Thursday, December 17, 2009
Healthcare
Healthcare: A Right or a Privilege? the headline read.
That's easy.
Back in the day, we all used to say "God heals the sick and the physician sends the bill."
God's healing is a right.
Paying the doctor's bill, however, is a privilege.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
"Fear" as an Institution
Now I am the kind of guy who, when he sees a fence,
understands that it was put there precisely
for him to find a way over, under, around or through.
I think that the "black swan" event in the USA was the assasination of JFK ...
followed by his brother, and MLK,
and then finally, just in case anyone did not get the message,
John Lennon.
All hope was killed in this society.
The only thing left for anyone to do was to take care of himself as best he could
and screw everybody else.
Well, we did.
Many people have said that the current "crisis" is a credit crisis,
caused by too much borrowing and too loose money.
I disagree.
Although those conditions certainly contributed, loans, sometimes very large,
have been a social tradition since ancient times.
However, what I have seen rise from nothing to the point of dominance
is a practice that had no historical precedent
but has now permeated everybody's thinking.
Insurance.
"Managing risk".
Just think about how much time and money everybody, and I mean everybody,
spends playing with futures contracts.
The first ones were automobile insurance, health insurance, and life insurance,
and the hoi polloi are still struggling with those.
But over top of them grew commodities futures and options contracts.
what we call derivatives. And the structures just continue to get more and more complex and large.
Now just look at one life insurance contract.
Basically it is a bet between you and your insurance company.
You are putting your money down to say that you are going to die before they expect you to -- if you are right, you win the bet and your family gets paid off. The insurance company is betting that you will live longer than you expect to, and keep on paying them premiums. They plan on raising and raising the premiums while lowering and lowering the final payoff. There's different rules and versions of the bet, but for the most part, the insurance company has stacked the odds considerably in their favor.
Out of this concept grew a whole new class of mathematicians,
actuarial calculators, statistics.
Soon afterward, we got a whole class of managers learning how to fudge the numbers by lying about the basic assumptions. (from which cometh the global warming debate, among other ills). The critics all go back over the mathematical equations and
they find that the arithmetic has been done correctly, so they conclude that the results are correct but they are not because the basic problem was stated wrong.
Back in the day, we used to say that the market boils down to two emotions, fear and greed. We understood that greed makes the market to go up while fear makes it go down.
But it seems to me that in the last fifty years or so,
bit by bit,
people have forgotten that simple fact.
Fear makes the market to go down.
Our society has become more and more obsessed with fears of all kinds, we keep collecting new ones.
Meanwhile, every old one becomes institutionalized,
made permanent in our minds and actions,
through the use of insurance contracts, derivatives, or what have you. As a culture we have collected more and more fears
without ever "solving" any of the old ones. They get built into our social customs
and our laws.
So the burden, and the expense,
just keeps on getting heavier and heavier.
One little example.
As I have said before,
I got rid of my computer virus protection two years ago,
because it was costing me considerable amount of money
and moreover the software was using up to 60% of my machine resources,
which I considered to be obscene and outright theft.
Since everyone else was protected, viruses can no longer work.
In two years my machine has not caught one virus
(but it has picked up an awful lot of new junk,
as the large corporations and advertising mavens relentlessly keep finding new routes
to invade and infect me and steal my time and resources ...
its an ongoing battle as, sooner or later, I find ways to get rid of the new junk
and then they invent still more nefarious methods of stealing from me.)
Anyway, what I am getting at is,
I have known that our culture, our society, is doomed
by this institutionalizing of our fears,
and by the smaller and smaller spaces that we have left
within which to create and grow.
I've known it for decades.
This place is decaying, its headed relentlessly downhill.
There is no escape.
Its not Bernanke's fault, or Greenspans, or Bush's or anybody's,
anymore than Nero was to blame for the fall of Rome.
Its just the way things happen in this world.
cycles.
up and down, up and down,
too hot, then too cold, too bright, then too dark.
just like sex.
(now excuse me. I think I remembered something I have to do this morning ...)
-chiz
understands that it was put there precisely
for him to find a way over, under, around or through.
I think that the "black swan" event in the USA was the assasination of JFK ...
followed by his brother, and MLK,
and then finally, just in case anyone did not get the message,
John Lennon.
All hope was killed in this society.
The only thing left for anyone to do was to take care of himself as best he could
and screw everybody else.
Well, we did.
Many people have said that the current "crisis" is a credit crisis,
caused by too much borrowing and too loose money.
I disagree.
Although those conditions certainly contributed, loans, sometimes very large,
have been a social tradition since ancient times.
However, what I have seen rise from nothing to the point of dominance
is a practice that had no historical precedent
but has now permeated everybody's thinking.
Insurance.
"Managing risk".
Just think about how much time and money everybody, and I mean everybody,
spends playing with futures contracts.
