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  • Judea Pearl wins 2011 Turing Award

    George Rebane

    The Association for Computing Machinery announced today that it has named Dr Judea Pearl of the University of California, Los Angeles as the recipient of the A.M. Turing Award for 2011.  The announcement itself begins –

    JudeaPearlNEW YORK, March 15, 2012—ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Judea Pearl of the University of California, Los Angeles the winner of the 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award for innovations that enabled remarkable advances in the partnership between humans and machines that is the foundation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Pearl pioneered developments in probabilistic and causal reasoning and their application to a broad range of problems and challenges. He created a computational foundation for processing information under uncertainty, a core problem faced by intelligent systems. He also developed graphical methods and symbolic calculus that enable machines to reason about actions and observations, and to assess cause-effect relationships from empirical findings. His work serves as the standard method for handling uncertainty in computer systems, with applications ranging from medical diagnosis, homeland security and genetic counseling to natural language understanding and mapping gene expression data. His influence extends beyond artificial intelligence and even computer science, to human reasoning and the philosophy of science.

    The Turing Award, widely considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc. It is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing, whose 100th anniversary will be celebrated in June at the ACM 2012 Turing Centenary Celebration that includes 34 past Turing Award winners along with Pearl.

    “Like Alan Turing himself, Pearl turned his thinking to constructing procedures that might be harnessed to perform tasks traditionally associated with human intelligence,” said Vint Cerf, chair of the ACM 2012 Turing Centenary Celebration, and a former ACM Turing Award recipient. “His accomplishments over the last 30 years have provided the theoretical basis for progress in artificial intelligence and led to extraordinary achievements in machine learning, and they have redefined the term ‘thinking machine.’” Cerf pointed to Pearl’s innovation as a quantum leap from Turing’s “test” dating to the 1950s, when Turing set out to discover if machines could think. “Pearl’s work on reasoning with uncertainty as well as his game˗changing contributions to machine reasoning about causality have had a pervasive influence not only on machine learning but on natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, computational biology, econometrics, cognitive science, and statistics,” Cerf said.

    The rest of the announcement may be read here.

    Judea Pearl and I first became acquainted as colleagues on various defense research projects during the 1970s when he consulted for the small ‘black studies’ company that I headed during that period.  Subsequently our families became friends and over the years we spent many evenings in exciting discussions and song (Judea on guitar and me on the keyboard – Judea is an excellent musician in voice, choral, and several instruments.).  It was Judea who convinced me to complete my doctorate and join his small troupe of students at UCLA working on the various research tasks that served as the halo around the magnificent tour de force that Judea Pearl presented to the world when he showed how Bayesian networks could be constructed and correctly computed.

    Once his 1988 Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference was published, Bayes nets became and have remained the state-of-the-art in machine intelligence.  Bayesian inference now is the standard in all applications that required correct probabilistic reasoning, decisions under uncertainty, and management of risk – in short in all human endeavors.  Every field that has not embraced what Pearl started with Bayes is now scrambling to catch up.

    I have long had the honor of calling Judea Pearl my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend.  Those of us who had the good fortune to recognize early his genius and accomplishments were amply rewarded by what he taught us, and how he guided our individual contributions (my own humble efforts were in machine learning and causality).  It is most appropriate that Judea now joins the pantheon of the recognized greats in computer science. 

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  • Why we rage and what we can never condone

    George Rebane

    Here's a detail that has escaped me about the whole can of worms about the millions of illegal aliens in our country and the thousands more arriving every month.  The US Code dating back to 1940 required all aliens in the US to present proper identification giving evidence of their status when required by government authorities including law enforcement officials.  Arizona has passed a state law requiring exactly that to help them combat their illegal alien problem (e.g. one out of three prisoners incarcerated by Arizona are foreign – Mexican – nationals).  Unprecedented in American history, today we have our first post-American president and his Attorney General suing Arizona for enforcing US law that the federal government explicitly refuses to enforce across the land.  This is the reprehensible betrayal by government is in sum and substance of the Great Divide debate.

