New Years Book List

"If I wanted an education, I would have got a library card." This was said by a friend of mine on his graduation from college.
I've been thinking about  a good list of books that would be an informative, interesting and that would be fun to read, mostly for new adult readers. Moby Dick, one of the world's great books, is a lot of work as well. Ditto most of the Russians. So I am working on a list that could be read, reading every night for an hour, for two years, that would be mind-expanding but not labor. 50 books. Some are good introes to a style or writer, some to periods.
This is my start. I am eager for additions.

The Magnificent Century-- Costain                                                                                  

The New Testament

Greek Way--Edith Hamilton

The Duchess of Malfi--Webster

Coming of Age in the Milky Way--Ferris

Killer Angels--Sharra

Game of Thrones  (First of Fire and Ice Series)--Martin

The Iliad

Mere Christianity-- C. S. Lewis

Bleak House--Dickens

                                                                                                                    
Middlemarch--George Eliot

When Genius Failed-- Roger Lowenstein

A Night to Remember--Walter Lord

The Big Short--Lewis

                                                                                                                       
Ivanhoe --Walter Scott

Hot Zone--Preston

Daughter of Time ---Tey

Master and Commander--O'Brien

Winter's Bone--Woodrell

Kidnapped--Stevenson

Cave--Saramago

Call of the Wild--London

Huckleberry Finn--Twain

Leisure The Basis of Culture--Pieper

The Count of Monte Cristo--Dumas

Sunday Sermon 12/30/12

Today's gospel is the only description of Christ we have between His life as an infant and as a preaching adult. It is distinctive amidst the complex and challenging philosophical passages typical of the gospel. In this episode, Christ's parents lose Him for three days. They lose the Son of God in a town in the Middle East for three days! During the first Jewish-Roman war (66–73 CE) the population of Jerusalem was estimated at 600,000 persons by Roman historian Tacitus, while Josephus, estimated that there were as many as 1,100,000, who were killed in the war. This does not include visitors to the religious center. And the child was from Nazareth, a small town that was, apparently, a suburb of Sepphoris, a town expanded by Herod's son, and a Roman military center, estimated at about 20,000 people. Nazareth was small; a twelve year old from Nazareth lost in Jerusalem would be really lost.

How could Christ get lost in Jerusalem? Can anyone imagine how distraught they must have been. And how could Christ be so dismissive of their anxiety?

There is a distance here, unsettling and strange. There is always this suggestion of a parallel plane Christ is touching, some otherworldly element at work. And this moment, the losing of a child, is such a common and riveting moment--almost elemental in the human narrative. But here it is reversed. The child is not lost, the parents are lost from Him.


((A mosaic from Sepphoris)

Cab Thoughts 12/29/12

Every debt is ultimately paid, if not by the debtor, then eventually by the creditor.

~Jim Grant

Alan Lankford of the University of Alabama analyzed data from a recent New York Police Department study of “active shooters”—criminals who attempted to murder people in a confined area, where there are lots of people, and who chose at least some victims randomly. Counting only the incidents with at least two casualties, there were 179 such crimes between 1966 and 2010. In the 1980s, there were 18. In the 1990s, there were 54. In the 2000s, there were 87.

McElroy is out for the next Jet game. He has been suffering concussion-like symptoms after being sacked 11 times in the Jets' 27-17 loss to San Diego last Sunday. 11!

The wind industry will install about 12,000 megawatts of new capacity in 2012 that will produce an amount of electricity in the course of a full year equal to about 6 nuclear plants the size of the Three Mile Island nuclear unit that continues to operate. In 2013 wind wind will provide 5% of the nation's electricity. But it is expensive. (see below.)

Golden Oldie on Terrorists: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/02/good-man-is-hard-to-find.html

What is Executive Order 6102?

This from a discussion on SeekingAlpha on companies trying to damage competitors they could not defeat: "Some execs from a top 20 automotive component company (They acquired an entity I worked for.) discussed in a meeting how they would damage components from other competing suppliers on their vehicles and take them back to the dealer to effect the warranty data. Since the components we are talking about had very low ppm numbers over the warranty time frame a few added returns would make a significant difference if it was done over a short period. "

40% of the voters in the last election were unmarried.

The etymology of "the whole nine yards:" Two 1912 articles in The Mount Vernon Signal in Kentucky promised to “give” or “tell” the “whole six yards” of a story. There was another instance from 1916, in the same paper. The dating clearly refutes the popular ammunition-belt theory from the Second World War and the more modern concrete-mixer theory while the Kentucky focus suggests a probable “backwoods provenance.” As for the meaning of the phrase the slippage from six yards to nine — part of the same “numerical phrase inflation,” that turned “Cloud 7” to “Cloud 9” — suggests it doesn’t refer to anything in particular any more than, say, “the whole shebang” does. So intense interest and research reveals, as an answer, nothing much, in both meanings of the phrase.

During peak hours, the 3,200 megawatts of solar capacity built will provide the equivalent of 2 nuclear plants.

Some of the materials in lithium-ion batteries come from conflict regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even non-conflict mining of materials is often done in appalling conditions. "Blood energy" anyone?

Dominion is closing their nuclear plant in Wisconsin. Why? The nuclear plant is losing money, despite operating well. Its operating costs of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour make it uneconomic in today's low-priced competitive wholesale electricity markets. This does not bode well for nuclear power. It is being phased out because it is too expensive, not too dangerous.

The three largest mental health hospitals in the U.S. are the psychiatric wings at Riker's Island in New York, Cook County Jail in Chicago and Los Angeles County Jail. Ex Post Facto management.

DARPA has remarkable programs, some whimsical and some quite impressive. One of the latter is the LS3, the Legged Squad Support System.

Developers want the system to be able to carry 400 pounds of gear up to 24 miles in varied terrain, and must also “follow the leader either in an exact path or its own chosen path that is best for itself. The interaction needs to be intuitive.” In short, “it needs to act like a trained animal.”
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has the top two best selling books on the NYT best selling book list.

Wind subsidies cost $52.48 per one million watt hours generated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By contrast, the subsidies for generating the same amount of electricity from nuclear power are $3.10, from hydropower 84 cents, from coal 64 cents, and from natural gas 63 cents. See "Dominion" above.

Business idea of the week:

Under the Affordable Care Act, employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees more must offer a health plan that covers at least 60% of the of the actuarial value of the cost of the benefits. One of the solutions is to divide the business in half to halve the number of employees for each entity. But for that to be legitimate, the control of one of the entities must be surrendered. Someone could start a business of "second halves," created in a way where the impact of dividing the company could be lessened and more palatable to the original owner.

Condom dispensers will be placed in the 22 Philadelphia high schools whose students had the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and condoms will be available free to any student.

On July 25, 1764, four Lenape Indians walked into a one-room schoolhouse in colonial Pennsylvania and killed Enoch Brown and 10 of his pupils. One child survived, scalped. He lived demented to the end of his days.

