Rebane's Ruminations

Last Thoughts from 2008 (updated)

George Rebane

2008, the year of fearsome foibles, is ending appropriately for me.  This morning, when starting to put on my contacts, I discovered that I had flushed them down the drain last night after taking them off.  I have worn contacts since 1961 (47 years!!) and their manipulation is a thoughtless process for me.  But somehow last night when I popped them out and put them into their case for the overnight soaking, something switched in the old brainbone as I was talking to Jo Ann.  From the available evidence this morning, it was clear that after I put my lenses in their case, I inadvertently reverted to the morning routine, rinsed out the case and then put it on the sink to dry out for the following evening.  The kind people at my optometrist office this morning informed that this brain fart will cost about $204.  Ahh, the ignominy of too many birthdays.

As we rummage through the ruins of our IRAs and portfolios, a correspondent reminds us that there is still another side of this financial crisis that seeks the light of day.  Only one MSM outlet seems to have connected some of the other dots as seen in this little video collage.  [update - another correspondent, afraid that I may not fully appreciate the intricacies of federal finances, just sent me this tutorial by Fred Thompson.]

Finally, two correspondents, each from a different world, sent this funny summary of the year’s news assembled by a very clever and talented blogger.

We close this year of bursting bubbles, nuclear standoffs, exploding rockets and missiles, terror bombings, unbridled nationalization, payoffs and ponzis, and hopeful change with a wish that you and yours will brace yourselves and have a tolerable 2009 – anything more than that would now seem syrupy and frivolous - and next year this time not have to look back at 2008 as the good old days. ;-)

Singularity Signposts – 30dec2008

George Rebane

Cold computing as envisioned by several physicists (e.g. Frank Tipler) and computer scientists (e.g. Hans Moravec), and predicted by futurists (e.g Ray Kurzweil) is a step closer as reported in ‘How Small Can Computers Get? Computing In A Molecule’.  A team of French scientists (please hold applause and/or snide remarks) at the French National Scientific Research Center has made progress toward atomic scale computing.

What’s so big about this?  Well, just about everything.  In Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near he addresses the question ‘How Smart is a Rock?’ and provides an answer that will startle you (more than the spelling of ‘Einstein’ in the picture).  It turns out that plain old cold matter has a tremendous potential to store data and compute using its original molecular structure somewhat rearranged and repurposed.  And computational power in small spaces that requires a small amount or even no additional amount of energy will make possible beings, experiences, and even universes that today are already more than glimmers of our imaginations.

The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme

George Rebane

A correspondent sends the nearby cartoon and reminds us again that if we judge the government by the same standards that its citizens are judged, then the government would be the biggest crook of all.  All this comes under the growing time-bombs of unfunded liabilities which are set to go off across the land in hundreds (thousands?) of counties, towns, cities, and, of course, the federal government.  The MSM uses the Madoff episode to discredit free market capitalism, and to distract us all from the real Ponzi schemes conducted everywhere that government acts as the employer.  While we feel sorry for the little guys whose money was invested with Madoff, we continue to ignore our own plight as the biggest suckers of all.

Ruminations - 28dec2008

George Rebane

Emeritus Professor Robert Johnston, UC Irvine, will be presenting on land use and transportation modeling in the age of anthropogenic global warming.  This will be on 18 Feb 2009 in Incline Village (details here).  Of course, the whole presentation starts with the revealed truth that AGW is real as inscribed on the stone tablets brought down from Mt. Gore.  For the technical reader, please note that in the syllabus of the good professor’s references, there is a glaring lack of studies which corroborate the performance of the cited models with the real world.  This is of a piece with similar holes in the work of those using the various climate change models for their political ends.

To close California’s near $50B looming budget deficit, the Democrats are planning to tax the bejeezus out of its citizens and businesses.  And our Governator of the Compliant Character will probably go along with them.  We are already the second highest tax state in the country, and are paying for it with an exodus of corporations and the well-heeled.  And the new tax addicts will continue to ignore their impact on business and jobs.  The most recent big red flag, that warns us of the economic disaster to come from new carbon and deficit taxes, is that Silicon Valley had just one new IPO in 2008.  Compare that with an average of 28 per year since 1985.  This is not only bad, but VERY BAD.  All of this matters not to politicians betting their sinecures on the demonstrated smarts of the California voter. 

