Rebane's Ruminations

TechTest2012 Survivors Breakfast

George Rebane

Last Friday (25may12) the annual ‘Survivors Breakfast’ was again held at Tofanelli’s.  The event has become a tradition to celebrate the young people who took the year’s test and those who received the top scores on the SESF sponsored merit scholarship exam.  TT2012 top three scorers (in no particular order) were Ben Martin, Parker Scanlon, and Dominic Castro-Wehr pictured below.

This year included was Joe Fenner (pictured above), the top scorer of TechTestJr2012, and his parents.  TTJr was inaugurated this year for the county’s 8th graders in response to requests from local middle schools.  Students starting 9th grade make a very serious choice to take the science-math track in high school or not.  That choice greatly determines their ability to study STEM subjects in colleges and embark on STEM careers.

After a hearty breakfast, the students each told us of their plans for next year.  The juniors, who took the test for practice, all promised to study much harder for TT2013 when they will be going for the money.  The breakfast always ends with everyone getting their coveted Survivor’s T-shirt, and then a big picture taking session.  Pictured below are the juniors (left) and seniors.

More pictures and information is available on the SESF website here.

Knowledge Engines

George Rebane

Part of our rush toward Singularity involves the web becoming ‘smarter’.  In case you haven’t noticed, search engine technologies are rapidly evolving from providing ‘information’ to becoming so-called knowledge engines.  Wolfram Alpha was an early one into this functionality, and it is now being joined by Google’s Knowledge Graph Microsoft will soon upgrade its Bing to provide the same type of functionality.

My friend Dr Larry Press reports on Knowledge Graph here.  And this is a short video that gives you an idea of all this before you dive into the details.

As evident from my past posts on the topic, I’m looking forward to IBM offering its Watson technology on a broad basis to websites.  To do that though will require the installation of what I’d call server cities instead of server farms.  Today web related utilities already consume more than 5% of our electrical capacity.  With all of us starting to use Watson-derived knowledge engines will make the country’s lights dim.

 

Ruminations - 16may12

George Rebane

The bad news about Obamacare just keeps getting worse.  In addition to recent reports that colleges are dropping higher costing student health plans prescribed under the law’s provisions, we now discover that Obamacare puts a new excise tax on one of the remaining areas of job creating and innovation in which we still lead the world – medical device manufacturing.  It’s one of the few industries left that contributes to the positive side of our trade balance, and provides over 400,000 direct jobs and about two million indirect support jobs.  Here I’m talking about CT scanners, pacemakers, blood pressure devices, and even the new robots used in surgery.

In ‘Obamacare’s Killer Device Tax’ Dr Henry Miller writes that “the US leads the world in medical technology.  A punitive new excise levy jeopardizes jobs and innovation.”  Team Obama sees this industry as the next one it can attack in order to further disable American leadership in innovation and commerce.  Obamacare will impose a new add-on 2.3% excise tax on medical devices that kicks in next January.  This is a serious kick in the shorts because of the high regulatory cost of jumping through hoops, and the long accrual of sales revenues required before ROI becomes positive.  It isn’t that hard overseas.

And what happened to this year's five million new citizens that became of age and didn't bump the number in the workforce?  Lots of possible answers, "Or are more of the long-term unemployed becoming the never-again employed?"  The labor market participation has increased since the 1940s, then leveled and started going down around 2000, causing a lot of people to look for reasons.  My money is also on the govt worker retirees whose outlandish pensions came due, and made it easy to drop out early. Meanwhile on the campaign trail the Big Lie machine about how our economy is creating jobs under the Messiah is in full swing.  Daily the real news belies every bit of his empty braggadocio.

‘Testing is not Teaching’ is the growing cry of parents of minority kids across the country.  The teachers unions like NEA are joining in and asking that Congress roll back testing mandates that started under Bush2’s No Child Left Behind and were picked up by Obama’s Race to the Top.  The charges against testing range from being unfair to teachers, having arbitrary scoring levels, being poorly designed, to stifling the more creative aspects of education.  Teachers are accused of teaching to the tests, and they are not doing a good job at it.  Meanwhile other school districts are saying that their teachers have not changed their curricula, are not teaching to the tests, and that their kids are doing quite well on such tests.

