Cab Thoughts 7/13/16

"I was told by the founding members of the Women's Studies Department at the State University of New York at Albany that I had been brainwashed by male scientists to believe that hormones even existed, much less had any role in the shaping of our identity and character."--Camille Paglia

The Greeks used to have a word for it. Now it's the Japanese.  Kodokushi or “lonely death” refers to the Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time. First noticed in the 1980s, kodokushi has become an increasing problem in Japan, attributed to economic troubles and Japan's increasingly elderly population. It represents upwards of 5% of total deaths – about 30,000 people a year.

In the Middle Ages, the Church viewed translations of the Bible from ancient languages into English, French and other common languages as heresy, and a direct threat to the importance and power of the Church. William Tyndale, whose English translation of the Bible in 1526 was the first to take advantage of the printing press, was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and was condemned to be burned to death. Tyndale was a young cleric who had become disillusioned with the pomp and power of the Church; he was ascetic and scholarly by nature, and was instinctively attracted to the purer faith associated with the Lollards and the 'new men.' 

The individualism handed down from the Scottish Enlightenment was concerned with finding a social system that "does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid." This is from Hayek, explaining that individualism is not a reactive greedy isolationism but rather a social theory. Importantly, much of the orderliness of social life is often the result of human action, but not of human design. The distinguishing feature of this brand of individualism is that it takes the self-interest of the individual (which includes caring for one's friends and family) as a psychological fact of human action, not as endorsing the unattractive characteristic of selfishness or greed. For Hayek, the intellectual confusion that leads to the belief that individualism approves and encourages human selfishness (which it does not) is one of the main reasons why so many people dislike it. The next element of his thinking is the limitation of man's knowledge. Hayek elaborates further on what he calls the "pretence of knowledge" in his Nobel Speech.

 

Who is....Horace Greeley?

 

The university as we know it today evolved from guilds or unions. Men studying at universities who reached a middling level of competence were know as "bachelors", since, though they had some ability, it was not enough to support a family. A student with considerable experience, he would lec­ture and otherwise aid apprentice students and serve masters, somewhat in the fashion of teaching assistants in modern research universities. ... A bachelor would then have to pass through two stages on his way to becoming a master.

 

The Sohn Investment Conference (run by investment guru Ira Sohn) pulls together some of the greatest traders and hedge fund managers in the world every year. “The conference wants a specific recommendation from me. I guess ‘Get out of the stock market’ isn’t clear enough,” said Stanley Druckenmiller from the conference stage in New York. Gold “remains our largest currency allocation.”The billionaire investor expressed skepticism about the current investment environment due to Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy and a slowing Chinese economy.
“The Fed has borrowed from future consumption more than ever before. It is the least data-dependent Fed in history. This is the longest deviation from historical norms in terms of Fed dovishness than I have ever seen in my career,” Druckenmiller said. “This kind of myopia causes reckless behavior.”
He believes U.S. corporations have not used debt in productive investments, but [have] instead relied on financial engineering with over $2 trillion in acquisitions and stock buybacks in the last year.

 

After the Civil War, Washington was a wreck. With the country growing and expanding, many wanted to move the capital in the direction of the nation's growth, west. St. Louis was a prominent candidate. Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune , who advised Civil War veterans to 'go West and grow up with the country,' wanted the capital to do the same, as did the editor of the Chicago Tribune. Reavis even held a 'national' con­vention in St. Louis to champion his city. 

 

Turkey and Iran are the heirs of the Ottoman and Persian empires. They have a history of expansion and militarism. Iran is Shi'a. Saudi Arabia is Sunni but only a recently minted state and with no military. Iraq is a shell and Syria is tearing itself apart. Israel is armed to the teeth but has no real interest in the breakdowns of the neighboring Arab states other than defensive.

But if Syria and Iraq hollow out a chaotic and powerless center, what will its neighbors, Turkey and Iran, do?

