Brane Space

As Predicted: Catholic Bishops Oppose the Deal

2012-02-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

Catholic Bullies in action during the Inquisition. From L-R: Woman accused of lesbianism suspended and gutted, heretic has hot wax poured onto his body, papal critic to have his tongue cut out.

Seems Obama can't win. He steps out on a ledge with a compromise deal delivered yesterday to allow the Catholic Church Bullies and their Enclave to save face, and he gets turned down! Well, I warned as much in a blog yesterday, noting the lead story in The Miami Herald which observed:

"But the U.S. Conference of Bishops withheld its endorsement, saying it was too early to say if Obama's policy changed had met core concerns of the Catholic church. "

Well, it seems they decided it doesn't according to a WSJ news notice just received by email:

"Catholic bishops said that they would not support the Obama administration's proposed compromise on a controversial rule that requires most employers to fully cover contraception in their workers' health plans.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had led opposition to the regulation, issued a statement saying that members did not believe their concerns were addressed by a new policy offered by President Barack Obama on Friday to allow religious employers who object to the use of birth control to turn over responsibility for covering it to insurance companies."

Now, let's get it straight once and for all that these bullying fuckers and robed freaks, like their Inquisitor forbears, are not out for accommodation, or compromise. The bastards want it all, and they will not give an inch. Their ultimate aim is to use this as a political football with which to rip Obama -which is why I fully agree with a recent salon.com article, that Obama needs to be more of a secular president than an appeaser of these Jacobins. The sooner Obama understands this, the sooner he can move forward and tell these assholes to "take it or leave it". And if they choose to leave it, then withdraw their tax exempt status forthwith! No more freebies!

You choose to operate in the public domain, with your schools, hospitals, whatever...then we expect you to serve citizens who work at your institutions and not try to impose your bullshit morality (a faux morality I might add, because these turds had no trouble ferrying child pedophiles around parish to parish).

Because this church lacks any moral credibility and as I noted in previous blogs the 'birth control" bunkum is a red herring, Obama is under no compunction to pay attention to any of them out of any bogus "religious liberty".

Bear in mind, "religious liberty" is the last refuge of religious scoundrels, and bullies. They have no more respect for liberty than the Nazis had for the Jews at Auschwitz. Indeed, these same asswipes helped to rescue Nazi-SS butchers along ratlines to South American during and after World War II.

For those who may be interested, this site - with excerpts from the book 'Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis, and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy' by Christopher Simpson, Collier / Macmillan, 1988- is very informative.

Please go to: Ratlines-Blowback

Particularly in the Vatican's role in smuggling Nazis out of Europe - with U.S. assistance. Also the role of Intermarium is clarified. I do hope people-readers find it ironic that a cabal that helped Nazis and SS butchers escape would proclaim so much moralism now with birth control!

These are the brigands that burned the library at Alexandria, then pillaged Islamic cities during the Crusades, slaying millions. All this before incinerating over 100,000 people as heretics, and torturing over 14 million (including threatening Galileo) in the centuries old pogrom known as "the Inquisition". (And who's Office of the Inquisition still exists today- only called the "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith").

Oh, and let's not forget the (1978) assassination of the one decent Pope (JOHN PAUL I) who had intended to clean house at the Vatican Bank and change the birth control policy. His murder is documented in David Yallop's book, 'In God's Name'.

What we see over and over is a bunch of Jacobins posturing and preaching a morality they don't have a clue of practicing themselves. The Vatican insults our intellect by asserting these are all the "crimes of individuals", oblivious to the fact that they are directed and driven by irrational, indefensible and malignant doctrines built into the core of the Catholic religion.

As I said, we need to interpet these Bishops' reply as an act of war on the larger society. If they then want a "culture war" we will be sure to give them one!

How Safe Is Thimerosal As Used in Vaccines?

2012-02-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

In his book The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy (which I admit I haven't read, only synopses and reviews) , author Jim Marrs makes the claim that a vast cabal of global financiers and corporatists, hidden 'New World Order' elites and monied greedheads is effectively poisoning all of us by enabling assorted toxic detritus to flow deliberately into our foods, water, and even meds. The ostensible purpose is to compromise our health to such an extent we emerge as little better than walking zombies ....unable to even perceive how they're stealing the world around us, far less defend ourselves. While Marrs makes what seems to be a compelling case, he ultimately falls on his own hubris by somehow linking this matrix to the designs of "leftists, Socialists" and even Obama. In the end, like so many, he falls into the trap of failing to parse distinctions between Socialism, National Socialism (e.g. of the Nazis) and Liberalism. This is one major reason I never bothered to read the book, since I can't stomach such conflations, nor historical ineptitude (despite the fact Marrs did a very respectable job in his Kennedy assassination book, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy)

One of Marrs' claims does seem to hold true, from my own investigations, and that is the collusion of assorted government agencies in writing off threats to health via toxic chemicals, and even allowing many of these to be used for our own health "benefits". The classic example is the use of fluoride in municipal water systems all across the country, ostensibly to "fight tooth decay".

Some years back, while perusing The Project Censored Yearbook (1999, p. 74) I encountered a piece by Joel Griffiths and Chris Byron entitled: 'Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb.' This well-documented essay kind of shattered my illusions, one could say, especially regarding trusting the pronouncements of government on anything. This is not to say I am "anti-government" - only that I am a government skeptic. I am not convinced in all instances that it will do the right thing, if by doing so it inveighs against their own interests and agendas. Look no further here than their 50 -year long formal claim that the Kennedy Assassination is a closed book and "Lee Oswald done it". Yeah, right! And human virgins can have babies too!

So my experience with the Kennedy assassination alone, leading me to write the book, The JFK Assassination: The Final Analysis, at once puts me in the government skeptic camp, though I might have been less hardened on it- at least in terms of general citizen welfare, before I discovered the Project Censored Yearbook article on fluoride.

Anyway, in that article the authors note that the original safety arguments for fluoride were "developed by scientists working with the Manhattan Project" - as a ruse to counter possible litigation for atomic workers (since fluoride came off as a byproduct). This despite the fact the original atomic bomb scientists had confirmed that fluoride was "one of the most toxic substances known".

They also added that if litigation was to be suppressed, PR had to be confected to blunt any alarm by the public. To that end, government misinformation campaigns began in earnest in the 1950s (around the same time as "duck and cover" gibberish emerged) to deflect the public's toxicity concerns by referring to flouride's "benefits in fighting tooth decay". This brainwashing has since been sounded so often and convincingly that it's become part and parcel of that vast constellation of accepted national verities, and embedded in public consciousness to the extent that only anti-science whackos, rabid anti-tech neo-Luddites or John Birchers dispute it! (So don't ever openly admit to your dentist that you are "anti-fluoride"!)

The success of the PR campaign, meanwhile, paved the way for the concerted work of many thousands of other atomic workers - who were told the radiation from the plutonium they had to work with (e.g. for triggers used on nuclear warheads) was "harmless" and who as a result, haven't been able to collect a red cent though they are dying like flies from some 22 varieties of cancer. See more at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1632228,00.html

Meanwhile, on the "health" front, propaganda was pumped non-stop to the effect that "fluoridation re-minerals tooth enamel" while denying any negatives. This was used to claim that it was essential to fight dental caries (cavities) now widespread in youngsters, by putting fluoride in drinking water. But it wasn't just any fluoride but an industrial waste byproduct called "hydrofluorosilic acid" which has been linked to:

- bone cancer in male children was between two and seven times greater than for non-fluoridated areas

- pre-natal deaths 15% higher than in neighboring non-fluoridated areas.

-impairment of immune system function

- skeletal fluorosis, from chronic exposure, including: severe joint and bone pain, sensations of burning, pricking in the limbs, muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal disorders

- lowering of IQs, in children exposed to fluoride over prolonged time, and animal studies disclose shrinkage of brains of rats exposed to the equivalent of 8 glasses of water per day (See, e.g. Brain Research, Vol. 784, pp. 284-298)

As I noted in a blog from three years ago, the $50 question has been why the CDC not come out and warned us of these risks? I gave at least two plausible reasons: 1) CDC as an arm of government that has actively pursued propaganda (as for the atomic workers, and more recently giving short shrift to toxic chemicals in terms of carcinogenic effects- see 'The Secret History of the War on Cancer') is unlikely to overturn more than 50 years of carefully crafted spin on fluoride. And (2), to do so would invite thousands of suits or actions by communities already using it- and vast extra cost to the government!

But fluoride is merely the tip of the iceberg. We're all swimming in a veritable sea of toxic industrial chemicals - for which recent studies have now shown that more than 20,000 have been kept concealed from us in terms of their effects. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/america-toxic-1.html

It is quite obvious, as it has been for the fluoride (and as it was for the atomic workers poisoned by radiation) that it is a sacrifice foisted on citizens to preserve industrial capacity in areas related to war expansion, or intense industry. Preservation of that capacity also means not having to pay out enormous sums for cleanups, or cancers, or terrible iillnesses that arise on account of contact with toxins or radioactive materials. Meanwhile, people get told over and over that "too much fat" is causing their cancers - whether of lungs, bladders, prostate gland or breasts. Never mind the evidence from more than 80 years of cumulative data which discloses it's chemicals in the environment that contribute more than fifty times as much! (See 'The Secret History of the War on Cancer', by Devra Davis, Chapters 1-4).

The issue of thimerosal, such as used as a mercury -based preservative, seems to be similar in some respects but not all. For one thing, not all citizens need to get vaccines every year, for another thimerosal has been effectively phased out for such use since around 2001, according to the CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm

Note specifically the section therein under: Is Thimerosal Used in Other Vaccines?

"Since 2001, no new vaccine licensed by FDA for use in children has contained thimerosal as a preservative, and all vaccines routinely recommended by CDC for children younger than 6 years of age have been thimerosal–free, or contain only trace amounts of thimerosal, except for multi–dose formulations of influenza vaccine"

Of course, this may be little consolation for the millions of parents who unknowlingly subjected their toddlers to thimerosal - generally from 1980 through 2000, and have expressed fears of an autism connection. To be sure, such speculation has been repeatedly smacked down by the medical -industrial complex and their drug-supported "journals" - as has the notion that environmental carcinogens cause hundreds of times more cancers than foods. However, background research doesn't appear to support such a stance, which in that regard, resembles the one that fluoride was perfectly okay.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. for example, in his article, Deadly Immunity (Rolling Stone, June, 2005)observes that Eli Lilly, the first pharmaceutical company to use thimerosal, "knew from the start its products could cause death or even damage in animals and humans". Kennedy goes on to write that in 1935, Pittman-Moore (another vaccine manufacturer at the time) "warned Eli Lilly that half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal -based vaccines became sick, leading researchers to declare the preservative 'unsatisfactory as a serum for use on dogs'."

Kennedy then goes on to write how, during World War II, the "Defense Department used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers" but reuqired Lilly to label it "poison". Kennedy then cites a 1967 study reported in Applied Microbiology, which "found thimerosal killed mice when added to vaccines". Kennedy avers that "four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was 'toxic to tissue cells' in concentrations as low as 1 part per million, 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine".

Despite this, according to Kennedy, "the company continued to promote thimerosal as 'nontoxic' and also incorporated it into disinfectants".

Kennedy follows up by writing that (ibid.):

"In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over the counter products that contained thimerosal and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, the same year the CDC recommended infants be injected with a new series of mercury -laced vaccines continaing thimerosal"

How much mercury was typically in these vaccines? Author Loretta Schwarz-Nobel in her book, Poisoned Nation (p. 88) cites a San Jose, Calif. medical examiner who took the time to document the concentrations for assorted infantile vaccines:

- Hepatitis B: 12 mcg of mercury or 30x the safe level

- DTaP and Hib: 50 mcg of mercury or 50 x safe level

-Hep B and Polio: 62.5 mcg of mercury, or 78x the safe level

Each of these examples was described as "bolus dose".

According to the author (ibid.)

"When the issue was finally studied it turned out that mercury in the form of thimerosal was fifty times more toxic to susceptible infants than mercury from the consumption of fish was to young children."

Schwarz-Nobel, based on medical experts consulted for her book, conjectures that the reason for this disparity is that (p. 89): "there is no blood-brain barrier in infants so that mercury accumulates in brain cells and nerves."

She then cites Dr. Tim O'Shea, who in his own book, The Sanctity of Human Blood, quotes Dr. Amy Holmes, a biochemist, who states that while "most mercury clears from the blood very soon, mercury in thimerosal is stored in the gut, liver and brain and becomes tightly bound to the cells. Once inside those cells...the mercury is converted back to its inorganic form...it can then either do immediate cell damage or become latent and cause the onset of autism, brain disorders or digetive chaos years later."

Sobering, but the question remains, why do it? The first answer that comes to mind, as in the case of crap like hydrofluorosilic acid (for fluoridate water supplies) and high fructose corn syrup (now in most of our foods) is MONEY! Rather than lose profits from production spinoffs or efficiencies (again based on evil Pareto distribution economics) the crap is used to preserve profits, so fed back to us. If we get cancers, or diabetes or whatever, who gives a shit? Evidently not the powers charged with protecting our interests, as opposed to the corporate vermin.

And author Schwarz-Nobel doesn't disappoint, writing (top of page 88):

"The reason was money. Thimerosal allowed drug companies to package vaccines in multiple doses and that was more important to them than the health risks".

Ah yes, profits over people, where have we seen that before?

All I can say is that if the trope that "The Business of America is Business" is really true, then we are all well and truly fucked, and Jim Marrs may at least be half onto something in his New World Order conspiracy speculations. At the very least, when the global financiers and their banker friends, and corporations (as "persons" with "rights' - to hear Mitt Romney) take over at last, when Greece falls as well as the rest of Europe with the U.S. next, the choice of name for the parasites that effected it won't really matter.

Did Obama Effect a Compromise or Cave in?

2012-02-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

That is the question I asked this morning as I watched Obama's presser to do with the contraception uproar in the wake of his Affordable Care Act provisions. As I noted in the last blog and previous ones, there was really no need to change or do anything. Given we have the separation of Church and State in this nation, than anything a church-based entity does in the public space must be subject to government oversight and guidelines. It is the same thing with these odious "faith based services" which were hatched since Bush's reign. Thus, they are not permited to proselytize using government money that many of us (atheists and secularists) pay, nor can they practice any hiring discrimination, say of gays, Jews or atheists while on the government dime.

It ought to have been the same with Catholic institutions operating in the public sphere and providing contraceptives to workers.

But alas, 100 stupid old celibate male freaks, the Catholic Bishops, got their panties in a snit and were determined to make a political deal out of this whole issue. They were led by the likes of the black- robed Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, a guy obviously oblivious to the needs of Catholic women, or any women!

Once alleged Catholic "liberals" like WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne joined the fray on the side of the patriarchy, and assorted other groups and charities, it was all over except for the dirges. After the Repukes entered and claimed this as a wedge issue, one could smell surrender not far away, I mean, there was too much of a political firestorm. Some women's groups - such as led by Sen. Barbara Boxer, tried to provide some support for Obama's position but it was too little and too late. What Obama really needed was a measured counterforce PR strike to match the intensity of the Reich Wing reactionary howlers and whiners. Bottom line, he didn't get it.

One wonders where the Catholic women were in all this, but perhaps like those suffering from "Stockholm syndrome", they were peremptorily shut down or shut up, either by their conservative pro-church mates or the Church's paleolithic prelates, or the Church's noisome PR that "government was infringing on religious liberty" when nothing of the sort transpired. After all, NO churches were asked to provide contraceptives as part of health plans, only Catholic public institutions like schools, universities and hospitals that occupy the public space - consume its resources, and are granted tax exempt status.

And so, Obama advisors like David Plouffe saw no out other than the one today, in which once more Obama attempted to split differences. Interestingly, in an MSNBC Roundtable, the head of Planned Parenthood praised the compromise and to be sure, Obama's words were that if the church-based institutions refuse to pay for contraceptives (which they surely will) the women will be able to demand it from insurers, and his Affordable Care Act will contain revisions to ensure they pay up.

But there's the rub. There's absolutely no assurance they will pay up. Indeed, it is more likely any of these private insurers will raise a stink about the added expense of having to eat co-pays for contraception. From today's front page story in The Miami Herald (http://www.miamherald.com/):

"The White House says covering contraception saves insurance companies money by keeping women healthy. But the plan is likely to meet resistance from insurers. Although administration officials are right that contraception is cost effective, insurers may well argue that it's not free, either. And the industry might balk at what amounts to a coverage mandate on it.”

And to be sure, this may also be why Obama delayed responding (or confecting a "compromise") for so long because he knows the costs will be enormous and in an austerity environment the insurers will likely squawk and even take their case to the Supremes.

Consider: if it costs on average $600 a year to supply contraception to women who need it, and some 10 million will - under the Affordable Care Act, then that is $6 billion a year - not exactly chump change. Apart from the fact the insurers could drag this thing out in court for years, there are also other strategies they might employ so they don't have to eat the costs - including passing increased premiums and co-pays onto other members.

So, no, to many of us this won't be good enough and the plan ought to have remained where it was: the Catholic enterprises eating the costs in return for which they are granted tax exempt status to operate! As it is, there's absolutely no assurance - not 100% - that these sanctimonious miscreants still won't accept what's on offer from Obama. Indeed, as the lead story in The Miami Herald this morning observed:

"But the U.S. Conference of Bishops withheld its endorsement, saying it was too early to say if Obama's policy changed had met core concerns of the Catholic church. "

So these deluded fools and reactionaries, protectors of priestly pedophiles over the past decade, could still try to browbeat Obama into further retreat. And make no mistake, he can't afford to backtrack again, or even be perceived as giving in to these Jacobins.

So, did Obama effect a compromise in the true sense this morning, or did we witness a cave-in? The answer, alas, will have to await the manner in which this plays out. If women end up having to pay the co-pays after all, and insurers refuse to go along or use court delay tactics, we shall have to take it as a political cave-in with some fancy PR attached. But we will all know by then that effectively he tried to put lipstick on a pig.

Once More: The Issue is Sovereignty of Women's Bodies!

2012-02-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Lost amidst all the moralist hoopla and sanctimonious "religious liberty" crappola in the Affordable Care Plan debate (which has now intensified since the Repuke opportunists have now latched onto it as another wedge issue) is the central question transcending all others: Do Catholic women (especially) have autonomy over their own bodies OR are they mere chattel at the beck and call of an elite of male bishops and patriarchy calling the shots?

If Catholic women answer 'NO!' and they insist they aren't chattel for the male patriarchy of their antiquated church-religion, then they must take arms against that male cabal and tell them in no uncertain terms they stand foursquare with their sisters - both secular and poor (as well as over 1.5 million who need contraceptives for medical problems such as endometriosis) that they will not accept a specious moral ruling as an excuse to compromise an important part of the Obama Affordable Care Act.

They must also become vociferous in repelling the onslaught of Reich wing pigs who seek to use this as a wedge issue to get up on their moralistic hobby horses to try to alienate voters from Obama. Catholic women are at the nexus of this battle, because we know nearly 90% of them already practice contraception anyway, so we're only asking them to stand tall with their sisters who work at Catholic hospitals, schools or other institutions to ensure that any of these which occupy public space (and also receive tax free status) are also obligated to adhere to federal rules and regulations.

If they can't or won't do that, then let them refuse tax free status and go it alone!

Catholic women, perhaps unlike the males (many still Reagan Democrats, aka Repubs), also tend to vote more Democratic than Republican which is why this reactionary drive is also aimed at them, to make them believe Obama is somehow trying to bring their own church down. Nonsense! Even this morning, the idiot Joe Scarborough on his 'Morning Joe' show insisted that the Obama contraceptive ruling was akin to ordering the Southern Baptist Union to appoint specific people as deacons. Aberrant wholesale bullshit and nonsense! There is no comparison whatsoever, and commendations to his co-host Nita for at least grasping that!

Among the tropes being circulated by the right wingers is that the issue "isn't so much contraception per se, as the federal government telling a church what to do". Horse shit! The federal government in numerous rulings with precedents has gone down on record as showing any and every belief or practice of a proclaimed religion can't be condoned. Hence, practitioners of Santeria in Miami cannot at will collect chickens, butcher them and leave them hung up and dripping blood on a neighbor's steps. Neither can a Christian Scientist withhold life-saving care from his or her child - say if the child has c. diff. or pneumonia, on the basis that the religion's "positive mind states" will enjoin a special healing force into action.

Apart from that, federal rules and regs cover a wide spectrum of American affairs, and I don't particularly hear or see the faithers and churchers and their hangers -on bitching when they get tax exempt status! (Which deficits the rest of us, secularists, must make up the difference for!) So spare me the horse pockey about being "ordered to go against one's beliefs". If your operation in any way is in the PUBLIC space, then you are to follow federal guidelines, parameters, else get out of it! If you want to hole up in your own private enclave, fine, do whatever the hell you choose or want!

The real people here being stepped on, by the foot of central male domination, are Catholic women - being told in no uncertain terms that they've no choice in the matter of risking pregnancy and - if they want sex- they have to disavow contraception and be open to "new life" - never mind they may not be able to afford it, or that another pregnancy may cause health problems.

Apart from the holier -than-thou's and their yapping over supposedly "sacred" beliefs which are in reality ancient superstitions based on demonic associations, we see the spectacle of other pundits putting in their own bollocks. Such was the case today with one John H. Cochrane ('The Real Trouble with the Birth control Mandate', WSJ, p. A13) who parades a host of canards including:

"Poor women who can't afford birth control are a red herring".

Showing that the denizens and parasites of the Cato Institute (he's also supposedly at the Univ. of Chicago..."the Booth School", if you can believe it) are as oblivious to facts as ever, able to simply dismiss 32 million poor women with a wave of their pens. He goes on to say, correctly, "HHS isn't limiting this to the poor anyway" which is beside the point, because if the larger constellation of women doesn't receive this as an insurance benefit than neither will the poor women!

The moron next writes:

"There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free".

Again, not so. Rather, we believe that by mandating coverage the government can neutralize the toxic excesses of corporate manipulation within the extant insurance industry. Seeing as how they regularly take people's money then find excuses to deny treatment based on certain "pre-existing" or other conditions! Not to mention how the PhrMA makers gouge customers for their drugs (my aciphex has now increased 250% to $460 for 90 pills) while they use the money for drug -prescription ads on TV and in magazines! So by insinuating such a mandate, some of the money stolen from citizens is thereby returned and justice revived.

Cochrane then goes nuts at the end of his tract, asserting that "birth control" is a "contentious issue" and that the real point of this debate is that NO citizen ought to have to pay for another's use of it. Fair enough, dilweed, then don't cry in the next 15-20 years when traffic is choc-a-bloc and you can't get to your classes on time, and the hospital ERs are jam packed, and your next visit to the motor division issuing licenses results in a 10 hour or longer wait! Oh, and don't bellyache for a hundred other issues - including water quality and use, as well as environmental toxins, all contingent on population. Not to mention global warming.

Some, like this dolt, never learn. But we hope Catholic women will and take the side of the "angels" as they fight tooth and nail against their officious Church hierarchy!

Solutions to Problems

2012-02-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

The problems again and their solutions:

1) Solve for σ_x, σ_y and σ_z in terms of the orbital angular momenta, L(x), L(y) and L(z)
Solution: In terms of the angular momenta:

σ_x = L(x)/ ħ, σ_y = L(y)/ ħ and σ_z = L(z)/ ħ

2) Solve for the spin-momentum operators s(x), s(y) and s(z) in terms of σ_x, σ_y and σ_z. (State any assumptions made)

Basic assumption (borne out by experiment), is that the spin operators must satisfy the same commutation relations as for L(x), L(y) and L(z)

As we saw:

For L(x):

σ _x σ_y = - σ_y σ_x = i ħ σ_z

For L(y):

σ_y σ_z = - σ_z σ_y = i ħ σ_x

For L(z):

σ_z σ_x = -σ_x σ_z = i ħ σ_y

Then, similarly:

For s(x):

s _x s_y = - s_y s_x = i ħ s_z

For s(y):

s _y s_z = - s_z s_y = i ħ s_x

For s(z):

s_z s_x = -s_x s_z = i ħ s_y

And since the spin operator s(op)^2 = s(x)^2 + s(y)^2 + s(z)^2

Has eigenvalues = ½ (½ + 1) ħ^2 = 3 ħ^2/ 4 in both states, we have:

s(x) = ħ/2 (σ_x), s(y) = ħ/2 (σ_y) and s(z) = ħ/2 (σ_z)

3) Show that the TOTAL angular momentum vector, J(z) =

(ħ/i (@/@φ )+ ħ/2 ..... 0)

(0 ....... ħ/i (@/@ φ ) - ħ/2)

displays a Hermitian matrix, where φ is a spherical angle and @/@ φ denotes a partial derivative with respect to it.

Solution: Take the conjugate transpose which must equal to the original matrix if Hermitian.

Then M’ (conjugate) =

(ħ/i (@/@φ )- ħ/2 ..... 0)

(0 ....... ħ/i (@/@ φ ) + ħ/2)

And the transpose of this is ^M’ = M* =

(ħ/i (@/@φ )+ ħ/2 ..... 0)
(0 ....... ħ/i (@/@ φ ) - ħ/2)

So the matrix is Hermitian

4) Show by direct computation that: σ_x σ_y + σ_y σ_z =

(i……….i)
(i………-i)

Solution: This computation is shown worked out in the accompanying graphic (from Mathcad)

5) Compute the matrices for (L(x) + i L(y)) m.m' and (L(x) - i L(y)) m.m' if the angular momentum quantum number l = -1.

This is really a trick question! In fact, the lowest value the angular momentum quantum number l can have is l = 0 which is associated with the lowest energy subshell, s.. The angular momentum quantum number thereby increases with each subshell, s, p, d, f translating to l=0, l= 1, l=2 and l= 3 respectively.

Let's Not Let Them Muck Up the Alaskan Wilderness!

2012-02-09T08:31:00.001-08:00

Scenes from our last Alaskan trip in March, 2005. Top - a scene from the Seward Highway south of Anchorage very similar to the sort of views from Bristol Bay. Bottom: Approaching Mount Denali by small plane.

When last in Alaska, in March 2005, my wife and I got to see many sights including massive wilderness regions near Mount McKinley ('Denali") as well as immense glaciers in the southern region just below Anchorage. In the latter case, we were shown just how much particular glaciers had receded in just the last two decades. Meanwhile, during a visit to the Ice Art Exhibit in Fairbanks, several ice towers (including one 150' tall) collapsed due to melting permafrost beneath.

It would be simple to say that climate change-anthropogenic global warming is the only culprit threatening Alaskans, but there are also more immediate threats. One such is a planned, open pit pebble mine in the heart of the watershed that feeds Bristol Bay, see e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Bay

For those who take the time to peruse the preceding link you will get an idea of an unspoiled "Eden" with vast tundra, harboring crystal clear streams and pristine lakes that span a stunning array of national parks and wildlife refuges. Indeed, the planet's largest sockeye salmon streams run through this marvelous land which also supports an abundance of bears (brown bears, aka 'Grizzlies'), whales, seals, and eagles....including bald eagles...our national symbol.

The problem here is that the effluent generated by mining operations (mainly run by the foreign-owned companies Anglo-American and Rio Tinto) will unleash millions of metric tons of mining waste replete with cyanide, sulfuric acid, arsenic and dozens of other toxic chemicals. None of which are supportive of life.

Little wonder that in the wake of these planned destructive operations, thousands of native Alaskans, led by the Nunamata Aulukesai ('Caretakers of the land') have joined with Alaskan fishermen and conservationists to organize opposition to this impending ecological holocaust and save their way of life - as well as the pristine environment which beckons so many of us when we visit the Great state.

Will the effort succeed? No one knows. What we do know are the following facts compiled by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC):

1) The mine would redefine the word 'huge' with a gaping pit wide enough "to line up nine of the world's longest cruise ships and deep enough to swallow the Empire State Building".

2) The ancillary industrial infrastructure would include transmission lines, and 86 miles of shipping roads as well as dredging of the Cook Inlet, which is home to the endangered Beluga Whale. This to be done in exchange for "a new deepwater port".

3) The mine itself will sit in an earthquake zone near the Lake Clarke fault, a 135 mile tectonic zone and barely 125 miles north of the site of the monstrous 1964 Anchorage quake that set off a tsunami.

In respect of (3), if there was a quake, at least a billion tons of contaminated material could be released into the streams and habitats of Bristol Bay.

We sincerely hope that by the time of our next visit to Alaska, likely in early 2013 for the Solar maximum, the pebble mining plan will be scuttled and Alaska's virgin wilderness nature once more preserved from the ravenous parasites who'd plunder her!

Hermitian Matrices and Orbital Angular Momentum

2012-02-08T12:26:00.001-08:00

We continue now with further examples of how Hermitian matrices and operators play a role in advanced physics. Of some use for the interested reader will be two previous blogs in which the concept of orbital angular momentum at the quantum-atomic level was introduced, including examples of problems based on it. See e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/07/space-quantization-further-simple-qm.html

and

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/07/solution-of-quantum-mechanics-problems.html

For example, we can look at the orbital angular momentum vectors in the x and y -directions, given by L(x) and L(y). Since these are Hermitian, i.e.

L(x) = h/2π [σ_x ] = ħ [σ_x ] , and L(y) = h/2π [σ_y ] = ħ [σ_y ]

where ħ = h/2π and σ_x, σ_y are the Pauli spin matrices as given in the earlier blog, viz.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/uses-of-hermitian-matrices-in-physics.html

and h is the Planck constant (h = 6.62 x 10^-34 J-sec), then it follows that the forms:

(L(x) + i L(y)) and (L(x) - i L(y)) are Hermitan conjugates.

These mathematical facts can be used to obtain expressions in terms of the quantum numbers l and m (see the first two blog links), where we solve for the quantity ‖C^m‖:

‖C^m‖ = ħ [(l - m) (l + m + 1)]^½

To determine the allowed values of l and m one always begins with the fact that if one is given a wave function, U (m,l) one can always generate a wave function U(m+1), l or U(m-1),l by operating respectively with (L(x) + i L(y)) or (L(x) - i L(y)). If m and m' then refer to spin quantum numbers in columns and row rspectively and d references diagonals, then:

(L(x) + i L(y)) m.m' = ħ [(l - m') (l + m' + 1)]^½ dm,m'+1

and

(L(x) - i L(y)) m.m' = ħ [(l - m) (l + m + 1)]^½ dm',m+1

The case of l = ½ is especially easy to treat and we get:

(L(x) + i L(y)) m.m' = ħ [(½ - m') (½ + m' + 1)]^½ dm,m'+1

= ħ x

(0...1)
(0....0)

and:

(L(x) - i L(y)) m.m' = ħ [(½ - m) (l½ + m + 1)]^½ dm',m+1

= ħ x

(0...0)
(1....0)

Problems:

1) Solve for σ_x, σ_y and σ_z in terms of the orbital angular momenta, L(x), L(y) and L(z)

2) Solve for the spin-momentum operators s(x), s(y) and s(z) in terms of σ_x, σ_y and σ_z. (State any assumptions made)

3) Show that the TOTAL angular momentum vector, J(z) =

(ħ/i (@/@φ )+ ħ/2 ..... 0)

(0 ....... ħ/i (@/@ φ ) - ħ/2)

displays a Hermitian matrix, where φ is a spherical angle and @/@ φ denotes a partial derivative with respect to it.

4) Show by direct computation that:

σ_x σ_y + σ_y σ_z =

(i……….i)
(i………-i)

5) Compute the matrices for (L(x) + i L(y)) m.m' and (L(x) - i L(y)) m.m' if the angular momentum quantum number l = -1.

NO! To Any Compromise with Religious Whackjobs!

2012-02-08T09:33:00.001-08:00

Obama's health masterpiece, his Affordable Care Act, has seen enemies galore crop up since its passage, all determined to take it down despite the fact it has helped or will help millions of Americans, including: by allowing adult children up to the age of 26 to be put under their parents' insurance coverage, and disallowing medical insurers from employing the ruse of "pre-existing conditions" to block coverage or invoke much higher rates than otherwise would be available.

