Fish Fear Me

Dave's Unified Theory Of Time Zones

Somewhere there must be a study on the impact of time zones on the American psyche. My theory is this:

• The East Coast is an hour ahead of everyone else and this plants a sense of superiority in them that cannot be vanquished. They are first. Period.
• Midwesterners try to compensate by going to work an hour earlier than what civilized norms dictate so they can be on the job for East Coast customers. This really pisses them off but they are too polite to say anything about it. This is called the Midwest work ethic.
• Mountain Time is where the difference becomes too much and the people break from any schedule based on Eastern Time. Two hours is too much so they'll just go their own way, thank you very much. This is known as an independent streak and it sort of scares people on the East Coast while making some Midwesterners envious.
• By the time you get to the West Coast there is no hope of even bothering to try to hang with or catch up to the East Coast. Whatever, dude. That and the traffic that forces one to go either Zen or crazy provides a sort of pleasant, trance-like state to the mornings. The goal is to just get through the day until 2:00 when the East Coast people go home and they can finally get some work done.

It might need a little work, but I think it's close. Very close.

Just Off The Boat, He Bamboozled Phineas T.

It wasn't all news of doom and gloom 150 years ago:

It seems that BARNUM, a few days ago, was in a great hurry to be shaved, and entered his ordinary place of tonsorial resort under the Park Hotel; but all the operatives were engaged, and one other customer -- a great brawny Irishman, just landed, and with a beard and head requiring very extensive attention -- stood between the exhibitor of the "What-is-it?" and his turn as "next." "I am in a hurry, my good man!" said PHINEAS T., addressing Pat; "and if you give me your "turn I will pay for what you want done here." "All right," responded the delighted Irishman; and the showman was soon shaved and on his way to keep his engagement, merely saying as he left the door to the proprietor of the saloon, "Do what this man wants," pointing to the exile of Erin, "and charge it to me." No sooner was he gone than PATRICK took off his "trusty," and a thick cotton neck-tie, at the same time asking the barber, "Now tell me all you do?" "Why, Sir," responded the tonsorial operative, "we shave, cut and curl hair, shampoo and bathe." "All right, then," said PAT; "Do all them things to me. Sorra wan of me knows what they mane, but as he said he'd pay for them, just do them all, an' God bless you!" The barber saw the joke and did as requested, putting the big Irishman through all the processes, and bringing him out so pleasantly altered that he scarely knew himself. We leave our readers to imagine 'BARNUM's face next morning, when the proprietor of the saloon handed him a bill -- " For shaving irishman 10 cents, cutting his hair 25 cents, curling it 25 cents, shampooing it 25 cents, and bathing Irishman 25 cents -- total for Irish man $1 10."

We Used To Be Smarter Than This

The first few minutes of last night's State of the Union Speech were fine. I twitched a little when Obama took partial credit for not boosting taxes the way he really wanted to, but politicians will be politicians. Then the flowery words about innovation, clean energy, and competitiveness started to flow and I stared in awe at the Audacity of Bullshit. I have a better chance of playing Tinkerbell the next time Peter Pan hits Broadway than we have of seeing the future unfold the way President Obama promised last night. I'll explain by way of a conversation I had with my dad this morning.

He watched it last night and came away with reminders of the 1960s and the innovations sparked by NASA and Department of Defense projects back then. He was involved in some of those projects, first in the US Air Force and later in the private sector. I can very much see how last night's speech reminded him of that era when government funding and research led to remarkable innovation and new products. I think there are two important differences between then and now though.

The first is in properly defining what we are trying to accomplish. President Kennedy said that he wanted us to send a man to the moon, but he didn't stop there. He added that bit about returning him safely back to Earth. Now that is obvious from a moral point of view, but strictly from an engineering perspective it changes things enormously. In fact, I bet the vast majority of effort in the space program of the 1960s was dedicated to that last and very important part of the mission. 

What does that have to do with last night? This:

So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.

