Hogmanney

Hogmanney is the Scottish New Year, a mixture of ancient traditions and, possibly, a more modern reaction to the strict Cromwellian restrictions of the Middle Ages. It has a number of characteristics. Bonfires are a part, perhaps from Viking or Clan days. "Redding" the house is another. It is a ritualistic cleaning, a readying for the new year. The fireplace is swept and some read the ashes, like auguries. After midnight, neighbors visit, bringing small gifts, usually food, and receiving them, usually whiskey. Importance was placed on the first to enter in the new year, the "first foot." (Tall handsome men were good, redheaded women bad.) The house and the livestock are blessed with water from a local stream--which sounds really old--and then the woman of the house would go from room to room with a smoldering juniper branch, seemingly counteracting all the "redding" with smoke. Robert Burn's version of the traditional Scottish Auld Lang Syne, which translates to “times gone by,” is sung.

Oil Below $60

Oil has fallen below $60 a barrel for the first time in more than five years – a fall of 44 per cent since June. That should benefit the average guy but there will be a fallout that might ensnare him because nothing in an economy can be isolated. For example, high yield bonds linked to oil companies are linked to oil prices, so they may be imperiled. The falling prices could damage the North Sea, marginal drillers and fledgling fracking industries.
Green energy technologies such as solar and wind had been banking on sharp increases in fossil fuel prices to make them increasingly competitive and help to attract the huge amount of investment required to build renewable power plants.
There are clear advantages to most with oil cheaper. With oil prices low, there will be a great improvement in travel and home energy costs, manufacturing costs and agricultural overhead.  
But where will these savings go? Those savings will likely be diverted into the pet projects of the crony capitalists, their government employees and their supportive ideologues. As the gap between the cost of fossil fuel power and renewable power gets bigger, investments in these areas will be less attractive. So extra subsidies will be necessary. Those subsidies will probably come from households in the form of higher energy bills. So the cost of energy will go down but we average guys will not see it.

Death by Cop

In 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 140 blacks were killed by police. That same year, 386 whites were killed by police. Over the 13-year period from 1999 to 2011, 2,151 whites and 1,130 blacks were killed by police. So 34.45% of deaths by police action were Black. Blacks make up 13.2% of the U.S. population.

In 1968, shootings by law enforcement were the cause of death for 8.6 out of every million blacks. For whites, the rate was was 0.9 deaths per million.
By 2011, law enforcement shootings caused 2.74 deaths for every million blacks, and 1.28 deaths for every million whites. While the death-by-police rate for whites has held pretty steady over the last 45 years at about the one-in-a-million level, the rate for blacks has fallen. In the last several decades the numbers of blacks killed by cops are down nearly 75%.

Excluding practice on the gun range, 95% of officers — including those in big-city departments — have never discharged their firearm in the line of duty. 

 

In 2014, 114 police were killed in the line of duty. The average age was 40. 110 were male, 4 female, and the average time of service was 12 years, 6 months.

Sunday Sermon 12/28/14

Today is the Feast of the Presentation. It has an odd history. Originally it was the Feast of Purification but this name was confusing to people who did not know who was being purified or why. (Purification was a Jewish ritual, post delivery. A new mother had to be isolated for 40 days if the child was a boy, 80 days if it was a girl. This isolation was physical, in the home, and the woman was forbidden contact with sacred objects. There was also an additional element: The Jews mandated that every first born male be "redeemed" in the temple before God ever since the tenth plague of Egypt.) It became the Feast of the Meeting before it settled on Presentation.

In this Gospel, Simeon offers a prophesy. It is said to be the first prophesy since Malachi in 420 B.C.. (There is an argument that Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, prophesied first.) At any rate, it is a historic event. And part of what he says is often overlooked: "...for my eyes have seen the salvation which you have made ready in the sight of the nations; a light of revelation for the gentiles and glory for your people Israel." This is a startling line that includes the Gentiles in Christ's plan long before Paul.

But it is even older. Isaiah 60:1-3 says:

  Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.  
² For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
³ And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

Cab Thoughts 12/27/14

"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Joshua Birnbaum, the ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader who made bets against subprime mortgages during the financial crisis, now has more than $2 billion in wagers against high-yield bonds at his Tilden Park Capital Management LP hedge-fund firm, according to investor documents. Bonds tied to the energy sector make up about 15% of the high-yield space. If oil prices stay low.......

Carl Hoffman's 2014 book, Savage Harvest, tries to  answer the question that's haunted the Rockefeller legacy since 1961: What happened to eager young Michael Rockefeller, who vanished while collecting indigenous art among the Asmat tribe of what was then Netherlands New Guinea?

Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is roughly 250%. If interest rates were to rise by 2%, it would take 80% or more of their tax revenues just to pay the interest. That is not a working business model. Therefore they can’t allow interest rates to rise. The only way they can accomplish that is for the Bank of Japan to become the market for Japanese government bonds (JGBs). And that in fact is what has happened. When the Bank of Japan momentarily withdraws from the ten-year JGB market, nothing trades. The Bank of Japan is the market today.

Carmen Segarra, the former Fed bank examiner, tells of a Goldman Sachs executive saying in a meeting that “once clients were wealthy enough, certain consumer laws didn’t apply to them.” 

Andruw Jones hit 434 home runs in his 17-year major league career and won 10 straight Gold Glove Awards as a center fielder. Didi Gregorius is expected to replace Derek Jeter at short for the Yankees. Both men are from Curaçao, the nation with the most major leaguers per capita in the world last season. Curaçao has one major leaguer for every 21,000 residents or so. For comparison, on opening day last season, there were 83 players from the Dominican Republic, a nation of 10.4 million — roughly one major leaguer per 125,000 inhabitants. For the United States, the ratio was about one to 503,000. An autonomous country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Curaçao is an island about 40 miles off the northern coast of Venezuela. At 171 square miles, it is about twice as large as Brooklyn, and with a population of about 150,000, it is a bit larger than Bridgeport, Conn.

"The Heroes of Beslan:" The ugly problem publicized by the peculiar Senate "torture release" deserves some true and honest thought. But there is a growing disconnect between the old world and the new. 126 children were killed in Pakistan in a military attack targeting a school. That is hard to apply the Marquis of Queensbury rules to.

A professor I knew said that the society could tell when it was crossing the line when it began thinking of the enemy as an illness.

In 2006, thousands of college kids in the Midwest became infected with mumps, despite the fact that most had received the vaccine. This phenomenon is called vaccine failure, and scientists divide it into two categories: primary and secondary. Primary vaccine failure occurs when the body doesn't produce antibodies in response to the initial immunization, but this is relatively rare with the mumps vaccine. Secondary failure occurs when the body fails to maintain an adequate level of antibodies, despite having an initially strong response to the immunization. This is what we're seeing in the NHL.

