Yes, Virginia

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."

Chabon

Michael Chabon was in town marketing his new book, Moonglow. It has has been well reviewed. He is a talented guy--he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay--but he is eccentric in his writing with a lot of specific, and diluting, types of styles. While he emphasizes a Jewish literature tradition, he has written sci-fi, an unsuccessful HBO series, comics, movies ("John Carter"), and mysteries. 

There is an interesting slant in his philosophy: He is interested in entertaining his reader. He wants to write seriously but wants the reader to be more than edified, he wants him to enjoy the experience.

This might be one of the key problems of modern literature.
 

He asked for questions to be submitted before the talk and I submitted this question, which he answered:

"A famous definition of genre fiction is that it is like pornography: Certain events are expected by the reader and and those expectations are met by the author.
A recent review of a mystery novel was dismissed in a NYT review as being, as all genre fiction, without "ambiguity."
Do you think these observations are accurate, do you think of them as legitimate criticisms of genre quality and how can we genre fans defend ourselves against the disdain of our enemies disguised as friends and family?"

His answer emphasized quality, reasonably, but he also said all styles, even the most serious, have their own rules and milestones.

No creation can escape its environmental fingerprints.

Sunday 12/18/16

In today's gospel, Joseph has a dream where he is told the child Mary is carrying is not the product of an illicit relationship, it is the Son of God. The entire New Testament hinges on this moment. The divine nature of Christ is brought to the outside world for the first time. The resurrection of  Christ is the edifice of Christianity, the nature of Christ's conception is its foundation. Enter Arius.

Arias, an early Christian bishop, argued that Christ had a beginning and therefore could not be God. He was declared a heretic, then absolved, then made a heretic again. But his distress is crucial as it was--and is--the world's distress. The Prophet Mohammad formed his opinion of Christianity through an Arian philosopher and, while he accepted the Jews as monotheists, he thought Christians polytheists.

Logic brought to bear on a being that rises from the dead seems misapplied. If either part of the story is acceptable, then it is hard to limit the rest of the story with petty human concerns. But, strangely, human reaction is the essence of the story. Like all the nativity scenes, humanity is at the center. Christ comes to the world as a vulnerable infant, dependent upon human care. Christ's later claims will mean nothing to the world without the disciples' translation, acceptance and proselytizing. Humanity is the linchpin of the entire story.   After all, human faith was the basis of it all, for Mary--and Joseph--could have said "No."

Astonishing. And a hell of a dream.

Cab Thoughts 12/17/16

Manners are minor morals. Manners are to morals as the final sandpapering, rubbing, and polishing on a fine piece of furniture are to the selection of the wood, the sawing, chiseling, and fitting. They are the finishing touch.--Hazlett


Economists are always debating the relative merits of consumption vs. production. Production seems to be the basis of the Broken Window Theory, i.e. any production--even production that produces nothing of value--aids the economy. So some will say that a hurricane is good for the economy because it stimulates production, although that production at best only recreates previous status. Under this assumption, war should be great. The consumption position is that all economic activity is ultimately justified by how much it enables us to expand our consumption, not by how much it enables us to expand our production.  Consumption is the end; production is the means.  Of course, production is an essential means; we cannot expand consumption without expanding production.  But production is not the ultimate purpose of economic activity. So digging a hole and then filling it up again at a certain hourly rate is meaningless to the economy.


The University of Florida has offered its students counseling in the face of offensive Halloween outfits on October 31. The poor dears.


Beijing has selected countries that it aimed to lift from poverty, while forging political alliances and creating markets for Chinese goods. Their economic development plans have merged politics and economics with their potential customers. This is an interesting distortion in economics.
Caracas is the biggest client of China's state-orchestrated development lending, accepting some $65bn in loans since 2007 for projects such as oil refineries, gold mines and railways. But in May this year, Venezuela engineered a default under which it has deferred paying the principal -- and only honors the interest -- on outstanding debts estimated at $20bn-$24bn.


