Another reason to oppose war.

 

An army — all armies, not just yours — selects for robust men because in conflict, robust men are generally more successful.  Bear in mind throughout this that "men provide muscle mass and DNA; women create civilization".  That last is, however, only part of the equation.  While women create civilization, only men can create men, and only robust men can create robust men.

Along comes a war, where — as George Carlin used to say — rich old men send poor young men to fight and die.  And, of course, it's robust poor young men who do the fighting and dying.

The inevitable result is that succeeding generations are increasingly the product of those who weren't robust enough to be selected to fight and die (the un-robust) or who were able to game the system to avoid selection (the young rich).  If this pattern is sustained long enough, the result is what we see now on American and British college campuses:  the snowflake culture.  Our future leaders will come from a population so un-robust that they feel threatened by opinions.  This is unsustainable.  It is a strategy that will lead inevitably to a failure of the species to thrive, and if continued long enough, will lead to extinction.  Its cause is 'too much war'.

Europeans (and we’re part of that, culturally) have a long history of imperial expansion justified under the assumption that 'bigger is better’.  Such expansion almost surely requires wars of conquest that, like any war, requires robust young soldiers and that, like every other war, results in dead robust young soldiers.  Britain lost the bulk of two generations of robust, adventurous young men for being at the center of two world wars, and is now at the point of being conquered by unarmed third-world barbarians because there are too few offspring of robust, adventurous, risk-taking men who take after their fathers.

Luckily, here at the start of the 21st century, we’re beginning to understand that bigger is not better, and the justification for another war is being questioned by those who pay the bill either in taxes or with their lives.  China, Russia, and the United States, the three largest modern nations, are all showing signs of weakness at their seams.  China’s totalitarian government is each year forced to clamp down ever harder on dissident voices;  Russia, which should have a booming economy given its phenomenal natural resources, is struggling to keep its own people fed;  the United States is watching its politics devolve toward looming civil war.

In the case of the U.S., our Congress seems intent on provoking another war with Russia or China, as if another war is just what the doctor ordered.  The solution to all these problems is two-pronged:

One:  It is a fact that in all of human history, no nation has ever gone to war with a major trading partner.  The best way to prevent war is to engage in commerce.  When all your probable enemies are busily making money from the interactions between your economy and theirs, war becomes an unnecessary complication.

Two:  Recognizing that bigger is not, in fact, better, we need to seriously reconsider the notion embedded in our brains that our union is indivisible.  (This is also a valuable lesson for other countries similarly constructed.)  The greatest failures in our history are marked by those times when we 'made a federal project out of it’, when we concluded (almost always incorrectly) that one size could fit all.  It’s often hard in retrospect to see that such actions were errors because we have no contravening examples to show us that we picked a sub-optimal solution.  All we have are the long-term consequences (of the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, to cite but a few examples) to tug on our sleeves and ask 'was that what you intended?’.  If we are honest with ourselves, if we put away rabid partisanship, we can readily admit that most of these 'one size fits all’ solutions do not, in fact, fit very well anywhere, much less 'everywhere'.

For the case of the (increasingly dis-)United States, it's time to give up the demonstrably incorrect idea that Uncle Sam knows best.  In the education department, for instance, we have spent trillions to improve student performance and we have no statistically significant change to show for it.  Although we have a cabinet-level Department of Energy, we have not built a single new nuclear reactor in thirty years, relying instead on becoming the world's leading producer of petroleum.  Climate alarmists are even now working to undo that success and intend to leave us shivering in the cold and grubbing for insects.  That is: a proto-hominid, paleolithic existence.  Talk about your 'existential threat'!

If we're to survive into the 22nd century, we have to adopt the attitude called 'isolationist' by some, 'non-interventionist' by others: we care that you're having problems, but we have problems of our own to solve, and those problems come first in our list of priorities.  When we have our own house in order, we may be able to help you out, OR you may profit by our example and solve your own problems.

We've had far too many wars of liberation, and far too many dead children that might one day have grown to be fathers of a generation we could have been proud of.  Instead, we have college seniors that are triggered by ideas that offend them.

"A republic, if you can keep it." —— Benjamin Franklin

 

I love my GPS

 

In ages past, people getting ready for a long trip would visit their local AAA office to get a customized 'Trip-Tik'.  These were ring-bound 5"-by-8" strip maps each showing 50 to 300 miles of major travel roads.  AAA travel consultants would select the proper set of strip maps for the journey you had in mind and stripe them with highlighter pens to show the recommended route.  The back of each sheet listed recommended hotels, motels, restaurants, and service stations related to the route on the front side, each with its AAA-rating.  It was a complete, coherent collection of all the information you would need for that trip segment.  Together with its accompanying maps, it was everything you needed to know from leaving home to getting back home again.  Pretty neat, but labor-intensive, and when your plans changed mid-trip, useless, unless you could find a nearby AAA office to give you an update.

Automation has come to the rescue, thanks to a cluster of 69 satellites being used by three different positioning systems.  31 of them are what enable the GPS in your car.  As long as your GPS can 'hear' at least three of them, the built-in software can tell you where you are within about 50 feet anywhere on the surface of the planet.

We got our first GPS in 2009 in preparation for a road trip into the American Southwest.  We used it for a few weeks to get used to it before we left on vacation, then used it in our rental car when we got there.

Our first stop was at Canyon de Chelly (shay-ye) in Arizona.  The canyon has a 'v' shape with the two legs of the canyon extending generally east from the town of Chinle, AZ.  There are 'rim roads' along the south rim and the north rim.  On our first half-day there, we explored the south rim road.  The next day was spent taking guided tours into the canyons.  On our last day, we drove out along the north rim road to catch any sights we might otherwise have missed.  When we were satisfied that we had seen everything there was to see, I programmed the GPS for the next leg of our trip: to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado with an en route pass by Shiprock, an ancient volcanic basalt core whose cone has eroded away over the eons, and which became a sort of 'mile marker' for pioneer wagon trains as they headed for California.  The GPS ordered me to turn right (east) out of the parking lot.

"No," I thought, "that's not right.  I have to go west into Chinle to pick up US-191 north."  My second thought was that this was a vacation and that I should go where the GPS pointed.  We turned east through rough wilderness via BIA-64 and BIA-12 and BIA-13 and BIA-33.  It was some time before I realized that these were Bureau of Indian Affairs roads, and the GPS was taking us directly through the Navajo (I presume) Reservation.  At one point, we were zig-zagging our way up the side of a mountain when we reached the high point and could see, straight ahead 30 miles away across the plains, Shiprock standing there like an obsidian ax blade sticking up out of the desert.  The GPS had given us a magnificent view as our reward for having faith in its ability.

You know how a GPS picks a route, don't you?  It has a vast encyclopedia of roads and facts about those roads.  It knows that from here to there, the speed limit is v and the distance is s, so the time to get from point A to point B is t.  It picks your route by adding up all the times from each possible route and selecting the smallest of those.

There are downsides to placing too much faith in a GPS, however.  Sometimes its advice is just plain wrong.  Usually this happens when you're in the vicinity of a city or metropolitan area.  The GPS may give you directions that seem to take forever!  The reason for this is simple, so simple that I'm amazed GPS-makers haven't added the SMOP (Simple Matter Of Programming) to their software that would correct it.  The mis-routing happens because the GPS doesn't allow for the time your speed will be zero because you're waiting at a red light.  The simple 'fix' is to charge 25 or 35 or 45 seconds to the route-time for every traffic light along the way.  You won't get stopped at every one of them, (unless you're on State Street in Erie PA) but when you do get stopped, it will be for several minutes.  Charging the route-time this way operates to make certain routes poor options for through traffic, and the normal GPS software will usually, then, de-select such routes even if they are more direct.

For road trips, however, most moderns have given up using AAA Trip-Tiks, and now rely exclusively on their GPSs, whether built-in or added-on.  Don't leave home without it!

 

Stop+Space+Space

 

In ages past when adolescent women took a 'business track' in high school, they studied stenography (Gr.: short writing) usually referred to as "sten and transcription".  'Stenography' is the art of quickly writing dictated words by recording their sound patterns.  'Transcription' was the process of re-converting all those mysterious cryptic squiggles back into something legible.  In general, that meant typing it onto paper.  Naturally, one also had to become proficient at typing.  One of the first lessons in typing class would have been 'double space between sentences', or 'double space after a full stop'.

