The Virtual Philosophy Club

Reset our thinking?

2011-12-31T14:37:00.004-05:00

Which do you think has more value to us as a nation? A growth industry that saves lives, uses high tech equipment made in the USA or another growth industry that is degenerative to human lives and uses high tech equipment manufactured in China? Perhaps that's stated a bit strongly, but how else can I make my point? We get all up tight when health care grows and takes a bigger share of the gross national product. We run out and buy stock when we find out that electronic entertainment or video games are selling off the shelves at Xmas. Why do we go nuts and look for "solutions to the problem" when health care spending goes up, and glow with stock market happiness when entertainment expenses go up? Why do we see health care growth as a negative and brain numbing games as a positive. I think we need to push the reset button on our thinking. If video games were provided by the government from our taxes the same way that liberals propose to provide health care, maybe we'd have a federal death panel in charge of video games usage.

Congress of Birds = Super Committee

2011-11-23T20:41:00.001-05:00

On the day the Super Committee of the US CONgress (opposite of PROgress :^) failed to reach a compromise on solving the US Debt Crisis, another kind of Congress, birds of a different feather, gathered in, around, and over the pond behind my home in The Villages, FL.

The special gathering of birds seems to have been initiated a day or two ago when there was a heavy rain. That event seems to have stirred something up that attracted lots of birds to our pond.

Click on the YouTube video and enjoy.

Ira Glickstein

Clean Coal - Sustainable Power/Food Concept

2011-11-09T19:01:00.000-05:00

I presented a forward-looking Sustainable Power/Food Concept based on Clean Coal technology at the Science/Technology Club, The Villages, FL, on 10 November 2011 and at the Bridgeport Men's Club on 15 November. You may download my PowerPoint Show HERE.

This presentation is based on my postings at Watts Up WIth That?, the world's most popular climate Blog, HERE and HERE.

The basic idea is to utililize the Clean Coal concept of Coal to Gas (CTG) and/or Coal to Liquid (CTL), extracting coal energy toally underground without mining. The CTG (or CTL) is piped underground to a Clean Coal powerplant where the CO2 effluent is captured. Instead of the (IMHO insane) concept of sequestering the CO2 underground in old oil wells, my concept pipes the CO2 to enhanced-CO2 greenhouses, where it is used to grow food crops far more quickly and efficiently than ordinary free-air farming. The cellulose waste products from the food crop are processed into methane (CH4) and recycled as fuel into the Clean Coal Powerplant. In addition, food and industrial waste (biomass) from nearby towns and cities is also recycled into methane, providing further power.

Ira Glickstein

David Hume - History of England

2011-11-03T22:26:00.005-04:00

I presented "David Hume - History of England" at the Philosophy Club of the Villages on 4 November 2011. THANKS to all who attended and made well-thought out comments.

You may download a copy of my Powerpoint show here: HERE

David Hume was born in Scotland (1711) and lived there and in England for most of his life. He published the first volume of his History of England in 1754. He published additional volumes in the years following. Hume died in 1776.

OUTLINE OF MY TALK

1. David Hume and Adam Smith

His sanguine life and stoic death

2. Early History of England

Britons (prior to ~43 BC)
Roman Rule (~43 BC)
Saxon Invasion (~450 AD)
Danish Invasion (~980 AD)
Norman Conquest (~1050 AD)

3. Jewish References (~1100-1290AD)

Ira Glickstein

Raising Cain

2011-11-01T15:59:00.004-04:00

[from billlifka - images added by Ira. (Neither Ira nor billlifka specifically endorse any candidate in this posting)]

At the moment, many of the national polls rank Herman Cain highest among those campaigning to become the Republican candidate for the presidency. It’s still two months before the earliest presidential primaries so the polls have questionable value. Nevertheless, Cain is so unusual, in comparison to the others, that his current popularity is amazing. He is different mainly in his not being a career politician and this may be a major reason for his appeal. There are other reasons.

Both of Cain’s parents are African-American. They were poor and worked hard to raise a family. The mother was a cleaning woman and the father was a janitor, barber and, eventually, chauffeur to the president of Coca Cola. Herman was educated in segregated schools. He received a B.S. from Morehouse College in Mathematics with a minor in physics. His Masters is in Computer Science from Purdue University. He holds eight honorary degrees from various universities.

Cain was a (civilian) ballistics analyst for the U.S. Navy. At Coca Cola, he worked his way up to become its top IT executive. Recruited by Pillsbury, he managed a 400 store Burger King region near Philadelphia from least to most profitable. Assigned CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Pillsbury’s subsidiary, he improved its performance and led a leveraged buyout, continuing as its CEO. He was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. On behalf of that organization, he debated Bill Clinton on his Universal Healthcare Bill in a Kansas City town hall meeting; it was judged to be a Cain win. He served on the board of directors (and, later, its chairman) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He has served on the boards of eight corporations and one bank. This is the man who Hillary Clinton demeaned as a pizza man. She remembers who spiked her health plan.

Cain has lived all over the country, because of his career. He’s been married for 43 years and has two children and three grandchildren. He was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, metastases in his liver. With a 30% survival prognosis, he underwent surgery and chemotherapy. After five years, he has remained cancer-free. He’s assistant pastor at his Baptist Church. He’s been a talk radio host and a syndicated columnist. Most people would admit this guy is pretty impressive.

The problem with Cain is he came late to the campaign party without an organization for fund raising and campaign operations. Without massive funding, a modern political campaign is at a huge disadvantage, perhaps hopelessly so. On the other hand, the Tea Party really likes him. The good news is the Tea Party has great influence. The bad news is it’s very loosely organized, also. Unless Cain shows up well in the early state primaries, he’s toast. That would be unfortunate; he is a good comparison to the other Republicans and would be an effective opponent to Obama.

As the currently leading Republican prospect, Cain is the target of most criticism. His 9-9-9 tax plan is torn apart by many in both political parties. No doubt some valid criticisms will emerge, eventually, but not so far. Arthur B. Laffer, a credible, well known economist, gives the plan high marks. Newt Gingrich, another prospective Republican Presidential Candidate praises Cain for his boldness in coming forth with a useful idea while others just carp about the situation. The other main criticism of Cain is lack of international experience. Cain believes America should name its friends and its enemies and treat its friends like friends. That’s refreshingly original.

billlifka

"NO SHUCKS" silk-free corn-on-the-cob, quick and easy

2011-10-29T17:50:00.008-04:00

For years, I've paid extra to buy corn-on-the-cob with the husk removed, or spent time shucking the corn and tossing the husks in the garbage can. And, despite best efforts, there is always that odd silk thread or two that remains behind pretending to be tooth floss!

No more! As the You Tube video shows (click image above to view), there is a much, much, MUCH easier way!

How did you get along for years without this knowledge? I have no idea.

I've loved corn-on-the-cob since I was a kid 70-odd years ago. Heck, when we had a young family of our own, and grew our own corn on a "gentleman's farm" in upstate New York, we'd get the water boiling before we picked the corn, and then shuck and toss the cobs in. Delicious!

With the advent of microwave ovens, I've wrapped the shucked corn in moist napkins, and then nuked it that way.

But, always, always, ALWAYS, it has taken considerable effort (or cost) to shuck it before cooking.

Well, thanks to Nancy, my water aerobics instructor, who put me on to this "NO SHUCKS" silk-free method last week, I will never shuck a raw ear of corn again.

Here is how to do it:

1) Take one or more the ears of corn, exactly as you purchased them in the super-market or picked them in the field, and place them in the microwave.

2) Set the timer for 3-4 minutes per ear, depending upon the size.

3) Holding a hot ear of corn with gloves or a dish towel, remove the lower part by cutting completely through the husk and cob. You will have to sacrifice about a quarter-inch of corn when you do this.

4) Grasp the ear from the tassel end, and shake it a few times, to loosen the husk.

5) The absolutely clean cob - totally silk-free - will emerge and drop right onto the plate (in some cases, you might have to grasp the cob and give it a little pull).

6) The only waste will be the part you cut off, plus the husk - with ALL the silk still inside - which will all be in one neat piece instead of an unruly mess of vegetation.

THAT IS IT! ENJOY!

Ira Glickstein

Steve Jobs RIP - Our first and most recent Apples

2011-10-06T19:35:00.007-04:00

My wife and I invested $5,000 in one of the first 3000 Apple II computers back in 1978 (about $20,000 in 2011 dollars).

<< Magazine ad shows Apple II using a TV set as a display, as we did. The inset photo shows Steve Wozniak, the self-taught computer engineer, and Steve Jobs, the visionary, with one of the first Apple II computers.

This year, I paid a fraction of that for my Apple iPad2.

<< Me with my Apple iPad2 (photo taken with the very same iPad2). Steve Jobs in one of his last appearances announcing future developments for the iPad tablet computers.

Our 1978 investment brought fantastic rewards. As a result of our Apple II, Vi became interested in computers, earned a Masters Degree in Computer Science, taught at Binghamton University for a year, and then had a very successful professional career as a team leader for Special Forces helicopter software at IBM and Lockheed Martin.

I brought my Apple II (in a good-size suitcase) to IBM and used it while teaching a course there.

As a result, when the original IBM PC1 was introduced, I got the first one delivered to the IBM facility in Owego and introduced it to the other engineers. I have written thousands of lines of computer code for the Apple II and the IBM PC, and, although IBM never paid me for writing code, I believe that my Apple II and IBM PC computer expertise was largely responsible for my success in conceptualizing advanced automation for avionics systems.

As the life and contributions of Steve Jobs were being celebrated on all the TV news programs and newspapers today, I could not help but add my thanks to this American Original. Every time I use my iPad2, I marvel at the concept and the execution of a wonderful product no one knew we needed a couple years ago. It has become my constant companion. I use it as a camera, web surfer, email communicator, video viewer, book reader, game player, and so, so much more.

So, Steve Jobs - rest in peace. And THANKS! Your contributions changed the world - and my life - and will be remembered forever.

Ira Glickstein

PS: Had we invested that $5,000 in Apple stock in 1978, what would it have been worth today? OY!

Gore-linked Video Fakes Climate Science

2011-09-28T16:35:00.007-04:00

CLICK ON IMAGE BELOW FOR VIDEO THAT INCLUDES FAKED CO2 GLOBAL WARMING EXPERIMENT

CLIMATE 101 from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

The above video includes a supposed "high school physics" experiment that has been shown to be an edited video fake by Watts Up With That? (WUWT)

Last week, while I was in Brugge, Belgium, near the end of my bike and barge trip from Brussels, I received an email from Anthony Watts (owner of WUWT) with a link to a review version of the above exposure of the Gore-linked fake, asking for my comments. As I sat in the Brugge Markt, using a a free WiFi link, I was amazed and pleased to see that Anthony had used one of my graphics in his posting to explain the "Greenhouse effect". (To see it, click on Watts Up With That? (WUWT) and then scroll way down to just beyond the image of the INFRARED HEAT LAMP and you will see the animated graphic credited to me.)

As I read Anthony's posting, which reveals that the supposed "high school physics" experiment in the video was obviously faked, I thought immediately of how Dan Rather got into trouble when he broadcast images of a letter about George Bush's military record that included a superscript "th" that proved conclusively the letter had not been typed in the year it was supposedly prepared, and was therefore a fake. Rather lost his job and reputation. I hope the same happens to Al Gore for being asociated with this type of easily proven fakery.

Ira Glickstein

Federal Regulation vs American Businesses

2011-09-11T13:30:00.005-04:00

[from billlifka] There’s much debate over federal regulation becoming ever more intrusive, more unreasonable and more damaging to the economy. I agree with those who believe the federal bureaucrats have far exceeded their missions and have violated the constitution by usurping powers of Congress. Liberals (progressives) have been attacking the private sector for over a century. Their goal is a socialistic America. Consider my personal experience twenty six years ago. It’s only one of many similar happenings.

At the time, I was engaged in restoring a troubled company. Despite its negative cash flow, this company had a number of commendable characteristics. Having a few less than 500 employees, it was considered to be a “small business”. Small businesses are the real source of employment growth and for other reasons, also, the federal government was trying, in 1985, to encourage small businesses. Another federal goal was to reduce an imbalance of trade caused by much greater imports than exports. This company exported 35% of its products; well above average.

Both federal and state governments encouraged employment of minorities (translate this to be African-Americans) and especially those in pockets of poverty, like inner cities. The company was adjacent to Bridgeport, CT, with its large population of poor blacks. The company employed many of them in electronic assembly. This was not at minimum wage but competitive and union-negotiated hourly rates. Another federal concern, back then, was “Japan Inc. eating our lunch”, especially in the electronic industries. The company was leading all Japanese producers of its product, combined, in market share. (It shared the lead with the subsidiary of a huge American corporation.) The bottom line is that this small company deserved federal support, not its grief.

The company had two export licenses: one for trade and one for samples. The first was for items sold and the other for demonstration product which, eventually, would be returned or destroyed. In the company’s regular review of paperwork, it discovered that a small shipment (about three thousand dollars) had been filed under the sample license, mistakenly. The company reported this to the local Commerce Department office, within a few weeks of the mistake. Nothing was heard from Commerce for over six months. This wasn’t surprising. It was like not feeding a parking meter and showing up at city hall a few weeks later, voluntarily, to pay the dollar owed.

Without warning or discussion, Commerce cancelled the company’s export licenses, fined it $5 million (Like killing flies with a howitzer.) and spread the news to the company’s customers and distributors in federal publications. The company couldn’t raise $5 million or survive losing one third of its business. It appealed the ruling. The accuser was a young, black, female lawyer at Commerce who would not back down a penny. As far as she was concerned, the company was a typically rotten corporation better dead than alive. Her supervisor was empathetic, but powerless for fear of his underling’s political position. Eventually, the company had its U.S. Senator exert his clout; the licenses were restored and the fine reduced to $50K, less than cost of legal fees to continue the fight. That’s one example of regulatory action that is killing American businesses. Cost of filing compliance reports is worse. Over-regulation is a major factor in unemployment.

Billlifka

Score One for the Internet

2011-09-08T11:31:00.002-04:00

The other day I was at the clinic to have blood drawn for some tests. I told the young lady poking me with a needle that the blood culture had to be done for 21 days rather than the usual 3 days in order to detect brucellosis. She said that she saw brucella on the order but nothing about 30 days. I insisted that it was necessary, because brucella is hard to detect. I had read that on the internet. She had never heard of brucella, but she went to ask the the microbiologist. When she returned, she said, "Score one for the internet. We would have thrown out the culture after 3 days."

There are only 200 cases of brucellosis in the US. The point is that health care can be improved if the public is educated about how to do internet research properly. My own doctor has never seen a case, although he learned about the disease in medical school. Doctors find patient research on the internet to be annoying, but when done right, patients can contribute to their own diagnosis.

What would you say are the key features of useful amateur internet research?

Global Warming Debate

2011-09-07T19:43:00.012-04:00

I participated in a Joint Presentation on Global Warming at the Science-Technology Club, The Villages, FL, on 08 September 2011. My friend Bob Miller was on the AFFIRMATIVE side, which maintains that Global Warming due to unprecedented use of fossil fuels DOES constitute a substantial, near-term danger to human civilization on Earth. I took the NEGATIVE side that it DOES NOT.

Our combined PowerPoint chart set is available for anyone to download at https://sites.google.com/site/bigira/climate-related-ppt/SciTechGWDebateUpload.pptx?attredirects=0&d=1. Please use SLIDE SHOW mode to view the presentation because some of the charts are animated.

As indicated in the second graphic above, the debate follows the traditional 1858 Lincoln and Douglas debate format. (The photos show Bob in his younger days and me before I grew my beard :^).

The main difference in the format is that an Audience Participation Question and Comment period has been added between the initial presentations by each side and the rebuttal presentations.

To keep this debate on track, and prevent it from degenerating into a pointless argument about whether the so-called "Greenhouse effect" is real (it is), whether the Earth has been warming over the past century (it has) and, whether humans have any role in that warming (we do), both participants have agreed to the stipulations listed in the third graphic.

In short, we both agree that the "Greenhouse Effect" is real and rising CO2 levels do contribute to that effect, that it has indeed warmed, and that humans actions have some responsibility for the warming.

That leaves the much more important questions for debate:

How much has the Earth actually warmed over the past century?

How much of that is due to human activities, primarily rising CO2 levels?

Does the temperature rise pose any substantial, near-term danger to human civilization?

What, if any, drastic action is required to ameliorate human-caused Global Warming?

Ira Glickstein

GUILTY - Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

2011-08-25T22:23:00.011-04:00

This posting is based on a presentation given to the Philosophy Club, The Villages, FL, on 26 August 2011.

The PowerPoint slides may be downloaded here.

WHAT IS THE STANDARD OF JUSTICE?

In CIVIL cases, where one person or organization is suing another, the standard is Preponderance of the Evidence, meaning that the winning side must tip the scale of justice by at least a little bit.

In CRIMINAL cases, where The State charges an individual, the standard is much higher. It is Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, meaning The State has a very high burden of proof, reflecting the seriousness of the charge and the potential punishment.

In the past, the phrase "and to a moral certainty" has been used, but it is no longer used in NY and NJ and some other states because it is "outdated and potentially confusing". Indeed, some people interpret the standard to essentially require that the judge and jury find the defendant guilty beyond all doubt, which is an impossible task in many crimes.

According to the Federal Judicial Center:

• Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you firmly convinced of the defendant's guilt.

• There are very few things in this world that we know with absolute certainty, and in criminal cases the law does not require proof that overcomes every possible doubt.

• If, based on your consideration of the evidence, you are firmly convinced that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged, you must find him guilty.

• If on the other hand, you think there is a real possibility that he is not guilty, you must give him the benefit of the doubt and find him not guilty.

JURY ERROR

In the well publicized OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony cases, many of us think the jury acted in error in finding the defendants not guilty.

OJ was rich enough to hire an excellent defense team. His celebrity and race appears to have led to what is called "jury nullification" where evidence is ignored in favor of some higher considerations. In this case, it was an ill-considered effort to correct past and ongoing discrimination by the US justice system against poor people in general an African-Americans in particular by releasing a rich man who, despite his race, has done very well in our country.

Casey Anthony, on the other hand, was neither rich nor black, but she was young and (to some) good-looking, and the unusual nature of the crime she was charged with and her bizarre actions after the death of her daughter attracted media attention. The State (IMHO) over-charged her by going for first-degree murder. No one (but Casey) may ever know exactly what happened, but I believe she was not guilty of pre-meditated murder but only of horribly negligent actions that led to her daughter's demise. I think she over-medicated the child with chloroform, to quiet her so she would be free to go out on the town.

THE "CSI" PROOF PROBLEM

Part of the problem is the unreasonably high level of expectation of proof juries have come to expect based on their experience watching crime programs such as Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) on TV. In many of those programs, the evidence is solidly physical and overwhelming. Juries therefore have a tough time with circumstantial evidence.

ARGUMENTS FOR "LAW AND ORDER" JUSTICE

• If a guilty person is mistakenly acquitted, he or she will likely recidivate and commit further crimes, condemning innocent civilians to becoming victims of crimes.
•Many wrongly convicted defendants have bad past records. They are most likely guilty of something.

• Not-guilty verdicts reduce respect for and fear of the police force, and thus are detrimental to public safety.

ARGUMENTS FOR MORE CAUTIOUS AND LENIENT JUSTICE

• If an innocent is wrongly convicted,then the cops stop looking for the actual criminal. He or she is still free, posing a danger of further crime.

• A guilty person mistakenly acquitted is likely to be re-arrested for further crimes and eventually will be jailed, and justice done.

» A guilty verdict in a highly charged case (e.g., O.J. Simpson) may cause riots. Better to let one killer go free than to have more innocents die.

• Many defendants are poor and have been abused by their families and society. Their crimes are a cry for help. Forgive them!

• A guilty person may escape justice on Earth, but will be severely punished in the afterlife. God’s justice will be done.

CRIMINAL RECIDIVISM STATISTICS

Within six years of release, after serving their term in prison, over 70% of convicted criminals will be arrested for a crime, and an astounding 50% will be convicted of another crime. Recidivism rates are higher for those released at younger ages. Thus, given that convicts have high recidivism rates, it stands to reason that criminals who get away with their crimes (either by not being arrested or, if arrested, being found not guilty by the jury), will have even higher recidivism rates since they are generally younger.

The graphic at the head of this posting shows the consequences.

1) Given ten murderers in a community, there are likely to be about twenty victims (since many murders involve more than one victim).

2) Violent crimes tend to be cleared by arrest at a rate of about 60% for murder. (Other violent crimes have clearance rates that are much lower, such as about 25% for rape. Non-violent crimes have even lower clearance rates, below 20% for theft and burglary.)

3) Thus, only about six of our ten murderers will be arrested and charged. Conviction rates are about 80%, so only about five of those six charged will be convicted and jailed.

4) This failure of justice leaves five murders out on the street, and they are likely to commit an additional ten murders.

5) Furthermore, when the jailed murders are released after serving their sentences, come of them will likely recidivate, leading to even more dead people.

Please consider the above if you even have the opportunity to serve on a jury!

Ira Glickstein

Heinz Jaffee and His Historical Bracelet

2011-07-31T10:42:00.013-04:00

An amazing chapter has been added to the eventful life of my friend Heinz Jaffee who I originally wrote about four years ago.

Through the kindness of a stranger in Germany, a bracelet he lost during WWII was returned to him, some 60 years after he lost it while fighting the Nazis. Our local newspaper The Villages Daily Sun published the bracelet story today:

It’s been more than 60 years since Heinz Jaffe was injured while fighting against the Nazis in World War II.

Now 88 and living in The Villages, Jaffe’s reminder of that time lies in the Purple Heart and two Bronze Star medals he keeps in their case and, of course, the memories that over time have refused to fade.

“Those memories are ingrained in me,” the Village of Mallory Square resident said. “I remember my war years. It was an experience that you just don’t forget.”

Recently, Jaffe was given back a tangible piece of that history: an ID bracelet he wore, and lost, while fighting in the war.

The gift came from a stranger some 6,000 miles away who spent years trying to return the simple bracelet to its owner.

“It’s an unbelievable story,” Jaffe said.

... a recent phone call from his sister-in-law in New Jersey brought back a wartime memory that Jaffe had long since dismissed.

One day out of the blue, Jaffe’s sister-in-law received a call from a Birgit Heuser in Germany, who was looking for the owner of an ID bracelet with the engraving “Heinz A. Jaffe 32915458.”

The stranger was then connected by phone with a shocked Jaffe, who gave her his address and anxiously waited to receive the bracelet which he believed he lost when he was injured crossing that river so many years ago.

“I definitely remember the bracelet,” he said. “I don’t remember having lost it but I do remember that bracelet.”

According to Heuser’s letter, from 1944 until the end of the war, her grandparents and their children were evacuated from their home in a village about six miles from where Jaffe fought and was eventually injured.

When Heuser’s family were able to return home, a 12-year-old boy who would grow up to be her father found several items from the war, according to the letter, including some clothes of American soldiers and two ID bracelets.

In the letter, Heuser writes that her parents tried several times to get more information about the owners of the items but to no avail. However, they never parted with their discoveries, choosing to keep them in a small basket.

Decades later, Heuser came across the historic items and decided to further investigate the names on the bracelet.

A couple of clicks of the mouse and she was able to locate Jaffe and mail him back his long-lost bracelet.

Although Jaffe cannot remember exactly where or from whom he received the bracelet, there was no denying his name and Army serial number etched in the bracelet which, other than a broken clasp, has remained perfectly intact.

All these years later, Jaffe said it’s hard to express what seeing the bracelet again means to him.

“It’s hard to explain, but it’s something from my past.” he said.

