Slouching Toward the Sequester

Sequester, the evil beast, continues to advance on the calender. Many are at risk. The Office of Management and Budget reports the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) will lose $2 million from its $20 million budget--but, as Reason magazine's Mike Riggs points out, the NDIC shut down in June 2012. (n.b. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The Director of the OMB is a member of the President's Cabinet. The main job of the OMB is to assist the President to prepare the budget. These guys did not know a 20 million dollar segment of the government, that they fund, was gone.)

Oops.

Well, anyway, things will be bad. We can not manage the tiniest of cuts from budget growth, let alone the budget. And there will be lines at airports. But with half the country not paying taxes, it is unlikely many Obama voters will be in airplane lines. They probably are at home--or have their own planes.

So, at times of stress, the government turns its displeasure upon its citizens.

Divergent Physician Worlds, One Future

At a dinner recently two physicians were talking about money. This is a rarity and I was all ears. Both were academics working for salary at different academic institutions. Both were married to physicians. Both were bright. Both were bitter.

The general opinion was that the average academic physician made as income considerably less than their private physician counterparts. One stated her income was about 100 thousand dollars a year, as was her husband's. Both were surgeons; she had better hours than her husband who frequently started his day at seven and came home around two in the morning. She had a student loan from medical school that totalled 460 thousand dollars. She had decided she could not afford children.

I suggested that husband and wife physicians had more negotiating room and could work fewer hours and both said that was not possible in the academic community. The rules were tight, productivity was closely monitored and there was no room for part time service. More, referrals within the system were closely observed; Relative Value Units (RVU) where physicians are given numerical grades for referring to the hospital for services that can be billed by the institution determines employment and contracts. (This is a particularly interesting twist. It seems that academic institutions have turned the history of medical practice on its head. Now the physicians are working for fixed salaries and the hospitals are plumping up fee-for-service.)

There were some worthwhile generalities that came out of this meeting. Academics are oppressed and unhappy. The rise of Industrial Medicine will make the physician in the system as insignificant as possible. And most surprising, the academics resent their independent private practice colleagues immensely and want to have them share their pain.

As academics tend to be published, quoted and deferred to in public by everybody but their employers, this bodes ill for the future of the profession.

Norsemen and their Gods

Edith Hamilton's widely read "Mythology," is devoted mostly to her great loves, Greek culture and mythology. Tucked into the book is a small section on Norse mythology. It is a short but shocking read. The Norse gods were not like the Greek. The Norse gods held a position in the universe that was more than vulnerable, it was doomed. And they knew it. Consequently they were capable of that one aspect of life denied the Greek gods: Heroism.

The references are few. Not many works survived the Christian cleansing. Two Icelandic "Eddas" have survived and are responsible for almost all of our information about the religion.

The "Younger Edda" was written down by a Snorri Sturluson in the last part of the twelfth century and is something of an academic work. The older one, the "Elder Edda," is dated about 1300 and is very old, a mixture of several poems--often on the same subject--and Hamilton writes, astonishingly, the epic material is "as great as the 'Iliad', perhaps even greater" but there was no Norse poet equal to the work, as Homer was. In it Goodness does not prevail over Evil. Righteousness is not rewarded.

In the "Elder Edda," the Norse gods live in Asgard, under constant threat from the Giants of Jotunheim. The mood in Asgard is somber; there is no lightheartedness, no carelessness, no joy. The structure of the universe is being constantly gnawed at by serpents and, at some point, will collapse. And the gods have powerful opponents; the Giants are the enemies of the gods and all that is good. Throughout the writings is the certainty that eventually the gods, and goodness, will fall. "The gods are doomed and the end is death." The only vindication that the gods--and men--can hope for is heroism in the face of certain defeat, the defiance of fate.

Odin is the sky-father, the king of the gods. He is a brooding, worried being as he waits for the fall to come. But he is not inactive. He constantly seeks and suffers for more wisdom for himself and, Prometheus-like, he brings it to man. But unlike Prometheus, he suffers not because he is punished; he suffers as a trade, a compact he makes to bring man his gifts. First he bargains at the Well of Wisdom for a drink and surrenders an eye for it. Then he achieves the knowledge of the Runes by suffering, by pain. Read the remarkable and shocking description of Odin's trial in the "Elder Edda" as he hung
                        Nine whole nights on a wind-rocked tree,
                        Wounded with a spear.
                        I was offered to Odin, myself to myself,
                        On that tree of which no man knows.

Yet these dark men in this dark land also write of a vision, a light that will penetrate the darkness when "The sun turns black, the earth sinks in the sea/ The hot stars fall from the sky," a new heaven and earth would emerge "In wondrous beauty once again,/ The dwellings roofed with gold" when One would come, greater than Odin and beyond evil
                                        A greater than all,
                         But I dare not ever speak his name

It is a small hope, but it this dark world any hope casts a lot of light.

Sequester Rhymes with Fester

A huge and malignant evil is stalking this great land. Its name cannot be spoken. That is to say pronounced. It is the feared and dreaded sequester. Its origin is apparently, like the flu, unknown. But it is of a great and terrible power. Who can name it? And what evil thing bore this foul beast?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.” But apparently, as he mentioned this weekend, it has something to do with owning airplanes.

Bob Woodward, no friend of Republicans, reports in his last book that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — whom Woodward calls the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government. Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.
Mr. Obama "misremembers." A transparent curtain can be fragile.

Now, what kind of numbers are we talking about? What cuts will cause this feared crisis?

Federal budget 2012: 3,728,000,000,000.00 (Trillion)

Federal budget 2013: 3,795,600,000,000.00 (Trillion)

2013's budget increase over 2012: 67,600,000,000.00 (Billion)

Money "sequestered" from 2013 budget: 85,400,000,000.00 or 17,600,000,000.00 if you exclude the money added to last years budget.

% sequestered of 2013 budget: 2.2%  Or 0.004% of the budget of 2012.

So the crisis predicted is going to be caused by a 2.2% reduction in the 2013 budget. But that budget is 67 billion dollars higher than last year's. So most of the sequestered money will come from the increase in the budget from 2012 to 2013. So the crisis predicted will be the result of a decrease in 17.6 billion dollars, or 0.004% of the budget of 2012.

Now, just for reference, the tax increase on Americans for this year will be 1.4% on those making $40,000, 1.6% for 50,000, 1.7% for 100,000. So Americans will lose from their incomes, at a minimum, 1.4% from taxes. They will have to make due.

And the government can not make due with a decline of 0.004%? The giant brains in Washington can not adjust to that without a crisis?

If that is true, we have no hope.

Sunday Sermon 2/25/13

A discussion recently raised the question of the historical nature of Christianity and Judaism. Judaism was characterized as the intrusion of God into history, the introduction of God in the word, the written word which matured through time. Unlike parallel oral traditions, this was written.

This week's readings highlight this history. The Old Testament reading is of Abram's covenant with God, Chapter 15 of Genesis. The New Testament is the Transfiguration.

