Dimensions

When 3D movies were introduced (reintroduced) in the 50s they had to explain what three dimensions meant. It was long after that I was introduced to the concept of time (t) as a forth dimension, and a band called the fifth dimension. Now as I understand it, physics is wrestling with how many dimensions there are; nine and twenty seven are the primary contenders.
First lets decide how to define dimension. I would select; a measurable non-derived property off an object in space, length, height and width fit nicely. We have to stretch that definition a little to include time. Since the others can change with time including time seems reasonable.
I propose several others: Orientation has three axes just as do the linear dimensions, pilots can relate to them as pitch, roll and yaw. or as linear dimensions are x, y and z the orientation dimensions are k,l and m.  Now we have seven.
Every point in space has a unique but changeable temperature (T). Density (D) is usually defined in term of mass per volume, but density could be a dimension itself if we were not locked into legacy definitions. (mass/volume). Maybe mass is really density times volume.
Could it be that the nine elusive dimensions are actually right in front of us. x,y,z,k,l,m,t,T,and D,

I thought that entropy and enthalpy might be fundamental, but since they are easily defined in terms of these nine, I think they can be considered derived units, along with the more bizarre like gravitational flux or maybe someone can name of the other 18.  I am doing this to liberate our thinking from the mold that insists that since 3 of the 4 commonly cited dimensions are linear, that rest should be similar. While I cite T as temperature, it could be some unit of intrinsic energy that encompasses temperature.



Anyway, I'm in way over my head, maybe someone can expand this train of logic.

Origin of life

Two incompatible hypotheses reinforce a logical conclusion.
Hypothesis number one. For life to spring up by accident is about as likely a a wind blowing across a junkyard assembling the junk into a jetliner. Therefore corollary one there must be an intelligent plan; or corollary two, life was transported here from somewhere else (but then where did it start).
Hypothesis number two there are so many planets, there must be life as we know it on x percent of the planets.

Well if the odds of life are basically one chance in infinity and there are an infinite number of planets, then logically the odds of life on just one of those planets is one. Here we are. I know that the mathematicians are about to pounce but we are dealing in an area where Newtonian or even Einsteinian logic won't help.

So far no person using scientific methodology can explain why there is life here or anywhere in the universe. It is the only true miracle perhaps an incredibly unlikely event happened just once on one minor planet circling a minor star in an unremarkable galaxy. The right combination of carbon based compounds at the right temperature and pressure and entropy and enthalpy and charge came together in just the right way to create something that never existed before: a simple life form, perhaps a virus, or prion, or something long extinct that had the ability to reproduce and to mutate into something more complex.  It only had to happen once.

TAXES

The history of taxes is a history of injustice. Originally taxes were imposed by the sovereign, chief, baron, war-lord or whatever you want to call the bully. Tax rate was whatever he could squeeze out of you. Lesser bullies in turn squeezed their subjects for whatever they could get and so on. Collecting taxes is like getting down from a goose, the object being to get as much as possible with as little fuss as possible.

Somewhere in history it occurred to the common people that taxes should be somehow proportional, and some of them fought for this small innovation. Theoretically the landless peasant or serf only paid what he could afford and the intermediate paid according to the same formula, but of course if you are destitute, giving up even 1% may mean not eating. The American Revolution was triggered by 1% tax! (Without representation.)

Proportional tax, has become a sort of standard, with the twentieth century innovation of progressive taxation.  The idea being that for some 1% is oppressive and for the well off a much higher proportion is merely an inconvenience. The rub here is: What is a fair progression? As a result many tax systems have complicated algorithms that attempt fairness, but do not do it well. Even two individuals that appear to be equally taxable might have vastly different abilities to pay, one might have a sickly child, or land prone to flooding.

The first thing to consider is the tax base.

Equality: Everyone pay the same amount.

Disposable property: The tax collector comes to your place periodically and takes some of everything he can carry, or settles for what you donate.

Real property: The tax collector estimates what your property is worth, sends you a bill for a percentage.

Income: You and the tax collector figure out what your income was (will be) and then pay a proportion according to a complicated set of tables and calculations.
     Flat tax: An income tax that is theoretically simpler and fairer because there is only one rate.

Consumption: Usually at point of final sale, Almost always a fixed rate in a given jurisdiction, but not applied to all goods and services.
     VAT, GET and other hidden sales taxes collected at various points in the distribution chain.

Transaction: Just a sales tax on intangibles.

Excise: Relatively high tax applied to transactions the state wants to discourage, includes "sin"

Emissions: A tax on smoke!

Extraction: Based on what you take out of the commons.

Some taxes are imposed in a way that they are inherently regressive. The wealthy devote much of their income to things that are not subject to sales tax. Many transaction taxes are fixed per transaction so licensing a pound puppy costs as much as a $10,000 pure-bread lhasa apso. Social Security deduction tops put at $117,000 income.

The problem with many of these bases is evaluation. Two farms or fishing boats or barrels of whisky might look the same superficially, yet have vastly different values. Two identical boats might have different values depending on where they are. Two earners might have the exact same income, to the penny, but one lives in a city with high rents. Two coal fired smokestacks may appear to have the same emissions, but one is burning anthracite and the other lignite when no one is looking.

Some bases require businesses to collaborate with the tax collector, keeping detailed records of what was sold to whom at what location on which day in order to apply the correct tax rate to each and every transaction.

Flat tax sound good superficially, but as soon as one looks a little deeper the obvious limitation stands out: 15% of exactly what, gross income, take home, net, disposable? Cost of doing business has to be accounted for.

Many years ago I proposed a tax on energy, regardless of the source. My logic was and still is that energy consumption is proportional to wealth, and progressive also. Wealthier have more and bigger homes to heat and air condition. Bigger cars, yachts jets etc. They travel more, and more often in luxury accommodations.  I learned that Al Gore proposed a carbon tax at about the same time. Narrowing it to carbon has some distinct advantages since carbon emissions are undesirable and most carbon comes from fossil sources that are finite. Energy measurement is inherently fair, A megawatt is megawatt whether it's from coal or oil, or gas, or nuclear. Now there might be a debate whether to include renewable or even nuclear, but that is a one time decision.

