Three Airplane Books, Sanford, Connelly and Child--A Review

Good, cheap white wine, a calm but vibrant neighborhood, a good airplane book--these great and elusive ideals are sought by all. Here are three candidates for a great airplane book: "A Darkness More Than Night" by Michael Connelly, "61 Hours" by Lee Child and "Mind Prey" by John Sanford. Each of these books have the author's signature hero(es): The profiler McCaleb and the detective Bosch in Connelly's, Reacher the loner warrior in Child's, and Sanford's Lucas Davenport, the entrepreneurial  detective. All of these men have the peculiar modern requirements of disaffection, failed relationships and melancholy and they are distinguished from each other by their personal anger-violence ratio.

Sanford's story has the least to offer. I underline every book--interesting facts or presentation--and this is the first book in a long time where I underlined nothing. Aside from a cute little engagement ring theme, there was little engaging. There was some obnoxious looming threat to children, the default position of every writer.

I have a bit of trouble with Connolly; he is very grisly. I found The Poet almost unreadable. This offering was less so and clever, if contrived. The story line was nicely done with some good misdirections. Generally an adequate read.

I liked Child's book best. It does have some outrageous plotting, so outrageous that the reader suspects misdirection, but it is well enough written with some legitimate characters and is daringly placed in a very limited setting, snowbound in a small town in South Dakota. There is an appealing phone relationship developed in the story which softens the imposing Reacher. (I have no idea how Cruise is going to play him in the upcoming movie which sounds as if it is planned as a franchise production.)

All three served their purpose of distraction, Child best, Sanford least.

Cardiff Man

There is a wonderful story about America in a book called "Finding Oz" by Evan Schwartz. In October of 1869, in Cardiff, New York, a small town outside of Syracuse, a farmer named William Newell discovered a twelve foot "petrified giant " while digging a well. He soon placed a tent around it and charged admission. He eventually sold it to a local businessman for 37,000 dollars, a huge amount at the time.

Meanwhile archeologists examined the giant and declared it a recently created fake. Then a factory owner named George Hull admitted that he had commissioned its creation out of gypsum-just to prove how easy it was to fool Americans--and gave it to his cousin Newell to be "accidentally discovered". This apparently grew out of an argument he had with a local fundamentalist who believed that, according to Genesis, giants once roamed the earth.

Case closed, right? No. People kept coming. People kept paying to see it. P.T. Barnum offered an unbelievable 60,000 dollars for it and, when rebuffed, had his own replica built and advertised it as the real fake. ("There is a sucker born every minute" was apparently coined by the owner of the "original fake.") But Barnum's observation was more profound: "The American people love to be humbugged," he observed.

There was a local man, L. Frank Baum, a Syracuse castorine-oil merchant, who watched this evolve and took it to heart. When he wrote "Wizard of Oz" and the wizard is finally revealed as a fraud, he says, "it was the only thing I could do." The people of Oz were eager to be deluded and were willing "to do anything I wished them to."

Other generalization are yours to make.

The Forest and Trees of Politics

Obama's objection to Bain Capital is telling, political posturing aside.

Private equity firms are limited partnerships made up of people who, generally, think they are smarter than most other people, especially in business. (So far they have a lot in common with politicians.) But they make their living looking at companies that are failing, doing poorly or otherwise underachieving in the marketplace with the eye that they, Bain, can make them better, with the current management or without them. After analysis they pick a target, negotiate a price, buy it and then try to set it right. This almost always results in restructuring the company, with some personnel advanced, some removed and some business lines similarly changed. This involves firing people, closing plants or offices or projects and generally reshaping the company. The objective is to keep the company alive and restore profitability, profitability being the company's only true objective.

Excluding people, cutting people out, is truly offensive to the left. They cannot do it. And people who do it truly offend them.

In a way this silliness over Bain is symbolic of the clash in out culture. The left would continue the failing part of a business out of kindness and allow the whole system to fail. The right would fire Bob Cratchit to keep the business afloat.

It was said that General George McClellan was the finest general of his time, his country's best analyst, best tactician, best strategist. Lincoln appointed him to lead the Army of the North. But he suffered; he could not stand to see young men die. Worse, he could not stand to have his decisions lead to the death of young men. So he danced with Lee, who had no such reluctance, and the war dragged on with countless unplanned deaths, but deaths nonetheless, until Grant, a brute but a leader, took over.

Cab Thoughts 5/26/12

Today there are 79,000 Americans over 100 years old. By 2050 (when today's newborns are middle aged), this figure will reach 601,000. The $30,000 combined Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payment that is being handed, on average, to each of today's elderly equals almost two-thirds of per capita GDP.

