Cab Thought 3/14/15

Some people have a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are equal, than amongst any other; and I think that, if such a government were once established amongst such a people, it would not only oppress men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism, therefore, appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic times.--deTocqueville

 

Two Krugman quotes before he became an NYT darling:

One, "So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment."

And, two, "They also argue that because there are cases in which companies paying above-market wages reap offsetting gains in the form of lower turnover and greater worker loyalty, raising minimum wages will lead to similar gains. The obvious economist’s reply is, if paying higher wages is such a good idea, why aren’t companies doing it voluntarily?"

There are a trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy,

Sci-fi guy David Brin asks this:  The JFK conspirators, if any, would now be at least eighty years old. So why, over that last decade or so, have we seen no death-bed confessions?

 

When Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. collapsed, its U.S. operations had 1.2 million derivatives transactions outstanding with 6,500 trading partners.
Many of them were far from Wall Street, including schools, which had relied on Lehman to help reduce their exposure to fluctuating interest rates through derivatives. In all, the contracts, which were tied to interest rates, bonds, currencies, commodities and stocks, had a "notional," or theoretical, value of $39 trillion. (wsj)

The world's gross domestic product (GDP)--total--is only about $65 trillion.

Russian scientists have now spotted a total of seven spontaneous craters, five of which appeared in the Yamal Peninsula. Two of those holes have since turned into lakes. And one giant crater is rimmed by a ring of at least 20 mini-craters, the Siberian Times reported.

China's ambassador to Belgium, Qu Xing, was quoted as blaming competition between Russia and the West for the Ukraine crisis, urging Western powers to "abandon the zero-sum mentality" with Russia.  Reuters assessment of Xing speech: "an unusually frank and open display of support for Moscow's position in the crisis."

The New Horizon spacecraft is closing in on Pluto. Nine years after its launch, New Horizons will achieve closest approach on July 14, 2015, collecting data on the surface and atmosphere of the dwarf planet, its large moon Charon and four smaller moons, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx.

The "bartender and waiter" industry is having a growth spurt and soon will surpass the manufacturing sector in the U.S..

A segment of Buffet's shareholder letter: [W]ho has ever benefited during the past 238 years by betting against America? If you compare our country’s present condition to that existing in 1776, you have to rub your eyes in wonder. In my lifetime alone, real per-capita U.S. output has sextupled. My parents could not have dreamed in 1930 of the world their son would  see. Though the preachers of pessimism prattle endlessly about America’s problems, I’ve never seen one who wishes to emigrate (though I can think of a few for whom I would happily buy a one-way ticket).

In the United States, one in 98 boys is diagnosed with autism.

Central bankers are employees of a banking cartel that is owned by private banks. These banks have a license to lend money into existence, earning interest on their loans. It is no surprise that their share of US corporate profits has risen fourfold since President Nixon ended the quasi-gold standard Bretton Woods system. What a business! Their cost of goods sold is next to nothing.
The market can absorb a little central bank-created money. But there’s a limit. And that limit has been greatly increased, thanks to: A worldwide overcapacity of output, financed by previous lending and a huge glut of cheap labor, also largely brought forth by the credit expansion of the last 30 years

Without these unique circumstances, central banks’ policies – ZIRP and QE – would probably have caused inflation to rise to the double-digit range already … maybe higher. (zero hedge)

 

Who is....Italo Calvino?

 

The first shipload of African captives to North America arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619, but for most of the 17th century, European indentured servants were far more numerous in the North American British colonies than were African slaves.  By the time of the American Revolution, the English importers alone had brought some three million captive Africans to the Americas. America and Great Britain banned the African slave trade in 1807, but the trade of African slaves to Brazil and Cuba continued until the 1860s.