I’m a proponent of standardized testing in core skill areas like reading, writing, and math.  Testing can also be useful in confirming what kids have learned in the hard sciences like physics and chemistry.  But things get squishier when you add in questions about sociology, literature, and even civics.  The opponents of testing don’t tell us about reliable alternatives for measuring how kids and teachers are doing in the learning and teaching of critical skills that underpin the ability to do well in all the other subjects, and in life.

For reasons that I don’t understand, the cost of testing has also gone up, even with the introduction of computers and other technology.  And that is part and parcel of the overall cost of education that is sky rocketing, again for reasons that both academics and economists are attempting to discover.  Over the years why does it cost more and more to turn out Susies and Johnnies who know less than ever?

And did you catch that some school children from LA are suing California for promoting a "statutory scheme" that keeps bad teachers in classrooms, especially classrooms in low-income schools.

Climbing Sugar Mountain.  Mark Zuckerberg’s baby is going to hit the merciless markets on Friday, and no one really knows what it’s worth.  Why?  Well, Facebook’s market cap will be based on “finding ways to make money that haven’t been demonstrated or articulated yet.”  No one is sure that ads on the social medium work, and dealing in the vast amounts of collected user data is an uncertain minefield.  And young Mr Zuckerberg has not exactly been sending strong signals about his concern for profits and acumen in being CEO of a public company, one that will be under intense scrutiny by everyone.  But what the hell - got a hunch, bet a bunch – after all,  people are saying that out the gate Facebook will be worth ten times as much as Google was at its IPO.

Happy Mother's Day

George Rebane

 

Ellen Rebane (1916 - 1990)

 

Conspiracy Theories by the Dozen, Oh My! (updated 21may12)

George Rebane

[Correction: This is the submitted form of my column that appeared belatedly in the print edition of the 25may12 Union.  I was informed of the delay due to a rush of political columns and articles on the new marijuana ordnance.]

In this election year all the weird stuff we’ve been hearing about seems to be coming at us more loudly and from every direction.  Each piece by itself sounds like a purposed effort to drive America deeper into a place that most of us don’t want it to go; each piece sounds like the revelation of another quiet conspiracy at work.  And when you gather all the pieces together, they don’t look like separate pieces at all, but to many they appear to fit into one big concerted effort from somewhere by some people who are working together.

And what makes it even more curious is that the individual pieces have been promoted by people from all political parties – most certainly including Republicans and Democrats.  So we can’t just point our finger at one side and blame the whole thing on them.

We start with the International Democrat Union (idu.org) founded in 1983 by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Republican Party National Committee’s John Allen, and joined by VPOTUS George HW Bush.  It is a self-declared union of ‘centre and centre right’ parties with high sounding principles that include abiding by the anti-constitutional UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and calls for unspecified obligations between nations.  Who knows what the IDU does, but it meets every four years near the Republican Convention.

Then we have the notorious UN Agenda21 initiative to which President GHW Bush signed us up (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml).  Reading its tenets and principles calls for a one world in which human activity is restricted to a fraction of the earth’s land surface, and everyone belongs to a wholesome, sustainable, inclusive, happy society of peacefully like-minded and sensitive people.  The progressive principles of this future UN-dominated world are being implemented through something called the ICLEI Global (iclei.org) which organizes “local governments for sustainability” and already has over 550 US cities as members.

Next we come to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 with its draconian Title X, Subtitle D.  There its anti-terrorism provisions give the President powers to do all kinds of spooky and unconstitutional things like constructing a gulag of stalags in the US for forcibly interning thousands of US citizens when the need arises.