The reason for the double-space was to give a visually-clear indication that one sentence was ending and another beginning. In the age of word processors, the habit of 'double space after a full stop' has become deprecated. That is, it is no longer taught, and is now considered improper. We live in a world of 'single space between sentences'. Most word processing software will actually remove what it considers 'extraneous blanks' between sentences. Even if you deliberately period-space-space as you type, MSWord may just erase all those 'errors' the first chance it gets. Well, really, does it make any difference? Let's see. To illustrate the change in visual clarity engendered by that change in policy, this paragraph has been keyed as 'single space between sentences'. All the others are keyed 'double space between sentences'. Can you detect the difference?

Admittedly, the change may be hard to detect, but as you read the text with your eyes there's a voice in your head that 'reads the text aloud' to you.  It has a different pacing and you may be able to actually feel the presence or absence of a... pause?... between the sentences.

I am a great fan of that old double-space.  Everything I write uses it.  It's old-style.  Why would anyone be such an old stick-in-the-mud?  (Aside, that is, from enjoying being a curmudgeonly fuddy-duddy.)

When writing fiction (as I often do) control of pacing is something greatly to be desired.  I want my readers to hear, to feel that pause between thoughts that often accompanies dialog between characters.  Similarly, when writing a letter to someone who will personally read it, one may also want to control that pacing.  That might mean eliminating that pause between thoughts to transmit a sense of urgency, or to include the pause to gently nudge the reader into a thoughtful mood.

Thankfully, in recent times it has become possible to customize one's word-processing software settings to prevent it eliminating all those laboriously typed spaces.  For those who (like me, occasionally) write in HTML, there's a way to prevent the HTML processor from compressing the text: the non-breaking space.  A non-breaking space is never eliminated; it is always kept.  Its symbol is ampersand-nbsp-semicolon ( ).  Each place where your eyes detect 'too many spaces' is the probable result of a non-breaking space after a period plus a regular space such that the reader software is forced to insert an empty character after the period and before the single space character that cannot be further compressed.

I hope that your own eyes will urge you to the position that the second paragraph here is the least easy to read, and that you'll come to value an extra space here and there in your own writing.

 

Hunter Biden, Director

 

Why all this focus on Hunter Biden?

Some people have a tendency to not 'connect the dots'.  They may look at all the attention paid to Joe Biden's son Hunter and his employment on some obscure Ukrainian energy company's board (Burisma) and jump to the obvious conclusion:  the Republicans can't find anything on Biden, so they go after Biden's family.  If that's true, it would be despicable, and we would all be justified in heaping scorn on the GOP for such dirty politics.

There's a spare dot in the middle of this picture that's hidden from view.

Ukraine, like many other countries, is a recipient of U.S. foreign aid.  The threat of withholding that aid can be used to move their politics in any desired direction.  "Aha!" you say, "so Ukraine leans on Burisma to put Biden's son on their payroll and pay him a pile of loot so that they'll have an 'in' when it comes time to collect some more foreign aid!  That seems like a sound business decision!"  and you just missed the hidden dot.

The hidden dot is that Burisma has deep connections to the Ukraine government itself, the same government that gets all that foreign aid.  Burisma can pad its invoices to cover Hunter Biden's hefty (and likely unjustified) directorial 'salary' and Ukraine winds up paying that bill.  Burisma just passed Hunter's salary through to the Ukraine government which paid that salary using U.S. foreign aid money.  Hunter Biden is not being paid by Burisma, he's being paid by you.  Foreign aid money is being 'laundered' from your pockets right back into the pockets of the Biden family.

Hunter sits on several such boards in several similarly-situated countries despite the fact that Hunter Biden has no experience in the workings of the oil and gas industry.  His only 'experience' is as the son of a long-term U.S. Senator and Vice President.

Who wants to bet that if the U.S. cuts off aid to Ukraine, Hunter Biden would be flushed from Burisma's board within the week?

Lord Peter Bauer once pointed out that "Foreign aid is an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries, to rich people in poor countries."  And to rich people in rich countries, too, it seems.

 

P.s.:  Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, just resigned from a board in a country that looks very much like a laundry.

 

Riqui — May 15, 2006 to October 4, 2019

 

Norene and I both expected to be emotional basket cases when the day came, and I'm not saying we were not sad, but...

Riqui (Suncatcher's Periquita, officially) had a bout of congestive heart failure on January 3rd and the vet told us then "3 months... maybe 4" so this wasn't exactly "a surprise".  With excellent care, she lasted through October, but in recent days she started huffing more, not exactly a cough, but respiratory.  She also started getting foggy.  She'd go outside on the lawn and seem not to know exactly why she was there.  She was becoming incontinent, but... knew where the Puppy Pads were and what they were for.  Friday when we took her to see the vet again, her tongue was purple.  She was visibly struggling to breathe.

You always wonder "Am I doing this for my convenience?" but there's a flip-side to that coin: "Am I keeping her alive so that I, myself, won't feel pain?"  In the end, we opted to take the pain to save her from it.

I suspect it's going to hurt a long time.  Memories are like that, damn it.

 

Dave Boyd and the STSS

 

When I worked at IBM's Field Engineering headquarters Information Systems Department (FEIS) in the late 70s, I had the good fortune to collaborate on several projects with David P. Boyd, a truly gifted systems analyst with an impressive résumé of accomplishments, including writing the curriculum for the first Autocoder class.  (I don't know what 'Autocoder' is, by the way.)  Dave was the analyst and the brains behind the Suggestions Tracking and Statistical System (STSS), FE's first IMS DB/DC application.  For reasons that were not initially clear, I, a very junior programmer, was tasked with doing the core programming for this quite-elaborate application.

Management at FEHQ was very averse to slipping a date once the client had signed off on it.  That meant that on occasion programmers (and sometimes the analysts) would work through the night and sometimes through the weekend.

On one such overnight effort, Dave and I were returning from FE's Sterling Forest Data Center in the wee hours of the morning.  I don't recall the project or whether it was a one-day or a multi-day work-through, but I do recall that Dave had driven us there in his Porsche 914.  As soon as we were sure the project would make its deadline, we wrapped up and headed for the parking lot.  It was around 2 AM when we set off for Yorktown Heights where Dave and I both lived.  The only plausible route was Seven Lakes Parkway winding through Harriman State Park, one lane in each direction, heavily forested, and unlit save for the occasional traffic circle.  As we approached Tiorati Circle, Dave casually mentioned that Tiorati was the highest elevation on Seven Lakes Parkway.  "You know what that means, right?" he asked me.  I admitted that I did not know what he was asking.  "It means that we could coast from Tiorati all the way to the Bear Mountain Bridge.  Are you in a hurry to get home?"  I shook my head.  A minute later, Dave negotiated Tiorati Circle at 45mph and as he rejoined the main road, slipped the 914's stick into neutral.  For the next 20-something miles, gravity provided all the motive power to the car, and Dave only put it back into gear when we could see the bridge at the end of a long downslope.  It was the weirdest sensation: racing down a darkened country road at highway speed, with the road ahead illuminated only by the car's headlights, and the Porsche engine purring contentedly.

STSS had been mandated to FEIS by Corporate because the Suggestion Department in Endicott (NY) was nominally run by the Field Engineering Division even though it served all non-plant locations in the United States and thus served several different divisions' employees.  The nature of the project involved a great deal of data entry, so much that it stretched over several years.  Since it was to be a 'flagship application' and involved technologies FEIS was largely unfamiliar with, the project time line was allowed to extend far longer than would otherwise be permitted.  While I did most of the design and coding, several other programmers would now and then be pressed into service to produce parts of the system as well.

When it was complete, the software was cut over to run in parallel test mode.  That is: Endicott considered it to be "running in production" even if everyone in 'production' considered it to be not-yet-installed.  Getting it documented and installed was my job alone since everyone including Dave had been shifted onto other projects leaving me as the last man standing.  After several abortive attempts to get 'the package' accepted by the production side of the house, it became clear that some sort of animus was at work to prevent STSS from becoming 'official', and the animus extended to my own management who steadfastly refused to intervene to get an otherwise perfectly-working software system past a gamut of ever-changing rules.  In August, 1979, with STSS still officially uninstalled, I left IBM for greener pastures.  Within six months, Endicott's management began complaining to Corporate management about the situation, and Corporate told FEHQ to 'get that installed or find a new job'.  Presto!  Installed!