 

When private firms in competitive markets seek more revenue they considerately offer customers the carrot of better service; in contrast, when government agencies seek more revenue they angrily whack ‘customers’ with the stick of worsened service.
(Don Boudreaux)

 

Ex post facto: adj.: 

1. Retroactive
2. (law) Formulated or enacted after some event, and then retroactively applied to it.

From Latin ex (“from”) + post (“after”) + facto, ablative of factum (“deed”).
It has a gambling slang equivalent; it is similar to "past post," a type of confidence scam where a bet is made after post time -- the official start of a horse race. Using after-the-fact information allows the con man to cheat the victim. Probably the most well-known example of a past-post scam is in the movie The Sting where characters played by Robert Redford and Paul Newman employ a past post to get even with a mob boss who had killed a mutual friend. In 2002, three men were able to pull off a real life past-post scam during the Breeders’ Cup at Arlington Park (Illinois, USA). It allowed the trio to print winning “6-pick” tickets after four of the six races had been run yielding them a payoff of around $3 million.

Athens could save money by delaying payments to suppliers or try to raise up to 3 billion euros by borrowing from state entities such as pension funds though the government may already have used up part of this, a source has told Reuters.
This from the anti-austerity party.

 

Ancient languages did not have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. In the Odyssey, Homer famously describes the "wine-dark sea." But never "blue." 
The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye.

 

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, testifying at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, said that they had uncovered more than 30,000 emails related to the IRS practice of targeting conservative and Tea Party groups for special ill treatment. I have no real idea what is going on here but the appearance of impropriety at a powerful segment of the Federal  government seems important enough to be open and thorough about. Certainly something to be interested in.

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/07/computers-writing-and-phaedrus.html

 

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran. Interesting how the U.S. is trying to carry out its international plans with the defiant local nations' opposition.

The experimental French writer Georges Perec, like Italo Calvino, belonged to the "Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle" group, founded in 1960; translated, this would be "Workshop of Potential Literature," but the group is known internationally as OuLiPo, if only because of their enthusiasm for the lipogram. (A text that purposefully excludes a particular letter of the alphabet.) In 1969, he published La Disparition, a 100,000 word novel excluding the letter "e". This is a mystery novel -- Anton Vowl has vanished, taking the letter "e" along with him. 

 

An interesting take on free markets in a review of Ira Katznelson’s Fear Itself by Arnold Kling: It is hardly uncommon to find intellectuals who believe that decentralized markets are chaotic, capricious, and misanthropic. On occasion, those with such beliefs have disparaged democracy and instead gravitated toward totalitarianism. Those who instead value the right of individual dissent and democratic decision processes tend to believe in a sort of collectivism that somehow emerges from and reflects the popular will. 

 

 In 1859, journalist Q. K. Philander Doesticks (Mortimer Thomson) attended an auction of 436 men, women, and children formerly held by Pierce M. Butler. Butler's slaves were auctioned in order to pay debts incurred in gambling and the financial crash of 1857-58.  It was the largest such auction in American history. Many of the slave families described in Doesticks' report were the subject of a series of letters, written twenty years earlier, by famous British actress and author Frances Ann Kemble. Her Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, 1838-1839, published in 1863 to galvanize English support of the North during the Civil War, is an unusual account of Southern planter culture from the perspective of an outspoken outsider who considered herself an abolitionist. 

 

Women were far better represented in professional occupations in the first three decades of the 20th century than in the middle of that century. Women received a larger share of the postgraduate degrees necessary for such careers in the earlier era than in the 1950s and 1960s. The proportion of women among the high achievers listed in "Who's Who in America" in 1902 was more than double the proportion listed in 1958. The decline of women in high-level careers occurred when women's age of marriage and child-bearing declined during the midcentury "baby boom" years.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is "very interested" in the idea of raising taxes through unilateral executive action.
"The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans," Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action.

 

The original Lewis and Clark journals were not presented as a publication until 1904. 750 reprints of the 8 volume set were reprinted--including maps--in 1959.  

 

 

AAAAAaaaaannnnndddddd.......open star clusters embedded around the center of NGC 2174:

 

 

 

 

 

Berkshire Letter

A few snippets from the annual Berkshire letter:

Buffet: "[W]ho has ever benefited during the past 238 years by betting against America? If you compare our country’s present condition to that existing in 1776, you have to rub your eyes in wonder. In my lifetime alone, real per-capita U.S. output has sextupled. My parents could not have dreamed in 1930 of the world their son would  see. Though the preachers of pessimism prattle endlessly about America’s problems, I’ve never seen one who wishes to emigrate (though I can think of a few for whom I would happily buy a one-way ticket)."

Munger on the future: The numbers have become too big. I think Berkshire will outperform the average American company, but our advantage, if any, won’t be great. Eventually – probably between ten and twenty years from now – Berkshire’s earnings and capital resources will reach a level that will not allow management to intelligently reinvest all of the company’s earnings. At that time our directors will need to determine whether the best method to distribute the excess earnings is through dividends, share repurchases or both.
The next to last task on my list was: Predict whether abnormally good results would continue at Berkshire if Buffett were soon to depart. The answer is yes. Berkshire has in place in its subsidiaries much business momentum grounded in much durable competitive advantage. Provided that most of the Berkshire system remains in place, the combined momentum and opportunity now present is so great that Berkshire would almost surely remain a better-than-normal company for a very long time even if (1) Buffett left tomorrow, (2) his successors were persons of only moderate ability, and (3) Berkshire never again purchased a large business.But, under this Buffett-soon-leaves assumption, his successors would not be “of only moderate ability.” For instance, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel are proven performers who would probably be under-described as “world-class.” “World-leading” would be the description I would choose. In some important ways, each is a better  business executive than Buffett.With Berkshire now so large and the age of activism upon us, I think some desirable acquisition opportunities will come and that Berkshire’s $60 billion in cash will constructively decrease.

Androcles and the Lion

A slave named Androcles once escaped from his master and fled to the forest. As he was wandering about there he came upon a Lion lying down moaning and groaning. At first he turned to flee, but finding that the Lion did not pursue him, he turned back and went up to him. As he came near, the Lion put out his paw, which was all swollen and bleeding, and Androcles found that a huge thorn had got into it, and was causing all the pain. He pulled out the thorn and bound up the paw of the Lion, who was soon able to rise and lick the hand of Androcles like a dog. Then the Lion took Androcles to his cave, and every day used to bring him meat from which to live. But shortly afterwards both Androcles and the Lion were captured, and the slave was sentenced to be thrown to the Lion, after the latter had been kept without food for several days. The Emperor and all his Court came to see the spectacle, and Androcles was led out into the middle of the arena. Soon the Lion was let loose from his den, and rushed bounding and roaring towards his victim. But as soon as he came near to Androcles he recognised his friend, and fawned upon him, and licked his hands like a friendly dog. The Emperor, surprised at this, summoned Androcles to him, who told him the whole story. Whereupon the slave was pardoned and freed, and the Lion let loose to his native forest.

Moral of Aesops Fable: Gratitude is the sign of noble souls

Cab Thoughts

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. --Michael Crichton


In South Africa in 2013, more than 6,300,000 people were living with HIV; about 200,000 South Africans died of AIDS in 2013. (The population of South Africa is about 53 million.)     

Only three candidates in the last 100 years have come back to win the presidency after losing an earlier presidential nomination: Lyndon Johnson in 1964, George Bush in 1988 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. The first two benefited from popular presidents preceding them — following Kennedy's assassination, Johnson was already president when Democrats nominated him, while Bush followed Reagan. Only Reagan did it entirely on his own.
That is a high hill for Hillary.

Who is ....Camille Paglia?

An economist posed this question: Name one deflation, one liquidity trap, where there has been food or fuel shortages. Or riots. Or that has led to a world war. Your approaches to inflation and deflation should be asymmetrical, because inflation is far more dangerous. How would he classify the 30s?