The Old Testament reading is pivotal in its philosophy and its history. The Book of Genesis is a collection of chapters written at different times. Today's reading is really old. Ancient. And so is its vision of God. God is an unknowable and universal power who can not be understood or explained. This strange ritual Abram and God go through is equally primitive and universal; it could have occurred anywhere. Likely it is one of the early writings in history, probably from the time of Abram, 1850 b.c.. In addition to the very important covenant with God, this reading contains one of the crucial passages in Christian history, 15:6: "Abram believed God and it was reputed to him unto justice." ("Justice" as "righteousness.") This nature of man, as righteous or not, was a point of division in the Presbyterian separation from Catholicism. Most (especially Calvin but not Luther) felt man was so steeped in sin that man could not rescue himself; predestination emerged and good works were not redemptive.

The earlier books of Genesis, 1 through 12, were actually written after Chapter 15, probably at the time of the Babylon Captivity, around 600 b.c.. It contains elements of the Gilgamesh.

Cab Thoughts 2/23/13

The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong....The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

In 1970, 1 in 51 American workers were on disability. Last year it was 1 in 13.

What is a "mondegreen?" It is the misheard lyric --rock has a zillion like "The ants are my friends/They're blowin' in the wind" (" "The answer my friend/Is blowing' in the wind"). Where did it come from? From a woman who had misheard the line in the folk song“they had slain the Earl of Moray/and laid him on the green” as “they had slain the Earl of Moray/and Lady Mondegreen.” There is a book of them called "'Scuse me While I Kiss this Guy." So everyone is theoretically employable.

The BBC reported yesterday that, for the first time, white Britons are now in a minority in London, the country’s largest city.

"Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to batteries. It may take another 10 years to 20 years before the industry can produce an electric vehicle with the range and flexibility consumers expect." --Tom Gage, who led production of the Tesla drive-train at AC Propulsion Ltd.

The American Poverty Program was started in 1964 with a budget of $64 Billion that year. (Inflation corrected that is about $330 Billion.) In 2012 the poverty program received $664 Billion. Since 1964 there has been a total of $16 Trillion taken out of the economy and contributed to the poverty program.

There is an ongoing debate over Lincoln's real feelings about slavery, the black man and the Civil War. One explanation of Lincoln's decision to fight the Civil War is economic: Throughout most of our history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. The North just could not let them go.

Lehman Brothers had, at the time of their bankruptcy, $35 trillion (with a "T") in derivative exposure and 52 billion dollars in transaction costs alone.

As a young man the the eventually urbane and well-traveled Jewish historian Josephus lived as an ascetic in the desert.

Samuel Morse who invented the telegraph was sued over the work in sixty separate cases. Alexander Graham Bell would face more than six hundred lawsuits over his invention of the telephone. Five of them would reach the U.S. Supreme Court. One rival in particu­lar, a brilliant inventor named Elisha Gray, would insist to his dying day that the telephone had been his invention. Years later, Gray's own partner would sigh, 'Of all the men who didn't invent the telephone, Gray was the nearest.' "

In the late 1800s and early 1900s Howard Thurston was America's preeminent magician, besting even his friend and rival Harry Houdini. He was a runaway as a child and spent his early teens riding the rails, jumping on and off freight trains living a surprisingly common feral train life.

During 2012, China generated 100.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from wind, more than nuclear.

There is a significant problem in Denver with rabbits eating battery wires in the cars at the airport. Mechanics say coating the wires with fox or coyote urine can discourage the rabbits. So all of you who have been saving coyote urine are vindicated. There is a coyote urine market!

This is lifted directly off of a due diligence summary for a small company looking for investment money: "...(We)....will first market the device in select European markets given the more favorable regulatory clearance path and the need to collect clinical data to support US clearance." The Europeans are more friendly to entrepreneurs than the U.S..

Output of CO2 gas fell 13 percent in the past five years in the U.S. to a level last seen in 1994. The U.S. is still No. 2 worldwide in net CO2 emissions, trailing only China, but remarkably (and rarely noted) is only number 10 per capita. I am not sure which is more surprising.

Nutrition and its impact on growth: A study comparing poor boys recruited by the Marine Society (in essence a charity that supported poor boys going into the British Navy) to upper-class entrants to the elite military academy of Sandhurst near London, showed a slow upward trend for cohorts born between 1750 and 1825 but clearly demonstrate a large disparity in height between the two groups. At the age of 14, the Sandhurst recruits were almost 10 inches taller than their poor compatriots. Interestingly, not having a father in the home was a separate factor in retarded growth.

The Fed is keeping interest rates low and plans to continue this for several years if they can be believed. The net effect is the search outside government debt for yield (and the government selling debt that is way overvalued.) Here is a summary of the effects as seen by a money manager: "The artificially low T-Bill rates first work their way slowly up the curve. Next, the most obviously competitive type of equities – high yield stocks – begin to be bid up ahead of the rest of the market, as has happened. “I’ve just got to squeeze out some higher rates somewhere, anywhere,” is the pension fund plea. Then, this low rate competition begins to filter into other securities, historically sought after for their higher yields: higher-grade real estate, where the “cap rates” slowly fall; and, unfortunately, also forestry and farmland, mainly of the larger and more standard varieties that appeal to institutions, which show declines in their required yields, i.e., their prices rise. The longer the engineered rates stay below true market rates, the higher asset prices become until, yes, you’ve got it, corporate assets begin to sell way over replacement cost. Then, if the heart of capitalism is still beating at all, a long period of over-investment begins and returns are bid down and everything moves into balance, often helped along if asset prices get too high, as in 2000 and 2007, by a good healthy market crunch." (Grantham)

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

The Buffalo Bruins fine goalie Ryan Miller's career record against the Penguins is 5-11-3, his worst against any opponent.

The Quinnipiac opinion poll has Gov. Christy at the highest job approval he has ever had, 74 percent. That is the highest New Jersey Governor approval in the 17 years that Quinnipiac has been polling the state, and the highest of any Governor in the seven states that Quinnipiac polls now.

Only 16 percent of all murders and 7 percent of sexual assaults aboard cruise ships lead to convictions or plea bargains, according to FBI statistics.

Fisker Automotive Inc., the U.S. plug-in hybrid carmaker seeking a buyer, is weighing several bids, including a $350 million offer from Dongfeng Motor Corp. that would give the Chinese car maker majority control, said people with knowledge of the matter. Dongfeng, based in Wuhan, China, would gain 85 percent of Fisker under the terms of its bid, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the process is private.

Private investors put in over $1 Billion into the company would now own only 15%. (If 350 million is 85% then the total value of the company is 412 million. 15% of that is 61.8 million, 16% of the original 1 billion dollars. Yikes.)

Aaaaaaaannnnnnddddd.....two graphs:

Merger and Acquisitions by U.S. states:

Mergers and Acquisitions by country:

Society's Real Conflict

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

Now if the government wanted to investigate those dichotomies, that would be worth the watch.

