Ron's News and Musings

Don't be this guy

2012-01-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

Paul Dearinger was recently convicted and is going to jail. Imagine the conversation between and his fellow inmates.
"Frank, what did you do to get in here?" - "I stole a car"
"Steve, what did you do?" - "I robbed a liquor store"
"Mike, what did you do?" - "I stabbed a guy"
"Paul, what did you do?" - "I beat a puppy to death"

Federal Regulation D

2012-01-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Today there was a message on my answering machine from my bank with an "urgent" message. I was worried that it might be fraudulent charges so I immediately called. I was informed that I was getting close to violating Regulation D of the Federal Reserve board. That sounded pretty serious to me.

Then the bank representative told me what Regulation D was: it limits the number of online transfers you can make between your accounts to 6 times a month. I had already made 5 transfers and the month is only half over (I would explain why but it is no more your business than it is the Federal governments business).

I can't imagine what could possibly be wrong with making more than 6 online transfers. Nor can I imaging why the Federal Reserve board thinks it's any of their business. It's my money and my relationship with my bank.

It seems I've heard talk of the need for more financial regulation out of Washington DC. No Thanks!

Alan Greenspan's "Age of Turbulence"

2011-12-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Alan Greenspan's book "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World". The first part of the book was more of a biography, which I found very interesting. He played the saxophone in Big Bands before becoming a financial guru. Then he had the amazing opportunity to either interact or work with Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. It was nice to have his rather non-political insights into these men.

Following the biographical section was his take on various countries, then various economic issues: from Oil to global warming. At times he gets a little too technical.

My impression is that Alan Greenspan is incredibly intelligent with a vast understanding of many economic issues, yet he is still a man with limitations. He was probably the most trustworthy person to have the responsibility that he held, yet I question whether too much power was given to a single individual.

The greatest argument for my opinion is that while the book was written in late 2007, he is forecasting where the economy might be in the year 2030, but was blind to the pending financial collapse. He did mention the risk of credit default swaps, but claimed that the New York Federal Reserve Bank was taking care of it and he didn't expect it to be a problem.

Sometimes a person can be so brilliant, that by comparison to other mere mortals their judgement is clouded into thinking they have supreme, flawless judgement. There is no way to know whether the U.S. economy is better or worse off having had Mr. Greenspan at the helm. Either way, after reading this book I find that I respect him and agree with many of his views.

iPad Helps Autistic Kids

2011-11-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Sometimes technology can do amazing things

San Diego Boycotts Arizona Power

2011-09-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

In a move of solidarity against Arizona's immigration policies, Southern Californians from the city of San Clemente down south of the border in Mexico boycotted imported electrical power from Arizona. This boycott comes more than a year after the boycotts by Oakland and West Hollywood proved to be insignificant [1]. Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom praised the boycott saying that it achieved more than he dreamed of as mayor of San Francisco when he banned travel to Arizona by city employees. Unfortunately, the boycott will prove to be short lived as Southern Californians realize that it is very difficult to function without electricity.

Benjamin Franklin on Beer

2011-08-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Franklin worked at a printers shop in London. This excerpt is from his autobiography:

I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great drinkers of beer. On occasion I carried up and down stairs a large form of type in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer! We had an ale-house boy, who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another pint when he had done his day's work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he supposed, to drink strong beer that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made ; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread ; and therefore if he could eat that with a pint of water it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that vile liquor, an expense I was free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under.

A Southern Christian View on Slavery

2011-08-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "The Life of Abraham Lincoln" by Henry Ketcham and have renewed admiration for Lincoln for his integrity and strong moral character. I was surprised to discover that he never joined a specific church even though he was very literate in the Bible. One of the problems that Lincoln had with religion was that prominent religious leaders of the time were preaching that slavery was a divine institution.

The church with which he was naturally affiliated was the Presbyterian. The most eloquent preacher of that denomination was the Reverend Dr. Palmer of New Orleans, who was an aggressive champion of slavery as a divine institution. His teachings were feebly echoed in thousands of other pulpits. Now Lincoln abhorred slavery. He incorporated human freedom into his religion...It may therefore be seen that the church did not give him a cordial invitation. If this needs any proof, that proof is found in the fact that the pastors in Springfield voted almost unanimously against him...

...this did not embitter him against the church...all his life long he kept up such bonds of sympathy with the church as were possible. He bore with the faults of the church and of ministers with that patience which made his whole character so remarkably genuine. He was a constant attendant at the services, he was favorable to all the legitimate work of the church.

Here is a sermon from Dr. Palmer, along with an address from another prominent clergyman:

Thanksgiving Sermon, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, November 29, 1860
A Southern Christian View on Slavery , James Henry Thornwell, 1861

Of course, those views are in the past. Here are a couple of apologies for past positions:

The Southern Baptist church apologized for their stance on slavery in 1995.
A New Orleans Archbishop apologizes for slavery Feb 1, 2011

John Stewart on Ron Paul

2011-08-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

This video is pretty funny until you ask why is the media doing this? I don't know if Ron Paul would make a good U.S. President, but he does have a history of being right on some important issues. Did you know that Ron Paul was trying to avoid the housing bubble 9 years ago? [link] Enjoy the video.

Level 5 Leadership

2011-08-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

In the book "Good to Great", great organizations are lead by Level 5 leaders. Author Jim Collins describes a Level 5 leader as someone who passes the window/mirror test, which involves two questions:

Why were you successful?
What went wrong?

A leader's answers can either:

"Look out the window" and give credit or blame to external factors
"Look in the Mirror" and take credit or blame upon themselves.

A Level 5 Leader answers the "Why were you successful?" question by looking out the window: "I had good people, I was lucky, The timing was in our favor, etc." and answers the "What went wrong?" question with by looking in the mirror "I made a mistake, a bad judgement call, etc.".

What prompted this posting? This article: I reversed the recession until bad luck hit.

A Class Divided

2011-07-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

Fear of Flying

2011-06-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

I was flying home Sunday night when my wife told me she was nervous about me flying. Then she asked me if I still had life insurance. Oops! I remembered that my Term Life had just expired and I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't renewed it yet. This planted the seed of fear.

At the airport, the monitors indicated my flight was on time. As we waited for the previous passengers to disembark, the first off was a women in a wheel chair pushed by two paramedics. She was obviously distressed and had some sort of medical emergency.

A little bit later, a man in silky white "pajamas" and a big white Afro wig (it looked like a large football helmet) got off the airplane.

Then there was the announcement: Our flight was being delayed due to engine troubles.

That was it - three omens feeding the seed of fear. I sent a text message to my family "I love you" and reminded myself about all of the statistics I read about how safe flying is.

We finally boarded and the captain told us that an indicator light went off for the actuator on the thrust reversers. That didn't sound too bad. It would only matter during landing and the chances of surviving a crash during landing seemed much better than falling out of the sky. The captain said he would try to make up the lost time, but he would have to fly around bad weather.

We hit the bad weather later and it was probably the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. I stopped reading my book as it was impossible to hold it still. I reached to turn off the light but couldn't hold my finger steady enough. I had to hold both hands up, push against the console, and then inch towards the off button. I figured if this was the end, it would probably be nice and quick.

We got out of the bad weather and the flight was smooth again. I reminded myself that I had been correct in trusting in the safety statistics. The captain then announced that "we were out of the bad weather, for now, but to remain seated as the next patch of weather would probably be worse". Thankfully it wasn't worse.

I finished my book and we had a safe landing.

When I got off the airplane, my legs and butt were very sore from sitting so long. I was reminded of a news article I read recently that said "sitting can kill you". So maybe all of the sitting during air travel is what can kill you.

P.S. If you're really afraid of flying and don't find the statistics comforting enough, you might consider this course http://www.fearofflyinghelp.com/

Is it the Guns?

2011-06-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to reading "Culture of Fear" by Barry Glassner and I'm inspired to have less fear in my life. According to the author, some of the fears that our culture exaggerates include: plane crashes, road rage, Gulf War Syndrome, breast implants, poisoned Halloween candy, child abduction and teen pregnancy.

The author, however, fell victim to the same fear fear mongering he complains about when he repeatedly decries gun violence and argues for more gun control. This seemed inconsistent with most of his book, so I decided to look into it a little more.

Below are charts comparing gun ownership to gun related homicides. The first chart shows no clear correlation (each blue diamond is a country). The point in the top right shows the strongest relationship (39% ownership and 7 homicides per 100,000 people). That's the U.S.

Instead of jumping to the conclusion: "gun owners in the U.S. are violent", I decided to look at the data for all 50 states, as well as New York City and Los Angeles. Not as much of a correlation, especially for New York City which has probably the strictest gun control laws (1.7% ownership, 6.5 homicides/100K) .

So I thought about it and was reminded of the Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality (0 being equal and 1 or 100% is unequal). I decided to compare Gini to Gun Homicides.

For both countries and U.S. states, it seems that greater economic disparity results in more gun violence (Someday I'll actually calculate the statistics). For example, New York City has a Gini of .5, which may explain why gun violence is still high there.

The Solution?

I'm worried that the politicians and activists will lazily jump to another poorly thought out solution like the need to increase welfare payments (another conclusion in Barry Glassner's book).

Reducing gun related violence is much more complicated than getting rid of guns or even reducing poverty (reducing the Gini). For example, countries with the highest gun ownership (Switzerland, Norway and Finland) may benefit from better trained gun owners (due to compulsory military service in Switzerland and more gun training in Norway and Finland).

My Solution: Provide gun safety training for poor school children. Sounds crazy, but it could possibly do more to help than taking guns away from responsible citizens.

Full Disclosure: I own a Red-Rider BB Gun and have many friends how are gun owners.

References:
A more critical review of The Culture of Fear
Would Banning Firearms Result in Lower Murder and Suicide? Harvard Law
Wikipedia, etc. for the statistics.

A Bigger Box

2011-06-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

It all started with a lucky nickle. Then a fancy strand of string. You put your treasures in a small box tucked in the corner of your bottom dresser drawer. Then you got an award at school, a shiny rock, a trophy and a bigger box. The box moved to a corner in your closet and got bigger. Then it became a stack of boxes. They moved to a corner in the garage and eventually took up a whole wall in the garage. The car now sat in the driveway and you were stuffing boxes in the rafters. You rented a small storage unit easing the pressure. You got a second unit, then a third. You found an abandoned warehouse and felt relieved by all the empty space. The space filled up so slowly that you never worried about it; until if filled up. You acquired a lease on the building next door and filled it up. You found more buildings and started looking at empty aircraft hangars in the desert.

My questions. Does it make sense to store that much stuff? At what point do you decide to get rid of some of your old stuff? Where do you get started?

Compare this to computers. How many hard drives do you have? How full is your gmail account or other online storage areas?

Last year, 24 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Now it is 48 hours of video every minute

Google gmail gives 193 million users 2 GB of memory. That's about 1/2 million 1 TB hard drives. Recently gmail servers crashed.

I try to clean house as I go but I'm still trying to figure out my strategy for making sure that my most valuable digital possessions are saved when it comes time to foreclose on the warehouses. I wonder when we'll start hearing about a"data storage" crisis.

Plain English

2011-06-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Years ago I read an article about the Plain English (or more generally "Plain Language") movement. This is the idea that writing in a concise manner provides the most value. For example a business that sends correspondences will receive more responses if they use Plain English. If it is too painful to read, people will just throw it away.

I am tempted to write more, but that would be in violation of the inspiration for this post.

You can read more about it on wikipedia.

There are some interesting examples at plainlanguage.gov (Oxymoronic?)

The Walmart Gene

2011-05-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

I have no political opinion about whether Walmart is good or evil, or if it's exploitive to it's employees or not. I know that I can buy some products at lower prices at Walmart and I'm a big Free Market proponent.

The other day my son and I went to Walmart. On our way into the store, I was noticing some of the characters unique to the Walmart shopping experience. So I asked "Is there a Walmart gene?". It seemed obvious that there must be some genetic connection that described these unique characters. As we walked around Walmart, our shopping experience was more joyous as we tried to identify which of the other shoppers might have the special Walmart chromosome.

If you can't wait till your next visit to play this game (or you refuse to shop at Walmart), try this site: http://www.peopleofwalmart.com

Which one's the Shampoo?

2011-05-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

Imagine it's early morning, your eyes are still sleepy, and you step into the shower. You wet your hair and the water is dripping in your eyes. You look down at the two white bottles: one shampoo and the other conditioner. Which one do you grab?

I have to admit that the packaging looks great for a shelf in the market, but I can't figure which bottle is which.

The "MATRIX"? Hmmm, no, they both are "MATRIX"

The "BIOLAGE"? Whatever that means, and they both are "BIOLAGE".

The, um, er, I can't quite make it out. Water still dripping in my eyes. Let me hold it closer, I wish I had my glasses.

I know, I'll just squirt equal amounts of both into my hand and shampoo and condition at the same time!

Hey marketing/packaging people! Try putting this on your bottles:

SHAMPOO CONDITIONER

or is it "CONDITIONER, then SHAMPOO". Still can't read the label.

Atlas Shrugged

2011-04-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie Atlas Shrugged this weekend.

Four years ago I was sharing my frustrations at work with a coworker and she said I had to read "Atlas Shrugged". The fictional world of Atlas Shrugged resembled my work environment a little too much. I slogged through, then got hooked and ended up enjoying the book. The book also had a big impact on my life: I quit my frustrating job. I now owe Atlas Shrugged a favor.

The 1950's story is surprisingly relevant today and the movie manages to tell the story as occurring in 2016. I thought the casting was very true to the original characters. I thought the movie's quality was slightly better than "made for TV", but I still recommend everyone see the movie Atlas Shrugged (remember, I owe it a favor).

Seeing the movie will:

Save you the effort of reading the 1000+ pages (or if you already read it, you probably don't need to be told to see the movie).
Provide economic support to complete the Trilogy, and I want to see the rest of the story told (apparently you can't fit 1000+ pages of material into one 1.5 hour movie).
Help spread the idea that excessive meddling by bureaucrats can potentially result in catastrophe.
Help show how many people support the previous point.

Orthorexia

2011-03-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had someone bring a veggie burger to your barbeque? Have you ever had an "intervention" by a concerned friend or family member who preached about the "correctness" of their "healthy" diet? Did they get defensive when you provided counter evidence to their dogma? Or, maybe that person is you (If you feel defensive, it's okay. That's a normal response).

These behaviors relate to the condition "orthorexia", which refers to an extreme obsession with only eating "healthy" (derives from the Greek "Ortho" for "correct or right" and "orexis" meaning "appetite"). When I was a kid, it was called "health nut".

Not that eating healthy is a disorder. There is plenty of evidence that a healthy diet can reduce the incidence of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This is how the term "Western Diseases" was coined. However with all of the conflicting information on health, its not surprising that such a "disorder" could exist (it's not officially a disorder yet).

Here's a little self-test to determine if you or a loved one are orthorexic: Self-test from MetroActive

Here's a confessional from a recovering orthorexic (and the person who coined the term): Health Food Junkie

Tsunami Inundation Maps for California

2011-03-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Tsunami in Japan was larger than prepared for, which raises the question: "Are you vulnerable to a Tsunami?". I found this analysis of "Tsunami Inundation" for California:

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/geologic_hazards/Tsunami/Inundation_Maps/Pages/Statewide_Maps.aspx

Keep clicking to drill down to detailed maps.

An Unexpected Love Affair

2011-03-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am a bit surprised at how the liberal democrats have taken to protecting Muslims. Here's a short list of how they show their support:

Objecting to the Congressional Hearings on "The Radicalization of Muslims"[1]
Firing of Juan Williams from NPR for "offensive" comments towards Muslims.[2]
Support the "religious right" to build a Mosque near Ground-Zero of 9/11.[3]
Walk off of their own show (The View) in defense of Muslims [4]
Call to not jump to conclusions on Fort Hood shootings [5]

The reason I am surprised at these positions is because of the contrast in their beliefs. Let's compare side by side:

Liberal Democrats	Muslims and Sharia Law
Believe in separation of church and state	Believe religious law should BE state law (Sharia Law)
Believe that religion should not be forced on anyone	Becoming non-religious, is strictly forbidden and punishable by death
Believe in equal rights for women	The rights of women are arguably fewer. Polygamy is legal.
Believe in criminal rights and reform	Penalty for theft is cutting off one or both hands
Believe in sexual freedom	The punishment for adultery is stoning
Believe in equal rights for homosexuals	Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death
Against death penalty	Death penalty for adultery, homosexuality, apostasy, etc.
Believe in legalization of controlled substances such as alcohol and marijuana	Liquor and drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, opium, etc are all unlawful

In all fairness, these are extreme examples and the beliefs are not necessarily shared by all Muslims. Also, this list excludes any similarities(for example, Muslims allow for abortion up to 4 months of pregnancy). Still, the differences are significant.

The best explanation that I can come up with for the love affair is "The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend" or in other words, liberal democrats think "Muslims are the enemy of Christians, who are typically conservative Republicans, therefore we like them". It's a little like teaming up with Stalin to beat the Nazis - after you get rid of the Nazis, how do you get rid of Stalin?

Update March 15, 2011 - Another possible explanation is that liberal democrats always look out for the underdog; even if they are ideological polar opposites.

Islamic Radicalization Hearings

2011-03-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

The media calls these Congressional hearings a "witch-hunt" similar to the days of the "red scare" when McCarthyism lead to Hollywood Blacklisting.

Luckily I was able to watch a portion of the hearings on my favorite reality show (C-SPAN). As a result I feel less frightened and more sympathetic towards American Muslims. I think we've come a long way as a country in the last 60-70 years in how we can discuss sensitive issues like this.

The Democrats were united in objecting every chance they got, saying that these hearings would only result in Islamophobia. They wanted the hearings to be fair and include all of the Christian terrorists groups as well. In fairness to them, I think they helped keep it civil by reminding everyone of the dangers in discussing such a sensitive subject.

The Republicans made the point that is was about time this hearing happened as there was no Congressional hearing on the Fort Hood shootings (which killed 13 people and injured 29) 2 years ago, though a hearing was held on Toxic FEMA Trailers which apparently had killed no one.

