Cab Thoughts 8/31/13

A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.--de Tocqueville

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) testing awarded the Tesla S an average of 5.4 stars--the highest total ever achieved by any vehicle.

The Affordable Care Act will cut $335 Billion in Medicare payments. The cost of increased taxes, fees and penalties is $434.1 Billion. Total: $769.1 Billion out of the system.

Zucherberg hosted a fund raiser for Christie.

Junot Diaz on his writing habits: "I wrote my first book listening to the soundtrack to the movie Conan the Barbarian on a loop. That's how I ride."

Advanced Placement Classes: In the last five years, the federal government has spent $275 million to promote AP classes and subsidize exam fees for low-income students; states have spent many millions more. The idea seems to be that students, if given greater challenges and opportunities, will rise to the occasion. Advocates often argue that students benefit from being exposed to the high expectations of an AP class, even if they don’t pass the test. In fact, taking an AP class does not lead to better grades in college, higher college graduation rates, or any other tangible benefit — unless the student does well enough to pass the AP test, said Trevor Packer, a senior vice president at the College Board.

In the last five years, the federal government has spent $275 million to promote the classes and subsidize exam fees for low-income students; states have spent many millions more.The class of 2012 failed nearly 1.3 million AP exams during their high school careers. That’s a lot of time and money.

Research shows that students don’t reap any measurable benefit from AP classes unless they do well enough to pass the $89 end-of-course exam.

Who is....Nathanial Greene?

In Swaziland, a country in southern Africa, witches are banned from riding above 492 feet on their broomsticks.

An investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that the National Security Agency uses algorithms to filter three-quarters of all Internet traffic in the U.S. and appears to retain the content of certain emails sent between U.S. citizens within the country.

An interesting conundrum: From December 2007 to June 2013, health spending rose 14.7%. Meanwhile, GDP grew at only 4.6%. Health care's share of total employment has increased from 9.5% to 10.7%. Excluding health spending from GDP, GDP growth is only 2.7%. So health spending accounted for almost half the economy's overall gain. Here's the rub: From 1999 to 2013, wages and salaries rose 50% in current dollars while health insurance premiums increased 182%, reports the Kaiser Family Foundation. Some insurance premiums would otherwise have gone into paychecks. So we are going to save money by starving the strongest horse in the trace.

William T. Vollmann won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Europe Central. He was apparently suspected by the FBI of being the Unabomber (the report says "anti-growth and anti-progress themes persist throughout each VOLLMANN work.") and then the anthrax killer. His article in Harper's raises an interesting question: What are the personal liberty implications of being suspected of something really serious although you don't know?

Golden Oldies:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/07/if-one-small-thing-is-true-then.html

Bloomberg reports that packs of the dogs have been spotted in groups as large as 20 roaming Detroit streets.

Morgan Stanley will pay a $1 million fine and compensate harmed investors to settle civil charges that the bank failed to give customers the best market prices for some corporate and municipal bonds, U.S. brokerage regulators said on Thursday. Civil charges, not criminal so no one goes to jail; the fine is paid by the huge corporation and everyone moves on. Bakshish.

Obama has a plan that would tie $150 billion each year in federal student aid to a ratings system the Department of Education will develop by 2015. Colleges that are more affordable, serve more students from poorer backgrounds and have high graduation rates, among other factors, will be rated higher and will influence the degree of government financial support.
What any of those factors have to do with education is uncertain. But, as stated by Mr. Earnest in a press conference, "So the record -- the President’s record on these issues -- he has a bias in favor of historically black colleges and universities because of the service they provide and because of the quality education that they provide to their students."

"We wanted to make a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead of the zombie world." Simon Pegg, film writer of "Shaun of the Dead."

Combined global sales of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are expected to total 5.2 million units in 2020, or just 7.3 percent of the 70.9 million passenger vehicles forecasted to be sold worldwide by that year, according to a report issued by J.D. Power and Associates. For comparison, global HEV and BEV sales in 2010 are forecast to total 954,500 vehicles, or 2.2 percent of the 44.7 million vehicles projected to be sold through the end of 2010.

Sedulous: adjective: Involving great care, effort, and persistence. From Latin se (without) + dolus (trickery, guile). Ultimately from the Indo-European root del- (to count or recount) that is also the source of tell, tale, talk, and Dutch taal (speech, language).

Sometimes an assumption of power is more than arrogance and repression, sometimes it is a test. ObamaCare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health care law — 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62% of the deadlines in Dodd-Frank.

According to The Montreal Gazette, Quebec is considering setting the prices of new books for nine months to give independent booksellers a chance against Amazon and bigger stores that can offer steep discounts. Several countries including France and Germany have similar protections in place. What's the next step, inspecting mailboxes?

Fix a price of something and it goes away.

AAAAAAAAaaaaaannnnnnddddd....a graph:

Foxy Journalism

FOX has been changing its lineups since the 2012 debacle, cutting back on the self-promoters and the screamingly wrong. Karl Rove has become scarce and Dick Morris is on the Index. They have made several curious scheduling decisions as well, putting Cavuto opposite O'Reilly and, recently, taking the talking point Gattling Hannity off at 9:00 in favor of fecund Megyn Kelly. The inner workings of FOX are only a curiosity but the press coverage is not. Here is a syndicated Hannity-Kelly story as reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
"Piers Morgan is getting some competition in the form of Fox newswoman Megyn Kelly, E! News reports.
Kelly, who's on maternity leave from work, has landed her own 9 p.m. Fox News time slot, according to the Drudge Report. Kelly's show would replace Sean Hannity's current 9 p.m. gig and would air in direct competition with Morgan's CNN show "Piers Morgan Live."
So what's Morgan think about his new time-slot rival? "Bring it on @megynkelly," the 48-year-old Brit tweeted Thursday with a link to the Drudge Report's story.
Sounds like Morgan isn't too worried!
Kelly gave birth to baby boy Thatcher Bray on July 23. Thatcher is Kelly and husband Doug Brunt's third child together."

Now that looks like a pretty straight forward puff-piece; the Morgan-Hannity competition sounds viable and Morgan sounds like a legitimate contender to be reckoned with. Except neither is true. Here are stats from last month:
"Tuesday night Fox News’ Hannity was #1 in the 25-54 demo at 9pm, more than doubling its nearest competitor, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show. Sean Harrity's show had 408K demo viewers to Rachel Maddow‘s 203K.
With CNN’s Piers Morgan drawing just 84K viewers in the demo, Hannity’s total topped MSNBC and CNN’s numbers combined at 9pm."

Morgan is clearly an insignificant competitor in that time slot. Why would the newspaper try to give the impression that he was more?

The Melting Pot

When I was a child, I remember a teacher who used to rail at my class, "Remember, children, America is not a melting pot of culture!" It was always a troubling concept because the "melting pot" has meant exactly that: it has evolved generally into meaning some homogeneous cultural stew. That is a disservice to the nation and its people. It should be thought of in its original meaning.

The term was first used by a Rabbi Samuel Schulman, who spoke of America as "the melting pot of nationalities" in a 1907 Passover sermon at his New York temple. The vision was that of multiple individual cultures joined at their collective hips by a common revolutionary national vision and commitment, a country of apriori equality, freedom and individual responsibility. This equality that did not have to be earned but was granted, by definition, by citizenship, along with its attendant responsibilities.

There was a play around the same time called "The Melting Pot" by Israel Zangwill. In it a Jewish composer and his lover, the daughter of an anti-Semitic Russian nobleman, overcome those old European mores and conflicts in the new America. That may expect too much. The pot is not a crucible. America will not purify its people; it will not cure stupidity and bigotry. Indeed, America will allow you to continue with your cultural specialness, your historical group individuality which you may guard jealously. You may keep your cultural identity as separate as you desire.

