Rebane's Ruminations

Last Thoughts from 2008 (updated)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

Singularity Signposts – 30dec2008

George Rebane

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

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

The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme

George Rebane

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

Ruminations - 28dec2008

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Christmas View from the Left

George Rebane

   

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

A Respite of Joy

George Rebane

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

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

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

 

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

George Rebane

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

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

Ruminations – 21dec2008

George Rebane

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

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

Dr. Ants Leps – RIP

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps we shall meet again.

A December Weekend in Nevada County

George Rebane

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“absolutely economically disastrous”

George Rebane

This is Texas governor Rick Perry’s assessment of the fate of his and other states if the country accepts California’s model for lowering carbon emissions.  And it looks like the nation is headed exactly in that direction as Obama announces his new energy team to be led by Steven Chu as Energy Secretary and Carol Browner as the new “energy czar”.  Browner was Clinton’s hard left-leaning EPA administrator, Chu is Lawrence Livermore Lab’s director who is always dialing for federal dollars to keep the lab’s programs funded. 

To do that Chu has, of course, been a very strong advocate of the climate change hysteria because it puts bread on his table.  In return, his pronouncements are cited as further evidence that AGW is real.  Now in other areas, a person who stands to directly benefit from some consensus judgment like that would normally recuse himself.  But in the political push to enlarge governments at all levels, no one in the consensus science crowd is ever called out for making self-serving statements.  And the public is generally ignorant of how these people get their government funded paychecks.  Pay the piper, call the tune.

Looking closer to home, California has finally gone and done it.  Sacramento has now adopted the CARB Scoping Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  As reported in this morning’s WSJ –

California on Thursday (11 Dec 2008) adopted the nation’s most sweeping plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Air Resources Board unanimously approved the plan despite warnings it will put costly new burdens on businesses at a time when the economy is in extreme crisis, with California forecasting a budget gap of $41.8 billion through mid-2010.

The strategy relies on 31 new rules affecting all facets of life, including where people may build their homes and what materials they use to construct them.

One central piece is a cap-and trade program, set to begin in 2012, under which power plants, refineries and big factories will be able to buy and sell the right to emit heat-trapping gases.

In coming years we may set aside 11 December as another annual reminder of a bygone December tragedy, one that turned out to be “absolutely economically disastrous”.  But none can say that this was a sneak attack.

Ruminations - 11dec2008

George Rebane

Been meaning to give Dixie Fix a big hat tip for regaining her post as our laudable and informative back fence ‘gossiper’ of happenings in Nevada County.  Dixie Redfearn’s blog is fast becoming a community staple as was her column in our beloved Onion before that newspaper decided to dispense with her services.  Now a broadcaster at KNCO, Dixie has again taken her place as one of our more pleasant community voices.  Check out her site (link above and in right column) and be among the first to know what’s happening.

Sac Bee’s Dan Walters has a short piece worth reading on Schwarzenegger’s ludicrous claims that implementing CARB’s Scope Plan on reducing California’s carbon emissions will be good for our economy.  As RR readers are aware, this hysteria is now proposed for national prime time and our new president is already on this train to nowhere.  The true believers are now starting to characterize us skeptics as knuckledraggers whose efforts to bring science back into the global warming debate represent a danger to all mankind.  Their rants are getting to a scary level – we are now called ‘Delayers’ with a sinister motive (example here).  One can only imagine what kinds of laws and restrictions will be imposed if this thing becomes inflamed in Congress.  It is easy to see that in a not-too-distant future people like me will be indicted for ‘hate speech against humanity’ when we point out the non-science that is the current basis for anthropogenic global warming.  In the 1930s you didn’t dare criticize Lysenko’s crop biology theories in the USSR.  And opposing the eugenics policies of the state in Nazi Germany could also have you reclassified and treated accordingly.  Both of these were presented as 'consensus science'.  It’s time to back off the hysteria and let a reasoned public discourse present both sides of the issue.  Today’s rush to legislation under the cover of MSM’s one-sided reporting is a recipe for economic and social disaster.  More on the details can found on MC Media Watch.    

Merry Tossmas!!  Here’s a good message to spread around during the Christmas season.