A Muslim witness also pointed out that the government report on the Fort Hood shootings made no mention of the radical Islamic motivation of the shooter[1]. He made the analogy that if you are trying to get rid of cancer, but are not allowed to mention it in any way, then you will have a hard time removing it. He said it is time to talk about the cancer.

I only watched a portion, but what I heard seemed fair minded and from what I could tell the millions of peace loving American Muslims outnumber the extremist American-hating Muslims.

There were many good sound bites, but my favorite was the Los Angeles County Sheriff talking about reading the Koran and sharing the true message of Islam :)

Winners!!

2011-03-09T23:11:00.000-08:00

The best reality show on TV today is C-SPAN. It temporarily took second place last week to the "winner", the Charlie Sheen Show.

If you haven't watched C-SPAN, let me elaborate the storyline.
The United States is falling apart. People are losing their jobs. Everyday, families are evicted from their homes adding to the growing homeless population. Food prices are rising and children go to bed hungry. Gas and fuel prices are skyrocketing. At the same time, the world is losing confidence in the U.S. with soaring debts. Anti-U.S. sentiment and terrorism are growing. Little-by-little, China is buying U.S. debt and will soon have enormous power over us. Our heros, the representatives of the people, the Democrats (D) and Republicans (R) stand tall and firm. They are the only ones who are willing to step up and claim the power to save us from all of our woes.

Scene 1 (The Debate floor):

The (D) tags the (R) and says "it's all your fault, your it". Then the (R) tags the (D) back and says "no, it's all your fault, your it". The (D) tags the (R) and says "your it, no tag backs". The (R) tags the (D) and says "undo no tag backs, your it, double no tag backs".

Winners!!

BYU Honor Code

2011-03-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

Here are some answers to questions I've seen about the recent dismissal of Brandon Davies, the starting center for the BYU Men's Basketball.

Q. Who turned Brandon in?

A. Brandon turned himself in. Tom Holmoe (BYU Athletic Director) said, Davies came to him and coach Dave Rose seeking "direction and counsel ... There was a serious violation of which we were made aware. He used us as a resource."[1]

Q. What about forgiveness? Wouldn't the REAL Christian thing be to forgive Brandon Davies?

A. Added Holmoe: "The first thing we did was put our arms around (Davies). Our No. 1 thing then, now and in the future is going to be to look out for his best interests, to be able to make sure we can help him along the process of getting him back with the team and getting back on track to achieving all of his dreams." [1]

Q. Who would want to go to BYU with such strict standards?

A. According to US News, BYU (Provo) is the #1 most popular university, above Harvard and Stanford. [2] What this means is that for students accepted to BYU, more go on to enroll than any other college. The number of students that accept these standards is 46,383 students (if you count all BYU campuses: Provo-29,780, Idaho-14,100, Hawaii-2,500, since they all have the same honor code). Last year over 4,000 students (38% of applicants) were denied admission (it's getting a lot harder to get into BYU).

Q. Why couldn't they just let him finish the season? The basketball team was doing so good.

A. It's easy to get distracted from high standards by short term temptations. Over the long term, consistency pays off. For example, BYU ranks #11 in schools "whose graduates were the top-rated by recruiters". [3]

GDP and the Price of Crude Oil

2011-02-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

I read that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lags the price of crude oil. When the price goes up, then GDP goes down. I decided to look into this and produced the chart below of actual and predicted GDP as a function of time. Since the lag is about 6 months, the predictions extend 6 months into the future. Note that the prediction shows a significant drop in GDP by September 2011 (Which agrees with many analysts).

This is a Google Document, so I'll try and update as new data is available.

I scaled the Oil Prices to 2010 dollars using the CPI data. Then, I used the following simple formula:

GDP_Predicted(date) = a * OilPrice(date - lag) + b

I know that there are many other factors driving GDP, but there seems to be an apparent correlation here. Time will tell whether the predictions show any validity. I probably should have learned my lesson on trying to predict financial futures, since my Stock Predictions failed about 7 months ago (most likely due to Bernanke's QE2).

Data Sources
GDP www.bea.gov
Oil prices www.eia.doe.gov
CPI www.bls.gov

Dieting and Cutting the Deficit

2011-02-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Pres. Obama announced that he plans on cutting the deficit in half. [1] Sounds like a step in the right direction, but consider this:

You had the perfect physique in High School, but every year you've put on a few pounds and the last two years you gained 20 pounds each year. You now weigh an extra 200 lbs and your doctor and loved ones are pleading for you to lose weight. You promise to cut your weight gain in half! Notice the subtle insertion of the word "gain". What this really means is that you will still gain 10 lbs next year. Not exactly losing weight.

The deficit is like your annual weight gain and debt is like the total weight you need to lose. For example, the Federal deficit for fiscal year 2009 was $1.4 trillion (million million) [2] while the debt is ten times that (about $14 trillion) [3. The Debt Clock]. Cutting the deficit in half still means the debt is growing.

I wonder how fat we'll get before we go on a real diet.

Super Bowl Interview

2011-02-12T00:35:00.000-08:00

On Super Bowl Sunday, Bill O'Reilly (Fox News) interviewed President Obama, though I didn't find out about it till Monday. Ironically, of the several random books downloaded onto my iPod, I finished listening to "Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama and started "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity" by Bill O'Reilly. So what do I think about these guys?

Barack Obama
I agree with many of the ideas that Pres. Obama preaches about values, politics, faith and family. However, I can't get over the fact that some of his actions don't match his words. For example, his action of increasing the Federal debt by more ($3.7 trillion) in 2 years than our country accumulated in its first 225 years [1] is in direct conflict what he said in 2006:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” [2]

To be fair, the first 225 years don't include the last 10 years with the previous four presidents (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan) increasing the debt from $1 trillion to over $10 trillion. They really should have created surpluses during these decades of relative prosperity. With a surplus, Pres. Obama would have been better equipped to handle the financial crisis (Pharaoh's dream of 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine keeps coming to mind [3]).

Bill O'Reilly
I watch the O'Reilly factor on occasion so it was interesting to learn more about him. I also find an inconsistency in what he says and what he does. He made a very convincing case that he's a simple guy and the driving force behind him is righting wrongs and sticking up for the underdog. His actions on his television show are not consistent with this. It seems to me that it is VERY important to him to be right, and if a guest ever starts to win an argument, he talks over them and cuts them off. He may look out for the underdog, but to Bill O'Reilly the number one underdog to stick up for is Bill O'Reilly.

While his behavior can be annoying, I can choose not to watch him. Unfortunately I don't have a choice when it comes to the extra $3.7 trillion in federal debt.

The Interview
I think Bill and Barack did very well with the interview. You have to respect the President while trying to hold him accountable, and Mr. O'Reilly did that as well as could be expected.

I'd Rather Live in America

2011-01-29T00:26:00.000-08:00

I've been following a story that has made the recent tragedy of a shooting spree in Arizona seem tolerable. I would like to compare these two stories side-by-side

	Gabrielle Giffords	Salman Taseer
Position	A member of the U.S. House of Representatives.	The governor of province of Punjab in Pakistan.
Politics	A moderate/left-leaning politician	A left-leaning politician
Controversy	None, really. She supported Obamacare but she is actually quite moderate: supports gun rights and stronger immigration laws.	Defended a poor Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who was condemned to death for blasphemy. He also was outspoken against the anti-blasphemy law
Attack	Was shot by Jared Loughner, a mentally disturbed young man	Was shot and killed by Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, who was part of Salman's security detail
Reason	No reason was given, but apparently Jared was unhappy with a letter Gabby wrote to him in 2007 regarding questions he had asked her at a public meeting	Malik was more forthcoming with his reason: he didn't like Salman's opposition to the blasphemy law in Pakistan
Response	Jared was immediately arrested and is being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Additionally, his civil rights are being respected by being assigned a high profile defense attorney, Judy Clarke	Malik was arrested but his supporters blocked the attempts by the police to bring him before a judge. They also threw rose petals on him [1]. He has been called a hero by religious groups [2].
Why I'd rather live in America	Even though there was some unwarranted finger pointing of blame for the attack, there was still universal condemnation of the attack.	There was wide spread acceptance of the attack on Mr. Taseer. The blasphemy laws are so oppressive that even questioning them is blasphemy. There is little legal recourse since hearsay is sufficient to convict since the stated blasphemy cannot be presented in the charges or in court since doing so would be blasphemous.

References
"Staring into the abyss: Pakistan's increasing radicalisation", The Economist, January 8th-14th, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Giffords

State of the Union

2011-01-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

A couple thoughts on President Obama's State of the Union Address tonight:

I liked the idea of having the Democrat and Republican members of Congress sit together. I had heard some partisan comments before about "why didn't Democrats didn't suggest doing it when the Republicans were in the minority?", but I think it was a great gesture no matter who suggested it or how long it took them to think of it. It was much better than watching half the room sit during a standing ovation.
I think that the election in November helped remind Congress and the President who they work for. I sensed a much more civil tone from the President and Paul Ryan. They must have read my post on civility
I was pleased to see more attention being focused on the economy. Obama and Ryan must have seen the Economic Headlines that I posted.
I was impressed that in his Republican rebuttal, Paul Ryan acknowledged that both parties are responsible for our enormous federal deficit. He must have read my post Civility, Debt and Partisanship.
I'm VERY glad that I'm just a blogger and I don't have the actual burden of trying to fix the problems we have.

Inciting Violence

2011-01-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

Here's some content in the media that could be used to incite violence.

Palin's "Hit List"

The Global Warming/Climate Change "10/10" project

Update 1/21/2011
Bears/Packers Playoffs (Parody Video)

Asian Envy

2011-01-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

It all started in High School with the smart Asian kids. My envy had a nasty flavor since I was in the top of my class and the Asian kids were competition. Later my envy became healthier as I matured and enjoyed exchanging culture with my Asian friends in grad school: learning a little Chinese at lunch time and comparing our different worlds. I still remember being told that the English words "Soup" and "Soap" sound identical (as well as "Shirts" and "Shorts"). Try saying them with an Asian accent - you'll see why.

My best friend at my first job was genetically 100% Asian, but really 33% Asian, 33% Hawaiian and 33% Californian. He invited me to play in a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at his Asian Christian church. It was the most civil basketball experience I have ever had.

Now my group at work is about one third Asian: my boss is Filipino and a new hire that I'm mentoring is Vietnamese. Even my Caucasian coworker's wife is Chinese. Two years ago our group climbed Mt. Whitney and I partnered with a Chinese coworker (hiking is a good bonding experience). At the summit, we video taped ourselves talking to friends and family. Mine was lame. My friends was very heartfelt.

To top off the Asian influence in our lives, we currently have a Japanese student living with us.

What do I think of Asians? They are disciplined, hard working, cohesive, fun and friendly.

So is there anything wrong with Asians? Here's a couple of observations:

Our house guest has dual citizenship (U.S. and Japan) since his parents were living here when he was born. Japan makes him decide when he is 21 which he will be. I was asking him about naturalized citizens in Japan and basically there are none: no Blacks, no Latinos, no Europeans, no Russians, no Indians, and no other Asians (not even Central Asians). Senator Jim Webb, in his book "A Time to Fight" talks about how wonderful the Japanese prison system is compared to the U.S., but if you have no immigration and no cultural conflicts, it's not surprising.
Recently there was a WSJ article explaining "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior". It has received much attention (which I am also envious of). If Amy Chua's thesis that Chinese Mothers are superior, then explain this: Due to China's One Child Policy (limits couples to having one child), the ratio of male births to female births has increased drastically. The result is that there will be millions of men with no prospects for marriage. So what is happening to the girls? Since the Chinese culture values sons more than daughters, many girls are eliminated by selective abortion, infanticide and abandonment (Our neighbors adopted one of these neglected Chinese girls). Chinese mothers may be superior; if your not a girl or you can survive their murderous ways.
China owns all of our debt. What this means is that the government has lots of wealth due to a trade surplus with the rest of the world, and instead of raising the living standard of their people (the average annual salary is about $7400) they keep the money, throw lavish parties and buy foreign debt.

I know that it would be wrong to call Asian cultures anti-immigration, greedy dictatorships full of baby-killing mothers. That narrative doesn't fit with my personal experience.

New Look

2011-01-15T01:37:00.000-08:00

I just finished creating a new look for my blog. I've resisted doing this on the premise that simple is best, however I asked my son-in-law for constructive criticism. He, of course, pointed out things to change, which happened to be things that I liked most. I planned on ignoring his suggestions but I have since softened my stance. It's funny how we don't like criticism (and consequently I think that we aren't vocal enough with our criticism; we're too afraid to offend even though we secretly may have strong opinions about how things are).

Wouldn't it be nice if we could get honest feedback from others and learn how to not be offended?

Here are the changes:

Warmer colors to reflect my attempts to be less polarizing and more civil (Also the previous black and white colors do not reflect reality - there seems to always be an exception to black and white rules).
A picture of myself (I tried to cartoonize it to hide the bags under my eyes).
A border of words around the title to reflect some of the themes of my postings.

Tucson Shooting and the X-ocrats

2011-01-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

What's an X-ocrat? It's anyone person or organization whose utmost concern is obtaining or retaining power (being the ruler). An X-ocrat is the person that turns a terrible tragedy (such as the shooting in Tucson that killed several people and injured Congresswoman Gifford) into an opportunity to play the blame game in hopes of grabbing more power for yourself [1][2][3]. This X-ocrat power struggle becomes a greater reality than any other real issues. Americans long for the days after 9/11, when people were engaged emotionally and united in working to solve real problems.
The current X-ocrat's disconnect from reality is what keeps getting them voted out of power (Republicans lost the House in 2006 and the Senate and Presidency in 2008; the Democrats lost the House in 2010). Note that X-ocrats are Democrats, Republicans, the Main Stream Media, unions, Wall Street.

Links Added Jan 13,2011:
WSJ, Postings of a Troubled Mind

Here is some interesting commentary from two comedians. I guess poking fun at the X-ocrats helps them not to become blinded by the power struggle.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Arizona Shootings Reaction

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Pundits Lay Blame for Senseless Arizona Attack

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

Video Archive

Light, Truth and Gravity

2010-12-30T00:33:00.000-08:00

Once I was asked how I could believe in God and science. It's true that religion and science have a history of conflict. I think one of the problems is that religions extrapolate dogmas too far, then new scientific discoveries invalidate unfounded beliefs, and the battle begins. Usually science wins as the theories are proven out. When religion rationalizes outdated beliefs, it is discredited and the temptation for the "scientifically minded" is to "throw out the baby with the bathwater".

I've managed to see and experience the value in both systems of understanding, and in many instances I am satisfied to see science and religion in agreement. This happened tonight as I was reading an article on some of the latest thinking in Physics. The theories start by trying to explain what happens to "information" in the Universe with results of a quantum mechanical explanation for gravity (and dark energy, which no other theory accounts for). Here's a quote from the article:

Some physicists are convinced that the properties of information do not come from the behaviour of information carriers such as photons and electrons but the other way round. They think that information itself is the ghostly bedrock on which our universe is built.[1]

There seems to be an interesting relationship between "information", "light" and "laws by which all things are governed".

Here are some religious verses:

D&C 88:11-13
11 And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;

12 Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—

13The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.

I would equate the bold items as such:

"light" with "photos and electrons"
"information" with "knowledge" or "enlightenment"
"gravity" with "the law by which all things are governed"

So what does this mean to me?

Scientific understanding is finite.
Religion provides a hope of infinite understanding.
Religion overreaches
Science corrects religion with new understanding.
Go to step 1.

Enjoy the Holidays with some Economic Headlines

2010-12-29T00:44:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying the holidays: time off work and time with the family. My usual blog posts tend to be a little too serious and I haven't wanted to ruin the mood for this happy time of year. The end of the year is approaching so I thought I'd post a list of economic headlines I've been saving up.

The premise I had when I started this was that the economic news seemed to oscillate daily. I thought I'd try and capture this with the top headline of the day (I missed a few days). See if you think my premise was valid.

9/14/2010 Wall Street boosted by technology and retail shares (Reuters)
9/15/2010 Mortgage giant losses could reach $400 billion
9/15/2010 Resilient Wall Street edges higher (Reuters)
9/16/2010 Foreclosures Rise; Repossessions Set Record
9/16/2010 Wall Street opens lower after data (Reuters)
9/20/2010 Recession ended in June 2009: NBER
9/21/2010 Housing starts at 4-month high (Reuters)
9/24/2010 Wall St jumps on data enthusiasm
9/28/2010 Wall St flat as consumer confidence on tap (mixed report)
9/28/2010 Consumer Confidence Falls to Lowest Level Since February
10/4/2010 Housing shows stability, factory orders fall
10/4/2010 ...unsustainable fiscal situation... Ben Bernanke
10/6/2010 Wall St opens lower after weak ADP report
10/6/2010 Real estate downturn could last 8 years: IMF
10/8/2010 Economy loses 95K jobs due to government layoffs
10/14/2010 Applications for jobless benefits rise to 462K
10/14/2010 September home foreclosures top 100,000 for first time
10/20/2010 Economy grew sluggishly in recent weeks: Fed
10/20/2010 Wall Street bounces with dollar, earnings
10/21/2010 Shares edge up, whipsawed by dollar, earnings
10/25/2010 Wall St advances on dollar weakness, Fed bets
10/26/2010 Wall St set for weak open on earnings, strong dollar
10/27/2010 Wall St falls on lack of Fed stimulus clarity
10/29/2010 Economy grows at slightly faster pace in Q3
10/29/2010 Economy grew modestly in third-quarter
10/29/2010 GDP growth tepid in Q3, more Fed easing seen
11/4/2010 Wall St rallies as Fed stokes risk appetite
11/8/2010 Fed officials voice concerns about bond buying
11/16/2010 Bond Market Defies Fed
11/29/2010 Citing deficit, Obama freezing federal worker pay
12/4/2010 U.S. unemployment climbs to 9.8%, raising doubts about recovery
12/8/2010 US Treasuries hit by biggest sell-off in two years
12/9/2010 U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Fell 17,000 to 421,000 Last Week
12/21/2010 US teen birth rate at all-time low, economy cited
12/28/2010 111th Congress Created More National Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined

...everything can be taken from a man but one thing...