In addition, its recent provisions to enable coverage of contraception (which will particularly benefit the poor and working class) are monumental in terms of: raising the economic stability of families which simply can't afford more mouths to feed, and making abortion much less necessary since 6 of 10 abortions today are performed more as a default family planning method than merely "murdering a fetus". In other words, provide real birth control and abortion will become a thing of the past. Beyond this, nearly 1.5 million American women each year rely on contraceptives to provide medical relief for symptoms not at all associated with birth prevention (see the article by Barbara Boxer et al in today's WSJ, p. A17).

But despite this, there is risk of Obama's administration willingly diluting the last aspect of his plan, which will be a major setback - all to appease the frothing at the mouth religious crazies- especially the Roman Catholics - and their apologists in the media, as well as their Reich wing political whores. The news in today's papers, i.e. WSJ, 'Obama Seeks Deal on Birth Control', p. A5, is therefore extremely unsettling. It means, again, the administration may backtrack on the planned implementation of a benefit because howlers and moralistic banshees can't abide it.

As I already blogged,

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/catholics-need-to-make-choice-and-stop.html

most of this screechifying and tumult is totally unjustified because the birth control dictate is based on the Magisterium, or teaching office of the Catholic Church. It was NEVER EVER issued "ex cathedra" or "from the Chair of St. Peter" - meaning it is NOT AN INFALLIBLE PRONOUNCEMENT!

If not infallible, then it CAN BE WRONG!

In his marvelous book, Infallible?, Hans Kung indeed observed (p. 143):

" no one, neither Vatican I, nor Vatican II, nor the textbook theologians, has shown that the Church - its leadership or its theology - is able to put forward propositions which inherently cannot be erroneous."

Kung was questioning the very doctrine of "infallibility" itself, but his statement applies with special force to all claims or "moral proclamations" issued under the Magisterium basis. Why do so many Catholics refuse to see or acknowledge this before mounting their moral high horses?

Indeed, WHY are we paying any attention to this moral posturing at all given this Church has lost ALL its moral authority and credibility over the past decade after condoning thousands of cases of priest sexual abuse and rape of children and trying to cover the crimes up? Do their pronouncements on ANYTHING - whether fornication, contraception, masturbation or even homosexuality ....mean one damned thing? Hardly! They could as well be given the same gravitas as chattering apes or baboons in a zoo or bellowing winos on a street corner. So why pay attention to them?

Regarding the early years when the priest sexual abuse crisis exploded, Clayton Sullivan in his book 'Rescuing Sex from the Christians' cites quotes from assorted sources to the effect that the Catholics' fetishistic pseudo-moral obsession with sex acts has been a prime contributor to a spate of crimes, as well as mounting "anti-clericalism". He quotes Richard McBrien of Notre Dame University thus:

"The Catholic Church's teaching on human sexuality is that every sexual thought, word, desire and action outside of marriage (and some within - as for example use of contraception) are deserving of eternal punishment and Hell if the sin is not properly confessed and absolved."

Which is laughable irony given one is likely confessing such "sins" to a priestly pederast!

But in reading this sort of moralist bollocks one is led to inquire into exactly how the Church evolved to be such a ninny-ish, hyper-scrupulous nanny over sexual acts when humans are largely risen apes and not fallen angels anyway. The answer, as it turns out, carries us as far back as the time of St. Augustine, one of the most influential Church Fathers.

Augustine of Hippo was originally a Manichean, and like his peers, practiced contraception. While he converted to Christianity in 387 CE, the only Manichean tenet he ditched was the contraception. He retained all the other flesh/pleasure = demonic connotations and interjected them into his various teaching including his 'letters'. (For more on this, see the excellent monograph 'Eunuchs For the Kingdom of Heaven' by Ute Ranke-Heinemann, Doubleday, 1990).

Most scholars, like Ranke-Heinemann (and also Elaine Pagels, the author of 'Adam, Eve and The Serpent') believe Augustine's stance altered owing to a passage in the bible to do with Onan "spilling his seed". As Augustine himself writes:

"It is impermissible and shameful to practice intercourse with one's wife while preventing the conception of children. This is what Onan did, the son of Judah, and that is why God killed him". ('The Adulterous Relations', II, 12).

In fact, this false interpetation of the Onan passage is also what is probably responsible for engendering the masturbation bogey. Since from then, "spilling seed" was equated to "onanism" and onanism to masturbation. The acceleration of this erroneous conflation was due to an English Puritan, and physician, named Bekkers. This whacko wrote (in 1610) the polemic entitled Onania or The Loathsome Sin Of Self-Pollution, that one could expect:

"Vomiting, nausea, weakening of the organs of breathing, coughing, hoarseness, back pain, lack of libido, paleness, thinness, pimples on face, loss of memory, attacks of rage, madness, idiocy, malapropism, epilepsy, nightly ejaculations, stiffness, fever, and finally suicide".

Thereby recounting almost every normal human travail, but in his mind.....all as a result of practicing the solo act of sex relief (which if recent sexual statistics are to be believed, is practiced much more frequently among all races and nationalities than all other sex acts combined!)

Of course, the then Church seized on this and extrapolated it to contraception, thereby equating that to "mutual masturbation".

Now, getting back to Onan - his sin was in reality neither a form of contraception (coitus interruptus) or masturbation but rather an offense against the Hebrew law of succession wherein the nearest male relative of the deceased husband is obligated to fertilize the wife. He refused, spilled his seed instead, and was guilty - not of seed-spilling but refusing provision for succession.

Now, Augustine's Manichean teachings (after his conversion) held that any sexual pleasure whatsoever was diabolical in origin. However, it could be countenanced IF a baby was the end product. Otherwise, the offending parties were "trafficking with demons" . (He cites at one point, for "proof", the demon Asmodeus, "who slew seven men in 7 beds with seven women, but not when they were sitting at a table.")

Before I continue, can anyone ....anyone with a grain of sense and intelligence inform me as to why a Church in the 21st century is harkening back to such horse shit as a means to lead its nearly 1 billion followers? (I will return to this at the end!)

Augustine's harsh and sterile dogmas probably spurred the Church Father Origen (of Adamantius) to cut off his own sexual organs because he was unable to control them. Since each 'stimulus' enabled a particular demon (e.g. Asmodeus, Belial, Baal) to gain a foothold, it was better to get rid of the putative pudendal avenues.....offenders?.... entirely. So much for nightly boners!

The poison of the Church's fraudulent, misguided teachings goes even further than this, as noted by former Franciscan priest Emmet McLoughlin (Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church, 1962, Lyle Stuart Books). That is, unlike the Manicheans, they include sins of THOUGHT. Thus a person who even briefly entertained an "impure thought" could as easily be earmarked for hell as one who actually committed the acts. McLoughlin blames this implanted neurosis for the astounding and disproportionate number of Catholics then in psycho wards and in prisons (cf. 'Let the Statistics Tell Their Tragic Story' , pp. 189- 214, 1962).

"Natural law" itself was fashioned mostly on the basis of the cogitations of St. Thomas Aquinas, who in turn was influenced by Augustine. It is also important to note, that natural law applied to more than just sexual issues - but those are the ones it's most often tied into. For example, slavery also used to be justified under natural law, since the Church's Fathers argued that some men were "naturally unable to govern themselves and had to be told what to do. This was for their own good". (See: 'Contraception and Holiness: The Catholic Predicament')

What do we find from all this? The common thread throughout Church history is the pre-occupation with and obsession over minor sexual acts, commonly performed- those that every human being does ....some more frequently, some less. This includes even including sexual fantasies (also widespread) as earning a person's "soul" a spot in the nether regions of Hell, probably with the most fire.

So what's up with this continued antiquated defense of these indefensible moralistic suppositions when any sane religion ought to have retired them to the same place as torture of heretics, and burning the feet and genitals of sexual apostates in boiling oil? The short answer? It continues a pseudo-manifestation of power since this pathetic Church has lost it in most other arenas. It is no longer a worldly power like it was at the time of the Borgias, nor are its derelict doctrines even paid much attention to as it experiences the largest ouflow from its membership of any Christian sect each year. (Some 22 million Catholics have said hasta la vista in the past 10 years according to Pew Research study).

The only thing that halfway keeps it afloat in this country is new immigrants, mainly from largely Hispanic nations like Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua etc.

And what about clinging to these archaic doctrines like for contraception? (Which, btw, Pope Paul VI's own Papal commission recommended he reject lest the Church lose its larger moral perspective. The Pope, prodded by the likes of antiquated Cardinals in the Curia refused, and the rest is history). The reason is simple: to be able to exert control over their flock’s collective gonads and hence their very lives. (See also the excerpts attached from Arthur C. Clarke's published views on the previous pope and contraception, from a 1993 issue of Free Inquiry).

So long as these moral charlatans have their easily duped members by the balls, how far will they stray? Recall most still believe in the absurd Hell bogey. Hence, we see even some Catholic University students - as one ABC News last night- prepared to hold out and defend "Holy Mother Church" from having to accept them nasty contraception plans Obama's Health plan would impose. Bull shit! Holy Mother church is a wreck and needs to get with the program. That means putting her antiquated, ancient Manichean teachings concerning sex and demons - as first taught by Augustine, into mental dumpsters.

But ....will she do that? Hell no, because to do so is essentially (in her mind) to relinquish the last vestiges of temporal and political power. I mean, look how many insane ideological whore politicos are coming to her defense, everyone from Newtie (who abandoned one wife who had cancer for another with which he wanted a "threesome") to Mitch McConnell, the same asshole that wanted to strip Medicare to its bare bones.

Meanwhile, we also see the corporate media going into overdrive trying to paint any resistance to the "Church's moral prereogatives" as inviting some sort of electoral cataclysm for Obama in November. I fucking doubt it! The fact is there is NO where else for sane people to go with their votes! I mean, c'mon! I am talking to YOU Catholics out there too! You're going to pitch a hissy fit if Obama allows his original contraceptive rules to go through and vote for MITT? The multi-millionaire who doesn't even know the cost of a gallon of milk or loaf of bread? Who joked about making a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry during the Repuke debates and later insisted that "$340 grand isn't that much money" referring to what he received in speaking fees. So he very likely doesn't know what your heating oil costs are each month either! And NEWTIE? Are you fucking kdding me? This is the guy that wants to at once, hatch a colony on the Moon but also whose tax plan will create an $850 billion deficit in its first year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

And we won't even consider Ron Paul who wants to locate where all the Federal Reserve "black helicopters" are based (after he gets rid of the Fed), and would chuck all our money out as "fiat". Nor Rick Santorum, who's made it abundantly clear he'd like to issue an Executive Order prohibiting all contraception, and all abortions even in the case of rape and incest. So, Catholics are going to vote for THESE clowns, or do it via default, by not voting at all? Don't make me laugh! If Catholics do go this route, they're a lot more stupid and ignorant than even I thought - especially to defend a pseudo-moral teaching that went out with demons hiding in food (as described in the Compendium Malleficarum, demons often had to be "exorcised" from food boli, usually after being vomited up. Special attention was generally paid to "hairballs" ejected from felines and one reason millions of felines were incinerated as "familiars").

According to White House spokesman Jay Carney (WSJ, ibid.):

"There are ways, I think, to help resolve this issue that ensures we provide that important preventive service, that health care coverage to all women,...in a way that also tries to allay some of these concerns."

But Jay, I can't see it! How do you compromise with freaks - religiously -deluded fruitcakes, that still hold to doctrines that date back to the epoch of belief in demons obscuring themselves in food boli, and partaking of human sex acts? You can't make nice with insanity! You can't reason with these archaic nitwits or compromise in any way that supports rationality!

The only other way is unfair - mentioned in today's WSJ piece as being modeled after the existing plan in Hawaii, whereby employees who wish contraceptives have to pay the premiums out of their own pockets. (The result is no employer funds go to contraception).

But that means the less economically advantaged will suffer. The people, workers, who probably most need the availability of contraceptives, to prevent having more kids they can't support, will have to do without....and either give up sex, or ....take their chances. And if they lose in the latter lotto, likely resort to abortion.

This is a compromise that can't be made any more than squaring a circle. The effective compromise has already transpired and it allowed the Catholics to withhold contraceptives from their own members. They must not be allowed to do that for secular citizens who seek care at their hospitals, or work at their institutions. If they can't abide by that, then exact full penalties and let devil take the hindmost. And if they're insane enough to vote for a Mitt, a Newt or other GOOP, then so be it. I personally don't believe they are that disconnected from reality or stupid!

The unsavory but true fact in this whole charade is that it's not about "religious liberty" at all. Not any more than the Komen fiasco was about about abortions a week ago. In each case, powerful reactionary forces have used religious or moral fronts to seize on some issue to attempt to shatter the electorate and render an Obama victory much less likely. These degenerates can only succeed if we allow them to, especially those in the targeted "victim" groups (such as Catholics, or Komen supporters). Will they be the willing pawns for the nefarious moves of wealthy fascists, including corporate powers and the Koch brothers, or will they awaken to see how they're being played? We will have to hope the latter happens, but it needs to happen soon!

Again- A BAD Idea Proposed for Money Market Funds!

2012-02-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Money market funds might be called the life blood of capitalist society in that their (fixed income or nearly so) assets provide an important source of credit for companies which will then use it for expanding plant, or labor. In an environment in which credit is still very tight (thanks to the banks) this can be the difference between business failure and success. Hence, in any context in which one will be discussing jobs or the need to keep jobs or increase them, money market funds will have to enter the conversation.

Now, the tragedy is that these funds' assets appear to be shrinking as disclosed in the attached graphs from today's Wall Street Journal (p. 2, and front page 'U.S. Set Money-Market Plan'). As one can see from the left graph, the total U.S. assets have decreased from nearly $3.8 trillionin 2008 (when the financial crisis and especially the Lehman failure hit) to about $2.7 trillion now. Meanwhile, the number of these funds has decreased to 632.

Now, who invests in these funds? Largely little guy investors who are near retirement and don't wish to lose their shirts or homes in another stock market crash ...and make no mistake a new bubble is brewing what with Fed policies and cheap money (based on near zero interest rates) likely to continue through 2014. Thus, those within about 3 weeks of retiring, like my wife, must - to protect their nest egg assets- move 401k monies into an IRA which has basically only money market funds to offer as the safest option. (No Treasuries or bonds).

But what if, say, an investor who depends on this money to support a lengthy retirement wakes up one morning to discover that the total money in that IRA money market fund has shrunken by 50% or more? What then? What if the next day the total decreases another 20%? Then the next day it goes up maybe 10% but then down 15%? What kind of an effect do you suppose this will have on the prospective retiree who depends on a fixed income to make budgeting decisions?

And yet, evidently the illustrious Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of new proposals to "minimize any losses for shareholders in the event of another financial panic" (ibid.) are planning to "float" money markets, which means leaving them exposed to variable daily fluctuations like mutual funds - the very things that cratered most small investors 401ks in the 2008 crash! According to the WSJ piece:

"The SEC plans to propose scrapping the money funds fixed $1 net asset value and make it floatable like other mutual funds"

The problem, of course, is that money market funds aren't supposed to be "like other mutual funds" because they are supposed to be the last haven where small guy investors can go to preserve principal, as opposed to taking humongous losses in the stock market. (Realize here that mutuals are comprised of all the nasties resident in stocks, including derivatives that are buried in equities). In this sense, one can question the SEC objective "to minimize any losses for shareholders ". Because if floating NAV is on the table, what this really translates to is "letting them maybe lose their homes or cars but not their shirts and food". Minimized, get it! You still have a "floor" for maximum loss, but now a lot lower than before!

What is behind this nonsense? Enraged small investors faced with possible floating rates can blame a largely Gooper congress and the Dodd-Frank bill - which had to be tailored to what the GOP House wanted if it was to pass. That included absolutely, positively NO more government "bailouts" of any financial funds, including money markets. Recall here that the money market fund called "Reserve Primary" broke the buck (e.g. went below its designated one dollar parity NAV) in 2008 and at that time the ensuing panic subsided only after the Fed and the Treasury Dept. stepped in to backstop the funds and provide the $$ to ensure $1 parity. Well no more. According to SEC Chairwoman, Mary Schapiro, quoted in the WSJ article (p. A2):

"At the end of the day, the taxpayer simply can't be on the hook for failure, and the tools to ameliorate a run that existed in 2008 when Reserve broke the buck don't exist any more."

In other words, all the small investors, mainly soon to be or already retirees, are now on the hook for the losses if any, that a new panic brings. They - who are also taxpayers- now face losing principal as well as losing to inflation because of the Fed's zero interest, pro stock market policies. But as my wife observed, maybe that's why the SEC is taking this step, to drive people into the stock market via regular mutual funds.

The victim in any case is the money market fund holder, especially since money market funds are about the only safe (e.g. relatively fixed income) option afforded in most IRAs and 401ks. So, if floating share prices are now allowed, the money market investor may lose as much (theoretically) as if he were invested in certain "balanced" mutual funds, or index funds. Now sure, the float could also go upward, rewarding the investor, but once any variable share value emerges then we have speculation and propensity for market timing. Obviously, money market investors will attempt to play it so they cash out at the highest floated share price, not the lowest. This then introduces the same sort of gamesmanship that occurs in the Wall Street stock casino

Of course, this is only one of several major complaints of fund managers, others are concerned with new liquidity rules and lending. A "liquidity fee" is also being bruited about. Needless to say there are some unhappy campers. For example, J. Christopher Donahue of Federated Investors, Inc,. plans to sue the SEC if the new regulations interfere with his firm's ability to do business.

A worse consequence is that many small fry will pull money out of these things regardless, especially if the floating aspect is enacted. The end result could be the loss of trillions of dollars for business credit in an already low demand environment.

All in all, this proposal of floating the NAV for money market funds, which provide the ballast of credit for American businesses, is a horrific idea. It is much fairer to ALL money market investors to keep the $1 share price as the standard, and leave the variable rates optional for Funds that wish to offer more speculative instruments. The choice is therefore one the SEC needs to make for opt for minimal moral failure as opposed to "minimizing shareholder losses": i.e. not turn the immense money market sphere into another speculative domain - to the detriment of all cautious savers- who may need all the money they can muster to live off a lifetime income stream via annuities or RMDs.

They chose not to speculate in the stock market, and they should not now be compelled to do so in money markets. SEC, take note!

Did the GIANTS Deserve Their SB XLVI Win? Of Course!

2012-02-06T09:59:00.002-08:00

"Homer fan derangement syndrome" is not a pretty sight to behold. In fact, it's downright ugly and bespeaks the intermittent seizures of insanity and irrationality that can overcome pro football fans if their team doesn't make it to the highest mountain and win - in this case the SuperBowl. Well, Superbowl XLVI is now in the books, and the New York Giants 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots has set off this peculiar derangement syndrome in multiple cities - generally expressed on their assorted (newspaper) football forums.

On the New England Patriots (boston.com) boards one sees it expressed multiple ways, ranging from the purely zany and idiotic to the off the wall. Of course, Pats' fans would feel horrible after 100% investing themselves in the belief they'd exact revenge for the Giants beating them in SuperBowl XLII and ruining their perfect season and place in NFL history. Thus it is partly understandable that Pats fans at Univ. of Massachusetts might go ape shit and riot after the loss, unable to handle the inability to get that revenge.

Then there were assorted other comments on the boards, including to the effect the refs "blew the call of a safety" on Tom Brady (giving the Giants 2 early pts.), insisting there was no such thing. (Really? Look at it again and then consult the NFL Rules Book!) Another whined that the "Zebras muffed the call on Manningham and he was clearly out of bounds". Errr...don't think so! Look at the still AP photo in this morning's papers clearly showing Giants receiver Manningham with both feet in bounds and hands securely wrapped around the ball.

But see, in the case of fan derangement syndrome, the reality or facts of the matter don't mean a thing! These are easily swept under the rug of the obsessive fan's perceptions and converted into either the "luck" of the opponent (and I do admit the Giants had some luck in recovering two would be fumbles the Pats might have had) or that the "refs gave the calls away" or made miscalls.

Nowhere is this fan derangement more entrenched than the NE boards, but a close runnerup manifestation still persists on the Green Bay Packer forums of the Milwaukee Journal -Sentinel (http://www.jsonline.com/) where assorted Pack fans continue to make such wacked out statements as "The Giants are the worst team to ever win a SuperBowl" and "It was all luck, luck, luck...."

But, of course, the trouble with the luck argument is that it turns two ways. One could also argue the Packers were "lucky" in most of their 13-0 run this past season, pulling out cardiac last minute wins thanks to Aaron Rodgers, until they met a 6-8 Kansas City team that exposed their defensive flaws. I.e. had the Pack D been able to make one critical stop near the end of the game (like the Giants' D did last night leaving time for Eli Manning to work his 3-minute magic) they'd have won that KC game 14-12 as opposed to blowing it, 19-14.

Some other pro Green Bay commenters also want to claim, lamely "the only team that could beat the Packers this year was the Packers themselves" then pointing to the 37-20 playoff victory of the Giants at Lambeau and Aaron Rodgers "not being 100% on target, 8 drops and 3 fumbles". But this trickery of syntax merely shows fans' degree of derangement and how that impinges their perceptions - just as it did with NE Pats fans.

The truth is that Rodgers probably played fairly but - unlike Eli Manning- tried to force the ball in certain situations and paid the price. Eli basically took what the Patriots gave him, and Rodgers wanted more. In addition, Rodgers rhythm was thrown off by the relentless pressure inside imposed by the likes of Giant defenders Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre-Paul. This made him rush throws when he didn't want to make them, and worse, made him try to overcome press coverage on his WRs - ending in two sacks. As for those eight drops, let's be frank, at least five were due to Pierre-Paul's disruption of Packer slot receivers near the line of scrimmage - causing slightly delayed running of assigned routes.

Obviously then, if Rodgers is throwing to the location a receiver is supposed to be, as opposed to where he actually is (even if off by barely a yard) there will be a dropped pass because it's competent execution depends on precise location. The G-men knew this which was exactly why they consistently bumped Pack wideouts. But the hardnosed Pack fans don't want to hear this, they refuse to "give Jack his jacket" meaning the Giants the credit they deserve. They want to lay all the blame on the Pack "playing its worst game at the worst time".

But think about this logically. Does a 15-1 team (then) bruited to the "best"- and which has effectively THREE weeks to prepare for the biggest game of the season and also play at HOME, merit any consideration as a putative worthy champion or champion to be if it can't carry out the win? And against a 9-7 regular season opponent? I don't believe so! Instead, the Pack - this year's version - disclosed themselves to be a pretender with a flawed and suspect defense incapable of making critical 3rd down stops.

But will the deranged fans on the Packer boards admit this? Hell no! It was "all luck, luck, luck" for the Giants, or as one guy put it: "Sometimes its better to be lucky than good". Totally missing the irony that last year Giants' fans might have said the exact same thing about the then 10-6 Packers, lowest seeded of all NFC teams, then making a run and taking the prized Lombardi trophy at the end. It's all relative and all a matter of perspective, but one thing that's become common in all these late season, lower-seeded champs is that they make their own luck!

It is clear to the dispassionate football observer over the past ten years, that the older paradigm of the top seeded team getting to the show has been replaced by the newer paradigm of the late, hot lower seed. Look, in the past 5 years, at No. 6 seed Pittsburgh getting the Lombardi, and the No. 6 Packers getting it last year, while the No. 4 Giants got it this year. Did all these teams prevail merely by luck? Well, maybe a little, but much more in doing the hard work and preparation, and mounting a full steam of gas when most needed.

What the deranged fan needs to do, instead of dumping on the victorious lower seeded team, is maybe realize that his team was so favored in previous years and also.....maybe being the top seed isn't worth all it's cracked up to be! New England was the No. 1 AFC seed and look at what happened to them in the SuperBowl. Meanwhile, the Packers were the No. 1 NFC seed this year and the 49ers were No. 2 and both were beaten by the Giants in the second and third rounds of the playoffs.

Sometimes, it pays to be just plain GOOD at the right time, rather than depending only on luck! In this regard, the telltale words of Packer defender Charles Woodson, quoted in The Green Bay Press -Gazette two weeks (ago about the Giants win over Green Bay in the playoff ) is one every deranged fan ought to heed:

"They just wanted it more than we did".

So, maybe desire is what trumps luck and maybe ebbing of desire, or "fire in the belly" is one affliction that befalls previous SuperBowl champs.

"Coming Apart?" - Charles Murray's Arguments After This Last Book!

2012-02-05T10:23:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was the venomous (and rightfully earned) backlash Charles Murray received after his ridiculous earlier book, The Bell Curve (in which he attempted to tie IQ to racial genetics, with African-Americans and Latinos at the lower end of "the Bell Curve" which prompted his new effort. Maybe he was convinced it was time to redress his earlier imbalance. Well, he succeeds, this time in recounting how working class whites are detaching from the "four founding virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion". In any case, he attributes their failure to hold up these four props as explaining why they are perhaps now embracing government "entitlements" and in the process reducing their collective IQ. Well, a bald and brash hypothesis if you can prove it!

Murray can't, any more than he could prove his earlier specious theory, but as before he goes out of his way to dredge up countless statistics to attempt to make his case that way. For example, we learn that in blue-collar America (in contrast to the white upper class in which divorce rates hav declined) divorce has soared since the 1980s, and nonmarital child-bering is skyrocketing Worse and worse, 40% of white females with just a high school diploma have children outside of marriage, compared to 5% with college degrees.

But while intriguing, none of these state make his case. Bear in mind, as I have noted before - it is a hallmark of classic Libertarians to try to invoke to blame victims of an oppressive system, int hie case one dominated by global capitalsm, as opposed to the system itself. The pervasive blame game that pervades the media then leads to the "fundamental attribution error" among the victims, making them believe they are responsible for their plight as opposed to a system stacked against them.

Thus, white lower class marriages are collapsing not because of some innate brutish carnality but because of the severe economic pressures imposed when jobs are lost by the tens of millions, sent overseas to India or China, while the Americans left behind jobless (mainly working class) are left to try to scrape through on minimum wage jobs. All this has been extensively documented by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca in their book: The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, Addison-Wesley, 1997. They meticulously detail the global capitalist-enegendered coercive market in labor, which promotes a long term "race to the bottom" and with accompanying horrific social costs .

So, obviously, when jobs are lost en masse and new training doesn't succeed in replacing them, even as homes are foreclosed and debts mount, of course marriages will fall victim - comprised as they are of individuals who will be adversely affected from their own senses of worth to their bank accounts.

But never mind that the Libertarians, like Murrary, in their dream world insist the displaced millions can land on their feet if resourceful enough. Or, if they just had high enough IQs! And didn't depend on government "entitlements" that depress ambition and lead to mass stupidity. But let us always bear in mind this is the Libertarian trademark: to call 'foul' at any effort government might exert to support struggling citizens, even when its own tax policies have enabled the shipment of millions of jobs overseas with no penalties. And of course Murray IS a Libbie, first and foremost!

Murray writes in his tract: ‘What it means to be a Libertarian’ (p. 6):

“It is wrong for me to use force against you, because it violates your right to control of your person....I may have the purest motive in the world. I may even have the best idea in the world. But even these give me no right to make you do something just because I think it's a good idea. This truth translates into the first libertarian principle of governance: In a free society individuals may not initiate the use of force against any other individual or group”

Of course, this is also undoubtedly where the pet Libertarian canard that “taxes equal theft’ comes from. But looking at it objectively this is arrant twaddle and illogical to boot. I mean “libertarian principle of governance”! This is an oxymoron! Governance presumes and demands the non-passive act of governing, which means someone is actively setting standards of expected action, and also providing the means to uphold them. Else, what’s the point? It’s all an exercise in mental masturbation. In other words, unless someone (coercively) enforces governance, it will be meaningless. Now, maybe there IS a docile libertarian principle of “governing suggestion”- but this in no way is the same as “governance”!

Anti-statism is a central tenet of libertarianism, but it rests on no foundations, other than the so-called libertarian principles babbled by Murray and others. For example, Frank Chodorov, quoted by David Boaz of CATO Inst. in ‘Libertarianism: A Primer’, goes so far as to write:

“Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people... The concept of Society as a metaphysical concept falls flat when we observe that Society disappears when the component parts disperse”

Boaz himself joins in on what the “individual” means:

“For libertarians, the basic unit of social analysis is the individual.... Individuals are, in all cases, the source and foundation of creativity, activity, and society. Only individuals can think, love, pursue projects, act. Groups don’t have plans or intentions”

But, as Prof. Ernest Partridge put it in his (2007) blog piece on ‘Liberals and Libertarians’ :

“Now consider the implications of this denial of the 'independent existence of the public' and "society." If there is no "public," then there are no "public goods" and there is no "public interest." If there is no "society," then there is no "social harm," or "social injustice" or "social (and public) responsibility." It then follows that government has no role in mitigating "social injustice" or promoting "the public interest," since these terms are fundamentally meaningless.

Poverty and racial discrimination, for example, are individual problems requiring individual solutions”.

And this is mainly Murray's error in a nutshell, blaming individuals for societally systemic problems that only a government can address, resolve. Indeed, if Boaz’ concept held sway and government force was not used in Alabama in September, 1963 (JFK federalizing the Alabama National Guard to enforce school integration) we’d still be a segregated nation, with blacks sitting in the back of the bus, ‘colored’ water coolers and restrooms, and the rest. Only someone totally divorced from history and reality would claim individual African-Americans at the time could have obtained their civil rights with mere individual effort and no government input.

Will Murray ever get this? Doubtful! While correlation is obviously not the same as causation, one can't help seeing it as an appropriate response to Murray's ideas and readers are suggested to check out this site:
http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html

Meanwhile, we know historically that the Right has been making a concerted effort to blame everything on the middle and lower classes as well as the government which aids them via whatever program. The latest pick-on appears to be food stamps, never mind the Right's blowhards allowed the financial system to become endemically corrupted by toxic derivatives....but it's easier to lay the blame on "lousy credit misfits" who misused Fannie and Freddie to get home loans they couldn't afford.

More on this to come, as this campaign season plays out!

Catholics Need to Make a Choice - and Stop Whining!

2012-02-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

Fr. Alvin Holloway, S.J. used to teach us Ethics at Loyola University (ca. 1966) and that using artificial contraception was akin to "mutual masturbation" (a 'mortal sin'). He never did inform us that both of these "grievous" acts were actually optional under the Church's Magisterium or teaching office!

Okay, pardon me, maybe it isn't Catholics whining at all, but rather the hysterical Reich wing chattering class doing it for them. At least one would seriously hope! This concerns the issue of contraception embedded in President Obama's 'Affordable Care Act' and whether those allowances "transgress" sacred Catholic doctrines.

I noted in an earlier blog that this claim was mostly sound and fury signifying nothing, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/catholics-losing-it-over-obama-admin.html

and explicitly pointed out the errors in "natural law" on which the Catholics base their morality, even citing one Catholic biologist, Elizabeth Dougherty (in Contraception and Holiness, The Lessons of Zoology, p. 110) who asked:

"Why do we call secondary the ends of the sexual act which have been accorded in fullness to us, and why do we call primary the end that we share with the lower animals?"

Because make no mistake here: no matter you're a church or person, if you deny the exercise of choice in terms of contraception, you're not only reducing your fellow humans to mere breeding animals, but you are also "planetary criminals" to use Arthur C. Clarke's stark term, because of massively contributing to a population this planet can't support! (And hence, fomenting mass destitution).

But as a former Catholic I will go even further and assert most Catholics who object to the contraception provisions in the Affordable Care Act don't even know their own theology. I, however, have had to take three years of it - including Ethics and Catholic Moral Theology, while attending Loyola University, New Orleans, 1964-66.

Here's the key point that eludes some of the most vociferous Catholics, including the caterwauling Bishops (who ought to know better): As pointed out by Theologian Hans Kung ('Infallible?') the birth control proscription comes from the Church's TEACHING OFFICE or Magisterium, not ex cathedra or "from the chair of St. Peter".

If a ruling comes from the Magisterium or teaching office, then it isn't binding! It isn't binding on Catholics and it isn't binding on those they would serve, say in their hospitals (patients who need contraceptives) or instututions (workers there, who aren't even Catholics!)