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  • The ‘Global One Percent’ Myth

    George Rebane

    The income inequality issue will not go away.  It is Team Obama’s main causus belli, and underpins all of their re-election strategy.  But the progressive tenets of income inequality are a myth that has again been exposed, most recently using data from a Swedish study that is reported in the 9mar12 WSJ piece by Dr Allan Meltzer.

    Citing that data Meltzer points out that the recent increases in the incomes of the developed countries’ top earners are easily explained away by the Great Doubling of the world’s competitive workforce that occurred after the Fall of the Wall.   This affected the middle and lower echelons of workers and caused “the top 1% (to) gain relatively because they are less affected by the hordes of newly productive workers.”

    TopPercentileIncome

    This, of course, is denied by all on the Left ranging from their street twits (aka the recent occupiers) to their ‘honorables’ in Congress.  As Meltzer points out –

    The big error made by those on the left is to believe that redistribution permits the 99% or 90% to gain at the expense of top earners. In much current political discussion, this is taken as an unchallenged truth. It should not be. The lasting opportunity for the poor is better jobs produced by investments, many of which are financed by those who earn high incomes. It makes little sense to applaud the contribution to all of us made by the late Steve Jobs while favoring policies that reduce incentives for innovators and investors.

    The mythically characterized income inequality is not a phenomenon peculiar to only America, but as seen in the nearby graphic filched from the WSJ, it is common to all advanced countries.  And, as has long been argued in these pages, to ascribe the inequality as some sort of global capitalist plot to beggar the lower classes is simply inane.

    Our system is democratic capitalism. In every national election, the public expresses its preference for taxation and redistribution. It is a democratic choice, not a plot controlled by one’s most despised interest group. The much-maligned Congress is unable to pass a budget because it is elected by people who have conflicting ideas about taxes and redistribution. President Obama wants higher tax rates to pay for more redistribution now. The Republicans, recalling Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and much of the history of democratic capitalist countries, want lower tax rates and less regulation to bring higher growth and to help pay for some of the future health care and pensions promised to an aging population.

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  • Are we really that dense?

    George Rebane

    [This is the submitted form of my regular column in The Union that was published in its 10mar12 print and online editions.]

    This administration has gone into maximum bamboozle mode on the nation’s energy policy.  Their lies and contradictions are coming out so fast and thick that it’s hard to count, let alone catalog them.  But it’s worth reviewing a couple of facets of what the President is successfully having us swallow.

    (more…)

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  • An Ideal Politician

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 9 March 2012.]

    If you were to spell out some attributes of an ideal and laudable politician, what would they be?  I’ve thought about this for some time now, especially as these attributes might apply to the local and statewide people we elect.  My own list has three main points which I’ll label ‘Don’t Add Pain’, ‘Sunset and Tune’, and ‘Just Say NO’.

    (more…)

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  • ‘Greece Passes Key Debt Test’, NOT!

    George Rebane

    DowntheToiletThe world’s newspapers are heralding the massive haircut taken by Greek sovereign debt holders as some kind of triumphal finesse in international finance.  Specifically –

    Just over 80% of Greece’s private-sector creditors had agreed by a Thursday evening deadline to turn in their bonds for new ones with less than half the face value, touching off a massive debt swap that marks a seminal moment in Europe’s long-frustrated efforts to rescue its most financially vulnerable nation.

    The 9mar12 WSJ report goes on to celebrate this “seminal moment” of a long-awaited “rescue”.

    But they got it all wrong.  The private sector investors accepting this level of loss are saying nothing other than ‘My choices are to lose the whole thing, or get out with 47 cents on the dollar.  I’ll take the 47 cents.’  Today Greece is having to pay over 600% for short term loans, which says that the probability of another default in 12 months is over 99%.