California’s Monterey Shale stretches 200 miles south from San Francisco. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the shale formation could hold 15.4 billion barrels of oil, which would be double the combined reserves of the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas. That is huge. Wouldn't it be funny if the environmentally correct California became the new Texas in drilling.

An AP poll finds that one-third of the population has little or no belief in science. Among the science doubting group, acceptance that climate change is real jumped from 47% in 2009 to 61% today.
 
In October, armed attackers, presumed to be members of Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group with links to al Qaeda, invaded the Tudun Wada Wuro Patuje area in Nigeria, and entered the off-campus housing of the Federal Polytechnic State University. The attackers called students out of their rooms and asked for their names. Those with Christian names were shot dead or killed with knives. Students with traditionally Muslim names were told to quote Islamic scripture.

Just one in three Mexicans graduates from high school, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Of Mexico's 99,400 primary schools, just 4,750 offer a full day of classes, with the rest offering students just four hours apiece, according to government statistics. Teaching positions are lifetime and can be willed or sold at the teacher's retirement or death.

The only democracy Egypt has known in 5,000 years of recorded history lasted six years — from 1946, when the World War II British protectorate came to an end, until 1952, when Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Free Officers movement dethroned and exiled King Farouk.

Nasser‘s coup was inspired by Egypt‘s defeat in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

2% of crimes in Mexico are solved.

Who is Jacintha Saldanha?

AAAAANNNNNDDDddd.......... a graph:

Boys Will Be Boys Department

Continuing on with our review of the Weather Underground, a reminder of the Weather Underground activities during their apparently excusable adolescent phase (from Larry Grathwohl ):

Weather Underground Attacks and Activities

7 October 1969 – Bombing of Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago, apparently as a “kickoff” for the “Days of Rage” riots in the city October 8-11, 1969. The Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”

8 October-11, 1969 – The “Days of Rage” riots occur in Chicago in which 287 Weatherman members from throughout the country were arrested and a large amount of property damage was done.

6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO stated in their book “Prairie Fire” that they had did the explosion.

13 February 1970 - Bombing of several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department.

16 February 1970 – Bombing of Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen.

6 March 1970 – Bombing in the 13th Police District of the Detroit, Michigan. 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, during that period, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.

6 March 1970 – “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members die. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails TO INFLICT MAXIMUM CASUALTIES UPON DETONATION.

30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO “bomb factory” on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO “weapons cache” in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.

10 May 1970 – Bombing of The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C.

21 May 1970 – The WUO under Bernardine Dohrn’s name releases its “Declaration of a State of War” communiqué.

6 June 1970 – The WUO sends a letter claiming credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice; however, no explosion actually took place. Months later, workmen in this building located an unexploded device which had apparently been dormant for some time.

9 June 1970 - Bombing of the New York City Police Headquarters.

27 July 1970 - Bombing of The Presidio army base in San Francisco. [NYT, 7/27/70]

12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, break out and escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.

8 October 1970 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. [NYT, 8/10/70]

10 October 1970 - Bombing of Queens traffic-court building. [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]

14 October 1970 - Bombing of the Harvard Center for International Affairs [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]

1 March 1971 - Bombing of the United States Capitol. “ [NYT, 3/2/71]

April, 1971 – Pine St “bomb factory” discovered in San Francisco, California.

29 August, 1971 - Bombing of the Office of California Prisons. [LAT, 8/29/71]

17 September 1971 - Bombing of The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY [NYT, 9/18/71]

15 October 1971 - Bombing of William Bundy’s office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]

19 May 1972 - Bombing of the Pentagon. [NYT, 5/19/72]

18 May 1973 - Bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York

28 September 1973 - Bombing of ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy . [NYT, 9/28/73]

6 March 1974 - Bombing of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco

31 May 1974 - Bombing of The Office of the California Attorney General.

17 June 1974 - Bombing of Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters.

11 September 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation).

29 January 1975 - Bombing of the State Department in (AP. “State Department Rattled by Blast,” The Daily Times-News, January 29 1975, p.1)

16 June 1975 - Bombing of Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York.

September, 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation.

October 20, 1981 - Brinks robbery in which several members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army stole over $1 million from a Brinks armored car near Nyack, New York. The robbers murdered 2 police officers and 1 Brinks guard. Several others were wounded

Prarie Fire

Our concern about terrorism has an intense but selective memory. The next two notes will cover the Weather Underground, a violent sect of the student movement of the '60s and '70s. Several graduates of that vicious element have become quite influential since.

An underground newspaper called "The Berkeley Tribe," in August 1970, had an article titled, " Unsettled Accounts". Underneath this headline it stated, "Larry Grathwohl is one of the most dangerous police agents ever to infiltrate the American revolutionary movement." Grathwohl successfully infiltrated the Weather Underground for the FBI and his observations and reminiscences have been published and broadcast--video from his appearance before the Senate, his book "The Young Revolutionaries," and a number of documentaries and spots. These provide reminders of how dangerous, if limited, these self-styled revolutionaries were and how much damage they did. One of the more chilling is his description of a meeting involving William Ayers, among others, discussing the eventual need for anti-capitalist reeducation camps in the Southwest and the elimination (i.e. murder) of the 25 million people they thought would resist such a program.

Grathwohl's main thesis has been that the Underground's anti-war position was one of convenience; their real aim was to destroy the economic and social structure of the U.S.. For some reason people never took them very seriously but they were serious. Ayers himself continues to be an influence in America and seems to have escaped judgment. (His wife certainly has.)

With the recent violence in Connecticut and Ayres' admitted influence upon the current administration, these snippets have been picked out from Grathwohl's writings:


I worked with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in the Weather Underground as an informant for the FBI. I never heard of Obama during my time in the movement, although I understand Joel Gilbert has developed information that Obama was active with a Weather Underground support group, the May 19th Communist Organization, in New York.

I left the Weather Underground and testified against Ayers and Dohrn for their involvement in a murder plot that killed Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell

I remember one meeting when our Weatherman “collective” brought up the subject of the Kennedy assassinations. At least 20 to 25 people were present and Bill Ayers was one of them. I heard Bill state that the murders of both John F. Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy were a good thing because liberals compromise the conflict between U.S. imperialism and the socialist revolution.

One of my assignments was Detroit, Michigan, and I arrived there in late January of 1970. Shortly after my arrival I was assigned to a cell with four other people and during the meeting with Bill Ayers we were told that our objective would be to place bombs at the Detroit Police Officers Association (DPOA Building) and at the 13th precinct. Furthermore Bill instructed us to determine the best time to place these explosive devices ......After a week of information gathering we had another meeting with Bill Ayers and at this time I suggested to Bill that if we placed the bomb in the walkway between these two buildings the DPOA building would suffer little if any damage while the red barn restaurant would most likely be destroyed. I also concluded that customers in that restaurant would die. Bill Ayers responded by telling me, "sometimes innocent people have to die in a revolution."

