We Have Met the 1% and It Is Us

The Republicans are really a pretty dumb political party. Somehow they have allowed the debate over the financial growth and stability of the nation to be distilled down by their opponents to the welfare of the nation's wealthiest citizens.

The point is not which individuals have the earnings of the people, it is whether the earnings of the people stay in the private sector or go to the government. Private economies do better across all income groups for a number of reasons--the main one being that the motives for the allocation of money in the private sector are not corrupted--so that the welfare of the entire community is better protected if the money stays private.

 

Identifying private money with the people who have the most of it is an easy and shabby deception historically associated with some very bad people.

Cloud Atlas: A Review

"Cloud Atlas" is the movie adaption of a novel of the same name by David Mitchell.  It is a mammoth undertaking. The movie is structurally burdened by six separate story lines (an attorney being poisoned by his physician, a gay composer struggling with his mentor, a journalist exposing a fraud, a publisher unwillingly committed to a nursing home, a cloned slave who leads a rebellion, a villager in a post-apocalyptic society on a quest) in six separate times in six separate geographies. (The Pacific Islands, 1800's; Belgium, 1930's; San Francisco, 1970's; London, 2012; Seoul, 2144 and Hawaii, in some distant future.) The movie then accepts several more arbitrary burdens. There are three directors, Tom Twkyer from “Run Lola Run” and Andy and Lana nee Larry Wachowski from “The Matrix” trilogy". Several parts are played by the same actor and these parts cross ethnic, racial, cultural and gender confines. While all the stories involve an awakening of sorts, some are personal, some are cultural and one is comedic silliness. Several are deadly serious but two are so outlandish that they can not help but laugh at themselves, one during a murder.

Throughout the movie the audience searches for unifying principles. There seem to be some. Slavery or restraint appears frequently, a tattoo recurs over time, references to previous stories are accidentally revealed with found manuscripts or recurring music and, of course, the actors reappear as different entities. But the search for a greater concept is not rewarding. There does seem to be the unifying notion that we, all people, have a common bond, that no man is alone and that great notions and works survive and recur from age to age. But there is no pattern in this recurrence. There is no Buddhist-like idea of gradual purification or meliorism. The reappearance of the same actors seems self-indulgent, an exhibition or a display rather than a theme. And there is the matter of director Lana nee Larry Wachowski who said in an interview she wanted to educate transphobic people “who want to lynch me, who want to crucify me.”

These problems aside, this is an entertaining film. It is three hours long and the time flew. The problem occurs in the intimation of something bigger here, something afoot more than just a fun film, and that promise is distracting (and unfilled) as the audience tries to reconstruct it within the movie. Once that search for a bigger and more profound concept is put to rest, the film is enjoyable.

And there certainly are some lessons one can learn: Do not bring too much of yourself to work, continuity is not guaranteed by similar tattoos, universality is not guaranteed by disparate scenes and make-up and, during an apocalyptic struggle, it is best if the good guys are better armed.

A Surprise: The Cost of Backing Up Renewables

Lux Research reports that wind farm output can fluctuate up or down by 3% over a ten-minute interval, 10% over a one-hour interval and 16% over a two-hour interval. Similarly solar panel output can plunge by 50% or more in a few minutes.

As stability in the grid is crucial, this means that some backup energy source, currently estimated at .5% of production, will be needed. As renewable (wind and solar) sources take up more of the burden of electric generation, so the need for backup sources will increase proportionately. In 2009 over 20,132,212 GWh of electricity was produced throughout the world. If renewable sources approach 30% production as planned, the backup storage requirements would be over 100,000 GWh.  Now for the shocker: Typical manufactured energy storage systems cost several million dollars per MWh. That is several billion dollars per GWh.

Per GWh. These are astronomical numbers.

And...AND...unlike the grid sources which can last for a couple of decades, the backup sources have to be replaced every three to seven years. Three to seven years!

Have these numbers been calculated in to the cost of renewables? And who is going to pay it?

Sunday Sermon 10/28/12

Jerusalem.

In today's gospel Christ stops at Jericho. In Mark's next chapter, He is in Jerusalem.

This gospel itself is unusual. It contains another encounter with another blind man. This time Christ cures him immediately and there is none of the "hidden" qualities of the previous encounter where the blind man was enjoined not to tell anyone of the miracle. According to an interesting interpretation I heard recently by a Holy Ghost father, Mark is writing for a Roman audience under persecution with the specific intent to emphasize the spiritual rather than any physical development. Here Christ is hurrying the time, pushing everything along. He is going to Jerusalem.

This gospel is introduced with lines from Paul's letter to the Hebrews, 5: 1-6 which ends with the line "Thou art a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek," a quote from the Psalms. Who is Melchizedek? He appears once and only once in the Old Testament, in Genesis, in  the story of Abraham when he rescues his kidnapped nephew, Lot, by defeating a coalition of Mesopotamian kings. Melchizedek is identified as the king of Salem, a "priest of the most high God" and he brings bread and wine and Abraham, the victor of this world changing battle, gives him tithes.

Melchizedek is an old Canaanite name meaning “My King Is Righteousness.” Salem, of which he is said to be king, is probably Jerusalem. So a Canaanite is a king before Abraham, a priest before the Levitical Priesthood, he offers bread and wine and is honored by the new king of Canaan.

There is a self-contained completeness here reminiscent of great poetry. Adrienne Rich writes that  "Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe...." Here is a moment where one can only wonder at the power of the event, an event that is more poetic than historical. In essence a universal being inserts himself into human time, into the boundaries of history. And that this event is not just reflected in history, not just symbolized. He was there before the Hebrews, before Abraham. He has been waiting.

In Jerusalem.

Cab Thoughts 10/27/12

“People say the reason Obama wouldn’t call Clinton is because he doesn’t like him,” observes  Tanden. “The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It's stunning that he's in politics, because he really doesn't like people. My analogy is that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.”--former white House staffer Neera Tandem (who served as senior advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, advising Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and working on President Barack Obama’s health reform team in the White House to pass the bill) on Obama's not asking Clinton for advice.

 

Alpha Centauri is the nearest star system to our sun; it is 4.3 light-years away. It would take the Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri--not including the fuel problem (the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need to carry it.)

Dinosaur plumage????

 

The Left is in favor of government spending and the jobs it creates--execpt for the spending and jobs that result from military spending. The Right always thinks that federal spending is inferior to private spending--except for military spending.

 

It appears, contrary to my expectations, that the Libertarian Johnson is going to be a non-factor in the election.

 

America continues to be different. The world view of the election is striking. By a margin of 50-9 percent, Obama is favored in the poll of 21,797 respondents in 21 countries around the world. Obama polls highest in France; only in Pakistan(!) does Romney out-poll Obama. Most, with good taste presumably, refused to answer, it appears, but still this is further evidence of American Exceptional-ism.

