Rebane's Ruminations

Climate Change - The Real Deniers

George Rebane

The mantra of the PEAs (Post-Enquiry Adherents) is that “the debate is over” regarding climate change and their nostrums for its remediation.  That is the only tactic that the PEAs have left to push through their agenda.  The agenda calls for unifying the world to combat what they know is a man-made calamity that can be man-unmade if we would all just get along and go along.  This morning’s Investor’s Business Daily editorial is a comprehensive call for opening up the debate since the claimed scientific consensus is nothing more than sham propaganda.  For more on the recent hard evidence re global warming that concerns us skeptics, please visit NC Media Watch.

Two Twenty-Year Views

George Rebane

[These two pieces by Dick Dickenson and me were written  last summer and assembled on 5 August 2007.  Our friend Pat Tobin suggested that they might see light of day in The Union, however, these words were judged inappropriate for the paper's readership and now appear here as we prepare to greet election year 2008.]

Over the last several months my friend James R. Dickenson (author and retired national affairs journalist for The Washington Post) and I have been discussing the current polity of our country and where all the various domestic and international stirrings may be taking us as a nation and a people.  We are both students of history and avid observers of humanity’s fears and foibles with careers well placed to peer into the foggy future.  A couple of weeks ago I asked Dick to draft the most likely landscape of our world twenty years out.  Dick responded with a comprehensive piece (appended hereto), and in a return email asked me to likewise pen my view, which is the present piece.  So here we have two offerings - Dick’s view from the perspective of a respected and nationally known member of our fourth estate, and a self-declared New Deal Democrat; and mine as a WW2 era immigrant, career technocrat, and entrepreneurial capitalist. Our mutual friend Pat Tobin had the idea that, perhaps, this exchange should see a broader audience.  The interested reader may google both of us for more details on our backgrounds.

Our prognostications differ markedly, one can even say they are diametrical.  There are many aspects of my own vision which disturb me. Against these I continue to work, in-spired by the words of Bonaro Overstreet’s ‘Stubborn Ounces’.

You say the little efforts that I make
will do no good; they never will prevail
to tip the hovering scale
where justice hangs in balance.

I don’t think I ever thought they would.
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
in favor of my right to choose which side
shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.

As a systems scientist my musings often take a structured form which allows certain (de)formed brains to more easily understand and manipulate such arcane notions.  To me the future will be determined by and fashioned from the confluence of several major geo-political and technology related themes –

• The under-educated American worker confronting globalization and the onrush of human-transforming technology (aka The Singularity).
• Immigration and the worldwide movement toward mono-culturalism.
• China’s emergence as the pre-eminent economic then political power on earth.
• The demise of republican democracies on a global scale.

The pdf containing the complete 'Two Twenty Year Views' may be downloaded here Download Two Twenty Year Views_070805 .

Ruminations - 19dec2007

George Rebane

• NC downtown patrols cut back
• More disclosures
• Climate Change in Greenland
• Sub-prime lending - from mess to madness
• 18dec07 Union article on 'new road to economic revitalization'
• ‘A Return to Ritual’ in churches and temples
• Gracian #146

The Union reports that Nevada City’s downtown is again filling with hooligans and other low lifes now that we only have one cop on the downtown beat.  Our newspaper described these individuals in more genteel terms – “people” and “young people” – which makes them sound vanilla and unobtrusive.  We read that the merchants report “(p)eople smoking marijuana openly, spitting on the sidewalk, throwing garbage onto the street, feeding or even abusing their dogs, forcing other pedestrians to step into the roadway and acting with hostility toward those who ask them to shape up are problems getting little response from the authorities”.  The fact that these misfits were not labeled, left the readers to rummage around for the proper insensitive names which would referentially differentiate them from the polite company that usually inhabit our sidewalks.  It makes one hanker for the old days when the police chief would talk with the delinquents and explain the matter to them – using appropriate explicatory methods and field expedients understood by even the dullest - without having to be “very sensitive to citizen rights”, those rights which allow us to gather and assault other citizens without recourse.  The good people of those times had trustworthy and able constables who could be empowered to do the obviously right thing that has over the years become not so obvious today.  I guess it will get worse before it gets better – modern times.