Our national saving is less than our domestic investment, and has been the case for decades, our current account is negative (a deficit). This means foreigners are investing more in the United States than we Americans are investing abroad. Our national saving rate has gone from 15 percent to 0 percent. It has cut our domestic investment rate from 15 percent to 4 percent.

The Miami Herald reports that 47 million gallons of raw sewage in two years were dumped into local waters and that nationally there are 247,000 water and sewer main breaks every year. Yet reading the news one would think the real threat to our water was natural gas drilling.

The two presidents between Roosevelt and Kennedy were far more simple men. The sons of poor men, neither owned his own house until after his presidency, and both with farming backgrounds, both Truman and Eisenhower were Americans from a simpler time and place. This is a line from William Miller's book about them called "Two Americans": "Although members of the Lost Generation, neither of them was lost. Although members of their generation engaged in the 'revolt from the village' after the Great War and lived in Paris, neither of these villagers revolted. Neither went to Paris, or to anywhere else in Europe, except when sent there by the army."

So we have this political system that rewards the attractive, the slick, the handsome, the well-spoken, the careful and advances them to a position where they must make substantive decisions on war, the economy and international affairs. This is like choosing your left offensive tackle on the basis of his gardening skills.

Over 850,000 people now have top secret security clearance and more than twelve hundred top secret government organizations exist to help find and capture terrorists. 1,074 federal government organizations and nearly two thousand private companies are involved with programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in at least 17,000 locations across the United States - all of them working at the top secret classification level. The biggest growth had come within the many agencies and large cor­porations that had existed before the attacks. Of all the top secret units fighting terrorism after 9/11, a separate organization, the Joint Special Operations Command, is the single organization that has killed and captured more al-Qaeda members around the world and destroyed more of their training camps and safe houses than the rest of the U.S. government forces combined. JSOC also killed Bin Laden through its Navy SEAL Team 6. (From "Top Secret America by Priest and Arkin)

In the world of governmental unintended consequences, foreign policy rarely comes up in discussion. But in the fifties the U.S. had to make some decisions about the East, particularly India and Pakistan. India was leaning towards China so the Americans chose to support Pakistan with financial and military aid. From Double Game" by  Wright: "India has become the state that we tried to create in Pakistan. It is a rising economic star, militarily powerful and democratic, and it shares American interests. Pakistan, however, is one of the most anti-American countries in the world, and a covert sponsor of terrorism. Politically and economically, it verges on being a failed state. And, despite Pakistani avowals to the contrary, America's worst enemy..."

In essence, the State Department built an Edsel. Repercussions? None. Failed governmental policy is an area where we "Judge not."

Professionals in an Urban Story

 A physician starts writing pain prescriptions for money, mostly narcotics. Thousands upon thousands. So many that when he is arrested the price of the narcotics on the street triples because of the drop in supply.

As he continues to write the scripts, the pharmacists get wary. After a while there isn't a pharmacy in the county--the whole county--who will take the doctor's prescriptions. The market for the prescriptions moves away from town, across county lines to pharmacies further away.

One pharmacy will fill the prescriptions but the pharmacist refuses to take insurance or credit cards. Only cash. He charges 1500 dollars for a script of 100 pills, then writes in the computer he has charged 100 dollars. He is averaging 25,000 dollars a day off the books. He--and his wife and his daughter--are making so much money they have no place to hide it. They own a nursing facility so they start depositing the money in the accounts of demented patients they have there. Since they are responsible for them they have access to their accounts, both in and out. The patients grow rich but don't know it.

Eventually, but surprisingly late, the whole thing dissolves. The physician is looking at 15 years in prison, the pharmacist--and his wife and daughter--slightly less.

PQRS

 PQRS was established as a voluntary program providing bonus payments to qualified professionals for reporting certain results from their medical practice  under the guidelines of Physician Quality Reporting Initiatives to Medicare from 2006 to 2014 (created under the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006). Obamacare, the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordability Health Care Act, mandates this reporting after 2015 and beyond.

Reporting on management and results of management can return a small financial reward, a gradually decreasing percentage of the physician's Medicare billing, until 2015 when a fine will be imposed for not reporting or demonstrating desired results.

In essence, milestones of medical care have been established by the Washington leadership and physicians will be fined for not achieving them. How these milestones will be created, what and how they will be measured and whether they will be meaningful  is yet to be determined. Current milestones are limited, for example having electronic records or sending prescriptions by fax to pharmacies. Future milestones might be considerably more grand, like changing complication rates of diabetes or fracture rates in osteoporosis. This appears to be similar in nature to the government solar energy initiatives: If you build a theoretical framework, real working individuals will fill it in.

Whether or not physicians will allow themselves to be held responsible for such results will be interesting.