2010-12-15T22:49:00.000-08:00

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

All or Nothing

2010-11-30T23:13:00.000-08:00

This week, President Obama announced a plan to freeze the wages of ALL Federal employees for two years, saving billions of dollars. My first reaction was "Good for him! Saving billions is a step in the right direction." After thinking about it, I realized the fallacy of this move.

While I believe that there are many Federal workers that deserve a wage freeze, not "All" do.

Similar "All or Nothing" thinking:

ALL people traveling on airplanes are suspected terrorists and are subjected to extreme measures (taking off clothing items, not allowing the carry of any liquids, subject to invasive electronic and physical searching)
ALL deep-water drilling must stop for 6-months (Obama's offshore drilling moratorium after the BP Oil Spill), hurting many viable and safe drill sites and impacting the jobs and related economy.
The $787 Billion Stimulus included ALL spending ideas (Why not pick the most valuable spending ideas and then authorize spending as needed?).
The Healthcare Reform Act included ALL 2000+ pages of reform (why not just pick the best couple of ideas and see how they work?)

This problem isn't Democrat nor is it Republican. It's a "leave it to me, I know best" mentality. When the All or Nothing decisions are made they typically result in unintended bad consequences. The resulting criticism draws the excuse that "it would be too hard to sort out the good from the bad" or "we'll fix it later"[1].

Extreme examples of "All or Nothing" thinking

During the French Revolution, the idea that ALL Aristocrats were bad and should be executed.
In early U.S. history, the idea that ALL blacks were inferior and NONE should be allowed basic civil rights.
Nazi Germany's idea that ALL Jews are bad for Germany
During World War II, the idea in the U.S that ALL Japanese immigrants were bad and should be put in concentration camps.

What would be a better approach to cutting the cost of Federal wages? Here's my idea:

Evaluate the relative "value" of all Federal Departments and Agencies (listed here)
Determine a percentage that each Department/Agency needs to cut.
Give the head of each Dept./Agency the task of making the cuts.
The head of each Dept./Agency then performs steps 1-3 for his subordinates.
Repeat steps 1-4 until you reach the bottom of the decision makers.
Repeat steps 1-5 evary 1 to 12 months until you've balanced the budget.

First Effects of the Healthcare Reform Act

2010-11-22T22:12:00.000-08:00

Our family is already benefiting from the Health Care Reform Act. Our 21 year-old son stopped being eligible under the old plan, but we can now have him covered thanks to the new law.

Our family is also starting to pay for the Health Care Reform Act. I got this memo from our benefits department:

The purpose of this memo is to provide you information on the medical rates for next year... The premiums for certain medical insurance plans are increasing significantly for 2011. This increase is due to medical trend, increased costs to meet requirements for the Healthcare Reform Act, and primarily, to the high dollar amount of medical claims in these plans over the last year...

The out-of-pocket increases to cover your family:

"Cadillac" plan increased by $529.75/month, $6,357/year.
"Cheap Cadillac" plan costs an extra $157.65/month or $1,892/year.
"Chevy" plan increased by $43.59/month, $523/year.

We had the "Chevy" plan, so the increase seems fair since we are getting the added value of coverage for an additional dependent.

The peasants are revolting over the increase in the Cadillac plan.

I don't know what percentage of these increases is due to the new law. I know that most of the increase in the Cadillac plan is due to simple economics and not due to the new law. Our company is trying to ween people off of a local health provider (covered by the "Cadillac") whose costs have risen significantly. The "Cheap Cadillac" plan very explicitly excludes the evil, costly provider.

Surprisingly, the out-of-pocket cost of Kaiser (yet another option) went unchanged, so Kaiser is getting out business this year for the first time. Free market forces are still working, in spite of all the rules and regulations.

Senate Save Us From The Practical Problems

2010-11-16T21:51:00.000-08:00

I was watching the C-SPAN coverage of the Senate Committee on Air Cargo and Airport Security hearing[1] (a reasonable alternative to watching Glee). This hearing was timely due to the recent controversy with the full body scanners at airports and pat-downs. [2]

It was obvious to me why Congress has such a low approval rating. Do these Senators really think they are making us safer? My least favorite was Senator Levin (at 45 min in video [1]). He managed to point out 19 times during his 7 minutes of questioning that the "practical problems" had not been solved. I had no idea what point he was trying to make. The Senators did speak for us public by saying we would rather experience delays in shipping, be patted down by airport security, etc. than suffer another failed attempt like the underwear bomber or printer cartridge bomb.

Thanks for taking care of us!

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine Woman With 2 Artificial Knees Describes 'Sexual Assault' By Screener...
Searched because she wore a skirt
Cancer-surviving flight attendant forced to remove prosthetic breast...
TSA Apologizes For Making Boy Remove Leg Braces
Wow! I agree with Senator Boxer on this one!

Going to far...Child scream's "Stop touching me!"

Civility, Debt and Partisanship

2010-11-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

I was raised to believe that debt is bad and should be avoided with few exceptions. Not surprisingly, every time I hear about the growing Federal Debt, I feel anxious and worried. Recently, I came across a Wikipedia article titled National debt by U.S. presidential terms. I was bothered by the premise of the article that Republican Presidents increase the debt and Democrat Presidents decrease the debt.
I was pleased to see the discussion section for the article raise the same issues that I would have:

What about Obama?
Why blame only the President when only the House of Representatives is authorized by the Constitution to originate spending bills? (Article I Section 7 "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives", and by precedence that includes spending).
Why did the chart start in 1950, excluding the deficit spending of Democrat Presidents before this period?

I decided to look at the data myself. Of course I abandoned civility by starting with the premise that Democrats are the spenders and Republicans were fiscally responsible. I ended up with the chart below (the color represents the control of the House of Representatives).

As I looked at the data, I couldn't find a clear pattern. I then looked at partisan splits in Congress and between Congress and the President. If you look at either chart, you can see that there are times when either party was responsible for the debt.

I then remembered my vow of civility and decided to take a fresh look at the data, not blaming either party. The results both surprised me and didn't. Below is a table of periods of rising debt.

What stands out:

What political party is in power is not significant
Periods of debt seem to be related to wars and financial crises
It takes much fewer years to create debt than to pay it off
Our government has had out of control spending for last 30 years.
Our government has not wisely used the surplus during recent years of plenty.
Republicans and Democrats are both right when they blame each other for our debt problems.

Year	Years to Peak	%GDP	Years to Payoff	Historical Event	Party Pres House Senate
1908	1	1.5%	1	Panic of 1907	R	R	R
1916-1919	4	28%	11	World War I	D	DR	DR
1930-1941	12	26%	Not paid for	Great Depression	RD	RD	RD
1941-1945	5	83%	24	World War II	D	D	D
1981-1996	16	35%	???	Cold War Off Gold Standard?	R	RD	D
2002-Present	9+	38%	???	War in Middle East Great Recession	RD	RD	RD
1981-Present	30+	62%	???	???	RD	RD	RD

Night Before The Election

2010-11-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

I had a couple friend's over tonight to look over the ballot. Next election I'll try and get an earlier start.

Here's a summary:

I've lived in California my whole life and I'm frankly scared for its future.
I'm surprisingly voting mostly for incumbents at the local level.

Our city is not in debt.
I've met the mayor and I like him. I also trust him.
I like our cities development plan: the new parks are beautiful and I like the businesses that have come here.
The schools have continually been improving (at least their test scores). The incumbents on the school board have lived here over 35 years and raised their kid's here.

I guess I picked a good town to live in. I hope I don't have to move out of California.

In Conclusion:

The enormous power in Sacramento that resulted from such a great state as California has resulted in greed, corruption and enormous debt.

The limited power at the local level allows civic minded people to act responsibly.

Got This In The Mail

2010-10-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

I received all of these political ads in the mail just today. I haven't made up my mind on all of the issues or candidates yet, but I do know that I don't plan on using any of this information. If I did, I wouldn't have anyone or anything to vote for.

Are You Psychic?

2010-10-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

I have a list of ideas for politically oriented postings, but since you and I are both sick of the political blitzkrieg going on before the election, I decided to pick a non-political topic.

Researchers at Cornell University claim to have demonstrated that our brains can "see into the future". The researcher, Dr. Bem, showed college students a list of words then gave them a memory test. After the test, the students practiced the words. The results showed that practicing after the test improved the score on the test they already took.

Your reaction is either:

You ignore the results or explain them away.
You are willing to believe that this is actually possible.
You don't get it (A link to the original article is at the end of this post).

I happen to be one of those that believes the results. There's some pretty crazy counter intuitive stuff from Relativity and Quantum Mechanics that has proven to be right.

So why can't we be affected now by events that happen in the future? I think we can.

The problem is that I don't know how to find a practical application for this. For example, how long can someone wait after taking a test to study and still get a benefit? Minutes? Hours? Days? Should I encourage my son to postpone his cramming for a test until it's over? When does studying give you the most benefit? Before, after or both?

So are we psychic? I recommend reading the original article here. (It's short).

CNN takes on Fox News - "She should submit to me"

2010-10-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

So it seems that CNN's falling ratings have made them go back to the drawing board. Yesterday I spent about 5 minutes watching Rachel Maddow campaign for the Democrats then I channel surfed to the Anderson Cooper AC 360 show.

I was quite surprised. Anderson Cooper said that they want to hold candidates responsible for false campaign advertising, whether they were Republican or Democrat. The only person they could get was some random Democrat candidate (Rep. Alan Grayson). Anderson Cooper then did a good job pointing out the problems with his "Taliban Dan" ad about his opponent Daniel Webster. The worse part of the ad is including a playing a short video clip of Mr Webster saying "she should submit to me" over and over again. Mr. Grayson defended this, even after the original video was played in context.

The original video showed Mr. Webster saying (see min 3:10 in video below) "we should write in our Journals and pick a scripture for our wives. DON'T pick 'she should submit to me'". A pretty blatant out-of-context editing.

It was funny seeing how awkward it was for Anderson to drill a Democrat, but I do give him credit for acting non-partisan and holding this guy accountable. I also give credit to CNN for trying out responsible journalism. I'll be anxous to see what happens when Piers Morgan (from America's Got Talent and Celebrity Apprentice) takes over for Larry King. He sounds like he wants to aggressively challenge Fox. I hope the competition gets us better content.

Rachel Maddow's Spin

2010-10-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

I find it important to listen to different viewpoints, so while channel surfing tonight I stopped to watch the Rachel Maddow show. Rachel made some compelling points:

While many people were against the TARP, it officially expired this weekend and Rachel claims that the $700 billion only really cost us $50 billion and if AIG pays us back, we'll actually make money. Our financial markets are sound and it was the right thing to do.
The $787 Billion stimulus was designed to save 3.5 million jobs, which it did.
The Health Care Bill has provided various advantages (I actually was about to enjoy one benefit - restoring my son to my employer provided health insurance, but it doesn't kick in until next year and my son just got a job with benefits. While Obamacare may not have helped, you could argue that his new job is one of the stimulus jobs).
Here's the real kicker: the growth in GDP was on a steady decline (thanks to the evil Republicans) from January 2008 until Obama was sworn in office in January 2009. It went from shrinking by 6% to growing by 5%. Rachel basically showed this chart.

I was quite impressed with this story but I was curious why her story ended in 2009. I decided to look up the data for 2010. Here's the whole chart. Why did Rachel exclude the downward trend in GDP growth for 2010? Was she doing that with her other information? Are we potentially going to make money on TARP? Did the Stimulus really create 3.5 million jobs? Why can't people who claim to report the news provide objective truth?

I continued watching MSNBC compelled to hear Barney Frank dispel Republican lies. He claims that he and the Democrats were trying to stop predatory lending way back in 2004. Here's some info from my September 24, 2008 post:

In 2003, Bush attempted to overhaul the finance industry but his proposal was rejected along party lines. Ron Paul introduced "FREE HOUSING MARKET ENHANCEMENT ACT".

In a related New York Times article on Sept. 11, 2003, there is a quote from Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Is Meg Whitman a Witch?

2010-10-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Is Meg Whitman a Witch?

According to the current witch trial initiated by Gloria Allred, the answer is "YES!!!!". At first there was no proof that Meg Whitman lied about knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper, but then the smoking gun came out: the LETTER. I found a copy of the "incriminating" letter from the Social Security Administration here. It's surprisingly straightforward and easy to read. Basically, it shows that the Whitman's complied with the law in every way (Although they were given the false SSN by the housekeeper). It does not prove, however that Meg Whitman does not practice witchcraft, so the trial continues. Read it for yourself (or just read the bold sections):

"We are writing to you about your Wage and Tax Statement (W-2) for the employee shown below... We can't put these earnings on the employee's Social Security record until the name and Social Security number you reported agree with our records....

"The reasons the reported information doesn't agree with our records may include, but are not limited to:
Record transcription or typographical errors
Incomplete or blank name reported
Incomplete or blank SSN reported
Name Changes
This letter does not imply that you or your employee intentionally provided incorrect information about the employee's name or SSN. It is not a basis, in and of itself, for you to take any adverse action against the employee, such as a laying off, suspending, firing, or discriminating against the individual. Any employer that uses the information in this letter to justify taking adverse action against an employee may violate state or federal law and be subject to legal consequences. Moreover, this letter makes no statement about your employee's immigration status."

Obama Said What!?

2010-09-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

I recently started a project where I track the news headlines related to the economy. One day the news is good, the next day it is bad. I've recorded about a week of headlines so far and will post my findings sometime soon.

One headline that made my list: "Economic Experts put an official date to the end of the recession!"

Of course I expected the current administration to take credit for this "success". I was actually pleased at President Obama's comments regarding the end of the recession:

"Obviously for the millions of people still out of work, people who have seen their home values decline, people struggling to pay their home bills every day, it's still very real for them ... I know how frustrated people are. I know in some cases how desperate people are"

"I am confident that if we stay on a course that gets us back to old-fashioned values of hard work and responsibility and looking out for one another, that America will thrive."

A while ago when I was in a more critical mindset, my wife reminded me that Obama deserves some respect as our President. He has my respect for this comment.

If you read my posts, this isn't the first time I like what our President has said. [Click]

Homophobic Hemophiliacs and Racist Mathematicians

2010-09-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

I avoided donating blood for years but I've been trying to make up for it lately. This week I gave my tenth pint of blood. I actually enjoy giving and will continue giving even though this last was a bad experience (It was a needle problem).

Homophobic Hemophiliacs

One of the questions on the paperwork to donate blood that always surprises me is specifically for men: "Have you ever had sex with a man?". While homophobia is frowned upon, is it okay for a hemophiliac to be afraid of a homosexual man's blood?

In an attempt at civil discourse, it is important to identify the strengths and weaknesses of any position. It is true that many people have unfair prejudices related to other people's sexual orientation. It is also true that even with full acceptance by society, there would still be negative consequences of homosexuality. When the LGBT community is willing to have this discussion and not intimidate people into silence, then we will be closer to having civil discourse. (Note: I'm referring to the recent California hearing on Prop. 8 where many witnesses backed out when the plaintiffs fought for a televised hearing).

Racist Mathematicians

Have you ever thought about how mathematicians are racists? Actually not all mathematicians, just the ones that figure out your credit score. They claim to be objective by using information such as:

How good are you at paying off your debt?

Have you been late on payments?
Have you defaulted on any loans?

How much debt do you have as a percentage of the credit available to you?

The problem is that Blacks and Hispanics have lower credit scores than Whites and Asians. Is this racism? Is it a justification to be racist? If "they" are credit risks, then I do have a right to discriminate against them? The answer of course is no, no and no. The reason is that:

"All ________s are not credit risks. All credit risks are not ________".

(Feel free to insert White, Asian, Black, Hispanic or your own race/gender in the blank.)

The credit score formula does not include skin color. Low credit scores, however, could be a manifestation of systemic racism. Racial preferences in education and with job opportunities could in the long run result in lower credit scores. But even here there are counter examples:

"A ________ can be more qualified than a non-________".

(Once again, insert White, Asian, Black, Hispanic or your own race/gender in the blank.)

Once again, civil discourse requires us to look past race. If there is a group of Whites (or any other color) with low credit scores, shouldn't we desire to provide resources (training, education, job opportunities). Wouldn't society as a whole benefit from higher credit scores? Of course not everyone will respond to our efforts, but that doesn't mean we don't try.

"All ________s deserve the opportunity to succeed.
Some ________s will succeed with help from others.
Some ________s will reject our best efforts to help them succeed".

(Once again, insert White, Asian, Black, Hispanic or your own race/gender in the blank.)

*Inspired by Thomas Sowell

Kagan-Obama Connection

2010-09-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Updated 9/14/2010 (Thanks to my friend Laura B.):
Apparently I was duped by the Kagan-Obama Connection story. I'm usually better at filtering info. To my credit, I didn't fall for the Kenyan Birth Certificate story (see below). I was tempted to delete the rest of this posting, but have left it as is.

Original:
This post is from what I like to call "the underground blogosphere", which is basically forwarded emails. You never know where they come from, and most of the time they can be easily debunked. I thought this was actually noteworthy since it included links to a valid source: the Supreme Court Docket website.

I mentioned this connection between Obama and Elena Kagan to my neighbor and he said (playing devil's advocate) "So what?". My simple answer is that in a true separation between the Executive and Judicial branches of government, I would prefer that the latest appointment to the Supreme Court not be quite so cozy with the sitting President. To be fair, I should probably research any similar connections between Bush and his appointments.

BTW, I believe the Kenyan Birth Certificate is fake. You don't put $5000 on the counter and say "Give me Barack Obama's Birth Certificate". I'm still waiting for someone to do this and get his birth certificate from several different hospitals.

