Diversity, Fukuyama and the Non Sequitur

The mom of the bomber, in the middle of her ridiculously implausible "denial tour," said if her son were executed "I will say Allahu Akbar!“

Somehow this fits. In fact all of this seems a non sequitur. Nothing leads from one point to another.
A family flees to this country and is welcomed and protected. The family goes on welfare support. They become comfortable and the children pursue their educations. One marries a local girl and has a child. Then they blow up countless strangers. Afterwards they go to several social events.

Any of these episodes might be individually coherent, even reasonable. But together they are more like that charming boy on the bus trip from Florida to Washington State, Ted Bundy. Except we know Ted was quite mad and these boys are not. They are just vicious. But purposelessly so to the Western mind. Any connection to the world of politics or religion is more senile than symbolic; there just is no obvious reason, at least to us. Is there a new social madness, like the obscene phone caller, made possible only by some innocent modern circumstance?

So what is going on? Is it really beyond reason?

A great worry is the tremendous variability of social norms. American prisons, as an isolated culture, look nothing like the culture its constituents came from. Pirate ships demonstrated a democratic structure that was not present in any of the cultures the pirates left. The savagery of the western American farmer in the Indian Wars had nothing in common with the east coast of his origin. Shards from shattered societies like the Symbionese Liberation Army or Jonestown or Amish communities look fantastic to the rest of us but are, nonetheless, quite well ordered and often of great integrity.

Solzhenitsyn thought the American inclusiveness was charmingly naive on a local level and blunderingly stupid internationally. At his 1978 Commencement Address at Harvard, Solzhenitsyn said, "Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture .....constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking.....But the persisting blindness of (Western) superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems....such a conception is a fruit of Western comprehension of the essence of other worlds."

George Bush was an evangelist for democracy. Almost all Westerners believe the progress the West has made is towards a preordained ideal.  Francis Fukuyama wrote about it as "The End of History." All was fulfilled in us.

Imagine, then, that all the behavior we see as so strange and inconsistent is being viewed through a distorted Western prism, that bombers are not indoctrinated or "brainwashed" but progressing along their cultural norm, that the acceptance of adult-on-children violence is not acceptance at all but rather the norm, that their connection to Western development is tangential, not incremental.

Maybe these cultural "divides" are rather ancient schisms and have more consequence than we ever thought.

German Home-Schooling

..to "counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies."
 
This is a quote from the German High Court explaining why they have outlawed homeschooling in Germany. A common school system counteracts the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies. The common school system promoted homogeneity.
 
There is a lot here. Looking around at various societies, the "parallel society" seems to be a real problem with real risk. But, for example, how would a Muslim German citizen respond to this? Is the Protestant north taught the same as Catholic Bavaria?
 
More specifically, is this ordering pressure applied in the right way? Outlawing home-schools seems more like herding than leading, confining than directing.
 
A better approach might be to create a core understanding of the nation's basics and make that understanding mandatory. All the rest, home-schooling included, would be elaboration.

But this would require the nation have a good concept of self.

Sunday Sermon 4/28/13

In today's gospel, the scene has shifted from the post-resurrection to the Last Supper. Immediately preceding the reading Judas has left the group "And it was night."

Christ then gives the longest speech to the disciples in the New Testament. He starts by declaring that the wheels of the glorification of the Son of Man are in motion. As He does so often, Christ describes the coming events in great contrast to how we would; He continues to work on this other, unworldly plane. He describes His coming savage, cruel and humiliating Passion as "glorifying." His sacrifice will "glorify" Him and His Father. There is a supernatural vision here which continues into the "Wither I go you cannot come" line. This entire speech sounds as if it is being delivered to history.

Christ then abruptly shifts and makes things simple and astounding with a revolutionary statement that will reverberate through history: "Love one another."

Then it was night.

Cab Thoughts 4/27/13

Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy? -- Lamia, Keats

 

 

The constant threat of unrestrained violence from any source and for any or no reason--the American preoccupation with zombie stories is beginning to make more sense.

The strange mandate for ethanol as a more expensive alternative to petroleum continues. Interestingly, ethanol from natural gas is much cheaper to produce but is discouraged by the U.S. government for political-read-financial-influence reasons. Sometimes "financial influence" can create terrible labyrinths.

 

Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Mississippi arrested for sending ricin to President Obama and Sen. Wicker. Curtis is an Elvis impersonator. When he was released he thanked his fans.

Another thing that makes the impact of the dreaded sequester on air traffic mysterious: Flyers directly fund two-thirds of the FAA's budget through 17 airline taxes and fees—about 20% of the cost of a $300 domestic ticket, up from 7% in the 1970s.

 

Sometimes stats are pretty clear. It was clear the Catholic vote in the last election was not significant and their vote in the future will likely never be a factor. The Church can pronounce all it wants; they do not have a political influence any more. It is also likely the failure of the gun control bill--really little more than elaboration of existing law with the exception of the loss of medical privacy--shows a real distrust of government.

 

Children of illegal immigrants that are born into this country are considered legal American citizens because of "Jus Soli" which means "right of the soil" (birthright) by the 14th amendment. They can receive welfare benefits and any of the privileges and rights of any American Citizen. An illegal resident cannot receive any welfare benefits. However, some illegal immigrants can get benefits by acquiring illegal social security cards or from stolen social security cards.  In this way they can get welfare, food stamps, jobs, social security, disability, unemployment, and of course their famed free health-care. According to the FBI 41% of illegal aliens are on welfare.

Former State Department adviser Vali Nasr describes veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke being all but frozen out by President Obama's inner circle, for whom Nasr believes diplomacy was a "lost art."

 

From a biography on Kipling by Harry Ricketts: "No sooner had he [Kipling} stepped off the boat [in San Francisco] than he witnessed the stabbing of a Chinaman. A sortie to a gambling den in Chinatown produced a dead Mexican, shot before his eyes over a poker game. In another equally unverifiable episode, a 'bunco-steerer' (card-sharp) tried -- unsuccessfully of course -- to get him drunk and fleece him."

 

In 1870, Erich von Wolf, a German chemist, examined the amount of iron within spinach, among many other green vegetables. In recording his findings, von Wolf accidentally misplaced a decimal point when transcribing data from his notebook, changing the iron content in spinach by an order of magnitude. While there are actually only 3.5 milligrams of iron in a 100-gram serving of spinach, the accepted fact became 35 milligrams. The nutritional value of spinach became legendary until corrected in 1937.

 

George Orwell's birthplace in India is being turned into a memorial park in honor of Mahatma Gandhi. The birthplaces of Edith Wharton, Eugene O'Neill and Jack London are now Starbucks.

 

Who was....Richard Jewell?

 

Warren Buffett  gave an interview in late 2008 with Berkshire stock down 44% at $84,000 per share. The interviewer asked, “How did it feel to see your stock go down over 40%?” He said, “It felt pretty much the same as it did the half-dozen other times it’s happened.”  Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company has endured such declines multiple times during its climb from $15 per share in 1965 when he took over the company to its current $130,000, or so (which is actually still down 10% from its $150,000 peak in 2007) per share

 

Gasoline prices in SW France: $8.36/gal.

 

There is a new biography of Keats out by Nicholas Roe with a few interesting and new ideas. One is that Keats' father's death in a riding accident at the age of 31 was devastating to Keats, as was his young mother's remarkable recovery and remarriage to an unemployed and unemployable 20 year old two months later.  These family disasters may have influenced him more than previously thought. The other assertion is his remarkable ability to write prose. Roe thinks, had Keats survived, he would have been an essayist or a fiction writer.

