Rebane's Ruminations

Memorial Day 2019

The price of liberty is never paid up,

payment for its maintenance is always due.

Earthshaking News – Cancer Cured?

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regularly scheduled KVMR radio commentary broadcast on 30 January 2019.  An edited version of this commentary appeared in the 2feb19 Union.]

Standby for the next tranche of earthshaking news.  You know, the kind of report that promises to make a big impact on the lives of each of us.  Well, there’s another one of these that has come out, but has yet to make a big splash in the headlines, which today are probably more interested in keeping the latest Trump/Pelosi brouhaha at a boil.

Remember the earthshaking news back in 1989 when a couple of scientists claimed to have cracked the code on cold fusion (here).  Fusion energy is the holy grail of humanity’s search for a clean and virtually limitless source of power to make our civilization hum without polluting the earth with fossil fuels residues and/or fission power catastrophes.  From our high school science class most of us remember that fission power is generated by splitting atoms which releases the desired energy, along with a bunch of deadly radiation and radioactive stuff that needs to be contained and then disposed of safely.  Today fission reactors around the world power everything from electric grids to big carriers and missile submarines.  The other bad part about fission reactors is that their operation must be constantly controlled lest they go into an unstable meltdown like the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Fusion energy comes from hydrogen atoms being fused into the heavier helium atoms in an environment of extreme gravitational pressure and ten million-degree temperatures such as occur naturally in the cores of stars including our sun.  If for some reason the pressure is released or the temperature goes down, fusion stops instantly.  And the only bad byproduct of controlled fusion is some high energy neutrons that tend to corrode anything that attempts to contain the process.  Well, the cold fusion experiments ended as an embarrassing bust, and to date no one has made much progress on controlling ‘hot’ or thermonuclear fusion.  It’s turning out to be much more difficult to contain and harness on earth what goes on naturally all over the universe.  So the arrival of fusion power has yet to shake our world. (more here)

Now, get ready for today’s earth-shaker – seatbelts please.  Israeli scientists announce that they have a demonstrated a cure for cancer.  This ongoing development, to be completed “in a year’s time”, is reported in the Jerusalem Post and Forbes magazine.  The scientists work at Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd (AEBi), a pharmaceutical company located in Ness Ziona, Israel.  The reported cure is more than a bit mind-blowing since it can be targeted to attack all types of cancer cells.  And once it kills them, the cure is permanent, there will be no lurking cancer stem cells left that will later bloom into a full-blown cancer that is so common to the disease.

But that’s not all.  Using a multi-target toxin drug they named MuTaTo, AEBi reports that “Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, (the process) will last … a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market.” (more here)

So there you have it – the next promise of a real earth-shaker that will save the 1 in 5 men and the 1 in 6 women who will develop cancer during their lifetimes.  MuTaTo will then go into clinical testing and the usual bureaucratic obstacle course.  You can read more about it with the links posted on my website.  But overall and so far, what’s not to like about such uplifting news?

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

 

MIM’s first major 2019 concert

[Mr Nowlen, is a major mover in Northern California’s classical music community.  He is a longtime musician, educator, conductor, and senior staffer for several of the region's musical organizations and performing groups.  His activities range from teaching at UC Davis to Music in the Mountains here in Nevada County where he has been involved for years bringing and making music for us.  He also currently serves as MIM’s Artistic Director, and submitted this invitation for your kind consideration.]

Pete Nowlen

Happy New Year! 

I’m so looking forward to our first Music in the Mountains major concert of 2019, when we feature my good friend Maestro Leo Eylar and the California Youth Symphony for a fantastic matinee concert on Sunday March 10. You are going to go crazy for this amazing group of more than 100 young performers. (details and tickets here)

The California Youth Symphony is one America’s top youth orchestras. It was the first such orchestra to tour abroad in 1963, and continues to tour internationally every other year, performing in many of the world’s great venues. It is a past first prize winner of the International Youth and Music Festival Competition in Vienna.

Our March 10 performance includes works of Rachmaninoff, Chabrier and Strauss, and will particularly feature two amazing 16-year-old performers, pianist Catherine Huang and cellist Davis You.

Catherine will be featured in Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini as winner of CYS’ annual Young Artist Competition. Davis, a past Young Artist winner, will be featured as the cello soloist and protagonist in Richard Strauss’ tone poem, Don Quixote. 