Back in 2006, researchers found that college students who came down with mumps had been immunized more than ten years earlier than roommates who didn't contract the disease. A subsequent study confirmed this, revealing that protective antibodies were much lower in students who'd been vaccinated fifteen years earlier compared to students who'd been vaccinated just five years earlier. The takeaway here is that the mumps vaccine works, we just don't know how long it works. (Matt McCarthy, an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center)

A lot of the success of Germany's economy of late is due to the Chinese building frenzy. China embarked on a   infrastructure and real estate build out, in an effort to insulate itself from the contraction forces that the Great Recession created. This created in turn a booming market for German capital goods exports. 

A study back in 1990 by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, absent single motherhood, there would be no difference in black and white crime rates.

A return to a previous note that has some ongoing pertinence. From a good review of Machiavelli by John Gray in The New Statesman: "...modern law is an artifact of state power. Probably nothing is more important for the protection of freedom than the independence of the judiciary from the executive; but this independence (which can never be complete) is possible only when the state is strong and secure. Western governments blunder around the world gibbering about human rights; but there can be no rights without the rule of law and no rule of law in a fractured or failed state, which is the usual result of western sponsored regime change. In many cases geopolitical calculations may lie behind the decision to intervene; yet it is a fantasy about the nature of rights that is the public rationale, and there is every sign that our leaders take the fantasy for real. The grisly fiasco that has been staged in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – a larger and more dangerous version of which seems to be unfolding in Syria – testifies to the hold on western leaders of the delusion that law can supplant politics."

"There can be no rights without the rule of law!" That is a concept worth reflecting on because so often you see rights argued as infringed upon by all law.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/07/reward-limits.html

One explanation: Up until the mid-1990s, Microsoft had virtually no lobbyist presence in Washington, D.C., and gave almost no money to political campaigns. Then the Clinton Justice Department decided to sue Microsoft for antitrust violations.
By 1998, the company was pouring $3.7 million into lobbying and giving more than $1.4 million to political campaigns. Influencing Washington became part of Microsoft's business strategy only after Washington decided to influence Microsoft's business.

Just in case you were worried about the future of the democracy, be reassured. There has been a savage backlash against Gov. Christy on social media. Why? He's a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Farmers and common sense won big with the new budget. The Clean Water Act will not apply to farm ponds and irrigation trenches, and the Environmental Protection Agency won't be able to count dairy cow and cattle farts and belching as greenhouse gases. The White House wanted to cut dairy industry emissions 25% by 2020.

epicene \EP-uh-seen\, adjective: 1. Having the characteristics of both sexes. 2. Effeminate; unmasculine. 3. Sexless; neuter. Epicene derives from Latin epicoenus, from Greek epikoinos, "common to," from epi-, "upon" + koinos, "common."

Stanley Druckenmiller—former chairman and president of Pittsburgh's Duquesne Capital, former portfolio manager of Soros’s Quantum Fund, and one of the great investors of modern times—has said that IBM was his favorite short  and that it was the poster child for the type of stock market we have nowadays. Why? Because it sells bonds and takes on debt--which in most times would be used  for capital expenditures--and uses it for dividends and stock buybacks.
                 
The new budget has $5.5 billion for Obama's Ebola-care programs, with nearly 90% of the money going to Africa.

AAAAAaaaaaaannnnnddddddd.....a picture of Detroit, returning to the land:

Virginia and Santa

One of the most famous Letters to the Editor ever to appear in a newspaper was this query from an 8-year-old girl. It was first printed in the New York Sun in 1897, along with a response by editor Francis P. Church. It proved so popular that it was reprinted every year until the Sun went out of business in 1949. 
The Question

Dear Editor:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

The Answer

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

"Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

"You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

"No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."

Merry Christmas

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

Always responsible to Him, they became responsible for Him.

The message of Christianity--that of forgiveness, love, family and community--so distilled down in the symbols of this holiday, is so optimistic and hopeful one is always struck by the homicidal, nihilistic, despairing and similarly faith-based philosophies that have risen as alternative explanations of man's condition.

It is hard to believe an active evil force is not present to influence it.

Merry Christmas.

Saturnala and Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Profiling and Science

A problem with profiling is that not only is it intuitive, it is a part of our general lives, from internet advertising to insurance rates. One bad experience in a chain restaurant invalidates them all. In a crucial situation, always pitch a left-handed pitcher to a left-handed batter. In the Spelling Bee, bet the immigrants' kid. A white policeman shoots and unarmed black child; we generalize that this implies bigotry in other policemen.

 

We are always making generalizations and they may not hold up to scientific scrutiny but there is something in us that wants to generalize. This is not simply the xenophobia of the tribe, the fear of "The Other." Our brain seems to want to protect us from making a decision at every moment, to shield us from the assault of information and sensations that bombard us. But that does not invalidate the basic truths: Sometimes the generalities are simply scientifically wrong. More importantly, often the individual will escape the general. Left-hander power pitcher Tony Watson is terrific against left-handers but even better against righties.

 

On the other hand, we are desperate for a neutral world; we want to be taken for what we really are--or aspire to be. Everything must be evenhanded. We are polite to creationists and accepting of the most meaningless art. There was once a conscious social--and scientific--effort to democratize AIDS despite the profound demographic biases. We will soon demand drowning on dry land.

 

Mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases are approximately 30 percent higher among black adults than among white adults. Cervical cancer rates are almost five times higher among Vietnamese women in the U.S. than among white women. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as it is among white men. So is vigilance in these subsets regarding these individual diseases profiling and should it be abandoned? And, worse, when significant distinctions in subjects arise, will we suppress the knowledge?
Interestingly, the ACA encourages companies to reward good health practice by lowering health insurance rates for employees who improve their behavior. Those companies that tried have been sued by another government unit for "biased" insurance rates.

Pigs, A Retry

Wild Pigs

Pigs were domesticated in China around 4900 B.C. (although some experts claim 7000 to 6000 B.C. in Western Asia) and were being raised in Europe by 1500 B.C.. The Romans improved pig breeding

There are about five million wild pigs in 39 states, mostly the southeast, who cause at least $1.5 billion in damages and control costs each year, according to a 2007 survey, mostly to agriculture.  There is a $20-million federal initiative to get their numbers under control. Columbus in 1493 brought 8 hogs to the West Indies. Pigs were first introduced in the 1500’s to what is now the southeastern U.S. by Spanish Explorer, Hernando DeSoto. In the early 1900’s, Eurasian or Russian wild boar were introduced into portions of the United States. The American wild pig is the result of the cross breeding. The typical weight is around 150 lbs, but they can uncommonly become much heavier, to well over 300 lbs.
Wild pigs run in packs, called “sounders,” with as many as 30 animals in a group.
Wild boar meat contains far less fat than domestic pork, so some authorities recommend that the meat be marinated overnight before cooking. One of the most popular ways to prepare wild boar is by smoking the meat.