Last night Jo Ann and I attended a dinner honoring Supervisor Sue Horne for her years of public service to Nevada County.  It was a wonderful affair during which Sue received several well-deserved plaques and awards from organizations and community leaders.  We are long time supporters of Sue and see her as an epitome of an elected official; the country needs many more like her.  We wish her well and look forward to her next foray into elected office.  A hat tip also goes to Rick Haffey, County CEO, who was the MC of the event and did a great job.  We have a good crew at the Rood Center.

A Curious and Interesting Device – WiFi Radio

Wayne Watson

[gjr – Wayne is an astronomer and a teacher.  I join with those who consider him a treasure of Nevada County.  He lives at 121.01 Deg. W, 39.26 Deg. N.]

Some of you may have heard of a wi-fi or internet radio. Perhaps not. Store clerks in some of the major electronics stores here don't seem to know much about them, and sometimes don't even know they have them. I bought one by Grace a week ago. C. Crane sells one, as do a few others. They offer access to 10,000 radio stations on the internet. They might make an interesting Christmas gift, or a gift for someone who lives outside the country.

The radio looks like a common radio and does not plug into your computer. It relies on any wi-fi access in your immediate area. In my case, it just taps into my household  wi-fi.  I can play it anywhere in the house, and in the garage, probably in my observatory 100' from the house. Currently, I've set it up to play WJR-AM and WUOM-FM in Michigan. For kicks, it brings in a station in Germany. Locally, my presets include KGO-AM and KQED-FM here in California. Both of these stations are in San Francisco and are a challenge to receive here. Many of the stations are music, but there are many news and talk radio stations. See <https://www.reciva.com/> for some insight into the available stations.

The Grace sells for $200. See <http://www.gracedigitalaudio.com/> . It is a complete unit in that it contains the tuner, wi-fi connection, station pre-sets, volume control, built-in speaker, small LCD screen, and an AC plug. When I got it, it would not connect. I called their free tech support in San Diego and after 5 minutes they found my firmware was out of date. Within five more minutes we had it installed over the internet without ever using my PC. It didn't take long to start setting up stations by their call letters. There is no keyboard and the mechanism to enter characters is the LCD and the large Select knob. The LCD displays a menu like structure which one can move through by rotating the Select knob, and sometimes pressing the Back button. For a "keyboard", characters are strung out in a horizontal fashion in the LCD. There must be over a 100, but one can move pretty fast through them by turning the knob. Finding the character and pressing the select knob enters the character. A special <END> is used to terminate the call letter string. A headset can be plugged into the back. The sound is good, but probably not hi-fi quality.

When I talked to their support, I suggested they make a clearer front panel. The letters are grayish-white on a black background. I think they said they plan on it, which led me to ask if it might undergo further changes. Yes. The number of presets will increase to 10 early next year, and the unit will have a ethernet connection. Further, they plan to come out with a portable unit, and a "luxury" model. These changes are likely to occur in Jan-Feb.

My impression of the users guide is that it was helpful but missed items like trouble-shooting, and references to both the web sites I gave above. It did provide the Grace 800 support number. The firmware upgrade "problem" suggested to me the unit had been on the store shelf quite awhile.

As for this unit, it's given me confidence in it, but, in the face of a physical update soon, I will likely take it back within the 30 day period. We really bought it to see if it would work in the event we buy and send one to our son who is working outside the USA for the next several years. It passes the test. It likely can be used on the road, or even in a car. One person tells me he has an inverter in his car and plugs his C. Crane wi-fi radio into it.

You may not get much info from your local electronics store about these radios. Best Buy is beginning to carry them now. They are available from Amazon and the producers of them, C. Crane at any rate.

If you've had experience with these radios, let me know.

Ruminations - 9dec2008

George Rebane

In the mood of the times and doing their part, our Board of Supervisors today unanimously declined to take a 2.3% cost of living increase.  Good move.

