College Sports

It is that time of year when we all sit before out TV sets and watch college football games. It is great fun to watch young kids who are not getting paid risk serious injury so that we can all have a good time and the coach can take home a pay check 10 times that of the President of the USA. Is this a great country or what? In most states, the university football coach is the highest paid person on the public payroll. Didn't know that did you? If the coach gets paid so much, why don't the kids who are doing all the work get paid? I have some ideas that I think need to be considered.

How about paying the players? As I see it, there are two kinds of games. The true game where the players play just to have fun and no one has to pay to see the game. The others are games where you have to pay to see the game. This is what we have for most college and high school games. I feel that if you have to pay to see the game, then it must be some kind of professional game and the players should get at least 50% of the gate. Seems fair to me. I used to play baseball in an industrial league. The rules for this league were that at least 2/3 of the players had to be employed by the company. This seemed like a good rule that prevented very large companies from dominating the league. We went out and recruited many good players to fill this 1/3 allowed. Our team was very competitive even though we were a smaller company.

Now where am I going with this? Notice in our colleges and universities how a few bigger schools seem to dominate the games? I propose that we allow colleges and universities to recruit non-student athletes to play on their teams. Combine this with paying all players 50% of the gate and TV rights, it would even up the teams and make watching TV that much more interesting. I know what you are about to say, "that is what we already have in college sports". Don't we already pay the players and we know that they don't have to go to class nor do they graduate, so they must be "non student athletes".

I think I mentioned in a prior Blog that when I lived in Buenos Aires, they did not have organized sports in the schools. School was for learning, not playing games. Recall that Argentina won the Gold Medal in basketball with an all white team against our all black team. Just because we have sports in our schools does not mean that it is the best way. We must know that sports in our schools interferes with the basic mission of learning. Most people will not agree with me on this because they have never thought the situation thru. If organized sports in our colleges is so good, then why do we limit the number of years a person can play to just 4? If a little is good, more must be better? Do you really believe that? Talk to your friends while watching football on TV and see what they have to say. What is more important, sports or education?

Years ago, I played baseball in an industrial league where companies sponsored teams. The quality of the play was at a high level.

Simple Economic Tests

Some of this might sound like a repeat, but it all hooks together. Did you ever notice how easy it is for kids to learn how to control the volume on the radio. If they grab the knob and turn it one direction, they notice that the sound volume changes. If it went up with the first move, they try turning in the other direction to see what happens. In less than 10 seconds, they know how to control the volume of the radio. My point is that almost everything follows this simple relationship. You will be surprised how much you already know about economics and decision making. Now, let' try a few simple examples.

We have been hearing for years that the USA economy is based on personal consumption. Many of us accept this as fact because they have heard it so many times. Now, let's give the concept a test. If personal consumption were to go up dramatically, what would you think would happen with the economy? Think about it as a feeding frenzy. You know what the affect would be. Once we were all out of money, we would starve. Sounds bad to me.

Now let's look at high school graduation rates. The drop out rate is going up and is now 40% nationally and higher in many areas. What if it went up to 75% so that only 25% of our kids graduated from high school? The economy would go into the toilet. How about all the cities that now have a graduation rate of just 25%? They are not going into the toilet, because they are alreay there.

How about medical doctor graduation rates here in the USA? In 1975 the number of imported new doctors was 50%. Then we only produced 50% of our new doctors. What is it now? We only graduate 40% of the doctors that we need. If we did not graduate any medical doctors, what would our economy look like? In the toilet, right? That is the direction that we are going.

How about science and engineering? In 1986, the number of new engineers graduating from out expensive universities started to drop after going up since the union was formed. Do we need more engineers or fewer. All growing economies are short of engineers except for the USA.

Prior to the real estate bust, it is estimated that home building accounted for 1/5th to 1/4 or our economy and it was growing. This all happened while most unrelated areas of the economy were declining. When taken as a total, every thing looked rosie. Would building too many homes help the economy or hurt it? What about building too few homes? If you build too few, you can always catch up, but you don't have the same alternative if you build too many. What if the homes built are too big or too small? Which alternative would have the best affect on the economy? See how easy it is to figure out these, so called, complicated things?

How about Obama care? Would spending more help or hurt the conomy? Any one who had completed 4th grade would know that spending more on medical would hurt rather than help the economy. See how simple it is? The problem is that 99% of all the things that are happening are "negative" in regard to the economy.

Pick other items and do this test and see what happens.

