| Sunday, May
16, 2010
Report & thoughts from dire
straights
Well, after over a whole month of chemotherapy for my
stomach cancer without any negative side effects, indeed getting stronger
and stronger thanks to 45 minutes of Hatha Yoga and 20 minutes of hand
weights daily, I got whacked by an intestinal blockage which had me unable
to eat or drink without puking and has landed me in the Sloan Kettering
hospital for the past week. The first attempt to at least deal with this
intermediary condition failed and they’ll be trying to do something else
next week.
Sloan Kettering has an apparently well-earned
reputation as the best cancer hospital in the US, just as the US has the
well-earned reputation as having the worst health care system in the
developed world. It’s an almost luxurious place, or would be if it weren’t a
hospital. But if I weren’t on Medicare, I would be entirely fucked, I
couldn’t possibly afford it, and Obamacare would be no help.
Until I ended up here, I was doing my own witchdoctory
in addition to the chemotherapy--curcumin, certain vitamins, etc. Now I
can’t do it and am entirely in the hands of the hospital and the medical
establishment, and there is a great feeling of powerlessness and
frustration.
This is compounded by the rigid and basically inhumane
rules, prolocols, and schedules of even this, the best of hospitals.
Unimportant vital signs measurements at 4 am. Various people barging in and
out with paper to sign, this and that, without a by your leave. No
recognition that even a healthy person needs their eight hours of sleep.
They don’t call someone in my position a "patient" for nothing! Patient is
what you are forced to be. The doctors, the nurses, and maybe half of the
orderlies, are sympatheric human beings, but the system itself is not only
programmed to be heartless but even indifferent to some counterproductive
health consequences of its unfeeling bureaucratic bullshit. The interuptions
of sleep for example, having to wait 2 hours for some simple eye drops to be
authorized by a doctor who never even saw me for another.
I don’t know whether I will survive this hospital
stay, or for how long afterward if I do--weeks, months, years--but this
experience is certainly memento mori that will not allow me to ever forget
that I am mortal, and so are you, and so is everyone.
And whatever you do or do not believe, Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever, or even agnostic like me this is surely
the genesis of all religion.
Norman Spinrad
Printed with permission.
===============
Oil production, nuclear power, and haze-grey ships
"One would think that more domestic oil
production would be attractive to all political parties. Real wealth is
created. The money stays in the United States. Jobs are created. Even a
very modest separation tax would generate a lot of revenue."
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
Agreed on all points. I've suggested that--in adition
to that--if it were desired to implement "shovel-ready" projects to
stimulate domestic spending. how about some nice, clean, safe,
zero-carbon-footprint, zero-emission nuke plants as well? I know you are on
board with this, and--in addition to the obvious benefits--it would entail
lots of nice, high-paying, tradesman jobs for Americans, in America.
Next on my list would be to lay down a few extra
haze-grey ships and rebuild the Navy. I know that we do not see entirely
eye-to-eye on defense and security policy, but surely even a low-key,
non-forward-leaning foreign policy of the type you have advocated
post-Cold-War would benefit from our being able to "show the flag"
everywhere? And it would no doubt give second thoughts to pirates and other
"enemies of all mankind". And of course, it's really, really hard to conquer
and occupy anything much larger than a Caribbean island or Central American
banana republic if all you have is the Navy and Marines to do it
with...plus--as with the nuke plants--it's more jobs for Americans, as
presumably we'd still build the ships in our own yards.
Last, but certainly not least, I've puzzled over the
linked problems of cheap energy and dependence on foreign oil. One thought I
had--I really don't know how well this would work, and of course the
parallel I'm going to suggest comes with it s own set of warnings--would be
a domestic oil production subsidy, somewhat analogous to the agricultural
price supports we've had since the Depression.
Essentially, here is how I see it: cheap oil is good
for consumers (and secondary-industry producers), but cheap oil is really,
really bad for domestic oil production: it's no coincidence that domestic
oil exploration and extraction is tied to the world price. It's more
expensive (both in actual fact and for reasons of regulatory overburden) to
produce oil in or near the US than in the MIddle East, so--naturally--the
only times that encourage that are ones that are generally bad for the rest
of the economy--when world oil prices are high.