I was told by Bill Ayers in February of 1970 that Bernardine Dorn was the main perpetrator of the bombing of the Park Police Station which resulted in the death of Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell.

Saturnalia and Christmas

Saturn is the Roman Chronos, an early Titan in the history of the evolution of the gods and man, the son of the Earth and Sky. He defeats his siblings and, in fear of a prophesy that he will be overthrown by a son, eats his children. One child, Zeus, is hidden by his mother and grows to rescue his siblings and overthrow his father.

Saturn is the original fertility symbol in mythology, preceding Persephone in chronology and hierarchy. He does not quite fit the popular notion of a historical evolutionary progression away from female fertility goddesses to the more combative male deities. As the second layer of the gods, supplanted by Zeus and his siblings, he is much less active but had a significant old mythological following.

Saturnalia originated as a farmer's festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season  (satus means sowing). It started as a two day celebration but grew longer and later; it was seven days around the winter solstice in the third century A.D., when numerous archaeological sites demonstrate that the cult of Saturn still survived. The poet Lucian of Samosata (AD 120-180) has the god Cronos (Saturn) say in his poem, Saturnalia:

During my week the serious is barred: no business is allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping...an occasional dunking of corked faces in icy water--such are the functions over which I preside. 

A public holiday with gifts, masters and slaves swapping clothes, the strange election of a temporary house "monarch." A time for feasting, goodwill, generosity to the poor, the exchange of gifts and the decoration of trees.

By that time, with Christianity well established, it is difficult to determine which gave and took. 

 

Merry Christmas

Today we celebrate God's stepping into Time. In this extraordinary integration, He enters a Middle Eastern family and places Himself in their care.

Always responsible to Him, they became responsible for Him.

Medicine as a Product

Dr. Toby Cosgrove, a physician and the CEO of Cleveland Clinic, gave a very enlightening interview recently to the WSJ. The topic was his view of the Affordable Care Act.

He thinks this bill will replace the fee-for-service system for one that rewards hospitals for efficient and high quality care. The system will emphasize hospital organizations; physicians will not be allowed to be independent, they will be instruments of integrated care providers. Doctors will be paid a salary and will not be paid on the basis of productivity.

He expects consolidation to occur country-wide and compared the new medicine to other nationalized consumer systems: "I don't think that anyone would suggest that supermarkets have not reduced the cost of food across the United States or that books from Amazon don't cost less than books do from your local bookstore." When asked if consolidation has had an impact on costs up to now he replied it had not because "Medicare pays 6% under the cost of delivering care, Medicaid 13% under the cost of delivering care." That means that every single medicare or Medicaid patient cost more to take care of than the hospital is compensated for. That means the private insurer , Blue Cross, Etna and the like have to be overcharged to make up the difference.

When asked about the argument that physicians should not be cost conscious and should weigh only clinical factors in their decisions, Dr. Cosgrove said, "They can't do that."

So he sees the medical system shifting from physician-driven to system-driven and decisions on care to be influenced by cost considerations. If you think this sounds like the direct opposite of what one would think of as "professionalism," you would be right.

Dr. Cosgrove estimates that in ten years 75% of health care costs will be paid by the federal government and eventually it will be entirely single payer. The displacement of physician's responsibility from the patient to the hospital/system/insurer will be the end of medicine as a profession.

Sunday Serman 12/23/12

In today's gospel, Mary meets Elizabeth. John does fetal gymnastics.

This seems to be an under-appreciated moment in the gospel. Mary travels to see her older cousin; both have experienced an obstetrical miracle. Elizabeth, understandings the hierarchy of things, is thrilled and honored.

They stand there, or sit there--perhaps across a rough table--in the hills of Judah, looking at each other. Each is an Old Testament woman, each is carrying the New Testament. They both are a bridge between two ways of life. But they are more than the interface between two histories, they are the culmination of one and the beginning of another. The other.

They literally embody each world. But, more than history, they unite the physical and the spiritual.

There are many profound paintings of this encounter and they understandably emphasize the obvious and overwhelming spirituality of the event. They are somber and reverential. But the humanity of these women, one a girl, is never shown. Imagine what they thought, these two, facing each other in that rugged land with their special knowledge.

What did they say to each other? Was there anything to say?

Cab Thoughts 12/22/12

"I am just going outside and may be some time" Lawrence Oates, leaving his tent to die on Scott's failed return from his doomed South Pole expedition.

Beijing and Shanghai each have more multimillionaires now than Los Angeles. (People with wealth of over 30 million dollars were measured.) New York still has the highest. But wealth is growing--and spreading. Even San Paulo, Brazil has more people in this subset than does San Francisco. This is being viewed as a shift in wealth from west to east. No matter. For the sake of fairness, I'm sure we can get them to share.

Gingrich said on "Meet the Press" regarding a Hilary Clinton presidential candidacy, “The Republican Party of today is truly incapable of competing at that level.” But the Republicans couldn't beat Winnie-the-Pooh. Why would Obama turn his "community organizers" loose for Hilary? Why not for Michelle? The Republicans couldn't beat her either.

Every 48 seconds, someone uses a handgun to defend himself against a crime (according to Florida State University's Gary Kleck, using data collected by liberal pollster Peter Hart in a poll paid for by the anti-gun lobby).

In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2008), Jason C. Matejkowski and his co-authors reported that 16% of state prisoners who had perpetrated murders were mentally ill. And according to a study released in July by the Treatment Advocacy Center, the number of state hospital beds in America per capita has plummeted to 1850 levels, or 14.1 beds per 100,000 people. 

The Orange County Register reported that Disney canceled a scheduled appearance bySuzy Favor Hamilton at the August 2013 expo during the Disneyland Half Marathon weekend. So who's the headline getter, this woman or Gabby Douglas?

Why will the coming War on Guns have more success than the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty? Or, for that matter, the War on Alcohol from Prohibition?

If the 4 billion in additional tax breaks identified by the administration for the oil and gas industry were eliminated it would work out to ~$0.014/gallon of gasoline.

Seats for the Notre Dame game are going for $5500.00 a seat.

Cave wrote an interesting article decrying the progression of economist from the failed "scientific socialism" planning to the new, improved soon-to-be-failed "scientific capitalism" planning as they try to decrease risk in the economy. (What Hayek called the "fatal conceit.") He includes one line from Popper: "In an economic system, if the goal of the authorities is to reduce some particular risks, then the sum of all these suppressed risks will reappear one day through a massive increase in the systemic risk and this will happen because the future is unknowable". So the sum of risks is relatively constant and one can take them in small, digestible doses or in one, large, indigestible block.

Question of the day: Who was Maria Crofts Halpin?

Good news: Some of the New Education policies have been successful. According to Professor of Psychology Roy Baumeister, one of the leading criminologists in America, violent criminals have an extraordinarily high self-esteem, much more than the average citizen.