~~The rest of this posting was copied from an email:~~

~~PAYBACK TIME FOR ELENA KAGAN??~~

~~I’ll bet you thought that Snopes never lied!!~~
~~Can they be trusted from now on??? I don’t think so!!   Pass this around, share the light!~~
~~The Supreme Court sites don’t lie……! At least for now we should be able to trust that site, don’t you think?~~
~~Nice to see that others are finally beginning to realize that snopes.com cannot always be trusted.~~
~~Why wouldn't we think that the corruption is rampant in this administration?~~
I went to Snopes to check this out and they said it was false and there were no such dockets so I googled the supreme court, typed in Obama/Kagan and guess what? Yep, you got it.    Snopes lied.   Everyone of those dockets are there. So here is what I wrote Snopes:
WND article about Elena Kagan and Barak Obama dockets. The information you have posted stating that there were no such cases as claimed by WND and the examples you gave are blatantly false. I went directly to the Supreme courts website, typed in Obama Kagan and immediately came up with all of the dockets that WND made reference too.    I have long suspected that you really slant things but this was really shocking!
~~Thank you.~~
~~Kagan was representing Obama in all the petitions to prove his citizenship. Now she may help rule on them.~~
   ~~Folks, this is really ugly.~~

~~Chicago Politics, and the beat goes on and on and on...~~
Once again the Senate sold us out. Someone has figured out why Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court.... Pull up the Supreme Courts website, go to the docket and search for Obama. She was the Solicitor General for all the suits against him filed with the Supreme Court to show proof of natural born citizenship. He owed her big time. All of the requests were denied of course. They were never heard. It just keeps getting deeper and deeper, doesn't it?
The American people mean nothing any longer.. It's all about payback time for those that compromised themselves to elect someone that really has no true right to even be there. We should be getting so sick of all of this nonsense.
~~Here are some websites of the Supreme Court Docket: You can look up these hearings and guess what?~~
~~Elena Kagan is the attorney representing Obama!!!~~
~~Check out these examples:~~
~~http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-8857.htm~~
~~http://www.supremecourt.gov/:wbr>Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-6790.htm~~
~~http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-724.htm~~
~~http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/08-10382.htm~~

C-SPAN and Reclaiming the Dream Rally

2010-08-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I like to watch C-SPAN, since I can watch raw coverage of events and create my own opinion instead of being told what to think by the news networks.

While watching a congressional hearing on the BP Oil Spill, I managed to chase away my own family due to boredom. I enjoyed the coverage alone. Even without special effects and high adrenaline action scenes, it still kept my attention.

I was surprised to watch the other night and find coverage of Al Sharpton's "Reclaim the Dream" rally. I wonder if they also covered Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally the same day. I was shocked during Barbara Williams-Skinner's prayer to hear her say

"Like Dr. King, we believe that the bank of justice is not bankrupt," she said. "We thank you God for raising up President Barack Obama as a small down payment on that dream."

See 3:34 in the video below.

Traffic Ticket

2010-08-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

I recently got a traffic ticket for going 50 in a 35 mph zone. I was transitioning to a 45 mph zone, but the officer showed no mercy. This is my third traffic ticket in less than a year and the previous 2 points on my record resulted in my insurance going up (I am still trying to get the courts to recognize traffic school for my first ticket).

I decided to fight this 3rd ticket after consulting with friends and researching on the Internet. I went to city hall and got a copy of the traffic survey for this road. Local speed limits are determined by observing traffic, and then using the 85th percentile to set the limit. The speed limit can be adjusted due to special circumstances (high accident rates, etc.) The address of the survey was within 50 ft of the address on the citation. I happen to be traveling at the 85th percentile (50 mph) but the traffic survey lowered the speed due to an "unsafe" intersection a mile up the road.

This ticket will cost me about $1350 (a $300 ticket and a $350 rise in my insurance rates per year for 3 years, until the tickets get off my record).

This has made me think about the our legislative, legal, enforcement system. Here are my thoughts:

The State Legislature. It seems that a badge of courage for our state congressmen and senators is to sponsor legislation and have it pass. The goal is improving our society, but it still results in more laws. One such law is that Californian's are required to have auto insurance. This creates the first problem by giving insurers an advantage.
Law Enforcement. The badge of courage for Law Enforcement is "being tough on crime". That means more tickets, arrests, etc. The goal is a safe society, but it still results in more citizens being accused of crimes.
Prosecutors - From District Attorneys on down, the badge of courage is convictions - the percentage of accused criminals that are found or plead guilty.

More laws = more criminals.
Better enforcement = even more criminals.
Better prosecution = yet more criminals.

With this formula, is it surprising that our prisons are overflowing?

This may seem like a silly jump. From traffic ticket to overcrowded prisons. Somehow I'll come up with the extra $1350. There are plenty of people, however, who this would be a burden. Some of them might not be able to find legal ways to cope. Thus starts the slippery slope to criminal behavior.

In his book "A Time To Fight", Senator Jim Webb tells of his experience visiting the Japanese prison system, which is designed to "re-socialize, reform, rehabilitate" offenders [1]. They incarcerate a much smaller percentage of the population and for shorter periods than in the United States. The Japanese have had this system for about a century.

When Senator Webb asked how they started this system, they said they learned it from Europe and America. Japan had a major prison reform [2] around the time that our politicians started "fixing" our prison system [3]. In fairness, Japan is a smaller county with a more homogenized culture, which may make it easier to implement their system than it would be in the United States. That doesn't mean that I can't question our current formula.

Cool It

2010-08-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" by Bjorn Lomborg. This book is a rare instance of someone crossing lines in the Global Warming battle, resulting in "friendly fire" from his fellow environmentalists. I will provide a quick summary, provide my review, and then provide an alternate solution.

Quick Summary

Here's the book in a nutshell:

Global Warming is bad, but not nearly as bad as people are saying.
Rather than spend money to stop Global Warming, the money would be better spent prioritizing the problems we fix (HIV/AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, sanitation and water supply).
We should also spend money on R&D to fix Global Warming.
This approach will result in the world being stronger and more capable of fixing Global Warming when it starts to become a real problem.

Whether these solutions cause the knot in your stomach to tighten or loosen is an indicator of which side of the battle you are on. Since I am trying to be more civil, open and objective, I recommend that you resist the temptation to either brand Bjorn a traitor or fist pump and think "Yes! One more point for the AGW skeptics!".

My Review

I agree with Bjorn that the estimates of Global Warming are exaggerated, however this is based on my own analysis [1]
I agree that focusing on solvable social problems makes more sense.
I disagree with Bjorn's analysis on the cost-benefit analysis of these fixes. As with any attempt by political scientists to "fix things", the hidden costs are ignored. There are many issues he didn't address, for example the environmental impact of the oceans absorbing CO2. (I remember an experiment in my college Chemistry class where we put a digital acid meter in a cup of water. When we stirred the water or blew bubbles in it with a straw, the acidity increased).
I was glad to see someone willing to have a conversation about what to do. It is much more palatable than "The debate is over. We have to pass Cap and Trade now or else the oceans will boil, all the continents will turn into deserts and all animal life will die!!!".

Bonus Material - Alternate Solution

Congratulations!! You made it this far, so you get to hear my solution.

By the year 2100, the world's population will grow to over 18 Billion (at current growth rates) which is 300% growth from the year 2000. By 2100, each person would need to reduce their CO2 emissions by about 80% (Our current CO2 emissions need to be 40-80% of our current levels. In 2010, each person's share is 1/3 or 13-27% of current levels, or a 73-87% reduction). Breathing represents around 6-10% of all CO2 emissions, so there isn't much more to cut.

The real problem is not how much CO2 each person emits but how many people are on the earth! Since it is politically unacceptable to reduce the number of living people while at the same time acceptable to reduce the number of births (abortions and China's one child policy), we need to provide incentives to reduce the population.

Create CO2 tax on fashion and cosmetics. Attractive people = more babies = more CO2 = bad.
Create CO2 tax on alcoholic beverages. Just reducing the attractiveness of people is not enough. We also need to reduce the alcohol induced attraction. I once saw a bumber sticker that read "Beer - Helping ugly people have sex for over 100 years". Alcohol Consumption = more people = more CO2 = bad.
Create CO2 tax on automotive industry. Any car shown to be a "chick magnet" should be slapped with a CO2 tax (This is also a nice payback to Japan for Kyoto and Europe for the Copenhagen Climate Summit). Sexy car = more couples = more babies = more CO2 = bad.
Create CO2 tax on Hollywood. Any movie or TV show that shows people having sex or that show lavish lifestyles is a stimulus for irresponsible CO2 emissions. Sex/Luxury = more babied and energy consumption = more CO2 = bad.

These solutions are of course silly, but I challenge anyone to show how Cap and Trade or other policies are more effective over the long run.

Prop 8 Declared Unconstitutional

2010-08-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

Today, California's Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.

This blog was primarily started as a place to document my thoughts, feelings and research regarding this complicated issue. A matter of fact, after Prop 8 passed, my wife was concerned that I wouldn't have anything to write about.

I've been asked several times today how I feel and this is my answer:

I'm happy for the people who fought for and wanted the recognition of same-sex marriage in California.
I'm sorry that the trial seemed "unfair" due to:

The backers of Proposition 8 called only two witnesses, and both made concessions under cross-examination that helped the other side.

The sponsors complained that Walker's pretrial rulings had been unfair and that some of their prospective witnesses decided not to testify out of fear for their safety.
I'm concerned that if this ruling stands, that this new "right" will be used as leverage to degrade aspects of our society: education, religion, etc.
I hope that if this ruling stands, that it will not have a negative impact on our society

I am trying to deal with the psychological discomfort (no, not "hate" or "bigotry") that I feel towards homosexuality. I know that if I knew more gays personally it would help. My daughter mentioned that there was going to be a gay pride parade near her home. I suggested she go so that she could form her own opinion. She went. She experienced severe "psychological discomfort". If the gay community truly want more public acceptance, maybe they should be more selective in how they "expose" themselves to the public.

Why Today is Better than 20 years ago

2010-07-27T23:23:00.000-07:00

While there seems to be plenty of news about everything going wrong in the world, I thought I would share a few things I've come across that show why we have it better today than 20 years ago.

Flying is Safer
Air travel is 7 times safer today than it was 20 years ago! [1] One of the reasons is due to sophisticated aircraft simulators used to train pilots. Pilots now experience realistic scenarios and learn how to react while putting no one at risk.

Driving is Safer
Driving is about 40% safer today than it was 25 years ago (17 times safer than it was in 1920!) [2] This doesn't surprise me considering that I used to "surf" in the back of Mom's station wagon and now I'm surrounded by air bags and I have "stop-on-a-dime" brakes. It is impressive considering that speed limits have increased by 10-20 MPH.

Cancer Rates are Dropping
Cancer deaths and rate of incidence has dropped about 20% over the last 20 years! [3][4] Note that this isn't just better treatment; fewer people are getting cancer thanks to changes in habits and other environmental changes.

The Internet
The Internet was basically non-existent 20 years ago. Shopping, banking, catching up with friends, movies, music, libraries, etc. are now available. The world has changed (I think for the better).[5]

Mobile Phones
Mobile Phones were big, bulky and expensive 20 years ago.

Do you know of any other reasons today is better than 1990?

That's Not in My American History Book

2010-07-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

Just finished listening to the audio book "That's Not in My American History Book" by Thomas Ayres. An interesting book with rich source of historical anecdotes. Here are some patterns I noticed in these stories (the best is the last one):

The Hero
American History loves it's heroes. Heroes are created for a variety of reasons.

Literary License. An author wants to make his story better, so he makes the hero bigger than life. This is partly how the Wild West was born.

Example: Belle Star wasn't a beautiful female Robin Hood, but instead a mentally deranged woman who once stole some milk cows.

Preserving Character - A prominent figure performs a truly heroic act so flaws are suppressed so that their memory is not tainted.

Example: George Washington actually lost many battles and nearly lost the war.

Promotion - History is invented to promote a relative, political candidate, etc.

Example: There is no real evidence that Betsy Ross made the first "stars and stripes". The first time she was brought to public attention was by her grandson in 1870.

Conspiracy - Besides heroes, we also need good villains to blame things on. Drastic events need a good explanation

There is compelling evidence that John Wilkes Booth escaped and moved to Texas and that there was a cover up related to the person who was killed and lies in Booth's grave.

Drugs and Alcohol
I ended up attending a youth conference/retreat for our church and some of the youth obligingly let me listen to the book on our drive. They actually seemed to enjoy it, making comments and even asking me to resume playing the book after a short stop. I noticed this while driving with them.

Apparently one of the reasons General Custer lost and died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (besides the Indians being better armed) was that his troops had been drinking (their canteens where found filled with whiskey). Custer split his forces, with Captain Benteen in charge of part of the forces. Benteen's group survived and it is believed that a hangover prevented him from making the rational decision to help defend Custer.
America's Shortest War (in Texas after the Civil War) lasted only a day after the victors returned to town, got drunk, and then were defenseless against the returning U.S. Army.
Salem Witch trials may have been caused by the side effects of drugs that resembled being possessed by evil spirits or being under a witches spell.

Prejudice
Another pattern in suppressed history is due to prejudice.

Gustav Albin Weisskopf was a German immigrant that designed and flew airplanes before before the Wright Brothers. Apparently his accomplishments were ignored due to prejudice towards immigrants.
Heroines of the Battlefield - many woman disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War. Sibyl Ludington was a young girl "Paul Revere". Sexism has made it hard for these woman to get proper recognition they deserve.
James Beckwourth was a mountain man and explorer. He discovered the pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains to California (now known as Beckwourth Pass). His adventures are incredible. You probably haven't heard much of him. He's African American.

In Conclusion, I highly recommend learning a broader spectrum of our history.

Two Bombs Hit World Cup

2010-07-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

I happened to watch the finals today. I haven't had a chance to watch much, of the World Cup, but I've seen the excitement surrounding the event. This evening, I just read the news about bombs going off during the World Cup (link). After reading some of the comments, I felt like responding.

First, many of the comments were quick to demonize Muslims. If all of the approximately 1 billion Muslims were dangerous terrorist, then we would be much worse off than we currently are. If the people responsible were Muslim, then they are a fringe group.

Some or the comments drew comparisons to NATO actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a difference between targeting innocent people and targeting dangerous people. I'm just glad that I don't have to make the decision to pull the trigger when the dangerous people hide amongst the innocent.

Finally, my heart goes out anyone effected in anyway by this terrorist attack.

The Wow Event

2010-07-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time" by Michael Brooks. I enjoyed the book and found it thought provoking. Here are a couple of thoughts.

The Wow! Event

The Wow! event or Wow! Signal was a radio signal detected by SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) in 1977. There is no scientific explanation for the signal and it excited researchers who considered it as possible evidence of intelligent beings outside of our Solar System. The signal lasted 72 seconds and has not been detected since. The signal provided no information other than a location in the sky.

Scientists have also been probing Mars for life and searching the cosmos for the existence of inhabitable planets. The idea is that someday, we may want or need to find somewhere to live besides earth. Mars is significantly less habitable than the more inhabitable location on earth. The nearest star with habitable planets would take about 60,000 years to reach with our fastest space craft [1]

I find it ironic that many scientists are critical of religion's:

Belief in an intelligent being that does not live on this earth.

Trying to communicate with this being through prayer.
For many, a great source of comfort when they "claim" to have communicated with this being.

Belief that after this life, there is a place we will go to live.

There is no way experience this place in this lifetime.

How is SETI and the search for habitable planets any less acceptable than some of the religious beliefs and practices of today?

Placebo and Homeopathy
Another interesting subject in the book is the placebo effect and homeopathy. The placebo effect is getting health benefits from something like a sugar pill just because we are told it will help. A couple of interesting points:

A morphine drip will help with pain. At some point, the morphine can be substituted by saline solution with the same effect. This is placebo in action. Now the tricky part. There is a medicine that, when administered, will block the effects of morphine. It will also block the placebo effects of the saline solution.

Another tricky fact: it is harder for drug companies to get approval for new medications, since they have to perform better than placebos. The problem is that placebos are getting better! The explanation is that people have more faith in medicine, so that are more responsive to even placebos.

Homeopathy is the practice of diluting a harmful substance to provide a cure. I guess that it is so diluted, than none of the original substance exists. I'm still on the fence with Homeopathy, but apparently it has an effect better than a placebo. There is something unexplainable yet real there. I think the current problem with Homeopathy is that it is "diluted" with a lot of quackery, so you can never know if you are getting something that actually works.

Free Will
I guess there are scientists who believe that free will is not real. They claim our behaviors are just a result of complex chemical and biological reactions. I acknowledge that our behavior is strongly influenced by nature. People with brain injuries and other diseases have been known to change their personalities and behavioral patterns. But to say that all that man has created: music, art, architecture, automobiles, airplanes, man walking on the moon, the computer and the internet are just a result of chemical compulsion seems silly. I think our lives and our world is a product of will vs. nature. I would like to think will is winning. As Robert Frost wrote

...
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.".

A Time To Fight

2010-06-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Senator Jim Webb's book "A Time To Fight". Jim Webb is a Vietnam Vet (Marine) who climbed the military ranks to become Secretary of the Navy. He's also a successful author. I enjoyed his book (with the exception of typical political self-promotion and opponent bashing). A couple of the key take-aways:

Japanese Prison System
Senator Webb had the unique opportunity to visit a Japanese prison. Compared to the U.S., Japan has highly trained prison guards, about 1/10th the prisoners per capita, of which they keep in prison for a shorter period. They have the of re-integrating the prisoner into society (they teach work skills, respect, etc.) When asked how they started this they replied that they have been doing this for over a century. How did they develop this system? They learned it from the U.S. and Germany. Where did we go wrong and how do we fix it?

War Strategy
Senator Webb was very critical of the war in Iraq. His description helped me to better frame my opinion about the war. I believe in being supportive of our troops while at the same I generally oppose having gone there in the first place. I believe that we justly carried out the war and have done good there.

The issue is long term strategy vs. short term tactics. In the game of chess (for example), you have to consider the value of all your pieces. You might make a sacrifice, but only for a greater advantage.