Roundabout riddles.  The new Grass Valley roundabout under construction at the junction of East Main and Idaho-Maryland is a real head-scratcher.  It is hard to believe that in its current state and design it is already providing a benefit.  Yesterday at the school rush hour the traffic on East Main was stacked up beyond Hughes almost to Sierra College Dr.  Intersections are evaluated according to their service or throughput rate – the average number of vehicles per minute that can pass through the intersection.  That number was known before construction began; but the GV police captain was not able to tell us what today’s number is.  Also puzzling is the presence of two stop signs at the roundabout that still slow things down more than ever.  And someone should explain why the roundabout does not have two lanes for which there is ample room.  A two lane roundabout handles traffic more quickly, and most certainly will let larger vehicles like semi-trailers pass through without outside help.  Finally, turning the wrong way when entering a roundabout seems like a good reason to reconsider the driving privileges of any such pilgrim behind the wheel.

Awakened by the news of Illinois Governor Blagojevich arrested by federal agents, Jo Ann and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief.  In that most corrupt of states, Chicago is possibly the most corrupt metropolitan region we have to offer.  And to think that we as a country were so fortunate as to pluck the only squeaky clean politician from that cesspool as our next president.  My, my, my.

Off the Fence about Drugs

George Rebane

After years of teetering about the legalization of drugs and going through many ‘but on the other hand’ arguments, I have finally climbed down on the side of legalization.  The evidence for worldwide harm from trying to stop the growth, processing, distribution, and consumption of narcotics is now overwhelming.  The awesome impact of drug prohibition policies ranges from the international arena right down to little ol’ Nevada County here in the California Sierras.  (Our rural county’s leading agricultural crop is marijuana grown by Mexican cartels on secluded farms deep in the forests manned by well-armed nasties.)

Two pro-con articles in the 5dec08 WSJ settle the matter very nicely.  On the one hand John Walters, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, argues in 'Our Drug Policy is a Success' that

Reported drug use among eighth, 10th and 12th graders has declined for six straight years. Teen use of cocaine, marijuana and inhalants is down significantly, while consumption of methamphetamine and hallucinogens like LSD and Ecstasy has all but collapsed.

The number of workplace tests that are positive for cocaine is down sharply, to the lowest levels on record. Even the sudden spike of meth use -- remember the headlines from just a few years ago? -- has yielded to a combination of state and federal regulations controlling meth ingredients. And abroad, crackdowns in Colombia and Mexico have caused the price of cocaine to roughly double in the past two years.

Walters claims that this is “success is one of Washington's best kept secrets.”  But the problem is that enforcing prohibition isn’t a success.  Even though some usage rates have been dropping, the numbers of drug users and those in our justice system continues to climb.  And the numbers of destroyed lives through incarceration and criminal activity is approaching astronomical levels.

The international impact of the illicit drug trade is the real best kept secret from the American public.  Stratfor, the respected private intelligence service, has been running a series of analyses on what the drug trade is doing to governments in South and Central America, the Middle East, and Asia.  Illegal drugs fuel human misery across the world at all levels.  Closer to home, Stratfor has been reporting on the situation in Mexico and on our common border about which there is little in our MSM.

Stratfor writes in its ‘Countries in Crisis’ series that

The Mexican state is undergoing the most severe challenges it has faced since the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. … Mexico’s problems can be boiled down to illicit drugs. The country’s geography almost dictates that Mexico’s City’s writ will be ignored across wide tracts of the country, and current efforts to bring law and order to the Mexican frontier are threatening the central functionality of the state itself. In 2008 alone, Mexico has already suffered more deaths from drug-related violence than all coalition deaths in Iraq since the war’s beginning in 2003.

The role of drug cultivation in the Middle East that supports international Islamic terrorism is becoming known to many in this country.  America’s problems in fighting this scourge of western civilization is compounded by the production and distribution of drugs which is a prime money source funding what is bad and at the same time acting as a barrier to economic alternatives which are good.  Again, Stratfor is the non-partisan source for the necessary details that our MSM does not report.

BS Levels High - Sea Levels Uncertain

George Rebane

Reading a recent post on NC Media Watch on climate change and sea levels made me go back and redo some previous research on the difficult problem of measuring sea levels.  The bottom line is that measuring the earth’s sea levels (yes, there are many of them) is still a difficult and unsolved problem.  At least it’s unsolved to the level that is claimed by the climate change hysteria heroes.