 

In September 2015, writer and statistician Nate Silver urged people to "calm down" about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination. Two months later, he wrote that the media should "stop freaking out about Donald Trump's polls" and that Trump's odds were "higher than 0 but (considerably) less than 20 percent." Six months after that, after Ted Cruz had dropped out of the race but before John Kasich had done so, Silver wrote: "Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination." "Other than being early skeptics of Jeb Bush, we basically got the Republican race wrong," Silver wrote.

 

Truculent: adj: 1. fierce; cruel; savagely brutal. 2. brutally harsh; vitriolic; scathing: his truculent criticism of her work. 3. aggressively hostile; belligerent. ety: 1540s, from Latin truculentus "fierce, savage," from trux (genitive trucis) "fierce, wild."

Strangely enough, the word truculent in French, same word, is a very positive word applied to people larger than life, with a great ability for words and the language in general. A lot of Shakespeare characters can be seen as truculents in the French sense, a storyteller often is, Gérard Depardieu can be at times and in real life too. It describes someone who takes a lot of space, speaks with wit and laughs aloud, shows a lot of panache and tells impressive stories, some kind of big-hearted lion without the cruelty nor the claws.
[dictionary definitions for the French truculent: colorful, earthy]  

 

The average savings of a 50-year-old is only $42,000. The average net worth of somebody between 55 and 64 is $46,000. A couple at age 65 can expect to pay $218,000 just for medical treatment over the next 20 years. Eighty percent of people between 30 and 54 believe they will not have enough money to retire. One in three people have no money saved for retirement at age 65, and almost 40% are 100% dependent on Social Security.

 

Those that support what they believe to be isolationism frequently cite Thomas Jefferson’s warning against involvement in entangling alliances. Yet, the American Revolution was won only because the colonies used extensive diplomacy and alliance building. Benjamin Franklin was sent to Paris to recruit the French government to the side of the US. Franklin used the conflict between Britain and France to try to position the US as a French ally. The French, at first, provided some covert supplies to the US during the revolution. France would later make a large-scale commitment to the US because it wanted the British defeated in North America.

 

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was quite candid in saying that zero interest rates and quantitative easing were intended to create a “wealth effect.”  He wanted asset values to rise so the affluent would spend more, so the economy could boom. He achieved the first of these: asset values rose. But who owns assets?

 
Ticket splitting is becoming rare in polarized America: In 2012, only 5.7 percent of voters supported a presidential candidate and a congressional candidate of opposite parties. At least half a dozen Republican senators seeking reelection and Senate aspirants can hope to win if the person at the top of the Republican ticket loses their state by, say, only four points, but not if he loses by 10. A Democratic Senate probably would guarantee a Supreme Court with a liberal cast for a generation. Only three Democrats — Andrew Jackson (twice), Franklin Roosevelt (four times) and Lyndon Johnson — have won more than 53 percent. So if Trump gets blown out, what happens to the Rube-publican Party?

Rube-publican strategist Mary Matalin has left the Rube-publican Party.

An observation in an article by David Roberts : Almost irrespective of what you think of Clinton's politics or her policies, she is manifestly more prepared to run the federal government than Donald Trump. The number of people who recognize this elemental fact about the election, however, has probably already reached and passed its peak. It will decline from here on out. The moment of clarity is already ending.....The campaign press requires, for its ongoing health and advertising revenue, a real race. It needs controversies. "Donald Trump is not fit to be president" may be the accurate answer to pretty much every relevant question about the race, but it's not an interesting answer. It's too final, too settled. No one wants to click on it.What's more, the campaign media's self-image is built on not being partisan, which precludes adjudicating political disputes. How does that even work if one side is offering up a flawed centrist and the other is offering up a vulgar xenophobic demagogue? It would be profoundly out of character for reporters to spend the six months between now and the election writing, again and again, that one side's candidate is a liar and a racist and an egomaniac. It would be uncomfortable, personally and professionally." So, according to him, the press will make a race out of an obvious mismatch. Hide the women. Save yourselves.