Obama's Health Care, Pre-Existing Condidtion

Recall the fan fare from Obama regarding his plan to provide insurance for pre-existing conditions? Seems like the chickens are coming home to roost. People are finding that the price for insurance that cover pre-existing conditions is costing a lot more than they want to pay. Didn't everyone with a brain predict this? Now why would an insurance company want to sell a person an insurance policy for less than they would have to pay out. Doesn't everyone know that on average insurance costs more than the average paid directly by the individual for their health service.

I was watching FOX News this morning and they were pointing out that very few people have signed up for the pre-existing condition insurance. It was less than 5% of what the Obama administration had predicted. Where else do you think the Obama administration made bad predictions?

At a time when our number one problem is the economy, can you tell me why Obama and the Democrats would tackle health care? It is a business killer and anyone with a 4th grade education would know this. It is interesting that all the efforts by Obama have been directed toward insurance and nothing toward actually reducing the cost of an office visit. Oh, I forgot about the push for computerization of medical records. If I look at my own medical history, I can find zero benefit from any record computerization. I think this is typical for most people. Recall that we still import 60% of our doctors. Most come from India. Now what do you think will happen as the economy of India improves? I think a lot of Indian doctors are going to stay home or if they come here, they are going to expect to make a lot more.

We can hope that the Obama health care plan will die and fall by its own weight.

Do Something!!!!!

Have you watched the old movies where the girl crys, "Do Something!" It seems this is a common human trait, but now people seem to be calling Obama to, "Do Something!"
The problem is that Obama is an egomaniac and thus feels that he is just short of Superman and can do anything. In a way the general population created Obama and his superior attitude.

I used to teach decision theory at a major university and frequently had to remind my classes that "doing nothing" was the correct alternative in many situations. I was just watching a hunting show on TV and the hunter shot a deer with a bow and his shot was a little off. He was not sure if he had a clean kill or what. I could just see someone calling out for him to, "Do Something". What he did was to call his group together and immediately get out of the area. He said, "let's go and come back in the morning". In affect, he did nothing. When they came back in the morning, the deer was dead just a short distance from where he was shot. Had they "Done something" and ran after the deer, the deer may have run for several miles before it lay ed down and died. This is a simple story, but I think you get the idea.

You always see the movie where the people are in the life boat and some girl calls out for some man to, "Do something". The life boat is at least 500 miles from the nearest help and any paddling will just use up energy and cause the person do die sooner. What they need to do is to keep warm and save their energy so that they can stay alive as long as possible until help arrives.

In the case of Obama, rather than letting natural economic forces adjust to the situation, he went down to the bank and took out all the people's savings and passed out the money. All this did was to make the country weaker and less able to live long enough for the economic situation to work itself out.

Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need an energy policy"? What do you think they mean by this? What they mean is for someone to, "Do something". Most people don't understand basic economics and the fact that logical actions are taking place all the time for simple economic reasons. In the case of energy, people purchase the least expensive energy. You search around for the least expensive gas for you car. If there is a source of energy that is competitive natural forces will cause people to develop it. You don't need Obama and his gang meddling in it. They need to butt out and "do nothing".

If you spill food on the floor, you can bet that you will hear someone say, "Do something". You can't save the food, it is gone. All you can do is to clean up the mess. People seem to know that when you are in the kitchen cooking and drop a knife that you should not "Do something" and try to catch it. You should let it drop on the floor and pick it up latter. Look around and you will see all kinds of situations where someone will call out for someone to, "Do something". Remember that doing "nothing" is frequently the best solution

US History, What Do People "Think" or "Know"?

Rather than try to figure out what people "think", I try to find out what people "know". I have found after 70 years of observations that what people "think" is a lot less significant than what they "know". When you think about it, how can a person have a logical thought if they don't know anything? Religion is a good example of people "thinking" when they don't "know" anything. Notice how most people have gotten all involved with what people "think" rather than what they "know"?

The way that I have gotten around this loop hole is to ask simple questions that have definite answers. In interviewing, we call these "knock out" questions. You could talk to someone for hours and get a very wrong impression if you relied on answers about what they "think" rather than what the "know". I have had several discussions with people who seemed well educated about the character of the USA. They all had plenty to say and were quick to let me know what they "think". I was at first impressed until I asked them a few "knock out" question about American history. Here are the questions that I asked and they could not answer a single one.

* Where is Fort McHenry where Francis Scott Key was held as a prisoner on an English ship while he wrote the Star Spangled Banner?

* Where is Jamestown, the location of the first permanent English settlement in the New World?

* Where is Yorktown, the location of the last battle of the Revolutionary War where the English surrendered?

* Where is Fort Sumpter, the place where the first shots of the Civil War were fired?

* Where is Alamance, the location where the Colonialists with 2,000 fighters fought the Battle of Alamance against 2,000 English troops for two days just prior to 1776?