The U.S. is giving the Egyptians twenty F-16s. The F-16 is the best fighter jet in the world, and the U.S. has already made Egypt fourth in the world in F-16s ownership. The other three are: the U.S., Israel and Turkey. I'll bet the Israelis are thrilled with the American largess. But it is nice to know that Armageddon will be fought out high tech.

A Ponderosa Pine forest experiences a lightning-lit fire about once a decade under natural conditions.

Gold is not a consistent inflation hedge and pays no interest so why do people buy it? One reason: If global production of gold continues at a rate of 2,500 metric tons a year, and if the USGS is correct in its estimate that there are only 51,000 metric tons of exploitable gold reserves, then gold production will be exhausted in about 20 years.

Medicare pays 6% under the cost of delivering care, Medicaid 13% under the cost of delivering care. So hospitals lose money on every single Medicare and Medicaid patient. Right now they make it up by charging the private insurer more for the same thing. But what will happen when there is no productive, richer segment to exploit?

New business of the week: The political landscape is crowded with special interest lobbying groups, mostly representative of the state of the nation one generation ago: AARP, unions, teacher groups, illnesses. But the demographics have changed and while the older groups have a lot to lose with change, they are not as numerical as they used to be. For example, In 2011, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 11.8 percent. Bur in 1983 it was 20.1%. Moreover the makeup has changed. Public-sector workers have a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9 percent). Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 36.8 percent. These are not numbers one usually associates with union blue collar tradesmen. And what is not represented is youth, not the Young Republicans or Americans for Freedom but young people with their special interest. Hence, the business of the week is a young American lobby.

Last week was the anniversary of the Apollo 17 moon landing, the last moon landing. Appropriately, politics was prominent. Former X-15 pilot Joe Engle had trained extensively with Cernan and Evans for lunar exploration as the backup LMP on Apollo 14. It was expected that the entire crew would rotate up to prime crew for Apollo 17, but once it became clear that this would be the last lunar flight, the scientific community pressed NASA to select a scientist-astronaut to land on the Moon. NASA administration then pressed Deke Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations responsible for crew assignments, to make the change and he presented Cernan with the choice of replacing Engle with geologist Harrison Schmitt on his crew; otherwise Slayton would assign Apollo 17 to Dick Gordon's entire crew (the back-up crew and the planned crew for the now cancelled Apollo 18) to include Schmitt. Cernan opted to fly with Schmitt.

Are increased sales always good? Dollar Stores sales are up 4%.

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/income-disparity-and-its-discontents.html

AAAAANNNNDDDDddddd......a graph:

Economic Wack-A-Mole

Cave wrote an interesting article decrying the progression of economists from the failed "scientific socialism" planning to the new, improved soon-to-be-failed "scientific capitalism" planning as they try to decrease risk in the economy. (What Hayek called the "fatal conceit.") He includes one line from Popper: Karl Popper explained: "In an economic system, if the goal of the authorities is to reduce some particular risks, then the sum of all these suppressed risks will reappear one day through a massive increase in the systemic risk and this will happen because the future is unknowable". So the sum of risks is relatively constant and one can take them in small, digestible doses or in one, large, indigestible block.

Note that the effort is made to manipulate what cannot be manipulated. The recognition of our limits is not fatalistic, it is realistic. And the efforts of economists and politicians to avert the consequences of mistakes is little more than those of a witch doctor sacrificing a virgin to sedate the volcano.

Sometimes it seems to work. 

Bork Redux

Robert Bork has died. This is an old blog about this accomplished man done wrong by his government and its leaders.


Gingrich, Bork and Manning the Backroom Barricades

Gingrich is just another politician. What puts me off about him is his practiced sincerity. But Barney Frank's accusation of his being responsible for the acrimony in Washington because of his combativeness with the Clinton administration really deserves a lot of assessment and criticism.

Much of the integrity in politics has the sincerity of a television preacher or the World Wrestling Federation. Entertainment and survival trumps philosophy. Lingering in the background of all these political moments is the suspicion that none of these people are very good at leadership and legislation but are very good at politics and the intricacies of government. One wonders if they all were displaced for new blood what would happen. Would all the office staffs be retained because no one can do without them? Would the new people even know how to get anything done, even know who to call?

So the machinery of Washington seems a mixture of hardwired mechanics and the sorcerer's apprentice. Political philosophy from any of these people seems a bit much to ask. And such demands may be inappropriate for politics. Churchill himself was not a particularly consistent politician but he was a focused and consistent leader regardless of the times. Lincoln, a truly great man in my eyes, has been criticized for his slowness in freeing the slaves as weak and uncommitted when I believe he was demanding sequentially only what the country could bear.

The rancor in Washington certainly was evident with Gingrich's success in 1994 but I wonder at its source; the Democrats had always had their way and I doubt the change was easy for them. But anyone who thinks that the struggles of that administration initiated rancor in Washington is not remembering the single seminal moment of domestic politics in my lifetime, the domestic counterpart of the foreign adventure in Viet Nam, a moment that made me reassess the entire American political process. Bork.

Robert Bork graduated Phi Beta Kappa in law, was a U.S. Marine, became a lawyer and eventually specialized in anti-trust where he developed a unique notion that emphasized maximizing consumer welfare which, over time, became the dominate thinking in antitrust matters in America. He became Solicitor General and, during the "Saturday Night Massacre," when Nixon tried to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox for trying to examine the Oval Office tapes of president conversations, U.S. Attorney Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelhaus both resigned in protest and Bork became Acting Attorney General. He planned to resign as well but Richardson and Ruckelshaus persuaded him to stay on to maintain the Justice Department's continuity and Bork fired Cox. He then became a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. There he developed a reputation as a constitutional scholar in his efforts to deal with the judicial problem of making law without popular approval advocating "originalism", guiding decisions based on the understanding of the framers' original understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Bork said, "The truth is that a judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else." He built on the Alexander Bickel's influential critiques of the Warren Court for poor reasoning, activism and misuse of historical materials. Bork said, "We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own." His reputation grew and, before long, he was the most highly regarded judge in the American judiciary. In 1987 Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court.

No one who knew anything about Bork or law felt that he was anything but a significant legal scholar of the highest integrity. One may not agree with him but everyone recognized that he was eminently qualified to be on the Supreme Court, perhaps more than all but a few past judges. But quality was and would not be the point. Bork did not follow the current in Washington and would be challenged, not by reason or argument but by a monumental smear campaign, aided and abetted by the press. The leader of this unconscionable attack on this distinguished man amazingly was one of politics most disreputable characters, Sen. Edward Kennedy, a man devoid of redeeming values. In a speech that will be remembered as a nadir of political behavior he cried " Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice." So a private citizen, respected and accomplished, is savagely attacked by his own government representatives.