Dear Reader, to enable you to properly evaluate these ruminations I must add two more disclosures.  Jo Ann and I recently contributed to the campaign of Ron Paul.  If the left-wing will sweep the field next year, then we would like to throw our stubborn ounces on the side of someone who walks the walk he talks.  Perhaps, as they say, if enough of us do it, it will send a message.  And also, poring through our charitable gifts, we find that we have and continue to contribute to the Center for Competitive Politics which supports the retention of our First Amendment rights under the Constitution.  Mercy.

On the global warming front Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That) reports that recent climate change research in Greenland shows that the island was as warm or warmer during the last millennium than it is now.  The results were presented by the University of Cincinnati at the recent American Geophysical Union’s session Greenland Climate Change Past and Present.  But I wouldn’t spend much effort looking for reports on these findings in the balanced mainstream media.  When encountering such information, we must always remember that “the debate is over.”

On the sub-prime lending front.  The government has again confirmed its uncontested opinion of us.  So many of us are now in the double-dummy category that we need to ratchet back on a few more freedoms for our own good.  Treasury Secretary Paulson is announcing his plan to “freeze the teaser” making it illegal for lenders to up the interest rate as stipulated in the ARM contract signed by the borrower.  This, of course, will hit hardest the private individuals – retireds, 401K contributors, long-term investors, etc – hardest who bought ‘conservative’ money market funds.  Congress, not to be outdone, has passed legislation to also put the additional burden of defaults on the lender.  If, after lying through your teeth on your loan application, you discover that you can’t repay the loan, you will now be able to walk away or even sue the lender.  The law will make the lender liable for not being able to correctly vet the borrower and identify the potential deadbeats.  That has always been the case, but in a more primitive age the borrower stayed on the hook for the loan; not any more.  If you can’t pay, it was by definition a “predatory loan” and you will have recourse.  That you are reading these words dear Reader makes it likely that you can immediately see how these new government bandaids will wind up helping us all, especially the poorest and most ignorant.

In the 18dec07 Union there was a long and laborious article by Reinette Senum on economic revitalization.  To achieve this she prescribes that “we must begin doing business with a different philosophy, set of rules, standards and goals.”  Different indeed.  The socialist palliatives and nostroms she rediscovers are well worn with the tread of her philosophical forebears whom history has trouble burying because history is no longer called to serve.  Ignoring these lessons, her implicit message is the echo of ‘let’s try it again, this time it will be different’.  On the other hand, she and her business partner Kelly Casterson also inaugurate a periodical column that promises to give practical advice on saving energy to home and business owners.  We look forward to that.

‘A Return to Ritual’ in the 24dec07 US News & World Report describes a phenomenon sweeping the Judeo-Christian religions calling for reinstatement of more traditional liturgies that have been abandoned in recent decades.  It seems that worshipping closer to the manner of our ancestors does contribute to the depth and continuity of an comforting belief system.  The replacement of church and temple altars with rock band stages may be starting to get some pushback.  Some of us are even old enough to remember that going to church meant putting on your ‘Sunday go meetin’ clothes’ instead of ragged levis, sweatshirts, and go-aheads just so you would look cool.  Visible and frequented symbols remain powerful reminders of our faith, which then begs the question - what does a grim array of microphones, wires, speakers, and an electronic drumset remind you to believe in?

Finally, for over forty years I’ve kept a copy of Gracian’s Manual (Fischer translation) handy on/near my desk.  Through its pages and over the centuries the good Father Baltasar counsels all of us who only need open his little tome from time to time.  In my case I am more often scraped and bruised when attempting to fit myself through his templates of good conduct and character.  Here we read from Gracian #146 –

Look beneath.  For ordinarily things are far other than they seem; and the dullness which does not seek to pass beyond the rind, is due to be increasingly disillusioned if it gets deeper into the interior.  The false is forever the lead in everything, continually dragging along the fools: the truth brings up the rear, is late, and limps along upon the arm of time, wherefore the man of insight will save for it at least the half of that faculty, which our great mother has wisely given us twice.  Deceit is superficial, wherefore the superficial are taken in at once.  The man of substance lives safely within himself, to be better treasured of his colleagues, and of those who know.  

 

Income Inequality and Education

George Rebane

[This is adapted from a 3jun07 posting to RR when it resided on The Union website.]

You earn more money the more education you have.  This astounding conclusion was recently reported in the May/June 2007 issue of The American by two leading lights in economics – Nobel laureate Gary Becker and Clark Prize winner Kevin Murphy.  It is most astounding to the many Americans and our government who behave as if high earners are somehow stealing money from the low earners and must therefore be punished.  This punishment comes in the form of being constantly lambasted in the populist media and having more of their earnings confiscated by the state.