So--why not have a sliding subsidy per barrel produced
domestically (including offshore production subject to direct US regulation
and oversight, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, and inshore of the territorial
sea limits in the Atlantic and Pacific) which would essentially make up the
difference between the current world price and some figure which would
represent a mythical ideal of high price? The beauty of this would be that
it would be tied to a fixed number (possibly adjusted for exogenous--that
is, non-energy-related--inflation, but otherwise fixed), and it could "go
negative" (i.e. turn into a tax) if the world price went even higher than
the magic number.
For example (I'm just making up the numbers, if the
"magic number" were $100/bbl, and the world price were $80/bbl, domestic
production would receive a $20/bbl subsidy. If the world price went up to
$90, the subsidy would drop to $10: if the world price went down to $40, the
subsidy would increase to $60. And here's what I think is the real beauty:
if the world price went up to $200/bbl, the subsidy would turn into a TAX of
$100/bbl.
Again, this is just a wild idea. It's possible that
the subsidy/tax should not be one-to-one, or that it should have a max and
min: but as it is essentially an indirect sliding tariff on foreign oil as
well. I figured you'd at least find it intriguing.
Very respectfully,
David G.D. Hecht
I don't know the magic numbers. Reagan had his
views on what separation taxes ought to be charged. I thought they were too
low, but I freely admit I am no expert on this. I do know that shipping a
trillion dollars a year to Near East sovereign investment firms which then
buy the United States in fee simple is not good policy. Most of those Middle
East states are fairly unstable, and have mercenary armies to protect them
(the Kuwaiti collapse to Saddam's invasion is instructive). I do not believe
our energy policy makes sense, nor did it in Jimmy Carter's day.
==========
Patrick J. Buchanan: The End of La Dolce Vita
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-end-of-la-dolce-vita-4031/print / (read)
May 7, 2010
Are Europe and America headed to where Athens is
today?
To answer the question, consider what brought Greece
to where she is --running a deficit of 14 percent of gross domestic product
with a debt approaching 100 percent, with Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Great
Britain not that far behind. How did this happen?
Protected by the United States through a half-century
of Cold War, Europe cut back on defense and ratcheted up spending for La
Dolce Vita.
All of Europe adopted universal health care. All voted
in a shorter workweek, a higher minimum wage, greater job security, earlier
retirements and munificent pensions.
As the cradle-to-grave welfare states rose, an
ever-increasing share of the labor force left the private sector for the
security of the public sector.
Tax-consumers, the beneficiaries of the welfare states
and the bureaucrats that ran them, grew in number, as taxpayers declined as
a share of the labor force. Though Greece was far from the most productive
nation in Europe, Athens led the parade.
After the baby boom ended, the pill arrival in the
1960s. Then came abortion on demand in the 1970s.<snip>
The logic of empire.
==========
Subject: Plan to tap into Social Security fund
criticized
!?! Surprise! ?!
!?! Shock !?!
Who would have guessed?
http://billingsgazette.com/news/
state-and-regional/montana/article_ccaf6c12
-5f1a-11df-ba8e-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story
Tracy Walters, CISSP
Kick the can down the road. Someone else will be in
office when we have to default.
I do note that Periclean Athens was built --
splendidly -- largely through the compulsory dues levied on members of the
Athenian Defense League: the League formed to defend against Persia.
Secession from the league got you the fate of Mytilene; they were invaded,
the men killed, the women and children sold into slavery. For the strong do
as they will, and the weak suffer what they must. King George III used the
same logic: the colonies were expensive and should be made to pay for their
defense. The result was the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Ride, and
Concord Bridge.
Successful Empire depends on a strong will by the
strong. The Athenian Democracy had that. England had not.
============
Attack on the Peace Boat; irony abounds
GULF OF ADEN: SS (THE OCEANIC), a former passenger
ship used by the Peace Boat, a Japan-based international non-governmental
and non-profit organization to promote peace, was fired upon 5 May 10 at
2122 UTC while underway in position 13:06N – 048:37E, approximately 90NM
southwest of Al Mukalla, Yemen. One skiff opened fire on the vessel with
automatic weapons and RPGs. The vessel increased speed and conducted evasive
maneuvers and was able to successfully avoid the attack. No injuries to the
crew were reported (IMB Int'l Maritime Bureau , Mercury chat, American
Shipper Online).