Global Relations - Before the Iraq war, the U.S. had basically universal support in the war on terror. Our motives are now in question and support has fallen.
Financial Costs - The $1 trillion and counting cost of the war was an unfortunate expenditure considering our current crisis. The additional cost was that it resulted in turning over Congress to the Democrats with basically an open line of credit.
Human Cost -

~4,000 U.S. Deaths [1]
~30,000 U.S. wounded .
~300,000 to 500,000 with mental health issues. This was according to an article in a recent issue of the USC Alumni magazine that claims 1 in 3 will return with problems. Another article claims 1 in 5. [2] About 1.6 million people have served to date.
~100,000 Iraqi Deaths
1-3 million Iraqi refugees [3]

Balance of Power - This wasn't in "A Time To Fight" but I read another article about the FBI agent, George Piro, that gained Saddam Hussein's confidence [4]. He found that "[Saddam's] prewar weapons of mass destruction deceptions were a ruse to convince Iran - whom he feared - that he had an arsenal." [5] Since we now seem to be worried about Iran, maybe a better strategy would have been to leave Saddam Hussein in power to counter-balance Iran.

I'm sure there are plenty of benefits to the war, but I'm still not convinced that overall strategy for the Iraq war makes any sense at all.

Sources:
[1] siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/OIF-Total-by-month.pdf
[2] www.news-medical.net/news/2008/04/18/37529.aspx
[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_casualties_of_war
[4] pubrecord.org/world/2425/saddam-husseins-fbi-interviews-revealed/
[5] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2007/11/13/2007-11-13_in_book_fbi_agent_says_saddam_hussein_cr-2.html#ixzz0rqWWi3a7"

A Briefer History of Islam

2010-06-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

~2000 B.C. - The prophet Abraham is Born. Abraham marries Sarah. She can't have kids, so she gives her handmaiden, Hagar, to Abraham. Hagar bears a son, Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
~1900 B.C. - Abraham (100 years old) is told his wife Sarah will bear a son. Sarah Laughs. She bears a son, Isaac, the ancestor of Israel and Jesus.
~1885 B.C. - Abraham is told to sacrifice his son. Just before he does it, an angel stops him. Because of his obedience, Abraham is promised by the Lord that he will "be a father of many nations" and his seed will as numerous as the "stars of the heaven, and as the sand ... upon the sea shore".

Bible version: The son was Isaac.[1]
Islamic version: The son was Ishmael.

~570 A.D. - The prophet Muhammad is born.
~610 A.D. - Muhammad is meditating in a cave and is visited by an Angel. Over a period of time, he receives revelations that end up being the Quran (Koran). The revelations include instructions on moral living, which help Muhammad and his followers prosper and overpower the barbaric culture that he was raised in.

750-1200 A.D. - The Islamic Golden Age. During this period, the Islamic world contributed to agriculture, the arts, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology, and technology.[2] The Middle East was positioned along major trade routes adding to the power of Islam. Islamic territory expanded to include North Africa, Israel, Spain [3], Bulgaria. The Crusades attempted to retake Israel.

1300-1500 A.D. - The European Renaissance. During this period, Europe absorbed the knowledge from the Islamic world [4] and made advancements in the areas of literature, philosophy, art, politics, science and religion.

1500-1900 - The Modern Era. During this period, the Western World saw significant development in science, politics, warfare and technology (including the printing press, advances in navigation, etc.). Shipping allowed Europeans to bypass the Middle East, reducing the power of Islam. European weapons and warfare shrunk Islam territories. Islam becomes relatively insignificant.

1900s - Oil. The world starts getting hungry for Oil and the Middle Eastern Oil fields are discovered. Western technology and know-how is imported to exploit the Oil fields. Islamic countries start getting more powerful.

1964 - Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr joins the Nation of Islam and changes his name to Muhammad Ali.

2001 - 9/11. Islamic Fundamentalists crash airplanes into the World Trade Center and remind the world about Islam.

The author and historian Bernard Lewis describes what went wrong [5]. My summary is that while Muhammad's revealed morality greatly benefited Islam, the success resulted in arrogance causing Islam to reject anything from the "infidels". Unfortunately this included many critical advancements that left Islam way behind. Bernard Lewis also claims that Islamic restrictions on women reduce the potential contributions from half their population.

We can all learn a lesson from this history.

[1] Genesis 22:2
[2] Howard R. Turner (1997), Science in Medieval Islam, p. 270 (book cover, last page), University of Texas Press, ISBN 0-292-78149-0
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Spain
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_contributions_to_Medieval_Europe
[5] What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East

Terrorism kills, and Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather.

2010-06-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

The primaries are over and Barbara Boxer has launched a website http://fiorinafacts.com/ to provide "facts" about Carly Fiorina.

I think that some of "Call me Senator" Boxer's attacks may backfire. Specifically the "Fiorina’s Flippant Climate Change Attack".

“One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change,” the ad shows Boxer opining in 2007. “Terrorism kills,” Fiorina declares in response, “and Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather.”

First of all, equating climate change with the weather is childish in its ignorance. Fortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency has a helpful kids’ site that enunciates the difference. “Weather,” the site notes, “describes whatever is happening outdoors in a given place at a given time. Weather is what happens from minute to minute.” In contrast, “Climate is the long-term average of a region’s weather events lumped together…Climate describes the total of all weather occurring over a period of years in a given place.”

I didn't know "equating climate change with the weather" was such a serious fault. I would like to see a definition of "Climate Change" that doesn't use the word "weather" nor have anything to do with the weather.

Fiorina should have said "Terrorism kills, and Barbara Boxer’s worried about the long-term average of weather events". Not as catchy.
Don't call me ma'am

The Bachelorette

2010-06-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

After the TV show "Lost" ended, I thought that I would have an extra hour per week. Last week, my wife was watching The Bachelorette. She makes fun of me for acting uninterested as I ask questions, make comments and laugh.

I have to confess that I genuinely like The Bachelorette. If you read my blog much, you may be surprised to read this. Why do I like it?

1. I have developed a genuine interest in "reading" people. Lately that has included a lot of politicians. Its funny how they respond to Tea Parties, angry Town Hall meetings and basically any criticism. Non-verbal communication fascinates me and The Bachelorette is very rich. A bunch of guys competing for a very nice, attractive young lady creates an intriguing reality.

2. I recently watched a couple of Oprah's New Earth classes. Most of it is way too esoteric, but there is a cool concept of "the power of now". It reminds of the book "The Inner Game of Tennis". When the guys on the show start thinking about what's at stake and not enjoying the present moment, you can see it in their face and whole body. It's a death sentence on this show. It's a real kick to see these guys go from confident to worried panic.

The Guys:

The Weatherman - Last week he was being bullied by another guy. He really got his feathers ruffled. The tenseness in his face, his obsessive reaction to everything the bully did. He felt obligated to warn Ali about the bully. He was given a rose (saved). My wife pointed out that while all of these guys are vying for Ali, she saved the Weatherman because she now had a spy into the house. No matter what he does, he sets himself up to be used.

The Bully - He saw the weak one in the herd (the Weatherman) and it was too easy. He was actually pretty funny. He got kicked off because he competed against the guys, not for the girl.

Enough for now. The show is surprisingly entertaining.

Civility and the Oil Spill

2010-06-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

I think its time for a dose of civility related to the current oil spill.

1. Can Hollywood help with the Oil Spill?

Facts:

James Cameron, Kevin Costner, Spike Lee and Robert Redford offered to help.
James Cameron was rejected by BP. His response: "They're just a bunch of morons."
Actor Paul Sorvino thinks BP should accept their help. Watch this video:

Reality:

Complex problems need the people and organizations best equipped to solve the problem.

After spending my career as an engineer and scientist, there is nothing more frustrating than having someone try and help who doesn't fully understand the complexity of a problem. For example, in the case of the oil spill, there is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons flowing out of a complex system of pipes one mile under the ocean. Remote controlled robots requiring extensive training and experience to operate are being used to fix the problem.

Asking Hollywood to help makes about as much sense having James Cameron ask deep sea oil experts help make an Avatar sequel.

In fairness to these actors, I respect their willingness and desire to help and it would be great if their resources could be used, at least to help with the clean up.

2. Are Obama and/or Bush to blame for anything to do with the oil spill?

Facts:

Political types are quick to blame Obama or Bush for the oil spill, depending on which side they are on. Why did they let this happen? Why aren't they doing more? What should they be doing?

I was very impressed with the interview between Larry King and Obama. I thought Obama actually sounded presidential. Video Here

1:35 Larry: "...wants the Defense Dept. more fully involved...more troops..."
2:20 Larry: "What part of this is your baby?"
3:00 Obama: "My Job ..."
3:10 Obama: "When it comes to solving this problem..."
3:30 Obama: "BP has the best equipment and technology"
3:39 Obama: "Our Responsiblity ..."

Reality:

People need to understand that this world is way too big and complex to hold one person responsible for problems, even if they are the U.S. President. It's fair to criticize the politicians when they claim they are going to fix things (Health Care, financial crisis, immigration, etc.)

If your are strongly opposed to a person, group, etc., you don't have to hate everything they do.

Updates:
A post about naturally occurring oil leaks in the ocean

He hit me first

2010-06-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of a scientific study where two people had sensors placed on them (their arms or chests, I don't remember). The first person was told to tap or hit the second person. The second person was told to tap/hit the first person with the same force.

The result: The second person always hit harder than the first.

Not surprising. Tender flesh is more sensitive than your knuckles, so you do have to hit harder to have equal pain.

Recently I made a comment on a website. The author of a new book was interviewed and I made a comment:

I started wondering if [the author] was a disgruntled employee at ..., since he seemed to depart from scholarship and opted for unsubstantiated innuendo. He left me satisfied at the end [of his interview].

He responded

please advise me re: scholarship and unsubstantiated innuendo, as I’ve only written a doctoral dissertation and published a lengthy volume which documents what I describe. You have apparently listened to some of a podcast interview. Now feel free to read what I’ve written, and get back to me with your counsel.

I was never, to my knowledge, gruntled as an employee, and thus cannot see how I am currently in a state of disgruntlement. Did I sound disgruntled? Was I pleased with how things ‘worked’ there? Obviously not, for reasons I give in the book. Of course, that I may or may not be a disgruntled employee entirely answers every argument I make, and clearly proves the contrary case, whatever that may be. Only gruntled persons can make true statements, for sure.

He was hitting me back harder than I hit him. I then responded:

I owe you a read of your book or dissertation (is it available?). My apologies for the use of a poorly selected word “disgruntled”. I was only responding to your language where you seemed to communicate dissatisfaction with your experience

Did I take the easy way out of a good Internet flame war?

His final response answers this question:

No problem, I am sorry I reacted rather prickly. There’s such a loss in communication when we don’t have the voice to attend to the words. I actually made a few jokes about being ‘gruntled’ in the book, as I was expecting the term to be thrown at me. The links to both volumes can be found on the first page of the interview.

Restasis Commercial

2010-05-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

I keep seeing the same Restasis commercial on TV and I seem to be the only one bothered by it. When it comes on, I pause the commercial and do a play-by-play analysis for whomever in my family is watching.

1. It starts with a woman telling her doctor that she's tired of using eye drops "several times a day".
2. The doctor gives her a prescription for Restasis and says that it will "promote tear production" and she can use her other drops less.
3. The woman acts nervous about using a prescription eye medicine.
4. The doctor reassures the woman saying she uses Restasis herself, twice daily.

If Restasis is so good, why does it only reduce the need for drops from several times a day to twice a day?

The poll results from my family:
My mother-in-law said she didn't notice this (she's very polite to me).
My son said I was over analyzing it.
My wife didn't seem to really care.

Full disclosure: I used Restasis after Lasik eye surgery. It was very expensive, but also pretty darn good. I look forward to the generic, over-the-counter version someday.

Lost Finale

2010-05-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

I guess I better write about "Lost" while it is still a news story. I have to confess that I have been a faithful viewer.

I am amused at the response to the final episode of "Lost" from other viewers. Many were disappointed that a grand unified meaning of every quirky thing from six seasons wasn't provided. Others were content with the "happily ever after" finale.

Here's my analysis:

The writers had a responsibility to sell each 1 hour show and try to get people to come back for more. Fortunately, the writer's were intelligent and made the story interesting: interesting characters and crazy situations. Some of these situations were resolve in the 1 hour, others took several episodes, and some were never resolved (kind of like real life). I think it is unrealistic to expect anything more.

I appreciate what was created, I enjoyed it, but I'm glad it is over. That's an extra hour I now have every week.

More FDR: Wheat and Tares

2010-05-22T22:35:00.001-07:00

I heard a positive news story recently that ties together several of my past blog posts. San Diego State University gave honorary degrees to Japanese American students who were forced to leave school in 1942 due to being sent to an internment camp [1]

As I read about the story further, I learned something shocking about this embarrassing episode in U.S. history: It was Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) who signed Executive Order 9066 that created the internment camps! This info made me think of a few of my posts from last year where I tried to answer the question: was FDR's New Deal good or bad for the country? My source of information were interviews with some of my octogenarian friends[2][3]

To save you the trouble, the results were:
The New Deal was great, putting people to work and literally saving lives, unless you were a small business owner who had to pay more than your fair share or a rancher/farmer who felt a man needs to fend for himself.

I don't think I need to do another survey to see if people agree that the internment camps were bad. This is where my post Wheat and Tares comes in. We all have good (Wheat) and bad (Tares) in our conduct and character. With another election coming up, I wish the candidates (and critics) would acknowledge this and quit the character assassinations.

Also, I wonder how many Americans called FDR a racist for what he did. I think we've come along way as a country since then.

Time For a New Name

2010-05-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

I was surprised that this article didn't point out the interesting name of the "Chair of the Pro Choice Caucus". If I were for abortions, I wouldn't want my name to be "Slaughter".

The chairwoman of the House Pro-Choice Caucus urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to press Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan about her views on abortion rights.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said she was concerned about a memo Kagan wrote during the Clinton administration supporting legislation to ban some partial birth abortions.

The Boy Who Harvested the Wind

2010-05-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

This is a review of William Kamkwamba's book "The Boy Who Harvested the Wind". This book is an amazing story of life in Africa today, told first hand. It shows:

The superstitions that still exist.
Struggles of individuals due to lack of education and other opportunities, as well as alcohol abuse.
Political corruption that lead to a devastating famine.
First hand account of the famine.
The story of individuals struggling to survive.
The amazing inventiveness of one boy to improve the quality of life for his family and village by building a windmill out of junk.

Many of my views were reconfirmed by this story.

Human suffering is tragic and real.
Giving aid to corrupt governments is a VERY ineffective way to reduce this suffering.
Local community leaders are a better source of meeting the needs of a community.
Solutions to problems can come from the most unexpected places.
Providing people opportunities to learn and help themselves is the best solution.

Here's a video of William Presenting what he did at a TED conference.

Here's a clip from a documentary:

Assault on Reason

2010-05-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is a review of Al Gore's book "Assault on Reason". If you're familiar with my views, you may be surprised that I would even read his book, but I am seriously trying to be more "civil" in my discussions [1].

Pres. Obama actually made a valid point in his commencement address at the University of Michigan [2] about listening to opposing viewpoints:

Still, if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship.

A year ago I read the "Conscience of a Liberal" by Paul Krugman and so I figured it was time for another dose of opposing views.

I was actually quite surprised by how much I enjoyed and agreed with Al Gore's book. He made a good case about the problems of politics in the U.S. today, presenting scientific studies and other information. He discussed the problem of special interests and how they manipulate the political conversation and agenda.

The problem that I had with this book is that after a convincing discourse on America's "assault on reason", it then proceeded to carry out an "assault on reason". The book waged a full attack on President Bush and Republicans. Everything they did was criminal. Not one mention was made of any crimes made by Democrats. "Reason" and civil discourse lead me to acknowledge the faults in my own thoughts and beliefs and recognize the good in opposing views.

Al Gore missed an opportunity to do this. I was surprised to actually make it half-way through the book before getting tired of the force-feeding of anti-Bushisms. I think the best way to summarize this book is "A spoon full of sugar helps the kool-aid go down".

Marijuana and Earthquakes

2010-05-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

California has an initiative on the ballot in the Nov. 2010 election to legalizing marijuana. One of the main arguments for this is that criminalizing pot results in the problems found in the 1920s during prohibition. This is a compelling argument but reminds me of my experience with earthquakes. Every time there is an earthquake, my friends and relatives from out of state call to see if I'm okay. They see the dramatic coverage of large fissures, fallen buildings, etc. and immediately worry about us. Meanwhile, we get about 30 seconds of shaking to liven our conversations (no material damage).

The "narrative" for prohibition seems to focus on the epicenter in Chicago with Al Capone and his bootlegging friends. However, today there are 100s of dry counties in the U.S that prohibit alcohol without even the slightest aftershock. The best argument I found against "dry counties" was that people who consume alcohol have to drive farther to get intoxicated and therefore are driving drunk longer.

Here are my views on legalizing marijuana:

1. The Federal Government does not, nor should it, have the power to restrict our liberties (At least they realized in 1920 that this was unconstitutional resulting in an amendment).
2. There are plenty of people who will make bad decisions when trying to provide, procure or use self-medicating substances.
3. There are plenty of people who are perfectly content avoiding self-medicating substances (legal or not).
(The next two are from a friend who is a Criminal Defense Attorney).
4. "There is nothing that leads a person faster to a worthless life that smoking pot".
5. "We should expect all citizens to be productive members of society, otherwise they are a drain on our resources".
6. If thinking about this gives you a headache, please don't go and get a medical marijuana card.

Wheat, Tares and Stage Six

2010-04-25T22:37:00.000-07:00

I heard an interesting idea related to the parable of the Wheat and the Tares. I always took the wheat and the tares as referring to good or bad people. The idea I heard is that instead of people, wheat and tares represents the good and evil in each of us.

The part of the parable "Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them." makes more sense to me since it is harder to separate the good and evil in an individual than to separate good and evil people.

This also fits better with my last posting of striving for greater civility. Rather than identifying people or groups as "wheat or tares", we can identify the good in all people and ideas.

This also fits better with my recent reading on Lawrence Kohlberg's "Six Stages of Moral Development" and Fowler's "Six Stages of Faith". The early stages start with simple, idealistic definitions of right and wrong.

The sixth stage for both seems a bit hard to reach. For Kohlgerg, the sixth stage is based on universal ethical principles. For Fowler, the sixth stage is a universal inclusion of all beings.

