Libya, quake,distributism Mail 20110828

Mail 689 Tuesday, August 23, 2011

· Who saved Libya?

· The Virginia Quake observed

· Higgs Boson

· Distributism

I get far more interesting mail than I can possibly publish. In some cases I save mail that I want to reply to, but often I never find time. Other mail is intriguing but there isn’t room for the day. Every now and then I go back and look for mail I flagged. Some of that is in tonight’s batch. And of course there’s the more topical mail.

Libya

Hi Jerry,

Being sort of a quasi-Frenchman these days I respectfully have to comment on this comment of yours:

> A tyrant is out, and unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are not in.

> It happened on President Obama’s watch and he deserves the credit:

> without the US strike forces the rebels would long ago have been

> snuffed out.

Not to discredit President Obama, but your remark about the US strike forces is a bit off the mark. First, it’s really NATO strike forces as in this case the US did not contribute more than all others together as in Afghanistan or Iraq. And there is the matter of chronology. The coalition forces as a whole came into action in the early hours of 19 March, when amongst other things a large number of cruise missiles was fired by US vessels at Libyan air defense installations and military airfields, as the first step in guaranteeing unopposed operation of NATO (and allied) aircraft in Libyan airspace to enforce the no-fly zone and attack Qhadafi’s forces where they were threatening civilians. What has been conveniently glossed over in most media reports since is that it was not the US, but France that took the lead on the first day, that is Friday 18 March, the day immediately after the UN resolution 1973 was voted (on the evening of 17 March). Representatives of the involved Member States, essentially NATO members and some members of the Arab League, were meeting on Friday 18 March in Paris to discuss if, how and when they were going to actually interfere militarily. A lot of political hot air was expected to be generated. Meanwhile, Qhadafi had sent a column of heavy armour on its way to attack Benghazi, planned to enter that city in the early evening, with explicit orders to kill not only armed rebels but anyone supporting them, their families, women, children, elderly… Qhadafi’s message was clear: "We will kill you all." At that point the rebels had no heavy firepower, and could offer little resistance to a massed attack by tanks. At the opening of the meeting in Paris, which in my recollection was around or just after noon local time, the French president informed the representatives of the other states that French fighter aircraft had already taken off and were on their way to Benghazi.

In fact a small number of French Mirage and Rafale fighters had taken off from Nancy in Northeast France. They flew some three thousand kilometers, refueled over the Mediterranean, entered Libyan airspace before any of the air defense installations had been put out of commission and before any backup system was put in place to pick up downed pilots. They arrived in the nick of time when the lead tanks were about to enter the outskirts of Benghazi, and blasted them to rubble in an all-out attack that left a string of burnt-out hulks along the road. That evening Qhadafi’s armour did not enter Benghazi; the few that escaped ran like hell.

Thus the first NATO shots were fired by French pilots who took a huge risk to defend unarmed civilians against a violent dictator. If that air raid had not taken place, Qhadafis armoured troops would have razed Banghazi that night, killed thousands, strung up the rebels from lightpoles the way they had already done along the road into the city, and murdered their families and neighbours. The rebellion would have been effectively broken and Qhadafi would have laughed at NATO and the UN.

Yes, the US has played a major role in the operations and, being the nation with the world’s largest military by far, could contribute a lot of ordnance to be loosed at Qhadafi, stealth bombers and predator drones, and provide logistics once the large-scale operations had to be coordinated. But over a third of all air sorties over Libya during the entire period have been French, many of them in actual attacks. France had its one and only nuclear aircraft carrier in action off the Libyan coast, the US did not contribute a carrier. France, being a country one fifth the size of the US with a military a lot smaller than that, has shouldered a disproportional part of the military and economic load of this war. France urged the UN Security Council to make haste with the vote as there were only hours left to act, and France acted, alone, before all others. The people in Libya know that very well. It seems that people in the US do not.

Regards,

Frank Schweppe

P.S. Now we can only hope that the chaos following the liberation will not last too long and not too many atrocities will be committed by the new leadership in Libya. It won’t be easy – it can take almost two centuries after a revolution to come up with a democratic model that works reasonably well…

I don’t dispute any of that. Of course I have always thought it was Europe’s problem, as I thought the Balkans were Europe’s problem. It is very likely that if French and later the British had not acted promptly and appropriately, the Libyan rebels would have been snuffed out and there would have been nothing to support. I mostly congratulate President Obama for backing up the European effort so that the final result – well not final yet, but it looks to be pretty inevitable – is that Qadaffi is out and the US is NOT in, and that is all to the good.

