Billmon

TPI is right, the article written for dailykos by billmon is worth a read, mostly to save me the effort of summarizing it.

But the problem I see that he is not addressing is that if the government successfully absorbs the debt of the nation like a charcoal filter so that the economy doesn't collapse then nobody learns their lesson.

I am quite sure the Depression was a terrible, terrible time. I have no idea, I was born 40 years after it ended. I, in no way, endorse economic collapse. But if we use the government as a credit absorber, and soak up the insolvent banks, and soak up bankruptcies and personal credit defaults, if we buy mortgages, if we buy large stakes in Citi for half again what the stock value was (netting the company a tidy profit of $23 billion), then we are not letting individual Americans, one by one, learn the terrible lesson that my grandfather learned, which taught him to live his entire life frugally, to own only one home from 1956-present, and to invest in low-risk funds that netted him a comfortable, but never lavish, retirement.

I see the crazy look in the eyes of my peers at work, as we all swallow -30% losses in our 401k plans. But I do not hear them discussing changing their investment strategies, or moving to lower-yield mutual funds. Instead they talk about "waiting it out" and expect things to recover soon, so they can go back to making high-interest returns on high-risk Eurostocks. And they talk about how they can't wait for the housing market to bounce back so they'll at least see their house return to the value for which they paid. They don't acknowledge they overpaid by 40%, instead they wonder how soon they'll see that 40% return so they can sell it to someone for $40k more than they spent and move into an even bigger house. The house they deserve.

If we are not going to learn the hard lessons that are required to prevent a future repeat mistake, then what is the point of fixing things?


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Awesome Parental Example of the Day

Make your child read the Geneva Convention before they can kill Huns.


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Ron Paul 2012?

Douthat writes, and I agree, that if Obama doesn't magically fix the economy (through essentially the same strategy outlined by Bush but somehow seemingly idiotic then), or at least show significant improvement, then the situation may arise where a third party Presidential candidate (Ron Paul of course comes to mind) might be viable.

I see the situation going like this: the Republicans are totally hosed. Not only are they foundering and seem incapable of redeveloping leadership or even maintaining rational thoughts, but also their major demographic, the old white people, are dying off in growing numbers (or not voting). And any leaders the Republicans seem to bring forth are either old-school (read: untrustworthy) or apparently unable to outfox obama (read: incompetent).

Meanwhile, Gen Y (people born between 1980-2000) is growing vote-eligible and fast. By 2012, slightly more than 60% of Gen Y will be old enough to vote, and by 2016 over 80% of Gen Y will be eligible. That's a huge influx of young voters, on the order of 15-20 million. Especially compared to Bush 43's first term, where only 20% of Gen Y could vote.
Depending on whom you ask, the Gen Y'ers voted either favorably or overwhelmingly for Obama, because they were highly critical of Bush and the Republican Party, either due to his war (where Gen Y was exclusively fighting) or his mishandling of the economy, or his gross misuse of the Christian faith as a justification for unethical behavior (or his unethical behavior in spite of his professed Christian faith). So Obama is probably hoping (expecting) to carry Gen Y again in 2012. But I often argue that Gen Y is the "instant gratification generation"; if President Obama can't carry through all his claims and quickly, there's a decent chance that a savvy candidate could turn Gen Y against him.
And as Douthat notes, Perot pulled his percentage of the popular vote by making the Republicans look untrustworthy and the Democrats look like failures. I could easily see Ron Paul do the same, especially if the economy isn't in significantly better shape. Ron Paul has a library of sound bytes predicting the market crash, proposing solutions, railing on Democratic leadership and Republican leadership, and that could easily be used as an attack on the failed strategies used (by both parties) to rebuild the economy.

Now, I am not currently a Ron Paul supporter. Most of Ron Paul's solutions to problems seem way too aggressive and dramatic to be feasible. Right or wrong, he mostly represents "the obvious solution" that cannot be achieved. Like the obvious solution to global warming is to annihilate 90% of the human species, but that's not exactly practical. A quick browse of this blog shows that I voted for Obama, partially to stop John McCrank from getting elected, but also because I, like many of my peers, deeply bought in to Barack Obama and his seemingly genuine devotion to improving the country. So perhaps I (along with any others who were Gen Y Obama voters but not worshippers) are in a position to quickly turn on the President if his promises are not kept, or if his goals are not met. Perception of betrayal can be a dangerous emotion.

And should that happen, that the old folks still vote for their beloved Republican party, and the young folks abandon the innocuous Democrats and Obama, expect Gen Y to turn not to the Republicans, but to a potential third party candidate who aggressively and proactively responds to a new generation and their requirements for a public candidate.

However, I don't seriously think that Ron Paul, or any other third party candidate, could be a viable candidate to actually get elected in 2012. I think they easily receive a sizeable majority on the order, if not greater, than Ross Perot achieved in '92. But I don't see a third party candidate going over 15% yet. And I refuse to make 2016 predictions.

And if a third party candidate in fact got elected in 2012, it could be a total disaster; instead of opposition on one side of the aisle, he or she instead faced the wrath of both sides.


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Target Audience

Now when I was in highschool, there were video game babes. When I got to college, there were video game babes. When I went to grad school, there were video game babes. Now I have been out of school for a couple years, and there are, unsurprisingly, video game babes. The obvious reason for this is that video games have a massive - hugely massive - demographic that is made up by and large by horny teenage boys.

But Winda Binedetti at MSNBC thinks video games need to grow up. Because...you know...she did. After enumerating a very long list of games showing scantily clad women for Xbox360 (many of which were described in such compelling detail that TAE may need to buy an xbox) she also pointed out that the new expansion pack for GTA4 includes male nudity.

Now I think it is a little unfair to expect the gaming industry to clean up its act. It's not like the movie industry is doing so. In fact, movies seem to be moving towards more cartoonish, scantily clad women. Much of the reason for this is America's sudden bloodlust for comic-books-turned-movies. Comic books have made women look like sex objects for nigh on 60 years, so Hollywood has a lot of catching up to do. Just look at the only major female character in the upcoming Watchmen. She wears that outfit because it's comfortable, to be sure. Or maybe the women in the movie 300 (intense nudity during sex scene), Iron Man (she sleeps with him immediately), X-Men 3 (spray on costume), etc etc etc...blah blah blah as long as there are teenage boys there are going to be teenage hormones and there are going to be people who are finely trained to target those lusts to make money.

Winda, just like you, I'm getting older, and ridiculous costumes in movies or outfits on video game women makes me roll my eyes too. But the entertainment industry is smart enough to make products for every demographic. If you think you have evolved beyond teen hacknslash games with mostly naked women, try Fantastic Contraption, one of the smartest games ever made (and it's free too). Or Spore, or the Call of Duty series, which are FPS made for the older group.

Just don't lament the continued boobage in games...because that is something that is timeless.


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You heard it here first, folks.

Like I mentioned yesterday, Reagan's total deficit increase during his eight years as President was around $1.7 trillion.

Obama's newly released budget has a $1.7 trillion deficit in this year alone.


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Obligatory American Idol Post

This week's Idol sits on my DVR, so I can't make statements towards which contestants did the best. I am sure my personal favorite, "30 Seconds To Mars Boy", did well. Anyone who can out-Cher Cher gets my vote.
Anyway, I have seen arguments that the current format is dull, or too bloody. For those that don't know, typically Idol lets America start voting with 24 contestants remaining and winnows those down to the final winner. This season they are doing 3 independent groups of 12, each of which has one episode to pass along 3 winners, creating a "final group" of 9, of which, 3 wild card contestants will be added for a "final 12" which will be eliminated one by one.

In my opinion, this method works much better for finding talent. If only 25% of a group pass through, rather than 92%, there is less chance that a Sanjaya or Bucky can sneak through week after week. The final 12 will be a stronger group.


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My numbers defeat your numbers.

Yglesias, TPI, and various others have all had a field day with versions of this chart, which shows that the deficit during Democratic Presidents decreased as a percentage of the GDP, whereas during the Reagan, H, and W years the deficit/GDP ratio when up.
Now, a quick glance at this chart, combined with some unscrupulous narration, would lead the casual reader to assume that somehow through liberal "magic pony money" Bill Clinton reduced the deficit. Then the narrator could provide sweeping claims that Obama would do the same...and continue derailing the logic train to conclude that modern Republicans like deficits while Democrats are actually the fiscally conservative ones!

This is simply not true. In the comments on Yglesias post, a commenter points to the site containing this graph. I have edited it below.



As you can see (larger version here), during the Reagan and both Bush eras, the deficit did in fact increase. But during Clinton's terms it did also. Could it be the only reason Yglesias graph looks so compelling for Clinton's fiscal genius would be that during the majority of his term he enjoyed an economic boom that boosted the GDP, rather than that he (and his Congressional Democratic cohorts) actually made some decisions that decreased government waste?

This is the more plausible conclusion. Reagan increased the Federal deficit approximately $1.7 trillion (unadjusted) during his 8 years, while Clinton increased the Federal deficit by $1.6 trillion (unadjusted). Bush Sr. did slightly more than half that in half the time, and W Bush...well let's just leave him out of this discussion.