When You Own The Words – ‘Illegal Immigration’

George Rebane

[This piece is adapted from a post that first appeared as an Other Voices article on The Union's website on 10 June 2007.  The issue discussed here is becoming more important as the presidential candidates seek to differentiate themselves regarding immigration while continuing to confuse and pander to the voters using terms that are designed to please the many while informing the few.]

Disagreement and discontent on the issue of ‘illegal immigration’ reigns in the land.  A cause of this confusion is that we use words that carry changed meanings and messages depending on our education and ideology.  The objective is to elicit the support on the subject with soundbites and obfuscation that hide the important factors about the issue we don’t want the other side to dwell on.  In order to clearly think about and discuss the matter, we need to attach unambiguous labels to a number of distinct cases that involve people from one country going to and abiding in another country.

What is the broad, non-pejorative umbrella term used to describe a foreigner in our country who is not a citizen?  The historically accurate term still in the dictionary is alien.  Aliens come in the many flavors which we discuss below – tourist, transiting-visitor, immigrant, legal resident, migrant worker, and so on.

Ruminations – 15dec2007

George Rebane

• Promoting Nevada County Jobs
• Role of Religion in Campaigns

Jeff Pelline wrote a good editorial in today’s Union that covered a lot of the waterfront in promoting job growth in the county.  Here are some added thoughts.  RR readers know my school of economics teaches that technologists have been the prime wealth creators for many decades and from here on out will have even more of that burden put on their shoulders.  But all wealth is not created equally even in technology.  For example, ‘green companies’ that depend on the government’s distortion of the markets (read subsidies) to survive will be a weak and marginally sustainable area of growth.  Such green technology firms in Nevada County are basically betting that the folks in Ohio and elsewhere will want to pay for people to work and live in Nevada County.  And this only lasts for a while until the plug is pulled.  As an entrepreneur, I would be leery of sticking my government subsidized company up here instead of in a more accessible (metropolitan area) closer to bigger labor, transportation, and other markets.  And teaching local people job skills is absolutely wonderful as long as they then have the ability to work in the county.  For example, teaching welding and other machine shop skills makes a lot of sense if we allow the establishment of new business that do welding and generate all the other collateral effects like traffic, pollution, noise, … ; otherwise we train people locally to then move, or worse, commute elsewhere to work.

Peggy Noonan (‘The Pulpit and the Potemkin Village’) in today’s WSJ laments that religion again plays a big part in the upcoming presidential campaign.  In this she and other columnists concentrate on the (pejorative) discriminatory aspects of supporting a candidate based on religion. What these commentators seem to miss is the most fundamental role that a declared religion plays in favor of a candidate.  And that is that a credible religious label efficiently encodes (that’s tech talk) a whole list of values and behaviors of the candidate without having to take time/money to repeatedly spell them out for every new audience. In short, if the, say, man believably asserts he’s a practicing Baptist, then a large fraction of the people immediately attribute a whole bunch of good attributes to him that they would like to see in a principled politician and/or office holder.  Of course, the candidate has to trade off the effect on certain people who may not think that having a bible thumper in office is such a hot idea.  In any event, claimed religions, club affiliations, military experience, etc serve to efficiently summarize a lot information about the character of the candidate and make us feel we can successfully predict how he really would act in office.  Until there is drafted and publicized a widely accepted and vanilla ‘Universal Code of Political Ethics’ that is free of ties to known belief systems and affiliations, we should understand that hearing a politician play the religion, ethnic, or race card is also a fast way of saying ‘I am this and not that’ relying on the appropriate stereotypes embedded in our culture.  (BTW, accurate stereotyping is not the politically incorrect thing that certain folks would like to have us think; but we’ll cover that another time.)  For us voters such self-ascribed labels are good information and should be looked at in their entirety, and not simply serve as a slogan-based stimulus to either summarily accept or reject the candidate.

Today's Markets - A Perspective

George Rebane

I received the following email from a friend and member of our little investment group.  He is the most astute and insightful investor I personally know and his remarks are forwarded, with permission, for the consideration of those readers interested in what's going on in the today's security markets.

