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  • Ruminations – 9feb13 (updated)

    George Rebane

    The prestigious national newspaper Investor’s Business Daily has now picked up the alarm about the feds’ enormous ammo and gun buys.  (RR readers were made aware of these developments months ago.)  All of the weaponry is designated for in-country use in the US, and amounts involved are enough to support the Iraq war use rate (5.5M rounds per month) to continue that level of combat for 24 years.  (H/T to reader)

    MIT mavens in artificial intelligence acknowledge that AI (robots) will permanently kill jobs while increasing the nation’s productivity as they replace humans.  This has been a longstanding area of interest on RR (see Singularity Signposts) for the last several years, recently culminating in a series on the economic impact of productivity growth on unemployment given the government imposed slow growth that is planned for the remainder of this decade.  It is also heartening for me to finally hear corroboration of the thesis that such intelligent machines “could create more inequality.”  The message here has been ‘bet on it’ (here and here).

    This should not be a matter of joy to anyone.  Those who can design and work with such machines will prosper, and prosper magnificently.  Those who have to compete with them will suffer the fate of ‘John Henry, the Steel Drivin’ Man’.  Congress is still in denial about this future, but it is good to at least see academics of the technical stripe pick up on this and start making public statements (example here).
     

    Obamacare is now an identified and almost universally recognized albatrsos hung around the nation’s neck.  As more and more of it comes to light and is implemented, the disastrous numbers continue to roll in about its impact on America’s healthcare and overall economy.  One thing is certain, EVERY benefit that this new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, starting with its cynical name, has turned out to be a bald-faced lie.  Nothing salutary of it remains except the cries of a few true believers in his second coming, and, of course, all those legions of new government workers hired to bilk their fellow citizens.

    Recently even the quantitative comparisons with many European socialized healthcare systems have been cast in doubt with the revelation that it takes an extra envelope stuffed with cash passed under the table to a physician or administrator to be approved for a procedure, moved up in the que, or actually have the service performed.  These bribes are called “informal payments’ and have been the norm for decades in underfunded nationalized health systems with poorly paid workers.  As such national healthcare systems start suffering cutbacks, this practice is also spreading to the richer countries.  In any case, it’s hard to compare costs in the face of such dealings.  One is reminded of attempting to equate unemployment rates between nations practicing various levels of socialism and/or communism.  About the future of Obamacare no one should be surprised.

    [update]  Burnished bullshit.  That is about the best that can be said for the YubaNet reported study by Glantz and Grana of UCSF.  The connection between the Tea Party and the tobacco industry and/or "tobacco interests" is utter nonsense and no more intimate than the celebrated fact that literally any two people on earth can be joined by no more than 'six degrees of separation' or six links on the grand sociogram of the world.  Here's their strong point from YubaNet's breathless report –

    "From previously secret tobacco industry
    documents available at the UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, IRS
    filings and other publicly available documents, the study authors traced
    a decades-long chain of personal, corporate and financial relationships
    between tobacco companies, tobacco industry lobbying and public
    relations firms and nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea
    Party."

    Study authors Glantz and Grana are cheap-shot demogauges of the worst kind – i.e. they generate their politically motivated progressive pap on taxpayer dollars.  The connection from which they weave their egregious relationship (conspiracy?) is that the nation's tea parties have, of course, used the imagery that has come to represent the historical occasion in Boston harbor.  That imagery was apparently also used by 'tobacco interests' in promoting their industry.  And that is the thread these liberal 'scholars' use to sew together today's tea partiers and the evil tobacco industry.

    That leftwing blogs like YubaNet gleefully publish and give full credence to such studies points clearly to the other layer of manure that the lamestream and liberal echo chambers have been coating the countryside with – the tea parties are history, pay no attention to the little burble they caused in 2010, everything is back under control.

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  • Immigration Reform – The Correct Solution 2

    George Rebane

    I’ve been nudged to present my views on immigration
    reform in more detail than what I’ve already written about the illegal alien
    problem and my experiences as an immigrant over sixty years ago.  The preamble to this post was ‘Immigration
    Reform – The Correct Solution’     where I acknowledged that America will not
    accept the mass deportation of 11M+ illegals, no matter how they got here. Nevertheless,
    all effective and sustainable solutions to immigration reform  must begin with securing our border with
    Mexico so that the inflow of illegals is reduced to a ‘trickle’.