 

Another Republican moron with moronic opinions about pregnancy. When are these people going to learn that only morons care about this? Or at least give the moron who thinks that the island of Guam is going to tip over because of a new marine unit's arrival equal time.

 

$76 Billion have been paid in lawyer fees for mortgage suits against the big banks since 2008.

 

There are good stats that show that GDP grows inversely to government size. That makes sense because with government growth is subsidized from taxes from the private sector. That removes money from consumption and investment.

 

Every once in a while these people step over the line. Here is one such instance: (From The Hill) United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups. This sounds like something from The Onion. What is next, giving Serbian and North Korean monitors police power?

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/09/cafeteria-of-vulgarity.html

Amtrak has lost over $850 million in the last ten years on their snack bars.

 

8 in 10 Americans under the age of 30 have read a book in the past year compared to about 7 in 10  adults, in general. The average Irish adult reads 60 books a year.

 

Clint Eastwood has brought in all of his movies ahead of schedule and under budget. His working relationship with Warner Brothers is the longest director-producer relationship in the history of Hollywood.

 

I thought Eastwood's "empty chair" image at the convention was evidence he was failing. Now he looks like a genius.

 

In 2010, one out of five Americans (21.6%) age 25 to 34 reported living in a multigenerational household, the majority with their parents. That was up from 15.8% in 2000 and a low of 11% in 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. Some of this was from financial necessity but historically the family was always a geographic unit.

 

In France the government has proposed legislation that would determine home energy bills dependent on age, income, climate and conservation efforts. The law could impose a penalty of as much as 600 euros a year for energy-inefficient households. Hard to believe? The consumer hated seat belts and catalytic converters, but they got them anyway because law is more powerful than choice.

 

One of the widely circulated untruths about Marcellus (encouraged even now by the NYT) is that there is no real volume of gas in the find, that it is a "Ponzi scheme." A recent ITG Investment Research estimates that the Marcellus contains 330 trillion cubic feet of gas, or more than twice the 141 trillion cubic feet estimated by the Energy Information Administration. That's about fifty years worth. So not only is it there, it is twice as big as the government thought.

 

The coarse, uninformative and combative debates are an embarrassment to the nation. Nothing, of course, embarrasses a politician.

 

The QE has resulted in a rise in commodity and stock prices. "Wages did not immediately respond to commodity price changes; therefore, there was an approximate 3% decline in real average hourly earnings in both instances. It is true that stock prices also rose along with commodity prices (S&P plus 36% and 24%, respectively, in QE1 and QE2). However, median households hold a small portion of equities, and thus received minimal wealth benefit.” (Lacy Hunt) So the geniuses who massage and tweak our world have created exactly the opposite of their intended effect: The QE was supposed to create a wealth effect, instill confidence and encourage risk taking, it has done the opposite.

 

The evil rich continue to be a core campaign concept for Democrats. Yet they ran John Kerry the last election with no discernible shame. Of course Kerry earned his money the old fashioned way: he married it.

40% of US corn and 14% of our soybean production is now consumed to make bio-fuels. We are burning food for fuel, distorting the food market, causing run-off damage all because we refuse to use the abundant oil and gas sources we have. There is no sensible--or legal--explanation for such a distortion.

I again was treated to the routine TSA outrages this week, the single greatest public relations disaster in history. Every day thousands upon thousands of travelers stand in line and curse militant Islam. I also got to curse the upper 1%. In every line there was a second, faster line of first class, military and other special people. Obama probably doesn't know of this injustice.

 

At least $813 million went to energy companies that eventually filed for bankruptcy, including A123, Solyndra, Beacon, Abound Solar and EnerDel. This should not be seen as Obama's failure. These people always do this. These are coffee house thinkers sitting around spending other people's money. Failure never deters the arrogant or the righteous. Here is a summary of large, failed directed federal programs aimed at energy solutions (from Peterson at Seeking Alpha):

• The Nixon and Ford Administrations' support for synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale;
• The Carter Administration's support for synthetic fuels, nuclear fusion, ethanol and fuel efficiency;
• The Clinton Administration's "Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles" that failed miserably while private initiatives from Toyota and Honda were remarkably successful;
• The Bush Administration's unflagging support for fuel cells, the hydrogen economy and corn ethanol; and
• The Obama Administration's support for alternative energy and electric vehicles.

These are huge programs with huge intent and their effects have gigantic reverberations throughout the economy. Money diverted, emphasis diverted, focus diverted. We are still burning food for fuel!  And they will not stop. They will not say they are out of their depth. They simply take your money and reload.

 

6 new-gas fired power plants represent billions of dollars of new investment, thousands of construction jobs, and thousands of megawatts of new, efficient, much cleaner generation are proposed in counties like Lawrence, Bradford, and Westmoreland.  Their completion depends upon price of gas and coal, whether coal plants are forced closed, environmental struggles etc.. Coal has actually made a comeback, now generating 39% of electricity, up from 32%. Why? Gas is up 95%.

AAAAAaannnnnddddd.......a chart this time:

Vehicle	2011	Market	2012	Market
Class	Units	Share	Units	Share
Battery Electric Vehicles	7,287	0.08%	6,358	0.06%
Plug-in Hybrids	3,895	0.04%	24,082	0.22%
Hybrid Electric Vehicles	191,541	2.02%	322,516	2.97%
Internal Combustion	9,282,889	97.86%	10,510,120	96.75%

The Mysterious Undecided

One of the great mysteries of this election campaign is the undecided voter. The entire campaign seems to be waged for their favor. Who are these undecided voters? Better, how could they be undecided?

While Romney is a bit of a collage of opinions, Obama is not. He is a Teddy Roosevelt Progressive, is willing to defer most programs to others (Affordable Care Act to the House, the debt crisis to Bernacki), does not think that the world needs disproportionate American representation and leadership, and is generally inexperienced in leadership even after 4 years. This speech is revealing: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-in-kansas.html   http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-in-kansas-2.html and http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-in-kansas-3.html.

This is not a traditional vision of America but it is certainly a vision. Anyone who agrees with it and the ACA and the Fed stimulus and the failure to hold Wall Street to account for its behavior over the past decade should vote for the guy.

But it is hard to see how any thinking person can be undecided.

Great Expectations and Their Judgments

A fascinating case has just bobbed up in the Italian Courts. In the city of L'Aquila in central Italy, six scientists and a government bureaucrat have been sentenced to six years in jail for failing to predict an earthquake that killed 300 people in 2009.