Ruminations - 1may12 (updated++)

George Rebane

It looks like getting your college education subsidized will now become a new ‘right’ across the land.  Neither party is willing to let student loan interest rates increase automatically as they were supposed to.  As a taxpayer, I want the government out of the student loan business (among many other businesses they are in), but as long as they want to play lenders (recall the last time they tried that in real estate) with my money, I want to be able to have a say what areas of study that I and fellow taxpayers will fund.  Most certainly I don’t want to be on the hook for defaulted loans by people whose majors only qualified them to gainfully ask ‘... and would you like fries with that?’ after graduation.

On the whole, our post-high school education system is a mess, which is just a continuation of the mess our high school system is in.  Both secondary and post-secondary school systems are scam operations on the national weal, each costing an arm and a leg, and delivering little brains.

But the President has now made student loans one of his campaign issues since he cannot run on his record.  Speaking of which, the latest poll has 49% of Americans wanting to overturn Obamacare, and 38% wanting to keep it.  The latter have no idea what’s in the legislation, and don’t really care because it just adds on to the other freebies that they already get from taxpayers.

The other big item brought up by the President is to garner the Hispanic vote by demagoguery on the illegal alien issue.  As I have repeatedly argued, the tragic mislabeling of the illegal entrants as illegal immigrants has totally muddied the debate and allowed the leftwing to bamboozle the lightweights with statements like Sen Dick Durbin's (D-IL) recent wail that the Republicans (especially in Arizona) are “considering people as criminals just because of their immigration status.”  Well hello Dick! We should consider them criminals because according to our laws, illegal entrants and aliens are.  And that sumbich regularly raises his hand to uphold the Constitution.

All of this doesn’t seem to be playing as well with the Hispanics because as of yesterday 45% of them support Arizona’s legislation to allow it to enforce federal law on illegal aliens.  43% don’t support it.  When all of our citizens are tallied, the support goes to 62%, and opposed are 27%.

Finally, on the anniversary of the Bin Laden hit we are still not allowed to see the photos that the Seal Team took of the raghead after they dispatched him.  Why?  Because it "may offend" some sensitive Muslims.  No one stops to consider that the willing exercise of power is the ONLY thing that the Islamists understand and respect.  And no one in the administration cares about the ongoing assaults and atrocious murders of Christians and Jews that continue wherever Muslims dominate.  No one checked to see how sensitive I was to the pictures of Danny Pearl’s decapitation, and I suspect that no one cares to this day.

But we are told to celebrate the “gutsy decision” the President made to take down the world’s foremost terrorist leader and accomplished enemy of the United States.  I am still puzzled about what part of that decision was gutsy, save the consideration of his political ass had the mission failed.  Last I saw, the man was still holding the title of our Commander-in-Chief.  Under the circumstances, what was he supposed to do?

However, the bottom line on this issue in this political season is President Obama's declaration that he won't politicize the Bin Laden killing, while at the same time claiming that Romney changed his mind and is now telling people that he too would have authorized the assassination raid.
 
Meanwhile, let's all enjoy the display of socialist solidarity that the Occupiers have promised us across the country on this annual celebration of international collectivism.

[update]  The news is in about California’s April revenues – state socialists surprised (again).  Turns out that corporate and personal income revenues have come in with a substantial shortfall from Moonbeam’s predictions.  The ‘rich’, on whom the state depends and promises to punish even more, are disappearing in greater numbers than anticipated ($2B fewer dollars last month from them alone).  Those who stay are reconfiguring their accounts to avoid confiscatory taxation.  The numbers on corporations are not in yet, but they have done all they can to either vamoose or move their earnings across the state line.

This sideshow is a continuing illustration of the progressive stasist mindset – raising taxes doesn’t matter, nobody will change their behavior.  RR readers have been advised of and discussing the realworld for the past five years, so no one here should be surprised.  Review assignment – Joel Kotkin’s ‘The Great California Exodus’.  But all said and done, don’t you wonder who are these faithful dumbasses whom the Sacramento Democrats continue to target with their BS?