 

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/11/wikileaks-and-stuxnet.html 

 

The earth is getting younger and older with more children and more older people. The problem is that we have not arranged ourselves on the planet in neat, homogeneous groups. In fact, most of the children are going to be in Africa and the arc around the Indian Ocean while most of the retirees will be in the developed world and China. The China demographics are surprising and a result of the "one child policy."

 

From Crestmont: Short-term interest rates (one year or less) are generally determined by the Federal Reserve; long-term interest rate yields are driven by the inflation rate or inflation expectations. The relationship between interest rates and inflation was not evident before the 1960’s. Current research now suggests implications for the future.
Though there are occasional, very limited periods that break the general rule, according to research from Crestmont's The 6/50 Rule states: “Interest rates will change by at least 50 basis points (0.5%) within the next 6 months.” There’s almost 50 years of history–virtually without exception–in our favor. Chances are that the change will be a good bit more than that.

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaannnnnndddddd......a map of Israel and her neighbors:

Sabermetrics

Sabermetrics is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face. (wiki)
Sabermetrics has revolutionized baseball. The game is being approached as a science. Throughout the game, statisticians are applying analytics to speed, strength, power, OBPs--everything they can evaluate to get an edge in the drafting of players, in matching them up on teams and matching them against each other.
Yet, when it is all said and done and all the information is in, they still play the game. Why?

First, unlike physics and other natural sciences, the variables the statistician can measure may not be the important ones.  So they emphasize the few things they can measure because they are easier to study. No statistician would estimate that  Kansas City would have been successful with their aggressive approach to hitting in the World Series last year. Their persistent success in the tournament last year was simply off the charts, in violation of most sabermetric hitting laws.
Second, while the statistician can produce general predictions, unlike physicists they cannot generate precise results. No statistician would estimate that Harrison would be Pittsburgh's leader in RBIs or McCutchen would be hitting .225.
The third reason baseball differs from physics relates to the first two: the information necessary to test detailed baseball predictions is impossible to gather. Usually right-handed hitters have an advantage against left-handed pitchers but that is not true with the Pirates' left-handed Watson who is much more effective against right-handed hitters. There is no material difference between the very average Arrietta from 2013 and the devastating Arrietta from 2015. St. Louis' Diaz' success had no augury in the minors. These distinctions are simply not analyzable. The factors are just not understood.

So we analyze as well as we can but still play the game because we know that our information, however voluminous, is flawed and incomplete. That is why we enjoy the competition after everything is analyzed: Significant uncertainty remains.

Now read the above again and substitute "economics" for "baseball."

The Pope and Zika

The Pope said some things that were quite shocking recently but they seemed to be drowned in the mandatory Trump mania he foolishly joined.
He was asked about contraception with respect to the Zika virus.
Francis drew a parallel to the decision taken by Pope Paul VI in the 1960s to approve giving nuns in Belgian Congo artificial contraception to prevent pregnancies because they were being systematically raped.

The questioner strangely included abortion in the question but Francis distinguished the two. He said, dismissing the abortion question, "On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one (Zika), such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear."

Francis has tended to downplay the fraught moral hand-wringing over sexual ethics that preoccupied his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He has said the church shouldn't be the "obsessed" with such issues.

This was pretty important because it is so public. How it will fit with the Philadelphia bishop's strange and aggressive sexual stand remains to be seen.

Sunday 7/10/16

Today's gospel is the Good Samaritan. A priest and a Levite pass by the damaged man and an outcast stops and saves him. Christ is delivering this story with, certainly, a wry smile. Established religion and infrastructure ignore the needy man; only the outsider helps. And he does not stay.

In many respects, it is astonishing that a story that ends in such a political crisis on Calvary is so rarely political. Who is your neighbor?

The ever-practical Margaret Thacher put an interesting spin on this religious proposition. She said:
"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well." This is an astonishingly revealing secular misreading of the parable. Results, indeed, do not matter. The end justifies nothing. Salve is applied, coins exchanged but the physical is nothing more than the three dimensions where the spiritual, like Christ and the Good Samaritan, are passing through.