Would that we had been content with that in Afghanistan: The Taliban out, and the US not in.

Not far from the epicenter, life went on as usual Jerry: At 1:50 PM today I was enjoying a late lunch at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Ashland, VA, about 30 miles southeast of the earthquake epicenter in Mineral. When the roaring noise began and the building began to shake and our chairs and tables began vibrating the diners looked around wondering if a large train was running past the building. The waitstaff assured us there were no train tracks nearby, so we all concluded it was just an earthquake.

It seemed that most others, like myself, had never experienced an earthquake in all their decades of life. Shortly thereafter the shaking stopped and we all continued eating. About 30 minutes later I drove the 40 miles south to my home in Chester, VA. Along the way I saw no signs of any concerns or disruptions in the heavy traffic traveling at 75 mph on I-95. On the radio I heard about panic and disruptions in the D. C. to NY corridor. I concluded that in an earthquake you are better off surrounded by the kind of folks who frequent the Cracker Barrel than surrounded by the kind of folks who run away from the Pentagon and the Capitol. This government penchant for running away has bothered me ever since Congress ran away from the anthrax scare 10 years ago while the mailmen continued to handle the mail that so terrified our congress persons.

Best regards, –Harry M.

I saw a fair amount of damage on the 6 PM news tonight; more than had been reported earlier. But so far no one injured. I do find it interesting that on the East Coast a tremble makes people suspect terrorists while out here it’s Temblor! Out here, though, there’s a lot of crazy reaction including charging outside and running around in circles flapping your arms.

Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilizations, say scientists

Amazing.

I would have thought that 80-90 years of blantant, man-made RF emissions and some nuclear detonations would be a much more significant tip off to an alien race than a fraction of a degree rise in temperature that could easily be explained by natural phenomena.

Who knew that they so simultaneously dense and picky at the same time?

John Harlow, President BravePoint

Humorous commentary on aliens destroying Earth

Scary thought if you really think about it. Assume that there are aliens who wish to destroy potential rivals for galactic resources. Also assume that interstellar travel is difficult and expensive for the aliens so that it isn’t feasible to invade or simply destroy other planets. What better way to eliminate a competing race at minimal expense than to send a small probe that would use some means to persuade an alien species to destroy their own technological civilization by limiting their energy supply? This would explain why the greenie weenies are opposed to nuclear power as well as fossil fuels. Perhaps Al Gore’s transformation into the high priest of Global Warming Theology using the same tactics and style of a stereotypical televangelist is as much the result of alien influence as his training in a seminary? Was Al Gore abducted by aliens? Was he conditioned and programed to wage jihad against technological civilization by being subjected to repeated probings? One can only hope unless he enjoyed it.

Jim Crawford

Code and Regs

Joshua Jordan wrote, "The President likes to use federal regulations as if these were laws."

I’m sure his point was that a rule originating in the Executive branch is in some sense less genuine than a black-letter law passed by Congress. But is it?

I could cite from the Internal Revenue Code any number of instances where Congress outlined basic concepts then explicitly added that "the Secretary" (i.e., of the Treasury) is directed to create regulations for making these general principles work in practice.

Where Congress has delegated such authority the courts usually defer to the regulations — exactly as if they were laws.

–Mike Glyer

Which opens the whole Constitutional debate on delegation of power and separation of powers. For 180 years the Courts were meticulous on what could be delegated. After Roosevelt’s court packing threats "a switch in time saved nine" and there was a 5-4 majority on the court to allow considerable delegation. But there is still the principle that power delegated to the legislature by the people cannot be further delegated to non-elected officers.

It hasn’t been tested in a while; but it was good law in my day that there was a strict limit on delegation of legislative power.

