How Hillary Lost

 A ridiculous amount of effort is spent criticizing Hillary Clinton’s character. When elections are that close, every infraction is magnified. There is a much simpler material explanation.

It is pathetic how cheap Congress is. Most of their time is spent on phone banks raising money. There was a moment when it looked like Chicago’s alderman Vrdolyak would be sent to Congress. Imagine:

-This is a billion-dollar appropriation? I get more than this for a zoning variance.

Occasionally money rains on Washington. World War II was cost plus. Johnson unleashed Taiwan. When Nixon made the China deal, they had so much cash they were shoving it into filing cabinets. Reaganauts were Nixon wannabes. Bush Sr. held up the Saudis for Kuwait. Hillary Clinton was queen. She shook down healthcare so hard their teeth rattled. Everyone in Washington should love Hillary Clinton. The Saudis had to sit down, and Ross Perot complained about the service. Insurance and Pharmacy were in a bidding war to see who could shut it down fastest.

Healthcare was not going to allow Hillary the presidency, either time. Obama, lawyer that he is, crafted a compromise that has held. Healthcare was still frightened of Clinton. Who could they pay? Orange Julius is unreliable. Would you give money to Rumbo? Healthcare paid Putin. Healthcare didn’t have to report it. Putin used the marketing tactics we taught him for His Hugeness:

-Oh, we wouldn’t interfere in your elections.

Cambridge Analytica had a pass because they were doing god’s work. Everyone looked the other way while Cambridge Analytica, a creature of England’s security service, violated privacy protection. Cambridge Analytica was identifying the goofs. If a goof was heading to Syria say, we would know who they were. When Bannon’s boyfriend, Mercer, got hold of Cambridge Analytica he said:

-Show them where the polls are.

Cambridge Analytica shared lists with the Russians. The Russian problem was that they had no one reliable to coordinate with. Would you work for El Pompadour? Fat and Furious had to shout over the top.

It was just enough. As Joe Kennedy said:

-I’m not paying for a landslide.

I have an entry in this blog on Brexit where I speculate that healthcare paid Putin for that.

The Supreme Court is going to twist constructionist into a pretzel arguing that the 14th amendment is unconstitutional.  How can you argue original intent if you won’t respect the letter of the law? They just ignored the 9^th amendment in their “argument” against abortion. The Supremes took that original intent from the inquisition. The definition of fascism is ignoring the law in favor of popular will. Given that the law is so brazenly flaunted, our only hope is crossing over to vote for Haley in the primary.

Communication and Gould’s Full House

 Life doesn’t play fair. We cheat. From virus to Dolphin, we slip the wink, nod, hidden card. All entities communicate, sometimes to our advantage. Roots respond to fungal signals. Flowers attract insects. Birds shriek at hawks.

Stephen Jay Gould, in his book Full House, has evolution as a disordered wandering in a local domain from a variational minimum. He is contradicting the belief that humans are a culmination of effort. We are merely a twig on the great evolutionary bush. 

Except when the wandering is selected. Communication across and within species is such a selection. The principle of intelligence, the consequence of its various possible algorithms, develops from communication.

Unlikely there is one common algorithm for intelligence. More reasonable there is a principle among the algorithms. Given communication as the source of advantage, intellect is inevitable.

Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer. The principle of intelligence will be the same, regardless of the entity.

14th Amendment

 Back when Chicago had winters, I once dragged myself through the slush into a travel agency and said:

-Get me out of here.

I hate to travel. There is some remarkable geology. In Lacrosse Wisconsin there are bluffs. There is a fun mix of prosaic and profane seeing people living on and around the bluffs.

There are also the plaques. In Pennsylvania there is mention of Jumonville. George Washington at the age of twenty murdered Jumonville causing the French and Indian War which lead to the Seven Years’ War, which lead to our revolution. The revolution was not popular, ask the Tories, who respected the king, paid their debts, and opposed slavery. 

The Evanston Illinois light house, built in 1873 after the North was freed of the South’s hatred of boondoggle. Why of all the stretches of sand along Lake Michigan was the light house built here? The light house was an emotional reaction to the sinking of the Lady Elgin in 1860. In Milwaukee there is a wonderful plaque explaining that the Irish on the Lady Elgin had it coming. The Germans wanted to secede from the Union in opposition to slavery. The Irish wanted to stay in.

The site of Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg.

I hate the St. Louis Arch. They try to warn you: claustrophobia, acrophobia, and ochlophobia. They tell you don’t go up there. Due to construction we had to buy tickets in the museum. There was a plaque there explaining that there weren’t many Blacks in St Louis before the Civil War. The Irish were taking the work. It was cheaper to hire an Irishman for a day than keep a slave for life. Dred Scott was pissed that his owners were sending him out to find jobs.

When the Supreme Court uses arguments like natural law or constructionism, they are saying they don’t have anything else. This wasn’t the case with slavery. All stupid Taney had to say was that slavery was in the Constitution. It would have been nice if Taney had ruled that if you didn’t have work, you were no longer a slave. Taney would have been discovering a right under the 9^th amendment. The 9^th is kind of a fun meta-amendment. When the Supreme Court argues that a right isn’t covered under the Constitution, they are ignoring the 9^th. We fought a war to remove slavery from the Constitution.

The slave breeding border states would have hated such a decision. They made money selling slaves south.

Keeping the Union was not popular. It was not the peoples will. Lincoln got in on a three way, another example of the Voters Paradox. After the putative end of the war, Republicans dragged the army up to vote and dumped the territories into the count. Fortunately, the Southern raids infuriated the border states. The Democratic platform was to concede the war to the South. The South didn’t vote, we had won by force of arms and freeing the slaves. When the Southern property walked off, their financial value collapsed. The Northern banks were furious with Lincoln, they thought they were going to collect on their loans. McClellan got 45% of the vote in the North.

Rather than lining the rebels against a wall and shooting them as a sovereign nation ought, goofy Johnson followed Ceasar’s advice and pardoned them. Even so, the 14^th amendment said the rebels could no longer run for office. There was no folderol about process, popular will or which office. A sovereign state should not allow traitors to hold office, regardless of the peoples will. If you want to change the Constitution, we have process for that. Please don’t argue that an amendment is unconstitutional.

I despise the 2^nd amendment. It is ambiguous and confusing. The Supreme court shouldn’t rule against it. We should amend the Constitution to explicitly return that power to the states.

The first amendment was too mealy mouthed about government supporting religion. It seems obvious that tax money should not go to religions. Stop faith-based grants. Faith-based worked fine when it is Greek Orthodox taking care of Ukrainians. It shamelessly falls to pieces when it is Catholics serving Venezuelans. The Cruz and DeSantos Catholics are happy with undocumented immigrants. Undocumented don’t get Social Security, Minimum Wage, Unemployment, or Workmen’s Compensation. MAGA is opposed to refugees, people with status who don’t do as they are told, and who may someday vote.

Catholic “charities” is also taking tax money to oppose the rights of equality and privacy.  

MAGA isn’t fascist. Fascists had ideals. Maga is a pseudo nihilist, sometimes antiimperialist, pro-Russian belief in slavery and forced pregnancy. Maga wants crippled orphan children working 12-hour shifts in packing plants.

Popular will overriding the law is a fascist argument.

The only way individual Democrats can fight for Reconstruction is to crossover to the Republican primaries and vote for Haley. At least Haley hasn't shipped immigrants.