They could not answer a single one of these correctly, but they could tell me all about Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower. I have a feeling that the several well educated people whom I asked these simple questions are very typical of our general population. You take the test and give it to a few of your friends and tell me how much weight you should be giving to what they "think".

A Word You Don't Hear Much----Efficiency

Why don't we hear the word "efficiency" more? About the only place the word comes up is regard to gas mileage. If a car gets more miles per gallon, it seems that we all accept that as "more" efficient. The problem is that you can seldom define "efficiency" based on just one parameter. What if we had two cars to compare and one cost $5,000, got 30 mmpg and had 100,000 more good miles in it and the other cost $45,000, got 35 mpg and was good for about 200,000 miles. This is a little like the cash for junkers program. The question is, which is the most efficient? When Obama, never took any advanced math or science, analysed this problem, he only looked at the mpg and not the total cost. When you look at the total cost and do a little 4th grade math, you find that the $5,000 car is the most efficient.

The reason that I use the above example is that we are all familiar with it and 99% of us came down on the wrong side. That just might be because the USA ranks 25th out of 30 in science and math. If you see where I am going, you have already concluded that the USA is toast. That might not be true, but it is going to require us to start using our brains and get back to basics.

Now what are these basics? The most important one is "efficiency". Take WWII compared to modern warfare. In WWII, it took several hundred bombs to distroy a factory or bridge. We never did distroy the bridge in North Vietnam. They could get materials across the bridge the full length of the war. Now modern bombing is much different. I takes only "one" bomb to take out a bridge. Now that is efficiency by a factor of hundreds to one. For some reason people understand that farmers are much more efficient now then they were just a few years ago. Most people don't know anything about farming, so why do they come to this correct conclusion in regard to farming? They don't seem to come to a similar conclusion for our school teachers, or the federal department of education. Why is that? They don't understand the concept of efficiency. When the cave man came up with the club, he became a much more efficient hunter for food. His efficiency was rewarded with a meal and he went on form there. How is it any different today. It used to take months to cross the USA from East Coast to the West. Now it only takes a few hours. That is efficiency. It used to take days to get a message across the country and today it takes only seconds. That is efficiency. Now what would this place be like today if we had not made our total systems more efficient? It would be a little like Africa is today.

When the Republicans take over the house in a few weeks, they are going to cutting cost. The reason that they will have to cut costs is that many of the current expenditures are not "efficient". It is like the cash for clunkers. We have to stop spending money, which is like the blood of this nation, on things that do not pay back. When I say, "pay-back" I mean that they payback with interest. Would you put money into something where all that you would get is you same money back in 25 years. Our government has been putting money into things that we will not get our money back from in a million years, much less pay any interest. Notice all the attention given to mortgage rates. A very small change is big news. Why is there not the same focus on government spending? When I administeed big multimillion dollar budgets, I required the proposals to be ranked in terms of the interest that they earned and I had a cut off at about 12% below which I would not go. About all you will see coming out of our government is some kind of "benifit ratio". They assume that if it has a ratio above 1.0 that it is good and should be funded. They never look at alternative places to spend the money or to reject the idea totally.s Look at the big stink when the new Governor of New Jersey stopped the tunnel project. He said that it was not worth the money and he was right. How about the high speed train from Tampa to Orlando? What value is that? There was even on proposed between Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin. There is no limit on the stupidity of polititians.

Now think about it. Isn't this all about efficiency? Each time we spend money or the blood of this nation, it would improve the efficiency of the country and it should do it while paying back interest. Look at any project funded by our government and see if you can find where they calculated the rate of return or interest returned to the tax payers? Ask you congress men and any polititian that you can what rate of return we should expect for our tax money. If we kept the money and invested it, we would be asking about the rate of return, so why not our government?

The bottom line is that we as a nation are so dumb when it comes to math and science that we let people who are dumber than us spend our hard earned money stupidly. That has to stop.

What Happened To Rev. Wright?

Don't hear much about Rev. Wright. What happened to him? He is living in his 6.5 million dollar home paid for by the members of his church. Recall that he was for redistribution of wealth. Seems that he won in the end because 6.5 million dollars from the church was redistributed to him personally. Recall that Obama and his wife sat listening and agreeing with Rev Wright for 20 years. Recall that Obama said that Rev. Wright was one of his most important advisors. Look in the mirror and tell me who you listened to for a period of 20 years who you agreed with and from whom you took serious advice. Rev. Wright is the most important single person in Obama's life. If you look at it another way, every night in the White House in the bed room, there is a total of 40 years of listening and agreeing with Rev. Wright. How many of you are married to a person who has listened and agreed with the same person that you have for the most formitable years of your lives? This is what we are talking about. Recall that Obama's wife stated that when her husband was elected president of the USA, it was the first time in her adult life that she was proud of the USA. That statement was not a single accident, it was a window into what she actually thinks as well as what Obama thinks. Both have been very guarded in their public statement, so this has special significance.