Now during the terms of all four of these Presidents the House and Senate entertained both Democratic and Republican majorities. So if Presidents and Congresses on both sides of the fence were all driving up the deficit with equal abandon, how can anyone possibly think that Obama (and the 111th Congress) will do anything but the same?

It is possible that Yglesias chart will be a trend; Obama will not increase the deficit compared to the growth of the GDP, but based on the gross deficit numbers, I highly doubt anyone in Washington intends to actually decrease overall deficit spending.


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Totally Amazing Site of the Day

Visit this site. Input your location. Enjoy realtime updated starmaps, night or day, including every major constellation and star (with intensity) as well as the visible planets, sun, and moon (with phase).

Very helpful...in case you ever need to navigate by the stars at night and you happen to have a laptop and internet access...


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Engineering

Will Wilkinson on Obama Speech: "Oratorywise, so good. Ideawise, so weak. Combination, so dangerous."

I have one thing to add. At one point Obama says: "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

Very cute phrase, but inaccurate. First, a nation cannot invent something...a nation is a collective unit of people, and cannot "invent" something. Can the nation be the President of the United States? No. Then how can "the nation" invent something? An individual person, or a small group of people, invents something.
Second, the automobile was not invented by an American! The first working (internal combustion engine driven) automobile was invented by Karl Benz and began commercial production 1885. Further German engineers refined the automobile based on Benz' 4-cylinder 4 stroke engine.
The first American to attempt an automobile was by a guy named George Selden, who refused to abandon the 2-stroke engine, which hampered the American automobile efforts for a further 20 years. Ford (whom I assume Obama was referencing) did not actually invent the automobile. Instead he developed the assembly line built, mass-produced automobile.

If anything, Ford should be credited with starting the trend in the automotive industry to overpay workers. At the time, the average unskilled worker earned $2-3 a day. Ford offered his workers $5. Fast forward 100 years, and the average assembly line worker at a car plant makes twice what they make at say...a Tyson's chicken plant.

So maybe what Obama was really saying was "I believe the nation that invented the over-paid union-protected, high-wage, low-skill worker should not walk away from interference in fair wage practices by free market capitalist corporations."


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Dilbert

Read today's Dilbert.


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Obama Speech Last Night

Obama: "This is America. We don't do what's easy."
Tell me about it...

What we do: Iraq
What's easy: Not Iraq

What we do: 12 million page tax code
What's easy: flat tax

What we do: Roe v Wade
What's easy: Stay out of people's business

What we do: $700 billion for annual defense budget, none of which will actually be spent on defense
What's easy: $700 billion for improving schools.

What we do: 2 party, Republic-style democracy
What's easy: Ask Thomas Hobbes

What we do: American Football
What's easy: European Football

What we do: Stimulus
What's easy: free-market capitalism

The list goes on and on...


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Ahem

House Democrats attempt to bolster their own numbers by changing the Articles of Confederation. Similar to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (or the Missouri Compromise? I can never remember) they are offering to give Utah another seat (assumed but not guaranteed Republican) to balance the growth.

Now obviously I am a fan of taxation WITH representation, and the residents of D.C. have long argued they have no congressional sway. However, I am interested to know exactly what effect the Representative from D.C. expects to have; he or she would be only 1 in 437.

People from large states do not understand the pointlessness of the House of Representatives. Kansas, though more than 1/3rd the size of California only gets 4 seats, while California gets 53. This is because the weighting of the House is based on population, not landmass (or economic power). One could argue that larger states should have higher levels of representation, because they needs to more effectively represent their populations...4 Representatives could not possibly accurately represent the massive Californian population.
But if that is true, what is the point of the Senate?

You see, there is the trap. One the one hand we have the House, so that every state gets a proportionally equal say, but then we turn it around and make each state get an equal say in the Senate. You just can't argue the logic of one side of Congress without sounding like you are arguing against the other side.

"But the two balance each other out, like magic!" someone said to me this morning.

If that is the case, then where will the D.C. Senate balance be? And where was the D.C. Tea Party followed by revolution to force this issue? Why revolt when you can just get a massive Democratic majority instead?

And if D.C. gets a seat in the House, are we saying that D.C. (population ~590k) has the voting power of South Dakota (population ~804k), Vermont (~620k), Alaska (~686k), Delaware (~873), or Montana (~850k)?

But wait, it gets more troubling. A simple math algorithm shows that if California, population 36 million, gets 53 Representatives, then that is basically 1 Rep per 680K people. D.C., with a mere 590K people, shouldn't have enough people to get a vote! Further, the population of D.C. is declining, so they are losing their argument that they are a population requiring representation.

Here's my conspiracy theory of the day: Washington will add D.C. as a full voting member of the House, then use that as leverage to lower the population requirement for a single vote in the House. If every state got one rep for every 590,000 people, then populous states would get more votes! California (conveniently Democratic) would surge to 61 votes, New York (also conveniently Democratic leaning) would increase to 33 votes. Illinois would gain to House seats.
Conversely, the Red Stripe (North Dakota down to Oklahoma) would gain zero net seats.
Of course, this is great news to the Senators from New York (who replaced Hillary? I lost track), where 2 seats were lost after the 2000 census.
And how can you argue against this? If someone says "I have devised a way to make the people more effectively represented in Congress" then you must, as a lover of freedom and representation, agree they have a good plan. However, if their plan is instead stated as "I have devised a way to make people in Democratic leaning states be more heavily represented" then you'll definitely raise some ire. Unfortunately these two statements are summarizing the exact same plan.


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And now for a word on illegal immigrants.

In a recent local police/Federal authority joint effort, it was discovered that of the 366 prisoners locked up in the Johnson County, Kansas jail, 292 of them were illegal immigrants.
That's right folks, 80% of the crimes being committed (in which a suspect is apprehended) are perpetrated my people WHO SHOULDN'T EVEN BE HERE.


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Politics as Usual

I really want a single piece of neat science or engineering news to occur so I can post about it. But in the meantime...
This line really sums up the whole article:

"Urging strict future restraint even as current spending soars, President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to dramatically slash the skyrocketing annual budget deficit as he started to dole out the record $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed last week."

Do as I say, not as I do.


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More on the Moore Protest

TAE gains instant internet fame due to this incredibly flattering image.


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Hummin'!

Thanks to Instapundit, who turned my blog into a weekend sensation.


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Blogging the Tax Protest

This morning my family joyfully attended the stimulus protest at the Overland Park office of Rep. Dennis Moore. I have included (as best my ability) several images from the event. All images can be clicked on to view a larger version.

There were several hundred people picketing when we arrived. That's pretty good when the temperature was in the 20's and the wind was howling!


Even some infants got in on the action.


Many clever signs were on hand.


It wouldn't be a Kansas protest without the militia. Go 2nd Amendment!


A small but well-armed contingent of Ron Paul supporters were also present.


It was a fun time, I hope everyone who attended also enjoyed it! Go Democracy!

Update: Still struggling with the HTML, you have to click on the images to see the full frame, sorry.



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For God's sake automate automotives!

This morning, as I was barreling down the on-ramp, I almost killed a guy, twice.I was second in line on the on-ramp, and it was early enough that the highway traffic was at full speed, so the whole gang of us mergers were accelerating like crazy to get up to speed. Out of nowhere, the genius in front of me, who was leading the whole train of us, slammed on his brakes. I was looking over my left shoulder at traffic on the highway, trying to anticipate what hole I should fill, and when I turned back forward the guys' car was no more than a couple feet in front of me. I stamped on my brakes, and fortunately, the guy took off again, or I would have slid into him. Also fortunately, the guy behind me was alert, so I was not rear-ended as well. So I re-accelerate and get on the highway, and lo-and-behold the guy who randomly stamped his brake is going really slow, so I get over and pass him. I glance over at him (not glaring, I promise) and suprise! he's texting on his smartphone. I could have killed him. Twice.

Now, whether I should have had my head facing forward or not and whether that guy has the right to text while driving in rush hour are not the issues here. They would both be non-issues if someone would just suck it up and develop cars that drive themselves. I cannot possibly harp on this one enough, because it is based on technology (unlike my hyperdrive proposal) that we already have, and would save 40,000+ lives a year, in the U.S. alone.

There are several initiatives currently being pushed to automate vehicles, like the competitions funded by DARPA, but most of these are military projects light-years away from being used by civilians, and incapable of handling heavy traffic.

No, what we need is a new initiative. You know a plan is good when you can describe it in 5 steps:
1. Create computer simulations that track vehicle locations in real-time and attempt to streamline traffic through a "Nile Delta" technique around heavy traffic areas.
2. Mass produce automated robotics that control the steering, acceleration and braking of a car and subsidize/mandate all existing cars be retrofitted and all new cars have it standard. Include GPS in this system with uplink to computer servers that optimize traffic and define the shortest route.
3. Test implement this on small towns and gradually increase the complexity of the traffic situations to work out bugs in optimization server.
4. Provide "transition software" to enable automatic cars to be inducted into non-automatic traffic until all cars are converted.
5. Set deadline upon which all cars must be converted. Make deadline less than 24 months.