A Eurasian boar


American feral pig, the second one ready to fight:

Sunday Sermon 12/21/14

Today's gospel is The Annunciation. It appears only in Luke, the physician. With the Resurrection, it is the lynchpin of Christianity.  As such it is the focus of artist and writers throughout history. 
It is a remarkable description, simple and understated, gravid as it were with potential and meaning. Mary somehow gives some humanity to this overwhelming violation of natural law. Anyone who makes Christianity an abstraction must be insensible to this scene.
Morton writes there is a single stream in Nazareth that supplies the town water and it has been so ever since the town was built; Mary must have drawn water from it.
It is said that Mary's house was transported by angels first to Croatia, then to Loreto, as if the miraculous nature of the Annunciation needs support. 

Here are two poems, one by Rilke where Gabriel is so overwhelmed he forgets his mission, the other by the British poet Elizabeth Jennings with a maternal, galactic acceptance.

Annunciation

The Angel speaks

You are not closer to God than we

We’re all from Him so far

Yet with such sweet wonder

Your hands blessed are.

So do they ripen, so they shimmer

from the sleeves as by no woman before.

I am the day, I am the dew,

But Thou,

Thou art the Tree.

I'm weary, for the way was long

Forgive me, I forgot

What He, who sits in gold array

as in the sun sent me to say,

You thoughtful one

(great space bewilders me)

You see: I am the beginning

But Thou,

Thou art the Tree.

Wide I spread the arc of my flight

I found myself so strange and far

And now your little house is drowned

in the folds of my great, bright dress.

And yet you’re alone as never before

You don’t see me at all

As if: I’m a breath of wind in the wood

But Thou

Thou art the Tree.

All the angels fear like this

Let one another go:

Never had we such desire

Uncertain yet so great

Perhaps that something happens soon

You only know in dreams

Hail, for thus my soul now sees:

You ready and so ripe.

You, Lady, are the great, high door

that soon shall open wide.

You, most beloved ear to my song

Now I feel: my word is lost

in you as in a wood.

So I came and I fulfilled

A thousand and one dreams

God looked at me; bedazzled me…

But Thou

Thou art the Tree.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"The Annunciation"  

Nothing will ease the pain to come
Though now she sits in ecstasy
And lets it have its way with her.
The angel’s shadow in the room
Is lightly lifted as if he
Had never terrified her there.
The furniture again returns
To its old simple state. She can
Take comfort from the things she knows
Though in her heart new loving burns
Something she never gave to man
Or god before, and this god grows
Most like a man. She wonders how
To pray at all, what thanks to give
And whom to give them to. “Alone
To all men’s eyes I now must go”
She thinks, “And by myself must live
With a strange child that is my own.”
So from her ecstasy she moves
And turns to human things at last
(Announcing angels set aside).
It is a human child she loves
Though a god stirs beneath her breast
And great salvations grip her side.

--Elizabeth Jennings

Cab Thoughts 12/20/14

"The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones; the Oil Age won't end because we run out of oil." - Don Huberts


Six in 10 Americans, including half of all Republicans, said they support regulation of carbon dioxide pollution, although they weren't asked how. Nearly half of Republicans said the U.S. should lead the global fight to curb climate change, even if it means taking action when other countries do not.

Speaking of pollution: Correlation is not causation. But does correlation raise the question of causation? Is correlation the stimulus for experiment? 

Isn't correlation the source of hypothesis? And isn't personal hypothesis often the source of bigotry? So the same drive for truth in science is the source of half-truth.

Ted Kennedy sent a letter to Andropov regarding President Reagan. In it he offered a deal. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.

Truly a great American.

At Runnymede, beside the Thames, King John on 15 June 1215 met aggrieved English barons who had backed his failed war with the French. What resulted was  Magna Carta, a document that established a new relationship between a king and his subjects.
Its clause “to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice” – remains a touchstone for civil liberties that emerged later.

Next year the British will hold the  Magna Carta Show which will hold celebrations throughout Britain. One of the stars of the show will be the Melrose Chronicle, a poem written in Latin by Cistercian monks almost 800 years ago.  It is the earliest independent account of the events at Runnymede.
It begins: “A new state of things begun in England; such a strange affair as had never been heard; for the body wishes to rule the head, and the people desired to be masters over the king.” It goes on to explain the anger at King John. “The king, it is true, had perverted the excellent institutions of the realm, and had mismanaged its laws and customs, and misgoverned his subjects. His inclination became his law; he oppressed his own subjects; he placed over them foreign mercenary soldiers, and he put to death the lawful heirs, of whom he had obtained possession as his hostages, while an alien seized their lands.”

On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be orbiting Sun-like stars. This in one galaxy!

Google said it will shut its Google News service in Spain because a new law will require the company to pay publishers for displaying any portion of their work.

Half of women and 43% of men in England are now regularly taking prescription drugs, according to the comprehensive Health Survey for England. Cholesterol-lowering statins, pain relief and anti-depressants were among the most prescribed medicines.

The report, by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), showed an average of 18.7 prescriptions per person in England in 2013. The cost to the NHS was in excess of 15 billion pounds a year.
More than a fifth of men and nearly a quarter of women were taking at least three prescriptions.
All the figures exclude contraceptives and smoking cessation products.

What was....The Kecksburg Incident?

The CIA report from the Senate is difficult to understand. The report was compiled by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee and said the CIA had misled Americans about what it was doing. It even said they misled Bush. Strangely, they did not talk to anyone involved. The information the CIA collected this way failed to secure information that foiled any threats, the report said. The CIA specifically and publicly has contradicted this. The release of the report is strange. It will infuriate some allies, who thought "covert" meant we would not broadcast it, probably undermines our credibility worldwide and will expose us to an avalanche of righteous abuse. But it does not really indict Bush. If the report is right, the CIA is a group of vicious, mendacious savages, if wrong the Senate is incompetent. Not a great endorsement of the grand government  view of the Progressives in either way.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/gingrich-bork-and-manning-backroom.html

The Telegraph had an article on Bank of America's prediction that oil was going to $50 a barrel and that OPEC was in deep trouble. From that article: "...What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56pc of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83pc of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another. These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves."

Ashton Carter looks to be the new Dept. of Defense chief. He was not the President's first choice. It is said that several turned it down. Hopefully that is not the result of a belief that the current administration is difficult to work with.

As worrisome and dangerous these hacks are, sometimes they are really fun. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd promised to show Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal’s husband, Bernard Weinraub, — a former Times reporter — a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication.