The Senate did not rise above this mockery. Bork was voted down and his name became a word used to describe vicious and ad hominid attacks with the help of the media to destroy the reputation of an individual and eliminate him from political contention. This event had more of an impact than any other political incident in the 1980's and the image of politicians and Washington has been irrevocably stained in many minds since. The ersatz attack on Clarence Thomas later--no less inspired but peculiar and creepy--tried to be the 1990's equivalent of political disillusion but was easily displaced by the Clinton circus later in the decade.

Gingrich is no innocent but he is innocent of this.

The Killer of Men

"These tragedies must end," Obama said at Newtown this weekend.

Proud words. Apparently Washington has an insight into these problems they are not sharing. What can we simple folk work out from the information of the last several home-grown disasters?

One, the perpetrators were male, except when they weren't. For example,  Jennifer San Marco in Goleta, California.
Two, they were crazy, except when they weren't. McVeigh at Oklahoma wasn't crazy nor were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine.
Three, they used guns, except when they didn't. McVeigh and the Columbine wannabes used--or tried to use--explosives.

Generalities about people and groups in most circles are called bigotry and prejudice unless it is done by some social scientist or politician for some vague presumed good. Indeed there are some who think the very inability of social science to generalize well is the reason for our success as a species: The unpredictability of the individual for astonishing good as well as evil. Killers like this one in Connecticut are not only unpredictable, they are the obverse of our creative side.

Or are these malignancies really outliers? Mao killed over 35 million, the Khmer Rouge killed 30% of Cambodia's population (so many that they developed a bullet conservation program and made "to hoe" a verb meaning "to kill"), Stalin killed 45 million and Hitler 6 million Jews alone, and the Turks killed over a million Armenians in 1915. Ahmadinajad promises to kill all the Jews in the world--the world--and there does not seem to be an age requirement in his mind. And Lord knows how many Hutus and Tutsis were killed. We are not talking combat here, we are talking murder.

Until Mr. Obama has some way of first protecting people from the great killer of men, the State, he is wasting his time with these terrible, but small, tragedies. And we, the potential victims, deserve leadership with a better understanding of our risk.

Apocalypse and Epiphany

There is some excitement over the prophesy made by an ancient central American culture, a culture with a death ceremony orientation and without the wheel, about the end of the world. There is far better evidence from a much more reliable civilization.

One year ago my wife bought a new faucet for our kitchen. It looked great but never worked as well as the faucet it replaced. The hot water was tepid, the flow scant. We began to have trouble with the dishwasher and the repair man said it was because we were not rinsing the dishes adequately before washing and, with the new faucet, we indeed could not rinse well. The dishwasher will need replaced soon. Finally we asked a friend, a contractor, to look at the faucet and he fixed it in a minute. Apparently new faucets are shipped with a built-in artificial restriction to water flow. This is an idea of the EPA. The faucet is actually sabotaged at the factory. So the new faucet has been specifically built to work poorly, has resulted in damage to the dishwasher that will require replacement and has caused frustration and anxiety ever since its purchase.

Building things not to work. If that isn't a sign of the apocalypse I don't know what is. I can not wait until the guy who pushed that idea through gets a promotion to the Department of State, Defense, or Medicine.

Prescott, Taxes and GDP

Edward Prescott and Lee Ohanian wrote an article recently on the direction of the American economy. Prescott was a Nobel Price co-winner in economics in 2004 and Ohanian is an economics professor at UCLA. (Ohanian is also from the Hoover Institute where Sowell is so there may be some slanting here.) Their article focuses on income transfers from the private to public sector with its resulting changes in productivity.

The marginal tax rate in the U.S. is currently around 40% if state, local and consumption taxes are included. In California it is closer to 60% (as high as France, Germany and Italy.) The authors claim that such transfers depress production and, in Europe, have resulted in a decrease in almost 30% of work hours from 1400/yr to 1000/yr since the 1950s. (Although it must be said--though they do not--that the Europe of the Post-war period had significant stimulus to be productive.) Similarly, the Americans have had a decline in production of 13.5% since 2008 (as projected, not actual.)

Interestingly, they refer to an Economist assessment of start-ups reaching the Fortune 500 from 1976 to 2007 (like Microsoft or Apple) and can find only one European company to do so, Norway's Renewable Energy Corp.

Associations are, of course, not necessarily causation and such a decline could also be linked to the economic performance of the Chicago Cubs but it is a worry. But that is not what the Romer research says; their research is quite damning regarding taxation's effect on the GDP. Governments are, at least logically, not as good a steward of money as the owners are. Nor are the recipients of government largess the best investments; they are in need of help because they are failing at what they do. Prescott and Ohanian say that the further increase in taxation and regulation from the current government is certain to steal financing from the productive centers and underwrite the less productive.

The European laboratory must mean something.

Sunday Sermon 12/16/12

In today's gospel, John comes out of the desert and he has a lot to say. But, in fact, what he demands is rather simple. There is no safety in being one of the chosen people, he says. Everyone is individually responsible. He asks that people be kind to one another, to share, to avoid abusing their positions. To the soldier he says, "Be content with your pay."

Be content with your pay?

John is the first interface of a collision of worlds. He is preceding Christ in his message of the importance of spirituality over the mundane. Yet his solution to this problem, this difficulty of managing spiritual demands in the physical, working world is indeed mundane. Be kind to one another. Do not take advantage of circumstances. Share. These simple things--things every individual can do--are the physical world's bridge to God. It is not as people you will be judged, it is as yourself.

John's life and death traces Christ's. He comes out of the desert, lives a spiritual life outside the world of men, preaches repentance and salvation, is imprisoned and murdered for provincial reasons. It is said that great drama is heightened by parallel themes. They reverberate and summate.  Laertes haunts Hamlet; he too is a tortured son trying to avenge the murder of his father. So it is with John. And recently, with the slaughter of the innocents in Connecticut. There is evil in the world, often it is beyond our ken or control. And there is great power in the individual, for ill but also for good.

Cab Thoughts 12/15/12

The lottery is a tax on stupidity--Voltaire


It is unlikely that Yamamoto ever said “You cannot invade America. There is a rifle behind every blade of grass.” It is, like so many of the modern fictions-disguised-as-history, the other, illegitimate, mixture of fact and fiction, the obverse and perverse of the genius of Barnes or McCartney, in this instance just noble support of the notion that an armed citizen deters the would-be despot, foreign or domestic.
But this terrible event in Connecticut should give everyone pause. Certainly the damage that the despot can do is far greater than that of a madman in a school or mall. The entire modern world stands in awe of the bloody tableau of damage done by self proclaimed leaders and heroes in their effort to take or administer their power for whatever blood claim or philosophical claim they believed they represented.
But ours is a huge bell-shaped curve with all sorts or stragglers, outliers and exceptions at the ends. And the weapons become increasingly more powerful.
One thing is certain: Lunacy and /or stupidity are incompatible with freedom.
Maybe we, as a species, are just to damn stupid to be free.