Orphaned at a young age, barely five feet tall and not well educated, Keats was  gregarious and fond of “women, wine, and snuff.” His lovely poetry, his sad and early death, has abstracted him in readers' eyes but he loved the theater, enjoyed watching boxing matches, and would spend an evening cutting cards for half guineas. He also seems to have been treated for a venereal disease, possibly syphilis. For a while he studied under a surgeon. Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary served as a stimulus for his poetic leanings.
Keats died at 25 and was lightly regarded as a poet at his death.

The last known manuscript poem by John Keats sold for a world record £181,250 on 10 April '13 at the sale of the first part of Roy Davids Collection Part III at Bonhams.

 

Pennsylvania is among the minority of states that ended the electricity generation, state sanctioned monopolies. But in every state the distribution of electricity to customers remains a state sanctioned monopoly.

 

South Florida has an infestation of invasive giant African land snails, which can grow to the size of rats, readily consume over 500 native species, and are known to enjoy chewing on the stucco common to Florida’s housing.

 

In 1914, Mary Richardson  took a meat cleaver to Diego Velazquez’s The Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in London. It is said she wasn't crazy because there was a sort-of-recognizable, if disjointed, "purpose" for this act.  She was protesting the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in Britain. As a militant suffragette herself, Richardson decided to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for its role in the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other beautiful living women.” 

 

China is coal-powered, getting about 70% of its total energy from coal, and its surging coal use continues. China built 50,000 megawatts of coal generation during 2012 or about one-sixth of the US coal fleet. In the USA, 9,000 megawatts of coal generation retired in 2012 out of 316,000. While coal provides currently about 40% of America's electricity, coal provides about 20% of our total energy. Coal provides 3.5 times of China's total energy as it does in the USA. And U.S. coal use is declining progressively. The U.S. could retire up to a third of its coal generation by 2016.

 

"No tax cut would have helped us deal with this." This is a quote from the esteemed Barney Frank, erstwhile legislator, co- owner of a house of prostitution and the champion of sub-prime mortgage lending, on the Boston bombing. There is no topic too wide to fit through their tiny prism.

 

In the population study of a sample of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien.

 

Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, and Mike Staunton are three professors at the London Business School who have been compiling data on the performance of stocks and bonds for 19 different countries going all the way back to the year 1900. These countries represented 89% of the world equity market at the beginning of 1900 and 85% as of the end of 2011. The return of a globally diversified portfolio over those 112 years was 5.4% above inflation, before fees and taxes.

 

In 2012, China accounted for about 32% of the total global carbon emissions or twice the total of the USA. Moreover, Chinese per capita emissions are now up to about 50% of a typical American. By 2020, China will emit approximately 4 times more carbon pollution than the USA, and its portion of global emissions could be close to 40% and their per capita emissions will exceed that of the U.S..

 

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/01/assassination-two.html

 

Monday's Pulitzer awards news has led to an immediate sales spike for the winners. Sharon Olds' poetry collection Stag's Leap is already sold out on Amazon.

 

EIA 2013 Annual Energy Outlook contains the projection that each American will use less and less energy from 2011 to 2040. Indeed, EIA projects that per capita American energy use will fall back to 1963 levels by 2040. A big assumption in this forecast is the success of EV and hybrid cars although we certainly do not have the battery for either yet.

 

The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge. At first, the DPLA’s offering will be limited to a rich variety of collections—books, manuscripts, and works of art—that have already been digitized in cultural institutions throughout the country. Around this core it will grow, gradually accumulating material of all kinds until it will function as a national digital library. The major limitation seems to be copyright questions.

 

Two major authors were included in Time magazine's annual list of the "100 Most Influential People" — Tenth of December writer George Saunders and Hilary Mantel, the novelist behind Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Poet Mary Karr, who wrote the entry on Saunders, said, "For more than a decade, George Saunders has been the best short-story writer in English — not "one of," not "arguably," but the Best."

 

Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

 

AAAAAAaaannnnnnnndddddd.......a graph of demographics during the Great Awakening:

"Are the Tsarnaevs White?"

Peter Beinhart has an article in The Daily Beast titled "Are the Tsarnaevs White?" It is an effort to clarify the original Salon article hoping the Boston bomber was a "white American." Beinhart takes some pleasure in the idea that at least one was an American and both were white. Apparently some blogs have laughed at the Solon article because they feel the Tsarnaevs did not fit the bill as "white Americans" when they--or one--did fit the literal definition.

This is an interesting problem because, of course, we all generalize in some way all the time. And Americans seem obsessed with race. But to many it is peculiarly defined. Years ago in the color-barred South, Roberto Clemente was refused entry to a restaurant while his white teammates were let in. The teammates immediately objected, saying Clemente was not black, he was Puerto Rican. The restaurant let him in.

But race is quite well defined and color has little to do with it because the history of racial evaluation is archaeological, i.e. bones mostly. An Iranian will be miffed if he is confused with an Arab; both are Caucasians. The largest Islam population in the world is in Indonesia, not Africa; what does that say about Islam's racial make-up? The Palestinians are genetically identical to their enemies, the Israelis. Southern Italy was conquered by the Arabs over and over again; is Sofia Loren less Caucasian than Noomi Rapace?  How about Eva Green? The entire Middle East and a lot of eastern Europe has had genetic mixture from Asian armies. But African genetic intervention has not occurred much.

The writer of the article in Salon hoping for a white American bomber does not understand any of this and his superficial mis-perceptions are probably more racist than most. He was hoping for some Timothy McVeigh supremacist wacko. But most of the talk here is not racial, it is cultural. The fear here is of foreigners and unassimilated immigrants. There may be some real insurmountable cultural differences at work here, as Solzhenitsyn predicted, but what we got in Boston were two vicious disaffected white guys flying the flag of Islam.

Years ago you could get a letter of marque and raid ships on the high sea under your country's flag. More honest men flew a pirate flag.

Zero Sum Gaming

Dennis Gartman quotes the outrageous P.J. O’Rourke:

"Mr. President, the worst thing that you’ve done is that you sent a message to America in your reelection campaign that we live in a zero-sum universe. There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney’s argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we’ve got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners.
In this zero-sum universe there is only so much happiness. The idea is that if we wipe the smile off the faces of people with prosperous businesses and successful careers, that will make the rest of us grin.
There is only so much money. The people who have money are hogging it. The way for the rest of us to get money is to turn the hogs into bacon. The evil of zero-sum thinking and redistributive politics has nothing to do with which things are taken or to whom those things are given or what the sum of zero things is supposed to be. The evil lies in denying people the right, the means, and, indeed, the duty to make more things."

It is hard to understand any of this. In his book "The Stewardship of Wealth" Gregory Curtis says exactly this: He says that before the Industrial Revolution the world was in a zero sum wealth straitjacket. Ayn Rand once wrote that America's contribution to the world was over this very point: "Men had thought of wealth as a static quantity, to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created." On first reading, "zero sum" sounds like a classic straw-man attack.Truly, the defects of this kind of redistribution seem so obvious that such notions like "You have enough retirement money" as the current budget declares sounds like the partial dogma of some arcane sect.

This zero-sum argument does indeed dismiss production and growth as an engine of social economic improvement. Worse, it pits the producers against the non-producers, citizen against citizen. Worst, it undermines the belief in the value of private property--one of the great precepts of the West--and allows new and shallow attitudes to redefine it. 

This is not its greatest danger, however. Its greatest danger is that it can be casually thrown out as a concept without challenge or ridicule. And that may imply the greatest damage has already occurred.

Political Fetish

"No tax cut would have helped us deal with this." This is a quote from the esteemed Barney Frank, erstwhile legislator, co-owner of a house of prostitution and the champion of sub-prime mortgage lending, on the Boston bombing.