Ideas from Marrs

The wonderfully named Jim Marrs is a writer of true fringe material---mostly conspiratorial. He is more unusual in that he is published by major houses; this may not make him credible but it does show he sells. He has published five volumes with HarperCollins and its William Morrow imprint — including “Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us” (1997) and “The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America” (2008). Mr. Marrs’s newest book, “Our Occulted History,” is a consideration of the possibility that both the Darwinists and the creationists have it wrong; that modern man might have actually been bred by “space-faring overlords” from the planet Nibiru. (It is always exciting when such stuff--like scientology--can offer such specifics.) Indeed, according to Mr Marrs, the Nibiruians  may still be exerting their influence over Earth by controlling “a small group of international yet interconnected individuals” who run the financial and news media industries.

This might explain some things, especially the part about a small group of leaders and media people who have allegiences to some intergalactic project that only peripherally involves us. And it might supprt the notion that Obama's behavior is that of a visitor from a more moral civilization. But his first book is the interesting one. His first book, “Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy,” was rejected by some 25 publishers before the independent Carroll & Graf, now defunct, published it in 1989.

That book became a best seller, as well as one of the sources for Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “J.F.K.” It is always good to know the foundations of major and influencial works.

Minimum Objectivity

In the President's State of the Union speech he extolled raising the minimum wage. A "family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty level. That is wrong." It is wrong, i.e. slightly untrue. The average family income of a household with a minimum-wage worker is about $47,023—which is far above the poverty line of $23,550 for a family of four. And, more important, most minimum-wage earners are not the primary bread winner. Nearly 40% live with a parent or relative. But if you are twenty, with two kids and working at McDonald's, you will be below the poverty level. The problem in that situation, however, is not the wage; it is much, much deeper than that. This seems to be a sticking point: having children with no education, no evidence of responsibility and no real future prospects is not going to be solved by a thirty cent raise. But the quality of that scenario can not be quantified and, thus, discussed.

There is another point: Does raising the mandatory wage on jobs that are essentially entry-level jobs or supplemental jobs for school age kids influence their availability? Fixing the price of a work at a low level makes the worker go away, does fixing the price of work at a high level make the work go away? According to a White House memo, "A range of economic studies show that modestly raising the minimum wage increases earnings and reduces poverty without measurably reducing employment." That is reassuring. Accept for" modestly" and "measurably," two words that would not be accepted in any reasonable study. And, worse, this from David Neumark, an economist from the University of California at Irvine who looked at over 100 studies on the minimum wage. He wrote that the White House summary of job loss from minimum wage "grossly misstates the weight of the evidence." About 85% of the studies "find a negative employment effect on low-skilled workers."

Studies and numbers can show a lot of things; the devil does quote scripture. But this seems like a  more simple economic question than most. And it seems that people with good intent might be able to get some evidence one way or the other of the value of such an approach.

The fact that that has not happened is telling.

Presidents' Day Collage

Presidents' Day is a bad idea. It drags all the individuals in and celebrates none. It submerges each individual with his special abilities into a meaningless composite. In a world of Armstrong, Bonds and Grass we should elevate heroes and men of integrity, not mix them in a stew.

This new world of equality-through-sameness may not tolerate such distinctions, though. We have not had a real hero since Pat Tillman and he, symbolically, was killed by friendly fire.

Another View of Debt and Spending

An opinion on the debt and spending from the Left, Andrew Tobias, who wrote a great book on investing, "The Only Investment Book You Will Ever Need." This is from his blog:

"One way to look at it is to ask this question: Will we have an easier time managing our already giant debt if our infrastructure is crumbling . . . or managing an even slightly larger debt if we have a modern, efficient infrastructure? Which economy is likely to generate more tax revenue long-term? Which is likely to inspire more investor confidence?
Another way to look at is: Will austerity and non-investment in our future really lower the deficit? Or will it mean (at best) more of the same kind of economy we have now, with lots of safety-net expenditures but less tax revenue than we’d raise in a robust economy?
A third way to look at it: What will be the cost of repairing bridges after they’ve collapsed versus repairing them now? Ten times as much? A hundred times as much? What will be the cost of dealing for 70 years with kids whose intellect has been impaired because we failed to de-lead their homes, or because we failed to provide pre-school education and modern classrooms . . . versus the cost of doing that work now? Ten times as much? A hundred times as much? Isn’t it cheaper to put idle people to work doing that now so more of those kids become productive taxpayers rather than wards of the state?
And note, as always, that scary as half-trillion-dollar deficits sound, if we just ran them every year for the next 50, in an environment where our economy were growing just 2.5% in real terms but also 2.5% with inflation, our National Debt would gradually but dramatically shrink as a proportion of GDP. From roughly 100% of GDP now to roughly 25%. No need to “balance” the budget at all — especially because the way Uncle Sam budgets, we don’t capitalize investments. Bridges that cost $1 billion to build are not amortized over decades, as a business would amortize a power plant; they are “expensed” all in the year the cash goes out the door.
This is what we did after World War II..."

But if Wall Street sold a product that they knew would lose value over time, wouldn't you be outraged?

Sunday Sermon 2/17/13

(N.B.: The Old Testament reading today is one of those rare example where the more modern translation outshines the King James version: "My father was a wandering Aramean...")

This week's gospel is the Temptation in the Desert, one of those writings of biblical conflict that the evangelists seemed to delight in presenting, fearlessly--almost defiantly. Christ goes to the desert for forty days "and was tempted by the devil," who  "led him to a high mountain," quotes scripture and, finally rejected, "departed from him for a time." Christ is offered relief of human needs, possessions and authority if he will surrender his integrity. Is this real? Is this literal? Is this a debate Christ is having in His mind. Christ always responds with scripture, but the devil quotes scripture as well.

Can Christ be tempted? Led? Does the devil come back? If so, why?

There is a disturbing quality in passages like these of a struggle, an internal dispute that is within Christ, as if the human and spiritual were unsettled within Him. Like us.

Cab Thoughts 2/16/13

Twice a day, a broken clock is more accurate than the Cs clock at the National Bureau of Standards.

Wild exuberance. Fantasies. Elaborate and unreal displays. Maybe the State of the Union should always be delivered on Mardi Gras.

This is just too rich: Jonah Lehrer, the science writer who resigned from The New Yorker in July after he was caught recycling his own material and fabricating quotes, was paid a $20,000 honorarium by the Knight Foundation to speak about his "mistakes" at a media seminar this week.

PIMCO has just opened a new EFT to benefit from decline in the value of the dollar. (A weaker currency gives a nation's exporters a competitive advantage on the global market.) Bill Gross, one of Pimco's chief strategists, has long warned that rising debt levels in the United States and the Federal Reserve's easy monetary policies will pressure the dollar for years.

Total sales of vehicles in China rose 46 percent to 2.03 million units last month, according to LMC Automotive, an Asian forecasting company in Shanghai. Sales of SUVs, the fastest-growing segment last year, continued continued their gains in January, surging 91 percent to 240,700 units. Sedan deliveries gained 49 percent to 1.19 million vehicles. It is said that most of these purchases are cash.

