I felt

this tall.

Steve Jobs was unique in special ways.  He was described as a grand marketeer.  So, he gets compared with the greats and I get milk and cookies and told to take my nap.  Then I started thinking about it.  What he really wanted was a closed system and he’s got it.   He, like Gates, comes from an earlier time.  The progression and needs of the time created open systems.  People could “do their thing” and not get smacked down.  Jobs — also described as not a nice man — wanted to own control.  That’s been his contribution and that goes well beyond neat toys.  So maybe it was wrong to compare him to Bell.  Carnegie and Rockefeller were more representative.

So, with my self-worth in doubt, along came Nova.  Einstein. Newton. Cosmic Constant.  Higgs Boson.  Stop! Stop! My head is going to explode.  Every so often they do one of these Physics for Dummies and each time reality collides with reality.  That lets me think all of it makes senses for, oh, this long.  [finger touches finger]  Well, they went on to explain that Newton blew it along with those of us in the corner wearing the pointy hats.   What it really reminded me of was a iron workers bar.  People would tell tall tails with the winner lauding it over the next  grant seeker drunk.  And, make no mistake, these guys were coming up with Babe the Blue Ox grade yarns and then topping it with the next tale.

All this made me think.  Ouch!  In the Jobs deal there was the only interview that include Jobs and Gates.   Then it came to me.   I’d seen that before and it wasn’t the scary robber barons story.

OK, I no longer feel small enough to walk under the door jam.  These are the same guys we see running for office.  These are the same as the guys trying to use a rail tariff to destroy competition.  OK, I am on my way back to 6’5″.  Jobs … schmobs.

Then the Physics guys attacked.  I found poor Newton was as dumb as the rest of us.  And, shamefully, a lot of what he was saying made sense to folks like me and how I observed the world around me.  Pish-pish! not to be done old chap.  Einstein destroys Newton.  Guy from U of Chicago calls out Albert for his “inelegant”  cosmic constant.  And so the Bunyanesqe one-upping continued until finally they tell me that reality is 2-D and the 3-D world about me is likely a hologram.  Now I am a ghost or consigned to the logo on a VISA card.   Massive put-down!  They use my wallet falling into a black hole to point out that the wallet’s contents are reproduced on the sigularity.  Humm, maybe that 2-d storage is their attempt to figure out God’s spreadsheet.  I may get out of this hologram in the end and move on to greener pastures and still waters.

If anybody out there figures it out better, be sure to let me know.  But do it right after you ask for grant money and production costs.  And, the way I understood it from Jobs, you can’t pull it off without an I-Pad.

Related posts:

1. Damn!
2. Damn, I’m Good
3. Damn I am good

It took a bit of Googling to be reminded of the author and quote that comes next.  The author was George Santayana.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

My more liberal friends seem to ignore some thing that history and George provide. It is a situation that government seems to ignore more and more.  Isn’t the question of the day as much about past effort than the changes we support for things like inequality and fairness?

One of the big issues concerns the underprivileged.  I am not sure of the accuracy but we’ll go with that.  Lyndon Johnson kicked it off for my generation.  FDR did it in my father’s time.  My grandfather saw it with the earlier Roosevelt and others.   Many of the ideas share an ongoing solution.  The approach over that time has gone from local solutions like Hull House to Johnson’s massive governmental solution he called The Great Society.  That has been expanded on and expanded on but the problems all seem as evident.  What does history say about the solutions being promoted today?  The current view is that it has gotten worse and worse.  Doesn’t history say we need to seek a different direction?

You can apply such thinking to all the other hot button issues?  They all have a varied history.   They persist in our current events.  If we do more of the same, will it resolve the issue based only on persistence?  It is good to look back.  It shows us the many success and many failure attached to various issues.  And when their are failures shown in the past,  we need to do more but using a new solution.   That what history can tell us.

Here’s a bit more from George about perfectibility that addresses our age:

The future of moral evolution is accordingly infinite, but its character is more and more determinate at every step. Mankind can never, without perishing, surrender its animal nature, its need to eat and drink, its sexual method of reproduction, its vision of nature, its faculty of speech, its arts of music, poetry, and building. Particular races cannot subsist if they renounce their savage instincts, but die, like wild animals, in captivity; and particular individuals die when not suffered any longer to retain their memories, their bodies, or even their master passions. Thus human nature survives amid a continual fluctuation of its embodiments. At every step twigs and leaves are thrown out that last but one season; but the underlying stem may have meantime grown stronger and more luxuriant. Whole branches sometimes wither, but others may continue to bloom. Spiritual unity runs, like sap, from the common root to every uttermost flower; but at each forking in the growth the branches part company, and what happens in one is no direct concern of the others. The products of one age and nation may well be unintelligible to another; the elements of humanity common to both may lie lower down. So that the highest things are communicable to the fewest persons, and yet, among these few, are the most perfectly communicable. The more elaborate and determinate a man’s heritage and genius are, the more he has in common with his next of kin, and the more he can transmit and implant in his posterity for ever. Civilisation is cumulative. The farther it goes the intenser it is, substituting articulate interests for animal fumes and for enigmatic passions. Such articulate interests can be shared; and the infinite vistas they open up can be pursued for ever with the knowledge that a work long ago begun is being perfected and that an ideal is being embodied which need never be outworn.

His writings on this are free and available from Project Gutenberg.  They are available to download to a variety of readers and mobile devices.  Every time I visit there the top download is always The Kama Sutra.  I didn’t know so many people would be so interest in improving their karma.

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Near the top of my RSS feed is Reason.   That would be Reason Magazine.  I warn you that it has a libertarian bent.  That’d be the one with the small L.  But it does seek some balance.  I have always thought that which was the McNeal-Lear Report and what  it morphed into these day does it from the more liberal perspective.  They both do the balancing act with mixed results but they are among the few that try.

I was reminded of why I have them in a early location in my reader by this article.  There are a lot of places that’d use that coverage.  That’s why I say it is a libertarian biased site and not Libertarian or Republican.  It is a good site to hear the libertarian view.  I know you all have at least a bit of that when you rile at the UIGEA.

The magazine is supported by their foundation.  It has a blog I sometimes glance at.  A recent blog was about illegal aliens and interesting.  That is down substantially.  The reasoning the blog provides  is interesting.

Emigration is good.  Without it we wouldn’t be here.  But, illegal is a negative.   Politicians fail to support it properly. Bad legislation can turn anyone into a law breaker.  That has occurred throughout our history.  Even going back to the 18th century we can find stupidity on the scale we encounter today.  Bad laws and lawmakers are an ongoing problem and it takes time to mitigate their excesses.

Illegal emigration is one such fight.  On one side we have the so called conservatives ready to mine the border.  On the other side is the liberal expose of supposed excesses by businesses taking advantage of migrant workers.  I see it as another little UIGEA where self-determination gets damaged in the process.

The blog has another thought provoking article about a current topic — taxing those rich bastards.  I think fair taxation is a good thing — given the government cost we can’t avoid.  But, our tax system isn’t fair and that extends through many levels.  Fair taxing though would take Solomon. All we can do is use reason instead of emotion to get as close as we can.

If you get here for reasons other than agreement with my sometimes lame-brain views, take a look at the links and add them to your reader. (If you don’t have a reader, I suggest you get one.)  I know you will fill it with views that parallel your own — I certainly do.  But, throw in a few that make you uncomfortable.   I think Reason Magazine and their interesting blog might help my more liberal friends see there is some reason apparent in even differing views.  I’ll try harder too. That seems reasonable.

Related posts:

1. The Voice of Reason
2. Feingold? The voice of Reason???

The laptop wasn’t my best move although it has allowed me to set the problem aside for a bit.  The laptop was a better bit of inspiration than reality.  I just don’t use it often and then it is a quick use for a specific reason.  It is a 17″ with a graphics processor and good memory — overkill and overspent.

Time to disclose the real DAMN.  It had a really outdated list of sites in my reader.  I’m not good at housekeeping but I did keep the reader on the desktop pretty clean.  I had to or end up with a list longer than the proverbial arm.

Too many friends I never met have disappeared.  Some were conflicted.  Some funny.  All wrote better.  Are they alive, well, different?  Unlikely I will ever know. But, that list was deja vu all over again.  Hopefully not dead but certainly gone.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson.
Jolting Joe has left and gone away,
Hey hey hey.

Related posts:

1. Damn PBS
2. Damn, I’m Good
3. Damn I am good

I knew only one person there on 9/11.  He was a V.P. at Cantor-Fitzgerald.  It was an Internet thing only.  I had dumb questions; he was the kind of guy that’d answer them for you or anyone with grace.  His body was not recovered for solace to his family.  I really only knew him indirectly but I respected who/what he was.  Anyone who doesn’t moan such loss is an obscenity.

Loss is an obscenity.  Today will talk to the living about heroes and villains. But there is an obscenity in all this.  Like that Supreme Court Judge on obscenity wrote, “I know it when I see it.”  I saw losses from the age of a toddler on.  One of my earliest memories was of loss.  That was intimate — a two-year old’s loss of a newborn sister.  Other losses were more lip service than loss.  Significant because I was still of an age that didn’t look for or at it well.

Aging actresses would bribe the cameraman.  They’d get him to smear Vaseline on the lens to soften features.  Time does some of that with loss.  Loss of clarity is one of those small gifts.  But aging provides a cumulative effect that grows.  9/11 gives those younger some added perspective on what age finds a frequent companion — loss.

Loss disrupts our world.  Some handle it better than others regardless of the approach local society uses to face the finality. We do that because things have gone beyond our understanding.  It is days like this that should both comfort and warn.  Not about the evil perpetrators of such outrage but that fallen angels are in the fabric of life and a lure to all.

Loss is  a mirror.  We aren’t seeing reality.  Mirrors reverse the image. That contributes to why such loss is taken advantage off.  It get lip service and  the attention of tent show ministers.  Days like this scare me.  Mirrors like this don’t flatter — no matter how or where we look.  That could be the best we can take away today.  Loss is personal.  Comfort is the only thing we can share that shows who we really are or could be.

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So, Dave played JT, Full Tilt issued a statement, the president blamed the other side, Wall Street lays egg after egg, banks foreclose… and the list seems unending.

All that was brought home by the Full Tilt statement as seen on Subject:Poker and well covered by Noah of the hyphenated name.  He covers it nicely and, if you’ll  read it, I don’t have to plagiarize paraphrase.   It is a case study in unintended consequences by a host of parties.  I could make a case that any one step had at least some reasoning.  But, it is also just like Mojo’s post.  Or congress gutting laws from the depression era that then allowed this depression.

Poker is often described as being interesting and challenging because we have incomplete information.  Poker players certainly know about unintended consequences.  That’s what unintended consequences is all about.   At Full Tilt and with their licensing body those stacked up and stacked up.  I could give a multiple choice question about what caused it that runs from A through Z with all of above and more being the Z.  I could do the same for the economy, political parties — action groups — special interest — etc.  Individually they all at least seem rational at some level.  Collectively, we are screwed and didn’t see it coming.

I don’t know; it has been an interesting morning trying to connect dots.  It was interesting in the manner of “May you live in interesting times.” and that seems  the only constant I can associate with all these unintended consequences.

ADDENDUM:

I have an excuse for screwing up.  In my age group, it is now reported that it makes us better.  Now there is a giggle.  It appears older brains aren’t exclusive to my age group.

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1. Clunkers and Consequences
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While their quality varies from night to night and era to era,  the Jihadists demand to cut the Jew Letterman’s tongue out is either why we have Homeland Security directing our lives or something we’ve all given a Goish thought to from time to time.

The first monologist I watched, Steve Alan, resembles no other.  It was zany, slapstick burlesque.  He’d laugh at himself ahead of the audience.  That’s a characteristic that got lost as we progressed.

Jack Paar followed.  He probably did more of his own writing than any other.  None could be more cutting.  His collection of petards were always available for hoisting.  It was an emotional release in the theatrical tradition of speaking thoughts aloud.

The best tool user in the craft was Johnny Carson.   He could incorporate slapstick or sticking in the knife with an ease, quality and longevity that still sets the standard.

Leno’s humor seems to lack the longevity and often the quality in his later period.  He’s become the stage.  It is hard to see him without an enormous ego preceding.  He’s gotten harder to watch or respect.

Letterman used to get my real-time voting.  Over time he’s become a cliche of a cliche.  The writers seem mired in the last decade.  Past greats were politically ambidextrous. Letterman has become sadly predictable.  While glorifying New York, he’s acting more like an addled Hollywood actor version on the world.  He can knock what he has become.

The best monologist today doesn’t show up at 10:35 Central — 11:35 Eastern.  It is John Stewart with his Daily Show. He is equal opportunity like past greats.  His broad brush can paint human miniatures too often resembling Dorian Gray.  He can use the tools honed by Paar and Carson to great effect.  It isn’t that strange that so many get their news fix for the day there.

To those Jihadist that want to damage the non-Jew Jew they think Letterman,  join the list.  We’ve all watched him too many at X:35 do a lousy job.  Be thankful you got knocked on Letterman.  Stewart can really tear you a new one.

P.S. Dave is from my home state.  Although Nap-town (Indy) is a bit of an anomaly at times as is my area — Da Region. The fact is he lost his Hoosier citizenship and was deported.   He did get to reapply due to the result of the last Presidential election but it was denied later over tea.

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The weather has been a horror this year.  It was a lousy spring and an oven of a summer.  In this part of the world, neither is a particular shock.  The weather is variable.  If you don’t believe me, wait five…ok, I won’t work that cliché — even though considered a knee slapper in its day.   This year, “Ring of Fire” has sent it limping to the background.  That has even outdone “Heat Dome” almost two to one in the TV meteorologist patter.

My heart goes out to my southern friends who still suffer.  Oh, I know that air conditioning is big but I hate it. Yes, I use it when I must; but my neighbors see must far more often than I do.  The next door one never opens a window.  He’ll never know what great sleepin’ weather last night was.   Well, he isn’t very bright anyway.  Maybe if he slept better…

Spring, I said, was lousy.  That means late.  Spring is all about promise.  The good one’s bring an exuberance without qualifications added.   The lousy one leave you anticipating without reward.   So, this years lack of early enjoyments and had me hoping for a nice summer.  We can have summers that aren’t perfect and that loss of perfection wobbles to either side.  Too cool can describe a summer around here.    We have a three bears climate.

Good sleepin’ weather really meant something back in my youth.  On the hot nights, families used 4-40 air conditioning.  Evenings, the family would hop in the car and roll down all four windows and ride about.  With Lake Michigan at hand we might even make it to Lake Shore Drive before going back to the somewhat cooled house.  It is remembering things like that emphasize how nice it is this morning with a gentle breeze making it almost cool at times.   The air is dry after that front came through yesterday.   That let me add the down comforter last night and wake up a little later and oh so refreshed.

Really hope everybody gets some good sleepin’ weather.  Enjoy when it hits!

That is my weather report.   I hope the fall makes up for all this.  It is my favorite time of year and it darn well better.

Related posts:

1. If you don’t like the weather,
2. Oh, the weather outside is
3. Good News?

Yesterday was in the 90′s and the day before hotter.  But it barely beat out that day because the dew point went from bad to oppressive.

However, today is bloomin’ gorgeous.  It is around the mid 70′s and the dew point is a comfortable 59.

I usually don’t provide weather reports.  This year mostly because there hasn’t really been anything good to really report. And, why would you pay attention to my problem as the year for most was their own little slice of hell and, that being the case, I can go suck lemons.

The breeze is gentle and the momentary thought it is a bit on the cool side is tempered by that great feeling that says you are alive and have a bit of joy compliments of Mama Nature.

Don’t ask (think about really as it is again supposed to suck) whats ahead for the weekend.   I am living the moment.

Related posts:

1. Status Report Deux
2. Trip Report – we are now moving to Dante’s third circle (Home of the Glutton)

In this Internet age, common knowledge often morphs into urban legend.  There are tons of site that debunk the knowledge spread by people for various reason.  Snopes.com is an interesting site about them.  Google makes finding information almost too easy.  Good and valid aren’t search options for the most part.

It is surprising how long I can retain misinformation.  The partial information I hold is even more massive and can be equally damaging.  Half truths abound.   And claims are often based on such weak data.

The government has been the biggest beneficiary of my blind acceptance of things that seem right and become common knowledge.   I’d like to mention some.

Global Warming: Of all those around this has the greatest potential.  I just can’t determine whether it is to benefit or damage me.  I do now know that the EPA is major driving force which means that control has moved from the elected to the appointed.  In fact they continue to do things congress has told them not to do.  My local weatherman is very accurate about tomorrow.  Next week is very iffy.  He has access to multiple models that are far more accurate than in the past but they are suspect as they go farther into the future.  These models have been developed over time and are commercial products that need quality and improving quality to be viable products.  Can I rely then on academics who’s livelihood is based on their preconceived view giving me a model that will be accurate in 100 years?

Drugs: The term War on Drugs was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1971.  That makes Iraq and Afghanistan Johny-come-lately.  At least those we have a chance to win.  As I drifted toward the Libertarian view, their drug policy that was a sticking point.  They call for full decriminalization.  But, my common knowledge made drugs bad/evil/debilitating.  Switzerland provides heron and free needles.  Holland had open sale of marijuana  but has recently made it locals only.   On Cops last week I watched them arrest 3 guys for a small amount of grass.  They were just getting by but the one had picked up the other two from work on his way home from work.  One of the cops chortled it was going to cost him $765 to get his car back.  Looks like 3 working stiff will have a problem getting to work tomorrow.  Drug gangs keep expanding control in many neighborhoods and this is how we are fighting drugs.  I am ready to see an approach other than war.

The Patriot Act goal is to keep us safe.  The vehicle compromises our rights.  That’s been traditional in times of war.   But, most of that was voluntary.  War correspondents didn’t give details and even misled during WWII.  Today, we have legislation and are prosecuting people also protected by whistle blower status.  AT&T provides the NSA with every telephone conversation — international and domestic.  That goes even beyond the act itself.  They base it on their need for knowledge and justify it with a negative.  The negative is common knowledge — we haven’t had repeats.  Actually we have but the perpetrators weren’t very smart about it.

Common knowledge is often valid knowledge.  Business constantly uses things like cost:benefit.  It is a basic tool.  We know that “Seat belts save lives” and air bags are even better. So we added that and side bags and in a few years when all deploy the vehicle will be not economical to repair.  Government tells us that creates jobs in the airbag industry and then in autos where a car must be added as we junk the one in the fender bender.

A 19th century economist observed:

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—”It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Often common knowledge bring on all too common reasoning.  I’m guilty.  You?

ADDENDUM:

Congrats to Bill Rini who getting married and going back to work.  I am guessing there is a relationship there. I am basing that on pretty common knowledge.

Here’s a bit of seemly uncommon knowledge about the common knowledge.  Its not easy being green.

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