The rank and file Christian has some major catch up to do if the religion is to remain a staple of American culture.  Most of us in the faith are more than fuzzy about our theology, and almost none of us are aware of the secular humanist assault – led by luminaries such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins – on Judeo-Christian beliefs and traditions.  Here is a report on the recent activities of Freedom From Religion, one of a growing number of primarily left-wing organizations active in banning religion from the American scene.

The Independent reports on “scientific illiteracy (being) all the rage among the glitterati”.

When it comes to science, Barack Obama is no better than many of us. Today he joins the list of shame of those in public life who made scientifically unsupportable statements in 2008.

These folks, of course, are the cows with the shiny bells that lead the rest of us in the unquestioning herd.

A Christmas View from the Left

George Rebane

   

According to folks like Wiley, the borrowers were otherwise responsible people who thought that ARM was a body part when they signed the loan papers.

A Respite of Joy

George Rebane

Today Christians in the western tradition celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation.  Our Eastern Orthodox brethren maintain the old Julian calendar and will celebrate Christmas on 7 Jan 2009.  This lag has been in effect since the 16th century when our modern Gregorian calendar was adopted to great consternation in Europe.  In many cities there were riots by people demanding the return of their “lost” 11 days which many believed were actually days taken from their lives since the calendar was suddenly advanced by church edict in 1582.  To complicate matters more, not all countries and churches accepted this change, and church calendars will remain complicated for several centuries yet.

The Jewish Festival of Lights or Hanukkah, which this year coincides with Christmas, is an eight day celebration of the rededication of the Jerusalem temple about 200 BC during the Maccabean Revolt.  Its start is on the 25th day of Kislev in the Jewish calendar which is even more complicated and causes these eight holy days to fall anywhere from late November to late December.  The original observance of Hanukkah was a miraculous event in that the temple’s Lamp of the Eternal Flame had only a one day supply for oil which burned for eight days until new oil could be procured to keep it burning.

Jo Ann and I wish all of our friends and readers a joyous Christmas and Hanukkah, and a 2009 of health, peace, productivity, and restoration.

 

The (NY, LA, …) Times They Are a Changin’

George Rebane

We’re all aware of the travails of newspapers and most MSM news outlets.  There are many factors blamed for newspapers limiting deliveries, many shutting down, broadcasters reducing their news gathering staffs, etc.  Lot of the blame is being directed at the Internet and the growing population of bloggers.  For reasons easy to understand, the declining state of journalism is not usually fingered in these reports.

However, the problems with that profession are now getting to be so bad that an increasing chorus of criticism is beginning to be heard across the land.  The modern journalist is more often than not viewed with a jaundiced eye by the general public, and almost always discounted by the better read crowd.  Decades of denial behind them, the American street is even beginning to understand that the journeyman journalist has to be the piper who fashions his tunes according to the politics and preferences of his publisher, editor, and advertiser.  And the tighter they wrap themselves in their vaunted Code of Ethics to deflect the slings and arrows, the higher rise the peals of laughter.

Ruminations – 21dec2008

George Rebane

Happy Winter Solstice to everyone.  At 4:04 AM PST this morning the sun was exactly overhead somewhere at the Tropic of Capricorn latitude in the southern hemisphere.  For Jews everywhere Hanukkah, the festival of the lights, starts this evening at sunset.  Christians have today lit the fourth candle of Advent and await the annual celebration of the Incarnation.  I haven’t a clue what the secular humanists are doing this season besides monitoring that the odd crèche or menorah is not found anywhere on public property.  All in all, we should take maximum advantage of these holy days and stock up on all the goodness and mercy we can because 2009 is going to be a duuzy.