Here’s a readable report ‘Global sea level change: Determination and interpretation’ by Bruce Douglas of NOAA – this is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that contains our national brains in matters having to do with sea levels.  In this report Dr. Douglas gives an account of the enormously difficult problem of even talking about a notion called ‘sea level’ let alone measuring its value.  And in no way can we build the quantitative causal chain to sea level values from any of the multitude of cross-linked factors that affect it – even if one does accept that we are suffering from anthropogenic global warming. But Douglas does conclude that the future is hopeful, and that some day we might be able to actually estimate what the global warming crowd already claims is a done deal.

Salient points made by Douglas -

- currently it takes an observation interval of 100-150 years to get a reliable measure of sea level trends;
- the best we can determine is that for the last 150 plus years the sea levels have been rising at a little less than 2mm per year;
- today we don’t have a clue what they might be doing in the short term;
- there’s hope that we can get our arms around most of this measurement problem, but no one’s done it yet.

Bottom line – the scary reports of actual worldwide sea levels and their future behavior are nothing but the latest calamities piled onto the crapola cart that is regularly wheeled through the public square for political purposes.  The sheep scare easily and vote accordingly.  The real question one should ask is why such reports from prestigious and responsible scientific institutions are not reported, and why they have not become part of the (suppressed) public debate on climate change.

Ruminations – 5dec2008

George Rebane

Ad losses have put the “newspaper industry into a tailspin”, so reports the Denver Post.  More than 30 newspapers are on currently on the block, notably including The Rocky Mountain News.  Major newspapers like the Washington Post are expected to cease their print editions in the near future, reverting to online news delivery and the printing of occasional feature magazines.  The problem is shrinking readership and ad revenues exacerbated by the current economic downturn.  In the past, newspapers have recovered the ad revenues when things got better, but today the internet is nipping away and many of the advertisers are not expected to return.  This is an ongoing story.  A fortunate sidelight is that small town newspapers are not yet feeling the full effects of this ads flight.  This may explain the ever hopeful reports from the management about the health of our beloved Onion.  Tough times.

A correspondent reminded me that today is the day the Supreme Court will hear the suit claiming that Obama does not have the constitutional qualification of native birth to become President.  This has been an interesting non-news item for the liberal MSM, but the blogosphere has kept the issue alive with reports, analyses, and even forensic investigations of the mysterious birth certificate that the state of Hawaii refuses to release for examination.  Here are stories posted by the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune in their online editions.  And here is a most interesting YouTube video by an image expert (Dr. Ron Polarik) who has received death threats for developing evidence that the birth certificate copy released by the Obama campaign is a forgery.  BTW, people have also claimed that McCain would be similarly unqualified because he was born in the (Panama) Canal Zone.  They are ignorant of the special legal status of the Canal Zone and similar legislation that also covers children born overseas to American citizens in the service of their country (e.g. military personnel and diplomats).

Why did FDR’s civilian government programs fail to get us out of the Depression, yet the military spending on WW2 is credited with restarting our economy?  Correspondent and RR commenter Wade asks this thoughtful and important question (here) which in part reads

However, that leaves my "question" unanswered. The revisionists all seem to agree that the war (big, centralized, tax-and-deficit-fueled government spending) turned the economy around while the New Deal itself (big, centralized, tax-and-deficit-fueled government spending) was horrible. Can anyone reconcile this for me? I truly don't understand it as a coherent point of view...

Wade is an information systems professional who works for a large southwestern city government.  He is also an intellectual, well-read, and amazingly, in spite of my best efforts to date, a devoted and entrenched liberal.  Wade’s “revisionists” are to him academics whose post hoc studies of the Depression have knocked some of the burnish from the visage of Saint Delano.

The short but incomplete answer to his question is that government work programs (e.g. to build/refurbish bridges and roads) executed within a country are of a fundamentally different kind than government programs to wage a global war the results of which are perceived to determine the survival of the nation.  Waging a war in which a major part of the country’s and the world’s labor force was destroyed, along with its infrastructure (save in the US), was an altogether different economic event that brought forth altruistic human sacrifices for subsequent wealth creation that the peacetime building of dams and aqueducts just doesn’t inspire (in spite of the heroic propaganda films put out by the Soviets and our own NRA in the 1930s).  A more complete answer to the effects of different government ‘stimulus’ programs may be found in Hazlitt’s classic Economics in One Lesson, and, of course, Bastiat’s The Law.  But, perhaps, other RR readers can weigh in on Wade’s question which, I suspect, is on the minds of many today.