You can learn more about these amazing young performers below. I promise you that you do not want to miss this performance. It is sure to be the largest orchestra, and one of the most inspiring programs that Music in the Mountains has ever put on stage.

Sixteen-year-old pianist Catherine Huang is a sophomore at Lynbrook High School and studies piano with Professor Hans Boepple. She won first prize and the young jury award at the 2017 Arthur Fraser International Piano Competition and appeared on Kansas Public Radio as the first prize winner of the 2016 International Institute for Young Musicians (IIYM) International Piano Competition.

Davis You, 16, is a junior at Palo Alto High School. He studies cello with Jonathan Koh and previously studied with Irene Sharp. His awards include first place in the 2016 California ASTA solo competition, first place in the 2017 California Youth Symphony Young Artist Competition, and five invitations to perform in the Junior Bach Festival

 

Scoping Your Rifle

George Rebane

OK boys and girls, time to take a break from our usual work of solving the world’s socio-political problems.  Today we’re going to look at a new and, hopefully, better method for scoping your rifle.  I am a lifelong shooter and also a military and NRA trained range safety officer (RSO).  As a longtime member of our local Sportsmen shooting club (rifle, pistol, trap, archery), I do my required club work hours serving several times a year as the rifle/pistol RSO on Sunday afternoons when the club opens its outdoor range to the public.

You shooters can imagine the stories I have stored up over the years helping (the mostly inexperienced) shooters and keeping them from accidentally killing someone.  Well, one of the tasks I’m frequently asked to help with is scoping the rifle of a guest or member who is not quite clear on the concept.  To scope a rifle means to align the scope with the rifle’s barrel so that a shotgroup’s centroid is close to the center of the bullseye at a given range (say, 100 yds) when shot with the scope’s crosshairs, or point of aim (POA), centered on the bullseye.

A joyous Christmas to those who still believe

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

A merry and joyous Christmas wish from the Rebanes (this year our Southern Tribe – the Esteys, children and grandchildren - moved here to northern California) to all who read these pages - God's annual promise reissued.  And to that, Jo Ann and I add the fervent hope that your new year will be healthy and fulfilling.

Fake News Defined (Addended)

George Rebane

Fake News – Assertions in the media (including blogosphere) disguised as news items which are purposely meant to mislead.  This includes assertions of data (facts and beliefs about the real world), information (various formatting of data to promote certain types of decisions/conclusions), and outright lies of the various types (more here).  Most, but not all, propaganda (“information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.”) is delivered as fake news.

In the spirit of promoting operational definitions on RR, ‘fake news’ has been used in this sense in my commentaries, and will continue to be so used.  Commenters who do not subscribe to this definition are welcome to offer their own in order to clarify their remarks, else the reader is invited to interpret such uses in these postings according to above definition (now added to Download RR Glossary&Semantics_v181124).

Happy Thanksgiving 2018

George Rebane

Jo Ann and I wish all our RR friends and readers a very happy Thanksgiving.

PS. I've long been puzzled by how individual secular humanists think about and celebrate this day as they observe it with family and friends.  Since giving thanks is a show of gratitude for having received something - mostly unbidden and/or undeserved - to whom do such people show gratitude and for what?

My email has been hacked

George Rebane

Got a call from a friend this morning telling me that my ‘sbcglobal.net’ email has been hacked, and people are getting emails from this address with the following message with subject line 'Urgent.....George Rebane'

How are you? I need a favor from you.

I need to get a Gamestop Gift Card for my Nephew, Its his birthday but i can't do this now because I'm currently traveling.Can you get it from any store around you? I'll pay back as soon as i am back. Kindly let me know if you can handle this.

Please ignore this as another sign of out fraudulent times.  Thank you.

Fair Division 101B

George Rebane

In ‘Fair Division 101’ I introduced readers to the field of fair division algorithms and presented a powerful and easy-to-use two-party algorithm derived from the literature which I named FD01.  At the conclusion of that dissertation I offered a method for extending FD01 for use by more than two parties.  The method works but is a bit clunky to apply.  Since then I have developed a slick multi-party version dubbed FD02 which retains the correctness, format, and all the simplicity of FD01.  FD02 is suitable for online implementation, and can be used in adjudicating wills, dissolving partnerships, mergers & acquisitions, and private occasions requiring the fair division of an identified set of assets.  You can download the short paper ( Download TN1808-1_FD02) describing it and the MS Excel™ spreadsheet ( Download FairDivisionAlgo_FD02) that is fun to play with, demonstrates its implementation, and can be modified or used as is in the realworld.  Enjoy.