The worst mass school murder in American history took place on May 18,1927 in Bath Township, Mich., when a former school board member set off three bombs that killed 45 people.

The Dept of Homeland Security is teaching first responders to fight flesh-eating ghouls according to a report written by Tom Coburn, M.D.
U.S. Senator. Don't worry; we have plenty of money.

California electric car company Coda Automotive quietly cut 15 percent of its workforce, approximately 50 employees, on Friday.

It is curious that Bob Costas did not blame the Belcher murder/suicide on alcohol.

Jacintha Saldanha's death has certainly disappeared from the news. Perhaps people who take themselves seriously, responsibility as a trust make the average person uncomfortable.

Is Obama asleep at the wheel but confident the GPS is on? You can do that, you know, when history has a dialectically determined direction.

Mormonism has in its biblical history, the separation of the good and the bad people into two groups. The bad have been colored red and brown by God. But, if the good err, they will be punished by the colored having victory over them. One wonders if the Romney loss means more to him than just an election defeat.

Another reason not to own cats: Recent investigations have shown that Toxoplasma gondii – a single-celled parasite – can pass from the human gut to the brain where it may cause behavioral changes. It is a common cat parasite.

About 70% of freight in the U.S. is moved by truck with revenue of about $660 billion. Class 8 trucks (big ones) make up 2.7% of trucks but consume 21% of the truck fuel. Average MPG for a Class 8 truck: 4.8. Trucks are second behind air transport in CO2 production. Compared to trains, there is 480 ton miles per gallon for railroads and 110 ton miles per gallon for heavy trucks.

 

In Goethe’s 1831 drama "Faust", the devil persuades a bankrupt emperor to print and spend vast quantities of paper money as a short-term fix for his country’s fiscal problems. As a consequence, the empire ultimately unravels and descends into chaos.

Electric vehicles (which include Plug-in Prius) constituted .7% of auto sales in November and .4% for 2012 overall. Last month Volt sales fell by 1,442 units but Ford C-MAX Energi sales increased by 1,115 units.

African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but according to the Justice Department, they comprise 39 percent of violent crime convictions. Thirty-six percent of all murders in America are committed by African-Americans, and 90 percent of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks. Between 1976-2005, blacks committed 59% of felony murders. Overall, blacks are 9 times more likely to commit murder than whites.
Source: US DOJ

 

A study out purports to show that having children leads to a longer life. There are, of course, a zillion things wrong with the study, but there is no question that life seems longer to parents.

Michael D'Antuono's painting, "Truth," on display at the Bunker Hill Community College Art Gallery (until December 15th so you have to hurry):

About 1.5 million, or about 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree holders age 25 or younger – were unemployed or underemployed in 2011. For high school grads (age 17-20), the unemployment rate was 31.1 percent from April 2011-March 2012. According to new U.S. government projections, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings in the next eight years will require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Violence off the field in football is like the peace process in the Middle East; soon no one will notice.

Koichi Tanaka shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2003 for his work on protein-molecule analysis after his work was consistently cited by others who advanced it but he never received recognition in his own company until after he won the prize. The world is filled with these innovative people, most who left their parent company after their ideas went unappreciated. Sam Walton left Ben Franklin, Eugene Kleiner left William Shockley's Semiconductor Laboratory for Fairchild then Moore left Fairchild for Intel, Hal Sperlich took his rejected mini-van concept to Chrysler.

In 2008 for the first time in history there were more people living in cities than on the land. In 1950, there were two cities with a population of more than ten million. By 1975, there were three. As of 2007, there were nineteen, and by 2025, the United Nations estimates that there will be twenty-seven.
There are ninety cities in China alone that have a population of greater than one million. We are becoming a different people, whether we have the genes for it or not.

China is second behind the U.S. in oil consumption but China's per capita use is 1/10th of the U.S..

At the Battle of Nagashino in Japan in 1575, an army of 38,000 men, of whom 10,000 carried guns, defeated an army of sword-wielding samurai. It was a crisis for the warrior class; it was apparent that a farmer could kill a samurai knight with a gun and the whole system was threatened. In the early seventeenth century, Tokugawa Ieyasu and his descen­dants defeated their rivals and established a military dictatorship. In the 1630s, they began restricting the manufacture and sale of firearms. Only in two towns could gun makers practice their trade. Civilians were for­bidden to buy guns. Japan banned foreigners and travel by the Japanese. Isolated, they did fine until Perry showed up in 1853 with ships and foreigners....and guns. Lessons? Isolation can work. Guns are a great leveler. Technology is usually good for a culture but not always for the leaders of the culture. Banning guns--or any leveling weapon--is very good for the unreasonably powerful.

Question of the Day: What was the Brown Dog Affair?

Gas in Europe is 2 to 2.5 times the cost in the U.S..

Rural voters accounted for just 14 percent of the turnout in last month's election.

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/11/happy-meals-and-american-way-of-life.html

AAAAAAANNNNNNDDDDDDDDD a graph:

National Saving and Borrowing

What happens with the society's money? It can be divided up into three segments: 1. What the private (household and business community) does with its net activity (borrow or save/pay down debt) 2. what the government does net (borrow or pay down debt) and 3. what happens with the Current Account Balance (is there a trade surplus or deficit.) Indeed, the three are intimately related: X+Y=Z. If private activity is positive (i.e. savings are generated) and the government activity an equal amount of money borrowed (i.e. deficit equals the savings in the private sector) then the Account Balance is zero.

X+Y always equals Z

100 dollars private savings/debt reduction + 100 dollars government surplus = 200 dollars trade surplus.
100 dollars private debt + 200 dollars government surplus = 100 dollars trade surplus.

When the government starts to run big deficits, the only answer is to have the private sector start to run a surplus or to create some huge trade surplus. The government might look at some things we could export and encourage it.

(N.B. Natural gas in Japan is over $15, compared to $3.78 in the US. In Europe is in double digits.)

The Bakken Multiplier

Money is often viewed as a limited resource, often controlled by some out of proportion to others. That is why so many want to redistribute it. But money can be viral. Like success.

Take the Bakken area, a rock formation in North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan. A research paper by Dow initially projected the formation as a potential oil source. Leigh Price, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geologist, wrote a paper declaring the shale site had  petroleum  reserves that ranged from 271 billion to 503 billion barrels. Estimates have changed (up and down) and there has always been the concern over the accessibility of the oil; it is technically challenging. However, recently the USGS released a report estimating the amount of technically recoverable, undiscovered oil in the Bakken formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels.

This is a huge find and companies have moved in with division strength. Ports have been refitted to allow the exporting of petroleum where they used to be dedicated for importing. It is estimated that ports like McAllen, Texas will be exporting in 3 to 4 years. And the market is huge as well. Gas costs between $3.50 to $4.00 in the U.S.; in Japan it is over $15 and in Europe it is in double digits. (Interestingly, the Russians, Europe's largest gas source, has professional writers that follow American debates over gas drilling and write "reporting pieces" for the European press trying to discourage drilling in Europe to maintain their monopoly.)