This is a spectacular insight into how people think and what they expect. Usually we run into the streets with torches and pitchforks because someone exceeded their authority or moral limits. Here the scientists failed the community by not living up to the community's expectations, despite the fact that the community's expectations were absurd. No one can predict earthquakes. Nor can they read Tarot cards. But some people believe and, if enough Tarot card readers end up on a jury of your peers, some strange things can happen. You need go no farther than the Wee Care Nursery School or the Fells Acres Day Care Center.

Clearly the jury believed that these poor people were responsible for following nonexistent protocols for unknown processes towards imaginary solutions. This is hauntingly reminiscent of modern popular American politics where alternative energies that do not exist and no one uses are touted and financially supported as a solution to our energy problems.

Sometimes the self appointed experts can claim too much. But usually they can find safety in the cynicism and short memories of their electorate victims. Here the fantasies have grown a judicial arm.

Luck: The Demon that Haunts the Republic

'Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman criticizes the value of books that assess successful business practices and leaders. "The comparison of firms that have been more or less successful is to a significant extent a com­parison between firms that have been more or less lucky." The author apparently feels this is a breakthrough thought that diminishes success--and, I suppose, failure--in the marketplace.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It is a variant of the "You didn't build that" riff that hopes to make success arbitrary and unjust. It has been a constant, if subtle, theme in Obama's speeches.

Only a fool would argue against luck. And only a bigger fool would try to define luck and then legislate against it. Imagine trying to balance the scales of beauty or height or speed. Worry about individual ambition or lack thereof, those with social graces, the backward academic, the aggressive warrior. Envision Kurt Vonnegut's ballet where the dancers' grace is hamstrung by awkward weights. Or are we all clean slates waiting for Yeats or Shakespeare or Einstein to be inscribed? Or should we be engineered, all genetically equal in a egalitarian dream, all citizens identical and true with true national identity? All indistinguishable and each equally representative. Like algae.

There is something strangely ancient about this thinking, Olympian and weird. Notions of dice and wheels and laughing Chance appear in the brain's mist. Tykhe was the Greek goddess of fortune and chance, one of the Moirai--or Fates, where anything could happen. Thkhe was usually paired with Nemesis, the goddess that maintained balance. She was particularly interested in matters of love, evil rewarded and excessive good fortune. Nemesis avenged wronged lovers, punished successful criminals and balanced unreasonable success.

To the Greeks she was also the goddess of indignation.

To the more practical Romans, she was jealousy.

Happy Birthday

October 23rd is a wonderful day in human history. It is the day that James Ussher, a 17th Century Irish bishop, by calculation of the biblical "begats" and counting backward, determined the date of the origin of the world. God created the world on October 23, 4004.

At 6p.m..

 

Happy birthday, World.

Outsourcing Petroleum Production

The Congressional Research Service has tabulated the totals and acknowledges that the United States currently has the world's largest known fossil fuel reserves in terms of total oil equivalent—almost three times as much as Saudi Arabia.

Look at the world and see how much of our problems are caused by our energy demands and here the government is telling us we have enough at home to sustain us, on the natural gas side for perhaps 200 years. Yet we continue to outsource it. We will not drill in the Gulf but will subsidize Petrobras from Brazil to do so. This is an outsourcing that influences our safety and the world's security. It makes us draw from the international supply when we have our own. It means that all the emerging nations, with their growing thirst for energy, have to compete with us for oil, when we could just develop our own. It would bring productive work with productive spin-offs to the United States.

It's better for the world if we do not? Emerging nations use cheap energy and increasing emerging nations will use increasing amounts. And they will compete with us for it. How is that good for them or us? Worse, how will the world react when the inevitable conflict erupts in the Middle East and the oil reserves are inaccessible? How will the Earth suffer when nuclear powers will not accept a return to the steam age?

Dividends and Deer Hunters

One of the changes (with hope) planned by the Obama administration is the raising of the tax on dividends from 15% to as high as 44%. Coincidentally this advance will occur six weeks after the election.

Dividends are important. Many people live on them, particularly retirees. More, according to Siegle, rising dividends account for 90% of the historical growth in stock prices. Raising the taxes on them will rip through the markets like the Grim Reaper. Allocations will change. The uncertainty of returns will become the norm. This, of course, flies in the face of the public policy of the Fed, which hopes to increase public confidence, investment and risk acceptance.

Why are the tax rates different for dividends? Because they are already taxed at the 35% rate as corporate profits first. That, plus the 44%, equals a total of about 64% tax on corporate profits. 

As with most policy decisions, the government expects a static situation, like a hunter who expects the deer to stand still even after several shots. But if you were the CEO of a company, how would you respond to this? And what would you do if you were an investor?

Sunday Sermon 10/21

Today's gospel brings wisdom riding on silliness. James and John want a guarantee of a high place in heaven. Christ has a shocking response; "It is not mine to give to you, but to them for whom it is prepared." Any self-respecting apostle would want to know how Christ was limited and for whom these places were prepared. Have they already been filled? Are they preordained?  But we get nothing from them as the other apostles begin to squabble.

Christ uses this question to push the notion of hierarchies in a rare political way, pointing out the Gentile tendency to have royal houses. This will not be the Christian way as "whomsoever will be first among you, shall be the servant of all."

Again, the spiritual and the new trumps the physical and the old.

Cab Thoughts 10/20/12

"A man's religion is the deepest and wisest thing in his life."--William James

Big Bird and Sandra Fluke: A vision for the nation.

Security for the now smoldering embassy at Benghazi was outsourced to Blue Mountain, a badass Welsh mercenary group. The annual budget was a bit less than 400,000 U.S. dollars. So the Blue Mountain guys outsourced it to five members of the Benghazi branch of the Feb. 17 Martyrs' Brigade and equipped them with handcuffs and batons.

7% of Americans think Oswald shot Kennedy. i have no idea what the others think.

40% of U.S. corn production goes for ethanol which makes up about 10% of  gasoline consumed. A good trade?

“This is about the birth of an entire new industry in America -- an industry that’s going to be central to the next generation of cars,” Obama said in a phone call to the CEO of A123 in 2010, according to a White House transcript. “When folks lift up their hoods on the cars of the future, I want them to see engines and batteries that are stamped: Made in America.” A123 received a $249.1 million federal grant in 2009 to build a U.S. factory and has a 120 million dollar grant from the DOE. A123 went bankrupt 10/16/12.

Scorecard for EV supplier bankrupcies in 2012:

January 26, 2012 – Ener1
July 12, 2012 – Valence Technology
October 16, 2012 – A123 Systems

Apparently wishing does not make it so. Perhaps a national day of handclapping, as I did for Tinker Bell as a child.