Jaffe said he is thankful to Heuser and her family for not only holding on to the bracelet for so long but for also taking the time to track him down and give him back a piece of his history.

My 2007 blog posting included an account written by Heinz for the D-Day Museum in New Orleans in 2001. The photo to the left was taken during his time in the US Army.

Heinz was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1923 and Bar Mitzvah there in 1936, during the terrible rise of the Nazis. As a young teen, he was sent to the US where, several years later, Heinz earned his US citizenship as a soldier. He fought in WWII and survived a combat war injury. You can read the whole account here. Highlights follow:

... I was assigned to Company B, 12th Engineers Combat Battalion, 8th Infantry Division. After a short training period with my new outfit, we embarked on a Liberty ship for the beaches of Normandy. The trip took about a week and the weather was beautiful. We spent most of our time sunbathing on deck. We arrived at the beach on either July 4th or 5th. We climbed down the side of the ship on nets into landing crafts that took us close to shore and we had to wade the rest of the way. This was similar to the situation on D-day, except no one was shooting at us! We relieved the 82nd Airborne which had dropped behind the German lines the night of D-day. They had taken tremendous casualties and were pretty shell-shocked. I watched them deliberately run over bodies of Germans with their Jeeps. War will do this to people.

While relieving the 82nd, I experienced my first artillery fire. I dove into the nearest hole and can still hear the laughter of the veterans as they told us it was outgoing mail, not incoming. One of our batteries had opened fire from right behind us! It didn't take us long to learn the difference!

Below are listed some of the war stories that I experienced and will never forget.

1. Gas Attack.

One night I was on guard duty about a half mile from where we were camped out for the night. In the middle of the night my partner and I heard people yelling off in the distance. The yelling got louder and nearer and we finally heard the word GAS! We had gas masks, but they were safely stored in our trucks in the camp area. We briefly discussed what to do and then decided to abandon our post and run for our masks. The run was all uphill and I ran out of breath about halfway there and decided gas or no gas, I couldn't run any further. It turned out the Germans had fired some phosgene shells which set off a gas alarm throughout the beachhead. No one ever said anything to us about leaving our post, which of course is a court martial offense.

2. Roadblock.

The Allied Armies broke out of the beachhead and most headed east toward Paris and Germany. The 8th Division however, headed west towards the Brittany Peninsula and the city of Brest. A major U- Boat base was located there and had to be neutralized to protect our ships in the Atlantic. One day at the outskirts of Brest we were called upon to remove a roadblock that was holding up the attack. It so happened that some of our troops had just liberated a wine warehouse. There was lots of wine around and we had our share of it. As we approached the roadblock, the Germans opened up with sniper and machine gun fire to keep us from removing it. Feeling pretty heroic, a few of us at a time ran to the roadblock and removed portions of it until the fire got too heavy. None of us were hit and we eventually removed the roadblock. We were rewarded with a Bronze Star for our heroism. In retrospect, I have no doubt our heroism came out of a bottle!

3. Luxembourg.

In late November of 1944 we had long since left the Brest area and driven across France to the main front. On the way we drove through Paris shortly after it was liberated and our platoon leader deliberately got us lost so we could see more of the city. The inhabitants of Paris welcomed us with flowers and wine, but we were forbidden to leave our trucks and so had no close encounters with the people.

One day we were in a village in Luxembourg when the Germans unleashed an artillery barrage on us. One of our sergeants yelled at me to jump into a jeep and move it to the back of a building for better protection. When I told him I could not drive, he could not believe that an American soldier could not drive a car! However, I had grown up in a city and my family didn't own a car and I had not learned to drive one.

4. Minefield.

Shortly after the Battle of the Bulge our platoon was called upon one evening to go to the front and try to get wounded soldiers out of a minefield they had entered during that day's attack. We got there after darkness had set in and could do nothing until daylight arrived. It was not possible to clear anti-personnel mines in the dark. All through the night we heard the soldiers calling for help and it was apparent that some didn't make it through the night. Listening to their cries for help all night and unable to do anything was a terrible experience. The next morning we went in and cleared paths to all the soldiers that survived and helped to get them out

5. The Enemy.

One night we were up front with the infantry and it was bitterly cold. I spent the night in a foxhole with nothing but my uniform and my topcoat. Waking up after a restless night, I had great difficulty straightening my legs because they seemed to be frozen. Fortunately, I managed to get the circulation going and they were all right.

Shortly after daylight we saw two German soldiers leave their fox hole and run toward their line several hundred yards away. Some of our guys opened fire upon them, but didn't hit them and they disappeared over a hill. These were the only German soldiers other then those wounded, dead, or captured that I saw during nine months of combat! I also never fired my gun during all that time.

6. Roadblock #2.

This next incident happened in January 1945 somewhere in Germany west of the Rhine River. We were called up to the front lines and asked to remove a roadblock. It consisted of one of our tanks that had been hit and was blocking a road needed for the next day's tank attack. Our plan was to use some dynamite and blast it off the road. We were told that the road was clear and there were no Germans around. The road was bordered by open fields except that a wooded area started on one side right about where the disabled tank was. We started down the road in broad daylight toward the tank. Just as we approached it a German machine gun opened up on us from the corner of the woods. Fortunately it missed all of us and we dove into the ditches on each side of the road. My first thought was I hoped the ditches weren't mined. My next concern was whether the machine gun could traverse along the ditch. We were lucky and safely made it back to our starting place. We were then told to try again after it got dark. We were also told that the machine gun nest would be eliminated. Based on what had happened earlier, I am not sure that was very reassuring to us!

After dark we started down the road again. I remember carrying a case of dynamite on my shoulder, but no rifle. I felt kind of naked! We got to the tank and my assignment together with another soldier was to go about fifty yards beyond the tank to remove some barbed wire that the Germans had stretched across the road. We carefully checked the wire for booby traps and started removing the wire when a loud explosion went off behind us. I first thought it was a mortar shell, but quickly realized I had not heard any shell coming in. We worked our way back to the tank and found that the guys placing the dynamite had set off a booby trap. Several members of our squad were wounded, including our platoon commander, Lt. Cohen. We managed to get all our wounded back to our lines and then went back down and blasted the tank off the road and removed the barbed wire. The Germans never bothered us that night, but it was a horrific experience nevertheless.

The next morning the tank attack started and almost immediately bogged down. I remember walking back to our trucks along the road lined with tanks with the rest of my squad and cursing at the men on the tanks for not going forward. I guess the experience of the night before left us less than understanding of their problems.

I, together with several others of my squad, received a Bronze Star for our efforts. This one I can say I deserved!

I never learned if our wounded comrades survived or not. In war, information is hard to come by.

7. My Last Battle.

In mid-February I found myself in the small town appropriately named Krauthausen. The town was divided by a river with all bridges across it destroyed. We were on the west bank of the river and the Germans on the east bank. The town was about 60 miles west of Aachen. The weather was cold and wet, but no snow.

An attack was planned and a night patrol was ordered to cross the river at night to learn something about the German positions. The river crossing was to be made by a small assault boat manned by three engineers and carrying a squad of infantry. This was the standard method for this type of operation.

I was not selected for this operation. The river current was very strong and the boat was swept downstream and never made it across. Fortunately, all occupants made it safely back to our side. The next night the operation was attempted again with the same result. The following night it was my turn to go.

I went with two of my buddies to the assembly area and met with a squad of infantry commanded by a 2nd Lieutenant. This time someone decided a small assault boat wouldn't do and they brought up an amphibious vehicle known as a Duck. It was operated by two African-American soldiers who had no idea that they were at the front and what they were being asked to do. One must remember the Army was not integrated in those days.

We were briefed and started toward the river in the Duck. It was pitch black and raining. As we left the main road the Duck got stuck in the mud! I remember thinking, great, we don't have to go. However, someone had the foresight to bring an assault boat along and we were going to attempt the river crossing in a way it had failed two nights in a row.

The standard way to approach the river was for the squad leader to lead the way followed by one of the Engineers carrying some of the paddles. The infantry men would carry the boat and the other two Engineers would bring up the rear with the rest of the paddles. The Lieutenant started toward the river and I followed at about twenty yards as the lead Engineer. I could not see the Lieutenant ahead of me in the dark, but caught up with him near the river. He had encountered some barbed wire and was attempting to remove it. I asked him to let me do it because I was trained to do this, specifically to watch for booby traps. However, he told me he would do it and I turned around to stop the rest of the patrol from getting too close. Just as I turned away he set off a mine!

I was hit and fell to the ground. I did not feel any great pain, but had difficulty breathing. I heard the rest of the patrol drop the boat and hit the ground. I realized that the Lieutenant must have been hit also. Everything was quiet for a while, but I knew my buddies would come looking for me. I remember taking off my helmet and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible, but I still had difficulty breathing. Eventually my buddies reached the Lieutenant and me and started carrying us back to the road. They got hold of a jeep and we went off to the nearest aid station. I remember the Lieutenant lying next to me on the jeep, but I never knew how badly he was hurt or if he survived. I never even knew his name!

Upon arriving at the field hospital, I was operated upon immediately. I had never lost consciousness. I later learned the extend of my injuries. My right lung was punctured and collapsed. Several ribs were broken. My intestines and other organs were perforated, I had a deep flesh wound in my thigh, and the fingers on my right hand were injured. I am sure if I hadn't carried the paddles on my right shoulder and turned away just before the explosion, I might have had serious head injuries.

Luck was with me that night. The surgeon on duty, I believe his name was Major Satan, was a chest specialist from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. I remember as they cut my clothes off that the nurses were kidding me because my feet were so dirty. The fact that I hadn't taken off my shoes and socks for days and slept in a coal cellar for protection from shelling probably had something to do with that!

I am pretty sure that the mine the Lieutenant set off was one of ours. First of all we were on our side of the river and the barbed wire was probably placed by us. Also, I saw an X-ray of my chest taken before any of the shrapnel had been removed and a piece in my lung looked like the corner of an American personnel mine.

8. The Road Back.

I spent about a week in the field hospital. During that time a Red Cross worker wrote a letter for me to my parents as my hand was bandaged and I was unable to write. I had never told my parents that I was in combat and always wrote as if I was still in England! The only one who knew the truth was my brother, who was serving in the Pacific Theater. That letter arrived home before the official notification from the War Department arrived! I am sure it saved my parents from the shock of receiving a telegram from the War Department. When it did arrive they already knew its content.

I was transferred by ambulance from the field hospital to a hospital in Liege, Belgium. Two weeks after that I again was transferred by ambulance to Paris. Unfortunately, I was in no condition to enjoy that great city! After one week I was flown to England to a military hospital that specialized in treating chest injuries. That was my first airplane flight! It was a C-46, the military version of the DC-3. It was outfitted to carry stretchers and had nurses aboard. I still remember that the landing was as smooth as any I experienced since. The pilot must have been specially trained to land a plane full of wounded soldiers!

I went through several more operations at the hospital and by May was an ambulatory patient. I became friends with two soldiers from the 101ST Airborne and the Rangers. For some reason we started to march through the wards and hallways of the hospital singing A duck must be somebody's friend to the tune of The Stars and Stripes Forever at the top of our voices! I think it was to wake everyone up in the morning. I also had the distinction of being the only one in the ward who did not have a drain tube in his chest.

There was great enjoyment at the hospital when the war in Europe ended in May of 1945. Shortly thereafter I left for home on the hospital ship "George Washington", arriving in Hoboken, NJ in mid-June. Walking off the ship I was handed a container of milk by the USO. I hadn't tasted fresh milk since I left the USA and it tasted terrific.

We went from the dock to a hospital in Staten Island before being sent to convalescent centers throughout the U.S. Since I lived in Newark, NJ, I was allowed to go home the next day for a reunion with my parents. I remember going to a restaurant with them that night and being the only one being served a steak because I was a wounded veteran.

The next day I was moved to Camp Upton on Long Island where I continued to recuperate until I was discharged in November 1945. While there, an announcement was made one Sunday morning that a bus was going to the Polo Grounds in NY for those of us who wanted to watch the NY Giants play football. We had special seats set up right behind the Giant's bench. This started my interest in professional football and I am still a Giants fan.

The Post War Years

The return to civilian life was not difficult. I went back to school under the G.I. Bill of Rights and graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1949. I married my wife Betty in 1954 and we have two children, Linda and Peter. They have blessed us with four grandchildren that we love to visit. We pile up a lot of air miles as they live in Connecticut and Seattle!...

Thanks to Birgit Heuser in Germany and congratulations to Heinz for providing yet another chapter in his life story!

Ira Glickstein

micro Air Vehicles

2011-07-05T11:42:00.006-04:00

Thanks to my neighbor Warren for the link to this great conceptual video about micro Air Vehicles. Almost makes me wish I was back at work conceptualizing automated avionics systems.

Ira Glickstein

Top Ten Heroes

2011-06-28T20:36:00.007-04:00

[From Dr. Doris Branson, based on her presentation to the Philosophy Club, The Villages, FL. You may obtain download a copy of her Powerpoint slides here.]

Down through the ages since the beginning of the recorded word there existed the idea of a special type of entity called the hero. Man or woman; they exemplified that essence of the hope for the future.

The epic heroes of the Greeks and Romans are very different than the heroes of today but they still must have certain characteristic to fulfill the unconscious archetype of the hero. The slide show presented at the philosophy club reiterates the evolving hero in literature.

When I presented this to the Philosophy Club, discussion centered around the people that most exemplified heroes to the members. The range of the top ten heroes was most interesting and thoughtful. There was discussion about heroes for children today and do they have legitimate heroes. Some of the people selected as heroes ranged from ancient philosophers to politicians or religious leaders.

Selecting the top ten heroes is very personal. Who would your top ten heroes be and why? Please Comment!

Doris Branson

Edison, Tammany, Labor Relations, and Forward Pricing

2011-06-20T23:21:00.011-04:00

When I was a teen, my contemporaries chased girls and worshiped sports stars. I did electrical experiments and my boyhood heroes were Thomas Alva Edison and Mr. Wizard!

In those days I was most interested in the technology behind Edison's clever inventions. I did not fully appreciate his real genius which was making them into commercially-successful, practical products the public needed and wanted to purchase. Nor did I realize the system engineering aspect of his work. His incandescent light bulb would have been useless had he not pioneered the electrification of Manhattan and other city centers.

I just read a book originally published in 1910 titled EDISON, HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS By Frank Lewis Dyer (General Counsel For The Edison Laboratory and Allied Interests) and Thomas Commerford Martin (President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers). The book is available free for the iPad at the iTunes store, or may be downloaded to your PC from this link:

http://www.digitalbookindex.com/r.pl?RecID=51300E80-8182-11E0-8178-263D4AB7B4C3

Here are some highlights with which you may not be familiar:

1) Government Inspectors

To electrify the downtown area of New York City, Edison had to bury miles of copper wires encased in iron pipes. That required the permission of the city government, controlled by the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. Then, as now, the politicians claimed to be looking out for the safety of the public. However, as Edison tells the story, all they really wanted was pay-offs.

"When I was laying tubes in the streets of New York, the office received notice from the Commissioner of Public Works to appear at his office at a certain hour. I went up there with a gentleman to see the Commissioner, H. O. Thompson. On arrival he said to me: 'You are putting down these tubes. The Department of Public Works requires that you should have five inspectors to look after this work, and that their salary shall be $5 per day, payable at the end of each week. Good-morning.' I went out very much crestfallen, thinking I would be delayed and harassed in the work which I was anxious to finish, and was doing night and day. We watched patiently for those inspectors to appear. The only appearance they made was to draw their pay Saturday afternoon."

2) Trading Jobs for Tammany Favors

The corrupt Tammany Hall machine allowed businesses to violate zoning regulations in return for jobs for their supporters.

"The street was lined with rather old buildings and poor tenements. We had not much frontage. As our business increased enormously, our quarters became too small, so we saw the district Tammany leader and asked him if we could not store castings and other things on the sidewalk. He gave us permission--told us to go ahead, and he would see it was all right. The only thing he required for this was that when a man was sent with a note from him asking us to give him a job, he was to be put on. We had a hand-laborer foreman--'Big Jim'--a very powerful Irishman, who could lift above half a ton. When one of the Tammany aspirants appeared, he was told to go right to work at $1.50 per day. The next day he was told off to lift a certain piece, and if the man could not lift it he was discharged. That made the Tammany man all safe. Jim could pick the piece up easily. The other man could not, and so we let him out. Finally the Tammany leader called a halt, as we were running big engine lathes out on the sidewalk, and he was afraid we were carrying it a little too far. The lathes were worked right out in the street, and belted through the windows of the shop."

3) Labor Troubles Solved by Automation

Edison was generous with his employees and he expected loyalty in return.

"After our works at Goerck Street got too small, we had labor troubles also. It seems I had rather a socialistic strain in me, and I raised the pay of the workmen twenty-five cents an hour above the prevailing rate of wages, whereupon Hoe & Company, our near neighbors, complained at our doing this. I said I thought it was all right. But the men, having got a little more wages, thought they would try coercion and get a little more, as we were considered soft marks. Whereupon they struck at a time that was critical. However, we were short of money for pay-rolls; and we concluded it might not be so bad after all, as it would give us a couple of weeks to catch up. So when the men went out they appointed a committee to meet us; but for two weeks they could not find us, so they became somewhat more anxious than we were. Finally they said they would like to go back. We said all right, and back they went. It was quite a novelty to the men not to be able to find us when they wanted to; and they didn't relish it at all. ...
"One of the incidents which caused a very great cheapening [of the cost of production of light bulbs] was that, when we started, one of the important processes had to be done by experts. This was the sealing on of the part carrying the filament into the globe, which was rather a delicate operation in those days, and required several months of training before any one could seal in a fair number of parts in a day. When we got to the point where we employed eighty of these experts they formed a union; and knowing it was impossible to manufacture lamps without them, they became very insolent.
"One instance was that the son of one of these experts was employed in the office, and when he was told to do anything would not do it, or would give an insolent reply. He was discharged, whereupon the union notified us that unless the boy was taken back the whole body would go out.
"It got so bad that the manager came to me and said he could not stand it any longer; something had got to be done. They were not only more surly; they were diminishing the output, and it became impossible to manage the works. He got me enthused on the subject, so I started in to see if it were not possible to do that operation by machinery.
"After feeling around for some days I got a clew how to do it. I then put men on it I could trust, and made the preliminary machinery. That seemed to work pretty well. I then made another machine which did the work nicely. I then made a third machine, and would bring in yard men, ordinary laborers, etc., and when I could get these men to put the parts together as well as the trained experts, in an hour, I considered the machine complete. I then went secretly to work and made thirty of the machines. Up in the top loft of the factory we stored those machines, and at night we put up the benches and got everything all ready. Then we discharged the office-boy. Then the union went out. It has been out ever since."

4) Forward Pricing

I thought "forward pricing" was a relatively new idea. However, it turns out that Edison made use of this practice, which is selling initial production runs well below cost to build a market, at prices that would be achieved at later mass production quantities.

"When we first started the electric light we had to have a factory for manufacturing lamps. As the Edison Light Company did not seem disposed to go into manufacturing, we started a small lamp factory at Menlo Park with what money I could raise from my other inventions and royalties, and some assistance. 
"The lamps at that time were costing about $1.25 each to make, so I said to the company: 'If you will give me a contract during the life of the patents, I will make all the lamps required by the company and deliver them for forty cents.' The company jumped at the chance of this offer, and a contract was drawn up. 
"We then bought at a receiver's sale at Harrison, New Jersey, a very large brick factory building which had been used as an oil-cloth works. We got it at a great bargain, and only paid a small sum down, and the balance on mortgage. We moved the lamp works from Menlo Park to Harrison. 
"The first year the lamps cost us about $1.10 each. We sold them for forty cents; but there were only about twenty or thirty thousand of them. 
"The next year they cost us about seventy cents, and we sold them for forty. There were a good many, and we lost more money the second year than the first. 
"The third year I succeeded in getting up machinery and in changing the processes, until it got down so that they cost somewhere around fifty cents. I still sold them for forty cents, and lost more money that year than any other, because the sales were increasing rapidly. 
"The fourth year I got it down to thirty-seven cents, and I made all the money up in one year that I had lost previously. I finally got it down to twenty-two cents, and sold them for forty cents; and they were made by the million. Whereupon the Wall Street people thought it was a very lucrative business, so they concluded they would like to have it, and bought us out.

Ira Glickstein

Sarah Palin Right On Paul Revere's Ride?

2011-06-06T11:23:00.015-04:00

Could Sarah Palin have been right on when she described her idea of the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere?

Say what? Yep, I read it on, of all places, the MSNBC website. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43285196/ns/politics/ [Scroll to the bottom and click on "Show more text"]

WHAT DID YOU (AND I) LEARN ABOUT PAUL REVERE'S RIDE?

Pretty much the story as told by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, http://poetry.eserver.org/paul-revere.html

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, ...

"..Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

... And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

... It was twelve by the village clock

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

... It was one by the village clock,

When he galloped into Lexington.

... It was two by the village clock,

When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

... So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---...

Do you remember anything else?

SARAH PALIN'S VERSION

The MSNBC site linked above quotes her as saying:

"He who warned the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."

Say what? Did you ever hear that Paul Revere WARNED the BRITISH ??? And RINGING THOSE BELLS ??? And, we were going to be FREE and ARMED ???

Where did she get that from?

OK, if you go to that linked MSNBC site, scroll to the bottom and then click on "Show more text", you will read:

... Revere did give up some details of the plan to the British that night, but after he had notified other colonists, and under questioning by British soldiers ... Revere revealed "there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up," ...

So, Paul Revere, in essence WARNED the British soldiers who questioned him after his ride, that there would soon be FIVE HUNDRED AMERICANS, ARMED and ready to protect our freedom.

And, during his ride through all those towns and villages, how did Paul Revere alert all those sleeping Americans? Did he go from house to house and wake them all up?

Of course not, he went to each Church, roused the keeper, and, by the sound of the Church bells, awoke and alerted everybody, informing them of the message he had received via the two signal lanterns hung in the Bell Tower of the Old North Church.

And, what was the main purpose of the British advance up through Medford and Lexington towards Concord? Well, it was to attempt to confiscate the stash of arms hidden there.

That explains this stanza in Longfellow's poem:

You know the rest. In the books you have read

How the British Regulars fired and fled---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

Ira Glickstein

PS: Sarah Palin is mocked for the slightest error or apparent error. At the same time, our President, arguably the most academically intelligent leader we have ever had, can write "24 May 2008" (a couple weeks ago in Westminster Abbey) as the date and year when it was actually 2011. The President forgets the YEAR, which is certainly more important for anyone to know than the story of Paul Revere, and Sarah Palin gets busted for her short-hand answer about the REAL story of Paul Revere warning the British and sounding the bells. Media bias? You Betcha! Amazing! http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=302953

...

The Second Warning. Preventing Economic Armageddon

2011-06-02T20:27:00.008-04:00

[From Doug McDonald - The proprietor of this Blog does not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in this Topic]

I don't know how many of you are aware of the great triumvirate [Rubin, Greenspan, and Summers, left to right, pictured here] steamrolling over Brooksley Born to keep her from regulating derivatives back in the late 1990's. Ms. Born, at the time, was the head of the "Commodity Futures Trading Commission" (CFTC). She was a lawyer who had worked with derivatives for 20 years and knew how dangerous they were in the hands of greedy Wall Street risk managers with no oversight. These three self ordained members of the economic intelligentcia, all of whom are still running around free amazingly enough, along with another know-it-all, Senator Phil (nation of whiners) Gramm of Texas, convinced Pres. Clinton to sign the bill removing the regulation of derivatives from the CFTC. Born had no recourse but to resign. The rest is history and Summers is now teaching his ideas to young impressionable lawyer/politician types at Harvard. God bless America!

