National Debt? What National Debt?

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If you’ve been watching the national news much lately you’ll wonder what ever happened to all the concern about the national debt and the massive budget deficits planned for the next decade.   On the up side however you will be quite an expert in addressing issues relating to repairs to the late Michael Jackson’s nose.  But I digress….

Hey, maybe we solved the debt and deficit spending problems?   Oh.  No.  We.  Didn’t.    We owe 11.5 Trillion and it’s rising faster than an inconveniently untrue  misinterpretation of a globally warmed sea level on a Florida shoreline.   Although it’s true that most economists from most sides felt a stimulus was important, and in fact it appears that has stemmed the tide of a financial death spiral, I think most would agree that as the recovery starts to take shape we need to look long and hard at how much we spend.   The *key cut* is obvious and it is the defense budget, but the legions of fake conservatives (often aka “Loyal Republicans”) who carp about a few million wasted here or there refuse to tackle the defense budget, blinded by an absolutely incomprehensible lack of understanding of basic global strategics which have shown throughout history that seeking massive military superiority has little or no justification.   From the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China to the Viet Nam to Iraq,  “defense” become “offense” and results in massive spending with hugely negative ROI and often just exaggerated the unstable conditions you sought to avoid  (e.g. Afghanistan, Middle East).

Incredibly, the concern about the debt has flipped to paying an extraordinary amount of attention to fixing the problems we don’t have anymore.     Obama was explaining to a crowd yesterday all the things the government is doing now to prevent the financial troubles *we do not have anymore*.     Overvalued real estate?    That ship sailed and sunk.    We are probably near the bottom now, things seem to be picking up a bit, so lets move on.   Financial system?   It’s not in great shape but the catastrophe appears to have been averted.

Yes we need oversight but not a huge bureaucratic encumbrances many Democrats are calling for now- ironically many like Barney Frank who are squarely at fault in this crisis for the crappiest era of congressional oversight in the history of the country.    The system failed to address the risk factors properly for reasons that are slowly becoming clearer – a combination of corporate greed and incentives run amock, defective ideas about how huge economies work, terrible government mismanagement of the regulatory systems, and I think by far and MOST IMPORTANTLY people using their homes as piggy banks, raiding their paper equity from stocks and Real Estate to live at inappropriately high standards, work less, retire too early, buy boats, speculate in MORE stocks and real estate, etc, etc.

We all made this bed  and now we are sleeping in it.   YES, even those of us who did NOT mismanage our finances were involved unless they lived alone on an island and didn’t do any investing, borrowing, or buying during the bubble.

The economy has been reset at a lower, more appropriate levels given all the prevailing circumstances.   Welcome to how economies *really work* and why the risky investments of the bubble were … risky.     But those aren’t the investments people are making now that will put them at risk.    New crops of scams are brewing as we speak and more importantly the debt on our backs is weighing down the future prospects *for our children*.   The massive debt is unconscionable yet we are fretting over things that will have relatively trivial impacts compared to that debt.    The country is acting a lot like the most irresponsible among us during the bubble who simply borrowed and borrowed and spent and spent and now are so far underwater in debt they have *no prospect* of paying things back.

Here’s a site with great debt detail:  http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd.htm

Oh, and if you want to get in your two cents and make a $.02 contribution to reduce our national debt there’s a place for that too, it is called “Dept G” in West Virginia.

The cool thing would be that if your $.02  reduced the 11,500,000,000,000.00 to 11,499,999,999,999.98   you would have changed a whole lot of numbers for a buck.     Printing costs alone would more than wash it away though, and you’d have kept the spiral going.   But that’s OK becuase that is how we roll now here in America – we spend like there is no tomorrow.   And then we spend the money that was supposed to be for tomorrow.   And when the spending gets out of hand we …. spend much, much more.