But there is one thing you must share: You must share the belief in America's special preoccupation with equality, with freedom, with individual responsibility. That, from every language, origin and culture, is in our "melting pot,"

Cab Thoughts 8/28/13

"You cannot wake up someone who is only pretending to be asleep”--political proverb

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 on a mission to send back images of Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere and volcanic eruptions on one of its moons, Io. Then it was due to travel on to Saturn to examine that planet's intricate system of rings and moons. 36 years later no one is sure where it is but studies suggest it is beyond heliosphere-produced particles and within galactic cosmic rays from outside the solar system. That is, it has left our solar system.

Debbie Macomber, an author The Sacramento Bee has dubbed "the reigning queen of women's fiction," has 170 million books in print but rarely is reviewed.

In 1602, printer James Robertes entered this in the Stationers' Register: "A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servants." This was a stolen play, before copy-write.

Procrustes: noun: A person imposing conformity without concern for individuality. Etymology: After Procrustes, a giant in Greek mythology, who stretched or cut his victims to make them fit his bed. He was killed by Theseus. From Greek Procroustes (stretcher). The word is more often used in its adjective form Procrustean. Earliest documented use: 1581.

A "large number" of Americans had their telephone calls accidentally intercepted by the NSA when a top secret order to eavesdrop on multiple phone lines for reasons of national security confused the international code for Egypt (20) with the area code for Washington (202) according to WashPo.

Who was....Edward Carl "Eddie" Gaedel?

More than two-thirds of those released from prison are rearrested within three years of release, and 42% of parolees return to prison or jail within 24 months of their release.

 

 

"...what is the essence of slavery? It's the forceful use of one person to serve the purposes of another person. When Congress, through the tax code, takes the earnings of one person and turns around to give it to another person in the forms of prescription drugs, Social Security, food stamps, farm subsidies or airline bailouts, it is forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another." ---Walter Williams

Al Jazeera bought CurrentTV for $500 million. It has seemingly limitless financing from an energy-rich government and a staff of 900, including 400 newsroom employees. It is one of the most significant investments in television journalism in modern times.

Chester Himes, "the father of black American crime writing," wrote the "Harlem Domestic" novels featuring the detectives "Coffin" Ed Jones and "Gravedigger" Johnston. Absurdity and racism characterizes many of his books. He learned to write in prison (armed robbery after failing out of Ohio State) where he saw one convict murdered for not passing the bread, two who killed each other over whether Paris was in France or France in Paris. He was responsible for the accidental blinding of his teenage brother and never escaped the guilt.

Susan Sontag thought homosexuals and Jews had a common political nature. As traditional outsiders in Western culture the artistic and political agendas they pursue are means of emancipation and integration. With their liberalism, “Jews pinned their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral sense.” With Camp "Homosexuals have pinned their hopes for integrating into society on promoting the aesthetic sense.”

The poet John Hollander has died. The poet J. D. McClatchy told the Times, "It is said of a man like John Hollander that when he dies it is like the burning of the library at Alexandria."

Hawking writes in "A Brief History of Time" that "scientific determinism" means "something that will happen in the future can be predicted." Many argue that mysteries that do not conform to this idea are just a result of our own error or primitive technology. The concept of radioactivity gives a good insight into the question: "All uranium found on earth is thought to have been synthesized during a supernova explosion that occurred roughly 5 billion years ago. Even before the laws of quantum mechanics were developed to their present level, the radioactivity of such elements has posed a challenge to determinism due to its unpredictability. One gram of uranium-238, a commonly occurring radioactive substance, contains some 2.5 x 10²¹ atoms. Each of these atoms are identical and indistinguishable according to all tests known to modern science. Yet about 12600 times a second, one of the atoms in that gram will decay, giving off an alpha particle. The challenge for determinism is to explain why and when decay occurs, since it does not seem to depend on external stimulus. Indeed, no extant theory of physics makes testable predictions of exactly when any given atom will decay. At best scientists can discover determined probabilities in the form of the element's half life."--wiki

 

 

Another important man of letters has died as well, black jazz critic, essayist and novelist Albert Murry. A vocal opponent of black separatism, he argued in his seminal 1970 book The Omni-Americans that in the United States, black and white were permanently intertwined, and that "American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts ... is incontestably mulatto."

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/08/true-equality.html

The Bill of Rights was actually an afterthought. The Federalists opposed the idea because they feared it would paralyze the government and was unneeded as the government had no king, only those prerogatives surrendered by the people. The anti-Federalists were more numerous and worried about possible abuse. James Madison, a Federalist, had been against a Bill of Rights, but in his hard-fought electoral campaign for the House of Representatives in the winter of 1788-1789, had made a public pledge, if elected, to work in the Congress for the adoption of a bill of rights. Jefferson supported it from France. When Madison was elected, he campaigned for the legislation and his prestige carried the day.

Jim Lacey of the Marine Corps War College notes that Gen. David Petraeus has said there are perhaps about 100 al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan. 'Did anyone,' Lacey asks, 'do the math?' There are, he says, more than 140,000 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, or 1,400 for every al-Qaida fighter. It costs about $1 million a year to deploy and support every soldier — or up to $140 billion, or close to $1.5 billion a year, for each al-Qaida fighter.
'In what universe do we find strategists to whom this makes sense?'"

AAAaaaaaannnnddddd..........Miss America 1924:

ACA Questions

Sometimes an assumption of power is more than arrogance and repression, sometimes it is a test. ObamaCare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health care law — 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62% of the deadlines in Dodd-Frank.
Two questions about the Affordable Care Act:
1. Will the law be seen as a test of the government's ability to take on large projects? If managing of 16% of the economy proves to be too much to do efficiently, will that change the minds of those who feel this type of thing is the government's work? And, if  successful, will it stimulate more such projects?
2. Since the Act is having logistical problems, it is likely that its implementation will be delayed into the nest several years. Is it in Obama's interest to have Hillary come in and fix it or would that reflect badly on him? Might he oppose her nomination as a result? (He has not made his enormously successful social media programs available to the DNC yet.)

What Do We Know? How Do We Know It Is True?

A recent article reported that 93% of people killed in American directed drone attacks on terrorists are innocent bystanders and that the Americans often attack shortly after the first attack to kill responders--much like terrorists. Pursuing links and sources for these stories is unrewarding; the origin and accuracy of these stories are difficult to verify.

Ours is an insincere world of motivated people and groups. We are at the mercy of information that might be accurate, might be politically or economically motivated, might be shamelessly mendacious. Joan of Arc told the King of France she was ordered by God to lead a military action against the English; should he believe her? Should he give a farm girl the control of his armies? Information about the earth's temperature is sketchy and recent but appears to show a temperature rise. Is a rise in such a short period significant? Is it accurate? Does it have predictive value? Can we pinpoint a reason for the change? Autism seems to be a recent phenomenon; so are vaccines: Is there a relationship? House ownership seems to be associated with economic success; should the state facilitate the poor's buying houses?

During the Second World War Poland was overrun by both Germany and Russia. A Polish leader, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, escaped and became the unofficial Polish leader-in-exile in London. In April, 1943, he visited with Churchill in Downing Street and raised the question of the alleged massacre by the Russians of 10,000 Polish officers in the forests of Katyn, near Smolensk in the USSR. Churchill urged caution since the alliance between Stalin and the West was fragile. The Germans were using the story to split the British, Poles and Russians. Sikorski, without consulting the British Government, called publicly for the International Red Cross to investigate the massacres. Stalin angrily broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile. Sikorski was killed in a plane crash out of Gibraltar on July 4, 1943.