    The following points comprise my ‘correct solution’ as it
    stands today, and dear reader you may (and I know that you will) consider it as
    a draft that together we might perhaps shape into a more polished form.  As usual, I’ll revert to a structured format
    that makes subsequent reference to the points presented a bit more convenient.

    (more…)

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  • New Encryption App Promises Big Changes and Trouble

    George Rebane

    A new iPhone and iPad encryption app will come on the market this Friday 8 February that is sure to get the feds’ undies in a bundle.  It was developed by a hot new cryptography start-up called Silent Circle,  and has already been successfully tested in a number of situations worldwide.  Readers will, of course, immediately see all kinds of implications that such secure communications will promise.

    In addition to all the benefits that this new technology will contribute to privacy and security, it also has a potential for mischief.  Slate reports, “But while Silent Circle’s revolutionary technology will assist many people in difficult environments, maybe even saving lives, there’s also a dark side. Law enforcement agencies will almost certainly be seriously concerned about how it could be used to aid criminals. The FBI, for instance, wants all communications providers to build in backdoors so it can secretly spy on suspects. Silent Circle is pushing hard in the exact opposite direction—it has an explicit policy that it cannot and will not comply with law enforcement eavesdropping requests. Now, having come up with a way not only to easily communicate encrypted but to send files encrypted and without a trace, the company might be setting itself up for a serious confrontation with the feds. Some governments could even try to ban the technology.”

    Read the article, check out the product, and then start communicating your deepest secrets in complete confidence until the feds come knocking on your door 😉

    PS. get your checkbooks ready for when they let in new investors.

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  • Boy Scouts and Homosexuality

    George Rebane

    The latest progressive dust devil on the landscape is the campaign to force a private organization to accept its mores and values regarding homosexuals in society.  Ruminating a bit on the topic, some thoughts came to mind I have not seen discussed.

    For eons pubescent boys and girls have been separated in uncountable cultures for the purpose of achieving some focused group activity, objective, or ritual.  The reason is simple, heterosexual boys and girls begin to succumb to the dictates of their burgeoning hormones, and consequently pay less/no attention to the purpose for which they have gathered as a group.  This is especially true when the gathering also involves group eating, sleeping, and performing ablutionary activities. 

    It would have been unthinkable to place boys and girls together in such settings where thoughts could and would turn extra-curricular.  Young boys would fantasize about being the only male in a girls’ dorm, and in response society fixed things so that peeking in windows was about as close as such wishes could be fulfilled.  We learned long ago not to mess with hormones.

    Now there are people who want to put young males into situations in which they are exposed to other sexually attractive young males, and in similar fashion for young females.  The theory being that a homosexual’s hormones can be turned on/off like a light switch, or (gasp!) maybe homosexual tendencies are only in the mind which can succumb to therapy.  In either case these arguments are a stretch, and a bridge too far for established 21st century ‘truths’.

    So let’s posit that the Boy Scouts and other young people’s organizations bow to progressive pressures, and groups of boys only (and girls only) find themselves with a homosexual or two in their midsts (recall, today homosexuals have no compunction to ‘stay in the closet’ – gay pride and all that).  The homosexuals, of course, would consider it a boon, else no one would want to foist their joining such groups under duress.  And here comes the point – such fortuitous introduction of the odd sexually oriented individual into a single gendered group is discrimination pure and simple.

    Why could not a heterosexual young person sue a single gendered group for the opportunity to be equally titillated as are his/her homosexual compatriots?  Or why could not the parents of a homosexual boy, fully aware of the pubescent focus arguments, not sue to have a girls school accept their son so that he could be in an educational environment that is not distractive?

    I could go on with more examples dear reader, and so could you.  The point made here is that we are again fiddling with the latch on another Pandora’s Box.

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  • America killing Americans is Legal (updated 6feb13)

    George Rebane

    Well, it’s official.  NBC reports getting a copy of a Justice Dept white paper to the WH that states it is completely legal and constitutional for the government to kill American citizens without any due process whatsoever.  All the President has to believe is that the targeted American may pose a threat to the country.  Here is a reported excerpt –

    “A lawful killing in self-defense is not an assassination,” the white paper reads. “In the Department’s view, a lethal operation conducted against a U.S. citizen whose conduct poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States would be a legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban. Similarly, the use of lethal force, consistent with the laws of war, against an individual who is a legitimate military target would be lawful and would not violate the assassination ban.”