[updated, one mo' time]  The Occupiers across the land, no matter how misguided in their protests, appear to protesting peacefully, and for that they are to be commended.  They have every right to get out there and proclaim their message.  It would be heartening to see them get a clue and put some people in front of the Capitol and the White House.  In the meantime, I'm showing my solidarity with the working man (with or w/o external plumbing) by doing some serious shopping this afternoon at local establishments so that they can continue providing jobs to these nebishes.

TechTest welcomes TechTestJr

George Rebane

TechTest2012, the sixth edition of SESF’s annual merit scholarship exam, was held on 14 April 2012 in the Nevada Union High School’s science lecture hall.  As has become tradition, the exam’s solution key has been posted on the SESF website (here), and the upcoming annual ‘Survivor’s Breakfast’, with the obligatory ‘Where the Elite Compete’ T-shirts, honoring test takers and winners is scheduled for May.  The test is given to high school seniors who are headed for STEM (q.v.) careers as recommended by their science and math teachers.

But the big news this year is SESF’s launch of TechTestJr (aka ‘son of TechTest’).  TTjr was inaugurated at the request of some Nevada County middle school educators who observed that it was in the 8th grade that students make the decision to pursue a high school curriculum that qualifies them for undertaking STEM college majors.  It is rare for students, who avoid the difficult science and math classes in high school, to then change their minds and enter a make-up program to enable them to pursue STEM majors.  TTjr is designed to be another timely motivator during that critical decision juncture (more here).

TTjr2012 was given last week over a three day period in several Nevada County middle schools and the results are available here.  A press release from the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation on the test reads –

SESF organized and sponsored a successful inaugural TechTestJr2012 exam for Nevada County 8th graders.  Six Nevada County schools participated in the 1st annual TechTestJr fashioned after SESF's very successful Nevada County high school merit based scholarship exam called TechTest.   93 Nevada County students, primarily 8th graders, took the TechTestJr exam. 

The 1 hour exam covered a wide range of math and science related questions.  

The top score was earned by a student of Robert Sharp's at 7 Hills School who scored a whopping 97% on the exam.  4 of the top 5 scores were earned by 7 Hills students.  Magnolia Intermediate School also had a very strong showing with one of the 4 runner-ups coming from Magnolia.  The 4 runner-ups each scored 93% on the exam. 

The top scoring student from each of the 6 school's will be recognized for their achievement.  Grass Valley Charter School's (top score of 90%), Mt. St. Mary's Academy (top score of 87%), Clear Creek (top score of 83%) and Union Hill (top score of 76%) students also participated in the very difficult merit based exam. 

The exam was proctored the week of April 16th in Nevada County.  SESF expects to add additional Nevada County schools to next year's list of participants.  If your school is interested please email mcdanielwealthman@sbcglobal.net. 

The goal of the TechTest series is to encourage continued education (and future vocations) in the technical fields of math and science.

Scattershots – 17apr12

George Rebane

The Financial Times reports (here) that Spain’s central government is looking to federalize financially distressed regions of the country.  (Greece essentially succumbed to such central control early on so as to avoid the rush.)  RR has anticipated a similar fate for California and states like Illinois, New Jersey, … under equally astute financial management by their state governments.  It’s all part of the European model that Team Obama is forging for us.

On another and more earth-shaking note, artificial intelligence may be at the threshold of passing the Turing Test (q.v.).  The new direction taken in AI recently depends on being able to manage ‘big data’.  That is, being able to organize and draw cross connections and correlations similar to what humans are able to do, and to do this much better than IBM’s Watson (q.v.).  the 12apr12 issue of Wired reports (here) that “there is reason to believe that code kernels for the first Turing-intelligent machine have already been written.”

The anticipated breakout is due to “Two revolutionary advances in information technology (which) may bring the Turing test out of retirement,” wrote Robert French, a cognitive scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in a 12apr12 Science essay. “The first is the ready availability of vast amounts of raw data — from video feeds to complete sound environments, and from casual conversations to technical documents on every conceivable subject. The second is the advent of sophisticated techniques for collecting, organizing, and processing this rich collection of data.”  The pre-Singularity threshold for hiring human workers continues to inch upward.