Fossett Crash Likely Caused by Downdrafts

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The NTSB National Transportation Safety Board has ruled the Steve Fossett crash was likely caused by downdrafts  in the California area where he was lost some two years ago after starting a trip from a  Nevada airfield.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2009/07/last-word-on-steve-fossett.html

Trevor R vs Elie Z in All Star Final at Hardbat Classic

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The All Star final of the Bud Light Hardbat Classic determined who among 8 high level invited players would compete against winners in the Rated Players, Basement Players, and Bar Player divisions.   This was probably one of the most exciting matches of the whole tournament because the playing level was high, Elie’s 6 point handicap against Trevor matched them up just right, and the crowd was really excited.   This match will be featured along with the tournament on ESPN in September:

Mark Cuban: Companies that Live by Free Stuff will Die by Free Stuff

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The always clever, almost always insightful, and sometimes good dancer Mark Cuban has a great post today about “Freemium” companies.   Cuban suggests:

Its not that they can’t make money offering free. They can , have and will. The problem is that they know that its literally  impossible  to be the king of the mountain forever. But that won’t stop them from trying. And that is exactly what will kill them.

Their better choice would be to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank.  More importantly, when you see your BlackSwan company appear and you know they will kick your ass, rather than ramping up to try to compete, get out. Sell. Or maximize cash and pay your shareholders every penny you have.

Like every company in the free space, your lifecycle has come to its conclusion. Don’t fight it. Admit it.  Profit from it.

I think Cuban is right on, though I think he’d also agree that most companies won’t take his advice, especially Google which stands to gain (but also lose) the most from maintaining their massive search revenue and general online dominance.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/07/05/the-freemium-company-lifecycle-challenge/

The Illusion of Relevance

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I’m not a big fan of the human intellect.      In fact I think one of the most obvious points in science – too rarely addressed – is how inadequately evolution has prepared us for the challenges of modern technological times.     A simple example is the fact many of us eat too much, and die early from diseases that we’d rarely get if we maintained a healthy lifestyle of modest calorie intake and modest exercise.

Every year *billions* of life years are lost simply due to minor deviations from our evolutionary designed healthy lifestyle recipe.   This is not to suggest that recipe of modest calorie intake + modest exercise is a health panacea, but those two factors dwarf most others in the developed world.    Poor countries, on the other hand, suffer more from *too few” calories and vices like smoking, war, and poor health standards.      In fact it is in this arena where humanity could have a stunning impact on raising the standard of living for about a billion people with a modest investments in health, water, and infrastructure.

Yet a combination of dictatorial regimes, inept bureaucracies, human ignorance among the victims, and widespread indifference from the affluent countries condemns an extraordinary number of people to a lifetime of relatively poor health and poverty.

What does this have to do with the illusion of relevance?     I think one aspect of our intellectual inadequacy is that we often assign importance to the wrong things.      Why is the death of Michael Jackson so much more interesting to so many than the deaths of some 125,000 children that have happened since Jackson’s untimely demise?   Every week sees hundreds of thousands die – often painfully and miserably – from diseases like malaria, rotoviruses, and malnutrition that are all easily preventable at relatively low cost.     This is NOT to suggest the people dying do not have responsibilities here – they do and I think a key component of bringing higher global health standards is to treat parents in the third world more harshly when they ignore the needs of their children in favor of their own bad habits and bad decisions.   Political correctness prevents using some marketing tactics that might prove effective in combating the profound, pervasive ignorance that often creates irrational aversion to great programs like vaccinations, health, condoms, schooling for girls, and other standard western rights that are currently beyond the grasp of so many in the developing world.

The tragic circumstances of the third world are not generally our *fault* as suggested by the naive who fail to see that it is the *lack of US participation*, not the presence of it, that has condemned so many poor economies to failure.

Still, solving these problems remains a large part of our *responsibility* as global citizens.    Partly due to the moral imperatives that are a product of the worldview most of us share but I think more importantly simply because we *can* solve these problems if we can extract ourselves from the foolish concerns that plague so many otherwise intelligent people.

More importantly, solving these problems requires us to dispense with the illusion of relevance about so many topics that have so little meaning to the collective humanity.     Britney Spears news vs Clean water for a billion people news.

You decide.

ClimateProgress.org bans most reasoned dissent?

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As a long time blogger I’m going to start calling out other blogs for an outrageous practice that is becoming very common and very frustrating to any clear thinker:  banning comments simply because they don’t line up with a particular blog’s point of view and biases.     Blog authors have a lot of control and it’s increasingly abused in the name of groupthink.    At the WordPress conference I was alarmed to hear a prominent blogger say something along the lines of “it’s my house and I can kick out whoever I want to”.    Blogs already suffer from inhibiting good two way communication and it pains me to see bloggers make the problem worse by wasting their time censoring comments.   I comment far less now than I used to at blogs like RealClimate.org because I know that even a calm and reasoned comment may be deleted by the heavy handed and irrational moderation practiced there.    This form of censorship distorts the conversation, often misleading the gullible into thinking there is concensus where there is none.