Each of the plant locations also maintained their own Suggestions Departments and each therefore had the same problems associated with tracking and counting submitted suggestions.  Before too long, plants here and there started whining that they didn't have an STSS of their own.  Dave Boyd — as the most knowledgeable person regarding STSS — was pulled back from whatever he was then doing and assigned the task of visiting each plant and installing a copy of STSS for each of them.  Well, plants aren't only in the United States.  There are plants in Milan Italy, Corbeille-Essonnes France, Boeblingen Germany, and several other places.  Dave got The Grand Tour of Europe.

Years later, I would learn that FE was resentful at Corporate HQ 'ramming STSS down their throats' and assigned the newest, greenest programmer they could find to screw up that project to a fare-thee-well, but they never told me about their nefarious plans.  Thinking they meant the project to be a success, I did everything I could to get it to work.  They were very, very upset that I succeeded, and I think they were more surprised than I that it turned out as well as it did.

IBM, I hear, no longer has a Suggestions Program, so FEHQ got their wish after all.

 

A response to 16 liberal talking points

 

A friend posted these 16 theses on Facebook with the proviso: "(Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine)".  Each of these 'liberal talking points' deserves an individual reply, but since I have been disinvited to post anywhere but my own page...  so let it be written; so let it be done.

—==+++==—

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members.  A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected.  Period.

Resp:  It is the essence of 'civilization' that the old, the weak, the infirm, and children are cared for and protected when they cannot do so for themselves.  On this count, there cannot be any argument without first abandoning any pretense of civilization oneself.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all."  This is not the case.  I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative.  I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it.  And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

Resp:  To say that healthcare is a right reveals a gross misunderstanding of the nature of 'rights'.  One cannot have a right without a corresponding responsibility.  My right to own a gun, for instance, carries with it a responsibility not to use it for evil.  What responsibility is associated with a right to healthcare?  It can only be that someone is charged with the responsibility of providing healthcare.  Who would that be?  Here is a case where, again, the productive sector is being asked — no that's not right — is being ordered to provide for someone who can't or won't provide for themselves.  If it were only the old, the weak, and the infirm, our innate moral sense would urge us to do this without coercion, but that's not what's at stake here, is it?

3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone.  It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

Resp:  What we see as 'the education crisis' is largely manufactured by bad public policy.  Suppose the government decided that teachers must be able to get to work teaching and offered a $10,000 tax rebate for any teacher who bought a new car.  What do you think would happen to the price of new cars?  If you guessed that the price of cars would suddenly jump by several thousand dollars, you can see why the price of a college education has quintupled in just a few decades.  (The same analysis, by the way, applies to that 'housing bubble' of a few years back.)  Market forces must be allowed to 'price' the value of a degree in Medieval French Literature or we will soon find ourselves with scholars who can quote verbatim 13th-century love poems but can't be employed anywhere but McDonald's.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work.  I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this.  Ever.  I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor.  Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this.  Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

Resp:  Jack is not rich because Jill is poor.  There is not a causal relationship between those two things.  There is a causal relationship between 'Jack is rich' and 'Jack runs a government-sanctioned monopoly'.  If you're serious about solving the problem of wealth inequality, you're not going to do so with simple-minded redistributionist schemes.  Plus, recognize that there will always be some inequality; some people are more talented than others, and some don't see money as the be-all and end-all of life.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly.  If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

Resp:  Well, you just pinned two things that can't happen without government intervention, and you think the answer is 'more government intervention'.  I don't know how to counter that.  Checkmate.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage.  Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes.  What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water.  Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multi-billion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

Resp:  Should companies have to pay 'x' dollars for work that isn't worth 'x' dollars?  What do you do with employees who don't/can't/won't contribute to your bottom line at least the equivalent of the minimum wage?  Answer: you fire them and replace them with machines.  What happens to your business if ALL your employees produce less than you are forced to pay them?  Your business is now 'your former business'.  Good idea?  Then, too, 'minimum wage jobs' aren't meant to provide a living wage.  They're meant to provide the kind of experience one needs to get a better job.  If you can only make minimum wage, you shouldn't be starting a family.

7. I am not anti-Christian.  I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc.  (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal).  All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs.  When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" — I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules.  You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you?  That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me.  Be a Christian.  Do your thing.  Just don't force it on me or mine.

Resp:  THAT is a true 'liberal' position, one that all the founding fathers would have applauded.  It boils down to 'leave me alone', a sentiment we find all through the revolutionary writings, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.  Where did we go wrong?  We said "Hmm.. clean food and untainted meat: good idea; let's have an FDA..." and we were off and running.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you.  I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

Resp:  Another true liberal position, but who says they have fewer rights?  Would that be... umm... Congress?

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally).  I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

Resp:  While Republicans (and occasionally Democrats) might dispute this, the Constitution nowhere grants authority to anyone, Congress or the President, to control immigration (you could look it up).  Congress is granted power 'to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization', and that's as far as it goes.  Surprised?  Whether you acknowledge it or not, the root of the current malaise is not 'immigration' per se, but rather the welfare state we have allowed this country to become, that and the fact that Congress has bobbled the ball on that 'uniform Rule of Naturalization' thingy.

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc.  It's not that I want the government's hands in everything — I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE.  Is the government devoid of shadiness?  Of course not.  But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc.  Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

Resp:  I would much rather have Consumer Union inspecting my food than FDA and USDA.  CU has a vested interest in maintaining their reputation for honesty and fair-dealing.  FDA and USDA?  Not so much.  Every drug ever recalled by the FDA was first determined to be safe and effective by the FDA.  As to 'consumers have recourse', I refer you to the vaunted 'tobacco settlement'.  Was any of that monster fine used to recompense anyone actually harmed by smoking?  Nope, and the terms of the settlement immunized the tobacco companies against lawsuits.  Nice people you're hangin' with...

11. I believe our current administration is fascist.  Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities.  Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

Resp:  If by 'fascist' you mean 'controlling the means of production', then we've been fascist for about 170 years.  I think what you mean is 'totalitarian', and we've been that for about 120 years.  Only the fact that 120 million Americans own 400 million guns and 300 billion rounds of ammunition has kept the government from lining people up against the wall.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed.  Which means those with privilege — white, straight, male, economic, etc. — need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

Resp:  Does that mean you want to forbid facial tattoos and eyebrow piercings?  Because if anything 'marginalizes' people, it's that.  Most marginalization of people results from the decisions of the marginalized rather than their skin color or gender.  Efforts to coerce an end to that marginalization results in bakers being sued for turning away profitable business.  Coercion is bad no matter what the reason.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government.  What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun.  (Got another opinion?  Put it on your page, not mine).

Resp:  There is not a single 'sensible gun control policy' in the liberal catechism that would have saved even one life — ever.  If anyone has proof that that's incorrect, I'd like to see it.  120 million Americans own 400 million guns and 300 billion rounds of ammunition.  If any appreciable fraction of those were as dangerous and unstable as they are made out to be, there wouldn't be 30,000 fatal gunshots each year; there would be 30,000 fatal gunshots each month.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness.  I prefer to think it’s social politeness.  If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles.  It’s the polite thing to do.  Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better.  When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better.  So why not do better?  How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

Resp:  I will happily call someone 'Theo' rather than Theodore, Ted, or Eddie, and I may even — if they ask politely — refer to them as 'Your Serene Boffness', but I'll laugh when I do.  Force me to do that?  That's really what this is all about, isn't it?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs.  There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil.  Sorry, billionaires.  Maybe try investing in something else.

Resp:  The laws of physics are immutable.  No amount of wishing will change the fact that wind, solar, hydroelectric, and thermal energy together cannot — that's an important word: cannot — sustain the world's current lifestyle, but it can destroy entire national economies trying prove that they can.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human.  They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse.  Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

Resp:  The laws of nature are as immutable as the laws of physics.  Men cannot bear children and parthenogenesis doesn't work for our species.  That means that men and women are biologically different, and no one with even half a brain disputes that.  That women must bear the children and are in a relatively fragile state while doing so means that they cannot — there's that word again — work the same as men.  At some point, they are forced (!) to attend to the birthing process and not attend to 'their job'.  Men provide muscle mass and DNA; women create civilization; let's not screw that up.