Attribution in Dialogues and Debates

George Rebane

Conversations and debates advance toward productive conclusions when each participant in turn builds on what has already been recognized – either expanding or rebutting, but most certainly acknowledging that a notion, idea, or report of a happening has already been presented and made part of the discussion thread.  Admittedly RR presents many topics in complex formats that rely on already established positions, multi-subject posts, single topic commentaries, and uncounted sandbox threads.  Recently it seems that more of us posting in these pages often arrive breathlessly, to introduce something they think is new to the current thread, that really turns out to have been posted as a preceding comment or the subject of one of my (often recent) posts.

Doing this is, well, not nice, because it places the just-arrived contributor under a narcissistic mantle – ‘I don’t care to discover what others have contributed to this thread, this is my most recent thought on the matter, and you all need to re/acquaint yourself with my thoughts on the topic.’  If we were all sitting in a comfortable room around a blazing hearth, flagons of brew and wine at hand, Harry would never dream of suddenly introducing, out of whole cloth, something that Sue had already brought to bear, and the group had already made some progress in its expansion or dispute.  In such case Harry would look either the inattentive fool or the self-centered ass seeking group credit for the contribution just because he was the most recent one to regurgitate it.

Having found another revealing citation or even one of his own brilliant thoughts, Harry would be embraced as a well-mannered and welcome contributor would he but utter something to the effect, ‘Sue brought up a (good, confusing, bad, informative, … ) notion on (topic) that I’d like to (expand, correct, support from a different perspective, dispute, …).’

I don’t claim to always be innocent of the above charges, but as one who has had a career in generating new ideas and building new things within fiercely competitive R&D communities, early on I had it pounded in to me that you ALWAYS acknowledge any and all primacy that is known to you.  When you do, people will respect you for your generosity and knowledge of the field, and will want to work with you or share things with you, knowing that they will never be made to stand in your shadow.  But if you don’t, … well then, ‘nuff said.

Our horizons are expanded by the shoulders on which we have gratefully been allowed to stand.

Credo on Closure

George Rebane

Here I record a brief note made over a year ago that I discovered while clearing my desk for the next project.  It is probably of not much interest to RR’s current readers, but may be for some future internet archeologists, especially students of causality.

Closure, n. – the act of bringing to an end or conclusion in at least a satisficing manner that fulfills the objective that initially launched the search or the enterprise undertaken.

The main points are –

1. Man instinctively wants to explore to the ends of causal chains and the edges of causal basins. [see also Pearl (1988), (2009), (2018)]
2. Man desires closure that may or not end in an acceptable mystery; preferably one that lies beyond the acknowledged boundary of his ken. (e.g. the ‘mind of God’, the upward hierarchy of super-intelligences)
3. Other sapient species probably have the same or similar built-in ‘drive’, because that is how they got to be sapient.
4. No matter where a civilization resides, there they fashion or receive wisdom which provides closure or at least the prospect of it.
5. On Earth the secularists’ Holy Grail is to discover the Theory of Everything (TOE), which implies that they don't believe in 'turtles all the way down'. The TOE of religionists, meta-physicists, and many scientists is attaining knowledge of a super-intelligence that is at least universal and perhaps even divine.
6. The real question or the sink of all inquiry is John Wheeler’s “Why Existence?” We can ask this when we are alive; but can we also ask it in any other state (of existence)?  Or is that forbidden? – i.e. our cosmos does not support questions like that.

Happy Fourth - An American Celebration!

Media Bias

George Rebane

First, H/T to Bob Crabb where I first saw this graphic of 'media bias' before going to another site to filch a good copy of it.  Now I have several problems with where some outlets are placed on this chart, but I'll keep them to myself until readers have had a chance to make their own voices heard.  (As always, click on the image to make it larger.)