There is no topic too wide to fit through their tiny prism.

Obama offered his own creepy take on their preoccupation by putting a positive spin on diversity at the bombing, pointing to the unfortunate Chinese student who was also a victim.

At this rate we will be connecting our Rousseau dots by investigating Boston bomber number one's brain for concussion damage from his boxing history.

Cab Thoughts 4/23/13

'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' --"E. L. Doctorow 


A woman watching the manhunt in Boston said, "They are so handsome. They seem to have so much to live for. I hope they are not killed." It was in a way a very reasonable response, is if the killers were boys with a temporary illness and would, with time, get better.

Mixed Martial Arts is formalized bar fighting and has attracted the competitors one would expect. But not all. Seth Kleinbeck is a M.D. from University of Arkansas’ College of Medicine, Rhadi Ferguson has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a master’s degree in Teaching from Howard and, in 2009, was awarded a PhD in Education from Capella University, and Rosi Sexton (Barr Body positive) attended Trinity College in Cambridge(!), where she completed a degree in Mathematics in 1998 and, in 2003, she received a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from the University of Manchester.

Last week, Google sold Frommer's Travel Guides back to Arthur Frommer after buying it less than a year ago. But according to paidContent, it kept all of the social media data.

Who or what  is.....No. 361 Great Wall # 61

The U.K. has a lottery where you pick 6 numbers of 49. What are your chances of picking six numbers from the 49 possibilities correctly, assuming that the machine picks winning numbers at random?  One in thirteen million.

The Kirghiz tribesmen of central Asia have long been known to use Golden eagles to catch wolves, and in fact Marco Polo (c. 1254-1324) wrote of “a great number of eagles, all trained to catch wolves, foxes, deer and wild goats.” In current day Mongolia, Mongolian Eagles are trained by feeding them meat pieces fixed into the eye sockets of a wolf skin which is dragged on a rope across the steppe. Their job is to seize the wolf by the face, blinding it, and hold down until the hunter rides up and kills it. Note that steppe wolves are not much larger than North American coyotes.

General Motors pension fund put up $170 million in equity and borrowed another $505 million and invested in a northern Missouri farm raising genetically engineered pigs. Everything went wrong. In May 1996, the pigs defaulted on $412 million in junk debt. In a perhaps related event, General Motors entered 2012 with its global pension plans underfunded by $25.4 billion. These are professional investors.

Michael Lobo, a member of the state assembly for Goa’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in India, is leading the crusade against Playboy, saying he will go on hunger strike if the local government gives the adult entertainment brand a green light to open clubs in his home state. To appease local sensibilities, Playboy has modified their costumes.

A very interesting question was raised about the firing of the Rice, the basketball coach from Rutgers: Would he have been fired if he had not made gay slurs?

Victoria Beale savages Paulo Coelho in The New Republic titled, "The Gospel of Success: Paulo Coelho's Vapid Philosophy": "If you've absorbed any of Coelho's incredible commercial success, without actually reading the 65-year-old, Brazilian author, it's genuinely shocking to realize just how shoddy and lightweight his books are, how obvious and well-trodden their revelations." I suppose she didn't like this from his latest book: "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

There is a real willingness for the Left to present itself uncloaked, as it were, with brazen confidence. Recently MSNBC ran a promo talking about the idea that children all belonged, not to parents or families, but to "The Collective." It is a bit hard to take at face value as it is so strange an idea with such horrible historical applications. But there it is, just sitting there steaming. And there is a funny rejoinder on the idea from a few years ago by Gramm.
Texas Sen. Phil Gramm once told a woman, "My educational policies are based on the fact that I care more about my children than you do."
She said, "No, you don't."
Gramm replied, "OK: What are their names?"

Citi Research calculates that wind power (without subsidies) is competitive with natural gas today, if gas costs $6 per thousand cubic feet. In most parts of the world, gas costs right now considerably more than $6 per thousand cubic feet. Gas is $4.15 this week in the spot market.

A recent National Academy of Sciences study concludes: "Scientists and battery experts, who have been optimistic in the recent past about improving lithium-ion batteries and about developing new battery chemistries—lithium/air and lithium/sulfur are the leading candidates—are considerably less optimistic now."

Mountain Pure, Gibson Guitar, Ruby Ridge--government middle managers with guns can do the darnedest things.

Golden Oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/11/tarp-talf-stimulus-and-fed.html

Household savings near record lows have joined to elevate profit margins more than 70% above their historical norm, as the deficit of one sector has to emerge as the surplus of another. The result is that investors quite erroneously accept the distorted “earnings yield” of stocks (and the associated “forward price/earnings multiple” of the S&P 500) at face value, without any adjustment for elevated profit margins or the historical tendency for such elevations to be eliminated over the course of the business cycle. (Hussman)

“There was a verbal dispute between a fan and Jerry Sands during which Jerry briefly entered into the stands,” Pirates GM Neal Huntington said. “The situation was quickly resolved without further incident, as the fan was ejected for his actions. We do not condone Jerry's actions and support the league's decision to suspend him for one game.”

If the sequester will cause cutbacks in such basics as airline safety, who would invest in or loan money to those vulnerable industries? Shouldn't that be an economic negative?

Chavez was born in the state of Barinas. His family still lives there. Barinas has become one of the kidnapping capitals of South America, higher than Columbia or Mexico. Chavez' family has prospered since he became President-for Life. Here are some noteworthy fragments of the family's success:
In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.
Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.
Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men. (From the NYT)
The presidential family hold five bank accounts in the United States amounting to USD 137 million.
(La Razon)

EIA  expects that U.S. crude oil production will exceed U.S. imports as early as the end of 2013, the first time that will have occurred since February, 1995.

There are 12,338 retired California government workers receiving $100,000 or more in pension payments from Calpers. Michael D. Johnson, a retiree from the County of Solano, pulls in $30,920.24 per month.

AAAAAaaaaannnnnddddd.....a graph:

Guns

The debate over the proposed changes in the gun laws raise questions that are serious; the problem is the answers may not be. First, the Second Amendment is pretty obvious; we do not tinker with other Amendments. Second, the seriousness of atrocities do not logically mean the means of the atrocity should be banned. Third, the weaknesses of the private gun sales are real but minor. Most guns sold at shows are sold with background checks. Where those background checks are not done are those personal and private sales to friends, family and neighbors. And the Internet.

Where do the objections come from? First, from fear of the government. Many people fear the government is collecting information on gun purchases not to screen potential owners but to collect a data base for eventual confiscation. Paranoia? Maybe, but these elitists are not the most honorable or honest of men. Secondly, the basic problem of most violent events in the nation: How are lunatics to be managed? In the background check regarding mental health questions, the burden has been on the applicant. "Have you ever been committed?" "Are you on psychotropic medications?" Under this proposed law, every one's medical records would be available to inspection. And subject to some judgment. Is a guy hospitalized in his early twenties for depression and symptom free for ten years a risk? Is someone on low-dose Zoloft a risk? What about a DUI? What about a guy who tests badly on IQ tests? Will freedom of speech face similar evaluation? When did our concept of basic human rights become subject to reassessment, anyway? And if they are, who gets to do the assessing?

This  is a mess, seen by critics as a prescription for failure and, worse, insincere. (For example, what was Obama's plan here? He expected this to be stopped in the House; what did it matter that it was stopped in the Senate by Democrats--unless the plan all along was to tar the Republicans with callousness. And why did the Democrats not allow debate?) It does not mean the problems are not legitimate and serious, it just suggests the leaders may not be up to the challenge. The appearance of one of the Newtown mothers as the speaker at the weekly Presidential Address confirms it: Posturing is a lot easier than problem-solving.