Today is a fine example of inefficient markets.  Short term investors are concerned with the bounce in consumerism and the increase in inflation concerns (less likelyhood of further rate decreases)  Hence, commodity prices are down.

Long term (which really counts)

   1.  Who really believes that the worst of the credit crunches are over?  The only way the govt can TRY to avert a housing disaster and a severe stock market decline is to continue (mid-term) with interest rate reductions.  This reads as increases in the money pumped out by Washington.

   2.  The bail-outs for failing mortgages and falling real estate prices will ultimately resemble the corrupt effort the last time this happened.  A government market of last resort supporting and auctioning real estate.  This will add funds to the fire.

   3.  The countries across the seas will not stand by and accept a weakening dollar and damages to their export positions.  They will also pump out more and more currency.

   4.  Investors in all countries will ultimately lose faith in currencies and turn more and more to assets that can retain purchasing power.  This will ultimately support gold, silver, timber, energy and (yes) the stock markets.

   5.  Lots of volatility ahead and many opportunities to fall for the short term head fakes.

I AM NOT A JOURNALIST

George Rebane

This year I took the advice of several friends and started blogging, first through our local paper’s website and then striking out on my own.  In recent years bloggers have become prominent on the international landscape as a source of every kind of information that can be transmitted over the World Wide Web, and in doing so they have become a kind of complementary burden to the established press – our vaunted Fourth Estate.  I don’t believe that any blogger really wanted to get into the news business.  But responding to their readers, some of them wound up becoming another news source.

Contrary to the loud protestations from the established media, the continuing decline of the journalistic profession really helped put bloggers on the map.  As an example of such decline, one need only go to the Society of Professional Journalists and compare their code of ethics against what is daily printed and broadcast.  Within this experience, it was a slam dunk for bloggers to become a growing and threatening alternative for every kind of content that was formerly the reserve of the professional press.

My personal theory of why mainstream journalism has suffered a decline hangs on two factors – the quality of the talent and the number of outlets.  In the liberal arts, especially the humanities, most people educated in the post-Great Society era (1965 onwards) have been dealt a meager hand in the game of life.  The increase in the number of outlets (primarily TV and Internet) has nevertheless provided employment for more marginal talking heads or journalists, if you will.  Today’s average reporter appears to be woefully ill-informed about history, current events relating to his assignment, and, of course, English grammar.  How many times have you heard today’s educated say ‘That surprised her and I.’, ‘There is a lot more features.’, or something similar.  But then all that doesn’t matter much because today’s audience is also less demanding.  And so it goes in the information age.

Reducing all this down to our little “burg” - as a recent commenter so aptly cited our mountain county hideaway - a few Nevada County bloggers and I have been encouraged by the local editor to rise beyond ourselves.  Specifically, he understands us all to be aspiring journalists seeking to duplicate the long-sought professionalism of our newspaper, The Union, and assessing us to fall woefully short in the effort.  Tirelessly this exemplar, nay, self-declared paragon of “thick-skinned” journalism patrols our blogs and does his best to point out our errors and short-comings.  These range from the egregious to the unforgivable – lexicographic behavior literally beyond the journalistic pale especially to the extent that it shades The Union - and all this in the name of holding us “accountable”.  Evidence of his industry in pursuing this grail is sprinkled throughout our blogs.  And though I hesitate to burden the reader with the task of seeing for himself; such undertaking would serve, if only anecdotally, to validate some of the points made above, especially relating to the ‘meager hand’. 

So dear Reader, I am here to provide relief to those disappointed in what they perceive as my attempts at journalism and hereby declare unconditionally – I am not a journalist.

Losing Their Homes

George Rebane

Patrick Tobin of Nevada County, CA sent me the following email on the effects of the current subprime 'crisis'.  Pat and his wife are long-time friends of ours from college days.  Pat is an ex-Marine officer, served on the city council of Inglewood, a career real estate professional, fellow escapee from the soCal mess, now a collector/restorer of antique cars, and for years (with wife Ardy) the editor/publisher of an impressive (inter?)national newsletter for Ford Model A aficianados from which he recently retired.  His email is reprinted here with permission.

"Mind you, I wouldn't want to lose my home, or more accurately, lose my house.  I haven't had the experience, but I imagine that it is humiliating, discouraging, possibly depressing , and without meaning to trivialize it, bothersome to have to relocate. The newspapers and TV run stories of sad looking people packing up whose mortgage payments have jumped so much that they can't pay.  Foreclosure and out. Ruination. Woe is me!