    This legal justification is recent, but its surrounding legal pretext is not.  In short, what Eric Holder says here is that it has always been legal for the Executive to pre-emptively execute anyone it deems a threat, and to do that without going through any legal formalities that become a matter of public record.  These are judgments without recourse, and their ex post facto justifications are explicitly relegated to the realm of subsequent political theater.  Bang, you’re dead, you insipient terrorist you  Next case please.

    [6feb13 update] OK, I waited long enough for the appropriate response.  When it was discovered that Bush2 had waterboarded 3 ragheads, the progressive purehearts and their lamestream echo chamber came unglued.  There were all kinds of calls for Bush2's head as being the Great Satan that all of Islam was telling us he was.  I mean there was some serious rending of garment and gnashing of teeth on the Left.  Now we find out that President Obama's killing of American citizens without due process, or ANY checks and balances, is all legal and hunkey-dorey, and we hear crickets on the airwaves.  And these are the people with whom we are seeking common ground?!

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  • The Liberal Mind – Topical trumps Synoptic

    George Rebane

    The ongoing debates on current issues such as budget, deficits, gun control, healthcare, climate change, immigration reform, … highlight one of the most robust aspects of how Left and Right thinking are fundamentally different.  As witnessed by RR’s Liberal Mind category, this is a long abiding subject of interest to me, and apparently becoming so to others inhabiting the polar regions of our ideological globe.  There is something fundamental and basic to how both sides present and argue their positions on the issues.  And since RR readers fervently debate these issues, I want to introduce a couple of new terms from the technical field that, perhaps, best capture the meaning of the different approaches.

    DebateA pair of arcane terms in science and technology that have yet to follow ‘feedback’, ‘bandwidth’, ‘in the loop’, ‘cloud’, … into the common lexicon are ‘synoptic’ and ‘topical’.  Dictionaries often define synoptic as “affording or taking a general view of the principal parts of a subject”.  In science and technology synoptic denotes notions that refer to an area in the large, be it the entire history or time window of a process, the overall design of a large-scale system, the complex inter-relationships of this with all of those, or a stream/collection of data in a database.  A synoptical argument captures the large scale of the subject that may even include objectives and measures of utility.  Something synoptic is of encompassing scope.

    The other end of the semantic notion of scope is topical which denotes anything of limited scope.  Again, the more common definition of topical is that “pertaining to or dealing with matters of current or local interest.”  But in the broader context I’m discussing here, things topical are limited in time and space, they are arguments, notions, appeals to the here and now, or entail some specific example(s) of a larger scheme, examples that need not be at all representative of the whole.  This last point is very important in the understanding of the proper meaning of topical.  Specific examples/incidents are sometimes also called anecdotal, and therefore a topical description of something subsumes the semantic of anecdotal examples, occasions, happenings, samples, etc.

    With this understanding, I now can make a more powerful proposition regarding how the Left and the Right contend on issues in the public arena.  The Left overwhelmingly presents its support and/or promotion of ideals and issues in distinctly topical frameworks.  Whether it is healthcare or gun control, we are regaled with stories of a specific individual who is denied a critical medical procedure, or have eleven bullets pumped into their little body.

    (more…)

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  • Immigration Reform – The Correct Solution

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 1 February 2013.]

    We’ve known for years that no one will deport the 11+Million illegal aliens now living in the United States.  And everyone also knows, whether they say it or not, that ultimately the overwhelming fraction of these people will stay here permanently, and one way or another become Americans.  That part about how many actually become Americans is the big rub in getting immigration reform legislation passed.

    PorousBorderThe contending sides here are the usual suspects, and as a conservetarian, I count myself in one of the corners.  We all know how America has always benefitted from immigration, and why we continue to attract and invite immigrants.  But here I’m referring to those who today are our legal immigrants, and not the illegal alien population that has long been the sticking part of immigration reform.

