Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 31may08

• Sue Horne for State Assembly
• Al Gore challenged by Vaclav Klaus
• Will we Napa Grass Valley?
• Sad exit for longtime Nevada City merchant
• I soloed yesterday

Sue Horne for State Assembly – Jo Ann and I are financial supporters of Sue’s campaign and have already cast our absentee ballots for her.  We did so because we have found her to have the right stuff for representing and promoting our mores, values, and a future beneficial to all citizens of California.  She is honest, smart, experienced, energetic, and has the courage to pursue her ideals.  Sue promises to be resilient to the predations of character that sooner or later taint most people who choose the political profession – the professors of which must always remind us that they are “The Honorable …” when we all know that in the large they are not.  Over the years Sue Horne has shown us that she is made of sterner stuff, and we expect nothing more from her than that she remain true to herself.

Vaclav Klaus, a trained economist who also happens to be president of Czechoslovakia, has challenged Al Gore to a public debate on the current Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hysteria sweeping the world.  During his Washington DC visit this week he was quoted (30may08 WSJ) to have said the following –

The basic questions of the current climate change debate are sufficiently known and well structured:
1) Do we live in an era of a statistically significant, nonaccidental and noncyclical climate change?
2) If so, is it dominantly man-made?
3) If so, should such a moderate temperature increase bother us more than many other pressing problems we face and should it receive our extraordinary attention?
4) If we want to change the climate, can it be done? Are current attempts to do so the best allocation of our scarce resources?

My answer to all these questions is NO, but with a difference in emphasis. I don't aspire to measure the global temperature, nor to estimate the importance of factors which make it. This is not the area of my comparative advantages. But to argue, as it's done by many contemporary environmentalists, that these questions have already been answered with a consensual "yes" and that there is an unchallenged scientific consensus about this is unjustified. It is also morally and intellectually deceptive.

This makes Dr. Klaus the first world leader to understand the complex and structured nature of the AGW issue who has begun asking the ‘nested’ questions all of which must be answered in the affirmative if we are to respond reasonably to climate change.  I have written a more complete piece on the entire sequence of these questions which can be downloaded from here.  Needless to say, Al Gore has ignored in silence this challenge to publicly examine the basis for the hysteria of which he is the international bandleader.

Voter Managed Growth in San Francisco

George Rebane

Grass Valley and Nevada County in the small may look to San Francisco in the large when it comes to managed growth mediated by the voter vicissitudes.  The 27may08 WSJ report on Lennar’s Hunters Point project outlines the travails of both the developer and a supportive city government to build a milestone addition to house the burgeoning population.  Michael Corkery’s ‘Lennar Plans Are Tough Sell in San Francisco’ details what happens when a project must also pass through a voting booth before breaking ground.

Ruminations – 27may08

George Rebane

* Second annual TechTest Survivor's Breakfast
* Killing frost tonight on the Great Plains
* Gas prices, nationalizing oil industry, and 'cap and trade' in Congress
* Michelle Obama is a terminal racist

Last Friday Jo Ann and I had the pleasure of attending the second annual Survivor’s Breakfast for TechTest2008 sponsored by the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation.  All of the attending students had scored ‘in the money’ on the grueling test given on 5 April.  These young men and women are definitely in the superior 1% of achievers that Bauerlein reports in his otherwise depressing The Dumbest Generation (not recommended reading for today’s hopeful parents).  During our brief ceremony I, as the foundation’s Director of Research, was again allowed to pontificate a little about the role and importance of technical careers to America.  A more complete report on the occasion is on the SESF website here, and you can download a copy of the test here.

Tonight there will be a killing frost on the northern Great Plains.  Before the latest global warming craze, scientists in the 1970s knew (and those in secure career positions still know) that Earth is overdue for another ice age.  The harbinger of this climate change has been widely acknowledged to be a June killing frost on the American Great Plains that wipes out the summer cereal crops.  Bloggers Russ Steele and Anthony Watts have been reporting the cooling trend that has been recorded and acknowledged by organizations like NASA and NOAA.  Reasoned reporting seldom penetrates the media frenzy generated by highly politicized organizations like the UN’s IPCC and promoted by Team Gore.  For the science perspective about climate change stay tuned to the non-professional weblogs like NC Media Watch.  For the hysteria component, pick up any newspaper or watch TV news – especially now as the Warner-Lieberman carbon ‘cap and trade’ bill starts its round of congressional hearings.  As for the real trend in global temperatures, Al Gore call your office.