Spending and Saving

"Each dollar spent by the federal government creates no sustainable income, yet the interest payment incurred with each borrowed dollar creates a subtraction from future revenue streams of the private sector."

This, from Lacy Hunt, is the nut of the problem created by the federal government in their efforts to solve a problem. The other two factors are housing debt, that does not finance expansion but is static in the present and demanding in the future and the fact that most debt is being used to live, again immediately static but long term demanding.

It's not for nothing our savings rate has dropped from 15% to zero. And savings is where investment comes from.

The Mayans and Us

1. "There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt." John Adams
2. Government deficit spending would provide additional market demand, pushing prices up and stimulating more hiring. Public-works projects would “prime the pump.” This policy would continue until “full employment” was attained.--after Keynes

Two tribes have emerged on the political landscape. One believes that government must spend to stimulate growth regardless of the money available and that anyone who disagrees is an idiot. The other believes that the government must adhere to a budget, avoid debt and allow the creation and destruction of the marketplace to occur and that anyone who does not believe this is a traitor. These tribes do not share any vision, cannot compromise, have no respect for the other and believe their solution is the only possible way for the nation to go. More, they think the problems facing us, if not solved by their particular solution, will destroy us.

Are we becoming a group of apocalyptic cults?

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/06/g-20-tug-of-war.html

Cab Thoughts 5/21/12

I saw the Libertarian Johnson speak on TV. He is a guy with a lot of mannerism but he is smart and will hurt Romney. There will be the inevitable Obama defection from the guys who want to legalize dope--and perhaps the homosexual subset--but most will be from guys who just hate government excess and, while Romney will not make them happy, Obama is worse for them. If this group moves to Johnson, Romney has no chance. Although one wonders at Obama's curious timing about gay marriage. Johnson might have been a stimulus there.

There is a book out decrying the lack of world leadership. Its name? G-Zero.

The question, "How can the government with its unmanageable budget and debt, pretend to chastise and investigate JPMorgan with its 2 billion trading loss but the likelihood of earning 16 million dollars profit this year?"

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/08/irony-is-overrated-claudia-black.html

"Dissertation Upon Parties" by Henry St. John Lord Bolingbroke, a rare 270 year old book, was found in The Charleston Library Society. One of the Library's  archivists, Trisha Kometer, says the contents of its vaults, one of which is located behind an antique shop on Charleston's King Street, remain unclear. "We have lists but because the library itself has been moved from place to place to place, the collections have been integrated, they have been pulled apart and a lot has gone on during the years," she said, making it difficult to tell for sure. This is really hard to believe. Like the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark. We should limit our investigations to what we have. That sounds close to a life lesson as well.

From marcellusgas.org: the last well in the Marcellus shale region will be drilled in 2070 when 13 million acres in 37  counties will be under production. There will be an average of 3000 drilling permits a year then. (Since 2005 there have been 10,033 permits issued with 5,700 wells drilled or under production so far.) The estimated life of the field? >100 years. This is a revolution in economics.

So Romney disavows an ad that a PAC said they had no intentions of running and the Democrats want a stronger disavowal. These guys would give you a permanent migraine if you paid close attention to them.

90% of the information we have about the brain we have learned in the last 11 years. The internet has 6 billion nodes, each connecting to ten nodes. The brain has 60 billion nodes each with 1000 connections. Sleep of less than seven hours decreases learning by 20%. Exercise looks to enhance brain ganglion creation, i.e. learning potential.

From "Clash of Generations" by Larry Kotlikoff, and Scott Burns: "In the dream world of our political parties, their favorite action always "pays for itself." Republicans buy votes by reducing taxes and claiming they pay for themselves. Democrats buy votes by spending money and calling it an "investment." Setting just one set of these loonies loose on the economy would be damaging enough, but in recent years we've opened the asylum. We've watched them combine forces to both raise spending and cut tax rates. The bill goes to the kids who, conveniently, are never in the room."

The average age of retirement in this country is now 67 and rising. People are just not able financially to retire. The logical step would be to prepare for that event in advance. However, 49% of people have stopped contributing to retirement plans and, under the age of 48, 56% of people have stopped putting money in retirement plans. This is seriously nuts. The savings rate in this country has fallen dramatically, from 15% to zero.

The teachers union in Pennsylvania has discovered that there is not enough money in the retirement fund to pay its retirement commitments. This is a contract that must be met. Therefor, taxes will rise in the state to cover it. And, people will leave to lower taxed states in response.

Your phone tracks you every ten minutes so there is a map of your whereabouts that can be called upon. The police do it regularly. So, if you are going to commit a felony, do not bring a phone. (It might make a good attempt at alibi in fiction.)