The former Colorado police chief who led the investigation into the murder of six-year-old "beauty queen"
JonBenet Ramsey recently gave an accidental interview on Reddit. His summary included:
Court documents released in 2013 showed that a grand jury recommended indictments against the Ramseys, contrary to the long-held perception that the secret panel ended their work in 1999 without deciding to charge anyone. 

The documents revealed that the parents had been indicted for felony child abuse resulting in death and accessory to the crimes of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death - but that then-District Attorney Alex Hunter had refused to sign the indictments.

Former District Attorney Mary Lacy cleared the Ramseys of any role in their daughter's death, based on DNA evidence that pointed to the involvement of a third party.

Investigators did not believe there was a 'legitimate point of entry' for an intruder to get into the house that night.

He said that the girl was hit hard across the head and then, after it was clear that she had not died, she was strangled between 45 minutes and two hours later, based on her brain swelling.

'The rest of the scene we believe was staged, including the vaginal trauma, to make it look like a kidnapping/assault gone bad.'

Lord Byron sent two letters about a Welsh girl he met, one to a friend, one to her. Here is an excerpt from each: "I am at present principally occupied with a fresh face & a very pretty one too," he wrote in a Christmas Day letter to a friend, "a Welsh Girl whom I lately added to the bevy, and of whom I am tolerably enamoured for the present."  And, two weeks later, when the truth about the Welsh Girl became all too clear after he intercepted a letter she sent to her new lover: "Return to your relations," Byron now wrote, "you shall be furnished with the means, but him, who now addresses you for the last time, you will never see again."

The greatest verified age for any living organism is from a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree in Nevada called Prometheus that was measured by a ring count to be about 4,900 years old when it was cut down in 1964.

The Sharia quotes the Prophet Mohammad from the authoritative Hadiths of Bukhari and Muslim:  “I did not hear (the Prophet) him permit untruth in anything people say, except for three things: war, settling disagreements, and a man talking with his wife.”

The fierce Camille Paglia in a recent interview: "Post-structuralism is a system of literary and social analysis that flared up and vanished in France in the 1960s but that became anachronistically entrenched in British and American academe from the 1970s on. Based on the outmoded linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and promoted by the idolized Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault, it absurdly asserts that we experience or process reality only through language and that, because language is inherently unstable, nothing can be known. By undermining meaning, history and personal will, post-structuralism has done incalculable damage to education and contemporary thought....Post-structuralism has destroyed two generations of graduate students, who were forced to mouth its ugly jargon and empty platitudes for their foolish faculty elders. And the end result is that humanities departments everywhere, having abandoned their proper mission of defending and celebrating art, have become humiliatingly marginalized in both reputation and impact."

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which yielded just 1.6% at the start of this month, is now yielding 2.16% — which means it is yielding 35% more than it was a month ago. Is this a harbinger of what is to come? Most people do not think so.

The earned income tax credit (EITC), first proposed in the early 1970s, was signed by President Ford in 1975. It was later substantially expanded by President Reagan, who deemed it “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” 
The credit underwent significant expansions in 1990 and 1993. In 2003, some 19 million taxpayers were expected to claim more than $34 billion of earned income credits, with an average credit per taxpayer of $1,784 per year (U.S. Congress 2004). In 2004, some families will be entitled to claim an earned income credit of up to $4,300 per year (IRS 2003). The Earned Income Tax Credit has grown into the largest, Federally-funded means-tested cash assistance program in the United States. Half of the states and the District of Columbia have enacted earned income tax credits (EITCs) to supplement the federal EITC. The estimated cost for the coming year, federally, is 71 billion dollars. Total "income security" costs currently are 310 billion dollars.

There is a community that argues against the relationship between HIV and AIDs. It is not insignificant. One, the magazine "Continuum," run by HIV-positive dissidents, shut down when its editors all died of AIDS-related causes. 

An observation by Robert Bork: "When an ideology is institutionalized it becomes, paradoxically, less visible – even to those who implement it.  The basic ideas are no longer apprehended or controverted, and hence it becomes easier to move further along the lines implied by those ideas.  Particular developments in the movement may be disliked and resisted, but our capacity to resist effectively is diminished if we fail to recognize that the trouble lies at the source."