Israel has flown inside Syria’s borders to attack chemical and biological weapons stores. Biological weapons stores. Little has been said about this.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, the "father of the Prius" who helped put hybrids on the map, said he believes fuel-cell vehicles hold far more promise than battery electric cars. "Because of its shortcomings — driving range, cost and recharging time — the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars," said Uchiyamada. "We need something entirely new."

A March 2012 Nature study shows that the global damage cost from hurricanes will go to 0.02% of gross domestic product annually in 2100 from 0.04% today—a drop of 50%, despite global warming.

The human brain consists of hundreds of billions of cells called neurons and over a trillion glial cells. The number of connections between these cells numbers between 60–240 trillion.

Golden oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/04/non-profit-capitalism.html

Goalie Tim Thomas was traded by the Bruins to the Islanders on Thursday for a conditional second-round draft choice either next year or in 2015. Thomas chose to take this season off following the NHL lockout and was suspended by the Bruins after he didn't report to training camp last month. The 38-year-old goalie is in the final season of a four-year deal that counts for $5 million against the salary cap. The Islanders have plenty of room to fit Thomas' salary on their cap, and this deal provides financial flexibility for the Bruins. But Thomas has said he will not play this season. And the Islanders have a good goalie. This is a deal with some peculiar qualities; no real advantage to the Islanders at all but considerable help to Boston.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, published two papers recently showing a rather startling demographic trend among Muslim countries: Marriage rates and fertility numbers are crashing, even in poor areas usually immune to such changes. The developed world has been showing these numbers for years. The female marriage rate fell in Germany from 98% to 59% from 1965 to 2000; it fell in France over that period from 99% to 61%; in Sweden from 98% to 49%; in Britain, from nearly 100% to 54%. Marriage is also plummeting in Asia: In Japan, the percentage of women between 30 and 34 who have never married rose from 7.2% in 1970 to 26.6% in 2000; in Burma, it rose from 9.3% to 25.9%; in Thailand, from 8.1% to 16.1%; in South Korea, from 1.4% to 10.7%.
Marriage rates in the Arab world are higher, but they're moving fast in the same direction
Using data for 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories, he found that fertility rates declined an average of 41% between 1975-80 and 2005-10, compared with a 33% drop for the world as a whole. Twenty-two Muslim countries and territories had fertility declines of 50% or more. The sharpest drops were in Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Libya, Albania, Qatar and Kuwait, which all recorded declines of 60% or more over these three decades.
Fertility in Iran declined an astonishing 70% over the 30-year period

A fall in petroleum imports led overall purchases from abroad to decline $4.6 billion in December. For the entire year, the country's imports of crude oil fell to their lowest levels since 1997 in terms of volume. There was considerable cheering about this and it is impressive.....until one looks at the overall balance numbers. For all of 2012, the U.S. trade gap fell by 3.5 percent to $540.4 billion. Our trade deficit was 540.4 billion dollars last year, and that was an improvement.

Warren Buffett: "The U.S trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to political turmoil... Right now, the rest of the world owns $3 trillion more of us than we own of them."

Venezuela devalues its currency. The major benefactor? The State. The devaluation cuts the dollar value of domestic debt from $42.9bn to $29.3bn, leading analysts to expect an increase in prices of Venezuela’s foreign debt.But while the government gains, most Venezuelans lose out, with Ecoanalitica (a currency concern) estimating an 8 per cent fall in consumers’ purchasing power. The relative value of workers’ salaries will fall.
Another group affected is the multinational companies that couldn’t repatriate capital, and they will end up losing from one day to the next 46.5 per cent of their funds accumulated in bolívars. Shares in companies with Venezuelan operations, including Colgate-Palmolive and Avon, fell on the announcement. Mr Oliveros, from Ecoanalitica, added that the devaluation was also likely to spur inflation, which at more than 20 per cent is one of the highest in the world

Dr. Carson, the Hopkins pediatric neurosurgeon, on health care insurance (delivered at a prayer breakfast where Obama was also present): "Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels. Number one.

And also, for the people who were indigent who don't have any money we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money. Instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let's put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care."

AAnnnnnddddd.....in the spirit of trade deficits, a trade deficit chart:

Beasts of the Southern Wild

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" is based on a one act play written by Lucy Aliba called "Juicy and Delicious." The movie was co-written by her and the movie's director, Benh Zeitlin, another of Wesleyan's ubiquitous graduates. It is a part fable, part coming of age (at a young age), part apocalyptic film done in a documentary format. It has won in Sundance and Cannes, has several Oscar nominations (including its six year old lead) and has some extraordinary qualities. The two main characters, Louisiana residents Quavenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry, have never acted before; the child lead is on screen for almost the entire film The second lead, a baker, initially refused the job to get his business up and running. The story is emotional, the scenery beautiful and the acting terrific. On the other side there is an almost painful quality about the lives that are struggling to be led and saved, an acceptance of filth, alcoholism and degeneracy that the individual bravery in the film transcends--but also highlights. There is pre-history imagery throughout that blunts the primitive lives a bit, but never softens it. But, to be fair, there is no reason to reserve nobility to the nobles.

The story takes place in a waterlocked area of the Bayou of  Louisiana, isolated from the mainland, called "The Bathtub." The geography here is a major character--beautiful, threatening and vulnerable. The story line centers on Hushpuppy, a six year old child abandoned by her mother, who is watching her father die of an unnamed illness. The father, at the same time, is trying to teach his child life survival skills but, more importantly, an attitude of survival, an appreciation that strength and confidence is necessary to live. (This is a strong idea but there are some complexities with it in the film that seem to be purposeful although, with a film as unstructured as this, it is hard to be sure.) As he declines, the natural course of things is threatened as well. The weather changes, the polar caps melt. Rain and flooding threatens the tight, diverse, isolated community. More, the change is part of an apocalyptic world change that releases powerful beasts from icy hibernation. These beasts move south to coincide with Hushpuppy's immediate threats and fears.

The story alternates from the holiday mindset of the people and the beautiful scenery to the grim, claustrophobic makeshift houses and goofy imitation businesses. Sometime the holiday atmosphere and the claustrophobia merge. Hushpuppy wanders through all this defiantly and self possessed. In one brilliant recurring theme she does drawings that approximate cave drawings, musing that future scientists can point to this to prove something she already knows, her intrepid existence. Then storms strike, destruction threatens, lives are overturned. And the beasts are coming. Hushpuppy emerges from all of this like some sort of fantastic warrior princess.

The history of this film, and the film itself, are curiously unsettled, as if it evolved before the writers' eyes. The leads apparently did not merge into their characters; it seems the characters serendipitously adapted to them. Some of the scenes are terrific, some just silly. And the grimness of the real life is depressing and miserable. But a lot is done well. The scenery is spectacular, the isolated tribe is coherent and believably primitive--like some Conan Doyle out-of-time wonderworld. And the acting should make everyone reassess the value of acting school.