There are even more suspect moral overtones on this than meet the eye. For example, the majority of Catholics are probably totally unaware that the Church DID ALLOW abortions to be performed up until the third trimester, and until 1869. John Connery, S.J. a leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, has been quoted as citing a long standing collection of Canon Law that “it was not until 1869 that abortion for any reason became grounds for excommunication” (See, e.g. Druyan and Sagan, PARADE, April 22, 1990). At the time the lack of dogmatic ruling created such furore that conservatives in the Church pushed for a higher dogma that would transcend the wishy-washy Magisterium ruling. They thereby succeeded in foisting the very late (1870) doctrine of "infallibility" which was more a rear guard action -addition to protect the Church from any possible subsequent alterations of moral teaching.

Thus, if a ruling came "ex cathedra" and applied to faith or morals, the Pope couldn't make a mistake. (Of course, as the “papal infallibility” doctrine was only first proclaimed in 1870, it conveniently didn't apply to rulings made earlier such as the ones on abortions allowed up to the 3rd trimester). But the larger point here is that clearly, the fact the Church already changed its doctrine on abortion shows its moral positions are malleable and not set in stone!

What this means is that the Church itself cannot be free of errors in faith or morals if it has already made one that was since covered up. Obviously, if you can alter a position, it is hardly "absolute". In his marvelous book, Infallible?, Hans Kung observes (p. 143):

" no one, neither Vatican I, nor Vatican II, nor the textbook theologians, has shown that the Church - its leadership or its theology - is able to put forward propositions which inherently
cannot be erroneous."

Which brings up the question: How will the Catholic bishops - who so impetuously condemned pro-abortion candidate voters to Hell in 2004 and 2008- reconcile that with the Church’s stance pre-1869?

Now let's look at the piffle from some of the hysterical, hyperventilating pundits such as Peggy Noonan (WSJ today, 'A Battle The President Can't Win', p. A15). She claims:

"The Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can't be Catholic anymore".

Which is total rubbish. Of course they can be Catholic and indeed, can expect THEIR members to adhere to THEIR teachings whether from the Magisterium or ex cathedra.

But the point missed by Noonan is that given the Church is funded by default via MY taxpayer dollars (since they don't have to pay taxes that I must) then I have to expect that if my wife or myself attends THEIR hospitals they will deliver the services WE need, not forbid us the ones they prohibit to their own flock! Thus, it serves no purpose to conflate the services the Affordable Care Act earmarks for secularists and non-Catholics (served by Catholic institutions like hospitals) with members of the Catholic Church - which is what Noonan and also Kathleen Parker ('The Cost of Conscience', Denver Post, today, p. 9B) have done.

In any case, as I already showed, the Obama Affordable Care Act merely enjoins these Catholic hospitals etc. to provide contraceptives if requested and contraception is not prohibited absolutely under the Magisterium. People can exercise choice! Indeed, forgotten amidst all the fervor and hubbub of these chattering conservos is that many Bishops since 1970 - when millions of Catholics became majorly disaffected by the anti-contraception stance - have advised parishioners to exercise their own moral choice in the matter.

Hence, the issue can't be as much of a biggie as Noonan proclaims, nor need Obama worry that "this is a battle he can't win." I happen to know many liberal Catholics and know most would not be so stupid as to revoke a vote for Obama over a morally optional issue that accordng to the Church's own doctrines insist isn't binding. They'd be stupid to do that!

Kathleen Parker is just as bad in her column, opining that:

"Essentially the new law forces them (Catholics) to forfeit their most fundamental beliefs or face prohibitive penalties- or close hospitals, schools and other charities"

Again, more bollocks! The law isn't demanding they "forfeit fundamental beliefs' because the issue doesn't concern those! NO one is being ordered to disbelieve in the doctrine of Transubstantiation (that claims the consecrated bread becomes the real body of Christ) which is a REAL fundamental belief, nor are Catholics being told to disown or reject Mary.

The issue concerns contraception provided to users of Catholic services who may not be Catholic at all.. And this contraception issue isn't fundamental as a core "belief" but rather an optional teaching from the Church's Magisterium which even Catholics are free to accept or reject (under their own exercise of conscience). As one priest told me before I finally left the Church ca. 1975: "You know you can stay if you want and just exercise your conscience. The prohibition against artificial contraception isn't binding, and you don't commit a mortal sin if you eschew it!"

Words for the wise, but you can bet that even more of the conservative chattering class will be humping and pumping this to try to fracture Obama's electoral coalition in the runup to November and get Catholics to break away. Stupidly--- I would add, because they've nothing to gain and everything to lose. Let's hope that more sane voices emerge to counter the nuttiness of the fruit cakes determined to try and make Obama a one -termer.

Uses of Hermitian Matrices in Physics

2012-02-04T10:51:00.000-08:00

Some blogs ago I promised readers, mainly followers of the linear algebra blogs, that I'd show how the Hermitian matrices could be applied to physics. In this blog I examine that, with the focus on the Pauli spin matrices. As well as being Hermitian, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/more-linear-algebra-unitary-and.html

The Pauli spin matrices: σ_x =

(0.......1)
(1.......0);

σ_y =

(0........-i)
(i......... 0);

σ_z =

(1....... 0)
(0...... -1)

are also unitary matrices and serve as Pauli spin matrix-operators as well.

It is also the case that products of the spin-matrices are often used, e.g.

σ_x σ_y = - σ_y σ_x = i σ_z

σ_y σ_z = - σ_z σ_y = i σ_x

σ_z σ_x = -σ_x σ_z = i σ_y

A prime interest is forming the Hamiltonian (or energy operator) for a quantum, spin ½ system with a magnetic moment u. The physical situation and application can be made more concrete by reference to the attached diagram which shows a magnetic dipole of strength u in a field intensity H (= B/u, where B is the magnetic induction) with separate poles (+p) and (-p). An original reference position is shown for which the angle Θ = π/2 which is then decreased to some lesser value (lower diagram). The work done on the dipole in the course of this partial rotation is given by the force times the displacement.

The force on the pole (+p) is +pH and the force on (-p) is -pH. Then the work done on the dipole in a rotation from an angle Θ = π/2 to an angle Θ with the field is:

W = (pH) (L cos Θ ) + (-ph) (- L cos Θ) = 2 pL H cos Θ = u* H

One form of the Hamiltonian using the spin operators can then be written:

{H} = - u(σ_x H_z + σ_y H_y + σ_z H_z)

More to come in a future blog!

NO, to More Drones in U.S. Skies!

2012-02-04T10:06:00.001-08:00

The story in The Wall Street Journal today ('U.S. Skies Could See More Drones', p. A7) came as a shocker of sorts. First, because it disclosed yet another federal agency (FAA) held hostage to the corporatist-industrial complex, now attempting to find new avenues for drone production since the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan are ending (well the first has officially ended, the second nearly so). And second, because it discloses how secretive this corporate-benefiting information is, much like the recent news that 38 salmonella food poisonings were due to "restaurant chain A" (in FDA jargon) but only lately identified as 'Taco Bell'.

And we already saw a couple years ago, how deep in bed the SEC was with Madoff, and how they missed warning investors of this guy's Ponzi scheme. It appears that, one by one, fed agencies are being held captive to corporate interests, while the public general welfare takes a back seat.

In ths case of this new FAA bill, worth some $63 billion (and already four years in the lobbying and rewriting phases), U.S. skies would be inundated with tens of thousands of unmanned drones sharing airpace with commercial planes - and recall these are already at the beck and call of overworked air traffic controllers, as gauged by nearly 300 near misses per year. Imagine if they now had to contend with thousands of these unmanned drones flying who knows where?

Certainly the commercial pilots themselves aren't too enthused. As the WSJ article observes:

"Barely hours after the 374-page bill became public pilot union officials urged a more deliberate approach. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 53,000 pilots across North America, said his organization remains worried about safety issues such as training and certification of those unmanned aircraft."

The article continues by noting that: "Safety experts also have raised questions about the ability of sensors aboard unmanned aircraft to properly detect a nearby plane, and to assure immediate action to avoid a midair collision".

This is not just small potatoes and - by all rights - ought to be raising as much of a firestorm among the safety aware public as the Komen fiasco a few days ago. Moreso, because our lawmakers have sought to keep all this under wraps until it's almost a fait accompli!

And just who are these interests pushing for new drones in our skies? Well, according to the WSJ:

"Under the FAA bill proponents envision huge fleets of drones operated nationwide by states, local governments, and companies."

My question, and that of every other right-thinking American, ought to be: 'How the hell can states and local governments be remotely considering $1 billion a pop for a drone....to do whatever... when their own budgets are in the tank and benefits aren't being properly distributed?' As for companies: Why are they splurging (or thinking of splurging) on these damned things while leaving money uninvested for labor hiring and new plant? It's fucking absurd!

And just what is it these expensive unmanned machines are supposed to be doing? According to the WSJ article:

"environmental monitoring, fire protection, surveillance of suspected criminals....checking power lines and tracking equipment"

WHAT!? Needless to say, and I shouldn't have to say it, all of these can be done at much less expense and without requiring unmanned drones. For example, multiple street video cameras mounted all over can now track criminals anywhere. Moreover, the "fusion centers" provided under the Patriot Act make this as easy as companies tracking people using 'cookies' on the web. Nor do we need to risk commercial passenger safety by putting thousands of the blasted things in our skies for the specious reasons cited. In the end this is all bullshit, and the real purpose of this law is to provide an outlet for the defense industry drone manufacturers who will no longer have U.S. occupations within which to ply their trade.

Now, true ...there are limited numbers of drones already operating in U.S. skies. These are "mainly by federal agencies for law enforcement and security purposes" (ibid.) Moreover, as the article notes, they are only allowed to fly in highly restricted areas (like near the Mexican border) and this has kept their numbers low.

What we emphatically do not need is our skies flooded with these fuckers and competing with commercial craft for airspace, and likely creating even more havoc and near collisions, or outright collisions! THAT is not the way to create new jobs!

The tragedy is that the good part of the FAA bill, the one that provides for GPS satellites to reinforce ground air traffic control, is tied up with this corporate welfare drone-for-any-redundant purpose bullshit. We need to send a message to these clueless congress critters to re-do their bill, and leave out the drone manufacture and deployment for every Tom, Dick and Harry and for specious reasons that are basically bollocks.

Footnote: The photo attached, in case readers are wondering, is based on the "frankensteined" insertion of a predator drone image (I felt that was more dramatic) into a photo I took looking out from a first class seat as the flight I was on descended to Miami International in June, 2007.
It is meant to depict the likely sort of near encounters we may experience if the corporate welfare part of this FAA bill goes through!

No, Computers & Technology alone don't equal Enrichment

2012-02-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

Geophysicist David Deming, in his WSJ op-ed, 'What I Learned From A Brainiac' (Jan. 30, p. A15) has it exactly correct that all the computers, tech and whatzits in the world don't translate into educational assets unless critical thinking is also part of the learning process and mastery of a skill. These are also issues I've blogged on before, including: the inability of today's allegedly high techie kids to properly google subjects, and the overuse of Facebook, Twitter.

In the latter case, in an early blog from 2010 ('Are We Enabling a Generation of über-dumpkopfs?)' :

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/are-we-enabling-generation-of-uber.html

I summarized the results of author Mark Bauerlein's research in his book, The Dumbest Generation, and how he depressingly documented the under-30 crowd foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, electronic social mirror world grounded in their own egos and selves. All writ larger than life in the world of "Facebook", which creates the illusion of instantly uniting with thousands of "friends" (most of whom one's never met) in a parody of Teilhard de Chardin's "Noosphere". (See, e.g. 'The Divine Milieu')

Bauerlein's main thrust was that these social networks and techno-links (now likely to overtake the whole planet what with Facebook's issuance of an IPO plausibly making Mark Zuckerberg $28b richer) and the ancillary digital media used, whether Facebook,Twitter or just dumb cell messages- all contribute to an artificial solipsistic world filtered by the egocentric dispositions of the users. Instead of being a channel of information and knowledge consolidation, the monitor screen becomes a mirror of the young users’ own limited selves and under-developed psyches.

And instead of aspiring to a depth of knowledge all that's on offer in this 'how r u?' digit byte circles is piffle and superficiality masked as "friendship". Meanwhile, all the things that bother and bore them are blocked out. All the people, issues and major global events that obsessive socio-network users don’t know (and don’t want to know) can all be excluded at the touch of key. A new bomb may have been developed by Iran, and an earthquake may have killed thousands in China, but in the case of Facebook users it’s the old monkey show: “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” .

Deming in his WSJ piece elaborates much further the chasm between youngsters growing up today - tied to their Twitter tethers- and those of us who grew up in the late 50s, early 60s. He notes, for example, his 'Braniac' computer kit (Yes, we had computers in those days but we aasembled them ourselves and learned by doing!) Deming recounts that his $18.95 computer kit featured "instructions for constructing a number of computer circuits that could add, subtract, play tick -tack-toe and solve simple problems in logic. "

In much the same way, in 1961 my own $12.95 analog computer kit (from Edmund Scientific Co.) allowed me to construct from scratch my own analog computer which used simple electrical potentiometers to compare voltages and arrive at basic mathematical solutions. Of course, most of these one could do in his or her own head, but the fun was in constructing the machine that obtained the same results.

Meanwhile, as Deming observes:

"So the Brainiac kit taught problem solving skills both in its assembly and execution. If this wasn't challenging enough, the kit contained Edmund Berkeley's handbook on Boolean Logic..... the very existence of the complicated technical materials notified us that there were vast worlds of information and learning to explore. The first task in climbing a mountain is to take note of its existence"

Indeed, but in today's solipsistic Facebook-Tweet era, much of that world is concealed (often deliberately) by the inability of the users to allow the real world to intrude into their little confected social media empires. Thus the predilection for texting and furiously letting fingers fly over a tiny screen rather than the face-to-face “bull sessions” such as we used to partake in - in the college dorms of the 60s. Sessions in which you had to confront actual emotions of the engagers- such as when arguing over civil rights and the Vietnam War, and not mere "emoticons" such as :) or :(.

You were challenged with every argumentative point made, and your logic bashed if not up to scratch. You were compelled to alter the syntax immediately and strengthen your salient points, even as you plumbed your knowledge base to ring up the facts of history needed to support your positions. You were not allowed to run to Google to make up for lapsed knowledge, as kids can do now in the heat of an argument.

As Deming further notes:

"In 1960, children were expected to rise up and meet standards set by adults. Self-esteem was something you attained by achievement."

Deming points to the wealth of imagination provided by science fiction novels, such as from Isaac Asimov ('I, Robot'), Ray Bradbury ('Fahrenheit 451') or Arthur C. Clarke ('The City and the Stars') as well as others such as Robert Heinlein. These then led us to voraciously read for the actual science - indeed, Arthur C. Clarke's early stories (e.g. 'Prelude to Space', 1951) are what incited me to go into model rocketry and build my own rockets with special compartments to loft lizards and roaches to over a mile in altitude then parachute them back to Earth.

Thus, Deming's excellent point:

"Placing a book in the hands of a child is infinitely more beneficial than giving them any type of electronic device. Reading is an active intellectual promise that expands childrens' intelligence, increases their command of language and thought. A modern computer is not an educational asset unless its use is closely monitored, restricted and supervised."

Bingo!

One last point, with which I must fully concur as a former educator:

"Education begins at home. There is little that teachers can do with children who have not been challenged at home but instead have been indulged and entertained with an array of electronic devices."

Devices, I might add, which have engendered the unnatural expectation that kids ought to be "entertained" during teaching hours, and in their classes! Something that would be unheard of for a kid going to school in the 60s. None of us expected our teachers to become instant clowns, comics or entertainers in order to learn. We understood the onus was on us, with some strategic help from parents - but more importantly, their providing the learning atmosphere to facilitate it. Not with toys so much, as books and the right educational resources....whether analog computer kits or assembling 'the Visible Man and Woman' to assist understanding of human biology. (Not to mention slinkies and rockets to teach physics!)

As for games, no problemo. To quote Deming:

"We developed our powers of mental concentration and analytical thinking skills by learning and playing chess."

Btw, no one is asserting here that all computers be relieved of their Facebook connections, but only that the use of social links and networks needs to be more parsimoniously allotted and judiciously used. We don't want youngsters getting addicted and losing their functioning brain cells on crack, 'E', meth or alchohol and neither should we accept overdosing on solipsistic electronic indulgence-which can be every bit as injurious ...turning indiscriminate users into ignorant turkeys!

'Komen for the Cure' - Now Out of Luck!

2012-02-02T12:16:00.001-08:00

The news that Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation halted further grants to Planned Parenthood, has walloped the circuits of the net and beyond like a firestorm. The news this a.m. is their site was flooded by so many protest complaints they had to shut it down. Will this make them changelings? I doubt it!

Komen for the Cure made its ill -fated choice when it catapulted anti-abortion zealot and wingnut Karen Handel to its vice-presidency. The fallout was then expected, and all that was needed was a ruse or excuse to fall back on. It came when the Repuke House commenced "investigations" (can you say, Witch hunts) into Planned Parenthood - an organization which provides nearly 170,000 mammograms and other health tests each year -mainly to poor women. "Komen for the Cure', meanwhile, is mainly a middle class white lady redoubt which has many corporate and Republican-conservo affiliations. Given the pretext of an "investigation" by a derelict political party that represents the last gasp of the Old Confederacy, Komen argued that it "could no longer provide grants to any organization under investigation".

Convenient! Well, now the Komen piper has to be paid, for allowing itself to be so politicized, and hijacked by the wingnut, freak nut wackos. Most progressives now have pulled their support for Komen and are piling the money into Planned Parenthood. Even on salon.com this morning, many commentators of the threads observed though they could not afford it, they would donate $100 or $200 to Planned Paenthood.

This is not so much a big deal for me, as I was never that enamored of Komen's pink parades, and corporate outlook, so never gave that much. Maybe $5 or so if that. My wife was the usual contributor, and now she has even backed off, appalled that the anti-abortionist Right can have such sway over an organization putatively for the benefit of all women. Well, so much for that.

But this is exactly how politics continues to poison our whole nexus as a civilized society, dividing us each from the other. In this case, Komen had to know in advance how this would play out and the blowback they'd get. If they didn't know, or underestimated it, they've no idea how polarized the nation is today and how one false move- say even denying funding to an organization they ought to be working in league with - can hurt them in turn.

Maybe this will be worth it if it serves as a cautionary tale for other organizations that might be tempted to either elect wingnut wackos to their top offices, or deny funding to groups like Planned Parenthood that provide essential health and screening services for the poorest.

Update: The latest word is that Komen Foundation has repealed its decision This is good and applauded, but the blog stays up just in case any of their more militant reich wing supporters push them to do it again! In any case, as editorials in both The Denver Post and Wall Street Journal have noted, 'Komen for the Cure' has made absolutely NO promises to fund PP programs in the future and indeed leaves the issue of said funding open to "review" each year. Lip service, anyone?

The "Myth of Starving Americans" - SAYS WHO?

2012-02-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

Well, it's no wonder Mitch Romney can blurt out that "I don't really care about the very poor!" given recycled textual detritus such as appeared in the WSJ on Jan. 30 ('The Myth of Starving Americans', p. A15). And btw, while Romney enjoins us all to "look at my whole sentence" - and to be fair, he did add "they have a safety net" (although one he would like to strip away as I will show in a future blog), there are dozens of ways he might have re-worded his opinion to prevent his Freudian slip being unleashed.

For example, he could have phrased it:

"They either have ample resources or access to a safety net, so I am not overly concerned right now with the very rich or very poor"

More or less putting his rhetorical "exclusions" on the same plausible footing, as opposed to markedly opening with one and the initial words "I don't really care....".

But perhaps the Freudian slip was triggered by the piece in the WSJ by Warren Kozak (who also happens to be the author of a new book ('LeMay') praising the biggest renegade ever to serve as a Joint Chief, Curtis LeMay. The guy who begged JFK to bomb Cuba, thereby inciting a nuclear war, and who compared Kennedy to Neville Chamberlain when he refused!)

Kozak does concede on opening that "a hungry child is the ultimate third rail in the entitlement debate. Few candidates- Democratic or Republican - would even question conventional wisdom on this particular issue because that would make them look indifferent to hungry children and that of course is political death".

As well it should be, so then why does Kozak proceed to look askance at this conventional wisdom? Maybe because he can? This despite the fact that more people are now on food stamps than anytime in history, not because they want to be....but because the financially unsound policies of the BushCo regime - which launched new wars without paying for them, and delivered nearly $3 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest, incepted the financial collapse in 2008 along with unwise unregulation of securities and fraudulent bond ratings.

But that is another blog. Or more accurately, the past substance of at least a half dozen blogs I've done already, mainly last year.

Kozak writes:

"The U.S. government spends close to $1 trillion a year providing cash, food, medical care, housing and services to poor and near-poor people"

But HOW much is this, really?

Let's note first that the government's defined poverty line is $12,968 for 2009 for an over-65 couple, and roughly $22,000 for a family of 4. However, neither of these threshold limits has been altered since 1969 - when the value of the dollar was five times greater than in 2009. This means that one can logically argue the poverty levels are lowballed, and more plausibly the poverty line for a family of 4 today would be around $48,000/year. This means up to 70 million households are in poverty. Add in seniors, and you get as many as 80 million households, with perhaps 165 million people affected or more than half the country! This means if anything government benefits are too meagerly distributed.

If there are 80 million households in poverty and needing some kind of assistance, then how far does that $1 trillion go? Performing the math, this comes to about $12,500 per household, but obviously this will vary according to the types and thresholds of benefits. Some households may need both Medicaid for ailing kids and food stamps, others will just need food stamps, no Medicaid. Leave out welfare, and the total comes to only $10, 000 per household. (I leave out welfare because all welfare programs are now predicated on 'welfare to work'- so the person must work a certain number of hours to obtain it or attend school directed toward fruitful employment.) Eliminate unmployment insurance, which should not be considered as part of this "entitlement matrx" because this is part of what companies pay - not all from government - and you bring it down lower. But we will leave it at an even $10,000/ year.

Perhaps $7,500 of that will plausible go for medical assistance, say via Medicaid, and that leaves $2,500. If we regard that as primarily for food, then that works out to about $208 a month. That's for four people! Kozak claims that - based on his $1 trillion figure, "Of that about $111 billion is spent on food in federal and state programs".

But again this isn't exactly breaking the bank! If there are 165 million in need, as I calculate (based on revising the lowballed poverty rates since 1969) then that means about $627 each for food per YEAR! Obviously, Kozak is using the lower poverty numbers, and this would be closer to 50 million people or about 1 in 6 Americans, if one accepts the census figures (which obviously I do not because they are based on the lowballed poverty thresholds!) .

Then, in that case, each receives about $2,220 per year. So of course, a guy like this hack would wonder where the money is going! Indeed, he writes:

"Yet despite this spending stories of rampant hunger persist. With all that money going out, how is that possible?"

Uh, because it's NOT enough, jackass, because you and the feds have lowballed the actual poverty rates! DUH! As I showed, the actual allotment for food, if my revised poverty etimates are correct, translates into a food money deficit per year amounting to $2,220 - $627 = $1,593. Or, if you wish to put it another way, that $111 billion cited by Kozak being spent ought to actually be about 3.5 x higher, or $380.5 b a year! Then if THIS was the amount spent, Kozak wouldn't have to be beseiged by so many "stories of rampant hunger persisting".

Is this really all that much? Consider: we have pissed away - to NO avail, and no profit, in my opinion, roughly $10b per month since the Afghan incursion, invasion began 10 years ago. Do the math! The total of this useless pissing out on a nation that will surely revert to Taliban control once we leave (as we must because we lack the $$ to remain there) comes to $120b a year or $1.2 trillion over the whole time. (I won't even bother to add in the cost of leaving all that equipment behind, which ran to $330b for Iraq. Get that? $330 b in cost just to leave millions of pounds of military materiel behind. That would almost feed all the U.S. hungry for one year!)

But I'm not done! Add in the cost of the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest and you add in another $900b for ten years! Add in the cost of the Iraq war - a war of choice, totally - and you get another $2.2 trillion. Add in all these together and you get: $2.2 trillion + $1.2 trillion + 0.9 trillion = $4.3 trillion! How much is that relative to the measly $380.5 million to feed 165 million famished Americans each year! Do the math on your own to see how far that $380.5 million would stretch if all that wasted money was available!

You ought to arrive at 11.3 YEARS! That is how long we'd be able to feed our hungry citizens on $380.5 billion a year if we hadn't pissed trillions away on two wasted occupations and a decade of tax cuts for fat cats.

Yet Kozak pisses and moans about a measly $111 billion spent on food for one fuckin' year!

Having shot his wad with this nonsense, Kozak isn't above using more spurious stats to try to reinforce his specious case that 26 million American kids aren't really going to bed hungry each night....no ...it's all in their little heads. Or ours!

He claims that two wonks (RObert Rector and Rachel Sheffield) from.....wouldn't you know it? The Heritage Foundation...

"found that according to Census Bureau data for 2009..of the almost 50 million Americans classified as poor, 96% of the parents said their children were never hungry"

First, as I already showed, the "50 million poor" is bogus, and lowballed. As for the parents saying their kids weren't hungry...well, doh! Would you admit on a census questionnaire you weren't able to properly provide for your kids? Give me a break! What do you take people for, stupid? Of course, parents - already shamed - will sugarcoat the information or put a smiley face on it! That doesn't mean their kids aren't hungry or don't go to bed in that state!

He goes on, oblivious to the basics of human psychology:

"Eighty three percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat and 82% of poor adults said they were never hungry at any time in 2009 due to lack of food or money."

And you believe this, nitwit? Because that's what they stated on a government questionnaire? If so, I have three acres of prime oceanfront resort to sell you in Barbados! (For his information and other readers, numerous papers on psychological response questions have been done over the decades to show such surveys can't be trusted, especially when they entail questions regarding whether the respondents are: a) racist, b) have sex x times or less a week, or c) reflect on their incapacities in economic terms.)

People by nature will give false or deceptive responses on these sensitive issues (which let's face it, reflect on their worth in the society's eyes) , because,.....the TRUTH FUCKIN' HURTS! But see, a bozo like Kozak refuses to take this into account because the converse bolsters (or he thinks it does) his phoney case that hungry Americans is a myth.

Not done yet, this miscreant then goes on to bellyache that:

"Today, two out of three lunches served at schools are free or nearly free"

He then implies such kids who eat school lunches, and are all the better for it (Colorado for example is trying to expand it through the No Kid Hungry campaign, which includes an awards program for schools that serve breakfast to more kids) , see e.g.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_19864743

are "tax eaters" and not tax payers, to use LBJ's old comparison. He then complains that "where once there were strict guidelines" on what foods could be purchased with food stamps - actually now benefit cards, that no longer applies. He obviously hates the thought of people being able to purchase anything other than cabbage in bulk, large rice sacks, oatmeal, flour, macaroni or milk.

His last solution to this food over-spending?

"If able-bodied, non-elderly recipients of food stamps were made to work the numbers would drop dramatically"

In other words, see those kids gobbling school food in the photos for the D. Post piece? (See link). Make 'em work before they eat! Good, ol' fashioned 'Murican values! No work, no eats! Tough luck, kid!

Great! So if either Newt or Mitt gets in, and especially with a Repuke House and Senate, we can expect a massive return to child labor - with kids mopping floors and cleaning toilets, just to get a square meal a day! Well, one good thing: At least the cheering Gooper-Teepee crowds will now be screaming 'Let 'em work!', as opposed to 'Let 'em die!', say, in the case of the medically uninsured who can't afford to pay for treatments for severe adverse health conditions!

How to get deficits to drop: Nix Renewing the Bush Tax cuts!

2012-02-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

The new report out of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) clearly shows the way to get a handle on the mounting deficits: kill the Bush tax cuts, I mean ALL of them - for the middle class as well as the wealthy. If that one step is taken, the deficit - which is projected to be $1.1 trillion this year, will fall to $585 billion next year, and to $345 billion in 2014. Most critically, this falling deficit will keep the bond markets and domestic austerity fetishists at bay, while keeping social benefits sound.

It is very simple to achieve but requires political gumption, and levelling with the American people: telling them they simply can't have their cake (future Social Security, Medicare benefits) and "eat it too" (continued tax cuts). Make a choice, take your pick. You're big people now!

The bottom line is that doing nothing will become the most direct way to slash the deficit, because doing nothing ....as in nada....is all that's required to finally retire or sunset the Bush tax cuts which have already outlived their usefulness and do next to nothing of economic benefit. The Financial Times analysis of Sept. 15, 2010 already showed that, including the observation that;

"“The 2000s- that is the period immediately following the Bush tax cuts – were the weakest decade in U.S. postwar history for real, non-residential capital investment. Not only were the 2000s by far the weakest period but the tax cuts did not even curtail the secular slowdown in the growth of business structures. Rather the slowdown accelerated to a full decline”

Contrast this with the hike in taxes immediately after Bill Clinton took office, leading to the accumulation of more than $600 billion in surpluses by the time he left office (see the one large bump on the accompanying graph near 2000), and the creation of 20 million jobs. Meanwhile, the FT analysis observed that:

“during each decade from the 1950s to the 1990s, growth in real gross non-residential investment averaged between 3.5 percent and 7.4 percent a decade. During the 2000s it averaged a mere 1%”

Can politicos process this and keep their hands off the extensions triggers, including for the middle class? Who knows? The trouble is there is this hidden demon in all politicos that tempts them to play politics with things like tax cuts instead of levelling.

But, especially in the case of Obama, being serious this time around about not reviving these cuts, including for the middle class, could have salutary effects. Already the likes of The Wall Street Journal ('$5 Trillion and Change' today, p. A14) is trying to pin the record high deficit accumulation on Obama as well as the largest yearly one ($1.1 trillion for 2012). The best way to neutralize such attacks in future would simply be to allow all the Bushie tax cuts to finally meet their end.

Of course, the WSJ indiscriminately uses the graph released by the CBO (attached) but doesn't parse it correctly. For while it shows a major deficit emergence near 2010 (see the high negative gradient dip), this isn't all on Obama. Much of it is a cumulative payment back-log from the Bush 2003 Medicare Modernization Act which delivered a new prescription drug benefit that was never paid for, and which also included yearly deficit creating engines such as "Medicare Advantage" which spends $12-15 billion a year more on services than traditional Medicare. And we won't even go into the corporate welfare bonanza it's become and the disallowance of any demand for the Medicare Part D PhrmA plans to allow the government to bargain for lowest drug prices like the VA does.. So, of course you're gonna get a growing deficit!

Then there has been the additional costs of Iraq (more than $1.3 trillion - including $330b for the pullout prescribed by the Bushies in '08, NOT by Obama last year) and the enormous "supplemental" budgets associated with Afghanistan, in the vicinity of $600b a year. And, of course, the Buish tax cuts extensions - which truth be told Obama did have the chance to stop, but didn't. But in any case, they have added about $300b this past year in extra deficits that only he must take ownership for, while during Bush's rein and under his tax cut decade, they added over $2.7 trillion including interest. (Thus the more realistic graph projections, in red and blue ink- attached, belie the way the WSJ interpreted the CBO data.)

Let us hope that the politicians of both parties commit to doing the right thing this year, and next - and that begins with: 1) no more wars that aren't fully paid for with tax increases and 2) no more Bush tax cuts! For anyone!

Making the Good Book Safe for Capitalists

2012-02-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

After having seen the victory of an unrepentant hyper-capitalist (worth some $42 million and change) in the GOP Florida primary yesterday, who is also the putative eventual Repup nominee, one also observes a barrage of PR defending capitalists and trying to tar anything remotely "socialist". This is understandable! If the richest barons and their scions of inherited wealth are to make even more advances under what (they believe) to be 8 yrs. of a capitalist -friendly administration, they have to pave the way with PR. They are basically trying to soften the electorate's mind and will to vote for Romney. (Though why any member of "the 99%" worth his creds would do that, apart from suffering from dementia or psychosis, is beyond me).