The World Health Organization has decided to impose its good ideas on the rest of us by encouraging states to raise the taxes on sugary drinks. They have determined, somehow, that sugary drinks are bad for us and that raising the price of them will discourage their use. So, why won't raising the price of labor with the minimum wage discourage the use of that labor? Cost is cost, overhead, overhead.


Who is.... James Callendar?


Jonathon Swift died quite tormented by madness and the fear of it. Fourteen years earlier he wrote "Verses on the Death of Dr Swift," mostly about society, but it contained this little section that foretold what he would do with his small estate:
 He gave the little Wealth he had,
To build a House for Fools and Mad:
And shew'd by one satyric Touch,
No Nation wanted it so much....
And this was his epitaph: "Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, dean of this Cathedral Church, where savage indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go, traveler, and imitate if you can one who with all his might championed liberty."


David Tepper, arguably the top hedge fund manager and investor of his generation, speaking before the election: “You have one person with questionable judgment and the other person may be demented, narcissistic and a scumbag,” Tepper said. “Not saying which one is which, you can make your decision on that. So it makes it a very difficult choice.” Tepper runs Appaloosa Management, a $19 billion hedge fund firm.


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds that global debt -- including the debts of governments, households and non-financial businesses -- reached a record $152 trillion in 2015, an amount much higher than before the 2008-09 financial crisis.


Alfred Nobel: At his death, Nobel's father was fleshing out plans for what sounds like plywood, and for coffins in which those mistaken for dead might have a device to save themselves. Perhaps acquired from his father, Nobel had a lifelong fear of being buried alive, and in his will he left instructions to have his arteries cut after death, just to be sure. He was an isolated misanthrope and rumors abound as to why he created his optimistic Prize. One interesting one stems from a case of journalistic mistaken identity. His brother, Ludvig, was also a self-made man but in oil. When he died he was mistaken for his brother and the obituary confused Ludvig with Albert and described him as the "merchant of death" for his 90 dynamite factories. The theory is that Nobel was so horrified by this glimpse at his legacy that he did all he could to combat it.


Sheenagh Pugh (b. 1950) taught creative writing for many years at the University of Glamorgan in Trefforest, Wales, until her retirement in 2008. She has published nine books of poetry,  two novels, translations and a critical study of fan fiction, The Democratic Genre (2005), one of the first such books to approach fan fiction from a literary and scholarly perspective.


20% of American households do not have television service of any kind. Read that again.  87% of people with the TV on are, at the same time, using a secondary viewing appliance. Streaming is going to be a big deal.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/08/quick-reviews-dr-sleep-camp-of-saints.html

In 1792, publisher James Callendar—then a supporter of Thomas Jefferson whose paper was secretly funded by Jefferson and his Republican allies–published a report of Alexander Hamilton’s adulterous affair with a colleague’s wife, to which Hamilton later confessed. (In 1802, when then-President Jefferson snubbed Callendar’s request for a political appointment, Callendar retaliated with an expose on Jefferson’s “concubine.” He is believed to have been referring to Sally Hemings, who was part black and also the likely half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife, Martha.) In 1796, an essay appeared in the Gazette of the United States in which a writer, mysteriously named “Phocion,”  attacked presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson for carrying on an affair with one of his slaves.  Phocion turned out to be former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Politics is always dirty. Even the Founders were dirty politicians. Now, what dynamics are afoot there?

The area of a circle is Pi times the radius squared. The area of a circle of the diameter of 18 is Pi times 9 times 9 equals Pi times 81. A circle of 12 diameter has an area of Pi times 6 times 6 equals Pi times 36. So you get more pizza with one 18 inch pizza than two 12 inch.

Everywhere TV revenues are down and TV usage is as well. Streaming is the future, they say. This looks provocative: After spending nearly $50 billion last year to acquire DirecTV, AT&T is preparing to roll out an internet video service that could upend its satellite-television business along with the rest of the pay-TV industry. Apparently sxecutives aren’t concerned that the lower-priced internet offering could eat into its existing TV business.(!)