Cab Thoughts 7/9/16

"The enemy is the gramophone mind whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment."--Orwell, in the intro to Animal Farm.

Angela Duckworth’s best-seller, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, offers a pair of big ideas: that grit—comprising a person’s perseverance and passion—is among the most important predictors of success and that we all have the power to increase our inner grit. These two theses, she argues, apply to military cadets--where she did her first work and developed a predictive testing program-- but also to kids in troubled elementary schools and undergrads at top-ranked universities and to scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs. Duckworth’s book describes a wide array of  “paragons of grit,” people she’s either interviewed or studied from afar: puzzlemasters and magicians, actors and inventors, children and adults, Steve Young and Julia Child. Grit appears in all of them. There are some saying that there is nothing new in the success-hard work ratio. But Duckworth has an optimism--and a rare humility--that itself is winning. The Seahawks have taken her in as a guru.

And a reaction has developed. Some complain that "grit" is a bit too "manly," a bit too assertive. That kind of criticism is very flattering.

After adjusting for inflation, median household income has fallen nearly $5000 since 2007.

For the first time in American history there are more unmarried women than married women. The number of adults age 34 and under who have never been married is nearing 50 percent. In recent years, data showed just 20% of Americans ages 18 to 29 are wedded, compared to nearly 60% in 1960. Additionally, more than 40% of American births are to unmarried women. Among Hispanic women the percent is over 53, and among black women the rate is over 71%.

The last deep-pit coal mine in the U.K. plans to shut down next week, heralding the end of a centuries-old industry that helped fuel the industrial revolution and build the British Empire. Some of this is related to the climate religion but much is not. Pricing is a major factor. The U.K. already imports most of the coal that fuels its power plants, with imports first surpassing local production in 2001. Russia has been the biggest beneficiary of the U.K.'s increased appetite for imported coal, providing 46% of its thermal coal in 2014, according to the U.K. government. Coal supplies roughly one-third of the energy for electricity generation in the U.K., with natural gas and renewable sources making up the rest. Kellingley, operated by U.K. Coal, is the victim of vast market forces that have pushed prices for thermal coal--the kind used to fuel power plants--to their lowest level in ​more than nine years at $45.10 a metric ton, according Rotterdam coal futures traded on the Intercontinental Exchange. It costs Kellingley about $65 to produce a ton of coal, compared with $45 a ton for imported coal, a company official said.

So why, if more expensive coal made coal decline, do people think that arbitrary increase in wages will encourage more work?

The nation’s manufacturers are now producing 47 percent more than they did 20 years ago. What has declined is manufacturing employment, which is 29 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. Producing more output with fewer workers is called higher productivity, which in turn is driven by technological innovation. This change is hard on displaced workers, but it is good for the economy over all. Rising living standards are possible only if productivity increases. The real question remains: How to improve work opportunities? This has been a topic of debate for some of the world's great minds for centuries. Fortunately we have The View, the Democrats and the Rube-publicans to break it all down for us.

Venezuela has more oil than the United States or Saudi Arabia or anyone else. They should be rich. But they are not. Hong Kong has nothing and is rich. There is a lesson here. A people’s wealth is not determined by the quantity of raw materials that happen to exist within those people’s political jurisdiction.  Instead, a people’s wealth is determined by how well their institutions and their attitudes encourage market-directed trade, commercial innovation, and entrepreneurial risk-taking.  If such activities are encouraged, wealth for the masses is produced; if such activities are discouraged, the masses remain impoverished. This is important.

At a certain point, you gotta shoot. "I don’t know, at a certain point, you can’t take it,” Trump said. “I mean, at a certain point, you have to do something that, you just can’t take that. That is not right. It’s against all, you know, when you talk about Geneva convention, there’s gotta be things that are against it. You can’t do that. That’s called taunting. But it should certainly start with diplomacy and it should start quickly with a phone call to Putin, wouldn’t you think?.....And if that doesn’t work out, I don’t know, you know, at a certain point, when that sucker comes by you, you need to shoot. I mean, you gotta shoot. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame. It’s a total lack of respect for our country and it’s a total lack of respect for Obama. Which as you know, they don’t respect.”