    This has not been a solution to anything other than getting off of a sinking ship of state with some of your belongings.  All these ‘rescue’ pyrotechnics do nothing but bamboozle European taxpayers (e.g. Germans) to not riot in the streets as their governments piss away more money down the toilet to buy time and rescue the private lenders (big banks and heavy hitters).

    Meanwhile back at the ranch boys and girls – this is California’s immediate future, and then comes the main event … .

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  • The Candyass Republicans (9mar12 update)

    George Rebane

    The subject of this post is the candyass response of Republican politicians to the Limbaugh/Fluke imbroglio.

    On ‘The Sad Tale of Sandra Fluke’ and extensive comment stream continues to (finally) air the destructive twists and turns of Obamacare that once more revealed the Left’s intentions on the breadth of entitlements subsidizing personal recreation, and their intentions on the constraint of conservative speech.  The former is part of their long promoted socialism for America, but the latter is a classic illustration and application of their asymmetrical logic on discourse in the public square.

    The asymmetry between what progressive pundits can say and how it is received in the lamestream (and their sheeple audiences), and what a conservative can say is a matter of record.  It is a long and detailed historical litany that I will not repeat, but will point you toward so you know what I’m talking about.  Red State’s Lori Ziganto writes ‘Limbaugh, Fluke, 'War on Women’ and the Travesty of Cravenly Caving to Lies of the Left’, Erick Erickson writes 'Silencing the Right', and Reason’s Nick Gillespie examines when ‘It's Like Totally Different When a Liberal Blowhard Guy Calls a Conservative Woman a Twat!’.  There are more similar recountings, but with these you’ll get the idea.

    The national response rolling over the countryside has been well-managed by the Left, reaching from the White House down to the loud local lefties in every community, with ours probably serving as the posterchild.  This you can confirm in ‘The Sad Tale …’ comment stream where some of our progressive luminaries in high dudgeon have posted monuments to their one-sided disgust at Limbaugh’s original remarks and my launch of a discussion of this new area of outrageous public entitlement.  These will stand as archeological monuments to 21st century leftwing mores and mentality.

    But my gripe here is with the Republican response to the howling heard over the land today.  The proper reply from prominent Republicans to Obama on down on this matter is, ‘Suck it up, this is what free speech sounds like.  Limbaugh has plowed no new ground with his remarks, but followed in your own well laid and deep furrows.  You are piling this crap into a high mountain only to hide your bankrupt social and economic policies during the election year.’

    But I haven’t heard any Republican of national note make such a statement.  Instead they continue to duck the topic or make candyass clucking sounds about Limbaugh’s “imprudence” while the Democrats’ machine rolls out their mischevious message over middling minds everywhere.

    Locally, you can get a snootfull by tuning in to KNCO this morning.

    [9mar12 update]  A correspondent sent this little vignette from O'Reilly that summarizes a lot of the background to Ms Flukes purposeful activism.

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  • Major cash importers finally discovered (updated 6mar12)

    George Rebane

    ColumbusDiscoversAmericaMemo to File: The current Economic Resource Council and its hired analyst Gene Warren have discovered that “retirees could be ticket to better local economy” as reported in the 5mar12 Union (couldn’t find online version).  This little piece of information should be old hat to anyone who has been paying attention for the last seven years or so.  At SESF (Sierra Economic and Science Foundation) we took a look at the county’s economic future, and it was easy money to discover that the three viable legs of our economy in the out years would be retirees, tourism, and information technology industry (NOT manufacturing).

    We started telling everyone in earshot from the BoS down to the local service clubs about this conclusion.  To no avail.  People kept holding economic development workshops every couple of years in which the forest was invisible because of all the pie charts and green propaganda that got in the way.  To no one’s surprise, these gatherings led to nothing.