Memorial Day - 28 May 2018

George Rebane

Once more we gratefully contemplate the terrible price paid by those who gave their all so that America may remain the land of opportunity and the home of the free.  The words and photo from Memorial Day - 30 May 2011 still apply, and this video will explain the cost.

Sapir-Whorf on the Art of Coding and the Communications Conundrum

George Rebane

In his ‘Code to Joy’ essay (featured in the Jun-Jul 2018 issue of 1843, the Economist’s bi-monthly features magazine), science writer and author Andrew Smith almost discovers Sapir-Whorf.  But not quite, and therein lies a tale.  The man had been writing about computer technology and its impact on our lives for most of his career before he realized that he really didn’t know exactly how software worked, and it was the software that enabled all those wonderful things that most of us now take for granted in our daily round.

So he asked, “Is learning to code in middle age a fool’s errand or a committed act of digital citizenship?”, and started his quest for a programming language which he could learn well enough to code up a simple task.  On his travels through the programming world he interviews important personages and finds a well-known mentor to help him as he inevitably hits the ‘dark night of the soul’ when all gleaned progress and understanding fades into a hopeless morass of imminent defeat.  But with a mini-epiphany here and there along the way, he perseveres and finally celebrates his finished and fully functional Python code snippet.

What Smith’s trail of tears illustrates is another confirmation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis cum dictum that a person’s language(s) bound their capacity for thought.  We have visited the ramifications of S-W in these pages before (e.g. here) in the context of languages such as English and mathematics.  The bottom line of it all is that every human being is not capable of thinking all human thoughts; they are limited by the languages they have mastered.  And Smith’s essay is a clear illustration of this, even though he is not able to connect it with S-W.  (He is not alone, almost none of our ‘educators’ have this understanding as they mangle our schools’ curricula and/or teach in our classrooms.)

The ramifications of S-W necessarily extend beyond thought to communications and understanding.  What you cannot think, you cannot communicate, and what is beyond your lexicon, you cannot understand what someone else is trying to tell you.  Cultures with such language deficits have a difficult time making progress since it is hard for them to come together to solve problems and make more complex plans for productive cooperative enterprises.  It has been the expansion of language that has always provided the bases for the advancement of cultures in the sense of securing more resources, insuring their survival, and increasing their quality of life.

Think of what your life would be if you had no concept of nor ability to communicate ‘before/after’,  'future/past', ‘more/less’, ‘harder/easier’, ‘if/then’, numbering/counting things in your environment, expressing the subjunctive, considering counterfactuals (“A counterfactual thought occurs when a person modifies a factual prior event and then assesses the consequences of that change.”), quantifying risk (the notions of likelihood/probability), … .

In the same manner, Smith and others not familiar with the art of coding have no concept of the kinds of primitives that are both necessary and possible in various programming languages.  And therefore, given a problem to solve that involves the manipulation of specific types of data or implementing a user task, they simply have no place to start thinking about how to approach and structure a solution (i.e. to algorize).  Smith runs into this problem without appreciating it when he initially considers which one of the current 1,700+ programming languages he should first learn.  His mentor takes him through such considerations, but without connecting to the larger linguistic landscape of thought and communications taught by Sapir-Whorf.

Today much (almost all?) of our discussion of social issues is also hampered by the various boundaries that exist in the (partially) shared language people use domestically, which, of course, is immensely amplified when translation is required between languages with widely different roots and current capacities for understanding and expressing thought.  The comment streams of blogs (e.g. RR’s) along with countless letters-to-the-editor attest to the so far insurmountable difficulties Americans have in communicating with each other, no matter how sincere are their efforts.

Ruminations – 22may18

George Rebane

America’s students are still struggling as they compete for leadership in the high tech job markets of today and tomorrow with other students arount the world.  A correspondent from the east coast emailed me the following – “The 2015 Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year old students around the world.. It's administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  The United States placed 24th out of 71 countries in science. It did worse in math, ranking 38th.  The U.S. scored at 470 in math, below the OECD average of 490. That's well below the scores of the top five, all of which are Asian: Singapore at 565, Hong Kong at 548, Macao at 544, Taiwan at 542, and Japan at 532.  China was not included, since only four provinces participated.  In science, the United States scored at 496, above the OECD average of 493. The top five highest scoring countries were Singapore at 556, Japan at 538, Estonia at 534, Taiwan at 532, and Finland at 531.”