New research warns that the number of women in the computing workforce will decline to 22% from 24% by 2025 if nothing is done to encourage more of them to study computer science.

In 1928 Dorothy Parker, under her pen name, Constant Reader, reviewed A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner in the New Yorker. Milne's children's books -- When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the Pooh, Now We Are Six -- had dominated the best seller lists. In the book, Pooh reveals that he added the "tiddely pom" to his Outdoor Song "to make it more hummy." She wrote: "And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

Vasectomies have suffered a decline of 64% in the number of men undergoing the procedure within the last 10 years. In 2004-5, there were 31,216 vasectomies carried out in England, but in 2014-15, that fell to just 11,113 according to NHS Digital.

“People worry massively and have lots of misconceptions about it," said Genevieve Edwards of Marie Stopes, a leading provider of vasectomies for the NH. Yes, she really said that.

A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been "fabricated." They also showed that many clinical trial outcomes were written before the trials had actually taken place.
Ah, science.

Aaaaaannnnndddddd.....a graph:

Trump Voters

A friend of mine is a pediatrician who years ago immigrated to America from India. She is clearly Indian and speaks with a slight, British-influenced accent.
She does some work for the state and found herself returning from some state meetings in Harrisburg on a back road in rural central Pennsylvania. Trump had just won the election and the conference had been alive with talk about it.

She stopped at a gas station and approached the building to buy some snacks. At the door were two tough looking middle-aged men talking, clearly local rural guys. She immediately thought of herself, a lone immigrant woman here in the heart of what was apparently revolutionary Trump country, facing two locals who fit her stereotypical Trump voter. She was suddenly intimidated and anxious.

She smiled and, preoccupied with her concerns, inadvertently spoke them. "I'll bet you are happy with the election," she said, and immediately regretted it.

The two smiled back and one said, softly, "Oh, you might be surprised."

She looked at him quizzically.
He said, again softly and with a shrug, "The rich always win."

She smiled and said, "Yes."

She entered, relieved, bought her snacks and left. They were gone.
It was only when she was in her car that she realized the men had lied to her to make her more comfortable.

Is this a great country or what.

First Lady

There is clearly dissention in the Trump White House: We are not going to have a First Lady. Great cheekbones and jawline or not, Melania is not going to be The Washington Hostess. She says she wants to be with her son, who will stay in his New York school, but, clearly, that is not enough. She simply does not want the Washington gig.

This, more than anything else in this overturning election, might signal the true enormity of the change brought by Trump's victory: The obvious suspects do not want the spoils. There will be no multi-lingual beauty in the White House receiving line. What politician's wife in the entire history of the world would not want to pick clothes, silverware and china to provide the opportunity to have social events where she could be envied? What good looking woman would not salivate at the chance to step into the spotlight, beam and favor a follower with her gentle smile or reduce an enemy to dust?
But Melania does not want the gig.

There has been little made of this so far; likely the press has been stunned mute by events. And some narratives are emerging, albeit slowly. Will there be a First Lady pro tem? Is Melania deferring to Ivanka? Would such a handoff be appropriate? Is an attractive First Daughter just too creepy as the First Lady? Does this entire problem signal a shift away from Washington? Will Melania be First Lady in New York? (A revolution in itself.)

Perhaps Melania is shy--but history does not suggest that. So what are we to do? A concerned nation expects a First Family, all of it. Does she feel like an outsider? Does she not like us, like Michelle? Should we be offended? Clearly something must be done.
Perhaps we have had a peak at what is to come. Kanye West was one of the first show business people to visit Trump. His wife, a renown beauty, has significant reality show experience.

Kim Kardashian for First Lady! Kim, a lonely nation turns it eyes to you!