Years later a play, Soldiers, by Rolf Hochhuth, a German writer, claimed that Sikorski was not killed in an accident, he was murdered by British agents because of his relationship--the reason a bit vague--with the Russian communists. Winston Churchill was directly accused. The play included a number of suspicious sources but had a lively, specific explanation of how the assassination was done, including the murder of Sikorski's daughter and the pilot, Max Prchal. The principles of the play were later interviewed by David Frost on British television and were dumbstruck when Frost produced the pilot, Max Prchal, quite alive, who then savaged the play as a total lie.

Public Records Office papers show that prime minister Harold Wilson was advised that an unnamed KGB defector had alleged that Sikorski had been murdered by the agency's forerunner, the NKVD. This information was regarded as "extremely delicate"; Wilson was warned that "no mention of it should be made publicly".

In the book, "Disinformation" by the former head of the Roumania intelligence agency (wonderfully abbreviated as DIE) Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa writes that the play was part of an elaborate scheme to shift blame for Sikorski's death away from the Russians, that the "play" was simple disinformation.

Artists, the purveyors of the hybrid truth-beauty, hawking impure stuff! Important. Who should be believed?

Cab Thoughts 8/24/13

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

– Mark Twain

In 1979, only 20% of U.S. households received more in transfer payments than they paid in total federal taxes; 80% of households had a net positive contribution to federal expense.  In 2009 sixty percent of U.S. households received more in the value of transfer payments than they paid in total federal taxes; only 40% of U.S. households in 2009 were making a net positive contribution to total federal expenditures (according to the Congressional Budget Office).

Carbon dioxide dissolves in rain water and sea water. The end solution of this is heavier than pure water. Limnic eruptions are rare episodes where heavy concentration of CO2 dissolved in water comes out of solution and is suddenly released into the air. Some stimulus allows some of the saturated water to drift higher in the lake, where the pressure is insufficient to keep the CO₂ in solution. Bubbles start forming and the water is lifted even higher in the lake, where even more of the CO₂ comes out of solution. This process forms a column of gas. At this point the water at the bottom of this column is pulled up by suction, and it too loses its CO₂ in a runaway process. This eruption pours CO₂ into the air and can also displace water to form a tsunami. As CO2 is heavier than air, air is displaced upward and CO2 floods the landscape. Engines stop. Then every living O2 processing animal suffocates.

Democrats think they can obtain more tax revenue by increasing tax rates on a smaller base, while Republicans expect more tax revenue can be generated by flattening tax rates on a broader base, creating faster growth and more revenue. What if they are both wrong?

Psychologist, thinking outside the box and Occam's Razor: In his book Clinical vs. Statistical Prediction: A The­oretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence, psychoanalyst Paul Meeh evaluated the predictive results of student grades comparing the opinions of child psychologists to algorithms. Algorithms did considerably better. This is an old book and has prompted a lot of response. Further studies show about 60% significantly better accuracy for the algo­rithms with the other comparisons scoring a tie in accuracy--important because algorithms are cheaper than counselors. These findings were duplicated in other diverse studies comparing expert opinion to algorithms in disease survival rates, interest rates prediction, suitability of foster parents, wine prices, recidivism, and sports competitions,  Why are experts inferior to algorithms? One possible reason is that experts try to be clever, think outside the box, and consider complex combinations of features in making their predictions. Complexity may work in the odd case, but more often than not it reduces validity. Simple combinations of features are better. And humans are terribly inconsistent. Experienced radiologists who evaluate chest X-rays as 'normal' or 'abnormal' contradict themselves 20% of the time when they see the same picture on separate occasions.

Who is.....Mary Mallon?

According to the Washington Post, Pennsylvania gas production is up 50% and will reach a stunning 3.2 trillion cubic feet this year. That is almost 13% of the nation's gas production. Pennsylvania will likely end 2013 as America's second biggest natural gas producing state, behind Texas but ahead of Louisiana.

Richard Nixon had two brothers, one especially able. Both died of tuberculosis and it is said Nixon began to carry the burden of three lives.

There is a book out saying that the world will turn on design and gives this as an example: There are sixty designers on the staff of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

The dictator Batista came from poverty, the revolutionary Castro from money. Castro was a dashing, imposing young man at university. He also murdered three men as a youth.

The strength of magnetic fields are measured in "teslas." A small reward. Tesla invented motors that worked on alternating electric current (AC) and he proved, in a long battle with Edison, that it was better to supply electrical energy using AC than direct current. By increasing the services that electrical utilities could offer, power supplied using AC allowed companies to increase the size of their systems and pursue economies of scale. But he was a visionary, not an entrepreneur, and never experienced much financial success. He eventually devoted all of his physical and emotional resources to proving electricity could be transmitted wirelessly. He and it failed and he went bankrupt. Then he had a nervous breakdown. He lived isolation in hotel rooms (the famous Room 3327) and was unproductive for the next forty years.

Golden Oldie:

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

Jimmy Carter put them up. Ronald Reagan took them down in 1986. Now 27 years later, Barack Obama is putting solar panels again on the White House, according to the Washington Post. One wonders if these people see these acts as symbolic of great, unspoken moment.

Persi Diaconis, professor of statistics at Stanford University, describes extremely unlikely coincidences as embodying the “blade of grass paradox.” If you were to stand in a meadow and reach down to touch a blade of grass, there are millions of grass blades that you might touch. But you will, in fact, touch one of them. The a priori fact that the blade you touch will be any particular one has an extremely tiny probability, but such an occurrence must take place if you are going to touch a blade of grass. This is the lottery argument: Someone is going to win.

Keynes did not have a doctorate in economics; he actually did not have a degree in economics.

Health officials say they've confirmed three cases of dengue fever contracted in central Florida.

Dengue fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Millions of cases are reported worldwide each year, but it's rare for anyone to contract it in the United States. The Florida Department of Health says the three patients are residents of Martin and St. Lucie counties. Officials say the patients acquired dengue from mosquitoes in Rio, near Jensen Beach. None have traveled internationally recently. St. Lucie County hasn't had any cases of locally acquired dengue until now. There was one case in Martin County in 2011.

Dengue is sometimes called "break bone fever" because of the severe joint pain it causes in extreme cases. Other symptoms include high fever, severe headache and a rash.(AP)

Founding Fathers Honey Trap. Alexander Hamilton, one of the greatest of the nation's founding fathers and the principal architect of the country's highly innovative and successful financial systems, stumbled in 1791 into a liaison with a young and married prostitute, twenty-three-year-old Maria Reynolds. What evolved, with Hamilton a respected, responsible man and married to a well regarded woman, was an affair complicated by blackmail (which Hamilton paid) by the woman and her husband and eventually Hamilton's public confession to an amazed nation.

His confession describes his first encounter where the woman presents herself as destitute and abandoned: "I took the bill out of my pocket and gave it to her. Some conversation ensued, from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable."

AAAAAAaaaaannnnnnndddddd.....a picture of Tesla:

See No Evil

Thinking, civilized people should seek the truth. But the recent circumstances involving the three teenagers who shot the Australian boy might make all of us reconsider this.

One kid named Jones who was among the guys who shot the Australian kid in Oklahoma told the arresting officers they were bored and killed him for "the fun of it."

The shooting has stimulated a lot of criticism that centers on American gun laws, even from the Australian Prime Minister. (The murderers are minors and can not buy guns legally but that seems to be unimportant to the debate.) Another thesis has been floated that the killers were under some gang initiation requirement.

So there seem to be extenuating circumstances. A motiveless murder can somehow be qualified. There can be angles to mindless savagery. This revolting episode might have a context! While this argument makes no sense, I'm for it. I can barely imagine the alternative: Three young men hunt and kill another young man, a total stranger, for sport.

So I'm just fine with the argument that, like a Borges novel, the gun did it. Or they were ordered to do it by a gang leader. The vision of armed pitiless monsters roaming the plains is worse than any apocalyptic dystopia from any zombie-loving director. And the idea that a subculture might exist that easily yawns, stretches and moves into hunt-and-murder mode is too much for any thinking, civilized people to consider.