It is time, I think, to reopen that debate. The authority to delegate legislative power can and often does lead to tyranny; something the Framers very well understood.

fixing the cognitive elite problem

I’m a computer professional who has recently discovered a bit of educational research from Dr. Benjamin Bloom. Called Bloom’s 2 sigma problem, it is a generally accepted observation that one to one tutoring provides superior educational results, the best possible, but that it is possible with a change in learning techniques to approximate those results. You can find Bloom’s study here:

http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Courses/ILT/ILT0004/TheTwoSigmaProblem.pdf

The shape of the bell curve is not appreciably altered at the high end. High performers are high performers and remain about the same. The remarkable changes are on the low end and in the middle, resulting in a narrowing of the distribution and an appreciably more egalitarian start to adult life for all the kids. That would reinvigorate the American ideal that "everybody can grow up to be president" as, yes, the vast majority would then have the tools needed.

This *should* put an end to talk I sometimes hear about "cognitive elites" ending the American dream and ushering in a new class based society. There’s just one problem, left and right neither seem to be talking seriously about applying Bloom’s insight and holding school systems to producing the sort of results he identified were possible, a high quality education that turns out the vast majority of kids with results we today label gifted and talented, elite, or other such labels.

My name is T. Michael Lutas but on the net I’m almost universally known as TMLutas and would appreciate being identified as such if you publish this.

TMLutas

About those job-killing regulations

Courtesy of the nation’s most self-destructive state

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/14/local/la-me-bed-sheets-20110814

Steve Chu

I was astounded by the comments of "Bruce". One line in particular stood out:

"Consumers create jobs. We need more consumers."

So if "consumers" want computers, they’ll just magically appear? Nobody will have to invest billions of dollars in, say, chip-making plants or other manufacturing buildings to actually create those computers? Somebody had better notify Intel, which has wasted billions on such plants in the last few decades.

Meanwhile, the Buffett article which Bruce refers to commits at least one lie of omission. Buffett refers to the relatively low rate of taxation for "dividend income", while not mentioning that that dividend was subject to corporate income taxes (Federal + Nebraska rates are at least 40% combined) before it showed up on his books. So the real tax rate for that income was around 50%.

For someone who is SO enthusiastic about "taxing the rich", Buffett is curiously silent about _his_ plans to put his estate in a trust, so it won’t be subject to a 55% death tax. Since Buffett is shielding his fortune from the death tax, and he shows no apparent interest in voluntarily contributing more to the Federal government, I’m a little skeptical that he’s being totally honest in his presentation.

Sincerely,

Calvin Dodge

Hi Jerry,

Just a response to your correspondent Bruce (to whom I commend Atlas Shrugged as an outstanding response to his point of view).

First off, it’s amusing to see billionaires wanting the government to take more of my money. You could take 90% of Buffett’s, and he’ll still be rich. Take more of mine, and I’ll find a way to cut my spending even more than I have (or close my business as being unprofitable). There’s nothing stopping Buffett from writing a check to the feds right now – why doesn’t he do it? Because it’s not about money. It’s about power, control, coercion, and ego.

My family has several small businesses. One has made the decision to not grow because the incremental cost of an employee is far higher than the productivity they would get. Another is planning on dropping healthcare coverage and paying the fines because it’s cheaper. One is struggling to stay afloat because of the cost of unemployment insurance (even though they haven’t laid anyone off). The regulations are absolutely stifling – sure GE can afford to hire a battery of attorneys to deal with them, but why on earth should someone have to hire their fifth employee to do that? It’s completely nuts – especially when the regulations don’t do any good! I just bought a new lamp…with an unremovable tag stuck next to the plug warning me not to lick the prongs while they’re plugged in (only a slight exaggeration). Colorado is about to pass regulations on day care centers to ensure that they have a racially balanced population….of dolls. Explain to me why that’s a critical government function (or in any way legitimate)?

There’s only one thing that Government can do to to help grow the economy and create jobs.

To quote John Galt:

"Get the hell out of my way"

Cheers,

Doug

You suggested yesterday that regulations and regulatory agencies should be subject to a sunset provision. I wonder whether this would result in such agencies, when they are about to face a vote on whether they should continue to exist, staging a media-fueled "crisis" in their area of control, to prevent legislators from voting them out of existence (lest they be portrayed as indifferent to such "crises"). Bureaucracies have done worse things to protect themselves.