With job creation rising about 2% a year while the labor supply is rising only about 0.5%, the unemployment rate is set to continue falling by about 1.5% annually. 

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made clear what so many already know: The goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological ruin but to extinguish capitalism.
"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said. Huh?

Mo'Nique claims she was only paid $50,000 for her Oscar-winning role in Precious.

Hadith: noun: plural hadith or hadiths. 1. a narrative record of the sayings or customs of Muhammad and his companions 2: the collective body of traditions relating to Muhammad and his companion. The intended meaning of hadith in religious tradition is that of something--action or opinion--attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran, akin to the Acts of the Apostles in timing but centering upon the Prophet specifically.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble came to the conclusion that “there must have been an instant in time when the entire Universe was contained in a single point in space. The Universe must have been born in this single violent event.” This is what became known the Big Bang theory. Now that everyone has come to grips with the Big Bang, some researchers say it may not have happened. “Our theory suggests that the age of the universe could be infinite,” study co-author Saurya Das, a theoretical physicist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, told LiveScience.

Switzerland is experiencing deflation and yet has full employment, a balanced budget, and a positive trade balance. Switzerland runs a current account surplus, a balanced budget, and has suffered almost no unemployment, all despite the fact that nobody knows the name of a single Swiss politician or central banker. 

Chapman approached Lennon in front of The Dakota and asked him to autograph his album, "Double Fantasy." After shooting Lennon four times, Chapman sat down on the sidewalk to read the book he was carrying, Catcher in the Rye. The "Double Fantasy" album which Lennon autographed for Chapman sold for several million dollars. The Catcher in the Rye began to pop up as a metaphor for lunacy or mind control, most famously in "Conspiracy Theory" with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts.

Researchers in China have spotted a monstrous black hole that they say is 12 billion times the size of the Sun.

Russian Ex-President Mikhail Gorbachev on the murder of Nemtsov: "The assassination of Boris Nemtsov is an attempt to complicate the situation in the country, even to destabilize it by ratcheting up tensions between the government and the opposition,” Gorbachev said. “Just who did this is hard to say, let’s not jump to any conclusions right now and give the investigators time to sort this all out,” he added.
Gorbachev did not rule out that the high-profile murder could encourage some people to urge the authorities to introduce a state of emergency, which he said would only exacerbate what is already a difficult situation. (sputniknews)

AAAAAaaannnnddddd......a graph:

A Rapid Greek Summary

Greece has debts it cannot repay. Some of this is disinterest, some cultural, some incompetence but the real problem stems from the EU acceptance of all the states it absorbed--and all their currencies--equally. Now the bills are coming due. The new Greek government is defiant in their desire to maintain the economic structure somehow. Yet the debts are still owed. And someone--either the debtor or the creditor--will suffer. Most of the creditors are European banks.
The media has covered this story as little--previously invaded--Greece against the might of the heartless, capitalistic, usurious--and previously invading--Germans. Not Greece versus the Eurozone but Greece versus Germany.
Many in Germany are calling for pushing Greece out of the euro. That would mean blowing up Greece's financial system, the return of the drachma, and default on almost all Greek debt.
Others want to paper over the cracks of the failed Greek state by extending and pretending these debts and the repayment plan are reasonable. That would require massive purchases of Greek bonds by the European Central Bank. The new debt would be little different than the old debt.
In the background are questions like, what happens if the Greeks are rescued by the Russians and then stay within the NATO as sort of Russia's fifth column? What happens if the Greek socialist government repudiates its debts; will that be seen as a counterculture victory (vs. the theft from the creditors) and thus enhance the socialist cause? W hat happens if the Germans demand payment and Greece fails; will that be seen as German cruelty or the inability of the Greeks to manage their state?