Now I'm all for clean energy, I mean who isn't? But that goal seems to be missing something. Let's add the word "abundant." And since we are talking about Apollo Project levels, let's add the word "cheap" also. There. Now this is a goal I can get behind and one that will position the US to be competitive for a generation:

So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean, abundant, and cheap energy sources.

See? Isn't that much better? We can do clean energy right now. The problem isn't that we don't have it, the problem is we would need to cover huge areas with solar panels and wind farms and we would drive the economy straight into the ground. If the mission is just clean energy we are truly screwed.

The second difference is in how breakthroughs in technology become commercial products and create jobs and grow the economy.

Let's pretend we are at NASA back in 1965. NASA needed a task performed in its mission to send a man to the moon, and back. It had technology A available to it which was also used commercially. It didn't really do the job very well though, so NASA and a contractor worked on developing technology B and  man was it slick for NASA's purposes. It was also pretty expensive and while really groovy, it was not really practical from a cost standpoint, so everyone else continued to use technology A until B could be made cheaper. The government did not say that since tech B was really groovy, and groovy is good, we had to subsidize commercial application of tech B so we could be the grooviest country ever. We understood back then that that would be foolish.

When the space program spawned commercially viable innovations there was no need for the government to subsidize their use, entrepreneurs grabbed them and ran.

Today fossil fuels are our tech A while solar and wind are our tech B. There are scales and applications where solar and wind power make a lot of sense, but we are implementing them in areas where it doesn't make any economic sense at all, therefore having taxpayers subsidize the efforts. This is a terrible mistake, not just because we are wasting money, but because it actually removes an incentive to innovate to the point where clean energy is just as cheap as fossil fuels. You just have to get close enough to where the subsidy kicks in. Whoohoo!

I'm all for funding research on clean energy, but such a project must be properly defined to also include our version of "returning him safely to the Earth." Otherwise, it will not create jobs, it will kill them. It will not make us more competitive, it will waste precious government funds and misallocate capital into inefficient and non-viable efforts. In short, it will be a disaster.

We used to know these things. We did.

I Know How To Fix This

I have no doubt that this will happen, the question is to what extent:

Tax pros now fear that tax evasion could go viral if the health-reform bill’s new 1099 requirement takes effect next year. They say more small businesses will likely opt to do all-cash transactions under the table to avoid the 1099 reporting requirement, and all of its onerous provisions, which are worse than small businesses may realize.

That's the direct opposite effect of what lawmakers had hoped for, and it would pose a bad development for the Internal Revenue Service, which for years has been under pressure from Congress to bring in more tax revenue. That revenue is needed now more than ever, as Social Security and Medicare teeter into the red, and as more states rely on federal revenue to fill their budget holes. 

The article goes on to report that uncollected federal taxes may be as high as $290 billion this year. Making even more people fill out even more time-wasting paperwork is not the answer. We live in a progressive and digital age and there lies the answer. With my modest proposal we can dramatically improve tax compliance and make life simpler for the American taxpayer:

1. Abolish all cash and coins. Cash is evil. It enables all sorts of crimes, from tax evasion to illegal drug purchases. In our time of instant processing of debit and credit cards cash is simply not needed. There are perfectly legal uses for cash right now that are more convenient to the individual, but alternatives can be developed. The good for the state(and what's good for the state is good for all of us) in the elimination of cash, as I will show in a moment, far outweighs any minor inconvenience to mere individuals.
2. Through the US Treasury Department, create individual income accounts based on social security number or business tax ID. All income must be sent to and received by one of these accounts, without exception. Every. Last. Cent. Wages, salaries, tips(think how much money the government will save just by closing that loophole!) interest...everything. Private bank accounts will not be forbidden, in fact they will become mandatory for each person or business, but they can only receive deposits to an account from a federal government individual income account. No other source is allowed. Want to give a friend or family member some money? Just drop it in their individual income account with a couple of clicks on your PC, or maybe someday a cell phone.
3. By tracking income type, the federal government can also help state and local governments close the gaps in their own income and sales/use tax enforcement that is costing those entities tens of billions of dollars each year.
4. The tax code would have to be simplified somewhat, but no more hassles with forms for individuals or businesses. Just log into your individual income account by the beginning of the year and set the deductions that you are eligible for. The system will calculate all of the correct taxes as the income comes in and forward what is left to your designated private bank account. 