The Pope at the Olympics

Strangely, I was thrilled with the Pope's decision to resign, placing management before tradition. Yet when the Olympics decided to get rid of wrestling as a competitive sport because it was commercially inferior to other events, I was outraged that they turned their backs on tradition.

The Pope as Emerson

The Catholic Church has core values as a base and structure fleshed out with tradition and pageantry. It is an organization that does not demand management but rather consistency. When faced with theoretical questions they take the historic route; when faced with management decisions, they freeze. They guide the Church through the world's storms, they do not interact with them. Almost the obverse of 19th Century transcendentalism, integrity of the structure is paramount and transcendental, integrity of individuals is for the world.

The Pope's decision to resign changes all this in a pen stroke. This does not appear to be a reaction to anything; it looks like the result of his assessment of his ability to manage. To have that kind of foreword perspective in the pontiff is remarkable and to create that concern as a component of papal leadership more so.

On one hand this is an organization with deep rooted ideas administered by people who believe them and who appoint assistants who are compatible with both. As such it is hard to change. On the other hand, this might be a revolution in the Church.

Penitent Rap

Leave a message after the beep....

Hey, hey, Father, is that you there?
You always seemed to me to be a guy who'd care.
It's been quite a while since my last confession   
And I guess this moment here will be a useful lesson.
Like, does this count, recorded and all?
Can I really be forgiven with just this call?
We have group confessions now; we confess to us
Just sitting in the church without a fuss.
If I confessed from a steeple or maybe a tree,
Or a building or a pulpit, would I be free
Of the guilt I hope to purify?
Would my good intentions be enough to sanctify
My soul, and set my mind at ease?
Or does ritual and pageantry please
God more, and help to make my regrets more real
So the circumstances are the things that seal the deal?

It doesn't seem right that God would change with times
But I know we do, and that the crimes
Of one time are not the crimes of another.
Like now it's no crime to take the wife of your brother.
So Hamlet's tragedy might be partially caused
By the local traditions, quirks of the laws
That in any other time might not be so grave.
So Ophelia and Hamlet--they might be saved
If the setting had just been another place or time.
Order would not have a reason or rhyme
To destroy them so. It's not so great a sample.
Claudius kills the king. I guess it's not a good example.

Father, you know I am sincere
And I certainly can say that I respect and fear
The consequences of my acts in God's eye:
Eternal damnation should I die
Without his forgiveness. Who would dare
To take a chance like that? But, to be fair,
There are thinkers who say we should randomly act
Because all acts are equal, and that's a fact.
But you could equally say we should be inert
Because God's mind is unknown and if He's hurt
He'll punish your immortal soul with death.
Immortal death, alone in space with nothing beneath
Or around or above
Estranged and isolated from God's love.
Maybe when we die the soul still stays
With the corpse in the ground and always
Is mixed with its fraying mortal cloak
That hangs about it like some ironic joke.
Better we're buried like Indians were, in a stand or tree--
In the air, at least. I saw that in a movie.

Father, you should know what I want to do
And what made me want to talk to you.
"By their fruits you shall know them" is troubling me.
Does that mean an apple's from an apple tree?
Or a good act is the product of a soul that's good?
That's simple enough. That's understood.
Or does it mean more? Could it be
The parent's the cause and someone like me
Is passive in what I can be or do;
That nothing in my family can ever be new,
But will repeat itself again and again,
And no one can escape a family's stain?

I'm an angry fruit from an angry tree.
The fruit is what I do and the tree is me.
What I am and do, it must be one.
Whatever I do, it must be done.
The fruit and the tree are really the same,
Father and son with a different name.
I'm sorry to go on like some Mad Hatter.
So let me get right to the meat of the matter.
I really don't want you to think I'm sick.
So, here's what I'm planning, I'm going to...Click

Several Quotes; One Source

Quotes:

"Eventually we do have a problem. The population is getting older, health care costs are rising ... . Something is going to have to give."

"We won't be able to pay for the kind of society we want without some increases in taxes and surely in the end it will require some middle-class taxes as well, maybe a value added tax."

"going to have to ... really make decisions about health care, (and) not pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits."

"Death panels and sales taxes is how we do this."


Sarah Palin? Newt Gingrich?

Nope. Paul Krugman answering questions after speaking at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C..

Sunday Sermon 2/10/13

The three readings today are reflections of each other across time. In each episode someone progresses from unworthiness to acceptance: an Old Testament prophet is purified, Paul talks about his conversion from Christian persecutor to evangelist and Peter is overwhelmed by Christ's miracle with the fish in the nets. The lesson is one of those wonderful biblical lessons, obvious yet startling. The eye of the needle screens out worldly excess, not people. Anyone can approach Christ.

Cab Thoughts 2/9/13

"There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen........Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil."
- From an essay by Frédéric Bastiat in 1850, "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen

Hydrogen cells, the new, NEW answer! The California Air Resources Board just approved new regulations designed to put 500,000 zero-emission cars on the road by 2025. More than 160,000 of those vehicles would be hydrogen fuel-cell cars in one scenario. The regulations also require oil companies to build hydrogen refueling stations.


The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week that two of America's Great Lakes, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, are at their lowest water levels since recording began in 1918. The lakes were 29 inches below their long-term average, and down 17 inches since this time last year. One of the factors is said to be dredging, so the volume of water may be less changed.

When looking at cars sold, the "cars sold" number is what the manufacturers are reporting that dealers purchased from the manufacturer.

We taste only four flavors: sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. That means that everything else we call 'flavor' is really 'odor.' And many of the foods we think we can smell we can only taste. Sugar isn't volatile, so we don't smell it, even though we taste it intensely. Because there is no gravity in space, there are no smells. Food tastes terrible in space. Wine is tasteless without good sense of smell.

"Er Ist Wieder Da (He's Back)" has sold more than 400,000 copies since its release, keeping it at the top of the Spiegel's bestseller chart since mid December. It is a first person novel with Hitler waking up in 2011 in Germany. It is said to be a satire.

Sixteen-year-old George Washington wrote a pamphlet, Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation; A Book of Etiquette. To have such a man do such a thing must mean something.

Who is....... Lucy Rimirez?

Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese. Wait 'til a militant government accountant sees that. They have. A provision in the Affordable Care Act that is starting next year allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums. A 60-year-old smoker could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.

Stratford did a quick summary of Central Asia. This is an excerpt: "Central Asia, with the exception of Tajikistan, is Turkic. But by further breaking the region up into ethnicities -- Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, Kyrgyz -- and creating official republics, even as they made sure the clan system everywhere remained intact, the Soviets ensured that pan-Turkism would have a hard time rearing up. The result, given Stalin's artificial borders, are states that are mutually suspicious of each other and that are partial misnomers themselves."