WMDs

Does Syria have Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Is Assad using WMDs against children?
Is Obama committed to interfering with Syria because of WMDs?
Will he ask Bush for advice?

Cab Thoughts 8/21/13

The big thieves hang the little ones. -Czech proverb

A National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health study took 111 samples at 11 sites in 5 states, including Pennsylvania. The results find that silica levels at all drilling sites exceeded safe levels and were as much as 10 times the safe level at some locations.

We know that a lot of synthesis goes into Obama's decisions. Who will pick the new Fed Chairman?

Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood murderer, is a Virginia-born army psychiatrist and a recipient of the Pentagon's Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

There is a lot of academic excitement over the word "so" in English usage. In English, the word "so" is polysemous; it can be used as an adverb, a conjunction, a pronoun, an interjection, or an adjective. You could argue that the sentence-initial "so" is an interjection, but sometimes "so" resembles, and might be best described, as a coordinating conjunction.
In his 2000 translation of "Beowulf", the poet Seamus Heaney uses "So" as a translation for "Hwaet," usually translated as 'lo', 'hark', 'behold', 'attend' and - more colloquially - 'listen.' 'So' operates as an expression that eliminates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. It replaces the focus. Sooo:
"So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns."

18 to 34-year-olds are buying cars at a much lower rate than previous generations.

A group of California consumers are suing Lance Armstrong over his books. They say the books were deceptively marketed as nonfiction and that they would not have bought them had they known Armstrong was lying about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. So in telling his own story, does Armstrong have the right to lie? Is he any worse than those reporters who made up interviews and were so readily forgiven?

Chile has 40 percent of the world's astronomical observatories and $6 billion worth of projects are currently underway. In 2020, Chile will hold 70 percent of the world's telescopes.

The President has decided not to implement part of the Affordable Care Act. That unilateral decision is not exactly legal. Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution mandates the president to faithfully execute the law and courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. Obama can't pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. It appears that he feels he has some sort of overriding moral authority here, kind of a "moral veto."

Douglas Bruster of the University of Texas at Austin says the handwriting and spelling in the "added lines" in Thomas Kyd's play The Spanish Tragedy, the so-called additional passages of some 325 lines inserted into the play after Kyd's death, are consistent with Shakespeare's writing.

The USA, the world's number 1 natural gas producer, has only 1,240 natural gas fueling stations.

Financial records in England used to be recorded on branches shaved down and written on called "tally sticks." These sticks were actually used as receipts. An Act of Parliament of 1782 officially abolished tally sticks as the main means of account-keeping at the Exchequer.

Tempera painting was the primary medium used in the ancient cultures of the world. The paint was created through a combination of minerals, egg yolk and water. The egg yolk was used chiefly as an adhesive substance while the minerals varied greatly based on what was available and the color desired. Tempera painting is the oldest type of painting in visual art. It is the technique used in cave painting and continued into the Middle Ages when it was replaced by oil-based paint.

Who is....Lionel "Buster" Crabb?

The first English-language bookstore in Cuba opened last week, according to The Associated Press.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its "State of the Climate in 2012" report, which states that "worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record."But the report "fails to mention [2012] was one of the coolest of the decade, and thus confirms the cooling trend," according to an analysis by climate blogger(!) Pierre Gosselin."To no one's surprise, the report gives the reader the impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control," writes Gosselin. "But their data shows just the opposite." While manipulation of data should always be noted and discouraged, it is hard to argue that a year or a decade of temperatures constitute any tendency other than the tendency to tout your own political position.

tergiversate means "to change repeatedly one's attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject, etc.; equivocate." Origin, Latin tergiversātus: to turn one's back.

In the backwash of the Snowden revelations the President has declared that he believes there has been no wrongdoing with regard to national intelligence gathering. Nonetheless he has decided to appoint a high-level committee to investigate the doings of the intelligence community. He has appointed James Clapper to head the investigating committee. So James Clapper, who is Obama's director of national intelligence and who integrates and oversees all national intelligence, will run the group examining what all national intelligence does. Is this like Holder and the Justice Department investigating the Department of Justice' involvement in selling guns to Mexican drug cartels? Any odds on whether Mr. Clapper will confirm Mr. Obama's opinion?


Golden Oldies:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/02/money-laundering.html

'[C]harity is the national error of Englishmen'. This is the first sentence of an editorial in The Economist in November 1845 about the proper British response to the Irish potato famine. It appears in an assessment of the British financial thought of the time and argues that Adam Smith's scientific approach to the economy allowed "science to trump morality." The famine killed one million and caused another one million to emigrate; Ireland lost 25% of its population. It might be debatable that "charity is the national error of Englishmen" but it certainly is charitable to blame England's inaction on Smith and academia. There might have been more malice involved. It was Nassau Senior -- the Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford and one of the government's chief advisers on Irish economic policy -- whom Benjamin Jowett, the great Master of Balliol College, Oxford, had in mind when he said years later: 'I have always felt a certain horror of political economists since I heard one of them say that he feared the famine of 1848 in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good."

Stratfor is sometimes insightful, sometimes mundane. Here is their summary of the Obama foreign policy problem: "The world is a tough place. To wit, complex, populous and strife-torn Islamic societies are not amenable to American grand conceptions. But in every era there must be a specific moral and geopolitical logic that governs America's approach to the world. And that logic must be built out of what Washington will do, and can do, not only built out of what it won't do."

AAAAAaaaaaadddddd.....a composite of the orbits of potentially dangerous asteroids:

The Umpire: A Fable

In a tight pennant race, the two contending teams met on a Saturday for the "Game of the Week." Both teams were talented, the race had drawn interest and the game was watched by millions. It was 0-0 in the seventh when the batter hit a liner into right-center field. With the play before him and seeing an opportunity in the close, important game, the man tried to stretch the hit into a double. The strong-armed fielder cut the ball off and fired a good throw to second. The second baseman tagged as the runner slid in.
"Safe!" the umpire cried, but threw a hooked thumb out as an "out call."
Both the runner and the second baseman looked at him in confusion.
"What was it?" the runner said.
The umpire replied, "Oh, you were safe but five million people on TV saw me call you out so you're out."

Moral: An authority will lie and deny the truth to maintain his appearance and dignity.

Mani 1--Several Bricks or Syllables Shy of a Manifesto

Politics in itself is of no interest to me. And political parties are politics' worst distillate. Antagonism, belief founded on conjecture, mendacity, distortion--all these are the nature of politics and the essence of political parties. And these basic sins are intensified when the system begins to show it does not work.

I do want to explain myself: As dirty and harmful a bastard as politics can be, it comes from pure and noble parentage. Politics is the result of man's basic assessment of Man. That is, the nature of Man is the foundation of any political viewpoint. A political movement will be either the exploitation of Man's qualities as they see them or a reaction against those qualities for some perceived greater good. In either case, politics is the creation, the child, of our philosophy of life, of what we believe Man is and what the world he inhabits should be. If we believe Man a depraved killer, society should probably bear some aspects of a prison. If we think Man has been ruined by technology but has a good heart, perhaps some agricultural society would make sense.

But if something is not constructed correctly, it will fail. If your assessment of Man is erroneous or the world he is to inhabit completely fantastic, the resultant political structure will not work. It may take some time to fail--as power can compensate for unreality for a while--but in the long term it will not work. The Russian communist state was built on several gigantic fallacies and was doomed from the start. No support by the KGB, no pressure from Reagan, would have anything other than a minor effect. Internal flaws will bring a structure down. In government this means that some basic assessment and judgment of human nature must be made and, for the system to succeed, must be accurate.