This kind of talk scares the devil out of me. There are ways of making points and teaching lessons that do not involve warheads.

Who is...Sir John Dill?

"I've been working for you all my life!" Well, maybe not all of you. On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton said with a smile "We're going to put a lot of coal miners, and coal companies out of business." Bo Copely, a 39 year old  West Virginian who recently lost his job at a coal company, asked her, "When you make comments like 'we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs' these are the kind of people that you're affecting, this is my family. I just want to know how you can say you're going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs, and then come in here and tell us how you're going to be our friend." She answered, "I don't know how to explain it."

These people just say this stuff.

Caitlyn Jenner will appear on a summer cover of Sports Illustrated wearing "nothing but an American flag and her Olympic medal," a source reveals in the latest issue of Us Weekly. This is an advance, right?

Using satellite imagery and ancient Mayan astronomy charts, 15-year-old William Gadoury from Quebec, Canada is believed to have discovered a previously "unknown Mayan city" deep in the jungles of Mexico. The idea first struck Gadoury when he noticed that the Maya built their cities away from rivers, electing more marginal areas and even mountainous regions. He hypothesized that they must have had a different reason for choosing their locations.

Criminal organizations made up to $7 billion smuggling migrants into Europe last year, as 90% of those reaching the continent used smugglers, said Rob Wainwright, the head of Europe's police agency Europol.

More than half of immigrant-led households in the U.S. use at least one welfare program, according to research by the Center for Immigration Studies. By comparison, 30 percent of households led by native-born U.S. citizens take welfare. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America have the highest rate, with nearly three-quarters using at least one program. The Caribbean is second, with a 51 percent use rate.

Parlous: adj:   full of danger or risk; obsolete :  dangerously shrewd or cunning. usage: The company is in a parlous financial situation. He talked about the parlous state of the country. ety: Parlous is both a synonym and a derivative of "perilous"; it came to be as an alteration of "perilous" in Middle English. ("Perilous" is derived from the Anglo-French perilleus, which ultimately comes from the Latin word for "danger": "periculum.") Both words are documented in use from at least the 14th century, but by the 17th century "parlous" had slipped from common use and was considered more or less archaic. It experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 20th century (although some critics still regarded it as an archaic affectation), and today it appears in fairly common use, often modifying "state" or "times."

In 1936, Spain was still a new and fragile democracy when Francisco Franco led a military uprising of "Nationalists" against the government's "Republican" army, inaugurating the brutal, three-year Spanish Civil War. The government was the left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists were supported by a number of conservative groups, including monarchists such as the religious conservative (Catholic) Carlists, and the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups. An estimated 500,000 people died in the war, including thousands upon thousands of civilians from murder, torture, and starvation. It is believed that the government of General Francisco Franco executed 100,000 Republican prisoners after the war, and another 35,000 Republicans died in concentration camps in the years that followed the war.

The United States and General Marshall were helped though the WW11 relations with England--and their problems with Churchill whom they thought was unreasonable with his war plans--by the calming reasonable presence of Sir John Dill, Churchill's liaison to the United States. There inevitably came a time when Churchill became frustrated with Dill and wanted to replace him, which created great concern for General Marshall, who feared the negative effects a less capable replacement. He, therefore, came up with an artful way of keeping Dill in office: He created an award for Dill he rigged through Yale. Churchill was impressed with the award and assumed Dill was doing a good job so he kept him.

Pollen samples indicate the presence of cannabis in sub-Saharan Africa for at least two millennia. Introduced by overland traders from the Arab Middle East and later by Portuguese seamen traveling from India, the herb quickly spread throughout the continent.