Banning Drilling but not Energy

Vermont is proceeding with plans to ban the use of fracking within its borders--although, significantly, not banning the use of natural gas. The fact that there is little natural gas to frack in Vermont has not deterred them. (In a similar spirit they might ban unlicensed deep sea exploration.)

There seems to be a notion here that our energy components are made up of interchangeable parts, that one can be substituted for another seamlessly. A look at Japan is instructive.

As Japan stopped operations recently at its last of formerly 55 operating nuclear plants, Japan reported its carbon emissions jumped 15% since 2010.  Japan had reduced its carbon emissions to 1990 levels but not any longer, after the closure of the nuclear plants.

Getting rid of one energy source means accepting another.

The Inequities

Inequities plague us like The Furies.

Income inequality. Gender inequity. Marriage inequity.  Contribution inequity. Crime inequity. Education inequity. Effort and work inequity. Saving inequity. Responsibility inequity. There are a lot of inequities out there and solving one is going to be inadequate. But the effort on the part of politicians to subdivide--and conquer--the population will, to some degree, be successful as they segment us into the two camps of, one, "I care fiercely about this topic" and, two, "I could not care less about this topic on a national level." So the politicians cleverly divide and pick up the intense shards, leaving the general group behind, until they have collected a number of tiny subsets adequate for a majority, or perhaps a plurality.

But I think they are missing a great opportunity: The generational inequity. There are simply too many old people making too much of a demand on everyone else with health insurance and social security. Now there would be a cause.

Emergent Learning

There is a criticism abroad that TED is biased towards the optimist; that all the lectures are upbeat and hopeful. Why that should be cautionary probably says a lot about this world.

Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist, has a lecture on TED explaining his "Hole in the Wall" thesis. He cut a hole in a wall separating his 21st century office from an Indian slum, installed a computer and internet hookup and waited. What emerged was remarkable evidence that learning--even about totally foreign topics taught sometimes in a foreign language--was a communal experience enhanced by only minimal support. More, it is not individual, not formal, not top-down and does not require teachers. It sounds like an old American plains single room schoolhouse. (This implies, I suppose, that children can be taught anything with little structure, even crazy things.) Of course every teachers union will put a fatwa out on him.

Mitra says, "Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.” Emergent!

If you build it, they will learn.

The Religeous Left

Obama's new ad about Romney's venture fund resulting in a failure looks like an honest ad: These politicians honestly do not understand anything about business. They think that businesses have an ulterior motive of making money, their major function is to employ people and pay taxes. So if a business fails to do either or both, skullduggery must be involved. They do not see the process of growth and replacement, of what is now called "creative destruction." Instead, like the creationist, the left believes there is no evolution, no damage, in business. Every business is born into an Eden and can live forever to employ and pay taxes.

Or perhaps it is a problem with "process." The left clearly struggles with energy; they want alternative energy by fiat. They can not see the development of alternatives. Natural gas is a wonderful step towards everything they want, cheaper energy, domestically produced energy, less polluting energy. But it is not exactly what they want. It does produce carbon. It is against the dogma. So rather than see it as a step towards their desires, they see it as another carbon producer and ignore the progress of the process. They would rather midwife the premature delivery of a deformed new product than nurse the work--the hard work--of developing it. Then again, maybe it is the hard work involved. Wishing is so much easier.

It could be worse. They haven't found any witches to blame. But they do turn up the occasional heretic.

AKA Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was the scourge of the free world in the '60's, the center around which all Vietnam swirled. (And the West thought, erroneously, the entire Pacific Basin.) He was born Nguyen Sinh Cung and eventually changed his name to Nguyen Ai Quoc, meaning "Nguyen the Patriot." Finally he changed his name to Ho Chi Minh, meaning "The Enlightened One."

The American Indian felt--and many still do feel--that one's name is part of one's essence and many will not surrender their name to an enemy, or even a stranger. The Europeans identify their name with clans and tribes. It is amusing to see a man develop his name as his politics develop, especially when that appellation is self-applied, like nominating oneself to a club. It is deeper than a nickname as the latter is something of a caricature; Ho's is a banner,--a descriptive names like a boxer's or a ship's-- a statement, like an American "Professor' or "Doctor" or "Sister." Or a preemptive strike, like naming William "The Conqueror" when he was ten years old.

Ho Chi Minh:  http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/01/revolution.html

 

Sunday Sermon 5/13/12

The reading today has the famous line "Greater love than this no man hath than a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends." This a a continuation of the "True vine" gospel. In it Christ says, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."

There is intimacy here, unlike any other religion. It is unnerving and startling. Christ sees His disciples as friends, not servants, as His followers are involved in His thinking. And His great commandment is the logical extension: Love one another.