Sunday Sermon 4/21/13

In today's gospel it is winter, the time commemorating the re-dedication of the temple by Judas Maccabeus in 164 B.C. after it was defiled by the Romans. Interestingly, it is mostly a social event.

It is a short gospel, and sweet without its context. Earlier, Christ talks about being the Good Shepherd but here, with "My sheep hear my voice," Christ is explaining to his Jewish questioners what distinguishes His followers: They hear His voice, follow and He knows them. Christ opponents, on the other hand, see the evidence and will not believe; other motives prevent them from believing. "But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep." (This line has caused a lot of trouble, especially from those predisposed to predestination.)

Then Christ says He will give His believers the "gift" of immortality. There is an intimacy here between Christ and His followers that switches to an intimacy between Christ and His Father. So the Shepherd, the flock and the Father come together. Then He says, "I and the Father are one."

How can anyone doubt what He is claiming? His audience didn't. In the next line they stone Him.

Cab Thoughts 4/20/13

Men had thought of wealth as a static quantity, to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.

~Ayn Rand

"Arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are 'acceptable crimes,'" said the PETA co-founder Alex Pacheco, "when used for the animal cause." 

The Amur tiger can weigh over 500 pounds and can be more than 10 feet long nose to tail. They can jump as far as 25 feet — vertically, they can jump over a basketball hoop.

In fiscal 2010, according to numbers published by the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), net spending by all levels of government in the United States was $5,942,988,401,000. That equaled $50,074 for each one of the 118,682,000 households in the country. In that same year, according to the Census Bureau, the median household income was $49,445. That means total net government spending per household ($50,074) exceeded median household income (49,445) by $629.

The Ireland Central Bank minted a coin with a James Joyce "Ulysses" quote to honor the man. They misquoted the book.
Chapter three of the novel begins: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read."
The second sentence on the commemorative 10 euro coin reads: "Signatures of all things that I am here to read."
After the predictable backlash, the bank said it was a matter of "artistic representation."

Who is.....Mary Surratt?

Good news! Yoko Ono is coming out with a book of "instructional poetry," according to OR Books. She "explains": "It's something I originally created for the Internet. For 100 days, every day, a different instruction was communicated. Now it's being published in book form. I'm riding a time machine that's going back to the old ways!"

If two products each cost $1 today, but one is subject to a 2% inflation rate and the other 10%, in 100 years the low-inflation product costs $7.25 and the high-inflation product costs $13,781. That, of course, also applies to compounding interest.

Background checks to buy a pressure cooker?

According to the EIA, although it had about 50% of the installed capacity of solar in the USA, geothermal produced about twice the electricity of solar. In four years, however, solar should surpass geothermal.

Obamacare costs projections have risen by over 40% from the projections just two years ago. That 40% does not take into account what private insurance costs have already risen and are going to continue to rise.

Wednesday's issue of "Batgirl" introduced the first transgender character in a mainstream comic series: Batgirl's roommate, Alysia Yeoh.

Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the law breakers.
But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the “plight” of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can “come out of the shadows” and “normalize” their lives.---Sowell

Data released by the Mining Safety and Health Administration show that the average number of coal mining jobs under the Obama administration is 15.3% higher than the average under the Bush administration. Nationwide, the job totals for 2011 and 2012 marked the highest two year period for coal mining employment in 15 years. The reason? Increased exports and decreased productivity. (Now this is a Federal study so......)

Why did so many of the high profile suffragettes of the early 20th Century join the Fascist Party?

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/10/obama-as-higgs-particle.html

Belgian King Leopold II was responsible for the deaths from 1885 to 1908 of ten million Africans in the lands surrounding the Congo River. His plan was to increase his personal wealth by buying land from natives, usually under false pretenses or the threat of violence or magic. Many military units had a "keeper of the hands," a soldier assigned to keep track of hands taken from the dead as sort of a "scalp" to prove the bullet used went to the king's cause. His activities were the basis for Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

An old joke on economists and models: An engineer, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on a deserted island. They are starving, when miraculously they find a box filled with canned food. What to do? They consider the problem, bringing their collective lifetimes of study and discipline to the task.

Being the practical, straightforward sort, the engineer suggests that they simply find a rock and hit the cans until they break open. “No, no!” cry the chemist and economist, “we would spill too much food and the birds would get it!”
After a bit of thought, the chemist recommends that they start a fire and heat the cans. The pressure in the cans will force them open and the food will conveniently already be heated. But the engineer and economist object, pointing out correctly that the cans would likely explode and splatter the food all over the beach.
The economist, after carefully studying the cans and reading the labels, starts scrawling a series of equations in the sand, which eventually cover the entire beach. After much pondering, he excitedly announces, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” as he points to the final equation. They ask him to explain, with their visions of finally getting a meal causing them to regard the economist with a new sense of respect.
The economist clears his throat and begins, “First, assume a can opener …”

The two men being investigated for secretly recording Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were enthusiastic activists, but definitely not professional operatives.
Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison were active bloggers. Reilly was a delegate to August’s Democratic National Convention, but he made his living as a financial planner. Morrison sold real estate.They started Progress Kentucky, a PAC, hoping to help Democrats upset McConnell, but in three months all they’ve done is turn a veteran senator with low approval ratings into a sympathetic figure and spur an FBI investigation. Progress Kentucky first achieved national notoriety for attacking McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, over her ethnicity.

Anyone can start a super PAC by filing papers with the Federal Election Commission and opening a bank account. The question is are these just incompetent amateurs on a professional political landscape or idiots actually representative of American politicians?

Fox News reported last week that “the U.S. Army listed Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism along with Al Qaeda and Hamas during a briefing with an Army Reserve unit based in Pennsylvania…The incident occurred during an Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief on extremism.”

The list is titled “Religious Extremism”; heading it is “Evangelical Christianity (U.S./Christian),” followed by “Ikhwan or Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt/Muslim)”and then “Ultra-Orthodox” (Israel/Judaism),” making for a politically correct trifecta of the three main monotheistic religions. Also on the list are “Al Quaeda [sic] (Transnational/Islam)’; “Hamas (Palestinian/Islamist)”; Abu Sayyah [sic] (Philippines/Islam)”; “Ku Klux Klan (U.S/Christian)”; and “Catholicism (U.S./Christian),” among others.

Maryland will impose a new tax on homeowners for the amount of rain that falls on homes. The so-called “storm management fee” will be enforced after Democrat Gov. Martin O’Malley pushed the bill forward, reported the Maryland Reporter. The measurement was passed by state lawmakers last year to raise funds to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s order to clean up the Chesapeake Bay estuary.

CBO projects that, under current law, the government’s yearly net interest spending will double as a share of GDP—from 1.5 percent in 2014 to 3.3 percent in 2023, a percentage that has been exceeded only once in the past 50 years. (CBO)

In 2000, a 1,003 kilogram (2,211 lbs) meteorite was discovered near Fukang, a city located in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, China. Named the Fukang Meteorite it was identified as a pallasite, a type of stony–iron meteorite, with striking olivine crystals throughout. Pallasites are extremely rare even among meteorites (only about 1% of all meteorites are this type) and Fukang has been hailed as one of the greatest meteorite discoveries of the 21st century.

The Fukang pallasite is believed to originate from deep inside intact meteors created during the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago and very few specimens are thought to have survived their descent through Earth’s atmosphere.

An anonymous group of collectors currently holds the largest portion which weighs 419.5 kg (925 pounds). In 2008 they attempted to sell it at auction at Bonham’s in New York for approximately $2 million but did not receive any bidders. A total of 31 kilograms (68 lb) of the specimen is at University of Arizona’s Southwest Meteorite Laboratory.