    In the meanwhile I and my colleagues were trying to convince the local jurisdictions to start promoting Nevada County as the ‘Santa Barbara or Scottsdale of the Sierra’ that would welcome well-to-do retirees as the most attractive, low impact, cash importers to our community.  What they needed – restaurants, entertainment, cultural events, peace and quiet, social life, low crime, medical care, natural beauty, … – was already here.  What we didn’t have was a policy that would readily permit the development of high-end condo communities with all the amenities, optional in-home assistance, and controlled access.  With some pluck, the retireds today come here and buy/build on acreage.  But as they age, their choices to stay in Nevada County are limited to modicum elder care facilities, or a move to more comfortable denser housing in a strange community elsewhere.  Few seemed to understand this.

    Now with a hired gun from the outside talking to ERC, an agency that is still trying to get its bearings and convince members to contribute enough to pay for a phone, desk, and file cabinet, we may have found a believable source.  I sure as hell hope we didn’t pay him more than SESF got for dispensing the same wisdom.  But at least Gene Warren was able to get Jeff Ackerman’s front-page attention which may even percolate up to the city councils and Supes.

    Now I know how the Indians felt when Columbus told them that it was he who had discovered America.

    [6mar12 update]  Speaking of tourism as a major county cash cow, our own Paul Emery will be on NPR CapRadio’s Insight this morning at 10am to talk about how Nevada County has become “an arts powerhouse” in the region.  Readers will recall that Paul is a noted producer of legitimate theater, music concerts, and also performs on stage now and then.  Paul is also KVMR’s News Director, RR reader/discussant, friend, and a sharp critic of anything that ripples off my keyboard (he actually fills in from where mom left off).  Give Paul a listen, he’s not that bad 😉

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  • The Sad Tale of Sandra Fluke (updated 6mar12)

    George Rebane

    That Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut is a debate for other fora, but I do want to reflect on the broader ramifications of having the state pay for the prophylactics used in sexual intercourse.  The practice is hugely supported by the left because it underwrites another cut to the traditional cultural mores, especially as they are touted in the Judeo-Christian ethic.  The purported social purpose for the entitlement is that people like Ms Fluke will climb in bed with or without the proper contraception, and if she and her partner are both carefree then the care of her offspring will not be free for the rest of us.  So we should pay for her pills or IUD or whatever.

    Reducing this argument to its elements says that society should collectively assume the costs of attempting to prevent behaviors of the irresponsible and indigent, which costs are lower than the subsequent collective costs of dealing with the after effects of such behaviors.

    In the minds of many of us, the next question that pops up right away is ‘where does it stop?’  What about the state paying for the statins of people who love to eat fat burgers so that we don’t then have to pay so much for treatment of their subsequent cardio-vascular maladies?  And we can go on to the taxpayers having to bear all kinds of preventative burdens that used to be the personal responsibility of the individual or his family or his relatives or his church; you get the idea.

    Here we have the case of a woman who admittedly screws so frequently with diverse partners that neither of them can be counted on, in the heat of the moment, to undertake their pleasures with proper preparation.  One could counter her congressional testimony with the plea that if her activities were, shall we say, more episodic or less frequent, then the specialness of the occasion would naturally invoke other behaviors in the prelude that would prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  But apparently that is not the case with Ms Fluke and her peers.

    In order to prevent this new entitlement creep to become a gallop, perhaps we could suggest that she might fund her own 24/7 protection by charging a fee, or asking her partners to chip in a small amount that would total to her ongoing costs of such enterprise.  This would place the burden where it should be borne, and nip in the bud another round of ever expanding and never ending public expenditures.

    [5mar12 update]  A reader gives us a heads up on the sad tale concerning Ms Fluke that, in short, reveals that she's no fluke when it comes to  progressive public pyrotechnics.  The source is the American Thinker, where we read –

    "Ms. Fluke is long-time feminist activist who graduated in 2003 from Cornell's "Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies." In the decade since then Ms. Fluke has become a political professional for a huge range of feminist causes. She has worked for the (Democrat) Manhattan Borough Taskforce on Domestic violence and…."

    The rest is here.