Meanwhile the Senate Democrats failed in their attempt to pass the ‘Buffett Rule’ tax increase.  This much ballyhooed piece of snowball’s-chance-in-hell legislation is the centerpiece of Obama’s campaign initiative sold to the sheeple under the rubric of “fairness” in solving our debt and deficit  problems in coming years.  But without even going into the examination of ‘fairness’, the Buffet Rule tax will accomplish none of this, and serve only as the transom to massive tax increases on the middle class (some history here).  The Heritage Foundation covers more detail on this.

The facts of the Buffett Rule are simple. The President wants millionaires (and small businesses taxed as individuals) to pay a minimum tax of 30 percent. For all of his rhetoric that the measure would "stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade," the Buffett Rule would bring in only $47 billion in revenue in ten years. To put those numbers in context, President Obama's budget calls for adding $6.7 trillion to the national debt. So the Buffett Rule would cover just 0.007% of all of Obama's debt and .001% of Obama's spending.

We shudder to contemplate that there are millions of Democrats with sufficient deficits as to make such election year demogauging a profitable enterprise for their progressive elite.  No one doubts that they know their constiuents.

On the sorry road to Stockton (updated 16apr12)

George Rebane

[This is the submitted form of my April column that appeared in the online (with figure omitted) and printed versions of the 14apr12 Union.]

By now most of us have heard of Stockton, the next California city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy as a result of a fiscal history that “has eerie similarities to a Ponzi scheme” according to its city manager Bob Deis.  The story is common to thousands of cities and counties across the land, and the core of each is years of lavish wage and pension benefits promised and delivered to the public sector employees in all the afflicted jurisdictions.

So now Stockton has already “suspended some payments to bondholders and is negotiating with creditors and unions”.  But Stockton, unlike many municipalities still drinking their koolaid, is open about its shortcomings.  A recent (1apr12) WSJ article reports that “Stockton admitted that its biggest problem has been a lack of transparency resulting in a host of ‘hidden costs’ in labor agreements for ‘obligations that are often difficult for citizens to identify or understand.’ ”

On the national scale the problem has been most recently researched and reported in the Cato Institute’s ‘State and Local Pension Plans’ by Jagadeesh Gokhale.  There we find that the financial health of most plans nosedived during the 2001 to 2009 interval.  What kept the apparent ponzi schemes going was that plan managers were allowed by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) to discount calculation of future plan liabilities at literally any interest rates which barely allowed them to keep a straight face.

California’s ponzi is still being foisted on the basis of the giant California Public Employees Retirement System projecting payouts and liabilities on the basis of their portfolio earning a now reduced (yes, indeed) rate of 7.5% annually, and that while Governor Moonbeam is going to raise taxes again to rebuild the state’s economy.  You can’t make this stuff up.

The President’s gullible base re-acknowledged (#2 update 3apr12)

George Rebane

Memo to file:  The President again denigrated his base constituencies today when he lectured them on how SCOTUS must deal with Obamacare.  The former Harvard constitutional law professor solemnly informed his supporters that it would be unprecedented and the worst form of judicial activism for SCOTUS to overturn Obamcare’s individual mandate.  After all, this piece of legislation is one that had been passed by majorities in both houses of Congress, presuming that other such legislation becomes law without the support of Congressional majorities.  Therefore overturning a law with such a compelling provenance would be epochally improper.

And with little risk of embarrassment, all this was delivered to his stalwart, yet butt stupid, supporters in the most serious terms in the Rose Garden as the Canadian prime minister and Mexican president looked on.  More educated commentators were a little stunned when later asked to properly frame these remarks.  But everyone seemed to agree that the statement was indeed directed correctly to the politically receptive and established aggregate capacities of those that have always characterized his base, in spite of the remarks being totally devoid of factual content.