Then the great closer: "If the world hate you, know ye, that it hated me before you." Because "you are not of the world." The material world cannot recognize the immaterial world. It is not that the two worlds are incompatible, they just are on different planes. The materialists will never understand you. And they will hate you because you are not of them.

Cab Thoughts 5/12/12

A picture of a political meeting in New York showed the Enlightened Ones, our moral leaders, all huddling to plan the election run, each with a passel of armed, intimidating bodyguards to protect them from harm. This in a city where the average guy is not allowed to be armed to protect himself... I know, I know; they are more important.

So Romney, an aspiring moral leader, apologizes for high school behavior. That is a really big rats nest to open for politicians. Thank heavens for the diligent reporting work that raised this titanic info. I'm sure the "how well he ate his vegetables" report is coming soon. After that, can we get to the behavior of the last five years, his opinion on lobbying, on  stimulus vs. deficit spending, then focus on that for a while?

14 of 17 physicians in front of a disciplinary board in Ohio for prescribing medications which caused patients problems said their knowledge of the drugs came entirely from TV ads.

Last night the Pirates had a man on third with no outs, the next inning  the bases loaded with no outs and did not score one run. The Pirates’ total of 83 runs isn’t just last in the majors. It’s the lowest  of any team in professional baseball. Yes, all 150 of them, from the Savannah Sand Gnats to the Greensboro Grasshoppers. Only the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings are even close, with 91 runs.

The price of natural gas in Japan is more than 6 times the price in the U.S.. Japan's energy sources have changed since the  Fukushima disaster; without nuclear power they are turning to natural gas. The U.S. importing facilities for gas have been turned around to export. We better raise our demand to keep this resource domestic.

Presidential polling, Obama vs. Romney, is less interesting without the inevitable third party component that elected Clinton. (Perot got 19% of the vote, all from Bush. The vote went Clinton 43.0, Bush 37.5, Perot 18.9.  Most people think Nader's small vote in Florida cost Gore the election.) There likely will be two conservative third parties at least, Governor Johnson of the Libertarian Party, former Congressman Virgil Goode who will run in Virginia. Both of these candidates will take votes from Romney. Romney cannot win without addressing these constituencies.

Monday Toyota announced that its RAV4-EV will sell for $49,800, as compared to $22,650 for the gasoline powered version.
Is a $27,150 option on a $22,650 car a bit steep?

Of those arrested in the  Occupier Movement in New York, ninety-five percent of them lived in homes valued at more than $500,000. Those who rented paid a median rent of $1,850 per month. Probably a 1% suicide pact.

In 1900, according to the Tax Foundation, government — state, local, federal — took 6 percent of the people's income. Today, when one puts a price on government-imposed regulation, the amount taken by government is over 40 percent. That "price of regulation" is a bit of a soft number but without a doubt there has been a huge change in the last 100 years as to what the respective positions in society, individual and government, are.

One of the concerns of the founders of the nation was the possibility the presidency would become hereditary. These men feared power, especially unearned and dependent upon popularity. This is what Washington said in a draft (deleted) on his first Inauguration: "I have no child for whom I could wish to make a provision-no family to build in greatness upon my Country's ruins." Yikes!

Apparently Ireland and Spain both have no law to protect entrepreneurs from claims, like limited partnerships. So a guy starting a company is responsible for loans forever. The rest of his life. No wonder investment in these nations is so low.

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/09/fundamentalist.html

Labor Stats

Here are some numbers from March's Bureau of Labor Employment Situation Summary Table A of the Household Data report, seasonally adjusted.

The number of people who are actually employed dropped by 31,000 but the unemployment rate fell because the number of people looking for a job dropped by 164,000. So if you are unemployed and stopped looking for a job, you are not considered unemployed. That makes sense to someone.

This month those with a college degree have a 4.2% unemployment rate, while 12.6% of those who did not finish high school did not have a job. Teenagers have a 25% unemployment rate. That number falls with each ten-year increase in age, until we get to those who are over 55, who are down to only 6.2% unemployed. Women have a lower unemployment rate than men at all ages. Married men and women (spouse present!) seem to fare better, with an average unemployment rate of 5.2%. Married men tend to lose jobs faster during a recession but also get back to work quicker.

If you had never been married you had a 12.5% chance of being out of work in March. Asian-Americans do slightly better in most categories than whites, while African-Americans have almost twice the unemployment levels. Hispanics are about halfway between whites and blacks across the board. Married white couples have a lower rate (5.3%) than Asian couples (6.2%) while never-married whites are unemployed at 10.5% and Asians at 9.2%.