So the PR is blaring, especially in the reactionary op-ed pages of that vehicle of high finance, The Wall Street Journal. Typified by two pieces, one 'The Myth Of Starving Americans' (which basically pooh-poohs the notion that any Americans even kids are going hungry) and the other: 'What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism' by an Aryeh Speros. I will deal with the "myth of starving Americans" in a separate blog, but for now set my sights on Spero's nonsense.

As expected, Speros starts out with one of the most cherished tropes of the financial Right, that of "individual responsibility", i.e.:

"Regarding mankind, no theme is more salient in the Bible than the morality of personal responsibility, for it is through this that man cultivates his inner development leading to his own growth, good citizenship and happiness"

This is very important because it lays the ground work for the specious arguments to follow, while also pressuring the unemployed, the hungry receiving food stamps and on others on welfare, to commit the fundamental attribution error. As I noted in my book, The Elements of the Corporatocracy, this error:

"Tends to credit or blame individuals for their level of failure or success without considering the aspects of the social structure that impel or impede their progress. Thus, it results in praise of the system and condemnation of individuals who are defined as losers."

This in turn leads to workers, citizens, voters who are prepared to tolerate any amount of systematic abuse from a corrupt system, because they lay the blame on their own "lack of ambition" or lack of education, lack of whatever......whatever the rich fuckers assert they lack in specious tracts like Speros'.

So inevitably when one sees proto-financial hacks praising "personal responsibility" and laying the blame for joblessness, home foreclosure or hunger on ordinary citizens, one never sees equal attention paid to banks that do "robo foreclosures" on dutiful citizens, or Wall Street firms that hijack their clients' wallets with usurious fees, or investment banks that load their offerings with risky credit default swaps or mutual funds that operate by market timing or insider info to give heads ups to large institutional investors while little guys sink or swim. Or.....political whores on the take from the coffers of corporations who demand the whores do their bidding. Oh no!

Thus, Speros doesn't disappoint, and never once does he mention any of the latter vermin, taking care to keep his powder dry only for the average man or woman. This is epitomized in his next statement:

"The entitlement/welfare state is a paradigm that undermines that noble goal"

Hmmmm.....does it? Within that "entitlement-welfare state" Spero appears to forget or dismiss that millions of men and women must depend on food stamps or other assistance, NOT because they have no work or they don't work, but because in his capitalist mecca the only jobs on offer are low wage, and no benefits! Hence, to make ends meet, and because they run out of money by mid-month even working TWO jobs, they've no choice but to file for these "entitlements" Speros regards as so morally detrimental - true to his subliminal Calvinism.

Nor is this tack new. A brief foray into American religious history of the 19th century will identify the Rev. Josiah Strong, Secretary of The Evangelical Society of the United States, as one of the leading defenders of biblical capitalism. Indeed, in his controversial book, Our Country - Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, Strong set out his manifesto that those who were poor or couldn't succeed like the robber barons could only blame their own lack of moral fiber, or Christian righteousness. THEY were at fault!

Indeed, Strong's genius was to arrive at a "potion" that blended Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism (increasingly finding favor with wealthy elitists and arch-capitalists) with Christian virtue, and a strict, constructionist view of The Constitution. Like Spencer, Strong pooh-poohed services for the poor and disabled as "encouraging a fundamental weakness in the society which induced corruption, sloth and all the other vices".

People needed to be put through a "caldron" and - if they can survive- they'd find God, spiritual life and work for their own wealth instead of bleeding it off the state. One of his favorite sayings- quotes was from Herbert Spencer, regarding all dependent citizens:

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."

The capper was tying the amassing of great wealth to Christian virtue. Thus, one's wealth immediately became a barometer for one's morality or spirituality. In a real way, Speros merely regurgitates this vile bunkum with his own piece, but under the pseudo-righteous banner of the bible. But let's explore that further. Speros writes:

"The Bible's proclamation that 'Six days shall ye work' is its recognition that on a day -to-day basis work is the engine that brings about man's inner state of personal responsibility.'

REALLY? So, what if millions ARE working - even at two low wage jobs- but they can't earn enough to feed their kids through the month? Are they to still deny themselves food stamp assistance or what you call "entitlements that undermine that noble goal". So is it more moral to starve than reach for what Speros would call a government "handout"? And how far will that pridefulness get the citizen? Maybe to the grave?

I also want to challenge that "bible proclamation" and I note here that all the citations Speros invokes come from the Jewish Old Testament, reflecting its harsh, genocidal task master god, and not the New Testament. Let me instead hurl this quote from Luke12: 27-28 back at Speros:

"Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, they spin not, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these".

So, is this bullshit, or does it mean something? The parable is obviously making a comparison between the lilies that "toil not" and implying humans have far more to gain than lilies that do nothing. In effect, humans would be expected to benefit equally by not compounding their needs beyond the likes of lilies, i.e. with the burdens of mammon. Indeed, speaking of "mammon" we also see from this same gospel (Luke 16: 13-14):

"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other or else hold to the one and despise the other.

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."

But let us clearly grasp here that Mammon is exactly what the capitalist serves. It is why he strives to maximize profits, often at the expense and welfare of his workers using the diabolical mechanism of labor value expropriation and exploitation which I explained in an earlier blog, i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/12/theory-of-political-elite-1.html

As noted therein, say the labor value sold as a product was L, and V is the labor value embodied in the production of the item, then the surplus value S is:

S = L - V

As an illustration, assume that a craftsman working for a company is paid $10 an hour to make beautiful mahogany chairs by hand. He takes 10 hours to make one chair, thereby imparting a discrete labor value of 10hr x $10/ hr = $100 into the chair, invested in his blood, sweat and maybe tears. The chair is then sold at retail for $1,000 by the company. Then the surplus value S is:

S = $1,000 - $100 = $900

Hence, in this light, V is the paid labor and S is the unpaid labor. The amount of labor expropriated is therefore equal to $900.

In other words, the capitalist feathers his own bed at the expense of his workers and their kids. Clearly this methodology was known even 2,000 years ago in Roman-occupied Judaea. as we note the words (Matthew 19: 23-24):

"Truly, I say to you it will be hard for rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a camel to pass through the idea of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Obviously, the warning encompasses the inevitable distraction the rich person will likely have, i.e. to obsess over his own ill-gotten material gains (if he employs expropriation of labor, which is what any minimum wage job does) but it also addresses how the rich man leaves his workers - in a kind of laboring poverty.

This is also why Speros' next quote is also laughable:

"The Bible speaks positively of payment and profit, 'For why else should a man so labor but to receive reward?"

But moving beyond the archaic Hebrew OT (which Speros clearly has a 'Jones' for), one finds the words of Yeshua actually condemn all those filfthy rich who don't properly pay their workers and enrich themselves by not paying a living wage by which to feed and clothe their families. As from Matthew 25: 41-42:

"Depart from me ye crused into the eternal fire prepared for ye. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, and I was thirsty and you gave me no drink and I was naked and you clothed me not"

The passage can be interpeted in terms of withheld charity, but also withheld economic justice for one's workers. For if the rich man expropriates his workers labor, he isn't allowing enough wages ("rewards") for food, or clothing ....hence is meeting the conditions for perdition.

Lastly, a glaring omission - even from Speros' bet OT, is worth a look. He babbles:

"The mechanism of capitalism, as manifest through investment and reasoned speculation, helps facilitate our partnership with God by bringing to the surface that which the Almighty embedded in nature."

Not once noting that in the ancient Jewish (as well as Muslim) financial code, interest was looked upon as evil as "capital gains" would be in that day if such instruments existed then that deliver those gains today. Thus, "reasoned speculation" (by which Speros must mean that which pads the ancient capitalist with returns) is a myth. It never existed other than in certain Pharisee quarters, which lot Yeshua rightly condemned as "whited sepulchres". (Not merely for their hypocrisy).

Indeed, one can make the case that truly righteous Jews would have seen the danger of excess returns or any returns beyond what was needed for day to day living as paving the way for a possibly corrupt political system by which their leaders might be bought. "Investment" yes, that would be accepted, but only with all returns plowed back into the operation, and workers' wages (and mouths) as well! Not kept for the rich to buy new palm oils to massage themselves, as the 1% do today with their rose wine wraps!

As for "bringing to the surface that which the Almighty embedded in nature", maybe not! For all those trillions of tons of dinosaur detritus we've brought up as oil, is now contributing to some 35 gigatons of carbon deposited in our atmosphere each year. A burden that will soon likely trigger the end of our world, meaning its conversion to another Venus.

Perhaps we need to pick and choose those parts of the Bible we base our priorities upon. A word to the wise to the arch-capitalists who will slobber over Speros' piece!

50-Year Old JFK Tapes Released: What Is Revealed....Or Not?

2012-01-31T08:39:00.001-08:00

One of thousands of 'Wanted for Treason' posters retrieved from Dallas streets on the day of the Kennedy assassination.

The CBS Morning show today presented the news that 50-year old audio-tapes (roughly 42-43 minutes) made aboard Air Force One en route back to Washington DC after the assassination, were just released after some fifty years. The question emerged as to what new aspects or elements do they show, if anything?

Readers can learn more here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505266_162-57368696/chilling-tape-from-air-force-one-on-day-jfk-shot/?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel

According to the CBS website info:

" It's been nearly a half-century since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But new information from that day in Dallas has just been released -- audiotape of conversations between Air Force One and Washington.

For the first time, the complete audio record of the flight back from Dallas to Washington is available to the public online, from the National Archives, for free."

I highly recommend interested readers avail themselves of this audio record for themselves. The CBS site info continues:

"The full audio of transmissions from White House Communications Agency (which captured the tapes) that day includes 42 minutes edited out of the original public version. It's likely to peak the interest of conspiracy theorists who are already asking why this material was cut out of the original.

Then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay had been a frequent opponent of Kennedy's. His whereabouts on the day of the assassination has always been a mystery.

In the newly public audio, we learn that LeMay was airborne, even as JFK's body was being flown back to Washington. And an aide to LeMay tried urgently to reach his boss."

Of course, to say LeMay was a "frequent opponent of Kennedy's" is serious understatement.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, Kennedy refused to bomb or invade Cuba as he was urged to do by his Joint Chiefs, especially Air Force General Curtis LeMay , who actually compared JFK to Neville Chamberlain, and referred to his actions as “appeasement”. According to one of the first major mainstream news releases after the tapes in the WH situation room were released (The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1996, 'Bomb Cuba!Le May Urged JFK', p. 2A):

"Tapes of secretly recorded White House conversations released this week show that President John F. Kennedy's military advisers strongly pressured him to bomb and invade Cuba during the missile crisis 34 years ago this month. Indeed, they forecast that war would occur whether he invaded Cuba or not.

Blasting Kennedy's cautious approach, the Air Force Chief, Gen. Curtis LeMay, told the President at a White House meeting on Oct. 19, 1962, "This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich......

Through those days Kennedy was fending off strong pressure for an attack on Cuba from congressional and military leaders such as LeMay, who told him, 'We don't have any choice but direct military action...I see no other solution...'"

Of course, JFK resisted these insane pleas which - had they been carried out- would doubtless have led to a massive nuclear exchange with the Russians, as former Defense Secrtary Robert McNamara noted in a 1993 interview on NBC Today. McNamara acknowledged that only later did the information become known that Castro had 93 IRBMs aimed at the eastern U.S. So, had JFK not had the courage to face down LeMay and the JCS we wouldn't even be discussing lost tapes.

LeMay and fellow Joint Chief Lyman Lemnitzer were also behind the odious plans for "Operation Northwoods", as revealed in James Bamford's 2001 book, Body of Secrets, Doubleday Books, p. 82. This was described by Bamford as (ibid):

“maybe the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government”

This treacherous campaign of terror was to include the sinking of refugee boats (carrying Cuban refugees) on the high seas, as well as the killing of innocent citizens on American cities’ streets, plus random bombings carried out in Washington, DC, Miami and other places. The objective? To deliberately incite a war with Castro's Cuba. One can easily see from both the October, 1962 exchanges and also the Northwoods information, that the JCS and especially LeMay - had a major 'Jones' for starting a war.

When I first heard of Northwoods, I had trouble processing how any U.S. government agency or entity could remotely conceive of such foul deeds, far less carry them out. Then I quickly recalled the blowing up of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 over Barbados, on October 6. 1976 by Luis Posada, Freddie Lugo and other renegades sponsored in the extremist Alpha 66 enclave by the CIA. 73 innocent victims perished in that terrorist act, the worst one in the western hemisphere prior to 9/11. Bamford, in his discussion of Northwoods, further notes that the extent of it included getting England (UK) to side with the U.S. against Castro by also launching attacks against Jamaica and Trinidad, both (then) Commonwealth members. Does anyone seriously believe, given the vile extent of such plans, they’d have been the least squeamish about planning to assassinate a president who consistently thwarted and humiliated them?

Evidently the daft and clueless pseudo-historian Robert Dallek does! Quoted on the CBS Morning show he opined, in conjunction with the suspicious nature of 42 minutes edited out of the original public version (presented in the Warren Commission Hearings) and the disappearance of LeMay in the immediate aftermath:

"They (conspiracy theorists) just can't accept that any person as dysfunctional as Lee Harvey Oswald, lone wolf that he was, could have carried out the assassination"

No, sir, we do not! Not when three master marksmen recruited by the Warren Commission failed to replicate Oswald's alleged feat. Indeed, just one of the three expert riflemen was able to get off three shots in under 5.6 seconds – the designated time interval for total shots declared by the Warren Commission. And most to the point: none of the total 18 shots fired in the test trials struck the targets in the head or the neck. In other words, from a technical standpoint of duplicating Oswald’s alleged shots- this trio of experts failed. Another key aspect: for the duration of the 18 rounds, two of the “master” riflemen were unable to reload and fire at the stationary target as rapidly as Oswald purportedly did for the moving limo.

Of course, I had earlier slammed Dallek for his historical amnesia in terms of his historical perspective on JFK's achievements, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/01/jfk-amnesia-how-bad-can-it-get.html

This time I focus on the usual prattle of some that we - the American people - simply can't handle that such an epically evil act could be committed by a little "nobody". In this, Dallek commits the same error as mathematician John Allan Paulos, in his 2008 book, Irreligion: mistaking the low political value of the person assassinated for the high political value of the assassination. In the case of Paulos, he makes a false equivalence (to JFK) using the 1997 example of Princess Diana. Thus, Princess Diana was so loved and cherished by millions, that few were able to accept she perished in a random auto accident.

However, apart from initiating some land mine awareness programs and being the public face for a few charities, Diana’s slaying had no where near the political repercussions down the line that JFK’s had. Any altered timelines extrapolated in the wake of her death would find nothing of the comparable magnitude that occurred with JFK’s demise. Thus, it’s like comparing chalk and cheese.

As for Dallek, he mistakes a conspiracy approach for an inability to cope and reconciling the loss to a "lone wolf", while he confuses possible psychological "dysfunction" of the alleged assassin for serious motivation and a realistic capability to carry out the deed. Indeed, in a 1997 Usenet FAQ for the newsgroup alt.conspiracy.jfk, I showed how anyone with the putative psychological disabilities attributed to Oswald would never have been able to carry out the kill attributed to him. Also, as I showed in a number of previous blogs, the kill shots couldn't even have come from where Oswald was alleged to be (the Texas School Book Depository):

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/11/nat-geo-continues-with-elites-kennedy.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-on-nat-geo-explorer-lost-bullet.html

Thus, the dynamics don't even point to Lee Oswald! Apart from that, Oswald's rifle skills were in question. By the time Oswald was discharged from the Marines, he was barely able to qualify in any defined shooter category - with a 191 score (or Marksman). Corporal Nelson Delgado, the marine most familiar with Oswald's skills, referred to his being tagged with the label of 'Maggie's Drawers', meaning he was a lousy shot. In effect, what we see is just the opposite of what one would expect for the alleged assassin. His shooting skills never adequate to begin with, then deteriorating over time, as opposed to improving. It is rather illogical, therefore, to suppose that in an environment ('civilian') which required no regular training and for which no evidence of any extraneous 'practice' existed Oswald's skills significantly improved to the level of being able to make the shots attributed to him. (Let's again bear in mind three professional master marksmen were unable to replicate them - either using Oswald's same rifle, or a different model with 18 shots to do it in!)

At least the other historian, Michael Beschloss, quoted on the CBS Morning Show admitted that people will rightfully question why this 42 min. stretch of tape is only now being released, and why it wasn't with the original Warren records. He went on to state many already believe the Warren Commission was more a "whitewash" citing a recent CBS News poll showing that 73% of Americans didn't believe it. Well, why should they? Any professed "commission" that ignores 200 material witnesses can't be for real, but would have to be a political-PR artifact to shut people up and put the event in the rear window. "Historian" Dallek plays right into this.

Finally, what are we to make of the fact that more than 50,000 pages to do with the Kennedy assassination remain unreleased? This despite the 1992 JFK Records Act by which all these documents were to have seen the light of day by now. (And let's recall Bill Clinton's 1996 Executive order to do this!)

Readers can learn more about this in the salon.com article below:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/31/u_s_secrecy_system_literally_out_of_control/

and in respect of the JFK material:

http://thefoiablog.typepad.com/the_foia_blog/2012/01/assassination-archives-seeks-release-of-50000-jfk-documents.html

Note also the letter therein, to the National Archives, to release this material. Why, if no conspiracy took place, the need to hide so much for so long? Surely "national security" can't continue to be used as an excuse given the technology has moved far beyond what spooks used 50 years ago, not to mention all those old sources long since dead. The only logical reason would be to protect actual handlers and agents that had a hand in the Kennedy hit - either directly, or by setting up a patsy to take the fall. People such as George Joannides.

In the end, the release of these 50-year old audio tapes merely adds more fuel to the fire of the conspiracy paradigm, while the silence of the agencies keeping 50 year old files on ice reinforces it! It appears these agencies really do fear the American people. Which seems incredible given that one of the most loathsome plans ever conceived by any government - Operation Northwoods- has already been exposed.

Lastly, the take of a genuine historian: Prof.. David R. Wrone, in writing in The Journal of Southern History(6), February, 1995, p. 188, is the only one that matters:

“I believe that irrefutable evidence shows conspirators, none of them Oswald, killed JFK. A mentally ill Jack Ruby, alone and unaided, shot Oswald. The federal inquiry knowingly collapsed and theorized a political solution. Its corruption spawned theorists who tout solutions rather than define the facts that are locked in the massively muddied evidentiary base, and released only by hard work.”

Further solutions to Matrix Problems

2012-01-30T15:36:00.000-08:00

We left off with some further matrix problems which are now solved:

Determine which of the following matrices is positive definite:

1)

(1......2)
(2.....1)

Check the eigenvalues, viz.

(1-φ ......2)
(2.......1- φ) = (1-φ )^2 - 4 = 0

Or: φ ^2 - 2φ - 3 = 0

And: (φ - 3) (φ + 1) = 0 so φ1 = 3, φ = -1

Since: φ2 is less than zero the matrix is not positive definite

2)

(1....-1)
(-1.....2)

Again, we first find the eigenvalues using:

(1-φ ......-1)
(-1.......2- φ) = (1-φ ) (2- φ) - 1 = 0

Or: 1 - 3φ + φ^2 - 1 = 0

Leading to: φ^2 - 3φ = 0 or φ (φ - 3) = 0

and this yields: φ1 = 0, and φ2 = 3

Only φ2 > 0 so the matrix is not positive definite

3)

(3.....2)
(2.....1)

Solve for the eigenvalues:

(3-φ ......2)
(2......1- φ) = (3-φ ) (1- φ) -4 = 0

And:

1 - 4φ + φ^2 - 4 = 0 or φ^2 - 4φ - 1 = 0

Use the quadratic formula to solve, viz. φ1, φ2 = {-b +/- [b^2 - 4ac]^½} / 2a

where: b = -4, a = 1 and c = -1

then:

φ1, φ2 = {4 +/- [4^2 - 4(1)]^½} / 2 = {4 +/- [16+ 4]^½} / 2

φ1, φ2 = {4 +/- [20]^½} / 2 = 2 +/- 2 [5]^½

So: φ1 = 2 + 2 [5]^½ and φ2 = 2 - 2 [5]^½

Since: φ2 = 2 - 2 [5]^½ = 2 - 2(2.236) = 2 - 4.472 = -2.472

is less than 0, the matrix is not positive definite.

4)

(1..........2..........3)
(2.........0...........1)
(3 .........1...........1)

Set out the 3 x 3 matrix to obtain the eigenvalues so:

(1- φ..........2..........3)
(2.........- φ.............1)
(3 .........1...........1 - φ)

Proceed to find the eigenvalues using:

(1- φ ) (-2....... 1)
.............. (1 ......1 - φ) -

(2) (2....... 1)
..... (3 ....1 - φ) +

(3) (2....... - φ)
.... (3 .........1 )

Leading to the eigenvalue equation:

1 - φ( -φ + φ^2 -1 ) - 2(-2φ -1) + 3(2 + 3φ)= 0

Or:

φ^3 - 2φ^2 - 13φ - 7 = 0

Which is a cubic equation. One root, call it φ1 = -2.33, is less than zero, hence the matrix cannot be positive definite.

Why The "Naked Ape" Needs Some Hair

2012-01-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

A specially (UV) illuminated bed bug about to plunge its proboscis into the bare waiting skin of a student guinea pig.

Since Desmond Morris' smash book of 1967, The Naked Ape, many people have actually thought of humans....those of us who are members of the primate species Homo sapiens, as "naked apes". The evolutionary arguments for this nakedness, meanwhile, have extended to everything from an intermittent "aquatic period" of several million years" (in which case why didn't we retain some residual gills) to competitive advantages in presenting a healthy skin to a possible mate.

Totally missed in all these ruminations, evidently by Morris as well, is that humans aren't really naked apes at all. Per square centimeter, human skin has as many hair follicles as other great apes - the difference it that they aren't as coarse or wide. So much for fancying that we are some special kind of "angel" or being far beyond those of our cousins, the chimps.

The evolutionary question that emerges then, is why did humans arrive with such fine hair hairs that grows from these abundant follicles. It's obviously not to woo mates, and in fact a majority of human females are not terribly turned on by hirsute males. Nor does there appear to be any kind of benefit in terms of camouflage, or even protection. That poison ivy leaf you touch will still carry a sting and an itch!

Now, two researchers from Britain's Sheffield University - Isabelle Dean and Michael Siva -Jothy- appear to have resolved this conundrum of the purpose of human hair. As published in the recent issue of Biology Letters, their research appears to show these fine human hairs servie as an early warning system to alert us before an arthropod (such as shown in the image) creeping under our covers or sheets puts a hurt on us. The most common threats being bed bugs, as well as certain species of lice. Hence, the fine vellus and terminal hairs are there to warn us - if even slightly disturbed by a small alien beastie attempting to make a meal. In effect, the sensation of the beastie making his way toward his dinner generally awakens us and allows enough time to react before becoming a ready blood meal.

In thier study, the Sheffield researchers recruited 29 university students to act as guinea pigs. Each had a patch of skin on one arm shaved and encompassed by petrleum jelly (to fence the bugs in) and the other arm had a similar patch though unshaven. Subsequently, unfed bed bugs were released to do their thing and the students were requested to look away while the beasties were placed on their arms. Clearly, Siva -Jothy and Dean didn't wish to see their charges freaking out before hand.

These human guniea pigs were then asked to press a button whenever they sensed a critter moving across their skin. Siva -Jothy and Dean found a significant difference in frequencies between the two separate arm patches. When a bug traversed a hairy patch, the button signal was depressed on average every 4 seconds. On a shaved patch more than ten seconds elapsed between detections. Further the bugs perched on the hairy skin took nearly 20% longer to attempt to bite their voluntary hosts. (I say "attempt" because the lab workers removed the bugs before they could sink their proboscises into the waiting flesh).

In all the cases, men (who are hairier) fared better than the female volunteers when the bugs were released onto unshaven patches of skin.

Desmond Morris was indeed correct on observing that human hair had "shrunk" but what he missed out was identifying why it hasn't completely disappeared to render a real naked ape.

Solutions to Matrix Problems

2012-01-29T15:12:00.000-08:00

We now examine the solutions to the previous problems. Once more:

Check each of the following matrices to determine if positive or positive definite or positive semi-definite (the case where D = ac - bd = 0)

1)

(cos π/2.........-sin π/2)
(sin π/2.........cos π/2 )

Solution: We know:

cos π/2 = 0, - sin π/2 = -1, sin π/2 = 1 so the matrix can be written:

(0...-1)
(1....0)

And the eigenvalues φ are found from:

(-φ ......-1)
(1..........- φ) =

φ^2 + 1 = 0 or φ^2 = -1 whence: φ1 = i, φ2 = -i

So they are imaginary. The determinant D = 0 - (-1)(1) = 1

Check that the pivot P > 0 when P = ([ac - bd]/ a) = (0 - (-1))/0 = 1/0

But 1/0 = oo so this test is indeterminate. (Note also we cannot say the eigenvalues > 0)

2)

(3.......1)
(0.......3)

The Determinant is D = ac - bd = (3)(3) - 0 = 0

The eigenvalues must be > 0. We check with the calculations, using :

(3-φ ......1)
(0.........3- φ) =

(3- φ) ^2 = 0 or 9 - φ ^2 = 0

so: φ1 = 3, and φ2 = - 3

The matrix fails the tests for being positive, positive definite because one eigenvalue is negative.

3)

(2.....6)
(6.....18)

The determinant D = (2)(18) - (6)(6) = 36 - 36 = 0

Hence the matrix is positive semi-definite, and also since the eigenvalues:

φ1 = 0, φ2 = 20

4)

(2i.....1)
(2.......i)

The determinant D = (2i)i - (1)(2) = 2 (i)^2 - 2 = 2(-1) - 2 = -4

Hence, not positive or positive definite, or positive semi-definite

5)

(-½ i.....i)
(2i....... i)

The determinant D = (-½ i) i - i((2 i) = [-½ (-1)] - (2)(-1) = ½ + 2 = 5/2

Check that the pivot P > 0. P = ([ac - bd]/ a) = ( 2½)/ (-½ i) = -1.25i

SO the test fails for this matrix, or th result is indeterminate.

Additional Problems:

Determine which of the following matrices is positive definite:

1)

(1......2)
(2.....1)

2)

(1....-1)
(-1.....2)

3)

(3.....2)
(2.....1)

4)

(1..........2..........3)
(2.........0...........1)
(3 .........1...........1)

Why Lisa Kennedy, aka "Kennedy", is a Moron!

2012-01-29T12:16:00.000-08:00

Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, talk show radio host and sometime commentator for reason Tv, appeared on the Bill Maher HBO 'Real Time' show Friday night. For the first several minutes, I watched and speculated that an intelligent newcomer find was perhaps made by Bill. While it's always nice to see and hear the usual brilliant guests, like Gore Vidal, Rachel Maddow, and Prof. Michael Dyson, it's great to get the perspectives of new minds too.

Regarding "Kennedy" or Ms. Kennedy (or Ms. Montgomery) the most useful trope applicable in Maher's Friday night show might have been along the lines of "better to remain quiet and be suspected of being a fool, than to open one's mouth and confirm it". In this case, my suspicions were first triggered when the panel discussed the Jan Brewer incident a few days ago, when the Arizona governor confronted President Obama on the airport tarmac in Phoenix and wagged her finger in his face. At least this is what the photograph showed.

As usual, Bill and his other guest Martin Bashir had the correct take that it was the epitome of disrespect. Dana Rohrabacher was somewhat off the wall, saying Brewer was "entitled" on account of the fact "a President is not a King or Queen" - implying that to critique this gauche conduct of the AZ governor was the same as obeisance. I basically wrote Rohrabacher's reply off as the product of one suffering from Alzheimer's and awaited Kennedy's response.

She asserted there was no way that a governor who was male would be criticized like Brewer had been. In other words, to this bubblehead, it was all about sexism and nothing more. Anyway, my suspicions that she was a nitwit had been established.

She then confirmed it with two later remarks-comments in the course of a rapid conversation touching several subjects. One of these was global warming, which of course the libertarian crowd (that runs 'Reason' magazine) doesn't accept. So, one more or less expected a stock, stupid answer and we got it:

"Sunspots!" Kennedy blurted

In other words, all the climate change debate amounted to was blaming manade CO2 instead of the true culprit: the heating from "sunspots".

Personally, I doubt Lisa even knows what a sunspot is, but let's briefly review. According to the standard (sunspot) theory of former Univ. of Chicago astrophysicist Eugene Parker, the "inverse ion hurricane" represented by a large sunspot, enables the basis for the latent energy to translate into a convective collapse process so the luminosity can flow out and around the periphery of spots. This effect operates according to the ionization reaction:

H + (energy) -> H+ + e(-)

backing up the supposition that a super-adiabatic temperature gradient is largest near the surface and its associated latent energy. Thus, what we see happening with accumulation of large spots (see the photo which I took of a mammoth group of spots on Nov. 4, 1980) is the redirection of heat to the periphery of the spot(s) yielding an enhanced solar irradiance. This is counterintuitive, since spots are actually cooler regions in relation to the Sun's surrounding photosphere, which is roughly 1500 K hotter.

The irradiance is just the solar radiance - in watts per square meter per steradian - integrated over the full solar disk."Steradian" denotes a solid angle measure. See, e.g. the definitional details (with diagrams) here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steradian)

Needless to say, solar irradiance has a direct bearing on the issue of climate change and to what degree the Sun is responsible, and especially whether (quantitatively) its irradiance over any one solar cycle or period therein overrides the human-incepted, CO2 -driven, greenhouse effect.

So, at least if "Kennedy" somehow meant this when she blurted out "sunspots" she was in the ballpark. But of course given she didn't elaborate, we simply don't know.

Where the problem comes in, is the actual relative contributions of heating arising from a nonlinear driver or forcing agent from global warming, vis-a-vis the contribution from solar irradiance.

In his lecture at the 40th Meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society ('Solar Irradiance: Recent Results and Future Research Plans'), in June, 2009, Thomas N. Woods of the University of Colorado dealt with the matter as it pertains to the current cycle, and in particular some recent measurements.Woods began by noting the assorted recent periods wherein irradiance measurably varied, including: the Medieval maximum, the Sporer minimum (1400s), the Maunder minimum (1600s), the Dalton minimum (1800s). He noted with emphasis that there was no single uniform value to characterize a time interval or period, since the radiance itself can vary hugely on small or local scales. For example, solar flares can propel radiance increases 50 times over normal and thereby affect the irradiance.

On average though, with such violent inputs smoothed out, the Earth's temperature changes by about 0.07 K (kelvin) over a given solar cycle - but not continuously cumulative, i.e. the temperatures don't keep building but diminish with the next sunspot minimum. Compare this to the 0.6 K change (increase) in global temperatures over the past 100 years arising from human-caused greenhouse effect. Thus, the human component is over 8.5 times greater.

Even if the solar forcing on climate is enhanced by positive feedbacks the amplification is usually no more than a factor 2. So that T= 0.07 K increases become T' = 0.14 K increases. The human component is still more important by a factor 4.2, a point made by Woods when he emphasized that the recent results support the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary contributor. This despite all the politicos, think tanks, Libbies and their Reason mags or tv -radio shows and other yahoos who keep blabbering that climate change arises from "natural cycles" - meaning the Sun is responsible. Sunspots obviously enters into this.

Now, what can be conceded here is that we may need to re-examine the standard solar dynamo theory. This is the Babcock-Leighton theory that every 11 years or so, magnetic fields on the Sun attain a high torsional component which causes them to "twist" up and also move from more northerly to more southerly solar latitudes where most active regions (ARs) form.

Typically, this is around 22-23 heliographic degrees. But during the interphase of the current cycle (24) with its predescessor, the torsional oscillation flow for the latter had been hovering near heliographic latitude 33 degrees, nearly 10 degrees off. Even moving at about 7 Mm (mega-meters or 10^6 meters) a year southward, this would take over 2 years to reach a latitude of 23 degrees, where large active regions (and spots!) ought to form.

THIS is what we would need to account for, a time delay associated with sunspots arriving at their "correct" heliographic latitudes. Any such remodeling of the basic dynamo model would, obviously, be difficult and require more detailed analysis of associated cycle tachoclines, and the meriodonal flows inside the Sun. This means MONEY.

But my point here is that while the time delay aspect needs to be re-visited, the relative warming contributions of sunspots vs. the nonlinear climate agents (greenhouse gases) do not. We know CO2 alone is driving up the solar insolation -heating at the increment of 2 watts per sq. meter per year with every 2 parts per million added. The reason as I stated before, is that all greenhouse gases act as primal heat amps on account of their molecular vibration properties. So, maybe if Ms. Kennedy is going to comment on "sunspots" in relation to climate change, she'd best do so by first getting a Physics degree in addition to her Philosophy degree. (I walways wondered where philosophy majors ended up. Now I know, on conservative talk radio shows!)

Anyway, Kennedy's other vacuous, lowbrow remark was that "Atheism is a religion". Bill Maher did his best to rebut this recycled foolishness in the time he had, but it wasn't enough and he moved on to his 'New Rules'.

But let's make no mistake that the claim is absurd on its face. The misplaced strategy, however, is always to attempt to place atheism within the same logical context as religion and then attack it on the basis of occupying an analogous “belief” spectrum. In the end, this is a fool’s errand.

For one thing it turns the very meaning and basis of religion on its head. We know all religions embody centralized beliefs or dogmas that issue from some sacred scripture or a body of theology based on scriptural interpretations.. Atheism has none of these, since there are no central propositions or beliefs with which all atheists agree.

A religion, by contrast, will have a core set of beliefs to which EVERYONE subscribes.

Further, atheists numbered amongst the most dominant version ("implicit atheism") withhold belief, they do not invest it. This alone separates atheists from religionists or people of faith. Second, atheists make no positive claims for any transcendent existent that requires their worship or obeisance. They simply acknowledge no god or entity with which to build a religion in other words. Third, atheists maintain no sacred works, scriptures, or ancient artifacts, from which their “truths” are extracted. They have no analog to a Bible, Qu’ran, Talmud or anything remotely similar. Instead, atheists pursue objective truth via open inquiry predicated on current science, which may provide fewer certainties or answers than if they merely placed their faith in a book.

Fourth, atheists convene no regular rituals, services or ceremonies to honor, or propitiate any entity. By contrast, the centerpiece of 99 percent of religions is precisely some social ritual, for the purpose of assembling together like-minded believers toward a common goal. Moreover, their churches, synagogues, temples etc. dot the landscape, taking up room that could be used to house the homeless in each respective area or locale.

Perhaps most importantly, there is no "acceptance" of atheist core principles from any “congregation” since there’s no homogeneous congregation to bestow it. Atheists often disagree on as many things as they agree on, precisely because no formal coda exists to fix beliefs within a uniform dogma.

Indeed, atheists can't even agree on whether the foundational philosophy of Materialism (actually scientific Materialism) is the cornerstone for atheist thought! Even the ones that do accept some form of Materialism don't always agree on which type. Thus one might encounter:

- Physicalist Materialism (everything in the cosmos has a physical nature)

- Epiphenomenalist Materialism (non-physical processes occur that are contingent on physical origins, organs, etc.)

- Panpsychic Materialism (attributes a mental character to physical entities)

- Emergent Materialism (can attribute vitalist forces to physical nature)

- Dialectical Materialism (mental processes evolve from physical ones)

Despite this, there remain some (evidently like "Kennedy") who insist that if an atheist simply doesn’t believe in the supernatural or God he is expressing a belief, albeit a negative one. If expressing a negative belief, then it's the same as a positive belief such as invoked in religions, ergo he is professing a religion. This is utter nonsense.

It would be akin to asserting that if I decline belief in ghosts I still have “negative ghost belief” and therefore am a Ghostologist ! The error inheres in asserting that an absence of belief is the same as a belief. This error repeats the canard that the onus is on the atheist to disprove the believer’s claim, instead of acknowledging it is impossible to prove a negative. Some sophists attempt to get around this by claiming it isn’t impossible to prove a negative. They argue that they can prove “there are no black balls” in a box by simply emptying the box out and finding all white balls. But this misrepresents the example, since the possibility of “all white” balls was never in question! The analogy is specious because the existence of God IS in question, and isn’t objectively verifiable, unlike counting real balls. The analogy trivializes the deity existence question while not validating the sophist.

The bottom line is that Lisa Kennedy, in her debut on Maher last night, merely showed herself to be another conservo meathead like a former guest Maher had on some time ago, the pseudo-atheist and pseudo-intellectual S.E. Cupp. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/05/se-cupp-and-case-for-pseudo-atheists.html

Catholics Losing It Over Obama Admin. Contraception Ruling

2012-01-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

Among the contraceptives that would be banned if Catholic hospitals etc. rebel against the Obama Administration ruling.

It is frankly difficult to conceive that in this day and age, in the second decade of the 21st century, a major world religion is still attempting to foist its archaic sexual-reproductive standards on its minions.....errrr.... members, and even extend that antiquated codswallop to affect non-members lives! But what else can one conclude when one reads bizarre bilge ('Catholics Hit Rule on contraception', WSJ, Jan. 27), such as:

"Catholic leaders lashed out at the Obama administration's decision to require religious employer's health plans to cover contraceptives, accusing the White House of betraying them on the issue.."

The article then elaborates:

"Catholic leaders say they were surprised by new federal rules that require employers to provide all forms of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration without co-payments or deductibles for health insurance policy holders. Most employers have to comply with the requirement starting in August..""

Say what? Look, these religious twits knew for over six months this ruling was coming, and they also knew the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services had already exempted religious organizations that employ and serve people of the same faith, from having to provide contraceptive services for them, for example. This is natural and reasonable, because it is assumed that within that closed enclave of homologous Catholic faith - most or all of the participants would agree to any claimed principles or dogmas.

However, any birdbrain would have to know that dispensation would have to cease when the general public, including many Protestants and even atheists, secularists that attended a Catholic hospital (maybe because it's the only one in their area) might be prevented from getting contraceptive services they needed. After all, since they aren't Catholics they can't be held to the same moral "rules" as Catholics.

But this is what these Catholic whiners are bitching about!They insist that their pet morality on contraceptives be broadened to extend to ALL employees and institutions, even those that employ mostly non-Catholics! This is insane! They even have the nerve to offer up rubbish such as spouted by the Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York (ibid.), that this rule:

"is a literally unconscionable attack on religious freedom"

In fact, it isn't! Roman Catholics are perfectly entitled to withhold contraceptive services for their own Catholic members, but may not do so for the general public that has no other alternatives or recourse than to go to a Catholic hospital, or work at some other Catholic institution - say like a school. Hence, if I as an atheist am teaching at such a school, I need to be able to secure these contraceptives for my wife if she should need them. To say I can't based on the fact the school is religious, is an infringement of my rights as a citizen. And certainly, if the Catholic Church is to continue to enjoy tax free status as a religion, it needs to keep its nose out of issues that don't concern it, namely those affecting non-Catholic citizens, irrespective of where they work.

Most puzzling is why, if Catholics purport to be against abortion, they'd be against contraception which arguably would cut down on the number of abortions. As one Connecticut lawmaker, Rosa De Lauro (D) observed, the White House actually "handled the decision very well by being open to listening to religious leaders", while adding (ibid.):

"Contraception is about preventing unintended pregnancy"

Exactly, so why on Earth be against something like contraception - in which no lives are taken - that would putatively eliminate the need to take them in the case of abortion? There is no logical reason for this. It's as if Catholics willingly condone the greater evil because they object to a subjectively perceived "lesser evil". That would be like me insisting all vaccinations be banned as "unnatural" based on my wacky religious beliefs of what constitutes the "natural", and demanding it be done for all people who avail themselves of my assistance or hospitals- thereby possibly leading to major pandemics that would engender the much greater REAL evil of death!

What the Church is really hanging onto is an antiquated "natural law" which is absurd on its face. Indeed, Catholic impediments to a sane birth control policy began with the misguided encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. The Pope at the time, Paul VI, issued this document in direct opposition to his own specially appointed Papal Commission on the matter. Author David Yallop, in his book In God's Name, 1984, has portrayed Humanae Vitae in stark terms indeed, as well as its paradoxical consequences (p. 58):

"On a disaster scale for the Roman Catholic Church, it measures higher than the treatment of Galileo in the seventeenth century "

The implicit assumption in Humanae Vitae and Pope John Paul II's subsequent encyclical Veritatis Splendor, is that procreation takes precedence over any other function of sexual intercourse. This is observably true in most other animals (with estrus cycles) but it certainly doesn’t apply to humans who exhibit a diverse array of sexual play. To devalue sexplay for its own end, while extolling procreation-based sex as the be-all and end-all, is to rob humans of their uniqueness as sexual primates. Or, to refer to the words of one Catholic biologist, Elizabeth Dougherty (in Contraception and Holiness, The Lessons of Zoology, p. 110):

"Why do we call secondary the ends of the sexual act which have been accorded in fullness to us, and why do we call primary the end that we share with the lower animals?"

It is also to invite ecological catastrophe for this planet. Since 1968, for example, the world population has added another two and a half billion which the Vatican merely welcomes as 'more souls for the Church' - potential or otherwise - while ignoring their collective impact on strained planetary ecosystems. Also, ignoring their individual impact on families which are so stretched economically they can't even care properly for the children they have, far less must add!

Catholic voters need to ask themselves if they are really prepared to get their panties into a snit over this, to the extent of either sitting out this election or worse....voting for someone like Mitt Romney,......a multi-millionaire who already has stated intentions to cut or privatize Medicare and to whittle Medicaid down by using "state block grants". In other words, let the burden of Medicaid fall on already budget-busted states to provide care. Most likely by whittling down the threshold acceptance levels to the bare minimum, say maximum income of $150 per month.

So these high-minded Catholic grasp the suffering this will surely cause? Or maybe their precious, antiquated doctrines are more important to them than the suffering of their fellow citizens.

Positive and Positive Definite Matrices

2012-01-28T11:36:00.001-08:00

We continue to examine some more aspects of Hermitian matrices and some general properties of all matrices. We will stick in this exposition to simple 2 x 2 matrices, but understand everything treated can be generalized to larger array square matrices. Consider first the case of a positive matrix.

Here, a Hermitian matrix is positive if all eigenvalues > (=) to 0. Let's consider this example for which we are to check whether it's positive: M =

(1 -φ .........i)
(-i.........1 - φ)

Write out:

M = (1 - φ)^2 - (-i)(i) = (1 - φ) (1 - φ) - (1) = φ^2 - 2φ + 1 - 1 = 0

Or:

φ^2 - 2φ = 0 so: φ( φ - 2) = 0

whence: φ1 = 0 and φ2 = 2

Thus, the condition is met that the eigenvalues (φ1, φ2) are equal to or greater than 0 so the matrix is positive.

We now consider any general symmetric matrix, i.e. such that A = t^A in the context of when such a matrix is positive definite. The conditions for this are:

i) All the eigenvalues are positive (e.g. φi > 0)

ii) All the determinants are positive (e.g. ac - bd > 0)

iii)The pivots ([ac - bd]/ a) > 0

iv) t^x A x > 0

Example: State whether matrix W =

(2.....6)
(6......19)

is positive definite.

Solution: We check each of the conditions (i - iv) to see if they are met.

First, the eigenvalues must be > 0. We check the calculations - see, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/12/revisiting-linear-algebra.html

to see : φ1 = 0.096 and φ2 = 20.904

so both meet the condition.

Check that the determinant D > 0:

D = (2) (19) - (6)(6) = 38 - 36 = 2

so the condition is met.

Check that the pivot P > 0.

P = ([ac - bd]/ a) = 2/ 2 = 1

so, the condition is met.

Check to see if: t^x A x > 0

We let: x =

[x1]
[x2]

so that: t^x = [x1 ...x2]

Then we obtain the operation: t^x W x =

[x1 ...x2] [2x1 + 6x2]
...............[6x1 + 19x2]

Yielding the quadratic form: 2x1^2 + 12x1 x2 + 19 x2^2

where: a = 2, 2b = 12 so b = 12/2 = 6 and lastly c = 19

Hence, it meets the condition since a, b, c are all positive.

Then the matrix is positive definite.

Problems:

Check each of the following matrices to determine if positive or positive definite or positive semi-definite (the case where D = ac - bd = 0)

1)

(cos π/2.........-sin π/2)
(sin π/2.........cos π/2 )

2)

(3.......1)
(0.......3)

3)

(2.....6)
(6.....18)

4)

(2i.....1)
(2.......i)

5)

(-½ i.....i)
(2i....... i)

NFL Conspiracy Theories: When Losing Fans Get Paranoid

2012-01-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

Baltimore receiver Lee Evans has the winning TD catch knocked out of his hands at the end of last week's Baltimore - New England game. Was the game fixed to ensure a Giants-Patriots revenge match?

Some fifteen years ago while working for a radiotherapy software company, a co-worker and I got into an animated discussion over professional football. He basically said he never followed any of it because "most of the games are fixed". I asked him to defend that point of view with some kind of evidence but he refrained, only claiming that I should "Look at some of the most critical plays and the calls of the refs!"

I basically dismissed his suspicions as looney, paranoid nonsense. Then, in the wake of the 15-1 Packers' loss to the NY Giants by 37-20, I saw it surface again on the Packer forums at the Milwaukee Journal -Sentinel. More than one devastated fan, still in disbelief, wrote to the effect that "It is simply impossible the Packers could have been beaten like this, at home, with more than three weeks to prepare, and a record like they have! I believe the game was fixed to enable a rematch of the Giants-Patriots!"

But they did lose! And rather than dream up suspicious fantasies, and let's bear in mind the Pack got the benefit of a fumble call (by Greg Jennings) they never should have! In addition, in today's Green Bay Press-Gazette, defender Charles Woodson admitted that the Giants played better and they "wanted the game more than we did".

A stark admission.

Now after the championship games last W/E the conspiracy meme continues to surface. The NFL had its "chosen teams" - with the best markets, picked for a "revenge match" between Tom Brady and Eli Manning. As with all loosely thought out conspiracy theories, these rest on selective confirmation, and then seeing almost all plays or calls as evidence of that confirmation of a conspiracy. For example, the memes have now extended to the players who for whatever reason boffed critical plays leading to the opponents to get in. Kyle Williams of the 49'ers for example, mishandled one punt during regulation leading to a Giants' extra possession possession and an Eli Manning TD. Then, in overtime, Williams fumbled a punt that led to the winning field goal. "He was on the take!" came the paranoid loser fans bleating. "They paid him to fumble!"

This, of course, is nonsense, and anyone watching Kyle after the game could see the last thing he wanted was to hand the game over to the Giants! (Which is also why it says very little of certain SF fans to have tweeted him threats, including death threats, according to his dad Ken Williams, a coach for the Chicago White sox baseball team). The same goes for insinuations that Baltimore Ravens' kicker Billy Cundiff deliberately botched a 32-yard kick that would have sent the Ravens- Patriots' game to Overtime. That was the last thing Cundiff wanted.

Then there was Baltimore receiver Lee Evans dropped touchdown pass at the end (see image), with barely 20 secs remaining. He makes that catch and the Ravens pack their bags for SuperBowl XLVVI. Maybe he dropped that pass deliberately, paid off several millions to throw the game for the Patriots to win! Again, nonsense, because Billy Cundiff still had the chance to tie the game, it did't pivot on Evans' catch, though yes had he made it it's a Ravens' win.

If there was anything suspicious near the end of the game it wasn't Evans' botched catch or Cundiff's miss, but rather a referee non-call with barely 50 seconds left when Patriots' safety Sterling Moore committed a pass interference penalty against Ravens' tight end, Dennis Pitta. Most serious observers (e.g. Baltimore Sun columnist John Eisenberg) agree it was a non-call that had tremendous consequences and it was also a call totally within the purview of the "Zebras". Had the defender Moore been penalized (as he ought to have been, on watching the play again) the Ravens' would have had the ball on their 1 -yard line and a new set of downs. Almost certainly, they'd have found a way to score 7, and win the game.

This is a harder one to skewer, though one might make the case that the refs were deliberately willing to "let the players play" without interfering. Still, the Ravens were penalized with a number of earlier calls that looked twitchy, while the Pats seemed to have escaped. But again, maybe this is merely looking for "confirmation" of a posited conspiracy. Still, given the game decided who was to travel to the SuperBowl, who knows what might have been had the Pats' defender (the same guy who knocked the ball from Evans' hands) been flagged for a PI.

Eyes are now trained on the coming Superbowl, and the "conspiracy game fix" theorists in SF, Baltimore and Green Bay are now watching carefully to see if Part II of their speculations comes true - that is, the Patriots are allowed to win to assure "revenge" for Brady's Pats in a rematch with the team that ignominously ended their perfect season in 2008. Needless to say, all eyes will be trained squarely on the refs in this game....and Brady and the Pats better earn their Lombardi trophy this time....no help from the Zebras!

Middle class shrunk? Yep, because some got rich!

2012-01-27T14:55:00.000-08:00

Every now and then one encounters a nutwhack theory so profoundly at odds with reality that one has little choice other than to subject it to the light. After all, we know that excrement -eating insects as well as offal of all forms - animate and inanimate, thrives and grows best in the dark. Look at some of the worst festering fungi like stachybotrys.

This also applies in the realm of memes and ideas. In this case, a recent article appearing in the Wall Street Journal, 'Lessons from the Grand Expansion' in which we are expected to buy into the bullshit of one "Henry R. Nau" - cited as a "Hoover Institute fellow who teaches political science and foreign affairs at George Washington University". Well, all I can say is if this WSJ piece is emblematic of his teaching or courses, I am truly sorry for his students!

Anyway, Nau would have us believe, seriously, that the documented shrinking of the American Middle Class (as reported by the 2010 U.S. census) is not due to large swatches of families falling into poverty - no, not at all. The shrinkage is instead due to more of the Middle class becoming "rich" and LEAVING IT! All of which shows once again, that one can prove or show just about anything oe wishes with the spurious use of statistics.

In his piece Nau claims:

"Between 1980 and 2007, the world economy experienced what I call a 'Great Expansion' due largely to free market policies that President Obama blames for the last recession. Over those three decades world GDP grew about 145% or roughly 3.4 % a year"

Here, Nau is essentially correct because Reagan's policies of banking de-regulation (i.e. the Bank Holding and Deregulation Act of 1984) combined with his low taxation policies, essentially meant greener pastures for overseas speculators and markets. No surprise then that the infamous carry trade in currencies flourished, enriching tycoons in assorted foreign nations, as well as providing the impetus to send millions of American jobs overseas (since foreign labor became so much cheaper as a result of currency downgrades). Couple these financial loosenings with hideous trade agreements (NAFTA, GATT etc.) and the WTO or World Trade Organization, and one had the basis for a massive flow of capital from the U.S. outward to emerging markets and nations. But, in the zero sum game of global capitalism ...this meant Americans would have to become poorer and they have. (See for example, the attached Excel Chart tracking the incomes in quintiles over the decades).

Thus, this leads to Nau's numero uno canard that:

"None of this global growth came at the expense of the U.S."

Making one wonder what planet Nau inhabits, or if he even inhabits a planet at all! (For more on how the capital in the U.S. as well as wealth was lost, please see the following references: False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, by John Grey, and One World Ready or Not - The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, by William Greider, Simon & Schuster,1996.)

Both of the books I cite above provide the horrendous details of how American wealth has been decimated in the age of mobile global capital. Any one, especially an "expert", who doesn't see this is a liar, a fool or a fraud. It's as simple as that.

Nau then goes on to write, committing the usual statistical error of selective data:

"The U.S. grew by more than 3% per year from 1980-2007 and created more than 50 million new jobs, massively expanding a middle class of working women, African-Americans and legal as well as illegal immigrants."

Note how he halts his citation at the year 2007, when the great recession commenced, and especially excludes the fallout from the 2008 meltdown during which some 14 million middle class jobs were lost, probably forever. This is why his next statement means next to nothing:

"Per capita income increased by 65% and household income went up substantially in all income categories"

But let's look at the actual data, as provided in the accompanying graphs, one from U.S. Census data, the other from the Economic Policy Institute. The last clearly shows that family income growth across all quintiles from 1979-2010 did not keep pace with income growth over the period 1947-79. Again, I noted the reasons earlier. After 1979 Reagan's deregulating and low taxation policies were enacted, and together with the rise of mobile global capital incepted major capital outflows from the U.S. Naturally this included jobs dispatched as well, and we've seen over 12 million lost since about 1989, along with the 14 million cut in the wake of the recession of 2007-8 and the financial meltdown and credit squeeze. Note that the middle quintiles, applicable to most of the middle class, didn't even make the 0.6% cut! In fact, the lowest quintile, mainly working classes, lost 0.4%.

In the Census graph, note not only the rising Gini index of inequality (extreme left), but also the declining middle class income, especially since the 2007-08 crash.

Nau then has the absolute chutzpah to write:

"Yes, the middle class has shrunk but not because its getting poorer but rather because it's getting richer".

Again, can't this birdbrain read or interpret graphs? How can he say or assert that when the actual quintile data shown, as well as the Census data, don't support it? Not content to appear semi-competent he goes in for more, to emerge as totally incompetent, scribbling:

"According to Stephen Rose of the Georgetown University Center of Education and the Workforce, fewer people today live in middle class households with incomes between $35,000 and $105,000.....where did the missing households go? They became richer!"

But if this is so, how is it that a Wall Street Journal report dated Sept. 10, 2011 (p. A1, charts p. A16)note that "the continued evaporation of the net wealth of the Middle Class (those deemed to earn in the range from $50,000- $140,000) has meant marketers can no longer assume this economic niche can purchase the wares that in the past they had taken for granted"

The article then noted, citing across a broad range of diverse products, how the loss of wealth has been such that it translated into "downscale purchasing" - buying Gain" Laundry detergent instead of the more expensive TIDE, Bounty Basic paper towels instead of regular Bounty, and replacing their regular toothpaste with BAKING SODA! Huh! These are rich folks? Maybe we need a lesson here in semantics, eh Mr. Nau?

How the hell can those downscale-spending behaviors be deemed of the "rich"? In fact, they can't be because the numbers don't add up based on the quintile distributions. There simply aren't the enhance income or net wealth indicators to support either Nau's or Rose's fairy tales. In addition, the article pointedly noted the current U.S. Gini index of 0.48, and we know Ginis in the 0.4- 0.5 range typically disclose 90% of earnings or wealth are being controlled by 5% of the populace. That adds up to maybe 2.5 million people, and given as The Economist has noted ('Who Exactly Are the 1%', Jan. 21-27, p. 31) this richest tier is essentially stable and "the rich marry their own kind" where are the infused middle class coming? Well, not into the 1% ($252,000/yr base threshold income after subtracting federal taxes) and as I already showed not in the $140,000.

So then the influx or middle refugees would have to be entering into the $140,000-$252,000 niche, which numbers roughly 1.1 million households. If more than 90% are stable "inbreds", married into this wealth or via inheritance, than that means the nouveau riche middle class interlopers - newly arrived, could not comprise more than about 20,000 households! Yet the middle class shrinkage has been by at least 10% since 1979. Or likely around 12 million households. (Also supported by earlier Census data).

When it comes time to spouting bollocks and bilge, we may be sure the WSJ and its hacks takes the cake!

The Pseudo-Science Agnotologists Strike Again!

2012-01-27T12:57:00.000-08:00

As I noted in an earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/our-students-at-risk-of-delusion-on.html

It's no wonder our college and even high school students are beginning to fall into the snare of climate denialism when supposed "scientists" rush to be a part of the ongoing agnotology. As I have pointed out repeatedly, agnotology, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).

Moreover, Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends . In other words, the supporters of agnotology - whoever they may be- are all committed to one end: destroying the science to enable economic profit and hence planetary ruin. Proctor also notes these special interests are often paid handsomely to sow immense confusion on the issue. Just a few years ago, in fact, Heritage Foundation offered $10,000 per article written by a "scientist" to try to refute global warming. We don't know how many takers there were, but I've counted over 200 letters or articles (usually op-eds like the one shown) in which either single hacks or groups of them have attempted to disparage global warming or insist "there's no need to panic". Well, there damned well is need to panic, as this year's unfolding weather disasters, including new heat waves and droughts will show.

But let's look at this latest idiotic article on offer in today's WSJ, in which it is claimed to be "signed by 16 scientists at the end of the article". Before getting to some of their bollocks, let us inquire into exactly WHO these people are. Do they have the gravitas or the disputative basis of real climate scientists? Going through the list, one finds:

Jan Breslow: Head of Biogenetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University

Roger Cohen, fellow American Physical Society. No specialty given, but as a recent commenter has pointed out, he's a "retired ExxonMobil Researcher and Engineer. Also a defender of the serial disinformationist, Lord Monckton (WUWT).He has been doing AGW denial talks for years". Maybe a denier cousin of S. Fred Singer! In any case, we write him off as having zero gravitas.

Edward David: Member, National Academy of Engineering

Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology, Univ. of Cambridge

Richard Lindzen, prof. of atmospheric sciences, MIT

James McGrath, prof. of Chemistry, Virginia Technical University

Bert Rutan, aerospace engineer

Harrions H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut

Nir Shaviv, prof. of astrophysics, Hebrew University

There are also four meteorologists listed and I will tackle them first. At first blush one might believe a meteorologist is perfectly qualified to discuss climate science. But not so fast! The meteorologist generally focuses attention on near term changes and trends, based on high pressure areas, lows, etc. not long term predictions.

Indeed, the Jan.-Feb. 2011 Issue of The Columbia Journalism Review featured a piece entitled ‘Hot Air: Why Don’t TV Weathermen Believe in Climate Change?’

In the article by Charles Homans, assorted reasons were put forward as to why many TV weathermen (especially ensconced in the Weather Channel) as well as a significant number of member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) don’t buy climate change. Among them:

1- Given their familiarity with the defects in their own extended predictions, meteorologists looking at long range climate questions (such as global warming effects) are predisposed to “see a system doomed to terminal unpredictability”.

2- Most skeptic meterologists (like Bob Breck an AMS-certified chief meteorologist at New Orleans WVUE) didn’t properly recognize the limits of their own scientific training – and hence the implausibility of their pronouncing on climate science.

3- Because of (2) the skeptic meteorologists tend to see their own “informed intuition” as the source of some kind of ersatz scientific authority – particularly if the skeptics are also excellent communicators, or fancy themselves so.

Some of the paradoxical statistics that were cited in the article, based on surveys carried out by Emory University Journalism lecturer Kris Wilson, included:

- 29% agreed with Weather Channel mogul John Coleman’s take that global warming was “the greatest scam in history”.

-Only 24% believed that humans were responsible for most of the change over the past half century.

- 50% were certain this wasn’t true and that humans weren’t responsible.

-Only 17% of the opinionated TV weathermen “received a graduate degree, a prerequisite for an academic researcher in any scientific field”.

Similar trends appear to correlate to Australian and European meteorologists but not quite to the same extent as for Americans. In any case, one would not expect to find much in the way of insight or illumination on global warming and its predictions from this lot.

As for Lindzen, about the only atmospheric scientist listed, I already lambasted him in earlier blogs:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/richard-lindzens-fantasies-1.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/richard-lindzens-fantasies-2.html

Now, what about the others? Do we really, REALLY want to take serious advice on CLIMATE change from biogeneticists, chemists, former astronauts, "professors of technology" or engineers? Give me a break! Even astrophysicists - like Shaviv, are not entitled to be taken with more than a grain of salt unless they regularly keep pace with all the latest information - via professional journals. Though my specialty is certainly in space physics, solar physics, I regularly (weekly) receive and read Eos Transactions of the Americal Geophysical Union, which usually contains at least one current climate article (already refereed) in each issue. Many of my blogs have been based on research from this journal, i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/latest-climate-news-not-sanguine.html

In many of my blogs I've also repeatedly cited the actual results from REAL climate scientists, as opposed to pretenders! Specifically, I've referenced the scientific consensus on global warming reported in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22, by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24) :

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

The authors concluded (p. 24) :

“The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists”

The problem, of course, is that so long as pseudo-climate scientists are given large header displays and article space in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, this perception problem will continue and many people will mistake the views of these pretenders for those of actual climate scientists.

Speaking of which, let's end by taking a brief look at some of the crap they've all subscribed to by lending their names. The article states:

"The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless, odorless gas exhaled at high concentrations by each of us and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle"

So these ludicrous morons insult our intelligence with the obvious, while not saying a solitary word about the 800-billion CO2- spewing vehicles sending gigatons of carbon into the planet's atmosphere each year. (Terry Gerlach of the U.S. Geological Survey showed from his time series studies that the projected anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of 35 gigatons per year is 135 times greater than the 0.26 gigatons per year emission rate for volcanoes).

Nor is one statement made on the key central point which one would have thought at least one of these 16 might have noticed: ALL Greenhouse gases' (including CO2 and methane) ability to absorb heat in the form of solar infrared radiation is directly contingent on the molecular vibrations undergone by the particular gas molecule which allows it to absorb and re-emit incident radiation. It is THIS property which confers the capacity to warm our atmosphere if present beyond a certain limiting concentration. And it is the aforementioned CO2 spewing vehicles that create the effect, hence making THEIR effluent a definite pollutant!

The clueless article next refers to a "lack of warming for more than a decade" - recycling once again a profound canard that was engendered by some idiot denier types in assorted tropes and news bytes ca. 2008-09. This bollocks evidently originated in a paper appearing in Nature – written by Dr. Noel Keenlyside et al, and which made a tentative claim for monotonic global cooling since ca. 1998. This 'jumped the shark' and become embedded into the warming skeptics' arsenal of disinfo and set real global warming science education back at least a decade in my estimation.

I say it "jumped the shark" because despite hundreds of efforts to correct it, it still surfaces like a Zombie immune to extirpation, as evinced in this absurd WSJ piece. So now, when one broaches warming anywhere, he is met with specious citations of the Keenlyside et al paper as "proof" it isn't happening.

At the root of this misapprehension by the faux skeptics is misinterpretation of the data appearing in the paper - not at all helped by the media (like the WSJ) which have also misconstrued it. Even Editors who fully know the actual original source still can't be bothered to consult it, they'd rather get their info 2nd hand (like from the 'Investor's Business Daily') then bloviate how global warming is wrong, or "hyped" in sundry editorials.

People prone to the denial weltanschauung then read these superficial reports, miss the key core clues, and bruit it all about that they (deniers, skeptics) were right all along. Instead of taking shortcuts, skeptics could have retrieved the ACTUAL paper from Nature! They could have studied the paper's key figure, the one that looks at past and (forecast) future global temperatures, "Hindcast/forecast decadal variations in global mean temperature, as compared with observations and standard climate model projections".

The first thing they’d have noted about the figure -indeed, one major source of confusion - is that each point represents a ten-year centered mean. That is, each point represents the average temperature of the decade starting 5 years before that point and ending 5 years after that point. Thus, the statistics for potential “cooling” could not possibly have been justifiably extrapolated beyond 1998 + 5 = 2003. Yet imbeciles all over the place (like the 16 who supported this WSJ piece) have insisted it is ongoing.

Second, the skeptics would have spotted the red line in the Nature publication and – if bright enough – beheld that it was the the actual global temperature data from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research. They ought to have asked: Why does the red line stop in 1998 and not 2007? Again, it’s a running 10-year mean, and the authors use data from a Hadley paper that ends around 2003, In effect, they can't do a ten-year centered mean after 1998.

Lazy deniers, however, have parlayed this simple statistical peculiarity of the data into believing that global warming factually STOPPED in 1998!

Third, at least one genius denier might have spotted the black line in the Figure, which was actually one of the IPCC scenario projections, labeled 'A1B.' It denotes a relatively high-CO2-growth model -- but actual carbon emissions since 2000 have wildly outpaced it. A further check by skeptics of the solid green line - the "hindcast" of the authors – e.g. how well their model compared to actual data (and the A1B scenario) could also be done. The lazy morons would have seen that, if extended (in dashes) through 2010 and finally to 2025, it JOINED up with A1B!
Another grievous source of confusion that has been misused by the deniers is the authors statement:

“Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming”

But what they really mean by that statement is not what a simple reading of that sentence would suggest: They do not mean that "the global surface temperature may not increase over the next ten years starting now."

What they meant is what the lead author, Dr. Noel Keenlyside, later provided in a clarification letter to the publicaton: They were predicting no increase in average temperature of the "next decade" (2005 to 2015- relative to their data timeline) over the previous decade, which, for them, is 2000 to 2010! And that is, in fact, precisely what the figure shows -- that the 10-year mean global temperature centered around 2010 is the roughly the same as the mean global temperature centered around 2005.

What is dismaying to those who have done research is how deficient the average denier-skeptic is, and how difficult it is to impart correct interpretation of data minus the bogey of ideology which stalks every word written on global warming. (And as Prof. Porter has observed, agnotology always makes its greatest incursion into the most contentious issues - especially those with political or economic consequences. )

As one 'Physics Today' report noted two years ago, it is as if those political and economic facets actually trump the SCIENCE.

That so-called scientists themselves would actually be a party to this spread of such misinformation is a travesty. It signifies for me that every last one of them ought to have their credentials repealed and Ph.D.s sent back forthwith. They don't deserve them!

Fed Announces Three More Years of Cheap Money- Markets Go Nuts

2012-01-26T10:19:00.000-08:00

Traders at the Chicago Board of Trade get hysterical after the Fed announcement of 3 more years of cheap money for speculators. They are making furious bids even as the yields crashed on 2, and 5-year Treasury notes.

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve yesterday announced at least three more years of near zero Fed interest rates, and the markets responded as you would have expected. The DOW shot up to 12,756 or its highest mark since May of last year. Meanwhile, traders in the two and five year options pit at the Chicago Board of Trade went ape shit. And why not? The yield on the five year Treasury note hit an all time low on the news. We already saw, 2 weeks ago, the yield on the 30-year Treasury note hit the unheard of low of 3.09%.

Can these all go lower, along with CD, and money market account interest rates, punching savers in the gut? You better believe it! Meanwhile, the Fed has shown again what a hostage it is to the Wall Street Speculators and the already unstable bubble market created- merely awaiting one pin prick, perhaps from spiking oil prices (arising from the Iranians shutting off the Straits of Hormuz - with Russian threats standing behind them) or another European series of downgrades or debt surprises.

Basically, all those in the stock market are living in a fool's paradise.

Savers, that is safety -oriented folks who don't wish to see their 401ks popped and imploding by 40-50%, don't have many choices. Basically it's either passbook savings at about 0.0001% or maybe money market accounts and CDs offering a current whopping 0.6% and which are now likely to head south of 0.5%. That means that $10,000 put in one of these instruments will yield a whopping $50 interest over a year. That's barely enough to go to a movie twice and buy popcorn and cokes.

According to one talking head on MSNBC's "The Street" this morning, the idea is for savers to "go to equities" and try to get dividends and realize once and for all they will only be able to garner chump change until 2015. Trouble is, it was equities that took the main hit in the stock meltdown of 2008, which cost 401k folks most of their hard won retirement bucks, forcing many to look for work - and now hopefully, keep at it until they make those losses back....maybe by 2020.

The hard fact is that conservative savers are left with very few options, other than those of increasing risk. My viewpoint is simple: so long as risky derivatives are unregulated and infiltrating stocks, and mutual funds - and so long as the expenses, commissions in both are downright outrageous, I'm not going into either of them. If that means cutting back on many things over the next year, so be it. But it's better than having to eat catfood or Kibbles the rest of my days.

Bernanke and his Fed mavens argue that the current post-recession economic climate of continuing slow growth supports this move, along with an inflation rate of 2%. As I noted before, that 2% rate is false, and to disprove it all you need to do is make a trip to the gas station or the grocery store. Or....order prescription drugs on Medicare Plan D. But see, the Fed in its computation of inflation rate, excludes the very items, factors contributing most to inflation! How tricky is that? Well, maybe about as much as the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) dropping unemployed folks from the unemployment rolls after 6 months and reclassifying them as "discouraged". Ahhhh,,......the tricks that must be pulled in a market economy to make it appear sound!)

In addition, the Fed continues to mistake a balance sheet recession (of which this economic slow growth is a byproduct) with a standard over-quick recession. In the case of the balance sheet recession, the wiser move would be to eliminate all the Bush tax cuts, which contrary to GOP mythology (which Dems also seem to be buying) that "low taxes create job growth"). No they do not, and The Financial Times analysis (9/15/10) of ten years of the Bush tax cuts disproved that canard.

So long as we have prolonged and regressive tax cuts adding to the deficit, and government, the public and business all under the stranglehold of a low aggregate demand environment, nothing will significantly change,.....no matter how many freebies the Fed tosses the speculators. Worse, the cheap money strategy of the Fed threatens to incept dollar debasement even as it rewards the privileged moneymen, high finance and foreign speculator types with cheap credit while it denies it to small businesses, entrepeneurs and those seeking private mortgages or even college loans. In a word, this is lunacy. The only thing we may be sure of is that another bubble will inflate, and this one may be worse than the one that burst 3 1/2 years ago.

Solution to Linear Algebra Problems

2012-01-26T09:13:00.000-08:00

We now examine the solutions for the previous problems:

1) Show that the matrix M =

(1 + i.....2)
(2..........5i)

is not Hermitian

Solution: Recall that a matrix is called Hermitian if it has complex numbers, and if: A = A* i.e. the matrix is found equal to its conjugate transpose

The complex conjugate of matrix M is M' =

(1 - i.....2)
(2..........-5i)

The transpose is: t^M' =

(1 - i.....2)
(2..........-5i)

But on inspection we see M does not equal t^M' , hence M is not Hermitian.

2) Determine whether the matrix Y =

(1.....(1+ 1i).......5)
((1- i).......2... ...i)
(5..........-i...........7)

is Hermitian or not.

Solution: First write the conjugate matrix, or Y' =

(1..... (1- i).....5)
((1+ i).......2... ..- i)
(5.......... i...........7)

The transpose of this 3 x 3 matrix is: t^Y' =

(1..... (1+ i).....5)
((1- i).......2... ..- 2)
(5.......... i...........7)

So by inspection the matrix Y is not Hermitian.

3) Determine whether the matrix, X =

(-i...1)
(1.....i)

is unitary or not.

Solution: Recall that we say a matrix is unitary if: A^-1 = A* i.e. if the inverse of the matrix is equal to its conjugate transpose. This also implies that we have:A A* = A* A = I

In this case, the conjugate of X is X' =

(i......1)
(1.....-i)

The transpose of this is: t^X' = X* =

(i......1)
(1.....-i)

and we see t^X = X* does not equal X, hence X is not unitary. We can check this is so, since if unitary we would expect A* A = I (the identity matrix) we therefore take: X* X =

(i......1) (-i.....1)
(1 ...-i)(1.......i) =

(2......-2i)
(2i........2)

Which is not the identity matrix.

4) Let A and B be 2 x 2 Hermitian matrices. Show that (A + B) is Hermitian.

Solution: Let A =

(a......bi)
(-bi.....c) and B =

(a......-bi)
(bi.......c)

Then: A + B =

(2a........0)
(0.........2c)

And the transpose t^(A + B) =

(2a........0)
(0.........2c)

So: t^(A + B) = A + B, and the sum is Hermitian

Isn't It Time Business Writers STFU on Climate Change?

2012-01-25T13:25:00.000-08:00

I have a serious problem with poseurs and know nothings bloviating on things they know next to nada about. And that starts with FAUX News talking heads and Business writers from The Wall Street Journal. Up to now I've not seen one single solitary rational or fact-based column from any of these twerps, and the latest to parade his ignorance is none other than Holman W. Jenkins, Jr ('How Green Became Obama's Albatross', today, p. A13)

Jenkins' column tries to paint Obama as some kind of Machiavellian pragmatist who "is enough of a free thinker to understand that global warming theory may be wrong." Hardly, because no president could be that dumb, or reckless ....what with the evidence available which little Holman can't seem to locate no matter how hard he tries. Here, of course, I am discriminating between a genuine free thinker (who may be pondering currently whether permafrost melting and methane or CO2 is the biggst nonlinear driver) and a numbnut who thinks the jury is still out when it's been "in" for over 15 years!

To try and bolster his case that global warming isn't a credible theory, Jenkins resorts to snide quotations of Al Gore whose support arises by invoking a "consensus of scientists" or "the respected judgment of scientists" rather than specific data. But nowhere does Jenkins, Jr. cite any materials, papers or evidence that backs up his case that global warming theory is unproven.

Among my gripes is Jenkins' recycling of a long duration canard by the denier brigade which ought to have ended long ago. He writes:

"The temperature data are so noisy that they reveal no pattern connecting rising CO2 in the industrial age with temperature trends".

Leading one to ask if Holman deliberately makes a concerted effort at being an idiot, or if it just happens. As shown from Figs. 1, 2 (attached), there are two clearly indicated patterns that quash Jenkins' denier fantasies. In Fig. 1 we have the well known delta Carbon isotope ratio data (stretching back into antiquity) that gives the 2000-year record of C14:C12 deviations. This was compiled by P.E. Damon ('The Solar Output and Its Variation', The University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 1977).

To conform with solar activity the plot is such that increasing radiocarbon (C14) is downward and indicated with (+). The deviations in parts per thousand are shown relative to an arbitrary 19th century reference level. As the late solar physicist John Eddy has observed concerning this output (Eddy, The New Solar Physics. p. 17):

“The gradual fall from left to right (increasing C14/C12 ratio) is…probably not a solar effect but the result of the known, slow decrease in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic moment... exposing the Earth to ever-increased cosmic ray fluxes and increased radiocarbon production.

The sharp upward spike at the modern end of the curve, representing a marked drop in relative radiocarbon, is generally attributed to anthropogenic causes—the mark of increased population and the Industrial Age"

Analyzing this record, it is clear that the magnitude of the Middle Ages' warming period (relative C14 strength of ~ -18), for example, is less than about ½ the relative effect attributed mainly to anthropogenic sources in the modern era (-40). Even if one fourth the latter magnitude is assigned to solar activity (based on solar variability component detected over 1861-1990 amounting to 0.1- 0.5 W/m^2 vs. 2.0 to 2.8 W/m^2 for heating component arising from greenhouse gas emissions, cf. Martin I. Hoffert et al, in Nature, Vol. 401, p. 764) the anthropogenic effect is at least 1.5x that for the last (exclusively solar) warming period.

These results comport with modern findings that the last ten years have been the warmest ever. (Not that warming "has stopped the past decade" as idiot deniers screech!) This is according to data from the World Meteorological Office. For reference: parts of Greenland had an average temperature 5.4 F above normal. Meanwhile, Russian officials have ascribed 11,000 “excess deaths” due to heat, arising from their prolonged heat wave. According to the World Meterological Observatory:

"The year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top three warmest years since the beginning of instrumental records in 1850.”

If Jenkins had the innate intelligence to look for the patterns, he might also have run into the data graph shown in Fig. 2, which includes data compiled by the National Climate Data Center and NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. As noted here there is a long stable level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (at about 285 parts per million) until humans begin burning fossil fuels such as coal in the mid-19th century. Moreover, this graph and the exposed pattern coincides almost perfectly with the earlier graph of the C14:C12 isotope deviations ratio over time.

Not content to display himself as a half-idiot, Jenkins next blathers away to confirm he is a total one:

"Some say because CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas, 'Shut Up!' But the known relationship between carbon and climate doesn't actually indicate a reason to worry."

It doesn't? If the graphs of Figs. 1 and 2 don't scare the bejeezus out of you, Mr. Jenkins, then maybe this additional fact should, concerning the contribution of rising CO2 concentrations to a warming world: we are adding CO2 at the additional concentraton rate of 2 ppm/ year and the heating insolation is increasing at 2 watts/yr. The CO2 concentration now stands at nearly 380 ppm, and we believe the threshold to trigger the runaway greenhouse effect will kick in between 480- 500 ppm. This means, and I'm assuming even Jenkins has taken basic arithmetic, that we will hit that threshold in 50 years. But that's assuming we don't amp up the carbon use and deposit even more in the atmosphere, especially as now the permafrost is melting all around the Arctic, releasing gigatonnes of methane, another greenhouse gas.

Oh, and if those pattern graphs don't scare the ass off Jenkins, he might want to take a good long view of this video previously posted, documenting the extent of glaciers melting worldwide.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1108763899

Anyone watching this documented evidence who isn't terrified, has lost most of his or her brain neurons. We also know that this process provides one of the nonlinear drivers toward catastrophic climate change. Melting of ice caps and glaciers (already occurring) results in diminished albedo (fraction of solar radiation reflected back into space), a darker Earth surface - with more infrared radiation (e.g. HEAT) being absorbed - reinforcing and enhancing global warming. As more ice melts from the polar regions, the positive feedback from lowering albedo proceeds faster.

In the end, Jenkins - like his fellow global warming biz bunch deniers (on the Journal staff), are more media whores in the service of corporate-cultivated agnotology.

Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has referred to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends - e.g. in imparting ignorance and faux skepticism, agnotology. Derived from the Greek 'agnosis' and hence the study of culturally constructed ignorance, It is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty)

Proctor notes that when a society doesn't know something it is often because special (often paid) interests have worked hard to sow immense confusion on the issue. People read 'A' then see 'B' ostensibly refuting it, and without a hard science background themselves (at least two years of university physics or chemistry plus calculus), are "lost at sea". In this case, a two bit hack like Jenkins knows before hand most of his readers (now mainly chattering over "Obamacare") will never do the research on their own to expose his stupid claims, including:

"To produce worrisome scenarios, climate models must posit 'feedbacks' that magnify the impact of CO2 by 300% to 500%"

But any physicist who's ever toyed with a basic electronic sound system understands the principle of positive and negative feedback. And he will also understand the role of positive feedback in terms of efffect from a changing planetary albedo such as shown in Fig. 3 ongoing near the Arctic. Quite clearly, this moron has never taken a serious physics course in his life which is one reason he shouldn't be expostulating on global warming.

The truth is that anti-global warming hacks like Jenkins are a dime a dozen. The tragedy is that millions of otherwise intelligent people buy into their ignorant bollocks.

Sizing Up the SOTU

2012-01-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

President Obama was in high dudgeon last night as he delivered his 3rd State of the Union address, and it is worthwhile to examine the content and the tenor of the speech as well as the GOP comebacks.

First, I thought Obama did indeed strike a populist stance in noting that "American values" inherently call for "fair play". That means if a citizen works hard, keeps his nose to the grindstone, and does his best, he should at least not be left behind while high octane millionaires (one of whom is actually running for the Republican nomination) joke about making $10,000 bets, or pooh-pooh an amount of $340,000 for speaking fees as "not being that much money". Especially when that amount clearly exceeds most Americans' net worth!

I had hoped Obama would also cite the Constitution (which the Repukes are so big on) by noting in the Preamble the role of government to "promote the general welfare" . He could also have argued staunchly that his Affordable Health Care Act (which the Goopers wish to abolish) is going to do just that. He might also have argued that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are also promoting the general welfare.

One mistake made in this context, at least I and many others (e.g. Bernie Sanders, Jeff Madrick, Elliot Spitzer, Robert Reich etc.) believe it to be, was mentioning possible "reforms to entitlements". Let us note here that neither Social Security or Medicare are "entitlements" and neither needs "reform" in the sense of cuts (which a change in COLA would do to S.S.) or privatizing. Indeed, all Americans have paid payroll taxes for at least a decade to receive these benefits, and in the case of Medicare, must bear extraordinary out of pocket costs amounting to nearly $200,000 over two decades. "Entitlements" meanwhile, suggests these benefits are unearned or dispensed gratis like welfare and then one falls right into the GOP language trap.

Second, Obama was absolutely correct about the "trickle down economics" of his Republican predecessors not working. In face, he might have mentioned that all the evidence shows the Bush tax cuts haven't worked, and hence there is no need to extend ANY of them - whether for the wealthiest 1% (which lowest threshold level begins at $340,000/yr) or the middle class. In a blog last year, I detailed the reasons why all of the Bush tax cuts need to be terminated. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/extending-bush-tax-cuts-may-mean-more.html

This was based on an extensive analysis by The Financial Times. Obama in his speech noted the rich need to pay more, indicating taxes ought to be at least at the "30% level" with no loopholes, but this ought to have been bolder! In fact, if the Bush tax cuts are all sunset, as they ought to have been last year, the wealthiest would be paying at the 39.5% marginal rate and the "no loopholes" provision could have been added to this.

But as others have pointed out (e.g. Jeff Madrick, Bernie Sanders, Elliot Spitzer) the math simply doesn't support that raising taxes only on the wealthiest one percent will do the trick. Madrick points out that this will save an increment of barely $700 billion over ten years, while repealing ALL the Bush tax cuts would save $3.3 trillion and essentially solve this ongoing battle about finding "1.2 trillion" to solve the initial deficit problem. Madrick isn't reciting anything new, as The Financial Times has been harping for more than 3 years that Obama needs to eliminate all Bush tax cuts and cease "playing politics" by obsessing only on those for the wealthiest.

Last night would have been an excellent time to treat all Americans as grown ups, and tell them straight they need to make a choice: Do you want more tax cuts, giving you maybe $500-1,000 more in your pockets each year, OR do you wish to preserve your Social Security and Medicare benefits. You can't have both! Make a choice! But that moment never came, so once again, the Bush tax cuts can be expected to be at the center of another year of horse trading political games with the repukes, and more likely all will once again be extended ....with little economic benefit and even greater deficits demanding further cuts down the line.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has correctly questioned the wisdom of the payroll tax cuts - as I have, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/11/most-loathsome-destructive-tax-cut-so.html

since they are what provide the dedicated funding for Social Security. If they are extended, and not terminated soon, then Goopers will make the logical case that Social Security needs to be cut since it no longer is bringing in the money to support itself. The next step, a draconian one, will be for Social Security annual funding to be approved by congressional bean counters each year. Again, Americans need to be treated like grown ups and asked what they want: minor immediate gratification from a "payroll tax holiday" or to secure their future benefits when they will most need them.

Third, Obama gave some great narratives (with personal examples) while expatiating on how to rescue American jobs and how he wants "an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills and American workers" and he gave terrific recommendations that companies, corporations should no longer be getting tax writeoffs for outsourcing jobs. Rather companies that set up jobs in this country ought to reap the tax breaks. This is just common sense, but the Republicans in the audience had expressions resembling those who were told they'd no longer be able to spend money on elections!

Obama moved onto shakier ground in several other areas:

1) He opined on using federal land to develop wind farms and solar energy. However, the problem with these alternate forms of energy is they simply don't provide the energy density needed to support a civilization, society like ours. There is no way wind engines, or solar cells will ever power glass or automobile factories, far less the machines to manufacture the new F-35 fighter bombers. If maximum energy capacity is measured in exajoules, then wind, solar and geothermal together barely make the cut collectively at 3 EJ. Meanwhile, our civilization, industrial society (especially if we intend to remain a high octane weapons nation) requires at least 50EJ per year. Only coal and oil can meet that demand, if massive conservation isn't factored in.

2) He warned colleges and universities that they risk losing federal funding if they do not keep tuition costs down. But that is not the fault of most of the universities. For example, here in Colorado the University of Colorado at Boulder, in order to keep its premier staff of professionals, and facilities, needs yearly outlays to support them in the form of tuition. Historically this came from state taxes, but since TABOR (Taxpayer's Bill of Rights ) was passed in 1991, wherein state revenue growth wasn't allowed to exceed inflation rate plus population they've been left behind. Add to that voters' repeatedly turning down tax hikes and there has been no other choice except to raise tuition ...and often by amounts that the taxes would have provided. This has led one Colo. state legislator to ask: What do Coloradans want? Lower tuition and higher taxes, or lower state taxes but much higher tuition?

Again, a difficult choice, but people need to be made to understand that these are the fiscal realities. Americans have to be led by the hand by their leaders to see these realities, as opposed to retreating to la-la land.

3) Obama declared at one point that the nation was not in decline and emphatically stated (true to the ongoing spirit of entrenched American exceptionalism, as if we are somehow historically different from the British and Dutch of past centuries) "Anyone who says America is in decline doesn't know what he is talking about". But I am afraid, Mr. President, that this falls on you. The nation certainly is in decline and has been for decades as I have noted, with extensive reasoning, examples, in earlier blogs, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-american-decline-how-and-why-1.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-american-decline-2-globalization.html

4) An unwise (to me) declaration was Obama stating he would do "whatever it takes" to ensure Iran gets no nuclear weapons capability". But this is not being geo-politically practical and takes no account of the fact that the Russians (especially ) have vested interests there, and their Security and Defense chief has already stated that any overt or aggressive intervention by other states will "lead to an all out wider war". What none of us want to see manifested here, is a playing out of the horrific 1983 Brit movie, THREADS. (Which began with a blockage of the straits of Hormuz, led to a NATO bombing of a nuclear plant at Isfahan, then culminated in a full scale nuclear exchange. The actual events in the film center around a family in Sheffield, England and how they get through it all. Let us hope Obama's words were just "macho" talk and none of us ever will!)

The GOP Response:

As predicted, the Republican response was totally predictable, delivered by the clueless governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels. According to Daniels:

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others"

But Obama didn't "castigate" others, only said that all Americans need to pay their fair share. The fact of the matter is that currently inequality is at an all time high. In the past ten years most Americans' wages and benefits have gone down or remained stagnant while the top 1% have seen their increase 23%. Our Gini index, the main indicator of inequality, now approaches that of Mexico and the Philippines. The main source of this has been the ongoing Bush tax cuts which have delivered the equivalent of a new Lexus each year to the top one percenters, (more like the equivalent of a new yacht to each top 0.01 percenter) while awarding only "chump change" to the average $50k /yr or under earner...and this also at the cost of future benefits.

As for "class warfare" it is the wealthy and the GOP who are carrying that out on the rest of us, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/and-class-war-continuesby-wealthy.html

The GOP candidates lumped Obama into the group with "Saul Alinsky radicals" but these guys would remake our whole economic system so no middle class can exist. I will get into this in a future blog on Mitt Romney's planned policies, he who paid more in taxes in 2010 than the average American earned in his lifetime!

Could any American in his right mind elect some $42 million a year financial maven who would have no possible comprehension of the ordinary American's plight? Who knows? But I do hope people treat this next election seriously. As noted from his SOTU, Obama may not be perfect, but he is a damned sight better choice than any of the goopers on offer. We had better hope he gets in office again, or our decline as a nation will alter from a slow roll to a downhill acceleration!

More Linear Algebra: Unitary and Hermitian Matrices

2012-01-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

As many readers would have seen by now, linear algebra often plays a role in assorted formulations of physics, including modern physics. Two of the more important aspects are unitary and Hermitian matrices (which applications will be covered in a future blog).

Basically, a square matrix (one with the same number of rows and columns) is called Hermitian if it has complex numbers, and if:

A = A*

i.e. the matrix is found equal to its conjugate transpose. We already saw how to obtain the transpose of a matrix for normal, non-complex matrices, e.g. if X=

(-1.....2)
(-2.....3)

Then: t^(X) =

(-1.....-2)
(2.......3)

Now, we need to reckon in the conjugate transpose such that: A* = t^(A') (Which we will soon see in some examples). Meanwhile, we say a matrix is unitary if:

A^-1 = A*

i.e. if the inverse of the matrix is equal to its conjugate transpose. This also implies that we have:

A A* = A* A = I

where I denotes the identity matrix. For example, for a 2 x 2 matrix, I =

(1...0)
(0....1)

Example: Show that the matrix M =

(2.....i)
(-i....5)

is Hermitian

We first get the complex conjugate of the matrix or, M' =

(2.....-i)
(i......5)

Then we obtain the transpose of that, or M* = t^(M') =

(2.....i)
(-i......5)

and since M = M* = t^(M')

the matrix is Hermitian.

Example (2). Show that the matrix A =

(cos Θ ..... sin Θ)
(-sin Θ ..... cos Θ)

is a unitary matrix.

By definition, the matrix A (a real matrix, not complex) will be unitary if: A ( t^A) = 1

We note that the transpose t^A =

(cos Θ ..... -sin Θ)
(sin Θ ..... cos Θ)

and: A (t^A) =

(cos Θ ..... sin Θ) (cos Θ ..... -sin Θ)
(-sin Θ ..... cos Θ)(sin Θ ..... cos Θ)

= 1

Hence, the matrix is unitary.

Problems:

1) Show that the matrix M =

(1 + i.....2)
(2..........5i)

is not Hermitian

2) Determine whether the matrix Y =

(1.....(1+ 1i).......5)
((1- i).......2... ...i)
(5..........-i...........7)

is Hermitian or not.

3) Determine whether the matrix, X =

(-i...1)
(1.....i)

is unitary or not.

4) Let A and B be 2 x 2 Hermitian matrices. Show that (A + B) is Hermitian.

A SuperBowl Rematch? Yes, But the WRONG One!

2012-01-24T09:27:00.000-08:00

Baltimore Ravens' field goal kicker Billy Cundiff walks from Gillette Stadium Sunday in shock and dismay after missing a game-tying 32-yard FG. In fact, Ravens' receiver Lee Evans was the real cause of the Ravens' not getting to another Superbowl!

All the pundits from every sports news nook and cranny are bloviating about the impending SuperBowl "rematch" between the New York Giants and New England Patriots coming on February 5th. This, of course, would reprise the match for Superbowl XLVII where the surprising Giants took down the then perfect (18-0) Pats, by a score of 17-14.

But not so fast! The real rematch ought to be reprising Superbowl XXXV between the Baltimore Ravens and the Giants, which the Ravens won handily in Tampa, 34-7. So what happened, and how did a bogus rematch replace the one that should have been?

Basically, one player mucked up what had been destined to be a Baltimore victory on Sunday, in the AFC Conference Championship. Truthfully, the Ravens had outplayed New England on both sides of the ball. The much maligned Ravens' Quarterback, Joe Flacco, actually had bested the Patriots' ace Tom Brady - he with three Superbowl rings already. The numbers don't lie: Flacco had two passing touchdowns, Brady 0, Flacco passed for some 306 yards, Brady only 239, and Flacco had only 1 interception to Brady's 2.

More pertinently, with barely 1:33 left, Flacco had steadfastly driven the Ravens from their own 21 yard line to the Patriots' 14, with the Patriots ahead by a field goal, 23-20. Clearly, it was Flacco's game now to win or lose in the classic two minute drill. Then with barely 20 seconds left, Flacco hefted a nicely thrown pass straight into the right edge of the end zone with receiver Lee Evans there to catch it and end the game with a 27-23 win for the Ravens.

Except that Evans boffed the catch! He evidently forgot or never bothered to apply what every 10 or 11 year old Peewee football player is drilled on: SECURE the ball first in any end zone play! You have to expect any defender worth his salt will desperately try to bat the ball from your hands, so you must ...in Michael Irvin's words...."hug that mother like your life depends on it"! Well, Evans failed to do that and paid the price when a subsititute corner named Sterling Moore knocked the ball from his grasp.

Instead, according to sports guru Woody Paige, dean of Denver Post sports writers, Evans "non-chalanted the catch and missed it". While Warren Sapp, on the NFL Network, opined: "he had the winning TD but he relaxed too soon!" Indeed, and Evans and the team paid dearly for this unacceptable miscue which can be seen in the clip below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxx0PLn9aLI

Within about five nanoseconds, thousands of man-hours of preparation and team labor was thereby flushed down the proverbial toilet. The game was still not lost, since kicker Billy Cundiff only had to make a 32-yard FG to tie the game and at least keep the Ravens' chances alive though Evans mucked them up. But, he shanked the ball wide left! Patriots fans then became delirious realizing that their team's unearned victory had been snatched from the jaws of defeat and they were heading for their 7th Superbowl and not the Ravens. The missed FG can also be seen at the end of the short clip.

Do I blame Cundiff like most pundits do? Not really. Because if Evans makes the TD catch he had all set up compliments of Joe Flacco, Cundiff becomes a non-issue. And by all counts, and football justice, Evans should have made that catch....no excuses! At least he was inconsolable after the game and accepted blame for the loss, as well he should. Because making that single play would have sent the Ravens on.

While his team mates talked the usual politically correct banter of being a "team sport" we know differently and also that they had to be bitterly disappointed at his incompetence at a time when elite players are supposed to make big plays...not boff them. The fact of the matter is that when a key player makes a misplay that essentially cedes victory to the opponent, it is that player's miscue or misplay that has in the space of a second or les destroyed all the thousands of hours of prep , blood, sweat and toil of the TEAM for the year. In the same sense, Kyle Williams has to accept responsibility -- as he has-- for the Giants' winning in the later NFC game ....by boffing a key punt and letting the Giants recover in overtime, to make the winning field goal.

No, it is absolutely not right that a lot of SF fans tweeted him threats, including death threats according to the San Francisco Chronicle - but that doesn't absolve him of the responsibility of making the most critical error of the game nor does it justify conflating all the players' errors (including Vernon Davis' two 15 yard penalties) in order to dilute his most critical one. Yes football is indeed a "team sport" but that doesn't mean one player can't - by himself- turn the team's chances of winning to nil by one misplay. This is something all football lovers need to admit, especially the players.

So the Superbowl coming up in 2 weeks really has the inferior AFC team playing vs. the Giants. In my football crystal ball I can see only one outcome here: The Giants again beating Brady and his Patriots, just like they did four years ago. Is it better to have lucked out and thereby gotten to a Superbowl -- and lost- than never to have gotten there at all? That's a question Mr. Tom Brady and his team mates will have to answer in two weeks, after they finally get their comeuppance when their luck runs out.

Round Three of Insanity Soon to Commence

2012-01-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

In both 2008, and 2010, Colorado voters were subjected to "Personhood" Amendments in the November elections of those years. In its first iteration the amendment was defeated by nearly 73%-27% and in the most recent (Nov. 2010) by nearly 70% -30%. But neither of those one-sided defeats has deterred the zealots who will be coming back one more time this November, to try to get Coloradans (and indeed, voters in at least 12 other states including: Ohio, Montana, Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia and California) to buy their snake oil once more.

I mean, how many times do we have to administer electoral butt -whippings to get these fools to back down?

Recall that the 2008 version, called "Amendment 48" described its purview of law as applicable to "any human being from the moment of fertilization". This 2010 version, meanwhile, was named "Amendment 62" and declared its warp and legal woof to cover: "every human being from the beginning of the biological development of the human being".

The preceding expanded definition of "person" was then to be directly applicable to Sections 3, 6 and 25 of Article II of the Colorado state constitution. Under those sections we have:

Sec. (3): "All persons in the state have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, and of acquiring, possessing and protecting their property - and of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness."

And:

Sec. (6): "Courts of justice shall be open to every person, and a speedy remedy afforded for every injury to person, property, or character, and justice should be administered without denial or delay."

And:

Sec. (25): "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without the process of law".

The newest incarnation, which hasn't yet been awarded an amendment number, will make slight alterations to the earlier language such that the law would apply to: 1) "every human being regardless of the method of creation” and 2) “human being” to be operationally defined as “a member of the species homo sapiens at any stage of development"

In other words, a zygote of maybe 4 cells would also qualify and be able to exercise its rights.

Apart from the fact that none of the Personhood geniuses pushing these inane Amendments have hitherto informed us how a fertilized egg or zygote goes about acquiring property (by ESP? Telekinesis? Alien zombies?) there are other problematic issues that surface.

One only has to read and re-read their language to see that any pregnant woman would be at immense risk of arrest or possible prosecution, if she's perceived to be doing the slightest thing that might adversely impact the little "person" inside her womb. Drinking alcohol? Ach du Lieder! Nein! A punishable offense! Going up to Pike's Peak (where the oxygen level is barely one fifth at sea level) on the Cog Railway? Hell no! The little person will probably be brain damaged by the lack of O2!

Needless to say, our civil and criminal courts can be expected to be so inundated with cases (btw, how will these "persons" hire lawyers, or will it be done 2nd hand?) they will barely be able to function, and likely grind to a halt. I mean, if you are going to declare these zygotes are "persons" you then must defend their rights as persons under the state Constitution, no?

Even a healthy pregnant woman who rides horseback or drives an ATV on a bone jarring trail in Estes Park may be eligible for apprehension. After all, the little "person's" tiny forming bones may be at risk! Some busybody with nothing better to do might report her (a fundie nanny?)

The draconian repercussions won't end there, by any means. If any of these "Personhood" amendments (or referendums) are passed in any of these 12 states, every female of child-bearing age would have to be supervised lest she advertently or inadvertently injure the little "person" inside her. Every miscarriage occurring at home would have to be investigated by the respective states' Bureaus of Investigation.

Bottom line, all the females of child bearing age in the states in which the amendments passed would be forced to be reproductive chattel. Even if they were brutally raped- or victims of incest, a state "Fetal supervisory board" would appear to ensure the birth comes to term, never mind the rapist's growth of seed is the same thing as an extension of the rape.

Insanity anyone? This is the sort of lunacy that transpires when people lose track of their logic and reason, and substitute a cockeyed faith for knowledge. The key logical fallacy committed by these bird brains promoting Personhood is the genetic fallacy. This consists in arguing that the antecedents of something must be the same as their fulfillment. It is committed by anyone who argues, in the context of the abortion debate, that a fetus – even from the moment of conception, must really be - because it is going to become, a person.

It can't be, any more than one can argue that an acorn - because it is going to become an oak tree- is an actual oak tree. No, sorry, it isn't. I can easily lift the acorn in one hand and even roll it between my fingers, I can't do that with an oak tree. Obviously and clearly they are not the same thing, and neither is the zygote the same as a full, autonomous human PERSON. Once one crosses that slippery slope, one induces on himself or herself no end of legal grief.

Unless a human is relatively autonomous, and that means it has the capacity to acquire specific property, whether an i-pad or DVD player or home, it can't be a "person" because it hasn't attained the level of development to exercise the rights of a genuine person. This means the opponents of these looneytune amendments need to get busy now to attack the proposals on the basis of more refined language, showing a greater attention to biological details. A primary crtierion for "person"? It must have the capacity to live independently outside of the mother's body, as well as form its own moral judgments and possess the ability to conceptualize property, and to acquire it .....even in rudimentary form. (Thus, an infant crawling over a carpet who seizes a baby rattle would demonstrate such capacity at least in basic form - thereby making the rattle his or her "property")

Of course, some clarifying language may be needed to allow for certain specific exceptions, including mature adults -people suffering from Alzheimers or who may have other brain disabilities. But who will have shown capacities to recognize, acquire and use property even at earlier stages.

In the end, voters in the affected states - especially women - must realize the battle will be fought at multiple levels and they need to be ready!

Monster Plasma "Blob" Headed for Earth: Is This the End?

2012-01-22T11:25:00.001-08:00

Top: Plasma eruption occurring on the Sun. Bottom: a magnificent green aurora of the type that may be visible in many locations this evening.

In the grade B -minus 1992 science fiction movie (Solar Crisis) with Charlton Heston, a massive catastrophe was depicted in a future time when the Earth is threatened by an impending "mega" flare and plasma burst. The energy outburst was forecast to "tear away the atmosphere and shower deadly radiation on everything". We'd end up little better than the hapless humans depicted in the more recent scifi flick, "KNOWING".

Now, we have word from spaceweather.com that a monster plasma burst has erupted from the Sun and is headed our way. Do we have cause to worry from either this event or any powerful flares that might follow it?

First, the energy of flares is limited by how much "free" (extractable) energy can be stored in the magnetic tubes that spawn them. A good analogy is a rubber band. If a rubber band is wound up over and over it gains free potential energy (available for future motion). Release it now and it will rapidly twist apart to its original state. Magnetic tubes on the Sun do something very similar. They are twisted up by the motions of the Sun's turbulent surface and store free magnetic energy as they twist. The more twisted they are, the more free magnetic energy they acquire - to power flares, and the particle bursts that accompany flares.

Second, not all powerfully twisted magnetic tubes are enabled to release all their energy at once. Sometimes it's released in lesser bursts, maybe coronal mass ejections, or lesser flares of lower intensity.

Flare energy is limited because: 1- there is a limit to the size a magnetic tube can attain, 2- there is a limit to how much twist a tube can acquire. Each of these limits the amount of total magnetic energy available for release. On that basis, it is unlikely that humans will ever see flares greater than those which occurred in August, 1972 and March, 1989. In the latter case, the Ottawa power grid was briefly knocked down as its main conducting wires literally melted. Note, however, that these are extreme cases.

What is heading for us is not the high energy radiation (mainly gamma -UV radiation) of a monster flare as such but rather the plasma from a "CME" or coronal mass ejection. So what is the most we might expect?

As reported at spaceweather:

http://www.spaceweather.com/

"A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field at 0617 UT on Jan. 22nd. At first the impact did not appear to be a strong one: the solar wind speed barely lifted itself to ~400 km/s when the CME passed by. Now, however, in the wake of the CME, a dense and increasingly geoeffective solar wind stream is blowing around Earth, setting the stage for possible auroras on the night of Jan. 22nd"

This means there is an excellent chance of seeing some spectacular auroras tonight, perhaps as far south as Florida and Texas. Generally, when such powerful plasma-generated currents impinge on our atmosphere, we can expect these to be translated into powerful sky displays of the northern lights.

So, instead of being overwrought by pseudo-fear (there'll be plenty of time for that later, as the "Mayan Apocalypse" approaches) maybe we all just need to chill out and try to catch some of the bright natural fireworks likely to go off tonight!

The Keystone XL Pipeline Scam: Be Glad Obama Scuttled It!

2012-01-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

In a number of op-eds in today's papers (WSJ, Denver Post) President Barack Obama was ridiculed for not allowing himself to fall for the "Keystone XL" pipeline scam of bringing "energy and jobs" to 'Murica. Okay, in fairness let me rephrase that: for not allowing this pipeline to go through which would bring an abundance of energy and jobs to the nation without much of any environmental cost.

To his credit Obama nixed this odious deal, which will only bring jobs for the very few (maybe 21,000 if that) and major hellacious environmental costs that would be a hundred times greater than the Exxon Valdez disaster if major leaks of this crappy tar sands-based stuff leached out to the surrounding environs, or - god-forbid- the damned thing burst in one or more places.

Make no mistake, this stuff isn't called "tar sands oil" for nothing. It's god-awful nasty stuff and already there've been some small leaks that have sent this crud into small streams and lakes in Michigan, but no where near the scale of a major pipeline rupture. In addition, this isn't the high benefit EROEI ('Energy returned on energy invested') oil we've been using since the 1970s or so, with EROEI's of at least 8 or 9, but rather low grade stuff of maybe EROEI 1.3, very optimistically.

During the tar sands oil extraction process, vast amounts of water are needed to separate the extracted product, bitumen, from sand, silt, and clay. It takes three barrels of water to extract each single barrel of oil. At this rate, tar sands operations use roughly 400 million gallons of water a day. Ninety percent of this polluted water is dumped into large human-made pools, known as tailing ponds, after it’s used. These ponds are home to toxic sludge, full of harmful substances like cyanide and ammonia, which has worked its way into neighboring clean water supplies.

And when you add in the energy that would be required to mount major clean up operations - all the machines and oil-intensive devices that would have to be used, than that EROEI of 1.3 would rapidly descend to maybe 0.5 if that. In other words, having to use a gallon of oil to obtain a half gallon of energy benefit.

Are we overly worried here about such clean ups and possible ruptures? I don't think so. We already know TransCanada attempted to cut corners by seeking a safety waiver to build the pipeline with thinner-than-normal steel and to pump oil at higher-than-normal pressures. Thanks to the pressure exerted by Friends of the Earth and allies, the company withdrew its safety waiver application in August 2010. We also have NO assurance, none ...nada...that this pipeline if it ever does come through won't also have pressure-wall thickness issues.

In summer 2010, a million gallons of tar sands oil poured into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan from a pipeline run by another Canadian company, Enbridge. The spill exposed residents to toxic chemicals, coated wildlife and has caused long-term damage to the local economy and ecosystem.
In his criticism of Obama in today's Denver Post ('Obama's Zigs and Zags', p. 5B), Llewellyn King assures that he (King): "spoke with Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver shortly before Obama's first decision to delay the pipeline. Oliver said that if the decision wasn't favorable, Canada would build a pipeline across the Rockies to British Columbia and export it to China."

Well, let them go ahead! For one thing, anyone who's been to that region of Canada knows its mainly populated by Grizzlies and some ducks, and moose, but relatively few humans. Hence, the potential for impacts on human communities and health are not so great as the planned pipeline through the States (check out the map) which would conceivably affect up to 50 million people and their communities. So, we are talking chalk and cheese here.

King goes on to assert Obama's latest decision has "infuriated Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government which now says it will no longer rely entirely on the U.S. for its hydrocarbon sales."

Uh....let's not forget Harper is another conservative nimrod and douchebag and so is his government. So his being exercised at Obama or the U.S. is no biggie, and easily something we can all live with. What Americans need to do is to ask themselves what they want: additional energy at a possible astronomical cost to their health and welfare ....with polluted water, estuaries, and tens of thousands of new cancer cases per year...or a better environment and LESS energy use by themselves! It's a Hobson's choice but there it is!

And just WHO is pushing this thing on us? Giant oil corporations invested in Canada's tar sands and who have, as Bill Moyers stated last night on Bill Maher's Real Time, already contributed more than $47 million of campaign donations to Repukes and lobbying money to try to make it so. They are hoping that Americans will be too dumb or dense to see the hidden (and not so hidden) costs that will be extracted.

As for the abominable Repukes, they simply want to force a totally artificial deadline on Obama in return for cutting a deal on his proposed payroll tax cut as well as the prevention of cuts in payments to Medicare docs. If this Keystone XL pipeline is the price to be paid for those deals then it is a price too high, and hopefully Mr. Obama and the Dems will not give in. Let the Repukes, the conservative Harper government in Canada along with TransCanada and U.S. oil interests seeking to make a buck all go straight to Hell.

The SOPA-PIPA Battle is Far From Over!

2012-01-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

It seems many millions of netizens, in the wake of the backlash against the ignominous laws known as "SOPA" and PIPA" on Wednesday, with over a dozen Senators backing down on further votes for PIPA, are now convinced the battle is won and we can all go home and relax! Far from it!

As a matter of fact, key DEMOCRATIC backers of PIPA, e.g. Sens. Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillebrand (NY), and Patrick Leahy of VT, still haven't withdrawn support, as indeed many other demos have not. It appears they are extremely wary of foregoing campaign cash from Hollywood's entertainment moguls, or the big cable tv companies. In fact, on Thursday night's 'Countdown' with Keith Olbermann, Markos Moulitsos of the blog Daily Kos :

http://www.dailykos.com/

Noted that many dems either cowardly voted "present" - a true copout if ever there was one, or avoided the vote entirely. As he put it: "I have never been so ashamed of the Democratic Party". Well, truth be told, I was more ashamed when these political weasels allowed the worst provisions of the Patriot Act to be extended two years ago. That was the low point for me, but truthfully I'm no longer terribly surprised at what any politician does. They are all bought out by some interest or other and remain supplicants to those interests for their electoral success. For more evidence, look no further than how former Dem Sen. Chris Dodd (CT) has since become president of the MPAA, and is one of those planning to "tweak" the PIPA law. Something rotten in Denmark, anyone? No wonder so many citizens are disgusted and cynical about American politics (apart from the fact MPAA lobbyist hacks wrote the PIPA law!)

The point now is that Hollywood and its sphere of special interest influence is not finished, not by a long shot, and is currently readying itself for another attempt at pushing at least one of these abominable laws through. According to the article 'Hollywood Loses SOPA Story' (WSJ, January 19, p. B1, B2) these special interests determined to protect "their property"(as if they aren't already stealing from citizens what with their outrageous movie ticket prices and DVD prices) are gearing up for a major PR campaign.

You see, they are firmly convinced the average netizen is simply too obtuse or maybe unread to understand or grasp their points. According to the WSJ piece (p. B2):

"The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is in discussions with studio chiefs and Hollywood unions to launch an advertising campaign to counteract 'misconceptions' about the legislation, according to a person familiar with the matter."

The piece then goes on to note that a campaign was launched Wednesday by Creative America - "an advocacy group that represents unions and other entertainment industry organizations". Evidently this lot's priority is "to make Hollywood's plight something average people can relate to."

It will boil down to: "Fight a Pirate! Save American jobs!"

But once again, we have no qualms about "fighting pirates" -whether Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Russians or anyone else who attempts to illegally copy Hollywood films or whatnot and sell these goods. And certainly we want to "save American jobs" - who wouldn't? (Though it's interesting that many of these studios film their fare in Vancouver, Toronto and other "cheap" foreign places to avoid paying Americans!) That is not the core issue!

The core issue is and remains the laws' unintended consequences, including shutting down websites or blogs using court orders, if they happen to include "copyrighted content" but make no money from it. Or, use the law to enable TV manufacturers, satellite tv companies or others to build technical gizmos into DVRs, DVD recorders or whatever to prevent, say football fans, from making dvds of their fave teams' games - as occurs now. Or even making movies for their own use. (Recall this same battle was fought when VCRs arrived, and the movie industry eventually backed down, realizing it wasn't worth it to fight citizens who wished to copy movies for their own uses, televised on their own TVs.)

So, until these unintended consequences are addressed in a serious way, and by that I mean all legal sanctions for innocent use of material expunged, this battle will continue. As one Colorado university student put it yesterday in the Denver Post: "The problem is that this is a law that can't work. We - this generation - grew up with the ability to download everything."

So, like the music CD companies who fought pitched battles against Napster and other sources and ended up eventually losing (check how many music CD companies still operate), so also will Hollywood if it gets too greedy concerning its "property" rights here.

For the rest of us, it is well to keep a watchful eye, and be prepared to take to our net pitchforks and torches if either of these laws surfaces again in similar form. Meanwhile, we need to let our Democratic reps know we are onto them, and they damned well better shape up if they want our continued support!

The Repukes and Food Stamps: Blame the Victims as Usual!

2012-01-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Before a critical election, such as this year, it is always well for the citizen to carefully parse language of the assorted candidates to determine the zeitgeist at work, and what one might expect to see if any of them are elected. A shot over the bow of all those now receiving food stamps was delivered by Newt Gingrich in Monday night's South Carolina primary debate. In that venue, Newtie declared (WSJ editorial, 'Food Stamp Nation', today):

"More people have been put on food stamps under Barack Obama than any other President in history."

Again, pay heed to the language of framing which is used over and over by PR meisters to attempt to subtly push percipients, readers toward the image they wish to confect, as opposed to the one grounded in reality. Newt's choice of language here "people were PUT ON food stamps" as opposed to the reality that people filed for food stamps, in order to feed their families.

No one - no American, "likes to" file for food stamps, but since the Bushie Repukes send the whole U.S. economy into the crapper ca. 2007-08 with their push for minimum wage jobs only (and keeping the minimum wage as low as possible), sending 7 million other jobs overseas to China and India, and de-regulation of banks - allowing them to sell crap subprime mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, not to mention wreaking havoc with their tax cuts and wars of choice, middle class families have had no choice. The Bushie combo of massive tax cuts for the wealthiest combined with setting off a speculative bubble that burst in 2008 - with more than 30 million middle class folks losing up to 40% of their 401ks, engendered the need for families to seek food stamp relief out of pure desperation.

That this R-asshole now holds Obama responsible ("the food stamp president"), as if "putting people on food stamps" was his objective, makes a mockery of any intellectual pretensions he has that would qualfy him for the highest office. In fact, Obama saved those millions of hungry kids in millions of middle and working class families who otherwise would have been starving now. Without, for example, pushing to make food stamps an integral part of his 2009 stimulus package, more than 30 million American kids would be going to bed hungry every night or begging for food on the streets.

Well, at least the WSJ editorial is honest enough to note that "the President himself didn't literally enroll people in the program" which was Gingrich's "crazy" claim (as WH spokesman Jay Carney correctly put it). However, in the next line the WSJ meatheads disclose their own agenda when they opine: "But any other way you cut the numbers Mr. Gingrich was right".

How so, morons? Because Mr. Obama enabled the desperately needed RELIEF for suffering families with kids from a situation you jackasses created by sending this economy to perdition in 2008 with your speculative housing bubble, and peddling the most toxic derivatives (credit default swaps) in financial history to ordinary people all over the world? Derivatives which totalled over $55 trillion and which by many estimates still contaminate our financial system? (One reason major banks on two continents have been very leery of lending, or borrowing.)

But see, this is how degenerate PR pushers work. In this case, they try to link the current record food stamp numbers ("44.7 million people participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in fiscal 2011 at a $75.3 billion cost to taxpayers up from 28.2 million and $37.6 billion in 2008") with current Obama policies. In fact, this is a blatant example of the logical fallacy known as "post hoc ergo propter hoc" or in plain English, "after this, therefore because of this". In other words, because this mass of food stamp dependents occurred after Obama's election, the WSJ and Gingrich want to establish a cause-effect relation based on the presumptive cause (Obama's policies) incepting the observed effect - 44.7 million now on food stamps.

But in fact, what happened is that the collapse of the housing markets - thanks to the Bushies' widespread use of credit default swaps, and a speculative bubble triggered by their tax cuts in conjunction with Fed low interest rates, set the stage for the financial collapse of 2008 in which over 13 million lost jobs - which of course, helped them pay for food. By the WSJ's and Gingrich's reckoning, therefore, most of these people receiving food stamps don't need them.....if they only had the moxie to look for decent jobs (which, of course, don't exist, see: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/accurate-portrayal-of-coming-austerity.html

Hence, they not only blame the victims of the Repukes' financial excesses and crimes, but also hold Obama responsible for helping the victims! What we see from this, is that if these guys are ever in total control of government again, food stamp recipients can expect to see massive cuts in those benefits .....oh, probably under some deficit correction banner!

The WSJ editorial for its part states (ibid.):

"Food stamps were intended to help the truly needy so children wouldn't go without nourishment, but Washington is slowly turning it into another entitlement for millions of Americans"

Written, spoken like true miscreants who've never had kids crying for more food every night, as they go to bed hungry. No, those kids and their parents were merely "grubbing" for benefits or "entitlements" that ought to have redounded to the more "needy". Never mind they were put in that financial position by the repuke policies that the WSJ and Gingrich endorse and which they'd love to continue if they can grab all the levers of power again. Or let me put that a different way: if American voters are comatose or dumb enough to allow it!

Oh, and if and when the GOP does make that grab, or they steal the election or voters are too uncaring, forget about ANY "entitlements"....and any food for starving kids! Gingrich, Romney and that lot will simply say: "Let them eat ...garbage.....from dumpsters!"

An Insane New Law That Must Be Stopped!

2012-01-18T09:48:00.000-08:00

In his spellbinding and righteous book: Who Will Tell The People: The Betrayal of American Democracy, author William Greider correctly eviscerates the basis of many of the laws passed in this country as either "hollow" (i.e. they work only against the interests of the majority, leaving loopholes for the 1% to escape) or outright execrable. The latter having been hatched within a venal and squalid electoral system in which money is regarded as "free speech" and corporations can render our congress critters no better than supplicants or whores. In other words, an entrenched system of legalized bribery undermines the whole edifice of our national integrity.

Many such egregious and rancid corporate laws have been spawned in recent decades, ranging from The Bank Holding and De-regulation Act of 1984, to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the more recent Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which was essentially an enormous piece of corporate welfare for Big PhrmA. But not many of these can compare to the one now being prepped for unleashing on a large unsuspecting citizenry known as The Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA.

In actual fact there are two bills that need to be reconciled. The one in the House is known as "SOPA" and the one under consideration in the Senate is called the "Protect International Property" Act, or PIPA. The law's promoters all extol the primary benefits to accrue from their passage which is to "tackle the problem of foreign-based websites that sell pirated movies, music and other products". (WSJ, today, 'New, Old Media Battle Over Net Rules', p. B1)

Indeed, in its hectoring editorial today against the nasty pirates ('Brake the Internet Pirates') the Wall Street Journal understandably sounds off against the need to protect U.S. consumers from "bootleg movies, TV shows, video games, books, music as well as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fashion, jewelry and more". And no rational person has much to quarrel with here.

Where the problems seep in, is in the unintended consequences of the laws being proposed. At the heart of this then, are consequences for example from passage of PIPA, whereby Wikipedia may have to shut down completely (it's dark now in a 24 hour protest against this odious legislation) if all embedded links to existing copyright protected material are outlawed. The law's powers are such, indeed, that "court orders" can be issued (say by the Justice Dept.) to require search engines like Google to disable links to targeted "violator" sites. Indeed, it is conceivable that the reach of the law is such that it can demand Google "disinfect" all its links and remove -clear them if they lead to other sites which have copyright protected content.

Sen. Mark Udall is now looking askance at this abomination, and observes (correctly, I believe) that (Denver Post, today, p. 12A)

"This could be a bill looking for a problem...three things that concern me is that it would kill free speech, it would kill innovation and undermine Internet security efforts. The government could censor Internet search results and encourage lawsuits by private parties"

Colorado's other Senator, Michael Bennet, an original supporter of the bill (after receiving $370,000 in campaign donations from the entertainment industry through the 3rd quarter of 2011, according to the same D. Post report) has also backed away. His staffers say "they didn't understand the rush to vote on it, without hearing from stakeholders".

Well, the rush is to shut speech down to enable the corporate media machine to grind us under! Indeed, Hunter Walk - director of product management at Google's Youtube, has built web tools on his own time to carry out the fight against SOPA and its sick sister, PIPA. As noted in today's WSJ (ibid., p. B2):

"I saw a news report that said the debates were being under-reported by news networks that were owned by corporations supporting the bill".

Indeed, and many of these have links to the entertainment industry which - let's face it - is anxious to make up for lost profits after all its dvd sales have crashed! Meanwhile, Mr. Walk has set up a clearinghouse for information at:

http://www.blackoutsopa.org/

Which I invite every reader to see.

Fortunately now, the good guys - those of us who inveigh against the reach of the Corporatocracy in whatever form it takes, including foreclosing speech under the rubric of "intellectual property rights protection"include the operators of not only Wikipedia, but Google and Facebook. Indeed, most tech companies realize they are in great peril if either of these horrific laws passes.

Meanwhile, the "old media" corporatists out to protect their interests are caterwauling like stuck pigs, with one video film maker evidently whining (WSJ, p. B2) that "piracy puts my company in jeopardy of losing everything we have built up over 26 years."

Well, ok, obviously, Chinese producers of bootlegged movies and videos hanging around Guangdong province need to be stopped. But will you also go after ordinary bloggers who merely post some neat Youtube songs, or vids, or links (e.g. of clips) to movies?

THAT is where we have to draw the line! Go after the offshore pirates, by all means, but leave ordinary folks alone who may only occasionally link to content for their blogs or websites and earn not one cent of profit from any of it. These are the "unintended consequences" that are in the cross hairs of most of us and which we must have removed from any proposed legislation, I don't care how many millions Hollywood, or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has bestowed on any legislator, under whatever guise.

Meanwhile, the WSJ editorializers can screech all they want that:

"The e-vangelists seem to believe that anybody is entitled to access any content at any time at no cost- open source".

And you have that exactly correcto, buddy boys! So long as we're not making any profits or even money from use of content, say to further information and spread knowledge on our blogs, websites, you have no freakin' business sticking your noses in. Open source, meanwhile, is here to stay. At least one major refuge in a corporate world determined to not only stifle speech, but ensure anyone who attempts to have his say will go into debt paying for overpriced content to achieve it. In other words, adding another 200 million debtors to those already paying on over-priced college tuiton loans, homes or what have you.

All of this needs to change and now is the time for everyone on the side of the "angels" to make that stand.

Why Have American Workers Left $126b On the Table?

2012-01-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

I actually had to read the brief report (p. 15) in the Jan.-Feb. issue of Money magazine several times to ensure I'd read it correctly. That according to statistics compiled by Hotwire, American workers were leaving nearly $126 billion total "on the table" (or if you will, in the hands of their employers, companies as unpaid labor) as the value of their total vacation days left untaken. This amount was based on the average of 6.2 days of vacation left unused per worker.

As the Money report pointed out, this doesn't even begin to assess the full value that these employees are giving away. Add in the health care spending by stressed employees (mainly those who choose not to take their full allottment of vacation days) and it amounts to "2½ times the figure for nonstressed co-workers" who DO take the days coming to them. This stat from the Health Enhancement Research Organization (ibid.).

Recall here that according to surplus value theory proposed by Karl Marx in his work, Kapital, if the labor value sold as a product or service is L, and V is the labor value embodied in the production of the item or service then the surplus value S is:

S = L - V

If an employee then earns $36,000 a year for generating a service or whatever other labor, and yields 6.2 days of his vacation time to the Boss Man, this translates to roughly $150 per working day assuming 20 such days per month. Then 6.2 days given up per year on average amounts to $930.

Then, by this reckoning V is the yearly paid labor or $36,000 and S is the unpaid labor or $930 per year. . The amount of labor expropriated per year is therefore equal to $930. Now, add in possible employee extra costs of $1,000 - say for health care or unpaid sick days - and you have $1,930 of labor exploited (this is assuming of course, the worker wouldn't have fallen ill had he taken his days and not been stressed out - leaving his immune system prey to flu, or other serious illness, even a stroke or heart condition. Of course in the latter cases the additional worker costs would be much greater!)

Meanwhile, the rate of surplus value per year, or the rate of yearly exploitation is:

S/V = ($1,930)/ ($36,000) = 0.053

In other words, the company or Boss Man is extracting 5.3% more work per year out of his forlorn employee than that employee is being remunerated.

WHY are Americans doing this for the capitalist one percent? So the high fliers can eat even more foie gras and enjoy 18 holes on St. Kitts every month, as their wives lavish in rose wine wraps every day? Of course, most workers will cite "fear" as the prime reason, meaning that if they take those days then they may likely return to find themselves without a job, never mind they might get ill from the added stress.

But the Money report offers a number of practical solutions as follows (ibid.):

1) Tack extra days onto business trips if you can

2) Take off a series of Fridays instead of taking a set of days one time

3) Block out time months in advance when you opt for (2)

The Money report adds that "simply anticipating a vacation increases your happiness"

Of course, it may increase your employer's unhappiness, but what's more important - taking those days as are owed you and devil take the hindmost, or....not taking them, getting a heart attack and croaking...then allowing your grubby employer to collect the $200k insurance he's taken out on you (and not told you about) via a "dead peasant's policy"?

It's time Americans cease allowing their greedy capitalist employers to eke out over 5% per year of surplus value from their hides. Get your 'commie' caps on, then read Marx' Kapital, and join the 'Occupy That Vacation" movement! NO MORE FREE LABOR TO THE 1%!

More "Ice Ages" In the Distant Future? Don't Believe It!

2012-01-16T10:45:00.001-08:00

Figuring out climate science is not an easy task, and often requires plenty of devotion, including to historical records, as well as climate physics, solar physics and ....plain old regular physics. This is often more than most lay folks or press pundits are willing to commit to so it's no surprise that so much bollocks can be written which gets attention either in a comatose corporate media or on some blogs.

Much more difficult to parse or grasp is how any academic worth his or her salt could seriously believe that another Ice Age could be on its way.....even over a thousand years hence! Yet in his Jan. 14-15 column in the WSJ ('Are We Holding A New Ice Age at Bay?'), Matt Ridley cites a paper published by university reearchers in Cambridge, London and Florida, claiming that while current greenhouse emissions may temporarily avert an Ice Age, we will still expect to see one "within about 1,500 years".

I don't think so!

Their argument is that our current "inter-glacial" (I refer to it as the first era of the "no more glacial") echoes the patterns of a previous warming period about 780,000 years ago. Like other Ice Age claimants, they make the mistake of believing that the Earth's orbit will somehow change and its eccentricity, axial tilt or both will over compensate for the CO2 accumulated and produce a new glacial period.

They fail to grasp that the change in gravitational potential energy (V = - GM/r) required to alter the Earth's orbit even a minuscule amount is stupendous - as even simple calculations would disclose. To get a magnitude of change sufficient for triggering major climatic impact you're talking about changes of the orbital elements in the range of 2- 5%. This is totally preposterous, given solar system energy constraints, and why most astronomers dismiss Milankovitch.

The alteration of the Earth's axial tilt is equally formidable to effect. For a theoretical change in obliquity, say from 21 to 24 degrees one can work out the change in angular momentum that’s required:

Since:

L = w I_p (ñ + cos ^2 (Θ)]

where w is the radial velocity, I_p the polar moment of inertia, ñ a direction in space and Θ the angle from vertical. Then d L = w Ip ( cos ^2 (Θ2) – cos ^2 (Θ1)] since we do not expect the magnitude of either w or I_p to change.

Then if Θ2 = 24 deg (= 0.419 rad), and Θ1 = 21 deg (= 0.367 rad):

Using I_p = 0.3307M r^2 =

I_p = 0.3307 (6.0 x 10^ 24 kg) (6.378 x 10^6 m)^2

I_ p = 8.07 x 10^ 37 kg- m^2 (polar moment in appropriate units)

dL = {7.272 x 10^ -5 rad/s) (8.07 x 10^ 37 kg- m^2 ) x ( cos ^2 (Θ2) - cos^2 (Θ1)]

dL= (5.87 x 10^33 kg-m2 s-1) (0.871 - 0.834) = 2.17 x 10^ 32 kg-m2/s

This is an enormous change in angular momentum of the planet – even given a presumed 41,000 year period to accomplish it. WHERE is the external force coming from to effect this change in angular momentum? We don’t know – since neither the Milankovitchies or their apologists and academic invokers never say. All they have is an empirical correlation schema – as opposed to a bona fide theory with self-consistent explanatory power and predicted orbital parameters, for the changes postulated.

Thus, we need to know – before “time expires” – where all the external torque is coming from to alter the Earth’s angular momentum by such a vast amount! Even allowing for the length of time- the magnitude of angular momentum must be accounted for. It has to come from somewhere, it simply cannot materialize in vacuo.

So if orbital changes are out, what IS the cause of the Ice Ages we've experienced? Basically, the CO2 concentration! Never has an Ice Age occurred when this is above 200 ppm, and never has an interglacial lasted very long when the CO2 concentration is less than 200 ppm. It now stands at nearly 380 ppm, and we believe the threshold to trigger the runaway greenhouse effect will kcick in between 480- 500 ppm.

Now, an added fact is that we are adding CO2 at the rate of 2 ppm/ year and the insolation is increasing at 2 watts/yr. A more disturbing fact is that CO2 also accumulates because earlier depositions remain even as new burdens are added yearly! Thus, the CO2 warming we’re now experiencing is not the result of just one year – but 100 years’ accumulation. In effect, each year we not only deal with the immediate concentrations of CO2 produced but also cumulative concentrations added from 100 years ago.

The process may be described something like a series with terms being added, viz: to describe the CO2 content added up to now in the atmosphere (CO2 depositions added by the completion of year 2011), we must initiate the series with n= 1 (e.g. for 1912), viz. CO2( 2011) = x_1 + x_2 + x_3 + x_4 +.............+ x_100

E.g. terminating at the last term, 100 years later. Here each ‘x’ denotes the CO2 burden added for each year in succession.Thus, the CO2 effect for a given year is not just for that year, but rather inclusive of the cumulative additions for all the years - starting up to 100 years before!

This means, all other things being equal, at any given time we have at least 100 years worth of CO2 concentrations to ADD, as well as the infrared energy component in watts. So, we can safely say - unless human cease using all fossil fuels immediately - that by the year 2112 we will have added another 200 ppm in CO2 concentration to the 200 ppm yearly real time additions, and also added 200 watts to the solar insolation or heat effect of it (estimated now at 1370 w/m^2). That means the latter will be expected to rise to 1770 w/m^2 while the CO2 concentration will reach 380 ppm + 400 ppm = 780 ppm. In other words, we will already have not only reached but surpassed runaway greenhouse conditions.

But it gets even worse!

An article appearing in Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (Vol. 83, No. 34), August 20, 2002, ‘Progress Made in Study of Ocean’s Calcium Carbonate Budget’, noted that sedimentary carbonates represent the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth. The author also noted that “a third of the anthropogenic CO2 that has been added to the atmosphere since the middle of the 18th century has been absorbed by the oceans. " This means that the oceans, acting as CO2 reservoirs, have actually masked the worst effects of global warming and that when their saturation point is reached, the spillover effect will be rapid and calamitous indeed.

Well, as the CO2 concentrations exceed 500 ppm, that threshold will be reached! In other words, like by the year 2060. Increases of atmospheric CO2 also increase concentrations of inorganic carbon, mainly in the forms pCO2 and HCO3. A side effect is to also diminish the pH of sea water. The author notes p. 374:

“Future decreases in sea water pH (and CO3(-2)) concentration will decrease the saturation state of the waters with respect to Ca CO3”.

This means that spillover becomes much more likely as the saturation threshold is lowered, with masses of CO2 released additionally into the atmosphere. Melting ice from glaciers, etc. – far from being an assisting agent to a new ice age, will reduce further the sea water pH and accelerate the release of CO2 from the oceans. Leading to much much warmer conditions and even more acidic oceans than exist currently (likely pH of 6 or less by 2075).

Indeed, we have excellent research showing that once CO2 levels reach 1 ½ times or more their current concentration - resulting in mean temperatures up to 10 degrees Celsius higher- there'll be NO way to halt the warming process. (See: Kerr, R.: No Way To Cool The Ultimate Greenhouse, in SCIENCE, Vol. 262 (October 29, 1993, p.648.)

Let's get it straight that once that runaway greenhouse sets in, it's game over - and there will be absolutely NO chance of any Ice Age recurring.

More amusing than the academics' take of "a new Ice Age in 1,500 years" is the ultimate irony that all of humanity will be dead long before that time, since all the oceans will have long since reached their latent heat of vaporization. Those highly acidic oceans from which life would have vanished even decades earlier will now be mere memories. And Earth?.....It will have mutated into Venus II.

Tim Tebow's Train Crashes to a Final Wreck

2012-01-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

Top: Patriots' defenders surround Tebow leaving him unable to break free to pick up a first down. Below: Tim walks away with head down after the 45-10 thrashing. This is it for the Tebow Train, at least for another year!

Last week, after the Denver Broncos' "miracle" worker QB Tim Tebow fired an overtime TD pass to Demaryus Thomas to beat a semi-crippled Pittsburgh Steelers team, all the Tebow groupies came out in force as predicted. The NFL Channel dominated with 88% of its special program time devoted to all things Tebow, including a "Tim Tebow special" on the quarterback's success this year. ESPN wasn't far behind and the newspapers must have racked up over 2 million inches in Tebow column space.

At The Washington Post, none other than former senior editor Sally Quinn actually wrote a fairly serious exploration of the possibility that Tebow might be "the Second Coming of Christ". After all, if he could engineer such marvelous game endings, plus do all his charitable work, perhaps he was Jesus Christ but now reincarnated in the form of an NFL football quarterback.

Not far behind, Michael Medved penned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday: 'The Secrets of Tebow Hatred', castigating all those churlish imps who would dare rain on the Great One's parade while a league "stocked with millionaire wife beaters and dog killers" received little or no opprobrium. Medved ultimately asks: "So why should Tim Tebow draw more resentment than other religious athletes?" and concludes "he's too apparently flawless to draw much sympathy from the uninitiated."

Meanwhile, a small stable of truly elite NFL quarterbacks (e.g. Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Eli Manning) waiting in the wings to play in this weekend's playoff games - had to listen and watch as endless hour after hour of prime broadcast time was devoted to Tim Tebow. Ultimately, one surmises that before the New England Patriots game with the Broncos last night, several thousand emails or tweets landed in NE QB Tom Brady's devices imploring him: "Please, Tom! Put an end to the hype behind this m***f*cker!" And so he did!

Tossing 6 - count them SIX - touchdown passes before the game was four minutes into the second half, tying an NFL playoff record, Brady and his Patriots routed the forlorn Broncos 45-10.The major ass-whipping, accompanied by hoots from the New England crowd and mocking chants of "Tebow! Te-BOE!" put a gnarly finish on the game's ending while dashing the hopes of the Tebow faithful that another miracle was yet in the works and he'd somehow pull one out with his "Lord and Savior" on his side. And no, to a Jesuit opinionator (Fr. J. Martin) in yesterday's WSJ, even if the Tebow led Broncs had somehow won, it wouldn't have "decimated atheism in the Rocky Mountain region". It merely would have meant the Broncos and Tebow had more luck or Zebra's calls on their side than anyone might have imagined!

In other words, the end had an absolute finality to it that, mercifully, should finally quell the continual jabber about Tim Tebow and his ways while giving short shrift to so many superior QBs. But what did one behold when the Broncos were on offense? Only pathos and chaos! They began - even after winning the coin toss- by "deferring", which was equivalent to allowing NE to spot them 7 pts, which is what happend. Brady basically said: "Oh yeah? You're going to defer? Okay, we will just go and take a seven point lead!" Which they did.

Over most of the Broncos' possessions, meanwhile, they kept running a foolish option play which the Patriot defenders always sniffed out and halted - usually for negative yards. Meanwhile, by the middle of the third quarter, behind by 35-7, the Broncos had racked up 13 negative plays (that is, plays for negative yardage) with many made by Tebow himself. Unlike last week, when he played with his WRs like Eddie Royal and Demaryus Thomas against a feeble secondary - with outstanding Ryan Clark missing from action- NE was whole and they didn't miss a beat. None of the Broncos receivers were able to get open enough to make big plays. Tears meanwhile filled bars and sports pubs from Pueblo all the way to Denver on the I25.

Is the land now filled with inveterate, cynical "Tebow haters"? Not really. The fact is most of us don't "hate" Tim Tebow. Hell, we hardly know him personally. What we hate is the media hype and schmaltz surrounding him and the unthinking nature of his fans and groupies who appear to conflate occasional luck on the football field with some type of divine intervention or "miracle" - when a small dose of critical thought ought to lead them to ask 'Why this time and not next time?'

We also detest how the evangelical whackos in the country have exploited Tebow to their own ends to push their agendas. Such as Colorado Springs -based 'Focus on the Family' which featured a "John 3:16" ad in the midst of last night's game. Have they no shame? Has Tebow no shame for permitting himself to be used to further others' agendas? The point is what we detest is not Tebow personally but allowing himself to be used for such blatant hypocritical posturing and nonsense, even as his many fans dote on him but do so while lacking any balance or proportion or judgment. This is what has driven many of us literally nuts, and why we hoped someone would finally put a lid on it.

Fortunately, Tom Brady did last night, and in stunning fashion. Yes, mayhap Tim will be resurrected next year. But at least for about eight months we shall hear no more about his "magical plays", his special whatever it is, or "miracles" that "bind the faithful".

All genuine miracle workers, alas, need them to keep occurring in order to be marked real...and they can't fail when the biggest obstacles emerge (such as 45-10 leads). Unfortunately for Tim, his miracle train crashed last night -- running into a determined New England team itself committed to ending the vacuous nonsense and hype....at least for another year!

Photo ID Voting Laws: The New 'Jim Crow' Laws At Our Door

2012-01-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

During the 'Jim Crow' era of the South, the states of the Old Confederacy were perpetually worried about black voters overtaking their chosen segregationists and making hay. Along with the laws that kept 'White' and 'Colored' accommodations, dining and restrooms separate, as well as water coolers (I was once scolded at the age of ten while traveling through MS, en route with parents for a vacation to Milwaukee for inadvertently choosing a water cooler marked 'colored', then asked if 'can't read') voter suppression was big on the menu. Usually this was done using the ruse of "literacy tests" or some other devious means to disallow any black votes.

Seems now that times haven't changed that much and (especially) since last year as many as 34 states introduced voter ID laws, of which five have been enacted while governors (democrats) in 5 other states have vetoed them. (according to a recent report in the Jan-Feb AARP Bulletin: 'Battle at the Ballot Box', p. 20) Other states are considering them and if all these laws are passed they could have very nearly the same effect of mass voter disenfranchisement as the 50s-early 60s Old South laws. Well, why be surprised when the country seems to have tilted more and more toward all things "Dixie" including on politics, economics and religion since the 1960s? After all, the GOP is now basically the party of the Old South, its politics of "God, guns and Bibles" rules - along with the central economic doctrine of "small gubmint" - ensconced since the time of the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis.

A real problem with confronting voter suppression laws concerns the spread of two memes that appear to reinforce the push for such laws. Simply expressed they are as follows:

1) It's no biggie! After all, you need a photo ID to drive!

2) If it helps stop voter fraud it's worth it!

Meme (1) or "argument 1" if you can even dignify by that, is specious because it flatly conflates a right and a privilege. Voting is a right affirmed in the Constitution, while driving is a privilege. Hence, the meme mixes chalk and cheese, but in a nation often short of critical thinking, this often passes muster. Nor does the comparison to flying and having to present a photo ID to do that pass the smell test. Again, flying - even across country - is a privilege not a right. The same rigid standard simply can't be used for voting.

People who resort to (1) also are usually ignorant of the millions of people affected by the potential photo ID requirement laws. For example, up to 1 in 3 elderly African -Americans would be affected. The reason is that most of these people were born in homes in the rural South where births were never officially recorded. Thus, since obtaining a state photo ID generally requires presentation of a birth certificate, marriage certificate, and other documents....not too mention often high costs - these potential voters are up against it.

The same applies to millions of over-65 American who often surrender their drivers' licenses because of poor vision, but either don't remember to get a generic state ID, or their states don't offer them. In either case, they end up without. According to the AARP report, "nearly 1 in 5 citizens over 65 lacks a current, government issued photo ID". The report also notes "those over 65 are more likely to lack birth certificates because they were born before recording births was a standard procedure".

Students - such as those at university - pose another problem. Many do have IDs but they're useless on account of being uiniversity IDs. What they will need to vote in the states with voter ID laws (see also the list attached) is a proper, government-state issued ID. These can be obtained in most states, but students need to get underway now, including rounding up all the documents they need to support their case, such as birth certificates. They should not wait until the last minute, especially because state motor division offices (where they're issued) are often over-crowded with applicants. Also, there's usually a one month waiting period to actually get the ID in your hands.

The AARP report adds:

"Strict new photo ID laws could make voting this year more difficult for 3.2 million voters in Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin if the new laws stand."

Meanwhile, a lawsuit is challenging the voter ID law in Wisconsin and the Justice Department is reviewing laws in Texas and South Carolina.

Meme (2) became entrenched during the Bush v. Gore battle of 2000, after Bush's brother Jeb and Florida Secretary of state Kathleeen Harris engineered a subtle voter suppression tactic using Choicepoint to place African-Americans on "felons lists". All of this is well documented in Chapter One of Greg Palast's excellent book (now available online free as a .pdf if you google it): 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy'.

Thus, though over 57,000 black Democratic votes were estimated suppressed in Duval County alone, the Repukes and Bushies circulated the specious counter-claim that it was BUSH at risk from "voter fraud" there, and hence they had to go to the Supreme Court to ensure "equal treatment". All of which is bare bollocks.

But according to Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, quoted in the AARP Bulletin (ibid.):

"It's more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls".

And indeed, the Wisconsin voter ID law, supposedly introduced to thwart such impersonation under the Walker regime, originated despite the fact (according to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC) that only seven instances of such fraud had been determined since 2000, 4 of which were on the Gooper side.

Let us hope this new, odious techno -version of 'Jim Crow' doesn't eliminate the millions of voters Obama needs to secure a 2nd term. The thought of Mitt Romney as President, and governing under a "Bain financial formula" dictate for the one percent - enabling all companies to toss out workers at will for "higher efficiency" - will see most of us homeless, penniless and hungry. Meanwhile Romney's minions will get to even gorge on more foie gras as they catch their weekly rose wine wraps and 18-holes on St. Kitts.

Linear Algebra Solution

2012-01-13T15:36:00.001-08:00

We look at the solution to the last problem given:

Find the associated matrix of the quadratic form:

f(X) = x^2 - 3xy + 4y^2

if X = (x, y, z)

Solution:

Let V = R^3 and let t^X = (x,y,z) denote elements of R^3. We have C =

(a.......b)
(c.......d)

and we require: f(x,y, z) = (x,y,z) C *v

where, v =

[x]
[y]
[z]

and x^2 - 3xy + 4y^2 = ax^2 + 2bxy + dy^2 + ez^2

but e = 0 and hence z = 0, so f(x,y,z) reduces to f(x,y) format let t^X = (x,y) denote elements of R^2 such that:

x^2 - 3xy + 4y^2 = ax^2 + 2bxy + dy^2

and: a = 1, 2b = -3 so b = -3/2 and d = 1

Then: C

=(1......-3/2)
(-3/2...... 4)

Is This Any Way to Win A War?

2012-01-13T10:35:00.001-08:00

By now, most have heard (unless they've been living under a rock inside a cave) of the video of four Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban - which recently emerged on Youtube. The video, with one of the captioned images shown, depicts four men in Marine Corps combat gear urinating on 3 corpses, a desecration according to Islam, as well as a war crimes violation of the Geneva Convention for which these characters could face life in prison. (Some news outlets - like The Wall Street Journal- have insisted these guys will only get dishonorable discharges, or maybe 2 years for violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but I disagree. If the Geneva Convention means anything it will have to surface here, especially if it is contended - as the U.S. does - that Afghanistan is a real war.) To make it worse, one of the Marines is heard saying: "Have a great day, buddy!"

Now, I ask you, what would the typical red-blooded American make of it if four Taliban were filmed urinating on American Marine corpses? Would the words "go ape shit" mean anything?

Meanhwile, the Defense Department has evidently launched multiple investigations to identify these miscreants and already traced them to the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, accord to The Wall Street Journal ('U.S. Attempts to Stem Video Outcry', p. A6, today). Two of the Marines have alredy been identified and face questioning.

The Marine unit involved was evidently deployed in the northern regions of Helman province in Afghanistan, from March through September, 2011. Most examiners of the video suggest it was shot in the spring or early summer. Since then the unit was returned home while a number of officers were shifted to other units.

In many ways, the video brings back disturbing memories of the Abu Ghraib desecrations that occurred in Iraq, which included forced mastrubation of Iraqi prisoners, and sodomizing them by a mixed gaggle of U.S. troops - males and females. The image went round the Arab world and essentially convinced many of what they already believed, that the U.S. forces were little better than the Nazis that invaded Poland in 1939 and desecrated Polish Jews, as they placed them in prisons and makeshift ghettoes. Later images of troops kicking in the doors of Iraqi families, tossing them to the ground and conducting odd raids and searches, as well as rapes, didn't help. These behaviors essentially sealed a loss for whatever positive goals the conflict intended, much like in VietNam.

Some might say these urinating Marines did the same for Afghanistan, but this conflict was lost long ago, probably as early as 2005, when the first massive drone strikes killed hundreds of innocent women and children, including dozens attending a wedding. Even the great Chinese war philosopher Sun Tzu knew that most conflicts are won or lost before being actually fought. And you always lose when you lose the hearts and minds of the peoples you're supposedly saving. So it was with both Afghanistan and Iraq, where we merely pissed trillions of dollars into bottomless corrupt ratholes, while leaving our own domestic needs unattended.

And what did we get for our trouble and all the lives and treasure squandered? Well, nearly 8 of 10 Iraqis who saw us only as occupiers, and nearly the same proportion in Afghanistan. A better way would have been committing millions of dollars to build schools and hospitals, as opposed to sending in tens of thousands of forces - often already tainted with inbuilt prejudices, hailing mainly from the rural South.

Hopefully, especially after the deficit debate rightfully takes a chunk of hide out of the Pentagon, such wars of choice will never be fought again. Well, we said that after Vietnam too, but look how that turned out! As long as the austerity mongers of the Right, and their allied political whores, defense contractors and corporatist vultures seek new ways to grab capital while impoverishing the rest of us, unnecessary wars and conflicts will be the mediums of choice.

Will Humans Ever Learn? The Weaponizing of 'Doomsday' Bugs

2012-01-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

In their paper ‘Galactic Civilizations: Population Dynamics and Interstellar Diffusion’ by William Newman and Carl Sagan, in Icarus, Vol. 46, June 1981, page 293, one suggestion made for why we detect no signals from advanced civilizations was that beyond a certain stage of their development, all advanced societies destroy themselves. Newman and Sagan weren't sure exactly when this occurred, but suspected probably within two generations of their inception of an atomic or nuclear phase. Since that commenced for humanity ca. 1945, and if one generation roughly equals 40 years, then that implies the flash point for danger would be as soon as 2025.

Of course, the end needn't necessarily be via nuclear weapons, though they are certainly the most destructive to consider. As one nuclear scientist put it, "the weapons we have can easily wipe out twice the world's population".

But an article appearing in a recent issue of The Economist (Dece. 31st, p. 63) spread the potential end via a wider net, focusing on the capacity to "weaponize" such nasties as smallpox and influenza. We already are aware, for example, that smallpox has been one of the worst scourges in human history - likely killing more humans through the centuries than all the wars combined. Yet, when humans had the chance to finally dispatch this monster, sending the remaining vials into the nearest incinerators, what did we see? Well, both the U.S. and the Russians decided to keep a number of vials on hand "just in case". In case of what? Further, so long as any such vials remain, no matter what the environs' safety protocols, every human is at risk of facing some weaponized version - engineered by a madman or terrorist freak.

Then there is influenza, which many might be tempted to treat with a big 'Ho-hum'. Boooooo-rrring! Not so fast! According to statistics released yesterday, on the top 15 causes of death, influenza now ranks 9th, ahead of suicide. And this is just the normal influenza.

Consider now two things that have transpired in the past 6 years that ought to send shivers down every living human's spine ( ibid.):

1) In 2005, researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland succeeded in reconstructing the Spanish Flu virus. This was the one that infected 500 million in 1917-18 at a time the global population was 1 billion, and killed 50 million of them. (In many cases, those infected died within 3 days of contracting it, of asphyxiation.) The reconstruction was made possible by retrieving some of the virus' DNA from buried Eskimos in Alaska who had been felled by it, then genetically engineering the remaining residual portions.

2) Two separate research teams at the University of Wisconsin -Madison and in Rotterdam, Holland have actually succeeding in developing (genetically) an airborne variant of H5N1 or the "Bird flu".

As The Economist notes, the fatality rate for H5N1 dating from 2003 when first uncovered in China has "been a staggering 60% of the cases detected worldwide". They noted:

"H5N1's toll would certainly have been greater had it not been for an important limitation. Unlike its Spanish sister it was not easily transmitted to humans. But if the virus ever evolved to hop nimbly from person to person (i.e. airborne) it too could wreak a pandemic".

By this point of the article one is tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, until the next line:

"That evolution has now occurred....."

Describing the basics of how the UWM and Rotterdam researchers used experiments on ferrets ("surprisingly good proxies to humans") to get the virus airborne, spreading infection merely via sneezes.

And if the H5N1 is hybridized with Spanish flu, or otherwise weaponized? In the case of a pandemic it could easily annihilate over 2.5 billion people, or at least rivalling a nuclear exchange of about 1,000 warheads from each side.

Why would thinking and supposedly intelligent humans even tempt fate by messing with such known killers and indeed, making them deadlier?

Perhaps the long dead aliens who never survived to a more advanced stage of their civilizations, as Newman and Sagan surmise, could answer that question.

Linear algebra solutions & Matrices of quadratic forms

2012-01-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

We look at the solutions from the earlier blog:

1) For a similar solid to that shown, but with vectors:

u = (1, -1, 4)

v = (1, 1, 0)

w = (-1, 2, 5)

Find: Vol (u, v, w)

Solution:

We let the volume be Vol(u, v, w) and:Vol (u, v, w) = Det [u, v, w]

So that:

(u1....u2......u3)
(v1....v2.....v3)
(w1....w2....w3) =

(1.....-1.....4)
(1......1.... .0)
(-1....2.......5)

And Det [u, v, w] =

(1....0)
{2.....5) -

(-1)(1....0)
(-1.....5) +

4 (1....1)
(-1....2) =

[(5 - 0) + (5 - 0) + 4(2 - (-1)] = 5 + 5 + 4(3) = 10 + 12 = 22 cu. units

2) Show that for the spanning vectors:

u = (-2, 2, 1)

v = (0, 1, 0)

w = (-4, 3, 2)

Vol (u, v, w) = 0

Solution:

Vol (u, v, w) = Det [u, v, w]

So that:

(u1....u2......u3)
(v1....v2.....v3)
(w1....w2....w3) =

(-2.....2......1)
(0.... 1.....0)
(-4....3.......2)

And Det [u, v, w] =

(-2)(1....0)
(3....2) -

2(0....0)
(-4.....2) +

(0.....1)
(-4.....3) =

[-2(2 - 0) - 2(0) + (0 -(-4)] = -4 + 4 = 0

Given these were fairly short, we now make a brief foray into the area of quadratic forms and the matrices associated with them. Let V be a finite dimensional space over the field K. Let g = < , > be a symmetric bilinear form on V. When we say a quadratic form determined by g we mean the function: f:V -> K

such that: f(v) = g =

Generic example:

If V = K^n then f(X) = X*X = (x1)^2 + .........(x_n)^2

i.e. for the quadratic form determined by an ordinary dot product. In general if V = K^n and C is a symmetric matrix in K, representing a bilinear form, the quadratic form is given as a function of X by:

f(X) = t^XCX = (SIGMA) i,j = 1 to n [c_ijxixj]

where SIGMA is for the Greek sumbol of summation, then if C is a diagonal matrix, e.g.

C =

(c1....0 ......0)
(0.....c2......0)
(0......0......c3)

then the quadratic form has the simpler expression:

f(X) = c1x1^2 + ........................cn x_n^2

Specific example - application:

Let V = R^2 and let t^X = (x,y) denote elements of R^2.

Given a function f(x,y) = 2x^2 + 3xy + y^2

is a quadratic form, find the matrix of its bilinear symmetric form.

We have C =

(a.......b)
(c.......d)

and we require: f(x,y) = (x,y) C *v

where, v =

[x]
[y]

then:

2x^2 + 3xy + y^2 = ax^2 + 2bxy + dy^2

and: a = 2, 2b = 3 so b = 3/2 and d = 1

Then: C =

(2........3/2)
(3/2......1)

Problem:

Find the associated matrix of the quadratic form:

f(X) = x^2 - 3xy + 4y^2

if X = (x, y, z)

An Accurate Portrayal of the Coming "Austerity" Wars

2012-01-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

Even as the country continues to slowly grind its way out of recession and deficit obsession, or at least tries to, some critical observers are projecting ahead to a not so nice future wherein the two political parties will become the ideological beach heads for a prolonged civil war. This will not be like the last Civil War, and may not even reach the stage of bloodshed, but it will be fought just as intensely and without remorse.

In his book, 'The Age of Austerity', veteran journalist Thomas Byrne Edsall has glimpsed the future by extrapolating rationally from the recent budget battles and deficit fights, and doesn't like what he sees. In particular, "a period of austerity markedly different from anything we have seen before...which will spark a resource war" between the Left and the Right. I must say that I myself have seen this battle looming, ever since the August, 2011 showdown over raising the debt ceiling in which the nation was essentially held hostage to Tea Bagger austerity and deficit cutting demands.

In his case, Edsall goes on to note that at the current time,

"The two major political parties are enmeshed in a death struggle to protect the benefits and goods that flow to their respective bases, with each attempting to expropriate the resources of the other."

This, of course, is one way to look at it. But based on my many prior blogs on this topic, the other way to look at it is in terms of one party - the Republicans - being taken over by extremely wealthy and powerful special interests, whose main objective is to impoverish the rest of us so they can maintain political and economic control. Thus, these interests incessantly inveigh against the welfare of the majority (as embodied within the "promote the general welfare" clause of the Preamble to the Constitution) to pad their own special agendas, including buying off our leaders and having them write laws to suit.

Hence, the only valid "expropriation of resources" is on the side of the Right and its wealthy purveyors, benefactors (Koch brothers, Richard Viguerie) and corporate interests at the expense of the rest of us. They want to therefore extend and enhance their tax cuts, and have much more defense spending in order to leave no money to support social welfare programs, or even domestic maintenance such as for our crumbling infrastructure.

They want us all stuck in a third world banana republic and with them pulling all the strings.

Because Edsall's take is more or less one of generic false equivalence, it makes sense he would see that austerity "raises the stakes of partisanship" with both Reeps and Demos cocooning themselves, and each party "believing its own facts and trusting its own sources".

However, this is much more true of the corporate Right and its lackeys than the left. For it is their lot who are so seduced by FAUX News they're unable to fathom or see the real facts. Indeed, many studies - including from The Columbia Journalism Review (e.g. May-June, 2003, 'Bias and the Middle East') have shown the Foxite side to be vastly less informed than the left watchers of MSNBC. (And indeed, to even remotely consider putting the Rachel Maddow show on the same plane as FOX's Bill O'Reilly is to reveal onself as a latter day journalistic Jacobin already brainwashed by rightist screeds.)

But I suspect that like most journalists, Edsall doesn't really buy into this (and I will get to more on this later) but uses it to try to show he's being "objective" as a journalist is expected to be these days and hence give roughly equal weight to both sides. Thus in vetting "conspiracy theories" he compares the anti-Obama Birthers against the Left's anti-Bushers and their claim of the Bushies having "foreknowledge of 9/11" - which - not to put too fine a point on it, is nowhere near as whacky as the Birther's claims - given how Bush's approval ratings soared and the military -national security state profited in the wake!) So never mind the two sides can never be weighted the same.

Because of not dispensing with false equivalence from the start, Edsall becomes the expected prey to the nattering nabobs of high finance, such as one W. James Antle III, who reviewed his book (WSJ, Jan. 10, ' A War of All Against All'). For example, Antle portrays Edsall's book as "one party protects tax cuts and the Pentagon's budget" while the other "fights to shovel money at social welfare programs".

Not one word here, not a one, that the former bunch has RAIDED the monies of the social welfare programs, namely Social Security, to pad its Pentagon budgets and off-budget war, supplementals funding. So who is being dishonest here? Meanwhile, as I showed earlier, both the tax cuts and the Pentagon spending and budgets were always devised by the Rightists to bleed social welfare monies dry by "starving government", see e.g. my earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/defense-spending-cuts-dont-believe-all.html

The point here, which Antle avoided? One party - the Reeps, protects tax cuts and the Pentagon's budget for the RICH! The other party, protects social welfare programs for the majority of the country who are NOT rich and will depend on those programs later. Let's get it straight once and for all here that the protected tax cuts and Pentagon budgets do not have benefits that redound to the many, but to the few. Nearly 75% of those extant Bush tax cuts go to the top 10%. NONE of the Pentagon budget increases go to the many, but rather to defense contractors, with maybe 100,000 odd jobs for defense (e.g. aircraft building) going to specific congressional districts that have always been in the maw of the military, like Colorado Springs.

But this is the sort of one-sided journalism one gets when the reactionary press gets its hands on a book that doesn't meet every one of its 1-percent stoking criteria. Thus, Antle III really lashes Edsall when he finally drops the pretense of false equivalence and writes:

"For years, conservatives have sought to chip away at the infrastructure of contemporary liberal democracy"

Which is exactly, spot-on true! They have done it since the Reagan era by using the combo of regressive tax cuts and military spending to decimate the domestic purse for any social use.

Antle III then excoriates Edsall for "holding Republicans to account for being routinely engaged in an assault on programs and regulations that Mr. Edsall holds dear".

What Antle III doesn't say, doesn't dare to - is a majority of Americans also hold those programs dear! Polls consistently find 80- 85% of Americans, of both parties (but the little guys not the politicos) holding dear Social Security. As for those "regulations", even higher proportions of Americans demand them to ensure their meats aren't contaminated with salmonella or E. Coli. or that their melons aren't full of listeria which can lay them low with perforated bowels or comas. (Such as occurred to several Colorado citizens). Similarly recent polls have found 80% or more of Americans demand EPA regs to ensure mercury isn't pouring out from coal-fired plants to contaminate their food, water and air and make their kids more prone to asthma attacks.

Yet Antle's precious Repukes want to dismantle most of those regs, for both the EPA and FDA to save a few million bucks. Think they care about the majority of Americans? Think again! So no wonder Antle III complains that "Edsall gives short shrift t the right-of-center positions about the virtues of free market dynamism or deregulation"

Well, even Edsall clearly has his false equivalence limits, and perhaps - unlike W. Antle III - he grasps that if the free market truly existed, and was dynamic, we wouldn't see the ever increasing inequality we behold as betrayed by the Gini index (now near to the Philippines and Mexico.) As for "deregulation" recent studies, including published recently in TIME (3 months ago) showed that European states that kept more regulations fared better economically than those that didn't. The reason was that their trade improved because buyers knew the regs meant higher quality goods.

The funniest attempt at take-down is when Antle III blabbers on Edsall's unequal treatement of the Tea Baggers vs. what he (Antle) calls the "extemist Left". He writes:

"More space in 'The Age of Austerity' is devoted to nasty slogans appearing on a few signs at Tea Party rallies than to the estremism of the Left"

Hmmmmm.....he conveniently avoids mention of the many hundreds of Tea Baggers that brought their loaded weapons to those same rallies, along with their signs! Nor does he mention the Tea Bagger "campaign maps" leading up to the 2010 mid-terms with rifle sights over Dem areas. Then three months later Gabby Giffords was shot. Not saying a Tea bagger did it, but her district was among those targeted with a rifle sight - so they certainly created the climate where a generic whacko, nut or extremist could pull a trigger!

Memory is indeed short, very much so, when convenient.

Finally, Mr. Antle III yammers, on the "left extremists":

"After all, where did we first see a sitting President portrayed as Hitler?"

Hmmmmm.....maybe forgetting that Gee Dubya had many commonalities with Adolf Hitler, which was what the more savvy Left was trying to indicate. These included:

1) Like Hitler, Bush was never formally and officially elected by a majority of voters (both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, though by different modus operandi)

2) Like Hitler, one of the first things Bush did after a "terror" attack, was to limit or repeal civil liberties. Hitler did it after the Reichstag fire, under an emergency 'Decree', Bush under the 'Patriot Act' (which was prepared BEFORE 9-11!)

3) Like Hitler, one of the first things Bush did is to wage all out war on unions, especially within Gov't. (‘Stomping Labor’, in The Progressive, June, 2002 ,p. 7.)

4) Like Hitler, Bush and his administration acted unilaterally -without any consultations in respect to international laws and treaties - from Kyoto to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.And just like Hitler, international treaty after treaty and concordance was violated, broken.

5) Like Hitler, Bush intimidated his opposition (e.g. using the "Patriot Act" etc) into political cowardice, thereby further reinforcing his bogus 'power with no mandate'.

6) Like Hitler - in invading The Sudetenland and Poland -and depicting 'terror' in those nations, Bush invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and had at least early plans for Iran'. Hitler did it to neutralize 'Bolsheviks' and 'Jew terrorists', Bush to neutralize Islamic 'terrorists'.

7) Hitler had Josef Goebbels as “Minister of Propaganda” – Bush had Herr Karl Rove.

8) Hitler had the “Reich Courts” to hand down a host of deleterious verdicts on the citizenry, Bush had his self-crafted “Military commissions" which did away with habeas corpus and is now fully formalized whereby any American citizen can be indefinitely detained - say at Guantanomo. (Obama and his press assistant have, to their credit asserted they would never do that, but the worry of many is that an unscrupulous REPUKE with delusions of grandeur or dictatorship would!).

Mayhap, W. James Antle III needs to read a bit more, including of 20th century history, before taking to his ideological pseudo-free market -deregulation bollocks high horse.

In the meantime, let's hope the austerity wars aren't as terrible as Edsall believes. But that will depend on the tactics of the Right's deficit hawks, Repuke military promoters and deregulators....If they go too far, well......