Now, obviously since I wrote yesterday a seething article criticizing government having GPS in cars so that they could track our location, it would seem strange to endorse it today. But the key difference here is that the primary purpose of the GPS automated navigation system is to save lives, whereas the purpose the Virginia lawmakers have in mind is to create a new tax and have a way to enforce that tax. Not only that, but they are proposing an alternative way to get more tax revenue than they currently are because they encouraged responsible driving, people complied, and now they are getting bit.

A system such as this has several advantages:
1. No need for car insurance, if there are no accidents (where a human is at fault)
2. Sleep on the way to work, or read, or on a long trip you could play games with the family, or stretch out and relax and watch a movie, or whatever.
3. Traffic never stops moving. If traffic can be optimized effectively enough, cars could basically never stop, which by some estimates would decrease the national gas requirement by 30%!
4. Optimization could potentially lead to a decrease in lanes of traffic required.
5. Instantaneous traffic diversion in case of mechanical failure of a vehicle.
6. Increased fuel efficiency leads to less gas purchased by a consumer (not to mention your car could automatically drive itself to the gas station for a fill up when it got low...during the night while you slept warm in your bed).

Of course, this is science fiction, especially in today's uncertain times.


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Field Trip

TAE is super excited to attend tomorrow morning's tax protest at the Overland Park office of Dennis Moore, Congressman from Kansas! See all freedom loving conservatives and libertarians there!!
Also excited to be attending, TAE's beautiful (yet righteously indignant) daughter, who has not been to a protest before. Her first one might as well be a tax protest!


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Mortgage Recovery, more Like U.S. Bankruptcy

By Adam Baumli, J.D.

Several days after the Obama press conference disclosing the Mortgage Recovery plan, 1 thing is clear, this plan isn't the right plan. After working in the world of bankruptcy and reading several statistics, I have concluded that the downfall of this irresponsible order is inevitable.

First, let's look at the idea of saving those who are in mortgage crisis mode. Roughly 92%
of those who have mortgages are paying them on time. Obama's announcement said, sorry to
the responsible even those of you who are sacrificing, but the government is not going to help you out. To the other 8%, those who aren't making mortgage payments, the government will help you remedy your mistake, because you can't help yourself. Obama had the message, "we all need to be responsible and live within our means." This quote is an oxymoron to Obama's actions. His actions say, "those of you who weren't responsible, you are going to reward you. Those of you who were responsible, you are S.O.L." Some news commentators state that Obama's plan increase the incentive to be fiscally irresponsible, that is a bit of an overstatement. What his plan does is decreases the incentive to be responsible. It sounds the same, but it really isn't. In other words, people don't want to be bad more, they just want less to be good. Let's shine light on this with some analogies. It's basically like decreasing the penalties for armed robbery. Instead of it being 10 years in jail, it is now 1 year. If Obama made that announcement, what do you think would happen? Armed robberies would go up. Based on the logic of this analogy, what should happen to foreclosures? They will probably go up in the future. The only incentive that we as home buyers have to pay our mortgages on time is the risk of losing our home in foreclosure. Reduce our incentive, then we as home buyers have less motivation. It is illogical to assume that more people will live within their means if there is less motivation to do so. It is irresponsible to spend other people's money on this horrible assumption. We all mock and shout from the roof tops about these idiotic CEOs who made bad decisions, yet we fail to acknowledge that we may have elected someone more irresponsible then all of them. This is a bad decision, which would bankrupt a major company. In this case, the company is the United States Treasury.

Now, how will this order affect the market? In short, the market will be more volatile and unpredictable. A free market runs with the incentive of money. Money has been shown over time to be the universal motivator. It motivates all of us to some extent. How do we determine the value of money, the market shows how people value things. If people value something more than it costs, then there are many purchases and the price rises accordingly. Supply and Demand, that is how the market works. Now, Obama's plan throws a wrench into the free market and creates unpredictability. The market becomes volatile when it becomes unpredictable.

Let's try to illustrate this with an example, I have a house valued at $200,000. Let's say that I am behind on my mortgage, but because of the Obama's plan, I make payments and extend my mortgage. Currently, the market had situated itself for my house to go on the market,
but now, my house isn't going on the market. However in 5 years or so, it is 50% likely that I will end up foreclosing anyways. In bankruptcies, statistics have shown that those who have done a plan similarly to Obama's still end up foreclosing 50% of the time. Now, the market will try to predict when these foreclosures will happen, but with complete uncertainty. The market is no longer controlled by everyone's value, but the actions of 8% of these people who have shown that they are very undependable already. The market's reaction to complete unpredictability is complete volatility. Complete volatility results in fear in the market, which results in a sinking market. I sound like Yoda. Undependability; Unpredictability; Volatility; Fear; Sinking; Suffering. If the government interferes and reduces these interest rates (which the market determined are correct), the results will be catastrophic. It would be the same as the government saying that Insurance companies have to lower their premiums for people who are overweight, smoke, and drink all the time, basically unhealthy. What would happen, these insurance companies would go under, just like these mortgage companies will.

Over time, outside influence in a free market has never ended with an overall positive effect. Actually, the more outside influence, the worse and more unpredictable the market becomes. A free market always corrects itself because it is run by majority values, supply and demand. This order is trying to artificially reduce supply, which artificially increases value. The only way that this doesn't end up in a swift downfall when the value drops back to reality is if the government keeps up with this artificial interference. Can we as a country afford sustaining this over a long period of time, forever? In short, NO. Especially since, remember decreasing the incentive, increases failures. Overtime, failures would keep rising. This is a recipe for how to bankrupt the United States.

I can't just complain and not offer my own possible solution. These foreclosures are bad, I understand that. There are those who didn't deserve what is happening to them. That is true. They probably make up about 5-10% of those in this problem. Those people who had an unexpected surgery or just plain bad luck and weren't able to plan ahead, but at least tried. However, the expansion of this pool of people cannot keep expanding, if it does, we all drown.
I would say that if the government wants to invest money into the economy, then do it wisely. Do it like a Broker with a PHD in Economics from the University of Chicago would do. Create a diversified portfolio where your low risk investments potential outweigh the possible losses from the high risk investments. It is obvious that the 8% are high risk investments. If it is not obvious to you as a reader, then stop reading and put all your money in a savings account, because you would be the world's worst investor. The government just needs to make sure that if it wants to invest in these people, that it invests more money in safer, low risk investments. As an investor, you wouldn't dare put all your savings in a high risk stock? You would have more chance of success in going to the casino and putting it all on black.

Back to what to do; a recent CNBC commentator said invest in the young as low risk investments. The young have more years to work in order for you to reclaim what you invested before they retire. Invest in education whether through reducing student debt or educational funding. Overtime, education has shown to be the best investment that increases success for a better return. I say at the very least, divide the money accordingly to the population. Give 92% of the money to those who pay their mortgages on time. Those people would now have extra money and have shown the responsibility to spend it wisely, invest it. Their investments should usurp the losses that you can expect from the high risk of the 8%. To those of the 5% who didn't deserve what happened to them, there already is a government program to help you out. It is called bankruptcy. I don't like bankruptcy personally because it is another interference in the free market, but it already exists, so use it. Bankruptcy is looked down upon, but guess what, receiving this money from the government is the exact same thing. Maybe the government should change the name of bankruptcy to government forgiveness. Bankruptcy is designed to help you save your house by forgiving all your other debt. Then, lenders won't lend you money. Guess what, they shouldn't lend you money. You were a high risk and have shown failure, but through bankruptcy now, you can be forgiven and start your path to correcting your credit. After a second chance and starting over, there are those who can and will succeed. Giving them money while they are in financial disarray is only delaying the inevitable. We have all heard the phrase, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for life." Obama's plan is giving out fish, at least bankruptcy is more in the direction of the latter. With my plan, those who fail will be taught, somewhat, and those who succeed (the other 92%) should cover the cost of the failures. Also, at least the pain of going through the bankruptcy process, it is hard and a pain, will lessen the blow to the overall incentive. If I had my wish, I would invest all the money in contracts to private companies to improve things that the government controls that would benefit everyone, roads, ports, municipality development, energy development, etc. I would not have these contracts government controlled, but private entity controlled.

Lastly, I have to discuss a free market economy. In a capitalistic free market economy, recessions are supposed to happen, that's the norm. The prices and income can't always rise, it goes up and down just like supply and demand. And recessions suck, they really do. Recessions are almost like a weed-out system where those who prepare survive and succeed and those who don't, flounder. That's what you want, the strong/smart surviving. For the most part, this roller coaster ride can be gentle and only hurt few people. What has been shown over time is when artificial interference happens, the roller coaster is much more severe with large climbs and huge drops. The other thing is that the roller coaster moves faster as well. I love roller coasters, the more speed, the better, but society doesn't love them, in fact fears them. Obama, stop interfering let this roller coaster right itself.

The American Dream is that those who work hard will succeed, not those who work are entitled success. That is how the American Dream is supposed to work. It's not entitlement, it's desire, ambition, determination, and execution that are rewarded. If you want to only wear 15 pieces of flare and do the bare minimum, then you shouldn't be rewarded with the American Dream. If you want to wear 35 pieces of flare and work harder, then you should be promoted, that's how the system is supposed to work. Over time using that system it has worked and made the United States the most successful country in the world. We need to get back to that.