Young people cause inflation. They cost everything and produce nothing. That's inflation in people terms. (Mauldin) When lots of young people come into the labor force, it's inflationary. (They buy and accumulate.) When lots of old people move out of the labor force and into retirement, it's deflationary. (They sell and disperse.)
This belief implies that the government cannot protect the society from a downturn or upturn regardless of stimulus.

66 Canadian wolves were transplanted into the Northern Rockies almost 20 years ago. That population now exceeds 1700. And they want your dog.

Hillary's noble acceptance of the Benghazi fiasco is reminiscent of a curious (minor thematic) point in the movie Argo: the State Department is somehow responsible for security at diplomatic missions. Could anything be more contradictory than having a military arm of diplomacy? And since when did accepting responsibility for a disaster start to absolve everyone?

Since 1880, when reliable temperature records began to be kept across most of the globe, the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius. From the start of 1997 until August 2012, however, figures released last week show the answer is zero: the trend, derived from the aggregate data collected from more than 3,000 worldwide measuring points, has been flat. (From the Brit's Met Office’s Hadley Centre and Prof Jones’s Climatic Research Unit.) What this means, I do not know. And, neither does anyone else.

Thomas Carlyle left the only copy of the manuscript "The French Revolution" at Stewart Mill's house, where the maid mistook it for trash and tossed it in the fire. He wrote a new one with renewed focus.

In a used book store this week all the Obama books were on sale for two bucks.

As Obama's plan to reverse the American preoccupation with growth and prosperity proceeds, it is met with bond and gold buying, not investment. The government sees in this the reason to stimulate the economy on its own. That stimulus will be made with borrowed money. The debt was 8 trillion dollars in 2008 and will be 16 trillion at the end of this year.

Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Deflation is the opposite, not enough money chasing too much goods. Both are a function of production and demand. If the Japanese dump a lot of semiconductors on the U.S. market, the price goes down, the American manufacturers cannot keep the margins up and eventually the low prices destroy them. If there is not enough silver to satisfy the Hunt brother's buying, the price goes up. So prices can fall if there is too much supply or if there is no demand. We seem to be in a period of no demand and prices should fall. Without demand, there are no sales and no jobs. Therefor government stimulus hopes to ...what, make people buy?

Golden oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/09/poker-golden-eggs-and-famous-goose.html

The British in the Revolutionary War made two efforts at conciliation with the American Rebels, one through Howe granting all of their demands as well as amnesty and another from Lord North, perhaps worried about a possible French alliance. Both were rejected--and the American agent (John Brown via Thomas Willing) for the first Howe offer was imprisoned for treason. The American rebels were more devoted to independence than it seemed.

Obama: The first Nobel Peace Prize winner with a kill list!

From Peter Freuchen"s "Book of the Eskimo," a hunter rejects the thanks of another for a kill the first man shared.: " In our country we are human!'' said the hunter. "And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.'" To be human means to them to avoid the calculation of what is owed among each other. One must will it away. Debt destroys. And dependence destroys.

From a recent interview: After deferring to Aristotle and Aquinas on natural law and saying the right to property is "passed prior to sovereignty", he said: "We human beings always seek happiness. Now there are two ways. You can make yourself happy by making other people unhappy--I call that the logic of robbery. The other way, you make yourself happy by making other people happy--that's the logic of the market. Which way do you prefer?" The interviewee? Zhang Weiying, Chinese communist economist (in the WSJ)

Aaaannnnndddd...a graph:

Grand Unifying Theories

The "Axial Age" was a phrase coined by German existen­tialist philosopher Karl Jaspers. While writing a history of philosophy he became interested that  Py­thagoras (570-495 BC), the Buddha (563-483 BC), and Confucius (551-479 BC), were all alive at exactly the same time. So intellectual schools emerged, all debating the same philosophical questions, all unaware of each other. Jaspers started his Age with the Persian prophet Zoroaster, around 800 BC, and ended it around 200 BC. Jesus and Mohammed eventually created his "Spiritual Age."

In "Debt" The author David Graeber argues that coinage emerged during the Axial Age as well, in exactly the same places and the same time, again independently. He poses the notion that expansion, war, armies and the need to pay armies simultaneously created the fertile field for both philosophical reflection and coins.

We humans seek unifying principles from quantum mechanics to global warming to God.

Redistributing Health Care

The State of New York's decision to limit the number of patients' medical office visits is a clever take on redistribution: Medical care will now be available to people who do not need it, an under-served subset. It will free up medical offices to see more people who are healthy--and they are a lot less expensive to care for.

The only more effective plan would be to shoot the ill when they show up for their appointment.

Casting a Shadow on the Election

Cast is a wonderful word. One can cast a vote--but also a ball, a glance, a calf, a play, a shade, a shadow, a board, a mold, a dice, a tendency, a composit, a plan, a feather, or a fall. One can cast off, on, away, and iron.

As the United States plans to cast their votes, the press is breaking down voting  patterns and voters into tidy, small blocks. All this microdisection of the voters leads to these crazy ideas that a state or two or a county or two in a state or two will elect the next president. It is an ugly way of diminishing the individual vote.

 

Asimov once wrote a short story where one citizen was selected as the prototype citizen and he cast the only vote. Strangely there were two elections, the "elector", then the "president."

In this election the meaning "cast" may be "to vomit."

 

Obreht and Boianjiu: Trouble in the Faculty Lounge

Téa Obreht, who wrote "The Tiger's Wife."





Shani Boianjiu, who wrote "The People of Forever are Not Afraid". Her reviews are not so great--even scornful--but one can hope.

The Tiger's Wife: A Review

Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the award, praised Mo's "hallucinatory realism," saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." If that sounds similar to the writings of the South American "magical realism school" like Gabriel García Márquez, it probably should. What it really sounds like is Tea Obreht, originally Tea Bajraktarević,  an American novelist of Bosniak/Slovene descent, born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, now Serbia.

Miss Obreht  is the author of a number of well regarded short stories and the more recent novel, "The Tiger's Wife", and her reviews are cautious. The caution is understandable. First she is young--in her twenties--and no reviewer wants to go overboard. Second, the author is beautiful and thus immediately suspect for, as everyone knows, brains eat beauty and the two cannot coexist; no one is crass or nonintellectual enough to note it, however,  and the reviewers all walk around this as if she had a prosthesis. (Although now, with the writer Shani Boianjiu, who wrote "The People of Forever are not Afraid",  a whole new field may open of vibrant, creative, Hellenic intellectuals with a pulse). Third, everyone is scared witless of her; this is her first novel, it is extremely good and no one wants to be on the wrong side of success.

