Thoughts on Easter

I believe that the West is careening its way towards two different kinds of bankruptcy. The first is fiscal bankruptcy. While most people see this as the primary problem, I see it as a minor symptom of the second bankruptcy: Spiritual Bankruptcy.

The West has created a system where the individual is the be all and end all of the world. We in America and our cousins in Europe have created a system where the government rewards any excess in the name of personal liberty. It is as if Ayn Rand's amoral universe has come into play. We have the looters true enough, but for some reason we also have the self-absorbed and egocentric villains that she tried so hard to make attractive.

The bankruptcy is the loss of the glue that holds any society together, the idea that one's actions must be part of a long line of persons. That the actions that one takes must make both one forebears and ones descendants proud. The individuals that live today is merely links in the chain of life. We take as much as we possibly can for our personal comfort, knowing that we are impoverishing the generations that will follow us.

We must begin to live in a sustainable manner. Our children and children's children will curse us if we do not.

Boomers Driving the Car

Had a chat with Carol last night. We were discussing the impact that the boomers will have on the medical system. When you look at the population histograms between 2005 and 2025, you are absolutely astounded by the number of old people that we will be carrying in the future.

Carol seems to think that suicide is going to become an increasingly acceptable option for these folks. She thinks that it is because they will do it willingly to decrease suffering. I will agree that this will always be an aspect (for background look here), but more and more I think that the system will start breaking down in its ability to deal with these oldsters and suicide will gradually be more and more used because the system cant keep up.

F=ma

Newton's Second Law

The acceleration of an object as produced by a net force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force, in the same direction as the net force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.

Let's set F equal to the ability of a society to exist. An arbitrary value will be assigned to denote "adequate" societal performance,

Lets set M as the population of the society

Let's set A as the product of the money supply and the velocity of that money.

Thus, when a nation's population increases, in order to maintain F at a constant, the money supply or the velocity of the money must increase. Since there is an inverse relationship of mass to acceleration, these must increase more rapidly than the rate of growth.

If money is leaving the country in external trade imbalances, the product of the money supply and velocity is made smaller and F drops below "adequate" societal performance.

Just a thought...I'll work on it more later.

The grand scheme of things

The hardest part about getting old is dropping the thought that somehow your desires and beliefs have any impact on the way that the world proceeds. We in America have this odd idea an individual will be able to change the world. I am more and more coming to the conclusion that the historic leaders were just people who got out in front of mass movements and claimed leadership. The mass movement was there first. The mass movement was the important entity. The so-called leader was merely an afterthought of the overall action.

The resumes leave the building

I posted three applications today for a company with no connection whatsoever to this parliment of whores that is called the biotechnology industry.

At the end of the day, I don't believe that the good that this industry does will outweigh the evil.

A New Direction

I think that I have to leave Biotech. It is becoming a decision that is being forced upon me from without, but it is a decision that will be for the best in the long run.

I don't like to think about it too much, but for the last eleven years, I have been working in a business (Rapid HIV testing) that is doomed from the start. The companies that I have worked for during this time have not been companies that created a viable product. Rather than that awful choice, they have been companies that created a totem for investor to ogle and throw their volatile money.

In the United States, there will never be a significant market in rapid HIV testing. Even if the USFDA allows an over the counter version of this out, the market for sluts and man-ho's in this country is too small to support the business. All of the companies that are chasing this rainbow have spent a minimum of US$40,000,000 to get to this point. There is no way on God's green earth that 4-5 companies with a total outlay to date of greater than US$200,000,000 can recoup their outlays with sales in the United States.

So lets look at the global market. Europe is a small, old society with a medical system that keeps the capitalist nature in line, there is no market there. China and India have their own internal industries that they will support, they will not allow American companies to enter that market at the level needed to recoup the losses to date.

So you are left with Africa and South America. Africa is a basket case that doesn't have the money for anything other than the US$0.60 tests that the NGO's can offer. South America is an afterthought, too small to make a difference, too hostile to the NorteAmericanos to buy from us.

The money was good. I got to travel and get out of debt. But it is time to move on.

Pity the fool

The former corporate shitheads sent a nastymail today. Seems that anything that I know is now their property.

Leave it to say that everything that they currently do was stolen wholesale from someone else. Apparently, their argument is that they stole it fair and square and so it is theirs now and no one else can play.

Maybe he was right.

Reprise:  Limitations on the Discussion

James Ussher made the remarkable statement that the world began sometime in 4004 BC.

This has been the butt of centuries worth of mocking, maybe even justified mocking. But let us turn this idea on it's head just for the sake of argument. Let us take the step of saying that that perhaps mankind came into being around 4004 BC.   There can be not proof for this, just a different way of looking at the problem.

I am not going to argue that the universe came into being in 4004 BC. I am not stupid. The evidence for the age of the the universe at approximately 13.7 billion years is too solid to ignore.

I will not argue that the earth came into being in 4004 BC either. I feel comfortable with the age of the earth at around 4.5 billion years.

Nor will I be caught into the trap that the bodily form that man inhabits came into being in 4004 BC. The bodily form that we use has been around quite some time, thank you very much.

What I will propose is that to be a member of mankind is to:

1. Possess a soul.
2. Have the same basic set of genes as >99% of the current human population

So what I posit as a working hypothesis is that the first ensoulment of mankind took place in a couple of folks in the middle east around 4000 BC.   The physical bodies (which we share >99% sequence homology with) prior to that time were for all intents and purposes, animals as they did not possess a soul.  From a straight biological point of view, we are of a common species with these "pre-men" and it would be impossible to differentiate them from ourselves morphologically, as the lack of a soul precludes them from being man.

This cannot ever be proven. Perhaps it is merely a facile argument to rationalize my personal faith. That being said I will work on this idea over time and add supporting evidence if I can find it and if I think of anything to refute it, hopefully I will be intellectually honest enough to include that as well.

I don't post often enough

The purpose of a blog should be primarily that of a diary. You show it to other people, and if you are like Samuel Pepys, some will even read it. For the most part however, blogs have become where the self-absorbed choose to spew out whatever ill-thought-out tripe that the blogger is thinking at that moment. The definition of a "good" blog is one that mostly agrees with your own ill-thought-out tripe.

The world is a complex place, bloggers usually take a small section out of it and grind their teeth on it like it was a piece of meat until it submits to their world-view. The trouble with this methodology is that once the process is complete, the subject, like a piece of meat so treated, is usually unfit for consumption by others.

I am getting to be an old man. Like the rest of the boomers, I was brought up to believe that the world cares about and values my opinion. This "truth" is becoming more and more transparently false every morning that I wake up and open my eyes. The world seems to have its own agenda, one that we do not form, but rather we swim in like fish in a sea. We are minnows in a sea where predators exist, and we try to convince ourselves that we can vote the predators into extinction.

But the predators in our world are not democrats. They will swim away for a while, mostly because they are not hungry right then, but they will be back when it is time.

This We'll Defend

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, …I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same….”

Fragment of the military oath upon accepting a commission in the US Military

Lt. Ehren Watada doesn't want to go back to Iraq. Understandable.

What are his motives?

I was a grunt. 11B10. I took the same oath, but it weighed lighter on my psyche. I was more involved in the vicissitudes of staying alive and the foolishness of of command.

But when one is an officer, perhaps it should be the case that discussions and controversy should occur at this point. A lieutenant should perhaps question the legitimacy of a war. The upper command will not do so. They will spout what is wanted to secure their power and perquisites. They will throw away soldiers lives in mad missions whose core is political and economic.

One must remember at all time that the pentagon is a large corporation. It wants power and money and has a unique means to both. I doubt sincerely that the upper command gives a damn about Iraq, but their access to power and money depend on the continuance of the forever war.

Watada will go to jail. Tough shit. You signed on the line to play by the UCMJ. You are fucked my friend.

The rest of us might be too.

This is Where the Discussion Starts

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

---

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

• and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will c

Thoughts on security

We (The Boomers) are the generation that praises security above all things. We have defined ourselves as so precious that we chickened out of the any war that looked like we might have to commit something beyond our words to. We created the all-volunteer army so that we could send the poor and the ethnic out to do our dirty work for us.

Our lives have been a continuous effort to make sure that we have every material comfort. We worship at the altars of Martha Stewart consumption and Oprah Winfrey self-absorption to create a frankenstein monster steeped in pathos.

Our 401-K's are the touchstone of our existence. "Will there be enough money for my golfing and my travelling to distract me from the fact that I led a shallow life of not enough?"

We threw away any relationship with God. When we finally decided that we needed something like this, we found it in a Mega-Church parking lot with the rest of the SUV's and a slick preacher telling us that God will love us because we are Americans and good people.

But friends, the world is on to us. They have been feeding us for years and now they will want their share. Their share will come out of what we consider our share.

And we will never be ruthless enough to stop it.

It's Sunday Morning

A long labor day weekend, and I am getting used to the idea that there is nothing pressing. Mass is in a couple of hours and I am drinking coffee and trying to restart a diary. In other words, SSDD.

The war between faith and reason is ongoing in my head. Faith seems to tell me that there is a greater scheme to the whole shebang than just the crap that goes on in the world. Reason tells me that this may well be the whole shebang. Pascal's Wager is a great place to start. In a nutshell it says that if there is a God, believing in him will provide infinite gain upon your death. If you do not believe in him, then it will provide pain upon your death. If there is no god, who cares? With those premises, it makes no sense whatsoever to not believe in God.

What is the hardest thing about the faith is the ritual that attaches itself to faith. At what point does the appearance of morality intersect with the content of morality. Does showing up in church on Sunday really have an effect upon your mortal soul, or is it merely a way to keep people focused. Does the wager on god allow the key to heaven, or does a holy life led without thoughts of God lead to hell?