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GPS

Today's Conspiracy Theory: The government in several states is proposing to drop the gas tax and replace it with a "per mile" tax, on the tune of 1/4 cent/mile.
I guess the problem is that states are losing hard-earned tax revenue because everyone is either driving less, driving smarter, or dumping their SUV's and buying more fuel efficient cars. If the government revenue drops because people start making smarter decisions...CHANGE THE LAWS!!
North Carolina, in particular, has taken this clever little idea and run with it, they want to put GPS in your car so they can track your movements and charge you for your mileage.

Yeah, that sounds like an awesome idea. Let's let the government track every place you go.

I guess all alarmist concerns like this stem from a built-in distrust of government, and proponents of such plans usually argue "what, you think the government is out to get you?" Well, not yet, but yes, I highly distrust the government. How many of those clowns are currently under campaign ethics investigation, tax evasion investigations, have been found to have proposed legislation that directly helped lobbyists, have been found cheating on their spouse, are from families that have a long history of clinging to Federal-level power, come from the Chicago political machine and it shows, etc etc.
The point is, I trust DEMOCRACY, and always will. But any free citizen who has watched Washington from the time Bill Clinton got elected to today has to realize that the President and Congress have been consolidating power and using a perpetual string of wars and crises to justify things that are clearly not in the best interests of the middle class free American.

Since when did the Supreme Court smackdown a major piece of legislation as unconstitutional? They used to do that all the time.

Anyway, enough survivalist stuff for a few days, there are engineering issues to publish.


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Societal Collapse Link of the Day

Here's a good read:

"It was the "Goldilocks economy" – not to hot, not too cold. Remember that? And now it turns out that it was actually more of a "Tinker-bell" economy, because the last five or so years of economic growth was more or less a hallucination, based on various debt pyramids, the "whole house of cards" as President Bush once referred to it during one of his lucid moments."

This puts a whole new exclamation point behind the importance of breaking our addiction to foreign oil, through whatever means necessary.


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Stockpiling stuff for the apocalypse

I'm not serious about this, yet, but here's a funny quote:

"The thing about being a survivalist kook and stockpiling gold, guns, and food is that there's no downside. Even if you're wrong, you've still got gold, guns, and food."

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Taxpayer protest in Phoenix

Great photos of protesters in Phoenix. I especially like the 12-year-old holding the sign that says "I will be paying your bills the rest of my life."


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Speaking of losing track of money

Am I the only one that has completely lost whatever sympathy I had for GM and Chrysler?

Am I the only one who has completely lost track of how much money they want?

Am I the only one who thinks the UAW is acting like the Blue-footed Boobies in the movie "Ice Age?"


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*sigh*-cialism

I haven't tossed out the "s word" for a while, but the latest housing aid bill proposed by President Obama strikes me as socialism in its purest, least capitalistic form.
To me, one of the really, really horrible things about socialism is the government-controlled redistribution of wealth from those who earned it to those that "deserve" it. I'm a pretty smart guy, so I grew up thinking that smart people can get ahead. With a great idea and a little hard work, you can become incredibly wealthy. Like the guy that came up with facebook, or the guy who invented the Snuggie.

But the newest (has anyone not lost track yet?) aid proposed by Obama just seems like classic socialism. Here's how it works: if you are paying your mortgage on time, you get nothing. If you live in an apartment, you get nothing. If your mortgage is incredibly hard to pay, and you've sold your SUV and bought a used Civic, you've deferred your student loans, you've had to carry credit card debt, you've cut back on any frugal spending, and still, your mortgage keeps its chokehold on your wallet, you get nothing.
But if you are 3 months behind on your mortgage, you get help.

There are some people in the country who have lost their job, or been forced to cut back hours, and this aid will genuinely help them. But the vast majority of people who are delinquent on their mortgages are people who got into the housing bubble, and stupidly bought a $500,000 house on a $40,000/year salary (and haven't changed their fiscal habits enough to pay their mortgage on time). Those people will get aid, unlike their slightly less stupid brethren who bought a $500,000 home on a $40,000/year salary and have cut back on everything they can so their mortgage payments are on time.

That's the real rub of socialism, though, isn't it? The government comes up with an aid program that benefits a small group of people in need, and the language of the aid program inadvertantly includes a bunch of low-life leeches who really, really just need to take a bath in the foul waters of their own greed and ignorance, and you use that aid program as justification for taking the money from the smart, the wealthy, and the fiscally responsible and you redistribute it to the stupid.

One other note: often, the pro-socialists cry out that "many rich people don't deserve their money, they inherited it. They're just living a rich lifestyle thanks to their parents brains and hard work. What's wrong with taxing them?" Well, for one, someday if I'm wealthy I really don't want to think about the money I leave for my children being taken away from them and given to stupid idiots because a bunch of liberals thought my children shouldn't have fun with some of it. Also, statements like that have the stink of jealousy all over them...and jealousy seems like an awful justification for legislation.


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Protesters in phoenix

Protesting Obama in Phoenix:

"I'm out here to excercise my First Amendment rights while I still have them," said Tim Guine, 52, a Phoenix sales manager. "Everything that man stands for is the antithesis of what this country was founded on. He's a Marxist, fascist."

In future news, Tim Guine has been sent to an internment camp, and his First Amendment rights have been revoked.

In future future news, the First Amendment has been revoked.


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Tracking your gunshots

Today's conspiracy theory:
The government is working on a new form of RFID which they can use to track guns, and record wirelessly when and how many bullets are fired from the gun.
For those unaware, RFID is a wireless, extremely short range communication method used to transmit data. Here at work, we all have our RFID keyfobs, and they are preprogrammed to let us in the locked doors. We just swipe them past the wall mounted RFID receivers, which is connected to a server. The server then confirms who we are and tell the door to unlock. This allows my company to basically track my movements throughout the building, 24/7.
However RFID suffers two major drawbacks: it won't transmit through metal or water and it won't transmit very far.
The government, as I mentioned, is working on a new technology, called RuBee, which will transmit through metal. The government plans to use this to track the number of shots fired through soldiers' weapons, and also to track how many weapons have been taken out of a barracks, etc etc.

We are only one small law away from having this technology put in civilian guns as well. A tiny piece of legislation could require any firearm sold in the U.S. to have that RuBee tag built into it, like Sig Sauer already does. It'd be easy to say "that way we could find out who stole your guns, and where they are" or "that way we can know if any guns were fired around the time a victim was shot", claiming that its for our own safety that they are requiring this.

I predict if this happens, pre-RuBee weapons will be considered illegal and all owners will be asked to hand them over, maybe as a trade for RuBee weapons. But they'll probably just require you to hand them over and give you nothing in return. Maybe a rose.


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States Rights vs. Federal Rights

I've been meaning to sum up my feelings about states rights versus what I think falls under the jurisdiction of things the Federal Government could do better. However I don't have time right now, so I'll just link to this, a discussion that Montana is leading the way in gun rights, and setting up what surely will soon be a showdown of state vs. federal legality. Basically, Montana is giving Federal Gun Laws the middle finger and passing their own statewide laws that "supercede the unconstitutional federal legislation".

Montana's Gun Liberation:
- Legislation to allow conceal carry anywhere in the state without permit (except federal buildings, haha) has passed in the House and is expected to pass through Senate
- Legislation to allow firearms dealers to buy and sell firearms without reporting the personal information of the people involved in the transaction to Federal authorities has also passed in the House, and also is expected to clear the Senate
- Right to Carry in National monuments and parks upheld in the state legislature last week.

Now, all of these seem like fair enough ideas to me, but what I find the most interesting about this is that they all are clearly things the Federal government has claimed they have the control over legislating. Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not aware of many states who have passed legislation claiming their right to ignore John Marshall.

And it brings into larger questions why we defer to the Federal level to determine whether an issue should be controlled at the state level or the federal level. In almost all cases, when presented with an opportunity to grab power, the Federal Government will grab that power. States, I hope, will begin to see that they have the ability to wave the Tenth Amendment in the President's face, and do what their local constituents please.
Perhaps then we can revisit McCulloch v Maryland, and perhaps we can realize that state legislatures can more effectively respond to the needs of their people than the Federal government ever could.

And then we can all laugh at the irony that the Democrats and Republicans are the children of the Democrat-Republican party, which championed states' rights and smaller government in the early 19th century.


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Stroke of Genius

Faced with a foreclosure from banks who had sold, bundled, resold, rebundled, and discretized mortgages into disastrous packages, some people are asking the judge to require the bank prove that the homeowner owes them money.

And it is working. Banks have, in many cases, completely lost all original documentation of the mortgage, it became a purely electronic entity in their computers.

Philosphy teacher: "Prove the apple I just set on my desk does not exist."
Student: "What apple?"


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Space Spelling Contest

I just don't think this is how you spell spectacle. I may be wrong, though.


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Our quiet neighbors...