The main character is a young physician, the granddaughter of a physician, and the basic story involves her relationship with her grandfather and her travels to deliver medicine to an orphanage, all against the backdrop of a recently resolved civil war. While the geography is never specific, these are people and places where the past is very important. Within this story are other stories--mythological and strange--which appear and merge with the present reality or appear as memory. The present, the past, folk stories, magic, superstition and mythology all swim in and out of each others streams. The principle stories are of the tiger's wife--a woman believed to have personal relationship with a tiger-- and "the deathless man"--a man cursed with immortality.  “Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories,” the lead character says, “the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life." The first story is responsible for his maturity, the second for his return to his innocence.

This mythology, this fantastic vision, runs through everyone in the story to some degree or another as the story moves through perceptions and times. Obreht's talent is to make the real people and times firm enough that the fantastic seems to grow from them naturally yet neither restricts the other. She moves smoothly from one time to another, from the concrete to the fantastic. The magical of life stimulate the absurd but Obreht uses the absurd to reveal the fantastic. The grandfather discovers an elephant loose in the city and the two follow it through the streets. As they do the grandfather surrenders to the circumstances and decides to tell her about the deathless man, a story he has long and jealously guarded. And she is funny. A poetic parrot with an evangelical bent, a man named "the-unhoped-for-one", raiders "with a willful attempt to forestall security"--this wryness gives credence to her more magical topics.

This is not a book without problems. These threads are a lot to handle. There are significant plotting errors buried in the magic, sometimes the time shifts are awkward and she can be cute. But for those of us trying to recover from our only knowledge of the Balkans in "Balkan Ghosts", this is a wonderful and hopeful addition.

Sunday Sermon 10/14/12

Today's is the "Eye of the Needle" gospel, a difficult assignment.

A man interrupts Christ with the question "What shall I do that I may receive life everlasting?" Christ recites the later commandments--interestingly avoiding the commandments about God--and the man acknowledges his acceptance of these commandments. Christ "looking at him, loved him, and said to him: one thing is wanting unto thee: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor....and come, follow me."

The man is distressed. But it is the apostles who are "astounded at his words"--and they have already made these sacrifices. Then they ask "Who, then can be saved?"

The brilliant short story writer, Flannery O'Connor, described her writing to hitting the reader with a two-by-four because she thought her points too important to be lost in subtlety. She probably learned this from the New Testament. Christ has already shown he loves this questioner, regardless of his possessions. Even the apostles--who have already given up their possessions--are shocked. So there is something more at work here. Some of this conversation is aimed at the old Hebrew notion that wealth is related to the value of the person. Successes run parallel. The apostles may well be surprised at the negation of this tradition. But they also must be shocked at the impracticalities here (reminiscent of the notion of leaving one's family--and presumably one's responsibilities). So, they ask, who can be saved? Christ's answer is the real point here: "With man it is impossible; but not with God." The is no temporal solution to the question of spirituality. You live in Caesar's world; give to him what you owe. But it has nothing to do with your relationship with God. It is another world. And your success in it is totally dependent upon Him.

Two-by-four.

Cab Thoughts 10/13/12

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -Mark Twain

Is the Higgs Field Phlogiston?

The single greatest outsourcing scandal in the United States is its outsourcing of petroleum production.

Lance Armstrong has been convicted by a nongovernmental agency, an agency funded by public and private money, who had the cooperation of the FBI and the Justice Department, where there are no oaths or subpena power and the accused cannot confront his accusers or challenge evidence. These protections are given drug dealers and child molesters, but the USADA is above all that. Wikipedia defines a Kangaroo Court as "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted".

Re: sub-prime mortgages. ACORN had been given a compelling incentive, as The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) allowed the organizations to collect a fee from the banks for their services in marketing the loans. The Senate Banking Committee had estimated that, as a result of CRA, $9.5 billion had gone to pay for services and salaries of the organizers.

 

The recent announcement that the White House was not aware of the request to bolster State Department security in Libya looks like a direct or indirect shift of the blame to Hilary. If I were she, I would go nuts.

There is a voting affliction among us, the affliction that demands a yes or no answer. Why are we unable to look at large social questions and say "We don't know the answer. We don't know the implications to that suggested change. We want to wait." Why is that seen as a "No" rather than what it is?

Brandon Moss hit .228/.295/.373 with 13 homers in 195 games for the Pirates from 2008 to 2010. He only played five games in the majors for the Phillies last year. He hit .291/.358/.596 with 21 homers in 84 games for Oakland this year. McClouth is starting for Baltimore in the playoffs. And of course there is LaRoach and Ludwick. As they say in investing: "When you are very early, you are still wrong."

A persistent worry about Obama's performance in the debate: So many of the programs he supports depends on literal change, upon things and circumstances that actually do not exist. Is it possible this guy can not think in the present?

The more I think about Obama's Stafford Act Speech (http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/10/obama-as-higgs-particle.html) the madder I get. The more i think about it, the more embarrassed I get. I think I must have actually expected more of him, as if he were something other than a typical insincere, egotistical, mendacious political hack.

 

Political debates, even religious debates, usually involve positions of merit on both sides. But the murder of the 14 year old Pakistani girl because of her opposition to the Taliban position on education is a prima fascie argument ender. These people have given up their right to an open-minded discussion.

 

It is hard to imagine a political party doing a good job of running the country when their basic premise is that the country doesn't need run.

The Chinese do a lot of business development top-down through their banks. When the government decides to expand something like solar production, they do so by allowing the State owned banks to invest in the industry. The local branch of the State owned bank gets together with local city planners and the city guarantees the loans needed to expand. This makes local politicians look good because better jobs are created in their cities. Now that 2/3rds of the solar factories will go broke the politicians and local government officials want to cover everything up. So they cook the books when reporting to Beijing the results of their operation. This is why China sits on the edge of the financial knife. They are OK if the industries they have backed are winners but....

The Task Force determining the value of testing and therapy for the Affordable Care Act so far seems to base its decisions on waiting to see who gets sicker. Like waiting for the fever to break or not. Appointing Rex Morgan M.D. to chair the Task Force would be appropriate in so many ways.

 

Golden oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/09/love-is-like-oxygen.html

While Electric Vehicles (EV) have about a 23% lower total life cycle CO2 emissions, emissions from EV manufacturing are over twice the emissions for Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) manufacturing. In essence EVs just change the site of pollution away from the road. Like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.

Has anyone ever walked on to the Baseball Playoff stage with more of a surprising impact than Ibanez did on Wednesday?





AAAnnnnndddd a graph:

The Entitlement Class

One wonders more and more about the debate. Maybe Obama expected more deference.