I think that about covers it.  Bottom line is that I'm a liberal because I think we should take care of each other.  That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money.  It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

Resp:  That must mean you're anti-war.  What are you doing voting Democrat (or Republican)?

 

Kindly General Lee

 

While surfing the internet today, I was directed to a 'recommended link' from The Atlantic debunking the 'canard' of Robert E. Lee as a gentlemanly soldier and talented tactician.  Of course there was not an opportunity to comment on the article, and I always suspect foul play when a publication thus shies away from adverse opinions.  The author of the piece, Adam Serwer, suggests that Lee was a poor tactician, else why would he fight a conventional war against an industrial behemoth?  And 'gentleman'?  What sort of gentleman would own slaves?  According to The Atlantic, the war was all about slavery and Lee was responsible for hundreds of thousands dead or maimed.  No wonder they don't allow comments!

I warrant the vast majority of Americans today actually do believe the Civil War was 'all about slavery'.  Why wouldn't they?  It's what they've been taught in every American History class since they were six.  It's not true that slavery had nothing to do with the war, but to say it was the entire, or even the primary, cause of the war is provable nonsense.  The easiest proof of that can be found in the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Civil War started, we're told, on April 12th, 1861 when South Carolinian troops shelled federal troops occupying Fort Sumter.  The Emancipation Proclamation was issued January 1st, 1863.  Now, that's odd, isn't it?  The war was 'all about slavery' but Lincoln waited over 20 months after the war started before making the empty gesture of declaring free those slaves then in territory the Union had no control over.  Further, slaves in Pennsylvania and New York weren't covered by that proclamation because Pennsylvania and New York were not 'in rebellion'.  How strange that those slaves would continue as slaves when the whole conflict was 'all about slavery'!

At the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union was getting its clock cleaned by someone who was, according to The Atlantic, not very good at warfare.  Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a sop to the abolitionists who, up until that time, didn't see much reason to enlist.  Afterwards, the war was 'a war to free the slaves' and abolitionists signed up in droves, filling the Union ranks.  That's where we get the idea that it was 'all about slavery'.

Lee could have fought a guerrilla war, and it would have been ghastly.  It also would have ended the United States as it was then seen.  Lincoln had already shown himself ready to trash the Constitution in the name of increasing federal power.  Federal troops occupied and shut down Northern newspapers whose editorial position opposed the war.  First amendment?  What First amendment are you talking about?

Lincoln couldn't, of course, shut down foreign newspapers, and the view from across the pond is enlightening.  Virtually every European newspaper of the day thought the cause of the U.S. Civil War was 'tariff and trade policy', not 'slavery'.  The U.S. heavily tariffed manufactured imported cotton goods.  The South produced cotton as its major crop, sold it to whomever would pay the going price, and that cotton would become shirts and other white goods in the mills of England, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, but the products arriving from Europe were exorbitantly priced due to the added tax.  Eventually, Europe stopped buying cotton from America because they weren't selling any product there, switched to Egyptian cotton, and left the South with only one place to sell their output: the North.  The North, now with no competition for the South's cotton, could squeeze the South on price.  It wasn't slavery that caused the Civil War, it was economics.  The South was getting screwed by the North, and everyone (especially in Europe) knew it.

So, why would Lee prosecute a conventional war with the North?  The South's attitude and expectations were likely a major factor.  Lee felt that if the South resisted assimilation, the North would eventually tire of it and just go away.  The South, it should be noted, didn't want to conquer the North; they just wanted to be left alone.  It was the North that wanted to conquer the South.  The U.S. Civil War thus isn't really 'a civil war' because there were not two factions fighting for control of the whole.  The South just wanted its independence and would have been content to leave the North in peace — and not have to fund a federal government that was already bloating.

At one point, a reporter is said to have asked Lincoln directly: "Why not just let them go?", and Lincoln's reply was: "Then who would pay for the government?"  Lincoln surely knew the 'civil war' was not about slavery.  It was about control, and he meant to have it no matter how many Americans had to die to get it for him.

After the war, Lee and Lord Acton (J. E. E. Dalberg, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely") kept up a lively correspondence over the course of several years.  The letters back-and-forth are currently available in print.  Acton expressed his belief that the South had the better moral position(!!) in the conflict.  In one letter, Lee casually, almost off-handedly, remarks that had he known how Reconstruction was going to be implemented, he would have dispersed his army into the wilderness to fight on as best they could ('guerrilla warfare') and he would have surrendered only himself to Grant at Appomattox.

We should all be grateful that Lee was such a poor tactician that he did not do that, for had he done so, we would today be seeing roughly what we see with our troops in the Middle East: 4-to-6 deaths a day.

Every day.

For 155 years.

 

Attack of the Robocallers

 

Robocallers are a modern plague.  It wouldn't have moved Pharaoh to let my people go, it's true, but he sure would have sent Egypt's Secret Police out to teach the scammers a lesson — if he could have found them.

Everyone, it seems, is now concerned, and everyone, it seems, is offering free advice on how to deal with them.  Why shouldn't I?

First, put an announcement message on your voicemail to let people know that their call may have been deliberately ignored:

Hello, you've reached the voicemail of [your name].  Either I'm unable to immediately answer your call, or I didn't recognize your number.  Please leave your name, a short message, and a call-back number and I will return the call when I am able.  Thank you and have a nice day.  If this is a sales solicitation call, you will never get a return call.  Have a nice day someplace else.

Second, adopt this policy:  if a call comes through with a name or number you do not recognize, let it roll to voice-mail.  Most cell phones will silence the ringer if you change the volume, so volume-up or volume-down and the ringer turns off.  The call goes to voicemail after ringing (silently) for x times.

Third, do not block the caller.  Many robocallers 'spoof' the incoming number;  the number you're blocking isn't the number the call is really coming from.  That means you will be blocking the wrong number.  Worse, the number you block is probably a real, active, in-use phone for somebody, and you could be blocking a number that, sometime in the future, you actually want to be able to call you.  And, because you're blocking the wrong number, it's a waste of your time and effort.

Some robocalls are really made by (software) robots.  These programs only know that the call has been answered, not that it has been answered by voicemail.  As a result, they begin their pre-recorded spiel as soon as the phone stops ringing.  Since you let it roll to voicemail, the first 10-15 seconds of that spiel doesn't get onto your voicemail.  When you finally listen to the message it says "...ether.  If you haven't taken care of this...".  The missing front end tells you immediately that it wasn't a real person, and you can safely purge the message.

Technology may provide some relief.  T-Mobile, for instance, has an internal list of probable spammers and marks many incoming calls as "Scam Likely".  Definitely let those roll to voicemail.  Most of them do not leave messages, but some...  The very best one I've ever encountered was an intelligent robocaller.  It could hear and recognize voice responses and respond appropriately.  It went something like this:
Me: "Hello... hello..."
Robocaller: (nervous giggle) "Oh, sorry, I was having a little trouble with my headset.  Can you hear me?"
Me: "Yes, I can hear you."
RC: "This is Julie from ... and I'm calling to see if you..."

At that point I hung up, but did you notice how the conversation went?  It waited for a second 'hello' before starting.  Then, it gave a reason for not answering immediately, so you believe this is a real person.  You respond with a 'yes', and the RC now knows it has a real person to 'talk' to, so it starts the spiel.  If you let it go on, it will ask questions, collect the answers, and maybe later route you over to the real caller having established that you do have storm windows and still have a mortgage and have a decent credit rating.  Insidious...

Legislation is unlikely to put a stop to this.  When has legislation ever solved a problem without creating two more to replace it?  When the law goes into effect, the spammers and scammers will alter their procedures or move offshore or... and the annoying calls will continue unabated.

Let them roll to voicemail.

 

Rx: government, 5mcg, bid, PRN

 

Government is best in small doses.  The stereotypical New England Town Meeting may be the best example of efficiently-run government.  A Congress with 100 Senators and 435 Representatives, flanked by a thousand federal agencies, may be the best example of how bad it can get.