Singularity Signposts – 25may08 (updated)

George Rebane

Have you heard of cognition-enhancing drugs?  Well, if you drink coffee, then you’ve been taking one probably for years.  But now we’re getting into some serious new drugs coming to you from big pharma that promise to keep you alert, focused, and improve your concentration and memory by leaps and bounds.

The technology notices I get from various professional societies, future studies groups, etc. have been for some time talking about the use of drugs to shift our brains into the next higher gear.  Now this news is becoming a torrent and the drug industry has a number of concoctions in the labs that they will soon (next 5 to 10 years) be offering to us.  No less than the 24may08 issue of The Economist has a major article (‘All on the mind’) detailing the need and the trend toward these mind pumpers.

To understand what’s happening, you have to separate these drugs from the stuff the cartels are importing from Mexico, and what the do-it-yourselfers are cooking up in suburban bathrooms.  The cognition-enhancers are good for you and your mentally intensive careers.  Some scientists and academicians are already into so-called “off label” use of drugs like Ritalin and Provigil that were developed to treat mental maladies like ADD and Alzheimers.  It turns out that these drugs mess with your neural wiring in ways that also benefits healthy people.  Such extra-curricular uses are now reported in the pre-eminent science rags like Nature.

Ruminations – 22may08

George Rebane

The services and plans of Hospitality House were described to the Nevada City Rotary Club last Thursday by Janice O'Brian, one of its leaders and founders.  The HH co-ordinates the efforts of Nevada County churches to provide food and shelter to any of the approximately 280 of the county’s homeless who are willing to follow some simple rules of civilization.  Every Thursday evening my church, Sierra Presbyterian, provides the evening meal and a place to sleep for people sent over by HH.  Twenty-five other local churches also pitch in.  This service is provided during the cold months of October through April.  We were told that HH is seeking to expand with some building projects and extend the service to year-round so that the homeless will not have to sleep in bug-infested forests and parks during the warm months. 

I asked how many of these unfortunate folks were home grown and how many came from outside the county.  Ms Maple stated that all of them were indigenous to the county, which answer amazed many of us.  If we note their increased numbers in public venues like the libraries and parks, and listen to the local police chiefs, we may look askance at that answer.  Santa Monica effectively destroyed its homeless care project by going overboard on the amenities it offered.  Word got out and everyone came to enjoy what the city chose to offer. Finally the city’s residents and visitors took exception to the stench of urine issuing from the city’s alleys and parking structures, and the program was curtailed.  We have yet to understand the dynamics of this problem, and probably should have a public discussion before our hearts overwhelm our heads.  Read Dixie Fix for another slant on the bigger problem.

Today CABPRO sponsored a wonderful presentation of agriculture in Nevada County.  The speaker was none other than farmer John Powers of the Nevada County Farm Bureau.  (I always find John informative and a pleasure to be in his audience.)  The main (legal) agricultural product of the county is still timber, however, the local area is also home to about 600 small scale farms that provide their owners with a part-time income and supply the county’s residents and restaurants with locally grown produce and, soon, some organically grown meat products.  They grow it locally, and we eat it – it’s as simple as that.  None of these small farmers receive the subsidies doled out by the perennial travesty called the national farm bill that is now again going through our honorable Congress.

Martin Light, CABPRO’s new Executive Director, and staff are launching a number of new initiatives and events to keep CABPRO members better informed.  Take a look at the CABPRO Report which covers county issues having to do with businesses and property rights from a more conservative perspective.  My hope is that Martin and the CABPRO Board will soon see the time when these informational events will also be open to the general public.  This will expose wider audiences to the more traditional and proven formats of civil discourse and examination of issues.  The right has never been too good at outreach during calm times; everyone is too busy minding their own business while the left is minding everyone else’s business.