Obama has an unusual political history. He won his first Illinois congress seat by challenging all his Democratic opponents' petitions signatures and eliminating them all. He became the Democratic nominee by default. Then he ran for the seat unopposed by a Republican. When he ran for the U.S. Senate he drew a strong opponent in Jack Ryan but Obama's operatives managed to have released Ryan's sealed divorce papers (from the extraordinary looking Jeri Lynn Ryan--the "Seven of Nine" Borg character in "Star Trek: Voyager") and the ugly results were made public. Ryan dropped out and he ran unopposed.

He got a Nobel prize by breathing.

Maybe it's not the receivers of tax money who feel entitled. Maybe it's the politicians.

"Homeland," A Review

(spoiler)


In "Homeland," the highly awarded Showtime series, two complicated and driven major characters collide and separate surrounded by intrigue and deception. This series could become the hallmark series for internal conflict, not the classic conflict where qualities intersect and interfere with each other to the detriment of the character but conflict where major characters have intense devotions to competing loyalties or disintegration to the point of incoherent loyalties. Playing sincerely for both teams--or all teams-- makes for serious problems in the audience.

The potential for loss of audience interest is made up for by high stakes intrigue, violence and National Inquirer-like loaded cultural questions. Can a captured marine join the religion of his captors? What responsibilities does a wife have to a husband missing in action for eight years? Is she guilty of infidelity when he returns? Should she trap him if the country suggests his infidelity to it? Can a very competent and devoted agent keep her job if she is also a bit crazy? How many benign cross cultural relationships are necessary to balance out one gigantic cross cultural animosity?

There are some practical problems as well. Early in the story it is evident that there is a high level leak in the CIA; this is noted but rarely discussed or worried about. A complicated plan two years in the making of murder and mayhem hinges on the almost impossible coincidence that allows a conspirator to be elected to public office and become a close friend of the Vice-President. After the complex plot fails, the decision is made by the mastermind to have the unsuccessful conspirator kill the conspirator who successfully completed his assignments under the most difficult of  circumstances. The unsuccessful conspirator fails in his two year quest because he is talked out of it at the last moment by his daughter in an innuendo-laden thirty second phone call. The conspirator who plans a mass assassination is not a terrorist; he is a vigilante with a justifiable personal hatred for a public official and some collateral damage he has caused; the collateral damage of his revenge--which would be considerable--is not a problem for the character or the writers.

None the less, like "The Godfather,' this is gripping, exciting and entertaining. I will keep watching. But I worrry. Craziness can be cured. A vigilante can straighten out, settle down and sell insurance.

No harm done.

Liberty, Equality, Production

"I had become aware that, in our time, the new social state that had produced and is still producing very great benefits was, however, giving birth to a number of quite dangerous tendencies. . . . My aim in writing (the) book was to point out these dreadful downward paths opening under the feet of our contemporaries, not to prove that they must be thrown back into an aristocratic state of society ... but to make these tendencies feared by painting them in vivid colors, and thus to secure the effort of mind and will which alone can combat them -- to teach democracy to know itself, and thereby to direct itself and contain itself."--Tocqueville, responding in an argument between liberty and equality in democracy.


One of the interesting aspects of the current presidency is the idea that this debate between liberty and equality is new, with new concepts and knowledge, when it actually is as old as the country. This debate is separate from the central government debate between the federalist and the anti-federalist, where the concern was the power needed by the state to function appropriately and what liberties would have to be surrendered.

The question of equality and liberty is more complex. The moral and ethical questions include what the individual can demand for himself and what his neighbor can withhold. So each individual in the equation has an equal claim for specialness.They are both different sides of the same coin. An additional  problem concerns whether the inhibition of liberty inhibits the community production, so the net effect of the government's expropriations necessarily decreases their largess. So that in an effort to improve the lot of one, all decline--even the intended beneficiary.

So not only is there a conflict within the intent; there is a conflict between the intent and the outcome.

Obama as a Higgs Particle

The peculiar Mr. Obama only becomes more so. This is an edited excerpt of a recent article by Thomas Sowell on the Stafford Act speech that Obama delivered at Hampton University after the New Orleans hurricane. This is so strange--like so many things he does--that it is beyond explanation.
And apparently beyond not only criticism but evaluation at all.

Obama gave a speech at Hampton University on June 5, 2007. That date is important, as we shall see.
In his speech — delivered in a ghetto-style accent that Obama doesn't use anywhere except when he is addressing a black audience — he charged the federal government with not showing the same concern for the people of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina hit as they had shown for the people of New York after the 9/11 attacks, or the people of Florida after hurricane Andrew hit.
Departing from his prepared remarks, he mentioned the Stafford Act, which requires communities receiving federal disaster relief to contribute 10% as much as the federal government does.
Sen. Obama, as he was then, pointed out that this requirement was waived in the case of New York and Florida because the people there were considered to be "part of the American family." But the people in New Orleans — predominantly black — "they don't care about as much," according to him.
If you want to know what community organizers do, this is it — rub people's emotions raw to hype their resentments. And this was Barack Obama in his old community organizer role, a role that should have warned those who thought that he was someone who would bring us together, when he was all too well practiced in the arts of polarizing us apart.
Why is the date of this speech important?
Because, less than two weeks earlier, on May 24, 2007, the U.S. Senate had in fact voted 80-14 to waive the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans, as it had waived that requirement for New York and Florida. More federal money was spent rebuilding New Orleans than was spent in New York after 9/11 and in Florida after Hurricane Andrew, combined.

He was one of just 14 Senators who voted against — repeat, AGAINST — the legislation which included the waiver.

Day Sixteen of Trip

We came through the Bosporus to Istanbul, the west on the northwest, the residential east on the other side. This is a huge city, twice the size of New York, with minarets and mosques everywhere, most buildings low in fear of the earthquakes. The hill where the St Sophia, The Blue Mosque and Topkapi sit dominates the eastern side. The early Greeks came here 600 years before Christ, to Byzantium, the Persians took it, then Alexander. The Roman Empire moved here and Constantine recreated it as Constantinople, Justinian (with the infamous Theodora) built St. Sophia in the sixth Century, the Crusaders took it and held it for almost one hundred years then Mehmet 11 took it, named it Istanbul and built Topkapi Palace. Suleyman 1 "The Magnificant" solidified the Ottomans. Modern Istanbul was created by Mustafa Kemal, "Ataturk".
The city is stupendous, sprawling and diverse. The architecture is the same. Regrettably Sophia--one of the real reasons to come here--was closed but we went to Topkapi, the Blue Mosque and the old town. Topkapi is filled with the most extraordinary relics from Old and New testament times and from Mohamed. We had lunch in a terrific restaurant--so good I encouraged wandering Europeans to try it. We went to the bazaar with its thousands of shops--you could spend your lifetime searching it--and ended up on a small boat as we cruised the Bosporus along the east and west shore. (There is a lot of money here.)
A very different place from other stops and from the West.