I found this statement from Fowler particularly interesting:

[Person in the sixth stage] are "contagious" in the sense that they create zones of liberation from the social, political, economic and ideological shackles we place and endure on human futurity. Living with felt participation in a power that unifies and transforms the world, Universalizers are often experienced as subversive of the structures (including religious structures) by which we sustain our individual and corporate survival, security and significance. Many persons in this stage die at the hands of those whom they hope to change. Universalizers are often more honored and revered after death than during their lives. The rare persons who may be described by this stage have a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us.

Do you know any historical figures that fit this description?

Civility

2010-04-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of quotes:

"The seriousness of our common challenges calls for an equally serious engagement with reasonable ideas and solutions. What we need is rigorous debate, not rancorous altercations."

"When a spirit of goodwill prompts our thinking and when united effort goes to work on a common problem, the results can be most gratifying."

“In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay.”

Read the full article here: The Mormon Ethic of Civility.

V&V

2010-03-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

As a software/system engineer, I can't help but compare the process I follow to provide a product vs. the process our legislatures follow. Maybe I just don't get political science. The process I use may seem a little dry, but even cool products like the iPod and cell phone were not produced by a continuous stream of pizza parties and happy hours (or backroom deals).

Intro

Verification and Validation or "V&V" is the process of making sure that a product does what it was asked to do (Verification) and meets its intended purpose (Validation). In other words, verification is "I did what you asked me to do" and validation is "I met your needs".

In developing software, the process before V&V includes coding (writing the software), compiling (the computer converts your software into a program it can run), and testing (Make sure the program doesn't crash and appears to do what it should). For example, let's write a program that provides health care for every American.

Coding and Compiling

Which of the following two code samples will compile?

Code Sample 1:
for (american=1, american<=NUMBER_OF_AMERICANS, american++) {
provide_healthcare(american)
}

Code Sample 2:
for (american=1; american<=NUMBER_OF_AMERICANS; american++) {
provide_healthcare(american);
}

The answer is Code Sample 2, since a "for" loop uses semi-colons instead of commas and the "provide_healthcare" statement is not terminated with a semi-colon.

I think that one of the main complaints about the healthcare bill is that we don't understand the language required. The legal system is like a big compiler that expects the language to follow very strict rules that your average American is not familiar with.

Testing

Even though the code in sample 2 compiles, it crashes when we run it. The reason is that the computer starts with "0" when for the first American. Here's the fix:

Code Sample 2 Fixed:
for (american=0; american < NUM_AMERICANS; american++) {
provide_healthcare(american);
}

This compiles and runs, but we have to test to make sure the function provide_healthcare does what it says and has no side effects. One problem with software is what is called a "memory leak". This is where the software uses resources and doesn't properly return the resource to the operating system when it's done with it. Eventually the result is that the computer will start getting slow and then eventually crash. For critical applications, this can be very dangerous and precautions need to be taken in advance to recover from a computer crash to avoid catastrophe.

The "memory leak" problem is a big fear for health care reform. This is one of the main problems with Medicare.

Take the word of the Engineer

Another alternative to the above process is to ask the engineer "Is this going to work?". The answer is typically "Yeah, sure". The reality is that relying on this answer is like playing Russian Roulette. Even if the engineer is experienced and answers with confidence "I stake my reputation on this!!!", taking his word is no replacement for a rigorous V&V process.

Back to health care, it doesn't matter who voted for it, what the polls say, what groups (AMA, AARP, etc.) support it; the question is "Will it improve the health of Americans?" A second question (that V&V doesn't address) is "what will it cost?".

How did we ever get anything done?

2010-03-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I got a text message from Jon at work:

"We'll merge in the morning. Be here around 9ish. See email".

We are currently working towards a deadline and we had to come in on our Friday off. I got home and checked my email. He needed my help with the "merge". Friday morning I pulled in the parking lot and I didn't see Jon's car. I was a little bugged until I read my email. It turns out Jon finished the merge about 2:00 am that morning. I quickly forgave Jon and was glad because I could start testing our software immediately. When Jon showed up around 10:30, I was surprised since I knew he had worked late.

Flashback to 1990

Whenever I needed to coordinate with someone at work (no instant messaging, email OR voice mail), I would call on the phone. Usually they weren't there, so the phone would roll over to the secretary. She would leave a note on their desk to call you. They would call back and usually miss you and then leave a note with your secretary that they were returning your call. Sometimes it took a week or two to get a simple answer.

The way I see it that with faster computers and better communication, we should be several times more efficient today than 20 years ago. I actually feel more efficient, I just don't remember how we got anything done that required people working together.

Flashback to 1986

I had a summer job as a research assistant. I was modifying a simple software program for my professor. It took 20 minutes to recompile the software after the smallest change. How did I ever get anything done?

Flashback to 1969

We landed a man on the moon. The computers they used had less computing power than my cell phone. How did they do that?

The Mental Health of California

2010-03-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

I heard an interesting piece of news about California cutting benefits for the mentally ill. The news story argued that we should all contact the State government to tell them to not cut benefits. There are several syllogisms (logical appeals) that I would like to address.

Let's get my position out of the way on this:

P1. Society as a whole should provide support to families, individuals and institutions that care for the mentally ill.
P2. Charities, private businesses and individuals most likely do not meet all the needs of caring for the mentally ill.
P3. The only other significant source of support for meeting the needs of the mentally ill is the government.
C1. The government should use some of their tax revenues to help support meeting the needs of caring for the mentally ill that is not provided by other sources.

The first two premises (P1 and P2) I think are reasonable. P3 is only true insofar as I can't think of other sources of support. The conclusion (C1) is a valid logical appeal, but the truth of the premises need to be proven.

Here is the syllogism from the news story
P1. The government should provide support to families, individuals and institutions that care for the mentally ill.
P2. The government is cutting benefits for the mentally ill.
C1. You should contact the government to tell them that they should not cut benefits for the mentally ill.

I'm not enough of an expert, but my emotions agree with C2 while the fiscally responsible side is confused. These are unanswered questions:

Why is government cutting support for the mentally ill?
These are my premises:
P1. State revenues have dropped relative to financial obligations
P2. Support for the mentally ill does not have the priority (due to political and legal reasons) as other financial obligations (such as pensions, etc) do.
P3. Cutting funding for emotionally charged issues like mental health care is a political move to gain acceptance for increasing government budgets and is a distraction from the need to cut less critical expenditures in a time of declining state revenues.

An implied syllogism from the news story:

P1. State revenues have dropped relative to financial obligations.
P2. The people don't want the state to cut spending on critical programs like mental health care.
C1. Therefore, the State should spend more than it has or raise taxes.

This syllogism is not valid, since it does not address the total State budget and what other items could be cut. My version of this logical argument is:

P1. There are many families, individuals and institutions that operate at the margin of their budget that would be significantly overburdened by a reduction in mental health benefits.
P2. There are other means of cost cutting that would not cause undo burden on an individual. Examples (to name a few):

Cutting the salary ($117,000) for wealthy members of the California State Assembly.
Cutting the retirement benefits provided by California to wealthy recipients.
Cutting the budget of other programs.

P3. There are other means of revenue generation. Examples:

Wealthy Athletes, Hollywood stars, heirs/heiresses, etc.
Using more of California's rich resources (untapped oil and natural gas).

P4. A general tax increase will put an unfair burden on some Californians.
C1. Therefore, we should look for specific areas of cost cutting and revenue generation instead of raising taxes in general to help meet the mental health needs in California.

A Memorial to Chelsea King

2010-03-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

I was shaken to the core when I found out what happened to Chelsea King. I don't know her personally. The first I heard of her was an email at work last week saying she was missing. The place where they arrested her murderer was the same place my sons and I go mountain biking. I remember my young son falling behind and it is terrifying to think that a predator lurked in the same area. This atrocity is too close to home.

Chelsea is not much younger than my own daughter. I can't imagine the pain this loss is causing her family and friends. I found out yesterday that a coworker lives in Danielle Van Dam's neighborhood. My friend's daughter was in Danielle's class at school and she had come over for a birthday party about a year earlier. She is still scarred by Danielle's murder after 8 years.

To remember the true horror and reality of the crimes against these girls, I recommend that the next time you watch CSI Crime Scene Investigation, CSI New York, CSI Las Vegas, CSI Miama, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Law & Order Special Crimes Unit, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, Bones, Without a Trace, or any other crime drama or horror movie (of which there is a disturbing abundance) ---

Remember it is real and it is ugly!!!

P.S. If I just ruined watching these shows for you, then this posting served its purpose.

The Health Insurance Iceberg

2010-02-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

The world is not run by those who are right. It is run by those who can convince others that they are right p 37

When you're debating something as big as health care reform, it seems that there are two sides that have each decided on a solution, and they simple report the numbers to convince others that they have the "right" solution.

Government Provided Health Care
For example, one solution is for a complete takeover of health care by the government. This side reports the high costs of medical insurance, excessive executive compensation, etc. The logic for government provided health care goes something like this:

1. Because of high costs, too many American's don't have health care.
2. It's the moral responsibility for a rich nation to assure all citizens have access to health care.
3. Therefore, the government should provide health insurance for all American's.

I've tried hard to come up with a valid syllogism to fit this argument. The form of a syllogism is:

All X is Y
All Y is Z
Therefore, all X is Z.

"All" can be replaced with "Some" or "No".
"is" can be replaced by "is not".

In order to be a valid argument, the premises need to be valid and the syllogism needs to be valid.

Valid Premises, Invalid Syllogism = Invalid Argument
Some health care is provided by the government
Smart people have health care
Therefore, smart people get their health care from the government.

In order for this to work, any value of X,Y and Z should work:
Some X is Y
Z is X
Therefore, Z is Y

To show how this is flawed, try:
Some lawyers are crooks.
Pres. Obama is a lawyer.
Therefore, Pres. Obama is a crook.

Another example (if you see no fallacy in the last example)
Some whites are racists.
Nancy Pelosi is white.
Therefore, Nancy Pelosi is a racist.

Valid Argument, Invalid Premise = Invalid Argument
Everyone deserves affordable health care.
Only the government can provide affordable health care (Invalid).
Therefore the government should provide health care for everyone.

Valid Argument, Valid Premise = Valid Argument
All health care for American's is _________
All _______ is health care provided by the government
Therefore, all health care for American's is provided by the government.

For those pushing government provided health care, a middle term is needed to make both premises valid. Good luck!

The Free Market Solution

For full disclosure, I am a proponent of the Free Market, but some of the arguments on this side are weak. For example, in response to the attack on health insurance companies, the health care reform opponents say that the we spend about $2.5 trillion ($2,500 billion) on health care in the U.S. each year and that the executive compensation ($10 million and up) is pennies. Also, the average profits for health insurance companies is only about 5%, which ends up being less than $20 billion per year (not even 1% total health care cost). Very compelling numbers! The Free Market wins! Or does it? (I think this is a fallacy of invalid contrast or misuse of statistics).

A closer look at the numbers (see table below) shows that the top 10 health insurance providers have total annual revenues of $253 Billion or 10% of all of our health care costs.

Company	Sym.	Mark.Capital. $Billion	P/E	Profits $Billion	Total Revenue $Billion	%profit
UnitedHealth Group	UNH	38.19	10.44	3.66	87.14	4.2%
WellPoint	WLP	27.47	6.26	4.39	61.24	7.2%
Aetna	AET	13	10.56	1.23	34.73	3.5%
Cigna	CI	9.37	7.25	1.29	18	7.0%
Health Net	HNT	2.4	5	0.48	15.71	3.1%
Coventry Health Care	CVH	3.38	14.1	0.24	13.9	1.7%
Humana	HUM	8.06	7.7	1.05	8.02	13.1%
Amerigroup	AGP	1.34	9.21	0.15	4.97	2.9%
Universal American	UAM	1.1	8.34	0.13	4.85	2.7%
Centene	CNC	0.77	9.47	0.08	4.1	2.0%
Total		105	88	13	253	5.0%

While these revenues represent exchanges for goods or services, none of these goods or services actually represent health care. For example, a policy that costs $8000 (rough estimate of annual cost of insurance), the amount breaks down as follows (If we assume that all U.S. health care is paid by claims against insurance - which it isn't).

$7200 Medical Claims paid out ($8000 minus 10% or $800 of insurance company revenues)
$760 Operating costs (buildings, utility bills, salaries, etc.)
$40 Profit of 5% on the $800

The opponents of government provided health care say that the $40 profit on a $8000 policy is nothing. The problem is that this is a flawed argument used to counter another flawed argument. Insurance profits are only the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the "insurance" iceberg is the $760 per person it costs to run the insurance company.

The flawed argument here is:
1. Insurance company profits and executive compensation are only 5% (True)
2. Insurance company profits are an even smaller percentage of total health care costs (True).
3. Therefore, insurance companies are not the problem with out of control health care costs.

This is either the fallacy of the excluded middle (total insurance costs) or of irrelevant contrast.

Why is Health Care so expensive?
My hypothesis is that government measures that attempt to improve health care has the unintended consequences of interfering with the free market feedback loop.

Here's where I expose my strong bias against publicly owned/traded companies.

Privately owned - focus on making customers happy by increasing quality of products and services while reducing prices/costs.

Publicly owned - focus is split between making customers happy and making stock holders happy. Increasing revenues is the only way to make stockholders happy.

Regulation on health care companies and another focus to both types of companies: how to satisfy government rules and regulations. For public companies, no amount of regulation is going to reduce the stockholders demand for growth. Limiting preexisting conditions, guarantees for uninsured, etc. all reduce revenue growth and therefore force premiums to go up.

Conclusion

Insurance companies are a larger contributor to rising health care costs than free market proponents will admit. The reason that insurance companies are a problem is due to government intervention and market growth demands that squeeze out the consumers needs.

The way to shrink the "iceberg" is to find ways to help private companies compete against the public companies. This will only work if many of the regulations that the government has imposed to "fix" health care are changed so that market forces can help melt the rest of the "iceberg".

Only the government thinks that cutting a foot of the bottom of a blanket and sewing to the top will make the blanket a foot longer.

Health Care Summit - The Onus is On Them

2010-02-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

While trying to listen to the Health Care Summit today, I found myself cringing at the abuse of logic. (I just finish reading "Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language").

I only heard one person who actually seemed to attempt to address the issue while not pushing an agenda. That was Senator Tom Coburn who happens to be a medical doctor. I liked how tried focus on "why" health care cost so much and what we can do about it. His first proposal was to address Medicare fraud and abuse, which could save billions of dollars (The current cost of Medicare, etc. is about $440 billion with an estimated 10% of that being fraud, waste and abuse).

The response to Senator Coburn was:

Pres. Obama - "Every good idea that we've heard about reducing fraud and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid system, we've adopted in our legislation... we want to eliminate fraud and abuse".

Rep. Steny Hoyer - "In our bill.. you'll be happy to see a very substantial investment in [cutting fraud, waste and abuse]".

So I say, Mr. President and distinguished members of Congress, if you are capable of "legislating" significant reduction of fraud, waste and abuse then you might gain my confidence that the rest of your legislation is more than "good ideas" and "investment [spending]". Until you gain my confidence, I am suspicious that any expansion of Government Health Care will be subject to the same fraud, waste and abuse of the old programs.

The onus is on you: reduce fraud in the programs you already manage before expanding them OR get out of the health care business altogether.

1929 to 2008: Market Oscillations

2010-02-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

The stock market seems to be going up and down. This agrees with Ben Bernanke's "Financial Accelerator" model, which indicates that when the market starts to move, it typically overshoots where it should be and then bounces back. It is a little like the spring in the animation on the right.

If we use the "mass on a spring" model, there is a clear formula for the frequency at which the mass goes up and down. The time between up (or down) cycles is proportional to the mass on the spring (The bigger the mass, the slower it moves).

If we think of the "mass" of the market, a good measure would be Market Capitalization. I had a hard time finding this value for 1929, so I decided to use GDP instead. To convert to 2008 dollars, I divided by CPI (consumer price index) to factor out inflation.

Date	GDP ($billion)	CPI	Sqrt(m)	Ratio to 1929
1929	104	17.13	2.46	1.00
2008	14200	207.34	8.28	3.4

What this means is that 3.4 days today is equal to 1 day in 1929 (in terms of market momentum). So here's a plot of the stock market with 1929 scaled by value (using recent market highs) and by time (using here 2.8 days). The similarity is scary.

The Dictator Game

2010-01-30T21:14:00.000-08:00

I'm reading "Super Freakonomics" and came across an interesting story. Somehow, it seems I always end up reading something relevant to the days events. The day I read this happened to be a couple of days before the State of the Union address.

The economic games/experiments described in "Super Freakonomics" helped me understand why the President and Congress are so quick to take our money.

There are two classic games "Ultimatum" and "Dictator" used as experiments by economists for determining human behavior.

In Ultimatum, there are 2 players. One is given $20 and is asked to offer any amount to the second player. If the second player rejects the offer, neither player gets any money. The average offered was $6. It was usually rejected if it was less than $3.

In Dictator, the main difference was that the second player got no input. Surprisingly, the "dictators" were very generous.

An economist, John List, thought these experiments didn't agree with real human behavior. He tried a couple variations:

The first variation: Dictator game with an additional option of being able to take $1 from the second person. The result was that fewer people gave money. The power to take people's money (taxation) makes you less generous!

The second variation: the Dictator game, but the first person is told that the second person also was given $20. They are told that they can still give any portion of their money, or take any of the second persons money. The result was that only 10% gave money, more than 60% took money, and most surprising more than 40% took ALL the money. Taking money from the rich makes you want to take ALL the money!

3. The final version of the game was the same as the last version, except that both players had to WORK for the $20. The result was that only 28% of the players took money away and 2/3 neither gave nor took a penny. We respect other people's property more when everyone works for what they have!

The last version is my favorite. I think it is evidence that a free-market economy is the best option. So what does this have to do with the State of the Union address this week?

Congress and the President are acting like dictators in game 2. What they don't realize is that they are actually playing the "Ultimatum" game and the American voter is about to "reject" their offer and vote them out of the dictator position. Test results won't be in until November.