(23may08 - the Hospitality House rumination is corrected per Dixie's comment.  Thanks Dixie.)

“Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain”

George Rebane

Today’s New York Times article (‘Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain’ by Sara Reistad-Long) on brains of a certain age is glad tidings for all of us of the Happy Days generation long dissed by the younger set.  The bottom line of recently published research says that the reason we older folks have a hard time remembering something is that we have a lot more up there to rummage through before we can find what we're looking for.

These studies are reported in the recent edition of “Progress in Brain Research” where its authors say that

“(w)hen older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.  Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. (F)or most aging adults much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.”

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

Ruminations - 19may08

George Rebane

*** According to the Associated Press, Warren Buffett said the presidency was not unlike running a business.  The Oracle of Omaha stated that, "They say in the stock market, 'Buy into a business that's doing so well an idiot could run it, because sooner or later, one will,' … The U.S. is sort of like that. I think the country will do fine whether it's the Democratic or Republican candidate, but I strongly prefer the Democrats."  It’s wonderful to hear the Oracle pronounce the country in such a robust state of stability, and especially his willingness to demonstrate that to us all by pledging his support to either Hillary or Barack for the presidency.  Hmmm.

*** And yes, for the record, let it be known that the re-dedication of the Grass Valley Veterans Hall drew a crowd of at least 120 if not more (there were additional people downstairs), instead of the paltry 50 reported by our county’s major news organ.  Jo Ann and I were very pleased with the turnout on that hot afternoon.  All agreed that the renovations were first class and the delivered kudos well earned by the participating working groups.  The entertaining dancers and band performed numbers that took us all back to the days of the original building dedication. The various veterans’ auxiliaries did a wonderful job serving up some tasty fat pills downstairs so that later on we could all skip dinner.  Well done!

Obama in Portland Rising

George Rebane

The image of an estimated 75,000 people is scary to those who can think and ponder the survival of our Republic.  It reminds students of history of the compelling pictures of speeches made in Russia and Germany before their absolute leaders were enthroned.  In such throngs it is hard to evaluate and assess the words of the speaker, and one leaves the worship service within an abiding emotional frame that rarely captures the true character of the event. 

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speaks to people at Waterfront Park in Portland, Ore., May 18, 2008. (Associated Press)

Here we see a man who was exposed to the thought of James H. Cone for over twenty years during which he kept going back for more.  And today, having advanced to within a step of the Oval Office, he has been informed by no other obvious accomplishments save the certified ravings of his pastor and the inflamed ideas of his pastor’s philosophical mentor.  Who would have thought that a good baritone voice saying nothing but “hope” and “change” could hide so much and fool so many.   

Investing while Inflating

George Rebane

Attempting to hang on to your money today is very hard, and it’s about to get harder.  Your greenback dollar is being destroyed at a prodigious rate, and destroyed it must be since at its present value there is no way that our government can meet its commitments to all those whose votes were bought with our bought-and-paid-for assets (yes, I said assets), and our children’s future earnings.

The government will have to come up with over $50,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillions for those who don’t count zeros) of unfunded liabilities in the next couple or three decades to cover its obligations – and that’s in the value of today’s dollars.  There is no way that it will collect this amount in taxes while the people still have their guns.  So the only solution is the classic one for overspent governments – destroy the coin of the realm and pay off the promised amounts in worthless fiat money.  No-one from either party has come up with a better solution.  (Except that the socialists have some ideas about your guns.)

The government has a number of ways to exact this tribute, the two major ways being simply by taxing your labor and your profits, and then adding the hidden tax of inflating the currency.  Before going any further let’s be clear that the buying power of your dollar can go down for two distinct and independent reasons.  First, by inflation when there are more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services - inflation is purely a monetary phenomenon.  And second, when market or other non-monetary forces increase demand or diminish supply for goods and services.