The first ones were automobile insurance, health insurance, and life insurance,
and the hoi polloi are still struggling with those.
But over top of them grew commodities futures and options contracts.
what we call derivatives. And the structures just continue to get more and more complex and large.
Now just look at one life insurance contract.
Basically it is a bet between you and your insurance company.
You are putting your money down to say that you are going to die before they expect you to -- if you are right, you win the bet and your family gets paid off. The insurance company is betting that you will live longer than you expect to, and keep on paying them premiums. They plan on raising and raising the premiums while lowering and lowering the final payoff. There's different rules and versions of the bet, but for the most part, the insurance company has stacked the odds considerably in their favor.
Out of this concept grew a whole new class of mathematicians,
actuarial calculators, statistics.
Soon afterward, we got a whole class of managers learning how to fudge the numbers by lying about the basic assumptions. (from which cometh the global warming debate, among other ills). The critics all go back over the mathematical equations and
they find that the arithmetic has been done correctly, so they conclude that the results are correct but they are not because the basic problem was stated wrong.
Back in the day, we used to say that the market boils down to two emotions, fear and greed. We understood that greed makes the market to go up while fear makes it go down.
But it seems to me that in the last fifty years or so,
bit by bit,
people have forgotten that simple fact.
Fear makes the market to go down.
Our society has become more and more obsessed with fears of all kinds, we keep collecting new ones.
Meanwhile, every old one becomes institutionalized,
made permanent in our minds and actions,
through the use of insurance contracts, derivatives, or what have you. As a culture we have collected more and more fears
without ever "solving" any of the old ones. They get built into our social customs
and our laws.
So the burden, and the expense,
just keeps on getting heavier and heavier.
One little example.
As I have said before,
I got rid of my computer virus protection two years ago,
because it was costing me considerable amount of money
and moreover the software was using up to 60% of my machine resources,
which I considered to be obscene and outright theft.
Since everyone else was protected, viruses can no longer work.
In two years my machine has not caught one virus
(but it has picked up an awful lot of new junk,
as the large corporations and advertising mavens relentlessly keep finding new routes
to invade and infect me and steal my time and resources ...
its an ongoing battle as, sooner or later, I find ways to get rid of the new junk
and then they invent still more nefarious methods of stealing from me.)
Anyway, what I am getting at is,
I have known that our culture, our society, is doomed
by this institutionalizing of our fears,
and by the smaller and smaller spaces that we have left
within which to create and grow.
I've known it for decades.
This place is decaying, its headed relentlessly downhill.
There is no escape.
Its not Bernanke's fault, or Greenspans, or Bush's or anybody's,
anymore than Nero was to blame for the fall of Rome.
Its just the way things happen in this world.
cycles.
up and down, up and down,
too hot, then too cold, too bright, then too dark.
just like sex.
(now excuse me. I think I remembered something I have to do this morning ...)
-chiz
Friday, December 11, 2009
Feeding Africa
(credentials: I have traveled to Ethiopia 4 times, eaten, slept, danced and prayed with the people, married one and brought her back to the USA, I also
mingle and socialize freely with Africans here.)
The predominant approach to the societies of sub-saharan Africa by the USA and western European nations has consisted mainly of sending food relief, to a lesser extent sending medicine, and sending a few missionaries who hole out in the local Hilton and force-feed the gospel. The justification for sending food rather than cash is that corrupt governments would steal the cash. Sending food has the dual effect of propping up first world agribusinesses by buying their surpluses, while crushing native farmers by flooding their markets.
For the past decade China has been exerting a greater and greater presence. I hear the same story over and over from my friends and acquaintances. The Chinese build roads, build schools, build hydroelectric dams and steel mills and mines.
They also immigrate in much greater numbers, enough to begin to sway the cultures.
I understand compassion. Children are cute, suffering children are heartbreaking. However, before you lift a finger to act, I strongly recommend the following exercise:
Plan to do this for a whole season. Set aside a time of day when you can buy a loaf of bread and take it to the park, every day. Once there, start to feed the few pigeons (or ducks, or sparrows, or whatever ...). give them bread until they stop begging for it. Then come back the next day.
After just a very few days, you should notice that the birds start to anticipate your arrival, recognize you, and eagerly look forward to their meal. You should also be noticing that they increase in number.
After a couple of weeks, you should be finding that you are now attracting large numbers of birds, quite a few more than you had ever seen in that park before.
You will begin to notice that a few of the other humans using the park may become a bit annoyed. You may notice that the bird droppings are increasing in the area and the odor is definitely deteriorating. In fact, if you continue in your daily routine for very much longer, your activities are very likely to come to the attention of the local constabulary. Depending on your demeanor, they will either politely or less politely find the means to persuade you to cease.