The NYT reports that Peruvian authorities say Greenpeace activists have damaged the fragile--and restricted--landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird.

Earlier this month, surgeons at Zhejiang University in China performed surgery to remove two damaged vertebrae from a 21-year-old patient. In their place they inserted a 3D printed titanium implant which was shaped to the exact size needed for the patient's body. The surgery, which took doctors much less time and provided significantly less risk [than conventional surgery] was completely successful and the patient is expected to make a full recovery. This is said to be the first ever surgery involving 3D printing vertebrae in order to replace a patient's thoracic vertebrae. This is remarkable, if true. But one must remember the famous documentaries of Chinese horsemen riding through nuclear explosions and the equally famous lung surgery filmed with the patient under only acupuncture.

The BBC has announced that it plans to adapt two of A.J. Rowling's detective novels for television. Written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm pair as an ongoing series, which spotlights the auspiciously named private detective Cormoran Strike.

Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution has won the rights to investigate the skeleton of Kennewick  Man, found in 1996 in the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington. He estimates the man died 600 to 7000 B.C.. Dennis Stanford has written a book arguing that people got into the New World on the Atlantic side across the pack ice from Spain and France 17,000 to 20,000 years ago.

Mansuetude: noun: Gentleness; meekness. From Latin mansuescere (to make tame: to accustom to handling), from manus (hand) + suescere (to become accustomed). Ultimately from the Indo-European root man- (hand), which is also the source of manual, manage, maintain, manicure, maneuver, manufacture, manuscript, command, manque, amanuensis and legerdemain. Earliest documented use: 1390.

And the fascination with epics continues. Christopher Nolan did Interstellar. Now his brother and partner Jonathan has announced that his own next project will be to craft -- for HBO -- Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.        
AAAAaaaaannnnnddddd........a picture of the first armed airplane of the Serbian army in 1915.

No Law, No Peace

A return to a previous note that has some ongoing pertinence. From a good review of Machiavelli by John Gray in The New Statesman: "...modern law is an artefact of state power. Probably nothing is more important for the protection of freedom than the independence of the judiciary from the executive; but this independence (which can never be complete) is possible only when the state is strong and secure. Western governments blunder around the world gibbering about human rights; but there can be no rights without the rule of law and no rule of law in a fractured or failed state, which is the usual result of western sponsored regime change. In many cases geopolitical calculations may lie behind the decision to intervene; yet it is a fantasy about the nature of rights that is the public rationale, and there is every sign that our leaders take the fantasy for real. The grisly fiasco that has been staged in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – a larger and more dangerous version of which seems to be unfolding in Syria – testifies to the hold on western leaders of the delusion that law can supplant politics."

"There can be no rights without the rule of law." That is a concept worth reflecting on because so often you see rights argued as infringed upon by all law. Rousseau etc.. And "law is an artifact of state power." So a bit of a contradiction, no? But the American structure is very different and was very new. In America the government is also restrained and limited by law. That is where the safety of our rights lies. 

No law, no peace.

Truth, Beauty and Conviction

Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988 to the outrage and condemnation from the Islamic community. Indeed a Fatwa, a holy hit contract, was put out against him and those associated with the book. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was stabbed to death; Ettore Capiolo, the Italian translator was seriously injured but not killed in a stabbing attack. William Nygaard, the publisher for the book in Norway, was shot three times but survived. The Turkish translator, Aziz Nesin, was the target in the Sivas bombing which resulted in 37 deaths.

The artist has always suffered for his work and sometimes great insight is not required. Sometimes slander, calumny or simple tasteless cruelty must be defended. Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Brown's DaVinci Code come to mind. But the artist always stands firm for his truth. And nowhere does this noble symbolic strength for art rise more defiantly than Hollywood. From interviews to self-congratulatory awards we can always rely on Hollywood--ever green--to take the high road.

So fear not. We can certainly expect Hollywood to stand up to the attempts at intimidation associated with The Interview.

Cab Thoughts 12/17/14

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. --michael crichton



A for-profit Florida college used exotic dancers to recruit students and faked high school diplomas and attendance records to qualify its pupils for millions in federal financial aid, according to a civil complaint. From 2009 to its closing in June 2012, FastTrain, the for-profit educational entity, received some $35 million in federal funds, including Pell Grants, providing federal aid to the neediest families.

“To generate as much revenue as possible, FastTrain would fill its classes with ineligible students,” the complaint said.

The school's recruiting tactics included employing exotic dancers, authorities said, and encouraging attractive women to dress provocatively when going to recruit young men.

It turns out that vlogger Zoe Sugg's novel Girl Online, which just broke the record for first-week sales of a debut author in the U.K., was at least partially ghostwritten. Sugg's publisher confirmed to The Sunday Times that a team of writers helped her compose the book, and The Independent notes a blog post by freelance writer Siobhan Curham that explained how she'd written a novel in just six weeks — a novel now suspected to be Girl Online.

Who is.....Christiana Figueres?

In recent weeks, many Hezbollah officials and senior members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard have publicly boasted about the advanced ground-to-ground missiles which Iran supplied Hezbollah and which allow the terror group to threaten almost any target within Israel. Sooner or later, the Puritans will have a nuclear weapon to destroy Evil. 

Charles Shumer, Democrat Senator from New York, delivered a scary speech a few weeks ago. He said that while most people thought the ACA helped the poor, most thought it damaged the middle class. His overall point was that the Obama plans attack problems that are ideological, not practical. Health care was not a crisis in 2009 nor are climate change and amnesty for illegal immigrants now. 

These problems are hardly the top priorities of a working/middle class whose median income declined as much during the Obama recovery as during the Great Recession. Worse, only 15% of the uninsured minority vote. Shumer is arguing that Obama policies are driving the middle class away from the Democrat Party.
If that is true, it is a lot bigger a story than whatever the Rube-publicans are doing.

Michael Sam, has been named Man of the Year by men's magazine GQ,

Buccaneers: The pirates of the Caribbean derived their name from the Arawak Indian word buccan, referring to a wooden frame used for smoking meats. The French changed this to boucan and called the French hunters who used these frames to cook and preserve feral cattle and the offspring of Columbus' pigs on the island of Hispaniola boucanier. English colonists anglicized the word to buccaneers.

The labor force participation rate remained at a 36-year low of 62.8 percent in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Milton's agreement for Paradise Lost with printer Samuel Simmons -- five pounds at signing, another five for each 1500 copies sold on a first edition of 4,500 -- is the earliest preserved author's contract.

