Slow News Day

In rural America, radio personality Paul Harvey was once the most trusted news source around. For decades, his "Paul Harvey News and Comment" was the most popular feature on countryside radio stations everywhere. I remember once reading a blurb about him in a Sunday supplement. One of his fans wrote in and asked how he could possibly report on all that world news without a huge reporting staff. He replied that he, his wife, and his son worked with neighbors and friends to get all the news every day, even weekends.

The truth was, of course, that he was a day behind on what he reported! In those days, rural America did not notice stale news since everything else also arrived a day late. All Paul Harver did to "get the news" was read a city newspaper, select a few stories and tell them on the air. He then added some commentary in his inimitable style, and he eventually became a millionaire many times over.

There's a lesson in here somewhere...

civil war observation...

During the first couple of years of the civil war, Northern troops were not nearly as motivated to fight as Southerners. In addition, the union generals were primarily interested in NOT fighting. Instead, they tried to scare the South into submission by creating a massive army and making threatening gestures. Somehow, the Northern guys in charge of the army thought there were twice as many rebels under arms as there actually were. MacLellan usually thought he was outnumbered and failed to attack even when he actually had an overwhelming advantage. Back to troop motivation, the rebels felt they were protecting their homes and families, as well as their fellow troops. Meanwhile, the Union troops only knew they were trying not to get killed.

Things changed after the fallout settled from a few battles, like Antietam and Fredericksburg. Northern troops got really ticked off that the Rebels had killed and maimed so many of their brothers in arms. And, Lincoln signed the emancipation proclaimation, giving the North another reason to fight. By the time Grant took over the army, motivation had shifted significantly North. He still deserves a lot of credit, but the fact is he got a more experienced and more motivated bunch of troops than MacLellan had.

MacLellan made a bloody 12-month conflict into the full-blown Civil War we all know and hate. By constantly refusing to attack the rebels when he had an overwhelming advantage, he allowed the South to outfit itself with boots, guns, and ammo at the expense of dead and retreating Northern troops. The South won consistently in the first year, thus collecting tens of thousands of troops who would otherwise have run for the hills or wrapped themselves in the Stars and Stripes.

weeds...

Weeds can sometimes look very similar to the garden vegetables and flowers we attempt to grow. One of the ways you can tell is that the plants you want are, if you did it right, kind of in a predictable geometric arrangement. Weeds probably aren't. So, maybe it's like some ideas. They may look good, but if they don't fit into the pattern...

The spirit of the law?

the second amendment. wow. Carol brought this first point: Every fit person should be compelled to undergo military training for 6 months at a specific age, perhaps 19. No exceptions -- not obesity, depression, nor most disabilities. One of the main things people should learn is how to safely use and care for firearms, including armored vehicles and artillery. Yes, we should have a draft so people understand the cost of war, and anyone who gets a paycheck from the federal government should see his or her sons and daughters drafted first, to serve at the front of the conflict.
OK... something to think about... the arms the founding fathers were talking about in the second amendment included only flintlock rifles, muskets, and single-shot pistols. We could also include swords, knives, cannons, clubs, rocks... At least in some ways, the founding fathers were visionaries, but they could not have envisioned the powerful handguns we have now. These guns shoot cartridges that conveniently package slug, shell, cap, and powder. Cartridge-shooting guns were relatively unknown until after the Civil War.

It is statistically proven that the hot-blooded murder rate was lower before cartridge-based repeating weapons became common. Of course people shot each other, but the time it took to load a black powder single shot weapon was prohibitive to killing anyone in the heat of anger.

Why We Don't Compromise.

I see the root of most of the problems in the world as a struggle between villages. Imagine that you live in one of two villages that must share land and water. There are three main options in this case:
1) Let the other village have everything, while your village starves or moves far away.
2)Take, by force if necessary, all the resources. Let the other village starve. (This could backfire, sending your village back to option 1)
3) Compromise and share resources.

That pretty much covers the options. When starvation is the option, people are forced to cooperate with each and share. This is done by compromise, sometimes called "mutual amputation." Neither side will EVER end up with everything it wants. But, if they try sometime, they just might find, they get what they need.

In the case of the villages, people will end up negotiating face to face and coming to an agreement or they probably won't survive long. This means that social evolution will automatically select people who can compromise and share. Well, not quite, because the genes that survive are determined almost entirely by who has resistence to a plague, or who can stay isolated from those who have the plague. Meaning that in time of plague, being selfish might keep you alive.

Like metamorphic rock subject to the forces of famine and plague, our civilization was formed. Hunter gatherers seldom suffered from famine and plague. The total population and the extremely low density of population kept the demand synchronized with the resources via small, incremental adjustments. Disease of any kind was hard to spread when small bands roamed the Earth, seldom interacting with others.

Hunter gatherers may have benefitted from cooperation with other groups, but they just as easily could have been seriously hurt in the process, since hunter-gatherer bands never viewed each other as equals. My tribe is "the people," yours is something less than that.

Modern civilization has changed the available options, at least in first-world countries or among the wealthy. In many cases, these people are so far removed from hunting or growing their own food that there seldom appears to be any survival-based need for compromise, and certainly not face-to-face.

Too Poor to be Sick?

25 years ago, it was a huge deal that hospital costs were so high. Astronomically higher than common sense could explain. Aspirin cost $10 each. An IV drip was $200. Basic non-private room was $800 per day. Why? Now, we understand that hospitals need to charge massive fees partially to pay legal costs, but mostly to pay for the care of people who have no money (ie no health insurance). Somehow, we learned to live with this system, even though it was largely ineffective and cost twice as much as single-payer health insurance that would have covered everyone in the country. Many, if not most hospitals operate as non-profit entities. They shuffle tons of money around, but pay no investors. Oh well, it may be a bad system, but at least it's a system.

More On ic Oil

It would be funny if it were not so pathetic... all the TPers etc. who deny that our trillion-dollar futile involvement in middle-east peace creation/keeping has nothing to do with Oil, and that the thousands of lives lost in Iraq are justified by some reason other than our disastrous addiction to oil. Imagine if we had not been complete morons, and had invested those lives and dollars into developing alternative energy, even if it was only getting all fuel stations to add a pump for natural gas and giving incentives for buying and building natural gas powered vehicles. We could drill out our natural gas and use it up over the next 50-100 years. Then we could carefully drill our oil reserves to supply all the stuff we can't make from natural gas: jet fuel, plastics, fertilizer, medicine, fabric.... Eventually, we could make many of those things by renewable means, such as using vegetable oil. We could run trucks and trains on bio-diesel. Eventually, we can generate all our electricity using nuclear plants, wind power, solar, hydro, and geothermal (that will take over 20 years...). In the meantime we would need to use coal and whatever else we have. Anyway, we have wasted a staggering amount of blood and treasure for the sake of our foreign oil addiction with no end in sight. A trillion dollars would have put us in good shape for alternate energy sources, and we could have the advised the Middle East and Venezuela to take a flying leap.

Enough to make you Run around naked...

Total cost, in USD, of a tee shirt or a pair of shorts including door-to-door shipping purchased from a factory in Cambodia: 1.75-2.00. Each can sell in the US for $20-$50. This is way oversimplifying the situation, but when I hear that any US clothing retailers are having financial problems, I am shocked. These companies must be run by either the completely corrupt or the completely incompetent. Yes, I am sure it is tough to run a company on a 1,000% to 2,000% percent gross profit margin, but I think a small troupe of well-trained chimps could handle it.

It has long been that case that jewelry stores have a scandalous markup of 100-300 percent on pieces that they got cheaply, but they had to work for their profits. Expensive pieces could sit unsold in inventory for many months. Repairs, customizations, adjustments, cleanings etc. had to fill in the gaps when the people couldn't afford to buy the new stuff.

In the clothing biz, unsold stuff could be marked down to a mere 200 percent profit and sold in a sidewalk sale. Or, in the worst of cases, clothes could be donated by the bale as a tax write-off totaling more than the company paid for it.

The 'kings

A thousand years ago, the galactic betting pool on which civilization would dominate the Earth would have been heavily in favor of the Chinese Empire, or possibly another Asian power. Certainly, Scandinavia would not have been in the running. Short growing season, small population, high superstition and low literacy rate ranked the vikings somewhere near the bottom. They had no concept of public health through cleanliness, but practiced Spartan-style eugenics. Although lacking in scientific knowledge, they somehow figured out how to build durable ships and navigate by the stars. It seems a nearly endless supply of cod did the rest. The vikings fished cod all the way from Russia to Newfoundland. They lived on fish in the summer and dried fish in the winter, conquering coasts as they went until their ancestors controlled Western Europe.

The British, French, and Dutch continued and improved ship building, farming (based on new-world crops), fishing, and coastal attacks using high-tech weapons. They let the warm continental states of Europe find and explore the new world, then, after the risk was lowered, they moved in and took control of North America. From that base, their decedents won two world wars and got control of almost the whole world. Meanwhile the Chinese, who had burned their massive fleet to ashes and given up on exploration (they didn't have cod), faded into a technological backwater. Wow. Who could have predicted it? The vikings' original lack of academic prowess and personal hygiene didn't seem to be an impediment to their progress.

The vikings who stayed in Scandinavia may not have conquered new lands, but have built tightly-knit modern civilizations that are the envy of the world. From Finland to the ends of the British empire, the Vikings triumphed. Did they deserve to rule the world? Hmmm. Maybe not, but someone was bound to do it sooner or later, and for some reason, the Chinese took themselves out of the running.

Today, it looks like the Chinese, backed by Asia's little dragons will move into first place among world powers within at most 60 years. Oh well. At least we vikings had our age of glory, but in the end, the Mandarins will triumph as they should have originally.

Durables

It is a shame that civilization seems to rise and fall based immunity to random disease outbreaks. Plague has had more influence on civilization than anything except perhaps drought/famine. Which humans end up in charge of civilization depends almost entirely which ones are lucky enough to get a reliable supply of food AND have the right kind of immunity. All the other traits we find so useful, i.e. intelligence, beauty, strength, compassion, musical talent, analytical ability, etc. mean nothing unless you win the immunity lottery. In short, we are selected not for how good we are, but how durable our immune system happens to be.

Compromise

The compromise between a lizard and a fish is an amphibian. Despite our congressional representatives, compromises can obviously be successful -- especially if you like toads, frogs, and salamanders.

Evil Lotion

Conservative evangelical institutions of higher education get kind of a bad rap. While their curriculum trashes Darwinism, it acknowledges that adaptation within a type (limited evolution) is a proven fact. Evangelicals seldom express this fact outside of academia. Indisputable, empirical facts in evidence trump what may look like biblical evidence to the contrary (see Genesis 30-31).

That which God has created is the ultimate scientific evidence. God created living things to adapt and survive. Bacteria that is destroyed by antibiotics or thwarted by immunity will be replaced by different bacteria. The replacement may have resulted from a genetic mutation. This process occurs among all living things: Survival of the fittest. This is not strictly Darwinism, however.

I am absolutely not an expert on taxonomy, but everyone knows Darwinism asserts that one kind (family?) of animals or plants can change into another over many thousands, perhaps millions of years. This theory may or may not be true. HOWEVER it can never be proven scientifically. Scientists cannot conduct laboratory experiments to show it, or observe it happening in nature. We just don't live long enough, or even if we did there is not much chance we would see it occur. Certainly, no laboratory experiment could ever prove it. Yes, I am fully aware that Darwin never intimated that man evolved from apes. He asserted that we have a common ancestor with apes. Hmmm. Try proving THAT using a controlled, repeatable laboratory experiment!

Darwinism has another problem. To completely follow Darwin, we need to believe that a self replicating cell arose (and thrived) on Earth from inanimate chemicals over a matter of a few million years. Then, within another billion years or so the cell became a complex multi-billion-cell organism. The odds against this are impossibly long, nonetheless it could be true. Now let's see you prove it in a lab. If it cannot be proven, it can never be scientific fact.

On the other side of the issue, evangelical religious belief cannot disprove Darwinism scientifically, and does not even propose an alternate scientific theory. Yes historical geology is fascinating, and offers proof of general concepts (age of the earth, extinction) but the presence or absence of fossil evidence cannot prove or disprove Darwinism, creationism, or "intelligent design."

The two sides of the Darwin debate attack each other blindly. Darwinists claim that creationists/IDers reject the concept of adaptation or survival of the fittest. This is misleading. Equally specious is the religionists' assertion that the lack of an accurate fossil record disproves Darwinism.

Does it really matter whether or not Darwinism is true? One would almost have to wonder in light of the fact that the majority of the people in The Greatest Generation rejected Darwinism.

Stream of Semi Consciousness... the end of BYU football

Wow. I love football... even college football, even BYU football. But it has to go. BYU will very soon be left out of the merging super-conferences, and cut off from the money needed to run a major college program successfully. The Cougs can stay in their own little conference, going to their own little bowl game (maybe). Most of the other teams in the MWC will never be invited to go to a bowl coalition/big money conference. They will be stuck with BYU forever, fading ever farther into obscurity.

We should give up on trying to run a major college football program and spend the money on academics. Like perhaps endowed chairs in science or the humanities. Or focusing on doing what it takes to become a major research university, or improving our grad schools. Of course we can still have sports. We do wonderfully in Volleyball and Rugby!

You can't have everything. The great academic universities can't run major college sports programs. Well, there are a few exceptions... Cal, Stanford, Northwestern, Air Force, maybe Duke. Hey, those schools should always play for the championship. In all the calculations used to determine the college football championsip, academics should be 50%. That way one of the few universities that can be first tier in education AND sports would probably win.

One question remains... when the football program fades away, what will we do with Lavell Edwards stadium... maybe use it for Rugby?

Capital Punishment

I am against capital punishment, simply because executing people makes some of us feel like we have done something to deter crime. We have not.

Yet it costs more to execute someone than to keep him or her in prison for life. We could spend the money on schools instead if our goal is to deter crime.

The point is not that executing people does not deter crime, but that many people have the illusion that it does. This is simply bad for society

By the way, if executions deter crime... can anyone tell me the names of the last three people executed in the US? No? Then there is no possibility it would change anyone's behaviour, unless you have Ted Bundy's disease and WANT to be executed. Then you would keep killing until you got the injection you wanted.

Libertarianism, a Pure, Apocalyptic Philosophy

Only angels or demi-gods could be pure libertarians. The rest of us have to settle for something less. The libertarian point of view dictates that person A can do whatever he/she wants, provided that action does not infringe on the rights of persons B-Z to do whatever each of them wants.

Libertarians point out that the founding fathers were essentially libertarians, and that their philosophy is in our country's DNA. We didn't want the government of England to tell us what to do. OK. No federal government, or one so limited that it can barely keep a small navy at sea. For that matter, libertarians think we should have little if any state, county, or local government. Fine. So do I. I also think the season should always be early autumn, we should be able to retire at 22 and live on our own country estates with thoroughbred horses.

Unfortunately, most of us don't have the luxury of critcizing the human anthill from an ivory tower. People could afford to think like this when (if ever) we all lived in small villages, and each of us lived by taking care of a tiny farm. We breathed the same air, drank the same water, relied on the same rain to grow our food, and worked together as best we could to help those hit by disaster.

Each of us provided our own security, food, medical care (such as it was), sewage processing, transportation (walking), old-age pension, childcare, and education (such as it was). As long as God provided the right amounts of rain and sunshine, things were tolerable. Each of would have had to go out of his or her own way to interfere with anyone else's right to do whatever he/she wanted to do. This was, and can be, the only environment in which libertarianism can exist.

Let me add here that much of the world still lives in this kind of environment, such as it is. Small villages where people practice semi-sustainable agriculture in an attempt to keep from starving. Unfortunately, all of the farm land with rich soil and plenty of rain and sunshine has been paved over and/or is controlled by wealthy non-farmers. Too bad. That means most of the world has to survive on the edge of starvation, or find a non-agricultural job. That means everything complicated. So complicated, in fact, that libertarianism is pragmatically useless.

The second I go off the farm to herd sheep and cattle, I potentially hurt others by using up the grass and leaving the land open to erosion. I could end up contaminating the water others drink. However, if my herding provides enough benefit, i.e. I slaughter enough animals every year to make it easier for everyone effected by my negative impact to get thorough the winter, maybe it all balances out. Maybe. But who decides if it balances? Everyone has to vote on it, and then someone has to enforce it... wait a minute, now we have government. Our Libertarian index just dropped by 10%. (Yes, this is the tragedy of the commons)

Next, some people will (justifiably) make the argument that they suffer more than others due to the effects of animals getting herded around, and/or do not get benefits equal to what others do from the slaughtered animals. Now the government we created will have to take from some and give to others in an attempt to make it fair. Otherwise, they will get voted out of power, and someone else who seems more fair minded will take over. Woah. Now our index has dropped another 20 percent. We are only 70% libertarian, and civilization has barely even started.

Of course, in a properly disabled post-apocalyptic world, libertarians could flourish in the tiny survivalist communities.