Rebane's Ruminations

Christmas - 2021

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

[This Christmas message first appeared here in 2019 and was repeated last year.  It still bears repeating.]

Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

Thanksgiving 2021

George Rebane

In spite of it all dear readers and RR regulars, we still have so much to be thankful for.  Jo Ann and I wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving, and may you be blessed to share it with those you love.

River Fire Reflections

George Rebane

Kudos to Yubanet.com for being the most heads up and informative website for wildfire information.  At the same time, government falls short of its function as is apparent to anyone visiting mynevadacounty.com.  Starting yesterday (4aug21) afternoon, all of us in western Nevada County have been on tenterhooks watching the River Fire started by someone at the Bear River Campground near Colfax.

For Jo Ann and me this kind of annual firewatch and evacuation preparedness has been a way of life ever since we moved to Simi Valley in 1968, and then into the Santa Monica Mountains in 1978, and here to Nevada County in 2002.  Every year it’s the same ol’ same ol’ – are we going to lose our home this year?  And frankly, after over fifty years of this and at our age, we’re starting to get a little tired of being puckered up every summer and fall.

In Appreciation – 14jul21

Sell your stuff at the price of courtesy, for that imposes the heaviest obligation; …courtesy not only pays, but it pledges, and it is gallant manner that imposes the greatest obligation; nothing costs a man of conscience more than something given him, for it is sold him twice, and at a double price, that of its own value, and that of politeness.  Nevertheless it remains true, that to men of mean spirit such noble talk is mere gibberish, for they do not understand the idioms of good style.  Gracian #272

George Rebane

Recently I’ve been doing some review and archiving of the last 14 years of RR’s contents.  And in the perusal of the voluminous comment streams in these pages, I am overcome with gratitude for the content of the almost 200,000 comments from readers of all socio-political persuasions.  Most humbling to me are the long, thoughtful, and citation-supported comments that append to and expand on my commentaries.  Most of these, over the years, have come from a small and faithful cadre of regular commenters.  It is a rare blog where comment contents abet and also vie with the topical posts – RR is so blessed.

I am also grateful for the cadre of readers who trade their ideas with me through emails, giving rise to long and fruitful exchanges, some of which I have been able to post.  And lastly, I have to also thank our readers of the Left.  Some of them take me and RR’s more rightwing readers to task on other blogs, whereon they can swim in more comfortable waters without having to match wits with those whom they criticize or seek to silence.

But the greatest thanks go to those liberals, progressives, et al of today’s woke cadres who now and then have the fortitude to take up their lance and do battle in our comment streams.  It is their welcome attendance that gives spice to the debates and that illustrate most clearly how differently our polarized sides see the same world, and the diametrically opposite directions each side wants to guide our republic.  After all, for a more complete telling, we need from all sides the observations and interpretations of events from the last great century of Man.

Happy Independence Day 2021!

George Rebane

And the message from last year (here) bears repeating.

The Blessings of Inequality

George Rebane

We are in the age of trading equality for equity.  Why?  Because equality at the start of any road quickly leads to inequality among the travelers - given equal opportunities, some get further ahead than others.  That’s how it has been, is now, and always will be the human condition.  To the socialist such results are anathema.  To them an enlightened governance will use force as needed to assure that society advances in a tight equitable cohort in which no one is left too far behind, and no one gets ahead too far.  And the governing elites will decide and manage what is ‘too far’.

As history has shown elsewhere and also in our land, policies that impose such equities produce stagnating economies in which the lot of the citizenry is uniform misery that takes many forms as individual freedoms are pruned over time.

Over the last 250 years, ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the west, we have witnessed an enormous blossoming in the quality of life (QoL) for all classes.  These range from fewer and less menial jobs with shorter hours, better living conditions with more stuff, an explosion of arts and entertainments, and longer lives during which to enjoy all these blessings.  Moreover, these betterments have inevitably spread across the world, raising billions of people out of droll and desperate lives that their ancestors suffered for centuries.