A nation the size of the U.S. may simply be impossible to run efficiently, but our national tendency to make every issue "a federal project" puts us on a path to costly, unjust, and overly-complicated government.  It may be that the best solution to this problem is 'secession'.

Perhaps the next amendment to the Constitution ought to be

"The prerogative of the States to separate from the United States of America and 'to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them' shall not be abrogated."

Some will object that we fought a civil war over this issue and resolved it in the negative.  That is categorically untrue.  What the civil war resolved was the truth that an industrialized society has a military advantage over an agricultural society.  Absolutely nothing else was decided.

Allowing discretionary secession would, in fact, have an immediate salubrious effect on the efficiency of our federal behemoth.  When states acquire the power to defund the federal government, that federal government would necessarily become much more attentive to the needs and desires of the individual states — or lose their funding.  Many problems that are now addressed with one-size-fits-all national programs would have to be handled at the level of the individual states, as was the original plan in the 18th century.  We would again, after a hiatus of 155 years, resume true Constitutional governance.

 

Ounces and Pounds

 

There's an old riddle that goes "Which weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?" and the accepted answer is that they both weigh the same.

Except that they don't.

An ounce of feathers weighs the same as an ounce of bread or an ounce of balsa wood, but an ounce of gold is heavier.  The reason is that feathers and bread and balsa wood are weighed using the Avoirdupois scale, and gold is measured on the Troy scale.

An Avoirdupois ounce is 437.5 grains (28.35g), but a Troy ounce is 480 grains (31.10g).  An ounce of any precious metal is 42.5 grains heavier than any non-metal because the two things are measured on different scales.

Pounds are something else.  An Avoirdupois pound is 16 Avoirdupois ounces, 7,000 grains, 453.6 grams, but a Troy pound is only 12 Troy ounces, 5,760 grains, 373.24 grams.

Oddly, while an ounce of gold may be heavier than an ounce of feathers, a pound of feathers is heavier (by 80g) than a pound of gold.

—==+++==—

Update:   Thanks to Jim Pruitt for the correction.  This originally said 'lead', but Jim points out that the Troy scale is used only for precious metals and like substances such as gems, so I changed 'lead' into 'gold'.  Hot dog, I'm an alchemist!

 

Brahms

 

Sometimes when I get on a writing jag, I put music on to play in the background.  Often, it's Brahms.

Back in the days of 4 track reel-to-reel tape recorders, the 60s, my sister presented me with a recording of the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto played by the famous Sviatoslav Richter.  In those days, the Soviet Union was a brutally repressive regime that made it difficult for its citizens, especially its famous and/or talented citizens, to travel abroad.  Often, they just wouldn't come back.  Richter had been offered a gig with the Chicago Symphony to record a few piano pieces including the Brahms PC#2.  It was that recording that introduced me to Brahms.  I didn't even unwrap it for nearly a year, but when I did and listened to it finally, I was awe-stricken.  It became such a favorite of mine that I probably damaged the tape by playing it as often as I did.

Twenty years ago in the heat of the Y2K 'crisis', I was working a contract in Houston for EXXON and living in an apartment.  I flew home for Christmas, planning to come back to work the last few days of the contract before packing the apartment into my car and driving home to Florida for the last time.  At Christmas, my girls gave me a CD of Brahms' 2nd and 3rd symphonies.  It went back to Houston with me and, with my car packed to the headliner, I slipped the disc into its player and began my 2-day journey home.

Between Houston and Oldsmar, I didn't change the disc.  I let it play on repeat-forever for 2 whole days.  It was that enchanting.  It is, to this day, one of my favorite CDs.  I'm listening to it now.

Thank you, ladies.

 

F-you, Woodrow Wilson, and the horse you rode in on.

 

If there is one person who is most responsible for the Second World War, it may be Woodrow Wilson.

RMS Lusitania was sunk in May 1915 by a German u-boat after being warned via ads placed in the New York papers that it was a target.  Everyone shrugged off the threat by the German ambassador, assuming they would not dare torpedo a peaceful passenger liner.  Germany claimed Lusitania was transporting war materiel.  In April 1917, in the wake of 'The Zimmermann Telegram', Congress, spurred on by Wilson, declared war on Germany.  Wilson was hot for 'regime change' in Europe, and had his own ideas, the 14 Points, about how he would reorganize the continent.  The sinking of the Lusitania two years prior also played heavily into the declaration of war, and the Zimmermann Telegram has since been proven to be disinformation planted by British counter-intelligence.

When WW-I broke out on July 28, 1914, it was, initially, 'a pissing contest among cousins'.  Virtually all the countries originally involved were monarchies, and virtually all of their rulers were related, most of them via Queen Victoria.  Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Alexander are both in this category.  Various cousins took various sides in the dispute.  Through 1917, it was carnage on a Biblical scale, largely wiping out an entire generation of European men.  By 1917, the war was a stalemate, both sides running out of steam, when the U.S. entered the fray and tipped the scales.

By 1918, the industrial might of the U.S. had finally worn the Axis powers down to the point of surrender.  Wilson had what he wanted all along: Germany destroyed as a viable competitor.

The sinking of the Lusitania is an interesting study in the light of what we now know.

In the 1980s, the technology became available for divers to study the wreck in detail.  What they discovered was enlightening.  First, the British government tried to prevent the operation because they feared there might still be unexploded ordnance on board.  This came as a surprise to everyone involved since the British had claimed for 65 years that Lusitania carried only passengers, and that Germany was wrong about it having war materiel on board.  Now they were saying that Germany was justified in sinking the ship.  Further, it was the U.S. government that was 'the shipper' of that material.  When Wilson swore Lusitania was a peaceful passenger ship, he was lying, and he knew it.

When divers finally did reach the wreck of Lusitania, they discovered two holes in the hull.  One had the earmarks of a torpedo hit: the hull was bent inward.  The other hole was different.  The metal was bent outward.  Lusitania sank as fast as it did because it blew up from the inside.  It blew up from the explosives Wilson swore to the American people were not aboard that ship.  The people who died that day were killed by Wilson's lies.

The entry of the U.S. into WW-I, a conflict in which we had no cause to intervene, was engineered by the Executive Branch because Wilson wanted a piece of the action, and he didn't care how many Americans had to die to get it.

The result: Germany was reduced to third-world status generating intense hatred of those who brought them low, and made it possible for a demagogue with a glib tongue to convince the beaten-down Germans that they should exact revenge on those who did this to them.

Had it not been for Wilson, the U.S. would have steered clear of that shitstorm, WW-I likely would have been a draw, and everyone would have been anxious for it not to happen again.  One would today have to be a doctoral-level researcher of German history to be able to correctly identify Adolph Hitler — if he even rated a mention.  The Holocaust might not have happened.  Nuclear weapons might not exist.

I hope Woodrow Wilson is burning in Hell.

 

Paris - 2008

 

Friends of mine — Earl and Kellie (McCoobery) Starr — are presently in Paris visiting some of Earl's kids who live there.  They walk.  They walk a lot, which is easy to do in Paris which I tell people is one of the most walkable cities on Earth.  I'm having a back-and-forth conversation with them on FaceBook and that reminded me of our last trip to Paris in 2008, so I thought I would put down some recollections of that most memorable trip.

—==+++==—

Norene's brother passed away in 2007 and we went north for the festivities.  At a family get-together afterwards, Norene's niece approached her and asked when we were next going back to France.  Norene suggested that it might be soon.  The niece begged to tag along with her daughter and Norene agreed.  We were a party of four.

We told this story to our friends, Joe and Cathy Mallozzi, and they expressed interest in going with us.  We were a party of six.

The grand niece's talent for bowling got her onto a team that wangled an invitation to play in an Italian tournament, so niece and grand-niece wound up going to Italy ahead of our trip to France.  Their finances precluded two trips to Europe so close together, so we were a party of four again.

When her divorce was finally final, my co-worker Peggy Thomas held a celebration at a local watering hole, and during the event, I recounted the trials and tribulations of planning this all out.  Peggy admitted she soooo wanted to go to Europe, especially with seasoned travelers as guides.  Chris Dulligan, another co-worker, did a 'me too!', and we were a party of six again.