Scientists have long known that the Milky Way galaxy contains an estimated 200-400 billion stars (the disparity being caused by the large number of stars possibly hidden from view by other stars, stars that we can now see but subsequently have gone extinct and we are as yet unaware of it, stars that have formed that we cannot see yet, and of course stars that were destroyed during interstellar war between super-advanced alien species), of which they believed many had planets. Planets outside our own solar system are called "exoplanets". Now, a new finding by Dr. Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute of Science suggests that as many as 1 in 4 of these stars may be orbited by an "earth-like" exoplanet. Although the immediate mental image is of water and lush green vegetation, the truth is he is referring to "rocky planets" i.e. not gas giants, which are the most common type of exoplanet found thus far.

This calls into focus the Drake Equation, which was proposed in 1960 by Frank Drake (not the Francis Drake, that guy lived in the 1500's). The equation attempts to quantify through broad statistical analysis the number of terrestrial planets there are, and more importantly how many of those planets have intelligent life capable of communication with humanity. The Drake Equation puts the number of rocky exoplanets far below the number proposed by Dr. Boss; if Boss is correct, the number of extraterrestrial civilizations would increase from Drake's proposed 10 to possibly thousands.

But, one must ask (and they have), if there are thousands of intelligent species out there, why have we not detected a single one? If a person traveled to the edge of our solar system and pointed a microphone inwards, the amount of radio data being beamed outward would be deafening. How have we not noticed the same in other solar systems?

My guess is this: the window of opportunity is very small. Take our own planet for example. The estimated age of the earth is 4.4 billion years. Humans have had the technology to broadcast radio waves (powerful enough to be detected from deep space) for around 60 years. That means that aliens, if taking a random sample of radio data from earth from its formation up to the present, have a 1 in 7,350,000 of sampling during the period where they'd actually hear something. This is significant because an advanced civilization, deep in space, has a noticeable (years) delay before our radio broadcasts will actually reach them. For example, a radio broadcast into space today will not reach the nearest star for about 4.2 years. The nearest star with a planet: 10.4 years. Therefore, best case scenario, the last 10 years of technological development are completely unknown to any intelligent species other than ourselves in this universe.
The same goes for us looking for other species on other worlds. It seems very likely that their "window of radio" would be as sufficiently tiny versus the overall age of their planet, and therefore our observations would have lottery jackpot odds of actually witnessing a planet at the right age to have an intelligent species with radio broadcast capability.
The other problem is that humans may very soon develop a technology that surpasses radio waves for through-the-air information transmission. Could it be that the entire history of radio will be less than 150 years long? If so, one should assume that another intelligent species in space also would find its own radio transmission systems obsolete and shut them down, ending the opportunity for extra-solar observers like ourselves to find them.

Here is my suggestion: there are most likely many intelligent species in this universe, as there are billions of other galaxies outside the Milky Way. But in our lifetimes we will not find them. The small ocean of money we spend observing radio waves from space (mostly noise from stars and black holes), as well as the time we spend wondering philosophically about what it means if we are not the lone intelligent species in existence is money and time better spent developing means to colonize the galaxy.
As it stands now, the human species is 100% totally stuck on this planet. If a 12 mile wide asteroid was detected on a collision course with earth, we'd basically have no chicken exit, no deflection strategy, and no hope. All life on this planet would cease, and we'd be included.
Building some ridiculous space station to conduct pointless experiments (or give millionaire tourists a joy ride) is also an obscene waste of money. All our space efforts must be on developing a method for interstellar travel. Every brilliant mind at NASA, and wherever else brilliant, star-loving minds are located, must focus on this one goal: escape. We need teams focused on vessel development, research into basic sciences of jet and faster-than-light propulsion, artificial gravity, hydroponics, chemical recycling, and immune-boosting. People don't think about it, but if we landed on another planet with life, we'd probably be dead in a few hours from bacterial infection. We'd literally be "bubble boy" come out of his bubble.

We must get off this rocky planet and on to others. Then the First Contact issue will solve itself. Wouldn't it be a brilliant stroke of genius by Gene Roddenberry if our ability to travel to other stars, not knowing if they have residents already, caused us to fulfill the criteria necessary to enable our interaction with them?

Right now we are a race of brutes, pointlessly battling for terrestrial supremacy or even the right to live. But 99.999... (181 9's)% of the volume of the universe is not on earth, and we owe it to ourselves to go out there and colonize. Humans are the most adaptable single species ever created by evolution, surely we were meant to adapt beyond the rim of this world. Surely a creature so wonderfully complex and intelligent, so capable of cooperative problem-solving, so well-endowed with the anatomy and physiology for advanced technology should strive for something greater than just sitting here arguing whether global warming is real.


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Kansas: Its Debt Is Bigger Than You Think

Now, I am not an economist, nor a Constitutional lawyer, so arguing the legality or Constitutionality of income tax is far beyond me. I know there are many who believe that income tax is illegal, and should be stopped. Others believe it is "just the way of things" and don't mind. I fall somewhere in the middle, I think income tax is not Constitutional, but I believe that if we abolished it we'd have to massively increase sales tax or some other tax to make up the difference...or face massive government cutbacks...hey maybe abolishing income tax isn't so bad!

But when the state government in Kansas announced that they were delaying income tax refunds until they fix their budget, I had to roll my eyes. That'd be like if I went to Best Buy and bought a cd for $11.99 and paid with a $20 bill, and the cashier told me she was going to keep my change until Best Buy got their profits back up. But rest assured, the cashier tells me, you'll get your money.


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FDA declares unlicensed breathing illegal, after chemical company patents oxygen

Today's disturbingly believable conspiracy theory:
It is widely considered fact in some circles that the FDA is actually just the pet program of pharmaceutical companies who use the FDA to legalize their piracy of natural substances and destruction of "supplements" in favor of their own expensive, highly profitable (and conveniently taxable) drugs.

Today I have to wonder if this is actually true. In an article I could not find on any MSM site, it appears the FDA has made it illegal to take vitamin b6, a compound called pyridoxamine. This decision comes after a pharmaceutical company petitioned that it actually had created pyridoxamine and it was a "new drug." In a bizarre twist, the FDA agreed. Now all vitamin companies must immediately pull any supplements containing the compound or face penalty (or closure) by the government. All supplements currently in circulation (i.e. in your bathroom cabinet) are considered an illegal drug and should be destroyed immediately.

The reason this is so bizarre is that pyridoxamine is a naturally occuring compound that is common in fish, white meat, and many grains. How can the FDA possibly ban a naturally occurring substance, and how can they call it a "new drug" if it has existed in its current state for thousands (if not millions) of years?

Apparently, this is not the first time the FDA has done this. After it was found that red yeast rice contained a compound called a "statin" that naturally lowered cholesterol, several drug companies isolated the gene for the compound and started making their own statin drugs, like Lipitor, Crestor, Vytorin, and Caduet. As soon as these were shown to be effective, the pharmaceutical companies petitioned the FDA to remove all red yeast rice products from the market. The FDA strangely agreed, even though these drugs were based on a naturally occurring compound.

It seems strange that the FDA would ban obviously safe, natural compounds who have clearly defined positive effects on the human body in favor of unnatural, new drugs. But in the case of vitamin b6, the "new drug" is identical to the naturally occuring compound. They didn't even change it!

But the real conspiracy, if you ask me, comes not from this ridiculous behavior. It comes from the fact that I could find no mention of this article on any mainstream media outlet, and no one I talked to had heard anything about it. Instead, the only article I could find today on vitamins was this:

Vitamins no cancer or heart help, study says.

Unfortunately, I can read, so I read the article. It was quick to admit that there was no actual empirical evidence to support the headline! There was only basic assessments. So the article is basically saying they can't back up their statement, but it's maybe probably true. The article goes on to cover its own ass: "multivitamins may still be useful "as a form of insurance" for people with poor eating habits."

So while the FDA is banning naturally occuring vitamins, the media is reporting that vitamins don't work, based on unsubstantiated research that admits it is not rigorous? I smell the stink of agenda all over this.


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Baby Got (hump)Back

What an awful pun, and I'm embarrassed. But seriously, male whales prefer fat females.


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Stimulus Nears

As the stimulus nears passage, many engineers are wondering how they can get a piece of that giant cherry pie. I'll post a detailed analysis, as soon as the final, approved, signed format of the stimulus is revealed.

Tragedy in Buffalo

Chris Kausner, believing his sister was on the plane, rushed to a hastily established command center after calling his vacationing mother in Florida to break the news.

"To tell you the truth, I heard my mother make a noise on the phone that I've never heard before. So not good, not good," he told reporters.


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Morning Smile

For a good time this morning, google "Amish on rollerblades" then click the images tab.


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Dallas Housing

My friend Adam, a lawyer in Dallas, TX, writes about the housing market in Prosper, a suburb north of Dallas:

550 homes were expected to be purchased by seeking homebuyers in the area of Prosper. There were 7 major developers in the area. Instead of splitting the 550 needed homes between the 7 developers, each developer built their own cadre of 550 homes. This meant there were, in the space of a couple years, 3,850 new homes in Prosper, when only a fraction of those were needed. Once the houses were done, the construction workers that had been relocated to Prosper to do this were laid off (because no one needed any more houses, obviously), and subsequently many foreclosed on their own homes and moved to small apartments where they are living off unemployment.