A closer look at how this all came about immediately reveals the role of inequality that sprung up in the new middle classes which were enabled by ever more liberal governments that inherited western culture.  In the 19^th century trade and industry allowed those who could and would to quickly leap ahead of their more sanguine and status quo satisfied neighbors in growing their assets.  The last two centuries contain countless stories of single-generation leaps from abject poverty to undreamed of wealth by entrepreneurs who took risks investing their time, health, money, and comfort to bring something new and useful to market.

And all of them knew that what they introduced would initially garner resistance and criticism in the marketplace.  Their driving hope was always that there would be a cohort of potential customers with the means and curiosity to give the new product or service a try, for these also would be taking a risk to buy something that might not work.  But it was always those having sufficient money set aside who could take that risk to enjoy and/or incorporate the new thing into their lives or businesses.

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 Creation.

This has now become RR's annual message celebrating Easter.

‘Luxury Floating Real Estate’

George Rebane

Living on a huge manmade island may be the thing of the future for those who can afford it and want to escape from the ever more contested and politically roiling lands that cover about 29% of the Earth’s 197,000,000 sq mi surface.  The first of these islands is being built off the Bahamas by an outfit that calls itself The Blue Estate (here).  Multiples of such islands are planned to reside off Dubai in the Persian Gulf which are advertised to be miniature havens of German, Swiss, Italian, and Swedish culture.  The Blue Estate plan envisions an island measuring 1,500 by 1,000 meters as shown below.

The island’s size, modular construction, and high (130ft) free board, augmented by another 100+ foot extendable windwalls, we are told will assure the structure’s calm survival in the roughest of hurricanes.  The island will also have propulsion and guidance so that it can transit open ocean areas to avoid storms.

Yet to be explained is to what extent the island will be energy self-sufficient using solar, wind, and wave energy extraction technologies.  Its home area will be in international waters, minutes by air away from Miami and Bahamian towns.  Apparently, food and other consumables will be imported.

The community will also be economically self-sufficient by being home to clean commercial enterprises and the successfully retired.  The commercial activities will be heavily IT oriented with ample satellite connectivity.  I can envision that it might also be home to small R&D firms engaged in computer science, genomics, and similar areas.  Located in a tropical sea with abundant (300+ days/yr) sunshine, the island can also operate a sizeable nearby sea farm containing various flora supported by an underwater matrix which will give rise to a whole new ecosystem of rich sea life similar to what exist around oil drilling platforms and the Navy’s ‘kelp farm’ (off San Clemente Island) on which I worked years ago.

One of the potential attractions of such seaborne communities may be their ability to provide social stability through a discriminative selection of residents.  It is clear to me that some such island communities will emphasize cultural cohesion of their residents.  Offering such cohesive environments seems to be the goal of the planned Persian Gulf islands that will focus on providing culture-specific resort living and holidays.

As an entrepreneur and systems nerd, I am drawn to the dreaming and planning of such habitats, and in the present case could go on for pages contemplating different concepts and their supporting technical, commercial, environmental, educational, cultural, … support systems and institutions.  But to me the problem of having the seas support a considerable population of such islands in different parts of the world will come down to the solution of the inevitable political problems that will arise and need solutions that can be implemented globally.

Because these island communities will attract (and be limited to) the smart, productive, and ‘financially capable’ people, they will naturally become hotbeds of wealth generation.  And they will therefore become tax and tariff prey for the land-based political grifters who maintain their collectivist regimes by bamboozling their poor and huddled masses yearning to be free.  These people need state supplied succor that their political leaders will not allow them to generate for all the reasons we have discussed in these pages.

In such political landscapes those who can will escape to available locales with lower taxes, regulations, and abundant liberties.  This we see happening in today’s American migrations, and have witnessed for decades (centuries?) in Europe and Asia where the productive congregate in enclaves such as Singapore, Taiwan, and formerly Hong Kong.  Therefore, new political paradigms need to be discovered if the financially and culturally attractive island communities are to thrive and multiply.  Else the early ones will just be economically harvested to oblivion by the land-based stifling autocracies that see such free and enterprising enclaves as low-hanging fruit.

Much more to be said about all this.