Apple vs. The Czars

2010-01-12T05:50:00.000-08:00

My son had his Apple iPod Nano stolen at school. I don't remember if it was from his backpack or his locker. I do remember that I got mad at him for bringing it to school in the first place. This all happened before Christmas and his birthday, so an obvious present for him was a replacement MP3 player.

I was concerned about replacing it just to have it stolen again. I would prefer he buy it with hard earned money in order for him to place greater value. I wanted to keep our losses to a minimum by buying the cheapest alternative.

Notice all of the "I"s in the previous paragraphs.

So what did my son ask for? An Apple iTouch. Ouch! That's an expensive alternative! Of course my lovely wife thought we should get the iTouch, since she has a different philosophy:

Christmas and birthday presents are supposed to be about what the recipient wants.
Presents don't have to be practical.

Luckily she helped me realize that I was acting a little too much like a czar. A czar is all about top down decision making. The czar knows best.

So my son got an iTouch and I got a LG Chocolate Touch cell phone. The LG is the first new cell phone I've ever had, since I am always practical and take the hand-me down phones from my wife.

The LG Chocolate Touch is pretty cool.
The iTouch (and iPhone) is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!
So what's the difference?

The difference is top down planning vs. free market. Both LG and Apple use top down development to create cool technologies, but Apple uses the free market to completely blow away LG. The difference is in the "apps" or applications you can use.

Apparently LG uses the czarist or top down approach. The czar defines what will be on the phone and the peon developers implement their plan. I'm not insulting the developers; just the czars. The developers probably have a lot of great ideas, but weren't allowed to do them or had no incentive.

Apple, on the other hand, understands the amazing power of the free market. They made it relatively easy to create apps for the iPhone/iTouch, provide a store for selling your apps, and give you 70% of the selling price! (I bet the LG developers are lucky to get 1% of the selling price of their apps). The result is over 100,000 very cool apps.

Why does this work? It's all about the protection of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Get rid of the czars and let the people create freely. Give people cool options and they will spend money.

Here's a few of the iTouch apps:

Koi Pond - Relax while you watch koi fish in a pond. Touch the water and it sends ripples and the fish scatter. Hold your finger steady and the fish come and nibble on it (at 4:50 in video).
Earthscape - Spin the earth and zoom into anywhere to see satellite imagery. Find your house or go to Paris or Egypt.
Shop Savvy - Find the cheapest prices. Take a picture of a bar code and find out the lowest price and where to buy it online.
Flute - Hold your iPhone like a flute and blow into the microphone to create music. Use the Google Earth map to find other people playing their flutes and listen to their music.
Finger Twister - Like the classic game twister, but you play with two fingers with a friend.
Level - Use your iPhone as a bubble level. Place it sideways on a shelf or picture frame to see if it is level.
Fishing - Pick a fishing spot, make a casting motion with your iPhone and then real in the fish using the touch screen.

I'm a racist; and a pacifist

2010-01-07T00:12:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a great book: "Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language". After learning about all of the wrong ways to make statements, I decided to take notes on what the non-abusive, logical way to speak.

One example is "name calling". The non-abusive way to call someone a name is to:

Define what the name means.
Provide evidence that the person meets the criteria of the name.

Let me now apply these rules to the title of my blog. I'll start with the less emotionally charged word.

Pacifist

1. The Definition
Pacify = "to bring peace"
Pacifist = "someone who loves to bring peace"

Note that the suffix "-ist" modifies the root word as "someone who loves ..."

2. The evidence
My mom was the first one to call me a "peacemaker" when I tried to get the neighbor boys to stop hurting their dog.

Racist

1. The Definition
Race = "the manifestation of inherited physical characteristics"
Racist = "someone who loves race"

Note: my definition is quite different from the usual definition.

2. The evidence
I was raised in the Mormon church, which historically discriminated against blacks in that they were denied ordinances beyond baptism. When I was 14, I read a book called "A Black Mormon Tells Her Story", by Wynetta Willis Martin. I was so impressed by this book that I wrote about it in my journal. This is what I wrote: "Reading this book has really changed my impression about blacks and our church. I now know that someday, blacks will be able to hold the priesthood...". A photo of my journal is below, along with an interesting entry a year later, when the Mormon church changed their policy on blacks, giving them full rights to all church ordinances.

My father worked at a family business in South Central Los Angeles. I would occasionally work Saturdays and when I got older, I would work summers. One of my first regular jobs was stock boy (before that I swept floors, cleaned, etc.). I worked alongside another employee, Delores, and we became good friends. Delores was also Mormon (and black) and her husband was one of the first black Mormon bishops. My next job was deliveryman and I visited hundreds of homes. This was a good way to break racial stereotypes that a suburban white boy might have developed. I met alot of very nice people (Most people are nice when you deliver a working refrigerator, regardless of what race they are).

When I turned 19, I applied to go on a mission for our church. I still remember telling my dad that I would like to have a black companion (mormon missionaries are always paired in companionships). Companionships are assigned, so you don't get to pick your companion. You learn alot when you spend every waking hour with someone who was previously a complete stranger. I have to admit that this was challenging; until I got my last companion. He was black. We had some amazing experiences and a lot of fun. He was also the most compatible companion I had my whole mission and our friendship raised the bar for what I looked for in a relationship.

Later, in graduate school I worked with people from Japan, Taiwan, India and Europe. Our lunches were multicultural exchanges. I loved it.

Years later, my best friend at work was Asian-American. He was a good friend at a challenging time in my life. He invited me to play in a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at his church and I ended up being one of a few white guys (everyone else was Asian). I must say, yt was the friendliest basketball I've ever experience.

So in conclusion, I love race; therefore, I'm a racist.

My Journal Entries:

Stones into Schools

2009-12-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

I just finished Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson. After reading his book, I feel guilty that I took any of his time attending his lecture earlier this month. Let me just say: Good work Greg!

I've never been a big fan of being a tourist, and as a result have traveled little. I did have the opportunity to live in Brazil for 16 months and work in Switzerland and Wales for a few weeks. I enjoy getting inside a culture, spending time with real locals in their everyday habitats, as opposed to the scurrying through the usual tourist facade. That's why I enjoyed both "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools". I was able to read about a real person having real experiences in Pakistan and Afghanistan (if they aren't real, then I must say Greg is very creative). I trust very few sources to give me the same insights provided by Greg.

We are usually bombarded by an endless supply of people over-selling us on stuff that we end up becoming cynical. There is this rare moment however when you interact with or observe someone and you realize that you are experiencing something real. This was one of the main reasons I married my wife. I had never met anyone so real. Next book: "Hold Me Tight"

Global Warming: Leave CO2 Alone!

2009-12-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

I find it confusing when I see groups with strong positions in direct opposition to each other. Somewhere between the two extremes is some version of the truth, and I wish more than anything to discover the truth. With Global Warming I think I'm getting closer to the truth.

First, I think I should disclose that I have sympathized more with the Global Warming deniers. This comes partially from distrust and discomfort with phrases like "the debate is over", "everyone knows", "if we don't do something now...", etc. However, I decided that in my quest for truth, I needed to be willing to accept the truth, whatever it might be. I have therefore put on my objectivity hat making myself willing to accept the truth.

I've tried to make my analysis as simple as possible, since global climate is extremely complicated. My focus is on the question: Are humans increasing the emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and are CO2 emissions causing the planet to warm up?

To save you time from reading this whole posting, I'll give you my conclusions up front, with the analysis after. I found some surprises.

Global Warming Conclusions:

CO2 levels have been rising for the last 50 years.
Humans may be responsible for CO2 rising (CO2 growth appears to match population growth).
CO2 DOES act as a greenhouse gas with a warming effect (this was a surprise to me).
The CO2 warming effect is much weaker than reported by the media.

Besides CO2, I think that humans are affecting the environment and we should be serious about monitoring what we are doing. Still, draconian measures are not yet justified.

CO2 levels have been rising for the last 50 years

The primary support for this are the CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii [1] [2] These show a steady rise in CO2. Although this might be expected near an active volcano, other data from around the world show the same trend [3]. The data before 1959 are not as reliable, but an interesting study has been done by Beck [4].

Man may be responsible for CO2 rising

This required a little more analysis. I tried to find reliable data for CO2 from fossil fuel emissions and finally settled on data from the CDIAC [5]. The fluctuations in the fossil fuel data don't show up in the atmospheric CO2 data. The atmospheric CO2 data does look suspiciously like an exponential growth curve. The world population also follows a exponential growth, so this is included as well. It's reported that people exhale about 1 kg of CO2 per day (by my calculations, people breathing produces about 30% as much as fossil fuel use).
This chart (click to enlarge) shows the CO2 from fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 concentration above 265 ppm (since we are talking about an increase over some supposed baseline), and world population. Both CO2 levels are scaled (normalized) to the 1959 population data. I purposely picked a 265 ppm baseline since it shows how closely atmospheric CO2 and population growth are correlated. The most important note is the fluctuations in fossil fuel consumption are not reflected in the atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

This chart of the Carbon Cycle [5] also shows that CO2 from fossil fuels is only a small part of the overall carbon cycle (Though there is no reference to where the numbers come from).

The chart below shows the fluctuations of CO2 concentrations derived from ice core data for the last 400,000 years. It would be interesting to know what caused these fluctuations (volcanoes, natural climate change cycles, etc.). These numbers are used to show that we are currently at the highest levels in 400,000 years, although it is disputed whether or not the ice core data accurately show peaks in CO2 occuring, this site attempts to dispel this as a myth [6].

CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas with a warming effect

Much of the "proof" that CO2 is a hazardous greenhouse gas comes from complex computer models of the climate. While I don't have the expertise to critique these models, I do have enough experience to be suspicious of the claim that CO2 is a problem.

I use a simple model. Consider a sphere just slightly larger than the earth and its atmosphere. If more energy goes into the sphere than comes out, the inside heats up. The energy going in is solar radiation and the energy coming out is reflected solar radiation and thermal (infrared) radiation from the earth. CO2 doesn't absorb the solar energy but it does absorb some of the infrared energy. See my post on Black Body Radiation for more info.

My suspicion comes for the fact that CO2 absorbs 100% of that thermal radiation (energy) over a short distance and increasing CO2 shouldn't result in more absorption.

An analogy for this is a car parked in direct sunlight. The car gets hot inside since the sunlight goes through the window and heats up the interior. The thermal or infrared radiation from the interior is then blocked by the window glass (glass is opaque in the infrared). Making the glass in your windshield slightly thicker is similar to increasing CO2 levels and unlikely make your car hotter.

Luckily we don't have to depend on my hunches or an analogy to show whether CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. There is a computer model (MODTRAN) that has been well verified for computing the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere. MODTRAN can be run using a simple web interface that allows setting atmospheric CO2 concentration and surface temperature of the earth [7]. This is much better than many of the crude calculations I've seen on the Internet [8][9] The chart below shows the MODTRAN output for a Mid-Latitude Summer Day, 375 ppm CO2. The red line is the energy leaving the earth's atmosphere. The big dip in the middle (between wave numbers 600 and 800) is due to CO2 absorption.
The next chart is the same results with no atmospheric CO2. You can see the dip is missing, which means with no CO2, the energy is escaping the earth's atmosphere.
The next chart shows the difference in radiation leaving the earth for 375 ppm and with CO2 doubled at 750 ppm.
The total area under the blue curve is the radiant energy at 375 ppm. The red curve (mostly overlayed by the blue) is for 750 ppm. There are small differences at the edges of the CO2 absorption band. Though small, this does show that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, blocking some radiant energy.

The CO2 warming effect is much weaker than reported by the media.

Two questions need to be answered:
1. How much energy is trapped due to the CO2 greenhouse effect?
2. What is the effect on temperature?

Update Jan. 20, 2010: The IPCC refers to this as "radiative forcing" or "the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus long-wave; in Wm^-2) at the tropopause AFTER allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, but with surface and tropo-spheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values".IPCC definition of "Radiative Forcing"

I will show that the IPCC definition is flawed, since allowing the surface temperature to change significantly offsets the green house effect.

MODTRAN can be used easily to demonstrate this. The next step is to balance the radiative forcing (solar in, thermal out) while assuming solar irradiance is constant. As the earth heats up from the green house gas, it emits more thermal radiation, which is only partially absorbed by CO2. So the earth only needs to heat up slightly to create a balance.

The table below shows calculations for various CO2 concentrations. The Radiant Intensity is how much energy (Watts) is leaving the surface of the earth per square meter (300 Watts is the same as three 100 Watt light bulbs). The surface temperature was determined by running MODTRAN with various surface temperatures until the radiant intensity matched the baseline. As you can see, the temperature changes are not as severe as those predicted by Al Gore and friends[10].

	Atmospheric CO2 (ppm)	Radiant Intensity (W/m2)	Surface Temperature (Kelvin)	MODTRAN Predicted Temperature Change due to CO2 (C)	Measured and Predicted (p) Temperature Change (C)
Baseline	265	281.093	290	-0.21	-0.25 (m)
1959	316	280.371	290.21	0	0 (m)
2007	375	279.648	290.41	0.20	0.35 (m)
Double	750	276.791	291.27	1.06	2.5-3.5 (p)
Worst Estimate of CO2 in 2100	1000	275.598	291.64	1.43	4.4 (p)

Notes

My analysis does not address the hypothesis for the potential magnifying effects of CO2 (i.e., slight CO2 warming causes more water vapor in the atmosphere. The water vapor acts as a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.). See The Climate Effects of Water Vapour
Besides energy transfer outside the earth's atmosphere, there is also transfer at the earth's surface (land and oceans). There are many potential processes here (geothermal, ocean warming/cooling, etc). The only human activity that I could think of was mining/drilling and then burning fossil fuels (converting chemical energy into thermal energy). I calculated this effect to be less than 1% of the greenhouse effect.
Melting glaciers and polar ice caps cools the atmosphere (Most likely by a very small amount).
Water (clouds and humidity) have a much greater greenhouse effect than CO2
Other gases (Methane, etc.) from human activities were not included in my analysis. If they are the real problem, than I think we should stop talking about CO2 and focus on emissions of these other gases.
Climate change addresses local variations, global warming addresses thermal energy being added to the whole system.

Cosmic rays the real cause of Global Warming?
Update Jan. 16, 2010: Climate experts divided on implications of brutal cold spells
Evidence of Arctic Warming
Update Dec. 2, 2011: The climate may not be as sensitive to carbon dioxide as previously believed

More info at the Petition Project

Greg Mortenson in Person

2009-12-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

Thursday night I went to hear Greg Mortenson speak. I was moved by his book, "Three Cups of Tea" and I luckily got tickets before they sold out. He shared many great thoughts, which I should probably share, but I've been a little obsessed by Global Warming (trying to understand it) and Greg mentioned something that started me thinking.

I will point out one thing: Greg is passionate that educating girls is the key to bringing peace to the world. It makes sense. There are many reasons and statistics to back up his stance. I agree with him 100%.

Greg said “In the holy Koran when a young man goes on a jihad he first has to get permission and blessing from his mother. If a woman has an education she is much less likely to condone her son to get into violence or to terrorism.”

This is the point I want to focus on. He said that Islamic extremists (Taliban, Al Queda) are going into the illiterate, uneducated villages to recruit since mothers elsewhere are getting too smart to give their sons permission to become terrorist.

So what could this possibly have to do with Global Warming?

First start by looking at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen where they are proposing that wealthy countries send billions of dollars to poor countries to help them deal with the effects of climate change.

While it seems like the right thing to do to follow this solution, I believe the backers of this solution are worst then the terrorist recruiters. It is becoming more and more difficult to squeeze money out of our prosperous country, because we are getting too smart. So "they" get smarter and design a plan to send wealth to impoverished countries. These countries are like the illiterate villages, where it will be easy to siphon off some of the GW reparation money.

I know it sounds a little like a wacko conspiracy idea, but who honestly thinks that billions of dollars will in any way be effectively spent to deal with climate change?

Here's my question to anyone that thinks a lot of money can do any good:

If I gave you $1 million, could you do something good for your community, without wasting a penny? (Most people answer yes or probably).
How about if I gave you $10 million? (Most people realize that it's a little harder to track this much money)
How about if I gave you $1 billion? (There are plenty of examples of how hard it is to insert this much money into a community to help them. Usually it results in unintended consequences like what happens to lottery winners).

Oh, and here's an interesting report from Copenhagen

Black Body Radiation and Global Warming

2009-12-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a quiz:

You hear about a new band called "Black Body Radiation" and you think:
a) Just another rock band with meaningless long names like "Red Hot Chili Peppers", "Bare Naked Ladies", "Stone Temple Pilot", "Nine Inch Nails"
b) A racially motivated name
c) A name based on some obscure sexual innuendo
d) A name created by science nerds

The answer of course would be d). Any other answer would be an amazing coincidence.

I remember learning about "Black Body Radiation" and scratching my head at the name. Surprising I ended up spending 10 years of my career focused primarily on this subject. So what is it?

First, I need to explain how things heat up.

Touch something hot (also called "conduction"). The heat moves from the hot thing to the thing touching it.
Blow hot air (also called "convection"). This is where the convection oven gets its name.
Stand by the radiator (also called "radiation"). Invisible light called thermal or "infrared" radiation is put off by warm objects. This is where "Black Body Radiation" comes in.

The hotter an object, the more thermal radiation it puts out. You can test this by putting your hand close to your face with your eyes closed. Without touching your face, you can feel the heat from your hand. This is the radiation part of "Black Body Radiation".

If I take two pieces of metal and polish one to a mirror finish and paint the other with black paint, the black piece will feel hotter if I put my hand near it (without touching). This is the "Black Body" part since its black and any thing solid is called a "body". The reason scientists like "black bodies" is because then they can use mathematical formulas to figure out exactly how much energy is being radiated.

Here's an online calculator (Not the best).

Another interesting thing that happens as things heat up is that the "peak" of the thermal energy gets closer to visible light. The first color is a red, thus the term "red hot". As it gets hotter, it gets orange, then yellow. Here's an online viewer for the color of hot objects. As you slide the temperature back and forth you can see how the color goes from black (invisible radiation) to various colors. The temperature input is in Kelvin. If you want to convert it, type "convert 500 K to F" in google and it will do it for you).