There are many obvious gray areas in terms of censorship but I’m seeing an increasing number of blogs cross the lines of reasoned discourse in the interest of lining up support for their positions.   Interestingly this is becoming something of standard operating procedure in much of the climate alarmism blog community, where ClimateProgress stands out conspicuously as an alarmist voice for the poorly informed who want to stay that way.

My hypothesis is that this irrationality and censorship stems  from several new factors:  Ego-driven science of the last few decades, unreasonable attacks on scientists that were common in the Bush “anti science” administration, overspecialization in the sciences that creates narrow bands of expertise that have little relevance to larger context issues like Climate Change, grade inflation (there are a remarkable number of scientists who now write and discuss things as irrationally as a TV pundit – acting more as advocates than purveyors of information.

A spectacular example of this is Joe Romm’s ClimateProgress.org , a targeted and uninformed collection of misleading  posts about Climate Science.   Most are simply attack dog pieces on reasoned voices who do no share Romm’s irrationally alarmist views about Climate change.     Although I’m a fan of Tom Friedman his implied endorsement of this blog forces me to reconsider Friedman’s coherency.

Now, we are living in the blogosphere so ranting irrationally has a lot of entertainment value, but Romm’s has the audacity to simply ban or moderate those who don’t agree with him.

I feel a combination of anger and pity for people who choose to limit the conversation to strengthen their own (usually weak) positions, but when this is done in the name of “science” it *REALLY* pisses me off, and I’ll be bringing this up regularly as the intersection of advocacy and science continues to metasticize in the blogOsphere.

OK, I admit the comment below, posted over at ClimateProgress.org  is kind of snarky but he should at the very least post it in the interest of dialog since he’s attacking *both* Pielke’s, who any reasonable person would agree are well qualified climate scientists who suffer enormous abuse at the hands of their intellectual inferiors for simply pointing out the obvious about climate alarmism.

Ad Hominem BS as usual – do you EVER address any reasoned scientific critiques here? Both Pielke’s represent voices of reason in the rising sea of alarmism that represents the greatest exaggeration of risk in the history of humans on earth.

The main point for those of us who accept global warming and accept the anthropogenic nature of that warming but don’t preach catastrophe is that 1) related natural factors are very significant and poorly understood and affecting things as is obvious from the last few years of cooling 2) the models suck to the extent they don’t predict things well and are generally presented as unfalsifiable 3) the changes are gradual and small, presenting us with engineering issues, not existential ones.

These three points are *totally obvious to informed people* yet they don’t line up the groupthinkers.

PS – shame on you for deleting this comment!

Or this one at RealClimate.   I used to participate there often but noticed that if I addressed people who attacked me in the same snarky vein I’d sometimes be moderated.    This form of targeted censorship has no place in the blogs where free spirited discussion should rule the day.

Commenter Chris wrote: <i>In the interest of civility, I think we should await Pielke’s response before heaping abuse on him</i>

My reply: (I predict this will be deleted by the RealClimate censors):  Sure, but you obviously don’t belong here at RealClimate, where no reasoned objection goes unchallenged by blustering nonsense. Only here does “less change” become “more change”. The whole problem for clear thinkers is that the models are predicting things that are not happening. Predicted warming is not materializing as expected, and the *very recent* data suggests even more strongly that the idea we are poised on the brink of (Hansen’s term here) “Climate Catastrophe” is simply nonsense. I don’t even think you guys are *sincere* anymore. Egos and alarmism now trump the data on virtually every public front, though ironically the non-politically polluted studies remain of good quality.


Domain Renewal Group – BOGUS MARKETING ALERT!

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The “Domain Renewal Group” with an address listed in Buffalo appears to be like other shady firms preying on unsuspecting domain name holders.    They have sent me a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” with a “Reply Requested by July 27” for  1)  A domain they have nothing to do with and 2) a domain name that does not expire until November.

This common tactic preys on the fact that people either routinely pay bills or don’t understand the system well enough to know that most renewals are handled online anyway.    These letters make it appear as if you need to work with them to renew when in fact they will *move* your domain from current registrar and will generally charge much more per year for the fees.