Jim Grant, the harsh critic of easy money, on our PhD obsessed culture (looking back from the future):
"My generation gave former tenured economics professors discretionary authority to fabricate money and to fix interest rates.
We put the cart of asset prices before the horse of enterprise.
We entertained the fantasy that high asset prices made for prosperity, rather than the other way around.
We actually worked to foster inflation, which we called 'price stability' (this was on the eve of the hyperinflation of 2017).
We seem to have miscalculated."

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/old-new-years-problems.html

The God of Small Things was an elegant book written by Arundhati Roy, her first book. It won the Booker prize and she was looked to as a new breed of writer, not just from India, but a huge talent with an exciting future. Everyone waited for the next fiction. It never came. Instead Roy did an abrupt turn and became an activist. Nor was she any activist; she supported homicidal Maoist groups.
She began writing non-fiction, championing reforms in India, especially aimed at the caste system. And her positions were more than controversial, they were offensive. In The Doctor and the Saint she presented two different visions of reform: Gandhi’s and Ambedkar’s. Gandhi wanted to abolish the designation of “Untouchables”, the lowest caste that is today referred to as Dalit. But Ambedkar wanted to get rid of the caste system in its entirety. Gandhi emerges as a traditionalist, an egomaniac who had to be dragged into modernity by the more ambitious and radical Ambedkar.

Part of the U.S.-China global warming deal is that we, the U.S., will have to contribute money to China and India to help finance their shift away from carbon. The first payment is apparently $10 billion. The United Nations' climate change spokeswoman, Christiana Figueres, dismissed the U.S. commitment of $10 billion as "a very, very small sum." What is needed to decarbonise the global economy, she said, is “$90 trillion over the next 15 years”.
90 trillion dollars! Who are these people and who do they talk to every day?
For some perspective, the total Gross Domestic Product of the WHOLE WORLD is 71 trillion dollars and the total world debt is $223.3 trillion. That is 313% of global gross domestic product.
So where, exactly, is the 90 trillion dollars to fix the carbon economy going to come from and what is the world going to look like when it does?

There are an  estimated 100,000 near-Earth objects, such as asteroids and comets, which can cross Earth's orbit and are large enough to be dangerous. Only about 11,000 have so far been tracked and cataloged. this according to Vladimir Lipunov, a professor at Moscow State University. I don't suppose this has anything to do with the world's first Asteroid Day.

One of the lessons learned in 2008 was that regulators waited too long to sound the alarm about the systemic risk posed by the sharp increase in real estate-backed debt. When they did act by limiting banks' exposure to commercial real estate loans to 300% of capital, most banks were already above the limit. So the regulators' action closed the credit spigot abruptly, throttled the real estate industry and helped precipitate the crisis. (Jim Bauerle)

AAAaaaannnnnndddddd.....a picture of a German tank off a Russian bridge, July 4, 1941:

Mumps

Sydney Crosby has the mumps. So do almost 20 other players and referees in the NHL. The disease is rare. Most kids are vaccinated against it twice; first at the age of 1, and again around the age of 5, when they receive the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella) before starting kindergarten. Mumps is spread in respiratory droplets, often in the form of a sneeze. Symptoms can take up to three weeks to develop. Symptoms include glandular swelling (face, testicles) and sometimes encephalitis can occur. What is going on? Here is a nice summary from Matt McCarthy, an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center:

In 2006, thousands of college kids in the Midwest became infected with mumps, despite the fact that most had received the vaccine. This phenomenon is called vaccine failure, and scientists divide it into two categories: primary and secondary. Primary vaccine failure occurs when the body doesn't produce antibodies in response to the initial immunization, but this is relatively rare with the mumps vaccine. Secondary failure occurs when the body fails to maintain an adequate level of antibodies, despite having an initially strong response to the immunization. This is what we're seeing in the NHL.

Back in 2006, researchers found that college students who came down with mumps had been immunized more than ten years earlier than roommates who didn't contract the disease. A subsequent study confirmed this, revealing that protective antibodies were much lower in students who'd been vaccinated fifteen years earlier compared to students who'd been vaccinated just five years earlier. The takeaway here is that the mumps vaccine works, we just don't know how long it works. 

R>G

Good news! There is a new economics hero, French economist Thomas Piketty. In a huge book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, he argues that the effect of capitalism is, in its essence, unequal and, in the absence of intervention, that inequality will be self generating. Of course, there is a formula, r>g, where r stands for the average annual rate of return on capital (i.e. profits, dividends, interest, and rents) and g stands for the rate of economic growth. In other words, in a slow-growing economy, accumulated wealth grows faster than income from labor. So the rich, who already hold most of the wealth, will get richer, while everyone else, who depend mostly on income from their jobs, will be lucky to keep up with inflation.With the return of capital above the rate of economic growth--as it has been historically--the seeds of destruction are sown. In the time between 1945 and 1970, capitalism’s so-called Golden Age, the economies of Western Europe and the United States expanded and inequality declined. This period has left us with an erroneous optimism about capitalism.
Marx was right about the destination, just not the journey.

Cab Thoughts 12/13/14

The rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because they have superior access to the political system and can use their connections to promote their interests.--Francis Fukuyama

A group calling themselves Guardians of Peace hacked 40GB of Sony internal corporate data. The scale is astonishing. The information includes employee criminal background checks, salary negotiations, and doctors’ letters explaining the medical rationale for leaves of absence, spreadsheets containing the salaries of 6,800 global employees, along with Social Security numbers for 3,500 U.S. staff. And there is extensive documentation of the company’s operations, ranging from the script for an unreleased pilot written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. More: a Word document titled “Passwords” that contained an executive’s computer, LotusNotes, and American Express usernames and passwords, as well as Amex credit card numbers, expiration dates, and four-digit security codes. The attack knocked much of Sony's network off line with malware that wipes drives of PCs, making them unable to operate. It is expensive to repair them because each drive needs to be manually replaced or re-imaged. 

NYU professor Nouriel Roubini says there is low growth, and low inflation in much of the world and there is liquidity. That leads to asset inflation, an inflation that has to retreat in a market decline. He predicts 2016.

 

There are about five million wild pigs in 39 states, mostly the southeast, who cause at least $1.5 billion in damages and control costs each year, according to a 2007 survey, mostly to agriculture.  There is a $20-million federal initiative to get their numbers under control. Pigs were first introduced in the 1500’s to what is now the southeastern U.S. by Spanish explorer, Hernando DeSoto. In the early 1900’s, Eurasian or Russian wild boar were introduced into portions of the United States. The American wild pig is the result of the cross breeding.

 

Juggernaut: noun: 1. Anything requiring blind sacrifice. 2. A massive relentless force, person, institution, etc. that crushes everything in its path. Ety: From Hindi jagannath (one of the titles Krishna, a Hindu god, has), from Sanskrit jagannath, from jagat (world) + nath (lord). A procession of Jagannath takes place each year at Puri, India. Devotees pull a huge cart carrying the deity. Some have been accidentally crushed under the wheels (or are said to have thrown themselves under them). Earliest documented use: 1638.