A 1 sq. ft plate (black of course) at room temperature (70 F) emits (puts out) about 12.5 Watts.

To double the energy emitted from the plate to 25 Watts, the temperature has to be 170 F (40 degrees below boiling).

To equal a 100 Watt light bulb, you would have to heat the 1 sq ft plate to 430 F and it will start to glow a faint red. This is just below the 451 F required to burn books! (Just ask Ray Bradbury).

A wall (at room temperature) 8 ft tall and 10 feet long would put out 1000 Watts. In a room 10 ft by 10 ft (4 walls, floor and ceiling), 8500 Watts are being emitted! That's equal to 85 100 Watt light bulbs.

Now for Global Warming. The earth emits from its surface roughly 100,000,000,000,000,000 (100,000 trillion) Watts. If the earth heats up just 1 degree F, it will emit an additional 600 trillion Watts. What that means is the earth is losing this energy, or in other words the cooling power is almost the same as the CO2 greenhouse effect.

More on this later.

Hope and Faith

2009-12-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

Which is better, hope or faith? I read an article recently that actually tried to answer that question (I don't have the reference). They argued that hope is better since it usually means actually doing something (implying that faith involves no action).

I've thought about this a little since and here's my view on hope and faith. I'll use a story to illustrate. The characters are Bob Hope and Faith Hill (No relation to famous people, just convenient names). Bob is most interested in results and the actual outcome. How he gets this isn't as important. Faith is more likely to conform to the rules. She spends a lot more time worrying how she does things than she does worrying about the results.

Bob Hope and Faith Hill are enrolled in the same class and are taking a test today.

Bob: "I sure hope I pass the test".
Faith: "I have faith that I will pass the test".
Bob: "How can you know that you'll pass the test? You and your blind faith! I heard this test is hard!"
Faith: "I didn't say I 'know' I'll pass the test, just that I have faith that I will. I took the prerequisites for this class, I go to class everyday, I've taken good notes, and I followed the study guide. In our study group, we had copies of last semesters test and we were able to go through it. Mike helped explain a couple of ideas I didn't quite understand from Chapter 1. We were able to help Steve and Karen with Chapter 2. Mike was sick when we covered Chapter 3, so we helped him and now he's up to speed.".
Bob: (sigh) "I sure hope I pass the test."
Faith: "I sure hope you pass the test too, Bob."

This little story is of course lopsided. All hope isn't this empty and true hope can be a great motivator. When it comes to long shots (making the Olympic team), hope is the way to go.

Faith is still good, but sometimes faith can be blind. When it comes to religion, faith is based on many things that can't even be seen (Heaven, God) and so religious faith is considered by many to be "blind faith". However, religious faith is also similar to preparing for a test. Religion provides proven traditions, a system of moral guidelines, and the support of a group that share common goals and values. This is all good as long as the goals are along the lines of "build and strengthen" and not "conquer and destroy". Religion can be powerful, so if you pick one, be sure to pick a good one.

I have hope that you'll understand what I've written; but not faith (faith requires a little more effort :-)

Double Standards

2009-12-01T22:42:00.000-08:00

Tonight I listened to part of Pres. Obama's speech about sending more troops to Afghanistan. I also listened to several commentaries on the radio while driving home this evening.

I was surprised to find that I agreed with the President. I am a non-interventionist and I am proud that I didn't fall into the same "somebody's got to pay for 9/11" trap that many Americans seemed driven by when we went to war with Iraq.

What I found interesting was the sharp criticism from conservative commentators. If Pres. Bush had done the same thing (carefully evaluate, determine a strategy, and then commit troops) I'm sure he wouldn't get the same vehement criticism. A double standard.

On the other hand, if I remember last years debates, Mr. Obama claimed the "surge" didn't work, and yet it sounds like he is taking the same approach. A double standard.

I would love to see the press, commentators, politicians define a standard and stick to it, or at least acknowledge that they were previously in error.

Maybe someone will read all of my blog postings and point out potential double standards. (I put this last sentence in to immunize myself from the double standard bug that seems more widespread than H1N1).

I Can't Drive 55

2009-11-29T15:09:00.000-08:00

I just got back from vacation. I kept humming the Sammy Hagar song "I Can't Drive 55" as I drove 75 mph. On one section of the road there was an 80 mph "speed limit test section". I was wondering how they test this. Maybe they count the number of accidents to see if it makes a difference.

I still remember getting a speeding ticket years ago on this same road. I was the third car in a row of cars in the slow lane. The highway patrolman only stopped me. If I remember correctly, the ticket was for going 18 mph over the speed limit (73 mph). I think the spot I stopped is now marked with a 75 mph speed limit sign. I've always been ahead of time.

I decided to research a little the old 55 mph speed limit. I thought it was Jimmy Carter that pushed for the lower speed limit (he was a big preacher about the energy crisis). I was surprised to find it was the previous liberal president, Richard Nixon. He actually wanted a 50 mph speed limit!

CNN, Glenn Beck, Connect the dots

2009-11-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

In July I wrote about how I thought Glenn Beck focused only on negative news and not positive news here.

This morning I turned on the T.V. to watch a little news. The first station to come up was CNN. Fedricka Whitfield was the news anchor. Occasionally I watch different networks to get different viewpoints. It was interesting the stories:

1. A CNN poll indicates that a majority of Americans are in favor of the public option for healthcare.

2. A judge in a court case found the Army Corps of Engineers liable for the Huricane Katrina flooding.

3. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat Senator from Louisiana announced her support to vote the health care bill through committee.

My apologies to Glenn Beck, who always says to connect the stories. That idea he's right on. All three of these stories are connected, but CNN missed it. Thanks to my new, favorite news aggregator Instapundit.com (sorry Drudge), this news story that I read on Thursday makes the connection. Harry Reid's changes to the healthcare bill that vaguely include “certain states recovering from a major disaster...during the proceeding 7 fiscal years” apply to only one state: Mary Landrieu's Louisiana. That's a pretty expensive way to buy a vote. Since American tax payers are now on the hook for Katrina, is the Army Corps of Engineers off the hook?

I wonder how CNN worded their question for their poll: "Would you rather have a public option with the healthcare plan or move to Pakistan and have their healthcare?"

A Solution for the US Post Office

2009-11-19T20:51:00.001-08:00

I was getting our mail after work and as usual, most of the mail was junk. So as I walked back to our house, I thought of a solution to the post offices budget woes.

Raise the bulk rates on junk mail.

This would result in some combination of two things :

1. Increase revenues for the post office due to all the junk mail.

2. Decrease the amount of junk mail thus decreasing the burden on the post office. This would most likely reduce cost (Think how many fewer airplanes and big trucks need to cart the junk mail around the country). There would also be an environmental benefit due to creating less trash in our landfills and reducing carbon emissions.

Just a thought.

Nonsense

2009-11-14T22:36:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading "Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language" by Robert J Gula. I think this book should be required reading for all high school and college students. Anyone in the media or politics should be required to read it every year. At least this is the conclusion I've come to after reading only 1/3 of the book. Here some of the "abuses" and examples of how they are happening today.

Emotional Appeals

Appeal to Pity (argumentum ad misericordium) - Instead of giving carefully documented reasons, evidence and facts, a person appeals to our sense of pity, compassion, brotherly love.

Example from News: We need to provide health care for all Americans, end discrimination against pre-existing conditions and stop insurance companies from dropping people who are sick. "No one should go broke because they get sick". [1][2]

Problem: Limited (or no) facts or evidence that this is happening.

Appeal to Guilt - You have it good, so shouldn't you help those less fortunate

Example from News: "We need to spread the wealth"[1 at 4:42]

Appeal to Fear - "If you don't do X then Y will happen (and Y is bad)"

Example: Pass TARP or else banks will fail and economy will crumble, pass the Economic Stimulus or else unemployment will rise, pass Cap & Trade or else we'll destroy the earth, "...health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year." [1]

Appeal to Hope - "If you do X, Y may happen. Therefore, if you want Y to happen, do X (and Y is good)". Example: [1]

Appeal to Sincerity - The person presenting the argument seems very sincere, therefore we should trust them. Example: [1]

Propaganda

Appeal to Status/Bandwagon -

You can gain status by making this choice
Anyone of importance is doing the same thing
"Everyone is doing it"

Example: every poll, pollster, and [1 at 2:03]

Repetition - The theory is that if you say something often enough, people will eventually believe it.

Example: Google Search -

"global warming facts" -> 35,500,000 hits
"health care reform needed now" -> 21,700,000 hits
"obama hope and change" -> 108,000,000 hits
"economics stimulus package new jobs" -> 10,200,000

Oversimplification - Takes a complicated issue and looks at a from a narrow viewpoint.

Examples:

Global Warming is caused by man made carbon dioxide emissions. Natural cycles, solar variations, ocean CO2 absorption and emission, etc. are all ignored.
Our current health care crisis is caused by greedy insurance companies (specifically executives). Poor health habits, over regulation, and many other issues are basically ignored.

Name Calling - Use names with strong negative emotional associations for people you don't like or who oppose your position. These terms should be first defined and then evidence should be provided.

Examples:

Tea Party protesters are "Un-American, Astro-turf, teabaggers" (Until April 15, 2009, I never new that teabaggers was a sexually obscene term).
If you don't agree with Obama, you are a racist.

It's late so I'll have to comment on the Chapter 6, Irrelevance another time.

Purple is Good

2009-11-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Several years ago my company had an all hands meeting. At the time, we had grown so large that there wasn't a room or other space large enough to hold the meeting. The solution for this problem was across the street, at the local mega church. We already had an agreement to share parking lots for overflow, but letting us use their meeting hall was a very generous offer.

On the day of the meeting, we all walked in mass across the street. I listened to others conversations as we walked for this interesting event. One surprising comment made by an older man was that this would be the first time he ever stepped into a church.

The corporate vice-president was visiting to give the presentation. The one thing that stands out is a chart he put up. It had a grid of colored boxes, each apparently representing a different area of our business. The colors were red, yellow, green and purple. I guess when you're put in charge of a very large organization, it's hard to know the details so you need a high level summary.

The vice-president could apparently tell that we were confused by this chart so he explained to us "Purple is good". I chuckled quietly and was a little embarrassed for him.

It reminded me of a joke I once read:

The president asked the director for status on a project.

The director asked the manager.

- The manager asked the lead.
- - The lead asked the engineer.
  - The engineer replied "This project is crap!"
- The lead thought, "I can't tell that to the manager", so he toned it down a little and said "This project is cow manure!"
The manager thought, "I can't tell that to the director", so he toned it down a little more and said "This project is fertilizer!"

The director thought, "I can't tell that to the president," so he toned it down even more said "This project promotes growth".

Purple is good.

Fun Theory

2009-11-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

How do you change behavior?
1) Pass Laws
2) Tax bad behavior
3) Give financial incentives for good behavior.
4) Threaten physical harm or go to war to change behavior

This is one of the best ideas I've heard about in a long time.
5) Make it fun

Blink

2009-10-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

Blink is the 3rd book I've read that was written by Malcolm Gladwell (The others were Outliers and Tipping Point).

It was another interesting viewpoint on the world by Malcolm. This book talks about how our first impressions can be very powerful. The example that stood out to me was a Greek Statue purchased by the J. Paul Getty museum. It was in incredible shape, so they had scientists examine it and attorneys follow the paper trail to verify its authenticity. When an antiquities expert saw it (unfortunately after it was purchased), he immediately knew it was a fake. He couldn't put his finger on it, he just knew it (and ended up being right).

Blink also presents examples of how this instinct can be clouded. For example, by asking well chosen questions, researchers can change the behavior of their research subjects. My personal example of this was when my tennis partner asked if I breathe in or out when I serve the ball. My next serve was disastrous. The wrong part of my mind was engaged and upset the delicate balance of mind and body.

Now to tie this into politics. Many Americans are having "Blink" like experiences with the changes going on. They know out of control spending can only lead to trouble. We really should be paying attention to these "Blinkers", especially our senior citizens.

Also, politicians and other power brokers know that a careful presentation of their agendas can cloud the "Blink" instincts. The result is that many people are sucked into their propaganda and support their campaigns.

I recommend reading Blink.

Cool Robot!

2009-10-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty cool robot. Very innovative!

Think Stretch Armstrong with a brain.

Link

Best Healthcare Solution I've Heard of

2009-10-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Whole Foods market is using risk management and free market principles to cut health care costs. In risk management, you allocate resources based on the probability of something bad happening and the impact or severity of the consequences if it happens.

For example:

Cancer is low probability, high impact.
The common cold is high probability, low impact.

High deductibles basically cover the first (Cancer) and make you pay for the second (common cold).

Low deductibles basically cover both, but make you pay for it up front in higher premiums.

Therefore, every time someone gets health care and says to themselves, "Go ahead and do X, my insurance will pay for it", what they are really saying is "Go ahead and do X, all the people with low deductibles already paid for it". This increases demand and results in higher costs.

Additionally, when you use your insurance, health care costs more because the insurance company charges additional fees.

The best deal is high deductible insurance: you're not paying the insurance company for your low risk care AND you're not paying for all the frivolous low risk care that everyone else is getting.

Whole Foods' approach is to have a high deductible ($2500), which greatly reduces cost, and then put the savings in an individual employees account which they manage themselves.

The employees then decide how best to use the limited resources of their spending account using free market principles.

Harvey Milk Day

2009-10-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

Today, our governator reversed his position from last year and signed into law the statewide designation of May 22nd as Harvey Milk Day (SB 572).
For those unfamiliar with Harvey Milk, he is best know for his activism against a bill that tried to prevent homosexuals from being teachers in the public schools. He was later assassinated and become a cult figure for all gay activists, with a movie made about him last year. I'm sure your children and grandchildren can teach you all about it since this law is a modification to the California State Education code.

For those that supported Proposition 8 last year and are in general against the gay agenda, this is good news and bad news. The good news is that you are not the liar many said you were when you said homosexuality will be taught is schools. The bad news is that you were right and California Law now "designate[s] that date [May 22nd] as having special significance in public schools and educational institutions and would encourage those entities to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date" .

Watch Jack O. Connell's (California State Superintendent of Public Instruction) No on 8 commercial again. He said California law does not require teaching about marriage. He's very clever. I wish he would have said, "Homosexual values will not be taught in our public schools". Then parents could really trust him.

Obama, the Prince of Peace?

2009-10-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched an interesting video by Andrew Klavan on "Is Barack Obama Jesus Christ?". At first I thought it would sacrilegious, but I ended up entertained.

Here's my version of the points he made of how Obama and Jesus are the same.

Associating with undesirables

Jesus associated with "publicans and sinners", or basically "undesirable" people.
Obama associated with "undesirable" people as well: Reverend Right and Bill Aires.

Free Healthcare

Jesus promoted free health care by healing the sick.
Obama is also for free health care, he just wants to raise taxes to pay for it.

A Debt that can't be repaid

We all are in debt to Jesus, as he paid for our sins and there is no way for us to repay him.
Obama is creating such a huge debt that there is no we can pay for it.

Predictions of the Prince of Peace

Andrew Klavan missed one, since the news only came out today about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Before Jesus was even born, there were prophecies of him coming as the prince of peace.
Before Obama even did anything, he was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

My Christmas Wish - To be a Jedi

2009-10-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

I found something for my Christmas list. I have to say I was shocked since I thought that Jedi skills were pure science fiction. I've heard of researchers developing technology to help disabled people use their minds to control computer cursors, etc., but I never expected this technology to be available as a game.Click Here.

These games are actually very simple. How much you concentrate moves a ball in one dimension (up or down). I immediately imagined my future grandchildren wearing game controller "caps" to control complicated games. Seems far fetched? Here's a couple things to think about:
My grandmother couldn't figure out how to use a microwave oven. Now we use microwave ovens, computers, cell phones, MP3 players, etc. I can do most of these things better than my parents and my children are better at using some technology than I am.

My first computer game, Pong, had a controller that only controlled one dimension (You turned the joystick left and right). We loved it and would play for hours. Today's controllers are much more complicated and kid's are experts.

So will our children's children develop crazy mind control skills?

10,000 Hours

2009-10-04T22:33:00.000-07:00

I have been a little bit busy lately. I spent two days last week at medical facilities for my wife's kidney stone removal (Wednesday) and my son's concussion from a basketball game (Thursday). I started thinking that universal health care sounded like a good idea. This was just before asserting myself to avoid my son being sent to the emergency on an ambulance, since their CT Scan machine was broken and they couldn't get authorization from my insurance company. It all ended nicely and I rewarded the urgent care staff with $2.40 worth of doughnut holes. Their response: a lot of smiles and a "You can never go wrong bringing nurses treats".

I had plenty of time to think about during my wait and I realized that while universal health care is a great idea, I have no confidence that our Federal Government can accomplish it effectively. The main reason is that our U.S. Constitution makes it very difficult for them to administrate such a complex enterprise. There are good reasons for this.

So why is this blog titled 10,000 hours? I'm finishing Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" (I recommend it!). One of the ideas in his book is that in order to master a complex task (i.e., become a top musician, athlete, etc.) a person needs to spend about 10,000 hours. These were his findings:

Top violinists at a performing arts school had all practiced or performed roughly 10,000 hours. The "B" Violinists had practiced 8,000 hours and "C" group about 6,000 hours
Professional Canadian Hockey players had played about 10,000 hours
Bill Gates had spent roughly 10,000 hours writing software before founding Microsoft
The Beetles had performed about 10,000 hours before making it big (I always thought that Ed Sullivan just plucked them from Liverpool).

Some of these cases involved very fortunate circumstances: what month you were born in; going to a private school that happened to have access to the latest computers and living within walking distance of a university that had the same; getting a gig in Hamburg that had you performing 7 days a week.

"Outliers" also talks about the benefits of hard work and spending extra time.

Last night, I watched the General Priesthood broadcast for the LDS church. One of my favorite speakers, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, talked about being a refuge in Frankfurt, Germany after World War II. He shared two important principles he learned from this experience: Work Hard and Learn. You can listen to his talk here.