Saw on TV where some Indians are being insulted again.  It seems that a ski area has been making snow with recycled sewer water.  Now this water is clean enough to drink, but the Indians don’t want to have the stuff sprayed on yet another piece of recently discovered sacred ground.  For those of you of a scientific bent, consider that things disperse pretty thoroughly over time.  For instance, every breath you take today contains about 43 atoms of the last breath exhaled by Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ when they were executed two thousand years ago.  I also recall that the palefaces did beat the redskins, but then taught them how to dial up the local office of the ACLU.  Fortunately none of the Red Man’s Revenge casinos are located on holy ground – or, come to think of it, maybe they are. (Imagine how many H2O molecules formerly in the urine of infidels rains down on Muslim holy places annually.  Everyone can really get worked up about that.)

Dr. Ants Leps – RIP

George Rebane

My friend Ants Leps died last night.  Ants was a lifelong teacher and retired as a professor of mass communications and media from California State University – Northridge where he taught for many years.  His passing is another of those milestones that we now seem to encounter more and more often.

Ants and I met as young boys sometime right after the war in a refugee camp in Geislingen, Germany.  Both of our families had managed the great escape from our native Estonia in 1944 as the Red Army swept in.  Ants’ parents were celebrated Estonian artists.  In the refugee camp his father painted ‘the’ portrait of my father, and also taught him to paint.  Our paths parted in 1949 when the war refugees were accepted by many western countries.  The Leps and Rebane families headed for different parts of America to start their new lives.

Many years later in the 1980s Ants walked up to me at a technical conference after I had finished my talk.  He stuck out his hand and started speaking in Estonian as if we had just parted yesterday in Geislingen.  I did a double take and then we gave each other a hug.  It turned out that we both lived in the LA area, and our friendship was renewed.

Ants was teaching students, journalists, and media producers about the new field of interactive multi-media design, the field in which I was busy as an entrepreneur introducing new technologies.  Those years leading up to the Worldwide Web were hectic and exciting both technically and intellectually.  We met often to talk of possible futures and I was a regular guest lecturer in Ants’ courses.

Both Ants and his wife Virve have been ardent environmentalists and liberal progressives, thereby giving lie to the myth that all escapees from communism are automatically right-wingers.  They were members of the Sierra Club, devoted hikers, and gave of themselves to green causes.

Perhaps we shall meet again.

A December Weekend in Nevada County

George Rebane

 

Our house guests went home yesterday afternoon after sampling a bit of winter in the Sierra foothills.  Shortly after Gary and Vicki arrived, we had a big dinner with Christmas music in the background and a roaring fire while the snow was blowing outside.  After dinner we were relaxing around the fireplace when the inevitable overloaded branch somewhere over a power line came crashing down and the world turned black.  We had just been talking about blackouts and now we had ours.

Not to worry, I told everyone and tiptoed through blowing snow around the house where my piece de resistance for the occasion was quietly waiting in the deepening snow.  Clearing the intake and exhaust ports of the white stuff, I opened the panel cover and pushed the red button.  Instantly our little Kohler 12KW propane generator leaped to life and I hustled back into the house, and threw the master switch to let there be light (and heat and water and …).  We all felt pretty smug as we bundled off to bed with visions of determined and dedicated county and utility workers out in the cold night doing their best to clear the roads and fix the break.  Civilization is nice.

At less than two gallons per hour I let the generator run for the full 17 hours that the power was out.  Our big propane tank could take the hit, and I wanted to check out the system in a continuous demand situation.  It performed flawlessly.

We woke up to a scene that is best left for the nearby picture to describe.  I quickly built a big fire and we continued our catching up, plotting and scheming, and reliving our years together in southern California.  Great way to spend a day indoors with the gals doing their thing and bringing Gary and me puu-puus to fortify ourselves against the cold weather out there somewhere.  And you could barely hear the Kohler chugging away in the cold.

And, of course, we also did the normal things that we mountain folk do with out-of-town guests.  We took them on the usual local tours.  Our routine is that I take the male guest(s) on a ‘guys tour’ that includes places like the rifle range and airport and industrial parks.  Jo Ann takes the ladies on a ‘gals tour’ that involves more genteel locales like theaters, shops, and art centers.  And then we all go out to eat again.

Another wonderful visit to Nevada County’s winter wonderland.  Now I’m going outside to hug my generator and talk to it quietly about the next storm that is on its way.