The impact is more than local, although it is locally impressive. Unemployment in the Bakken region is 1%. Pay in a fast food restaurant is $10-15 an hour. The oil rigs pay up to $350,000 a year to the guy who runs it (no college degree required) and starting salary on the rig is $120,000 a year, with no experience. These areas are remote, dangerous and uncomfortable to work in but that means they also need trucks to bring the petroleum to shipping sites; salary for oil-truck drivers is $150-175,000 a year.

Shale gas will add about 0.5% to the growth of US GDP next year, in a year when we will be lucky to get 2%. But there is more. The Financial Times wrote recently, "Europeans are already complaining that cheap US gas is encouraging a flight of energy intensive businesses [to the US]. How can, say Europe's chemical producers – buying expensive Russian gas – compete with US rivals guaranteed access to cut-price feedstock?”

Success grows. Like money.

The Top 5%

In a casual conversation a remark was made by a venture capitalist who was trying to defend his searching for 20X return on an investment, an outrageous return by most standards. He said that with a 95% failure rate of the businesses he saw to invest in, of course he needed 20X return on the remaining 5% to break even. The highest profile angel investor in the city has said he invested in 17 start-ups and never had one success, not one exit with a profit.

This is difficult and dangerous stuff--unless, of course, you are investing with someone else's money. It seems, unlike the superficial impression, these people are taking risk not to counteract the uncertainty of the investing world; they are counting on it.

 

Nyasasaurus parringtoni

There is a scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where the Arc is being moved down a long warehouse corridor to be stored in anonymity and obscurity for ever more. It got a laugh because the audience knew it was completely outlandish but consistent with every one's idea of a bureaucracy. Now come the intrepid dinosaur hunters. Where are they hunting? Museums.

A dinosaur, likely the oldest dinosaur ever found, has been discovered. Or rediscovered. The animal lived about 245 million years ago, 10 million to 15 million years earlier than any previously discovered fossils, when Pangaea existed before separating into Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia. Called Nyasasaurus parringtoni after southern Africa's Lake Nyasa where it was found (now called Lake Malawi) it was about 3 feet at the hip, 2 to 3 times as long head to tail, and weighed about 44 to 130 pounds.

The problem is it was discovered and retrieved in the 1930's, packed and stored in London's Natural History Museum and only recently recognized for what it was.

Sterling Nesbitt at the University of Washington in Seattle who led the study said: "Found in the '30s, first described in the 1950s … Now 80 years later, we're putting it all together."

Doesn't this sound a bit vague and disordered, even for university professors? Doesn't this make "hiding in plain sight" somewhat inadequate?

Has our search for knowledge turned into some weird self irony where even when we find significance we either don't recognize it or we forget it?

Tax Man in the Home

The Defense of Marriage Act, known by its acronym DOMA, defines marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of deciding who can receive a range of federal benefits.

Four federal district courts and two appeals courts have struck down the provision. The Supreme Court is going to review DOMA through the case of 83-year-old Edith Windsor, who sued to challenge a $363,000 federal estate tax bill after her partner of 44 years, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. Windsor married Spyer in 2007 after doctors told them that Spyer would not live much longer due to her multiple sclerosis. When Spyer died she left everything she had to Windsor. There is no dispute that if Windsor had been married to a man, her estate tax bill would have been zero. Hence the case.

Strangely, this debate is over the legality of one woman leaving her estate to her presumably illegal spouse instead of the far more obvious question: what right does the state have to take any one's estate or determine where it goes? 

More, when this law is overturned--which it likely will be in homage to current emotional direction--what is to prevent friends and family from marrying each other fraudulently to avoid taxation? Especially with the low childbirth rate in the U.S., a lot of estates are going to be left without obvious beneficiaries. Will a tax marriage industry emerge? Will childless widows marry sisters, childless widowers marry a childhood  friend to benefit his family?

Sunday Sermon 12/9/12

"Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar...." So begins the third chapter of Luke as he lists the Roman Empire's hierarchy in descending order and grandeur from Rome down to the introduction of lowly John, son of Zachary, who becomes aware of the word of God in the desert. So many of these passages seem to be written with a smile. Here the greatest powers in the world are used, under the guise of exactness and  specificity, to introduce us to a single man in a tiny outpost of that great empire. And the Christ he is announcing and the message of that Christ will rise and grow and drown that great empire and all those great men who lead it.

In this world of men and their empires a new element is being introduced: Spirituality. But spirituality does not meet the world on its own plane; the world of the spirit is a different world. It does not defeat the physical world, it supersedes it.

Please, give Caesar what is due him, Christ will later say, perhaps with good humor. But, ".. all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

Cab thoughts 12/8/12

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

 A nurse who was duped by a radio prank caller pretending to be the Queen and looking for information about Kate Middleton's condition has been found dead in what appears to be a suicide. The call and information was puerile and banal but hints at a real tension in the world: nonproductive vs. productive people, trivial jobs vs. significant jobs, silly people vs. people who take themselves very seriously.

Interesting surprise: According to Pew Research, 54% of white voters under 30 voted for Romney and only 41% for Obama. Nearly 20% of black males under 30 voted for Romney, more than three times what McCain got. And Romney got a greater percentage of the white vote than did Reagan.

New York Magizine reports that FOX News has banned Both Morris and Rove from commenting since the election. The reason is that the FOX bosses were angry at the two's defiant and sometimes confrontational insistance that Romney would win. It may be a bit more complicated. I know several people who rely on FOX News who have refused to watch it since the election. FOX may be seeing a loyalty decline and trying to reverse it.

The 3-D printer has offered a new problem in the world: the 3-D plastic (or, I suppose, even bread) gun. Anyone with a 3-D printer can make one.

A15 is 15% alcohol gasoline, the dream-child of the corn lobby and is beginning to make inroads. But no one has a clue about the impact of that concentration of ethanol on the internal combustion engine. According to the AAA, BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen have said that their warranties will not cover fuel-related claims caused by the use of E15. Perhaps it should be AA, not AAA, doing the objecting. Might make a great bumper sticker.

In 2012, Obama won with 2 million votes more than McCain got in 2008 and over 9 million less than his own 2008 numbers. Romney got less than McCain did. You probably want to read that again.

There is a new book out called "The Four Percent Universe" about what we, as observers, can see in space. Most is called "dark" as in unknown for now, and possibly forever. This should not be confused with emptiness. This is real and measurable but undefined. Of the universe, there is a mysterious 23 percent that astronomers call "dark matter", another even more mysterious 73 percent they call "dark energy". Which leaves only 4 percent, the things we can see like stars, solar systems and galaxies. That is the stuff of us. And we used to feel insignificant before.