No More Cheap Food for Thought

George Rebane

[This is a recent exchange with ‘Dick’ Dickenson about the much-hyped, soon to be disastrous ethanol subsidy program that joins the other farm and corporate subsidy programs from the feds.]

[Rebane] By any reasonable (i.e. non-political) measure, America’s ethanol subsidy program is ill-begotten for all concerned except the already heavily subsidized farmers and refinery speculators.  To look at the problem on a wider scale, take a look at this week’s piece on food in the Economist.  Thoughts?

[Dickenson] I agree.  The ethanol issue is just the latest development in the scandalous, near criminal, farm price subsidy program, which I mean globally, not just in the U.S.  U.S. farm price supports had the original and completely justifiable goal in the Depression/Dust Bowl '30s of helping bankrupt farmers survive until the rains returned and helping ensure the nation's food supply--the national reserves of grains and meats then were well below the six month supply that is still the standard.

Mrs&Mr Bill or Mrs&Mr Hillary or ...

George Rebane

Here we have a measured response from 'Dick' Dickenson to an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal titled 'Two Presidents in the White House' by Sally Bedell Smith.  The small but growing band of regular RR readers will recognize Dick (please google 'James R. Dickenson') as the self-declared New Deal Democrat, and now journalist emeritus and author.  With his permission, his thoughts on various issues will appear here from time to time. In her piece Bedell Smith writes -

We now face the extraordinary possibility of having two presidents in the White House who are married to each other. That prospect is something that never occurred to our nation's founders, and is only now beginning to catch the attention of the public, with Hillary Clinton's position as front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Imagine being asked to serve as her running mate, knowing that her husband would be far more influential than any vice president. What would a potential secretary of state face now that Sen. Clinton has already said she would use her husband as ambassador to the world? As a former president, would Mr. Clinton read the daily intelligence briefing? His unofficial portfolio would potentially overlap with everyone in authority, without his being subject to Senate confirmation.

In our email discussion of this novel situation Dick responds -

"As a political reporter my response is that having Bill as a political adviser would, like most things, be a two-edged sword.  He could be valuable some times and he could be a liability at others.  Not least of the liability factor is the uneasiness/suspicion that his presence would cause.  I assume that as intelligent, well-meaning people they would try to make it work but human fallibility being what it is no one can predict.  Similar concerns were voiced when JFK named Bobby as his attorney general but the historical judgment on that has been favorable.  It is widely noted that during the Cuban missile Bobby was a wise counselor whom Jack could consult in guaranteed privacy and it was Bobby who advised responding to the conciliatory letter Khrushchev sent rather than the bellicose one, which the Joint Chiefs among others favored.  The result was the narrow miss on nuclear holocaust.

I pretty much discount the WSJ piece.  Of all the Clinton haters in this country the WSJ editorial page was certainly one of the most, if not the most, vitriolic and unreasoning that I know of; I privately considered them a bunch of "journalistic mad dogs" when it came to Bill Clinton as president.  God know there was ample cause for criticism, alarm, contempt, etc., but the Journal went beyond the Pale.  I don't think I've ever witnessed anything like it in the mainstream press in my lifetime.  I'm not alone--friends and colleagues from my Dow Jones days (the National Observer) plus friends and colleagues who have retired from the Journal and stayed here in Washington and own valuable blocks of stock agree.  Several canceled their subscriptions (half price for them) as a result.  I'm not surprised by other reports I hear that the Journal editor page editors are almost frantic in their dismay at the possibility of having Bill Clinton in their lives again.  My advice to them is: Get a life."

“Soft Skills” for Engineers – A Shot in the Other Foot

George Rebane

Folks, if I didn’t know better, I would say it was another dirty communist plot.  We have already done our best to sink the primary and secondary school systems in the country, and now we’re in the process of cooking the last goose to lay our golden eggs.  The Associated Press reports that the national accreditation body for engineering schools is now requiring that these schools produce a more well-rounded student who also has such things as “people skills”.

Apparently the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology has been co-opted by some soft heads who now require our engineering schools to start teaching “soft skills” to our engineering and science undergraduates.  And according to the Associated Press, they are not alone.  Joining them are the air head administrators and academics in such prestigious places as MIT and UC Berkeley.  I guess by now you have the feeling that I’m more than a little peeved.