Very bright guys have tried this before and have not agreed at all. Kant was thrilled with the Enlightenment, Rousseau thought it was a disaster. The problem is that most people think these guys are abstract thinkers with no practical meaning. That is untrue. These people either point to a future direction or are representative of it. Kant led to the English evolution, Rousseau led to the French Revolution and eventually Napoleon. Marx was worse as he unleashed a pious and charitably sounding philosophy that was arbitrarily homicidal. It is quite one thing to have people fail in a system because the protective nature of the system has been overestimated or the people themselves have, it is quite another thing to target a large element of the culture for extinction because of some vague and unprovable belief. It is no wonder that Hitler and Stalin found so much comfort in their treaty: They must have recognized the fraternal homicidal gleam in the eyes across the table. Leaders and government theorists will influence us if they possibly can--they want to--and must be thought of in that way. Governments and leaders try to exploit what they think we are; so what we are, and what their assessment of us is, matters.

But the assessment of Man is extremely difficult. Our analysis will always be contaminated by our hopes and prejudices. Worse, group behavior might be different from individual behavior--like flocking of birds--and the results from groups might be entirely unexpected. Even worse, times change. New factors--technological, religious, scientific--are introduced or removed. The ground changes. So political belief might come from optimistic views of Man, hopeful, radical, inspired, mystical--anything. But the evaluation of Man which forms the foundation of every political movement must be true. Man's personal plugs must fit the political outlets. For the outcome of inaccuracy in politics is chaos--until it is rescued, as it always is, by despotism.

More than the English Channel separated the development of the English state from the collapse of the French state. The English experience for the time was simply truer.

Sunday Sermon 8/18/13

What is the nature of truth and falsehood?  This seems to be the question Christ is asking today when he says, " Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation." He then describes division among families as a result of His ministry.

This sounds like so many disturbing scenarios Christ describes--leaving the plow, giving up possessions, not burying your father--but these examples all point to the sharp edge of His spirituality: One must recognize the world for what it is and separate the spiritual world from it. He has no argument with the daily concerns of life as Caesar is real but Caesar is also temporary and parochial. Christ is talking about the lasting qualities with universal meaning.

Truth and falsehood. Falsehood is easier on people because it is what they want to believe; falsehood is accommodating. It can fit. Every great dissembler takes a nugget of truth and builds a comfortable lie around it. Truth is not so easy and is definitely not accommodating. It requires sacrifice.

One interesting note. Christ describes the divisions as two against three, three against two. He sees a community struggling, not an isolated antagonism. Truth is not the province of the hermit or the seer, it is reached together.

Cab Thoughts 8/17/13

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. --Arthur Schopenhauer

The Perseid meteors seen this weekend are swept up dust grains from the tail of comet Swift-Tuttle.

Men are more than five times more likely to be killed by lightning strikes in the United States than women, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control. Golf? Too dumb to come in out of the rain? Sometimes stats mean something but don't mean much.

"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." So said Voltaire, a philosopher who lived 1694-1778. He is speaking in the time of kings and dynasties, not republics. That makes a difference. Nations have no natural enemies. Only tyrants are the enemy of mankind.

Magdeen asked, “Does anyone else think the Lord is too concerned with the way our daughters dress and braid their hair?” And the Lord struck him mightily with an open palm and cried, “Is that so? I am the Lord.” But later, He wondered if He had been too harsh....

The Lord said, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” And the people replied, “No other Gods? Even that one God with a crocodile head?” And the Lord conceded that the God with the crocodile head was hard to compete with.

(From 'Fragments from the Ancient Gospels of “The Church of a Pretty Good God.”'by James Folta and Luke Burns.)

A question about responsibility:
Patty Hearst was Stockholm-ed before Stockholm but was found guilty of robbery (although later pardoned.)
Castro claims his sex with his prisoners was consensual. If one assumes that they were Stockholm-ed like Hearst, was his act a crime? Could he be excused for taking advantages of changes he helped create?

From the world of marketing: A book store put a hint of chocolate in the air of their store. Customers were 40 percent more likely to buy romance novels and cookbooks, and about 22 percent more likely to buy books in other genres when the chocolate scent was present. Customers also spent more time browsing, researchers found. Pleasant smells have long been known to trigger spending: A 2008 study concluded that the smell of chocolate chip cookies made women more likely to make impulse purchases.

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/07/health-care-and-art-of-possible.html

3 new coal plants opened in the first half of 2013 that totaled 1,569 megawatts. While that is considerably less than all the additional wind and solar of all types built in the first half of 2013, the coal plants will generate more electricity as a result of their higher capacity factor. The coal plants will operate in most hours of the year near maximum output. While wind farms produce some electricity in most hours of the year, they rarely operate at maximum output. For wind to produce as much electricity as the 1,569 megawatts of new coal, about 4,500 megawatts of wind would be required. For solar to match the production of 1,569 megawatts of new coal, approximately 7,500 megawatts of new solar would be needed.

The four surviving original copies of Magna Carta will be brought together for the first time in history in 2015, the year of the 800th anniversary of the issue of the Charter by King John in 1215. The unification will be held at the British Library in collaboration with Lincoln Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral.

Jon Corzine, a Democrat who previously served as New Jersey's governor and U.S. senator, headed MF Global when it collapsed in October 2011 in one of the 10 biggest U.S. bankruptcies. Customers discovered that about $1.6 billion was missing from their accounts. Gone. That money turned out to have been used as stop gaps, which is illegal. How much do you want to bet this will be decided in civil court with fines, no criminal court or jail?

Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative targeting.

Lance Armstrong should have his seven Tour de France victories reinstated due to the prevalence of doping at the time, according to former cyclist Jan Ullrich. "I would give Armstrong the Tour victories back. ... That's how it was back then," Ullrich told the current edition of Sport Bild magazine. "It doesn't help anyone to draw a line through the winners' list." Ullrich, who won the Tour in 1997, finished second to Armstrong on three occasions -- in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

The Tropic of Cancer is associated with the zodiacal constellation Cancer the Crab. Historically the Sun's position was within Cancer during the northern summer solstice, but because of the precession of Earth's axis, that solstice sun is currently within the boundaries of Taurus.

Who was....Charles Whitman ?

“I could stand up here and say: let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified. The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing, and the world would be perfect. Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this will be. You are not going to wave a magic wand…” Hillary on Obama, 2008.

It is often said regarding the minimum wage, ‘If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now’; that is a canard. Most productivity gains have been in manufacturing, farming and transportation, not the low-wage sector. A more honest index would be the inflation rate, where in 1968 the minimum wage was $1.60, resulting in a 2013 minimum wage of $10.71.

The American singer Kelly Clarkson bought a ring owned by Jane Austen last year for about $228,000, but British authorities have barred her from taking it out of the U.K. until the end of September in the hopes that a British person will buy the gold and turquoise ring. This from the "adopted" country of the Elgin Marbles.

Canard: n. A false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so. etymology: from Fr. "duck",Specifically, the term "Canard" refers to a tactic used by a parent duck to deceptively draw a predator away from its offspring or nest by quacking and feigning a broken wing. In other words the "Canard" or "Duck" is lying.

Studies suggest that North Koreans may be up to three inches shorter than South Koreans and have diminished IQs because of malnourishment as children. The latter is a known effect on human beings anywhere who are subjected to a starvation diet. The North Korean population has suffered from severe diet restriction for decades.

AAAAAAnnnnnnddddd.........a graph:

WheelTug

One way to decrease airline costs is by decreasing power demands (and energy consumption) as the plane moves on the ground. Rather than continuing the expensive propulsion system from wing mounts while taxiing, several proposals have been developed to have the power for taxiing delivered directly from the plane's wheels themselves. There are currently two types, the plane is pushed by motors in the main wheels or pulled by a motor in the nose wheel. The former is the plan of giants Honeywell and SAFRAN, the latter by the tiny WheelTug Corp.