Fellow blogger and RR reader Russ Steele has a new blog – Rural Economy and Technology - that focuses on the introduction of technologies into rural economies.  It’s worth reading, especially as it treats the slow introduction of broadband to communities like Nevada County.  (more here)

Still on travel.  Apologies for sparse postings and responses to comments.

He Is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all of Creation.

Stephen Hawking, RIP

 

Dr Stephen Hawking, Physicist (1942 - 2018)

A Holy Day not a holiday

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

A merry and joyous Christmas wish from the Rebanes (this year we are joined by our Southern Tribe – the Esteys – and our Northern Tribe – the Fernandezs) to all who read these pages - God's annual promise reissued.  And to that we add the fervent hope that your new year will be healthy and fulfilling.

A Little Puzzle (updated 30dec17)

George Rebane

This little puzzle recently came to my attention.  A ring of radius R is tossed randomly onto a large grid of unit squares as shown below.  The toss will score only if the ring intersects two or three squares – rings 1 and 2 will score.  If the ring intersects only one or more than three squares, it will not score – rings 3 and 4 will not score.  What radius ring will maximize the probability of scoring – i.e. compute the radius and the maximum probability?

Being able to solve 'puzzles' such as this is a skill fundamental to solving several large classes of problems in science and engineering.  And coming up with just the approach to its solution is a critical thinking skill that should make non-techies proud.  TechTest season is again upon us, and I gave this problem to one of the very busy students I have been mentoring.  He saw the challenge immediately, went home but couldn’t put it down, and had the correct answer back to me before sunset.  I thought some of our RR readers might also want to take a crack at it, or give it to their bright offspring ;-)

[30dec17 update]  Thanks to Mr Don Carrera of Irwin, PA for his detailed workout of the problem’s solution.  In subsequent private communications I promised to make available to readers both his solution and mine in PDF formats.  Mr Carrera has also demonstrated that his solution and mine produce identical numerical results.  Here are the downloads for Mr Carrera's solution, and my solution.

Still Counting Our Blessings

George Rebane

As we again look forward to a family gathering at Casa Rebane, Jo Ann and I wish all of our readers and their families a most happy and meaningful Thanksgiving.  We live in a land still blessed.  Here are a couple of related readings appropriate for the holiday - 'The Desolate Wilderness', 'And the Fair Land'.

 

Tax Policy Noodlings

George Rebane

The newly proposed GOP tax cut has everyone talking.  A couple of its main features are supposed to include switching from sequential taxing to concurrent taxing of earnings.  Also discussed is the removal of certain deductions like mortgage interest paid from taxable earnings.  I was interested in the impact of these two policy changes so I pushed a few squigglies, and I’ll share with you here some of the results without taking you through the weeds – BTW, nothing higher than your high school algebra is required to derive these formulas.

In sequential taxing, the taxing jurisdictions calculate the taxes due in sequence, the later jurisdictions applying their tax rate to the remaining earnings after you’ve paid the earlier jurisdictions.  As an example, say, jurisdiction J1 (e.g. California) taxes at rate r₁, and J2 (e.g. the feds) then tax the remainder at rate r₂.  The overall tax rate r_S  you pay on earnings E is given in formula (1) in the panel below.

In concurrent taxing, the jurisdictions all compute their tax take on your taxable earnings E.  The overall tax rate r_C you pay is then given in formula (2) above.  This rate is always higher than the overall rate for sequential taxing, and the switch from sequential to concurrent is an effective tax increase R_SC given by formula (3).

Say, that r₁ = 0.1 (10%) and r₂ = 0.2.  Then from formula (1) r_S  = 1 – (1 – 0.1)(1 – 0.2) = 0.28 = 28%.  And similarly, from formula (2) r_C  = 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.3 = 30%.  From (3) we calculate the increase in effective tax rate as 0.1*0.2/(0.1 + 0.2 - 0.1*0.2) = 0.0714 = 7.14%.

For calculating the effective tax rate for deductions, assume that to compute your taxable earnings you can deduct a fraction f of your earnings E before applying the relevant tax rate r.  Then your effective tax rate r_f  is given by formula (4).  Now suppose that a deduction, say Δf, is no longer allowed.  This reduces the fractional amount of E you can deduct to (f – Δf).  Your effective tax rate is now given by formula (5).  Finally, the percentage of your tax increase R_fΔf through the denial of such a deduction is given by formula (6).