Some such crises might not do any real harm (for example, a crisis that’s pure media, such as the "Alar is poisoning our apples!" scare), but I recall that the raid on the Branch Davidians at Waco was said to have been initiated by BATF for such a reason. (A congressional hearing was to be held over problems with BATF enforcement and corruption, and the upper reaches of the agency were worried.) They needed a photogenic media event to protect them from any move to disband the agency or distribute its responsibilities among other departments. I don’t think they were intending for it to be nearly as "photogenic" as it got – since they were legal gun merchants, a raid resulting in piles of weapons to be photographed and displayed on CNN was probably what they were hoping for – but in the event, this agency’s need to protect itself ultimately resulted in scores of deaths.

I worry about what bureaucracies might do when threatened with extinction. Of course, that consideration is much of the reason for the kudzu-like growth of the bureaucratic apparatus in the first place! I have no solution, other than to be very careful about creating departments and agencies, since it’s so difficult to get rid of them.

job killing regs

I work for a small business manufacturing oil drilling tools we have a backlog of orders, are losing sales because of extended delivery but adding a 50th employee would change all sorts of catagories we would be in. So we have 49 and idle machines and reduced output.

rob Boyce

Buffet and higher taxes

Dr. Pournelle,

Unlike some of your other readers, I am completely unconvinced and deeply suspicious of Warren Buffet’s plea for higher taxes. The reason is simple: it would be easy for him to voluntarily contribute at a higher rate. As the ad says, Just Do It. He would instantly gain enormous credibility, become a folk hero overnight, and be proclaimed a True Patriot and the embodiment of noblesse oblige. Buffet has been pushing this schtick for years. So what’s stopping him, fanboys?

I think it is worthwhile to point out that massive tax code simplification, which would also be very popular, could accomplish the same end. In my lumpenproletariat opinion, this would be much more likely to be effective than modifying the current Byzantine structure. The major reason the existing rules are so complex is to give the rich ways to avoid paying the base rate, a situation that Mr. Buffet rather paradoxically exploits. It is entirely possible to rewrite the tax code so that a higher base rate could be more than offset by deductions.

Steve Chu

Raising Taxes Per Buffett’s Request

Stewart Varney had an excellent report this morning on Warren Buffet’s desire for higher taxes on the rich and its relationship to his business: The higher the taxes, the more insurance rates he can rake in. The New York Times’ article did not include a disclaimer to this effect and it should have.

Bikini Red

P.S. I’m a big fan. Love Fallen Angels, Mote In God’s Eye, etc.

Distributism

I think you completely mischaracterized Distributism as Communism-lite. If all you go by are the early Chesterton/etc. writings, that could be an acceptable error. The theory evolved and expanded.

Distributism sees the family as the atom of production and consumption, but it also recognizes employee-owned companies versus investor-owned entities. By this definition, United Airlines would be considered Distributist. You could also include the franchise model. That would include 85 percent of the 14,000 McDonalds in the US, let alone globally. While McDonalds Corporate sets the standards and owns the brand, boards of franchise representatives have final say on many issues, particularly where their own spending is concerned. In a similar vein, Credit Unions are considered Distributist versus conventional banks.

The iconic distributist is the plumber, who owns his own tools, business, and so on. Programmers for smart phone apps are a more recent entrepreneurial class. Guilds for training are acceptable and encouraged, minus the union and so on. Online education, certification programs, and so on may replace the higher education bubble. Homeschooling and private schools replace the lower education bubble of over-administration and underperformance.

The core issue with Distributism versus Corporatism or Communism is simple – stop screwing me. Rather a lot of large companies operate on a model that offshores excessively (GE), politicizes (GE), or seeks short term gains and golden parachutes over long term stability (1980’s MBA programs, WaMu after they brought in executives from… yep, GE). Another example was a factory incentive bonus for Caterpillar. In the first year, a massive bonus for factory productivity was awarded to the workers. In the second year, the manager of the factory kept half of it personally.

Communism replaces the exploitive, short-sighted kleptocratic executive with his identical party member twin. I don’t think the horror stories of socialism need to be recounted here, but I will make one exception. “The aristocracy will be quite as ready to “administer” Collectivism as they were to administer Puritanism or Manchesterism; in some ways a centralized political power is necessarily attractive to them… The Duke of Sussex will be quite as ready to be the Administrator of Sussex at the same screw. Sir William Harcourt, that typical aristocrat, put it quite correctly. “We” (that is, the aristocracy) “are all socialists now.”

G K Chesterton’s book “What’s Wrong with the World” (1910).

Thus predating the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Newsweek cover by almost 100 years.

Distributism removes the parasite element of both capitalist and communist models at a single stroke. It is far from perfect, but applied to a significant quantity of the population, it provides a blanket of skilled “distributed computing” to a robust economic model exactly the way “too big to fail” doesn’t. It allows the growth of small business, franchises, and employee-owned enterprises who know that the company has to continue sustainably if their retirement pension is to exist. In a disaster (economic, natural, or terrorist), I would like to have at least basic economic capacity to not be at the globalist level. Friedman’s famous description of a pencil as a marvel of globalist capitalism is also, unintentionally, a warning. Interconnected dominoes are not interlocked bricks – they make the system far weaker, and mean that a disruption anywhere is a disruption everywhere. Add to this just-in-time inventories and a population completely oblivious to where food or water comes from and you have a house of cards.

Distributism in the pure sense repeats the nonsense of Marx in that someone can be a farmer in the morning, a tailor in the afternoon, and a critic that night. It ignores the simple fact that not everyone will be competent at everything, and many are barely competent at one thing. Chesterton describes the working husband as “something to everyone” (butcher or baker, etc.) whereas the stay-at-home mom is “everything to someone” (the child’s nurse, teacher, etc.). It also points to the fact that the specialist and the generalist should share the same roof. The overspecialization of capitalism (where we fall into traps of obsolescence and disaster helplessness) or the overgeneralization of pure Marxism (where this theoretical community would never get past the 1700’s because no one would have the resources to specialize in mining, metallurgy, etc.) are both ultimately disastrous.

Kent Nebergall

In my attempt at brevity I may have been too brief: I certainly did not mean to lump in Belloc and Chesterton with Marx, nor characterize Distributism as Communism-lite. I have far more respect for Distributism than that.

Bill Buckley and I used to argue over whether it was possible to be distributist and conservative. I also discussed this at length with Russell Kirk. We all concluded that it was not, and certainly during the Cold War it wasn’t possible. It is also difficult to see how to get there from here. I was never sure of this.

But I find Chesterton much worth reading, and I find the distributist world, like the Jeffersonian world, intriguing and attractive. As an ideal I find it far more worthy than unregulated capitalism or Rand’s brand of whatever it is.

Chesterton and Belloc well understood the concept of the “New Class” that seems always to appear in socialism, and The Servile State that seems to accompany socialism. A bureaucracy of Iron Law generation is never very attractive. If maximum freedom is a goal – well, that’s a long discussion. Thanks for your presentation. I agree that I did not give a very accurate picture of what Chesterton was advocating.

I will also point out that I have always been in favor of anti-trust laws. Companies that are too big to fail should not be allowed to exist. There should not be 5 Huge Banks; better would be 50 Large ones. I do not think that enormous conglomerates are even efficient – they may be for a while but they are unstable because subject to disruptions beyond their control, Black Swans. The result goes far beyond creative destruction, and indeed creative destruction can be devastating for those going through it. A distributist economy would favor profitable enterprises over continued expansion. I would rather pay a bit more for just the right bush jacket chosen from a number of companies that offered them – as was the case at one time – than pay less for one of the few offered by coagulations of once revered names like Cable Car and Eddie Bauer which are now simply brand names. Often small and profitable is merely a short stage in the “growth” and “development” of a company before it is bought up to be part of the “growth” of a rising conglomerate on its way to be too big to fail. When I was a lad there were a dozen American automobile companies. Gee our old LaSalle ran great, went the song; and there was a bit of truth to that.

You say “Communism replaces the exploitive, short-sighted kleptocratic executive with his identical party member twin,” and that is very well said. It is an inevitable consequence of the Iron Law, which is a pretty nearly inevitable consequence of tax and reward structures that favor “growth” by acquisition over smaller and more stable operations. On the gripping hand, often those smaller profitable operations are not sustainable, and over time there must be creative destruction.

The advance of technology and distribution of computing power – the power to gather, hold, store, and manipulate data – changes what is possible in politics and the world. I saw that from the earliest days of the personal computer. It is a great equalizer.

All this is worth considerably more discussion at another time.

Charity, etc.

Etc. first…Perhaps those who believe in distributism should read the Honor Harrington series of SF novels, which have an arc concerning what happens to a society when the ‘dolists’ run the show. Oh, wait! Just look at the UK!

Charity – I believe that personal charity implies a social contract: I’ll help you out, but I expect YOU to help yourself to not need charity in the future. I can look the person in the eye, not to force shame, but to encourage and expect responsibility. Once Big Guv’mint (BG) takes over that role, as it largely has, that eye-contact is lost. No longer is there any responsibility, expectation or social contract.

In the recent debt-limit debate, several ‘loop-holes’ were mentioned as targets for closure. One of the options is to eliminate the charitable donations deduction. So now, BG not only has the role, but reinforces it be eliminating even the financial incentive to do ‘side charity’. I suppose the following step would to make personal charity illegal, eh?

FYI, BG employees are taking it in the shorts. Pay freezes this FY and next, and now discussions about paying taxes on health and retirement payments. The latter, of course, will ALSO be taxed upon payout after retirement, conveniently forgetting that the money has already been taxed once.

Best of health,

Dave

Inyokern

We no longer debate matters like the difference between the deservinf poor and the undeserving poor, although a tiny bit of that remains in the conversation between Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle’s father; but no one takes it seriously now. Perhaps it is time to do so again. There is a difference. Doolittle said he was undeserving poor and couldn’t afford morals…

Hope this guy gets a jury trial

Police officer shot dead after being ordered to kill man’s dogs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025812/Police-officer-Robert-Lasso-shot-dead-pointing-stun-gun-mans-dogs.html#ixzz1VEVFeemy

Don’t know about Pennsylvania, but around here, the Gummint would have a

hard time getting a jury to convict a citizen defending his family pets.

I know how I’d vote.

Higgs boson — or not

Scientists at CERN seem to be closing in on the Higgs boson — or, rather, they seem to be placing increasingly tighter bounds on its mass and production cross-section. So tight, in fact, that they are beginning to openly speculate that it doesn’t exist at all.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/23/god-particle-may-be-mirage-scientists-hint/?test=faces

Of course, I’ve been saying that for twenty-five or so years; not because I didn’t understand the mechanism of "spontaneous symmetry breaking" but because I didn’t believe in it; symmetry, if broken, must be broken through dynamical mechanisms. (If I had published that speculation while I was in grad school, could I be expecting my call from Stockholm this fall? 🙂 Of course, I only formulated it intuitively rather than mathematically, hence the lack of a paper trail. I’ll never make that mistake again. Until the next time…

Anyway, the question which remains is "what comes next." The article says "new physics" without defining that.

I say, following the same intuitive train, most likely preons. My personal "best guess" remains something with the following features:

a) The preons will look something like Harari’s "rishon" model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishon_model) ; however, all of the apparent non-dynamical aspects of the model should be dropped.

b) Mass is derived from the energy density of the color (and hypercolor) fields.

c) It is plausible that the quarks are expressions of an intermediate structure on the way to a set of preons which also incorporate the electrons. That is, it is plausible to postulate an entity called the sub-quark which is composed of the same set of preons as the electron, with color dynamics as the asymptotic limit of subquark binding in a fashion similar to the role of mesons in nuclear physics.

d) The families of quarks and leptons are generated as excited states of the preons. The model does not preclude higher occurrences, perhaps with properties similar to Weinberg’s Technicolor models which attempt dynamical symmetry breaking to bypass the Higgs mechanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor_(physics) . One should not assume that the discovery of Technicolor at LHC eliminates the possibility of preons.

e) Baryon asymmetry in the observed universe is basically a consequence of the dominant preon composition of the primordial fireball at the moment the fireball became transparent to preons.

f) As a corollary to d), and similarly to the rishon model, the net preon-antipreon composition of elementary matter is neutral; that is, the combination of elementary particles (nu-e-bar, e-, p, n) contains a complete set of preons and anti-preons.

g) Supersymmetry manifests either at the preon level or at some more fundamental level of constituents; more likely the latter, since it should be a manifestation of elementary particles at the Planck length – Planck mass scale where gravitation becomes integrated, and we’re still several decades from that.

Jim

I do not pretend competence to comment on this. I can manage relativity up to having to actually solve tensors, but my understanding of quantum mechanics and QED is pretty well descriptive, not comprehension.