‘2034’

George Rebane

This is a heads-up on a good read – 2034 – A Novel of the Next World War that will be published in early March.  It is written by two military and national security heavyweights – Elliot Ackerman and Adm James Stavridis, both ranking high in our national security apparatus; Ackerman in the White House and Stavridis former CIC of our Southern Command and then head of NATO military.  The first part of the novel took up the entire Jan 2021 issue of Wired.  I started reading it, and it immediately grabbed me.  I’m a kinda finicky reader, especially fiction, reserving time only for geo-political and edge sci-fi written by people who’ve 'been there and done that' – ‘2034’ definitely qualifies and promises to also be an education on a lot of systems and tactics.  Anyway, I thought that you would find this a good and timely read.  Here’s some promotional copy – “From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic, geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034--and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration.”

I sent the above notice to a group of friends who may be interested in geo-political thrillers with technical element that is written by knowledgeable authors.  Since then, the book has received some very good reviews from noteworthy people.  (more here and here)

“War with China is the most dangerous scenario facing us and the world. Absent a strategic method to manage our differences, Jim Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman’s chilling novel presents a realistic series of miscalculations leading to the worst consequences. A sobering, cautionary tale for our time.” — Jim Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (Ret.) and 26th Secretary of Defense

“A real page-turner, 2034 is a novel about a conflict we hope never happens. Drawing on their deep operational and diplomatic backgrounds, Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman have conjured a nightmare we desperately need to avoid. The novel is a cautionary tale for our times, and a reminder how quickly events can spin out of control—even before 2034.” — Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense 2006-2011

‘No Enemies’

George Rebane

Chartist poet Charles Mackay (1814-1889) wrote a poem he titled ‘No Enemies’, which appeared in an anthology of works celebrating and honoring social protest in 19^th century Great Britain, much like the protests that come so naturally to both sides in today’s polarized America.

RR commenters are a blessing

Live with those from whom you can learn; let friendly intercourse be a school for knowledge, and social contact a school for culture; to make teachers of your friends is to join the need of learning to the joy of converse.  Gracian #11

George Rebane

In blog years RR is now considered to be somewhere between long-of-tooth and ancient, along with its host in human years.  Rummaging around the very accessible archive of this online publishing effort, I always find it remarkable to rediscover the breadth of topics we have covered to various levels of depth.  And I’m not only talking about the almost 3,400 posted commentaries, but the extensive comment streams appended to most of the commentaries -  comment streams in which readers expand and amplify the topic, and provide other readers not only with their own insights, but also with informative links that substantiate their assertions.

Many of the over 175,000 (to date) appended comments are themselves lengthy essays, sometimes longer than the topical post itself, that highlight the quality of thought by their authors.  And I mean to include in this cohort of thoughtful scribblers a few of our liberal commenters, those who have taken the time to deliver extended arguments for their positions that go beyond countering snarks and ad hominems.

In its 14^th year this blog continues to be a welcoming arena for ideas, opinions, and apologetics from all quarters.  To be sure, ours is an arena in which every contributor should be prepared for dharma battle (q.v.).  And no one should take umbrage that their ideas are assaulted, instead such umbrage should be reserved for ideas ignored.

That said, I thank all RR readers and commenters for their precious hours that they have spent over the years in these pages.

End of an Era

George Rebane

Puna

6 June 2009 – 30 August 2020

Happy Fourth, if you can (redux and up a notch)

George Rebane

On this year’s Fourth our beloved land is in more disarray than in my living memory, and that’s a fer piece in anyone’s book.  Half the country does not know where we have been, what we have done, nor shares a common vision of our future.  These dark clouds were already gathering a year ago during which some prescient words were recorded in these pages (here).

Yet those of us who hold dear what has been and continues to be the America we love will join today in a special celebration of our birthday.  And we do this with the pledge that we with our families and friends will always keep this day a sacrosanct observance, even in the face of sinister forces that now work to erase the greatest country built by people of all races, creeds, and backgrounds joined together.  May God continue to bless the United States of America.

Hunker Down Diary – 23may20

George Rebane

Competition is the only cure for incompetence.