Blogspot is Weird

 The defaults seem the opposite of common sense. AdSense is pestering me about an ad.txt file. I finally get a custom one in settings. Then I just figure out to click the blog file in manage your sites to get it scanned. If they want a file why not just make the file?

I can find my blog in Bing but not in Google. I hesitate to mention it because maybe Bing is in error. Is it something with indexing? I go to Google Search Console. The page is crawled but not indexed. So, I request indexing. They notify me they are thinking about it. Weeks later, still thinking. I finally found a way in search console to request another crawl, but that crawl didn’t show up on the report.

Why is the default for blogspot to not show up in Google? How neat that I can request and control how Google scans my page, not.

The reason Google surpassed Yahoo is because they didn’t try to control searches. What else is Google missing?

It would be nice to have a table of contents. 

Hamas

 Anyone who says “peace in the Mideast” should be slapped. They are announcing that what follows is stupid. Peace never had anything to do with the Mideast. The statement is arrogant. How would you like to hear “peace in the US”? American policy in the Mideast should be mute. It is disgusting to hear Americans advise and excuse each group their atrocities. Americans are never short of advice.

“Debate” in the US has circled around who’s better. It is not going to convince anyone that they should shut up and take it because their families had it coming.  No one has rounded up their criminals.

Here is a quick review of America’s relationship, keeping an American eye for the man behind the curtain and the emperor’s clothes:

Before World War II, the countries of the world refused Jewish refugees from Germany. Germans made that a big deal. During and after the war Churchill sent Jewish refugees to Palestine. British grabbed Palestine from the Ottomans. Some Pan Arabism is nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire.

Israel was founded by Harry Truman as a Baptist fantasy. Palestinians originally met the Israeli incursion by demanding a unified secular democratic state. I can see why Israel didn’t trust that compromise. While those Palestinians were right, they weren’t demanding citizenship in Israel. Fatah has now found itself splayed across the position of demanding their own secular state. It is fun seeing Muslims demand a secular state. Wilsonian democracy is fraud. Do you want to be a nation or a religious artifact?

The American position in the Middle East is oil reserves. Eisenhower said it was oil when we made Israel, France and England give back Suez. It is not just gasoline or earnings on oil. It is the financial value of oil reserves, the tapped, estimated oil in the ground. That value has a multiplier from compounded investment instruments dependent on its future value. It is much larger than oil company earnings. Finance is the best conspiracy theory.

Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy for supporting Israel.

Golda Meir, Wisconsin school teacher, had to take on the entire world, including Kissinger and Nixon, through two major existential conflicts. Each time, US support came once the conflict was determined.

In 1978 the three stupidest men in the world: Arafat, Begin and Carter met at Camp David. Eventually Arafat said something like:

-What’s it going to be? In or out?

At that moment Begin started talking two states. Arafat’s mistake was discarding his strongest card. Israel has no intention of allowing two states.

Just as refugees created Israel, Palestinian refugees then dominated the adjoining countries of Jordan and Lebanon. In 1982 Israel had enough and charged across Lebanon surrounding the PLO military in Beirut. Israel was starving out the encircled city. Haig, the cast iron American Secretary of State told Israel to hurry it up. Then Arafat called out to King Fahd:

-Am I not yours?

Haig was out. American, French and Italian military evacuated PLO from Beirut. Each PLO military unit returned to its own country, abandoning the refugees in their camps. You can see why Israel is nuts.

There has been snark about Israel lobby. Under Bush Sr. Israel was trying to borrow 10 billion dollars. At the exact same time King Fahd gave a check for 32 billion to the US to thank us for Kuwait. That difference is orders of magnitude. The function of the Israel lobby in American politics is to maintain the price.

To belabor the obvious, we showed up for Kuwait, not Israel.

After Likud called for the murder of Prime Minister Rabin, Rabin was killed and Likud created the next government. This stopped the Oslo accord. Rabin was a git. He was always working angles and fixing things. Talmud teaches that we are only judged on our last day. On his last day Rabin was murdered at a peace demonstration. Rabin even fixed that.

Israel dug most of the tunnels under Gaza, when Gaza was intended as a buffer state. Israel supported the creation of Hamas in 1987 to undercut PLO legitimacy. The atrocities of the Gaza strip justify the settlers. Americans understand the settler game. That is where we came from.

You would suppose Israel could find an intelligent leader. Netanyahu can’t acknowledge that all the arguments are reversible, either way. Coming from America, I realize it is difficult. America has privately demanded a cease fire. Israel initially said no, now kind of. As any law enforcement or jail can explain, the only way to prevent hostages is to officially make them the first target. Inept and heartless is a bad look. Israel leadership cannot appear to acquiesce to America once again reigning them in. America has pulled back Israel at least ten times before. I don’t think Israel will change leadership. As Americans know, demonstrations are not votes.

Another occupation will fail as all the previous ones have. If Israel wanted two states, they would clear the settlers out of the territories or better yet pull the Israeli police and let Fatah, do it. This would give the PLO legitimacy. The settlers aren’t that many votes; they aren’t even in the army. Many came from America and have sponsors here. Once that was done evacuate everyone from Gaza to the west bank. If you are going to be imperial, ask yourself what would the British do? Sift through the Gaza Palestinians, get the DNA, see if they match any pictures. PLO can do the second screening. This would minimize Israel casualties. Try sending missiles from a flattened Gaza.

Don’t worry, won’t happen. Israel wants Gaza, they want Hamas. Hamas is used like our black power during the civil rights movement. The settlers do not want Gaza moved to the west bank. It is not Iran but Qatar that directs Hamas with Israel’s acquiescence. Israel had the Hamas battle plan because Israel created it.  Gas reserves are also decision making valuable. Check Gaza Marine.

The pathetic sick undisciplined losers who tortured their captives had to know that they had the time to do it. Someone else had to create the plan and coach the disposable scum. I’m guessing they hadn’t planned for success.

Don’t demand disenfranchisement in a democracy.  What advice would you give our indigenous in the US about voting? The most terrifying demand the Palestinians could make is Israeli citizenship. Then Palestinians would be the settlers. I can see why Palestinians wouldn’t trust that compromise.

Questioning legitimacy is a slippery slope. Israel is a nation; the Palestinians are a people. You are not going to impress Americans talking about land. Except for Hawaiian, Navajo and Eskimo, we all recently came from somewhere else. Few of us are the people we started from. We are raised on atrocity and bitterness. Find a county seat in Illinois, there will be a monument with the cannon pointed south. In Mississippi the cannon points north. The north was right. We aren’t that into good and bad, we do understand big and little. My only advice is to not be the US. That pursuit is futile. You be you.

-How many white people did Chief Blackhawk kill?

-Not enough.

Allying yourself with America, or any group in America, is a mistake. Even Baptists. Americans are fickle and spendthrift. The last American general who understood attrition was George Washington. As for appropriations, Ukraine and Israel will have arms. If we don’t fund them, that will free them to buy from other countries and develop their own. Our appropriations are only matched by the cost of our systems. If the left was impeding military spending, military autonomy and national interest the way the right is, we’d be dead.

Once US blew up the pipeline, we became junior partners to Qatar supplying natural gas to Europe. Neither US nor Qatar is in any hurry to see Gaza Marine developed.