Ruminations -15may08 (Updated)

George Rebane

* The Environmental Cost of Running Climate Models
* The lunacy of the ‘endangered’ polar bear

The Environmental Cost of Running Climate Models.  A recent MIT Technology Report states that supercomputers running today’s climate models chalk up an annual electricity bill of $150 million and with new technology they are trying to reduce this cost.  Now here we’re talking about the models that project all kinds of dire 50 and 100-year futures due to global warming.  These are the very same models that could not and did not predict the current cooling trend that has been going on for the last eight years.  I did a little arithmetic from easily available conversion and power plant efficiency data, and was amazed at the result.  In addition to giving out bogus answers and costing taxpayers $150 million every year, the exercise of these models also requires that we annually burn an additional 550,000 tons of coal in our power plants which releases over 11,600 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.  And all of this is equivalent to another 2.4 million barrels of crude oil which we have to import.  Talk about garbage in garbage out.

The lunacy of the ‘endangered’ polar bear.  Today the Interior Department placed the polar bear on the endangered species list promising to impose a phalanx of legal hobbles on our energy independence programs.  The bear population is now about 25,000, growing rapidly, and, before this ruling, was expected to get as high as 50,000 before any leveling off occurs due to food supply limits.  These critters have been around for millions of years and successfully weathered climate changes exceeding anything trumpeted by Team Gore.  This again is a political decision not based on science – here’s a report.  Another loss for America and victory for OPEC along with their sponsored terrorists.

(16 May 2008 - This update from CATO) Patrick J. Michaels, Cato senior fellow in environmental studies and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, comments:

"This is a political, not a scientific act. Polar bears are at or near record population levels today. They clearly survived eras in the past where Arctic climate was warmer than it is now. For several millennia after the end of the last ice age, summer temperatures in the Eurasian Arctic were 4-13°F warmer than modern temperatures. As some summer sea-ice is lost at today's temperatures, it seems likely that it was probably absent during that era. Obviously the polar bear survived, as did the fledgling Inuit culture.

"This marks the first instance of a species being listed based upon a computer model of future climate from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There has been no net warming in the last decade, and scientists recently discovered that it is likely there will be little if any for the next decade. Not one of the IPCC's models includes a two-decade hiatus in global warming. Consequently this listing is based upon obsolete science. This makes the listing of the Polar Bear obviously political and hardly scientific."

Ruminations - 13may08

George Rebane

* Mexican drug war
* 'The Dumbest Generation' by Mark Bauerlein
* TechTest2008 'survivors' to be honored

Stratfor’s 13may08 assessment of the ongoing Mexican drug war (‘Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?’) should make us all think about and prepare for uncomfortable futures.  Short of the US legalizing drugs – don’t hold your breath – this war has a high likelihood of spreading into our drug-consuming cities.  The direct effect on the hinterlands like Nevada County will be the further curtailment of civil liberties and increased population pressures – people who perceive and can avoid the violence of LA will move out (we did).  This $40 billion/year drug war is big in almost every dimension, and is now at a level in Mexico that it kills people from the highest levels of government officials and cartel leaderships.  There is precious little to prevent its hopping the border.  Every so often I have to remind myself that Jack Bauer is a fictional character, and even in the series ‘24’ drug cartels ran amuck in our country.  Meanwhile up here we continue with our left-right spats on issues removed from reality.  Perhaps La-la Land is no longer located in Los Angeles.

Mark Bauerlein’s new book – The Dumbest Generation – comes out this Thursday.  In it he reports on sprinkling some academic dust on how the youngsters of the Baby Boomers stack up in the smarts department.  Advance reviews don’t paint a pretty picture.  In today’s WSJ David Robinson of Princeton reports that “aging boomer parents, rather than pass down a fixed, canonical culture to their kids, encourage a modern-day version of their own rebellion …”.  Bauerlein makes the case “that cultural and technological forces, far from opening up an exciting new world of learning and thinking, have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy.” 