Not sure if these numbers mean very much other than the less you have achieved, the less you will achieve. And, of course, "Keep walking past the Black stats. Nothing to see here, nothing to see."

State Capitalism and the Entrepreneur

One of the problems with managed capitalism as is seen in the Asian countries is the process of "creative destruction". It is not a pleasant process for lunching bureaucrats and moral thought leaders; it is a cauldron of unrest. How many promising computer corporations rose and died before we reached our current status and how would such an evolution be managed by shortsighted, conflicted and dishonest bureaucrats? How many gazelles would have to be shackled in the name of fairness to the possums? How many Solyndra Frankensteins must be floated, how many GMs resuscitated and intubated?

Start-up investors sometimes refer to the formative period in early companies as "The Valley of Death." The company has an early development stage, it stabilizes and then must prove its worth in the competitive landscape where it will succeed or fail. This period of vulnerability is "The Valley of Death", the graveyard of good ideas, where the theoretical meets the practical, the idea, reality. If the service or product cannot show itself of value early in the competitive arena, it will die. The Valley of Death is filled with fear, anguish and screams. It is not the place for malleable bureaucrats, people without conviction or vision. Indeed, one of the strengths of the entrepreneur is his selective vision, his ability to see across the valley to success. Aggression, confidence, self-assurance, long vision, passion--these are the qualities of the builder, the entrepreneur. In fact, many staid and settled companies, hoping to create some entrepreneurial energy within, have purposely separated their entrepreneurs from oversight.

In essence, the entrepreneur is unmanageable.

"11/22/1963" by Stephen King--a Review

Despite his success as a novelist, most serious people do not like Stephen King; it's sort of a requirement once you get your "serious person" card. Academic and serious writers hate him, especially after he had the gall to write a book on writing. This book is a bit longer than necessary, is a bit self-indulgent and unedited, but it will change some minds.

Al Tempelton, the dying owner of a failing diner, comes to Jake Epping, an unhappy teacher and ex-husband of a scandelous alcoholic, with an enticing proposition: He has discovered in the back of his store a portal to 1958. 11:58a.m., September 9, 1958, exactly. Tempelton regularly takes a trip back through the portal to buy meat for his diner at 1958 prices. He has learned that you can go back and forth as often as you like--and presumably could stay there--but every time you go it is exactly the same time so the past resets every time you go back and any changes you have made are erased. More, when you return, regardless of the amount of time you have spent in the past, only two minutes have elapsed in the present. Tempelton explains that he is too sick for the job; he wants Epping to go back to 1958 and kill Lee Harvey Oswald and save President Kennedy. Vietnam. Civil Rights. The Great Society. Tempelton is offering Epping a chance to change the world.

Epping jumps at it. But first he does a trial run--which becomes several trial runs--as he tries to help a friend in the past and learn how this all works. The reader learns too. By the time he heads for Texas he, and the reader, are quite comfortable with these new rules.

Epping has no intention of just killing Oswald. He has learned from his practice at history changing that things do not always work out as planned, that history/time has a certain resilience. "The past is obdurate for the same reason a turtle's shell is obdurate: because the living flesh inside is tender and defenseless." And he wants to be right. He wants to be sure Oswald is the killer.

In his search he moves to a small Texas town, falls in love with teaching again, becomes involved with student life and directs the school play, falls in love with another teacher, Sadie Dunhill, and, in between evaluating Oswald, begins to live a normal life. King is a meticulous chronicler of the everyday. If this sounds mundane and uninspired, be assured it is not. He makes it rich and full; the 1960's glow and reflect off the pages. Maria Oswald is especially well done. Eventually Epping decides who is responsible for Kennedy's death and he stops the assassination. Time responds with earthquakes and eventual chaos. Epping must interfere again.

There have been many books on time travel, one of the best Asimov's "End of Eternity" about man, freedom, and the governance of men. This book is simpler but has bigger aims. This book is about men and women, life and the everyday, and a "universe of horror and love surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark." Asimov should be so good.

Harper and Promise

Saturday night Bryce Harper, the 19 year old number one draft choice of the Washington Senators, came to bat at number three in the first inning with two out. He is a phenom, the fifth youngest player to arrive from the minors to the majors ever (number one is ARod), and was brought to enervate the increasingly talented first-place Washington team. He is a catcher with a rocket arm. Right now he is playing left field but he has played center. He is currently hitting .308 with a .424 on-base percentage and .500 slugging percentage. On the mound was Cole Hamels, the talented Phillie. Hamels throws 93 miles an hour behind Harper and hits him in the back.
Harper turns and goes to first. Up next, Jayson Werth, and he singles. The swift Harper goes to third without a throw. Werth moves off first, Hamel watches him, then goes to first. With the move to first Harper steals home. Steals home!