—==+++==—

Months ahead of the trip, I asked for each of the travelers to provide me with a list of their must-see sights in Paris, and from that list, I divided our days such that we could hit a maximum number of attractions.  Of course, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre topped everyone's list.  I'm pleased to say we saw all the sights (except two) from everyone's lists.  For a pictorial recounting of the trip, see my website.

—==+++==—

The six of us met up at the Philadelphia airport whence we flew to Paris, arriving there the morning of September 7th, and took the shuttle to our apartment: 17 Rue Cadet.  We dropped our luggage and went to get breakfast at a local bistro, then everybody went back to the apartment for a much-needed snooze.  By mid-afternoon with everyone rested, I hustled them all across the street and down into the Metro to get our Cartes Orange, 5 days of go-anywhere Metro use.  Day-1 I had planned to devote to "Metro 101".  Joe and Cathy, raised in Brooklyn, knew all about subway travel; Chris and Peggy — not so much.  We did some trips hither and thither as practice, and wound up at the Abbesses Metro station in Montmartre, then climbed and climbed and climbed up to Place du Tertre for Sacre Coeur and dinner at Le Consulat.

In the days following, we tripped out to Chartres, had dinner at Le Refuge des Fondus, took in a show at Le Bal du Moulin Rouge, and got creeped out by the Paris Ossuary (among many other things).

After a week of Paris, Peggy and Chris flew home and the remaining four rented a car at CDG and headed for Normandy to see Rouen, the D-Day beaches, the American cemetery, and, finally, Mont St-Michel.  To top off the trip, we next went to the Loire valley to take in the chateaux: Chenonceau, Montpoupon, Clos Lucé, Cheverny, and Chambord, finally returning to Paris for our own flights home.

Yes, a good time was had by all.  Did I mention that Paris is a very walkable city?  Joe came home seven pounds lighter than he was at the start despite having eaten his way through half the boulangeries in France.

 

The Theory And Practice Of A Welfare State

 

In a welfare state, wealth is transferred from those who have wealth to those who don't.  Ideally, the recipients of welfare state charity are those who are needy through no fault of their own and who are making an effort to become self-sufficient.  Too often, however, the modern welfare state provides support for those who have no ambition to become self-sufficient, and which is a primary factor in how they became 'needy' in the first place.  A modern industrial society can actually tolerate a certain number of able-bodied slackers, although it's never a good idea since it tends to encourage others to take that low road.

In a modern industrial society, those with ambition and talent can live in comfort not generally available to welfare beneficiaries.  This is, in fact, the primary element that makes the welfare state possible: some people are producing wealth far beyond what is actually necessary for subsistence, and that extra wealth can be tapped in order to provide for those whose wealth-generating ability is below what is necessary for subsistence.  Voila!  A source of wealth and a place to use it.

If the recipients of welfare largesse are encouraged, cajoled, or coerced to end their reliance on public charity, a welfare state can operate for a very long time, and the more robust the underlying economy, the longer the game can be played.

We know, however, that entropy always increases, and this is true even in a modern welfare state.  As benefits become more lush, more people find themselves comfortable with the idea that they are wards of the state.  Eventually, that group becomes a powerful voting bloc, and at that point, the system, like a star that has run out of fuel, is on the path to a spectacular end.  In fact, without a mechanism that forces welfare recipients off the dole after a limited time, that path begins when the welfare state is first established.  As the number of participants who produce no wealth grows, the burden on the actual wealth-producers becomes more and more onerous.  If the number of wealth-producers is also falling (as it is in America today) the collapse of the system is easy to foresee.

Things get out of control when newborns are eligible for state-supplied welfare because there is an incentive, usually in the form of larger payments than are strictly necessary for the newborn's survival.  That is: having a baby becomes profitable and the incentive to become productive and leave the welfare rolls decreases, even if only slightly.  This also moves society toward the point where welfare recipients constitute a voting majority.

In Minnesota recently, a modern scam involving their welfare system threatens to bankrupt their economy.  Working mothers whose income is under a certain figure are eligible for $1,000 per child per month for child care expenses.  A company is formed for the purpose of delivering 'child care' and subscribes a group of families.  It then hires those mothers as 'attendants', and pays them minimum wage for 25 hours per week to watch their own children!  The company bills the state for the 'care' at the maximum allowable rate and, it appears, funnels the excess offshore.  It should not come as a surprise that the proceeds of this scam are used to bring Mom's relatives over from the home country so that they can apply for and get welfare benefits here.

Meanwhile, the sources of the funds for doing all this are having children at a much decreased rate.  The next generation will be much smaller, but supporting a much larger group of welfare clients.

This can't go on.

 

Mistaken Identity

 

A year or so ago, I got a toll-violation notice from SunPass, the Florida Toll Road folks.  They sent me a series of bills for the plate that's attached to my 49cc scooter.  Now, for anyone who doesn't know this, scooters in the 'under 50cc' class don't require a motorcycle endorsement on your license because they're barely more than mo-peds.  Under ideal conditions — downhill with a tailwind — that scooter will do 42mph.  I've seen that happen once.

But these toll notices were from the Central Florida Expressway in Polk County, 80 miles away, a road where the minimum speed is 40mph.  It's not even legal for me to drive that scooter there.  I called SunPass to complain.  The nice lady reviewed the photo that was used to generate the notice.  It was for a Hyundai sedan whose license plate was one character off: 'Q' vs. '0' (zero).  She apologized and re-routed the toll notice to the proper person.  Case closed.

A few months back, I got another toll notice, this time for a license plate that clearly wasn't mine.  I protested again.  And again.  And again.  SunPass finally got around to digging deep into the case and they report:

...the temporary plate number CIU-7849-FL was associated with a Toll-By-Plate account in your name. The information was provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I don't care what DMV says; that's not my plate.  I called DMV to verify the information.  "All our operators are busy with other callers.  Please call back another time.(click)"  I called the Pinellas County Tax Collector to see if they could verify the data, and here's where it gets uncomfortable.  PCTC says "Yessir, Mr. Clarke, that's your plate!"  The helpful operator, after checking with a supervisor, suggested that the dealer, Parks Ford, might have accidentally put my information on the paperwork for that 2010 Cadillac when they sold it in January.  That's plausible.  That's where we got our 2018 Ford last June.

Turns out, when they were hustling through the paperwork for Francis Leroy Clark, they used the information associated with Francis Xavier Clarke by mistake.  Uh-oh...

They swear by all that's holy that they will correct everything that needs correcting and confirm back to me that all is well.  It may take a few months, though...

 

Repairing Notre-Dame de Paris

 

There is considerable sentiment that Notre-Dame de Paris, which suffered a serious fire on 15 April 2019, should be rebuilt.  French President Emmanuel Macron has already pledged that it will be rebuilt, and several deep-pocketed French captains of industry have pledged over €600 million for that purpose.

There are two questions still unanswered: "Who will be in charge of the rebuilding?" and "In what form shall it be rebuilt?"  I have an answer for both.

The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris once belonged to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paris, but in 1789, the revolutionary government of France seized it along with several hundred other churches.  One of them is still to this day the Musée des arts et métiers.  Many of the churches are leased back to the Diocese of Paris for a fee.  That is: France took that property from its putative owner and now rents it back to them.  France owns Notre-Dame and is responsible for its maintenance.

It is a matter of settled law that good title can never vest in stolen property.

Taking it was a political crime.  Allowing it to burn as it did demonstrates that the French government is incapable of caring for such a valuable asset.  It is time to correct the criminal act of the revolutionary government of France in 1789.  Give Notre-Dame de Paris back to the Diocese of Paris to be rebuilt as its real owners wish.

 

April 19th, 1775

 

In the late evening of April 18th, 1775, two co-conspirators, William Dawes and Paul Revere, were on high alert in Boston.  A contact within the walls of General Sir Thomas Gage's compound had warned them of a probable troop movement overnight toward Lexington and Concord to the west with the goal of raiding and confiscating militia stores: gunpowder, shot, and flints.

Revere rowed across the harbor to Cambridge where he waited for a signal from Dawes who was to hang a lantern in the belfry of the (now 'Old') North Church: one if the troops were marching overland, two if they were to cross the harbor behind Revere.  As Revere watched, two lights shone out from across the water.  He mounted his horse and began to ride toward Lexington.  "The regulars are coming!"  Dawes took the overland route himself to alert militia units not on the direct path of His Majesty's Marines who were tasked with the operation.