Through all of this, it may be an issue here as to if you have any intelligence and free thought. If that is the case, then it is likely to dawn on you that your efforts to fix a problem, i.e. hunger, have actually been encouraging the birds to be fruitful and multiply, as well as to invite all of their friends and relations. Thus your actions actually have the opposite effect of your original intention.
FEEDING PIGEONS ONLY MAKES MORE PIGEONS!
At least, I would certainly hope so.
mingle and socialize freely with Africans here.)
The predominant approach to the societies of sub-saharan Africa by the USA and western European nations has consisted mainly of sending food relief, to a lesser extent sending medicine, and sending a few missionaries who hole out in the local Hilton and force-feed the gospel. The justification for sending food rather than cash is that corrupt governments would steal the cash. Sending food has the dual effect of propping up first world agribusinesses by buying their surpluses, while crushing native farmers by flooding their markets.
For the past decade China has been exerting a greater and greater presence. I hear the same story over and over from my friends and acquaintances. The Chinese build roads, build schools, build hydroelectric dams and steel mills and mines.
They also immigrate in much greater numbers, enough to begin to sway the cultures.
I understand compassion. Children are cute, suffering children are heartbreaking. However, before you lift a finger to act, I strongly recommend the following exercise:
Plan to do this for a whole season. Set aside a time of day when you can buy a loaf of bread and take it to the park, every day. Once there, start to feed the few pigeons (or ducks, or sparrows, or whatever ...). give them bread until they stop begging for it. Then come back the next day.
After just a very few days, you should notice that the birds start to anticipate your arrival, recognize you, and eagerly look forward to their meal. You should also be noticing that they increase in number.
After a couple of weeks, you should be finding that you are now attracting large numbers of birds, quite a few more than you had ever seen in that park before.
You will begin to notice that a few of the other humans using the park may become a bit annoyed. You may notice that the bird droppings are increasing in the area and the odor is definitely deteriorating. In fact, if you continue in your daily routine for very much longer, your activities are very likely to come to the attention of the local constabulary. Depending on your demeanor, they will either politely or less politely find the means to persuade you to cease.
Through all of this, it may be an issue here as to if you have any intelligence and free thought. If that is the case, then it is likely to dawn on you that your efforts to fix a problem, i.e. hunger, have actually been encouraging the birds to be fruitful and multiply, as well as to invite all of their friends and relations. Thus your actions actually have the opposite effect of your original intention.
FEEDING PIGEONS ONLY MAKES MORE PIGEONS!
At least, I would certainly hope so.
Monday, December 7, 2009
black swan
Let me just share this with you ...
"Scientists must stop ignoring the black swan in the room"
The ongoing "climategate" email scandal brings to mind an old axiom of science about a lovely hypothesis being slain by an ugly fact. It refers to the principle that a hypothesis cannot be proven correct; it can only be falsified or proven incorrect. This principle is best illustrated by philosopher Karl Popper's white swan thought experiment. It goes like this:
If you see a large group of white swans, you may be tempted to hypothesize that all swans are white. But you cannot prove this hypothesis. No matter how many white swans you count, there always remains the possibility of a black swan lurking out there. And looking for black swans is a fundamental principle of the scientific method.
In the case of climate science, the emails and other documents make it absolutely clear that the cabal headed by Phil Jones and Michael Mann abrogated their responsibility to science by making no effort to disprove their own hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, they actively sought to prevent others from examining their raw data out of fear that they would find the black swan. They also took extreme steps to marginalize and silence scientists who disagreed with their work and who had the temerity to say, "But here is a black swan."
It is now clear that Messrs. Jones and Mann and their colleagues pressed on counting white swans all the while stumbling over the black ones. Their actions not only discredit the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, but do incalculable damage to the public perception of science and scientists.
William G. Hopkins, professor emeritus, Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2292759
"Scientists must stop ignoring the black swan in the room"
The ongoing "climategate" email scandal brings to mind an old axiom of science about a lovely hypothesis being slain by an ugly fact. It refers to the principle that a hypothesis cannot be proven correct; it can only be falsified or proven incorrect. This principle is best illustrated by philosopher Karl Popper's white swan thought experiment. It goes like this:
If you see a large group of white swans, you may be tempted to hypothesize that all swans are white. But you cannot prove this hypothesis. No matter how many white swans you count, there always remains the possibility of a black swan lurking out there. And looking for black swans is a fundamental principle of the scientific method.
In the case of climate science, the emails and other documents make it absolutely clear that the cabal headed by Phil Jones and Michael Mann abrogated their responsibility to science by making no effort to disprove their own hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, they actively sought to prevent others from examining their raw data out of fear that they would find the black swan. They also took extreme steps to marginalize and silence scientists who disagreed with their work and who had the temerity to say, "But here is a black swan."
It is now clear that Messrs. Jones and Mann and their colleagues pressed on counting white swans all the while stumbling over the black ones. Their actions not only discredit the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, but do incalculable damage to the public perception of science and scientists.