Try to control your temper as you watch this PBS FRONTLINE documentary aptly named “The Warning”.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1302794657/

Well the great triumvirate is gone but now there are others who are trying to do it again to another brilliant and knowledgeable women, Elizabeth Warren [photo to left]. Please look into this and convince yourself as I have that we need to rein in the greedy narcissists on Wall Street and their buddies in congress.

We can't think Republican or Democrat here. There is too much money flying around to both parties. Google "Elizabeth Warren" and please do a little homework and look into the background of Elizabeth Warren, the “Congressional Oversight Panel” and the "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)". If you come up with a reason not to have Warren as head of the CFPB please let the rest of know what it is.

Here is a dialogue between David Gregory and Mitch McConnell on “Meet the Press” Sunday May 29, 2011.

David Gregory: Elizabeth Warren, would you back her or would you join Republicans to block her nomination?

McConnell: Well we’re pretty unenthusiastic about the possibility of Elizabeth Warren … uh … we’re pretty unenthusiastic frankly about this new agency and we’ve sent a letter to the President saying some changes need to be made in the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, because as it’s currently constituted it answers to no one and I think could be a serious threat to our financial system.

Here are a couple of links illustrating her knowledge and brilliance. Even the pundits are overwhelmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zt5wP9ZZ7M&feature=player_embedded

She is obviously so much more knowledgeable than the other people on the panel. This nation needs Elizabeth Warren.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFQqs2pzNfs&feature=player_embedded

Listen to her put these two pundits in their place and talk their language about how ridiculous the current regulating agencies are.

Here’s an indication that she won’t be pushed around but she needs help. She has to become known to everyone in the U.S. The electorate has to understand how brilliant and knowledgeable she is. She could be the savior of this country’s economy if given the power to EFFICIENTLY and CONSTRUCTIVELY regulate Wall Street as only she can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RET2Z5AVJ8A&feature=player_embedded

Here are some things you can do thanks to the Coffee Party Annabel and Eric <annabel2.0@coffeepartyusa.com>:

1) Write to President Obama, and demand that he not be bullied. He must nominate Elizabeth Warren to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He knows that she is the most qualified for the job. In two days, we have already sent over 1,000 letters.

2) Write to Congress, and let them know that we want strong consumer protection. An independent agency with Elizabeth Warren as the director can be the start of a firewall protecting us from abusive banking practices that led to the financial crisis of 2008. In two weeks, we've already sent 14,000 letters.

3) Join the thousands of Americans who have commented on Patrick McHenry's Facebook page to let him know how we feel about bullying and corruption.

4 Join the Coffee Party Elizabeth Warren Facebook page, or, volunteer for this initiative

I have two issues that I intend to spend the rest of my life promoting:

1. Political Transparency

2. Electorate Education

I believe that the solution to these two issues, by definition, solves all the other problems in our government.

I may need some help.

Climate Change (aka Global Warming)

2011-05-25T22:09:00.014-04:00

This posting is based on a talk to the Technology, Engineering, Science Plus Club, The Villages, FL, 26 May 2011. This group is a well-educated audience familiar with science and technology, but not necessarily fully cognizant regarding the current controversy.

Powerpoint charts available for download here

Skeptic Strategy for Talking About Global Warming

This Powerpoint chart set may be used as the basis for a skeptic-oriented talk or debate about Climate Change (aka Global Warming). Talking points are provided in the Notes section of each chart to help understand the main points made.

My “credentials” for preparing this slide set include:

Guest Contributor to the most popular climate website in the world, http://wattsupwiththat.com/author/iraglickstein/

Associate Professor of System Engineering at University of Maryland

System Engineer (Advanced Avionics and Visionics, Route Planning, Decision Aiding, Five Patents ... at IBM, Lockheed-Martin)

PhD in System Science (Binghamton University, 1996); MS in System Science (Binghamton); Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (CCNY)

If you saw the highly-rated 2006 movie An “Inconvenient” Truth you probably remember the scene depicted in the photo above.

Former VP Al Gore shows the ice core record of carbon dioxide (CO2 – in red) and temperature (in blue) over the past 600,000 years and he points out the obvious correlation between the two curves. When one goes up, so does the other. When one goes down, so does the other.

He then mounts a platform and is lifted high on the stage, showing how high CO2 levels are getting. He is then raised even higher to indicate where CO2 levels will be 30 years hence at the rate we are going if nothing is done about them.

The implication is that, if CO2 reaches that level, temperatures, which are clearly well-correlated, will rise as well. OMG ! At those high temperatures, the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps will melt, exposing the bare Earth beneath, reducing the albedo of the Surface and causing still more short-wave Solar energy to be absorbed. That could lead to still more warming and a “tipping point” catastrophe of major proportions. As the ice melts, low-lying islands and coastal areas will be submerged, killing and displacing billions of people.

Clearly, something needs to be done on a worldwide basis to stop further burning of fossil fuels and land use activities that reduce the albedo.

The message was so powerful that it earned Al Gore and his movie an Oscar and a Nobel prize in 2007. It came to be known as Catastrophic Anthropomorphic Global Warming (CAGW).

But wait, there is more to the story! If we examine the ice core data carefully, we discover that the temperatures rise about 800 years or more before the CO2 goes up. Temperature also falls 800 or more years before CO2 goes down. This lag of temperature behind CO2 is true for the entire 600,000 year ice core record. OOPS, is this another “inconvenient” truth?

Yes, there is correlation and possibly causation. But, in which direction?

HMMM .. If A “causes “ B, then A has to happen before B. Right? If, as Gore implies, CO2 “causes” temperatures to rise, then one would expect CO2 to rise before temperatures. Right?

Thus, all the ice core data proves is that temperature “causes” CO2 –or– that something else causes both temperature and CO2.

Those who believe that higher CO2 will cause temperatures to rise, due to the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect” point to the unprecedented levels of burning of fossil fuels and the undoubted rise of CO2. But, if it is unprecedented, and due to human activities, what does the ice core record have to tell us about the current situation? Humans could have had absolutely no role in the Global Warming and Global Cooling cycles of the ice ages. So, why did Gore bring it up?

Ira Glickstein

Emotions and Reasoning - Liberal and Conservative View of the Economy

2011-05-21T18:14:00.005-04:00

[from billlifka, posted by Ira with his permission]

Emotions and Reasoning

“It seems that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts,” so writes Chris Mooney in Mother Jones.com. Mooney does a credible job supporting that statement by citing University studies. What he calls “motivated reasoning” builds on an insight of neuroscience that reasoning is suffused with emotion. Not only are the two inseparable but the positive or negative feelings about people, things and ideas arise much more rapidly than related conscious thoughts; in a matter of milliseconds.

This can be detected with an EEG device long before human awareness. Humans developed and survived because evolution selected them to react very quickly to stimuli in their environment. It’s a basic survival skill called “fight-or-flight” reflex. Humans apply this not only to predators but to data. By the time humans are reasoning, it’s after a rationalizing of their prior emotional commitments. Therefore, much human “reasoning” is a means to retaining preconceived beliefs. In it, humans give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster their beliefs and spend disproportionate energy refuting arguments they find uncongenial.

Does Education Promote Reason?

Education does have an effect on “motivated reasoning’ but exactly in the opposite manner one might expect. Studies indicate that college educated people are significantly more likely to cling to their beliefs in the face of opposing scientific data than those with less education. The more educated one is, the more likely to generate all kind of reasons supporting an emotional belief. It’s very hard to change the minds of “smart” people. Most of the studies cited by Mooney dealt with Conservative or Liberals dealing with political issues for which scientific data was available and which data was compiled using methodology judged to be scientifically correct. Thusly, this phenomenon applies directly to my current essay series.

We All Wear Blinders

The mix of studies cited indicated that: left or right, Conservative or Liberal, all wear blinders in some situations. The question is: what can be done to counteract human nature? It’s clear that to convince humans to accept new evidence, it must be presented in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction. Leading with the facts is likely to be useless. Leading with the values may give the facts a fighting chance. In fact, leading with the facts is likely to trigger the “fight” response, causing the target of facts to become even more hardened in prior beliefs.

The attached essay continues a comparison of Conservative to Liberal thought. Any who have watched believers in both views “discuss” issues on a TV panel know that, most likely from the beginning, the opposing panelists won’t listen to opposing arguments, often “talking over” the opponents comments and disregarding entreaties of the moderator to give each a fair say. Often, such behavior is caused by a foolish belief that the person who talks the most, wins. More often, it’s caused by the “flight” response; a running away from threatening ideas.

If it were possible to do so, a moderator might task the panel to find values, within the scope of discussion, upon which panelists of both ideologies could agree. An example of such value in this essay might be a desire for all members of a society to live a productive life in which all are able to earn a living above some reasonable standard. In real life politics, forget it!

Economy: Left versus Right

There are a number of issues addressed by StudentNewsDaily.com to describe differences [between Liberal views to those of Conservatives]. The economy is one of these.

Liberals believe that a market system in which government regulates the economy is best and that government must protect citizens from the greed of big business. They assert that, unlike the private sector, the government is motivated by public interest. They know that government regulation in all areas of the economy is needed to level the playing field.

Conservatives believe that the free market system, competitive capitalism and private enterprise create the greatest opportunity and the highest standard of living for all. They assert that free markets produce more economic growth, more jobs and higher standards of living than those systems burdened by excessive government regulation.

The Author’s view [billlifka]

The above comparisons are true, as far as they go. Liberals have a massive lack of trust in privately owned and operated businesses of all kinds. They believe that citizen/consumers are not capable of avoiding the products of companies which charge exorbitant prices and sell low quality or harmful merchandise. They are quite certain that government bureaucracies are much more capable of choosing optimum suppliers than are citizens. They have no problem with federal bureaucrats picking “winners and losers” in every business category. Just as they’d like all citizens to prosper equally, they’d like the same to be true for businesses. The evils they attribute to “big” business somehow aren’t part of “big” government, in their view.

Conservatives have a massive lack of trust in government, especially in federal government and in federal government’s ability to manage the economy. Conservatives believe that involvement of the government in economic matters is almost certain to damage the economy. Conservatives have no problem with the fact that certain companies may perform so well, compared to competitors, they prosper greatly and gain dominant market shares. In the main, Conservatives accept the writings of Adam Smith as describing an optimum economic system.

While Liberal economic philosophy is understandable as dictatorial intent to equalize wealth among all citizens, it seems to be totally wrong-headed in view of world experience. It’s clear that (what is really) Socialism has failed every time it’s been tried. Capitalism is the preference of Conservatives and it has usually succeeded; often spectacularly, as in America. While the gap in wealth between the better off and poorer off is greater under Capitalism, the poorer are usually better off than the “equals” in Socialistic systems. If America is used as an example, the nation’s wealthiest citizens contribute mightily to charities that assist those at the lowest end of the economic ladder. This is all as Adam Smith predicted and preached.

Smith did prescribe a role for government. It was as a protector from external attacks, whether military or economic and as a sort of “referee” on internal matters. If he were living today, Smith would have moved to America to become a regular guest on Fox News. Karl Marx would be teaching at Columbia and be lionized by Liberal Think Tanks.

billlifka

Evolved?

2011-05-18T21:46:00.006-04:00

[from Joel] Apparently politicians are the least evolved of males. Shades of Bill Clinton, another socialist can't keep his hands off women. Here's the way French journalists see the problem of Strauss-Kahn.

"In 2007, he was given the opportunity to make a quick comeback, as the head of the International Monetary Fund. At the time of his nomination, Jean Quatremer of Libé ration pointed out in his blog: "Strauss-Kahn's only real problem is his behavior with women. Too pushy, he often narrowly excapes [charges] of harassment. This fault of his is well known by the media, but no one speaks about it." Several months earlier, on Feb. 5, 2007, during an interview on the Paris Première program, a young woman, Tristane Banon, daughter of a Socialist party regional council member, said Strauss-Kahn had attempted to rape her in 2002. But the television network, fearing defamation charges, covered the name of the former minister with a bleep. Her failure to press charges cast doubt on her testimony."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072205,00.html

Osama bin Laden was a Global Warming Activist

2011-05-09T18:28:00.007-04:00

The current media frenzy over the death of Osama bin Laden seems to have reported everything known about him - except his Global Warming Alarmism.

According to an Oct 10, 2010 Guardian story:

Unlikely activist? Osama bin Laden calls for action on climate change -- Audio message criticises relief efforts in Pakistan and says climate change is causing 'great catastrophes' throughout Islamic world

Osama bin Laden yesterday criticised relief efforts in Pakistan and called for action against climate change in what appeared to be a new audio tape from the al-Qaida leader.
The audio message lasted about 11 minutes, and was broadcast with a video showing still images of Bin Laden and images of natural disasters, the Islamist website used by al-Qaida said. ...
Bin Laden also touches on global warming, the second time he is believed to have made climate change a prominent theme of one of his statements.
"The huge climate change is affecting our (Islamic) nation and is causing great catastrophes throughout the Islamic world," he says in the tape....

Well, if it is true that hell is seven times hotter than it ought to be, Osama's "predictions" have come true, at least for himself.:^)

Ira Glickstein

Skepticism versus Faith

2011-04-29T21:09:00.008-04:00

[From Joel] We had an excellent presentation at our philosophy club (The Villages, FL) this afternoon. However, the account of history from the time of the ancient Minoans to modern times sounded a little too much like feminist propaganda to me. I was suspicious. I questioned whether there was sufficient evidence for the belief in a garden-of-Eden-like world presided over by female goddesses and a female dominated society, but the speaker was unequivocal in his belief that the archeological evidence supported such a conclusion.

My search of the internet revealed that some skepticism would be appropriate. There is much disagreement over the meaning of the ancient remains found in Crete. As just one example, here's a review of a book which disputes the feminist theory of gender dominated history.

From Library Journal

According to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, there was a time in social development before written records when women were the central controlling forces in community life. Goddesses were the primary objects of worship, and peace reigned between the sexes. In a systematic analysis of the underpinnings of this popular theory, independent scholar Eller (Living in the Lap of the Goddess), who is affiliated with Princeton University, applies both logic and common sense to what has become a highly emotional argument for some feminists and New Age partisans. Pointing out that much of the physical evidence upon which the hypothesis rests is open to various interpretations, she warns that adherents of the myth may be seeing what they want to see: that by relying on biological distinctions they are creating stereotypes as insidious as the patriarchal ones they abhor. While immersion in this myth may raise gender self-esteem, only hard work will change the reality-based biases of modern life. This well-structured, lucid argument is recommended for academic libraries and public libraries where interest in the subject is high.

Joel

Florida Gator Time

2011-04-27T23:57:00.006-04:00

I've taken more than a dozen people kayaking on the Rainbow River to give them a good, easy taste of Florida kayaking.

"There are no gators because the water is so clear," I have always told them.

Well, it aint so! Today we were out on the river not far from Rainbow Springs State Park and another kayaker told us there was a big gator in a cove so we went in. Sure enough, we saw this 8-foot thing that I was convinced was a plastic replica because it was not moving and it was on such a clear river. My friend Bernie took this photo of me with it.

Well, as we paddled back, our other friends wanted to see it so we went back into the cove. This time, I saw the gator open its mouth and move its head! WOW! I would never have paddled so close had I known it was alive and real. Another kayaker told us she had also seen some turtles swimming in the river neaby and that there was a smaller gator with them. So, it seems, we have a growing family of gators in the Rainbow River.

Ira Glickstein

QR Code - Scan Me!

2011-04-16T22:48:00.011-04:00

Wikipedia has a good entry on Quick Response (QR) codes.

OK, your smart phone or iPad has the ability to scan QR codes? You can add me and this Blog to your Contact list by scanning the first image, and add some text information by scanning the second.

These QR codes were generated free at http://www.itmt.co/QR/

You are already seeing these QR codes appearing in magazines and billboards. I plan to put one on my business card. Anyone with a QR-code reader on their photo device can scan the code and go to a specified website, send an email to a specified address, and/or add name, phone, and address information to their Contact list.

Ira Glickstein

The First "Canary in the Coalmine"?

2011-04-12T14:43:00.007-04:00

[From Don Hess. The proprietor of this blog does not necessarily agree with the material in this posting.]

Has the first canary in the coal mine showed up? This past Sunday, two days ago, the Villages Daily Sun featured an article on page A 19 about a disease that's selectively hitting genetically modified crops. It's called Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), and for the past two years has been devastating soybean crops across several states, Iowa being the worst hit.

The story begins with an Iowa farmer whose soybean fields, "where he used seeds developed by Monsanto, and sprayed with its popular glycophosphate weed killer Roundup Ready <(sic), were littered with yellow leaves and dead plants. Four days earlier, the plants had been waist high and emerald green." "Nearby, in fields where he had planted seeds that weren't genetically engineered and didn't use glycophosphates, the soybeans were healthy and lush."

The article goes on to opine that SDS and its supposed cause, a fungus called fusarium solani f.sp. glycine, have been around since the 1970s, but that "last year, after a chilly spring and wet summer, soybean sudden death syndrome raced across the midwest." - and, strongly suggested by the article, singled out those plants produced from Monsanto's seeds. An expert on the disease at Iowa State University, Xiao Bing Yang, "estimated last summer that up to half the state's fields might be infected in varying degrees."

In January, Don M. Huber, an emeritus professor at Purdue University wrote a letter to Tom Vilsack, head of the USDA, asking the Department of Agriculture to investigate. and stating that the threat should be treated as an emergency. As of this last Friday, the Department's reply was that Huber's letter was "forwarded to the correspondence office." The article goes on to state that Huber's letter, which surfaced on the internet in February, starting a "firestorm" of controversy, "has intensified the battle between those who believe technology is the only way to feed a balooning global population, and those who are increasingly fearful that biotechnology is resulting in food that is nutritionally lacking and environmentally dangerous." The article goes on to detail a battle between Monsanto and the biotech "industry" on one side, and scientists, on the other, whose reputations and funding (increasingly sponsored by the industry itself as public funding has dried up in the current economic climate) are threatened by intimidation through industry ridicule, ostracism and loss of funds if they publish research articles which are - to put it euphemistially - "unflattering" to the industry.

In my op-ed piece, "Another view...", last week, I asserted that Monsanto's products were creating a "monoculture" of crops in the U.S. that could subject this nation to famine conditions if one or two diseases appeared that would attack Monsanto produced plants. It appears that this article could be describing the beginning of a pandemic of selective vulnerability that could wipe out those crops and potentially our future food supply. Could the crop failure among soy beans of the past two years be figuratively the first "canary in the coalmine" with regard to the vulnerabilities of biotechnically produced seeds. Read the article for yourself. You decide.

Don Hess

A Heap of Consciousness

2011-04-11T23:28:00.007-04:00

Ira brought up his concept at our recent Philo Club meeting, which he claims he shares with Einstein and Spinoza, that the sum of many consciousnesses is another super consciousness. He uses the fact that the sum of a multitude of neurons constituting the entire brain add up to a consciousness as a proof by analogy.

The trouble with this approach is that it produces the "Problem of the Heap." If there is a heap of grains and one grain is subtracted, does one still have a heap? If the answer is yes, and one keeps subtracting grains, at what point does one cease to have a heap? If one assumes there is a super consciousness, and one subtracts individuals, at what point does the super consciousness disappear? Both problems are born in the concept of vagueness. A heap is a vague concept and so is consciousness.

Joel

The Blogosphere - Millions of Citizen Journalists

2011-04-08T12:31:00.009-04:00

[Based on a presentation by Ira Glickstein to the Philosophy Club, The Villages, FL, 08 April 2011. Powerpoint slides are available HERE]

UNSEAT THE ELITE!

What if everybody had a printing press with worldwide reach at essentially zero cost? Well we do!

The Blogosphere is a growing, multi-million person army of citizen journalists. Anyone can create a blog that can be read by anyone else, instantaneously and worldwide, at essentially no cost.

Technological developments in the past decades have diluted the ownership of the press from a monopoly of the professional, connected, monied elite to a more balanced playing field where ordinary people can reach extraordinary audiences. The elite no longer choose what is "the news of the day".

As the left-hand panel of the graphic indicates, the traditional model has professional authors and reporters, who are assigned by and work for media conglomerates, gathering and reporting the news of the day. Their work is funnelled through the editorial and publications processes of the media conglomerates and is then flushed down upon the people, who the media elite regard as "The Great Unwashed Public". We poor souls at the bottom have no choice but to lap it up. (Yes, there are "Letters to the Editor" and call-ins on Talk Radio, but these are screened and selected by the same media elite who published and broadcast the original stories, so effective views that happen to be contrary may not see the light of day.)

We, now do have a choice. The new model, shown in the right-hand panel, consists of literally hundreds of millions of non-professionals who run blogs out of their homes, and billions of blog readers who may become commenters at the flip of the switch on their PCs and laptops. Bloggers interact with each other on a peer-to-peer basis. Of course there are some blogs with greater readership and influence than others, but it is an almost pure meritocracy. My blog -and yours- is just as convenient to bring up on any computer as the most influential blog in the world!

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

We are fortunate enough to know the exact moment of truth when the media elite decline began. It was late one Saturday night back in January 1998, when, at precisely 11:32:47 PM, Pacific Standard Time, in the kitchen of his apartment in Hollywood, CA, a strange looking fellow named Matt Drudge posted an item to his news aggregation blog. His scoop was the fact that Newsweek Magazine had just spiked a story by veteran reporter Michael Isikoff, apparently for political reasons, because the story was about the then President of the United States and his sexual affair with a young intern named Monica Lewinsky.

Quoting This Day in Tech History: "Almost overnight it seems, traditional news media, especially newspapers, began to lose ground to Internet news sources."

The Drudge Report continues to be one of the most popular websites in the world. I visit it a couple times a day to check on the latest news. Unlike other popular websites, the Drudge Report continues its "plain Jane" style (or lack thereof), linking major media reoports of the news stories I most want to read and sometimes breaking new stories of its own.

MY BLOGOSPHERE PORTFOLIO

I've had a blog since the mid-1900's. The first one I had to code in raw HTML because there were no editors available to me at the time. It is still online at http://pages.prodigy.net/ira/home.htm, frozen in time because I have not had access to it for about seven years.

I currently have four Google Blogs, the one you are reading now, The Vitual Philosophy Club, plus Curb Your Enthusiasm - Fantasy Episodes, 2052 - Life, Liberty and Technology - predictions for the second half of the 21st Century, and 2052-The Hawking Plan, my free online novel.

I also have a dozen Google Knols to my credit, and here is the list. Knols (bits of knowledge) are Google's answer to Wikipedia. Ironically, I started writing Knols after Wikipedia rejected a scholarly item I wrote about Optimal Span. I made the mistake of mentioning that it was based on my PhD Dissertation and one of the Wikipedia volunteer reviewers thought that was inappropriate. It turns out that Wikipedia has a formal review process. My item was challenged, I made changes and appealed the challenge, and some comittee voted and excised my item.

Even though I think their process misfired in my case, overall this experience enhanced my respect for the integrity of Wikipedia items on important topics. Yes, anyone can post misinformation to Wikipedia on unimportant topic areas, but they do have dedicated volunteer reviewers for domains of importance. So, rejected by Wikipedia, I went to Google Knols and posted my Optimal Span item there. (A great example of the efffectiveness of competition in increasing the freedom of choice of writers and audiences!)

Over the past few years, I have posted a dozen Knols on many topics, and they have garnered over 20,000 page views.

Back in December of last year, I became a Guest Contributor at the world's most viewed climate website, Watts Up With That?, which this year was voted Best Science Blog. Since December, I have posted 16 topics, garnering over 90,000 page views, and a few thousand comments. It is quite thrilling, and a bit humbling, to post an item and, within 24 hours, have a few thousand page views and a one- or two-hundred comments!