This looks like a clear win for the giants but it is more complex. Power at the main wheels generates a lot of heat as the plane is moved. A rule in flying is that brakes must be cool before the plane can roll for takeoff because, should the plane need to stop for some reason, the brakes will not work or might overheat and hydraulic fluid fire might result. Cooling the wheels takes time and airlines are frantic about being on time. More, time is money; an “airline minute” is worth between $100-150. So the cooling time may eat into the fuel savings.

The nose-wheel solution from WheelTug adds no heat to braking systems and enables the current cooling airflow to operate normally. As a result, there will be no adverse impact on brake cooling times. So additional heat generation--and the time required for heat dissipation-- should be a major advantage to WheelTug.

But WheelTug is very small. And some good ideas remain good ideas. A goal without a plan is a wish.

"Pravda" Means "Truth"

Obama said this on Leno:
"I don't know. As you know, for the last three years, I’ve said, let’s work together. Let’s find a financing mechanism and let’s go ahead and fix our bridges, fix our roads, sewer systems, our ports. The Panama is being widened so that these big supertankers can come in. Now, that will be finished in 2015. If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don't do that, those ships are going to go someplace else. And we’ll lose jobs. Businesses won’t locate here."

It appears here that Obama thinks those ports are on the Gulf of Mexico, not on the Atlantic.

Here is how the AP reported it:
"If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf — (and in) places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. — if we don't do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we'll lose jobs," Obama said.
The brutal Michelle Malkin wrote, "The parenthetical Obama Gulf gaffe rescue would be akin to putting an "(s)" after "potatoe" to cover for Dan Quayle."

I don't care much about honest politicians making an honest mistake. I care plenty about a free press that decides not to be.

Cab Thoughts 8/14/13

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." - Aldous Huxley

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written by American author L. Frank Baum. The book was illustrated by William Wallace Denslow and he fought fiercely for his share of the royalties from the book and the stage play. The royalties allowed him to buy an island in Bermuda, Bluck's Island. He then crowned himself King Denslow the First.

A scandal in South Korea about bribery and faked safety tests for critical plant equipment in the nuclear power industry is growing. Bribery and personal loyalty seem to be rampant among suppliers and safety testing companies.

Germany leads the world both in installed solar generation and in closing nuclear plants. The closure of nuclear plants means Germany needs base-load generation that operates during all hours. And so new coal plants are surging in Germany--10 plants totaling 11,000 megawatts. Why is Germany investing so heavily in new coal plants and not natural gas units? There is no shale gas in Europe and so natural gas is expensive there. In fact, gas regularly costs about $10 for a thousand cubic feet across Europe, while last week gas cost about $3.30 in the United States. This creates a competitive advantage in the U.S. and manufacturing will move here as a result.

Who is....Ronnie Biggs?

Batteries have a mix of energy and power. Power is the rate at which energy is consumed, expressed in watts or kilowatts, energy is the amount of power consumed, expressed in watt-hours or kilowatt-hours. Batteries can be classified by their recommended discharge times which are typically measured in seconds, minutes or hours. Energy batteries like lithium-ion are typically used in applications where an electrical device like a computer, cell phone or EV needs a steady energy output to perform its function and the battery is big enough to run the device for one to five hours. Power batteries are typically used in applications where an electrical device like a starter motor, heavy truck or grid installation needs short bursts of power to perform its function and the battery is only big enough to run the device 15 to 60 minutes. Supercapacitors and flywheels typically can't run a device for more than a few minutes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that forty percent of the world's population is at risk for dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever syndrome, and dengue shock syndrome. There are no approved antivirals or vaccines for the treatment or prevention of dengue fever. Dengue virus is a member of the Flaviviridae family, which are enveloped, positive-sense RNA viruses whose human pathogens also include West Nile virus, yellow fever virus, Japanese encephalitis virus and tick-borne encephalitis virus, among others. Dengue virus may be transmitted via the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is found in tropical and sub-tropical regions around the world. The Honduran government has declared a state of emergency after an increase in dengue cases.

There are 13,828 cases in the country.

Colony Collapse Disorder has destroyed 10 million beehives in 6 years.  Scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. A parasite called Nosema Ceranae and pesticides that weaken bees ability to withstand the parasite are now the leading suspect. The bad news is that this latest research does not identify just one pesticide as the problem but suggests a "brew" of pesticides that combine with the parasite is devastating bee colonies.

Golden Oldies:

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

China loves wine, but not to drink. They launder money through the industry, a report said. (Quartz, South China Morning Post)

What is "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten?"

It is an anagram of....."To be or not to be: that is the question; whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.."

The World Bank and European Investment Blank have decided  to not fund coal plants.  None-the-less,"Coal is now used to generate 40 percent of the world’s electricity, and its use has grown more than 50 percent in the past decade, according to EIA."(Bloomberg)

At the peak of their power, up to 10 percent of Japan’s population was samurai. Because of their large numbers and long influence in Japan’s history, every single Japanese person living today is said to have at least some samurai blood in them. While not common, women were allowed samurai training and were called “Onna-Bugeisha." When remains from the site of the Battle of Senbon Matsubaru in 1580 were DNA-tested, 35 out of 105 bodies were female. Research on other sites has yielded similar results.

Analyst David Whiston at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago said that Johnson Controls is in the process of expanding its production capacity worldwide, an investment of $520 million, to meet growing demand. The company is forecasting 50 million start-stop vehicles worldwide by 2017, up from 11 million last year.

Hot water freezes faster than cold water. It is not fully understood why. The effect, now known as the Mpemba effect, was first noted in the 4th century BC by Aristotle, and many scientists have noted the same phenomenon in the centuries since Aristotle’s time. It was dubbed the Mpemba effect in the 1960s when schoolboy Erasto Mpemba from Tanzania claimed in his science class that ice cream would freeze faster if it was heated first before being put in the freezer. The laughter ended only when a school inspector tried the experiment himself and vindicated him. (One theory is that the hot water melts the frost in the freezer--frost being an insulator--where the cold water does not.)

In Federalist No. 57, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, explained that the new nation would remain free only as long as lawmakers had to live by the same laws they imposed on the public.

In Richard Miniter's book "Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisers Who Decide for Him," it relates that at the urging of advisor Valerie Jarrett, Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before approving the Navy SEAL mission in Pakistan on May 2, 2011. According to the book, Jarrett was concerned about political harm to Obama if the mission failed. Conservative outlets have expanded that observation to Benghazi, suggesting that she, and not Obama, managed--or rather withdrew from managing--it.

adiaphorous \ad-ee-AF-er-uhs\, adjective: Doing neither good nor harm, as a medicine. Adiaphorous is derived from the Greek, adiaphoros, meaning 'indifferent.'

A Hunger Games-themed summer camp that culminates in a tournament at which children fight to the "death"--flag capturing, actually-- has opened in Florida.

Duke Energy has cancelled the building of Levy County, Florida nuclear units. The price tag had reached $24.7 billion for 2,200 megawatts. Everyone is upset that Duke has been billing its customers for the unstarted project but the real story is the incredible cost. $24.7 billion for 2,200 megawatts works out to an astonishing $11 per watt or 11 times the construction cost of gas plants and nearly 6 times the construction costs of wind or solar farms. Nuclear may be simply too expensive a source of power in this country.

Margaret Eby of New York's Daily News deon  writer Flannery O'Connor's pet peacocks: "When she was five years old, she taught a pair of chickens to walk backwards, attracting the attention of Britain's Pathe news. Over her life, she cared for ducks, swans, and guinea hens, but the peacocks became her crowning achievement. From the peahen and peacock pair that she purchased by mail order in 1952 flourished a cackling crowd of peafowl. They snacked on the fig trees out back, pecked at the roses, and trailed their long, dazzling tails through the red Georgia dirt."