R
============
We are truly a nation of idiots
Jerry,
Amazing. Some guy who does lawn work for relatives had
his car trashed by the bomb squad because he had 2 gas cans in the back
seat. What is next, strip searches of anyone who is seen buying batteries
and wire from wal-mart? I bought a bag of fertilizer last week and it is
kept in my garage near the gas can I use to feed my lawnmower, so I suppose
I should expect to have my garage destroyed by the bomb squad if some random
paranoid calls the cops about the suspicious situation?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/14/
new.york.suspicious.vehicle/index.html?hpt=T2
Imagine that, carrying a can of gas in a car is enough
to evacuate the area and call the bomb squad. We are doomed.
Sean
I note that there are few car bombs placed in the
main square in Zurich.
============
We taste bad
One of Jupiter's red bands has completely disappeared.
The only possible explanation is Aliens sucking up the stripe, presumably to
make barbeque sauce for when they land on Earth.
RH
Let's hope we taste bad. And that one doesn't find
spices on Jupiter...
==========
Google authors' settlement
Most plaintiffs in a class action suit who win or get
a settlement get something of value, even if it is not worth much. Because I
sent in a registration card, I got an award in a suit involving computer
monitors. It was a dollars-off coupon for my next purchase of a monitor made
by the same manufacturer. I bet the lawyers did not get paid in dollars-off
coupons.
The Google settlement is unique in that winning
authors will lose some rights.
Bob Thrun
I have come to believe that the Google settlement
agreement between the Google and the Guild is the best we can come up with,
and that we ought to adopt it quickly.
============
Clouds have an effect...
Dr. Roy Spencer, on his 13May blog writes:
"The difference between clouds magnifying versus
mitigating warming could be the difference between global warming being
little more than an academic curiosity…or a disaster for life on Earth."
<http://www.drroyspencer.com/>
It is refreshing to read an experienced scientist's
simple and exciting appraisal as well as his invitation for reasoned calm
discussion.
We need more people like Roy Spencer.
steven, PhD, Physicist
No one will pay to finance a model that shows that
little to nothing is going to happen. I do not know how to finance
contrarian research, yet we ought to be doing that. Rational debate requires
good data generated by conflicting hypotheses. At least scientific rational
debate does. There are other uses of Reason beyond science, but of all human
activities science outh to be reasonable.
============
"The smarter you get, and the more technology you use
for your business, the more impact it has on families."
<http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/04
/smallbusiness/amish_business_success/index.>
R
===========
The internet, as imagined in 1965:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/07/
nigel_calder_internet_1965/
Pretty spiffy, actually.
Ed
===========
Teacher Strike
Cutting the 10% worst teachers in the
district would save a lot of money, and all serious studies of education
show that getting lousy teachers out of the system improves the education
results something wonderful, but that will not seriously be considered.
This is typically not what happens. What happens is
the teachers who are frustrated with school management are the ones layed
off. They are the ones who complain the most about the mindless rules and
the blockhead bosses. That is, the ones who think the school is there to
serve the community. This is why you have unions, to prevent teachers from
being railroaded for political reasons. What this eventually turns into is
the really good teachers get fed up and leave instead of being terminated,
so the end result is the same, I guess.
Y
Precisely.
============
Regarding the Message from Amazon Kindle about ad fees
-- FYI
Dear Jerry:
My own impression is that online or electronic ads of
any kind are seen by most readers as merely annoying and are mostly
disregarded. My current campaigns on Facebook take about 4,000 or 5,000
impressions to generate a single click through. Fortunately one does not pay
much per CPM, between 15 and 20 cents. I'm accumulating fans slowly and the
book is selling on Amazon.com again. They just reordered it for two of their
distribution centers.
I think ads in the middle of texts will be resented
and are a mistake. They might be minimally acceptable at the end of a
e-book, sort of like those ads at the backs of the cheap editions of years
gone by. I also think that most people will not like "enhanced" e-books with
embedded links, or audio and video clips unless they are textbooks. It's
useful there, but in other narratives simply distracting and potentially a
negative sell.