On this Memorial Day weekend today is HD77 for Jo Ann and me.  Even though we have not left the county, we have taken a number of ‘essential’ trips to the grocery, nursery, and hardware store.  We have also had a number of essential dinners with family and local friends, and continue our Facetime cocktail hours.  Jo Ann has her farm planted for this year, and everything appears to be on track for a bountiful summer and fall.  I overdid it on splitting firewood; we now have enough to finish out this season and much of next season.  Both of us keep attending Zoomed meetings of the various organizations in which we are active.

As political animals, we maintain ferocious reading and writing schedules.  For better or worse (currently still worse), we have not touched our portfolio during the recent wild dip and roller coaster recovery.  So far so good.  I am having a great time rummaging around the technical sides of epidemic science and management.  Readers know my thoughts on the amount and kind of ‘science’ that has been brought to bear on this coronavirus pandemic here in America and also in other developed countries.  As more and more people begin to understand and admit, there is little or no science that is evident in the measurement and/or management of this disease (you heard it first here two months ago).  The whole C19 affair is a dreadful self-inflicted farce that continues to play out in the healthcare and economic sectors.

The record of pronouncements by both our national and state healthcare professionals, and political leaders illustrate a growing tsunami of contradictory statements regaling us with predictions, prescriptions, policies, and prohibitions which range between the comical and insane.  Basically, no one knows anything definitive about how/what to measure that can be used to track and support a coherent set of response policies.  Everyone is flying by the seat of their pants under the rubric, repeated with the greatest gravitas, that ‘we will be guided by science and not politics’.  Given the bevy of brown numbers that continue to flow from universities and alphabet-soup agencies, the real national and state responses long ago succumbed to exactly the opposite guidance – what little science there is about dealing with the coronavirus, it doesn’t have a chance.  In the meantime, people are revolting against the lockdowns and betting on herd immunity until a vaccine makes its debut from the wings.  Actually, it’s only half the people who understand the real desolation that economic destitution brings, the other half don’t have a clue and believe in the tooth fairy, endless newly printed money, and the states’ national guards mobilized to work the farms, deliver the goods, and staff the grocery stores, until the all-clear is sounded by Drs Fauci and Brix.  (more here)

And to put a ribbon on it or add insult to injury, we here on Hind Tit Rd (aka Cement Hill Rd) suffered our second power outage in a week.  Don’t know what the boys and girls at PG&E are doing, but they ain’t doing it right.  I again draw your kind attention to my above tagline.

C19 - a rose by any other name would …

‘For yourself, never seek justice, only mercy.’ Coach Dick Beedy

George Rebane

The pathogen causing today’s worldwide pandemic is referred to by many labels – novel coronavirus, Covid-19, 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV-2, Wuhan virus, CCP virus, China virus, … .  The politically correct don’t want to attach a “stigmatizing” name to anything that may gore the reputation of one of their champions in today’s ongoing ideological narrative that propagandizes and defends their vision of a brave new world, so the WHO selected Covid-19 as its official name to the virus.

My own penchant for labels favors those that have the fewest readily-available characters, eschewing all unnecessary delimiters (which are also characters), and that unambiguously identify that which is labeled.  As a bleeding edge techie all my life, I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of giving new names to countless things just discovered, invented, developed, … that never had a name, let alone a short spiffy name or a distinguishing TLA (three letter acronym).

After reviewing the plethora of labels for our current dastardly ‘bug’, I said what the hell, and referred to it simply as C19 in these pages – writing or speaking elsewhere, I pick a more communicative label from the above list.  Nevertheless, I have been taken to task here by one of our more tightly-wound, assiduous intellects, and longtime readers with a technical background.  His point is not so much that RR readers would misunderstand, as it is that C19 doesn’t accurately and repeatedly focus blame on the country, ideology, and political party to blame for loosing this dreadful disease on the world, nor is it the technically correct label for the virus.

He has a point worth considering on the ‘blame’ component of his criticism – screw the technically correct part.  Since I am a dedicated anti-communist, anti-collectivist ideologue of established repute (I suspect it’s in my double-helix), I should take every opportunity to dun the dastardly sumbiches of the CCP when writing about C19.  After all, the CCP lays uncontested claim to operating history’s biggest murder machine on mankind, having killed hundreds of millions of people, and making life a misery for more hundreds of millions.