I'm doing my share promoting the citizen's army of journalists. And by reading (and commenting) on this, you are too!

Ira Glickstein

Another View on the Genetically Modified Food "Controversy"

2011-04-06T16:20:00.009-04:00

[From Don Hess. The proprietor of this Blog does not necessarily agree with this material.]

Friends of the Philosophy Club, Although I wasn't present for Deardra's presentation, I did help her "vet" the slides, and am familiar with her talk. Because of the complexity of the subject and the time constraint on any club presentation, I decided to add this view to fill in a few of what I thought were the "gaps" in Deardra's short prentation.

For those who are truly interested, and who would like some very well presented information, there are four DVD presentations on the dangers GMOs present, and on Monsanto's political revolving door with the USDA, FDA, EPA and Supreme Court.

The swapping of personnel positions between their Monsanto employ and the various agencies of government, including Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, is a matter of record; there is no disputing it. The chronology of the swings in the revolving door is far too synchronized with important decisions made by these bodies to be coincidental.

The DVDs are "The Future of Food", "Food, Inc.", "The World According to Monsanto", and "David Versus Monsanto". If you choose to view them, you will get an understanding of Monsanto's monstrous activites and their destruction of animal and human lives and of the environment.

I presume any personal bias against belief and tendency to dismiss the dangers, the politics, or Monsantos destructive activities might stem from a belief in the benign character of capitalism and the self-policing potential of the "free" market.

But this rogue organization has thwarted all the processes designed to promote the safety of the food that sustains our lives - to the extent of buying up all of its seed competition, intimidating farmers by suing them for "breach of patent" when wind-blown GM seed contaminates their fields planted with organic crops. These processes thwart the normal "market function" (and consumer protection) of "fair" competition. Monsanto has even gone to the extent of inserting policy written by their shills (see below) at the FDA, prohibiting labelling that would allow the consumer a choice to abandon their products.

Currently polls show that more than 53% of consumers would not buy products that included genetically modified (GM) crops IF they KNEW they were present. These crops are now present in 70% of the products in supermarkets, including everything from breakfast cereals to catsup, processed cheeze, peanut butter, salad dressing, soy milk and jelly. The major marketers of milk abandoned milk from cows fed rGBH (also known as rBST) when only 5% of their customers declined to buy it. Without labelling that informs consumers of the presence of genetically modifified grain content, consumers cannot "vote with their feet" and another normal market function is thwarted.

Michael Taylor was one of the FDA's Directors and wrote the policy, still extant today, that prevents labelling of GM products in the USA. Today he occupies a position as "special advisor" in this area to President Obama. The current head of the Department of Agriculture is Tom Vilsack, also a former Monsanto executive. All together about ten of Monsanto's previous officers have also inhabited offices in the various branches of government with decision power in this area.

Monsanto has also attempted to suppress pretigious independent lab studies of the effects of their crops on rats and mice in England (Arpad Pustai) and Russia, and had the research scientists involved fired and muzzled through non-disclosure agreements. Fortunately, Dr. Pustai was released from his agreement after seven months, and within a month and a half after his disclosures on the health of rats fed GM potatoes, most of Europe abandoned the consumption of products containing GM crops.

Monsanto's suits of farmers and their patents on "terminator seeds" - seeds that will NOT germinate to produce the next generation of crops - belie their "benign" image and expose their intentions to force control of the world food supply and its pricing through monopoly. These activities arise from the corporation that has given the world PCBs, DDT, Agent Orange, Dioxin, Aspartame, rBST (bovine growth hormone) and now genetically modified soy, corn, canola, cotton, papayas, zuchinni and sugar beets, and is now attempting to introduce GM alfalfa, which will contaminate organically grown alfalfa within 5 miles of any field containing the GM brand. Can we count on the moral goodwill of such a corporation to protect our food supply?

Currently, there are two bills before Congress for reconciliation, HR 475 and S 510, which attempt to criminalize organic farming and prohibit private gardening. HR 475 was introduced by a House member whose husband is patently employed by a lobbying firm with Monsanto as a client. Monsanto denies any connection with the Senate bill. Fortunately for the possible outcome of reconciliation, an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana would limit the provisions to farms of more than $500 thousand gross a year. But the insideous attempt toward creating monopoly is apparent in Monsanto's interest in these bills.

Monsanto has contributed to the deaths of over 125,000 small Indian cotton growers by buying up all of the competing organic seed suppliers, witholding all that seed from the market, forcing the farmers to buy Monsanto's seed and then jacking up the prices fourfold, causing small farmer bankruptcies, despair and suicides.

Thank God much of Europe and Japan have outlawed their products for human consumption. Those countries will provide a safe repository for seed varieties when this rogue corporation destroys plant diversity to an extent that one or two crop blights in this country will destroy the entire monoculture food producing capacity of this nation - much like the wheat failure several years ago in Russia and the potato famine in Ireland.

It is up to you to draw your own conclusions about this monstrously destructive rogue corporation, but I urge you NOT to do that on the basis of ignorance. You owe it to yourselves to view the information necessary to make sensible judgements. Efforts are underway today, through hearings, to require the Justice Department to break up the monopoly Monsanto holds over the industry. Please take the opportunity to join them if you are persuaded by the information I'm offering here.

Three of the DVDs are available, full lenth, on You Tube under the exact titles I've listed above. Start with the four DVDs above and then investigate further via the internet.

It is YOUR health and YOUR future that are as stake if you are one who permits this organization to continue its evil activities without objection or resistance.

Don Hess

The Genetically Modified Food Controversy

2011-03-29T14:59:00.104-04:00

Gene Transfer

[From Deardra MacDonald - Based on a presentation at the Philosophy Club in The Villages, FL, 25 March 2011. Powerpoint charts are available on video at the end of topic. The proprietor of this Blog does not necessarily agree with this material.]

My main reason for doing this topic at the Philosophy Club was to become familiar with the controversy surrounding the Giant Chemical Corporations, Small Farmers, Activists, and the Consumers. Three months ago I was like most Americans and had absolutely no idea that over the past couple of decades, giant Chemical Corporations has achieved a virtual monopoly on some of the most important seed markets in the United States and the world. So I started with the basic question, “What is a genetically modified seed?" The section that started my education was Wikipedia’s “Genetically Modified Food Controversies”. My research started by just reading this website and trying to absorb, or should I say struggling to understand genetically modified organism controversy! From that point my research took on over 100 website from Universities, Independent Research Centers, Lawsuits, Monsanto vs. Small Farmers, White House Involvement, on and on and on… to many to write in this article.

Consumer’s Fear That No Independent Research Done On Humans

An article by the Center for Research on Globalization Stated, “One of the great mysteries surrounding the spread of genetically modified plants around the world since the first commercial crops were released in the early 1990’s in the USA and Argentina has been the absence of independent scientific studies of possible long-term effects of a diet of GMO plants on humans or even rats. The real reason has now come to light. The genetically modified agribusiness companies like Monsanto, BASF, Pioneer, Syngenta and others prohibit independent research.

An editorial in the respected American scientific monthly magazine, Scientific American, August 2009 reveals the shocking and alarming reality behind the proliferation of genetically modified products throughout the food chain of the planet since 1994. There are no independent scientific studies published in any reputed scientific journal in the world for one simple reason. It is impossible to independently verify that GMO crops such as Monsanto Roundup Ready Soybeans or MON8110 GMO maize perform as the company claims, or that, as the company also claims, that they have no harmful side effects because the GMO companies forbid such tests! They are covered by the US constitution patent protection, allowing a monopoly of that invention for 20 years. The Internet is the places to go to find out about the research and risks.

The Revolving Door Policy George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama

The support between Monsanto and White House is unprecedented in the history of corporations. Monsanto is an American company; its headquarters is located in Saint Louis, Missouri. “ A statement was made by our President in 1992 proclaimed that genetically modified seed is “substantially equivalent” to non-GMO seeds”. The genetically modified seed was approved in the United States beginning with our President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and supported by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. High Level Connections.

Small Farmer and Monsanto Contract

The contract has been call by activist and farmer An Ironclad Contract. It is a contract that profits Monsanto. This contract is fundamentally unfair to farmers. Ironclad Contract What needs to be understood is that it is also fundamentally unfair to society, we the consumers are the third unrepresented party to such because we end up consuming the products of this agreement.

People have said if working with Monsanto is so difficult, farmers should just plant conventional seeds. That sounds like an easy fix, but where are they going to get the seed? The Center for Research on Globalization explains why Monsanto keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds. Monsanto has bought up the seed companies across the Midwest. They’ve written Monsanto Seed Laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible. Monsanto is pushing the law that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops.

Small Farmer vs. Monsanto Lawsuits

Whenever you see the words Small Farmer and Monsanto in the same article, it is describing a lawsuit against small farmer by Monsanto. Monsanto is filing lawsuits around the world. See what Vandana Shiva from India says about small farmers. Vandana Shiva: The Future of Food-Part 1 Vandana Shiva Video.

Monsanto's efforts to prosecute farmers can be divided into three stages: investigations of farmers, out-of-court settlements, and litigation against farmers Monsanto believes are in breach of contract or engaged in patent infringement. Monsanto has set aside an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers.

Activist rally for labeling all genetically modified.

This is where the Activist and consumers have rallied together and have signed petitions to label all foods that have been genetically modified. Allergic reactions are a real concern of genetic engineering because it may transfer new proteins into foods, causing allergic reactions and many other symptoms in human. Since law does not regulate labeling genetically engineered food, those who have known allergies will have no way of identifying the contents of their food. The first Taco Bell crisis and the mixing of genetically altered corn not approved for human consumption into the nation's corn supply reveals how poorly government regulators have been doing their job. It was biotech opponents, not the FDA, who discovered that Taco Bell brand taco shells -- made by Kraft and sold in grocery stores -- was contaminated with animal seed Cry9C corn, marketed by the French biotechnology company Aventis under the name StarLink. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved StarLink in 1998 for use in animal feed or non-food industrial purposes only.

Where does the American Medical Association Stand on Genetically Modified Food

When I talk about the giant Chemical Corporation and genetically modified food, the first response I get back from other people always centers on a similar comment. People say that doesn’t make sense? Why would the American Medical Association support a corporation that produces a product that could be potentially harmful to humans? Then I patiently… remind people of the support that both the doctors and American Medical Association sided completely with the Giant Tobacco Corporations. The Journal of the American Medical Association published it advertisements of the safety of smoking in the early 1930’s. In medical journals and in the popular media, one of the most infamous cigarette advertising slogans was associated with the Camel brand: "More doctor smoke Camels than any other cigarette." The campaign began in 1946 and ran for eight years in magazines and on the radio. They are still bills in the House and Senate today trying to pass stronger wording against tobacco. Tobacco Regulations

When I put in “American Medical Association and Monsanto” using Google search engine, the first 3 websites on American Medical Association and Monsanto are on Monsanto’s letterhead? After the first 3 website then came the flood of websites reporting negative information. I selected this video under the topic American Medical Association and Monsanto: Video.

Summary

It is up to each person to decide what side of the “Controversy” they support. It is mandatory that consumers have a good understanding of “both sides” of this controversy because over 60% of what you buy in the grocery store is genetically modified food and ends up on your dinner table. This new genetically modified organism in our food has not been tested on humans. It will take generations to determine which side of this controversy is right?

Deardra MacDonald

Press for full screen.

Nuke Tsunami Makes Clean Coal Look Better

2011-03-18T12:27:00.005-04:00

I've just published this over at Watts Up With That?

The recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which shut down several reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, followed by a failure of the backup cooling systems that resulted in hydrogen gas explosions and fires, has me re-evaluating my support for nuclear power.

Don’t get me wrong, I still favor nuclear power as part of what Sen. John McCain called an “all of the above” energy policy. We need all the energy we can get to power a vibrant, growing world economy. Our energy future should include nuclear along with clean coal, gas, oil, and renewables, as well as improved energy efficiency and usage. I welcomed the recent resurgence in interest in building more nuclear power plants in the US, a policy supported by both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Obama re-iterated that support a day ago.

Read the rest HERE and please comment here or go over there to join what will soon be many dozens of commenters and hundreds of page viewers. (Click here to see all my Watts Up Topics).

Ira Glickstein

Golf and Philosophy: Lessons from the Links

2011-03-15T00:11:00.008-04:00

[from Andy Wible]

I enjoyed giving a talk at the Villages’ Philosophy Club on February 25th on some of the issues raised in my new book Golf and Philosophy: Lessons from the Links. I have been a lifelong golfer and I currently teach philosophy at Muskegon Community College. So, I decided to bring my two lifelong passions together in the book. I don’t think any other sport affects fundamental philosophical issues in our lives like golf. Golf affects where we live, such as the Villages and often who we our friends are. Also, unlike most other sports, we can play it nearly all our lives. The Power point presentation that on the book I gave is available at: http://www.muskegoncc.edu/PDFFiles/C&P_Arts/Wible_Villages.pdf The narrative below is a sketch of the lecture that accompanied the slides.

I started the talk by explaining a common theme that runs through the book and philosophy in general. The theme is the importance of finding the essence of a concept. The essence is what makes something what it is. Let’s look at a simple example. There are many different tables in the world, but what makes them all tables? One might say it is a flat surface with four legs. But four legs do not seem to be necessary for being a table. So, “four legs” should not be part of our definition of table. A flat surface is not enough for being a table for we know the floor is a flat surface and is not a table. To get the full essence of a concept, we are looking for the necessary (required) conditions that are jointly sufficient (enough). A better answer might be that a table is an elevated flat surface (this is close to what the dictionary says). This definition is closer to the truth but still does not seem to be sufficient for some things like buildings fulfill this definition.

We can use this conceptual framework to look at the essence of golf. The Casey Marin court case was an examination of the essence of golf. The question was whether giving Martin a cart would change the nature or essence of the game. If it did, then the cart legally did not need to be given. Is walking a necessary condition of golf? Many argued it was. Of course, many people use carts and are still playing golf. So, on the surface it seems that he should be given the cart given his disability (the majority on the Supreme Court agreed). It is a tough issue though, because we might argue that walking is an essential part of “professional golf” where greater excellence is demanded.

A similar issue is whether golf is a sport. Some have argued that it is not because there is not as much of a physical requirement as sports such as football or basketball. A cart clearly would change the nature of those sports. Running though does not seem to be a necessary condition of playing a sport. A tennis player who walks to her shots is still playing tennis. So, what makes some games qualify as sports? In chapter 15, Holt and Holt suggest that a sport be defined as a competitive game of inclusively gross physical skill. Do you think that this definition provides the necessary and sufficient conditions of the concept “sport?” If they are on the right track, then we can safely say golf is a sport.

We next turned ways golf can teach us about big issues in life. The first way golf can help us to understand personal identity or who we are. What makes me who I am? Why am I the same person as five years ago even though I have changed? If I change and yet remain the same, then whatever changed in me is not who I am essentially. That quality that changed was not a necessary condition of who I am. For example, many people say that their jobs make them who they are. “I am Joe the Plumber.” It is true that many peoples’ identities are influenced by their work, but we are not essentially our work. If someone changes his job he is still that person. We are also not our body or our soul for we could change our body or soul and still be the same person.

Golf helps us to get a better understanding of who we are by noticing the importance of memories when playing. If we remember a bad short putt, then that memory causes our current self to shiver over the next short putt. The reason is that we largely are our memories. I am who I am because of the memories that I have. If you lose all your memories, then you are no longer the same person (we often say that Alzheimer’s patients are not the same person, but cancer patients are the same person.). This theory of personal identity is not perfect for I could have false memories of something that I never did. I might remember playing golf with my Grandfather at Doral, but there could be good evidence that I never did.

Nonetheless, it does seem closer to the truth. Philosophy does not always give us the right answer, but attempts to get us closer to the truth.

We next turned our discussion to the meaning of life (chapter 16 of the book). I asked whether living a happy life is sufficient to living a meaningful life. One problem with saying that happiness if sufficient for a meaningful life is that a happy immoral person could be said to have a meaningful life. I think most of us would think that he does not for a generally moral life is necessary to live a meaningful life. Golf can again help see this. Our most meaningful rounds are not the ones where we cheat and win the bet we make with opponents. Our most meaningful rounds tend to be the ones where we did the right thing and achieved moral and physical excellence. We also looked into friendships and how golf (done right) can help us to make meaningful friends (moral friends).

I concluded by looking at ethics and golf. Does golf make us more or less moral persons? Beller and Stole argue in chapter 5 that golf is the one sport that the more people play it, the better their moral reasoning skills become. Other sports seem to have the opposite effect. Why is this? Is it correct? I think it might be due to players calling their own rules and the history and civility demanded by the game. Lumpkin talks of an interesting result of this data in chapter 7 of the book. She says that golf is the one sport that the professionals are moral than the amateurs when they play. The pro basketball player would never say that he fouled another player, but an amateur commonly does. In golf, amateurs touch their golf balls all the time for a better lie, but pros never do.

I don’t mean to make golf sound perfect. We know the elitism, racism, and sexism that has plagues the sport. As one questioner nicely pointed also pointed out, “Couldn’t be we doing something better with our time and money? Are we isolating ourselves from more important issues?” We should work to make golf overcome these problems. Some attempts are out there. The First Tee program helps to diversify the sport and the PGA tour has given over a billion dollars to charity. Pushing ourselves and others in the sport to do better is essential to preserving and improving the game.

Thank you allowing me to talk about golf and philosophy. More in-depth analysis and topics are available in the book which is available at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or can ordered by your local bookstore. The Villages is directly mentioned in the book. Can you find it? Comments and questions about all these topics or the book are welcome!

First Amendment Rights and Responsibilities

2011-03-06T14:37:00.016-05:00

[from Don Hess]

I’ve hosted a group in The Villages called the World Affairs Forum for almost 4 years. Ira and I have had a few conversations and he’s given me the “keys” to contribute occasionally to the conversation here. Thanks Ira for the chance to present what will probably be provocative - and maybe controversial – views.

With regard to my views today, I’ve got to make the disclaimer that I’m no legal scholar or “expert” in any way; just a guy who is interested in being governed fairly and well and being a good citizen of this country and the world.

It seems to me that there are issues today that deserve our serious attention, and that many of them get ignored in the noise of what is euphemistically called “debate”. What I’d like to talk about is HOW we debate and whether that is productive of any real solutions or not.

It has been said that it is a “curse” to live in “interesting” times. The events of the past several months here and around the world lead pretty convincingly to the belief that those are certainly the kind of times we are living in. The curse is in trying to understand them.

In Tunisia and Egypt, in Yemen and Bahrain, in Jordan, Syria and Algeria there have been uprisings against dictators – both “benevolent” rulers and tyrants – in the region. The uprisings no doubt, currently have their origins in the terrible economic conditions of our times. But the historical causes have certainly been oppression and corruption. “Freedom” has been the cry of the protestors …the freedom of Democracy and self-rule.

So we are asking ourselves why this is happening now. Why not decades ago? Some of these tyrants have been in power for three (Mubarack), or four (Khaddafi) decades. In Iran, whose Green Revolution foreshadowed by months the revolutions of today, the Mullahs have been in power for over 30 years since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978. So why now?

I believe the answer is freedom of speech - not that “that” has been granted by the tyrants who maintained their tight control through a monopoly on communications - but that it has simply been taken by the protestors through the power of new technologies – satellite T.V. and cell-phones, the internet, and Facebook - that transcend the powers and borders of state control. And now the citizens of those countries, using the freedom of speech that they’ve ripped from the dictators, are dying in a fight to win the other freedoms of Democracy that we’ve enjoyed and taken for granted for a couple of hundred years since our Revolution.

John Kennedy, in his inaugural speech fifty years ago, declared that “the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.” And in the same speech he also declared that, “We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.” (and that we, as a nation, are) “…unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

So today, while others die to gain the liberties we have been assured in our Constitution's Bill of Rights, I would like to look at what is “at issue” in this country of ours with regard to what James Madison declared the “most important of rights” – the 1st Amendment right to Freedom of Speech.

The 1st Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition their Government for a redress of grievances.”

Aside from religion, there are two issues here; freedom of speech (personal and press) and freedom of assembly - for the redress of grievances. In the current events of the past few months and weeks we have seen both several efforts to exercise these rights and some challenges to this exercise.

We have seen the exercise of that right in the face of world government secrecy by Julian Assange of Wikileaks. (Please go to "You Tube" and type in "60 Minutes" + "Assange" to see a 30 minute interview with Steve Croft and Julian Assange).

That exercise has been challenged in our country by our Defense Department, State Department and Department of Justice. There are those among our politicians who have called him a traitor and a terrorist and demanded his execution because his actions put in jeopardy those in our military, diplomatic and intelligence services. But the questions he has raised may have really helped bring about the revolutions for democracy in the Middle East by exposing cables between Arab rulers and our State and Defense Departments.

So the questions to be asked about the “issue” of freedom of speech concerning Wikileaks, I believe, are the following.

Is government (or corporate) secrecy really covert censorship of the 1st Amendment right in this country?
Does revelation of secrets (aside from redacting the names of combatants, CIA “operatives” or their foreign contacts) really pose a danger to our country? If so, why and who should make that decision - the government or the publisher of such secrets? And if so, would more transparency among governments as to their dealings with each other lessen such danger?
Are our laws and the enforcement of them adequate to protect “whistleblowers” both outside and inside of government or do we need organizations like Wikileaks to protect them? Does that “whistleblower” have the right to make the determination of “abuse”? If not, who does?
If the primary reason for “whistleblowers” supplying documents to Wikileaks is their firm belief that there is not enough internal transparency or external forces (co-opted media) to enforce disclosure, does the “whistleblower” have a duty to force that disclosure through supplying Wikileaks with secret data?
Should a “publisher” such as Assange, be free of prosecution if he does not either seek or pay for particular information, but simply makes himself a conduit for those who offer it?

Meanwhile, here at home we have seen the exercise of the 1st Amendment right of assembly for “redress of grievances” against the government actions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. The same example of peaceful conduct has been observed in these protests as was set in the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. And yet there has been a consideration of attempts to provoke and thwart that good conduct revealed in a “prank” conversation between Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and a Boston blogger. The reason Walker said he decided not to use “troublemakers” as Mubarack did in Egypt was a practical one - not a moral one - the “public” was getting irritated with what had already gone on. Then he shut the capitol to protestors.

Maybe it will seem that it’s a bit of a “stretch” to equate an attempt at union-busting to free speech. But perhaps you will recall that last year the Supreme Court, in a decision called Citizens United, decided that money was equivalent to free speech. I doubt that when the Bill of Rights was written there was a consideration of the enormous power of corporations. All politics and the spread of information about it - through newspapers - was local. Editors were fiercely independent, and there was little chance of corporate control of media.

Today huge corporations have huge budgets to influence elections, and the decision in Citizens United gave them even more opportunity through making it possible for them to fund “ads” against or for any candidate – out of their “general” revenues - through 3rd party organizations. Only a weak provision for “disclosure” of funding sources for these organizations prevents total secrecy about who is “pulling the strings” in any campaign and thwarts investigation into what reason for that is.

So, money is now the power behind the huge “megaphone” available to corporations and unions that wish to heavily influence the electoral process. But, if the unions can be “busted”, and the provision for dues “checkoff” taken from them and therefore their political contributions, then the playing field is heavily, and I believe unfairly tilted toward corporations whose funds come from profits and are paid for by the very consumers who buy their products and who may very well not agree with the corporate political purposes.

Do you suppose that could be a reason for the fight in Wisconsin? Do we suppose that using consumer money is any more “fair” than using “taxpayer” money (an allegation which has proven to be a false conflation with union dues)? Do we want to condone by silent witness the actions of a government of the sort Wisconsin has shown itself to be? Is the Golden Rule not the rule by which we, ourselves, would LIKE to be treated? If we allow others to be treated in an inferior or underhanded way, can we expect more for ourselves and OUR objectives?

The final thing I would like to talk about today is responsibility in return for privilege. Is a right always a “RIGHT” under ANY circumstances without ANY obligation to use it responsibly? Is “hate” speech a responsible use, or an ABUSE of the 1st Amendment right? Does this “right” require “us” to “give up” something (our personal prejudices and bad behavior) in order to get something (freedom to express ourselves fully, usefully and responsibly)?

Let me propose a simple example of what I mean. We are all familiar with the “right” to proceed with a green traffic light. But that “right” denies a person from proceeding who is coming from a different direction and is faced with a “red”. This is a rule that is agreed upon by everyone. It is easy to understand because its violation will produce physical consequences that will ruin somebody’s day.

But it seems to me, that with regard to the equally consequential right of free speech, because it is more esoteric, and the consequences are not so vivid and immediate, that we all now wish to shout “freedom” and ignore the obligation to act responsibly. Here are a few examples:

An assistant Attorney General for the state of Indiana – a high public official with an obligation for leadership in the public eye – recently “tweeted” that he favored the use of “live ammunition” in dealing with the protestors in Wisconsin. He followed this up by declaring in an interview that, “Hell yes, I’m for the use of deadly force.” Imagine THIS in the United States of America which has inveighed heavily very recently AGAINST the use of deadly force in Egypt and Libya. Needless to say, the man was fired. Someone at some level - probably Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels - had the good sense to exercise the responsibility that this official wouldn’t.

In another example of hate speech, at a rally by Paul Broun, a member of Congress in Georgia, an “elderly” man asked, “Who is going to shoot Obama”. Instead of taking a position of moral leadership and rebuking the man, the representative “allowed”, that, yes, “I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year.” It took him three days to realize that what he had tacitly condoned for another by his refusal to rebuke, could help create a climate in which the same thing could happen to himself as happened to Gabriel Giffords in Tucson, and which he was condoning by his silence for Obama. At the end of three days his staff issued a disclaimer.

So, I would like to ask whether, by the actions described above in Wisconsin, Indiana and Georgia, we are creating a climate of irresponsibility in this country that will “witness” and “permit the slow undoing of those human rights” which we have been greatly privileged to enjoy and which were paid for by the blood of generations before us as they are being paid for in our time by the blood of those who are fighting for them today in the Middle East.

George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright, journalist, critic, and Nobel Laureate once wrote, “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve”. I think we all, in this nation, will determine by our present behavior, by our attitudes and behavior toward our “rights”, and by our civility, or lack of it, toward each other, just what kind of government it is that we “deserve” and wish to preserve for future generations.

I hope that we will, in the future, treat our problems with the seriousness and responsibility they deserve and not just give lip service to their solution while each demanding we have our own way. I believe it will be only through courtesy, civility and cooperation that they can be solved. God help us if we don’t realize that and practice those qualities in our discourse and in our politics, and insist on them from our leaders.

Don Hess

Runaway Trolley - Applied to End of Life Issues

2011-02-27T12:41:00.012-05:00

The Runaway Trolley thought experiment was introduced in a previous Topic, on this Blog.

The basic lesson was that there are situations where it is quite ethical to take an action that saves (or benefits) a number of people, even if that action has, as an inevitable side effect, the death (or detriment) of a smaller number of people.

This posting has to do with End of Life Issues, and how we might apply the lesson of the Runaway Trolley to the public-funded medical care system. An earlier posting related the Runaway Tolley to Criminal Recidivism

POWERPOINT SHOW AVAILABLE

Click HERE to download a narrated PowerPoint Show that includes animated charts for the Runaway Trolley thought experiment. After the Runaway Trolley is explored, the charts continue and apply the ethical lesson to two real-world issues: 1) Criminal Recidivism and 2) End of Life Issues. The PowerPoint Show is based on a talk I gave to The Philosophy Club at The Villages, FL, on 04 February 2011. NOTE: The Powerpoint Show is Narrated and plays and advances automatically after download to your computer.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S VIEWS

President Obama, in a moment of unusual candor, expressed his views on end-of-life health care for those with chronic or terminal illness, published in the New York Times Magazine in April 2009. (full text from NY Times website, see section V). I have reproduced the text of that section at the end of this posting. [Some material here is from my earlier posting END-OF-LIFE: Honest Brokers (not Death Panels :^)]

DIRECT OBAMA QUOTES

“… government can … be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. … when it comes to Medicare and Medicade, where the taxpayers are footing the bill …

“… using comparative-effectiveness studies as a way of reining in costs, …

“… the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here. …

“…there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. … you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S GRANDMOTHER

As a case-in-point, the President brought up the hip replacement received by his terminally-ill grandmother mere weeks before she passed away. During his campaign, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then, probably due to a mild stroke, she fell and broke her hip. Her condition was analyzed by her doctors who told her she had three to nine months to live due to the cancer. They also told her that a weak heart posed risks for the invasive surgery hip replacement.

In the absence of cost-effectiveness data or guidelines to the contrary, she chose the hip replacement, which was approved by Medicare and done mostly at public expense. She passed away two weeks later, sadly just days before Obama won. It appears the stress of the operation may have shortened her life by several months.

I don't know if Obama's grandmother got approval for the hip replacement because she was related to a prominent person. That would be bad enough, but it would be even worse if we are giving hip replacements and other stressful and expensive treatments to all terminally ill grandmothers and grandfathers.

QUOTING THE PRESIDENT AGAIN

"... in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. ... So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here."

QUALITY ADUSTED LIFE YEARS

A concept called "Quality Adjusted Life Years" (QALY) is in use in the UK and, IMHO, should be adapted for use in the US. The basic idea is to estimate, before approving very expensive, public-funded medical procedures, the probability the procedure will be successful, and, if successful, the number of years the recipient is likely to live and the subjective quality of those years.

Subjective quality is a difficult measure. Fortunately for us, based on experience and practice in the UK and elsewhere, there are fairly well-established guidelines. For example, mobility is an issue in quality of life. If a person is able to walk without assistance that is better than being wheelchair-bound, and a wheel chair is better than being bedridden. Being alert and awake and mentally competent is better than lack of those qualities. Being able to take food by mouth is better than IV, etc.

In the UK, if each QALY is estimated to cost less than about $40,000, and if the recipient wants the medical procedure, it is approved for public funding. On the other hand, if the cost is more than $40,000 per QALY, or if the recipient does not want the procedure, only palliative care, consisting of pain management along with love and attention, is provided, even if this level of care will reduce the likely life span of the patient.

The QALY concept may also be utilized to compare alternative treatment options. For example, if medical treatment procedure A will cost substantially more per QALY than medical treatment procedure B, only B will be approved, even if both are under the $40,000 limit.

Examples:

1) Alice is a candidate for treatment A that is estimated to cost $150K for the treatment and care, has a probability of success of 80%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 60%. Based on her age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Alice has a life expectancy of 10 years. The calculation gives her QALY = 5 years, so each QALY will cost about $31,000, which is below the limit of $40,000. The Treatment A is therefore approved for public funding if Alice is willing to accept it.

2) Bob is a candidate for treatment B that is estimated to cost $90K for the treatment and care, has a probability of success of 50%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 40%. Based on his age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Bob has a life expectancy of 5 years. The calculation gives him QALY = 1 year, so each QALY will cost about $90,000, which is above the limit of $40,000. The Treatment A is therefore NOT approved for public funding and Bob is entitled to palliative care only.

3) Carl is a candidate for treatment C that is estimated to cost $50K, or treatment D that is estimated to cost $100K.

Treatment C has a probability of success of 90%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 60%. Based on his age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Carl has a life expectancy of 5 years. The calculation gives him QALY = 3 years, so each QALY will cost about $19,000, which is below the limit of $40,000.

Treatment D has a probability of success of 80%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 70%. Based on his age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Carl has a life expectancy of 5 years. The calculation gives him QALY = 3 years, so each QALY will cost about $36,000, which is below the limit of $40,000.

Both treatment C and D are below the limit of $40,000 per QALY, but C is substantially less expensive and, therefore, only treatment C is approved for public funding if Carl is willing to accept it.

A STORY MY FATHER TOLD ME

Once upon a time, there was a boy in China and he saw his father carrying a large basket on his shoulders. "What do you have in the basket?" he asked.

"Well," said the father, "It is your grandfather."

"What are you doing with grandpa?" asked the boy.

"Well," he replied sadly, "Your grandfather is quite old and he is so sick that we cannot take care of him anymore, so I am going to dump him in the river."

The boy thought about it awhile, and then he said: "OK, Dad, ... But remember to bring back the basket!"

Of course the point of the story is that the boy will learn from his father's actions and will, when the time comes, uses that same basket to dispatch his father.

When my mom's cancer roared up after a year of chemo and radiation, she decided to accept only palliative care. Our family travelled to San Francisco where they lived and said goodby. Hospice provided morphene and a hospital bed for their apartment. We spoke by phone every evening for about a month until she passed away.

My dad made it clear that was what he wanted when the time came.

About five years later he had a stroke and fell and was taken to the hospital where an MRI confirmed a major bleeding in his brain that was terminal. He could not speak or hear or see and was being kept alive with IV hydration and nutrition and oxygen to help his breathing. My brother and I asked the doctors to remove all artificial life support, including the IV and oxygen, and he passed away a few days later.

I have asked my children to do the same for me when the time comes. "Remember to bring back the basket!"

ACT! OR FATE?

If we Accept FATE?

Do next to nothing to change US health care.

Health care not fair.

Given medical advances, End of Life costs escalate out of control.

Neo-natal care and preventative care are under-funded.

USA goes bankrupt (like Greece, hedonistic socialism).

If we ACT!

Enact QALY End of Life guidelines.

Health care is more fair.

Given medical advances, End of Life costs are controlled.

Neo-natal and preventative care are well-funded.

USA avoids bankruptcy.

Death with dignity and loving care.

CONCLUSIONS

Although I did not vote for him, and oppose much of his economic policy, I agree with President Obama's remarks on end-of-life treatment.

I wish he and his Democratic allies would be similarly honest and I wish the Republicans who are characterizing the issue as "pulling the plug on granny" would be more thoughtful and helpful and honest as well.

I do not like to hear people call these "honest broker" government medical and ethical tribunals "death panels". However, the 'honest broker" guidelines, when imposed on Medicare and other public-funded medical decisions, will, in effect, cause many of the terminally and chronically ill to be given palliative treatments that will undoubtedly shorten their lives.

Whatever you call them, I believe we need ethical end-of-life guidelines to prevent doctors and hospitals from ordering expensive treatments that are not cost-effective (and that may be done more for reasons of fear of malpractice suits and/or simple greed to increase their incomes).

I am not if favor of further nationalization of US health care. However, with Medicare the primary payer for nearly all of us over 65, we need national guidelines to prevent the program from going bankrupt. (See this and this for more details on my views of what we really need in cost-effective health care reform.)

Let us take the ethical lessons of the Runaway Trolley to heart and ACT! rather than accept the hand of FATE?

Ira Glickstein

PS: For the record, and in case the NY Times takes the page linked above out of their free access, here is the full text of the applicable section of the document from which I quoted Pressident Obama's words.

V. Post-Reform Health care
You have suggested that health care is now the No. 1 legislative priority. It seems to me this is only a small generalization — to say that the way the medical system works now is, people go to the doctor; the doctor tells them what treatments they need; they get those treatments, regardless of cost or, frankly, regardless of whether they’re effective. I wonder if you could talk to people about how going to the doctor will be different in the future; how they will experience medical care differently on the other side of health care reform.
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I do think consumers have gotten more active in their own treatments in a way that’s very useful. And I think that should continue to be encouraged, to the extent that we can provide consumers with more information about their own well-being — that, I think, can be helpful.
I have always said, though, that we should not overstate the degree to which consumers rather than doctors are going to be driving treatment, because, I just speak from my own experience, I’m a pretty-well-educated layperson when it comes to medical care; I know how to ask good questions of my doctor. But ultimately, he’s the guy with the medical degree. So, if he tells me, You know what, you’ve got such-and-such and you need to take such-and-such, I don’t go around arguing with him or go online to see if I can find a better opinion than his.
And so, in that sense, there’s always going to be an asymmetry of information between patient and provider. And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. And certainly that’s true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control.
And right now we’re footing the bill for a lot of things that don’t make people healthier.
THE PRESIDENT: That don’t make people healthier. So when Peter Orszag and I talk about the importance of using comparative-effectiveness studies (see note below) as a way of reining in costs, that’s not an attempt to micromanage the doctor-patient relationship. It is an attempt to say to patients, you know what, we’ve looked at some objective studies out here, people who know about this stuff, concluding that the blue pill, which costs half as much as the red pill, is just as effective, and you might want to go ahead and get the blue one. And if a provider is pushing the red one on you, then you should at least ask some important questions.
Won’t that be hard, because of the trust that people put in their doctors, just as you said? Won’t people say, Wait a second, my doctor is telling me to take the red pill, and the government is saving money by saying take the blue —
THE PRESIDENT: Let me put it this way: I actually think that most doctors want to do right by their patients. And if they’ve got good information, I think they will act on that good information.
Now, there are distortions in the system, everything from the drug salesmen and junkets to how reimbursements occur. Some of those things government has control over; some of those things are just more embedded in our medical culture. But the doctors I know — both ones who treat me as well as friends of mine — I think take their job very seriously and are thinking in terms of what’s best for the patient. They operate within particular incentive structures, like anybody else, and particular habits, like anybody else.
And so if it turns out that doctors in Florida are spending 25 percent more on treating their patients as doctors in Minnesota, and the doctors in Minnesota are getting outcomes that are just as good — then us going down to Florida and pointing out that this is how folks in Minnesota are doing it and they seem to be getting pretty good outcomes, and are there particular reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing? — I think that conversation will ultimately yield some significant savings and some significant benefits.
Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —
Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.
THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.
So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.
And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.
I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.
And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.
THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.
So how do you — how do we deal with it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Note: Comparative-effective studies — which are now done by academic researchers, but not systematically across the medical system — review data to determine which widely used treatments do not improve outcomes and which effective treatments are not used often enough.

Runaway Trolley - Applied to Criminal Recidivism

2011-02-16T22:00:00.005-05:00

The Runaway Trolley thought experiment was introduced in a previous Topic on this Blog.

The basic lesson was that there are situations where it is quite ethical to take an action that saves (or benefits) a number of people, even if that action has, as an inevitable side effect, the death (or detriment) of a smaller number of people.

This posting has to do with Criminal Recidivism, and how we might apply the lesson of the Runaway Trolley to the justice system.

POWERPOINT SHOW AVAILABLE

Click HERE to download a narrated PowerPoint Show that includes animated charts for the Runaway Trolley thought experiment. After the Runaway Trolley is explored, the charts continue and apply the ethical lesson to two real-world issues: 1) Criminal Recidivism and 2) End of Life Issues. This posting covers Criminal Recidivism only. A subsequent posting will cover End of Life Issues. The PowerPoint Show is based on a talk I gave to The Philosophy Club at The Villages, FL, on 04 February 2011. NOTE: The Powerpoint Show is Narrated and plays and advances automatically after download to your computer.

WAS MAIMONIDES RIGHT ABOUT CRIMINAL JUSTICE?

Moses Maimonides, the 11th Century Rabbi and medical doctor shown in the sketch above, is one of the most highly regarded ethical teachers in Jewish tradition. He famously wrote that it was better to let 1000 guilty go free rather than wrongly convict a single innocent. Do you agree with that ideal? Is an error rate of 1/1000 the correct standard for a criminal justice system?

Juries in criminal cases are charged with the responsibility to convict only if the evidence meets the standard of being beyond a reasonable doubt. The 1/1000 standard corresponds to a certainty of 99.9%. Is that a good working definition for beyond a reasonable doubt? Is that number too high? For example, in civil cases, the standard is the preponderance of the evidence, which means, if one side proves its case to a certainty of 51%, the other side loses. Is 51% a good working definition for beyond a reasonable doubt?

Well, Benjamin Franklin, US Founding Father, said the number of guilty released to save one innocent from being wrongly convicted was 100, which corresponds to 99%. William Blackstone, the 18th century jurist who codified British Common Law, said the correct value was 10, corresponding to 90% certainty. Benjamin Cardozo, 19th century US Supreme Court Justice, said the number was 5, corresponding to 80% certainty. And, Voltaire, the 18th century French philosopher, said the number was 1, corresponding to 50% certainty.

How in the world can so many respected men have such different standards for criminal justice? How may we use the Runaway Trolley to arrive at a reasonable number?

CRIMINAL RECIDIVISM RATES

The graphic lists criminal recidivism rates for a number of crimes. Notice that nearly all violent crimes, including assault, murder, robbery, and sex crimes have recidivism rates above 50%. That means that, when a person has been convicted of a violent crime and has served his sentence and is released, there is a greater than 50% likelihood that he will commit another violent crime, be caught, and convicted again.

FUTURE VICTIMS CONDEMNED BY FAILURE OF JUSTICE

Criminal Recidivism rates for violent crimes teach us that, every time we release two convicts, we are, in essence, condemning at least one innocent to become the victim of a future crime. The number of innocents condemned is probably considerably larger than one because: 1) Many violent crimes have more than one victim, and 2) The released convict is likely to commit more than one violent crime before being caught and convicted again.

Extending this lesson to criminal trials, if, after weighing the evidence of a violent crime we the jury believe there is a greater than 50% likelihood the defendant is guilty, we should vote him guilty!

If there is only a 51% chance he is actually guilty, and we release him on a technicality or because we feel sympathy for him, and it turns out he was actually guilty, we are denying justice not only to his victims in the current case, but there is a high likelihood we are also condemning future victims to violence.

If we convict him on 51% certainty, and he turns out to have actually been innocent, we are doing a serious injustice to an innocent man. But, what is the likelihood he is totally innocent? Unless corrupt police have purposely framed him (in which case they would most likely have manufactured overwhelming evidence, which is not the case here), we are probably dealing with a person who has an extensive rap sheet and other indicators he has not lead a respectable life. He may not be guilty of this particular crime, but his incarceration will not be much of a loss to society - certainly not as much as the death or serious injury for one or more totally innocent victims if we make a mistake and release someone who is actually guilty.

The justice system is so dominated by lawyers and legal technicalities that rich people with clever lawyers can literally get away with murder, as many of us think happened to OJ Simpson.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1) Reform the Court System. Change the rules of evidence. Make it harder to get off on a technicality or with a clever lawyer.

2) Change the way we handle people convicted of violent crimes. DO NOT release them after their sentence is served. Keep them in some type of work camp.

3) Perhaps modern technology provides a humane and affordable solution for dealing with released convicts and others with extensive rap sheets. Stick a chip up their butt so they may be tracked for the rest of their lives. If there is certainty they will be caught and convicted if they commit any kind of infraction, they may learn to stay on the straight and narrow.

My free online novel, 2052 - The Hawking Plan, envisages a society, several decades from now, when everybody "voluntarily" carries an RFID device that effectively tracks their every move and activity.

Does that sound too drastic? Well how about your total lack of privacy right now? Those of us with homes and computers and cell phones and cars and jobs are effectively tracked by various computers and video cameras as we go on with our lives. We leave video and computer records dozens of times every day. The only people who have any privacy anymore are the drifters and criminal class, one of whom is likely to steal your car or credit card!

NOTE: Subsequent postings in this series will extend this lesson to the real-world situation of End of Life Issues.

Ira Glickstein

Picking Howard Pattee's Brain (He says he enjoys it)

2011-02-08T22:54:00.010-05:00

A person who calls him-or-her-self "Nikman" showed up with a Comment at A Previous Topic on this Blog, and had some great things to say about our regular participant, Prof. Howard Pattee.

I think this deserves a new Topic. Here is what we have so far:

nikman said... I stumbled across this blog for the first time a few minutes ago and discovered that Howard Pattee is posting.

I don't know what more to say right now. Except that there should be a system in place enabling us to pick his brain regularly on a vast array of topics relating to the philosophy of science. If he doesn't want that he should have posted using a pseudonym. You reap what you sow, dude. [Nickman] February 6, 2011 9:23 PM

Ira Glickstein said... Thanks Nickman for your positive comments on a regular here, Prof. Howard Pattee. Howard was Chairman of my PhD committee at Binghamton University. I consider it a real privilege to have him as a continuing positive influence in my life.

Please let us know how you know Howard. We can always use intelligent and courteous Comments here, so please join us.

Ira Glickstein February 6, 2011 11:29 PM

nikman said... IIRC [If I Remember Correctly] it began with "Artificial Life Needs a Real Epistemology" which was almost literally a breath of fresh air. At last, something besides all those stultifying functionalists.

The best thing up till then had been another HP, Hilary Putnam, who's still not chopped liver. More recently, of course, the computational complexity folks (Scott Aaronson et al.) have weighed in to the advantage of sanity. Anyway, I particularly love this:

"The problem also poses an apparent paradox: All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics. At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws."
You asked. [Nickman] February 7, 2011 11:15 AM

Howard Pattee said... nikman,
Thanks for the complement. If time permits, I enjoy having my brain picked. That 1995 quote is indeed what I had thought about for many years. From childhood we are taught that every event has a cause, and that every event is the result of natural laws. In fact, the evidence for both beliefs is weak or mythical.

The evidence is that we (living systems) choose what we perceive as an event and we favor events that can be described as causal and that that can be predicted by laws. We survive by that choice because it is ultimately the result of natural selection. The evidence is that most of the structures in the universe including organism are undetermined by laws and are mostly selected frozen accidents.

We have also been saddled with Aristotle’s logic of causality that can prove the existence of God as the First and Final Cause or the uncaused cause. His logic also implies determinism.

In contrast, modern quantum cosmology sees causality and determinism as just the illusion of good statistics of primordial uncaused spontaneous creations and symmetry breaking. Of course we could still say that God is a (gratuitous) uncaused cause; but how do we know S/He is not just playing dice?

Howard February 8, 2011 9:20 PM

[Emphasis and notes added by Ira] Please continue this Topic with Comments here.

Ira Glickstein

Prediction: Soft Landing in Egypt

2011-02-06T14:05:00.011-05:00

I'm no expert on Egypt, but Vi and I spent a couple weeks there back in 1997. [Double click the image for a larger version.]

I think Egypt will recover from the current unrest with a reasonably soft landing.

IMHO, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will hang on as a figurehead leader for some time, perhaps weeks to months. His presence in Egypt serves as a kind of lightning rod covering the other government leaders there. Control will be maintained by the leadership of the Army.

They have installed Army-connected men in charge. They have wisely allowed the demonstrations to continue and, to some extent, have restored the Internet and cell phone service. The demonstrations will continue, but at reduced intensity.

Come September, the Army-connected leadership group will preside over a somewhat controlled general election, with some participation from "liberal" elements. The new government will be less dictatorial than the current one.

Fortunately, Egypt is a good bit more secular than other Moslem countries, particularly the Iran of decades ago. The Internet and cell phones that helped spark and organize the rebellion will help keep the secular leaders on both the government and uprising sides from allowing Egypt to slide into extremist Islamic ideology. At least that is what I hope will happen. Time will tell.

The photos are from my old http://pages.prodigy.net/ira/egypt.htm website, were you can read a blow-by-blow account of our Egyptian adventure, including:

Our visit to the Queen Hatshepsut Temple in Luxor, only weeks before several dozen tourists were killed there,
My solo bicycle ride through the downtown Luxor rabbit warren of dirt streets,
Our police-escorted convoy to Alexandria,
Our Nile River cruise, including a galabia party where they said I looked like a rabbi,
Traffic in Egypt where lane markers and traffic lights are merely for decoration,
Our camel rides at the Pyramids,
Our subway ride to old Cairo where we got stoned,
Our visit to the Ben Ezra Synagogue (attended in the 11th century by Maimonides),

and, of course,

My solo walk from our hotel to the McDonalds near Tahrir Square!

As we watch the news on TV we sympathize with our tour guide, Mona, whose business must have been devastated by the current crisis.

Prior to our trip in 1997, there had been unrest as well. Due to that uncertainty, there were only five people on our tour, Vi and I and another couple and their adult son. Our tour bus was a Volkswagen van. We therefore received a very personal tour, including a visit to Mona's apartment, where we met her three young children and her sister. During our time in Cairo, we talked Mona into her first ride on bumper cars (just like Coney Island).

Ira Glickstein

Runaway Trolley - Applied to Real-World Issues

2011-02-02T18:25:00.012-05:00

The Runaway Trolley ethical choice thought experiment is a classic that has been tested on tens of thousands of people in different societies with remarkably consistent results. This may expose at least one basic human ethical value.

POWERPOINT SHOW AVAILABLE

Click HERE to download a narrated PowerPoint Show that includes animated charts for the Runaway Trolley thought experiment. After the Runaway Trolley is explored, the charts continue and apply the ethical lesson to two real-world
issues: 1) Criminal Recidivism and 2) End of Life Issues. This posting covers the Runaway Trolley only. Subsequent postings in this series will cover Criminal Recidivism and End of Life Issues. The PowerPoint Show is based on a talk I gave to The Philosophy Club at The Villages, FL, on 04 February 2011. NOTE: The Powerpoint Show is now Narrated and plays and advances automatically after download to your computer.

RUNAWAY TROLLEY - PART 1 - The Siding Guy

The graphic illustrates the issue. A trolley has lost its brakes and is roaring down a hill. If nothing is done (FATE) the trolley will crash into the station at the foot of the hill, certainly killing at least five people.

There happens to be a junction and a siding. If that trolley can be switched over to the siding, the trolley will certainly stop safely in a pile of sand, and the five or more people on the trolley and in the station will not be killed.

YOU happen to be standing by the junction and see a switch that may be thrown to redirect the trolley from the Main Line to the Siding.

You are about to throw the switch (ACT) when you notice there is one person who happens to be sitting in the sand pile and that person will certainly be killed if the trolley is switched to the siding. What should you do?

NOTE: This type of thought experiment is intended to illustrate an ethical concept, so it is somewhat artificial. To play this game, you MUST ASSUME that all the facts stated are absolutely certain and, further, that all the people involved are total strangers and completely innocent. Therefore, you cannot avoid the ethical issue and suggest you could shout a warning to the guy on the siding - he is too far away to hear you. You cannot defer to a trolley company employee or another passer-by who happens to be at the junction - you are totally alone. You cannot phone the trolley company - time is short and you must let FATE take its toll or ACT and save several lives.

OK, now, what is THE RIGHT THING TO DO? Should you do nothing (FATE) or throw that switch (ACT)? Please decide now, before you read on.

RUNAWAY TROLLEY PART 2 - The Fat Man

The situation is similar to Part 1, the trolley is roaring down the track and five people will die when it certainly crashes into the station. But, this time, there is no siding. OY!

However, there is a footbridge that crosses over the trolley tracks, and, guess what, YOU happen to be on that footbridge. You see the trolley approaching the footbridge and you realize that if you do nothing (FATE) at least five people will die when the trolley crashes into the station.

Thinking quickly, you imagine yourself jumping from the footbridge onto the tracks in the path of the trolley. If you do so, you will certainly die but there is a chance your body will slow the trolley and save some or all the lives. Should you jump? You will die but five or more will live!

You notice that there is a very fat man standing on the other side of the footbridge, looking towards the station. He is totally unaware of the emergency, and there is no time to talk to him about it. He happens to be standing right above the trolley track and all it would take would be an easy nudge and he would tumble onto the tracks. He is so heavy he will certainly stop the trolley and save all the people, but, sadly, he will certainly die. He will die but five or more will live!

OK, now, what is THE RIGHT THING TO DO? Should you do nothing (FATE) or nudge that fat man down onto the tracks (ACT)? Please decide now, before you read on.

ANALYSIS AND PAST RESULTS

This problem, and versions suitable for "primitive" societies who do not know what a trolley is, has been posed to tens of thousands of people. I will tell you the remarkably consistent results further down in this posting.

Principle of Double Effect

But first, we need to learn about the Principle of Double Effect. It holds that:

You may take action which has bad side effects, but deliberately intending harm (even for good causes), is ethically wrong.

Thus, it is OK to act if your intent is to save many lives, even if, indirectly, some few lives are lost. This clearly applies to the Runaway Trolley Part 1 - the Siding Guy. Your INTENT is to save many people, and the Siding Guy's death, though clearly forseeable, is an UNintended side effect.

It is similar to the aircraft pilot whose plane is certain to crash. If he allows FATE to take its course, the airplane will crash into the center of a large metropolitan area, killing hundreds of people. If he ACTS he can divert the airplane to a less populated place, preferably a deserted area, but, if that choice is not available, he should crash into an area of single-family homes rather than apartment buildings.

Conversely, it is NOT OK to act if your intent is to kill someone, even if, indirectly, many lives will be saved. This clearly applies to the Runaway Trolley Part 2 - the Fat Man. Your INTENT is to kill the fat man, and the saving of the many lives on the trolley and in the station, is a side effect of a wrong intent.

(A strict Utilitarian might have trouble with that argument. What if killing one innocent person was certain to save 100 lives? 1,000? 1,000,000???)

This type of reasoning applies to an ethical thought experient called the Surgeon and the Stranger. A Surgeon at a hospital has five patients, each of whom needs a different organ transplant (heart, lung, etc.) or they will certainly die. There are absolutely no organs available from any normal source in time to save their lives.

Then a total Stranger checks into the hospital emergency room for a minor problem. The Surgeon learns that he is a drifter, with no relatives or friends, and no one in the world knows where he is or even cares. And, guess what, his blood type happens to match all five patients who need transplants. Your compassionate nurse suggests they fake the medical record of the Stranger to claim he died unexpectedly and they use his organs to save the five patients who need them desperately. "The five people who will die if we do not ACT have lived in our town for their whole lives. No one will miss this worthless Stranger. God must have sent that drifter to us for this purpose!" she says.

Well, as tempting as it is, the Principle of Double Effect says the Surgeon should let FATE take its course and not ACT. What do you think?

Statistical Results

The Runaway Trolley was presented to The Philosophy Club a year ago and everyone (100% of the 45 people in attendance) would ACT (throw the switch) to save five or more innocents despite the death of the Siding Guy. In the case of the Fat Man, 7% (three of the 45) would ACT (nudge him off the footbridge) while 93% would let FATE take its course.

A BBC poll found similar results, with 77% ACTing to save five or more innocents to the demise of the Siding Guy and only 27% ACTing to nudge the Fat Man to his demise, despite that opportunity to save five or more innocents.

NOTE: Subsequent postings in this series will extend this lesson to the real-world situations of: Criminal Recidivism and End of Life Issues.

Ira Glickstein

Climate Change (AKA Global Warming)

2011-01-27T10:42:00.011-05:00

I've been blogging as a Guest Contributor over at Watts Up With That? the world's most viewed climate blog. Here are some graphics I created that may be of interest.

This one is from The PAST is Not What It Used to Be where I discuss the Data Bias that I think has exaggerated Global Warming since 1880 by about 0.3ºC.

The blink graphic switches between two different sets of US Annual Mean Temperature data covering the same years published by NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies). My annotations remain fixed to show the changes.

Notice how the 1999 version has the years before 1960 warmer, by about 0.1ºC as compared to the same data published this year! Note also how the 2011 version has the data for 1980 and afterwards warmer, by up to 0.2ºC as compared to the same years on the 1999 version! Why would data that has been in hand for decades have to be adjusted in this "see-saw" way, if not to exaggerate the amount of warming in recent years? (That is Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA GISS, juggling the Earth and his impact on our economy.)

The second graphic is from Do We Care if 2010 is the Warmist Year In History?. It reproduces a NASA GISS email from Dr. Makiko Sato to Hansen, released in an FOIA request, in which she recounts the seven versions of US Annual Mean Temperature published for 1934 and 1998.

I've annotated that email with a graph showing how 1934 was warmer than 1998 by more than 0.5ºC when the first version was published in 1999. When the exact same raw data was reanalyzed and republished in 2001, 1934 temperatures (which were by then old enough to collect Social Security :^) were somehow reduced by almost 0.2ºC and 1998 data got boosted by nearly 0.1ºC, to reduce 1934's lead.

The graphic shows how 1934 continued to get cooler and 1998 got warmer (though 1998 had a surprising setback in the 2006 version :^) until, in the last analysis, they were in a virtual tie. Note that all this data is from an official NASA GISS email.

Sadly, after the date of the email, further reanalysis was done to make 1934 about an eighth of a degree cooler than 1998. Sad loss for the old guy. This clearly demonstrates the NASA GISS desire to make the more recent year warmer to prove Global Warming. It was embarassing to have the older data beat the more recent in the race to be warmer. Kind of like losing a footrace to your grandfather! So they did a Photoshop on the photo finish image to correct their earlier error.

Question: If the final version (1934 cooler than 1998) is correct, then the initial seven versions must all be in error?

Ira Glickstein

IBM Centenial: 100 Years x 100 Innovations

2011-01-23T00:54:00.004-05:00

Here is a YouTube video well worth watching if you are an IBMer (as my wife and I were) or if you have used IBM equipment, or been affected by the computer revolution.

Men and women who were born 100, 99, 98, and so on years ago describe the progress of the IBM corporation and the computer industry, as marked by IBM innovations that occurred in the year of their birth.

Ira Glickstein

Amazing Solution Behind the 8-Ball

2011-01-06T12:20:00.014-05:00

My good neighbor Warren came over last evening with a problem. He schedules 8-Ball and has a dandy scheme for twelve teams over eleven weeks. For each session, pairs of teams are assigned to each of the six tables in the Billiard parlor. His schedule is constructed such that, over the eleven week period, each team plays each other team exactly once.

Well, someone decided to add a thirteenth team! OY!

Warren figured out that the schedule would have to be expanded to thirteen weeks and that, each week, a different team would take a "bye" - not play. Of course, he wanted to retain his system where, over the course of the thirteen weeks, each team plays each other team exactly once.

So, he asked me, how to schedule it?

I thought about it for a while and then, fairly rapidly, came up with a methodology that amazed both of us! (If I have to say so myself :^)

What is the solution? What is the method I came up with?

Think about it before you scroll down.

VVVVVVV Scroll

VVVVVVV Scroll

VVVVVVV Scroll

VVVVVVV Scroll

VVVVVVV Scroll

VVVVVVV Scroll

SOLUTION (Image is below the text)

I made use of a spreadsheet, but it could just as well have been done on graph paper.

1) I marked out a 13 by 13 grid. That way the intersection of any row and any column designated a specific match-up. For example, the intersection of the fourth row and the third column would match team #4 with team #3.

2) I immediately realized that a team could not be matched against itself, so the entire middle diagonal was not applicable. I yellowed that out.

3) Then, I realized that the match-up of #4 with #3 was the same as the match-up of #3 with # 4 (DUH!), so the entire upper right hand triangle of cells would duplicate the lower left triangle. So I yellowed out the upper right cells.

4) That left the lower left triangle of cells. OK, what to do now?

5) Well, the six Billiard tables for any given week could include each team a maximum of one time, so the six cells corresponding to that week had to be on separate rows and columns. In other words, they had to be on a diagonal. (WOW! That was the breakthrough!)

6) So, I noticed that the diagonal that started with cell 13-1 had exactly six cells in it. So, I colored them a deep yellow.

7) The diagonal starting with cell 13-2 also had six cells, so I colored them green.

8) Then I went up the diagonal starting with cell 13-3, coloring them red. Uh, oh! There were only five cells and I needed six. Where to find a nice single cell needing company? I noticed that cell 2-1 was a candidate, so I colored it red as well.

9) Moving on to cell 13-4, I did the same, with the color blue, and so on and on until all the cells in the lower left triangle were colored.

10) It took thirteen colors, a good sign from the math gods! Each color represented one of the thirteen weeks of the schedule. The first diagonal I colored, in deep yellow, gives team #7 a bye. The second, in red, gives team #8 a bye, and so on, for each color. (The byes are listed in the far right column, corresponding to the color in column 1. Team #1 gets a bye for the light green diagonal.)

Neat, ain' it? Ira Glickstein

My Guest Postings on Watts Up With That?

2010-12-25T22:00:00.012-05:00

Well, I've hit the "big time" as a Guest Contributor at the most popular climate science blog in the world, Watts Up With That? (WUWT)

[Update 06 Jan 2011: I now have more postings on WUWT than I care to list. Click Here for links to ALL of Ira's WUWT Postings.]

[Update, 31 Dec 2010: As a result of my posts on WUWT, picked up by other sites, this month (Dec 2010) we hit an all-time record of nearly 14,000 page views here at The Virtual Philosophy Club, as readers follow links back here. That means your comments and topics here have a better chance of being read than ever before.]

Have a look at my maiden posting at Do We Care if 2010 is the Warmist Year in History featuring the adjacent graphic [click it for a larger version].

Its only been up since around 4PM this afternoon and has already garnered over 50 Comments and over 2000 page views so far.

[UPDATE 28 DEC 2010]

I've posted a second topic, NASA's Sunspot Prediction Roller Coaster to WUWT late last evening, and, as of 10:30AM today, there have been over 2000 page views and over 75 comments. See the adjacent graphic [click it for a larger version].

[UPDATE 28 DEC 2010]

As of today, my two topics on WUWT have garnered over 16,000 page views!

[UPDATE 31 DEC 2010]

I've posted yet another big one at WUWT based on my earlier posting here at TVPC. If that topic interested you, head over to WUWT Clean Coal (Say WATT?) Our Energy Future and read some of the 150 Comments, most intelligent, and of all shades of opinion, and my sparkling replies (at least IMHO :^).

Ira Glickstein

Best Photo of Lunar Eclipse

2010-12-21T18:10:00.010-05:00

Were you outside at around 3AM (eastern US time) this morning? I was, and the sky here in The Villages, FL was sparkling clear. With the Moonlight toned down thanks to the shadow of the Earth, the stars were astonishingly vivid.

In my backyard with our darkened house on one side and the golf course pond on the other, there was little ambient light to interfere with this rare event. According to Wikipedia, it was "the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern Winter Solstice (Southern Summer Solstice) since 1638, and only the second in the Common Era."

I watched in awe, at about 2:45AM, as the Earth's shadow covered first 80% of the Moon's surface, and then, at around 3:15 to 3:20AM, all of it. WOW!

The photo above [click on image for larger view] is the best I've seen of the view available to me. It was posted at Spaceweather.com by Howard L Cohen who took it at Gainesville, FL, some 50 miles north of my location. THANKS Howard! (The linked site has many other photos, but none as clear as the view we were blessed with in Central Florida, at least IMHO.)

Ira Glickstein

Sunspots - Prediction of New "Dalton Minimum"

2010-12-20T15:30:00.009-05:00

Global COOLING Anyone?

Nearly TWO YEARS ago (January 2009 and December 2009) I predicted that the now current Sunspot Cycle #24 would peak at 80. I am now revising that down to a peak of only 60, based on a great posting by David Archibald at Watts Up With That, the most widely read and respected climate website in the world.

We may be in for a new Dalton Minimum similar to the period from 1790 to 1830 when temperatures were unusually low. Indeed, we may come to welcome the cushion of warmth, perhaps 0.1 to 0.2ºC, that may be due to recent human activities. (The IPCC Climate "Team" claims 0.6 to 0.8ºC rise mostly due to human-caused Global Warming, but that is most likely an over-estimate.)

As the graphic shows, at the time I made the 80 prediction, NASA was predicting a peak of 104, having revised it downwards a couple of times from their original, wildly high estimate of a 156 peak. The most recent NASA projection is 90.

Description of the Graphic

[Click graphic for larger version] The base for the graphic is from Archibald's posting (Figure 9). The BROWN curve plots actual data from Solar Cycles #3, #4, #5, and #6 (late 1700's through early 1800's). The GREEN curve plots the corresponding actual data for Solar Cycles #22, #23, and the first part of #24, (1990 through December 2010)

I have added the annotations in RED and GRAY, indicating NASA's incredible string of highly incorrect predictions from 2006 to most recent (red hoops) and my original January 2009 prediction and my revised prediction (gray hoops).

Historical Correlation of the Dalton and Maunder Minima with Sunspot Activity

The very cold temperatures from 1790 through 1830 are usually explained as being due to increased volcanic activity, including the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815 that caused the Year Without a Summer, 1816. However, low solar activity, with peak Sunspot counts of only 45 for Sunspot Cycles #5 and #6, is most likely the major cause. Even lower Sunspot counts (below 10) occurred during the earlier Maunder Minimum (1650 to 1700). These periods of Global Cooling were marked by crop failures that are inimicable to human life.

Explanation of the Effect of Sunspot Counts on Climate

The NY Times interviewed Henrik Svensmark last year about his theory of Sunspots and Climate:

One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

Conclusion

Before we destroy industrial economies with extreme measures to reduce carbon emissions, it will be a good idea to consider how that might not only not be effective in reducing human-caused Global Warming, but how a bit of carbon-warming could be welcome during the coming period of Global Cooling. By the way, I am still in favor of an across-the-board Carbon Tax because the steady rise in CO2 levels is unprecedented and that is the most intelligent way to utilize our market-based economic system to speed the development of renewable energy sources. However, that effort has a multi-decade time horizon and is no emergency.

Ira Glickstein

Einstein's Cosmological Philosophy

2010-12-16T20:44:00.005-05:00

[Presentation to Philosophy Club, The Villages, FL, 17 Dec 2010. Download the PowerPoint charts here]

Do I have any special qualifications for giving this presentation? Well, both he and I ride bicycles, and, Einstein in German means "One Stone" while mine (German spelling: Glücksstein) means "Lucky Stone" :^).

My main source is Walter Isaacson's excellent 2007 book, Einstein, His Life and Universe. I also used Einstein's own The World as I see It (1949) and Out of My Later Years (1950), and a number of online sources including Wikipedia Einstein and Cosmology, Wikiquote, Marxists.org, and Einstein's 1427 page FBI FOIA file.

POLITICS: Was Einstein a Socialist?

Let us get this out of the way at the outset. Yes, he was a socialist. In Why Socialism? (1949) he wrote "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils [of capitalism], namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, … the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. … guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. …”

However, in that same article, he cautioned "The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?"

His FBI FOIA file concludes that he "was a member, sponsor, or affiliated with thirty-four communist fronts between 1937 and 1954." IMHO the FBI was justified in denying Einstein access to classified A-Bomb information and investigating him for possible disloyalty.

Although the FBI did not discover it while he was alive, letters that became public in 1998 prove that Einstein had an affair with a Soviet spy, Margarita Konenkova, from 1941 until 1945. [Image added 24 December 2010, from Filosophando, click for larger version.]

If Einstein was alive today, I believe he would have realized, based on the subsequent history of Communism (Russia, China, ...) that his cautionary words, quoted above, were more valid than he thought they were when he uttered them in 1949. However, I also believe he would be a "social justice" western liberal/progressive and definitely not in tune with my politics.

SCIENCE: His Great Contributions

His first published paper, on the capillary forces of a straw (1901), and his second, on the thermodynamic equivalence of heat, work or particles (1902) were a non-distinguished prelude to his four amazingly breakthrough miracle year publications in 1905:

The Photoelectric Effect (showing that light was composed of quanta rather than continuous waves, and which later led to the wave/particle duality of quantum mechanics, and for which he won a Nobel in 1921),

Brownian Motion (kinetic theory of heat),

The Special Theory of Relativity (that uniform motion is indistinguishable from rest, and the speed of light is the same for moving or stationary observers), and,

The Equivalence of Mass and Energy (e = mc², and, since c, the speed of light in a vacuum is such a large number, and when you square it, it is much, much larger, a tiny abount of mass, m, is equivalent to a tremendous amount of energy, e, witness the Atom bomb)

Between 1907 and 1911 Einstein considered the equivalence of gravity and acceleration. He reasoned that a person in a closed box on Earth would, of course, experience normal gravity. However, if the closed box were transported to space, out of the influence of any nearby mass, and then accelerated to 32 ft per second squared, the person would feel the exact same effects as those of gravity on Earth.

In 1915 he published his General Theory of Relativity, showing that matter causes space-time to curve, which we experience as gravity. He predicted that the gravity of the Sun would cause the light from a star to appear to curve and this was confirmed by Eddington, during an eclipse of the Sun in 1929.

The presentation includes animated Powerpoint charts for:

Relativity and Speed of Light (A bullet fired from a Gun on a moving train goes faster than from a stationary vehicle, yet a light beam fired from a Laser on a moving rocket does not go faster than from a stationary vehicle), and
Einstein's Cosmology (Static, Oscillating, and Expanding Universes, as well as speculation on how Black Holes, predicted by Einstein in 1915, may, via Continuous Creation be the key to something like his Eternal Universe)

COSMOLOGY: Blunders or (Yet Unrecognized) Genius?

Einstein had certain strong expectations of Nature and the Universe (which, see below, he regarded as equivalent to Spinoza's God as well as his own). That led him to expect that the Universe would be static, neither expanding nor contracting, so it could be Eternal in some sense. So, in 1917, he included the Cosmological Constant (Λ) to counteract gravity. When Hubble showed that the Universe was expanding (1929), Einstein said the Cosmological Constant was his "biggest blunder" and, in that same year, adopted what is called the Friedman-Einstein oscilating Universe, which is Eternal in that the mass/energy is constant. When that became untenable, in 1932, he adopted what is called the Einstein-de Sitter Universe, which expands forever, but the rate of expansion slows down over time.

Current accepted truth is that the Universe not only expands forever, but the rate of expansion is increasing, not slowing down. (OY!) And that the Universe had a beginning in the Big Bang (OY! OY!) and it will have an end as the density of mass/energy approaches zero due to the accelerating expansion, and entropy goes to maximum (OY OY! OY!) In my presentation, I speculate (along with Fred Hoyle, Roger Penrose, and others) that black holes and multiple dimensions we cannot sense, may allow an Eternal Universe, with matter/energy continually recycled between the dimensions we can experience and the hidded dimensions, with density and entropy refreshed.

RELIGION: From Moses to Spinoza to Einstein

Young Einstein was the product of a secular family that acknowledge their Judaism. He said "As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud." So, he knew about Moses and the Rabbis, but, early on, became more enamored of Science and Spinoza. The presentation includes part of his 1920 poem to Spinoza (and in the Notes below the chart, the complete text in English and the original German), and his 1929 statement "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." For Einstein, God and Nature were one, writing in 1921 "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not. … Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse."

His dedication to determinism, in defiance of mainstream physics and the quantum mechanics whose foundation he had personally laid, was based on religious conviction that "God does not play dice with the universe" (1926). He also said, in 1931, "I am compelled to act as if free will existed …[on the other hand, I know] ‘a man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.’" [quoting Schopenhauer]

He thought scientists needed a type of faith that springs from the religious sphere: "science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. … the faith … that the regulations [for] the world of existence are … comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (1941) In 1931 he defined three stages of religious belief, going back to his Jewish roots and how they led him to what he considers a higher form of faith: "Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of [1] fear to [2] moral religion … but there is third state of religious experience … which I will call [3] cosmic religious feeling … which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image".

He used personal terms for God, "Dear God (die Lieber Gott) ... The Old One (der Alte) ... Lord God (Herrgott)", yet he wrote in 1949: "the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. …[but] I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of Nature and of our own being." and in 1931 "I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?"

Perhaps his best advice for scientists, and everyone else, is "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (1950)

Ira Glickstein

Contradictory Models Continued

2010-12-16T16:40:00.003-05:00

Howard said: Joel, I have always been bothered by the transition from one or two particle deterministic models to N-particle statistical models. Bohr gave the story about the boy who goes into a candy store and asks for a penny’s worth of mixed sweets. The store owner says I don’t have any mixed sweets, but here are three sweets, you can mix them yourself. Whether reality is deterministic, as Einstein and Ira believe, or whether it is stochastic, as most quantum physicists believe, is a metaphysical difference that does not make any practical or empirically testable difference in our models.

Joel responds: After thinking it through, I think you and many others have good reason to be bothered. I felt bothered too and now believe I have come to a conclusion concerning the paradox. I believe that the sign reversibility of the equations of motion has been misinterpreted as thermodynamic or mechanical reversibility. Please look at this thought experiment involving just two perfectly elastic billiard balls on a odd-shaped pool table with perfectly elastic cushions. We recognize that if one ball (A) is stationary and the other (B) is aimed at it on centers, then B will transfer its momentum to A and become stationary. If a cushion is arranged at right angle to the path of A, then A will be reflected and head back toward B. In the collision that follows, A will return its momentum to B and B will head back toward the shooter. Let another cushion be interposed at right angle to the path of B so that B is again reflected toward A. The net result of all this is that we have a reversible or naturally reversing process. We see similar approximations to this description in pendulums and celestial orbiting bodies. The reversibility of the billiard ball process is a consequence of the sign reversibility of the velocity in the momentum equation PLUS the purposeful adjustment of the cushion to reverse the sign of the velocity at some point.

Let's look at a very slightly more complicated experiment. Let everything be the same except that the first cushion is oriented to cause ball A to go off in a direction which will not cause a return collision with B. Since we have a "closed system," A will eventually strike a cushion, i.e., part of the container wall. Let this cushion be oriented so that it is at right angles to the path of A. The result is that A will be reflected and follow its same path in reverse, and striking the first wall and head back toward B. In other words, it will all be played out in reverse as the momentum (and energy equation) demand, but only because the second wall was PURPOSELY oriented to cause the reflection in the proper direction. One could extend this logic to any number of acute reflections preceding the 180 degree reversing collision.

It might seem as though only the Nth (final before reversal) wall segment has to be fixed. However, its orientation cannot be calculated without a knowledge of all the other reflections that preceded it, since the direction of ball A must be known. Hence, N wall segments are fixed by the motion of just a single collision pair. Like Monte Hall, with his knowledge of what is behind each of the doors, we must have knowledge of the entire particle path in order to design the reflecting container to insure reversal after the Nth wall collision. As long as these conditions are satisfied, mechanical reversibility and entropy are not a problem. The entropy neither increases nor decreases.

I think it would be instructive to design a wall for which an entire class of interactions will be reversible. For instance, consider a container made of two parabolas with a common axis and common foci. A collision which causes ball or particle A to travel through the focus and then continue to the wall will be reflected parallel to the axis of the parabolas, strike the opposite parabola and then back through the common focus. My gut tells me that by continuing in this vein, one would find that elastic balls in an elastic container with several degrees of freedom will spread their initial energy irreversibly with asymptotically increasing entropy. I'm going to work on such a proof. Thanks again Howard for opening Pandora's Elastic Box for me.

Contradictory Models

2010-12-11T20:26:00.006-05:00

[from Joel, Title and link added by Ira]

Howard Pattee said [November 20, 2010 7:19 PM]:

This point is well-known in physics by the two models of a gas. Microscopically the dynamic model of an ideal box of atoms is reversible (time-symmetric) while the thermodynamic model is irreversible. Clearly these models are formally contradictory and therefore neither model can be derived from (or reduced to) the other. As Max Planck noted: “For it is clear to everybody that there must be an unfathomable gulf between a probability, however small, and an absolute impossibility . . . Thus dynamics and statistics cannot be regarded as interrelated.”

Thanks Howard for pointing this out. Although I've taught classical thermodynamics at the undergraduate level and statistical thermodynamics at the graduate level, there seems to be a gap between the two that is not really paid attention to in engineering programs. Although the Maxwell Demon paradox is mentioned, the logical implications are not explored. We simply teach that the microscopic and macroscopic are related by the formula for change in entropy equaI to Plancks constant times the natural log of the ratio of thermodynamic probabilities of the macrostates. I did some research after your post and days of hard thinking. My gut tells me that the assumption of sign reversal in the classical mechanics description being equivalent to reversibility has something wrong with it. One thing I find fascinating is that this paradox and its cousins are the stimulus for your semiotic approach to evolution. Like all other paradoxes, it doesn't seem to matter whether one actually finds the "true" answer. What matters is that the stimulation can lead to new ideas like your semiotic approach. Look at all the mathematical progress that has its roots in Zeno's Paradox.

American Government Theme Park

2010-12-09T11:03:00.006-05:00

[from billlifka, posted with his permission. Graphic by Ira - click it for larger version.]

I dare my grandson Adam to tell his Professor in an Econ class that his grandfather’s solution to America’s big economic problem is to turn Washington DC into a theme park. As part of the dare, Adam would have to certify that his grandfather is still allowed to leave the house on his own and do all those other things allowed to people not too far along in their senility.

No doubt, you think I was just kidding but I was serious. “OK”, you say, “But then the Congress wouldn’t pass it.” Of course, you’d be right. But my scheme isn’t insane and would more likely pass than the Presidential Deficit Commission is likely to agree on a plan or, it occurring despite the odds, have both Houses of Congress pass such plan or, such vote occurring despite the odds, have the resulting bill signed by the president.

Therefore, I’m going to devote some time to the details of my idea and how implementation is possible. You will find that each piece of this plan is feasible and could be implemented. Further, enough of the pieces could be fit together to get the country back to a point where it was living within its means. That is more than what the co-chairs of the Deficit Committee accomplished in their joint recommendation, which was blasted by one special interest group or another and won’t be agreed to by commission members.

I didn’t invent the scheme. It’s chosen by most companies at some point (if they don’t go out of business) and by most people as they grow older. It’s not a recipe for death but for renewed life. When my wife Alice and I retired, we did it.

For my example though, I’ll choose the fictitious Earl and Countess of Anyshire who realized the expenses on their ancestral palace and estate exceeded the revenues. Although the Earl never made it through college, he knew how to count. “My dear”, said he, “We need to live within our means and this palace of ours is a money pit!” Accordingly, they decided to move to a charming home in the suburbs which could be maintained by only three servants and had improved plumbing and insulation to boot. What to do with the palace?

Certainly, they would take some of their furniture with them; but only enough to occupy a small abode and only those pieces which were comfortable. All the imposing, historic stuff would be left behind to enhance the baronial ambience of the place; including the dozens of paintings of their noble ancestors. In a combination of public and private interests, the estate would be used to impress tourists and hold conferences and entertainments. The fees would provide a profit after operating expenses. The Earl and Countess would go on with their lives as before, he attending the House of Lords sessions and she attending her various teas. (Some of which could be held in the old palace.) Of course, there was much stuff not necessary to the palace or suburban home.

An estate sale addressed the bulk of this excess and provided a tidy nest egg for coming years. The Duke hated to part with his horses, especially since some could only be sold for dog food. On the other hand, he knew that horses emanated a large amount of greenhouse gas and that fox hunting was now thought to be politically incorrect. And so it went. Even the servants on the estate were employed in the continuing maintenance or new business enterprises with equal or better salaries and no need for bowing and scraping.

My plan for the American Government Theme Park, properly done, would work the same way.

billlifka

Amateur Data Gathering

2010-12-05T17:43:00.003-05:00

If I tell you that I've been having gastrointestinal trouble, since I started consuming Splenda itself and products that use Splenda, you would rightly say that the evidence of a connection is just anecdotal. That term is used to dismiss a lot of data gathered by amateurs, Actually, when accurately reported, I prefer anecdotal evidence to statistical evidence, just as I prefer in-depth interviews with likely voters to telephone surveys. The conclusions of a statistical study carried out at a university or health organization often turns out to be misleading or just plain wrong, because of the risks inherent in the design of population studies.

Continuing on with my "Slenda" story; I went to the web to see what I could find. Lo and behold, there was a forum which contained many first hand accounts of gastric distress accompanying the use of Splenda and a few that said complainers were all crazy. The first defect in such forums is that it automatically selects people that are in distress. If I started a forum for people who have experienced sneezing fits after turning on their computers less than an hour after eating, there would immediately be 50 contributions from people who had that experience. It's just the statistical nature of the huge number of people browsing the internet. However, I'm not quick to dismiss honest data. Outliers can contain important information. Every experiment deserves to be explained.

My question for this blog is this. Astronomers have used thousands of amateurs to scan the skies that are too vast for professionals to monitor. Can the anecdotes of amateurs be filtered and combined in such a way as to produce valid scientific evidence? If one hundred people who report stomach distress stopping after quitting Splenda, are asked to restart in order to see if the distress starts again, can we draw any conclusions. How many times must we reproduce the start-stop cycle with each of these amateurs before we can have some confidence in the results?

CLEAN Coal! (Say WATT?)

2010-11-30T19:59:00.011-05:00

The December 2010 issue of the Atlantic shows an amazing turn-around by the Global Warming alarmists! Yes, they are still alarmed and predicting imminent climate change disaster, but ...

BUT, they have reversed themselves on their previous 'ol devil coal! (This follows their equally sharp reversal on nuclear energy over the past few years.)

Turns out we need coal to generate Watts of electricity for our electric cars and, they say, we can do it in a way that is environmentally correct.

The cover story, by respected author James Fallows, is titled Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal. {Click the link to read it free online.}

"To environmentalists, 'clean coal' is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal— ..."

Recall that, only last year, a leading alarmist, NASA's James Hansen, one of the key science advisors on Al Gore's The Inconvenient Truth movie, wrote:

"..coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet. ... The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretense that they are working on “clean coal”..." and "The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death."
Amazingly, while atmospheric CO2 is still the bogeyman of what alarmists say is an imminent Global Warming disaster, coal, which is nearly all carbon and generates CO2 when burned as intended, is part of the solution! Fallows writes:

Before James Watt invented the steam engine in the late 1700s—that is, before human societies had much incentive to burn coal and later oil in large quantities—the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was around 280 parts per million, or ppm ... By 1900, as Europe and North America were industrializing, it had reached about 300 ppm.

Now the carbon-dioxide concentration is at or above 390 ppm, which is probably the highest level in many millions of years. “We know that the last time CO2 was sustained at this level, much of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets were not there,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, told me. Because of the 37 billion annual tons of carbon-dioxide emissions, the atmospheric carbon-dioxide level continues to go up by about two ppm a year. For perspective: by the time today’s sixth-graders finish high school, the world carbon-dioxide level will probably have passed 400 ppm, and by the time most of them are starting families, it will have entered the 420s. ...

Michael Mann told me. “What we have with rising CO2 levels in general is a dramatically increasing probability of serious and deleterious change in our climate.” He went down the list: more frequent, severe, and sustained heat waves, like those that affected Russia and the United States this summer; more frequent and destructive hurricanes and floods; more frequent droughts, like the “thousand-year drought” that has devastated Australian agriculture; and altered patterns of the El Niño phenomenon, which will change rainfall patterns in the Americas. ...

You should recognize Michael Mann as the creator of the deceptive "hockey stick curve" at the center of many of the Climategate emails. (See this and this and this and this.)

So, what is the solution? Fallows writes:

Isn’t “clean energy” the answer? Of course—because everything is the answer. The people I spoke with and reports I read differed in emphasis, sometimes significantly. Some urged greater stress on efficiency and conservation; some, a faster move toward nuclear power or natural gas; some, an all-out push for solar power and other renewable sources ...

“Emotionally, we would all like to think that wind, solar, and conservation will solve the problem for us,” David Mohler of Duke Energy told me. “Nothing will change, our comfort and convenience will be the same, and we can avoid that nasty coal. Unfortunately, the math doesn’t work that way.”...

Coal will be with us because it is abundant: any projected “peak coal” stage would come many decades after the world reaches “peak oil.” It will be with us because of where it’s located: the top four coal-reserve countries are the United States, Russia, China, and India, which together have about 40 percent of the world’s population and more than 60 percent of its coal. ...

“I know this is a theological issue for some people,” Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore said. “Solar and wind power are going to be important, but it is really hard to get them beyond 10 percent of total power supply.” ...

What would progress on coal entail? The proposals are variations on two approaches: ways to capture carbon dioxide before it can escape into the air and ways to reduce the carbon dioxide that coal produces when burned. In “post-combustion” systems, the coal is burned normally, but then chemical or physical processes separate carbon dioxide from the plume of hot flue gas that comes out of the smokestack. Once “captured” as a relatively pure stream of carbon dioxide, this part of the exhaust is pressurized into liquid form and then sold or stored. ...

“Pre-combustion” systems are fundamentally more efficient. In them, the coal is treated chemically to produce a flammable gas with lower carbon content than untreated coal. This means less carbon dioxide going up the smokestack to be separated and stored.

Either way, pre- or post-, the final step in dealing with carbon is “sequestration”—doing something with the carbon dioxide that has been isolated at such cost and effort, so it doesn’t just escape into the air. ... All larger-scale, longer-term proposals for storing carbon involve injecting it deep underground, into porous rock that will trap it indefinitely. In the right geological circumstances, the captured carbon dioxide can even be used for “enhanced oil recovery,” forcing oil out of the porous rock into which it is introduced and up into wells.

According to Fallows, China is in the lead on this clean coal technology, with help from American and other western corporations. While it is good that at least some of the Global Warming alarmists are warming up to coal as a necessary part of the solution, it would be better IMHO, if they were also more realistic about the actual dangers of climate change and the likelihood (again IMHO) that most of the warming of the past century is due to natural cycles not under human control and that we are likely already in a multi-decade period of stable temperatures, and perhaps a bit of cooling.

Yes, I think we need to do something about the unprecedented steady rise in CO2 levels, but we have to do it is a way that will not destroy our economies or force us to drastically reduce our lifestyles. One thing I agree with James Hansen about is that an across-the-board carbon tax, assessed equally against all sequestered fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) and collected at the mine, well, or port, is the best solution, far more suitable to the task than the "cap and trade" political scam, and more likely to work.

Rather than have governments pick winners (and mess up as they did with corn ethanol subsidies that raised food prices and reduced gas mileage without doing much to control CO2 emissions) I prefer to tax carbon progressively a bit more each year and let industry and other users decide for themselves how to adapt to the higher prices. Nothing stimulates action and invention like saving your own money. Nothing wastes money like government taking money from "Mr. A" and giving it to "Mr. B" for the "good of society".

***************************

Another story in the same issue of the Atlantic is about famed physicist Freeman Dyson and The Danger of Cosmic Genius.{Click the link to read it free online.}

They write:

In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment?

Does it occur to them that the Global Warming alarmists may be the ones who are wrong?

Ira Glickstein

Effects of human behavior on life of our planet

2010-11-18T22:09:00.009-05:00

[From David Sussman, posted by Ira with his permission and based on his 12 November 2010 presentation to the Philosophy Club, The Villages, Fl, Click here to Download the Powerpoint presentation.]

The structure of the analysis contains essentially three components:

(1) The human condition,

(2) behavioral consequences deleterious to the future of life on Earth, and

(3) a view of the future.

The human condition derives essentially from our evolutionary history, all of us products of an unbroken string of survivors stretching back to the first glimmers of life from self-replicating molecules 3.5 billion years ago. As humans are one of countless species, extant and extinct, created by natural processes, there is no reason to believe that we, or any other, are endowed with freedom of choice. This is regarded as an illusion stemming from other features of the strategy honed for us by nature, e.g. consciousness and speech. Our strategy is enshrouded in myth, explained by Reg Morrison (Spirit in the Gene) as a necessity predicated on the need for emotional response to immediate threat rather than logical analysis. Another dimension of our ‘condition’, and linked inevitably to the others, is our propensity to expand our numbers much beyond what our rational faculties would inform us is sustainable and compatible with an extended tenure for us and other life forms on Earth.

Behavioral consequences - Of the wide array of possibilities that arise from our condition, essentially coalesced into our particular operational strategy, I have selected a few salient behavioral characteristics that I believe bear most strongly on prospects for the future of life:

our failure to nurture so as to maintain natural identity and physical and mental health of every child on Earth, or to inculcate an appreciation of the tenets of democracy;
stressing rights rather than responsibilities in social organization, leading to excesses as best described by Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons”;
sex exploitation in its many manifestations – for the purposes of dominance, manipulation and economic advantage;
the unholy alliance of religion and politics, each employing similar strategies for securing operatives’ aggrandizement;
the divorce of science from philosophy, leaving its practitioners devoid of a framework that could more productively guide the nature and applications of their inquiries;
our propensity to take confrontation beyond the brink to violence and mayhem;
the practice of concentrating capital and other forces leading to inordinate disparity in the distribution of wealth and other life amenities.

What of the future? Is humanity at an evolutionary dead end? Certainly survival in civilized society is different from what would be dictated by nature “red in tooth and claw”. And although evolution proceeds at a snails pace, culture sweeps through like a zephyr. The absence of choice leaves it up to nature, the overseer of both evolution and culture, as well as conditions that we will confront in the future. Are we capable of predicting the future? Inherent uncertainty in physical processes that underlie all that we think and do, precludes prognostication. Societies, as any other complex system, are either fundamentally too complex for our “poor power” or subject to both subatomic (with macroscopic manifestations) and chaotic uncertainty.

David Sussman

NOTE: See earlier discussion related to David Sussman's presentation in a topic posted by Joel last week.

Semantic Puzzles

2010-11-14T13:00:00.002-05:00

[from Joel, image added by Ira]
The philosopher Wittgenstein believed that there are no philosophical problems, only semantic puzzles. David Sussman, our speaker at Friday's [The Villages, FL] philosophy club meeting presented a talk about humanism. Among other things, he presented the philosophical problem that a mechanistic approach to the human mind excludes the possibility of free will and yet we believe we have free will. He proposed that perhaps a person cannot be blamed for what is an inevitable consequence of brain machinery. I believe this is just an example of a semantic puzzle. Can you state the puzzle and find the solution?

You Can't Believe ANYTHING !

2010-10-26T19:22:00.006-04:00

The Atlantic, a respected mainstream literary magazine, says you can't believe anything! (November 2010 issue)

They are not talking about political adverts, but about peer-reviewed MEDICAL RESEARCH as well as Internet sites. On this Blog we've recently discussed Elite Opposition to Online Information and compared it to peer-reviewed journals and books, so these items caught my eye.

Truth Lies Here by Michael Hirschorn, is a hit piece against right-leaning web sites. It starts with the alleged efforts of the "Digg Patriots" to drive down the readership of left-leaning web items by coordinated use of the Digg "bury" option. The reader is lead to believe that left-leaning groups have not use similar tactics. Digg, a website that allows users to recommend web items has since discontinued the "bury" option so the point is moot in any case. Hirschorn goes on to misreport the Sherrod incident (which I discussed here) as well as the Acorn pimp and prostitute caper. He claims the videos were "heavily doctored" when in fact they were simply edited.

The Acorn sting video speaks for itself. According to the NY Times "...two conservative activists pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute used a hidden camera and recorded Acorn employees advising them on how to conceal the source of illegal income and manage 14-year-old Salvadoran prostitutes in the country illegally: 'Train them to keep their mouth shut.'" Perhaps the activists had to visit several Acorn sites before they got that damning video, but it is clear at least one Acorn worker had no problem helping a pimp exploit underage illegal female immigrants. In the Sherrod case the editing was misleading, but the real story was how the Agriculture Department and the NAACP "bit" and fired and condemned Sherrod, despite the fact she had informed her superiors of the true situation and the NAACP had the complete video that proved Sherrod was not a racist but was reporting on a redemptive moment in her career.

Hirschorn blasts the usual suspect, Sarah Palin, for using Twitter shorthand, including "Ground Zero mosque" (it is a cultural center and two blocks away).

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science, by David Freedman, is a longer and much more serious piece that calls into question nearly all medical research. Freedman begins with the fact that Albanian immigrants to Greece have their "perfectly healthy" appendixes removed at a rate three times higher than Greeks, apparently because surgery residents are over-eager to rack up scalpel time. The researchers who uncovered the situation had trouble getting their study published, which led them to do some further investigations of medical research journals.

Many peer-reviewed medical findings are later refuted. This fact may be interpreted in two ways: 1) The system is working and correcting itself, or 2) Why are so many medical studies wrong in the first place?

Well, according to the researcher Freedman interviewed, the problem is the need for researchers to get grants and publish, and that may be accomplished only by getting new and surprising results. This leads them to come up with new theories and then construct research projects that are biased to prove those theories. Even in apparently properly set up randomized trials, results are exaggerated. For example, of 49 most widely used cited research articles over the past 13 years, 34 were retested and 41% of those were shown to be wrong or exaggerated! "Drug studies have the added corruptive force of financial conflict of interest." They hardly ever study the effect of not prescribing any medication. And, when it comes to nutritional studies, "ignore them all" is the best advice! Clearly, this information should be taken into account as we consider government involvement in health care and end-of-life issues, as I discussed here.

But medical research is not especially fact-free, "a remarkably consistent paucity of strong evidence in published economics studies made it unlikely that any of them were right."

Ira Glickstein

Constitutional Convention

2010-10-17T07:47:00.002-04:00

[from JohnS - image of original constitutional convention added by Ira]

Is a constitutional convention the answer?
Many emails are circulating proposing one for various causes.

Article V of the Constitution provides for a Constitutional Convention to propose Amendments to the Constitution if two thirds of the State Legislatures call for it. That is 34 State Legislatures. (Article V appears at the end of this posting). Governors of 35 States have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It is about time that the States and people stand up and demand a Constitutional Convention amending the Constitution. Note, although only 34 States are required to call a Convention 38 States are required to ratify any Amendments proposed by the Convention.

Would this be a good objective for the Tea Party movement?

This could be a major but necessary undertaking because our Federal Government is so complex, so out of control and is failing to represent the people, however, the Convention could address each issue separately and present them as individual amendments to be ratified by the States while the Convention addresses the other issues.

I would like to propose several issues if such a convention was formed.

1. We have runaway spending by the Presidency and Congress. Both parties are at fault. This spending must be reined in by a better taxation system and by enacting a balanced budget amendment.

2. Amendment 10, a part of the Bill of Rights, delegates to the States and the people all rights not prohibited by the Constitution. This has been abused in many ways over the last 50 years or so. New Amendments are needed to return the power to the States that has been abrogated by the Federal Government.

3. Amendment 4, a part of the Bill of Rights, gives the right to the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects. Again, this right has been slowly eroded over the years and needs to be restated in a manner that protects the people in view of new technology, which has the potential to spy on us even within our home.

4. Along the same vein, many laws restrict what we can do or cannot do within our own homes these restrictions are also a violation of the 4th Amendment.

5. Congress has abused its privileged position by providing for itself rights, benefits, etc, that it denies to the people. Several Amendments or a multipurpose Amendment is required to correct these abuses. For example, we need term limits for the Congress and insure Congress perks and benefits are no better than available to all.

6. We spend billions of dollars overseas giving to other nations money that could be better used here in the United States. This must be addressed.

7. George H W Bush, George W Bush and Barack Obama have and are improperly using our military in Iraq Afghanistan and elsewhere. The mission of the Military in today’s environs needs further examination.

8. As a last point, although I suspect that others will rear their heads, for example I read today that Obama care will be forming 160 new Commissions and Bureaus. Do we need them, what will be their jobs and how many. We need a commission to examine and recommend to the Convention changes in the size, functions, budgets and personnel levels of the entire Federal Government.

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Political Signs of the Times

2010-10-02T15:38:00.009-04:00

In light of the controversy over inappropriate signs at Tea Party gatherings, I paid special attention to the signs at the rally I attended yesterday, here in The Villages, FL. The headliners were possible 2012 Presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney (who lost in the 2008 primaries despite my vote) and businessman Rick Scott (who won the 2010 primary for Governor of Florida despite my vote for his opponent).

Well, the strongest sign I saw said "FIRE PELOSI". Mine said "How About COMPETENCE for a CHANGE?" The others were boldly printed "SCOTT CARROLL" (for Rick Scott and his running mate, Jennifer Carroll) plus hand-written signs the organizers had passsed out saying things like "Chicks for Rick" and "Vote for Rick".

**********************

I arrived around 3PM, two hours before the main event. By that time, however, all seating in and around Market Square was occupied by happy residents of "Florida's friendliest home town." The central area around the pavillion from which the headliners would talk was for standees only and was already 1/3 full.

I got a $1 hot dog and watched one of the jumbotron TVs showing video of the 2008 visit by President George W. Bush. They also showed the presidential primary appearances I had attended for Mitt Romney and John McCain, plus videos of the visits of Rudy Guilliani and Fred Thompson. The video highlight for me was the gigantic Sarah Palin for VP rally I had attended along with 70,000 others.

A nice lady gave me a flag. I stuck it into a hole in my hat. I politely turned down several offers of political signs since I had brought my own.

It was a brilliantly sunny and beautiful day in The Villages. I needed a shady place to sit. Folding chairs, coolers, and signs with sticks were banned from Market Square proper, but I was able to find a spot for my chair and cooler in the shade of a golf cart parked on Canal Street adjacent to the Square. I watched the musical group Rio Diamond via jumbotron TV and enjoyed the fellowship of the friendly crowd, sipping a can of soda from my cooler and reading the AARP Bulletin that had arrived in the mail that day.

Right on schedule, 5PM, the headliners arrived and I left my seat and found a great place to stand. It was about 10 feet from the pavillion, on the west side where the sun would not be in my eyes.

Introductions were quickly accomplished. In addition to Romney and Scott, they included Scott's wife of 38 years; his running mate Jennifer Carroll; Florida AG candidate Pam Bondi; plus some local politicos. Romney's talk was short and direct. He has been in The Villages several times before. I actually shook hands with him along the rope line after his 2008 talk.

Scott gave a nice speech, starting with his childhood in public housing. His first business, while in college, he said, was selling the donuts his mother made. He sold to airlines and other commercial customers and got to the point where his mother had to start making them 8PM the previous evening and work all night. As expected, he did not mention his time as CEO of Columbia/HCA, where he was ousted by the board in the aftermath of a big Medicade and Medicare fraud.

And then it was over and we all went home.

*****************************************

I though about how easy it would have been for me to have hidden any kind of disgusting sign in my car or golf cart and unfurled it at the rally. That is why I think it is totally unfair to blame the organizers for the inappropriate display of racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive signs that happen to show up at any event in a public place. (See Huffington Post for an opposing opinion.)

Ira Glickstein

Elite Opposition to Online Information

2010-09-27T19:56:00.007-04:00

Elite academia has their underwear in a bunch about use of online citations by college students. A few years ago, the History Department at Middlebury College went so far as to bar students from citing Wikipedia as a source in papers or other academic work, a story picked up by the NY Times (of course) and immitated by UC Santa Cruz and others.

Online sources, they say, have made it easier for students to copy material and submit it as their own writing (plagiarism). Much of that material, opponents claim, may be false because it has not gone through the editing and review process traditional for books and magazines.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

In a recent talk on Freedom of the Press in the Digital Age at our local Philosophy Club, I used these examples to illustrate how "the authorities" always try to shut down alternative sources and technologies that undermine their monopoly control on information. The academic elite that controls the publishing industry and the main-stream press hates it when they lose control because they simply do not trust ordinary people.

THE AUTHORITIES ALWAYS FAVOR CENSORSHIP

Back around 1200 AD Pope Innocent III banned the common language (vulgate) Bible because, he said “… The mysteries of the faith … cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence.” In other words, if you don't understand Latin you have to listen to the interpretations of "qualified" experts, i.e., the Pope and priests. In the 1450's when moveable type printing came into use, drastically reducing the cost of reproducing books which up til then had been a virtual monopoly of the Church and the Crown, no one could own a printing press without a license.

The English Parliament, in 1643, noting "Abuses, and frequent Disorders, in printing many false, forged, scandalous, seditious, libelous, and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets, and Books" by people who "set up sundry private Printing Presses in Corners" ordered that no "Book, Pamphlet, or Paper, shall from henceforth be printed, … unless … first approved of, and licensed …” John Milton (yes the famous poet) responded the following year by publishing an UNLICENSED speech opposed to any kind of prior restraint on the freedom to publish. In general, the English-speaking world and our Western-oriented allies have the greatest degree of press freedom that has ever existed in the history of the world.

THE INTERNET (AND WIKIPEDIA) OFFERS ULTIMATE FREEDOM

The advent of the Internet is the ultimate in freedom to publish without approval from "the authorities". Every day, millions of ordinary people post to Blogs like this one that nearly everyone in the world can read if they choose to. No licensing, no prior restraint by the government! Of course, if the information is libelous, injured parties can sue. If it is a matter of diffference of opinion, opponents are free to publish their own rebuttal on the Internet.

So, back to the ban on academic citations of Wikipedia and other online sources. Why does the academic elite think that books and magazines and newspapers published by established organizations are more reliable than Wikipedia? Well, they say, these organizations have editors and research staffs that act as "gatekeepers" to protect the truth. That is true, but it is also true that most of these gatekeepers have similar opinions on controversial topics. Would you make the Pope and priests the sole gatekeepers for religious information as Pope Innocent III wanted? If not, why would you put elite academics in charge of information about history and politics and similar topics where opinion and fact are not easy to separate?

I think Wikipedia, pound for pound, has a greater truth content than The New York Times. Yes, anyone can edit items into Wikipedia, but, if false information is edited into an item about an important topic, there are far many more people who are prepared to edit it out and make sure it is correct. Wikipedia has a system of voluntary reviewers. If an item is challenged, the author is given an opportunity to correct it and, if he or she fails to do so, there is a review and voting process that can delete the material. Corrections thus appear in hours or days. How long does it take to correct something in a book or magazine?

Wikipedia has Google-backed competition in the form of Google Knols (where a Knol is a bit of knowledge). Again, anyone may post Knol topics, but, unlike Wikipedia, authors must identify themselves. I have published 11 Knols that, in total, garnered nearly 17,000 page views as of a month ago.

As many of you know, I teach an online graduate course in System Engineering. I encourage my students to use online sources as wll as traditional published materials. I actually prefer online sources because it makes it easier for me to detect and prove plagiarism. When I see a phrase or sentence I do not think a particular student has written, and if it is not in quote marks with a proper citation, I do a Google on the phrase, using quote marks at either end. If I get a direct hit, I look to see if the rest of the sentence or paragraph is also copied, and, if so, I have positive proof of violation of the Academic Integrity policy of the university.

Ira Glickstein

Tea Party Thoughts

2010-09-06T21:37:00.008-04:00

The "Tea Party" movement has worried and even alarmed regulars in both political parties as well as the national media establishment!

Many "talking heads" say they cannot understand it. Perhaps they are purposely misinterpreting it?

One thing for sure - The Tea Party is a force beyond their control!

Some "talking heads" claim it is an insignificant dust up that will soon pass. Others that it is the well-financed effort of some secret forces to seize control of the American political process.

Reactions range from making fun of the name (using the sexually-loaded teabagger epithet); accusing members of being racist, gun-totting, homophobic ignoramuses; to alarmist calls to block a right-wing revolution funded by the Republican Party or, more ominously, by Rupert Murdock or some secret Texas billionaires!

The base illustration above is an engraving by W. D. Cooper that appeared in a 1789 book. I have added the annotations listing the stated purpose of the 1773 Boston Tea Party, No Taxation Without Representation, as well as the general principles subscribed to by the many Tea Party groups in 2010, Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.

WHO ARE THE TEA PARTY SUPPORTERS?

I have not attended any Tea Party events nor have I contributed any money or joined any of their national or local groups. However, like some 28% of the American public, I generally support the basic goals of the movement. According to an April 2010 Gallup/USA Today poll report, about an equal number (26%) oppose, and the remainder neither support nor oppose or have no opinion. Gallup concludes that "Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics, Skew right politically, but have typical profile by age, education, and employment."

Indeed, while 40% of the public call themselves "Independent", a slightly higher percentage of Independents (43%) support the Tea Party. Democrats, 32% of the public, comprise only 8% of Tea Party supporters, while Republicans, 28% of the public, comprise 49% of Tea Party supporters. Male supporters outnumber females by 10% (55% to 45%). Supporters tend to have somewhat higher incomes than the general public. 79% are non-Hispanic white, compared to 75% of the general population in that category, which means that some 21% of Tea Party supporters are Hispanic, Black, or "Other" which is only 4% less than the general public in those categories.

Tea Party supporters differ from the public on the "Healthcare Reform Bill". While the public thinks the Healthcare Reform Bill is a "bad thing" by a 50:47 margin, Tea Party supporters reject it by a much larger 87:12 margin.

UNJUSTIFIED ATTACKS ON THE TEA PARTY

There are literally thousands of local Tea Party groups with no clear national leadership. They all agree on three key tenets: Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. They may differ on other issues and even support different candidates in primaries. The National Tea Party Federation (NTPF) has attempted to bring some order, even expelling one group, the Tea Party Express, when a member of its leadership team posted a racially-insensitive satire on his personal website and the Express failed to disown him.

IMHO, it is critically important that the local Tea Party groups blunt criticism by the national media that they are racist by firmly rejecting any member or group that strays into that non-productive arena. The NTPF will not accept local groups that cater to "birthers" or "truthers".

The problem is that any person can show up at a Tea Party event with a racist sign or shout awful words and, if the event is at a public place, there is little they can do about it. There are anti-Tea Party people who collect disgusting photos (that may or may not have been taken at actual Tea Party events, and, even if taken at these events may not be actual members of the Tea Party) .

For example, the third photo (President Obama with a Hitler mustache) in the linked collection has a clear "www.LaRouchePAC.com" label at the bottom (see image above). As you may know, Lyndon LaRouch is a political troublemaker and crackpot who was jailed from 1988-1994. Not only that, but he has run for political office seven times for the Democratic Party nomination (not that he is a mainstream guy in any established party)!

Some of the signs in the collection have typographical errors which, to me, shows that they were hand-written by ordinary Americans and not mass-produced by some political consultant. Others are merely distasteful.

Nevertheless, given the bias of much of the national media against the Tea Party, I think members and participants should take special care to avoid any signs or words or comments to the media that could be used to cast a bad light on the movement. I know the opponents of the Tea Party have used words and signs that are far worse, with barely any notice by the press, but that is just the way it is and we have to live with and make the best of it.

SHOULD THE TEA PARTY BECOME A THIRD POLITICAL PARTY?

Some are worried that the Tea Party might try to become a separate political party. Indeed, just this week, the Michigan Supreme Court barred a "Tea Party" organization that tried to field a slate of 23 candidates for the November ballot. "Activists in the tea party movement who believed the Tea Party political party was a fraud by some Democrats to dilute the influence of conservative voters in this fall's election were relieved by the ruling."

I think it will be better if the Tea Party remains a grassroots organization with somewhat dispersed leadership. I hope they confine themselves to rousing the conservative base to go to the polls in primaries to support candidates of both political parties who support their basic tenets Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.

In some jurisdictions, the only candidates who have a chance to be elected are moderate Republicans. The Tea Partiers should support electable candidates over more right-wing people who cannot win. For example, former HP Exec Carly Fiorina won her bid for the Republican Senate nomination from California with support from Tea Party advocate and former Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. She defeated a more rightwing candidate who was supported by one of the Tea Party groups. In Democrat-dominated jurisdictions, I would like to see the Tea Party support the most moderate Democrat. Of course, since I am not a member of any Tea Party organization, these are merely helpful suggestions!

Ira Glickstein

Brooks Law - Management Span of Control Advisor

2010-08-26T14:39:00.012-04:00

Way back in 1975 Frederick Brooks wrote a famous book, The Mythical Man-Month, stating: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

Other than the now-all-to-obvious sexist nature of his words ("manpower", "Man-Month"), Brooks Law has stood the test of time. Three graphs from the original book with their original captions are reproduced in the figure [the yellow, non-sexist annotation is mine].

The first caption suggests and then dismisses the idea that "If one man takes 10 months to do a job, 10 men can do it in one month" saying "This may be true of picking cotton." (OOPS, is the mention of picking cotton racist? Perhaps he should have used the more familiar "nine women could produce a baby in one month" but that would be sexist again. OY! :^)

He then notes that "even on tasks that can be nicely partitioned among people, the additional communication required adds to the total work, increasing the schedule." That is the well known Law of Diminishing Returns, which does have a mathematical formula. But, as his second graph indicates, more people will still speed the job.

Finally, he says of his last figure (called the "Bathtub" curve) , "Since software construction is complex, the communications overhead is great. Adding more men can lengthen, rather than shorten, the schedule." That seems like verbal flailing of his arms - but, nevertheless IT IS TRUE! And it applies not only to software engineering, but to any complex engineering or business or political or legal or medical task that requires significant interaction between professionals. But, look at Brooks graphs - there are no numbers on the axes! How can a Law be unquantified?

Since my PhD is in Hierarchy Theory, I have considered this a personal challenge and have written a couple of Google Knols about Optimal Span and Quantifying Brooks Mythical Man-Month, between them garnering over 6,000 page views! A few months ago I received an email from a very smart Knol reader who was utilizing my work in planning the management structure for a project at his company and he wanted an Excel spreadsheet to help with the task. I sent him an old spreadsheet I had used to make some graphs for my Knol and he used it (giving me credit in the PowerPoint charts he asked me to review and that he presented to his management).

But, my old spreadsheet -while useful to this one very capable and perceptive person- was not easy to use nor did it apply to multi-level hierarchies. I knew I could do better! That triggered me to create a Management Span of Control Advisor that would put my theory into a form so simple that even a manager could use it (:^).

The happy result is my just-published Google Knol Management Span of Control Advisor and a comprehensive yet easy to use spreadsheet to go along with it.

The illustration from my new spreadsheet shows how Brooks Law applies mainly to a One Level department (BLUE bathtub curve), but it can be "drained" with a multilevel hierarchy (Two Level structure - PINK curve and a Three Level structure - GREEN curve).

Please feel free to have a look at my new Knol and download and try out the companion Excel spreadsheet. As always, comments are appreciated!

Ira Glickstein

PS: My students at the University of Maryland University College will be using this new Knol and spreadsheet in the online grad course in System Engineering I teach there and which starts in a couple weeks. Most of them are professionals in the Information Technology (IT) industry (or related military work) and many are going for their Masters Degree to help them become better IT managers or move from technical work to IT management.

Three Times the Size of Manhattan and It FLOATS!

2010-08-09T16:04:00.009-04:00

What is over three times the area of Manhattan and floats? It is the tip of the tongue of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland which has just calved off and is moving at anything but a glacial pace into the Arctic Ocean.

About a month ago my family and I were privileged to watch the Margerie Glacier in Canada's Glacier Bay calve [click on photo for larger view]. Our cruise ship patrolled about a quarter mile away from Margerie for over an hour and we got to see the birth of a handful of chunks. It was impressive to see pieces the size of large buildings come crashing down into the water and float away as tiny icebergs. First we'd see the iceberg-to-be start to fall and then, a second or two later, we heard the snap, crackle, and pop! The crew of the Holland-America Ryndam served cups of thick, hot split pea soup on deck to celebrate our visit.

The image shows the tongue of the Petermann Glacier prior to separation (31 July). The animation shows separation (4 August) and later after it had moved a few miles away (7 August). [Click CLICK HERE TO SEE HI-RES ANIMATION]

The images were generated using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) an advanced, computer-intensive technology with which I am familiar due to my work on military avionics. It is sometimes called Side-Looking Radar. An aircraft (or satellite) flies in a straight line, and emits radar pulses to the side. The return signals are recorded in memory storage and processed to generate an image with high precision equivalent to a "lens" the length of the flight segment. (As we all know, in optics, the larger the lens the sharper the images, and the equivalent applies to synthetic-aperture radars as well.)

The Petermann Glacier grows about 1 KM (5/8 mile) every year. The piece that just broke off is about 30 KM (19 miles) long and thus represents about 30 years of growth.

Normally, much smaller pieces break off on a regular basis - as we witnessed at Margerie - but every several years a big one lets loose, the last one in 1991. Close examination shows a crack developing that may open up in perhaps ten years, giving birth to what could be up to an 8 KM (5 mile) long iceberg.

For comparison, the most recent Petermann iceberg is about 30 x 14 KM (~19 x 8 miles) while Manhattan Island in New York City is about 20 x 4 KM (~12 x 2 miles).

Read more about this event and see some wonderful images at Watts Up With That and the European Space Agency.

Of course, this giant glacier calving has been interpreted as further proof of the dangers of Global Warming. As regular readers of this Blog know, I am a lukewarmer-skeptic on human-caused warming. I accept that we have been in a warming period for the past 150 years or more (since the Little Ice Age) and that human activity is responsible for perhaps 10% of that warming, while the remainder is due to natural cycles. (see Atmospheric Science Made Simple, and Is the IPCC Process Scientific? and Explaining Away Climategate - 1 and Explaining Away Climategate - 2.)

Ira Glickstein

Self Defense?

2010-07-29T09:28:00.008-04:00

[From Joel] In previous times article IV section 4 of the Constitution has been considered to be without consequence either being obvious or unenforceable. It reads:

Section 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

It would seem that illegal immigration in great numbers is a form of foreign invasion and that the federal government has an obligation which it is not meeting. The philosophical question is whether or not the failure to fulfill an obligation forecloses a protected party from defending itself. Does the existence of the police prevent an individual from acting to defend one's property?

Racism - Real and Imagined - Sherrod Timeline

2010-07-23T10:30:00.007-04:00

The incomplete and misleading Media Matters timeline for USDA official Shirley Sherrod's recent travail starts on Monday, 19 July, the day she was forced to resign by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Here is my timeline that starts three days prior. It is based on Sherrod's own accounting in an interview with MSNBC [click for video].

THURSDAY, 15 July 2010:

Shirley Sherrod says she was first alerted the previous Thursday, 15 July, when someone sent her a nasty email about the deceptively edited Internet video of her talk to a March 2010 NAACP event. She says she replied with her side of the story and then forwarded it all to the USDA that very day. Thus, three days before she was forced to resign, the USDA knew her NAACP talk was about a redemptive event in her life where she overcame race-based emotions and helped a white farmer and his wife save their land.

MONDAY, 19 July 2010:

Again according to Sherrod herself, around 2:30PM on Monday, while at an official USDA meeting, she received a call and was told she was being put on administrative leave. During her drive home from the meeting, she received multiple calls from the USDA, culminating in one where she was told the White House wanted her out immediately and demanding that she pull over and send her resignation using her Blackberry, which she did. It is clear their urgency was prompted by a rumor the incendiary video would appear on FoxNews that evening.

Thus, although the USDA had Sherrod's explanation and three days to view the entire video, they forced her to resign prior to the deceptively edited video appearing on FoxNews. The O'Reilly Factor, apparently recorded earlier that evening, was the first FoxNews show to play a 30-second clip, with a subtitle noting she had already resigned.

TUESDAY, 20 July 2010

Ag Secretary Vilsack stood by his decision to terminate Sherrod even after the full context of her NAACP talk was known. His statement said:

"Yesterday, I asked for and accepted Ms. Sherrod's resignation for two reasons. First, for the past 18 months, we have been working to turn the page on the sordid civil rights record at USDA and this controversy could make it more difficult to move forward on correcting injustices. Second, state rural development directors make many decisions and are often called to use their discretion. ... The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia."

The NAACP, in lockstep with the Administration, initially condemned Sherrod's remarks as "shameful" and stated they were "appalled by her actions". Later that day they said they would review the whole tape, which was in their possession. After doing so, they concluded they had been "snookered" by FoxNews.

WEDNESDAY, 21 July 2010

Hasty backtracking by all! Vilsack, having reviewed the full video, apologized for forcing Sherrod to resign. He announced he had offered her a new position at the USDA. O'Reilly apologized, saying he had not done his homework, should have read the whole transcript before jumping to unjustified conclusions, and should not have called for her to be ousted. The White House press secretary, on behalf of the Administration, joined the chorus. (President Obama called Sherrod the following day to add his apology.)

BOTTOM LINE

We all hoped the election of our first Black President would lead us further down the I have a Dream road where, in the words of Martin Luther King:

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. ... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

We have a ways to go but we have made a tremendous amount of progress. As a child I was apalled when "coloreds" were ordered to sit in the back of the Greyhound bus when we crossed into Maryland on our trip to Washington DC from New York.

Thank goodness government-imposed segregation is a thing of the past. Thank goodness the highest USDA official in Georgia was able to sit down "at a table of brotherhood" [and sisterhood] "on the red hills of Georgia [with] the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners". It was going so well until false accusations of racism by an Internet blogger, and a hair-trigger response by an overly-anxious Administration, forced her out.

IRRESPONSIBLE CHARGES OF RACISM AND THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

The "bomb-throwing" rightwing blogger who posted the deceptively edited video of Sherrod excused his actions on the basis that the NAACP and other leftist groups have leveled similar untrue charges of racism at the Tea Party and the Republican Party and FoxNews and others on the right. Yes, extremists on both sides continue to make false charges of racism.

I am not a member of the Tea Party nor have I attended any of their events, but I generally support their views. They are a loosely associated group of local grassroots organizations. A few idiots (mostly provocateurs sent by Lyndon LaRouche as far as I can tell) attend Tea Party rallies with disgusting racist signs and the entire Tea Party is falsely labeled as racist.

I was pleased when the National Tea Party Federation, a coalition of local and regional Tea Party groups, soundly rejected a racist satire posted by a prominent person in the Tea Party Express group. The Federation demanded that the racial satirist be expelled by the Express group. When the Express group failed to do so, they were expelled from the Federation.

In keeping with the key tenets of the Tea Party movement of Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets, local and regional groups value their independence and reject any hint of a tightly controlled national body. That makes it more difficult to police their ranks. However, when the Northern Iowa Tea Party recently put up a disgusting billboard grouping President Obama with Hitler and Lenin, there was a clear outcry and the sign was taken down the next day!

The radical left seems to have adopted the tactic of falsely labeling the right in general, and the Tea Party in particular, as racists and worse. The media overplay the few nutcases with disgusting signs and generally ignore the overwhelming majority who are orderly and civil and even pick up the garbage when their rallies are over!

I am encouraged that the National Tea Party Federation (NTPF) has established strong membership rules, including:

Our organization rejects Birthers.
Our organization rejects 9/11 Truthers.
Our organization rejects racial discrimination.
Our organization rejects hate speech.
Our organization rejects acts of violence or subversive behavior.

Ira Glickstein