Earth’s temperature has only been directly measured at enough locations to give a reasonably accurate global average for about the last 150 years, with the greatest accuracy (from satellites) only going back about 30 years. The “reliable” CO2 background level has only been directly continuously measured at one location (Mauna Loa) for about 50 years, and at a much larger number of locations for about 30 years.

Blimps! Discovery Air and Hybrid Air Vehicles is developing a blimp to deliver material to mining sites. What about fire? Didn't we learn this already? The dramatic fire of the Hindenburg was the painted fabric burning, not hydrogen. Hydrogen flames are invisible. A blend of 50% hydrogen in the helium could get more lift for a lower price, and still be safe. Hydrogen can't burn in the presence of Helium.

Is there an optimal CO2 level for the earth? For mankind? Could they be different? If they are different, should one be sacrificed? If so, which one?

I can not get over this quote from Harry Reid. "Now remember, we've already done more than a billion dollars' worth of cuts, so we need to get some credit for that." (Harry Reid speaking about expenditures.) We have a budget with a 1.6 trillion dollars deficit, a debt of 16 trillion dollars and he thinks cutting 1 billion dollars of expenditures is an achievement. It is frighteningly.......what? Stupid? Naive? Does he not know the magnitude of difference between billion and trillion? Or are these people in such a cocoon that everything is of little importance. Certainly an awake media would have jumped on this. Is anyone paying attention?

An individual without a high school degree or GED is more than 4X as likely to be an active lottery player as an individual educated above the high school level. Of individuals with the same level of education, black males are 10X as likely to be regular lottery players than white females.

The efficient markets argument: Like the joke about the economist refusing to pick up a $20 bill he sees on the ground because if it were a real $20 bill someone would have picked it up by now.

The Voyager 1 probe, launched 35 years ago to study the outer planets, is now about 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from Earth. At that distance, it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light 17 hours to reach Earth. It is leaving the confines of our solar system.

John Hanger, the former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is running for governor.

The Onion recently reported that the premier of North Korea had been voted the sexiest man in the world and a China newspaper, People's Daily, fell for it and printed it as legit. This week the North Koreans announced they had found a "unicorn lair" near a famous archeological site and this is being translated as a joke, sort of in retaliation for the Onion's. This, of course, implies that totalitarian regimes can have a sense of humor. And it also denies the indisputable history of political entities manipulating science and its relatives for political gain.

An upsetting site:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

You can still apply for a FDIC loan after evidence of serious financial problems. 40% are subprime and you need only 3% down 3 years after a default.

Question of the day: Who was Kennewick Man? And why does he look like Patrick Stewart?

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/11/capital-punishment.html

Texas encourages state investments with subsidies and tax breaks that amount to 19 billion dollars. Texas alone accounts for 25% of the $80 billion total of state and local subsidies paid each year around the country in battles for jobs.

AAAAAAnnnnddddd a graph:

When the GPS has Control of the Car

President Obama is seen as more of a philosophical force than a political one. It is doubtful that many previous leaders would boast of "leading from behind." There is a peculiar, almost spiritual quality about his positions. He seems to see himself as inspiring and principled more than leading.

An interesting aspect of dialectic philosophies is how inherent tension within a system evolves, how it "works itself out," without the obvious intervention of individual leadership. They are "leader proof." Indeed, the attempt by the system being phased out to preserve itself is never successful. The struggle contained within the system can be only delayed, not stopped or reversed, as its resolution is inevitable.

That notion might put Obama's famous inaction in a slightly different light.

Coal Heritics

Bad news for carbon opponents:


1.
 

2.
   Rank   Country                                                           Consumption 
                                                                       in thousand short tons

1	China	3,695,377.50
2	United States	1,048,295.13
3	India	721,986.38
4	Russian Federation	256,795.56
5	Germany	255,746.16
6	South Africa	206,192.84
7	Japan	205,983.41
8	Poland	148,870.45
9	Australia	145,155.67
10	Korea, Republic Of	125,575.31
11	Turkey	109,120.01
12	Kazakhstan	86,862.13
13	Taiwan, Province Of China	71,374.97
14	Ukraine	69,803.87
15	Greece	61,136.39
16	United Kingdom	55,373.51
17	Czech Republic	54,866.45
18	Indonesia	54,228.21
19	Canada	52,497.58
20	Serbia	42,085.14
21	Thailand	38,947.97
22	Romania	35,913.30
23	Bulgaria	35,611.27
24	Korea, Democratic People's Republic Of	30,349.94
25	Viet Nam	25,719.13
26	Brazil	25,370.80
27	Italy	22,852.02
28	Malaysia	21,322.01
29	France	20,020.18
30	Mexico	19,767.75

Chaos Theory

Structure. We love it. We pursue it. In our children we try to develop it as soon as we can and consider ourselves inferior parents if we can not. And we admire it everywhere, from Legos to sports teams to government. The opposite of structure is disorder. Entropy. Disintegration. Chaos. The enemy of civilization. It sounds like "planning," and who could object to a plan?

Yet there is a yang to this yin. Nature uses disorder to develop. Tightly integrated entities like military units or growing corporations seem to get congested, lose energy and creativeness and fail more than looser, more adaptive entities. And evolution seems to reward variety, not rigidity.

Nassem Taleb wrote a small article recently published in the WSJ with a twist on this thesis: Order can be the opponent of development and advancement. "Nothing fails in vain." Failure is creative (it makes for good restaurants.) Bottom up government--like the Swiss canton versus the top down autocratic infrastructure of Russia, Iraq  and Syria--allows for creation. And survival. He points out the great minds of the Golden Age of  English Science--Darwin, Cavendish, Parsons and Bayes--were not locked into a rigid disciplines, they were hobbyists. A free hand and a free mind. Intervention by leadership--especially government--should be an emergency, not maintenance.

Risk. Disorder. Failure. The creative force. And the enemy of politicians who, through lobbyists or ambition or arrogance or empathy, can not abide it.

A Short Summary of America and its Debt

"Now remember, we've already done more than a billion dollars' worth of cuts, so we need to get some credit for that."---Harry Reid speaking about expenditures. This is a quote from the leader of the Senate during debates over spending and taxing, euphemistically known as raising revenue.

The U.S. deficit--what we spend versus what we take in as taxes--is 1.2 trillion--TRILLION--dollars. Annually.

Our debt--the sum of our accumulated deficits which we pay interest on (as we did borrow it to spend it)--is 16 trillion--TRILLION--dollars. This does not include the future costs of current commitments.

Despite the vote this year, the vast majority of voters polled felt there was too much government in American lives. Yet, according to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics, government expenditures per person in France are $18,866.00 and in the U.S., $19,266.00.

But a comparison of taxation does not match the European expenditures. Government spending in Australia is 33.1% of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1%. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4% and revenues are 41%. But government spending in the U.S. is 42.2%, but revenues are 24%.

So...
1. We want more from government in our lives than we admit.
2. We are not willing to pay for those subsidies.
3. We elect laughable leadership and we do not care.