Over 200,000 parent-less children were sent on trains to the Midwest between 1854 and 1929. They were called "orphan trains" and the objective was to find them families but it was also to populate the Midwest and to provide labor. At its worst it was not much better than slavery. They were usually between the ages of 2 to the age of 14. 12- to 14-year-old boys were the most in demand because they provided labor. Sometimes trains of babies were sent called "mercy trains."

Charles Cullen was a nurse who killed as many as 300 of his patients before he was caught.

AAAAAAaaannnnnddddddd.......a graph:

The Children of the Heroes of Beslan

One of the Marathon murderers is dead, the other on the run. They are both quite young. The suspects were identified to The Associated Press as coming from the Russian region near Chechnya.
Chechnya is the site of the infamous Heroes of Beslan, a most despicable atrocity that stunned any thinking person paying attention. (The attack, by hardened combat veterans, targeted a grade school.) This kind of behavior is usually seen in a culture in its death throes.
Below are two links that these events have called to mind.

 http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/05/thinking-of-heroes-of-beslan.html

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-dr-karen-woo-died.html

Boston and "Whiite Privilege"

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

This is part of an article that appeared in "Salon" titled "Let's Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American." It is a chilling read for a number of reasons, one being that it was seen worthy by someone of publishing. The essence of the article is "I want the circumstances to fit my prejudices" but it is disguised as more than that. When can we identify individual behavior as representative of a larger group, as part of a creed? Hamas has a stated creed that includes the destruction of Jews and Israel. Ted Kaczynski was/is a vicious, homicidal lunatic who sent bombs to the homes of strangers because of some perceived connection they had with the advance of technology that he opposed. He was a bright guy and had many views in common with sincere environmentalists. But he was/is absolutely nuts. Should we target environmentalists as a result of Ted Kaczynski? Is he really representative of a group? But if we are going to think of him as an isolated individual, should we not think of the lunatics of ELF as followers of a homicidal creed?

I may be wrong here; I did not think we were attacking Al Qaida sites symbolically to ensure others "don't get any ideas." I thought we were attacking a group of people who had declared war on us and our children. As a philosophy. As a creed. Nor did I know the people I identified as Al Qaida were not white. But there is a lot here I did not know. I did not know the IRA represented Ireland; I thought they were a tiny, peripheral, diffuse group of homicidal political revolutionaries who blew up day care centers.

Lunatics believe things. Sometimes they believe they are Napoleon. Sometimes their beliefs are accurate. But, contrary to popular Hollywood depiction, lunatics do not form groups. There are no revolutions in a madhouse. A crazy might well be attracted to the excitement and violence of a group and join the act but he can not join the people; he has lost that human ability to merge and link with another. This is a basic fact of madness and this is why the madman is dangerous. He can not connect to his fellows. He can be remorseless because he has no empathy. Lynch mobs, on the other hand, are not crazy, they are vicious.

This is not that difficult.

Mary Richardson, Boston and the Bill Ayers Syndrome

Lunatics come in many guises; sometimes it is a simple, small thing that goes wrong that allows both totally crazy behavior and, strangely, a willingness of reasonable people to excuse them for the atrocity's seemingly "symbolic" qualities. In 1914, Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to Diego Velazquez’s The Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in London. It is said she wasn't crazy because there was a sort-of-recognizable, if disjointed, "purpose" for this act. She was protesting the arrest of the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in Britain. As a militant suffragette herself, Richardson decided to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for its role in the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other beautiful living women.”

She pursued her life as a militant suffragette with various arsons and once bombed a railway station. Richardson was at the Epsom races on Derby Day, 4 June 1913, when fellow suffragette Emily Davison jumped in front of the King's horse. Ms. Davison died in Epsom Cottage Hospital later.

Ms. Richardson later became the head of the women's section of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Sir Oswald Mosley.

Like pregnancy, craziness is an all-or-nothing affair and it is in their deeds where people usually reveal themselves. As charming as he was and as talented a conversationalist, Ted Bundy was as crazy as a mud hen. But, in fairness to crazies, there is a grey area here. Crazies can not help themselves. Some people behave terribly or dangerously not because they are crazy but because they are just plain vicious.

Boston

I awoke this morning thinking about the Boston Marathon bombing. There has been no blame assigned as yet but Chris Mathews thinks the Tea Party may be involved.

Not every savage act teaches a lesson; sometime a cigar is just a cigar. But there are some intimations here. Ours is a nation that publicly admits it can not control its own borders. National security is apparently a myth, how can individual security be any different? The irony of the Newtown parents being in the grandstand across the street from the explosion is withering.

We are also a heroic species. It was astonishing to see the bystanders and officials tearing the barricades apart to get to the injured. Like the fireman of 9/11, selflessness emerging from a field sown with evil is more than reassuring, it makes us worthwhile.

Finally, there is evil. It is real. Relativism and moral neutrality pale before it.

Humanity is a large bell-shaped curve. If the average IQ is 100, there are as many people with a 70 as a 130. Does that mean there are as many Laslo Toths as Michealangelos? No, there are more Toths, countless more. That is our miracle.

April 15, 2013, the Anniversary of Lincoln's Death

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Sunday Sermon 4/14/13

In today's gospel the apostles go fishing, Christ appears on the shore, gives them a catch and discusses Peter's devotion. This is Christ's third appearance after rising from the dead.

There is, as usual, a lot to wonder about. Are the disciples regressing to their original lives? What is the meaning of Christ's distance at their meeting--so Emmaus-like? Is Christ recreating the Last Supper and revising Peter's denial?

One interesting, if peripheral, notion is a small point of friendship. John refers to "that disciple .....whom Jesus loved." 

There is a lot of complexity here. Later Christ talks with Peter about love and the discussion bounces between Greek subtleties of different meanings of love, "agapao" represents a sacrificial love or total commitment, and "phileo" defined as fondness. Elaine Pagels says that the "disciple whom Jesus loved" is an effort by the evangelist to de-emphasize Peter's relationship with Christ.

But there is another view. Friendship is not a common theme in the New Testament. The pagans, without a spiritual ideal, pay great attention to friendship. (Patroklos and Achilles, Gilgamesh and Enkidu.) Christians have often been accused of overlooking the life of the world with a preoccupation of the overshadowing afterlife.

Here is a very concrete example where friendship is inherent to the Christian story.

Cab Thoughts 4/13/13

"'Politics is not the art of the possible. It is choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous'.--Galbraith


Sydney Crosby's devotion to the game of hockey is legendary. His entire life, from a child, has been in the pursuit of its excellence. His success has been as much a triumph of will as talent. When he was 12 he asked his coaches to help him improve his speed because he felt the professional game was becoming speed oriented. That said, one wonders when that intricate balance between sacrifice and reward tips away from reward, even at this incredibly high level.

North Korea, Iran less so, gives the lie to any and all international pretences of individual nation's sacrifice for the greater good. An important prejudice seems to be the Western idea of homogeneity among people and the possibility of similar chords struck during negotiations. In some cultures that simply does not exist.

There is a court case involving a physician who runs an abortion clinic in Philadelphia where a girl died. It has revealed some remarkable things. One, the anesthetic was usually given by a 15 year old girl. When she was not available, a girl in her 20's took over; she had a sixth grade education. Two, little worked. The ultrasound used to target the fetus had no image. That is, it showed nothing when turned on. The "crash cart" had no working EKG, no working automatic electronic defibrillator.