In the second, the Phillie catcher Ruiz comes to bat. "They are going to hit him," says the color guy, a former player. "They gotta hit him." But the Washington pitcher, Zimmerman, strikes him out with every pitch on the plate. The color guy seems a bit surprised.
When Hamels comes to bat in the third, Zimmerman hits him.

Harper has been terrific in the eight games he has played although most thought he would not stay in the majors this year. But, later in the game, Jayson Werth, the left fielder, sliding to make a catch, broke his wrist. He is their number four hitter with a 7 year, 126 million dollar contract. His backup is Xavier Nady.
Michael Morse, the original clean-up hitter who plays first and left, will return from his back injury soon as will infielders Ryan Zimmerman and Adam LaRoche but, with Werth's injury, Harper now may have to stay.

 

Probing Equality and Similarity

Equality is fine as a political or a spiritual concept but not so hot as a scientific generality. We look pretty much alike but it is likely that the new protein synthesizers will reveal a lot of subsets, then more sets within sets, as time goes by. This makes scientific generalities so difficult.

Take drug reactions. 5.4% of the population is sensitive to sulfa drugs, that is they will react to sulfa as an allergen with varying degrees of severity depending upon the relationship in their blood between the various constituents of reaction. But there is an interesting subset of people from malarial geographies that have developed a genetically different structure of their blood, called G6PD, that makes them less likely to be infected by malaria, so that genetic advantage is handed down. That advantage, when exposed to sulfa, becomes a disadvantage and the blood cell breaks down, causing hemolytic anemia. This advantage-turned-defect is present in 10% of black American males.
So this specialized sub-set has vastly different results.

Imagine such sub-sets throughout our diverse species in countless ways.

Makes you wonder about the placebo.

Sunday Sermon 5/6/12

Today' readings contain Christ's poetic metaphor, "I am the true vine." This is an elegant description of the intimacy between God and man as well as the ever-present need for constant reassessment. God is the "husbandman," Christ's followers are the branches. But the metaphor raises an unanswered question: What is the nature of the fruit of the vine?

There is also the introduction of Paul into the apostles in The Acts, a rather funny problem as no one trusts him. After his eventual acceptance--earned by Paul's deeds, not coincidentally--he goes among the Hellenists and preaches. These Hellenists are, of course, Jews influenced by the rational Greeks, the wisdom seekers of the pre-Christian world. They hoped to find fulfillment in man alone; in the pre-Christian world, it was the Greeks alone whose gods were man-like, not some weird chimera of man and beast. Yet, Paul, among these seekers of wisdom, must flee for his life because they try to kill him. Kill him for what he is saying.

Why would seekers of wisdom do that?

Cab Thoughts 5/5/12

Pete Stark, the scourge of American physicians and a moral leader, thought Solyndra, a company in his district, made electric cars. Why do we take these things so seriously when our leaders who are responsible for them do not?

Clean Energy hopes to build a network of 150 LNG (liquid natural gas) truck fueling stations along major truck routes that will allow LNG trucks to travel coast to coast. Obama, although I have read only rumors, promises a 50% tax credit for dedicated LNG engines but it in addition to his electric plan. Hydrogen too, which does sound goofy but Toyota is working on one.

Gov. Christy's travels and speeches looks like an audition for V.P. to me. I doubt if Romney can beat Obama if he allows the hard core right a reason to boycott or, worse, defect to a third party candidate, though.

Junior Seau is the eighth member of the Chargers 1994 Super Bowl team to die. It is hard to believe that football and hockey can continue to be played at their current violent, damaging level.

The 3.1 million additional people are essentially living rent-free by not paying their monthly $1,721 mortgage payments, (assuming they're still living in those houses and that their skipped payments are the same as the national average.) Since refusing to pay their mortgages and diverting their mortgage payments into other outlets, they have increased their purchasing power by $64 billion at annual rates, or the equivalent of 5.4% of after-tax income. A new way of tapping the house for money.

I guess Afghans can vote. Maybe an absentee ballot?

In 1950, 22 percent of American adults were single. Four million lived alone, and they accounted for 9 percent of all households. Living alone in the expanding country was common among farmers, migrant workers, miners and the like and it was usually a short-lived stage on the road to a more conventional domestic life. Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million--roughly one out of every seven adults--live alone. That is 28% of American households.

The number of people who are actually employed dropped by 31,000 but the unemployment rate fell because the number of people looking for a job dropped by 164,000. So if you aren't looking for a job, you are not considered unemployed. That makes sense to someone.