 

Here is a fine, coherent and short analysis of the markets and investments in them from Les Antman: "Nobody can tell you that an equity portfolio, even a globally diversified one, is safe. But the so-called safe havens aren’t safe, either, whether we are talking about the short-term or the long-term. If the businesses that provide the world’s goods and services do not continue to operate and earn reasonable returns over time, governments will not be able to raise any decent amount of revenue by taxation, and will either print increasingly worthless pieces of paper or default. Gold cannot buy non-existent products: it also depends on continued productivity in society. Production is the foundation of any livable future: there is no reward for successfully predicting the end of the world."

 

Who is...Ann Dunham?

 

Astrophysicist Dr. Brian May spoke recently about the risk of asteroids to life on the earth. His group is trying to raise awareness--read money--about the problems but also the solutions he says are already available. He is the former lead guitarist of the rock band Queen.Yes, he is.

 

American businesses and families pay $1.9 trillion annually to comply with federal regulations. $353 billion of these costs from EPA alone. EPA wants to decrease allowable ozone levels to 70 or even 60 ppb, which many researchers say is below natural ozone levels. Natural ozone levels! Even Jackson Hole and Teton County, Wyoming could be out of compliance, mostly due to emissions from pine trees. The EPA uses advisory groups in its decision-making. One is the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee; fifteen CASAC members have received more than $180 million in federal money since 2000.

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/12/lame-duck.html

 

Another amazing fortuitous--and really unlikely--find. A comic opera written by Raymond Chandler and never published has been uncovered at the Library of Congress, according to The Guardian. The paper notes that the 48-page libretto to The Princess and the Pedlar marks a departure from the detective fiction for which Chandler is best known. Registered for copyright in 1917 when he was still a teenager, the opera predates Chandler's first novel by two decades and bears traces of Gilbert and Sullivan, quite unlike his later work.

 

Watson's 1962 Nobel prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA has sold at auction in New York for $4.7 million, a world auction record for any Nobel prize. He was the seller.

 

One of the problems with free markets and competition is some people lose. (This--people losing--I think, is one of the great problems for liberal thinkers.) From 1870 to 1897 wheat prices fell from $1.06 to 63¢ a bushel, corn from 43¢ to 30¢ a bushel, and cotton from 15¢ to 6¢ a pound. Most of the time farmers received even less for their crops. The primary cause of their problem was overproduction resulting from increases in the acreage of farms and increased yields per acre due to improved farming methods, as well as the advent of railroads that made it easy to get produce to Eastern markets. So people were punished for doing something bell and better.
More, global competition from Argentina, Russia, and Canada enhanced by oceangoing steamboats made international transportation cheaper and ended an era of American agricultural export advantages.
This period of time saw one-third of farmers move to the cities for other work as they lost their employment on small family farms.

The same thing is happening with the U.S. petroleum producers now.

In what must be one of the most astonishing athletic comebacks in history, Lindsey Vonn won a World Cup race, her first in two years. It rivals Evelyn Ashford's gold medal after her two pregnancies.

 

William Caxton was England's first printer. He had an astonishing influence on English and English writing. Many of the 100 books and pamphlets he produced were his own translations, and many contained his own prefaces and epilogues, providing anything from personal details to literary criticism. Caxton also took responsibility for not only publishing what he thought was the best and most edifying British writing of the day (first editions of The Canterbury Tales and John Gower's Confessio Amantis), but for helping to clean up and stabilize the language.

What passes for discussion in Greek labor problems: The President of Attica Taxi Association (SATA) said that taxi drivers cooperating with Uber “should be hanged at Syntagma Square” for being traitors – “Judas” as he called them.

Some groups are always allowed hyperbole. Some are not.

 

George Orwell was a strange mix. He was a devout Socialist but wrote with ferocity against totalitarianism. He fought against the Fascists in Spain and was shot in the throat. Returning to England he was unable to fight in Europe but was an activist at home, encouraging home and domestic readiness should England be invaded. "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage," he wrote, "is the symbol of democracy."

 

AAAAaaaaaaannnnndddddd..... a picture of Dr. Brian May, CBE, PhD FRAS:

The Speed of the Expanding Universe

The idea of an expanding universe was proposed by Edwin Hubble. Several scientists--Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt  and others--set out to measure the rate of expansion. They expected to find that it was slowing due to the mass/gravity effect of the universe matter.
The accepted method is to measure the discrepancy between the expected brightness of distant stars, supernovas, to their actual brightness. The redshift of its spectrum is measured to determine how fast the star and its home galaxy are moving away. Instead slowing down, the expansion of the universe was accelerating. Something was counteracting the expected effects of gravity.
The accelerating expansion can not be explained by any type of missing mass, because mass implies gravity and more gravity should put the brakes on expansion. So astronomers proposed a new type of energy to explain the observations. They call it “dark energy”, though it may or may not be energy as we understand it. Its density remains constant even as the universe expands. The more space expands, the greater the effect of dark energy.
Very strange.
Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam Reiss, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011 for an observation the opposite of the one they expected, an observation that raised a lot more questions than it answered.

Visions of the Year Zero

Part of the U.S.-China global warming deal is that we, the U.S., will have to contribute money to China and India to help finance their shift away from carbon. The first payment is apparently $10 billion. The United Nations' climate change spokeswoman, Christiana Figueres, dismissed the U.S. commitment of $10 billion as "a very, very small sum." What is needed to decarbonise the global economy, she said, is “$90 trillion over the next 15 years”.
90 trillion dollars! Who are these people and who do they talk to every day?
For some perspective, the total Gross Domestic Product of the WHOLE WORLD is 71 trillion dollars and the total world debt is $223.3 trillion. That is 313% of global gross domestic product.
So where, exactly, is the 90 trillion dollars to fix the carbon economy going to come from and what is the world going to look like when it does?
Pol Pot would be thrilled.

Cab Thought 12/11/14

"I'm not sure I'm ready to have fun yet."--child on sideline of tennis camp
 

 

Forgiveness is quite the rage. Confessions and apologies, with the appropriate accepting forgiveness, are mandatory with everything from social error to homicide. The prisons are alive with efforts to reintroduce criminals into a society that is expected to look past their previous behavior.

So, how come Ray Rice doesn't get a second chance?