    The word ‘immigrant’, as in the politically correct ‘illegal immigrant’ or ‘undocumented immigrant’, has come to stifle reasoned debate on the subject.  For example, in reporting on Mexicans living in the US, the prestigious Pew Research Hispanic Center does not distinguish the legals from the illegals, calling the entire cohort simply immigrants.   In its charts and graphs showing Mexican influx, this charade wrongly assigns all Mexicans coming to America as having climbed over the fence.  In Pew’s lexicon, there are no Mexican illegal aliens here, even though they show hundreds of thousands of illegal Mexicans arriving yearly that now tally to over 11M “immigrants”.  These apparently add to the 52M legal Hispanic Americans of whom two out of three are of Mexican origin.  For some reason the published numbers on Hispanics are kept very murky, and the labels very confusing.

    (more…)

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  • Ruminations – 1feb13

    George Rebane

    Global blarney.  The IPCC has quietly admitted that its four prime climate change computer models have been overestimating the world’s temperature rises (here and here).  Of course none of these kinds of reports of dubious ‘science’ make any impact on the progressives’ who claim to be champions of science and higher learning.  Their credentials here consist mainly of their decades-long opposition to creationism promoted by fundamentalists of almost all religions.  In other areas of science they turn out to be total naïfs, being ignorant themselves and promoting STEM ignorance in schools.  In the meantime the left’s co-opted Scientific American keeps reporting that the “IPCC underestimated climate change”.  In America’s public policy (especially California’s AB32) climate change has given ‘political science’ a new meaning.  

    JBS-30jan13Last Wednesday evening we attended a John Birch Society event here at the Nevada City Elks Lodge (pictured).  William Jasper was promoting his new book The United Nations EXPOSED and also gave a talk on Agenda21.  It was a well-attended gathering that additionally featured Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal.  Present also was a contingent of liberals including RR reader and commenter Mr Doug Keachie taking pictures of everything (here).  The talk was about the brave new world being planned for us, and was given in a very professional manner using extensive quotes and citations of UN and ICLEI documents.  The program is proceeding apace, with minimal pushback, as described by my numerous posts filed under RR’s Agenda21 category.  A reason for its success is visible right here in our county when we recall the utter denial of Agenda21’s impact that is held by some of our county supervisors.

    Now even the unions are starting to bitch about Obamacare – my, my, my.  As the Pelosi Principle kicked in, all kinds of Obaminations started popping out of that landmark accomplishment of this administration.  So far, every claimed benefit of this socialist program is turning out to be a lie.  This must come as a surprise to the independents and middle-roaders.  The Left is blind to it, and its lamestream continues to ignore such insignificant news.  Professor Kessler of Stanford updates us on the latest in ‘Obamacare’s Broken Promises’.

    Economists, that little recognized part of our entertainment industry, have been quick to overcome the 1,100% error in their prediction of the 12Q4 growth in GDP.  Every one of them was able to quickly recover their 20-20 hindsight, and explain the now obvious but then invisible reasons why the -0.1% contraction occurred instead of their +1.0% predicted growth.  What are we to make of this? the same as always – forgive and forget.

    ‘Life in 2030’ is a collection of audio segments in the prestigious IEEE Spectrum on what technological advances we’ll enjoy a few years from now. These segments are titled –
    –    ‘How will Robots and Humans Coexist?’
    –    ‘Engineering Textiles to Keep Us Healthier and Happier’
    –    ‘Solar Power from Space’
    –    ‘Danish Island Tests Smart Grid’
    –    ‘Self-driving Cars Heading Our Way’
    –    ‘The Impact of the Invisible’

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  • Black Helicopters over South Houston and Miami

    Smokey the Bear's rules for fire safety – keep it small, keep it in a confined area, and keep an eye on it – apply doubly so to government.

    George Rebane

    Here’s a 12 minute video taken by Houston’s KTRK news helicopter of a military drill involving what looks like Army H500 helicopters armed with machine guns participating in an exercise that involved some actual firing that got local people excited.  KTRK reports –

    SkyEye 13 HD was over the south side where at first look, it appears there's a massive SWAT scene happening.   People have been calling police, as well as our newsroom, saying they're hearing gunshots in the area of Scott and Airport. It turns out, the Army says, it's a multi-agency training drill. They're doing it at the old Carnegie High School.  Helicopters were also involved. The Army isn't giving any details of what the training is about.   So if you see the helicopters or hear gunfire, it's only a drill.

    It looks like the next kid planning to shoot up a school will have to contend with some real counter fire if he keeps at it long enough to give time for the helicopter gunships to get there.  Each can also carry about four armed infantrymen.  But there’s nothing to worry about, it’s only a drill against gun toting nut jobs, Islamist terrorists, or whoever else needs to feel the full force of government response in peace or war.