In "You are What You Speak" by Robert Greene, several interesting observations on English grammar rules. "The split-infinitive rule may represent mindless prescriptivism's greatest height. It was foreign. (It was almost certainty based on the inability to split infinitives in Latin and Greek, since they consist of one word only.) It had been routinely violated by the great writers in English" So, also, the preposition at the end of the sentence rule. Apparently it arose from the poet Dryden who was a classics scholar and translator. Such a sentence structure is impossible in Latin so he decided it should be impossible in English.

Tomatoes have always been grown in hot, dry climates but, in the last years, hot and humid Florida produces a billion pounds of the fruit. The reason? It is hot when the northeast is not. The point of production is shipping so the fruit has become quite different from the usual home grown tomato. To get a successful crop, they pump the soil full of chemical fertilizers and can blast the plants with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. The tomato is consequently hard with noticeable decrease in nutrition and taste, but it has been bred to travel.

And a Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/10/subprime-morality.html

Europe Debt

Total European debt is at 443% of GDP. US debt is 350%. European banks are leveraged over 30 to 1, US banks are about 15 to 1.

There are only two ways that countries in Europe can get their deficits under control and begin to shrink their debt-to-GDP ratios. They can either grow GDP faster than the growth of their debt, or reduce their debt. How can Spain, with 20% unemployment and a projected 6% deficit, grow enough? How can this possibly be resolved? One, default, making the bonds of Europe--and maybe the U.S.--worthless. Since Spain cannot inflate as the currency is not actually theirs, this will also devalue their products and work.Two, inflate their currencies (which an EU country can not do but the U.S. can) and drive down the value of  bonds and cash, drive up interest rates. Both solutions crunch economic growth.

No easy place to hide.

Fairness Czar

The Washington Post searched the White House website for mention of the Buffett Rule and the AMT; the Buffett Rule is mentioned 17,400 times, the AMT fewer than 600. The Buffet Rule tax will take about 47 billion dollars from 22,000 wealthy households over ten years, the AMT will bring in 1 trillion dollars from millions of taxpayers most of whom earn less than 200,000 dollars a year over the same period.

Obama has said repeatedly that he favored the Buffett Rule even if it brought in less money; there is some poorly articulated reason that sounds a lot like reprisal but it is often stated as "fairness." But what is "fair" about the AMT which has accidentally become a middle class curse and why is the self-appointed "fairness czar" not fixing it?

"I'm always true to you darlin' in my fashion."

The problem with embracing fairness is the same as embracing chastity: You can not be spotty. You can not do it on even or odd days, during certain hours or under certain circumstances, or only with Billy.

First Line of the Iliad

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. . . .

Translated by Richmond Lattimore (1951)

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men — carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
           Begin it when the two men first contending
           broke with one another —
                                         the Lord Marshal
           Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus. . . .

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald (1974)

---

Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. . . .

Translated by Robert Fagles (1990) 

These are three translations, generally regarded as the best, of the first line of The Iliad, the great epic poem of Homer, one of the foundations of Western Art. The first line in epics of this type traditionally encapsulates the nature of the whole poem, as this line does. But these three are quite different in emphasis, Fagles, the more modern, highlights "rage" as the focus in the story, Fitzgerald "anger",  where Lattimore is more deferential with an invocation to the goddess as the stimulus of this story but then blames anger also. There is more than a qualitative difference in the words "anger and"rage." "Rage" is "anger" uncontrolled; "rage" possesses, "anger" torments. "Rage is "anger" in action.

The terrible Achilles, possessed as he is by "rage", destroys his own friends and countrymen. "Anger," being more self-contained, cuts a narrower swath and damages the self and those nearby, usually family, has less of an impact when compared to rage and seems an inferior choice.

So the great hero of the Iliad is a pawn to his rage and, in the first great epic in the Western canon, rage is elevated to the most prominent place among the destroyers of personality and life--even before "hubris," the Christian's "pride," that dooms Lucifer in the Old Testament. More important, one's fate and that of one's surroundings are not written in the stars but in our hearts.

We Are the Enemy

"I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff…the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years."--EPA Administrator  

 Well isn't this a charming insight into our devoted civil servants. They play the conquerer, we play the hapless conquered. Righteous tyrants, sharing tricks of the trade. How could people put up with this? This is not a peripheral guy. This is a quote from Al Armendariz, the EPA director of region 6, the area in the United States comprising Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.This is the center of one of the most important energy sources in America. And this is how the governmental regulator of the energy community sees his job and his "subjects". (Incidentally, he was the administrator responsible for the smear of Range Resources and the Texas contaminated groundwater charge issued to interrupt their drilling the Marcellus.)

What's really frightening is that this is a spokesman; they think he is particularly good in presenting their opinion and others are a lot worse.