Ruminations - 3dec2008

George Rebane

Gil Mathew, CEO of ERC, reports that the recently announced ’50 new engineering jobs’ will be confirmed in the new year.  He wrote me that “That was the count approximately 3 months ago from a collection of companies, Telestream, AJA, Thomson Grass Valley, NVision and Ensemble Design.  That number may have been reduced since the August estimate.”  Of course, the whole thing still depends on how the economy will look a couple of months from now.  Our community’s interest is high, since these jobs promise to pull into the county an annual $5M tranche of new money.  The second benefit is that such jobs will move us closer to a critical mass of professionals up here which at some point will become self-sustaining as the word gets out that we’re really a high-tech community.  Maintain crossed fingers.

Google has introduced a remarkable (aka cool) service.  It’s a voice activated free 411 information service that’s particularly useful from your cell phone when you’re out and about.  Just put 800-GOOG-411 into your favorite phone numbers and you’re all set.  When you want to know where something like a store or other business is, you just call that number and talk.  The service will even connect you with the store or restaurant or whatever, and you can talk to them – all hands free.  I tried it out and it works.  For more info go here.

Guess what some financial mavens are now suggesting that we do with our government’s $60T+ unfunded liabilities that come due during the baby boomer retirement years.  During this interval there won’t be enough workers to pay for all the Social Security, Medicare, etc outlays, because the ingrates will revolt if the government takes what it needs out of their paychecks.  So here’s a solution suggested by former undersecretary of the Treasury Peter Fisher, you create a 100-year bond and saddle the debt on the poor bastards who start entering the workforce during the latter part of this century.  Nobody cares about them, they don’t even exist yet.  And when they do, they’ll never know what hit them, while all of us are quietly pushing up daisies.  What a great idea!  And if we wanted to be really nice, we could leave them instructions on how to float a, say, 200-year bond issue if the monthly payments become a tad too much for them.  Truly a gift that keeps on giving. 

Money Math

George Rebane

 

Big Business Bolts to Bama

George Rebane

It was Lenin who advised his compatriots not to worry about the big capitalists, ‘They will sell us the rope that we will use to hang them.’  Numerous MSM articles (example here) are now heralding the stampede to the left of America’s big corporations.

RR readers are familiar with the notion that the bigger the business, the more it acts like a government bureaucracy, and expects the government to partner with it in everything from trade protectionism, through sweetheart regulations to cut competition, to outright bailouts.

Very few business managers are also students of history.  They are taught in MBA school primarily how to market themselves as a scarce commodity with outstanding acumen for increasing shareholder value of the companies they lead.  Well, recent evidence indicates that managers of big corporations are very likely to be acumen deficient common commodities.

But you have to hand it to these guys on how they structure their own compensation packages.  They’re hired to build the business which, of course, would be reflected in shareholder equity value going up.  Giving them options to buy shares at their entry price should put them on the same side of the table with shareholders.  Nevertheless, the real preference of these suits is to get big cash bonuses based on little more than the ability to fog a mirror – most certainly today we know that tanking the company is no impediment to wealth and glory.

So now, after the Republicans have shown themselves to be unprincipled and incompetent, they are rushing to embrace the Democrats as the new party of big business.  On reflection, it’s not altogether dumb for them to do this when you consider that in the short term they will be operating in government mangled markets.  And if you pays your money to the right people, they may even mangle the markets your way, or at least give you some of the billion dollar handouts when you screw up.

I don’t mourn the loss of huge corporations that long ago lost their way.  But I am concerned that the means now being constructed to prop up diseased dinosaurs will create an environment in which entrepreneurial innovation and growth will be stifled.  To this end the EU is already the world’s Exhibit A.

So when the dust settles and the new world order is in place, maybe Lenin’s dictum will have to be modified, ‘They will give us the rope that we will use to hang them.’