Thursday, July 4, 2013
Potato Salad
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Google Lat Long: Trekking the Grand Canyon for Google Maps
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Nuke Evolving
Though a few countries will pick nuke to be a part of their energy portfolio, in the U.S., the Shale Gale blowing cheap gas out of North Dakota is right up there with anti-technology ideology or dread of meltdown and proliferation as a deterrent for new nukes.
Monday, March 5, 2012
The Scramble for Africa
Pakenham, T., (2003). The scramble for Africa: White man’s conquest of the dark continent from 1876 to 1912. New York: Perennial. (Original work published in 1991)
This is a book about the occupation, colonization and conquest of Africa during the Victorian Era. The author, Thomas Pakenham, is an Anglo-Irish historian who writes mostly about Victorian and Post-Victorian British history. Initially, I thought that the title was of the author’s invention. However, I found out from a popular online encyclopedia, that the Scramble for Africa is a term of art for this period from 1876 until World War I.
I struggled to get into the book because I have little interest in Victorian history, and Mr. Pakenham doesn’t help matters by assuming a British audience will appreciate his wry characterizations of European historical figures. Not being British, and lacking a British history education made Mr. Pakenham’s dry humor very dead for me. In addition, I was expecting the book to be more Afro-centric. I was, instead, learning more than I cared to, about Queen Victoria. However, as I struggled through the first few chapters, enough background developed to generate interest for the remainder of the book. It was then that I could begin to appreciate the meticulousness of the research of this in-depth history of the Victorian Era land grab in Africa.
The Scramble for Africa has as its central theme the contrast between the humanitarian motives of David Livingstone, and the profit-taking of Belgium’s King Leopold. Livingstone, as a Christian missionary, represented social progress moving away from Africa’s slave trade. His philosophy was the triple-bottom-line of the day: the 3 Cs of Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization. “Trade, not the gun, would liberate Africa” (p. xxii).
Unfortunately, the fourth ‘C’ of Conquest eventually became the rule as King Leopold made his rubber money, and Cecil Rhodes made his gold-and-diamond fortune. Human rights atrocities were commonplace as Europe imposed its will with the barrel of a gun. All of this makes a kind of historical sense. But, surprisingly the fallout from the Scramble helps to explain the civil wars and anarchy that continue in Africa to this day, even though independence from Europe has been won for many years.
The rebellion against, and the withdrawal of, Europe is understandable, but the new independent African states, unprepared for party politics, split along ethnic and regional lines. Civil war and anarchy were, and are, the result. I suppose it would have been too much to ask of the European conquerors, which scrambled to divide up Africa, not to have just as quickly scrambled back out of Africa, leaving a political power vacuum in the wake of their evacuation. I suppose it would have been asking too much of the European conquerors to not have better educated their subjects while occupying Africa. And so, I wonder how many Africans today would like to turn back the clock to 1875. For good reason, this book has been reprinted a number of times since its first appearance in 1990.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
A scenario for Greece
• Foreign bankers lend
• Then, financial controllers see that the interest is paid.
• Then, foreign advisers take their cut.
• Finally, when the country is bankrupt and helpless, it is time for the foreign troops to ‘rescue’ the government from its rebellious people.
• Then, the country is gone.
This is a script played out many times in history (Pakenham, 2003, p. 126).
Reference
Pakenham, T., (2003). The scramble for Africa: White man’s conquest of the dark continent from 1876 to 1912. New York: Perennial. (Original work published in 1991)
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Tucson Audubon Society Blog: San Rafael IBA Survey a Great Success!
The Mountaineers Currents: The Suiattle Road: why Boundary Bridge looks funny...
Friday, February 17, 2012
A Grecodorkian reviews "Greece's Odious Debt"
Book Review
Manolopoulos, J. (2011). Greece’s ‘odious’ debt: The looting of the Hellenic Republic by the euro, the political elite, and the investment community [Kindle version]. New York: Anthem Press. Retrieved from Amazon.com
This is a book about the ongoing financial collapse of Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy. It gives emphasis to current financial events in Greece and the resultant stress on the European Central Bank. The author, Jason Manolopoulos, has an interesting perspective as an investment industry executive from Canada working in London. The book frequently compares the financial situation in Greece with the financial collapse of Argentina ten years ago. He draws helpful historical comparisons with the current financial instability in Europe and offers psychological analysis behind the decisions leading to the present. Finally, the book sheds light on institutional corruption and clientelism that prevent government from making rational, clean decisions.