I've been ordering a lot of DVDs lately from
gohastings.com, the online store for Hastings Entertainment, at whose stores
I have done so many book signings in the last two years. (Full disclosure: I
also own the stock.) I'm getting these for as little as 89 cents each plus
the shipping for used titles that may have been played once or twice. One
came in the original shrinkwrap. This is a way for Leigh and me to catch up
on all the movies we have missed, living in the mountains, but we are not
much interested in all those extra features they include. It's too much like
schoolwork when all we want is entertainment. Each title is shipped
individually, which confused us at first, but each is coming off the shelves
of an individual Hastings store to reduce surplus inventory. They buy and
trade a lot of used copies. It's a great deal for consumers. My last order
was ten titles for which I paid about $11.00 for the DVDs and $22.00 for the
shipping and handling. That's less than $4.00 each.
Having done a lot of e-publishing since 2004, I am not
rushing to do more. The front end expenses for a cover image, ISBN and
formatting tend to make it a bad investment and I'd rather sell the print
edition first. I look at what CostCo has been very successful doing; they
limit choice and sell volume because they have millions of customers. I
suspect that, by volume, they sell more books than Amazon.com and with less
effort.
But selling books, in any format, is not a "one size
fits all" proposition. I don't think anyone is actually asking the customers
what they really want in a scientific way. If there have been any focus
groups, I'm not aware of them. Most e-books are sold on the usual engineers'
assumption that if something can be done, it should be done. Saying so does
not make it so and the marketplace is littered with the wreckage of the many
who have believed this. It is magical thinking that rarely works. The extra
features are an extra production expense, but I doubt that anyone really
buys a DVD because they are there. The same will be true of "enhanced"
e-books.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit
The market will soon let us know. My guess is that
some will want enhancements and some will not. But I remain of the opinion
that the iPad is a game changer.
==
New publication of an old play
Dear Jerry:
Following up on my last, Brass Cannon Books will
shortly put out a new edition of the script for my 1988 stage play MARLOWE:
An Elizabethan Tragedy. It will be done print on demand, through Ingram and
will, I hope be on Amazon.com as well as through the web site. Creating an
electronic version means retyping the whole thing. We are beefing this
edition up a little with some information about the original production and
maybe a few things about The Shakespeare Society of America, which was the
original producer. When Thad Taylor, the founder, died in 2006, I assumed
that the organization died with him, but his nephew, Terry Taylor has
struggled to keep it alive and preserve the collection of Elizabethan
documents and artwork that Thad assembled. Several thousand items. The new
orientation is towards education and research rather than performance, but
thye have a website and a Facebook page if anyone is interested. They need
money and qualified volunteer staff. And they are no longer in the L.A.
area.
As for the Marlowe play, why now, 22 years later?
Well, given that there are 25 characters, 23 of them male and lots of
costumes, there's not much chance it will ever be produced again for the
stage. Perhaps I'll convert it to a radio play or a film script. In the
meantime, it's a quick easy way to add a book to the Brass Cannon Books
catalog. The second Civil War book needs additional material and that means
additional research. It won't be ready this year. I also want to experiment
with low-demand, high margin books and print on demand makes that easy to
do. The script is based on research and Thad though I had solved the mystery
of Marlowe's death in that tavern in Deptford. We'll make a more formal
announcement at the end of the month. It may be of interest to academics. We
aim to break even on the first hundred copies sold.
I am not going to put up a version for Kindle nor for
Apple, because Apple, too, is trying to control the retail price. Their
scheme leaves me the choice of making too little on the print edition or
allowing them to cut the price on a version for the iPad. Sony Reader wins
again.
I saw a comment in Locus about the do-it-yourself
approach. The comaprison was that you might make as much from 500 copies
that way as 20,000 on a royalty basis from a regular publisher but that it
wouldn't help you build a career. Here's the problem, IMO, with that
statement. Books from traditional publishers go out of print. About half of
them are returned to be remaindered or pulped. DIY print on demand books
never need to. Long term you may sell as many copies and make a lot more
money over time. I admit I have a background that most writers lack when it
comes to figuring this out. My original college majors were Drama and
Business. I did part of an MBA course and I've done a lot of business
coverage as a journalist. But, as I keep saying, none of it is "rocket
science". The necessary skills can be learned.
I may put out a couple of shorter works of fiction the
same way. I am sure that many will view this as a terrible mistake, but I
have a pile of old files to work with and they do me no good just sitting in
the files. As our colleague Linton Robinson put it, "Unpublished work does
not really exist."
We're still playing with the general e-book market,
but the results over the last six years are not encouraging. Apple might
change all of that, but Google Editions looks more likely to be the friend
of small publishers since they don't plan to control price and to make
everything work on any platform. Anything that cuts my front end prep costs
is very attractive. Sony Reader got me by volunteering to do all the
conversions themselves, without charge. And I get a check from them every
month. Those are getting bigger.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit
Francis Hamit is an old friend. I have not read his
Marlow play. I probably will read it this year; I have long been mildly
intrigued by Marlowe's death. I do not believe Marlowe "was Shakespeare".
===========
Market
The difference between Greece and California is that
the accounting is open and it has crept up incrementally, and California is
not required to actually pay the pensions quite yet.
Something similar may be said about New Jersey and
Portugal. Then there are 15-20 states that are grossly underfunded. We're
running out of EU countries to compare.
I have a war story from yesterday afternoon. My hedge
cost about 3%, just in the time it took to type it. It moved another 10% in
the next 30 seconds. The markets are pretty punchy this morning.
Unsettled markets are better than rioting in the
streets, but looking five years out I am concerned about just that
possibility.
Of course getting a riot out of retired politicians
drawing three pensions may be a little different than getting a riot out of
50 year old Greeks. (I live in Jersey, and use the word "politician"
advisedly [ex-mayor/ex-state senator/Corzine's cabinet member, raided last
year {same guy, Bayonne}]).
David Schierholz
==============
Pacemaker Problems, Global Warming, Price of Empire
Jerry;
I had a rather painful cardiac incident a few weeks
ago which sent me off to my cardiologist. A stress echocardiogram caused the
Dr to suspect that one of the leads from my pacemaker was out of place. A
chest X-ray revealed that the pacemaker lead had somehow burrowed its way
through the septum of my heart so that it is now in the left rather than
right atrium. A check of older X-rays confirms that this occurred prior to
2005. My doctor who has been practicing for decades has never seen this
before nor have any of his local collegues. Removing pacemaker leads is
difficult and risky even with the new, annular fiber optics that allows
surgeons to use a laser to cut them loose from surrounding arterial and
heart tissue. Cutting through the septum is a bit of an unknown. I also
don't think I should leave the lead in place. Typical lead placement
includes a large "J" that allows it to flex and bend in response to heart
motion so that it will not be putting stress on the artery wall. There now
is no such curved section to relieve stress which might explain why I've
always been able to feel the damn thing.
You had an interesting letter recently from someone
questioning why you favor efforts to sequester CO2 when you are a heretic
who rejects global warming theology. Your point that injecting CO2 into the
atmosphere is a dangerous experiment in geoengineering that you do not wish
to continue is right on. I'm still trying to get my local paper to publish
an Op-Ed extolling the virtues of OTEC systems.
The recent overthrough of the ruler of Turkmenistan
has given you cause to express your views about empire verses republic.
While I really can't refute your argument, I can't agree with reverting to
isolationism. Technology has made the world smaller. The Atlantic and the
Pacific are no longer such formidiable moats. I must confess that I would
take a perverse satisfaction in watching as Europe continues the transition
into becoming Eurabia.
JIm Crawford
I would not call returning to a policy of "friends
of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our own" a return to
isolationism. I would not call spending the money on developing our own
resources rather than on military adventures isolationism. I was for the
defense of this country wherever that was required, and I still am; but I
think a strong Navy and Air Force will keep the enemies off our shores while
we develop our resources. Turkmenistan has little I want. Few of us can even
name the nations of the Russian and Chinese Turkestans, much less their
resources and exports (other than raw opium).
===============f
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