    [6mar12 update]  This morning's leftwing NPR Morning Edition contained a segment on Limbaugh's 'slut apology'.  It was classic propaganda to keep this issue alive and focused on the very narrow subject of how Limbaugh characterized Fluke.  In the piece the reporter's entire argument anchored on Fluke being "just a civilian".  To the uninformed listener, the woman was just a random Georgetown University law student with a pocketbook problem in that her and her friends'/peers' rights were being violated by having to bear the cost of their own contraceptives.  Her professional and public political activities were purposely misrepresented, she was anything but "just a civilian".  I base the 'purposely' claim on the fact that Ms Fluke's past and professional agenda have now been broadcast over the countryside, and could not have been missed by NPR's equally professional investigative reporter.

    So the pot must be kept boiling and the focus kept on 'slut' instead of the proper breadth of national entitlements.  I am heartened that here on RR we are discussing the important issues regarding the implementation of Obamacare that have been raised by this incident.  I suppose the 'slut gambit'' served its purpose – most certainly here – as an attention getting device.

    And here is a fresh perspective from Ms Cathy Ruse, Georgetown law alum and senior fellow for legal studies at the Family Research Council.

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  • Nevada County Scattershots – 3 March 2012

    George Rebane

    Crabb120303
    Friend Bob Crabb’s 3mar12 Union cartoon above captures well the spirit and goals of Agenda21 (q.v.), and the brave new world we are being herded to pell-mell.  (BTW, Bob now has his own blog which you can visit through the ‘Our Links’ panel on the right.)

    And while I’m in the mood, in today’s Union there is a letter to the editor from a Conni Parker of Penn Valley, a certified binary pea brain.  She congratulates fellow intellectual Nancy Eubanks in a former piece “for outlining the many government programs that work”, and puts all people into two boxes when it comes to preference in governance – those who think more government is better, and anarchists.  If you happen to prefer a more limited government, then the Parker and Eubanks filters immediately assign you to the anarchist box, and ask how you’d like to drive on unpaved streets, and do without police protection – “if you don’t like government, try not having one.”  Oh well …

    What I really wanted to comment on is the excellent article – ‘$120 million net pension and benefit liabilities can’t be ignored’ – by CPA Dai Meagher in today’s paper.  A couple of weeks ago at a Board of Supes meeting, Dai and I expressed concern about the real level of the county’s unfunded liabilities, which was already disturbing back in 2007, and 2009 when Mike McDaniel brought this up to the Supervisors.

    (Unfunded liabilities are now a recognized scourge that threatens all levels of government in the nation, the result of profligate entitlement and public service pensions spending.  Only the diehard and fundamentally transformed progressives deny this conclusion that is even acknowledged in socialist Europe.)

    It was again pointed out to us that the county’s fisc has been prudently managed, and implied that any concern people have about the county having an unfunded liability problem is a “rural myth” propounded by ignorance of the true state of affairs.  Such rumors are totally unfounded.

    Well, as Dai makes clear, it turns out that they are not rumors, and the concern is indeed founded and in spades.  What specifically irks me is the hubris with which both the electeds and senior staff discuss such matters with us peons.  When I asked county CFO Joe Christoffel about the seemingly sanguine attitude with which the county was dealing with what looked like a financial tsunami headed toward us, his reply was that the county was making the payments required by CalPERS, and since that agency (projecting 7.75% annual portfolio growth) has not raised any red flags, therefore there is nothing to worry about.

    McDaniel and I were co-authors of the 2007 SESF unfunded liabilities report, and I have been writing about my concern in these matters for the last five years.  At this time, no one is accusing the current electeds of having run up the county’s obligations to what may actually be over $250M when CalPERS’ 7.75% urban myth is exploded in the new reporting standards that kick in next year as required by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).  My heartburn is that I don’t see 1) any clear acknowledgement of the problem, and therefore 2) no plan for dealing with it.

    UnfundLiabDisplay
    As a minimum, I want to see acknowledgement of the problem in the clear format shown above (first  presented in my 26feb12 post).  With that in hand, county taxpayers can make up their own minds on what questions to ask our county government, or just continue keeping their heads where the sun don’t shine.

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