Golden oldie:

 http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/12/angels-and-pinheads.html

Sanders’ health plan would eliminate private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and ObamaCare in favor of a single, government-run program, which he calls “Medicare for all.” There’d be no out-of-pocket costs for health care and long-term care.
When he released his plan, Sanders claimed it would cost about $14 trillion over 10 years. But not to worry, he said, since it would be fully paid for by the rich, and the middle class, and the working class, who would all see their taxes go up.
However, a new study from the liberal Urban Institute says that Sanders’s plan would cost more than twice what he says.
For starters, Sanders claims that he could somehow extend free care to everyone while still spending $6 trillion less over the next decade than would be the case. The Urban Institutes says that Sanders’ plan would actually increase national health spending by $6.6 trillion.
When you add it all up, the Urban Institute says, the price tag works out to $32 trillion over 10 years. In other words, Sanders’ plan would increase the already gargantuan size of the federal government by almost two-thirds.

AAAAAaaaaaannnnndddddd.....a graph:
 

The Recognition of Quality‏

We have great regard for awards. They supply us with expert opinions of quality. And we are a species that believes in, has regard for, quality.
Of course it's not that we don't have an opinion; sometimes controversy is the point. We watch the Oscars with great anticipation, each of us with out own favorites having made or decisions with our own inexpert but understandable judgments. Every athletic award comes with debate.
Some awards are tougher. Who should get the Nobel Prize in Physics? There we defer to acknowledged, highly esteemed professionals. And our interest is sometimes passing and superficial, but no less respectful. Who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last year?* But we do rely on these experts. When we are told that a number of climatologists support or reject the concept of global warming, we listen. 
Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949. His contribution to Science? To Mankind? Lobotomy. He developed and championed the inhuman practice of destroying people's minds surgically for the purpose of social management. That was just not a curiosity at the time. The scientific world is just like the rest of us. The Nobel Prize legitimized the procedure in the minds of many doctors and led to a dramatic increase in the number of lobotomies performed around the world. 
Oh, well.
Now there's an effort by the families of lobotomy patients to persuade the Nobel Prize committee to rescind the award given to Moniz.
(It is interesting that sports awards, where the bar is elevated gradually with time, are not rescinded. No one feels the winner of the 100 meter dash decades ago should be dismissed because modern sprinters are much faster. Context is appreciated in sports.)

*The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 was divided, one half jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites" and the other half to Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria".

Fyodor Dostoevsky in Love

In 1849 twenty-eight-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to die before a firing squad. Dostoevsky had been arrested eight months earlier for belonging to an underground group of political revolutionaries, all of these "champions of communism and new ideas," as the authorities put it.
The group was awakened without notice and transported to the execution site in fetters and shrouds. A priest in burial vestments met them, an officer read the charges and death sentences, a cross and confession were offered, a drum-roll began to play. Snow fell as the first three were hooded and tied to their posts, each one with a cart and coffin behind.
And then, with rifles already raised and sighted, someone rushed in waving a white cloth, a carriage rolled into the courtyard, a sealed letter announcing the Czar's mercy was read out. It had been a charade, a mock-execution orchestrated by Czar Nicholas I.

The prisoners were then led away to their real sentences, four years in Siberia and indefinite military service in Dostoevsky's case.
The experience profoundly affected Dostoevsky, and in multiple ways. A letter written later the same day to his brother talks of being "reborn for the better," of pledging himself "To be a man among men, to be a man always, not to allow oneself to be broken, to fall -- this is life's goal and meaning." Not only were his outlook, his politics, his writing and his health affected (it was in the Siberian prison camp that Dostoevsky had his first epileptic fit), but even his love life. In Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, Anna Dostoevsky tells the story of being hired by Dostoevsky in 1866 to take the dictation of his new novel, The Gambler -- she a twenty-two-year-old stenographer on her first job, the author forty-eight and already famous for Crime and Punishment. On the first day she found him so stern and sour that she was tempted to quit; on day two, over tea and pears, he told the tale of his mock-execution in such a way that "I could feel the gooseflesh crawling along my skin"; a month later she accepted his proposal of marriage.