After extending the Bush tax cuts, Obama stated that he still does not agree with extending the Bush tax law to wealthier people. To me this makes it clear that Obama does not understand what a Democracy is. He acknowledged that the public disagreed with democrats policies by the last election, but did not get the message that the election rejected his policies and that his thinking was wrong. He does not understand that the public expects him to "represent" them and that means doing the things that they want. The President is an "agent" of the people and they expect the President to carry out their wishes. Obama is so erogant that he feels that he is the only one who knows what is "wright". He seems to feel that he "won" the office of President and thus can do with it what ever he and his wife wants and we know where the two of them came from. We seem to have forgotten how much influence a wife has on her husband, no matter what the position. We actually have a combination of three people in the White House, Obama, his wife and Rev. Wright.

Think about it?

PS.......

In a prior Blog, I mentioned a BBC TV program called, "Thirthy Up". This where several young children, all age 7 were interviewed. They were then interviewed every 7 years for a period of several years. What came thru was how the first interview at age 7 predicted what kind of person these kids would be later in life. This is what we have with Obama being raised in Indonesia as a Moslem until he was 8 years old. This is a much bigger deal than most people are willing to admit. The time spent with Rev. Wright is a further example of who and what has influenced him and made him the "strange" person that he is.

Obama's Insurance Mandate

Isn't it great to get something for nothing? That is what many people feel about the changes in the Obama medical program. Now an insurance company has to keep your kids on your policy until they are 25 years old. Isn't this great? The insurance companies can't turn you down if you have a serious health problem either. Even better. Now how can we all get these nice free things and not have to pay for it? Now that is the question. First, insurance companies are not some ghost from outer space. They are just simple companies who try to spread risk among all of its customers so that a single customer does not go broke if something serious happens to them. Sounds OK to me. The insurance company has a bunch of smart people who know 4th grade math who can figure out what the average person would spend on health care. They know that a few people have to spend very large amounts when something serious happens once in 50 years, but with the large group of customers, it still only averages, let's say $100 per year. Now what the insurance companies does and many companies are self insured is to charge their customers $110 per year and when the rare one needs to pay a bill of $10,000 they can take it out of the pot. The system works fine and it spreads the risk and prevents individual boats from sinking.

Now along come Obama and changes the rules. Now to cover the kids until they are 25 will require the insurance company to increase the rates to $125 per year. Everyone who voted for Obama now calls their rep and complains that they are not getting their free lunch. Sorry, these are the facts of life.

Now comes the worst case. Look at it this way. Imagine that you have a car that was not insured and it was just in a wreak. With Obama's plan, you have an existing condition, a wreaked car, and you want to buy an insurance policy on it just like there was nothing wrong with the car. Exactly why would and insurance company want to sell you a policy for a good car when your car was already wreaked? He might do it, but after he looked at your car, the price might be very high. Is this a screwed up concept or what?

In any system that requires some kind of compromise, you first have to know what the best alternative is. In the case of health care, it is for every person to pay their own doctor bills and eliminate the insurance companies and the government. If we all paid our own doctor bills, the cost of health care in the USA would drop like a rock. The more money that is available for health care, the more it will cost until all the money is used up. Give your kid some money and see how long it lasts. It is the same with all this money chasing health care.

Sorry, got off the subject a little, but I think you can see that insurance is part of the problem. When you spend someone Elise's money, it always seems to spend a little easier. We need to figure out ways of taking money out of the system, not how to put more in. Remember when deductible insurance was the rage? I have it on my cars and home. When I have small problems, I take care of them and don't bother the insurance company. When I get somethinkl fixed, I get my monies worth. With full coverage, you don't care if you get your monies worth since someone else is paying, but it is really you with the much higher insurance oost. I cut my medical cost for a bladder infection by 67% by asking the doctor to allow the prescription to be refilled two times. If you have had a bladder infection, you can bet that you will have another one in the future. Now, I am ready.

I have found that most insurance salesmen are a lot better salesmen than most of us are customers. Be ware.

Wind Mill Power Off Cape Cod

We used to have a saying that went, "There is a limit to how smart you can be, but there is no limit to how dumb." I just saw on the news an interview with one of the promoters of the Wind Mills off Cape Cod. He said that the wind mills could produce power at a cost of $0.20 per KWH. That is how electricity is measured. I know for a fact that he did not add on the cost of all the tax kick backs that they got for the program and we know that he did not include making a profit like all normal companies do. My bet is that the power cost at least $0.25 per KWH. Now most people have no idea how much they are paying per KWH, so the numbers don't have any meaning for them. It was also interesting that the interviewer did not know anything either or was in on the fraud. I am not sure that my situation is normal, but I pay $0.11 per KWH. I have a second meter for my electric heat that I pay half the regular rate for, or $0.055 per KWH. The reason for this lower rate is that I have agreed with the power company that they can turn off the power to that meter if they need to balance the power to prevent a brown out. They don't lose any money on the special $0.055 rate or they would have have this special rate. Now I am getting to the point. Since the wind mill can not be depended on for 24/7 power, it has to be sold just like my speical rate. I did check on what it costs to generate electricity from coal and it ranges between $0.020 and $0.025 per KWH. Now if the power from the wind mill has a corrected cost of $0.25 per KWH, that makes it 10 times as expensive as coal power and coal power is available 24/7. Realistically, the wind power has a cost that is at least 15 times that from coal. You run the numbers or Google and you will see that I am correct.

The wind power and solar power people are just plane dumb or very dishoest.

You hear the complaint from all these Greenies that we don't have an energy policy, but we do. It is the free enterprise system where every individual buys his or her energy where ever they can find the best price. This is the only economic system that has been show to work over time and get the best results for the most people. Seems to me than we do have an energy policy and it is a good one that does not need any help from the Greenies or the government. Given a choice between electricity from coal or from a wind mill, which would you buy. Further, if we all went hungry and cold using wind power, how do you think I would affect the world? Every country in the world who got their power from coal would laugh at us and would be warm and eating steak and the weather would not have changed as a result of our actions. Shooting yourself in the head with a gun would save more energy than all these wind mills. Why don't more of these Greenies do that?

PS,

What would it cost to burn a 100 watt light bulb for 24 hours if your rate was $0.11 per KWH?

I'll post the number of people who got this simple question right. I hope that it is not "zero".

Science And Technology--Dielectrics

This not a disertation on all of Science, but only a small area that I feel will hold sway in the future. It is not what you might think. It has to do with energy, but it does not create any "new" energy. If you are any kind of scientist, you already know that there is no such thing as "new" energy. It is all here and it has been here since the "big bang". No new energy has been created since.

Here is what I think. We have to find a better "dielectric". Sounds technical doesn't it? Believe it or not, a dielectric is a some thing that does not conduct electricity. Much of the work so far has been on better conductors, like superconductors, but I feel that it is "dielectrics" that will carry the day. There are only a few ways that energy can be economically stored. Oil and coal are a couple of the best, but they have their problems. Along with the storeage of energy comes the need to be able to transport it to where it can be used from where it has be "gathered". With me so far? Now there are different forms of energy and some are heavier than others. Some are more complext to utilize than others. To my knowledge, electricity is the lightest and the easierst to transport, but it is difficult to store. Most electricity now is stored in chemical batteries and a small amount in capacitors. This last one is the one that I am interested in.

Now, how do capacitors work. They are simple devices with no moving parts. The electicity is stored in the form of a charge on oposing surfaces. It is like you walking across a dry carpet in the winter time and getting a shock when you touch the door knob. You are one of the plates and the door knob is the other. Electric power is virtually weightless and that is one of the big advantages. It can be drawn out at a very high rate. This is equivalent to having a very high horsepower motor at your disposal, that you don't have to start or rev up. The concept of the capacitor is very simple. The amount of charge it can hold is a function of the space between the opposing surfaces and the voltage between them. Like most things that sound so good, there are some draw backs. The most important is the space between the two surfaces. Noticee when you approached to door knob, the spark jumped between your hand and the knob before you actually touched the door knob. If we had a better insulator between your hand and the door knob, no spark would jumb when you were very much closer to the door knob and you could also carry a much higher voltage charge. I used to work a a company that made special high performance capacitors. Some were rated as high as 250,000 volts. We used vacuum as the dielectric insulator between the charged surfaces. That meant there was nothing between the surfaces except a few gas molecules, but these were enough to degrade performance. We had a lot of problems with the quality of the surfaces too. If there was the smallest defect on one of the surfaces, a spark could jump across between them and cancel the charge. Science has tried all kinds of methods to get the surfaces closer togeter and to prevent sparks jumping between them. If we could crack this basic problem with a much better mechanical dielectric, it would have a major impact on how we produce, store and transport energy.

