008 and Obama in 2009, to see their respective effects.

President Bush’s February 2008 program totaled $152 billion. President Obama’s bill, enacted a year later, was considerably larger at $862 billion. This money went to individuals and to local governments; very little was used by the federal government to buy goods and services. After Keynes, it is assumed that an increase in available money results in increased spending and increased GDP. After more than three years since the crisis flared up, unemployment is still very high and economic growth is weak.

The following graph shows disposable personal income--with the addition of the stimulus--beside consumption expenditures. (It includes a little blip in the silly "Cash for Clunkers" idea and how it did virtually nothing in the economy.) What is obvious is that increasing income did not increase expenditures.





Why? Why didn't the money, 1.14 trillion dollars, stimulate the economy? Why didn't the Keynesian prediction come true?

Nobel Prize–winning economists Milton Friedman and Franco Modigliani explained years ago that individuals do not increase consumption much when their income increases temporarily. Instead, they save most of the funds or use the money to pay back some of their outstanding debts.

So the federal government borrowed 1.14 trillion dollars and gave it to households and local governments who then used the money to pay down their debts.

In essence, the increased money the federal government borrowed was used to reduce net borrowing by households and local governments.

One of the qualities of Progressivism is confidence in management techniques. Management, leadership, vision--these are all aspects of the movement that relies upon expertise in government, that defies the cynicism that the governmental world is too complex for definitive management. This stimulus idea--from both parties--has been a gigantic failure and should give the citizen caution, if not their politicians.