The Implications of Novelty

Suzanne Koven is a writer and a primary care internist in Boston. She recently interviewed Oliver Sacks who is promoting his new book, "Hallucinations." Her introduction was as interesting as the interview.

A while before the interview she was recovering from shoulder surgery and was unhappy with her slow progress. On the way home from a friend's house, a trip designed to entertain her and improve her post hospital mood, she saw her twenty year old son enter her house before her. She was thrilled to see him but was annoyed he did not leave the door open for her; he clearly saw her as he looked right at her. She hurried inside with plans of introducing him to her friend and searched the house but found no one. She was hallucinating; she had imagined the appearance of her son and his actions. She had no history and no significant medication to account for it.

Sacks' interview included some remarks about his surprising drug-taking history and one startling observation. Later in the interview Sacks says, "..[A]...  parfumier had made something unlike anything ever encountered on earth. And it had a very strong smell which aroused no associations and could not be compared to anything. One realized this was absolute novelty. And I quote Poe on this: absolute novelty can enter some hallucinations and maybe some psychosis. I don’t know if imagination is enough. I think hallucinations in various ways go beyond imagination. These are not necessarily creative ways, though maybe they could be put down to creativity."

Kovan asks, " Almost like a visitation? Or would you say hallucinations sometimes come from a part of the brain that isn’t part of the “self?”

Sacks answers, "Yes, well that’s what the muse is. Or the devil!"

Bicycles, Taxis and History

General von Schlieffen bicycled through the Belgium countryside reconnoitering the grounds of the war he knew would come.

Years later, in 1914, the Germans came back, this time with more than bicycles. General von Kluck burst through Belgium and swept through northern France toward the encirclement of Paris. His forces defeated the British at Mons, then Le Cateau. The path to Paris was freed.

Then von Kluck changed his mind. Ignoring the von Schlieffen dictum to "keep the right strong" he allowed his right flank to drift east, in pursuit of the French army as they retreated in confusion down the Marne. Von Kluck thought he could finish them.

In Paris to the west, the French garrison was led by the aging General Gallieni. When he saw the Germans ignore Paris and slide east and south down the Marne he said, famously, "Gentlemen, they offer us their flank."

The French attacked. Using thousands of taxicabs, they moved their troops from Paris to the Marne Valley and caught von Kluck at his flank, unprepared. The Battle of the Marne stopped the German army cold, turned them and eventually cost the Germans the war.

Sunday Sermon 8/11/13

In today's readings, all the major figures are anticipating but never receiving. Rewards and responsibilities are impending; they are right around the corner. It could be argued that these are worrisome--even threatening--scenarios. Look sharp! The owner of the house may come home early and catch you servants unawares. But these lessons are much bigger than that. What is being asked is that you live your life consistently, honorably and virtuously. Virtue will get you rewarded but it is also the right way to live regardless.

Christ is saying "You know your responsibilities. Meet them whether I am here or not."

Cab Thoughts 8/10/13

 Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. --Arthur Schopenhauer

The Perseid meteors seen this weekend are swept up dust grains from the tail of comet Swift-Tuttle.

Men are more than five times more likely to be killed by lightning strikes in the United States than women, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control. Golf? Too dumb to come in out of the rain? Sometimes stats mean something but don't mean much.

"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." So said Voltaire, a philosopher who lived 1694-1778. He is speaking in the time of kings and dynasties, not republics. That makes a difference. Nations have no natural enemies. Only tyrants are the enemy of mankind.

Magdeen asked, “Does anyone else think the Lord is too concerned with the way our daughters dress and braid their hair?” And the Lord struck him mightily with an open palm and cried, “Is that so? I am the Lord.” But later, He wondered if He had been too harsh....

The Lord said, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” And the people replied, “No other Gods? Even that one God with a crocodile head?” And the Lord conceded that the God with the crocodile head was hard to compete with.

(From 'Fragments from the Ancient Gospels of “The Church of a Pretty Good God.”'by James Folta and Luke Burns.)

A question about responsibility.
Patty Hearst was Stockholm-ed before Stockholm but was found guilty of robbery (although later pardoned.)
Castro claims his sex with his prisoners was consensual. If one assumes that they were Stockholm-ed like Hearst, was his act a crime? Can he be excused for taking advantages of changes he helped create?

From the world of marketing: A book store put a hint of chocolate in the air of their store. Customers were 40 percent more likely to buy romance novels and cookbooks, and about 22 percent more likely to buy books in other genres when the chocolate scent was present. Customers also spent more time browsing, researchers found. Pleasant smells have long been known to trigger spending: A 2008 study concluded that the smell of chocolate chip cookies made women more likely to make impulse purchases.

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/07/health-care-and-art-of-possible.html

3 new coal plants opened in the first half of 2013 that totaled 1,569 megawatts. While that is considerably less than all the additional wind and solar of all types built in the first half of 2013, the coal plants will generate more electricity as a result of their higher capacity factor. The coal plants will operate in most hours of the year near maximum output. While wind farms produce some electricity in most hours of the year, they rarely operate at maximum output. For wind to produce as much electricity as the 1,569 megawatts of new coal, about 4,500 megawatts of wind would be required. For solar to match the production of 1,569 megawatts of new coal, approximately 7,500 megawatts of new solar would be needed.

The four surviving original copies of Magna Carta will be brought together for the first time in history in 2015, the year of the 800th anniversary of the issue of the Charter by King John in 1215. The unification will be held at the British Library in collaboration with Lincoln Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral.

Jon Corzine, a Democrat who previously served as New Jersey's governor and U.S. senator, headed MF Global when it collapsed in October 2011 in one of the 10 biggest U.S. bankruptcies. Customers discovered that about $1.6 billion was missing from their accounts. Gone. That money turned out to have been used as stop gaps, which is illegal. How much do you want to bet this will be decided in civil court with fines, no criminal court or jail?

Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative targeting.

Lance Armstrong should have his seven Tour de France victories reinstated due to the prevalence of doping at the time, according to former cyclist Jan Ullrich. "I would give Armstrong the Tour victories back. ... That's how it was back then," Ullrich told the current edition of Sport Bild magazine. "It doesn't help anyone to draw a line through the winners' list." Ullrich, who won the Tour in 1997, finished second to Armstrong on three occasions -- in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

The Tropic of Cancer is associated with the zodiacal constellation Cancer the Crab. Historically the Sun's position was within Cancer during the northern summer solstice, but because of the precession of Earth's axis, that solstice sun is currently within the boundaries of Taurus.

Who was....Charles Whitman ?

“I could stand up here and say: let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified. The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing, and the world would be perfect. Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this will be. You are not going to wave a magic wand…” Hillary on Obama, 2008.

It is often said regarding the minimum wage, ‘If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now’; that is a canard. Most productivity gains have been in manufacturing, farming and transportation, not the low-wage sector. A more honest index would be the inflation rate, where in 1968 the minimum wage was $1.60, resulting in a 2013 minimum wage of $10.71.

The American singer Kelly Clarkson bought a ring owned by Jane Austen last year for about $228,000, but British authorities have barred her from taking it out of the U.K. until the end of September in the hopes that a British person will buy the gold and turquoise ring. This from the "adopted" country of the Elgan Marbles.

canard: n. A false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so. etymology: from Fr. "duck",Specifically, the term "Canard" refers to a tactic used by a parent duck to deceptively draw a predator away from its offspring or nest by quacking and feigning a broken wing. In other words the "Canard" or "Duck" is lying.