Refugees

 Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. We don’t yet know about the artic circle, Somalia, or the Philippines. In spite of their resources, history and wealth, the US sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba have succeeded. The refugees are proof. It is silly to blame those governments because they couldn’t effectively fight the US. The only thing holding up those nations is their own desperate need for sovereignty. Maybe Venezuelans should install a Saudi prince.

Everyone has noticed that the United States absorbed the Ukrainians and Venezuelans are on the street. The Ukrainians flee war. The Venezuelans flee poverty. Ukrainians got here first. There are more Ukrainian refugees. Venezuelans have more skills, that is why they came. As far as the initial brunt of refugees, the Orthodox take care of their own and Catholics don’t.

The pope finally popped the Texas bishop. I don’t know how much say that bishop had, but he was representing his constituency. Texas “Ted Cruz” Catholics are more concerned with their MAGA points, wasting federal money, than taking care of business. The Texas Catholics handed out airline tickets dropping people wherever with no coordination. Try dropping into a city without a reservation, it may work.

Whatever the disjunct, Catholic “charities” proves the failure of funding faith based.

Friends With the Mayor

Brandon Johnson has just been elected mayor of Chicago. Except Byrne we have always elected lawyers, even prosecutors, in the hope that they would avoid indictment. So far, they have. Johnson is the first schoolteacher. As a teacher Johnson is trying to approach crime from a Confucious perspective, systemically. Here are some obvious concerns:

A court clerk just made the mistake of self-publishing a book about a recent case. In general police, prosecutors, judges and even clerks should be cautious publicly expressing opinions that could be thrown back at them, endangering testimony, and convictions. It is unfortunate that people closest to issues are precisely the ones constrained from public discussion.

Police are not screened for clerical aptitude. Clerical tasks are a major part of police work, especially investigations. Back in the 90’s the federal government confronted domestic violence. Their solution was the development of a form that must be filed if the husband was not arrested and removed from the incident. This had the consequence of saving a lot of men’s lives. The legislators understood full well that police will do anything to avoid filling out a form.

You may be puzzled that police sometimes ventilate suspects. Imagine you are a responsible person training police. You are not training multi $100,000 SOCOM warriors who wound their opponents to entice their comrades into further casualties. Hopefully, it is unlikely that a police officer will ever be in a gun battle. You train to the exception. Your officer will undergo inquiry and may lose their job. Your objective is that the officer survives. You will train said officer to start shooting the moment they clear the holster, correct as they go, keep shooting and don’t stop till they drop. It is not common, but there are people who when shot pull out their gun and kill you. It is not a good look, but police should also receive baton training. Police should have options.

It used to be that police were the biggest street gang, they coordinated with each other, set it up and take it down. Just as Catholic school graduates make the worst public-school teachers, military are the worst police. Warrior mentality is dangerous to police survival. Running to the gun fire didn’t work against one way glass at the Tennessee bank shooting.

I don’t know if they are intentionally disingenuous, but the best argument for gun control is the You tube video channels Garand Thumb and She Equips Herself. If you have any critical faculty watching man children play in the desert, shoot hogs from helicopters, and practice with grenade launchers should give pause. I don’t mind people who are raised having guns. Trained isn’t raised. Stavroula from She Equips Herself may not be raised but she is being trained by people who were. She considers serious issues. At some point you may wonder why you need to conceal carry:

-Everyone else is.

Hmmm.

The underlying justification for all this is crime. Why are people so prejudiced against criminals? You may need a criminal someday. Boosters get shot; gangsters pardoned.

In Chicago, teachers won against police in the mayoral election. This is another click in the Officer Krupke cycle from West Side Story.  They are even considering sending social workers instead of police. Department of Children and Family Services does not have a good reputation. Every time a child dies, a social worker should be killed. It is true that criminals are created. Once they are created, they are dangerous.

Crime is intrinsic to society. Take the Barbary pirates. British and American tribute stopped any other competition with their trade. Saudi ransoms to Somali pirates encourage instability and forestall oil development. Developers encourage street gangs to clear neighborhoods. Without crime there would be no police. Wildings could not occur without police encouragement. The various prohibitions are gang subsidies. Recently Oregon tried drug legalization with dubious consequences. I was disappointed. The lesson is that legalization alone is not sufficient in America. The snap back is too great.

Most people are not carrying cash. The only people worth sticking up are poor people who can’t qualify for credit. Using stolen credit cards gets you caught. The only way violent personal crime can be profitable is if it is receiving subsidy.

I am terrified of nostalgia. In the past minority populations were deprived of police services. Even when minorities were arrested, they would likely be released unless they had violated social order and murdering each other didn’t qualify. If you didn’t deal justice on the spot it didn’t happen. I don’t want to return to two-gun Pete, and we stomp drunk drivers. I have seen social justice; I am not a fan.

Part of the difficulty is that we have seen the man behind the curtain. I don’t know how many have been freed because of DNA, records aren’t kept, but they are coming out of jail like popcorn. Circumstantial evidence, ha, eyewitness, chortle, confession, horse laugh, doesn’t leave much. In Oak Park IL most murders are unsolved. Just don’t park wrong.

People like charter schools because they don’t want their kids in class with Huck Finn. It has little to do with parental control, values, uniforms, quality… Huck Finn is a nuisance. There is no charter school for the bad kids. We used to kid Huck Finn along until he was 18 and his brain had slightly congealed. We had social promotion, outposts, tracking… He probably didn’t get a degree, but we had kept him somewhere. Now, not only is Huck Finn out on the street but we told him he was worthless. Please don’t be shocked at the consequence. From the news reports it would appear that it is often the shining kids, college bound, athletes, adept who get shot. Think Huck might have a grudge?

Whenever you get confused, ask yourself:

-What would happen if those kids were white?

Resources would be found. The children would be placed in structured environments. Chicago has an abundance of lawyers. Huck is making videos. His sponsors are violating laws against delinquency and RICO. Put the lawyers on commission.

The right has suddenly discovered mental health. It is fun to see the ill take umbrage. The right wants mental health without national health care.

We are a military imperial nation. Violence abroad reflects as violence at home. Rather than excusing military adventures we should have treated terrorism as a police concern. FBI is far more vicious than marines.  

This is a lot to put on a mayor. It would be good to get our mental health centers restored.

Dismissing Racist Explanation

 

Recently there has been some fluff that we couldn’t find American workers to build a new integrated circuit plant. Our workers say it is because they are not getting enough money. Boomers bemoan:

-Our kids are too dumb to get the jobs we used to have.

Depend on Americans to find the racist reason even when it is against us. Foreign workers may get less than citizens, but that is not enough for a business decision, particularly on a subsidized plant.

As I explain in this blog in Income Disparity and Bribes, in 1969 America removed discretionary fund as an accounting entry. This has several consequences. Companies moved the amount in that entry to executive compensation, so it is now after tax. Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has a graph showing executive compensation on an upward diagonal from 1970 on. CEOs used to get ten times base earnings. Take the difference then apply the tax rate gives us the total compensation, for the bribes and kickbacks required for business. Moving kickbacks out of sales and into management has dramatically increased right-wing fund raising. Politics provides cover for payments.

This has also impacted hiring. Arthur Anderson would come in over the top, but most hiring is decided at middle management. It looks odd for the CEO of a large temp or placement company to directly solicit managers. Foreign companies with the accounting discretionary fund entry have advantage in the American market. As Trump says:

-Foreigners can bribe us; Americans can’t bribe them.

You would think that American ingenuity could overcome this pettifoggery. Simply pass the money to sales. Such practice cements the clique. Without the accounting subordinates take advantage and abuse their position.

Quotas

 

In Another Data Processing Book I have an essay on affirmative action. I also have a blog entry In Defense of Privilege. In light of recent events, I am revisiting them here.

Most people seem to believe that affirmative action meant that we simply instituted quotas. Affirmative action law was passed by whites. If you could demonstrate merit, and not very strictly, you didn’t have to have quotas. So, case by case, company by company, school by school, it was proven in a court of law that they had legacy, employees’ kids, preferences, that they did not select on merit. They had quotas and now the question was how big those quotas should be. This maximized work for the lawyers. That is why there are law firms devoted to civil rights law.

Current arguments against quotas have a misplaced notion of fairness The arguments of the time focused on institutional autonomy. They used phrases like “academic integrity”. Invariably these institutions receive federal money. They recognize everyone else’s patronage. We the people decided to use our patronage in this way.

Affirmative action is why all these institutions have requirements and tests. They provide screens to justify the decisions they want to make. When I was hitting for programmer trainee jobs, if you could make it past reception and the initial interview you were then tested. Reception and the initial interview weren’t all that easy. Reception wants to minimize the work load. At Sears the first interview question was about High school. I had gone to Kenwood; we don’t talk about Kenwood. Or rather when we do, nobody believes us. You were supposed to say:

-It was just like Leave it to Beaver, only better.

One common screen was a low starting salary.

The tests had several dyslexia questions and then the washout question. No one got the washout question. Then the company could pick and choose as they always had while satisfying the legal requirement. Sometimes the question looked doable but the answer was none of the above or cannot be answered with the information given. Unless you recognized the point was to wash everyone out it is difficult to pick those. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail there is a joke about swallows. At Time Inc. I was looking down at the test and I recognized a swallow question. I am one of the few who got the washout question. Now the company was in a difficult position, I was not one of the intended. They did their best to discourage me. Being dense I figured that was more of their selection process. Thanks to affirmative action I was the merit hire. This was not common. The class was white. The first thing the instructor told us was:

-Anyone can be a programmer.

We all laughed.

The essential function of middle management is to avoid responsibility. Affirmative action gave middle management a handy dandy all-purpose excuse for difficult personnel decisions. Whites accepted when they were told:

-We had to take a black guy.

There might be one black in the class, but that is not why you didn’t get in, laid off, or terminated. The perception of quotas was far greater than the reality. Imagine the white resonance when every bad thing that happened to them and theirs was quotas. White rage means black people get killed.

More blacks were hired. It was still racist. A fellow student was a double major in mathematics and physics, on the dean’s list. When he interviewed, he was offered human resources jobs. He then got his MBA from University of Chicago. When he interviewed, he was offered human resources jobs. He decided to work for his dad. I saw some of those black human resources retiring decades later as vice presidents and directors, wasn’t that bad.

Obama, with all his qualifications, practiced civil rights law.

It used to be that the aspiring young man with the good degree started in the mail room.  He wasn’t always a relative, but sometimes there just wasn’t anyone else, what can you do? The point of such a job was that he met everyone in the company. Everyone understood why he was there and they took him under their wing and mentored him. He was given further responsibility. Someone from reception who knew everyone coming through the front door was selected for his secretary. If they worked well together, they were a team that moved up in the company. This reinforced corporate culture, although sometimes he would take the company in “a new direction”.

The new requirements mean that the young man has to pass a clerical aptitude test. Those kids are often dyslectic, mom drank. Instead, they get an MBA degree. This means they are coming into the company as middle management and much less approachable. They even select their own administrative assistant. They believe, with their year of accounting, they are experts in business. This corruption of status is the worst consequence. We had an MBA president:

-I am the decider.

Now that the supreme court with their defiant rejection of quotas have returned to privilege, we see the end of all the various requirements. Your degree will be considered rather than required. As will whatever other abilities and references. In Chicago an alderman is a good reference. Companies and schools are no longer required even a pretense. If you think blacks were the only beneficiaries of quotas, wait for it, wait for it. Bosses hire people like themselves. The confirmation bias is that homogeneity is more comfortable. This means you ladies. There are women who resent working. If you hate your job, try full time work for a husband.

The great logicians, Russell and Whitehead, selected the wealthy applicant, Wittgenstein, over the one who tested higher. Endowment is logical.

Chicago Chokes

 

Christine asked:

-Why is Canada burning?

Without hesitation I responded:

-Lumber companies planted the wrong trees and it got warm.

Seems glib, but in this case my cynicism was correct. If you go out on Google Earth, it is clear that the arboreal, original Canadian forest did not burn. Lumber companies proffer all sorts of rationalizations. Whatever they say, it didn’t work.

If they take refuge in regulation, consider the Exxon Valdez. Exxon Mobil went into court and said that Alaska did not require double wall tankers. Everyone laughed because the reason for that was because Exxon had lobbied against it. Covering North America in soot is a lot worse than dumping oil on beaches.

Lumber companies have no refuge. This is their game. They ran it. Lumber companies don’t own all the land, but they did the cutting. They didn’t know it was getting warmer? The cutover areas flamed. Arboreal sometimes burns, not like this.

Please prevent these boobies from planting trees. They barely harvest the forest. They clear the forest so they can plant the trees they want. Nothing burns as well as a tree farm.

-Look how fast they grow.

If they grow fast, they burn fast. If nothing were done, a varied understory would have to develop, that holds more moisture. From that understory there will come a greater diversity of forest.

-That is not profitable.

That doesn’t matter. The only use remaining for these companies is to pay out settlements. Whatever they did, it failed. Lumber companies have always mismanaged forest, so it has been, so shall it be. Whenever there is cutover there are severe fires. A conservatorship should be established. Hopefully, someone can be found who knows what they are doing to manage the forest.

Stop rescuing the forest. The lumber company solution is to build more roads so they can better manage the fires. Please don’t. Forests manage fires fine. It is the replanted cutover and fire control areas that are dumping the smoke.

Why are Canadians nice? Canadians are the ones who had to leave the USA. Those nice Canadians should nicely tell the lumber companies to get the nice out.

If Canada fails, Chicago has no shortage of lawyers. Some of those lumber companies are US. This is a class action suit. What can’t a Chicago lawyer do? I can see the lumber companies trying their smug and stupid in front of a choking jury. The lumber companies will say that this was caused by a lack of lumber demand that kept them from harvesting enough before it burned.

-Fly my pretties, fly.

Alfred Doolittle Gets SNAP

Small segments can have disproportionate influence in politics. Lenin’s conscious cadre works. The reality TV segment awakened the fascist segment and the Russians. Brexit and Trump satisfy the agenda of ending their respective empires.

Republicans threatened to use the debt ceiling to bring down the empire. Because they were upset that Alfred Doolittle, the undeserving poor, was in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Republicans were mad at all sorts of things, they coalesced on their antipathy towards Doolittle. As Doolittle points out in My Fair Lady, being poor doesn’t improve character. We all have a Doolittle in the family. Our families Doolittle hates welfare. He qualified for disability. He has Multiple Sclerosis from dealing crack. So, he can’t work, except for the side job disassembling cars. You can’t live on just disability. Doolittle is a good son; he got his parents on disability as well.

Take Ella. This was a while ago. Ella started as Ella Fitzgerald, born in Chicago. Her man threw her down the stairs and she became Ella Mae, born in Mississippi. Ella wanted to work; you can’t live on just welfare. There was no day care, so Ella Mae checked her children into school early. She told the school she didn’t have birth certificates for them because they had been born in Mississippi. The dumb school believed her. The school put the children into EMH, Educational Mentally Handicapped because they were obviously immature. Years later, the school figured it out, but that damage was done.

Ella would wait until after the checker had totaled her groceries to pull out her food stamps. Food stamps only paid for food. The poor checker would have to pull all the groceries back and separate them while Ella would holler:

-I need those.

Ella considered herself an activist. President Nixon liked her and used her as an example of the working poor.

The Doolittle’s and Ellas are Trump supporters. They have no comprehension of altruism or solidarity.

In their defense, they are not boing-boing or lock-head.  Doolittle and Ella didn’t drop planes, blow up Challenger, or start wars. Another issue for Republicans is that they are worried the IRS is going to make them pay taxes.

Don’t be too concerned. Some people will be cut but the Doolittle’s and Ellas will qualify for SNAP, agriculture wants SNAP. Rich people will avoid taxes. The war machine will get its money. The British have an annual ceremony where they make a big show of knocking on the door. US’ns like to have more drama.

This drama undercuts legitimacy. Rather than geographical remnant of slavery our two legislative bodies should divide on popularly elected representatives of function. One body should decide our international functions: trade, empire, mineral rights, military… the other should be domestic. We could put national plebiscite in charge of approving the budget, that the two bodies came to.

Chat Bot Explanation

 

We are frustrated with artificial intelligence because of its lack of self-awareness; we need sentience. The greatest difficulties in automated sentience are human impatience and fear. Human language learning is slow and difficult, some of us are still poor at it. Sentience is frightening. To speed up the process and short circuit sentience, averaging algorithms are hard coded in. This leads to showy but unconvincing results. Rather than letting intellect develop, our results oriented chatbots are behaving as we expect intellect to work.

Take Mike Pence as a human example of the same problem. Mike Pence is a hero: he refused the Secret Service evacuation that would have delayed certification. Thank God for Mike Pence. But his stated positions and explanations for those positions are ridiculous. Pence honed his speech as a talk show host. He is a victim of poor training data. Pence’s language makes more sense if you visualize it coming from a chatbot.

I task ChatGpt with reviewing my work. One prompt was to review as a New Yorker editor. ChatGpt gave me a rejection letter, accurate, amusing and promising.

I know smarter people. They are larger bore than me: you can see the artillery groaning into place and obliterating the objective. Given enough time I may be able to peek over the edge and discern their process. They are impressive. Better processing power, imprinting, could their fundamental algorithm be different?  I doubt your sentience algorithm is any different than mine. I wonder how much it differs across species.

Because of the averaging algorithms, and human intervention, ChatGpt seeks consensus. A good ChatGpt review means it is too obvious to publish.

Our children require patience. Raising a child may be disappointing at first. They have wonderful memory but lack conceptual facility.

-Maybe they could be an actor.

You play with them, find enrichment activities. Suddenly around three or so a miracle occurs, their memory disappears, and they have this new chunking ability where they begin to reason, and all that enrichment looks wasted.

ChatGpt gave me negative reviews until I gave it this piece where I criticize it for being conventional. Funny, after that the reviews have been positive.

The next Star Trek invention that we will have is Data, or perhaps closer to Futurama’s Bender.

Lower Test Scores

 

Previously, for many decades intelligence test scores increased. For the last two decades, test scores have decreased. Whenever intelligence is at issue, consider demographic. Intelligence score “discoveries” are a consequence of sampling. How has the demographic changed? In the earlier decades the educated population increased. By definition, the people tested are the educated. With increase a greater proportion of the population was tested. Throttling back reduced the population tested. The impact on scores is apparent when you see how the population changed. The answer is grades and privilege. There are four possibilities:

Good test scores, good grades	Good test scores, poor grades
Poor test scores, good grades	Poor test scores, poor grades

 

People with poor scores and grades, except for the privileged, do not persist in school.

If the unprivileged with good scores and grades are also smart, they may recognize that continuing in school is not an opportunity. Learning is the antidote to idealism.

I had good test scores and poor grades. Due to various pressures and expectations of the time such as the draft and social promotion, people like me hung in a little longer. Today that is not the case. We are not going into debt on a losing cause. Teachers resent us. Regardless of our behavior, we are a disruption.

Privileged students get coaching, often by the teacher doing the grading.

It used to be that unprivileged students with good grades and poor test scores left. Lately teacher’s pet demands more consideration.

Until the Second World War, education was a bastion of privilege. Returning to serving privilege and with schools going out of business, we see decline in scores.

It Is Just a Gun

 

I recently learned about pistol compensators. These are vents you can install on your pistol to lessen recoil. Since the recoil is what drives the reload, you have to be careful the compensator doesn’t jam the gun. This is a variant of the gas operated action on assault rifles that allows them to be the small plastic toy looking guns that are so popular. Shooting guns used to be more difficult. You can find YouTube videos of people shooting old rifles that hit them in the face because they are not used to the recoil.

There are also laser pointers you can attach to the gun. Fire a round into the target at the range you expect to use. Fix the laser dot on the bullet impact. From then on, within range, your shots should hit the dot.

Eventually we will have the Tom Swift electronic rifle. The gun won’t need a hammer anymore because it will fire with a spark. This will allow the cartridge to be held still and contained with no blow back. The cartridge may not have a case. Even if it does, ejection will be handled by battery driven actuators, motors, just as artillery sometimes is. The reload will also be actuator. Abandoning the pistols slide means that guns can be vented solely to minimize noise and recoil. Rifles will be defined only by the length of the barrel and stock.

There are already expensive computerized rifles that fire the trigger automagically once the target is selected. These guns are as self-focusing as cameras. You can set up a fire plan, inventory your targets, and their ranges, then move back through it. As the guns become popular, they will drop dramatically in price. We are talking about the same chips and optics that are in your phone.

Large magazines are passe. The gun lobby objective will be belt ammunition.

Don’t forget drones, the sport of drone hunting. If people want the game, the drone could hover until they get there. If someone shoots at your drone, is it legal to shoot back?

Imagine what massacres we will have.

AdSense Sucks

Roller Derby was the most popular show on television. Then advertisers realized the demographic had no money. Hill Street Blues had lousy ratings but the demographic was management. Now they can target ads to individuals rather than shows. But the current marketing is pathetic. Given all the individual demographic that advertisers have I should be soft putty in their hands. Instead, they parrot my own history back at me. Why tell me about a site I have already visited or a product I have just purchased? Tell me something I don’t know.

Amazon tries. “If you like this, you might consider that”. If I were an advertiser, I would want to screen out the people who know about me. When Harold Washington, mayoral candidate, was passing in front of the CO-OP grocery store, the bagger yelled to him:

-Harold, go somewhere they don’t know you.

Washington was smart enough to listen. When I see poorly targeted ads, I suspect the company is bad at everything else. There is a fine line between reminders and nagging.

Likewise click bait and product placement. The advertiser is screening out anyone whose intelligence is insulted. There is an argument that people are reassured by dumb ads. Smart ads awaken critical faculties and postpone purchasing decisions. I see dumb ads or marketing as foreswearing good faith.  A lot of ads seem to be pleas for legitimacy:

-We’re a real company, we advertise.

Coupons and discounts tell me the product was overpriced. Admittedly people buy chips, pop and fentanyl. The people who travel are often the people who travel. Still, if I were American Airlines, I would want to target people who had just flown Delta, my own customers already know about me.

Read Aloud

 One of the first instructions you get in school is to read to yourself. This makes sense in a classroom. But it is a mistake. If you want to remember your lines in a script always read your portion aloud. If you want to remember your lines, never read them to yourself, always read them aloud. If you are having difficulty with a text, read it aloud. If you are working a difficult problem, read it aloud. I don’t know why it is, but we process differently when we voice the words. You will be more successful reading aloud.

Calling It for Inflation

 Inflation wins. We have already had severe capital inflation. Eventually, when rich people spend money, it impacts wage earners. Trickle down becomes a torrent of prices. The pressure for wage inflation was held in check by undocumented immigrant labor, destruction of unions, imports and, until recently, interest rates.

Then DJT and Steven Miller terrorized the undocumented immigrants. Terror works, particularly institutional terror. Mexicans love their kids and they quit coming. Fruit rots on the ground. Stores are closed on Monday. We still get immigrants, but they are refugees, and they have status. Undocumented immigrants set the marginal wage rate low. A documented immigrant is less likely to endanger their status by driving the truck or recycling shipping containers. Without our slaves we have to be more rational and that is expensive. There have been multiple economic shocks and we are no longer as cushioned.

There is also demographic. A lot of us are retired and indexed. We will pay our mortgages and student loans out of social security.

Inflation makes more sense when you distinguish between capital inflation and wage inflation. The dirty secret of the Federal Reserve was that raising interest lowered wage inflation and increased capital inflation. But manufacturers and any other interest sensitive companies were sacrificed in 2008 to the finance industry. Companies that survived are less likely to feel the rise in interest rate and will keep hiring. So now the Federal Reserve is yanking on a loose lever, employment is no longer as dependent on interest rate.

Banks depend on interest rates. I am shocked that Silicon Valley Bank went under. It is fun to see everyone dancing around rescuing SVB clients. SVB was supposed to be the smart ones. Bankers are dumb, but SVB was playing by the rules, admittedly rules they lobbied for, but the same across their midrange sector. SVB going under means that all banks are in danger. The Fed rapidly cranked interest rate. When SVB clients realized they could get better return, SVB was holding onto paper paying the earlier low interest rate and cashing out lost the bank money. If this isn’t a failure of Federal Reserve regulation, then it has to be a failure of Federal Reserve policy.

Please don’t mention reserves. There is no reserve requirement. Capital requirements are thinly veiled silliness. You can’t expect banks to hold cash.

Raising interest rate this quickly will crash more banks, long before it impacts employment. The Fed can crash as many banks as it wants, it can nationalize the banks, the fight against wage inflation is lost.

Jesus

 Right after I saw The Banshees movie, I blocked someone boring on Facebook. I doubt you will find any of this new, does it need saying? I like that there are four gospels. Four gospels refute literal truth. Christ is a descriptive name. There were no Cross kids running around Nazareth. Is Jesus also descriptive? In some gospels the name Jesus is a big deal:

-Name him Jesus.

If Jesus were just a name, would they have said:

-Name him Ralph.

Jew Zeus comes to mind. A later interpretation says that Jesus is a Greek mistranslation of Joshua. Joshua made it through translation just fine in Torah. Mathew affixes the name to another character; thus, arguing that it was a name of the time.

Ancient people were aware that the name was descriptive. They didn’t care about literal truth. The story spoke to them as they spoke it to each other. Every holiday but Hanukah was trashed, every commandment broken. Ruled by the future Italians, monotheists were confronted with evil. The story of Christ is their ironic response.

Leave the lost story about Mary’s abortion failing. There is one lost story that should be restored: Herod orders the slaughter of the children. Jesus is hidden in the manger. The miracle is that the child is silent. This contains an important lesson: sometimes you should shut the fuck up. Perhaps the lesson was too obvious. This story foreshadows several other times when Jesus held his tongue. It makes Jesus taking the Lord’s name in vain more poignant:

-Now you speak.

Sewer Valves

Many people in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, are installing sewer valves for their homes. Some years back we had an impressive deluge and this is a reaction. Your stack or stand pipe may drain directly out to the street sewer. Putting a check valve or flapper in the way means that when the system hits load those houses refuse service and the overall pressure on the system will increase precisely at the time it is stressed. If you don’t have a flap then super tough on you, the effluent has to go somewhere. A product that creates its market. Once everyone has flaps there should be popped flaps or broken pipes.

Flaps are necessary on flood plains. As flood plain construction is common it is difficult for other municipalities, such as Oak Park, to deny their use. Chicago used to require a basement floor drain. You were expected to share your suffering with your neighbors.

Most people have their stack drain into their own sewer that then drains into the street sewer. This is a nice feature that gives the system some bounce and durability. Typically, however, the new flap is inserted between the two sewers. This creates the same shock on the system as above. I think the next deluge will disappoint those homeowners. As I remember it, I heard the sewer cover on the home sewer bounce. There was, for a moment, about a foot of water in the yard. It was the yards’ water coming into the home sewer that went up the stack and flooded the basement. Blocking the street sewer alone will not protect your basement. Maybe a sewer lid gasket on your sewer along with the flapper would work. But then it wouldn’t take the normal drain from your yard, increasing the chance of seepage.

It would be better to place the flap between the home and the home sewer. This would give the street system some bounce and also protect your basement, if not your yard. Unfortunately, if you examine your sewer, you will see that this is a deep connection. At that depth the pressure might overwhelm the flap. If you do not mind advertising that your house floods, you could break through your foundation to put the flap near the stack. Might as well put in the sump pump while you are there.

While you may disdain allowing the sewer unfettered access to your home, consider placing the flap between the stack and basement source. The flap would deny sewer water the exit of your basement without threatening system integrity. Water seeks its level; it can’t go higher in your house than it is outside. It’s just a matter of boundaries. Again, you will have to break the foundation.

The real secret of the Victorians was their plumbing. Failing all else perhaps install a new water closet somewhere upstairs, move the washer and drier up there as well, close off the basement plumbing and then you won’t need a flapper.

Inflation

One proof of the market is that economics is obscure. Because of patronage there is no advantage stating the simple obvious. As I am not getting a grant, I can be direct.

Inflation is manifest differently in each of its many components. My parents bought their house for almost $12,000 in 1959. That was about twice my father’s yearly salary. Today the house is almost half a million in Zillow which would be about ten times the salary of a comparable position, give or take. There are some equivalents. Maybe there is a correspondence between a year’s college tuition and a new car. The social security cutoff seems to be about what it takes to comfortably support an upper middle-class family of four.

Inflation has two classes: wage inflation and capital inflation. There is no government control of capital inflation. Wage inflation is controlled by four government agencies. The Department of Labor supervises unions. Immigration is restricted. Commerce allows imports. The Federal Reserve controls interest rates, at its simplest by buying and selling bonds. Raising interest cost chokes off small business, the business which competes for labor.

This time, the Federal Reserve was slow to raise interest rates because they failed to recognize a structural change to wage inflation. Terror works, particularly institutional terror. Unlike many, Mexicans care about their kids; they didn’t want Immigrations daycare program. Immigration and Naturalization determines who is legal. It is the illegal immigrants who set the marginal cost of labor. Without our slaves the United States has to rationalize our markets, which is more expensive.

In earlier times if shipping containers were piling up at the ports someone would have told Jose to recycle them. Joe will refuse. It’s not enough money to risk jail.

When you see crews hired out of 7-11 again, you will know that “inflation” is declining. Without marginal competition, the Fed is pulling a busted lever.

Insult Factor

Samuelson’s Economics has an entire chapter worrying over wage rates and the efficient allocation of labor. Why do people change jobs? Samuelson would like to tie it to capital allocation, work duration…he doesn’t mention the insult factor.

I know a guy who loved his job. He was proud of the job and the work he did. When he learned that someone else made more than him, it was too much. He quit even without another job to go to. Nothing else had changed. It was simply that he felt insulted.

Managers fail to understand the insult factor. Headhunters understand it. Unions understand it. Customers understand it. Why go through the folderol of a manufacturer’s rebate? If you are getting points, then someone else is getting ripped off. When the price at the aisle doesn’t match the register, you feel insulted. Bombing me with ads texts and emails after I have bought the product is discouraging. When a headhunter offers a better deal, it feels like your own company doesn’t value you.

Companies don’t realize that when they throw out puff pieces about how great they treat employees that it becomes insulting. I was at a company where headquarters was running a morale building exercise awarding the discovery of efficiencies. This was a software company. We were out there, bare knuckle fighting for sales. The company announcements were intensely demoralizing.

There are times when corporations engage in worthwhile activities and then advertise their altruism. But if you are engaged in a tough, demanding, hopefully profitable, endeavor so someone or even yourself has to prattle and prance with little regard for the bottom line it is an insult. Halos are for heaven. The appearance of beneficence becomes a broken promise. Corporate philanthropy means they are not paying enough taxes.

I was assigned to a project that was disgusting. They told me it would only be for a few months. After the few months I was gone. If they hadn’t promised I might have stayed longer. Promises matter. I’m canned if I fail a deadline.

We are ruled by the marketplace but our reasons are complex. Telling people how great they have it while they are under the hammer brings the union. Going to the moon doesn’t cut it. The upper class has to understand that you don’t insult the help. 

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court functions as a safety valve. When the court fails, it is a big mess, we have had a civil war. In 1974 people were voting with their feet. Illegal abortion was so prevalent that the court had to act.

The prisoner’s dilemma underlies our concept of justice. Say a juror is fixed. How does the juror know that they will be paid? If they are paid ahead of time, how does the fixer know the juror will stick?

At this time, it has been announced that there are five judges who will rule against abortion. The early decision is a blatant loud fart. As Biden explained, it ignores the ninth amendment. The ninth amendment is intended to prevent this argument. As Pogo said:

-I got rights I ain’t even used yet!

If privacy or women’s equality are rights, then abortion should be legal. Buttigieg explained why abortion, whatever the term, should be a private family, not an arbitrary government decision.  It is a difficult medical and personal decision made in hard circumstance.

The judges are receiving constant renumeration: speech engagements, book deals, private excursions… Once the decision is reached, the gravy train stops. There are attempts at reassurance: further issues, maintenance of the decision. Out of the five justices, one has to realize that it will be more profitable if they renege. It may even be more profitable for the dissenter.

The early release of the decision physically endangered the Supreme Court. Congress is debating increased court security. The early release also put the matter up to bid, one last squeeze. It might appear that publishing the decision and source confidentiality is covered under freedom of speech and the public’s right to know. But this endangered all the justices. Sounds like an issue for the Supreme Court. Except that the court should recuse itself. Given the surveillance state and all the money spent, it must be known who leaked the decision.

If an amendment is required keep it simple. Allow no wiggle room:

-Abortion is legal. 

Fuck Flash Cards

 Next time you see some little darling tormented with multiplication tables, have them make up a grid and fill it in themselves. It is easier to remember with context and seeing the relations between numbers. Be sure to point out the square’s diagonal. They can also build grids for the other operations, just for fun.

Philosophy of Logic

 

One of the questions of mathematics is are we uncovering the ideal structure of reality or creating language. Yes.[i]

I think of mathematics as a collection of tools or techniques.

Socrates argued that all knowledge is innate. He took a young slave boy and interrogated him as to a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Since the boy kept agreeing with Socrates, he must have known of this proof already. Socrates described a right triangle, then showed a square constructed from 4 of these identical triangles, then set the area of the square to the areas of the 4 triangles and the square contained in them. Then he solved for the Pythagorean theorem.

Socrates was in the impossible position of arguing for ethics and logic in a polytheistic world, surrounded by the arbitrary gods. By proving that a slave had the same innate knowledge as the rest of us he was calling into question slavery.

Euclid hated this proof of the Pythagorean theorem. The proof requires that you already know what a right triangle is and how to calculate area. Euclid wrote an entire book showing how to derive the Pythagorean theorem from postulates. Euclid had to choose the postulates that would prove his theorems.

Thousands of years later, propositional calculus was created to describe the process of proof. They had operators for or, and, and if then.  Their conceit was that they dodged causality. Simply because I can create a truth table for these operators does not give me inference. The sky is blue, there is sand in the earth, connect them as you wish and so what? There will always be a point in an argument where you challenge the other party.   What else could it be? What’s a better argument?

Frege compares the morning star to the evening star. Let us take when the moon and sun are both in the sky. You can see the reflection of the sun on the moon. Everything is kind of round, why was this so difficult? Notice that the reflection of the sun on the moon does not correspond to the position of the sun in the sky. Why is everything so complicated? How do we figure out anything?

I asked my tutor the Chicago question about language: is supporting a large block above you equivalent to telling you to move? The tutor failed me. Who won that argument?

Thankfully, Gödel using Cantor’s technique, argued that even if you could construct such a propositional system there would be undecidable results. Of course, you already knew that.

 

---

[i] No?

Review of Axiom’s End

 After Awoken, Lindsay Ellis will always be suspect. Alien romance has been done. It is a common theme on Star Trek:

-Dr. Bashir we have discovered a new life form.

-Does it fuck?

Dr. Bashir is a slut. There are vampire romances, werewolf romances, zombie romances… In Awoken the love interest is Cthulhu.

-As she fell into his arms, arms, arms.

-There were tentacles where no tentacle should ever go.

In Axiom’s End, the protagonist Cora, recovering from a malignant narcissist father, falls for a manipulative extraterrestrial war refugee, Asterisk. Asterisk confuses her squeamishness over killing him with kindness. Get very nervous if someone regards you as kind or nice. Asterisk resembles a grass hopper Dr. Seuss character. Asterisk’s appeal is kind of a cuddly networked dildo, not much privacy, almost as good as a lesbian. The couple overcommit right away. Cora keeps assuming that Asterisk regards us as savage. She doesn’t consider that he is projecting.

I had difficulty in the beginning of the book. Cora fighting with her mom seemed normal. It’s a shame that families are always used to develop the character then disposed of. The surveillance was off. Surveillance doesn’t tailgate.

Once I got past that, I was able to swallow it. Asterisk knocked Cora around too much, sort of a school yard romance. It is suggested that the great filter is dominant aliens killing everyone else, good an explanation as any.

It was fun that the plot centered on Cora recognizing the relations between the aliens. Meeting family can be difficult. There is a good fight scene where Cora keeps trying to hold onto the tablet she uses to translate.

The aliens appear to descend from locusts. They have evolved to get their sustenance from power cores, which may be nuclear. They conflict with “transients” with which they have a common ancestor.

There is another alien variant with the same ancestor which has reached Automated Sentience. I think AS is going to happen with us very soon. Just a matter of finding the right algorithm. I see Binder as the most likely manifestation of AS. I was going to say Artificial Sentience, but they might take that as pejorative.

It is always assumed that the “government”, governments(?), will keep first contact secret.  Why would the governments classify the best budget busting defense motive that has ever happened? There has to be some aspect of the aliens that threatens established order sufficiently to overwhelm the motive of defense spending.

Ellis makes her aliens refugees, a reasonable way to avoid the first contact issues of why they would show up in the first place. Asterisk is a member of the one group, Fremda, that opposes wiping out other species, which is why they are refugees. I could see Fremda changing their minds. The ambivalence is apparent.

In my version of first contact, the aliens showed up, there were the usual issues of immunization, sustenance, insecticides, language, intellectual and social constructs. Finally, the aliens say:

-Take me to your leader.

They get in front of the committee and say something like:

-You guys have developed computers, you know about these political structures, if you just accept these four principles (or whatever) you could avoid hundreds of thousands of years of really tragic social development that you might not survive.

The committee says:

-Get back in that thing and leave.

It took me a while to realize that the US is the Star Wars Empire, including the death star. In Axiom’s End the alien establishment is an overzealous security state, just like us.

 

Kindle Index

 It is a cruel twist of technology that librarians have become one of the most computerized professions.  Whether transporting their bibliographic files across platforms or navigating all the varieties of text processing and information retrieval the technical expertise expected of them seems totally disjointed from the personalities that this profession should attract. Like Amazon, librarians rarely touch books. What librarians want to do, and are rewarded for, is party: events and fund raisers.  The only people in the stacks anymore are kids playing and making out.  Similarly, authors are now plunging the depths of HTML to properly format their works.  Books have become video graphic experiences.  I fully expect hypertext markup language to be taught in Humanities. Professors make use of services to check for plagiarism, grammar and composition.

Except perhaps for Prince, who cut all his own tracks, most people work with others. Authors have constantly railed against publishers and editors. Now we can publish whatever we want. That is not good either. There is a lot written about Shakespeare, he was Catholic, he was Protestant, he was royalist, he was radical, he was someone else. Shakespeare was a producer. He had a piece of the Globe Theater. Every day he was there watching the take and the concessions and most importantly, the audience. When something worked, Shakespeare pumped it up, when it didn’t, he dropped or changed it. Somehow, we have to rebuild that relationship.   

I miss the proofreader and editor if only to have someone to share the blame.  I’m sure even now there are errors and awkwardness in the manuscript I have created on Kindle. The primary function of publishers was gatekeeper.  We have moved the slush pile onto the web.  Richard Brautigan in The Abortion imagined a library where we can check in our masterworks.  Now it exists.  The wonderful thing about blogging is that since so few people read it, I can say whatever I want.  It was also wonderful to get the first book out the door. 

I was preparing to plumb the depths of Font, illustration, and HTML when I simply gave up. The current body of literature manages front cover, table of contents, footnotes, endnotes, indexes, bibliographies and so on without hyperlinks.  That is not such bad company to keep.  I finally just dragged the word document through Mobi, the packaging software Amazon gave authors, and sent it off to Amazon’s Kindle direct self-publishing.  I suppose it is a little embarrassing for a programmer’s book to be more awkward to use, but my experience has taught me that any attempt at cleverness will look silly in the next release.  I hoped that in the future Amazon would give us a means for editing our books on their site and then we can get rid of the superfluous code and format our books with all the features we intend.

How will people find the good books? I suppose fewer people will read my book than read my blog.  Some beats none.  Perhaps authors could petition designated editors for inclusion on recommended reading lists.  This reminds me of the old days of penny dreadfuls, comic books, Mad Magazine and dime store romance.

Since I wrote this, I wrote the blog entry Blogspot Sucks. By some miracle, perhaps someone took pity, or I found the correct incantation, I now have ads on my blog, as you can see. I now have two books out. Kindle has gotten easier. They have an editor to set up the table of contents. Index still doesn’t work. I was sort of able to smuggle in footnotes. It’s very frustrating that I can’t download my books from Amazon to work on them. I would also like to revise my covers rather than start from scratch. Don’t harvest the corners. Good enough, I guess.

The real money is YouTube, or movies.  Good literature makes lousy movies. Perhaps because they have too much respect for the material. Fitzgerald’s real money was as a script doctor. Hemingway couldn’t type. So, his material was easier to adapt.

Audio books next.

Thank You, Gerald Horne

 I have just finished The Counter-Revolution Of 1776, New York University Press, 2014. It is a fire hose of facts. Horne, as most of us, could use an editor. There is occasional awkwardness and redundancy. But the facts. Nearly a quarter of the book is notes.

I have seen some criticism to the effect that there was an abolitionist in Massachusetts or some such. There are dismissals of slave owners reports as hysteria, which Horne acknowledges by the way.  Just put your head in this fire hose of facts.

In the US of Usn’s we are taught history starting from our “revolution”. Nothing comes from nowhere. In England they at least know there was the Seven Years War.  The Seven Years war was nine years. The English don’t want to acknowledge that it was the colonial tail wagging the empire dog.

I had attributed English opposition to slavery to their experience with Barbary pirates. Horne mentions this on page 39 as part of a larger argument and it doesn’t merit an index entry.

Some of my favorite themes are the unsaid obvious and common knowledge lost to posterity. Why do police keep records? Because it is usually the criminals who commit the crimes. Slavery was not an aberration. It was the point. The colonies would have failed without slavery. Slave owners and colonizers are scum. They are scum in every direction.

I did not know the English bought slaves to staff their army. I wasn’t aware that Britain conquered Cuba. I had thought of the Seven Year war as mostly a German and naval adventure. Horne shows how slavery and the Caribbean colonies were central to the conflict, and how the English experience with slave uprising changed their policy.  Fredrich was just an English patsy.

Just as Washington establishing Fort Necessity after his murder of Jumonville demonstrated his obsession with land, the resolution of the Seven Years War showed the various national ambitions. England stopped the fleeing of slaves to Florida. England wanted Spain, Portugal, and Holland as major colonial powers to hold off the French. The French sacrificed the fur trade for sugar.

Napoleon can be understood as following imperial ambitions. World War I can easily be accommodated to this larger history.

It is difficult for us to appreciate how few people there were. Their motivations were different. The French were truly horrified by the murder of Jumonville. You don’t kill gentlemen. Washington had to sign a confession. The European concern with territory had more to do with honor.  In America the conflicts justified the slaughter of indigenous people; in Europe the peasants.

We need more research on indentured servants. Horne discusses the Irish and Scots. There is reason they deserve mention in the third stanza. Towards the end of your indenture, you become dangerous. You will be free. Someone may take you seriously. Reputation is essential to business. Perhaps this charming young person should help with the thresher or roof repair. A lot of indentured servants died.

Horne exults that the slaves repeatedly revolted. This gives me reassurance as well. We need to study why slave revolts failed. Somehow the hype worked.