Standards seem to have some variability depending on the circumstances. And, more importantly, when killing is the objective, death and pain, by necessity, become acceptable. This probably explains why this gigantic scandal has received virtually no coverage.

Who is....Kathy Boudine?

Gas supplies about 26% of America's total energy, ranking behind only oil in meeting America's energy needs. Coal provides 19% of our total energy and ranks third. Renewable energy in all its forms, including hydro and bio fuels, ranks fourth and nuclear power fifth. 38% of natural gas supplies is used to heat buildings, 33% to generate electricity. The displacement of coal as an electric generator, from 50% ten years ago to 37% now, is the single largest reason U.S. CO2 production has dropped.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 57 percent of Mexican immigrants will go on to use means-tested benefit programs, against only 6 percent of British.
And “one-fourth of public school students now speak languages other than English at home.”

In 1949, the Yale anthropologist George Peter Murdock published a survey of some 250 'representative cultures' from different eras and diverse parts of the world. He reported, 'The nuclear family is a uni­versal human social grouping. Either as the sole prevailing form of the family or as the basic unit from which more complex familial forms are compounded, it exists as a distinct and strongly functional group in every known society. No exception, at least, has come to light.'
In 1950, four million adult Americans lived alone. Today, thirty-one million do. In 1950, 22 percent of American adults were single. Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single.

Geologists mea­sure eruptions by the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which uses whole numbers from 0 to 8 to rate the relative amount of ash, dust, and sulphur a volcano throws into the atmosphere. Like the Richter Scale for earthquakes, each step along the Explosivity Index is equal to a tenfold increase in the magnitude of the eruption. Tambora in Indonesia rated an Index score of 7, making the eruption approxi­mately one thousand times more powerful than the Icelandic vol­cano Eyjafjallajokull, which disrupted trans-Atlantic air travel in 2010 but rated only a 4; one hundred times stronger than Mount St. Helens (a 5); and ten times more powerful than Krakatoa (a 6). Only four other eruptions in the last hundred centuries have reached a score of 7. The year following Tambora, 1816, was known throughout the world as the year without a summer.

Clausewitz saw that the limited wars of the eighteenth century on which he had been brought up had been transformed into the total wars of the Napoleonic era – and all subsequent eras – not by any change in the nature of weaponry, but by the enlistment of “the people”; people whose emotions would distort the rational calculations of governments and the professional expertise of the military, but could never again be left out of account. According to Emile Simpson, a British war veteran, in his book "War from the Ground Up" the paradigm (still largely accepted by Clausewitz) of “bipolar” wars fought between discrete states enjoying the support of their peoples has now been shattered by globalization. Popular support can no longer be taken for granted. “The people” are no longer homogeneous and the enemy is no longer a single entity. Further, “the enemy” is no longer the only actor to be taken into account.

The first kangaroo was seen by Western eyes in 1770. Proof of the existence of the gorilla was returned to the West by 19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu.

The Bank of Japan has doubled its bond purchases and lengthened its duration. This will undermine the yen's buying power. There is the equivalence of $9 trillion (T!) in Japanese yen holdings in Japan. The yen’s decline will deliver a global deflationary shock, especially for Japan’s biggest export competitors, then even German bunds yielding 1.25% might look attractive for the long side of the trade against the Japan bond short.

BBC America and its British sibling, the BBC, said on Monday that they would produce a television adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s best-selling novel, “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,” which would be shown as a mini-series in 2014.

The 245thNational Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society, is meeting this week with 12,000 presentations on advances in science and other topics. One presenter, Walter Rakitsky, Ph.D, is from Solazyme, a company claiming a breakthrough biotechnology platform that unlocks the power of microalgae to produce oil. He said that microalgae are the original oil producers on earth, and that all of the oil-producing machinery present in higher plants resides within these single-cell organisms.“For the first time in history, we have unlocked the ability to completely design and tailor oils,” he said. “This breakthrough allows us to create oils optimized for everything from high-performance jet and diesel fuel to renewable chemicals to skin-care products and heart-healthy food oils. These oils could replace or enhance the properties of oils derived from the world’s three dominant sources: petroleum, plants and animals.”

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/02/art-of-plausible.html

According to the Pew Research Center, 52 percent of Americans are now in favor of legalizing marijuana while only 45 percent oppose it, marking the first time in over 40 years of polling by the company that a majority of citizens have backed pot’s legalization.


From the economist Anatole Kaletsky:

Here is a list of economic questions that have something in common. In a recession, should governments reduce budget deficits or increase them? Do 0 percent interest rates stimulate economic recovery or suppress it? Should welfare benefits be maintained or cut in response to high unemployment? Should depositors in failed banks be protected or suffer big losses? Does income inequality damage or encourage economic growth? Will market forces create environmental disasters or avert them? Is government support necessary for technological progress or stifling to innovation?

What these important questions have in common is that professional economists can’t answer them.

(As an example)...The world’s most important central banks, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, hold diametrically opposing views about the effects of quantitative easing. If economics were a genuinely scientific discipline, such disputes over fundamental issues would have been settled decades ago. They are equivalent to astronomers still arguing about whether the sun revolves around the earth or earth around the sun.

Australia was sort of created January 26, 1788, when a fleet of eleven vessels carrying 1,030 people, including 548 male and 188 female convicts, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip in his flagship Sirius, entered Port Jackson or, as it would soon be known, Sydney Harbor. There was the belief in Britain that there existed in England an incorrigible "criminal class" and this exile, never done on this kind of scale before or since, was an effort to eliminate the "class." The Crown shipped more than 160,000 men, women and children (due to defects in the records, the true number will never be precisely known) in bondage to Australia. To my knowledge it has never been called a "gulag."

Fulton and his steamboat were innovators in the New York travel market and Fulton was granted a monopoly in New York waters. In 1824, in the landmark case of Gibbons v. Ogden, the Supreme Court struck down the Fulton monopoly. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that only the federal government, not the states, could regulate interstate commerce. The "Gibbons" in the case was the man who hired a young man named Cornelius Vanderbilt to pilot his steamboats in defiance of the monopoly. He, of course, eventually struck out on his own.

 

 

AAAAAnnnnnnnnddddddd......a graph:

Obama as Roosevelt

Some fuss was generated when Obama promised "the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one" in his acceptance speech this year. The whole point of the Shales book, "The Forgotten Man,' was this very observation: Roosevelt spent much of his presidency with whimsical and fitful projects he thought might help the economy. The net effect was to prolong and, in some respects, deepen the depression.

This idea of the federal government as sort of a campus coffee house with this good idea and that good idea being tried by this guy and that guy is a real nightmare model. And success is, at best, random. If the statist experience in Europe in the last two generations teaches anything, it is humility. But the elite are rarely humble. They know they must be special for a reason. And it is up to us poor oarsmen to keep the boat afloat while the captain and his friends debate their new ideas of navigation in their special cabin over fine meals and wine, believing as they do that they are immune to their own errors.

Ian Morris and the Big Picture

Ian Morris has number of books, history with a wide lens, where individuals shrink beside the importance of big, sweeping factors like biology, geography and city building. He has a law: "Morris Theorem," "Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things." These people are much the same everywhere. He was not always this way. In college, Morris sent a demo tape to Iron Maiden in 1979, when the soon-to-be-world-famous band was advertising for a new guitarist. Iron Maiden looked elsewhere. But he did play professionally for another band called Expozer.

