Comments - Part II

This is a continuation of http://usednotes.blogspot.com/2013/04/comments-part-i.html

Divided Government. The other day at his press conference, the President expressed the fact that we have a divided government, meaning the GOP controls the House. He inferred that because of this little gets done in Washington because of this division.  This most striking comment resonated as I believe most governments in the US, since its founding, have been "divided."  Yet the legislative and executive branches compromised frequently and achieved much - and congress was not so maligned by the public as it is today. It occurred to me the President must truly miss his first two years in office with a "unified" government wherein compromise was an unnecessary and unneeded tool for agreement. 

It is one thing not compromise on the basis of a firmly held principle, and quite another not to compromise when you don't know or have forgotten how.

The unwillingness or inability to compromise, now on both side of the aisle, is a significant reason why little happens in Washington these days.

Exhaustion.  Arguable is the proposition that the British, after two world wars,  having endured their many lives lost, abject bombing, their treasury depleted, and the will to carry on, simply gave in to cradle-to-grave alternatives.  They have.   In the years following World War II, the Brits gave up their empire to home rule, first in India, then after the war to Nigeria and other nations.  Though this was begun with India some twenty years earlier, it was consummated with pacts signed by Eden and McMillan following Churchill.  Ague the facts, argue the reasons, argue the logic, but one cannot argue the results.  The French gave up much sooner.  With the United States a parallel obtains.  It had an empire of influence, not territory.  It endured World Wars I and II, the Korean conflict, Vietnam, and more recently the Iraq and Afghanistan events.  The USA is exhausted with war.  It is no wonder that the USA is apologizing on every front to other nations, that it is reluctant to avoid conflicts, that it reinterprets terrorist events as one-offs, and that it avoids "boots on the ground" options at possible every turn.  It is no wonder that the USA has advanced in the direction of a total welfare state on each and every front of need. The USA is merely following the British model.

My guess is that the British will need another generation or two to return to their profound greatness on the world stage.  The Germans have already done so.  The Russians are ascending.  It is not clear if or when the USA will do the same.

References: 

 Arthur Herman," Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age,"   

William Manchester, "Last Lion," a trilogy on Churchill.

Rich man - poor man.  Right now I'm at a meeting in San Francisco.  I'm staying on the 25th floor of the Parc 55 hotel.  Nice hotel.  This morning, I left the hotel for a little walk to the West, and within two blocks I was knee deep in street people.  No jobs, no money, no prospects.  This afternoon, I walked a little to the East.  I was in the land of influence and shops stocked with the finest imported goods.  As always, there were street people, but in fewer numbers, all begging for dimes and quarters, where just an ice cream in the local shop cost nine dollars. I stopped in a bar for a beer early this evening.  It was packed with happy hour revelers. The guys were trying to impress the girls and the girls the guys.  All were totally cool.  San Francisco is a city living at once in squalid poverty and total luxury - each within a stone's throw of the other.  OK.  But I'm not the first to write this piece.    It has been written almost the same over the centuries many times and in many ways about many cities with a quiescent impoverished class and a garish wealthy class.  This nexus of squalor and luxury has been the subject of many hundreds of novels.  It seems like humanity recognizes it, accepts it, and yet is fascinated and horrified by it - all simultaneously.

Too poor and never rich. Once a people are too poor and too beaten and too downtrodden, they have not the inclination, nor resources, nor ability to improve themselves.  To the rich, they are invisible.   BUT, and this is a big but, many of those in poverty let it happen, some assuming that life would be a sequence of upgrades-without-effort. It isn't.  I'm not sure of the percentage of folks, but it is a sizable percentage of people that will live in perpetuity with government offered living assistance, a government offered food allowance, with no thought of rising up in the society.  In fact, doing nothing for a lifetime is just fine.

Comfortable subsistence is a life.   

Over-achiever, under-achiever - un-achiever? It is a myth we are all over-achievers, or even achievers.  It is important to understand that many are non-achievers, and moreover, not-want-to-be achievers.  Achievement is just not in their lexicon.  Simply recall your school days and your fellow students.  Some cared much, some cared not at all. Some worked, some didn't.  These are signatures of a lifetime.  It is a myth that the preponderance of people are willing to work hard, to take risks so as to achieve something, anything.  It is a fact that as long as food is on the table, there is a bed to sleep in, and a TV in the living room,  doing nothing is a personally acceptable life-style.

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Old technology – new technology.  Let's hear it for Steve Jobs.  He was a visionary; he transformed the way we communicate through the net and by cellular phone and by devise.  I guess he was a genius.  That's as far as I can go.   He did have a little mean streak.  When he was about to launch the iPad, arguably a game changing technology, he knew it would catch on fire.  Correct he was.  But at the time, Apple's MOV format was loosing a serious multimedia battle with its arch competitor, Macromedia's Flash.  One hardly saw any MOV applications, but zillions of Flash applications.  It would have been childs play to support Flash (SWF format) on his new iPad.  He didn't.  The result is that there have been wasted hundreds of thousands of Flash applets, not to mention millions of hours lost in writing them and learning the Action Script language. (Me included.)  But by defeating his nemesis, did he win?  Only in beating back Flash.  In fact, most new applets are written in the HTML5 format, and Apple could not dare not supporting it.  Movies have not been recast in the MOV format, but the MP4 format.

In fact, the Flash technology disappeared within two years. 'Tis a shame.

All of this may seem technical if not arcane to most readers, but it clearly illustrates the nonlinear zig-zag path of technology.  One day this technology is on top, working well, with many happy users.  The next day it is gone for good.  The striking aspect is that it has not been replaced by a better technology – just a different technology.   For the technology, it could be called a reversal of fortune.  For the practitioners, it is downright defeating.   The example here is by no means unique.
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What has happened to the young men?  These days there seems to be an army of young and not-so-young men that simply cannot find their way in life.  This is true in affluent and poor homes alike.  The young man lives with his parents, perhaps lives with parental support, perhaps simply becomes lost in the wash of humanity.  A natural question is why?  One answer is this: Men no longer have a mission.  When I was 14, my dad died of a heart attack.  All his friends told me to "take care of your mother."  This was a mission.  In school, I was told year after year the importance of getting a good job to help preserve the nation and to make a comfortable living, have a comfortable home, and raise a family.   I had a mission.  I had to achieve.  Society and my family were counting on me.  It seems this has all vanished.  Now the government will take care of your mother though assistance; now we have support groups to count on;  now there is an equality between sexes which diminishes the young man's sense of importance and duty.  It seems the young man, too many young men, have no sense of self-value, no sense of duty, no sense of importance, and no mission.  Altogether too many languish in pointless, empty, half-lives, having little purpose and no clear direction.   

Thinking.  Some people should just not be allowed to think!   Know any?

Comments - Part I

I needed to assign someone to a people-friendly job.  The person that would be perfect is always overloaded and puts off new tasks though they are never refused.  The alternate was not so people-compatible.  I told my assistant to find her a personality, maybe there’s something on eBay. :)

We are experts at everything, particularly those things we know nothing about.

It is only a matter of time, less than ten years, where some animal rights activists insist on legal marriages, complete with health and death benefits, with their pets.   Maybe this has happened. Consider:

• November 2007 – A man in southern India married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony as an attempt to atone for stoning two other dogs to death – an act he believes cursed him. Selvakumar, 33, told the paper he had been suffering since he stoned two dogs to death and hung their bodies from a tree 15 years prior.
• November 2010 – A young Toowoomba, Queensland man tied the knot with his best friend – a five-year-old labrador.
• There are many more...

Marry your pet?  There is even a website. http://www.marryyourpet.com/  Watch out for PETA; they need an issue; they need a headline.

Mindsurfing.  What is that??  Doesn’t matter.  It is.  Its kinda like day dreaming, dressed up with a new name.

Good for Dr. Petraeus, now visiting professor of public policy at Macaulay Honors College at CUNY.  Of course, he is flawed.  We all are likewise.  This most excellent general continues on, regardless, like most of us do.  Unfortunately, because of a minor peccadillo, our country has lost his valuable service.  Maybe a few students will learn from his very close encounters with terror, death, and war.   Wish I could sit in on his course.   How rare this is.

Senator Marco Rubio seems to be making illegal immigration reform a signature issue for his presence.  This, relatively minor issue, presents a risk to his gravitas as a future presidential contender.  Yet, is seems to be the only issue on which both of our now extreme parties can come to a semblance of agreement.  

Anecdotes vs. Evidence

We all know that a single anecdote is just that, a one-off observation or event.  Some generalize a single anecdote or couple of them as a rule.   We usually call it evidence supporting a rule and conclusion.  Lofty, right?  We all do it – often making an incorrect conclusion based on a semi-inductive argument  from grossly incomplete information.  

The question is this: Can a multiplicity of anecdotes constitute evidence?   And if so, how many do you need?  How sweeping need they be, and does their incidence correctly develop evidence?  The answer is really unknown, but it clearly is one of the operational aspects of social living.  It even applies to science.  What is done is that a model is created that fits the anecdotes.  This lends our treasure trove of anecdotes as actual and credible evidence.    This is another and rather pointed situation upon which humanity is socialized and is sustained.

There remains the question of how many anecdotes are required to make a rule or more generally a theory?  This is something akin to the “heep” paradox – but in reverse.   Suppose you place a single marble into an area, and keep adding more and more marbles.  Soon you have a bunch of marbles, still individually observable.  Add more and more.   Eventually you have a “heep” of marbles.  But when does the transition take place?  It seems to be, in this example, where individualization becomes impossible or unsupportable.   This applies, as well, to anecdotes.  When does their plurality make individual anecdotes unidentifiable?  We don’t know.

Mozart's concertos

I don't know who is your favorite composer or even if you have one.  Mine is Mozart.  When younger, I preferred Beethoven and Brahms.  The bombast, the power, the finality of their work was compelling.  It still is.  In the last years, my attention and love for Mozart has exceeded all others.  Even Bach and Haydn.  Even Prokofiev, and the other Russian masters.

Mozart's music, particularly the piano concertos, has a certain perfection at a level I barely understand.  As he may have said, each note is there for a reason, none less and no more would quite do.  There is no real bombast, no power, no thunder, but only perfection.  This evening I'm listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 14, KV 449.  Each movement is a wonder, though the third movement is incomparable.  It is like listening to a theme and variations on a theme of Mozart by Mozart.  The only disappointment is that it runs only about six minutes.  If only he had a bit more time and made it an even dozen minutes...

When the greatest mathematician of our era, Karl Friedrich Gauss, was asked how he developed his theories, he simply stated that all the scaffolding should be removed from the finished work. And it was! Not for Mozart. You can almost feel the sublime joy he must have experienced in making the composition.  

When the great physicist Albert Einstein was asked which of Mozart's concertos what his favorite, his answer was the one he listened to most recently.  Einstein had it nailed.  Twenty seven concertos, twenty seven works of perfection.  If any one of us could originally write just one of the movements of just one of the concertos, we would be acclaimed a musical genius.

Be careful.  You could be infected with the Mozart magic, and from this there is no cure.