Percy, Struggle and Clarity‏

Walter Isaacson has a nice little article in the NYT on Walker Percy and New Orleans. The gist of it is that Percy saw the complexity of every day life morally fatiguing and challenges clarifying and uplifting. Isaacson sees this in the purposefulness of New Orleans' rebuilding after Katrina.

“Though science taught that good environments were better than bad environments, it appeared to him that the opposite was the case,” he wrote of Will Barrett, the semi-autobiographical title character of his second novel, “The Last Gentleman.” “Take hurricanes, for example, certainly a bad environment if ever there was one. It was his impression that not just he but other people felt better in hurricanes.” Percy’s diagnosis was that when we are mired in the everydayness of ordinary life, we are susceptible to what he called “the malaise,” a free-floating despair associated with the feeling that you’re not a part of the world or connected to the people in it. You are alienated, detached. The heroes of his books, each in his own way, embark on a search for the cause and cure of this syndrome. “What is the nature of the search?” wonders Binx Bolling, the narrator of “The Moviegoer.” “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”

But Percy’s theory about the redemptive power of hurricanes goes beyond the fact that dangerous situations allow us to become action heroes or saints. “True, people help each other in catastrophes,” he wrote in “Lancelot.” “But they don’t feel good because they help each other. They help each other because they feel good.” The hurricane blows away our alienation.

Einstein's Kids and Cruel, Mean Regression

IQ is highly heritable, and that heritability is largely driven by genes (from 50% to more than 70% according to most estimates, some going as high as 90%). Since it is hard to define, intelligence is harder to track. Einstein's progeny is instructive--and alarming. (Remember, Mileva Marić, Einstein's wife, was also really smart; in fact she contributed to some of Einstein's work.) 

Einstein had three children:
Lieserl, who died in infancy, Eduard, who was a promising medicine student, but then started developing schizophrenia. He was institutionalized for a large part of his life and the primitive treatment methods he was subjected to deeply affected his cognitive abilities. Hans Albert was a pretty brilliant scientist. He was a professor of hydraulic engineering at UC Berkeley and the world's foremost expert on sediment transport.

Hans Albert had four biological children, but only one of them, Bernhard Einstein, ever survived to adulthood. He became a physicist, worked in engineering for Texas Instruments and Litton Industries, and received half a dozen US patents in his life.

Bernhard Einstein has five children, the only info was that one is an anesthesiologist.

Cab Thoughts 11/11/15

[T]o indulge in any racial preference is not to award to a Race, but to the State the power to create differing classes of citizens, and to rule on who shall belong to each class.--Mamet

John Boehner's decision to resign is a mystery to me. But it seems to be a mystery to everyone. The whole thing looks to be a good example of how little insight the free press is offering.

During eclipses Aristotle noted Earth's shadow on the Moon was always circular. For that to be true, Earth had to be a sphere, because only spheres cast circular shadows via all light sources, from all angles, and at all times. If Earth were a flat disk, the shadow would sometimes he oval. And some other times, when Earth's edge faced the Sun, the shadow would be a thin line. Only when Earth was face-on to the Sun would its shadow cast a circle.

At a site on the edge of the desert escarpment at Saqqara, overlooking the capital city of Memphis, an Egyptian nobleman named Imhotep supervised the construction of a pyramid of six steps to house the tomb of Netjerikhet (Djoser), a pharaoh who reigned in the twenty-seventh century BCE. The Step Pyramid at Saqqara was the first monument in the world to be built entirely of stone. Rising to a height of 204 feet, it was the tallest building of its time. And its construction marked the beginning of the Pyramid Age. Pyramid building required a highly organised supply system involving quarries, mines, shipyards, storehouses, workshops and a labour force of thousands. The pyramid itself consisted of 600,000 tons of limestone blocks. Its main burial chamber was made up of ten blocks of granite, each weighing twelve and a half tons, which had been transported by river barge from quarries at Aswan. But the construction went further. The pyramid was set within a forty-acre complex of buildings enclosed by a mile-long rectangle of perimeter walls built of fine white stone. It is estimated that the quantity of copper chisels needed to cut such a vast assembly of stone blocks would have amounted to seventy tons' worth, delivered to workshops from newly opened copper mines in the eastern desert. --from The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor by Martin Meredith

Who is....Sidney Blumenthal?

Harbin-based Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group, or Longmay Group, the biggest coal miner in northeast China which has been struggling to reduce massive losses in recent months as a result of the commodity collapse, just confirmed China's "hard-landing" has arrived when it announced it would cut 100,000 jobs or 40% of its entire 240,000-strong labor force.

