Three Sigma Systems

Recently, my son, a young journalist, wrote an interesting story for the Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Despite significant health challenges, 15-year-old Santa Cruzan Tess Dunn finds herself rocking out ...”

The Online Etymology Dictionary explains the origins of the concept of “disease” a follows:

disease

early 14c., “discomfort,” from O.Fr. desaise, from des- “without, away” (see dis-) + aise “ease” (see ease). Sense of “sickness, illness” first recorded late 14c.; the word still sometimes was used in its lit. sense early 17c. Related: Diseased.

Early 14c., “discomfort,” from O.Fr. desaise, from des- “without, away” (see dis-) + aise “ease” (see ease). Sense of “sickness, illness” first recorded late 14c.; the word still sometimes was used in its lit. sense early 17c. Related: Diseased.

In his NYT column today, “The Renminbi Runaround“, economist Krugman complains that the Chinese are playing unfair currency games.

“China’s exchange-rate policy is neither complicated nor unprecedented, except for its sheer scale. It’s a classic example of a government keeping the foreign-currency value of its money artificially low by selling its own currency and buying foreign currency.”

I like Krugman as much as I can like anyone who subscribes to the nonsense called economic theory. But the fact is that Paul is lost the funhouse. China has learned from us that the way to win the game is to manipulate the vig. In a reality that places profit as the highest calling, why waste energy creating something of value when you can churn money and con the other guy into making you rich? A sense of fair markets has nothing to do with making a profit. Just ask any whiz kid working on Wall Street.

We have been doing quite a bit of killing lately. So who must we kill to avenge 911 and make the world safe?

• The suicidal jihadis on the jets that flew into the Twin Towers? (Already dead)
• Bin Laden and his enraged fanatical followers who planned the attack?
• The Taliban Islamic fundamentalists who allowed Bin Laden to set up camp in Afghanistan?
• The true fundamentalist believers in Islam who fueled the ideas that Jihadis hold sacred?
• The billions of believers in Islam who believe the Jihadis are justified in their actions?
• Fundamentalist believers of any religion who seek revenge against non-believers?
• All humans who act out their rage for wrongs they believe have been committed against them?
• Any humans who might act out their rage for wrongs they believe have been committed against them?
• Any humans who stand in the way of what we regard as our interests even when our interests are antithetical to their interests?
• Every human who is not us?
• Every human who is not you?
• Every human who is not me?

Follow the logic and the winner is the last man standing.

June 23, 2010 NYT – There has been vigorous debate within the administration about how to proceed in Afghanistan, but General McChrystal and his aides did not overtly criticize administration policy.Rather, the differences were personal, and publicly aired.

Huh!?

Some pundits are spinning the story by arguing that MacChrystal’s public display of discrespect for our Presidency and the senior officers of the administration is less egregious than an actual policy difference! It seems to me that if you want to debeate a policy, there are ways to do that, but if you show disrespect for those you disagree with, it’s game over.

MacChrystal’s disrespect for the U. S. Commander in Chief speaks volumes. His school-bully “warrior” arrogance strongly suggests that he also is disrespectful of his adversaries on the battlefield. This error of judgement is universally regarded as a cardinal sin in the art of war.

NYT – A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration had imposed in response to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Am I getting this right? The FAA can ground airplanes for problems that may affect the safety of passengers but the President of the United States cannot ground oil drillers for problems that may kill people, compromise the health of the nation, and just possibly the future of mankind.

Chris Good is a staff editor at TheAtlantic.com, where he writes for the magazine’s Politics Channel and almost certainly gets paid for thinking. Yesterday he wrote “The Case Against Making BP Pay” in which he suggests that the law capping liability for an accidental oil spill at $75 million under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, should NOT be waived in the case of BP. What is this guy smoking?

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Chris,

You’ve got it backward. The point is NOT that “…lifting the cap disincentivizes lawmakers from making good laws.” Lifting the cap disincentivizes the Congress from making BAD LAWS.

Suppose you tell the kids it’s okay start a fire in the stove every morning so long as they are careful. It’s just plain stupid to tell them that they will be grounded for no more than one weekend even if, in their enthusiasm, thy get creative and decide to use gasoline as starter fluid!

You’ve got one thing right “…we should at least recognize that it’s perhaps better not to make a habit of creating rules that later have to be waived.”

Purely in the interest of a personal catharsis — call it therapy — I humbly submit the following chronicle of a boat maintenance job gone bad because of a crazy-bad man, in which yours truly gets “the shaft”. It’s was so bad it’s almost funny.

Cross posted from my SailTheChannel Blog: Anatomy of a Boat Maintenance Nightmare

In his June 4th NYT Op Ed, “Don’t Get Mad, Mr. President. Get Even“, Frank Rich cuts through the BS about Obama’s stealthy politics and implacable demeanor  with a hot knife. Before a leader can lead he must tell his friends and foes alike, where he’s going and by what means they will travel. Intellect, expertise and political savvy are useful only when deployed in the service of a worthy aim. It is already common knowledge that reining in and breaking up the oligarchical powers who are undermining all national purpose with their wanton avarice, is a worthy aim. Time’s a-wasting Mr. Obama. Over the ramparts!

Today’s NYT headline reads, “U.S. Adds Jobs in May, but Private Hiring Disappoints“. This headline reflects a perverse and pervasive wisdom that infects the minds of people at all levels of American society — government work is wasteful work!

• People like to think that private industry hires people to do the jobs that really matter and makes people do their jobs in the most efficient manner, because the captains of industry are singularly driven by the profit motive. If a job does not contribute to the dollars-and-cents bottom line, the compensation paid to the person doing that job is “waste”.  In other words, if there’s no profit to be made, there’s no job of true worth to be had.
• In the public sector, there’s no profit to be made. Police, emergency workers, teachers, civil servants, military personnel, and census takers, produce no profit, and the jobs they perform, when done fair and true, are inherently unprofitable. To bend the performance of these jobs toward profit, would be to corrupt them, as has been amply illustrated by private contractors who feed at the taxpayer trough for profit.
• Private industry happily skims the cream, cutting whatever corners it takes to make a buck, but the down and dirty business of maintaining and improving society does not go away because there’s no profit in it.
• We should sing the praises of public workers who, on the whole, perform their jobs quite well, not for profit, but in lieu of a fair wage for services rendered. They produce the wealth of a nation from which WE ALL PROFIT.

The media have bought into the pseudo-medical disease lingo of economic “recovery”, lock, stock, and barrel. To hear them tell it, the patient is getting well again and will soon be restored to a healthy normality. What in the hell is that supposed to mean? What was the disease that cause the illness in the first place? Is the disease well on its way to being cured? Recovery from what and to what?

Got your credit card? Don’t worry. Be happy, “it’s getting better all the time“.

Or is it?

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

John F. Kennedy

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

I came across the following irresistible quote when looking up the full text of a favorite short story by J. L. Borges, “The Library of Babel“, which should only be read by those who “get it”.

Quote:

In this world, there are two kinds of people — those who Get It and those who Don’t. If the meaning of this is not immediately obvious to you, count yourself as one of the latter.

What I like about Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, is that he that he understands that our global economic malaise has nothing in common with Eyjafjallajokull. In his NYT column today, “Looters in Loafers“, he writes:

“For the fact is that much of the financial industry has become a racket — a game in which a handful of people are lavishly paid to mislead and exploit consumers and investors. And if we don’t lower the boom on these practices, the racket will just go on.”

Natural disasters have a tendency to bring people together, making them more powerful as they struggle to cope with the challenges presented by life, but our economic woes are unnatural disasters created by clever con artists who devote their best efforts toward creating confusion that divides people in order to turn them into helpless prey.

Here’s an interesting essay by Stanley Fish for those wanting to paddle into the deep end of “problems of knowing” pool:

Does Reason Know What It Is Missing?

Here is my commentary on the article.

The problem is one of defining what Fish and Habermas mean by “religion”. At the foundational level of consiousness there is always and inescapably, belief, and it is possible to understand how foundational belief comes into being and how it forms the basis for the exercise of reason. The gotcha in this excellent essay is that the idea of belief-based being can be easily confounded with religious and secular dogmas that become obstacles to sacred awareness.

Can belief, the mythic underpinning of consciousness, be freed from religious and secular dogmas that both aspire to the status of “truth-saying:”? I “believe” the answer is YES.