Ruminations - 9dec2007

George Rebane

The initiative to revamp California’s electoral college make-up continues unabated.  The topic also came up with recent correspondents during which we mulled around both sides of the arguments which so far consist mostly of charges and counter charges.  It seems to me that the press could be a bit more helpful.  For example, in today’s Sac Bee Armando Acuña would have been more clear had he explained that each side has its own particular ‘utility’ that is trotted out to back its position on the initiative.  The left’s is that ‘It is California’s influence that is most important, and its strength/weight in the electoral process is maximized when all of its votes are cast as a block.’  The right’s is that ‘Nearly half the people in California are disenfranchised in today’s block voting schema, and it’s the people who count more than an amorphous political unit called California.’  The validity of each side can be seen with one’s shift in perspective.  In principled negotiations, the next step would be to discover a meta-utility that permits the evaluation of these two arguments.  Is that too complex for newspaper readers to understand?

Some local post-enquiry adherents (PEAs) on climate change have taken me to task on my views on the matter.  (Russ Steele of NC Media Watch regularly suffers similar charges.)  They appear not understand the complexity of the issue and therefore combine skeptics such as me with their pejorative grouping of “Deniers”.  This was recently again visible in my posting of ‘Climate Change Revisited’.  Here I just wanted to highlight two examples of the points I made therein.  First, climatologist Fred Singer’s recent peer-reviewed article (press release here) debunking the CO2 claims made by PEAs is a worthy counter-example of the many world class scientists who also consider themselves skeptics.  And second, since establishing scientific truth is not a democratic process, the current excitement about the new ‘E8 Theory of Everything’ in physics proposed by a definitely non-mainstream scientist eerily reminds one of the unknown patent clerk in Basel shunned by the physics establishment a century ago.  Let me be clear that these remarks in no way are intended to suffice the excellent questions posed by James Currier in his comment to ‘Climate Change Revisited’, the answers to which require a bit more preparation. 

Older Fighters Corps

George Rebane

Bill Krissoff, a Nevada County orthopedic surgeon, recently lost his son Marine 1st Lt Nathan Krissoff in Iraq.  Yesterday the Union and today NPR told how Bill Krissoff has decided to become a living memorial to his late son – Bill Krissoff has been permitted to re-up and is going to Iraq to provide his skillful expertise and work in a modern MASH unit.

Krissoff’s example brings to mind some thoughts I had a few years ago on the larger matter of using older ex-service personnel in service areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.  Using older fighters for many in-country duties would spare the requirement for and the loss of younger lives with families and hopeful futures.  I wrote then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld a letter outlining such a program, and hoped to be contacted as the first such volunteer in what I termed (working name only) the Old Fighters Corps.  Well, I didn’t even get the courtesy of a ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

But now that Bill Krissoff has gotten the ball rolling, maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of forming an OFC.  To read my letter to Rumsfeld, click here Download RumsfeldOFCltr.pdf.  And if you think the idea worthy, let me hear from you and/or pass it on; who knows … ?

[gjr_11dec07] In the original post I had mispelled Krissoff as Kristoff.  This egregious error was pointed out by Jeff Pelline, The Union's editor, who does a yeoman's duty patrolling these blogs in his best attempt to keep us all on the straight and narrow.  A hearfelt thanks.

The Singularity – A Short Overview

George Rebane

The Singularity is the name given to the most epochal event anticipated in the history of the human species Homo Sapiens Sapiens (usually shortened to H. Sapiens).  The tagline for my blog is motivated by its advent which will give rise to many of my future scribblings. Today ‘The Singularity’ is the label adopted by most people who are aware of the possible types of discontinuity that the near-term confluence of genetic engineering, nano-technology, and machine intelligence will hold for all life on earth.  The name was chosen from physics and mathematics because it represents an approaching short interval in time – a future event, if you will – after which what happens is totally unknown or, technically, is undefined.  The figure (click to enlarge) below may help us to understand what will happen.

The Religions of Candidates

George Rebane 

We now see Mitt Romney having to explain the relationship of his faith to its non-influence on his public policy decisions.  And, of course, Hillary is already wearing the Christian cross at opportune engagements.  But when pressed, both will swear on a stack of Bibles that their Bible will have no effect on how they deport themselves in public life.  So what does it mean to have a faith that can be left at the doorstep of the statehouse?  Some quotes from Romney’s speech and comments.