At about 5am the Marines arrived in Lexington and were met by 77 militia and 100 spectators who had gathered to watch the action.  A British officer rode forward and ordered the militia to disperse and many of them decided to go home at that point.  Just then, a shot was fired; no one knows to this day who fired the shot, but it was enough to get the battle started.  Following a bayonet charge, the battle of Lexington was over with 8 militia and one British regular dead.

At Concord later that day, perhaps 8am, the British forces clearly did fire the first shot and this was met by effective return fire from the militiamen assembled.  The British managed to do some searching for weapons, but found little or nothing to compensate them for their time.  By mid-morning, other militia companies, perhaps alerted by Dawes, began arriving and jumping into the fray.  By mid-afternoon, it is estimated there were between 2,000 and 4,000 colonial militia engaging the British troops, albeit half-heartedly.  Many clearly thought this was a minor incident and would operate to chasten the regulars and make them leave the colonials alone.  There were enough hardened militia, however, to chase the British troops back to Boston, inflicting 287 casualties along the way.

By the following morning, 20 April 1775, more than 15,000 militia ringed Boston, besieging it.  The War for Independence had begun.

The longest-running mystery in this tale was the identity of the mole within Gage's inner circle, the one who tipped off Dr. Joseph Warren who passed the word to Dawes and Revere.  Historians now believe it was Lady Margaret Kemble Gage, the Governor's New Jersey-born wife.  Gage said he had only told two people of the planned raid: his 2nd-in-command and an unspecified other; Warren was killed at Bunker Hill and never revealed his source.  After the rout at Concord, Gage shipped Lady Margaret off to England — to keep her safe or because he thought she was a spy? — and joined her there after the war ended.  She never saw North America again.

 

A Scar On The Face Of Paris

 

Notre Dame de Paris is burning as I write this.  The roof has fallen in and the flèche (the arrow), the central spire, has fallen with it.  The bell towers are involved.  The stained glass windows including the famous Rose Window are probably now lying in shards on the floor.  Drone footage shows the interior, mostly 800-year-old wood, is an inferno.  Without its roof, the flying buttresses that supported the enormous weight of the roof will likely push the walls inward.  The structure is probably a total loss.

I don't know which is worse: that we have lost NDdP to negligence or to arson.  In some ways, 'arson' might be preferable.  It would allow us to be angry at something or someone, but to lose 800 years of beauty and elegance and tradition to 'oops!' would be just too hard to bear.

How was this allowed to happen?

My heart is broken.  What is left will surely be 'a scar on the face of Paris'.

—==+++==—

UPDATE (16Apr): Authorities now say the fire was accidental.  I don't know that I entirely believe that, given that a dozen smaller French churches have gone up in flames over the past several months.  The stonework appears to have survived, and many artworks and relics have been saved.  Importantly, the crypt that houses priceless documents such as the original plans for the cathedral, appears to have survived as well.  The bell towers are intact.  Had the bells (which are supported on wooden carriages) crashed to the parvis, they could easily have taken the towers with them.  The Rose Window is said to be damaged but salvageable.

Many prominent French industrialists have pledged (so far) over €600 million for its restoration.

It will likely take decades before NDdP regains its former beauty if, in fact, it ever does.  Just as those who first began its construction in 1153, I will not live to see it complete.

 

Assange and Manning

 

If what follows offends you, I am definitely not sorry.

Julian Assange has been arrested in London and will be extradited to the United States to stand trial for... well, I'm not actually sure, to tell the truth.  Assange, an Australian, published via Wikileaks material he got (allegedly) from Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning.  Mull that for a moment.  Our 'intelligence services' are so incompetent at keeping secrets that secret stuff got out, and Assange is going to be punished for... somebody else's incompetence.

Assange, as an Australian, had no obligation of loyalty or citizenship to keep what he learned secret.  No obligation, period.

Further, the stuff that got leaked was not 'national security' stuff, it was evidence of war crimes, crimes perpetrated by U.S. military personnel and contractors.  Mull that for a moment.  You can choose either to defend Assange for making evidence of a crime public, or you can defend the criminals.  There aren't any other choices; pick one.  Warning: picking the wrong one makes you an accessory after the fact.

What he publicized is almost exactly the kind of stuff that got Woodward and Bernstein (and the Washington Post) their Pulitzer prizes.  How very odd that the Post is campaigning to put Assange in the federal pokey.  I guess they only stand up for their own employees.  Too bad he was a free-lancer.

Oh, yes, he also publicized the fact that the Democratic Party rigged their own party primaries in 2016 to ensure Hillary Clinton would beat Bernie Sanders.  He's the reason Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to step down — in disgrace — as party chairwoman.  If you're a Democrat, you should be mad at your own party leaders, not Julian Assange.  If you're a Republican, you should be happy Assange blew the whistle on what, more and more each and every day, looks like a criminal enterprise.  If, like me, you shun both major parties, you should be grateful to Assange for his entertainment value.

By no means should Assange be considered a criminal himself.  He is, in fact, a hero.  He should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He won't, because that would require we first admit that all of our military adventures in third-world hell-holes are crimes.

His trial, if he gets one, is going to be very educational.  Let's hope he doesn't commit suicide by two shots to the back of his head while in custody.

 

File your taxes FREE! (but not for long...)

 

Norene and I just recently e-filed our tax return for 2018 and we did it with the free tax preparation software available at IRS.gov.  It was... not too bad, all things considered and it cost us nothing to fill-in and file, a far cry from many of the other 'free' tax-prep offers you see on the web and in your inbox.

Most of those other 'free' offers have a hidden list of qualifications: your total income must be less than x; you may not itemize deductions; schedule A and several other forms are not 'free'; and the list goes on and on.  You spend several hours doing data-entry before the software tells you that you don't qualify for the free e-file option and it will cost $39.95 or $69.95 or $89.95 if, having done all that work, you still wish to e-file and, in many cases, even print your return.

The free tax-prep software at IRS.gov was actually free, but it may not be that way for very long.  The House Ways and Means committee has just sent the "Taxpayers First Act" to the full House for action.  The name, as you might suspect, is another of Congress' bald-faced lies.  It really ought to have been named the "Screw The Taxpayers First Act".  If it passes the House and the Senate, expect Trump to sign it into law.  It will then become illegal for the IRS to provide free tax-filing software.

Illegal.  H&R Block, TurboTax, and several other similar companies like this bill, because after it passes (and it will), you will have little choice but to fork over $39.95 or $69.95 or $89.95 if you want to e-file.

Of course, you could just 'go through the motions', then hand-copy the numbers onto paper forms, carefully, carefully, not making any mistakes, slip the forms into an envelope, and mail them.  You'll have your refund in three weeks or five weeks or eight weeks instead of five days — until TaxAct and TurboTax and H&R Block fix their software to only show you how much you owe or how much you're getting back, and you'll only see the real 1040 after you fork over $39.95 or $69.95 or $89.95.  I predict that will happen immediately upon passage of the "Screw The Taxpayers First Act".

...as if the income tax itself wasn't outrage enough.

To read a more nuanced take on this, go here.

 

Tariffs Are Taxes

 

The headline (on CNN) reads "US threatens tariffs on $11 billion of European goods over Airbus subsidies".  You can almost hear poorly-educated American viewers cheering and imagine them fist-bumping each other.  Yeah, man, we'll make those Europeans sorry for unfairly competing!

It pains me — almost pains me — to have to tell these good people that the only ones 'paying' will be Americans.

Did I just see your eyebrow lift?  Are you skeptical that Americans will pay for this?  Perhaps you don't understand how tariffs work.  Lemme 'splain dis to dju, Lucy.

In the first place, European governments subsidize Airbus so that Airbus can sell its product at a slightly reduced price — below the price their cost structure would normally dictate — and not just to us...  to everyone.  The money for that subsidy came from European taxpayers.  The EU is taxing their own people so that Airbus can sell us (and everyone else) cut-rate aircraft.

The effect of that is that Airbus planes become slightly more attractive because of their lower price tag, and Boeing aircraft consequently become slightly less attractive.  Those beasts!