Taxing energy, or carbon at the source has distinct advantages in terms of collect-ability. Fluids or electricity can be metered continuously and counting railroad cars of coal is a lot less invasive than adding up cash resister receipts.  Cheating an energy tax would be very difficult, you can't exactly hide a supertanker, a coal mine or a nuclear power plant.

Another advantage to extraction tax is that not only does it discourage the consumption of no- renewable resources and the inherent environmental damage is that it would encourage business to hire more employees where they can be utilized to reduce consumption.

I did the calculation a long time ago so I'm sure the numbers have changed a bit, but basically an energy tax equivalent 100% on a ton of carbon at the source could replace all other taxes, and all the record keeping and liability that goes with them..

Cities like Detroit are obsolete

First there was the family, Mother and her children. Then in some cultures the dad and other relatives became part of the extended family.  This got larger and became a tribe.  Many tribes merged into a clan.  Then things got complicated, some tribes and clans merged into nations.  Other tribes formed cities.  The large cities conquered surrounding territory and became city states, often with extensive territories, empires.

Eventually modern nations, with subdivisions called states, provinces, counties and cities evolved. Unfortunately the boundaries of these subdivisions have become in many ways obsolete.  Cities on opposite banks of a river may be in different states, but have more in common with one another than they do with their home state.  Suburban residents outside a city may make more use of some city services: libraries, museums, colleges than residents within.  Some cities require critical employees to live within, even though this may be a financial or cultural hardship.  It may deprive the city of the best candidate for some jobs, like teachers and police officers.

Many cities have learned to blur the lines to improve services.  Port districts manage the entire waterfront of multiple cities.  Many utilities are based on topographic boundaries rather than political, and some school districts are based on demographic boundaries.  Regional transportation has largely replaced municipal.

Unfortunately some cities, like Detroit, appear to be locked into the city state mentality and try to be everything to everyone within the arbitrary (historic) boundary, while at the same time supporting services that benefit non-residents more than taxpayers.  With today’s information technology there is no reason for all city services to have the same boundaries.  A separate service district for each service can be designed and managed to maximize efficiency, within much larger boundaries, such as county or state.  This of course might make mayors and city councils obsolete, but I can live with that.

Fracking ban

Once again a panicked minority has called for an outright ban on a technology they do not understand. There are definitely certain dangers to fracking, as with any large technology. Should we burn coal instead of natural gas? That will be the outcome of a ban on fracking. Everyone likes having electricity, but some oppose each of the technologies that make it possible. I even saw a website that declared electricity a natural resource that should be available to everyone for free. How would that work? No one has banned electricity, but governments that prohibit private competitors to their electrical monopolies typically do not provide reliable service.

Outright bans are a gut level response that freezes progress.  A well though out and flexible regulation always works better. Regulated utilities in developed counties provide abundant power to anyone.   It's not to say the regulation is perfect, but it is a lot less troublesome than an outright ban. Once a ban is in place it creates a constituency that opposes all progress. Compare Prohibition with the War On Drugs.

Instructions

I just finished a "30 minute installation" that took an hour and a half.
Why?
1: The screws they provided were so cheep that even with pre-drilled holes I stripped 4. Soft metal and undersized slots.
2. Atrocious instructions on two separate sheets in three languages.  If they have to do that, can't they at least use a different font for each language?

Civil Penalty

The Criminalizing of American business is a gigantic extrapolation of what local government has been doing with parking and traffic fines for decades. The accused, who may be innocent, sees defending himself as to troublesome or expensive and just pays the fine. Later he learns of hidden cost, such as insurance surcharges, or being label as an habitual offender.

To make the prosecution easier States now call these civil penalties rather than fines, although it is difficult to see how someone violating a stop sign has cost the state anything.

War on ????????????????

War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Terrorism, what do they have in common? A vaguely described objective. The first thing we teach in engineering is that a problem well defined is half solved. None of the above three are well defined. A war needs a clearly defined enemy that can be killed or captured. None of the War-ons can meet that criterion. These problems have to be mitigated with education and compassion. Unlike real war, total victory is not a realistic goal.

Illegal equals unregulated

Fearmongers in Government and the Media do everything they can to keep us alarmed and justify their pet battles. So is there anything to fear? My personal fear is not drugs, it’s the War On Drugs. Government lies about drugs to justify Gestapo tactics to fight this invisible enemy called Drugs. Regularly somewhere in America a SWAT team invades a home in search of Drugs, sometimes they find a commercial quantity, sometimes not. Sometimes they have to cook the books to make the take look commercial, in order to justify the assault. Then there is Civil Forfeiture. Police attempt an arrest, they can’t find any solid evidence, but they can confiscate property based on mere suspicion, property like a car, boat, house, or aircraft. The owner of the property has to sue to get it back. It is very difficult to prove a negative, so more often than not the victim won’t even try. Then there is the inevitable violence of turf battles between criminals.

That which is illegal is by definition unregulated, therefore impure and unsafe.

The War On Drugs is as big a mistake as Prohibition, but it’s not too late to end it.

GMO

Many things are illegal because they are perceived to be problematic. Unfortunately the perception may not be realistic. The perception may be based on prejudice. Alcohol for example causes problems, but prohibition only made it worse. The public has realized that the war on drugs has not eliminated their abuse and has had a lot of undesirable side effects even some politicians are beginning to notice. A lot of recent opinions express  opposition to GMO, but the sources of their factoids are murky. A rumor can make it around the world before the truth gets its fact checking complete.

Although many governments have banned some GMO products, as near as I can find out there is not one peer accepted scientific study that finds anything wrong with GMO food. Sure you can argue to wait until it is proven safe, but with that logic we would all still be cowering in jungles afraid of fire.

Post Office

Some people want to kill the USPS because they do not see the value to them. Rural people depend on it, as do many businesses. There is a simple way to fix the USPS. Stop meddling Congress. Let the postal service set their own rates and decide what services to offer like any other business.  Why should they charge 48 cents to do what FedEx does for only $17?

campaign finance

We learn from history that men (well politicians) never learn from history. Prohibition was a miserable failure, so we repealed the 19^th amendment, but continued the war on drugs. We can pass laws limiting campaign financing, but it is naïve to think that will make it go away. Like any other popular activity outlawed, it will find ways to go underground, out of sight, totally unregulated and dominated by organized crime.

I cannot think of a prohibition that accomplished its goal, can you?

Maybe contributions could be double blind.

No doubt being a police officer is a difficult and demanding job. Often days of boredom are interrupted by life threatening terror. Very few people are cut out for it. Some do not realize that the job is not for them until they are confronted with a life or death decision. Perhaps there is a non-intuitive a solution. More female officers! Men - the hunters- instinctively confront force with force. Women – the nurturers - have evolved to use other means, because force is not usually an option. Our tribal instinct is to keep our females safe, but in a modern world that is a less important strategy. Recall the female high school principal who talked down a would-be-shooter, before the police snipers arrived.  

THE GREAT HIGHWAY ROBBERY

It is widely believed that government cannot solve problems, because most of the time government is the problem.  Often the government idea of a solution to one perceived problem is to create a new situation with problems of its own that aggravate the existing situation, and superimpose a bureaucracy to perpetuate the new status quo.   If they can't get us to do the politically correct thing by persuasion or force, then the next level is to make the efficient, but politically incorrect, inefficient by any means possible, and the politically correct, but inefficient superficially efficient, no matter what the cost.  

This isn’t about robbery upon the highway, this is about stealing our highways right out from under our tires.  A small, but politically correct, group is appropriating about twenty five per cent of our highway surface for their exclusive use.  They use politically correct irrelevant arguments and factual distortions to justify the theft.  Naturally, since their grab helps government restrict the rights of other citizens, they have the full support of government at every level.  On the other hand, more likely they are the unwitting tool, merely helping government do what it does, make life complicated, and inefficient.

Now I probably would not notice if their activities made things better, but that is not what is happening.  Entire lanes of busy roads are being set aside for the exclusive use of a small self declared elite who feel that their politically correct purpose supersedes the one for which the roads were built.  They get away with this by declaring that their way is the wave of the future.  They insist that their way will reduce traffic congestion, save energy, reduce pollution, save lives, and make the world safe for non-alcoholic beer.  Exactly how reducing the number of lanes available to traffic will accomplish any of these things takes a leap of logic that transcends even faith.  Faith, you will remember, is belief in something you know is not true.

Strangely, the beneficiaries of this “improvement” are notoriously the worst traffic violation offenders.  Traffic signals and stop signs are beneath them. Lane controls are irrelevant, as are all regulatory signs, markings and islands.  The distinction between street and sidewalk is merely an inconvenience because of curbs.  These Kamikazes can be seen running against the flow of traffic, or with it, above, or more often way below the speed limit, whatever suits them.  When below the speed limit, they prefer to travel three or four abreast so they can communicate with and be admired by one another.  The traffic jam behind them is irrelevant.  “No one has a right to go faster than us.”  They will get so close to your car that your mirrors can’t reveal them, and then sue you if they get hurt.  Even where they have commandeered highway lanes, they may use them or not, depending on what is more expedient.  Private property means nothing to them. A short cut is a short cut.

These charioteers will pay $400 for a part that weighs a gram less than the $10 one it replaces, yet prefer brakes that will not skid a wheel unless the road is lubricated.

When it gets dark, these erstwhile pilots really come into their own.  No sissy lights or reflectors for these guys.  ‘We don't got to show you no stinkin’ reflectors.”  If you can’t see black spandex in the dark, it’s your problem, and your insurance company’s, not theirs.    The latest lighting fad is a little red strobe light that, if it happens to be pointing right at you, is as blinding as a candle. More often, it’s safety pinned to a backpack, pointing at airplanes.  They have the same contempt for signaling that they have for lights. Where these guys are and what they are going to do next is none of your business, until after you’re sued.

Interestingly, these activists tend to be philosophically like the environmentalists who proclaimed 20 years ago we would all have to wear gas masks to go outside in 1995, and that we would run out of fossil fuels completely by 2,000.  Remember, “Better active today than radioactive tomorrow?”  I would suspect that they are the environmentalists of the seventies, except the way they operate, they would not have lasted that long.

If you think I'm exaggerating, go look for a place to park.  What used to be the shoulder or parking lane has become the “bike lane”, though one seldom sees a bike actually in it.  The bikes are everywhere else.  If they are in the bike lane, they will leave it impulsively and ride anywhere that’s expedient.

Anytime a municipality wants to prohibit parking without a good reason, they just call the location a “bike lane”.  The bike lane will mysteriously stop or start for no apparent reason, in mid-block or mid-intersection.  Other times bike lanes stop right at the edge of a busy intersection, or jump across lanes leading the rare conscientious rider into a trap, then abandoning him.  The few riders who do ride in the bike lane act as if there was a protective wall around them.   “You can’t hit me, nah nah, na nah nah, I’m in the bike lane”.   Come to think of it, they ride that way anywhere.  Totally oblivious to motor traffic they will weave across an on-ramp as though they were in a personal tunnel.  Let one of these self-righteous athletes crash into a car and guess who goes to a lawyer and a chiropractor, in that order.

Not that these enthusiasts are entirely to blame, the officials who consecrate “bike lanes” and the Federal Bozeaucrats that make them do it, encourage this form of Russian roulette.  Like a white line is going to keep the cars here and the bikes there.  Guess who loses no matter which one crosses the line, and whose insurance will go up.  Guess who earns a big fat contingency fee.  Hmmm, maybe it’s lawyers; excuse me, Consumer Attorneys, who are behind all this.

Let’s see how they will reduce traffic congestion, save energy, reduce pollution, save lives and make the world safe from low tar cigarettes.  Except for really short trips around the neighborhood a car is about 5 times as fast as a bike, so the bike will be in traffic 5 times as long, to make the same trip. (And exposed to five times as many accident opportunities.)   So even though they are not as wide, 100 bikes could take up as much length of road as 500 cars.  To eliminate this problem the Bozeaucrats demand that we create bike lanes.  If bikes stay in the bike lanes that are about half as wide as car lane and if the bike lane was being used to capacity, they argue, the bikes would take up hardly any space.  What’s wrong with this picture?  A lane can transmit up to 2,000 cars an hour.  Except for an organized event, have you ever seen 2,000 bikes pass a single point in one hour, one day, or even one week?  They want to take a lane that can convey 2,000 cars (about 3,000 commuters) an hour, and dedicate it to maybe 20-30 bike riders an hour. Of course if there were a bike lane, there would be more riders, maybe 100 per hour.  So there, take that, a bike lane could reduce car traffic up to 3%, while reducing the available road by 25% or so. 

Such a deal!

Safety?  According to the Department of Transportation statistics (guesses), bicycles accounted for 2% of highway fatalities last year, yet they have no idea how many miles are ridden.  Most agree bicycles are less than 1% of traffic.  I'll bet it isn’t even 1 tenth of a percent.  How many cars did you see on the highway today?  How many bicycles? How many bikes were going more than a mile?  The Feds admit that the average usage for all bicycles is less than 10 miles per month, and that 9% of bicyclists crash or fall each year.  That is one accident every 1200 miles!  Is this safe?  Can you imagine if someone got hurt in your car every month?  More contingency fees, higher insurance, maybe it’s a conspiracy.  Bicycle fatalities are kept in a separate database and can’t be correlated to other accidents.  Motorcycles, by the way, which are known to be 1% of vehicle registrations, represent 4% of fatalities

Fossil fuels and pollution:  Fifty billion bicycle miles instead of car miles, at 20 mpg would save two billion gallons of fuel.   They win that round.  Yeah, right.  If you consider what taking away 25% of the highway lanes does to congestion.  Remember a lane can handle up to 2,000 cars an hour. When the bikes take away a lane they force the same number of cars to use fewer lanes, so a road that could handle 8,000 cars an hour can only handle 6,000.  Where do the other 2,000 go, by bicycle?  Right again.  They’re sitting in traffic jams blocking the other 6,000 all with motors idling, burning fuel to stand still, and making more pollution.  Of those 2,000 drivers an hour we’re told should bike to work how many actually would, or could even if they wanted to?  What happens when it snows, or when the wind chill is 10 below?  Who is going to bike to work in Phoenix when its 120 degrees?  What about people who commute more than five miles, or have steep hills to climb?

O.K, bikes are easy to park.   And steal!

ZEV zero emission vehicles

The tree huggers, politically correct bureaucrats and politicians want the industry to offer us “zero emission” cars, at gunpoint if necessary.  This is one of those save-the-world proposals that does not have a snowball’s chance of succeeding.

First, electricity is not free, you have to make it, and that means fossil fuels, because those same tree huggers already stopped us from building safe, clean, fission power plants.  Instead they have us chase such chimera as hydrogen, solar power (economical only for isolated locations), and fusion (unproven except for nanoseconds), but I digress.  Every highway vehicle not tethered to a fixed route must carry it’s own energy supply.  We operate in an oxygen atmosphere therefore the vehicle need not carry its oxidizer, only the fuel.  This is fortunate, because the typical reaction involves 16 pounds of oxidizer for every pound of fuel!  Excuse me, 16 politically correct grams of oxidizer for every politically correct gram of fuel.  A  zero emission vehicles (ZEV) unfortunately, must carry not only the equivalent of 100 pounds of fuel to make a reasonable trip, but also the 1600 pounds of oxidizer (or other reagent) to react with the fuel, which they then can convert to 1700 pounds of reaction product to carry back to the recharging station.

Now, modern engines are about 25% efficient (35% if they are diesel).  The zero emission vehicle since it needs to carry 17 times as much propellant, (fuel plus oxidizer) must be at least 17 times as efficient to compete.  Let’s see, 17 times 25% is 425%.  That is to say for every kilowatt-hour used to charge the battery the motor must be able to do over 4 kilo-watt hours of work.  Am I missing something here?  No, I'm not.

I was explaining this to an electrical engineer.  He stopped me, momentarily, with “I’m not convinced the same limitations apply.”  He was sort of right.  In practice, ZEV is even less practical.  It takes a thousand pound battery pack to store as much energy as four pounds of gasoline, and it has to carry those 1,000 pounds all the time. (Not yet 17:1, but so far only 200:1)

 For the ZEV to hope to compete, it must have a propulsion system that can put out four times as much energy as what we put in.  If we could do that, it could charge its own batteries and would never have to recharge, perpetual motion.  Not only that, but we could use that technology to build power plants that put out four times more power than the fuel they use.  We could then cascade these, each one driving one four times as big and we could power North America with a single candle.  Better yet we could just tap a candle’s worth off anywhere in the system to power it.  Wow!  I hope you see I’m being facetious.

Meanwhile back here on planet Earth, the best fossil fuel power plant is about 42% efficient, so to get that one kilowatt we had to burn the equivalent of 2.3 kilowatts of fuel.  Even if the ZEV were perfect, 100% efficient that kilowatt-hour of stored energy would weigh 17 times as much as a kilowatt-hour of stored fuel.  So it could compete with engines that were 6% efficient.  Look out James Watt, the original one, 1736-1819, steam engine, teakettle, you know.

It would obviously be more productive to look for a way to take the reaction products out of the air, than to attempt to carry them around and reprocess them.  We could have huge un-power plants that take carbon dioxide out of the air.  Plants that absorb carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into something useful, like, umm... wood.

“Hydrogen,” I hear you crying, “hydrogen is the fuel of the future.  Fuel cells can turn hydrogen directly into electricity and the byproduct is pure water.  Hydrogen is the answer, not batteries, not only that, but hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, we’ll never run out.” 

Here’s a buck, go buy me some.  Sure it’s abundant, but it’s all being used.  Most of it is busy being water.  The rest is tied up in organic compounds, such as, uh, oil.  Just like electricity, before you can buy hydrogen someone has to make it and making hydrogen requires … electricity.  Yes, hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and it is every bit as promising today as it was 30 years ago.     

OH DEAR MY BAD

When I wrote this, about 15 years ago I made a mistake. I do not feel too bad, because over 100,000 people have seen it and nobody corrected me.
The air fuel ratio is 16:1, but the air is only 20% oxygen, so the oxydizer to fuel ratio is more like 3.2:1
SO

 A  zero emission vehicles (ZEV) unfortunately, must carry not only the equivalent of 100 pounds of fuel to make a reasonable trip, but also the 300 pounds of oxidizer (or other reagent) to react with the fuel, which they then can convert to 400 pounds of reaction product to carry back to the recharging station.

Now, modern engines are about 25% efficient (35% if they are diesel).  The zero emission vehicle since it needs to carry 4 times as much propellant, (fuel plus oxidizer) must be at least 5 times as efficient to compete.  Let’s see, 4 times 25% is 100%.  That is to say for every kilowatt-hour used to charge the battery the motor must be able to do over 1 kilo-watt hours of work.   Since nothing is 100% efficient this still explains why the best electric cars have half the range of the average conventional car. Limited, but practical for many applications, like Honolulu.  And maybe some day just as good.

Campaign finance and prohibition

We learn from history that men (well politicians) never learn from history. Prohibition was a miserable failure, so we repealed the 19^th amendment, but continued the war on drugs. We can pass laws limiting campaign financing, but it is naïve to think that will make it go away. Like any other popular activity outlawed, it will find ways to go underground, out of sight, totally unregulated and dominated by organized crime.

I cannot think of a prohibition that accomplished its goal, can you?

  

Second Ammentment

Probably the two most emotional issues in America are abortion and the second amendment. Let’s set aside abortion for now because it is an emotional, religious and ethical issue.

I have had different attitudes about the second amendment, but the first time I rode across the American West I realized how individual firearms ownership made America virtually invasion proof so I became a believer. It is claimed that after Pearl Harbor Admiral Yamamoto said “I would never invade North America; there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

Both sides of the gun ownership issue make claims. More guns more violence, or less. The second amendment implies individual ownership, or not.

So I did my own research. The correlation between tough or lenient gun laws is weak. You can find data that supports either point of view. What did they mean when they wrote the Second Amendment? The answer is in the Federalist Papers. There is nothing in there about hunting or sport shooting. It is about defense against tyranny from within or without. Now I hear the anti-gunners saying things like the people in those days did not have military weapons. No, their rifles were considerably more effective than the muskets the Armies issued. Membership in the militia required gun ownership, not the other way around. Irregulars with small arms have held off, and even defeated mighty armies. The mujahedeen kicked the mighty Soviet Red Army out of Afghanistan.

Guns do facilitate violence, but so do fists, knives, pitchforks, cars, explosives, and accelerants, e.g. gasoline. The unarmed part of the world is experiencing an increase in suicide bombing. Violence is cultural. Unarmed Britain and Japan are peaceful because that’s the kind of obedient people they are. Switzerland is heavily armed, but peaceful. Every adult male there is required to maintain an assault rifle and ammunition. America was founded on violence: The French and Indian War, the Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, etc. Many early “settlers” were convicts given a choice between America and the gallows. For 200 years the troublemakers from all over the world emigrated. Going to America looking for a home where they could escape the shackles and limitations of “civilization”.

Most of the violence in America today is related to the War-On-Drugs. Think about it, what does WAR mean, it means killing people to impose your will on their survivors. Take away the war, take away the violence; simple as that! Take away the drugs, good luck with that one. Prohibition was a dismal failure.  We learn from history the government never learns from history. The war on drugs has had no perceivable reduction in drug use. Forbidden fruit is especially attractive to teenagers. Take away the guns, how? There are more than 300 million, most of them unregistered and easy to conceal. There are many countries where guns are illegal. The level of violence has no correlation with the laws. And like whiskey and drugs, those who cannot buy them, or steal them will figure out how to make their own. In Afghanistan village blacksmiths were making fully functional copies of Lee-Enfield army rifles and AK47’s!

If you examine the war on drugs objectively, as Judge Gray has:

http://www.amazon.com/Drug-Laws-Have-Failed-About/dp/1566398606/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416362244&sr=1-2&keywords=judge+James+gray

Or Ethan Nadelman:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_nadelmann_why_we_need_to_end_the_war_on_drugs

Or LEAP :  http://www.leap.cc/

You can only conclude that the War-On-Drugs is a bigger mistake than Prohibition and wonder about the sanity (Or Motives) of its proponents.

Perhaps: (Previous post Nov 7)

I now see the error of my ways.  I thought of the war on drugs as pointless and ineffective. I now see it as perfect for what it is intended to do. Look what would happen if we ended the war. 

We have built the world’s largest prison system; we have to keep it and all the people and contractors it employs busy.  What would we do with all those people warehoused in prison?  Would they join the ranks of the unemployed, or become just be petty criminals?  In addition to prisons we have courts, judges and their other employees that depend on the jobs it creates.

 Without low level drug users to plea bargain prosecutors would have to work much harder to maintain their important win/lose ratio.  Thousands of defense lawyers depend on the drug trials for easily earned income with no remorse for failure 

Police at every level from local departments to FBI have become dependent on the opportunities it provides, advancement, excitement, publicity, overtime, free drugs, bigger budgets and the assets that civil forfeiture provides: cars, boats, aircraft, electronics, weapons, and cash. 

The small arms industry depends on equipment, gun and ammunition sales to police and organized crime to stay in business and employ thousands of people.

The economies of several countries, and counties in the US, are dependent on the high prices they get for crops that produce an illegal product. What will they do when cocaine and marijuana bring the same price as oregano and tobacco?  Legal drugs would deprive independent vendors of a major source of tax free income.

All the hoopla about illegal drugs distracts people from the tobacco and alcohol industries, and the pervasive and harmful effects of their products. Constant news coverage of the War pushes news about the harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco off the front page.  Celebrity scandals about illegal drug usage are almost as interesting as sex.  Rehab is so much more newsworthy when it is paralleled with a threat of jail time. 

Pharmaceutical companies can justify the high prices of their mass produced product on the comparably high price of street drugs.  How could oxycodone compete with legal codeine or even safer, more effective marijuana?  Hundreds of chemists, now busy designing drugs (prescription and illegal) around the controlled substances act would be redundant. 

The drug test industry employs thousands.  Employers need a simple reason to reject minority applicants "You failed the drug test".  Since marijuana usage is somewhere between 50 and 80% and can be detected for months, this is almost always credible, and impossible to rebut, although meaningless. 

Political contributions from all those with vested interest in the drug war would stop, then what would all the campaign service providers do without the Mothers-milk of politics?  War of any kind provides speech material for polidioticians, “We need to work harder, we're seeing the light the end of the tunnel, can't stop now.”  Gets more votes than, “300 million Americans are quietly behaving themselves.” 

In fewer words, the war on drugs has so thoroughly pervaded our culture that we, or at least our ruling class, can't live without it any more than they could live without their own hypocrisy. It is a small part of the basis of popular politics: keep the public alarmed with an endless series of boogie-men preferably imaginary, or manufactured as necessary to the needs, of the reelection cycle.

Gasoline and Politics

Right before an election, gasoline prices come down.  I suspect the oil companies figure that happy Democrats won't vote, so more pro-oil-Republicans will win.  High gas prices make people mad, and angry Democrats are more likely to vote.  Lenin had it half right Gasoline is the opiate of the masses.

Reasonable Gun Control

The perpetual call for reasonable gun laws assumes that the laws we have are somehow unreasonable. Does reasonable mean total control, like North Korea, or a balance like say Switzerland. Yes, guns are too often involved in unjustified shootings, but according to some statistics often prevent a violent crime without ever being fired. No crime, no shooting, no police report.

I agree even one death is too many, but can we eliminate that one even with draconian laws? Just for reference, the number of gun related fatalities is of a similar magnitude as automotive fatalities, but no one is calling our traffic code unreasonable. The number who die from medical errors is several times as high, and the number that die from cigarette smoking is several times that. There is just so much the law can do.

If the War On Drugs were ended, a substantial portion of the gun violence would end.

Science

 I do not know much about fluoride, except that every dentist I ever talked to and the Centers for Disease Control are in favor of water fluoridation. While fluorine is a toxic gas, the fluoride in water is a salt. The main danger is the emotional distress caused by attitudes like some letters.

 

Many letters have been printed opposing introduction of scientific discoveries, such as bio-controls, or GMO crops. Almost invariably these letters equate the proposal to invasive species introduced in the, mostly distant, past: mongoose, Christmas berry, rabbits etc.

What the letter writers appear ignorant of is that those introductions were made for selfish reasons without any science at all.

There is a popular culture that has come to distrust science, and instead accepts anecdotal evidence (true or not) to reject: fluorides, vaccination, pasteurized milk, nuclear power, seat belts, geothermal, GMO, windmills, helmets or anything else they heard a horror story about.  This happens in spite of overwhelming scientific and statistical evidence that the benefits outweigh any risk.  I guess the world needs boogeymen, even if they are imaginary.

Speed Limit Falacy

It seems reasonable to assume that driving slower is safer.  After all if you are not moving, you can’t crash.  You will never get anywhere either, and you can still be crashed into.  While it is true that driving slower reduces severity of accidents there is no evidence that it actually prevents them.  Most fatal accidents happen at below 35mph!  This is simply because most driving time is spent below 35mph, in locations where collisions are likely to occur, like urban intersections.  On the other hand when all vehicles are going in the same direction at the same speed, as in a tunnel, they cannot collide.  If they do get a little out of sync and collide the severity is reduced.  This is the rationale to build limited access divided highways. The safest situation on traditional roads is to discipline traffic so that the difference in speed among vehicles is minimized.  This can be done two ways.  Draconian enforcement or rational speed limits.  Unfortunately there are not enough police or courts to make the former viable, unless we want to give the police shoot on sight authority, but that has problems of its own.  

It is widely believed that no matter what speed limit is posted most people will cheat by 5 to 10 miles per hour.  Many people also think the police will give them 5 mph or 10% grace. Neither is true.  It has been scientifically established that if there is no posted limit on a highway 85% of the drivers will drive at a safe and reasonable speed for the conditions.  The traffic will thus be self-disciplined and inherently safer.  More than half will be within a 10 mph range of speed, with many going slower for personal reasons, and a few going a little faster.  Of course there will be a small number going outrageously faster.  These are the ones enforcement should be concentrated on.  Unfortunately enforcement creates revenue and that can become the motivation for increased enforcement activity.

Untrained politicians and bureaucrats believe in the fallacy, and given the chance almost always decide to post the speed limit 5 to 10mph less than good traffic engineering dictates, 10mph slower that they themselves do drive on the same roadway.  When their prophesy comes true, their solution is to lower the limit by another 5mph.  This has almost no discernable effect on the maximum speed. Instead the traffic gets more chaotic and dangerous, because while small percentage will rigorously obey, the crazies (habitual speeders) will try to drive as fast as ever.  The rigorously obedient will frustrate not only the crazies, but many otherwise safe drivers, who will now tailgate (follow unsafely close) and be tempted to pass unsafely.  A driver who might feel safe driving 55 on a certain highway will probably not take many chances to pass one driving 50, but as the speed of the impediment decreases the willingness to pass increases.  As the motivation to pass increases the conditions under which a driver will attempt to pass deteriorate.  Almost no one would hesitate to pass a farm tractor going 7mph.

On a highway the grouping of traffic can be observed.  The slower a vehicle is travelling the closer the following traffic will be, disproportionately closer.  Likewise the frustration and risk tolerance of the following drivers will increase.  On a narrow highway for example a car travelling at 35 will accumulate a large number of cars behind it, with at least one obviously tailgating.  A car travelling at 45 will have fewer cars following, with hardly ever anyone tailgating.  A driver at 55 will probably have none behind him, until he overtakes one of the slower drivers above.  Too-low speed limits decrease safety by causing erratic behavior. 

Hawaii's Conquest

No doubt about it, the Hawaiian People were victimized, but it did not start with the overthrow of the Monarchy. It started when the first Hawaiians, sometimes called Menehune, were conquered by Tahitians, who essentially became the Alii. The common people, Maoli Hawaii, had few rights until Kamehameha I declared the law of the broken paddle.

Monarchy like any other system that depends on fealty and patronage is inherently corrupt. Just like everywhere else the aristocracy abused the common people for their personal gain. So many men were put to work gathering sandalwood to be sold to purchase luxuries for the elite (Alii) that there was no one to work the fields to grow food. Fortunately the sandalwood ran out, but by then there was nothing left of the original system.

Inevitably Hawaii went through several transitions. Whether what evolved was the best outcome will never be known, but to restore the monarchy means exactly what? The monarchy as it existed in 1890, 1867, 1848, 1819 or 1810? Because it changed with each new King. Was there ever a time when the common people were fully enfranchised?

There is a lot of sympathy for the last Queen Liliuokalani, but she tried to abolish the so called Bayonet Constitution. It was signed under pressure by her Brother Kalakaua,  It was the only thing however that made her Queen after his death!

No doubt about it, the Hawaiian People were victimized, but name an indigenous people that were not. It could have been much worse. There were attempts by many colonial powers to annex Hawaii.

Imagine if it was the Russians,the French or the Germans who succeeded

America's Future

            Many articles expound the hypothesis that just as the 19^th century was Britain’s and the 20^th America’s, the future century will be China’s; perhaps, but there are significant flaws in the theory.  Consider this:  Beginning with the Magna Charta in 1215 a new concept paralleled the development of the English speaking world, no human being is supreme, not even the King.  This concept grew and spread within English culture.  In 1588 Sir Walter Drake defeated the Spanish Invincible Armada ending a century of Spanish domination and gradually English hegemony spread over the entire globe.  His sovereign Elizabeth I discouraged religious persecution and in 1689 The English Bill of Rights was enacted: all human beings had certain rights.  By 1700 the sun never set on the British Empire.  However in 1775 that empire had begun to fragment.  Distant colonies became restless and many separated politically, but not culturally from Mother England.  Although England no longer dominates the planet, her collective progeny do.  Of the G20 countries, which account for 85% of the words economy, 4 are English speaking, 7 count English as an official or national language.  English is widely spoken in nearly all 20!  Of the G7 3, 42% are English speaking.  English is an official or national language of 53 countries. English is the most widely spoken language in history and is the predominant language of science, engineering, commerce and navigation. Worldwide air and marine traffic control is conducted in English.  The 23 language EU is considering having all patents in English only.  More people may grow up speaking Mandarin, but they almost all live in China.  English language newspapers, the BBC and CNN influence opinion everywhere. Al Jazeera, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and even Pravda have an English edition.

              Basic concepts of personal freedom as embodied in The English Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence (1776) and US Bill of rights (1791) get spread everywhere.  They in turn have lead to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).  Internet and cable television bombard the world with English language entertainment, values, and culture such as it is. Even though the films may be made in Nigeria! 

           

            Where a language goes the culture goes.  Just as the English language is very flexible in absorbing words from other languages the Anglo-American culture absorbs and redistributes customs: Just Another American Saturday Night (Brad Paisley). Fourteen of the G20 countries are multi ethnic with rights assured in the Anglo American tradition.  Only 1 lacks a representative government (two of them do it poorly).  In America you can find traces of almost every language or culture from Athabascan to Zulu, and almost every religion from Zoroastrian to Atheist.  Almost all of them tempered with mainstream American “I don’t agree with you, but I’ll pray for you” attitude.

America, with only 5% of the world’s population, controls about 75% of its television programs. Combined with the influence of brands and products such as Hollywood, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, jeans and Coca-Cola, American culture has permeated almost the entire world.

            China may rise in many ways, but no matter whose economy may be judged temporarily foremost the cultural values that started in England and flourished in America and other colonies have so pervaded the world that one might say “There will always be an England.”  It’s just that the capital Anglo-American culture is no longer political, or a physical location.   

             

            China’s ultimate limitation is one party rule, oligarchy.  Oligarchy historically has led to excesses that bring down governments.  With no opposition, national priorities get skewed and political energy is diverted from the greatest good to someone’s obsession; like the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Crusades or Fascism.  Even in America when one party has had too much control of the government progress stalls and excesses like McCarthy hearings, the USA Patriot act or the internment of Japanese Americans get priority.  The system of checks and balances ultimately works.  In Democracies the populations have leveled without political coercion and remain gender balanced.  In China the party holds veto power over any decision or activity.  The party panicked by fear of overpopulation, implemented by force a one-child policy.  Soon China will have a superannuated population, with hundreds of millions of young males for whom there are no women available.  The party is understandably afraid of the masses and so has created a multi class society where the urbanites have rights denied the rural peasants, but not as many as party members. Position not merit determines who gets what. 

            Like a Medieval monarch the party cannot tolerate political dissent, because that would tarnish its self image of infallibility.  When dissent occurs an oligarchy inevitably responds by tightening its grip.  Oligarchies like China may seem more stable than messy democracy, but they are not immune to failure, in fact they are susceptible to abrupt revolution often leading to total chaos.  Does anyone remember the USSR, The Qing Dynasty, the Shah, Hosni Mubarak.

            China is churning out college graduates in prodigious numbers, but the best Universities in the world are not in China they are mostly in America.  Top leaders from all over the planet (even China) send their offspring to America, England or Europe, in that order, to learn.  Those people are forever imbued with western concepts of human worth, and the long term value of free expression.  While China is training repeaters, America is training world leaders the American way.

 

            America took the leadership from Europe in part by prolific inventing.  Our free culture attracted the best, the brightest and the dissatisfied from around the world.  Americans still secure about half the patents and half the Nobel Prizes worldwide.  Name a modern Chinese invention?  China cannot copy its way to technological leadership no matter how much they revere the clever copyist.  Like Japan, someday they will produce truly innovative products, but it hasn’t happened yet.   Even when it does China will find itself sharing center stage with free cultures like America, Australia, Canada, India, United Kingdom, and all of  the economies that are growing even if not as fast as China. 

           

When you are the first to reach the top of a mountain you notice that the other climbers are catching up, that does not mean you are falling behind.

War On Drugs

I now see the error of my ways.  I thought of the war on drugs as pointless and ineffective. I now see it as perfect for what it is intended to do. Look what would happen if we ended the war. 

We have built the world’s largest prison system; we have to keep it and all the people and contractors it employs busy.  What would we do with all those people warehoused in prison?  Would they join the ranks of the unemployed, or become just be petty criminals?  In addition to prisons we have courts, judges and their other employees that depend on the jobs it creates.

 Without low level drug users to plea bargain prosecutors would have to work much harder to maintain their important win/lose ratio.  Thousands of defense lawyers depend on the drug trials for easily earned income with no remorse for failure 

Police at every level from local departments to FBI have become dependent on the opportunities it provides, advancement, excitement, publicity, overtime, free drugs, bigger budgets and the assets that civil forfeiture provides: cars, boats, aircraft, electronics, weapons, and cash. 

The small arms industry depends on equipment, gun and ammunition sales to police and organized crime to stay in business and employ thousands of people.

The economies of several countries, and counties in the US, are dependent on the high prices they get for crops that produce an illegal product. What will they do when cocaine and marijuana bring the same price as oregano and tobacco?  Legal drugs would deprive independent vendors of a major source of tax free income.

All the hoopla about illegal drugs distracts people from the tobacco and alcohol industries, and the pervasive and harmful effects of their products. Constant news coverage of the War pushes news about the harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco off the front page.  Celebrity scandals about illegal drug usage are almost as interesting as sex.  Rehab is so much more newsworthy when it is paralleled with a threat of jail time. 

Pharmaceutical companies can justify the high prices of their mass produced product on the comparably high price of street drugs.  How could oxycodone compete with legal codeine or even safer, more effective marijuana?  Hundreds of chemists, now busy designing drugs (prescription and illegal) around the controlled substances act would be redundant. 

The drug test industry employs thousands.  Employers need a simple reason to reject minority applicants "You failed the drug test".  Since marijuana usage is somewhere between 50 and 80% and can be detected for months, this is almost always credible, and impossible to rebut, although meaningless. 

Political contributions from all those with vested interest in the drug war would stop, then what would all the campaign service providers do without the Mothers-milk of politics?  War of any kind provides speech material for polidioticians, “We need to work harder, we're seeing the light the end of the tunnel, can't stop now.”  Gets more votes than, “300 million Americans are quietly behaving themselves.” 

In fewer words, the war on drugs has so thoroughly pervaded our culture that we, or at least our ruling class, can't live without it any more than they could live without their own hypocrisy. It is a small part of the basis of popular politics: keep the public alarmed with an endless series of boogie-men preferably imaginary, or manufactured as necessary to the needs, of the reelection cycle.

The War on Drugs has taken combat mentality into the streets of America. We need to end the insanity by decriminalizing things that really have no business being crimes in the first place, drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, and half the vehicle code.

War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Terrorism, what do they have in common? A vaguely described objective. The first thing we teach in engineering is that a problem well defined is half solved. None of the above three are well defined. A war needs a clearly defined enemy that can be killed or captured. None of the War-ons can meet that criterion. These problems have to be mitigated with education and compassion. Unlike real war, total victory is not a realistic goal.

Fearmongers

Fearmongers in Government and the Media do everything they can to keep us alarmed and justify their pet battles. So is there anything to fear? My personal fear is not drugs, it’s the War On Drugs. Government lies about drugs to justify Gestapo tactics to fight this invisible enemy called Drugs. Regularly somewhere in America a SWAT team invades a home in search of Drugs, sometimes they find a commercial quantity, sometimes not. Sometimes they have to cook the books to make what they confiscate look commercial, in order to justify the assault. Then there is Civil Forfeiture. Police attempt an arrest, they can’t find any solid evidence, but they can confiscate property based on mere suspicion, property like a car, boat, house, or aircraft. The owner of the property has to sue to get it back. It is very difficult to prove a negative, so more often than not the victim won’t even try. Then there is the inevitable violence of turf battles between criminals.

That which is illegal is by definition unregulated, therefore impure and unsafe.

The War On Drugs is as big a mistake as Prohibition, but it’s not too late to end it.

TMT Thirty Meter Telscope

A lot has been written lately about the telescope on Mauna Kea, citing what appear to be big numbers, like 18 story building, but it’s a dome not an office block. 

In perspective, Mauna Kea is about 1000 square miles, or about 620,000 acres. The entire TMT structure is less than 2 acres. So the structure will occupy 1/300,000^th of the surface of the mountain. In comparison to a newspaper page, it will occupy about as much space as the period at the end of this sentence.

The TMT protesters have right peaceably to assemble and the right to freely exercise their religion. The protesters claim to be followers of an ancient religion, but wasn’t that largely abolished by their King Liholiho almost 200 years ago. The core question is “Do they have the right to impose their particular interpretation of that religion on thousands of other citizens and the world wide scientific community”. 

I have to wonder what the most recent King, Kalakaua, himself an amateur astronomer would have to say.

GMO Genetically Modified Organisms

In 1937 without a shred of evidence, but lots of racism, the USA passed the Marijuana Tax Act that for all practical purposes made marijuana illegal. For the last 76 years a stream of anecdotes, hysteria, rigged research and government lies have kept it illegal. It turns out marijuana may be the safest drug ever discovered. Government policy has deprived millions of patients of the very medication that could east their suffering.

Fast forward to 2010, one seriously flawed study and a lot of anecdotes cause governments around the world to outlaw GMO food even though all other scientific studies say they cannot distinguish a GMO anything from its naturally grown cousin.

Anything can be toxic if you are exposed to a high enough concentration for long enough.  Some things that are toxic in large amounts are essential in the right amounts, like salt, NaCl, or copper, Cu.

Believe it or not even water. (Too much can flush out your electrolytes)

It is very easy for zealots to hype their fears with exaggeration and factoids taken out of context. Look for information from unbiased sources that try to look at both sides of an issue, and don’t have a dog in the fight.

It’s OK with me to label (genetically modified organism) GMO foods, but I have to ask why the proponents do not take the other tactic. Label GMO free foods, as they do gluten free, sugar free, or fat free. Organic may imply it, but not really. Could it be that no one can guarantee that their product is totally GMO free? The big food packagers might just respond with “May contain GMO ingredients” on everything making the labeling pointless.

Minimum Wage

Increasing the minimum wage would be good for business. Here is why. If a business increases its wages by 10% it increases their total cost by much less than 5% because rent and inventory are a much bigger share of cost than labor. The employee however enjoys an increase of 100% in his discretionary disposable income. Money he is likely to spend as soon as he can, boosting all local business. This works best if all the businesses in the community do it at the same time, or a major employer like Henry Ford did in 1914. Ford doubled factory wages to $5 a day. The workers became consumers and the economy took off like a skyrocket. Minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009 and we wonder why the economy is stalled.

Money has an important property called velocity.  It refers to how often or how fast it changes hands. Give $100 million to the 1% and it sits in the bank waiting for an opportunity to do a deal. Distribute $100 million in the form of a dollar an hour and that money will change hands before the sun goes down because poor people always have unmet needs. Chances are it will change hands again the next day or two as storekeepers restock or tradesmen buy materials.  Within a month that $100 million will result in half a billion of revenue while Mitt is still lining up a deal to put more people on unemployment.