William G. Hopkins, professor emeritus, Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2292759
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Happy birthday to You
This is just a friendly reminder that the above-titled song
is copyright, the copyright belongs to Warner Chappell,
and technically the song may not legally be performed at any
public gathering without paying royalties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_To_You
If you think that this warning can be safely ignored,
please read this account about the recent arrest and prosecution of
this no-doubt bloodthirsty succubus:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1916606,twilight-taping-arrest-movie-120209.article
is copyright, the copyright belongs to Warner Chappell,
and technically the song may not legally be performed at any
public gathering without paying royalties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_To_You
If you think that this warning can be safely ignored,
please read this account about the recent arrest and prosecution of
this no-doubt bloodthirsty succubus:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1916606,twilight-taping-arrest-movie-120209.article
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Mayan Empire
some semi-connected impressions:
Recently I had occasion to visit the Mayan ruins at Lamanai, Belize,
and listen to the enlightened guide of Carlos from "Lamanai Tours", Orange Walk.
(I highly recommend them, if you are down that way...)
Lamanai was one of the longest continually-habitated cities of the Mayans,
located some 8 kilometers from a major stone quarry on the New River lagoon.
Carlos said that when the spanish first arrived in the new world
and found these civilized inhabitants they asked them, in spanish, who they were.
The residents answered, in their own language, that they did not understand.
The sentence sounded like "mayan" to the spanish, and the name stuck.
Carlos explained about 2012 that Armageddon is just a Hollywood fabrication ...
that the Mayans did, indeed, have a circular calendar
and that one of the calendar's units was (is) a 52-year period
that just happens to end again in 2012.
The last one ended about the time of Kennedy's inauguration ....
The next one will end in 2064.
Circles have this quality about them, they just keep going around and around,
they never end ...
Carlos also talked about the devastation
that the spanish brought to the Mayans,
how Pisarro captured their king, held him for ransom,
and when the gold was paid, killed him anyway.
He also told how it was really the diseases of europe,
(among them syphilis, small pox, and tuberculosis)
which devastated their population and civilization even more than the spanish guns.
But what was even more interesting to me was
when he explained that the Mayan civilization actually went into a decline
spontaneously, around 900 AD, long before the spanish arrived.
Their calendar and indeed a whole system of hieroglyphics
had been developed prior to that time but reading and writing fell into disuse
and the whole population and economic development declined.
He voiced the question of modern scholars, "What happened?"
I know what happened.
Same thing's happening here, now.
At a certain point (it doesn't matter where!)
the general population of a civilization will reach a point where,
in their collective imagination,
there is precious little room for the civilization to grow.
There are no new frontiers.
At that point, the civilization will gradually turn from
productive, growth-oriented strategies to strategies
which are meant to defend or secure or hold on to what people have.
And because growth stops, those strategies of just trying to hold onto what we have
are doomed, by the law of entropy, to fail.
Everything in God's world works on cycles,
up and down, around and around.
Nothing stays the same, nothing goes up forever.
From a distance, its not that hard to see.
Coal
I have been saying this, over and over, for years,
and even though it just seems to generate jealousy, resentment and anger,
instead of anyone simply following my advice,
I will say it again:
Over the next twenty or so years,
the USA is going to become the "West Virginia" of China,
meaning that we will become impoverished
and our major economic activity will become the mining and exporting of coal.
Those who do not own it will have to work in the mines.
Here is a wonderfully-written synopsis of
economic events in the USA and the world over the last 30 or 40 years,
written by a Canadian banker ... it is long, very colorful, and worth finishing, imho:
The Power of Zero
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22536643/BMO-CM-Basic-Points-Nov-2009
"Anything which cannot go on forever, will stop."
Addendum, Nov. 23
This from Reuters today:
"the latest official Chinese customs data showed coal imports rose 219.5 percent from a year earlier to 11.14 million tonnes in October."
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idAFN2326566820091123?rpc=44
and even though it just seems to generate jealousy, resentment and anger,
instead of anyone simply following my advice,
I will say it again:
Over the next twenty or so years,
the USA is going to become the "West Virginia" of China,
meaning that we will become impoverished
and our major economic activity will become the mining and exporting of coal.
Those who do not own it will have to work in the mines.
Here is a wonderfully-written synopsis of
economic events in the USA and the world over the last 30 or 40 years,
written by a Canadian banker ... it is long, very colorful, and worth finishing, imho:
The Power of Zero
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22536643/BMO-CM-Basic-Points-Nov-2009
"Anything which cannot go on forever, will stop."
Addendum, Nov. 23
This from Reuters today:
"the latest official Chinese customs data showed coal imports rose 219.5 percent from a year earlier to 11.14 million tonnes in October."
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idAFN2326566820091123?rpc=44
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