But then again, I’m also a somewhat lazy sumbich, especially when in the white heat of laying down some thoughts on the keyboard.  So for the time being at least, I will go on using C19 in these pages, and, without prejudice, continue suffering the subsequent slings and arrows that may still come my way.

Hunker Down Diary – 8apr20

George Rebane

Today is HD32 for the Rebanes.  Yesterday morning we strapped on our pitifully sparse PPE (masks and gloves) and went to our usual Safeway to replenish the larder – we brought home a ton of veggies, canned goodies, and fresh pieces of dead animals.  The store had only one door open through which the customers were being metered – there was no line to get in and the people density was low.  Nevertheless, shelves containing paper products, sanitary supplies, and staples like flour were empty.  The last was important to me since I’m a baker and have baked ALL of our bread for the last 23 years.

For such things the dictum still holds that shortages and empty shelves will be the order of the day until all closets in America are filled with what people fear most doing without.  Fortunately, we have practiced the full closet FIFO system since we first were married and immediately witnessed the buying panic in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis (people suddenly preparing for WW3).  Actually, I already came with that kind of household policy which was hardwired into me by my parents through the WW2 years and then more years in post-war DP camps.  It has served us well, and I recommend it to all families as do our Mormon brethren – when society churns, it’s good to stay at home until at least some of the smoke clears.

Anyway, we’ve been home doing all kinds of projects, continuing our organizational meetings online, having FaceTime cocktail hours with friends, and even venturing a couple of visits to a neighbor and our local daughter, both households carrying out equal hunker down policies.  I’ve also been busy pushing squigglies on various C19 analyses, another one which I will post today.  It’s interesting that RR’s commenter cohort could care less for anything quantitative or technical, but I take heart in all that through an extensive correspondence and telecons with STEM oriented friends and colleagues who are also squiggly savvy and share my criterion for what’s really required to understand the issues du jour.  Fun time.

On this same thread, I find myself revisiting the question as to why I continue to bother posting on socio-political topics and issues, especially since I have pretty much shot my wad on how this pilgrim views the world about all things considered.  Any reader who cares, has at his disposal my entire ontology.  The only answer to that puzzle that comes up is RR’s readership; I feel that they have become part of my greater circle, perhaps even my greater family whose ongoing presence with their insights, reports, opinions, … I get a measure if not a corroboration of my picture of the world’s goings on that I update continuously.  In any case, the jury’s still out.

More later?

Russ Steele (1939-2020) RIP

George Rebane

My dear friend Russ Steele died this morning in the loving arms of Ellen, his wife of 56 years.  Russ was taken by pancreatic cancer which he had been fighting for the past year.  The Steeles and Rebanes have been close friends since we moved here in 2002, having worked on various community projects together, frequently entertaining and travelling together and with friends, and, of course being ideological twins in the great partisan battles that have raged over these years in our county, state, and country.  Lieutenant Colonel Steele retired after 20 years in the Air Force as an EW officer on B-52s, and then moving to systems test planning staff.  After the Air Force, Russ joined a large aerospace company to manage a group doing R&D in advanced transportation electronics, and moved back to Nevada County where he was born.

Since retiring from aerospace, Russ has been very involved in the county’s efforts to support local economic development through expansion of our telecommunications and broadband access.  Russ and Ellen were also very active in Nevada County’s Friends of the Military.  The Steeles raised four daughters who eventually left Nevada County to live in the Sacramento area with their families.  Three years ago Russ and Ellen moved to Lincoln to be closer to family and healthcare services.  Russ continued his interest in and love for Nevada County through frequent visits and consultations with various county managers and regional business development organizations.  He was also a prolific author, contributing articles to local business magazines and writing a book on his years growing up in a small Idaho mining village.

Jo Ann and I will miss Russ’s penetrating insights and always ready sense of humor – he was a man of information and avoided daisy talk - above all he was a patriot and a gentleman.  Today an important and intimate part of our life is gone.  I am reminded of John Donne’s words made famous by Hemingway, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…. Any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Christmas 2019

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

Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

Cancer Researcher at Work

George Rebane

It’s time for one of my infrequent Proud Grandpa sessions.  Granddaughter Elizabeth is a project lead doing cancer research at UCLA.  Her work continues in the fight against Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), a particularly deadly form of brain cancer that took the life of our granddaughter and her cousin Ellen at the age of 14.  The research is part of her work toward a PhD in neurosciences.  Today she is at the Society for Neuro-oncology conference in Phoenix presenting her work, a project she actually started during her undergraduate studies, to the cancer research community.  The photo shows her with a storyboard illustrating her research and the published paper on which she is the lead author.