As an example, let f = 0.35 = 35% and Δf = 0.25, then R_fΔf  = 0.25/(1 – 0.35) = 0.385 = 38.5%.

You may want to enter the formulas into a spread sheet and play with the numbers to understand the real damage that such tax policy changes will deliver.

Deflected Dialogue Redux

George Rebane

Gentle reader, we again return to RR’s department of poetry.  For the new to these pages, this is part of our cultural outreach that emphasizes the ‘rhyme’ part of our overall Rhyme and Reason offerings.  Actually, today we sample a reprise of an earlier poem for an earlier time entitled Deflected Dialogue –Upon reflection, it turns out that the times have not changed all that much for certain factions of our political spectrum.  Hence we are able present for your edification, Deflected Dialogue Redux -

Scattershots – 21aug17 (updated)

George Rebane

Remember how all the country got gruberized on Obamacare into such a state of dependancy that to this day no one has been able extract them from that calamitous benefit?  Well, turns out that ol’ John got caught doing some fraudulent billing for consulting work he was doing for Vermont.  But not to worry, the state’s AG will not pursue the MIT healthcare bamboozler under the Vermont Civil False Claims Act if Gruber just promises to go away and not ever come back.  He’ll just wait until the next Dem is in the White House ready to get the gruberized version of single-payer onto the books. (more here)

We enjoyed the Nevada County version of the eclipse this morning.  Jo Ann and I prepared our instrumentation to witness the celestial spectacle - I with my two sheets of paper with one having a pinhole in it, and she with a more interesting multi-image display on her sheet of paper with her Colander Camera.  I also noticed that our trees eagerly participated in the event by casting countless crescent filled shadows as the moon covered more than half the sun’s disk.

NASA’s attempts to present live coverage of the solar eclipse were priceless exemplars of government in action.  It was hard to imagine how many more ways one could screw up the presentation of a simple and predictable event for which there was an infinite time to prepare.  They could have done better contracting out the production to a teenager with an iPhone on FaceTime.  As an alternative to images of the proceeding eclipse, the NASA bureaucrats were convinced we wanted to see talking heads spewing endless repetitions of pabulum from different parts of the country, including the launch of some camera-equipped weather balloons, which event was televised by only showing the back of the heads of two NASA worthies while they watched and marveled at the balloon’s ascent of which the viewers saw nary an image.  You can’t make this up.  Two and a half centuries ago our Founders were familiar with this kind of bureaucratic mis-functioning, and therefore gave us a Constitution that was supposed to give government a minimalist role in the lives of a free people.

[update]  President Trump has pulled the plug on Operation Choke Point.  You remember the 2011 Obama program to sic his DoJ on businesses he didn’t like, from gun shops to coal-fired power plants.  And oh yes, he also pulled the plug on the Federal Advisory Panel on Climate Change.  Seems these guys have been mixing a bit too much conclusive politics with tentative science.  For some reason our friends on the Left don't seem to acknowledge such things as accomplishments of this administration.  (more here and here)

President Trump’s speech made several things clear on Afghanistan; one of them being that he realizes we need to keep troops in world hotspots for a long time if we are to maintain our position as the world ‘white hat’ hegemon.  But what no one seems to have picked up is that we are again in the business of fighting a tactic – terrorism – and no longer an enemy – fundamental Islam - that uses terror as one of its tactics.  Fundamentalist Islam never came up in his speech.  Do we again believe that so many young people all over the world give up their comfortable lives and willingly sacrifice themselves in the name of something called ‘terrorism’.  I don’t think so.  We will never successfully fight an enemy that we cannot recognize. 

 

Estonia 2017 (updated)

George Rebane

Yesterday we returned home from a two-week visit to Estonia with our grown daughters.  The trip was a long-anticipated odyssey to introduce them to the other half of their heritage, to let them see and walk in the places about which they have heard from their grandparents and me.  For Jo Ann and me it was our second trip since Estonia regained its freedom in 1991.  The journey had special meaning because it was the first time our ‘core family’ had spent time alone after our girls grew up and went to college more than thirty years ago.  Now in their early 50s they are both mothers of grown children, and one is even a 4-time grandmother.