Asians are on pace to become the largest immigrant group in the the United States. Meanwhile, the share of new arrivals who are Hispanic is smaller than it was 50 years ago.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson writes the Earth is not rigid. Its surface rises and falls daily as the oceans slosh in and out of the continental shelves, pulled by the Moon and, to a lesser extent, by the Sun. Tidal forces distort the waters of the world, making their surface oval. A well-known phenomenon. But tidal forces stretch the solid earth as well, and so the equatorial radius fluctuates daily and monthly, in tandem with the oceanic tidal and the phases of the Moon.

Henry Clay, in the first half of the nineteenth century, pioneered the "American System" that was later adopted by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. To achieve this goal the power of government, through sale of its enormous landholdings, could well afford to subsidize internal improvements. By levying protective tariffs, the government should foster the development of American manufacturing and agricultural enterprises that, in their infancy, might not be able to withstand foreign competition. The promotion of industry would create a home market for agricultural commodities, just as farms provided a market for manufactured products. The enemy in the thinking was Britain, whose free trade policy threatened to swamp the new America.

Between 30% and 60% of cocaine users combine the drug with alcohol. This concurrent use is the cause of nearly 75% of cocaine-related fatalities in the U.S., and a cocaine user is 25 times more likely to experience sudden death when combining it with alcohol.

Child pornography is one of the fastest growing Internet businesses, increasing at an average 150% per year for each of the last 10 years.

"I think that another generation will look back and say 'how could you have made that mistake all over again? How could you have failed to understand Hayek's notion of the fatal conceit, that central planners can't do better than the dispersed knowledge and signals of free market processes?'"--Mark Spitznagel, hedge fund manager. He is talking about, amazingly enough, the Fed's --and the government's--belief the Fed can centrally manage economies.

Espial: n.: 1. the act of spying. 2. the act of keeping watch; observation. Espial is related to the word espy, which comes from the German word spähen meaning "to spy." The suffix -al forms nouns from verbs, as in the word refusal.

The Panama Canal, built by the U.S. Government between 1904 and 1914, was at the moment it was undertaken the biggest financial and engineering feat in the history of the world. President Theodore Roosevelt, known for his boundless optimism and inexhaustible supply of energy, was perhaps the individual most responsible for making it happen, according to David McCullough in The Path Between the Seas.

This is astonishing, if true. Human trafficking around the globe is estimated to generate a profit of anywhere from $9 billion to $31.6 billion. Half of these profits are made in industrialized countries. 

"The truly unique feature of [Homo Sapiens or Sapiens] language is not its ability to transmit information about the [tangible]. Rather, it's the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled. Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution. Many animals and human species could previously say, 'Careful! A lion!' Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution (which occurred about 70,000 years ago), Homo sapiens acquired the ability to say, 'The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.' This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language."--Yuval Noah Harari.

Because the earth has a bulge at its center, if you stand at sea level anywhere on the equator, you'll be farther from Earth's center than you'd be nearly anywhere else on Earth.

Influential psychology textbooks have illustrated mass panic by citing supposed examples such as the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903 in Chicago in which some 600 people perished and the Cocoanut Grove Theater fire of 1942 in Boston in which 492 people died. In the textbook explanations, theatergoers burned to death as a result of their foolish overreaction to danger. But Jerome M. Chertkoff and Russell H. Kushigian of Indiana University, the first social psychologists to analyze the Cocoanut Grove fire in depth, found that the nightclub managers had jeopardized public safety in ways that are shocking today. In a 1999 book on the psychology of emergency egress and ingress, Chertkoff and Kushigian concluded that physical obstructions, not mass panic, were responsible for the loss of life in the infamous fire. Current belief is that during disasters people are very practical and community minded. Referencing the behavior of the British during the civilian bombings of WWII, 'The Blitz spirit' has become a cliché for communities pulling together in times of adversity.

There were no Libya analysts at State during the Benghazi attack. Instead, Hillary Clinton employed a private intelligence service, whose chief was......Sidney Blumenthal! Blumenthal's operation employed a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller, to supply intelligence for the secretary of state at the same time he worked as a paid consultant to CBS News.
Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/02/oscars-entertainment-and-sharing.html

When the British captured Philadelphia on September 26, 1777, they expected collapse of the revolution. The city was the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence, seat of the Continental Congress and de facto capital of the United Colonies. They didn't realize that, unlike a traditional European power, the decentralized American government would not crumble once its capital was conquered. Congress quickly reassembled at York, and General Washington moved his forces to Valley Forge after the Battle of Germantown. There were a lot of British Loyalists in Philadelphia and considerable fraternization with the army. When the French entered the war, the army, now under Clinton, withdrew to New York and left their Loyalist friends behind. The rebels reentered the ruined city immediately. There was some violence against the Tories but General Benedict Arnold, military commander of the city, limited violence by declaring martial law. Councils of Safety, composed of radical Patriots, seized Tory property and ordered Loyalists to report for trial. The estates of seventy-nine Philadelphians were confiscated, and over one hundred were convicted of treason. Three of them were executed.

AAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a picture of the Stepp Pyramid at Saqqara:

Advice From The Millionaire Next Door‏

The Millionaire Next Door is a long, fascinating reassessment of success in America. Some of it is not flattering. In short summary, the following covers the essentials of becoming the millionaire next door.

The majority acquired their wealth in one generation and  followed these  factors of wealth accumulation:
Live well below your means.
Spend  your time, energy and money efficiently in ways that build wealth. Believe that financial independence is more important than social status. Their parents didn't help.
Their adult children are  economically  self-sufficient.
They know how to pick market  opportunities.
They chose  the right occupation.

In raising their children and passing on their beliefs, they have rules for how they raise and educate their children on becoming as self-sufficient and successful as they have become.

Never tell your kids you are wealthy.
Teach your children discipline and frugality.
Minimize  discussion on what your kids will  inherit.
Emphasize their achievements.....not your success.
Assure them  many  things are more valuable than money.
You are not defined by the car you drive.
Beware the effect of colleges and college students who actively diminish effort and material achievement.

Disillusion

My infatuation with Quora is fading.
At first I was thrilled with the questions and answers, so many interesting ideas. Then I made a mistake; I asked a question. It involved Gödel. I spelled it without an umlaut and Quora corrected me. The answers were crisp and humorless--the question begged for a humorous answer. Then I could not upload an answer. Then I realized there was a sort of currency involved; you could earn credit to ask or answer.
With just enough complexity to work through I began worrying about the questions. Many were clearly looking for answers to school questions. Many were genially naive. A lot were purposefully leading, raising questions that suggested racist or political answers.
I'm not sure it will survive my search for an internet something to fill the pauses in the day.

Sunday 11/8/15

"It was because of your hardness of heart that Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but it was not this way from the beginning."

An interesting battle has emerged over divorce in the Catholic Church. The wing that sees itself as liberal, wants to loosen divorce laws and allow more acceptance of divorce in the Church.
They are opposed by the forces who want to hold marriage as a single, important commitment that does not bend with circumstance. (Prominent in this group is the African church.) These are called conservatives.
But--and this is the fun part--those conservatives point to Christ's specific division of the Old Testament law from His New testament law where Christ rejected the old notion of Moses' allowing divorce. Contemporary apologists support for divorce is labeled by the conservatives as Old Testament, "Neo-mosaic ."
So the conservatives stand for the New Testament, the liberals for the Old.
Delicious.

Cab Thoughts 11/7/15

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

~H. L. Mencken

When has a culture owed so little to its few “great” minds or its few hereditarily fortunate men and women? One of the contrasts between the culture of Europe and that of the United States is that the older culture traditionally depended on the monumental accomplishments of the few, while the newer culture – diffused, elusive, process-oriented – depended more on the novel, accreting ways of the many.--Boorstin

Chinese scientists have created genetically-engineered, extra-muscular dogs, after editing the genes of the animals for the first time. The scientists create dogs that have double the amount of muscle mass by deleting a certain gene, reports the MIT Technology Review. They were working on beagles.

Dogs have always been of interest to researchers because of their defined personality traits; identifying the genetic sites for aggression, docility, loyalty (probably not pointing and retrieving--although it makes for an interesting sci-fi idea) has implications for human control. This particular muscular enhancement in dogs is actually a known genetic defect in some, a loss of the myostatin gene which allows for heavier muscle development. These researchers simply deleted the gene and caused the genetic defect. It does not cause the dogs to bark with an Austrian accent.

The north pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus is unexpectedly fascinating and complex with large and deep fissures suggestive of global interplay between the surface and potential seas underneath, seas that future missions might target for signs of life.

Witchcraft: By the fall of 1692, twenty men and women, ages 20 to 80, had been executed under the imprimatur of the highest officials in Massachusetts. (Contrary to popular memory, however, no one was burned alive. Nineteen people were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones in a failed attempt to extract a confession.) As many as 165 more, in two dozen villages and towns, had been publicly accused of sorcery; they ranged from an American Indian slave to one of the richest merchants in the colony. In 1693, the executions stopped, the accusers fell silent, the jails emptied. The magic had stopped.

Who is...Irving Berlin?

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has called for the criminal investigation of people and organizations that are seen as global-warming deniers. This would include lawsuits against the coal and oil industries, certain think tanks and other organizations that question global-warming. Apparently they would use RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statutes rather than old fashioned Grand Inquisitors. (Of note, Holocaust denial is a crime in  many countries.)