Surgery for the Greatest Number

This year, more than half a million women in the United States will undergo hysterectomies. The majority will be between 40 and 55 years old, and most will have the surgery for fibroids, benign growths in the uterus that can cause pain, bleeding, and other symptoms. Five years ago, only about 12% of these surgeries were performed laparoscopically, done through incisions just big enough to fit a scope and tiny camera. Last year, nearly 30% were done that way, and the numbers were considered likely to rise.

Laparoscopy is fast,  has fewer pulmonary complications because the anesthesia is lighter and the incisions smaller, and hospital stays are shorter or avoided entirely for the same reasons. So it is more convenient and is cheaper with a faster recovery time. A morcellator has become standard instrument in laparoscopic surgeries to remove fibroids, the uterus, or both. The "morcellator," from the French to subdivide ("morsel" has the same origin), breaks the tissue into smaller segments so it can be collected and removed, preventing you from having to make a larger incision.

Cancer in a fibroid is rare--in women with symptomatic fibroids the number may be 1 in 450--and, while it is usually hard to find before surgery, everyone has an MRI and fibroid biopsies to try to assure there is no cancer, usually a leiomyosarcoma. If a woman's uterus is morcellated inside her body, cancer cells are spewed around the abdomen, where they cling to internal organs and, inevitably, grow. The difficulty is the screening MRI and biopsies are usually not terribly accurate so a tumor can slip through and be morcellated with the fibroid. Leiomyosarcoma is so rare there are no protocols for treating it, no best practices, no good survival statistics. Some doctors do nothing, waiting to see if it comes back; some start chemotherapy to try to stave it off; some schedule surgery to clean out anything that's already growing. But some of these come back, spread and kill the patient who would otherwise be cured with the older, open surgical procedure.

So, the problem: What do we do with a successful, cheap, convenient procedure with generally good results but in which there is a small number of women who have terrible results? When is a procedure safe and worthwhile?

Safe and worthwhile are tough requirements. Aspirin is worthwhile but harms some people so, is it safe? Some have fatal reactions to penicillin; could it be approved now? When something makes medicine cheaper and more convenient, what has to happen to prove it's not worth it?

Enter Dr. Amy Reed and her husband. Dr. Reed, an anesthesiologist in her mid-thirties with six young children, had a fibroid and went to discuss hysterectomy. While she preferred an open operation, she agreed to laparoscopy with morcellation. After negative MRI and biopsy she underwent an uneventful hysterectomy. A week later leiomyosarcoma was reported in the removed tissue. Since Reed's surgery, at least five other women around the country whose cancers were upstaged by morcellation have come forth. 

Reed is a high profile physician in Boston and so is her thoracic surgeon husband, Dr. Noorchashm. Her husband started a campaign against the procedure, speaking at every opportunity.

Eventually, crediting Reed's husband's influence, the FDA issued an advisory strongly discouraging the use of morcellation. Doctors and administrators maintained that what happened to Reed was unfortunate but incredibly rare and that it didn't make sense to abandon morcellation—a convenient and widely usable technique—because of such an unusual occurrence. The largest professional organization for ob-gyn surgeons, the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists, issued an official statement disagreeing with putting limits on the procedure. More institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Cleveland Clinic, changed policies and began to limit the procedure. Eventually Johnson & Johnson, the biggest morcellator maker in the United States, suspended production and sale of the tool.

So when is a good therapy for the vast majority of people not a good therapy?

And the unfortunate Dr. Reed? After extensive surgery and chemotherapy, her disease is back.

Sunday Gospel 3/8/15

In today's gospel, Christ drives the moneychangers from the temple. And, when challenged, He immediately personifies it.
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews said,
“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this..."

And why the symbolism? 

"But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
He himself understood it well."

And what did the apostles think? They recalled the Old Testament quote of Davis in Psalm 69 when David talks about how hard he struggled to know God: "Zeal for your house will consume me, (and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.)" 
All this personification made sense to them.
And, they thought He was destroying Himself.