Safe, secure, and hassle free. What's not to like? No, I haven't forgotten about barter and how people will be tempted to that. That can be countered though, with education about how barter equals stealing from the government which is really stealing from all of us and draconian, but unfortunately necessary, punishment for barter crimes. 

It is unconscionable that tax evasion is costing government at all levels hundreds of billions of dollars each year. We can deal with that though, in a way that doesn't add even more of a paperwork burden on Americans.

He'll Be Back

So Keith Olbermann has left the building. I suspect that we will see him return in one form or another fairly soon. My bet is that he starts up a video based web presence a la PJTV. Assuming he hasn't squandered all of that $7 million a year he has been making. I think he has a large enough fan base and a community of dedicated followers who would help him get it off the ground. In case you were wondering, I won't be one of them.

Salon's Steve Kornacki put forth one of those amusing but inadvertent nuggets of truth about Olbermann when he wrote this on Friday shortly after the news broke:

 Olbermann embraced the rivalry, skewing Fox and its personalities — particularly Bill O’Reilly — with biting humor and sarcasm, daring them to respond and acknowledge him.

That "skewing" has been corrected to "skewering" now, but I think Kornacki had it right the first time.

My personal dislike for Olbermann is almost entirely related to that word "skewing". He isn't honest enough or smart enough to take a political opponent's words or actions at face value to criticize them. You know, to metaphorically(let's be civil) "skewer" them. He has to distort them, so he can demonize them, so he can find an outlet for the contempt that oozes from every pore. I don't think I ever watched an entire broadcast of Countdown, but I saw more than enough clips of him summoning his powers of mendacity and hate. He's good at it.

If you're into that sort of thing.

Monday Odds and Ends

Busy. Busy. Busy. I have three days left to get a bunch of stuff done and then I am California bound for a week. Whoohoo!.

Bowl Bound. Congrats to both the Steelers and the Packers on making the Super Bowl. I don't really care all that much, but I'm compelled to root for the NFC North team. 

Knock Yourself Out. New York Times Readies Pay Wall. Fine with me. They won't get one cent from me until they decide that informing their customers is more important than enforcing a narrative. Anyone who subscribes to the Times and doesn't understand that that is what they are buying now is a tool.

Global Warming Lawsuits. No, the dogs of law are not yet unleashed(as the headline asserts) when it comes to suits alleging damages from global warming, but that's not from lack of effort from some quarters. It mentions a 2006 suit by California against six car makers and notes that one of the alleged damages was the decline of the mountain snow pack that the state depends on for water. Global warming, it alleged, had been the reason for the reduction and the automakers produced one of the main CO₂ emitters. The suit was dismissed in 2007, appealed, and then dropped for now in 2009 because of Obama's willingness to see CO₂ regulated.

The purpose of these suits is not to actually collect damages, but to force more regulation. The use of the real drought conditions was just an excuse, and one that couldn't be used today in California if they were to try to sue again. April of 2010 saw snow pack levels at 143% of normal and right now snow pack levels in California are approaching 200% of normal. If above levels continue then you can be sure that somebody will eventually sue for damages from flooding.

More Specialized Scholars. Here's an interesting piece from someone who works up close with Rhodes Scholarship applications(via Instapundit). She has noticed an increased specialization of studies to the point now where many of the very bright students she interviews are often lost when asked about anything outside of that narrow specialization. Here's a brief excerpt, but read the rest:

I wish I could say that this is a single, anomalous group of students, but the trend is unmistakable. Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.

In every field I have worked in since 1983, printing, materials management, and IT, there have been explosions of knowledge and technology that forced more and more specialization. I think this is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing as long as people understand, or are taught to understand, what they know and what they don't know. They may be brilliant in their field of intense study and yet have only a shallow grasp of another, even though what they know of the latter might be as detailed as a scholar of only a decade or so ago. 

Broad areas of study and technology have become so specialized that learning to be the generalist leader who can tie all of them together in an organization has ironically become a specialization itself. I saw that years ago as an IT Director. When I started I personally handled everything from PCs to UNIX servers to network communication devices, though I never did get into programming. By the time I had left I had hired expert administrators in every area and it was all I could do to maintain enough knowledge in each field to understand them enough and still provide leadership to the department as a whole. That change happened over seven years.

One implication in all of this goes to assigning credibility. For example, once a scientist gets outside of his increasingly narrow field of study, how much credibility should we give him? Okay, he's a scientist, but is he really any more qualified than you or I to talk to things that are outside of his primary area of study? Perhaps, but he's should probably have to build that credibility on more than just his work in a different area. 

Transferring credibility in one area to another has happened for a very long time. Actors and athletes make lots of money doing that every year and it works. When it comes to deodorant that's not really a big deal, but when it involves big societal issues we should now more than ever try to be careful about that. Particularly as specialization continues and perhaps even accelerates.

I think failure to recognize some of this is why our political and intellectual elites are failing us and why we do ourselves no favors by ignoring it ourselves. People are too eager to proclaim themselves experts outside of their lanes or to bestow that sort of credibility on people who are not entitled to it. And unfortunately the generalists that we normally would rely on to sort this stuff out have become to overwhelmed or are just flat-out corrupt.

Things I'm Thankful For...

...#6257: This never married into the family:

[T]he standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me.

Alrighty then.

I get the whole detached scientist schtick up to a point, but geez, that an aborted baby is just meat stuff is cold. Doesn't exactly make PZ Myers a leading candidate for executor of your living will, does it?

Seymour Hersh Brings The Ca-razy

In a stirring effort to retake the title of Craziest American from Jared Loughner, Seymour Hersh last week had this to say to an audience in Qatar:

"That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command."

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."

...

"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."

"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”"

Crusader coins. What he's probably talking about are challenge coins(or commander's coins) and while it's entirely possible that some moron had something made with "crusade" on it, my bet is that getting caught with something like that in Iraq or Afghanistan would not be a career enhancing move.

As for McChrystal, his spokesman issued the following:

“The allegations recently made by Seymour Hersh relating to General McChrystal’s involvement with an organization called The Knights of Malta are completely false and without basis in fact,” Bolger said in an e-mail. “General McChrystal is not and has never been a member of that organization.”

Even if he was a member, it's not the 13th century and they are no longer actual knights. Just in case anyone needed that cleared up.

As far as evidence goes, Hersh does not present any:

Hersh told Stars and Stripes he has proof to back up his claims but he declined to provide any because he is writing a book that will touch on the subject and revealing his evidence before the book is published would be “unethical.”

Uh huh. The more likely problem is that nobody has built the device that is capable of recording the voices in his head.

Wow.

Oh, and I forgot two other points I wanted to make. First of all, if we want to talk about careless speech that has the potential to incite violence, perhaps as exhibit A we can have the example of going to a Muslim nation and proclaiming that the U.S. is on a "crusade."

Secondly, Hersh was speaking at a branch campus of Georgetown University which, last time I checked, was still a Catholic institution. Is anybody paying attention over there? Hello?

1,000 words

Until further notice, I declare any discussion about global warming here to be off limits. 

And that's a little bit warmed up. International Falls had a record low of -46 this morning.

And Now For Something Completely Diffident

"Looks like she's gonna turn cold tomorrow."

"Oh yeah, got a front coming in."

"Yeah, you got that right."

In a related note, the National Weather Service has apparently decided that "Hey, it's going to be freakin' cold tomorrow" is no longer a sufficient warning for Upper Midwest residents:

Through this winter National Weather Service Offices in the Dakotas and Minnesota, including Duluth, will issue an experimental extreme cold (EC) product as needed.

 
Is that thing cold or does it just have to pee?

Our tax dollars at work.