 

Peter Stolypin a minister under Czar Nicholas II undertook agrarian reform in 1906. His program was to dissolve peasant communes and buy land from the nobility, then to divide the land among the peasants. These private landholders were called Kulaks (from the word "fist", perhaps connoting "tightfistedness.") This actually increased efficiency and boosted food production in the country-side by over 40%. Stolypin felt that by making peasants actual owners of the land and the product of their labor they would take a keener interest in land improvement and productivity. During the Russian Civil War (1918-21) the Kulaks generally supported the White Russians who were fighting to restore the Czarist regime--and were opposed to the communists who would take their land away again. Stalin blamed the Kulaks for the famine following the revolution and sent as many as he could to Siberia where they were just abandoned. Literally millions of Kulaks died. The exact number is not known, but estimates range from 4 to 8,000,000.
 

Vengeance: Elizabeth Lauten, the GOP staffer who resigned Monday morning after calling President Obama's teenage daughters classless, was arrested when she was 17 for shoplifting, according to the Smoking Gun.
 
A recent lecture on 3-D Printing: Really interesting technology with a fascinating social and economic history. The lecturer said that all the tech was developed by Americans who did not know the next step to take. The patents have since expired and the tech has been exploited by the Brits and the Germans. The few American companies that have survived had a brief flurry of success but recently have done very poorly.





More than 30% of Americans get their news from Facebook.





The WSJ has an article on wind power and subsidies entitled, "Wind Power is Intermittent, But Subsidies Are Eternal."


Over four centuries ago, the Dutch East India Company made history as the world’s first IPO. Known as VOC in the Netherlands, the company was one of the most successful ventures in the last several hundred years. When adjusted for inflation, its highest market capitalization would be worth over $7 TRILLION today (i.e. ten times the size of Apple). While the British East India Company is usually more famous nowadays, VOC had almost twice as many ships and moved five times more cargo than its British rivals. The company was so successful over the long-term that that it paid an astonishing 18% annual dividend to its shareholders for over 200 years.



Who is....Cotton Mather?

Total US debt is now over $18 trillion. Debt held by the public on January 20, 2009, Obama's inauguration day, was $6.3 trillion. It is now $12.9 trillion, a 105% increase.
The Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund trustees estimate the two program's combined long-term unfunded liabilities — the estimated amount the government will have to pay in benefits above what it expects to receive — at about $49 trillion.

 

From the Department of As If We don't Have Enough To Worry About: Steven Hawking was interviewed by BBC using his new computer-generated voice. Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans. "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."





Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, was born in America but hasn’t lived in the U.S. since age 5, but the IRS seeks to tax the sale his U.K. home. He has never given up his citizenship so is a duel citizen. The American government does not really tax income, it taxes people and everyone is fair game.

One-third of millennials (ages 18-31) who, because of the economy's sluggishness in the sixth year of recovery, are living with their parents.

Lame Duck literally refers to a duck which is unable to keep up with its flock, making it a target for predators. Generally it means any disabled or vulnerable person or thing. It first appeared in the Eighteenth Century    at the London Stock Exchange to mean a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. Also in naval use for "an old, slow ship." Its first political use was during the 1860s but was first attributed to Lincoln. Therefore....Anatine: 1. resembling a duck. 2. of or pertaining to the family Anatidae, comprising the swans, geese, and ducks. Anatine comes from the Latin word for "duck," anas. It entered English in the mid-1800s. 

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/socializing-outrage.html

 

There is a new book, Stalin, by Stephen Kotkin, the first of a planned three volume study. I am not sure how I feel about this, the academic dissection of a man responsible for 66 million deaths (not including the war deaths.) Seeing the broad tableau of Stalin is like starting a biography of Jack the Ripper with his school days. I know, I know. Stalin was probably distorted by his family, his father or the Church. (He was a seminarian.) But at some point the homicidal psychopaths of the world give up their right to objective study and consideration.

 

As part of the Treaty of Utrecht, Britain received a thirty-year trade agreement (an asiento) from Spain which permitted British merchants to trade up to 500 tons of goods per year in the Spanish colonies as well as sell an unlimited number of slaves. The Spanish felt the agreement was being abused and began stopping and searching British ships (and torturing their crews.) Parliament declared war on Spain on October 23, 1739. The conflict was called "The War of Jenkins' Ear" from Captain Robert Jenkins who had his ear cut off by the Spanish Coast Guard in 1731. Asked to appear in Parliament to recount his tale, he reputedly displayed his ear during his testimony.

"We can break our dependence on oil…and become the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” President Obama said in his January 2011 State of the Union address. But right now, one month from 2015, there are  less than 180,000 plug-ins on U.S. roads today. ( Worldwide, there are only 400,000.) Less than 70,000 Leafs, 71,00 Volts. And Fisker is bankrupt. Treason? Gridlock?

All the hope and subsidies in the world cannot overcome the physics of energy density: Hydrocarbons--oil--store 40X the energy pound for pound than does the electrochemistry of batteries. The engine-battery system of a Leaf is 1000 pounds more than the engine+gas tank of a Mustang. And the Mustang can run all day.

In 1740, James Thompson's Masque,  Alfred the Great, was first performed. Thompson never became very well known but this play contains one song that became an immortal anthem of Great Britain:
When Britain first at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of her land,
And guardian angels sung the strain:
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!
Britons never shall be slaves!

And why are the Greeks opposed to education? Between 8,000 and 10,000 people earlier marched through central Athens in solidarity with Nikos Romanos, a young anarchist convicted of involvement in an armed bank robbery. He has refused food for the past three weeks after authorities said they wouldn't let him attend lectures at an Athens university, where he was admitted after being allowed to sit entry exams in prison.





AAAAaaaaannnnnnddddddd.......a picture of Machu Picchu  before any intervention:

The Famous French Resistance

There is a book out on the French psyche. The thesis is that the entire modern French mind is damaged by the French collaboration with the Nazis through the Vichy government, a puppet government set up by the Germans in southern France and French North Africa. The Americans first encountered the Vichy government in North Africa.

The Americans, struggling against Japan, wanted to make its citizens aware of their responsibilities against the Germans. The British, impressed with the German war machine and reluctant to commit to the European continent yet with no stronghold, shied away from the idea of attacking Europe; they wanted to attack North Africa. They hoped to weaken Hitler with another front and felt the French Vichy forces in North Africa would be accepting of an attack. The American military wanted to attack Europe but Roosevelt over rode them and with the British for French North Africa. The operation was code named Operation Torch and would be the largest invasion of land by sea in history.

Eisenhower was appointed lieutenant general and named to head Operation Torch. A number of bizarre elements arose. It was felt by many that the Americans would be more "French friendly" than the British so they should lead at several heavily held French positions. French General Henri Giraud was slipped away and the position of commander in chief of French forces was offered to his. He declined, wanting to be chief of all invading forces. That was Eisenhower's position! Consequently Giraud sat the battle out.  