All smells fall into a few basic categories, almost like primary colors: minty (peppermint), floral (roses), ethereal (pears), musky (musk), resinous (camphor), foul (rotten eggs), and acrid (vinegar). This is why perfume manufacturers have had such success in concocting floral bouquets or just the right threshold of muskiness or fruitiness. Natural substances are no longer required; perfumes can be made on the molecular level in laboratories. One of the first perfumes based on a completely synthetic smell (an aldehyde) was Chanel No. 5. Because animal musk is so close to human testosterone, we can smell it in portions of as little as 0.000000000000032 of an ounce.

A fascinating paragraph from Technology Review on GE's efforts to sell wind turbines: "GE’s new wind turbine comes with battery backup. New algorithms, paired with weather-prediction software, determine when to store power in the battery and when to send it to the grid. As a result, wind farm operators can guarantee power output—but for just 15 minutes at a time. If wind power is ever to provide a large share of the total electricity supply, it may be necessary to have hours of storage—or else grid operators will have to maintain backup sources of power, such as natural-gas power plants." This cost effectiveness is crucial and rarely mentioned. The calculations always exclude the cost of building, maintaining and operating the back-up assets required for times when the wind isn't blowing.

Pennsylvania is going to raise gas taxes over the next five years from 19.2 cents per gallon, to 47.7 cents per gallon. That's a 150% increase over the span of the next five years.

While worried about debt and government management, there are some bright spots according to Roubini Global Economics. From a balance-sheet perspective, the U.S. household sector is coming to the end of its period of deleveraging that began in 2008. Wealth has been rebuilt (Figures 4 and 5), debt has been cut through defaults and repayment, and incomes have recovered (Figure 14 shows the detailed decomposition of this process). As long as interest rates remain low, and deflation is avoided, a more normal period may soon begin, although debt levels in some sectors remain high, mainly student loans which are greater than auto loans and credit card debt combined.

In March of 2004, terrorists bombed four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and wound­ing approximately eighteen hundred. Spanish police soon found a partial fingerprint on a plastic bag in a car containing materials from the attack. Using a digital copy of the fingerprint sent by the Spanish police, a senior FBI fingerprint examiner made 'a 100% identification' of Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon attorney, whose prints appeared in government databases because of his military service and an arrest years earlier. Mayfield was clearly not involved but the FBI would not give up until the Spanish police caught an Algerian with an identical print match. The FBI did not follow "blind procedure" to identify Mayfield but instead showed the prints around with him already identified as the bomber. Confirmation bias as institutional technique. Incidentally, the Bureau has not changed their policy.

Tiny Cyprus, whose banking system is bankrupt, has banks that are four times larger than the country, financially. There is considerable political turmoil in Cyprus, with elections due in two weeks (February 17). While the cash problem amounts to only about 10 billion euros, the procedural problem is challenging. When you deal with Cyprus, you will be establishing a precedent for dealing with the rest of Europe, where private liabilities are greater than the public wealth.

In 1974 Thomas Nagel published “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” a short essay arguing that the subjective experience of consciousness — what philosophers call the “qualia” — could not be fully reduced to the physical aspects of the brain. That essay framed a landmark challenge to the materialist view of the mind that was then prevailing and helped cement Mr. Nagel’s reputation. He has a new book, "Mind and Cosmos," argueing that consciousness, meaning and moral value aren’t just incidental features of life on earth, but fundamental aspects of the universe. Instead of random evolution Mr. Nagel sees the unfolding of a “cosmic predisposition.” (Nagel is, amazingly, an atheist.) This has stimulated the traditional emotional outrage that seems to characterize the usually scientific community and has energized the equally nonobjective "Intelligent Design" community.

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

Jared Diamond in his new book, The World Until Yesterday, writes about children being raised by non-biological parents, now called "allo parents." These anthropologist-sociologists went to small cultures and found a thriving deferral of parental responsibility through out the community. "It takes a village." As this is a modern trend, this notion of the responsibility of the group seems to be a hoped for ideal looking for a place of expression. This is presented as a way of escaping the limits of the individual parent, of improving survival chances by increasing socialization. The Celts did this, handing children down family lines laterally to aunts and uncles. I never though it was done because anyone thought it was a good idea, I always thought it was forced upon the culture because of the high mortality rate of the parents.

According to biologists, cats are off killing other animals — billions of them a year. Scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimate that each year cats are preying on billions of birds and small mammals like indigenous chipmunks, shrews, and meadow voles. There are estimated to be 30 million to 80 million free-roaming, feral cats living in the United States. They either survive alone or live in colonies. In Washington, D.C., for example, there are estimated to be some 300 outdoor cat colonies. There is actually a small and so far discredited movement in New Zealand to limit cats to protect the declining bird population. The government will soon be coming for your kitty!

Aaaaannnnnddddd a weird picture:

Op­eration Gomorrah

During World War II, the British spearheaded bombing raids on the German people that leveled all or part of 131 towns and cities, killed 600,000 civilians, destroyed 3.5 million homes, and left 7.5 million people homeless. Led by Sir Arthur Harris, this was done so "that those who have loosed ... horrors upon mankind will now in their homes and persons feel the shattering strokes of just retribution." In fairness, this savagery was not agreed upon; many opposed it. A description of it shows up in "Slaughterhouse Five" in the attack on Dresden.

 In "On the Natural History of Destruction," W G Sebald describes such an event in the British attack on the city of  Hamburg: "The aim of Op­eration Gomorrah, as it was called, was to destroy the city and reduce it as completely as possible to ashes. In a raid early in the morning of 27 July, be­ginning at 1 a.m., 10,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped on the densely populated residential area east of the Elbe. ... A now familiar sequence of events occurred: first all the doors and windows were torn from their frames and smashed by high-explosive bombs weighing 4,000 pounds, then the attic floors of the buildings were ignited by lightweight incendiary mixtures, and at the same time fire-bombs weighing up to 15 kilo­grams fell into the lower storeys. Within a few min­utes huge fires were burning all over the target area, which covered some 20 square kilometres, and they merged so rapidly that only quarter of an hour after the first bombs had dropped the whole airspace was a sea of flames as far as the eye could see. Another five minutes later, at 1.20 a.m., a firestorm of an intensity that no one would ever before have thought possible arose. The fire, now rising 2,000 metres into the sky, snatched oxygen to itself so violently that the air currents reached hurricane force, reso­nating like mighty organs with all their stops pulled out at once.

The fire burned like this for three hours. At its height the storm lifted gables and roofs from buildings, flung rafters and entire advertising hoard­ings through the air, tore trees from the ground and drove human beings before it like living torches. Behind collapsing facades the flames shot up as high as houses, rolled like a tidal wave through the streets at a speed of over 150 kilometres an hour, spun across open squares in strange rhythms like rolling cylinders of fire. The water in some of the canals was ablaze. The glass in the tramcar windows melted; stocks of sugar boiled in the bakery cellars. Those who had fled from their air-raid shelters sank, with grotesque contortions, in the thick bubbles thrown up by the melting asphalt. No one knows for certain how many lost their lives that night, or how many went mad before they died. When day broke, the summer dawn could not penetrate the leaden gloom above the city. The smoke had risen to a height of 8,000 metres, where it spread like a vast, anvil-shaped cumulonimbus cloud. A wavering heat, which the bomber pilots said they had felt through the sides of their planes, continued to rise from the smoking, glowing mounds of stone." 

 

The description gets worse. Much worse.

Pay, Earnings and Production

Physicians' pay has come up recently as a factor in the dreaded and mysterious cost of medical care discussion, costs which seem unfathomable to so many speakers, at least in public. In one particularly obnoxious interview a condescending, smiling, arrogant administrator from somewhere showed an eagerness to cut into physicians' pay that was almost creepy it was so oily. It was unusual as one rarely hears public officials campaign for decreased earnings for anybody. Perhaps this is an offshoot of the demonized 1% but attacking earnings directly, rather than through the indirect tax approach, is distinctly new. CEOs are often vilified for their outrageous incomes but those decisions are really corporate and independent. Physicians' salaries soon will be public decisions as doctors become more and more employees of the state.

Like so many government pronouncements, things are not as easy as they seem---but some symbolic targets are easy. So madmen murder children and we pass a law against a technology. Temperatures are going up so we attack a trace atmospheric element. Lord only knows what will emerge in the new health care problem and its equally problematic solution but several things are certain. The government believes health cost are very important. Obama told Boehner that health care costs exclusively were responsible for the American deficit/debt problem. Things cost money and that money must come from somewhere, usually profits from another source. If the cost and use of medical products cannot be limited, those products will become less and less available.

One interesting sidebar in physician pay is productivity. How much work is done by physicians is done because they are incentivize to work? Put another way, how many patients are cared for simply because the physician is rewarded to do so? Would a farmer produce as much food if he were paid by the day?

This is complicated by the fact that underlying these concerns is the unspoken belief that too much health care is being delivered. While this is couched in terms like "over treatment" and "waste" there are no guidelines for such ideas; they are only slogans. But limited resources will limit activity, waste or not.

As an interesting aside, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation the more significant drivers of health costs include new prescription drugs, technology and administrative needs. Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt, the man who singlehandedly has raised the alarm about the effect of health care costs to an economy, estimates that physicians’ take-home pay represents roughly 10% of national health care spending. Cutting physician pay by 20% would only reduce spending by 2%.

Even Socrates Was Not a Prophet in his Own Land

Xanthippe pouring water over Socrates. He's supposed to have replied: After thunder comes rain.

Art: Reyer Jacobsz van Blommendael (1628-1675)

Murder

Murder rates per capita are difficult to assess and accuracy is one of the problems. Here is a map of  murders by countries--a bit hard to see--and a link to an interactive map.




And the link:
http://chartsbin.com/view/1454

Mining and Quakes

A study on the risk of man induced seismic activity has been carried out by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Environmental groups and special interest entities have focused on earthquakes as a possible result of hydraulic fracking where water and trace chemicals are pumped into hydrocarbon sites to facilitate petroleum extraction. There is a tremendous amout of information available from a surprising amount of mining efforts. This is from that study. 

 

A British government enquiry held fracking responsible for a series of tremors in April and May of 2011 at Preese Hall near Blackpool, the largest of which had a magnitude of 2.3 on the Richter scale, big enough to be felt by local residents.
Fracking has also been linked to a "swarm" of 50 small earthquakes in Oklahoma on Jan 18, 2011, ranging in magnitude from 1.0 to 2.8, which occurred at the same time as the fracking of a well in the Eola Oil Field. Some reported changes near Ohio fields have been suspected as well.

The study of effects of underground injection is not new. There has been considerable experience with this phenomenon in other areas, particularly in geothermal energy production and pumping CO2 underground for the purpose of carbon retrieval and storage projects. Seismic events have been traced to conventional oil and gas extraction, secondary oil recovery through waterflooding, geothermal energy, waste water injection and hydroelectric reservoirs. In some of these projects the volumes and pressures have been considerable.

The most famous example of induced seismic activity occurred in the 1960s at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado, where the U.S. Army disposed of hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated water from chemical weapons production every day by pumping it into a well drilled on site. Between 1962 and 1967, more than 1,500 earthquakes were recorded in the area, some as high as magnitude 3 or 4, and noticed by local residents. "By November 1965, over 700 shocks had been recorded, and although 75 of these had been felt, no damage was recorded," according to previous research cited by the National Academy.  "Research indicated a strong relationship between injection volumes and earthquake frequency ... Although injection into the Arsenal well ceased in February 1966, earthquake activity continued for several more years. The strongest earthquakes actually occurred after injection into the well was discontinued."

Such events are also documented at The Geysers geothermal power project in northern California. The Geysers generates about 725 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a city the size of San Francisco, and supplies about 60 percent of the average power demand in the state's northern coastal region. Originally, the field produced power from steam flowing up naturally from 420 wells on the site. But as the underground pressure depleted, water injection commenced, which coincided with a significant rise in seismic activity, partly because of temperature differences between the injected water and hot rock formations. More than 1,000 seismic events with a magnitude of at least 1.5 are recorded every year, with around 25-30 reaching magnitude 3.0, and between one and three hitting magnitude 4.0 or more.

Between 1957 and 1983, aggressive gas production from the Lacq gas field in southwest France caused the pressure to drop from 660 bars to 160 (1 bar is roughly equal to normal atmospheric pressure). Some 800 seismic events with magnitudes ranging up to 4.2 were recorded as the pressure plunged.  These events are relatively rare compared with the large number of oil and gas fields around the world. Similarly, there are 151,000 injection wells licensed in the United States for waterflooding, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) or waste water disposal and documented instances of induced seismic activity remain very infrequent.

The most important risk factor is pressure changes linked to the net fluid balance (the total amount of fluid injected or withdrawn from the subsurface). The probability of triggering a significant seismic event increases with the volume of fluid injected (or withdrawn).

To trigger a magnitude 3 earthquake, a fault must rupture over an area of approximately 15 acres, increasing to 0.5 square miles for a magnitude 4 event, and 4.2 square miles for magnitude 5. The largest reported induced seismic events have all involved the injection of huge volumes that caused faults to rupture over a correspondingly large area. At Rocky Mountain Arsenal, the U.S. Army injected as much as 148-181,000 gallons (3,500-4,300 barrels) of water a day for years at a time. Massive injections into poorly selected rock formations induced 3 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0-5.5, the largest of which caused estimated damage of $500,000 in 1967.

Fracked wells simply do not inject a large enough volume of fluid over a big enough area to cause seismic events on this scale. In contrast, water injection at The Geysers has now hit more than 300 million barrels per year (partly offset by steam withdrawals). And carbon storage on utility-scale would involve the injection of truly staggering amounts of supercritical (gas/fluid) carbon dioxide into saline aquifers or unmineable coal seams.

I wouldn't rule out a Matt Damon movie, though.