 

Kakistocracy: n: 1. government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power. Kakistocracy entered English in the early 1800s from the Greek word kákistos meaning "worst," and -cracy, a combining form meaning "rule" or "government."

There have been at least four attempts in five years in which criminal networks with suspected Russian ties sought to sell radioactive material to extremists through Moldova, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. One investigation uncovered an attempt to sell bomb-grade uranium to a real buyer from the Middle East, the first known case of its kind.

From The Daily Mail: "A successful doctor and mother of three had been taking cocaine and drinking with two men before she was found dead in the doorway of a Manhattan apartment, a source told Daily Mail Online. Kiersten Cerveny, 38, had been taking cocaine while she was with Marc Henry Johnson, a married 51-year-old television and movie producer and another man, James 'Pepsi' Holder, 60, who is being sought by police, before she died. Cerveny had passed out and been taken downstairs by the two men, the source said. Police were today examining the scene of the death, at an apartment block in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. Cerveny had been drinking heavily in the Lower East Side of the city before partying with the men in the third-floor apartment. She was not wearing any underwear at the time and they were later discovered in her purse. Cerveny, 38, had a notable career in dermatology after graduating magna cum laude from Duke University. She had risen to be an assistant professor and lived in a million dollar home in Long Island with her second husband and their three young children." This is an astonishing story worth looking up.

For centuries, the real cost of labor has been increasing while the real cost of raw materials has been declining. That’s why we can afford to buy so much more stuff than our ancestors could. As a labor-intensive activity, recycling is an increasingly expensive way to produce materials that are less and less valuable.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/02/slouching-toward-sequester.html

Alexander's Ragtime Band, Anything You Can Do, Easter Parade, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, There's No Business Like Show Business, White Christmas. Irving Berlin had no musical training, and his piano skills were the most rudimentary of all the great composers, but he had an ear for melody and soon he began writing music as well. (Famously, Berlin only ever learned to play in the key of F-sharp, and had a specially designed piano that allowed him to transpose keys by turning a small wheel.) The combination of his lack of training, on the one hand, and seemingly inexhaustible, high-level production, on the other, spawned urban legends, which would persist his whole life, that he had between one and three 'colored boys' in the back room who wrote his songs. --from The B Side by Ben Yagoda

Politics has little in common with science. "Strictly speaking, pure science is about the search for the genuine causes of observable phenomena; politics is about gaining the authority to pursue favored outcomes. The method of science entails tolerance of and relentless but reasoned criticism of all views, including one’s own; the tools of politics include what urbanist Jane Jacobs calls “deception for the sake of the task.” Real science is about critically examining premises; pure politics is about defeating your opponent."--Sandy Ikeda, a professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY

Berlin has become a magnet for European youth, with 40,000 new residents flocking to the city every year, but only about 8,000 new housing units are added each year.

A rich entrepreneur named Martin Shkreli recently bought the rights to Daraprim — a drug used mainly to treat life-threatening, parasitic infections in babies — and almost overnight raised its price from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. That’s over a 5,000 percent increase. What we see is a wealthy man profiting, or at least trying to profit, from the misfortunes of the ill and less well-off. What makes his efforts possible is the complex and expensive regulations prevent a competitive drug from being developed. Note that the drug Daraprim is generic. Such behavior is possible only with real or de facto monopoly.

The word diamond is derived from the Greek adamas, meaning 'unalterable' or 'unbreakable.' Each diamond is a single crystal. In a typical diamond there are about a million billion billion atoms perfectly arranged and assembled into this pyramidal structure. And it is this structure that accounts for its remarkable properties. In this formation, the electrons are locked into an extremely stable state, and this is what gives it its legendary strength. It is also transparent, but with an unusually high optical dispersion, which means that it splits light that enters it into its constituent colors, giving it its bright rainbow sparkle. The combination of extreme hardness and optical luster makes diamonds almost flawless as gemstones. Because of their hardness, virtually nothing can scratch them, and so they keep their perfectly faceted shape and pristine sparkle not just throughout the lifetime of the wearer but throughout the lifetime of a civilization. Even in antiquity diamond was known to be the hardest material in the world. 

For 12 consecutive years — from 2001 through 2012 — each home run leader in the American League had a Hispanic surname. When two American boys whose ancestors came from India tied for first place in the U.S. National Spelling Bee in 2014, it was the seventh consecutive year in which the U.S. National Spelling Bee was won by an Asian Indian. Does inequity of outcome imply unfairness?

AAAAnnnnddddd....a picture of a whippit with the myostatin gene missing: