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  • Ruminations – 3oct19 (updated 6oct19)

    George Rebane

    Former Union publisher Jeff Ackerman writes (here) that Californians today pay and average of $4.02/gal for gasoline while the rest of the country averages at $2.64/gal.  And the escapee to Oregon goes on to point out that all of this is self-inflicted pain that the state’s voters are way past having enough between the ears to change course as Sacramento does its best to accelerate dumb laws/regulations and spread our epidemic across the country.

    Gun confiscation was again disguised at the Giffords/March for Our Lives “gun safety forum” in Las Vegas. The Dems are having problems coming together on which or whether to back such confiscation schemes as mandatory buybacks.  Even Moms Demand Action have stopped short of buybacks, which leaves Beto (of AR15/AK47 fame) and the klatch of radical socialists more isolated than ever.  Many of us hope Beto will double down on his ‘Damn right, we’ll take your guns!’

    No more masks for Hong Kong protesters.  An old British colonial law is to be invoked to threaten protesters with eventual arrest when they reveal their faces to government operated face recognition software that is being installed all over China today.  Here we are considering doing the same, starting with neighborhood watch cameras for recording night time crime (and anyone else who is on the street after dark).  Soon after, we’ll be fighting daytime crime and questioning people who are recorded being out of their own neighborhoods.  Isn’t technology wonderful?

    [4oct19 update]  Volker’s House testimony and release of tweets are the first real disclosures that may seriously put Trump’s tit in a wringer in the ongoing impeachment saga.  Trump is by no means the first president to seek and get foreign aid against political opponents for some horse trading.  But back then it was no big deal and a known prerogative of office.  IMHO, if the sought aid concerns a material revelation about the character of a political opponent, then I don’t oppose such information gathering.  However, I do oppose purchasing fabricated ‘evidence’ of an opponent’s bad character from foreign sources.

    [6oct19 update]  Harvard on capitalism (here) – whouda thought?

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  • Sandbox – 3oct19

    [I did my best to remove some of the irrelevant and ad hominem comments from a couple of my topical commentaries.  Please continue posting your comments under the appropriate recent topical posts or in the Sandbox if I have not recently covered the topic of your interest.  Thanks. gjr]

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  • Foreign Influence on the Rise

    People are usually willing to accept the verdict of democratic elections only when all parties share the same national loyalties. – Yuval Harari, widely published historian (emphasis mine)

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended transcript of my regularly scheduled KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 October 2019.]

    Let’s consider what has become an issue of great concern for most Americans and their political leaders – the impact of foreign influence in our elections.  To be sure, since time immemorial, nations, kingdoms, and all manner of jurisdictions have sought to influence the inner workings of each other to their advantage.  America has been no exception.  In modern times with facile mass communications across the globe, such influencing has become an ongoing geo-political game among today’s nations.  (more here and here)

    The political analysis journal Foreign Policy tells us (here) that “ever since the Treaty of Westphalia, the idea of territorial sovereignty has been central to how most of us think about international politics and foreign policy. Although a huge amount of activity occurs across state borders, one of the chief tasks of any government is to defend the nation’s territory and make sure—to the extent it can—that outsiders are not in position to interfere in harmful ways. But for all the effort and expense devoted to keeping harmful influences out, sometimes countries wind up locking and bolting the windows while leaving the front door wide open.”

    In the past the main paths for foreign governments to influence us was through enticing former prominent politicians with paid trips, ‘consulting’ contracts, and generous speaking fees.  Competent public relations firms would be hired to promote a candidate or cause.  There are, of course, platoons of professional lobbyists on K Street, and let’s not forget prominent DC think tanks and media journalists who can be bought and paid for with grants of special and/or exclusive access to the goings on and important people of the foreign power.  Finally, we have to include our universities that can be bought with appropriately fashioned ‘research grants’ to manufacture good reports about their benefactors.

    Such well-oiled avenues of foreign influence have been focused on shaping our foreign policy to satisfy the interests of other nations.  We must always remember that the ultimate reason for messing with our elections is to influence our adoption of favorable foreign policies.  An important essay on such matters that reviewed how our own political parties become involved was published in the October 1932 issue of Foreign Affairs.  The procedural principles and political history recounted in ‘Political Factors in American Foreign Policy’ is especially apropos to today’s imbroglios between our political parties lobbing charges and counter charges of conspiratorial foreign influence on each other.

    (more…)

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  • Blessed Milestones – 30 September 2019

    George Rebane

    The Rebane clans gathered this weekend in Nevada City to celebrate the marriage of granddaughter Fiona to Shawn.  The ceremony and festivities took place on Sunday at the Stone House, the town’s iconic restaurant and wedding venue that started life as a brewery in 1850.  This was preceded and followed by more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for family and guests at the homes of our now local tribe.  It was truly a joyous occasion for the marriage of our third granddaughter.  This little missive contributes to the occasional summaries of the many blessings that Jo Ann and I have received over the years since we first met on 21 September 1959 as undergraduates at UCLA.  Make no mistake, enough of our road together has also had its inevitable unpaved stretches, but this is a happy recounting of a paved part.

    As we gathered in the wonderfully redone venue with its large dining area, gathering rooms, bandstand and dance floor, and bar (and a very professional and competent staff of a local wedding planner and caterer), Jo Ann and I confirmed that we had the most birthdays of all the attendees.  The entire affair with all our kids, grandkids, great grandkids, more family, and friends came to be because of that chance meeting at the Pan Hellenic All-Pledge Dance at the beginning of the fall semester sixty years ago – we two are fortunate to be at the headwaters of a large causal basin of new lives, witnessing the many arrows that we have launched into the future.  The nearby photo shows us with our very involved great-grandmunchkins Lucy, Rae, Atticus, and Nell.

    Munchkins_190930

    Our family has spread itself out over a wide spectrum of endeavors and locales.  Oldest daughter Sini and husband Roland head up our ‘Northern Tribe’.  Roland continues a long career at Microsoft Research on the bleeding edge of AI research.  Sini, a former software engineer, is a school administrator and semi-professional photographer.  Our ‘Southern Tribe’ picked up stakes last year and moved here to live in Nevada and Placer counties.  Daughter Teine closed her longtime organizing business in SoCal, and decided to start a new career in professional dispute resolution for which she is now in the middle of Pepperdine University Law School’s Masters of Dispute Resolution program, an area for which life has well-prepared her.

    The grandchildren, all adults now, have dispersed themselves over much of the country.  Oldest granddaughter Claire (mother of the munchkins) lives in Denver with software engineer husband David.  One grandson Sean is an audio engineer working in Nashville for a leading audio production and processing enterprise.  Another grandson Lucas is a mountain climber and outdoor photographer working for a leading sports and camping gear company.  Another granddaughter Elizabeth is in the middle of a heavy-duty cancer research program at UCLA going for her doctorate in molecular biology and neuro science.  Another granddaughter Catherine, married last year, is a clinical trials administrator for a company in the Seattle area where she lives with her transport systems engineer husband Collin who works for a large international truck manufacturer doing autonomous vehicle development.

    Fiona is studying and working in holistic health (that’s the best I can make of it).  She lives locally with her brand new hubby who is an electrician getting ready to get his contractor’s license.  Casting an eye over the lot of our ‘issue’ gives us much to be thankful for.  We look back and recall our decision to start young – we married before graduation against all advice – so that we could still be around to see the many fruits of our labors.  Thank the good Lord, it has worked out.

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  • The Varieties of Reason in Another Attempt at Discourse

    “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.”  Saul Alinsky in ‘Rules for Radicals’

    George Rebane

    In the effort to reflect here ‘observations and interpretations of events from the last great century of man’, illuminating the ideas and attitudes of our polarized population is part and parcel of RR posts.  Here we do a little dissection of today’s leftwing vs rightwing thought to illustrate how early 21st century polarization is progressing.  To wit, we again have on parade in these pages a delicious example of how the liberal mind works – especially in its ability to apply standard garden variety logic to reason.  The comment stream of ‘Ruminations – 26sep19’ is an education in progressive thought and another Exhibit A on the machinations of such minds when they attempt to understand and then address a contended issue.  In this example it all started with commenter J. Barron stating –

    It is blatantly obvious that if billionaires can save millions in their taxes from going to the under class, they can invest that money in something else. Jets, hot tubs, young boys . . . it's famously known as trickle up economics. Show us the proof that ain't so. Reagan would not approve.  Posted by: J. Barron | 29 September 2019 at 09:02 PM

    To which I made a generic observation on Barron’s attempt to contribute to the resolution of his strong assertion about misspending of tax savings by billionaires.  I observed –

    In more tempered and reasonable societies the one making an assertion is required to substantiate it with some supportive evidence. In insane societies it's the asserter who demands that his audience prove his assertion to be false, else it must be taken to be true.  Posted by: George Rebane | 29 September 2019 at 09:53 PM

    In such references to ‘insane’ I use the term in its technical sense as in describing approaches and solutions to problems in the fields of mathematics, the sciences, and engineering.  This exchange gave rise to an intense discussion thread into which several additional progressives contributed the fruits of their thought.  The careful reader will immediately note that none of them understood my 953pm, or they thought it better for their case to change the subject.  In either case, my critique of Barron’s 902pm was not only not addressed, but it was duly mischaracterized as something completely unsaid – a common liberal tactic displayed in these pages over the years.

    (more…)

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  • Ruminations – 26sep19 (updated 28sep19)

    George Rebane

    'If you nominate Loony Liz, you won't get any money from us.', say heavy Dem donors to the DNC.

    Dem Rep Schiff's characterization of the Ukraine telecon transcript is historically one of the most audacious stream of lies fabricated out of whole cloth and bearing no relationship to what was in the released document.  Does anyone know of a lamestream outlet that has called him out on that?  (and more Dems' lies here)

    [27sep19 update] Socialist "France said it would cut taxes on individuals and businesses by €10.2B as Macron seeks to revive his economic overhaul."  Whouda thought, as our lefties have been telling us for years that tax rates don't affect economic behavior? (more here)

    [28sep19 update] The recent spate of spontaneous worldwide demonstrations against AGW are really not that spontaneous nor even locally sponsored.  Turns out they're the handiwork of a bunch of progressive rich people contributing money through something called Climate Emergency Fund, that then sends the cash to the worldwide chapters of Extinction Rebellion which actually collects and organizes the know-nothings into newsworthy protests primarily picked up by lamestream outlets. (more here)  H/T to reader.

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  • Toward the Singularity via super-intelligence

    George Rebane

    Knowing my relationship with Dr Judea Pearl, fellow blogger Russ Steele sent me a link to a recent interview (here) on AI with Judea.  Longtime RR readers recall pieces citing my friend, colleague, and mentor Judea Pearl as the inventor of Bayes and causal nets, and one of the true pioneers of AI and winner of the Turing Award (here and here).  I was privileged to be one of his very small group of doctoral students contributing to his research and the writing of his landmark Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference (1988) introducing Bayes nets for which I was able to contribute my research in machine learning that wound up in what is known as the Rebane-Pearl algorithm (here and here).

    JudeaPearl2019AEarly on (late 1980s) our little group began to understand that the alternative ‘causal net’ that was also used in the literature for Bayes nets may not be appropriate.  To be frank, we were somewhat guilty of introducing that appellation ourselves before we recognized that our enthusiastic reach exceeded our grasp of causality as provided by our research.  In our paper on the Rebane-Pearl algorithm I introduced the concept of a ‘causal basin’ and showed (in my hand-drawn figure which somehow made it into the paper and Judea’s book) how the algo could take a dataset and divide it into several causal basins.  I recall having long discussions with Judea on the relationship of probabilistic inference and ‘true causality’ as we humans ascribe to the goings on in our environment.

    A decade earlier Judea and I spent time during our family social get-togethers ensconcing ourselves with a bottle of wine to speculate on the future of intelligent machines and what computational, perceptual, and cognitive requirements they would need to achieve peerage with humans.  Over such discussions it became clear to both of us that machines would have to include the ability to handle the subjunctive and counter-factual ‘thoughts’, in addition being able to reason probabilistically a la Bayes nets.  It was Judea who came upon the idea that causality was a distinct cognitive beast that could not be tamed and understood through mere extensions of Bayes nets – a whole new calculus would be required.

    (more…)

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  • Sandbox – 25sep19

    [Anybody have any thoughts about a workable public policy that would sufficiently shield  PG&E so that it doesn't have to conduct its CYA power outages?  gjr]

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  • Scattershots – 23sep19 (updated 24sep19)

    George Rebane

    George Boardman again flies his true colors with his Union column ‘Trump’s great economy?  Depends on where you are on the food chain’.  He hits all the Democratic Party talking points, and even elevates the top 20% of Americans into the ‘enemy of the people’ class.  Why?  Because they’re getting the largest dollar benefits from our revived economy.  He ignores the wage gains of the middle class and denigrates the historic benefits to our minorities who now have historically low unemployment rates and are leaving entitlement rolls in record numbers.  The Democrats’ fear is clearly evident in his dour assessment – if the dark-skinned among us are able to leave the Progressive Plantation, then from where will come the votes to elect enough leftwing politicians to control Congress and keep alive the country’s lurch to the left?  For a more sober assessment of the country’s economy, you may peruse articles here, here, and here.

    Negro names – Deion, Jamar, Keshawn, Lavaughn, Mashawn, Naeem, Rashon, Salim, Dericia, Kanesha, Lachelle, Moesha, Quisha, Talisha, Temima, … (more here) – are the latest and clearest expression of our African-American population’s desire to differentiate themselves and proudly declare their solidarity with their own kind.  Among other such minority initiatives to separate the races (e.g. segregated clubs, institutions, living quarters, …), such initiatives in race-based discrimination are now celebrated, laudable, and promoted behaviors among all non-white peoples.  Our leftwingers again demonstrate their selective blinders by not being able to connect the dots between such expressions and the general characteristic of humans (and other critters) that have the great propensity to dwell among their ‘own kind’ (shared culture and values) rather than having to be politically incorrect strangers in their own land.  BTW, my use of ‘Negro’ is an intentional button push guaranteed to loosen the latest charges and confirmation by the looney Left of my being a racist.  Here is a more reasoned discussion of the current status on the use of that formerly proper and much-employed label. 

    Mark Zuckerberg is busy rebuilding human communities to counter their disintegration due to everything from rampant drug addiction to murderous totalitarian regimes.  At the 22jun17 inaugural Communities Summit he lamented that “for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter.  That’s a lot of people who now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else.”  So Mark has been ‘using AI’ to build up new communities that “will start to strengthen our social fabric and bring the world closer together”, and he’ll “change Facebook’s whole mission to take this on.”  What a nice guy to make such a selfless sacrifice with his business.  And while we’re patting him on the back, guess how and where these new communities will be formed?  Hint1 – it won’t involve real estate.  Hint2 – it will be an enormous new bonanza for harvesting data on people’s propensities, inclinations, and fears.  OK, here’s Hint3 – it starts with an ‘F’.

    [24sep19 update]  Biden, ‘I never talked to my son about business.’  That bullshit is so far off the rails that it brings up the biggest concern about floating it in our public forum.  The Democrats know that their base and hanger-on constituents are so terminally stupid that they will actually believe that a very political father will not talk to his beloved underachieving son about a business opportunity from which he can make a load of dough for doing nothing save peddle his father’s influence.  That is really a dumb bunch of voters out there who constitute the biggest threat to our republic.  ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Thomas Jefferson.

    On Fox News this afternoon we saw Iran’s President Rouhani eat Chris Wallace’s lunch.  It was an extremely informative interview and it will play very well back in Iran.  Rouhani was calm, erudite, and had more than an answer and a counter to Wallace’s attempts to conduct some sort of an expose on the crap that Iran has been pulling in its 40-year effort to become the mid-east hegemon.  Much to our chagrin, Wallace couldn’t lay a glove on him.  Next time we should send someone on varsity to interview smart and fast-thinking people.