Studies suggest that North Koreans may be up to three inches shorter than South Koreans and have diminished IQs because of malnourishment as children. The latter is a known effect on human beings anywhere who are subjected to a starvation diet. The North Korean population has suffered from severe diet restriction for decades.

AAAAAAnnnnnnddddd.........a graph:

Obama 2

Politics is a world of uncertain acts and results but very certain convictions. Obama, as a rather contradictory guy (Gitmo, Iraq), might be seen as a guy without real opinions but it is more likely these areas are just outside the set of his real interests.

Two very revealing quotes:

1. When asked by ABC's Charlie Gibson if he would support higher capital gains tax rates even if they raised less revenue than lower rates. Mr. Obama said yes. (2008)

2. When he spoke of his plans to eliminate coal as an energy source, he was not unaware of the implications. He said as a result, "energy cost would necessarily skyrocket."

Taxes do not just raise revenue, energy do not just provide power. There are bigger concepts at stake here. And people, their families, lives and comforts must be sacrificed to them.

Popes, Ricca, Swiss Guards and Janet Tavakoli

Janet Tavakoli is a finance and fiction writer, a polymath. Her finance writings include "Structured Finance and Collateralized Debt Obligations: New Developments in Cash and Synthetic Securitization..." and "The New Robber Barons"; her fiction, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits (Volume 1), is about the Vatican, its finances and its temptations. 

She sent a note to the investment guru/social activist Andrew Tobias, published on his blog, about the recent declarations by the Pope regarding Monsignor Battista Ricca, who is alleged to have had a romantic affair with a Swiss Guard (among others).
It is quite interesting and is included here:

“The Pope appointed...[Ricca]... to clean up corruption in the Vatican Bank so, of course, Ricca had to be blackmailed. The Pope made it pretty clear that 1) his internal investigation did not match with printed reports of Ricca’s having real-time gay partners, but that 2) even if the reports of his past life and breaking vows are true, God forgives and forgets, so those looking to use this as leverage against Ricca are out of luck. In one swoop, the Pope disarmed them. So a priest is gay? Who is the Pope to judge. So he had a wild past? If he asked for forgiveness and received it, the past is just that.”
She then theorizes: “It may have gone like this: Ricca agreed to be the pope’s investigator, and others sought to neutralize Ricca with embarrassing information — real or fabricated. The pope just said: ‘So what, even if it was once true? You can’t blackmail me, because I’m not embarrassed about anything, and Ricca shouldn’t be either; Ricca has my support. Write anything you like. Then try to get a better life.’”
“A Pope,” she says, “has never done anything close to this in the history of the Church.”

Cab Thought 8/7/13

The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some." - Louis Rukeyser

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal warned that the Gulf Arab kingdom needed to reduce its reliance on crude oil and diversify its revenues, as rising U.S. shale energy supplies cut global demand for its oil.

An excerpt from George R.R. Martin's upcoming novella was published Tuesday on the Tor website. The novella, The Princess and The Queen, or, The Blacks and The Greens, is set two centuries before the events of his popular Game of Thrones series, and recounts "the Causes, Origins, Battles, and Betrayals of that Most Tragic Bloodletting Known as the Dance of the Dragons."

A book asks a fascinating question: Apparently poetry preceded prose, did music precede language?

Univision ranked No. 1 among all networks in the adults 18-49 and adults 18-34 demographics during the July sweep period (June 26-July 24), according to Nielsen, a first for the Spanish-language network in any sweep period.

John Newton wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace." His autobiography ("An Authentic Narrative of some Interesting and Remarkable Particulars in the Life of John Newton," 1764) makes clear how lost he was. After several failed attempts as a sailor, he was press-ganged into service on an English man-of-war. He was such a trouble-maker that he was released to a slave-trader then abandoned by the trader to the whims of his "African princess" concubine, who starved him, and encouraged the natives to jeer and throw rocks at her white slave. He eventually returned to England and "was found."

Mexican migration to the U.S. declined sharply in 2008 and has continued to decline. Part of this story is the increase in border protection, but the dominant engine has been the economic shifts on both sides of the border – it has become easier for poor Mexicans to improve their quality of life in Mexico and harder to do so in the United States.

"The Way, Way Back" is one of those coming of age stories that usually become formulaic and silly with a moronic resolution but this one is pretty good. Good acting, not too much reach, and one very well written character who structures the whole story. Worthwhile, if simple.

Paparazzi is the plural of paparazzo, from the name of a photographer in Federico Fellini's 1959 film La Dolce Vita.

After over 40 years of secrecy, the real cause of death of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin has been made public. Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) became the first human to journey into outer space on April 12, 1961. Gagarin died in 1968 when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting crashed. According to a declassified report, there is a human factor behind the tragic incident - an unauthorized SU-15 fighter jet was flying dangerously close to Gagarin’s aircraft, passing close to Gagarin, turning his plane and sending it into a tailspin – a deep spiral – at a speed of 750 kilometers per hour. The specifics had been withheld because of the significance of his death to the program and the nation, the factor of error, as well as the usual State paranoia.

Who was...Mary Jo Kopechne?

K2, the world's second highest mountain behind Everest, was climbed for the first time in 1954. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying.

Golden Oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/06/truth-that-must-not-be-spoken.html

Gas production in Southwest Pennsylvania jumped 100% from July 2012 to July 2013. Production from that comparatively small area provided 1% of all of America's gas in 2012 and now 2%. The general Marcellus region now supplies about 10% of America's natural gas.

The Congressional Black Caucus is pushing Jackson-Lee to replace Napolitano at Homeland Security, a very curious candidate. Jackson -Lee is famous for wanting to see a picture of the American flag on Mars, placing her in the marines-might-tip-Guam-over intellectual subset, but also is closely connected, financially and presumably philosophically, to CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorist money laundering. A strange candidate for Homeland Security. At one annual fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, she presented the group with a congressional recognition award — even though the FBI has banned the group from outreach meetings. "How proud I am to have been associated with CAIR's legislative work," she said at a 2007 CAIR event. "We need CAIR and we need all of you supporting CAIR."

Reportedly, the New York Rangers were going after Cooke and offered him more money than the Minnesota Wild did. However, according to a source, Cooke would only go to the Western Conference, partly out of respect to the Penguins and also the Penguins reportedly promised Cooke a job when he retires. Is this preemptive tampering?

Eric Brynjolfsson points out in a TED that Watson, the IBM AI project, having successfully amassed enough everyday knowledge to defeat the grand champions on Jeopardy!, was "now applying for jobs at call centers, and getting them. In finance, and in law, and getting them." The problem will be jobs, he later told an interviewer. "The human mind did not evolve to multiply triple-digit numbers. The robot mind has. "

Eugene O'Neill dedicated "Long Day's Journey Into Night" to his wife, Carlotta. Attached to the original manuscript were O'Neill's instructions, communicated to Carlotta and to Bennett Cerf at Random House, that the play could not be published until twenty-five years after his death, and not performed ever--ostensibly to protect his family from the play's implications. Just two years after O'Neill's death in 1953, Carlotta had the script withdrawn from Random House, and donated to Yale University, with a view to publication and production. She pointed to the disintegration of the family O'Neill's ban was intended to protect -- Eugene Jr. dead by suicide, Jamie lost to heroin (he would commit suicide also), Oona disinherited for having married Charlie Chaplin -- and to a claim that O'Neill had given her permission to publish should she need the money.

A Bucharest court is investigating the October 2012 theft of seven paintings from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. The works, together worth tens of millions of dollars, are by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Lucian Freud, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Meyer de Haan. A man named Radu Dogaru has been arrested and suspected accomplices are being pursued. It is believed the suspect's mother burned the evidence. Apparently, destruction of stolen art is common after the thief realizes how hard stolen art is to sell. We need better educated thieves.

AAAAAAaaaaaaaannnnnnnnddddddd......a graph: