It’s National Poetry Month

Who even knew that there was such a thing?

In celebration I give the best use of poetry in pop culture lately – Mad Men “Meditations in an Emergency”

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Blatantly stolen from the LA Times

Writing…

A friend of mine has decided to try writing a short story of about 10,000 words.  A couple of years ago I wrote a couple short stories (since discarded) and outlined an idea for a TV series, which I knew would never get produced but which I thought would make a good series anyway.  I haven’t really done much with it since so I thought I would post it here.  Some of the ideas  overlaps with Tom Kratman’s “Caliphate” and John Ringo’s “Last Centurion”, but the main idea behind the story was mainly inspired by an urban legend about the 12th Marines on Okinawa.  When I was stationed there the story was that the 12th Marines were not allowed to march with a guidon or to return to the US (the unit not the individuals) because they had lost their colors in Vietnam and so they were in a kind of exile ordered by  SecNav.  The story is almost certainly (I’m 99.99% sure) not true, but the idea of a unit in exile kind of fascinated me.  Anyway here is the treatment that was supposed to serve as the basis of the story:

Medical Update

Some of you know this and some of you don’t but on the 9th I was diagnosed with High Blood Pressure.  Extremely high – the doctor didn’t give numbers initially but he said he was surprised I could walk into his office.  Anyway between the initial warning during a pre-employment physical and my actual diagnosis I drastically changed my eating habits.  Really cut back on salt and caffeine and started eating a whole bunch more fruits and vegetables (blech).  I also upped my walking schedule from 3 to 4 days per week to 4 to 5.  It’s made a difference.  In 20 days I have lost 10 pounds and the medication has pushed my BP way down.  Of course I am still to fat, so I will keep working on losing the weight, and I feel hungry and cranky all the time due to the lack of caffeine, but I will probably get used to that.

So exactly what is this guy advertising for?

Going thru the help wanted section on craigslist and this ad pops up:

Adult Gay (Bear) Start-Up Seeks Partner /.NET C# Developer (Capital Hill)

my first though is shouldn’t this be over in the personals section (and maybe it is but I’m not going to go look).  On second read the guy is obviously looking for a business partner, and reading the actual ad confirms that, but boy is that title clumsily worded.  I included the link in case any of my imaginary readers would care to apply.

Washington State to partner with Western Governors University?

At a time when Washington's higher-education budget is being slashed, some lawmakers believe a partnership with WGU could provide more access to college programs without costing the state any money. Earlier this session, the House voted 70-26 in favor of HB 1822, which would create a partnership between the state and WGU, similar to a partnership WGU established last year with the state of Indiana. The measure is now before the Senate.

Probably a smart move.  The state is very low on seats in the university system and this doesn’t cost them anything other than a repricocity (sp?) agreement.  WGU is already fully accredited so that makes it an even better deal.

Ira Glass challenges NPR to measure it’s liberal bias

More accurately he denies NPR has a liberal bias, and challenges On the Media to prove it.

IRA GLASS: Yes, all the conversations about defunding public radio. If you look at the lobbying effort that public radio and public TV have mounted - they had this campaign called 170 Million, and there’s a website, and it’s all about how 170 million Americans each month listen to public radio or watch public TV, and we're all in this together, and that includes a lot of conservatives. And I feel like it completely sidesteps the actual substance of the main attack on public radio, and that is the attack that we have a left-wing liberal bias.

…

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay so, Ira, what’s your beef then, really? Is it that public radio itself is not willing to take this on, because about 25 years ago I was asked to do a piece, is NPR biased to the left, and I couldn't find a metric to apply to the question in order to answer it.

IRA GLASS: I don't know the methodology that somebody would use, but I feel like public radio should address this directly, because I think anybody who listens to our stations understands that what they're hearing is mainstream media reporting. We have nothing to fear from a discussion of what is the news coverage we're doing.

As somebody who works in public radio, it is killing me that people on the right are going around trying to basically rebrand us, saying that it’s biased news, it’s - it’s, you know, it’s left wing news, when I feel like anybody who listens to the shows knows that it’s not. And we are not fighting back. We're not saying anything back. I find it completely annoying and [LAUGHS], and I don't understand it.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, so this gets back to not only Brooke’s problem finding a metric to report on this story, but it’s especially difficult when you and I both know that if you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and at all of the member stations, you would find an overwhelmingly progressive, liberal crowd, not uniformly, but overwhelmingly.

IRA GLASS: Journalism, in general, reporters tend to be Democrats and tend to be more liberal than the public as a whole, sure. But that doesn't change what is going out over the air. And I feel like, well, let's measure the product. And, and you’re saying what’s the metric that we can measure the product on.

I would say go through, you know, this morning’s Morning Edition and find me even a sentence that smells like political bias to you. Like, like, find one.

Of course we know what the result will be.  NPR will look at their news coverage and declare it to be non-biased by any measure they can dream up.  Shows like Diane Riehm or Tavis Smiley will be dismissed as a) Opinion, and b) Produced by member stations  and there fore not the responsibility of NPR itself.  It’s the same game that they play with Fox News only in reverse.  Fox is accused of bias because of the content of shows like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.  The fact that they are opinion / entertainment shows is completely irrelevant, at least in the minds of the left.   

On the Media says they will report back in a week, but I say why bother – The outcome is pre-ordained:

IRA GLASS: Well, On the Media, you are the perfect vehicle for this.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

You were made for this purpose, to measure the political bias of public radio. It needs to be done. You are the only ones.

[BROOKE LAUGHS].

You are the ones best positioned of everyone in the country, in the public radio system in the world, to do this mission. And I hand it to you. It’s an urgent mission and it needs to be done, and done beautifully.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What if the answer is, yes, NPR has a left wing bias?

IRA GLASS: It’s not gonna be yes.

Would you go see this film?

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off recut as an “indie” coming of age tale.

Personally I don’t think I would.  If the film was recut in the same style as the trailer it would just be depressing as hell instead of one of the funnest/funniest movies ever.

Speaking of media; last night I listened to a new show (or at least part of it) on NPR called “Too Much Information”.  It was the firs time the show has been on the local station and it SUCKED.  The first 20 minutes was a sketch about how the CIA was using social media to control events in Egypt and Wisconsin, done in a faux “This American Life” style.  You know soft voices pregnant pauses filled with a little background music and expository narration by someone who sounds like Ira Glass.  I could live with that.  “This American Life” is fairly successful and imitation is expected.  It was just so poorly done and the material was so poorly chosen that it was painful.  Stay away from this one.

Presented without comment

via IO9

Common Mistakes Economists Make, As Seen By Marginal Revolutions

Left Wing

2. Evaluating government spending on a program-by-program basis, rather than viewing the budget as a series of integrated accounts.  Cross check with the phrase "Social Security," or for use to take many discretionary spending cuts off the table.

…

6. Overestimating the efficacy of fiscal policy, underestimating the power of monetary policy, and sometimes ignoring or neglecting how the two interact ("the monetary authority moves last").

Right Wing

3. Lower taxes don't spur economic development as much as it is often claimed, at least not below the "fifty percent or less of gdp" range.

…

8. The story of steady and significant economic progress for most Americans is accepted too readily.

Read the rest for yourselves and discuss

And alternative energy is a viable approach for the United States why?

This article in the LA Times outlines the problems that the LA Community College District had in deploying “green energy” on it’s campuses.  Number one is the fact that it isn’t as efficient or as cheap as what is currently produced.  A fact mentioned a number of times:

The problems with Eisenberg's energy vision were fundamental. For starters, there simply wasn't room on the campuses for all the generating equipment required to become self-sufficient. Some of the colleges wouldn't come close to that goal even if solar panels, wind turbines and other devices were wedged into every available space.

Going off the grid did not make economic sense either. Given the cost of alternative energy technology, it would be more expensive for the district to generate all its own electricity than to continue paying utilities for power.

…

But Eisenberg's enthusiasm obscured an inconvenient reality: With the technology now available, the cost of renewable power exceeds that of energy derived from burning coal and natural gas.

Green energy advocates often argue that the added cost is justified by the reduction in pollution, particularly carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

…

One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.

This raises the question, If a relatively small deployment of “green energy technology” such as this is so problematic, why is it such a good idea for the country as a whole?  The LA Times doesn’t ask that question, almost certainly because they would get an answer they don’t like, but they do point out this fact:

"When dealing with issues on the human scale, the laws of Newtonian physics are non-negotiable," [Hoffman wrote.]

Someone needs to embroider that on a wall hanging and send it to President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the idiots pushing this green energy fiasco.

Had my intake interview with WGU

By my count I am about 10 classes away from my Bachelor’s.  Yay almost done.

What is the sound of one invisible hand clapping?

I know it’s still early but I don’t think we have to look much further for the obvious headline of the month.  From the New York Times I give you: 

Sheen Is Surrounded by a Coterie of Enablers

While bad behavior by star performers is tolerated in a number of industries — sports and high fashion, for example — Hollywood has a longer public history of aiding and abetting addicts. Doctors employed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer famously gave Judy Garland amphetamines and other drugs to combat fatigue and control her weight, setting up a life-long battle with drug addiction that she ultimately lost.

…

In the case of a crack-smoking, prostitute-frequenting Mr. Sheen, many people in Hollywood say there is a long list of enablers: managers and agents and publicists; a coterie of assistants and party buddies; prostitutes, drug dealers and sex film stars; and the tabloid media, which have fed on Mr. Sheen’s antics for years.

Really?  I never would have guessed that Charlie Sheen had a problem, much less that all the people sucking money off of him might not want him to change his behavior.

I don’t know if you have read Freakanomics or seen the movie, but I am reminded of the discussion of incentives

In this case the incentive for Sheen is attention.  CBS tried to change his behavior by removing his platform for attention.  Sheen broke their incentive scheme by becoming more outrageous and garnering attention in a different manner.  Somewhere a Zen Master has asked, “What is the sound of one invisible hand clapping?”  The answer is Charlie Sheen saying, “I’m an F-18 bro”.

Re-reading the classics–When Gravity Fails

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these.  There are a couple of reasons for that: a) As some at Ace’s will attest, I have trouble understanding words of more than two syllables or with more than one vowel.  That slows me up considerably.  b) It takes a while to wade thru the cat carcasses, empty whiskey bottles, and stacks of newspapers to actually locate a book to read, and c) Nobody actually reads these so I don’t really feel a rush to get one out on any set schedule.  (I have been informed I will have a new reader today.  If that’s true I may start cranking these out more frequently, If not – well the hostage gets it.)

Today’s work is When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger.

Written in 1986 at the height of the “Oh My God, the Japanese are buying up all the real estate scare”, “When Gravity Fails” is a dystopian cyberpunk novel with a slight twist.  Instead of Japan dominating everyone with their “Ohhh, we’re super scary smart” technology, the middle-east (in particular the Muslim middle-east) has engineered the downfall of the superpowers and come out on top.  The rest of the world has fragmented but it is hinted strongly that a caliphate has held the muslim world together.  Even for a genre that delights in beings as depressing as possible without being written by Sylvia Plath this strikes a lot of people (and by that I mean me) as a particularly depressing outcome.  It also seems slightly prescient given the state of the world today.

Against this backdrop we meet Marid Audran, a con-man/drifter who lives in the Budayeen, which seems to be the Las Vegas of the Muslim world.  Audran as the narrator presents a view of himself as tough and independent.  He is slightly arrogant and looks down on his friends who have had cybernetic enhancements, (they had to be there it’s a cyberpunk novel) as using artificial crutches to escape reality.  In reality he is a borderline addict / alcoholic who is just as dependent on his friends and his coping mechanisms as they are.  Effinger does throw in another little twist here; in most cyberpunk novels the enhancements are used to make people into some version of a supersoldier, faster reflexes, hardwired combat skills etc.  Effinger was obviously an astute observer of humanity, because like the internet in his universe implants are for porn.  Seriously that’s all these people do -  Jack in a porn module and hook up with some random person.  Good work if you can get it I guess, but it makes me think of that experiment with the mice where they wired the pleasure centers and it died after a couple weeks because all it did was hit the orgasm button.  Seems to me this is not the way to maintain a vast Muslim empire.  In addition Effinger must have been a kinky little SOB because no one uses the equipment they were born with.  90% of the girls are either post op transsexuals or shemales.  Of the rest one is a devout muslim, three are assassins with basketball sized breast implants, one is a cannibal and one is 90 years old and horny.  I don’t want to live in the neighborhood where he got his inspiration.

The story itself is boilerplate noir.  Reluctant hero has to solve series of brutal killings.  After seemingly solving the case it turns out that the crimes were actually masterminded by another, who has now kidnapped a friend / lover,  and the hero has to sacrifice a part of himself in order to save them.  The sacrifice is of course unappreciated and the hero is left in quiet contemplation to decide whether it was worth it.

So what’s the verdict?  This is actually a very readable book and I think one of the classics of the cyberpunk genre.  It takes the paradigms laid out by Sterling and Gibson and subverts them, but at the same time remains true to the original concepts.  I recommend it, the two sequels not so much.

BBC 4 looks at Hayekism

A half hour comparison between the views of Frederick Hayek and the Austrian school of economics and those of the followers of Lord Keynes.

(Note:  You have to sit through about 5 minutes of tedious poetry before the actual program starts)

via the Hayek Center

Economics for kids

I must have this

A Star Trek bathrobe from the good people at ThinkGeek.

 

HA!

I have been saying since 2008 that the proximate cause of the current recession was the speculative run on oil prices, and attributed it to malicious intent.  Up `til now I have only seen one economist who agreed with me (I know I posted about the guy but I can’t find the link), but now the Pentagon agrees with me:

“There is sufficient justification to question whether outside forces triggered, capitalized upon or magnified the economic difficulties of 2008,” the report says, explaining that those domestic economic factors would have caused a “normal downturn” but not the “near collapse” of the global economic system that took place.

Suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.

…

The report identifies three key stages in this possible economic attack:

• The first phase was a speculative run-up in oil prices that generated as much as $2 trillion of excess wealth for oil-producing nations, filling the coffers of Sovereign Wealth Funds, especially those that follow Shariah Compliant Finance.
• The second phase appears to have begun in 2008 with a series of bear raids targeting U.S. financial services firms that appeared to be systemically significant.
• The risk of a Phase Three has quickly emerged, suggesting a potential direct economic attack on the U.S. Treasury and U.S. dollar.

 

A link to the full report is available  at  PJ Tattler. 

To all who doubted me I just want to say Suck It!!!  Just kidding, but it is nice to get a little validation.