Cab Thoughts From Vacation

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”

– H. L. Mencken

The historical sites on the hill in Istanbul, The Blue Mosque, Topkapi, and the Sophia are guarded by taciturn adolescents with automatic weapons. I asked our guide if I could take a picture of one, adding I had never seen an automatic weapon in The U.S.. She just about fainted.

The story of the Golden Fleece incorporated almost all the Greek heroes in its adventure. The fleece was held in Colchis, a city so far away as to seem at the end of the world. The city was across the Black Sea to it far eastern border, then up the River Phasis.

Miletos is situated on the Mediterranean coast of what is now Turkey. What emerged at Miletos in the sixth century B.C. was civilization's first attempt to replace myths with rational thought. In Miletos three significant thinkers emerged: Thales, who developed the idea of a primordial element (water), Anaximander who continued with primordial elemental thought and drew the first (if whimsical) world map, and Anaximenes who developed several primordial elements from the rarefaction of air and also theorized on the human soul. They were followed by Hecataeus, the father of history
All of these men contributed to the philosophical revolution that would emerge in Athens.

The notion of a primordial element or elements led to the logic of alchemy.

The author of "The Swerve" does not like Christianity and, like many, ignores its intellectual and social contributions when he can possibly characterize it as a homicidal or art-smashing mob. His discussion on Alexandria allows him to expand in this vein as much of the destruction of the great city was caused by wild-eyed Christian fanatical homicidal art-smashers. The historical achievements of the city's citizens are daunting. Euclid developed his geometry in Alexandria; Archimedes produced a remarkably precise estimate of the value of pi and laid the foundation for calculus; Eratosthenes theorized that the earth was round and calculated its circumference to within 1 percent; Galen revolutionized medicine; Alexandrian astronomers postulated a heliocentric universe; geometers deduced that the length of a year was 365 1/4 days and proposed adding a 'leap day' every fourth year; geographers speculated that it would be possible to reach India by sailing west from Spain; engineers developed hydraulics and pneumatics--the doors of the temples were magically steam driven; anatomists first understood clearly that the brain and the nervous system were a unit and studied the function of the heart and the digestive system, and conducted experiments in nutrition.

Straits are crucial for commerce. 700 yard passage through the Bosporus. Gibraltar is 14 Km wide, the Danish Straits between the Baltic and North Sea. All are potential bottlenecks going somewhere. The largest river in Europe, the Volga, flows into the Caspian Sea, landlocked and untouched by commerce or history.

In 1204 the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople and stayed for 60 years.

A Genoese port on the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, Kaffa, was attacked by Tatars in 1347 who also brought the Black Death. Timur sacked the Venetian city of Tana in 1398.

The Black Sea is 2000 meters deep. The high organic inflow from the Kuban, Don, Dnieper, Druester and Danube uses up O2 and O2 is stripped from Sulfate resulting in H2S, an acid which settles down so that at 200 meters the Black Sea is anoxic and dead.

While the general current runs from the Black Sea to the Med, Marsigli's Current follows the pressure gradient of heavier Med to the lighter Black under the main current.

Diocletian tried to stabilize the Western World by creating a group of four leaders, the "Tetrarch", and the son of one tetrarch was Constantine. He took control at the Battle of Milvian Bridge with soldiers marked with the Chi and Rho on their shields, the first two letters of the Greek "Christ."No one is sure why.  He executed his first son and his second wife mysteriously disappeared at about the same time.

Constantinople fell to Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453. The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman in 1299. The Ottoman Empire was ruled for ten successive generations by capable and often brilliant leaders, culminating in the dazzling reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), who led the Empire to its cultural and geographic zenith. He built Topkapi, captured Belgrade and Budapest and completed the conquest of the Balkans. He besieged Vienna, the keystone of central Europe. He was well on his way to solidifying the Ottomans as the rising hisoric star in Europe.

All that changed when he met the redhead.
He was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana, as part of his share of a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland. She must have really been something. He was so taken by her he rejected his hundreds of other harem girls and spent his time with her exclusively. Then he did the unheard of. He married her.

She was soon known as "The Witch." She had a son, Selim II, and she poisoned Suleiman against his favorite, the brilliant and able Mustafa, to the advancement of her son. Mustafa was clearly the man to succeed the throne but she had Suleiman kill him. Suleiman actually watched as it was done. Selim became the new leader of the Empire and its new genetic father. A drunk and a coward, he brought dissolution to the Empire, personally and genetically. He started the tradition of killing every male in reach that looked to be a competent rival. This negative selective pattern reaped incompetent rewards. The behavior continued into the 20th Century when the Ottoman Empire fell apart in World War One, leaving the rest of the world with the aimless Middle East.

There is a great difference between phenotype and genotype.

There are burial mounds at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains, high in the permafrost, with burial artifacts of Scythians as described by Herodotus.

The Greeks incorporated the local history. Heracles has a son named Scythes, the supposed ancestor of the Scythians.

78% of the traffic of the famous "Silk Road" were slaves.

The Russians, through their devotion to all things dialectic, rejected transformation in Russia as the result of inward migration. Rather they saw it as the product of class chemistry transforming within static society. Marrism. Or Autochthony. What Sir Mortimer Wheeler wonderfully called, "Archeology not a profession but a vendetta."

Gen. Denchin's defeated White Army left from Novorosusk in March, 1920. It was the end of resistance to the revolution.

The Greeks were earlier invaders of the Black Sea, probably after the Scythians, and remained for hundreds of centuries as traders. After the First World War the Luzzern Treaty of 1923 allowed these people--who had not been to Greece in over two thousand years--to go back to Greece but those on the north shore were trapped by the revolution and could not leave until 1983.

Of all the nomadic tribes that funneled through the Black Sea, the most romantic are the Sarmatians. Their burial mounds are scattered to the east. They fought the Romans very successfully but were eventually defeated and absorbed. They were unique among the nomads with head armor, a lance for cavalry and a separate social and military structure: The had hereditary leaders but voted on military ones. Indeed, several military leaders buried there are women, perhaps the origin of the Amazon mythology. They eventually invaded Britain with Caesar and stayed after his withdrawal. Ascherson suggests they might be the forefathers of knighthood.

Wind Factories

“I once believed in the Sierra Club, until the CLUB ( an insular bunch of activists who aren’t looking at the entire picture but only at their own agendas) started fully supporting [windpower] …. Everything the environmentalists (including myself for 20 years) have worked so hard to protect, is now being destroyed or in jeopardy. Wind factories are industrial projects.”
- Jen Gilbert

This public letter of resignation from the Sierra Club is worth an extra moment. Her complaint is over the support of the Sierra Club for wind turbines, understandably called called "cuisinarts" by their opponents. There is more than the loss of protection for birds the writer is lamenting; she objects to the nature of the industry, its mechanics and capital structure. The turbines are not just dangerous to birds, they are an esthetic and philosophical challenge. They might replace coal fired plants which is essential to her, but these turbines, which use no carbon and produce no CO2, are an  inadequate revolution. Indeed this is a technological and capitalistic affront to her completely unrelated to energy and that is a deal-breaker, worse than her perceived warming.