Mr. Manolopoulos lists Greece’s many problems. The Greek economy features high levels of public debt, a large trade deficit, undiversified industries, an overextended public sector, militant trade unions, widespread corruption, uneven payment of taxes, an overvalued currency, consumers expecting rising living standards, and a euro membership based on inaccurate data. In retrospect, it seems fantastic that the Greek economy was observed to be in better than average condition as late a February 2009. All parties involved are not looking very good as this story continues to evolve, including Greek politicians, Greek society, trade unions, leaders of the European Union, the IMF, and the world’s investment banks. All have exhibited a collective display of hubris, miscalculation, over ambition, deception, mis-selling and sheer greed.
Manolopoulos (2011) says that “Greece has been allowed to borrow in excess of €300 billion despite a largely unreformed economy, overreliance on mid-tech industries, a chronically inefficient and corrupt public sector, and an unreformed political infrastructure with immunity for politicians guilty of financial crimes” (p. 138). Mr. Manolopoulos would like to call this an “odious debt”, the term in international law that refers to a debt incurred by a despotic regime, but where is the despot? Mr. Manolopoulos doesn’t say. If we look at the recent history of Greece, we know that since 1987, the Greek financial sector has undergone almost complete liberalization (Thomadakis, p. 57). Since then, the Greek financial sector has shown positive performance and its modernization is obvious in the growth of skilled jobs in the banking sector. In a very real sense, the Greek state has failed the Greek banks rather than the other way around. Yet, Mr. Manolopoulos doesn’t make clear why Greece has yet to reform their economic system. Must the author be speaking of its lawless culture, starting with the grotesque waste in the public sector? Further development of the subject of Greek politics and society would help the book more useful in understanding how Greece in got into the mess in which it finds itself.
According to Mr. Manolopoulos, Greece’s application to join the euro in 2000 was motivated by what he calls the bogus concept of economic convergence. Although he doesn’t define what he means by economic convergence, it is an important concept because it is one of the crucial areas for European Union financial success. To call it bogus without saying why diminishes Mr. Manolopoulos’ message. By better defining the theory of economic convergence and what it means, the author would be in a better position to describe the economic reforms necessary for Greece. For example, the theory of convergence is the hypothesis that the states that poorer economies per capita incomes grow faster than richer economies. Yet, as we see historically, capital doesn’t flow from rich to poor countries (Lucas, 1990). This puzzle is famously called the “Lucas Paradox” but is not referred to by Mr. Manolopoulos in his book.
“The miraculous turnaround, in which Greece went from being an unconverged economy to a converged one within 18 months, should have raised alarm bells” (Manolopoulos, p. 1205). Yes, according to the idea of economic convergence a poor economy’s per capita income will tend to grow at faster rates than richer economies. Eventually, then, all economies should converge in terms of per capita income. The reason for this is because developing countries have the potential to grow faster than developed countries because of the law of diminishing returns. Obviously, the current situation in Greece proves the limitations of this idea.
Mr. Manolopoulos says that “Greece will not be transformed overnight from a low-tax, low-service society to a high-tax, high-service one like Sweden. There will be an inflection point, a dark moment before the dawn where taxes will have increased and services not improved. That will be a serious political testing point” (p. 4758). This is an excellent point. Looking back over one hundred years ago to the reign of Greece’s King George I, we see that the price Greece paid for a central government was clientelism and a network of patronage to local bosses in exchange for loyalty to the crown (Keridis, 1997). Greece’s military dictatorship fell in 1974, marking the end of a highly unstable history and the beginning of a parliamentary democracy. Though Greece has made tremendous progress since then, the fact is that its post-1974 democratically elected leaders initially postponed economic adjustment to an open, competitive economy (Tsoukalis, 1997). Knowing this, we begin to understand the challenges that will lead to an overhaul of Greece’s antiquated institutions that is still necessary. In fact, one could say the Greek financial crisis is the pressure for reform that Greece has been looking for since 1981 when it allowed entry into the European Community.
“The silver lining is the fact that the Greek public sector is wasteful, her tax payment irregular, and the private sector is uncompetitive means there is huge scope for improvement” (Manolopoulos, p. 4758). The problem with this argument is that since 1981, when Greece entered into the European Community, Greece has steadily lost socioeconomic ground because of structural weaknesses in its governance (Diamandouros, 1997). At a time when international and European environments were streamlining and privatizing, Greece found itself, and still finds itself hostage, to internal social and political forces that were pushing her in the opposite direction. That these problems still existed upon entrance into the European Union in 2000, and have not been rectified as of 2012 is something to be very concerned about next month (March, 2012) when Greece is due for its next round of funds from Brussels. In fact, at the end of 2011, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found it striking that there was no central strategic and shared vision about where Greece was taking its society and economy (OECD, 2011).
As we are seeing in today’s financial news headlines, there has to be significant debt restructuring or else Greece must leave the EU. Why have we not learned our lessons? The orgy of debt continues. To continue to lend money to an economy that is losing money is simply unsustainable. Where does this leave the EU? There is fiscal union but not political union in the EU. For the EU to continue to exist, Greece will have to take orders from Brussels. Can Greek democracy survive under these stresses?
What is the path forward? While the thesis of “Greece’s Odious Debt” is a weak one, the book does a great job of directing attention to issues that created the financial crisis in Europe, especially in Greece. Are the Greeks of today remotely capable of coping with the financial realities of the modern world and the discipline of Eurozone members who are tiring of subsidizing unrealistic public expenditure and a robber baron attitude toward taxation?
Well that is the problem, with the book: It does not help us to know where we go from here. Clearly, Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos must secure a strong center and designate leadership that will take clear ownership of the reforms necessary. However, with a political system rooted in the politics of veto instead of the politics of persuasion, Mr. Papademos has an impossible task. It is understandable that “Greece’s Odious Debt” is challenged by the question of where Greece should go. Despite the emphasis of the book about lessons learned, Greece, unfortunately, is still in the early stages of this crisis, is in uncharted territory, and the outcome is very uncertain. In a very real sense, the Greek crisis has become an existential threat for the project of European integration begun with the Treaty of Rome over fifty years ago.
References
Diamandouros, P. N. (1997). Greek politics & society in the 1990s. In Allison, G. T., & Nicolaïdis, K. (Eds.), The Greek paradox: Promise vs. performance (pp. 23-37). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Keridis, D. (1997). Greece in the 1990s: The challenge of reform. In Allison, G. T., & Nicolaïdis, K. (Eds.), The Greek paradox: Promise vs. performance (pp. 85-96). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lucas, Robert E. (1990), “Why doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?" American Economic Review 80, 92-96.
Manolopoulos, J. (2011). Greece’s ‘odious’ debt: The looting of the Hellenic Republic by the euro, the political elite, and the investment community [Kindle version]. New York: Anthem Press. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2011). Greece: Review of the central administration. Retrieved February 15, 2012, from http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/governance/greece-review-of-the-central-administration_9789264102880-en
Thomadakis, S. B. (1997). The Greek economy: Performance, expectations, & paradoxes. In Allison, G. T., & Nicolaïdis, K. (Eds.), The Greek paradox: Promise vs. performance (pp. 39-60). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tsoukalis, L. (1997). Conclusion: Beyond the Greek paradox. In Allison, G. T., & Nicolaïdis, K. (Eds.), The Greek paradox: Promise vs. performance (pp. 164-74). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
41F
Moving against the 5-O bike commute on the mainline.
Got MDs heading at me, swerving and curving.
They’re hustling to get the hell home,
Out of the UW hospital,
Into the Seattle owl-eye darkness,
And pushing the limits of their stroboscopic LEDs.
Attack mode,
And a busted collarbone waiting at next RR xing.
No problem, an orthopod should be around.
I got my hundred bucks of groceries rattling on the back rack, PCC.
Don’t need to worry too much about my ice cream,
It’s 41F and getting real.
In what ways am I blowing a Condor away?
Couldn’t think of any.
But it did remind me that the great one,
The one, some say, was the last guy in America that knew what he was doing,
Said a computer was like this for our minds.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Book Review: "Break Through"
Book Review
Nordhaus, T., & Shellenberger, M. (2007). Break through: From the death of environmentalism to the politics of possibility [Kindle version]. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved from Amazon.com
This book by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger advocates dealing with the climate crisis through investment, not through regulation. Acknowledging that rapid climate change is a technological challenge, they argue that the best way to do deal with it is the way we’ve dealt with other technological challenges: by public investment in R&D and government procurement of promising energy technologies. In addition, they argue that environmental groups focus on pollution regulation is really misplaced because it has become a dogma of putting a price on carbon and economic sacrifice to avoid apocalypse, rather than a framework of economic opportunity and innovation.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger make a strong case that environmentalism has failed to accomplish its goals because it approaches the subject from the perspective of placing limits to growth on humanity. They instead suggest that the Malthusian limits to growth are particular to affluent societies and can be overcome by innovation and strong pragmatism. They insist that, “To direct our focus on collapse not only makes for a distorted view of human history, it risks undermining the security, confidence, and optimism required for progressive social and political change” (p. 150).
They state that the time has come for America to embrace a new story about itself. A story focused on aspiration rather than complaint, on assets rather than deficits and on possibility rather than limits. That, “modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, just die so that something new can live” (p. 9).
I object that the book does not clearly define what Environmentalism is; rather it is a term with which the authors play. For example, “If ‘the environment’ includes humans, then everything in environmental and the concept has little use other than being a poor synonym for ‘everything.’ If it excludes humans, then it is scientifically specious, not to mention politically suicidal” (p. 10). Which is it?
The real thesis of this book is that it’s a geoengineered planet that we live on and the solutions to its problems lie in investment in technology. A simpler way to support the authors’ thesis would be to explain that because the environmentalism discourse currently reflects a particular ethical view of the world, that ethical framework is inadequate to address the expanded number of discourses relevant to the climate change debate. But the authors fail to point out that there are no ethical systems adequate to guide behavior to remedy climate change. We need a planetary ethic to guide the investments to which Nordhaus and Shellenberger advocate. Moreover, it is not clear that we can innovate our way out of climate change due to the law of diminishing returns on investment in R & D.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger make a good case for why we should not leave saving the planet to environmentalists. Their investment based solution is very interesting because they seek to deny the Malthusian hypothesis and doomsday models. Theirs is the conventional economic perspective that has a strong faith in the law of infinite substitutability. I’m guessing that their definition of Sustainability is straight out of The American Heritage Dictionary: “To keep in existence”. They are pretty sure we can still innovate our way out of problems, again, again, and again. Are they right? The law of diminishing returns says no.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
"I read a study
that measured the efficiency
of locomotion
for various species
on the planet.
The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer.
Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing
about a third of the way down the list.
... then someone at Scientific American had the insight
to test the efficiency of locomotion
for a man on a bicycle,
[who] blew the condor away.
That's what a computer is to me
... the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with.
It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."
--Steve Jobs, in a 1990 interview
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Gemany is Quitting Nuke Cold Turkey
Germany is going to drop nuclear power by 2022: podcast -http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/06/02/germany-ditch-nuclear-power
This is interesting to me because the decision to dump nuke comes from a country with relatively low resources for renewable energy – they have a lot of dark, windless days. Fukushima has rocked the German public and swung conservative Chancellor Merkel onto a bold new course. Experts are skeptical that Germany can get off nuke and lower carbon dioxide emissions. Others applaud the decision claiming reliance on nuke prevents investment and development of new, zero-carbon energy technology.
Meanwhile in the U.S., the TVA is getting ready to ask its board to resurrect the stalled construction of a nuclear facility in Hollywood…AL. - http://www.coolhandnuke.com/Cool-Hand-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/78/TVA-seeks-green-light-to-build-Bellefonte.aspx
It seems that nuclear power is going to be left on the table to help meet the world’s 2050 energy forecast. Why? Because we are worried about carbon emissions. However, the German “no to nuke” decision makes this reason seem fuzzier.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
A Mechanical Engineer Reviews, "A History of Mechanical Inventions"
Usher, A. P. (1988). A history of mechanical inventions (Rev. ed.). New York: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1954)
I thought it would be fun to read this book because I like mechanical stuff. I did my undergraduate work in mechanical engineering, but I was never was required to read anything about the history of mechanical invention, and as a result it was wonderful to finally learn about their development as they relate to economic history. This knowledge helps to illuminate for me the context of current innovation and its origins. With innovation a perennially favorite topic for business literature, a bigger perspective provided by this classic book was refreshing. Some may criticize this book for being dated; however it provides the basis by which we look at the history of mechanical inventions. In fact, since 1961, The Society of the History of Technology has annually awarded the Abbott Payson Usher Prize, named in the author’s honor.
This is a history of mechanical inventions. Abbott Payson Usher was professor of economic history at Harvard and passed away in 1965 at the age of 82. He felt that, “Economic history is concerned with the description and the analysis of the mutual transformations taking glace between human societies and their environment” (p.1). From this point of view, he writes a compelling book, emphasizing social change as a cumulative process. “The development of human societies requires no less careful study of ecology than is necessary for the understanding of the growth of population of the various plants and animals” (p. 18). I very much enjoyed Prof. Usher’s opinion that the problems faced by the historian are not any different than those face by the scientist.
The main point of this classic is to talk about the importance of technological innovation in the cultural and economic history of the West. “Economic history is concerned with the description and the analysis of the mutual transformations taking glace between human societies and their environment” (p.1). Prof. Usher emphasizes the role of economic forces in developing technology to meet demand. For example from 1500—1730 there was no significant invention in the field f of spinning. I find that 230 years is an amazingly long time to go without invention in a fairly practical area. Apparently, there was no pressure upon the spinners which only happened when the flying shuttle was invented.
I also enjoyed his discussion of Leonardo da Vinci. Prof. Usher makes and excellent point that Leonardo lived in two worlds woven by many interests and the loss of either world would have been a calamity to him and an impairment of achievement in the remaining field. I love this thought because sometimes I feel diluted by my many interests and sometimes think that I need to “specialize”.
The definition of technology that Usher uses defines the entire book: the techniques by which resources are utilized at any given moment. Usher feels that the economic historian must pay particular attention to the relation between the geographic environment and the technology that makes the environment useful.
This book is almost sixty years old, but is written with a good understating of engineering. As a result it has aged well because the history to which it speaks it does so in precise terminology that is still important today. There can be little doubt of the importance of technological innovation in the economic history of the West and Prof. Usher demonstrates this admirably with a chapter entitled, “The Emergence of Novelty in Thought and Action”. “Invention in the field of mechanics is, in fact, broadly representative of every feature of the general process of invention” (p. 56). I like this because it turns out that mechanics is not a narrow field as one might guess.
Through a lifetime pursuit of extensive, documented research, Prof. Usher feels that it is important for the historian to limit his efforts to the task of developing operational procedures without attempting philosophical analysis of the underlying postulates. I think Prof. Usher’s underlying assumption in this book is that the limitations of resources are relative to the position of our knowledge and of our technique (p. 9). But technological innovation is subject to the law of diminishing returns (Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, p. 124). For a society to expand it needs high structural diversity and highly developed organization to maintain its complexity.
Prof. Usher’s real thesis in this book appears to be how man makes himself. That is, the quality and importance of great achievements are due to the cumulative syntheses of a very large number of small achievements (p.83). His real argument is that through infinite substitutability man can continue to expand socially and politically. He has faith that as resources become scarce and rise in price, that there will be rewards for innovation. The good professor seems to think that, in this optimistic view, new resources and technologies will emerge.
I believe the real argument of this book is that a dependence on fossil fuels has allowed man a respite from declining marginal productivity of future expansion. If we were to show innovation of technology over the last millennium, we might see that man’s ability to make himself is a result of his ability to maintain a highly differentiated and organized society based on his dependence on fossil fuels, and not of his ability to innovate. As the declining margin of research and development becomes more difficult, innovation becomes more complex and costly.
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