The idea detailed in his new book, Why the West Rules, is that an intellectual revolution took place between 800 and 200 BC. Confucianism and Daoism in China. Buddhism and Jainism in India. The Hebrew Bible and Greek philosophy in the West. From East Asia to the Mediterranean, new systems of thought emerged that shaped how billions of people made sense of the world for millenniums to come. All share a notion of transcendence. Reaching this superior realm involves a process of self-structuring. Live ethically. Renounce desire. Do unto others. Practice these principles in your personal life, the thinking goes, and you will change the world. If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the Axial Age—meaning the centuries around 500 BC formed an axis around which history turned—originated with the German philosopher Karl Jaspers after World War II. But Morris feels he knows why: The regional divine kings were becoming too local and the increasing population away from their divinity needed a new way to touch the divine.

He plans a new book on war. In Stone Age societies, 10 to 20 percent of the population died violently. (How he knows this, I do not know.) Yet by the 20th century, despite two world wars, the Holocaust, and nuclear weapons, only 1 to 2 percent died. What explains that decline? Morris says that despite the increase of weapons power, war is getting safer.

And the future? Past empires were regional. So were the impacts of their collapses. But that has changed. We are all tied together now. He sees the great threat as global warming. "The big scary thing now is that the entire world has become one big experiment," Morris says. After the Roman Empire fell, he points out, it took 1,600 years for western Eurasia to climb back to the level of development that the Romans had enjoyed.

Fukuyama thinks this is incomplete thinking, that smaller, unmeasurable factors like philosophy and religion have greater impact than Morris sees. And, indeed, there is a casual, chatty coffeehouse quality about Morris' books. But, in 2011, he was called to the CIA at Langley to address members of the National Intelligence Council, which publishes a global trends report after each presidential election to guide the incoming administration. Someone thinks he's really important.

Income Disparity Among People and Nations

There is probably a crisis center somewhere out there that just makes up new impending disasters. In a generation the world worry about "world freezing" shifted to "world warming" and now has settled politely upon the ambiguous "climate change." The purity of our foods, the danger of aquifer contamination, the Iranian nuclear power, the North Korean nuclear power, guns in the streets, the flu, the flu vaccine--they tumble out of the crisis factory like so many potato chips or cookies. "Income disparity" is a new world crisis. It sounds bad. Almost revolution-inducing. And a recent study has shown it is getting worse. Worse! And globalization is probably the cause!

Richer countries in 1980 (as measured by GDP per capita) tended to grow faster between 1980 and 2000 than poorer countries. The rich are getting richer! The poor are getting poorer! Globalization is going to create two huge disparate worlds that will soon cancel each other out. Or annihilate each other like matter and anti-matter.

Or is it? The largest populations of poverty are actually in the areas of national success. Both China and India are reaping the benefits of globalization, and so are their poor citizens. Indeed the largest beneficiaries of globalization have been the huge populations of India's and China's poor.

As The Economist points out, 'If you consider people, not countries, global inequality is falling rapidly.'

"Lore:" A Review

"Lore," a nickname for the lead Hannalore, is the second film by Australian director Cate Shortland It is based on one of the three sections of "The Dark Room", Rachel Seifert's Booker-shortlisted novel and winner of the 2001 Guardian first novel award. In it five children in immediate post-war Germany are left alone in southwest Germany to fend for themselves and, if possible, get to their grandmother's house in Hamburg. So children from the Black Forest must flee and avoid evil to get to grandmother's house, all this with a ceaselessly screaming infant.

It is a lot more serious than it sounds.

The Fuhrer is dead, the Allies are everywhere, the SS father of the children is returning to his command presumably to be killed and the mother, a distraught hard woman who seems to be implicated on the medical side of the Nazi insanity, collects as many valuables as possible to give to the oldest child, the 14 year old Lore, and walks off into internment. Lore, her 12 year old sister, two 7 year old twin boys and a male infant are left behind alone in The Forest. The story involves the difficulties, terrors, dangers and savagery the children encounter on their trip and the gradual recognition by the oldest girl of her parents' and Germany's contribution to the overwhelming inhumanity of the war and to the destruction of Germany itself.

The children have whatever the imprint parents and society can make. The twins sing Hitler Youth songs but are completely ajudgmental. Lore believes in her parents and their integrity, holds the Jews responsible for much of the damage done to Germany, and like many of those she meets on her odyssey, believes the pictures of the camps are falsified propaganda.

They are joined by a stranger, Thomas, who claims to be a Jew released from Buchenwald, and who may or may not want to help. With Lore’s ingrained anti-Semitism, she does not want his help. But he may not be a Jew. Is this a clever ambiguity, a hint of man's interconnection? But he is indubitably a killer. Does the same comment apply? But he does help the children and the younger children like him. Can Lore overcome her teachings and trust him? Does it matter when he may not be a Jew? And what of Lore's surprising effort at sexual intimacy with Thomas? Did anyone in the audience think that was believable?

Perhaps there is simply too much here. The director has a reputation of interest in sexual awakening; perhaps that awakening on the stage of the greatest human-made horror in history is diminished and diminishing when compared to these other monstrous events. One gets the impression the director underestimated the story.

And there is a lot to like here. This is an unusual view of the war. It is brilliantly restrained when it would have been easy not to. There is a wonderful scene of self-realization where Lore facilitates a crime, she cries, “What have we done?” and in the next scene tries to confess to a disinterested border guard as she searches for judgment--and justice--against herself. The cinematography is beautiful, the child actors terrific and the story gripping--so much so the obvious and inevitable symbolism in the end is an anticlimax.

Confusing the Adventure of Science with Adventure

The world has always loved balloonists but the French have loved them most.

Hand-in-hand in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris are two balloonists who tried to fly higher than anyone had before. The monument to Joseph Croce-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel shows the two draped beneath a shroud, their fingers intertwined and an inscription on the side declaring them to have perished in a balloon called the Zenith on April 15, 1875, at around 28,000 feet.

In the 1870s, ballooning had progressed to a point where higher and higher altitudes were being sought for greater understandings of the atmosphere and its weather. Brave men were learning of the challenges and dangers of higher flight by simply experiencing them, discovering the impacts of thin air that made on consciousness. This was done as it was later in diving and mountain climbing, trial and error. Oxygen seemed to take away the effects of thin air on consciousness so, equipped with several breathing bags of the air, Croce-Spinelli, Sivel, and a third balloonist, Gaston Tissandier, ascended into the air that April 15 prepared to break the existing record, 36,000 feet in 1862 by James Glaisher, for altitude.

They reached the "death zone," at about 26,000 feet, when they began to go in and out of consciousness. Unable to reach for the oxygen tubes above their heads, they were seized by the thrill of going up even further into this perilous altitude. As Tissandier, the only survivor, later recalled: "One becomes indifferent, one thinks neither of the perilous situation nor of any danger; one rises and is happy to rise." Croce-Spinelli, revived by a gulp of oxygen, decided to throw out equipment and the balloon rose to 28,000 feet, according to a recording by their barometer. When Tissandier came to, he found his companions dead and the Zenith rapidly plummeting to the earth.

The Zenith crash landed in Ciron, France, and Sivel and Croce-Spinelli were found with their faces blackened and their mouths filled with blood. They were widely celebrated as heroes who gave their lives for progressing aviation. A May 2, 1875 New York Times article declared them as "martyrs to science." A monument was erected in Ciron where the Zenith had fallen and the elaborate grave sculpted by Alphonse Dumilatre was installed in Père Lachaise Cemetery as a memorial to the two French balloonists. Gaston Tissandier is also buried in the Paris cemetery, although he lived until 1899.

Sunday Sermon 4/7/13

Today's gospel is the Doubting Thomas gospel, the New Testament statement on the limits of materialism and Christ's tolerant nod to science. It has, like so much of the Gospel, an ironic element. Talking across time, Christ's followers are not going to be reassured like Thomas; they will have to accept some things on the basis of faith.

