Fat and Hungry?

49M Americans go hungry while 60M Americans are obese and another 60M overweight. The satiated thin man depicted by Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood in the movies, has become a real-world rarity. But what is even more paradoxical is that many of the obese are also part of the hungry. One reason is the low cost of "empty calories": chips and fries, $1 meals at fast food outlets, $1 2-liter sodas at the mini-mart. The poor migrate to foods that are cheap and filling and that increasingly means high calories but poor nutritional value. Convenience is a huge factor. It is easier to spend $20 on pizza dinner than $10 in groceries followed by preparation time in the kitchen, especially with a car full of hungry kids.
Fat and Hungry has made companies like Archer Daniels Midland, McDonalds and Coca-Cola, "Fat and Happy".

Most weight gain is the simple result of calories in > calories out. Pro cyclists weight their food and ride with expensive power meters, but most of us have little idea what the value of either side of that equation is on any given day. People will burn 200 calories riding a bike, then reward themselves with a 1000 calorie meal believing they are ahead.

American's spend $10B on prescription antacid drugs and as much or more on over the counter alternatives. I would bet this drug market has grown faster than the population. I wonder if there is a correlation to weight gain in America?

Fifty years ago when obesity was uncommon, genetic differences were discovered to play a key role in how people absorb and metabolize sugars and fatty acids. Two people could eat the same diet, yet one only would gain more weight. Are genetics behind today's staggering obesity numbers? Gene mutations don't spread through a human population in one or two generations. In two human generations, bacteria can evolve millions of generations. There is recent scientific evidence that human gut bacteria (friendly flora) may have adapted the way sugars and fatty acids are moved from the digestive tract into the human bloodstream. Perhaps this will lead to new fat-forgiving products.

Nov 22, 1963

I was on an elementary school playground at noon the day John Fitzgerald Kennedy, "JFK" was shot. When we returned to class there was a school-wide announcement over the PA. The President of the United States was dead and school was closed for the rest of the day. Kids walked home or parents were called. At home Walter Cronkite was on TV. The mood was somber.

I grew up in the Permian Basin, so named for the geological era when a great sea existed in West Texas; a sea whose decaying animal and vegetable matter would over millions of years, create one of the largest oil-fields in the world. During the latter half of the 20th century, America ran on West Texas sweet crude from the Permian Basin. George H.W. Bush moved there in 1951 to start his oil company and later his political career. George Jr. went to elementary school in Midland, though he was in an East coast preparatory school when JFK was shot.

The political climate in West Texas was, and still is strongly right wing. There was no aura of Camelot surrounding the Kennedy's there. But the climate was also fraught with cold war tension. In California the school-kids practice earthquake drills. When I was a kid, we practiced Atomic Bomb drills - how quickly can you crawl under the desk and bury your head in your lap. There were houses in town that had bomb shelters. White Sands Missile Range was about 200 miles to the West. The first atomic bomb in the world exploded there. Sonic booms from the Air Force jets stationed there were not uncommon. In Nevada, the Hydrogen Bomb was tested underground in 1958. One winter for reasons I don't remember, we were warned not to eat or play in the "radioactive snow". Snow was a rarity for West Texas. When it happened schools closed - It was a day for snow-men, snow-ball fights and snow-ice-creme.

A year earlier Kennedy had made Khrushchev blink in the Cuban Missile Crisis. No one really knew what was going on, but we spent a lot of time crawling under our desks in October of 1962. When you take the cold war into account, the sudden loss of the Commander in Chief was a National tragedy that extended to the Permian basin as well. What would happen to America? Were we were vulnerable to Soviet aggression? No one under the age of 70 could even remember the last Presidential assassination.

Another Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson "LBJ", took the Presidential oath in an airplane that Friday afternoon in November. Over time worries about World War III were replaced with realities of Vietnam. A best friend's older brother came home in a bag. There were 100's more on TV every night.

On Monday November 25 1963, the nation watched the funeral procession for the 35th President of the United States. The image of John John saluting his father's coffin is unforgettable.

Tax Cellphones, Carbon, Cigarettes, Calories

California has 10M cars on the road. On an given day about a third of them use a cellphone despite laws prohibiting the use of non hands-free cellphones while driving. Why? Duh, it's only a $20 fine. Littering is a $1000 fine in California and many other states. The next time you are on the road, count the number of people driving illegally with a phone glued to their face vs. the number throwing trash out the window. The penalty for littering is 50 times the penalty for a behavior that kills and injures people every day. A $1000 fine would initially bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to state coffers. That money could replace state funding taken away from schools, fire departments and police. But pulling people over is dangerous and time-consuming. Maria Shriver's cellphone vehicle violations are well known because the paparazzi have her on tape. One cop with a camera could generate $1M in fines in a single weekend.

Thomas Friedman, columnist for the NY Times, suggested that gas should be $4.00/gallon forevermore. The price spike in the late 1970s forced Europe and Japan to adapt with efficient mass transit. We didn't, and we were even more unprepared for $140/barrel oil in 2008. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has called for $10/gallon gas, based on behavioral change at the global level. "No one explicitly pays for the destruction of our atmosphere and the warming of the world's oceans". American burns ~375M gallons of gas every day. Changing that will take time and technology. A carbon tax could fund the technology. Obama's Cap and Trade proposal has become a watered down political mess. California should take the lead will real reform by directly taxing carbon. (And gain relief from Cap and Trade because we get most of our electricity from non-polluting sources.)

California democrats proposed higher cigarette taxes as one way to fix the budget deficit. Cigarette consumption is a behavior that implicitly costs everyone though the burden of health care. Cigarettes kill more American every week than the war in Iraq has - to date. Insurance companies pass the cost of $100,000/year cancer treatment on to their other clients. We subsidize cigarette smoking through our insurance premiums. Heart disease and related complications (diabetes) kills more Americans every day than the war in Iraq. The costs are enormous, and we all pay, one way or another. It is time to tax nutritionally devoid calories - high-sugar drinks and high-fat "value meals".

updated Nov 1, 2009

Tell me what your plans are, and I'll tell how your are going to Fail.

Who hasn't heard that? Second-guessing is a skill honed in every office place in the world. In politics it is second nature to second guess. Because it so easy to find potential flaws, it is almost human nature to do so. In today's Internet-connected world we are all second guessers. What used to be reserved for the Editorial and Opinion page is now "news" on TV, radio and every blog on the net.

This is good, you say. This makes us think. Well placed criticism does make us think. Feedback is part of any successful planning process. But most of what is labeled critique is actually "throwing stones to draw attention to the stone thrower". If some talking head on CNBC says Timmothy Geittner's plan will fail, he isn't trying to help the Treasury Secretary solve the world's problems. He is trying to sell his own name, his blog, his book, i.e. his "brand". In a few months, when the dust settles on the Financial crisis will errant opinions be called out and graded? Nah. We live in a short-term world. Yesterday's news is buried in a heap of Tweets no one can keep up with. Good stone throwers know that if you keep throwing stones at new targets, old "misses" are soon forgotten.

There is a greater implication. The loss of long-term thinking in a world that only measures short-term results. Our world is increasingly complex but our news is remarkably simplistic - a child murderer in California, toxic assets, a few cases of swine flu. Did you know that 1000 children die every day from contaminated water? Or that more firefighters die from Heart Disease than fire and smoke? The result is a total lack of perspective and context, which creates the ideal environment for throwing stones.

Tell me what your plans are and I'll tell you how I can help - maybe.

Talking Heads,Second Guessing

Resist Twitter?

Twitter is a lottery with a key difference. The winning ticket was drawn "before" the tickets went on sale. Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, has the winning ticket, but we still feel compelled to buy tickets. We don't want to be "left out", "un-cool" or out of sync with the Obama generation. Everyone talks about Twitter although the old line about "how are they gonna make money" is starting to wane. We all know the answer. After a billion tickets (or Tweets) the winning number will be drawn (sort of) and the winning ticket holder (Biz Stone) will come forward to collect his One Billion Dollars. Yep, that's what this is all about.

Text messaging across the celluar-internet boundary at 140 characters (vs. 160 for SMS), and a clever name. The guys at YouTube got $1.6B for little more than that. Chad and Steve didn't invent "user generated video", they just had a clever name, and a venture backer who happened to be on the board of directors at Google.

Biz Stone is a former Google employee. He made Blogger (the application hosting this blog) a success for Google.

And if you are still wondering why anyone would care if you are eating a bagel or picking your nose, you're right - they don't. Twitter will persist as yet another electronic message conduit - a mechanism to influence while informing you, like Google, Yahoo, CNN, etc., and those who profit from providing the conduit like Verizon and TMobile.
"Psst, there's a bagel crumb stuck to your cheek".

Follow me on Twitter

Tags:
Twitter,
Verizon,
Google,

Werewolves of London

The CEO of AIG and Ben Bernanke blamed AIG's problems on the "FP division in London" - the group responsible for placing bad bets with credit default swaps. Bets that US taxpayers have made good on to the tune of $160B and counting. Warren Zevon was prescient.

He's the hairy, hairy gent, who ran amok in Kent.
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair.
You better stay away from him, he'll rip your lungs out Jim.
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor.

Aaahoo, werewolves of London

Extending the metaphor, is this the modern day Dr. Frankenstein?

Mark C. Brickell is the CEO and a director of Blackbird Holdings, a global trading system for privately negotiated derivatives. Widely regarded as a leader in the derivatives industry, Mr. Brickell joined Blackbird after twenty-five years at J.P. Morgan, where he most recently served as a managing director. During his time at J.P. Morgan, Mr. Brickell helped to build one of the world’s foremost derivatives businesses and supported the growth and advancement of the global derivatives industry while helping to shape a more favorable public policy environment. From 1988 to 1992, Mr. Brickell also served as chairman of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association; he was vice chairman for two years and on the board for more than a decade. He was part of the team that authored the influential 1993 Group of Thirty study, Derivatives: Practices and Principles, and has served on the board of directors of First Command since 2006.

AIG,Credit Default Swaps,derivatives,

Nationalize California

A going concern becomes insolvent when financial obligations exceed assets. Chapter 11, Title 11 is the preferred alternative to simply folding the tent. When the "concern" is the 8th largest economy in the world, folding the tent is not an option. The California budget resolution recently passed in Sacramento and now up for public approval will not solve California's endemic, systemic problems. We are destined to revisit this crisis again and again.

Nancy Pelosi, chief "pirate" on the high seas of Congress has brought $30B of (stimulus) treasure to her state. This will certainly help, but it won't solve our problems. The Federal government is invoking a virtual Chapter 11 on banks, Big 3 auto makers, and AIG - with bailout money. He who brings the money, makes the new rules. So why not do the same with the State of California. Force us to do what we cannot do: restructure the constitution and eliminate the referendum propositions that confound "government by representation". Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to clean up the "special interest" groups that defy progress but he has failed. Meg Whitman, running for Governor in 2010, has taken up the torch to make California business friendly. But that will never happen as special interests are "ordained and empowered" by numerous Amendments, Propositions, and a perpetual gridlocked assembly.

nationalization,Schwarzenegger,Ebay,

Everything to win and nothing to lose

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan describes How bank bonuses let us all down in today's Financial Times. Sheer poetry.

The national paradox on Nationalization. The Obama administration doesn't want to destroy the private banking sector because that would be "bad" somehow. And to appease Congress, neither do they want to reward the investors in those banks with government bailout money. So, the market sells off the bank stocks punishing everyone who entrusted their IRAs to the mutual funds who favored the financial sector on past performance. Nationalization becomes a fait accompli. When Obama says that he wants to force banks to loan money, while eliminating the reward system, he might as well be talking to Martians. The Federal Reserve is the only bank in America where the employees get paid simply to do their jobs. And if they do them well, the reward is "not" getting grilled by a Congressional committee.

nationalization,
Black Swan,

Spare the rod, soil the child?

As in save the bars enclosing California's exploding prison population and condemn our children to the worst educational opportunity in the US. Yep, after the $12B cut in educational spending proposed to fix the California budget crisis, California will likely rank 50th out of 50 states in per child educational spending. (Does anyone have the data for Puerto Rico or Guam?)

A Federal judicial panel recently ruled that California's prison system (nearing 2X capacity) violates the Eight amendment - prohibiting cruel and inhuman punishment - and recommends a 33% reduction of non-violent offenders. Of course "we" plan to appeal this federal order to reduce our budget, and the suffering and recidivism that extreme overcrowding produces.

What a quandary - whether it is better to lock up a "3rd striker" for twenty to life for shoplifting, or layoff our childrens' teachers.

And don't forget the incarcerated geriatrics receiving millions of dollars of drug and medical treatments - while shackled to their wheelchairs. A recent study predicted that elderly or infirm prisoners will consume 33% of the $6B prison budget in the next few years. I sure sleep a lot safer at night knowing they're not on the streets.

Tags:
California budget crisis,
prison overcrowding,
Education,

The Disintermediation of Education

Is the K-12 model outdated?

Just as the QWERTY keyboard was designed to prevent hyper-nimble fingers from overwhelming the mechanical key strike mechanism, is the thirteen year K-12 program an artificial restriction on learning?

A case could be made that access to learning resources - materials, books, teachers and classrooms - required a lengthy multi-year program. But in today's connected world, any child with an Internet connection has access to every book ever written. Amazon's vision for Kindle "every book ever printed in any language all available in 60 seconds,"stated goal with the Kindle, is to offer "every book in any language in 60 seconds". Google's stated vision is to catalog all human informaiton. Language translation software will soon allow any document or video, in any language to be understood by any person in his native language.

Did the human brain evolve around a 13 year pre-college curriculum. Of course not. "Caveboys" were were either finding food or avoiding becoming food, long before their 18th birthday. Old Star Trek episodes depict a brain-erased person restoring all knowledge in some time-compressed process taking hours, not years. And there is no reason why that science fiction will not become possible someday.

The primary result of the K-12 and four-year college program is to introduce young people into the work force at approximately voting age. Thus school serves a social development mechanism as much as a learning process. Home schooling may provide insight into that thesis, in that home-schooling removes a social element from a child's development. Exposure to the parental belief system 24/7 is probably not in the child's best interest. Many home-school advocates do so because of strong beliefs rooted in religious or social bias. Exposure to different beliefs and different people during childhood are essential to a healthy involvement in a complex adult world.

There is another side to this issue - cost. The cost of a K-12 program is the largest or 2nd largest budget item in every state in the country. And in many third world and emerging markets, access to K-12 education is limited by resources. This is the primary motive behind programs like OLPC, One Laptop per Child Laptop. The Internet allows those countries to educate more children, while this country could educate children with less money.

When I entered a Southern Methodist University at age 18, there was a student who was only 12 years old. And he graduated before I graduated. He was probably in a hurry to leave an environment where he did not fit in. Participation in dating, drinking, and intra-mural sports was simply impossible for him. But what if half the student body was near puberty? What if the average age to enter the work force were to drop by 20%? Is this a good thing? And is it inevitable either way?

Tags:
K=12,
Home Schooling,
One Laptop per Child,

Companies of the Future are Free

What if business could function like a Hollywood movie production. A company is created with a specific value-creation goal over a finite time-frame. Employees are hired to work either at a specific location, or any "connected" location. Roles, responsibilities and progress are managed online, where contributors and managers have instant access to the rate and direction of progress.

What are the barriers to such a system today? For one, the burdens of forming a company: taxes, employee benefits, laws. Corporate taxes should not exist in the US. They limit business creation and encourage offshore expansion to lower tax-base countries. For example in the semiconductor industry, integrated circuits are designed in the US, but IC wafers are tested, assembled and sold from offshore tax havens like Singapore or Ireland. If there were no corporate taxes in the US many of those jobs would stay here.

The second big barrier is employee benefits, e.g. healthcare. Healthcare should be a social responsibility not an employer responsibility. Your healthcare costs and provider network should not change if you change companies. It should only change if you change the state or country where you live.

So how does America fund social change without corporate taxes? With a new tax system. The Federal Income Tax system is absurd, wasteful and an ineffective tool of economic or social change. The solution is value-added consumption taxes (VAT), paid by every entity that consumes value, at the time of consumption. If your job is to sit at home, living off the grid, growing your own food, then you might only pay taxes on the medical treatments you receive. If you make and spend $200,000 per year, then you are paying taxes, but probably a lot less than a 38% bracket. And you would be paying a similar amount to your $200,000-income neighbors who can deduct items that you may not be able to deduct on today's 1040.

Social and economic change is managed by a non-uniform version of VAT. For instance, this is one way to introduce a carbon tax. A kilowatt of kerosene has a higher VAT than a kilowatt of solar/wind energy. It's that simple. Rather than obtuse 1049A deductions based on last year's expenditures, put the incentive right into the price of the item or service you need to buy today. The government collects taxes in real-time and adjusts VAT taxes in near real-time. They do this on toll-based freeways in Los Angeles, and it works.

With the right changes, companies of the future can freely form to create and export value. Value is taxed to fairly meet the needs of the government.

Tags:
VAT,
carbon tax,
IRS,

The BRICs are falling like bricks

Brazil, Russia, India and China, aka the BRIC emerging markets, are victims of the the world wide recession. Does anyone know of a country that is immune to the current credit and consumer confidence crisis? Even Dubai has seen a massive drop-off in real estate.

The US is deploying massive fiscal and monetary injections of dollars into the economy. The rest of the world is doing the same, leading to a "war-time financing in the absence of war", to quote Niall Ferguson.

But this war needs a name. The worst recession since "fill in the blank" is running out of blanks. No one wants to hear or use the "D" word, depression, as in "the Great Depression". In fact the words Great and Depression are enjoined forever now in our lexicon. The pundits say that term doesn't apply to the current crisis because unemployment will never reach 25%. But the sheer number of people out of work in American (and the rest of world) may indeed surpass the numbers in the early 1930's. Eighty years ago, agriculture dominated our economy. Farmers couldn't sell their crops, but they could eat them. The soup lines were in the cities. Today, we all live "in the city". In a somewhat whimsical forecast article published in the Financial Times today, Niall Ferguson coins the term "The Great Repression". Works for me.

In WWII, the world suffered, the US suffered, but the US emerged stronger. And led the world's recovery right up to the current crisis. The same thing will prove true in this war. Forecasts that our time has come, that our models are broken, are plain phooey. The world is exchanging "their" surplus dollars for "our" 0% yield T-bills - thank you very much. Oil-rich countries that over-leveraged $100/barrel oil (Venezuela, Iran and to a degree Russia) are devastated by $40/barrel oil. Deflation prone Japan, which recently saw their worst monthly drop in GDP ever, will lose their #2 position in the world's economy forever. China will learn a bit of humility perhaps. America and China will emerge stronger after The Great Repression.

Maybe this time we've learned out lesson??

A good strategic question raised by Tony Jackson in the Financial Times commenting on a Morgan Stanley forecast - "The present downturn is neither the Great Depression nor Japan because (in essence) all previous mistakes have been avoided this time." Tony is correct to observe that this assumes that all possible mistakes were contained in those two economic episodes and none of today's policy actions will later turn into new mistakes. (Japan once famous for poor quality imports, then highest quality DRAM memories, and ultimately all manner of cool consumer electronics is now famous for a never-really-ending deflationary stagnation).

As for the Great Depression, all we have are history lessons. No one alive today was old enough in 1929-1932 to understand what was happening. Paul Volker, Obama's new Recession advisor, was in diapers in 1929. Recently I tried reading the Financial Times to my 3 year-old granddaughter, but I don't think a single word sank in. A lot of help she'll be when the "Economic Disaster of 2090" occurs.

A world economy of $80T with 4B consumers, and 1B investors, all connected to online information and complex trading systems. But with different goals, strategies, political, emotional and cultural bias. In other words (to paraphrase Black Swan theory), knowledge of past events cannot perfectly prevent tomorrow's surprises. That's why they're called surprises. At least the smartest people are (gathering) in the room.

Grim Christmas?

Jay Leno, channeling Rodney Dangerfield, said "times are so bad, Santa is down to one HO". Is it shaping up to be a grim Christmas season or is it a time to be thankful?

If Christmas means buying or receiving gobs of new gadgets and designer clothes, jewelry, etc., then you are certainly in the wrong year.

The Happiness Equation is "what you have" divided by "what you want". Most of us have little control over things like credit default swaps and toxic mortgage assets. But they impact our job security, the equity in our homes, and our investments. And the impact sucks for most of us.

When the numerator of the Happiness Equation is sinking like a rock, you need to reduce the denominator to stay happy. Cutting back on spending is the first reaction, although cutting back on spending is a large part of the problem - there is over-reaction in the market and it leads to a vicious downward spiral.

You can also reassess "what you have" - like your health, your family, your friends - in other words, your blessings. Christmas is a season to rejoice in those things, not just the material. Except for the very unfortunate, groceries are relatively inexpensive, and Christmas is a time for cooking those special recipes.

Christmas is also coincident with the winter solstice. Pagans (North of the Equator) celebrated the shortest day of the year because the next day could only be longer. Whether you rejoice or not this Christmas has little to do with whether the end of the world is at hand. And one of these days, the next day can only be better.

PS If you need to put a face on the grinch, Dick Fuld has my vote.

Tags:
CDS,Christmas,layoff,TARP,grinch

Black and White

November 10, 2008. A Black President-elect Barack Obama visits the White House. This is historic for all Americans in different ways.
I attended a "Black and White" high school - Odessa Permian - the school of Friday Night Lights (of Book, movie and TV-show fame. The book was accurate enough to piss off a few of the locals in Odessa. The movie has been the called the greatest sports movie ever made. The TV show looks (to me) like "The OC" comes to West Texas.
But, the only "Black and White" at PHS were the school colors, not the student body. Odessa, Texas through the 1960s was as segregated as a black line on a white piece of paper. People of "color" lived South of the RR tracks. The "white" high schools were North of the RR tracks.
In 1954 school desegregation became the law of the land after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But little changed until 1969, when a federal judge ordered a North Carolina school district to use busing to speed integration. This led to a reaction to preserve Federal funding in school districts across the country. In Odessa the reaction was to put one black teen on a bus every day to Permian High School. The John Birch ideology in Odessa, TX didn't like it, but the students at PHS didn't seem to mind. By 1980 the (unwritten) RR track law was history. People of color moved North. Their kids went to all of the Odessa schools. Some of the them were star players, as the movie based on a real 1988 PHS team, depicted.
By the way, when the book was released in 1990, Odessa was in a steep economic depression. All of the $30/barrel oil wells were dry. And the Permian Panthers descended from a thirty year winning tradition to a streak of losing seasons. In 2007 oil prices surpassed the cost of advanced drilling techniques, and the Permian Basin boom was back. There is no recession in Odessa, Texas today: zero unemployment and zero homes for sale. People buying RVs just for temporary housing. And the Permian Panthers. are playoff bound for the second year in a row. President-elect Obama is actually Black and White and perhaps the smartest leader the country has elected in 50 years.

Tags: Barack Obama, Friday Night Lights, Permian Basin
MOJO

Predictions

Fears of the worst recession in anyone under 80 years of age's memory may be erased by a flood of money unleashed by the world's governments, sovereign wealth and private bottom-feeding funds. Unfortunately it may sit in vaults for six months while the world grinds to a halt.

But when it starts to recover what will the US have to exchange to pay for a National debt approaching 100% of GDP?

Financial services, nope not any more.

Healthcare - too expensive and falling behind the rest of the world's. Joe the plumber can't afford to float this $1.5T segment of our GDP anymore. Biotech - increasing competition in Europe, India and China
Green & alternative energy - maybe, but the recession may push the priorities for "tomorrow's" solutions down again. Nanotech, software, computing and Internet technology. - Yep, but

We also need to spend on infrastructure - estimates of $1.5T on roads, bridges, trains, power grid and that doesn't count education. No-child-left-behind has lowered the HS graduation rates below those of a generation ago. Throw in the long term costs of the Cheney-Bush wars, medicare, social security and the outlook is grim.

The long term view is that the world may be moving closer to real cooperation on global problems, and the US of A exports solutions better than any civilization to date.

The Death of Karl Rove mud-slinging

Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama for President should be a wake up call for the right. Is the Republican party "narrowing" to use Mr Powell's term - or is the Karl Rove style of "forget that man's good deeds, focus on the d**k he s**ked" political tactics finally run it's course.

McCain's 2000 campaign was sunk by a shameless Rove tactic in the primary vs. Bush. And now the same tactics are backfiring for McCain vs. Obama. To borrow a phrase, McCain hated Bush when the country loved Bush and he loves Bush when the country hates Bush.

McCain should be dissecting tax strategy not trying to make people worry about whether Obama sat on the same sofa as Ayers. At this point it is unlikely that Palin will ever spend a night at the "Admiral House" as VP of the USA. But she will most certainly return to TV as the host of her show - an Alaska version of "The Great White North" perhaps?

Sarah Palin has a daughter name Juneau?

That's a Jay Leno joke - and a good one if you pay attention to Oscar winning movies. John McCain's selection of of Sarah Palin as running mate for VP was a strategic roll-the-dice move. The 2008 election is no longer a simple black vs. white, old vs. young, red state vs. blue state issue. Both candidates represent change, both candidates can cross traditional party lines. A McCain victory in 2008 puts Palin in the pole position for first woman president of the USA in 2012. She is the "un-Hillary" - I bet that if she caught her husband having sex with a 21 year-old he would end up as Kodiak bear-bait. I am not impressed by the mantra that she has "been the leader of a metropolitan village". But it doesn't bother me that she has "gnoshed on pork-barrel funds" in a campaign where the other three guys are Senators. As for experience, how versed in foreign affairs was Ronald Reagan?. Arnold the Governator's Austrian birth is perhaps the only reason he won't run in 2012. And Argentina has Christina Fernandez, who inherited the position from her late husband. Frankly, I would rather have any of the four Presidential/Vice Presidential candidates in the White House over what we have had there for the last eight years. McCain should have won the Rep party nomination in 2000 - he just didn't play dirty enough. At the very least, this will be an interesting election season, a boon to Media advertising, and if McCain & Palin win, a Moose in every pot.

Tags: Sarah Palin, Juno, McCain, Obama

Dumb or Dumber?

Chris Anderson asks, in the July 2008 edition of Wired magazine. if the emergence of the Petabyte era - the ability to amass and analyze massive amounts of data - obsoletes scientific theory. A computer cloud and programs like Google's MapReduce, can brute force analyze raw real world data to uncover trends that once required scientific models and limited testing to unravel.

Nicolas Carr asks in the July/Aug 2008 Atlantic magazine if "Google is making us stupid" - by simplifying an individuals need to think. The ability to focus and engage the brain in cognitive activties, like reading an in-depth article, have been replaced with scanning "wiki facts" on a computer screen or iphone. The imminent death of journalism threatening newspapers and magazines like the Atlantic is one validation point.

Scientists no longer need to think. Individuals no longer need to think. What will we think of next?

Tags: Google "Map Reduce" "Cloud Computing"

World Wide Will

The food, energy and environmental problems facing the world are extra-national in scope. In many countries, the impact is a "perfect storm" of rising cost food and energy imports with catastrophic weather damaging domestic agriculture. Human suffering begets social and political upheaval.
These problems are global and complex. Dealing with them requires a new level of global cooperation. The United Nations is a 20th century concept. The true world-wide-web of the 21st century is a global decision making, and action-taking entity led by the major world markets in N. America, S. America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.