The Vichy French forces, however, did not sit it out. In Casablanca, because it was hoped that the French would not resist, there were no preliminary bombardments. This proved to be a costly error as French defenses took a toll of American landing forces. 

In Oran, the Vichy French naval fleet broke from the harbour and attacked the Allied invasion fleet but its ships were all sunk or driven ashore. French batteries and the invasion fleet exchanged fire throughout 8–9 November, with French troops defending Oran and the surrounding area stubbornly. Heavy fire from the British battleships brought about Oran's surrender on 9 November.

In Algiers, French fought the Allies but eventually surrendered.

Sooooo, the invasion of North Africa was a victory....against fierce French resistance.

Logical Food

There is a mine of resentment potential in the way the food of the world is channeled.


Half of all fresh water on the planet is used for livestock. It takes 1,500 gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk, and the water necessary for one pound of steak is double that. It takes fourteen pounds of feed to produce one pound of beef. The West eats about 200 pounds of meat per person per year. United Nations forecasts that the world's population will surpass nine billion by the year 2050. With increasing modernization and population growth one could conservatively imagine that by 2050 at least five billion people will expect to eat their 200 pounds of meat per year as well. In order to feed this many people this much meat, the world would need to produce one trillion pounds of beef and pork annually, and there is not enough land or nutrients on earth to support this kind of production.


Enter insect ranches. Thailand is the current world leader in insect farming, with about 15,000 farms raising locusts, grasshoppers, and mantises for human consumption. Insects also feature in the diets of rural Laos, Vietnam, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico.


It will be grand when this food and resource allocation crisis becomes popular, demonstration arise, and pious politicians begin the campaign, then the persuasion, then the laws to set this right.

sermon 12/8/14

 
Orion, towards Heaven.

Cab Thoughts 12/6/14

"As the saying goes, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Community organizers like Huerta don't teach anyone how to fish: they teach activists how to steal their neighbors' fish. This is what Huerta and her ilk call social justice." --Matthew Vadum    

In some states a nail technician needs to have a license that requires a 750-hour training program.

The late Nobel laureate Jose Saramago completed Skylight in 1953. Unpublished in English for some six decades, the book was not rediscovered until after Saramago's death in 2010. Now, this tale of lives woven together by a Lisbon apartment building will finally see a release this Tuesday.

Who were .....Watson and Crick?

The stigmata, the supposedly spontaneous recreation of the wounds of Christ at the crucifixion, did not appear until the 13th Century in the afflicted St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). Several hundred Christians have claimed the stigmata since, including several saints. All 32 of recorded cases of stigmata have been Roman Catholics and all but four of those cases were women. Many have confessed trickery but most have not, although all have raised suspicions. In 1984, an Italian court convicted stigmatic Gigliola Giorgini of fraud. The famous Twentieth Century stigmatists were Theresa Neumann and Father Pio, the latter made a saint although no ecclesiastical conclusion was reached on his affliction. One of the latest to be added to the list of alleged stigmatics is Audrey Santo, a child who has been in a coma since 1987, when she was three years old. Another is Fr. James Bruce, a Washington, D.C. priest.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/12/simon-capitalism-and-money.html

Brightness in stars is complicated, more than you would think. As a star gets hotter, more of its energy output moves beyond the visible light spectrum into ultra violet, X-rays and even gamma rays. And luminosity or total energy output (related to brightness) also depends on size. Smaller objects have less space from which to radiate electromagnetic energy, and hence are dim although hot. A newly formed white dwarf stars have surface temperatures of nearly 200,000 degrees F, but due to their small size (similar to Earth), are very dim. Smaller, hotter and dimmer still are neutron stars. A typical neutron star is no wider than the island of Trinidad, but can have a surface temperature of millions of degrees. In this case, the object is so small that its total energy output must also be small, and what energy it does radiate is mostly in shorter wavelength (non visible) ultraviolet and X-rays. Thus the  hottest stellar mass objects in the universe are comparatively very dim.

Sir Thomas Mallory completed his classic account of chivalry, Morte d'Arthur, while in prison for  robbery, rape and extortion.

There are earthquakes in Texas. Is fracking to blame? Witches? Perhaps an ancient Indian curse for drilling in old Indian cemeteries? The best relationship I have seen studied is with the very Green Geothermal power. Geothermal power production started in the Salton Sea field in California in 1982 and includes one of the largest and hottest geothermal wells in the world. Plants extract super-heated water from thousands of feet beneath the earth’s surface and use it to produce steam that drives turbines to generate electricity. The remaining brine is then injected back into the ground. The geothermal sites have long been known to be associated with earthquakes. In a paper authored by Emily Brodsky it was found that the earthquake rate mirrored the net extraction rate – the volume of water withdrawn minus the amount injected back into the ground.
“The net extraction…. at the Salton Sea is about half a billion gallons per month,” Brodsky said. “That results in roughly one detectable earthquake per 11 days. If you increase it, that increases the number of earthquakes."

Due to the sagging Canadian dollar the NHL's salary cap for the 2015-16 season might remain stagnant and force teams like the Blackhawks to make major moves during the offseason.

Carbon stays in the atmosphere for one hundred years. James Hanson, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote a paper in 2008 saying that exceeding 350 parts per million CO₂ in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects. We’ve already past that limit. Right now, concentrations of CO2 is around 400 ppm. If Hanson is right, we will be stuck with current CO2 levels for one hundred years. While stopping CO2 production is worthwhile, some option to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is more important. Why don't we hear that?

anodyne \AN-uh-dyn\, adjective: 1. Serving to relieve pain; soothing. 2. Not likely to offend; bland; innocuous. noun:
1. A medicine that relieves pain. 2. Anything that calms, comforts, or soothes disturbed feelings. Anodyne comes, via Latin, from Greek anodunos, "free from pain," from a-, an-, "without" + odune, "pain."

Christie's is offering a first edition Origin of Species. Also Watson's (Of Watson and Crick) Nobel Prize medal. The medal thing sounds a bit sad.

Some 2,500 documents potentially showing that the IRS shared taxpayer returns with the White House have appeared. This is a terrible breach of governmental ethics. Also the law. But the Treasury inspector general’s office said they would not release them because..... the documents are covered by privacy and disclosure laws! 

For Keynesians, Japan is in the Golden Age of Monetary Policy: free money and low rates. Can a productive country monetize 200% of its GDP without devastating, or at least seriously affecting, the buying power of its currency? And at what cost to its trading partners and those countries and companies that must compete against Japanese exports? Also, the Bank of Japan is the largest buyer of Japanese equities. And they are buying their own debt with borrowed money. So the Keynesians should view the Japanese economy as their own little laboratory; the thesis should rise or fall as Japan goes.

AAAAAaaaannnnndddd........a picture: