After the News

After watching the nightly news, I get the feeling that if this country were an airplane, the far left is the pilot who wants to pull the joystick back and climb steeper and steeper until the wings stall and the plane crashes, while the far right is the co-pilot who wants to push the joystick forward and dive the plane into the ground. Right now, they’re fighting over the joystick, with one pulling back on it and the other pushing forward on it. The passengers in the plane are worried. The passengers are telling the pilots to compromise and let the joystick have a middle setting. But the pilots are no-compromise guys. The pilot says the middle setting is no good because the plane won’t be climbing. The co-pilot says the middle setting is no good because the plane won’t be descending. Fortunately, the two pilots are equally strong and equally stubborn, so for the time being the airplane flies level. But, one cannot help feeling that something bad is imminent.

Money And Debt

Have you ever thought about how money gets created?

I suspect most people think the government creates money. It does not. Money is created by the Federal Reserve System, a cartel of privately-owned banks. Despite its name, it is no more a Federal agency than Federal Express.

When the Treasury Department needs money to pay the government’s bills, and if collected taxes aren’t enough, it borrows money from the Federal Reserve. In return, the Federal Reserve receives Treasury bonds of equal value. Treasury bonds are simply “IOUs”, a promise from the Treasury to repay the money to the Federal Reserve System – with interest. (All this happens with computer accounts, not pieces of paper.)

Where does the Federal Reserve System get the money to loan to the Treasury Department? It essentially writes a check on itself, creating money out of thin air. Every dollar in circulation was created as debt. If government and citizens repaid all public and private debt, there would be no money in circulation. If the federal government repaid all its debt, there would be quite a lot less money in circulation. A country’s monetary system doesn’t have to work this way, but that’s the system we have.

To avoid cycles of economic boom and bust, inflation and deflation, the Fed manages the amount of money in circulation. When the economy is growing too fast and inflation is creeping upward, the Fed shrinks the money supply (or slows its rate of growth). When the country is in a recession, the Fed boosts the money supply. Increasing the money supply helps the economy grow by reducing the cost of loans and making money easier to borrow. Boosting the money supply therefore promotes job growth. Shrinking the money supply makes loans more expensive and harder to obtain, thus causing the economy to grow more slowly (or shrink as businesses fail). Shrinking the money supply therefore promotes higher unemployment.

What happened in 2007 was a housing crash and then a banking crash. The image below shows the Fed’s R.100 chart from its 2nd quarter 2011 Flow of Funds (Z.1) report. Click the image for a larger picture. Line 1 shows the change in net worth of American families and nonprofits in billions of dollars. Prior to 2007, net worth had been growing at a rate of 5 or 6 trillion dollars per year. But in 2007, net worth grew a pitiful $22 billion. And in 2008, $12.8 trillion dollars of net worth suddenly vanished.

Remember, shrinking the money supply hurts the economy and promotes higher unemployment. That’s why the government rushed to pass a 2-year stimulus package. The idea was to get money back into the economy to replace some of the money that had vanished. (The stimulus bill was passed with no G.O.P. votes.) The problem was that the stimulus was so small relative to the amount of wealth that had disappeared that it was unlikely to help much. The stimulus did help, but it was no match for the amount of hurt that the housing/banking crash had inflicted.

Today, conservatives in Congress are trying hard to cut government spending. While this is good for the budget, it has a down side. A lot of paychecks in our economy are funded by government borrowing and spending. Cutting government spending will shrink the money supply which, in turn, will harm the still-struggling economy and curtail job growth. It all comes down to what you think is more important: the debt or jobs. Ironically, the spending cuts that hurt jobs are often made by cutting safety-net programs that were there to help people who are out of work and out of money.

Restaurant Tales

I have a lot of stories about restaurants, but my favorite stories didn’t happen to me. This first story happened to my brother Ken.

Ken goes into a KFC just before closing and orders a bucket of chicken. At the time this happened you could (and maybe still can) pay extra to get all white meat. So Ken asks for all white meat. The girl taking his order says “No, that would take all our white meat and if another customer comes in and wants white meat, we’ll have to drop another chicken [into the fryer], and we don’t want to do that so close to closing.”

Ken asks to speak to the manager. The manager comes over and, after being briefed on the situation, tells Ken the same thing. Ken can’t buy the white meat because another customer may come in and want it. So Ken leaves empty-handed and goes elsewhere for food.

The KFC had food to sell but refused to sell it because another (imaginary) customer might want it. They could have sold the chicken to Ken and told the next guy, “Sorry, we’re out.” But that would have made sense.

Another story came from my sister-in-law, Shirley. Traveling back from the beach, Shirley stops at a roadside diner. She orders dinner, which includes a choice of baked potato or potato salad. Shirley orders a baked potato. When her meal arrives, instead of the baked potato she ordered there is potato salad. The waitress explains that they are out of potatoes.

It so happens there is a pyramid of hot, foil-wrapped baked potatoes on the salad bar. Pointing to it, Shirley says, “There must be two hundred baked potatoes right there. Bring me one of those.”

And the waitress answers, “I can’t do that. Those potatoes belong to the salad bar.”

Once again, the restaurant has food the customer wants, the customer has money the restaurant wants, and you’d think there could be a simple swap that leaves everyone happy. But again, that would have made sense.

Why do I bring up these restaurant tales? Because I want to illustrate a certain kind of thinking. I call it the IBM binary mind. Yes or no. Black or white. Up or down. Good or evil. There are no shades of gray. It’s my way or the highway.

I don’t know where those restaurant workers are today, but their spirit lives on in Washington, D.C., where for many months, the name of the game has been “Let’s Not Make A Deal.” If we shoot ourselves in the foot, it will be our own damn fault. That’s what we get for voting nincompoops into office. Let’s not do that again.

The 27 Club

Amy Winehouse, singer and songwriter, is dead at age 27. Her name is the latest to be added to a list of musicians who died at age 27. So many, in fact, that it’s referred to as The 27 Club, or sometimes The Forever 27 Club, or Club 27. Amy is in good company. Brian Jones ... Jimi Hendrix ... Janis Joplin ... Jim Morrison ... Kurt Cobain ... are some of the better known members of the 27 Club. I wasn’t a fan of Amy Winehouse, but I could see she had talent. She sold millions of albums and left her mark on this world. Rest in peace, Amy.

Summer in Virginia

July and August in central Virginia bring blast-furnace days. When that blast-furnace covers other states it becomes newsworthy and people begin uttering phrases like “heat dome”. Heat dome? Is that Newspeak for heat wave? Whatever, it gets brutal. Oppressive. Dangerous. This is heat that kills people.

This morning’s heat index was at 119° F (48° C) by noon. The real air temperature reached 102° by 3 PM. That’s 102° in the shade. Add sweltering humidity so your perspiration doesn’t easily evaporate and you’ve got a recipe for heat stroke.

The temperature in my upstairs guest rooms reached 100° by afternoon. I keep the air conditioner off upstairs as there is no one living in that space. I’ll be honest; it felt much hotter than 100° up there.

Downstairs in the air conditioned living room the a/c unit struggled, running full time to hold the temperature at a balmy 80°.

The heat reminds me of a summer I spent in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I was working my way through college and trying to save every dime, so I rented a room at an old boarding house. There was no air conditioning and my room was on the top floor under a metal roof and directly above the kitchen, which prepared dozens of meals for boarders and guests all day. “Hot” did not describe that room. It was a sauna. It was a lie-naked-on-the-bedsheets-and-sweat room. And because the house had only one bathroom for each floor, even a cool shower was often not an option. I’ll quit writing now, before people get the notion I’m complaining. Stay cool, peeps.

Heat Dome

The heat dome has arrived in central Virginia. I just checked the temperature and … oy! The heat index is 116° F at 1:55 PM – not even the hottest part of the day yet. And tomorrow is supposed to be hotter. Thank God for air conditioning. No, thank Willis Carrier for air conditioning. And thank God for Willis Carrier.

Selling Religion

I was reading an article on the World Wide Web when there came a gentle knock at my front door. I looked outside and saw two well-dressed young men at my door. I noticed they carried Bibles. Lovely. And, yawn. I haven’t talked to Bible-toters at my front door since, well, last week.

Car Inspection Day

I had my car inspected this morning. I also had them change the oil and filter. After it came back down on the lift to the garage floor, I asked the manager if the mechanic had lubed the chassis. He said "newer cars" don't have lube points. I told him my Jeep is a '95 and yes, it has lube points. So they put the Jeep back up in the air, and then they had trouble finding a grease gun that worked. Who knows if it really got lubed? I sure don’t.

The incident reminded me of the Magic Lube quick oil change shop in Roanoke where I used to take my Subaru. I took my Sube there for 10 years in a row. At every oil change they gave me a list of things they had checked ... transmission fluid level, check ... differential fluid level, check ... and so on. One day after I had put about a hundred thousand miles on the Sube, I watched the mechanic do the oil change. From the customer waiting area, I could look through a window into the garage bay. I knew they didn’t check the gearbox oil because you have to remove the spare tire (which was mounted above the engine) to get to the gearbox dipstick, and I saw that the mechanic didn’t touch the spare tire. So after the car was put back on the ground and brought around to the front of the building, I told the manager that they hadn’t checked the gearbox oil.

“Yes, we did,” was his reply.

“No, you didn’t. You have to remove the spare tire to get the dipstick out, and no one removed the spare tire.”

“You don’t have to remove the spare tire,” the manager replied. “You can get the dipstick out without doing that.”

“Show me!” I said to him.

So he raised the hood and grabbed the gearbox dipstick and tried to pull it out. He bent the dipstick this way and that way, trying to get it out from under the tire, but the dipstick would not budge. Finally he admitted defeat and told one of his minions to remove the spare tire. When he finally pulled the dipstick out of the gearbox, it was bone dry. There wasn’t a hint of oil on the dipstick. The gearbox oil didn’t go from OK to nothing in 3500 miles. Obviously, it hadn’t been checked in tens of thousands of miles. I had been paying these guys to check my engine, and each time I paid them they gave me a sheet of paper indicating that they had checked all these things. When I challenged them, they insisted that I was wrong and that they were checking my engine. And they were lying.

A final addendum to that story: after they added gearbox oil and I was on my way home, I drove the car about 100 feet before I realized something was wrong with the engine. It was running rough. I stopped and raised the hood, and I discovered that the mechanic had pulled off a vacuum hose and had not re-attached it. After I plugged the vacuum hose back onto the throttle body, the engine ran normally. But I shouldn’t have to fix my engine after I pay for an oil change.

I wish I could say that encountering a dishonest auto mechanic is rare, but my experience has shown me that encountering an honest auto mechanic is the rarity. Oh, I have stories I could tell you.

Marman Clamp

While I was cleaning the dryer vent, I had to disconnect a screw-type clamp connecting the flexible metal hose from the dryer to the round sheet-metal vent tube. It reminded me of a Marman clamp. Instantly I thought, “I should blog about the Marman clamp.”

Here’s what a Marman clamp looks like (right). It may look familiar. But here’s what you probably don’t know:

Do you remember Zeppo Marx? Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Gummo were comedians and Zeppo was the foil, the loser straight man. Zeppo (real name: Herbert) didn’t like acting and in 1933 he left the group to become a theatrical agent. Zeppo enjoyed tinkering with mechanical things and became an inventor. In 1941, Zeppo established the Marman Products Company. It made clamps and strapping devices and was involved in the war effort. It was the first company to produce the Marman clamp after its inventor showed Zeppo the device. Marman clamps have many uses; a common use is for quick disconnects for large fuel lines. They are used in spacecraft such as the Cassini orbiter now in orbit around Saturn. Marman clamps were used to hold the “Fat Man” atomic bomb inside the B-29 bomber Bockscar.

Herbert “Zeppo” Marx held three patents. Two patents name him as co-inventor of a cardiac pulse monitor. The monitor was worn like a wristwatch and would alarm if the wearer went into cardiac arrest. Truly, Zeppo was not the Zero he played in the movies.

Jetsam

In his seminal 1964 paper titled On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell presented a theorem that has been called "the most profound in science". It has also been called “one of the most profound discoveries since relativity”. Certainly, it is one of the most important theorems in quantum mechanics. It is called Bell’s theorem (a.k.a. Bell’s inequality).

Let’s say you and I have a hat (upside down) on a table before us. The hat contains two marbles, a red one and a blue one. I reach into the hat and remove a marble, taking care to not look at it. You remove the other marble, also taking care to not look at it. If I have the red marble, you must have the blue marble. If I have the blue marble, you must have the red marble. This would seem to be common sense. Classical physics says that my marble is either red or blue, even though I haven’t looked at it yet to determine its color. In other words, classical physics says that reality is independent of observation. But quantum mechanics says that my marble is both red and blue until I look at it. Quantum mechanics says my marble (and yours, too) exists in a state of superposition in which it has a 50% probability of being red and a 50% probability of being blue. Observing the marble is an act of measurement. When a measurement (observation) is made of the marble, the probability for one color instantly goes to 100% while the probability for the other color goes to 0%. So I look at my marble and in that instant my red/blue marble becomes one color and in that same instant your marble becomes the other color, even if we are trillions of miles apart. Which begs the question: if your marble was, like mine, both red and blue until I looked at my marble, how did your marble know, instantly, what was happening to my marble? We don’t know how this happens but we have a name for it. It’s called quantum entanglement.

Being a reasonable and rational person you probably object to the notion that my marble (and yours) is really both red and blue until one of us looks at it. You are probably thinking it really does have one color or the other, but we don’t know which color it has until we look.

For actual marbles, you may be right. But for atomic-scale things like protons, electrons, photons, and such, it’s not so clear whether their properties exist before we measure them or if they are created by the act of measurement. John Bell’s brilliance was that he devised a way for us to experimentally determine whether reality is observer-independent on an atomic scale. His theorem makes two assumptions about our world. It assumes that reality exists independently of an observer, and it assumes that no signal can travel faster than the speed of light. Numerous experiments have tested Bell’s theorem and they all confirm this simple truth: at the atomic scale, either reality does not exist independently from an observer, or faster than light communication is possible (or both). There are good reasons why faster than light communication is impossible, so we’re left pondering this thought: at the level of atoms, particles don’t have properties until someone or something measures those properties. But that begs the question: exactly what is a measurement.

Let’s go back to the marble experiment. Suppose I close my eyes and open my hand with the marble in it and take a photo of the marble. Later I look at the photo and see the marble is blue. Does the marble become blue when I look at the photo, or did it become blue when I took the photo? Quantum mechanics doesn’t tell us.

And there’s another obvious question: how big does a particle have to be before this red/blue superposition quits happening? Quantum mechanics doesn’t tell us that, either.

So just to be clear, quantum mechanics, a body of scientific principles discovered and added to since the early twentieth century, and which has been tested and experimentally verified again and again and again, and which has become the underlying mathematical framework of many fields of physics and chemistry, including condensed matter physics, solid-state physics, atomic physics, molecular physics, computational physics, computational chemistry, quantum chemistry, particle physics, nuclear chemistry, and nuclear physics – quantum mechanics tells us the moon doesn’t exist when no one is looking at it.

If you want to jettison that thought from your brain, then go ahead and lighten the load.

Flotsam

According to an article in the Seattle Times,

“Millions of tons of debris that washed into the ocean during Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in March — everything from furniture to roofs to pieces of cars — are moving steadily toward the West Coast and raising concerns about a potential environmental headache.”

That sentence brings to my mind the memory of an incredible sight I once saw many years ago. I was driving south on I-5 through Oregon, and at Grants Pass I exited I-5 and took US-199, the Redwood Highway, west toward the coast. Highway 199 crosses part of southwestern Oregon, enters California (and Klamath National Forest) and ends at the West Coast community of Crescent City, California. Once there I got on highway 101, the Pacific Coast Highway, to continue my journey south.

The Pacific Ocean and northern California beaches were to my right. It was night but a full moon made the beaches easy to see. I drove past mile after mile of beaches that were covered with all sorts of wood debris: lumber, pilings, portions of piers, etc. The beaches were piled high and it just went on and on like that, mile after mile, for well over a hundred miles. The sheer volume of debris was very impressive.

At one point I pulled my van off the road and went down to examine some of it. The debris had been in the water for a long time. It was very light; boards felt as light as if they were made of paper, rather than the other way around. There was no substance to the wood; you could ignite it with a match. I had several hitchhikers with me that I had picked up in Oregon, and we all marveled at it. I asked a local person I encountered on the beach about it, and he said it came from Russia. He said when they have exceptionally strong storms on the east coast of Russia, debris goes into the water there and currents bring it to the west coast of the US. I don’t think it happens very often. It might even be one of those so-called hundred-year events.

And now it looks like America’s west coast is about to get another pasting of flotsam, but this time it will be Japanese flotsam – who’s to say, perhaps even some parts of a Fukushima nuclear plant. So West Coasters, if you’re out walking on the beach and you come upon a huge pile of debris, and if you see this symbol on some of it …

Then don’t dawdle. Run away.

Monitor Revival

Two years ago, my 19 inch LG flat-screen computer monitor died. I immediately went to my local hhgregg store and upgraded to a 23 inch LED/LCD widescreen monitor. It was so much better I kind of wished the old monitor had died sooner. I stashed the defunct monitor in my junk room, thinking I would fix it one day. My recent success with repairing my TV (see HDTV Action) inspired me to get off the dime and have a go at repairing the monitor.

The problem is the monitor won’t turn on unless the temperature is above 85° F. Even the power-on LED stays dark. Above 85° it works fine. I reckoned the cause had to be in the power supply and was probably more bad electrolytic capacitors.

Only seven screws hold the unit together, but after removing them the front bezel remained firmly attached to the back of the unit. It turned out they were held together by little “snaps” molded into the bezel. Using a thin screwdriver blade and my fingers, I was able to pry apart the front and the back.

	The “guts” of the monitor are shown at left. The large metal panel holds the LCD display and the CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamps). The small box holds the power supply and controller electronics.
	After flipping the small box over and removing a plastic panel, the power supply board is visible on the right.
	The power supply contains a half dozen electrolytic capacitors. Two of them have swelled but have not vented electrolyte. The two bad capacitors are at the bottom right and center right of the photo. One is rated 1000µF/16VDC and the other is rated 680µF/25VDC.
	I drove to Radio Shack and bought two 1000µF/35VDC electrolytic capacitors. The photo at left shows them installed in place of the bad caps. The monitor now works normally. HDTV repaired: check. Computer monitor repaired: check. Stand aside, I’m on a roll!

You Might Be A Dinosaur If …

Here are ten reasons you might be a dinosaur.

1. You have no tattoos and no desire to get one.
2. The thought of metal studs piercing your tongue, nipples, or genitals gives you the heebie jeebies.
3. You’ve actually used the term heebie jeebies in conversation.
4. You think a cell phone is primarily for making phone calls.
5. You still use email.
6. Your music collection is on CDs.
7. You think “reality television” is stupid.
8. You’re mystified how a pair of jeans can cost $600.
9. You look at your wristwatch when you want to know the time.
10. Each day you seem to become a little more invisible to waiters, waitresses, salespeople, and everyone under age 35.

Number of reasons that apply to you:

0 – 3: Party on, dude!

4 – 7: You’re another day older and deeper in debt.

8 – 10: Welcome to Medicare!

The C.A.T. Vortex

Just to show you I am aware of current events, I admit to being sucked into the Casey Anthony Trial television drama reality show vortex. It happened the weekend of the 4th. It was so freakin’ hot outside – heat index above 100° F each day – and the A/C felt so good, and my recliner was so comfy. I sat down in front of the TV and turned on one of the cable news channels – CNN, I think – and there was the courtroom, and closing arguments were about to begin.

I didn’t follow the Anthony case for the last three years, but I was aware of it. I knew the names Casey Anthony and Caylee Anthony, but I was never sure which was the tot and which was the mom. Now the trial was culminating; the prosecutor was ready to give his closing statement, after which the defense would give their closing statement, after which the prosecutor would get another shot with a rebuttal.

As I had done the previous three years whenever I inadvertently tuned into the Anthony drama, I changed the channel. I switched to HLN. There was the courtroom again. I switched the channel to MSNBC, only to see the courtroom again. I switched to Fox News but alas, they were showing the courtoom drama, too. I know when to give up. I decided to watch the lawyers for a while.

After watching both the prosecution’s closing statement and the defense’s closing statement, I was glad not to be a juror on that case. On the one hand, the timeline of events and Casey’s behavior pointed to her as probably being responsible in some way for Caylee’s death. On the other hand, there were many important questions left unanswered. How did Caylee die? What was the cause of death? Was it suffocation by duct tape? Was it poisoning by chloroform? Was it drowning? Was it something else? No one knew. All they had was speculation. When did Caylee die? Dunno. Where did Caylee die? Dunno. Why did Caylee die? Dunno. Just speculation.

In 1692 and 1693, the people of Salem, Massachusetts, conducted what has come to be known as the Salem witch trials. Accused of witchcraft, and being found guilty at trial, fourteen women and five men were executed by hanging. An 80 year old man who refused to enter a plea was crushed to death under heavy stones. At least five more people died while in prison.

The important thing to note here is that the people who sat on the juries were swept up in the mob hysteria of the day. They listened to some very flaky evidence which convinced them that the accused were guilty. They were damn sure those people were witches. And they were wrong. They executed – murdered – innocent people.

Today we know how important it is to judge a person guilty only through the use of well-documented evidence that is allowed into the trial. We don’t vote guilty because we have passionate feelings about the case or about the defendant. We don’t vote guilty because we think we know what happened. We vote guilty when we have proof of guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. And when no one can prove how or where or when the victim died, there is reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed. Going dancing doesn’t prove you murdered someone. Getting a tattoo doesn’t prove you’re a murderer. Not even having a dead body in your car, if that is what happened, can prove that you murdered someone.

Maybe Casey killed her daughter and got away with murder. But maybe she didn’t. And that is why the jury returned a not guilty verdict. They knew it would be an unpopular verdict. The media had tried and convicted Casey long before the trial began. What happened in the media is analogous to the mob hysteria that gripped Salem in 1692. Fortunately for our system of justice, cooler heads prevailed. The jury didn’t listen to the TV pundits, they looked at the evidence. And in this case, the evidence didn’t prove a murder was committed, much less prove who was responsible.

Ocean Sky

This time lapse video looks toward the Southern Ocean from south Australia. It took almost a year and a half to make.


Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

Funny Ad

I thought this ad was, well, super cool. The video is by janeFILMS. See more video at www.seejanedirect.com.