Cab Thoughts 12/14/16

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



In the last six years, insurance premiums rose 19%, or 3X faster than inflation. Deductibles rose 63%, more than 10X faster than inflation. Earnings rose only 11%, or less than 2X faster than inflation. Those three numbers explain why most people feel pressured by healthcare costs. In the aggregate, healthcare premiums and out-of-pocket expenses are consuming a large and rapidly swelling portion of middle-class income.
Businesses are responding to increased costs by raising the premium contributions of employees and raising deductibles. Even among large companies, 45% now have healthcare plans with deductibles of $1,000 or more.

Apotheosis noun: 1. the ideal example; epitome; quintessence: This poem is the apotheosis of lyric expression. 2. the elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god.

Apotheosis is a Late Latin and Greek word meaning "deification." It ultimately derives from the Greek combining form theós meaning “god.” It entered English in the late 1570s and later developed the sense "departure from this earthly life into heaven." 

 

"For a long time, the U.S. has boasted that its lively election is a sign of its system’s superiority. However, the essential purpose of the election is to provide a driving force for development. The most important task for presidential nominees is not to win the election, but to eventually govern the country.  It's time for the U.S. to take a close, honest look at its arrogant democracy and flawed politics."---from.......edited and translated from 美国选举乱象凸显制度弊端 Source: People's Daily!!!!! Interesting the Chinese think of government as "the driving force of development."

"And thus we end by thinking again of the unlikeness between ourselves and the Russians ; and by envying them that extraordinary union of extreme simplicity combined with the utmost subtlety which seems to mark both the educated Russian and the peasant equally. They do not rival as in the comedy of manners, but after leaving Tolstoy we always feel that we could sacrifice our skill in that direction for something of the profound psychology and superb sincerity of the Russian writers."--from a review by Virginia Woolf of Leo Tolstoy’s The Cossacks and Other Tales of the Caucasus. In it she compares Tolstoy to the English writers of the time.

"The big and little tragedies of a profit-directed economy are necessary for it to get better.  The same is true in science and art, though not about money profit.  Many experiments fail, and we get the benefit from the better ideas for surgeries and paintings and fish restaurants that succeed because resources have been reallocated to them instead.
Trade-tested betterment is the most altruistic of economic systems, because everything is directed toward satisfying ordinary customers."--McCloskey

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/10/monsters.html

Monsters and The Dialectic of Progress steeleydock.blogspot.com Jocelyn Wildenstein is an over-wealthy New York woman who wanted to take advantage of her wealth and the incredible technology available ...

Chelation is a therapy used to combat heavy metal poisoning. Somehow it has become one of those procedures that attract "Laetrile experts" and the like and and is used for a lot of things, especially artery disease. There is no evidence that it works and a lot of evidence it doesn't--and 30 deaths have occurred with it--but, nonetheless the federal government has just sponsored 37 million dollars in research grants to further investigation. If the Clinton Foundation were involved it would be more understandable but the best explanation seems to be it just isn't their money.

In a similar vein, the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney’s Magic Kingdom has been associated with the passage of kidney stones and some guy from Michigan is looking for grant money to study it.

Funny line in an open letter to the esteemed candidates on their opposition to free trade: "I do want you to know that you and Mr. Trump are merely the latest tools in a long, shameful parade of charlatans and scammers who absurdly promise the masses that greater prosperity is to be had if only they’ll agree to pay higher prices for the goods and services they consume."

A recent article in the WSJ complained that high tech companies were not hiring enough people. But people--workers--are a resource like land or fuel; should not all resources be used economically? Here is part of a letter to the editor: "....[this is the...] ages-old fallacy of judging the worth of firms and industries according to how many workers they employ rather than according to how well they enhance human well-being by increasing the production of consumer goods and services.  If your standard were the appropriate one, there’s an easy solution to the problem that you diagnose: you and others who share your view can hire workers to sit around idly, doing nothing of value.  If you are unwilling to pay people to perform such ‘work,’ you’ve no cause to complain that firms in tech sector do not effectively do the same."