Elizabeth is part of our Northern Tribe from the Seattle area.  Today she lives in Westwood (home of UCLA) literally three blocks from the first apartment that Jo Ann and I rented after we married while still undergrads.  Elizabeth is the fifth in our family to get degrees from UCLA, and will be the second to earn her PhD from there.  Grandma and Papa (prenom de famille) couldn’t be prouder of this arrow into our future.

Scattershots – 16sep19 (updated 17sep19)

George Rebane

The Trump haters led by the NYT did their best to relaunch the smear campaign against Justice Kavanaugh.  The formerly prestigious newspaper continued to dig its journalistic grave by publishing a carefully constructed story of another sexual escapade the Justice was supposed to have participated in as an undergraduate, and then later had to ‘amend’ it in response to a public outcry for the truth.  Well, it turns out that in the process the NYT rolled another fake news honey wagon down the street, immediately onto which jumped about twelve leading Dem presidential candidates to start spreading its contents through the lamestream media.  Our moral high-ground progressives (witness also these pages) have decided to respond with their usual crickets.  It’s telling that even Nadler is not going to touch this one with a ten-foot ladle.

Fox News should review the grade school credentials of some of its news editors.  Tonight on Bret Bayer a map showing the latest Iran/Saudi crisis had Oman labeled as the UAE, and the entire Arabian Sea as the greatly expanded Persian Gulf.  Our criticisms of the post-Great Society disaster in educating America’s kids is confirmed daily in what we see and hear on the news.

[17sep19 update]  My main desktop computer died on Sunday morning.  And I mean died, like in DEAD – even its operating system Windows10 did not load, it just got to BIOS and went belly up.  The tech mavens at Quietech (my goto PC docs) diagnosed it as having a hardware failure that required ordering a replacement part from China which will take at least a week to arrive.  Having PCs since ‘Day One’, I have never experienced such a failure in over 40 years.  We always have a bunch of computers around the house, but losing my main brain left me somewhere between devastated and discombobulated (I think psychiatrists know the difference).  The emotional experience was/is an interesting episode, and very revealing about my dependencies.  The dearly departed and about to be resurrected is a very large and very fast Alienware laptop game computer that can juggle multi-million element matrices in a single bound (yes, I still spend time messing with such beasts).  Now Jo Ann has the only working Windows box left in the house; the rest of our laptops, pads, and phones are all Apple products – e.g. I’m typing this on my MacBook Pro which lives in the front room by a comfy couch.  My self-indulging response to all this is having another super-fast (AMD 8-core, 16 thread) Windows tower built that will be delivered with a new 32 inch high-res monitor which will join my formerly biggest 27-incher.  Both of us got addicted to two-monitor setups some years back, and having only one screen to work with is now downright stifling.  Anyway, that’s more than you wanted to know about my current emotional shock and functional deficit.

Scattershots - 5sep19

Trip report.  We’re now on the Rhine heading for Koblenz to view some historical fortifications.  On this trip we landed in Munich, and drove to Bad Worishofen for a big reunion with four German families we have known and visited for decades, and ate ourselves silly at different places in the foothills of the Alps.  Very interesting was that no one wanted to talk politics very much - a staple of German conversation.  Then we drove to Basel through Austria and Switzerland to catch our Viking river longship.  The trip down the Rhine has been wonderful, especially the tour of the actual battlegrounds of the little known Colmar salient (contemporaneously fought with the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign made famous by Audie Murphy).  The daylong walking tour of Strasbourg was almost a reminder of the march up the Bataan peninsula.  We’re again traveling with friends with whom we done this before.  So far we’ve been through four countries and will add Holland before coming home.

Dropout Derby - 15aug19 update

George Rebane

And now Hickenlooper has hit the silk.  The results gentlemen.

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