“A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.”  If a person’s faith contains the core tenets that inform his interpretation of the world around, and guide his subsequent behavior, then what alternative tenets are we to extract from the candidate and trust that he will be faithful to them instead of his core beliefs?

“If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.”  The common cause of the people is simply the intersection (the overlapping part) of the sets of their individual causes.  This intersection or common cause, taken across the land, will be very small indeed, reducing itself down to defense of the nation from outside aggression, settling disputes between the states, regulating basic transportation infrastructure, … . It most certainly does not include today’s intrusive participation of the state in our lives and along with its arbitrary programs of wealth redistribution.  Is this Romney’s intent as president? 

“I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs.”  Double hah!!  See above comment on faith.

“Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office, is this: does he share these American values: the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another and a steadfast commitment to liberty?”  Not sure what any of these fine sounding values are anymore.  Bastiat said it better in stating that security, liberty, and property are the three fundamental co-dependent rights that establish and maintain a free people.

“We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny, and the boundless suffering these states and groups could inflict if given the chance.”  Amen!

Stem Cell Story

George Rebane (A blessed and proud father)

Earlier this week, after some long and determined preparation, a wonderful thing happened.  Our 43-year-old daughter Sini wrote an account of it for family, friends, and her church which begins –

“Yesterday I helped save someone’s life. I don’t know her name or where she lives or what kind of a person she is. I only know that she is a 67-year-old woman with myelodysplastic syndrome and she is very sick. So sick, in fact, that she needs to undergo a peripheral blood stem cell transplant. It turns out that I am a perfect tissue-type match for this woman and after an extensive physical exam I was approved as her anonymous stem cell donor. You may wonder how it is that God could use me in this powerful way. Let me tell you the story.”

The PDF of this wonderful story can be downloaded here - Download stem_cell_story.pdf .

Ruminations – 5dec2007

George Rebane

• Lutz Center under new management. Jo Ann and I have been supporters of this facility for dependent adults and intend to continue our support after it gets reorganized. Today’s Union announces a meeting this Friday at 6pm in the GV Veterans Hall of CODA (Community Organization for Dependent Adults) to discuss the reorganization and rebirth of the Lutz Center. Our friend Charlene Hogan is quoted in The Union describing the meeting “of concerned adults to discuss alternatives and future plans for a new facility for developmentally disabled adults in our community.” The Lutz Center used to care for adults who were also wheelchair bound from accidents and with all sorts of mental handicaps including Alzheimer’s. Developmentally disabled adults used to refer to adults who were disabled before their development into adults was complete. But in today’s newspeak words sometimes become harder to understand because they continue to get burdened with additional and varied meanings, often until they become meaningless. I was told by Chris Holland, another friend and member of CODA, that the reorganized center will continue to give respite relief to caregivers of adults with the same disabilities as before, not only the developmentally disabled. Please learn more about this fine community service and support it, for some day this bell may also toll for thee.

• Nevada City symposium on climate change today at the Miners Foundry. Preceded by minimal publicity, I was amused by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s statement that “We really want to spark dialogue”. With whom might that be if broader attendance is dissuaded by an accompanying “full registration” announcement. We hope that this is not just another nodding contest for true believers who then get ‘What You Can Do to Stop Climate Change’ instructions shoved in their shorts before they hit the streets and the council chambers.

• One of the major problems with the many hues of collectivism (e.g. co-ops, co-housing, …, co-XX) is that in their implementation the feedback links to bad behavior are mangled or cut. The immediate result is to re-create a classed society in the new collective the abolishment of which was its motivating purpose. The two major classes that emerge are the leaders and the followers (other subclasses will follow). The leaders, deriving all the benefits of being first on the food chain, naturally act as gatekeepers to membership in that fortunate class. One effective method of gatekeeping is to deny information about the collective to the followers – collectivist nation-states make such information a state secret. Such information becomes privileged and managed. BriarPatch, our natural foods co-op, seems to be going through such throes now. One of our correspondents points out that the announced delay in its audit, until after the dust settles from its recent move, may serve only to use the same dust cloud to hide some necessary changes to its books. I suppose appearances do count.