Those readers familiar with my drift in Ruminations and previous talks on numeracy will recognize this message as another corroboration of the Department of Education’s longitudinal survey of adult literacy in America.  Now Bauerlein agrees that we as a people are dumb and getting dumber while wealth-creation is demanding even smarter people.  With such a population, socialism is the siren song where those who can’t and won’t will vote for a state that will take by force from those who can and do.  The result is predictable.  We were advised over two hundred years ago that ‘a nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be’.  I will report more completely after my copy of Bauerlein’s book arrives.

In spite of all this, some of us will continue on the positive vein and look forward to announcing the winners of $15,000 of scholarship-prizes - those who scored highest on TechTest2008 given last April 5th.  This annual test is sponsored by the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation and seeks to promote technical careers among our county’s best and brightest.  The young people who took this test will be the ones that make possible tomorrow’s Microsofts, Googles, and Intels.  We will honor them this coming May 24th.   

Candidates' Replies on CABPRO Report

George Rebane

Kudos to Executive Director Martin Light and the CABPRO staff for publishing the candidates' replies to a comprehensive list of questions on The CABPRO Report.  Visit the site to read and compare for yourself the positions of State Assembly District Three candidate Sue Horne and Congressional candidates Ted Terbolizard, Doug Ose, and Tom McClintock on issues important to Nevada County residents.

Ruminations -7may08

George Rebane

* VE Day remembrance
* Ethanol realities come home to roost
* Vallejo’s Bankruptcy
* Some Left-wing Views on Illegal Aliens
* Repairing the family washing machine

VE Day.  Sixty-three years ago my mother, father, and I watched elements of Patton's Third Army roll into a small farming village near Monheim, Germany.  We had walked into this village a couple of weeks before carrying our suitcases.  My father was an electrician and was able to trade his talents for room and board. This night we spent huddled with other villagers in a basement on the gun-target line listening to incoming shells that were annihilating the remnants of an SS unit - holed up in a patch of forest about 200 yards from us - and shaking hell out of the village.  One of the SS troopers was wounded early in the shelling, and for most of the night we could hear his screams between explosions.  The screaming stopped before sunrise not long before the barrage was halted.  As we went back upstairs we saw two lines of soldiers with rifles at the ready on its only street slowly walk into the village while hugging the houses.  After that, the GIs started going through each house which created many a tense moment as they burst into one room after another.  We were very scared when our single room in the attic was assaulted and three very dirty and tired GIs came in with their M-1s at high port.  Then more drama and comedy as the main force came into town.  Soon thereafter the Rebanes were sitting in the back of a 3/4 ton truck being taken to the refugee camp in Augsburg that was set up as the collection point for east Europeans.  We were to be interned in such camps for the next four years.

Global Warning (sic)

George Rebane

Sometimes I wish that there would pop out two Earths so that we could give one of them to the True Believers lead by Team Gore, and then compare how each would work out.  The True Believers share most of the same ideas about how humanity should be governed as do the socialists.  Most of them are also convinced about the benefits of a global government that will stop wars and equitably share the world’s wealth.

In times past such left-wing thinkers have wished for some worldwide portending catastrophe to make us set our differences aside and unify us.  Well, now they have found one – anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  Shoving science aside and betting on wholesale stupidity promised by the bell curve, AGW has been completely politicized by our leaders and is being sold daily to the rest of us on a grand scale.  The campaign sweeps along with it political parties and corporations ready to sign up for the grand unification and redistribution schemes subsidized and regulated by governments, or better, super-governmental agreements like Kyoto, Bali, and who knows what next.  Even our ex-market capitalist and ex-conservative President G.W. Bush promotes CO2 legislation and carbon credits.  My, my, my.

Road Ruminations Concluded – 3may08

George Rebane

We got home yesterday about noon.  Leo the cat was released from solitary confinement in the garage and spent the first hour following us around registering grievances about being left in long and undeserved incarceration.  This is a well-practiced routine perfected over a span of thirteen years.  In this post I will conclude the reflections on this 17-day odyssey over the southwest quarter of our magnificent land, pointing out that some parts of it are more magnificent than others.  As with previous editions of Road Ruminations, I will undoubtedly lapse into observations and commentary that will outrage and offend the politically sensitive – please be forewarned.