So instead of responsibly building the required number of homes to match demand, all seven builders bought into the frenzy, and now the housing market in Prosper has completely collapsed.

Wait, so the reason we are in this situation is entirely due to greed? I never would have guessed.

Adam continues:

Giving [these workers] a government job for 8 years and hoping that the economy will turn around by then is not going to solve this problem, it will only delay it until those 8 years are up and the government can no longer borrow money to keep those jobs afloat. Then the government cuts funding to strengthen the dollar and lays off those people. Now you have all those people unemployed again and unable to afford the houses they bought using their government salary. The cycle begins again...

I think he is mistaken here, I don't think the government will cut funding. I think the Federal Fiscal Juggernaut will just keep on down Deficit Lane as long as it can.

Unless we elect a cadre of third party candidates in 2012 (preferably a Libertarian), I see no escape from the spiraling government deficit in the near future. The Republicans and Democrats are both clearly pro-fiscal irresponsibility at this point.


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I should start an Obama Broken Promise Tally

Former Lobbyist becomes Pentagon Number 2.


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Sarv-gyaata, Al-'aleem, Omniscient

I once heard it argued that God must be very sad, if indeed God exists. The argument basically went: if God truly was omniscient, and knew the past and the future in advance, then it followed that God also knew every other past and future, where each person on the earth made different decisions. God, with His omniscience, has seen things I have done in the past that didn't turn out as well as they did, and has had to face the failures of mine that I, by not making those choices, did not have to face. Conversely, choices I made that led to failure were observed by God, who would feel the disappointment that I didn't make a better choice that God (and only God) knew would lead to a better outcome.
If this is true, God must be very unhappy. For this is really a lose-lose scenario, God either knew what you should have done and is disappointed you did it, or you did what you should and God is pleased with that, but saddened by the knowledge of what would have happened had you chosen a poorer path.
Let's take an example. Let's say on my way to work tomorrow morning there is a sudden, massive car accident right in front of me. I swerve and avoid it, but the car behind me is not so lucky and smashes into the accident. The driver is critically injured. God, being omniscient, cannot be happy that I am well because he feels the suffering of the driver behind me that was not so fast with his steering. Similarly, God gets a double dose by omnisciently knowing how much pain I would have suffered if I had not swerved and avoided the accident.

Or take a real event. God knows what will happen to Americans because of the stimulus packaged being passed as I type this. Perhaps things will turn out great. But if it turns out to be a disaster, God already knows it, and is dealing with that. Further, God also knows what would have become of us if we hadn't passed the stimulus. It might have been much better than if we did pass it, in which case, God has to deal with that. But it might have been much worse than if we had passed it, and God must deal with that also.


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no title necessary

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women.

Could there be a better name for a club?


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Air Force requests bailout funding to continue war on fiscal responsibility

My father is a retired fighter pilot that flew for many years in the United States Air Force. He'd be the first, no wait, my mom would be the first and he'd be the second to tell you that flying jets in combat or in military conflicts is incredibly dangerous, fighter pilots have an incredibly high mortality rate, and they risk a massive amount of bureaucratic ire if they lose their multi-million dollar fighter plane. A "good" example of this is when Tom Cruise "Maverick" loses his F-14 in Top Gun and has to stand in front of a review board for all of 3o seconds before he is forced to continue flying F-14's as often as possible. The truth is, Northrup-Grumman would be getting a bill for $140 million, all because of a faulty firing pin in the cockpit hood.
ANYWAY
Apparently in Washington there is significant pressure on Obama to increase military spending. In case you have been in a cave, the U.S. Air Force has quietly built 180 F-22 fighter planes in the last several years. The F-22 is the Air Force's answer to the question "but what if the Cold War warms back up?" At $150 million a piece, it is also one of the costliest non-nuclear armed jets in the air. The 180 F-22's have so far clocked a total of zero hours of combat time, though they've been in service since before 2001.
Gregg Easterbrook:

But Air Force flyboy types love the F-22 because it looks seriously zoomy and is the sole fighter ever built that can sustain supersonic speed for long periods. Members of Congress from districts where the plane's components are built love the very fact that the airplane is so costly, about $150 million per additional copy -- if only it cost a lot more! Last June, Gates fired the Air Force chief of staff and Air Force secretary, an unprecedented disciplinary act for a Republican defense secretary, because Air Force top brass acted more interested in obtaining F-22s for service prestige than in supplying drones to assist U.S. forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Air Force leadership is not excited by drones. If anything, Air Force leadership is worried that drone aircraft will soon put flyboys out of business. (Look up the X-47 in Wikipedia; not only is it pilot-less but it's a Navy idea.) The blue-suit F-22 faction is staging a whispering campaign on Capitol Hill that Obama will be seen as weak unless he buys more superexpensive Cold War fighters. George W. Bush wasted huge amounts on the defense budget; Obama must prove he's tough by wasting huge amounts, too!

It'd be a great idea for Obama to listen to Secretary Gates, who seems to be doing a remarkably good job, considering who appointed him.
As an engineer and a boy who grew up going to air shows, I love fighter planes. But I love fighter pilots more, and I'd much prefer they fly a UAV from the safety of a bunker control station where the missiles don't kill them.


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The Search For Truth

Wellsy, in the comments of my most recent evolution/creation post:

The argument is important, at least in my humble opinion, because it's a battle for truth. And truth is good.

On the contrary, my whole point is that it isn't important.

Wellsy astutely argues that evolution (which is really just the summation of natural selection, thank you for the clarification) has given us understanding of important medical processes, like bacterial antibiotic resistance. In arguing this, he makes my point. The point of that research was not to understand evolution, it was to understand how to make antibiotics work again. Evolution is a tool used to explain the truth, but if I said "God makes bacteria become resistant, to keep us striving for greater medicine and a better world" would I technically be wrong? Can you prove that the random mutations of 0.002% of bacteria that cause their resistance to a drug is actually random and not driven by a Holy mechanism? This is part of the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument...if you can not prove a thing does not exist, then you must accept the possibility that it does.

The point I was trying to make is that Dawkins, and friends, would probably be a lot more effective proponents of evolution if they spent more time finding new antibiotics and treatments for bacterial infections than if they tried to argue that religion is fraud.

Many rational people age 18-29, in fact, over 40% of them, believe like Wellsy:

I personally see no mutual exclusivity between these viewpoints: God created the world, why can't He create evolution?

This is important to note because an effective (though maligned) manipulator knows that if he can control the youth, he is raising a generation that will soon be the working class and if they believe as he does, they will follow him. Dawkins, given this definition, is fighting a losing battle. Although a large percentage of Americans age 18-29 are pushing away from Christianity, they are not giving up God. Many "like Jesus and his teachings, but not his followers." Many profess a strong belief in God, but cannot choose a specific religion that appeals to them.

Therein lies the problem with Christianity as well, the message of Christianity is not to exclude people whose belief systems do not ally with their own. The simple message of Christianity is to first of all love God, one God, and to do so with all your heart and mind and strength. Second, love your neighbor as yourself, because if you cannot love your neighbor you cannot love God. "Christians" who castigate scientists and doubters sound fundamentally hypocritical, and provide an awful example of behavior. The 18-29 demographic notices, and is reacting negatively.
If Christians dropped the strong language, and instead concentrated ever harder on helping those that need help, they'd find their message was not lost to the evolutionists, instead, they'd attract followers to Jesus like never before.

Anyway, my point is that we need to stop worrying about the first chapter of human history, and which text is the correct version, and instead concentrate on a goal shared by scientists and theologians alike: improving the human condition.

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Hilarious Irony of the Evening

Commercial for the new movie "He's Just Not That Into You" was immediately followed by commercial from Zale's for engagement rings.


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Local Megachurch Develops Gravitational Field

Megachurches often run afoul because of the challenges of large membership, either they cannot have a staff large enough to cater to the individual needs of such a large lay, or they lose themselves by having such a bombastic building.
As mentioned here before, Mrs. TAE and I have been thoroughly enjoying Church of the Resurrection, the Methodist megachurch here in south KC. I hate to call it a megachurch because I like it there, but frankly, it fits in just about every way. We sit near the front, and attend the Sunday evening service, to avoid the claustrophobia of the large population of members.
COR is an enjoyable place, their minister is a brilliant speaker, if casually dressed, and their services are uplifting and enjoyable. Their music is very fun, though the playlist seems a bit small. Mrs. and I have found the nursery acceptable for the baby, and we see no reason to go anywhere else. Plus, they have communion, a must for TAE.

But I must, since I'm in such a mood today, heavily criticize whomever it was that designed that building. Utilitarian is a good word for it. There simply aren't any architectural features to it. The exterior is gray, mostly windowless, and rectangular. The interior of the sanctuary has no ceiling, and all the exposed guts of the sanctuary are exposed. The stage has an unusually low ceiling, so the choir in the back seems almost tucked up under the ceiling. The band area overflows into the main part of the stage, so that Hamilton, while preaching, seems trapped on one half of the stage by the massive Steinway.
The whole setup, from the massive screens too far to stage left and stage right, to the intense lighting that washes out the soloist choir while casting shadow over the main choir, to Hamilton's use of glasses during a sermon and not wearing contacts so his eyes are rendered invisible by the glare from the lighting, to the stadium seating setup, where the back seats are a full 40' higher than the seats at row one, all tend to make one feel they are not at a service; they are at a show.
Once again, I enjoy going there, and if ever there was a church where you should judge it by the people who form it, this would be the one. But COR stands as a poignant example of not using architecture to convey the beauty and wonder that is God.