    Nancy Pelosi has now given her imprimatur to an “official” impeachment inquiry against President Trump.  The problem is that this only moves the peanut ahead in the above mentioned mini-minds of Democrat constituents.  Such an official inquiry is no different than what has been going on until now.  What she has failed to launch is a ‘formal’ inquiry which constitutionally allows the issuance of subpoenas and the empanelment of the congressional version of a grand jury.  And having over-the-hill John Lewis (D-GA5)) make the announcement in the well of the House lends special flavor to this three-ring circus.

    The House Judiciary Committee got all worked up about getting the Ukraine telecon “whistleblower” to testify in the face of the President releasing the transcript of that conversation which was monitored by a dozen people here and in the Ukraine.  The question which no one, especially Nadler, is asking is on what information beyond the transcript did the whistleblower base his “serious and critical” complaint.  If it was nothing beyond his second hand reading of the transcript, then that means serious egg on the collective Democrats’ face.  But no one has said that he had anything beyond what everyone in the intelligence communities already knew.  Ukraine’s President Zelensky, who has consented to the transcript’s release, is going to throw some cold water on this witch hunt during his UN visit and talk with Trump.

    Mayor Reinette Senum of Nevada City is a sincere and dedicated worker for the common good.  She wrote a Union column (here) discussing the ways and means of broadband connectivity – especially 5G – for western Nevada County.  Although I’m seldom in sync with Reinette, I consider her a friend and have defended her right to express and promote her initiatives, no matter how far off the rails they seem to me. She wants broadband to come to our community in a “technology-neutral way”.  Now why would anyone want that???  I thought we all want technology to come our way definitely biased to our greater benefit; forego the losers and go with the winner.  She also wants to place our wellbeing in the hands of “independent scientists and well-informed medical professionals” when it comes to local radio frequency transmissions, but not when it comes to global warming, the impact of which is OK to leave in the interpretative hands of bureaucrats and consensus science.  Nevertheless, I credit her with informing us that the California constitution contains the following – “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”  This, of course, is anathema to the A21 (now Agenda 2030) promoting governor and Democrat overwhelmed California legislature daily taking more private property away from Californians.

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  • Where Are They Indeed?

    George Rebane

    There are about 2,500 galaxies (not stars) in the picture below – each of even the smallest dots is a galaxy.  Each such galaxy has about 300 billion stars, and each star has at least five planets.  Today we can see over 2,000,000,000,000 = 2 trillion such galaxies.  Fainter galaxies exist but don’t show in such photos.  This means that we can visualize only a part of our universe which itself contains 3×10^23 (a 3 with 23 zeros following it) planets.  Of these, at least 1% are in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone from their sun.  This suggests that there are about 3×10^21 planets that could potentially have an environment that supports life as we know it. (There are undoubtedly other forms of life about which we are ignorant.)  In our own galaxy there are about 11 billion of such planets.

    GalaxyFarAway2

    To further illustrate the vastness of our visible universe, consider that the above photo is a magnification of what our telescopes see when looking at a part of the entire sky surrounding Earth that is less than 1/33 of (or more than 33 times smaller than) the size of the period at the end of this sentence when held out at your arm’s length.  This means if you printed a page with a period (from Times New Roman size 12) on it, and made a hole with a very sharp needle through and exactly the size of the period, then holding it out at your arm’s length you would be able to ‘see’ over 84,000 galaxies through that pinprick, no matter in which direction you looked in the night sky.  Of course, your eye would have to have the magnifying power of a big telescope (like the Hubble) to resolve all those galaxies as shown in the above photo.  Perhaps this understanding would allow us to better contemplate the size of our visible universe and consider all the extra-terrestrial civilizations that have already existed, are now in existence, and will come to be in the interminable future.

    The background to this meditation was posted as ‘A copernican answers Fermi’, and later I’ll have more to say about the portents of all this. (more here)

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247 comments on Ruminations – 3oct19 (updated 6oct19)