In the case of the Domain Renewal Group they charge a whopping $30 per year so I’d be looking at an increase in my domain fees of some 400%

General rule for domain name holders:   Use great caution with any renewal notices, but also MAKE SURE your names will be automatically renewed with your current registrar if you forget, change email, or miss the notices which are generally NOT sent via real mail.     In typical internet irony the real paper mail domain notices are generally scams where the half-assed email renewal note may be legitimate.

Many registrars including the one I use (Godaddy) make it too easy to lose domain names if you don’t pay for them by expiration, often whisking them away into auction after only a few weeks.  For this reason “auto renewal” is generally a very good idea.

Note:  If you work for DOMAIN RENEWAL GROUP feel free to contact me – I’ll print your response to this.

Anna Kournikova Fight at Hardbat Classic Las Vegas. Venetian Lavo Nightclub

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Anna Kournikova looks on as Killerspin’s Biba Golic hits with the Harbat Classic’s celebrity host Judah Friedlander.    Judah’s a good player, Biba is a brilliant player, Anna’s pretty but …. not so much Table Tennis I think – Anna K refused to even hit the ball!

Biba Golic Anna KournikovaSo, the greastest prize in US Table Tennis history of $100,000  is awarded to bar player Jack Baker of Mobile Alabama and the only big Hardbat news is the fight at Lavo Nightclub between a drunk woman and Anna Kournikova.  Kournikova was a featured celebrity at the tournament though she does not appear to be much of a Table Tennis player.  I never even saw her hit a ball.

Here Anna Kournikova is pictured watching while Biba Golic (a spectacular player, originally from Serbia) plays with Judah Friedlander.

Adding to the misfortune is that my wife and were right near the action at the Venetian when we chose not to go to the Lavo party after we’d had a lot to eat at the  (very excellent) Palazzo Sportsbook party by Budweiser.   Both were held on the second day of the tournament.

We might even have been able to say “hey, were were there during Anna Kournikova’s lowlife highball ping pong fracas.

Celebrity watcher Perez Hilton reports below on the fight at the Hardbat Classic in Las Vegas between Anna Kournikova and another woman at the Lavo Nightclub afterparty.

Could the offender have been angry because Anna Anna didn’t play any Table Tennis during the tournament?   Not even with her beauty and style rival the charming Biba Golic, a top Table Tennis player who unfortunately did not compete in the All Star division of the tournament, but who will be featured in the ESPN coverage coming in September.

Perez Hilton:

Former tennis pro Anna Kournikova ended up with cuts on her neck after getting into a Sin City shoving match on Saturday night.

At the HardBat Classic party inside Lavo Nightclub, another woman at the club threw a drink on her and all hell broke loose!

According to an onlooker, the Enrique Iglesias‘ girlfriend/possible wife and her assistant were sitting at a VIP table when the other woman bumped them. They shoved each other but were separated.

Then, the mystery woman returned later for more trouble!

“The woman came back over and threw a drink on Anna and her assistant,” said the source. “The woman was definitely drunk.”

Anna wanted to have the women kicked out, but it escalated quickly to where the pair were pushing and shoving each other!

Meow!

The woman grabbed Kournikova by the neck and pushed her into a wall right before security broke them apart!!!

Anna did not need treatment but was extremely shaken up.

Violence is never the answer!

Killerspin Hardbat used for the Hardbat Classic

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A controversial new paddle made by Killerspin for the Hardbat Classic in Las Vegas made it very hard for many experienced players to compete effectively with each other or with the lower ranked players who often had a huge point advantage as well as the equipment handicap from making everybody use either the paddle shown here or an even cheaper “junk paddle” version.

Although I approve of the handicapping process I think they need some modifications to make a paddle that favors defender play , produces long, quality rallies rather than the short rallies this blade tended to create.   I only saw a handful of  “great points”  where we would have seen hundreds with regular sponge rubber.     I’d favor a modification that would introduce a USTTA approved hardbat and/or a sponge slow version.     Another approach might be to move to the “big ball” format which is much slower but does not destroy the fun of watching high quality loopers arc the ball back and forth many times.

Inexperienced and non- players want high quality play and this blade does not give us much of that, even when it is weilded by some of the finest players in the country as happened at the Hardbat Classic.

hardbat2

Table tennis will probably *never* be a good TV sport but it’s the world’s greatest participation sport and I think the focus needs to be on bringing people into the game rather than changing it to fit TV better.