When lost in awesome wonder, do members of the church lay their head back and stare up, only to see black, 40' spiral ductwork tucked up amongst steel beams?

Now don't take it personally, any COR member (or God forbid Rev. Hamilton finds this, I'll be instantly rebuked). The fact is, churches are at the mercy of architects and engineers, and the creativity of the design team is usually entirely independent of the church-goers collective will. So many churches now are being built literally wherever they can find space, like Heartland, which is building a church inside a renovated furniture warehouse. Others actually buy prefabricated, steel buildings and make that their home. These are fine decisions; the churches cannot possibly be judged for it, they did what they could with what they had. But in some cases the church had the means to build a beautiful building, or at least a building with something special to it, and instead they chose to hedge their bets on a slab building that resembles 1970's hospital construction.
Since when did stain glass become restrictively expensive? Surely it cannot cost more than those double-pane, low-e fixed windows that adorn the children's wing?

Anyway, I digress, but since I am attending COR every Sunday night, and every Sunday night I think the same thing, here it is: build a ceiling. If the church had a "special offering, please put in 20 dollars for a ceiling/renovation" offering one week, they'd bring in around a quarter million dollars. Believe me (since I work in the industry), that would buy you an amazing ceiling. My recommendation would be to cover the ceiling with semi-transparent tileing or sheets, and then nest LED lighting displays behind it. The lighting displays would naturally oscillate through the color spectrum, so the whole ceiling became a low intensity kaleidoscope. People, filled with the Holy Spirit, upon tilting their heads back, would be bathed in a myriad of exotic colors. It would be a spectacle of God's grace unlike any seen in the city or world even. It would mix the latest technologies with the desire for a church to fill people with awe.

But anyway, naked ductwork is no way to treat a church ceiling. Nor is this how you design a good church.


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Stimulus Reboot

If the stimulus is really this bad, if everything good has been sucked out of it, and now only a soulless, vampire of a bill remains behind, perhaps this is time for Obama to man up and just veto his own stimulus bill if it passes.
Popular opinion of Obama has not slipped nearly as much as popular opinion of the stimulus package. It would be a bold move, but a very potent one, if tonight on network TV Obama uses his scheduled spot to say "this got out of hand, we're going to start over."
If everyone hates this bill, there's no reason to still pass it just because we worked on it.

In building engineering, we occasionally come across a tough project where nothing seems to be going well, and as the building evolves, the mechanical and electrical systems continue to become more complicated and expensive. There comes a point where you have invested so much time in the project you don't want to start over, but the best thing to do is trash the whole thing and start over. You end up with more work, but every time you do this, the project is better, and you're better for having learned from your mistakes.


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Evolution vs. Creation (Part Infinity + 1)

TPI has a sterling example of the fact that theologists are much better trained thinkers than biologists when it comes to philosophy. Usually when biologists try to write articles debunking faith in favor of evolution, they come off as arrogant. Creationists usually come off as bitter.

However, for me, the evolution/creation debate has evolved (forgive me) into a question of the past overshadowing the present. The big thing religion, especially Christianity does, is paint a picture of how things were, are, and could possibly be in the future. Evolutionary biology has no ability to predict the future, in fact, evolutionary models of the rise of modern humans completely break down upon the advent of advanced civilization, where normal human breeding behavior radically changed. Add modern contraception into the mix, and human evolution is completely off the rails. The impact of humans, arguably, has altered the evolution of every other species away from the predicted evolutionary models. Adaption has had to increase at mathematically difficult rates, in order to keep up with how humans are changing the face of the world.

Contrarily, religion becomes an increasingly cloudy subject to take as fact the farther back you go. I am not arguing, however, that evolution explain our past and religion our future.

What I want to emphasize is that the smartest minds in all history are converged on this topic of where we came from. Did we evolve from little amoeba in the deep blue sea or did we come from the clay? Did we form via spontaneous creation of matter or did we evolve from ever-more-complex creatures battling for dietary supremacy? Did the world form 10,004 years ago, or is it billions of years old?
Why are these such important questions? Is it because both the religious and the evolutionary believe by debunking the beginnings of the opposing movement, the whole movement will collapse?

Evolutionary biologists and theologians must stop bickering about how or why the ancient past happened and start concerning themselves with what is going on today. Is there a way an evolutionary biologist can explain this behavior? Is there a way a Creationist can really, believably explain dinosaur fossils being dug up in North Dakota? There isn't. These two things, in their own way, are unreconcilable to the point that evolutionary biologists and Creationists must "agree to disagree" and move on to much, much more important matters, like curing cancer, or the 26,000 babies that died from starvation last night, or AIDS. Why do we put our complex, wonderful minds so hard to explaining an event so far in the past (to a point where it borders on irrelevance) when we instead need, I repeat need more thinking minds to concentrate on how to fix the present, and prepare for the future.

Stop trying to tell me that the world is 10,000 years old! Stop trying to tell me that I evolved from a phytoplankton that lived in acidic seas a thousand millenia ago. These are both so unimportant to the security of my life and health that I just shake my head that people waste their lives arguing them.

I think the reason Richard Dawkins is such an outspoken person is because he was wronged. Something must have happened to him that made him feel he must get even. I can only imagine what it was. His book, "The God Delusion", turns the ire of any religious person just by its title. If Dawkins wasn't an angry, vengeful person, but instead was trying to educate the masses and open the eyes of the close-minded to the possibility that evolution was the driving force for the creation of modern humans, his book would have been titled "Isn't It Possible That Something Other Than God May Have Caused Modern Humans To Arise?"
But books, and lectures, and debates meant only to debunk one side or another are typically angry, vengeful, and a complete waste of sharp human minds and resources.

And it seems awfully sad to think at the end of one's life, their greatest achievement was they wrote a book telling other people how wrong they were.


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Job Creation vs. Job Loss Prevention

Something central I see as a point of argument over the stimulus is whether we should concentrate on job creation or if we should try to limit job loss. Obviously the correct answer should be both, but since the partisan line seems to be towards one or the other, let's look at which would help the economy now and which would be a better long term decision.
If you give 50 people $500, you have effectively pumped $25,000 into the economy. Multiplier effects aside, the Bush Rebate has empirically been shown that that money does in fact stimulate the economy within two fiscal quarters of its input. Three quarters and beyond, the stimulus drastically disappeared; it was spent or saved. Similarly, a spending spree typically is seen in the GDP between March and May; people are spending their rebates after they file their income taxes.
So the argument for tax credits and tax rebates goes that by providing these benefits to people who are in the position to spend money will benefit the economy by stopping job loss; if I buy a couch, that might keep one more person employed at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Or if 50 people buy couches with their rebate checks, then we might pay a year's salary for an employee there. And that money is spent immediately.
Conversely, by concentrating not on tax breaks but instead on programs to provide new jobs, one makes a much more responsible decision in the long-term, but does not provide instantaneous impact on the economy. By taxing the people with existing jobs, it logically would seem that they are not able to make any positive effect to the economy beyond what they are doing right now. In fact, by increasing their tax burden, their spending decreases (however slightly). So in simple math terms, you tax 50 people $500, and you create a new job. That person, who was previously unemployed, is now able to spend the income and boost the economy.
However, if you give a tax rebate to 50 people, it seems to me that they get to do what they want with 100% of that $500 rebate (as rebates aren't taxed). But when you create a government job through taxation and program creation, that person will only get to spend whatever percentage of their income isn't used for taxes, health care, paying down debt...etc.

So to me, in simple logical terms, a tax rebate for everyone would benefit the economy (by preventing job loss through economic stimulation) more than taxation and job creation.

In any case, this is all getting way beyond my limited expertise in fiscal policy. Better to let experts duke it out, and I'll stick to what I love best: bioengineering.


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The coming Crises

The Newsweek article I linked to below makes a faint mention to "after the stimulus we will instinctively revert to a free state."

Such a comment must strike fear into the hearts of liberals. Which leads me to Machiavelli. Famous for his required high school reading "The Prince," Machiavelli wrote the book hoping to prove his deep understanding of the Sixteenth Century Western world.

One political thought that was expanded from Machiavelli was the idea that generosity towards the populace only breeds in them greed, and pushes resources to the limit. The other idea was that by staying in a constant state of military alertness causes the people to feel they need their leaders for protection.
Soon, and I mean very soon, a new crisis will "appear" that will require the government to take strong action to protect us. The 16th century threat of a foreign invasion has become terrorists, or bankers, or the housing bubble, or Iran.

Just you wait. Call me a crackpot if you wish, but impending doom has become the governmental milieu, the creamy filling in the government's donut of political policy. And the liberals, both in Congress, and the White House, used the Republican's unsavory mishandling of their own "crises" to pole vault into office. So you better believe the liberals are gonna try their own hand at crisis management.