To equalize this situation (heh heh heh) the U.S. government levies a tariff on Airbus aircraft.  The tariff jacks the price of Airbus product back to where it would normally be (or perhaps a little higher) for potential buyers, thereby removing the price advantage and making Boeing more financially attractive again.  Understand, that tariff is paid by whoever buys an Airbus aircraft: United, Delta, Continental — domestic airlines — and the tariff gets passed along in the ticket price to... why, to you!  It's almost like the U.S. government taxed you for flying on an Airbus plane!

So, now everyone who had bookkeeping in high school is whipping out paper and pencil and drawing T-accounts to make sense of all this.

• France taxes French taxpayers and gives the money to Airbus
• Airbus offers low-price airplanes to U.S. airline operators
• any airline operator who buy a low-price Airbus also pays a penalty — to the U.S. government
• the American consumer pays the penalty via ticket prices artificially boosted by the tariff
• any airline operator who buys a Boeing product instead also has to boost ticket prices because of Boeing's higher price

Who wins in this little game of three-card monte?  Airbus and Boeing and the U.S. government, of course.  You didn't actually think it was going to be you, did you?

You can thank CNN later for not bursting your bubble.  I'll take the blame for that.

 

Rhapsody in Blue — Remembering Audrey

 

I first heard Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' at Lewisohn Stadium in the Bronx.  I was an early-teen or possibly a pre-teen.  My sister, Audrey, was, I think, at the time a student at Hunter College.  She had scored a pair of tickets — student discount, no doubt — to a concert featuring 'Rhapsody in Blue' and 'An American in Paris', to this day my favorites of Gershwin's work.

Why she asked me to come along remains a mystery.  It never occurred to me until just recently that I was an unusual choice for a date, and Audrey can no longer explain her motives.  Perhaps Carmine Rispoli was otherwise occupied.

Lewisohn Stadium no longer exists.  It occupied the space (according to Wikipedia) from 136th street to 138th street between Amsterdam and Convent avenues.  We likely took the subway to the 137th street (City College) station and walked the few blocks to the stadium from there.  At a distance of 60+ years I can no longer recall the fine details.

What I can recall is being enthralled by music more beautiful and moving than anything in the classical repertoire.  'An American In Paris', in particular, perfectly described that beautiful city that I wouldn't see with my own eyes for another forty years.  To this day I can never envision Paris without Gershwin.

How odd that it's only now that I realize how much I miss my sister.

 

What if Social Security...?

 

There's lots of nonsense out on FaceBook and other social media sites about Social Security.  "I paid into this my whole life!" someone will pout;  "Where's all my money?" and it's followed by claims that SS is old-age insurance or that there's a separate account in each person's name.

None of that is true.

From the very start of the program, SS was a two-pronged piece of legislation.  The first piece was a tax plan whereby every wage earner would be taxed some small amount and their employer would be taxed the same amount.  This tax money (FICA) went into the General Fund from day-1.  There was never a 'separate account', but the Social Security Administration did keep a record of how much was taken and the earnings the tax was based on.  You can still get from SSA a list of how much you earned (that was taxed) from the day you started work.  Mine goes back to 1962.

The other part of that legislation was a welfare plan under which certain persons would be paid money based on certain qualifications: how much you had earned, your age, your health conditions, and a few others.  Under this plan, people who had never worked a day in their life (for wages) still got SS 'benefits'.  If there had been those mythical 'separate accounts', their balance would have been zero.  As a matter of fact, everyone's balance is zero.  You have no contractual right to SS benefits even today.

But listening to various people carp about how unfair the system is got me to thinking about how things might have been had those politicians in the 30s really been looking out for the welfare of the people.  Try this on for size:

Suppose the SS law had been cast something like this:

1. Every wage earner must escrow with a trustee of their choosing not less than __% of their gross taxable wages.
2. Funds so escrowed may not be withdrawn before age ___, except as provided by law.
3. This account is the property of the wage earner and heirs.

As of right now, when you die, your SS benefits die with you (except for your spouse).  Your children and grandchildren do not inherit your benefits, but the scheme above makes your SS account truly yours as many people think (wrongly) is the case now.

There's something else.  There would be other changes that are harder to predict.

For one thing, all that money taken as taxes was used to fund the Social Security Administration, and none of that money would have been needed because there wouldn't have been a SSA.  Our federal spending would have been noticeably lower, our national debt would have been lower, the inflation rate would have been lower, and the general health of the economy would have been higher, not simply because of lower federal spending, but because all that money in individual investment accounts would have been used to fuel the private sector rather than being wasted on the bureaucracy.

The Dow-Jones which now stands at 25,000-something might have been much higher, and the dividends from a more robust economy would have been reflected in higher interest rates paid on your retirement account.  What effect would that have had?  Hard to tell, but I ran a little spreadsheet on my numbers — which were not exceptional — and at 8% of FICA earnings (not including the amount my employers were taxed) accumulated at 6% interest, I would have had almost $400K at retirement age.  In the hands of a savvy investor, that might have been substantially higher.  If that 8% were bumped up to 15% to account for the employer's portion, my balance at age-65 approaches $750K.  That's a substantial nest egg, no?

Beyond that, I'm guessing that those numbers would have been substantially higher given my actual experience with 401k savings accounts.  What little time I did have to pour money into a 401k still provided a nice pile that SS would otherwise not have provided, and that 401k is mine to do with as I please and to pass along to my children when I don't need it anymore.

Yes, indeed, FDR's Congress surely did not do us any favors writing the SS law the way they did, but that probably wasn't their intent in any case.

Regardless, the law is what the law is.  No, you do not have your own personal SS account with a pile of money squirreled away for your retirement.  Stop complaining.

 

The Rule of 72

 

I read an interesting article today on the growth being shown by various economies and it contained this quote:

Concern about Chinese debt is not unwarranted, but with GDP rising by 6% per annum, its economy will be 80% larger in a decade, whilst India’s, growing at 7%, will have doubled.

and this made me recall "The Rule Of 72".  The rule is a handy yardstick used by financiers to quickly estimate the time it will take to double or halve an amount based on an interest rate.  It's very simple, really.  It works like this:

Say you have $1000 and you invest it or bank it at a cyclic interest rate of 6%.  At the end of the first cycle, you will have $1,060. After the second, $1,123.60, with the increase accelerating each cycle due to compounding.  At the end of the 12th cycle, your balance will be $2,012.20, approximately double your original investment, and 6 x 12 = 72.  As to the quote above, the balance at the end of cycle-10 is $1,790.85, about an 80% increase.

Another example: the interest rate is 3%.  After cycle-1, your balance is $1,030, then $1,060.90 (almost 6%).  By the end of cycle-23, you're at $1,973.59, and after cycle-24, it's $2,032.79, so 23-1/2 cycles give or take — call it 24, and 3 x 24 = 72.

As you can see, it's not exactly exact, but it's pretty close for use as a first approximation.  So, someone offering you a 4% rate is offering to double your money in (72 / 4 =) 18 cycles.  India's growth rate (according to the quote) will double its present size in (72 / 7 =) 10.3 cycles.

'72' is a handy number.

 

Brexit and Ireland

 

With Brexit barely a month away, some Americans may still be scratching their heads.  What's all the fuss?

I have to admit to some confusion myself.  My particular confusion arises over the phrase 'hard border'.  At present, both the UK and the Republic of Ireland (hereafter just 'Ireland') are members of the EU, which means that goods may transit freely between Northern Ireland and Ireland.  Post-Brexit, Northern Ireland will not be part of the EU (even though NI voted to remain — the rest of UK voted otherwise) and if there is not a hard border, goods from outside EU will easily flow into Ireland.  The EU is apparently upset over this and is demanding that Ireland and UK fix this.

Now, the border between Ireland and NI is about 160 miles long and there are hundreds of places where people cross willy-nilly all the time.  'Fixing' this means halting the free passage of people back and forth between NI and Ireland.  This is not going to go down easily.  When the two Irelands were plagued by "the troubles", it took a very large contingent of the UK military to police the border, and they were far from effective.

The alternative is to make the Irish Sea the 'hard border' and let NI continue as if they were part of the EU.  I'm thinking that if that's the solution that's settled on, it won't be too very long before Irishmen on both sides of their soft border start thinking it may be time to do what East Germany and West Germany did.

How do you say "wiedervereinigung" in Gaelic?  Athaontú, perhaps?  One can only hope...