Who is.....Joseph Schumpeter?


Medicare  unveiled a far-reaching overhaul of how it pays doctors and other clinicians. Compensation for medical professionals will start taking into account the quality of service - not just quantity. Imagine. "Quality." As definitive as "beauty?" It will be amazing.


Recent research by Professor Valentina Zharkova (Northumbria University) and colleagues has shed new light on the inner workings of the Sun. If correct, this new discovery means that future solar cycles and variations in the Sun’s activity can be predicted more accurately. The research suggests that the next three solar cycles will see solar activity reduce significantly into the middle of the century, producing conditions similar to those last seen in the 1600s – during the Maunder Minimum. This may have implications for temperatures here on Earth. Future solar cycles will serve as a test of the astrophysicists’ work, but some climate scientists have not welcomed the research and even tried to suppress the new findings. —Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2016
Some [critics] were welcoming and discussing. But some of them were quite — I would say — pushy. They were trying to actually silence us. Some of them contacted the Royal Astronomical Society, demanding, behind our back, that they withdraw our press release. The Royal Astronomical Society replied to them and said, ‘Look, this is the work by the scientists who we support, please discuss this with them.’ –Professor Valentina Zharkova, Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2016

The observable universe is made up of at least two trillion galaxies, according to a new study. That’s 20 times more than had previously been thought. The new estimate comes from a British-led study that used images from the Hubble Space Telescope to create a 3D map of the universe. It was once thought that God was unnecessary to explain the wonders of the universe; now the wonders of the universe are so overwhelming, not even God can explain them.

The world economy is about $75 trillion. Boosting growth by 1 percentage point would require $750 billion in extra annual spending.

Here’s what was very disturbing to me: after the medical episode, she went to her daughter’s apartment and not to an Emergency Room. Secret Service procedure for each detail dictates that everyone knows which hospital to go to depending on the event - heart failure, gunshot, you name it. It is very revealing that, whatever is wrong with her, she is being treated by her own private medical specialists in secret and, judging by the ballet-like reaction by her detail, they have dealt with this before.
Her detail knew that there was something very wrong with her and they were prepared.
---this is from an article by a former secret service agent, Gary Byrne, on Mrs. Clinton's fainting episode blamed on dehydration, then pneumonia.

Gelernter wrote an article on the election and it is brutal. He really hates Clinton. A line from it:  "Why do we insist on women in combat but not in the NFL? Because we take football seriously."

Chesterton on the need for context of virtue:  "The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered…it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful."--G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”

There are many ways to define an economic bubble. One is the expansion of wealth out of proportion to the growth of GDP. The growth of wealth in this country linked to low interest rates, not production, might qualify.

"Can Capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.” --Schumpeter
Marx believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its enemies (the proletariat), whom capitalism had purportedly exploited, and he relished the prospect. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes, that it would spawn a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the intellectual class’s existence. And unlike Marx, Schumpeter did not relish the destruction of capitalism. “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it.”--Economic Dictionary

Tyler Cowen believed that the economy involves a continuing struggle among the Three Ss: Stupidity, Schumpeter, and Smith. 

This is an interesting quote from Clinton. "So how are you going to pay for infrastructure jobs and paid family leave?’, I say, ‘Well, I’m telling you how I’m paying for everything,” she said at a campaign event in Seattle, drawing a contrast with GOP nominee Donald Trump.  “I am not going to add a penny to the national debt,” she vowed. “We’re going to go where the money is. We’re going to make the wealthy pay their fair share, and we’re finally going to close those corporate loopholes.” What this really means is that immediately on taking office she’s got to raise taxes by $500 billion. As that is 3.5% or so of GDP an immediate fiscal tightening of that amount would put the US economy back into recession. Oh, well.

Great line from Vernon Smith: State control can never substitute for self-control without destroying freedom and all that is human in both society and economy.

AAAAaaaaaaannnnndddddd......a chart: