Category Archives: personal

Those poor folks in the 99% who only have 8 million to their name.

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After some time looking I finally found the number I’ve been after, which is the cutoff point in terms of the wealth of those elusive and mysterious  “1% people” everybody is talking about.  Here’s the excellent research document:

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf

We learn that the cutoff for moving from the impoverished 99% to those nasty ONE PERCENTERS is …. wait for it …. a  Net worth of $8,232,000 or more..

WoW.

So here’s the problem if you are an anti occupation person – those one percenters SURE have a LOT of money!    In fact as you go into the category of the super duper rich – the top tenth of a percent, you get wealth so great it’s hard for most of us to even imagine – hundreds of millions of dollars.

HOWEVER if you are a “pro occupation” person I think you have even a bigger problem, and that’s the thing most  would not even call a “problem” at all, it’s the fact that we are SO prosperous here in America that millions and millions of people who are well below the “one percent” mark are incredibly well off .   Somebody with 7 million in the bank won’t make the 1% cut, but clearly they are very rich.

How moved should we be by a movement that considers millionaires to be among the disadvantaged in America?  

Of course the 99% folks don’t mean it literally, rather they are concerned that a small number of elite rich folks control the whole show.   It’s an important topic, yet it seems to me the concept of exploitation of the poor by the rich weakens as you examine closely the actual data as well as the procedures and power structures as well as how things work in the country’s business and political circles.  Lots of redistribution is already taking place, though tax critics will reasonably note that taxes go mostly to entitlements for the middle class and the defense department.   Higher taxes are not necessarily a path to “greater fairness”.

Certainly we want more even distribution of America’s massive wealth, but it’s also important to keep the production levels high so we have something to redistribute.  This balance is not easy.  Not easy at all.

Rotator Cuff Exercises

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After starting up Tennis again I’m already experiencing what I think is a rotator cuff irritation so it’s time to look for some rotator cuff exercises so hopefully I can play without injury or pain.   It’s hard getting old!

The Rotator cuff is a complex of thin muscles on your shoulders that allow the extensive motion you have in this area – motion that allows things like ball throwing and racket or club swinging, and more.   Irritation in this area is very common, especially with sports, and should be considered potentially serious.   Rotator cuff exercises help prevent injury to the shoulder.

Rotator cuff exercises:

Side-lying lateral raise.   Instructions from “FitBie”

Standing rows with free weights and tubing.  Not sure if this is what is meant by that or not:

Prone horizontal abuduction.

Wall pushups.

Internal and external rotation.

Berkeley Earth Project

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The Berkeley Earth Project is a very ambitious attempt to accurately assess the state of “Global Warming” in a very systematic and scientific way, free from the many biases, politics, and advocacy challenges that have arguably plagued the process to date.      Preliminary findings are just out here a bit prematurely, as the director of the project Muller recently testified to the US Congress:  http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Muller_Testimony_31_March_2011

Note that the results here are based on 2% sample they are using to validate their methods before they apply that method to the entire set of some 1.6 billion temperature records, a project that they maintain (and I agree) will result in the best measure to date of global temperature change.

Not surprisingly the 2% looks a lot like the temperature record we see from the major measurers of such things – CRU in England and NASA in the USA.     My gut expectation about the final record is that it will reflect a slight decrease in observed warming along with a significant, though modest, increase in the “uncertainty” of such measurements.     Why?   That finding would be very consistent with the fact that most of the climate scientists are doing excellent work that is good and only very slightly compromised by the alarmist bent.   That bent can’t change the data but I think it has inclined those – particularly in Paleodendrochronology – to view questionable assumptions by other scientists too sympathetically.   Sort of a “circling of the wagons” has happened as tree ring science emerged from almost total obscurity to the single most important “climate signal” in the global warming controversies.  The politics and alarmism and advocacy have very unfortunately led to some questionable interpretations and assumptions despite the obvious which are nearly rock solid findings of a global temperature rise over the last century.

Berkeley Earth is a great approach and I’m anxious to see how their transparent and hopefully unimpeachable methodology will shed light on global warming / climate change issues.

P.S.  IMHO  1.there is slight global warming, 2. it’s mostly human caused,  3. it’s not going to hurt much and 4. (most importantly) YOU (and I, and even the most fervent alarmist) are almost completely unwilling to do the things needed to change our warming prospects enough that it would make more than a trivial difference in the scheme of things.    If you travel much via planes or cars, keep your house between 65 and 85 degrees, fail to retrofit much of your life to save energy, etc, etc, etc then you are THE PROBLEM and you are NOT PART OF THE “SOLUTION”.      Sorry, but you won’t change and many of you won’t even build nuclear power plants – part of the no-brainer solution to energy needs.

Misplaced compassion … kills

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One of the most obvious things I assert is also the thing that bothers people the most.   It’s that most of us tend to fret or show  compassion over trivial or questionable things while we ignore the catastrophic circumstances that plague so many people around the world.

A great recent example is the effort to “find Paco”, a dog that was “lost” by Delta Airlines during a trip back to (the UK?) from Mexico.     As with most stories like this, the perception  at first glance is heart wrenching.    But then the facts clear up why this story is ridiculously overblown.

Paco was a stray, picked up by a tourist couple, who then had him shipped home.   It appears he escaped from his cage while on the tarmac in Mexico City and  (I’m speculating here) headed back to the places where he’s more comfortable living.    Sad for the couple, but hardly all that newsworthy, especially given the apparent outrage against Delta.

Delta’s offer to credit the couple only $200 for a lost pet was obviously a stupid move on their part, but I resent that people don’t get all the facts out there when trying to push these stories to a gullible public.    If you are a compassionate person you MUST IGNORE PACO and spend your time thinking about the daily deaths of thousands from Malaria, rotovirus, and lack of clean water.    Yes that task is more than  overwhelming, but the whimpy “Find Paco”  sentiment that people think makes them a “compassionate person” does nothing of the kind – it hardens them to the plight of millions who live in conditions we could largely fix if people would pay as much attention to that as they pay to missing stray dogs in Mexico.      (How?   If the developed world cut defense and entitlement spending by about 10% we could rebuild most of the developing world’s infrastructure  IN ONLY A FEW YEARS.     The strategic benefits alone would be staggering, but military enthusiasts are too blinded by irrational post-cold-war thinking while entitlement enthusiasts are too busy sending subsidies to the American lower and middle class, who contrary to our constant whining cost far more in bureaucracies and benefits than we pay for  (can you say “National Debt”?)

The millions spent sending poor Free Willie back into the wild also comes to mind (he died soon after, lacking the skills needed to survive).       Did people seriously think Willie would be happier in the wild?    It was as if their *need* to fight against captivity programs trumped the animal’s own well being.

So instead of fretting over things that don’t matter much, why not pick your favorite extreme poverty charity and help out – then you can feel good…. AND actually do some good too!    Here’s a start:   http://twitter.com/charitywater

Does your Storytelling Trump the Truth?

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One of the greatest confusions of my life has been watching otherwise very sharp folks descend into a sort of silly crazed madness – or at least incoherency – with respect to complex topics like politics, economy, global warming, etc.

AT THE VERY LEAST a thinking person should realize that we generally don’t have enough data or enough experiments to draw firm and certain conclusions about most complex topics, yet most of us seem to want to do exactly that.     I like to think I’m open minded about most things and generally happy to entertain even the most skeptical views of ideas I hold dear, but I’m sure I fall into this incoherency sometimes too.   However I try to insist to myself that I’m going to let the facts drive my conclusion rather than create stories and then fit in only those facts that support them.

Happily I think I …. finally …. understand why smart people can believe such dumb things, or support their views so strongly without regard to a reasoned analysis of all the information.

Storytelling trumps the truth !

It is not clear to me why we humans are so enamored with stories as opposed to data analysis, but clearly we have a huge preference for the storybook versions of things.     This is fun and entertaining when it comes to films, theater, music, and reading stories to your kids.    Unfortunately our storytelling obsession often gets in the way of good science, politics, and economics, all of which are best driven by cold hard facts and cool, rational interpretations of that data.

The storytelling obsession is SO powerful in fact that I often have people argue with me over something that is downright totally obvious if you view it rationally for even a moment.    It’s the idea that we should all work very strongly against politically motivated spending patterns and try to prioritize spending so we spend where it does the most good.    Most people will initially agree with this, but as soon as you say, for example, that we should take money AWAY from keeping comatose folks alive and put that money towards prenatal care in the Bronx (or, heaven forbid, Africa!),  many people do the descent into irrationality and say things like “well, what if it’s your friend who is in a coma?”.      If you say we should cut the defense budget they say (irrationally) “But how will we protect ourselves”, as if spending and protection obviously go hand in hand.      Stories allow us to spin and bend the data and analysis to our own agendas, and this is not a healthy process.

Many will relate personal stories or create stories to describe scenarios where – in some limited set of circumstances – they would have been hurt by a system that did not prioritize things in their way.    OF COURSE we will all have times when a rational system does not meet our needs!    This happens all the time.    But political / storytelling  spending – which is now rampant – will in all cases virtually guarantee we have suboptimal allocation of resources.

The answer is that a rational person recognizes that we’re all in this together and we need more rational rules about spending and we’ll all need to live with (or die by) those rules.    Sure there can be processes for exceptions to the general rules, but it’s simply not rational to suggest, as many do, that “we should always spend all the money in the world to save every single person”.

I think see these storytelling effects best on the far left and right of issues.    These can be political where President Obama is portrayed as a conservative corporate stooge by the incoherent left and a communist non-citizen by the incoherent right.   Neither view lines up with any but a delusional view of reality, yet both are fairly popular (and incompatible) ideas.

On a global scale we see religious fanatics use storytelling to weave their madness and bring continued instability to many regions.     I’d argue that a major challenge for many nations is to abandon leaders who are primarily charismatic storytellers in favor of resolute and analytical problem solvers.    Ideally you’ll find people who are both and in my opinion Obama may fit that bill if he can extricate himself from old school Democratic party economic delusions.

Fox News Alert: Universe Still Expanding at Speed of Light

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Despite a fair amount of college physics and math, and the insights that come from being a living conscious being on planet earth which you’d think would give some insight into the nature of the reality we experience on a daily basis all around us, I remain confused.

How can the *physical universe* have no center?    Almost all theories of cosmology and all of the extensive and available data is said to support this idea, but it still completely baffles me.   Earth has a center, the Galaxy has a center, and our Galactic Cluster has a center.    But at cosmic universe scales you cannot talk about “centers” anymore – ie the point where the big bang happened.    My understanding is there is no point of origin – almost all cosmologies that are consistent with the (huge amount) of physical data say the universe sprung into being but did NOT spring from any particular spot.

Now, one way this *does* make sense to me is to assume that the basis of reality is tiny bits of information rather than tiny bits of matter and energy.    ie matter and energy are a great way to model things down to a certain level, but at the very heart of everything we’ve just got some sort of binary information thing – zero or one, yes or no, on or off, “something or nothing”, etc.

This is appealing at one level because it seems to simplify some of the ultimate questions to about the simplest dynamic concept you can imagine which allows only two conditions – ie something or nothing.    A concept that allows only ONE condition would be totally static – I don’t see how you could have change or thought in a system that is defined with only a single contruct, but clearly if you add only one more condition, giving you the “on or off” 1 or 0, etc, you can get an infinite number of variations.

cmb_timeline75

Death rumors of blogosphere are greatly exaggerated

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Nick Carr is usually insightful over at Rough Type, but he’s missed the point of blogging if he thinks the best of the medium is behind us. On the contrary I think the real promise of blogging – as well as the web in general – is yet to come.

Why are the rumors of the death of the blogosphere greatly exaggerated even while the medium is still improving? Because things are not happening in the structured way articulate and/or elite information folks often prefer.

Rather we see regular folks sharing their observations, sometimes in inspired ways but often just as part of a growing amateur and untuned symphony of insights.   Although it is *certainly* true to note how much more crappy material there is out there than there was a few years ago before blogging went “mainstream”, it’s also true there is much more good material – it’s just become harder to find.

The good stuff is now distributed across such a large space and within massive comment streams that we need to build better blog search rather than a big blog mortuary.

I think folks like Nick are also correctly noting that the big blogs – thanks to big money – have become much worse because they now pander to large audiences with a lot of fluff pieces and filler.   Often the original writers with unique and interesting voices are eclipsed at their own blogs by hired hacks who offer either quirky irrelevant views or inferior insights to the original.  Part of the problem here is that writing has become commoditized at money blogs such that the spoils are reserved for the owners not the current writers.  Ergo, formerly first class blog writing becomes…second class.

These speed bumps in my view will ultimately work themselves out and we’ll see the “real” voices (Nick Carr’s blog above is a great example) gradually gain more of a  following at the expense of those who simply push out more information for the sake of a larger footprint.    For me, blogs that have lost their appeal even as they gained in theoretical “valuations” were Searchblog by John Battelle and TechCrunch by Mike Arrington.    Both remain “good” sources of information with “good” writing, but before these were *great* blogs with great new insider voices.    I think this is the problem Nick and many others are worried about without justification.   On TV you can only change the channel so many times before you are back at the same old junk.  On the internet there are more channels than minutes in a lifetime.

Election Day 2008

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Election Day 2008

Voting is still underway but the outcome is already clear – Obama will win our US presidency by either a modest or large number of electoral votes and probably about 54% or more of the popular vote. Many Americans are breathing a sigh of relief that the outcome today is clear and uncompromised by the many flaws of our counting system.

Election and electoral irregularities, negative campaign strategies, and the flaws of Democracy aside, all Americans should be very proud that our nation will once again make our qaudrennial peaceful transition of executive leadership from one administration to another after a national vote.

The Obama victory, combined with large gains in congress for the Democrats, will likely be viewed for centuries as one of the most significant transformative events in American history. This will be one of the largest swings from “conservative Republican” to “liberal Democrat” leadership in all of history.

In a decision based overwhelmingly on political rather than racial considerations, Obama’s rise to the US Presidency will also demolish the pervasive-but-misguided mythology that has suggested for over a generation that America could never transcend our history of prejudice and elect an African American to the highest office.

Yet Americans can transcend the challenges of our past.

We just did.

Robert Rubin on Zakaria GPS

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Today on Zakaria GPS we have Robert Rubin, Citibank and Wall Street megamoneymeister and Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury.

Rubin is always one of the most impressive observers of the economy, and distinguished as one of the few Secty’s of treasury who presided over a Federal balanced budget.  He articulates complexity well and also avoids the partisan nonsense that clouds these debates.  For example he was complimentary of Paulson’s efforts

Main point was that we need to do more to address mortgages at home and bank level to stabilize things and that he wanted a *huge* stimulous package – probably not in the form of tax rebates because they don’t tend to hit economy fast enough and are often saved.

Rubin is Obama’s economic advisor (along with Volker, Buffett, Summers).  Rubin was very complimentary of Obama’s style and intellect, pointing out that at the meetings Obama is always quick to divorce the campaign considerations from the economic solutions, and to listen to those who agree and disagree.

The bad news is that Rubin sounded like he was not willing to go back to Washington and take the position of Secretary of the Treasury again even though many (certainly I) would like to see him there again.