• This from the 5dec07 issue of the Washington Post. “U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test The 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that 15-year-olds in the United States are significantly less educated in science and math than their peers in many other industrialized countries. The average science score for U.S. students was lower than those in 16 of the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and in math U.S. students trailed behind 23 countries. The PISA test, which is given every three years, measures the ability of 15-year-olds to apply math and science to real-world situations. About 400,000 students worldwide took the test, including 5,600 in the United States. The PISA test results support concerns that too few U.S. students are prepared to become engineers, scientists, and physicians, and that the United States might lose ground to its competitors. On the science portion, U.S. students, mostly 10th graders, had an average score of 289 points out of a possible 1,000 points, 11 points below the average of the 30 countries. Canada, Japan, and Korea are among the countries that scored better than the United States. In math, only four countries had average scores lower than the United States, with 23 countries scoring higher, and two countries having approximately equal scores. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says the PISA results are disappointing, but notes that the National Math Advisory Panel and other initiatives are working to improve math and science education.” And this is the same generation that will demand that their quality of life remain among the highest in the world – their birthright.

It’s ALL in the Algorithm

George Rebane

Several years ago as the VP of Advanced Projects (the company’s Skunk Works) I had the privilege to assemble and work with a very talented group of PhD level engineers in the then exploding field of ecommerce.  My little team was commissioned to explore and discover new ways to monetize the online business of merchant ratings and price comparison shopping.  Our success turned out to be wholly dependent on the discovery of new information functions and their implementation in the form of efficient algorithms.  In the end the company and we all benefitted from this work.  However, at the start there was considerable debate as to why we should devote such high-powered and expensive talent to developing things called algorithms.

Part of our explanation to non-technical management included a sign over the door to our section of offices (I made sure my guys did not work in cubicles) that announced ‘Algo Atelier’, and underneath it was posted a sheet of paper titled It’s ALL in the Algorithm which began-

“Civilization started when our ancestors put together enough algorithms to pass on to the next generation, formalizing what was learned and successfully practiced in the last.  Such formalization of someone’s knowledge into a communicable algorithm allowed us to leap ahead of the glacial evolutionary learning processes that anchor the development of the lower species.  And those of us who algorized better, leaped further and faster.”

To read the rest of this little missal, suitable for framing, you may download the entire page here Download Algo0712.pdf.

Climate Change Revisited

George Rebane

Scientific truth is not the product of a democratic process.  All noteworthy scientific discoveries and engineering developments were made by loners swimming against the tide of well-known and accepted knowledge.  The more important and greater the discovery, the more it was at odds with the then current establishment.  But as we have seen repeatedly, it only takes one person’s correct argument to overturn the considered wisdom of the preceding age.

Southern California Fires – Part II: Our House is Still There!

George Rebane

(continued from Part I: Our House Burns, concluded in Part III: Lessons Learned)

The morning after in Simi Valley found us at our friends Chuck and Lois’ house eating breakfast and talking about what we would find when we returned to Saddle Peak Road and how we would rebuild.  The Malibu fire was still raging and would do so for two more days.  The TV was on and several stations were carrying ongoing coverage of the devastation.  Then we saw that one station was broadcasting live shots of the burning mountains from a helicopter and doing actual close-ups of charred remains of burned houses most of which were still smoldering.  The ruins seemed oddly alone, the sweeping close-ups showed no humans and the reporter explained that no attempt was made to save these houses because of the sheer intensity of the firestorms in which they were engulfed during the night.  Jo Ann and I were sitting on the floor with eyes glued to the tube waiting for a familiar shape or scene to appear from the panning camera.  Again, the reporter had no idea what area he was covering; to him it was just “in the mountains above Malibu”.  To us it was maddening. 

Suddenly we saw a familiar bend in a paved road and the camera stabilized for a moment on two charred foundations the outlines of which we instantly recognized – they were the remnants of the ‘A-Frame’ and the ‘Ugly Dome’ diagonally across from our house.  (In the sparsely populated mountains every family gave their own names to the houses in their neighborhood.)  I remember going into a kind of numb state where the voices in the room sounded as if from a distance; we were ready to see the camera sweep across the road and show the remains of our house.  Instead the view went directly across the road to the huge, almost finished ‘Bailey house’, our next door neighbor to the west.  The Bailey house was gone, the rubble piles didn’t even reach more than a couple of feet above the foundation.  The concrete walls on one side of the ground level garages had crumbled from the intense heat, the reporter was babbling something in the background about the “complete devastation” he was seeing.  We were holding our breath not knowing how we would react as our property came into view.