    Now many of you may say, Houston was just a one-off, a special training exercise unique to the area or some other bullshit like that.  OK, so then what are they doing over Miami at night as reported in this WSVN newscast by a very compliant 'journalist' who isn't surprised that none of this was announced beforehand?

    Some paranoids might think that these helicopters actually belong to the Dept of Education SWAT teams in its newly armed capability to collect delinquent student loans – their existing riot guns for that function may not be enough.  But then you know how desperate those student loan deadbeats can get.

    Now consider if these unannounced 'drills' become so common place that the population at large comes to take little notice, and actually takes comfort in that the government is training to protect us all real good.  Would we ever know if someone or group was really apprehended during one of these 'drills'?  Would we ever take special notice after becoming sanguine about machine gun fire from low flying helicopters overhead?

    In any case, practice makes perfect.  And as the good folks at KTRK and WSVN tell us “it’s only a drill.” (H/T to RR reader and correspondent.)

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  • Numbers get a (confused) boost

    George Rebane

    The importance and magnitude of EVERY social problem lies in its numbers.  If you don’t understand the numbers and how they relate, all you can do is emote about the problem.


    BillGatesRR     has argued from the start that applying the tools of the systems sciences is critical to the solutions of all social problems (see end notes below).  For obvious reasons, also presented and discussed in these pages, the Left has been the major opponent of bringing analytics and numeracy to bear on social issues – this for the simple reason that it deflates their emotion based fuzzy rhetoric which they use to promote their collectivism.

    Well, now we have no less than Bill Gates coming out in a major piece promoting quantitative “measurement” for solving worldwide problems ranging from high infant mortality to the classroom evaluation of teachers.  His proposals contain absolutely no new ideas, but what is important is that the world’s most famous billionaire and philanthropist is going public with ‘new’ notions the youngest of which is about fifty years old.

    In his ‘My Plan to Fix The World’s Biggest Problems’ there is no plan presented, save the exhortation to start measuring and recording things to do with the problem that you’re trying to solve.

    For reasons unknown, Gates does not make clear the difference between a utility function or figure of merit (FOM), that would serve as an objective or goal or to define ‘good’, and the measured attributes that go into the FOM.  Perhaps it’s because the piece was written for broad audiences who would be confused by such nuances.  However, regular RR readers should not suffer similarly.

    A clarifying example might serve here.  Consider buying a car from the many models offered – which one to buy?  To keep it simple, the only attributes you consider important are its top speed and cost.  Somehow you have to trade off these contentious attributes since the faster cars cost more.  The tradeoff is performed in your formulation of the cars’ FOM which combines the numerical values of each car’s speed and cost.  Then you can collect the numbers for the cars, calculate their FOM values, and pick the one that for you yields the maximum utility.  (For you phormulaphiles, a typical FOM formulation here might be FOM = weight*(mph top speed) + (1 – weight)*(K$ cost), where weight is a number between 0 and 1 that reflects your speed/cost tradeoff.)

    And here’s rub and the benefit – the adoption and expression of every FOM or utility function is completely subjective for whatever problem you’re solving.  The FOM captures your values, judgments, experience, likes/dislikes, and even constraints on what can be done.  And such explicit FOMs can do the same for a government, community, or a corporation (business has been using them for decades).  Gates is finally saying to America that we have to approach problems with systems thinking if we want to make progress.  Continuing with the Left’s approach of “issues activism” based on selected anecdotes and fuzzy emotionalism, while rejecting data and a common understanding of ‘good’, will not accomplish much, and has gotten us to where we are now.  (That last italicized bit I added because Bill Gates couldn’t.)

    The belated call for such quantitative approaches is encouraging, even though it might turn out to be just more relieving yourself over the windward gunnel.  I hope not.  Read the article.

    End Notes:  For a brief summary of RR postings related to reasoning and systems thinking, I have culled the following short list.  More can be found filed in RR’s ‘Science’ and ‘Science Snippets’ categories.

    ‘Economic Development in Nevada County’
    ‘Systems Science Rules (almost)!’
    ‘Healthcare Utility Metric with Scriptural Underpinnings’
    ‘A Thoughtful View of Climate Change’
    ‘Why Reason Fails’

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