Imagine this:
CNN Anchor: The housing market continued its downward correction back to normal levels today, as home prices moved back towards the 150 year moving average. Here to comment, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Thanks for coming Nancy.
Pelosi: You're so very welcome.
CNN Anchor: Speaker Pelosi, what is Congress prepared to do to stop the housing market from its downward plunge?
Pelosi: Abso-freakin-nothing. The American people built the housing bubble up, now they can figure out for themselves how to cope. Houses are too expensive anyway. We'll keep working here in Washington to make sure the roads are in good shape and that your tax dollars are spent wisely providing short term unemployment benefits to people who have lost their jobs. Oh and we're cutting state aid and Federal taxes, and reducing the overall size of the government, especially the military and "defense" spending. We're cracking down on illegal immigration, because every job being held by an illegal immigrant is a job not being held by a naturalized citizen.
CNN Anchor: What legislation has been passed lately?
Pelosi: We just passed legislation lowering our salaries to save Americans money, and we put a mandatory 2 term limit on Senators and 3 term limit on Representatives. More Americans should get their chance to be in Federal government, to make this democratic process work.

If only...

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We are Frenchmen now.

I, for one, am looking forward to storming the Bastille.


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Familial Debate, Cont'd

TPI took exception (in the comments) to my last post, where I claimed that tax cuts were the best stimulus.

Tax cuts in general tend to have a lower multiplier effect than well-designed spending, but tax cuts received by the rich have a particularly low economic impact. To my knowledge, no one even disagrees with this.

Well for one, I disagree. So does he, and her, and him. And to clarify my point, I said that I was in favor of tax cuts because they are stimulative...and if there are going to be tax cuts, they might as well benefit those who will bear the most load in repaying the debt incurred by the stimulus.

The thing about tax cuts is that it is "shovel ready." Ponderous government programs, or even infrastructure spending, has the disadvantage of requiring time to spool up to full speed; jobs may be lost before the work can be started. However, with tax breaks, you have a maximum of 12 months before you feel the stimulus from those tax breaks. Let me use an example: my wife and I almost bought a house, last month. We shopped the market, talked to a realtor, a couple banks, found a house we really liked, but the house turned out to be a lemon, and needed substantial repairs before it would have passed inspection. Like, $15,000 in repairs. Which is precisely how much we would have gotten in a tax credit if the stimulus passed. So this time next year, we may have bought a house thanks to the stimulus, whereas our current plan (barring stimulus passage with first-time home buyer tax credit included) is to find a duplex and hope to get a house before our daughter starts elementary school.

Now, I cannot argue that tax breaks for the wealthy may not be the best thing, I do not have a PhD in macroeconomic policy, nor do I have much empirical evidence towards one demographic using money more recklessly than another.

However, TPI suggests that tax breaks have a lower multiplier than well-designed spending. This is most likely true. But I fail to see almost anything in the stimulus that resembles well designed spending.
True, infrastructure spending and mass transit expansion is a great idea, but its not quick work, and it shouldn't require stimulus for that work to be funded by government.

One last thought. TPI went after me because the Republicans slashed the funding that would help buoy the balance sheets for state budgets. I cannot tell if TPI is acknowledging that the nefarious practice of balancing state budgets with Federal dollars is done every year! There is no pressure on state governments to balance their budgets! Gregg Easterbrook:

Here's the update. New York state has a $6.4 billion budget shortfall in the current fiscal year, second only to California's budget problem. Recently, New York Gov. David Paterson asked the state's legislature for $1.2 billion in spending cuts -- meaning the Empire State volunteered to take responsibility for only a fraction of its self-created problem -- then called on Washington to hand Albany the rest of the money: $5.2 billion. Paterson said, "We are going to have to turn to the federal government for help." So New York is not willing to make significant spending cuts and not willing to tax itself; but perfectly happy to demand that voters in other states be taxed to bail out New York! Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the state would ask the federal government for a $7 billion loan. So California is not willing to tax itself to solve its self-created budget problems, but perfectly happy to demand that voters in other states be taxed to bail out California!
Perhaps this is what should be expected when Washington is so poorly run; the nation's capitol seems like little more than a giveaway machine. Yet numerous states, including Colorado, Oregon and Pennsylvania, have budgets in fine shape because they did not overspend, as New York and California did; or saved during surplus years (all states had a combined $74 billion surplus in fiscal 2006 -- the responsible states saved some of that amount); or are not plagued by official corruption. Why should the people who live in states that spend carefully and pay their own way be compelled to subsidize government waste and kickbacks in California and New York? And why do the mainstream media continue to depict governors as fiscal paladins when so many shift their problems, and their debts, to Washington?
Here is evidence that the fiscal switcheroo favors governors politically. Polling data from the Pew Center shows that only 37 percent of Americans have a positive impression of the federal government, while 59 percent have a positive impression of state government. Remove the bookkeeping gimmicks that send federal money to the states and state taxes would rise while the national debt declined. Favorable-impression rankings surely would improve for Washington, while governors would decline in popularity.

To which, I must add: California's debt problem is largely owed to the services provided for illegal immigrants that are not balanced because illegal immigrants don't pay taxes (or corporate taxes are not paid on their behalf or medical bills go unpaid). Which makes more sense: further debt the U.S. naturalized population to continue supporting free health care for illegal immigrants in California, or (partially) pulling the plug on Federal support for that state's budget, forcing Arnold "Hypocrisy-Is-Cute" Schwarzenegger to make spending cuts or actually do something to enforce immigration laws?


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Why MIT is the Garden of Engineering Eden

Watch this video, and then realize how small the backpack is that the guy is wearing.

I am no prophet, but I suggest that the laptop is doomed. In the future I see wearable, or at least non-typical interactive computers taking over the portable PC market, while the desktop lives on and continues to absorb the television into an entertainment/computing complex.


Note: All the stuff in the video is really happening, none of it is computer graphics added later.


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On The Contrary

TPI suggests this is not the way to run a democracy. I contend, however, that he is liberally wrong.

As I wrote here, the stimulus package was an engineers dream...spending for infrastructure, renovated buildings, and green design abounded. But all that has been cut. That doesn't make me happy.

Neither does it make me happy that I'll be paying taxes to support avian flu prevention.

But what does make me happy is when one party cannot strong-arm the other through "public opinion" and Presidential fear-mongering. Obama on Friday morning: "A failure to act, and act now will turn crisis into a catastrophe."

Really? I mean, really? What was it Bush (who every liberal loudmouth in history railed on) said about the bank bailout (that had literally no oversight because it was passed too soon)?
Bush: "Failure to act, and act now, would have broad consequences far beyond Wall Street. It would threaten small business owners and homeowners on Main Street."
Neato.

And I love you, TPI, but there was (and is) so much stupid un-stimulative crap in the stimulus that it makes my head spin. I'm not even going to bother listing it, I'm sure there is a wiki entry.
The point of democracy is for there to always be a loyal rebellion, a dissenting vote, a minority who still gets their say. The point of a republic, which this nation was supposed to be modeled after, was a large group of elected representatives whose sole job was to keep all the other representatives from doing anything stupid. Rome, at its best, was when it ran itself and the Senate spent its time talking about how to best spend its time. The more the Senate gained power, and the more power the Triumvirate seized that power from the Senate, the less well off the state of Rome was. Of course, history is always arguable.

But what isn't arguable is that tax breaks do not help lobbyists. The beauty, or silver lining rather, of the infrastructure spending and building renovation spending getting cut is that Halliburton clones will not reap hundreds of millions of tax dollars for subpar work. Yes, it sucks, and I'm sad that "green buildings" will continue to be a pipe-dream. But on the other hand, tax breaks play no favorites, and Republicans and Democrats are handshaking like I've never seen on creating tax breaks all across the economic board. Although tax breaks usually benefit the upper class and higher income brackets the most, so too is the tax burden most strongly felt by the rich. Liberal idealist arguments against a mountain of empirical evidence will fall on deaf ears.
And the argument that tax breaks will push this nation back into consumptionism flies would go against the argument that tax breaks will only benefit the rich: if the rich get the tax breaks, and become consumptionists, and boost the economy, but the lower and middle class are forced to continue their current income strategies in a strengthened economy, then all groups benefit. The rich get the opportunity to spend more money (that they by and large earned). The economy gets the boost in spending from people who have gotten tax breaks. The lower and middle classes benefit by the job growth (in sectors that mainly serve lower and middle classes) to support the spending by the upper class. Like I said, all benefit from tax breaks to the wealthy.

The major problem I see with the anti-tax-break argument is that it assumes a "redistribution of wealth to the wealthy" argument. This is simply fallacy. The majority of taxes are being paid by the wealthy to support programs for the poor. If they get a tax break, and the government eventually will have to repay the loans used to create the tax break, then it will be the wealthy that will pick up the tab for the repayment of the tax credit they received. In essence, they are the ones getting screwed, not the poor; they will have to pay back their own loan, with interest.

So cry me a river about the tax breaks, and the poor and huddled masses who won't get them. Instead, what they'll get is to keep their job.




Disclaimer: I am and always have been against stimulus, and bailouts. Economies fix themselves. But if forced by the Democratic majority to stimulate (immediately), we might as well do it right, and do it bipartisan.
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