Christ, importantly, does not dismiss Thomas' skepticism. Thomas is a rational guy with a big persona in the gospel. And he is brave. (http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/sunday-sermon-41512.html) But he is a twin, a doppelganger, if you will. He is as complex as man and men.

And this complexity allows Christ to break down the aspects of men, like a prism, in the light.

Cab Thoughts 4/6/13

"Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be' – she always called me Elwood – 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."--Elwood P. Dowd

American CO2 production was down 3.8% in 2012. Coal emissions were down 12%. The UK's emissions of climate-warming gases surged 4.5% in 2012, as cheap coal replaced gas in power stations. Natural gas costs 2 to 3 times more in the UK than the US. A major reason for the higher gas price in the UK is that it, until recently, had a moratorium on shale gas production. Now that the UK has lifted its shale gas moratorium, shale gas production could begin there within 5 years.


Cyprus is winding down. What saved Iceland from mass unemployment after its banks blew up – or saved Sweden and Finland in the early 1990s – was a currency devaluation that brought industries back from the dead. But Cyprus has no real industry; its major industry is banking and that is now destroyed. And would anyone in their right mind vacation there?

Back in 1999, when both oil and natural gas prices were collapsed, 30 students were enrolled in Penn State University's petroleum and natural gas engineering program. Now, the number is 500. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that there are just 17 universities offering majors in petroleum engineering.


Homeschooling is illegal in Germany and has been so since 1918. During Hitler, schools were used as a political extension. The German Supreme Court stated the reason for the opposition to homeschooling is to "counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies." That is a quote of a major western nation's highest court's opinion on the nature of the state and its relationship to its society and it deserves some serious thought.


Couchsurfing is a term describing travelers staying informally with friends or families in any spare space available. It became an international concept in 1999, when Casey Fenton managed to plan a whole trip to Iceland though randomly generated volunteers. A web site was created and began receiving applications for both guests and hosts. Some efforts at compatibility were made but no payment was permitted. (Some trade, a gift, a skill..something...was allowed but arranged and not required.) As of October 2011, CouchSurfing had over 3 million active and inactive members.
It has had problems. In 2006 the computer system crashed and the entire data base was lost. In 2009 a Leeds U.K. host raped his Asian guest. In August 2011, Couchsurfing announced its change of status to a for-profit corporation. A $7.6 million dollar investment was raised by Benchmark Capital with $15 million coming on two follow up rounds. This for-profit decision was met with resistance by many members who, like ancient Christian zealots, preferred purity to survival (profit being impure).

Who is.....Ken Alibek?

The Amur (Siberian) tiger is the largest of all the world's cats. Unlike its jungle cousins it sacrifices sleekness for its thick coat against the cold. The thickly maned head can be as broad as a man's chest and shoulders, and winter paw prints are described using hats and pot lids for comparison. As the encyclope­dic reference Mammals of the Soviet Union puts it, 'The general appearance of the tiger is that of a huge physical force and quiet confidence, combined with a rather heavy grace.' Or as John Vaillent says: "this is what you get when you pair the agility and appetites of a cat with the mass of an industrial refrigerator." It is a prodigious hunter and killer but does not hunt man. Except for revenge.

PEW Research in 2012 found that 33% of 18 to 24 year olds had read a book.

This is the anniversary of the major outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) caused the deaths of 105 or more Soviet citizens in the 1970's. It was for years denied by the Russian government but eventually came to light after several high level defections--when it was clear the economic ship was sinking. The spores leaked from a bioweapons facility, a part of the Russian Biopreparate system, which they had interestingly constructed on the model of the Japanese bioweapons system. So these maniacal homicidal systems give birth to one another.

A 2003 study on organ donation: In Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, where citizens had to make an active choice to donate organs, only 4% to 17% consented to do so. In nearby Austria, France and Poland, where citizens were automatically "defaulted in" as donors unless they explicitly opted out, more than 99% agreed to donate.

The head of Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Cosgrove, is dyslectic. He says he relied on memorizing texts in medical school, and reading hasn't gotten easier for him. He says he has never read a novel. But, he says, "I frankly think dyslexia is a gift. If you are supported in school and your ego remains intact, then you emerge with a strong work ethic and a different view of the world." Read that again.

A book signed by Richard lll is on display, part of the new exhibition "The Kings Body: Richard III King of England 1483 - 1485" at Longleat House in Wiltshire. The book, written on vellum, includes stories by Chaucer as well as other popular writers of the 15th century. It is one of only thirteen surviving books from Richard III's library. Above his signature, in neat and educated handwriting, is a French line: "Tant le desieree," which translates to "So much desired." Richard signed the book as "R Gloucester," as he was still a teenager when the book was given to him and his only title was Duke of Gloucester. The book was purchased by Thomas Thynne, the First Viscount Weymouth, as part of a collection of medieval manuscripts in 1709. It has been housed at Longleat House ever since, still in the care of the Thynne family. The exhibition at Longleat also includes a First Folio from 1623.

The MoMA has a director of Research and Development, Paola Antonelli. This is her answer to the question "Why does MoMA have an R&D department?" "..my belief that museums can act as the laboratories and R&D centers of society—a belief that came from the financial crisis of 2008, when some so-called "productive" sectors of our social system showed their true colors and almost drowned us all. Because museums and similar institutions have often proved their social and educational commitment, they can count on bright and creative minds—artists, thinkers, critics, curators, and audience —to come together and work on important projects. And they can have real, positive influence. To do that, we need to make an effort to keep up with emerging technologies, explore new business models, and continue to experiment with ways of engaging with the public and with culture."
So capitalism will be saved by non-profits?

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/11/life-and-worst-possible-outcome-wpo.html

3.2% of natural gas is used for transportation worldwide, but only 0.2% of America's gas is consumed to power vehicles.

A buzz on the technical sites over an Edmunds' story that Tesla was developing a race car for NASCAR underwritten by the government: "Under the supervision of Tesla's in-house engineering team, Lidocad-daleoxide battery technology is being developed specifically for the race cars at a Czechoslovakian research facility, Blázen Dubna, Ltd."
"Blázen Dubna" is Chech for "April Fool."


The Bank of Japan released the world's most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy. New Governor Haruhiko Kuroda committed the BOJ to open-ended asset buying and said the monetary base would nearly double (!!!) to 270 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) by the end of 2014 in a shock therapy to end two decades of stagnation in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows.  Kuroda said the BOJ wanted to push down bond yields enough so that investors will start buying riskier assets, such as property and stocks, and to prompt households and companies to spend now rather than later on expectations of rising prices. "I don't see a risk of a sudden spike in long-term interest rates or a creation of an asset price bubble," Kuroda said.
Another nation manipulates its currency to create artificial value elsewhere.


The middle-income housing projects Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village sit on an 80-acre patch of Lower Manhattan. In 2006 Tishman Speyer and BlackRock bought it at auction, the biggest real estate deal ever. The whole idea behind the deal was that Tishman Speyer and BlackRock could get tenants in rent-regulated units out, and tenants who were willing to pay market rents in. But the tenants association went to court and blocked them.So they just walked away. It was easy to do because it wasn't their money on the line.
Charles Bagli covered the purchase for The New York Times. In his new book, Other People's Money, he tells what happened."They pretty much went through it unscathed," Bagli says, "but CalPERS [the California Public Employees' Retirement System], the largest pension fund in the country, lost $500 million. Poof — gone. ... Another pension fund down in Florida lost $250 million. The government of Singapore, well, they lost the most — over $600 million. It all just went poof."
Whether private enterprise  or government, it is always the same when it is someone else's money.

AAAaaaannnnnddd.....a Picture: