| Friday,
July 3, 2009
California licensed to print money
Jerry,
I note that California has started to issue IOU's
("state-registered warrants") and that a number of major banks have now said
they'll accept these. Bank of America was the first to announce this,
interesting given BofA's near-nationalized status under the TARP program.
In effect, the Federal government has now said that
California can print money, since by implication the Feds will bail out
banks that get into trouble for accepting the state's IOUs. There has been
speculation as to whether the Federal government will bail out California,
and whether the rest of the country would stand for such a raid on our
wallets. While nobody was looking, it just happened.
My guess is that once the California Legislature
realizes the state is effectively now able to print money, they will be even
less likely to trim California's spending to match its means. As in, zero
probability. The thing to watch for after Sacramento drags their feet for a
while longer is the moment when banks threaten to accept the state's IOUs
only at steep discounts unless the Feds make up the difference.
The California Legislature is welcome to go to hell in
its own way. It's unfortunate they'll take California with them, but
California elected them. However, the rest of us who just got hitched to
their train willy-nilly may want something to say about it, once people
realize. The Civil War established that secession is no longer an option,
but said nothing about expulsion. Or, more moderately, Reconstruction...
just sign me
Porkypine
Now there's a frightening thought. I can see
circumstances in which I will have no choice but to sell out and go
somewhere else where I can afford the taxes. Assuming there's anyone to
sell to. California has about the revenue it had some years ago. The
legislature simply won't consider cutting back to the expenditures of that
time.
============
Kids in their twenties
Hi Jerry,
I just had to reply to R's
assertion that women have become uncouth. Allow me to digress...
Once upon a time, it was the case that you were
working as a full adult by your mid-teens. Whether it was getting the crops
in or apprenticing at the mill, childhood was over. Some time later you
didn't start your trade until after high school; childhood had been extended
to 17 or 18.
Now most kids go on to college. In many places, the
drinking age has been raised to 21, reflecting the fact that this is another
extension of childhood. The process continues. Marriage and family raising
is now something to think about in your 30's. In your 20's, you may be
working, but life is still a party. Many kids live at home for longer - this
allows them more disposable income and more comfort. "Childhood", in the
sense of independence and responsibility, has ist extending farther. This is
a benefit of civilization: you do not have to work terribly hard to put food
on the table.
This is what "R" is seeing in personal ads looking for
"hot" dates. It's not uncouth - he just isn't 20 anymore, he probably isn't
"hot" and he is a grump on top of it. I interact a lot with kids in their
20s (and isn't that a funny phrase) so I understand their point of view.
Life is good, let's enjoy ourselves. And why not?
Cheers,
Brad
==========
Re: the comment that women are behaving
'differently' now....
What has changed, of course, is the availability of
birth control. Women typically had an early period of urges to be wild and
experiment, which if indulged, would result in an early preganacy. In more
primitive societies, well and good, that proves she's fertile, and so will
make a good wife.
Now the wild phase is not cut short by pregnancy. But
in any case, I think there's a more important consequence of
freely-available birth control at women's option, and that's the birth rates
below replacement we're seeing in many 1st world populations (like the
entire EU). It seems to me that humans evolved a reproduction system that
depends, to some degree, on women not being able to help getting pregnant.
But in an eye blink, that thing has changed, and we see the result.
Women certainly and instinctively tend to bond tightly
with their children one they bear them, but it appears that there is not
just as strong a drive to have them in the first place, as has always been
assumed. As long as there was a sex drive, a 'child' drive wasn't necessary,
as the result was automatic. The is, it used to be automatic.
Mike Juergens
============
Jimmy Carter Jr,
Jerry
Spengler thinks Obama is creating a power vacuum:
http://www.atimes.com/
atimes/Middle_East/KF30Ak02.html
The last time a president did that . . . well, I've
always thought of our current prez as Jimmy Carter Jr. Spengler just makes
the case.
Ed
We recovered from Jimmy Carter.
Unemployment is about where it was in his time. We'll get past this, and
at least there's no Seventy Years War with communism. Maybe we'll discover
how to be a republic again. Empire hasn't worked out as well as some
thought it would.
==========
Air NZ rolls out naked safety vid
Jerry
Air New Zealand has a clothes-free safety vid.
"Nothing to hide" is their slogan:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/02/air_nz_vid/
I guess not.
Ed
Eye Opening!
============
Several observations on
a theme:
Promotions, testing and race: A question not yet
asked
Doctor Pournelle,
A question on the matter of conforming personnel
management to Federal Civil Rights law.
How do the United States military and naval services
do it?
I recall reading years ago that they are the most
successfully example of racial integration the United States has. One reason
blacks, as one example, are "over represented" in those services is because
the system apparently promotes by merit and yet also avoids any appearance
of bias. I've not heard of any cases such as the "Fireman" SCOTUS case
involving the services.
Is that because they are exempt from the Civil Rights
law? If not exempt, what are they doing that the rest of us can learn from?
If exempt, is it perhaps time to examine similar
exemptions for public safety organs of government such as Fire and Police?