Sunday Sermon 10/7/12

The Gospels often show Christ delivering remarkably concise summaries of gigantic topics. Today is one of them.

Christ is asked about divorce. He asks the questioner to describe Moses' law, that any man can write a bill of divorce. Christ then puts Moses' law in context: Because of the Jews' "hardness of heart", this is a social precept, not religious dogma. The religious dogma is that in marriage men and women become one flesh. It is as old an idea as the naming of animals. It is basic as described in Genesis. Although weaker, more vulnerable in a vicious world, woman bring no weakness to the union. They are equal on another level. And no divorce.

In a few lines, Christ supersedes Mosaic Law, asserts the primacy of Genesis and completely rewrites the understanding of women in the world.

Day Fifteen of Trip

Another day at sea on the way to Istanbul, a beautiful day on this beautiful ship.
We are following the course of every Black Sea trader in history. The Silk Road from the East ended on the north and east coast of the Black Sea and transferred the cargo to ships that crossed the sea to the Bosporus at Polis-Constantinople-Istanbul and then west. Surprisingly, 70% of the cargo of the Silk Road was slaves.
Trading, access to the east and west, access to the sea, the fishing and the farming--these have all been motives behind the significant violence here since the Scythian first arrived. Greeks, Sarmatians, Huns and Tatars and more recently Catherine the Great, Nazis and Communists. The last of the Russian White Army evacuated from here and sailed west, signaling the end of the Czars and the beginning of another era of error.
Throughout it all has been the city on the Bosporus.

Day Fourteen of Trip

Another beautiful day. We have signed on to see the catacombs of Odessa. I am a bit vague on all this. All of these underground places were created by people who were mining under their houses for limestone rather than quarrying it offsite. So they built their houses up on their excavations underground. This has created a warren of catacombs throughout Europe. This sounds totally mad to me. Nor do I understand the relationship between these mines and the phrase "underground" for "resistance," if there is any relationship at all. This place we visited today was a meticulous reconstruction. 47 people lived here during the German occupation and all of them were killed as a result of an informer. This is a lovely old nineteenth century town;  staying in an underground tomb is a terrible waste of a day here.
It got worse. In a desperate effort to exorcise the experience we decided to walk around town freelance. After a nice start in the center of town we followed our map which turned out to be erroneous and slid slightly east, off the hill overlooking the harbor and ended up in the industrial area filled with old bolshevik symbols, old and angry bolshevik men and taxis who would not stop for us . The time for the ship's leaving was ticking down and I was seriously worried. I knew we were close but I had no idea how to get there. We were saved by a Ukrainian who used to deliver pizzas for Domino's in Charlottesville. He drove us directly to the ship--but would not have without everything in my wallet.
Life lessons: Never travel without a phone that works, never travel alone to an area where you do not know the language or the alphabet, avoid areas where you might depend upon the good-will of people with old political grudges towards some group you remotely resemble and always get the harbor-master's number when you leave a ship.
Back on board with the best glass of wine of the year.

Cab Thoughts 10/6/12

The meteor that hit Chiculub 65 million years ago ended the Cretaceous period and the dinosaurs. Debris exploded into the atmosphere. Researchers David King and Daniel Durda calculate that some of it reached halfway to the Moon before falling back to Earth. (How could that happen?) And when it did fall back, it rained red-hot rocks on the Earth, setting fires to forests almost everywhere. The atmosphere was heated enough to evaporate entire lakes, incinerate whole ecosystems, and extinguish most life over large low-latitude regions. (From "Why Geography Matters" by de Blij)

Quarks are held together by the "color force," which also binds protons and neutrons. This force, unlike electrical field which decreases with distance, grows stronger as the distances between color charges increases (like a spring.) It would take more energy than the sun puts out in a lifetime to separate out a single quark from a proton.Of course, when you separate a proton from a neutron you get Hiroshima. So....

Culture can be broad and accepting but it also should be the center and source of civic virtue. It has become only broad and accepting.

Beginning in 2014, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)--created by the new Obamacare--would consist of 15 unelected bureaucrats whose recommendations for reducing Medicare costs must be enacted by Congress by Aug. 15 of each year. If Congress does not enact them, or other measures achieving the same level of cost containment, IPAB's proposals automatically are transformed from recommendations into law. Without being approved by Congress. Without being signed by the president. Bypassing the separations of powers and looking unlike any possible constitutional entity.

Of the 4,319,000 new American jobs created since January 2010, 2,998,000 — or about 70% — went to people aged 55 or older.

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/07/dont-play-lacrosse-at-duke.html

China built a 800 mile 200+ mph train for $32b, only double what the Boston "Big Dig" highway project (< 5 miles, 50 mph speed limit) cost. I know, I know: Slave labor. But still.....

After the debate...was Clint Eastwood right?

The media is not taking this debate well. I wonder if they are beginning to wonder how smart this guy really is.

I heard Obama say the day after the debate that that was not the "real" Romney in the debate. How can one explain that?

If Israel finally comes under unrelenting military siege by its enemies and their very survival questioned, will the Israelis just surrender and move to Pebble Beach or will something more ominous emerge out of their impending destruction? (Think Samson.)

Imagine you have 45 kWh of batteries. You can use them to make one basic Tesla Model S or a fleet of 30 Prius-class HEVs. The Model S will save one owner 400 to 500 gallons of gas a year, but a fleet of 30 Prius-class HEVs would save 4,800 gallons of gas a year using the same battery materials. The key here is "battery materials." The world annually produces 14 billion tons of oil, natural gas and coal, 1.5 billion tons of iron and steel and 0.13 billion tons of non-ferrous metals. Annual production of several "technology metals" for batteries including cobalt, rare earth metals and lithium is less than 100,000 tons. There are no resource stockpiles. Everything is used.  14 billion tons of oil, natural gas and coal versus 100,000 tons of "technology metals." We are trading the use of common oil, coal and natural gas for the use of rare metals. We are creating our own shortages. Why would anyone do that?

Honda came out recently and said they are losing money on every vehicle they export from Japan to the US. They were not prepared for the huge shift in the value of the Yen vs Dollar. This is another example of the cost of currency changes, shipping and supplies interfering with profit. People are going to move their suppliers and their manufacturing closer to their markets (and away from previously cheap labor) as Toyota did. You heard it here first.

Christina Romer, an original member of Obama's Board of Economic Advisers, has a number of major studies on the relationship between taxes and GDP. A summary of the statistical work estimates that a tax increase of 1% of GDP would lead to a fall in output of 2.2% to 3.6% over the next 10 quarters. This was published by the prestigious American Economic Review in June 2010. So what is the logic behind a tax rise? 


AAAnnnnd a graph:

Day Thirteen of Trip

Odessa.
We are tied up to a working port. The city is actually above, up the famous Potemkin Steps. This is a city famous for its culture, especially its music. Strangely it was fought over savagely by the Germans and their Romanian allies and it was little damaged because the Germans had promised the city to the Romanians and they tried to keep it intact. We walked along the upper area near the steps with young men selling pictures with small eagles or big hawks, down towards City Hall with its hourly chimes past the London Hotel where Chekhov lived. The Opera House has been repaired and is quite spectacular. There is an appreciation of elegance here that is palpable. There is at least one performance here every day.
We followed on to Trotsky's House (a cousin) and it was beautiful. One of the tour played List's piano. A wedding was in the works in the courtyard below and one of the operatic students sang--she was terrific.
We drove around town, a toen filled with memorials, and had lunch in an old tavern by the park with a wonderful troup of Ukrainian singers and dancers.
On the way to the ship I was interviewed by some earnest young women with a camera--I was not sure who they were or if they were news or publicity. 

Day Twelve of Trip

We have moved to the dock in Yalta and can get directly off the ship.
Yalta was a famous resort area for the well-to-do. Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gorky came here. And, of course, the Romanovs. The Romanovs built the Livadia Palace for the summer here and planned, in their simpleness, to retire here under the auspice of the murderous Bolsheviks Of course the Livadia Palace became the meeting place for the Big Three powers at the end of the Second World War.
We are going to see the Palace, the Vorontsov Palace.
The town is crowded with small streets and an active market where food is brought in over the mountains daily. There is also some political meeting as well as a road race to finish off any semblance of order. Our guide is very unhappy with the separation of the Ukraine from Russia. Most locals are. The Ukraine is 70% Russian and the province where Yalta is  has repeatedly elected communists to the government, the only province to do so. Lenin statues are still up and striving.
We wind through the streets and somehow go through a roadblock to Livadia, the White Palace. Modern times demand it be seen as the site of the Yalta Conference but it is much more interesting as the Romanovs' home. There is something domestic about the place and the place has been well managed, windows open over gardens, pictures up. Really a sad and lovely place. One can feel the family here.
We drive to the Vorontsov Palace, the home of Russia's wealthiest man and on the way see the Swallow's Nest, a home built on the edge of a cliff by, presumably, a madman.
The Vorontsov Palace is not as moving as Livadia but it is memorable. It was designed by a Brit and has four different styles of facings, one on each side of the house. There is a lovely interior room with an interior garden and a lovely dining room.
The trip back was filled with appropriate Russian traffic and angst.
We walked along the long, wide port walkway with its surprisingly upscale shops and large parks. It is really a beautiful town with what seems like a long road ahead.

The Difference Between the Visionary and the Wishful

Toyota Motor Corp has scrapped plans for widespread sales of a new all-electric minicar, saying it had misread the market and the ability of still-emerging battery technology to meet consumer demands. (from Reuters) Much of Tesla's presumed sales came from partnership with Toyota.

Toyota continues with its hybrid plans.

President Barack Obama has set a goal of getting one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. That is clearly impossible now and shows the inherent disconnection between political wishing and the real world, a lesson that should be applied more widely.

Day Eleven of Trip

I could not stay awake for the helicopter transfer but it apparently went very smoothly. This guy is hurt, a bad head injury. The ship turned around again and we got into Yalta today. We lost our berth at the dock because we were late and are now anchored off at sea. The weather is rough with wind and high seas, too rough for tender transfers. This is just a hint of the weather that gave the Black Sea the name The Inhospitable Sea by the Greeks.

The staff is upset because we lost our berth (to the dreaded Regent Lines, their sworn enemy) and because this sea anchor means we will lose a day somewhere. The captain has decided to stay here and forgo the planned stop at Sevastopol. (It is a stop with military history and stimulated Tolstoy's first book.)

Yalta is famous for the Yalta conference that divided Europe up--for better of worse--after the Second World War. But it is the site of the Romanov's summer home (used for the Conference) and that should be of interest. It is in a province of the Ukraine and has the Ukraine's only communist government. Surprisingly, 70% of the population of the entire country is Russian.

From the sea it is a lovely town, small streets and buildings, a large walkway along the dock with a lot of people.

Day Ten of the Trip

A travel day at sea. Nothing but sea. It is a wonderfully relaxing experience in nice weather and a calm sea. We are going to the Black Sea. From now on it is a trip of passages, passage through The Dardanelles where Xerxes whipped the water (Byron's Hellespont), through the Marmosa Sea with its huge boats and transports, then through the Bosporus, surrounded by Istanbul.into the Black Sea where, for the last three thousand years, everything bound from the East to Europe has passed.

There are two currents in the Bosporus, the upper one from the Black Sea through the strait to the Mediterranean and the lower one back through the straits to the Black Sea. It is 2000 meters deep, fed by four of the five largest rivers in Europe. Those rivers bring huge amounts of organic material from cities and farms to the Sea, organic material that needs oxygen. It is so demanding a cycle that the O2 is quickly used up and O2 is stripped from sulphate creating hydrogen sulphate (H2S), a poison which makes the water below 200 meters anoxic and poisonous. Nothing lives there and wrecks lie frozen in time.

We pass through the Dardanelles at 5 a.m. and work our way up to Istanbul and into the Black Sea. It is inky but, as it is still early in the year, calm. It was here the Scythian settled, then the Pontic Greek traders, then the wonderful Sarmatians, the Goths from the north, Huns, Khazars, Turkic nomads and the Mongol-Taters of the Golden Horde. Here Genoa and Venice became the navel arm of the Ottomans.

It was here that Jason and his Argonauts sailed to Colchis (up the river Phasis) to get the golden fleece because it was the end of the world.

A formal night at dinner and I am under-dressed. I regret it.

After dinner there is an announcement: An engineer has fallen below decks and is badly hurt. After some debate the ship turns around to meet a helicopter from Istanbul. They are going to do a helicopter transfer in the dead of night off the ship in the middle of the Black Sea.

Day Nine of Trip

I have never been to Samos, close to Turkey. It's very different, a big island, a big town. And green, not the forbidding grey of Mykinos and the western islands.
This is a working town with markets selling to islanders, children and fewer restaurants. Still with trinkets but one gets the impression that the tourists are there as an addition, not the cause, of the place.
Life is expensive here. We spent a lot of time in the markets and this is a difficult period for these people. And I expect it will only get worse.
A lot of travel offers here to Greece and Turkey.
We had a wonderful dinner in the specialty Italian restaurant.
Tonight we leave for the Black Sea.