There seem, just by watching the news, to be more than
a few members of minorities in flag rank positions. I've never heard anyone
reputable claim those minority officers attained high rank in any fashion
other than merit. Well, okay, merit and the usual minor politics/ring
knocker back scratching that always occurs but is held in check by other
traditions and the ultimate "Reality Check" of combat/sea duty. A ship at
sea is stress and danger enough to serve as a form of low intensity combat
for the purposes of weeding out time servers and incompetents, either by
peer pressure or more Darwinian methods. That's one reason navies are fairly
immune to the worst effects of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy IF enough of the
officers actually spend a lot of time at sea.
I'd enjoy hearing from one of your subscribers that
has current or at least recent service experiences especially any who were
senior commissioned officers involved in personnel management.
Petronius
==
Then we have:
facts are stubborn things -- and tests are hard!
Affirmative Action Debate Roils Naval Academy New
Plebe Class Has Record Ratio of Minorities; Diversity Effort 'Dumbing Down'
Corps, Professor Says
Fleming said some academy admission data support his
claim. The share of plebes who scored less than 600 on the SAT math test was
22 percent this year, up from 12 percent in the Class of 2008. The number of
freshmen coming from the academy's one-year preparatory program, designed
for remedial studies, was 244 this year, the highest figure in at least 10
years. The data are not classified by race.
On the other hand, 76 percent of the Class of 2013
came from the top fifth of their high school class, about the same
proportion as a decade ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/
AR2009070202588.html?hpid=topnews
James
The historic cutoff point for the officer corps
was IQ 120 or above. There were enlisted jokes about this, but the troops
do have the right to have officers with a certain level of intellectual
smarts. And of course not all officers are entrusted with troops. ("If you
can't trust an officer with troops, put him in Intelligence...") Charisma
and competence are correlated but not perfectly so. Charisma without
competence can be disastrous. Competence without charisma is often (but
not always) ineffective.
IQ correlates pretty well with judgmental
reaction time (Three colored lights, three buttons, push the appropriate
button when the light flashes; that turns out to correlate highly with IQ.
Clearly not perfectly. Stephen Hawking would flunk out fast, and we can
all think of other exceptions; still, the correlation is there.) There are
lots of attempts to measure charisma, but I don' t recall that any of them
are as good (valid) as IQ tests measure IQ and tests measure competence.
For junior officers, there's such a thing as
"enough" competence.
==
Trooping the colour
Doctor Pournelle,
I recently watched the full ninety minute BBC coverage
of the 2008 "Trooping The Colour" ceremony held each year on the Queen's
Official Birthday on the second Saturday in June. Edward VII chose that date
for the ceremony on his accession to the throne, due to the vagaries of
British weather in his actual birth month of November. The ceremony involves
a regiment being honored by having one of its battalions parade with its
battle colour before the Queen and Prince Philip, the regimental band
playing, the Household Division of Foot Guards and Cavalry along with the
King's Troop of the Royal Artillery with their "colour', which is to say
their guns., always present and plenty of pomp, circumstance, ceremony and
tradition on display.
What struck me was the the way the Queen and her
consort arrive at Horse Guards Parade, take seats on a low dais (in curile
chairs, I noted!) right in the center of the field, and then sit there,
completely exposed, surrounded by perhaps one thousand armed men, most with
an automatic weapon on their shoulder, not to mention plenty of sabers and
swords, and NO VISIBLE SECURITY anywhere near the sovereign.
Now, I am sure there is plenty of security but a few
steps away. Still, there is no burly man in sunglasses and black suit
standing there ready to knock her down, cover her body with his and "take
the bullet".
That's when it ht me. This was almost certainly one of
the reasons this tradition was established. The sovereign, the head of
state, HAS to have the trust of the army. It's a personal bond, If the Army
is to offer its blood, literally, in service to the leader, then the leader
must be willing to present himself to the army on a regular basis, with
nothing shielding the him from the army but that mutual bond of trust.
Such rituals must go back to tribal times. What better
way to ensure you had a leader who could actually lead the tribal levies
than that the levies could remove him at will at one of these ceremonies,
should he be incompetent or, perhaps, simply uninspiring. Of course, that's
why Guard regiments came about, and is doubtless why the Household Division
are ALWAYS ppresent at this ceremony, mounted and watching from the
sidelines until their turn (at the end, significantly, after the line
battalion has marched past the monarch). I imagine in the original ancient
version of this ceremony, they were there Just In Case the regiment decided
to take an active role in determining the succession on an ad hoc basis!
Despite all the vetting and security checks in the
world, you know how easy it would be for ANY one of those marching soldiers
to have a magazine of live rounds in a pocket, and "go berserker" if they
felt the need to do so.
I think it speaks volumes for the power of that
personal bond between Head of State and army that such a thing has never
happened, and is quite unthinkable, not to mention quite simply un-British!
While I believe such a bond has and still does exist
in our own system of government, I wonder what would be the reaction of our
own elite if they had to follow the Queens annual example of trusting to
honor and fidelity?
I don't see it happening.
I hope there will always be an England, if only to
give us such examples.
Should you care to, the ceremony in its entirety
(including eightieth anniversary of the RAF flyby!) is on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxAr1x2ZZjo
It is more than worth the time!
Petronius
An interesting observation.
===========
What the Census Knows
What Does the Census Ask?
The earliest census records were destroyed when the
Brits burned Washington. There are fragments. They listed:
1. Name of heads of families
2. Number of free white persons, incl. heads of families, subdivided:
2a. Number of males by age cohorts. (The number of
cohorts changed over time.)
2.b Number of females by age cohorts.
3. Number of "All other free persons except Indians"
4. Number of "Slaves"
For example, in 1790, Morgan District, Lincoln Co.,
North Carolina, 8th Militia Company Hamontree, Wm. Males aged 16 and under:
2 Older: 4; Females: 4 (The frontier was divided into militia companies. The
age division for males was evidently to get a tally of those capable of
bearing arms.)
By the 1800 Census, the age cohorts were
(0-10)(10-16)(16-26)(26-45)(45 up) for both males and females. And no, I
don't know how they settled the ambiguity of the cohort boundaries.
1830/1840: as above, cohorts in 5-year increments;
tally of Employment, Pensioners, Impairment, and Attending School 1850/1860:
Dwelling #, Family #, Names of all people in household, Age, Sex, Color,
Occupation, Value of Real Estate, Birthplace, Married within the year (y/n),
Attended school within the year (y/n), Cannot read or write, Remarks.
Evidently, the govt had grown tolerably curious about migrations, education,
and marriage rates. 1870: All the above, plus Value of real estate/Value of
personal property; father foreign born, mother foreign born, born in year
(month); married in year (month), cannot read; cannot write; impairment;
males eligible to vote; males ineligible to vote. [Note that earlier
categories are being elaborated, split, etc.] 1880: All the above, plus:
relationship to head of household; checkoff: single, married,
widowed/divorced, married in census year; place of birth, place of mother's
birth, place of father's birth. (In 1880 Sebastian Co. Ark., John Hammontree,
his wife, and oldest son were born in Tennessee; but his three youngest
children were born in Ark. Given the ages of the children, the genealogist
can figure what years he must have loaded up the covered wagon.) 1890:
destroyed in a fire. Somewhere I've got a 1900 Census; but you get the
picture. They gradually added more and more stuff. Some things they don't
ask any more; some things they ask only on a sampling basis.
The Iron Law is clearly at work.
MikeF
==
Jerry,
As regards your discussion on the Constitutional
authority of the Census, I've spent some time with the published census data
as part of my family history research:
For Census years 1790 - 1840, the only information
collected was name of head of household, and a count of number of persons in
the household (with provisions for accounting for slaves). In 1790 - 1820,
only coarse measures of age and gender were collected (roughly, pre-teen,
teen, adult, and older adult - 44 being the cutoff) by gender, and with
accounting of minor and adult slaves by gender. In 1830-40, binning is by
decades of age (lustrums for minors).
Beginning in 1850, the names, age, race, literacy, and
occupation of every person is counted, and there is some measure of value of
property suitable to verify the tax rolls. This becomes embellished by 1930,
the last year of data which is publicly available, with birth dates and the
state of birth of the parents of each individual noted. Up to that point,
the data is call collected by census takers who interviewed each household
individually (for example, I have one year in the 1870s where the census
taker, a cousin of the wife, recorded the family in her maiden name instead
of her husband's surname).
As a family historian, I consider the census of c.
1900 - 1930 as the pinnacle of data which should reasonably be collected as
part of the census because of the utility to future generations of having
the collected genealogical information (though it has been noted that some
of this information is now accessible for identity thieves). Anything more
than that represents the government collecting statistical data to support
various functions of modern government which are not constitutionally
necessary (e.g. as a data service for advertisers).
For what it's worth,
Jim
As Mike says, the Iron Law is at work. Actually
it's more Parkinson's Law in this case. Whether it has grown beyond
Constitutional limits depends on your view of Constitutional limits.
"Everything is different now," many say. But clearly the Framers
recognized limits on what the census could ask.
============
Miseducation
This is a plain an example of how our schools have
become indoctrination centers rather than places that equip children for the
realities of life:
http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/05/11/education/11stuff.html?_
r=1&pagewanted=1&sq=Cautionary%20
Video&st=cse&scp=1
As someone who has spent far too much time making
"stuff" that makes lives better I find this just insulting. I just wish that
the education elite's image of how we do things could get out of the
Nineteenth century. I would challenge any of them to walk through the
industrial park where I work and figure what is inside each building.
John
Obama was booed when he spoke of teacher merit
pay at an NEA convention. Teachers unions are adamantly against any
evaluation of teachers, any pay based on merit or performance, or any
"credentials" other than those given by the standard educationist
institutions. So it goes.
===========
Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci discovered in
Basilicata?
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/
tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/
article5785697.ece
-- Roland Dobbins
I found this looking at old mail. Interesting.
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