Because many of our systems generate electicity at low voltages, like photo cells, we need a much more economical way to raise the voltage so more energy can be stored in higher voltage capacitors. Think about a capcitor that can only handle a 250 volt charge compared to one that can handle a 250,000 volt charge. We are talking about a device that could store 1000 times more energy. Further, if we could also get the plates closer together, it would make the device smaller and able to store even more energy. We are talking about instant on and off energy here. Chemcial batteries are now at their limit. Science can squeeze out a little more, but not much. The Lithimum-Ion battery was invented in 1906, over a hundred years ago, so I would not expect any thing revolutionary in the way of improvements.

Next time you hear someone who seems to understand science and technology talking about the future of energy, as them about the future of "dielectrics".

Reward The Winners, Not The Losers

Does this title sound strange? What we have had for the past couple of years under Obama is a system that rewards the "Losers". When I was a kid of about 5 or 6 years old, I heard the story about "The Little Red Hen". That is the story about the hen who worked hard and when she finally made a loaf of bread, all the dead beat other chickens that did not work wanted, "their share" of the bread. The Little Red Hen said "No" to them and only shared the bread with her chicks. Even at age 5 or 6, this made perfect sense to me. This was also about the time that I heard the story about "Chicken Little". He is the one who ran around telling all the chickens that the sky was falling. The dumb chickens who could not think for themselves ran into the chicken house where the fox was waiting for them. Isn't it interesting how these stories are now not PC. In our schools, no one is a loser. They are all winners even if they don't do their home work or know how to read. Even if you have a dog, you know that if you want the dog to do the right thing, you don't reward him for doing the wrong thing. Can it really be that simple? Yes, and we seem to be doing just the opposite.

Right now we have the "Lame Duck" congress dealing with the Bush tax cut running our on 12/31/10. The Democrats seem set on rewarding losers. How can I say that? People who are out of work are not losers, or are they? In all of my experience, companies always layoff the least qualified worker when it come to reducing staff. If that is the case, most of the workers who have been out of work for two or more years are the worst workers of losers. Many were making more money than they were really worth in their old jobs. Now why do you think that we should approve an additional 13 months of unemployment checks on top of the 24 that they have already collected. In the old days, extensions were for only 13 weeks, not a full year. By making the extensions short, it was an incentive for the unemployed to go find a job of some kind.

Look what is being proposed? The employee has social security taken out of their pay checks at about 7.5%. Obama wants to reduce this by 2% so the employed would have 2% more to spend. Sounds good if you are a "Consumption" economist, but we know that stimulating consumption does little to create new jobs. What should be done is to take 2% off what the employer pays. This would give the creator of jobs the incentive rather than the worker. In China as in most of the world the worker makes a lot less than they do here. Do you think that higher worker pay helps to create jobs or the other way around?

An additional note is that over half of the people in the USA don't pay any income tax, so giving the workers 2% off their social security adds little to tax collections. If the 2% were given to the employer, some of the money would come back to the government in the form of taxes. Both ideas would hurt the Social Security accounts, but giving it to the employers would have a bigger impact on creating jobs. I am not saying that the employee is the "loser", but it is clear that the employer is the "winner" and thus should be the one who is rewarded.

In a prior Blog I showed that many of the unemployed are high school drop outs so why should we reward them? I think that people who have been in prison have a hard time finding or holding jobs. To my way of thinking, "that's tough". Our government and our school system needs to find ways to reward winners, not the losers. I have known many people who were very poor and very few took any charity from the government. They had too much pride. Today, many people feel that they are entitled to free stuff from the government. They have no incentive to do the right thing, because they are rewarded as losers. We need to start ending this crazy business. Until we do, nothing is going to get any better.

Brasil or Brazil And Engineers

I don't watch 60 Minutes all that much, but this last Sunday, they interviewed the President of Brazil. Seems that the eoonomy of Brasil is booming, unlike that of the USA. He was ticking off all the areas in his economy where Brasil was ahead of the USA. There were quite a few. He said that his biggest customer was China, not the USA. Brasil has a positive balance of trade with China, where as, we have a negitive balance. The President said that Brasil had full employment and were actually had a shortage of "Engineers". How strange is that? The number of engineers who graduate from our colleges has actually gone down since 1986. It is actually worse than that, since we had fewer engineers moving into the USA before 1986 and more moving out. Even though we started graduating fewer engineers in 1986, we had fewer engineers moving into the work force prior to 1986. I also know for a fact that many new engineers did not go into engineering. They went into all kinds of other non-engineering jobs. I know some who went into Law and Medicine while others went to work on Wall Street. As you can see, since the USA does not make anything anymore, there is less need for engineers here.

I alway thought that to earn money and get rich that you had to produce something. I guess that I was wrong. I have a lot of friends who made millions "flipping" real estate. We all know that "flipping" real estate is, at best, a zero sum game much like poker. The gambling table does not produce any new money, it only rearranges the money around the table. The game ends when one person holds all the money and there is no way to restart the game except to find new players who have money that has been produced in the normal way, work. This sounds a lot like the game Madoff was playing and for which he went to jail. I forgot, the reason that "flipping" real estate could go on for so long and no one went to jail was that the money all came from the Government. When they ran out, they just printed more and the game went on.

If when you first heard the word, "flipping" and you did not see what was coming down the road, you have to admit that you had your eyes closed. What about the "Dot.Com" bubble? Did you really think that some 19 year old kid who had just learned how to program a computer and was a graduate from a public school system that ranked 25th out of 30 in math was going to, some how, sell more product than Sears? If you did, you were smoking something. As I have pointed out in past Blogs, it is not just the money that we have wasted on screw ball investments like the Dot.Com, but it is the missed opportunities. Most of our competitors did not go off searching for the quick buck and are now in a much better position economically. Right next door in Canada, they did not have to bail out their banks. The reason was that they did not make the crazy real estate loans that we did. They did not have a government loan office like FHA or the other alphabet soup agencies that we did. Us tax payers guarranted the loans that our banks and loan companies originated. The risk was ours and the profits went to the banks and others who origninated the loans. As I have said before, we had a feeding frenzy in real estate that was based on government money. The only thing that I can say is that we are stupid. I guess I must be an odd ball, because I have not made a home mortgage payment in over 30 years. I have never been under water on a home, but I have been under water on several cars, so why is that not just as bad?

Back to the engineer shortage in Brasil. Watch what happens in our school system with respect to science, math and engineers and you will be able to see if we are either going further down, or starting to go back up. When will things get back to "normal"? Normal, just might be the period from 1930 to 1940, who is to say that these past 50 years were "normal"?

Unemployment Rate By Group

I have been finding it hard to locate unemployment data by specific categories like, education level, political party, sex or age. If we are going to understand and deal with this high level of unemployment, it seems to me that we need to break it down in to manageable categories. What I would like to know is how unemployment breaks down between oollege graduates, high school only graduates and high school drop outs. We already know that 40% of our kids drop out of high school. I think that it would be logical to assume that high school drop outs have a much higher rate of unemployment than college graduates or high school graduates. We know the overall unemployment rate and can back into or force out possible unemployment rates for all three categories. We are talking about 4th grade math here. Make your own estimates. Mine are:

Group % of population Unemployment rate Weight
College Graduates 15% 2% 0.3
High School Graduates 45% 5% 2.25
Drop Outs 40% 20% 8.0

Total 100% 10.55%

Our major problem is that our kids are so dumb. The 60% who graduate high school rank near the bottom compared to the rest of the world. The drop outs are off the chart. We don't have an unemployment problem, we have a serious mental problem.

When people in most of the world can't find a job, they come to the USA where they seem to be able to find work. Why don't our dumb kids move to some other country where they can find work? No country in the world wants them. Many Chinese kids who go to school here and even some who were born here are moving back to China. How about that?

Do some of your own calculations and see what you come up with.

Where Education Dropped The Ball

I think that I just might have stumbled onto where our educational system went off the tracks. It was with our colleges and universities. Now just how can what happened in our colleges have such a negative impact on our k-12 education? Think of what just happened in the real estate market. First we had a feeding frenzy and then a total melt down. The real estate problem was the direct result of voters giving themselves loans on homes they could not afford. Seemed like a good idea for everyone to have a fine home. We all wanted a free lunch and you know how that type of thing ends up. Now, education. We all wanted our kids to go to college. It was the responsible thing for our parents to want for their kids and we did the same thing with our kids. The problem is that we did it the same way that we did the real estate thing. We changed the rules so that more kids could go to college. Sounds good so far?

What we did was to dumb down our colleges and we all know that shit runs down hill and that means to our k-12 schools. If our parents want us to go to college and don't make any other specific demands, we will find the easiest way to get the job done. Knowing that our colleges have been dumbed down and simple minded majors added, all we have to do is the minimum in k-12 knowing that we can still get into college. For many college majors, the only prerequisite is that you graduated from a high school. The college does not care what classes you took in high school since many will be repeated in college. You might have to get good grades in high school, but that is taken care of by "grade inflation". Have you noticed how many bumper stickers you see saying that, "my kid is on the honor roll"? I saw one that said, "my dog is smarter than your kid on the honor roll". I feel this latter one is very true. How can 75% of our kids be on the honor roll with only 60% even graduated from high school?

It is clear that our kids are among the dumbest in the world with it comes to reading, science and math and we need to do something about it. Here is my solution. In most college majors, there are a set of classes that all majors have to take. These are like English, History and Philosophy. Notice that none of these required classes are very hard or require any prerequisite. My solution is that all majors would have to take Physics, Chemistry and Math thru calculus. These are the hard classes that most of our dumb kids don't want to take. If we want smarter kids, we have to start making all college majors more difficult and stress math and science like all other counties in the world do.

What would happen is that at least 50% of our kids could not get in or stay in college. This would mean that we could cut the cost of higher education and at the same time make tuition much less for those who were qualified. You know the old expression, "bad money drives out good"? It is the same way with education. When we let our kids go to college and take bull shit majors and classes, it removes any incentive to work hard and be competitive. Some parents feel that their kids need, "the college experience". Exactly what is that? Do they need a period after high school where they can be more irresponsible than they were in high school? When I look back at my own college days, I know a lot of students who were in these bull shit majors who seemed to be having a very good time. In engineering and the sciences, it was much different. Do you think that is the reason that we have been going down as a nation in terms of engineering graduations since 1986? Our dumb kids saw that engineering was a lot more work and that bull shit majors were a lot easier and seemed to count just as much as a more difficult major with their parents and society. Well, they seem to have gotten their wish. The USA can't pay it bills and the main reason is that our citizens are on average some of the dumbest in the world. We know that all countries in the world have access to this data on education and they know that they are smarter than we are. How much real respect do you think they have for us? Not much. How much respect to do you have for a bum on the street? Look in the mirror, it is the same for us.

We have to change our colleges first and then our k-12 schools. Seems a strange way to solve the problem, but I feel it is the right way. As side benefit is that it would also get rid of many of our dumb teachers at the same time. We know that at least 50% of our k-12 teachers could not graduate college if our colleges had any real standards.

Think about it.

Are Our Kids That Dumb? Public Schools Scores

You might think that I am a broken record, but the current status of our public schools is the number one problem for the USA. All the data on international education has just added in China and guess what? China is number 1 in reading, science and math. Now let's look at the implications. China has the largest population in the world and the fastest growing economy. Several years ago, China anounced that they were going to limit families to only one child. I knew at the time that families with only one kid were smarter and their kids did better in school. At the time, I prredicted that in a short period of time, China would have the smartest and best educated kids in the world and now that fact has come true. Now at the same time the USA continues to go down hill. For many years, Finland was the best educated, but they have lost out to South Korea and China. Like most situations, China did not just now gain the top position. They were working on gaining some time ago. It is my opinion that China started making this big improvement with the first group of kids from the single child families.

Social research has shown for years that kids from larger families have lower IQ's than those from smaller families. Now look at what has been happening here in the USA interms of family size by ethnic groups. Our white population has been tending toward smaller families while blacks and hispanics continue to have larger families. Along with this is the large number of kids who are born out of wedlock. This last group does the worst on all measures. Getting ones self better educated is a social presponsibility. Dropping out of school and not graduating high school is a clear act of social irresponsibility. Breaking the law and going to prison is similarly amoung the most irresponsible acts. Now look at China. Based on education, China's young people are the most responsible, while ours are amoung the least responsible.

The problem is "What are we going to do about this situation?"

PS, Here is a little data from 2007. Since China was added to the data uin 2011, China is #1 in reading, science and math. How do you like that? Here is the 2007 list of education and skills which is a fairly good measure. Our kids are basically dumb. Get used to it, because nothing seems to be changing.
1--Findland
2--Canada
3--Japan
4--Switzerland
5--Sweden
6--Australia
7--Germany
8--Netherlands
9--Belgium
10-U.K.
11-Denmark
12-Austria
13-Ireland
14-France
15-Norway
16-USA

This based on a limited # of countries who participated in the testing, but it is clear where our kids stand. They are just dumb, period. If China were in the group, they would be #1 and South Korea would be #2. Isn't South Korea where the batteries for the GMC Volt are designed and built? We have to ask ourselves what products that we make here that anyone in the world would want to buy? What can we product better or cheaper than anyone else? it is getting to be a very short list.

Look In The Mirror, Economic Situation

We are hearing all this talk about rich people and big corporations being the cause of our current economic problems. It seems to fit with the current mentality of the American citizenship that we are all "victums" and thus not responsible for our actions. When we see the Black community claiming that they are just the "victums" of slavery and thus not responsible for the fact that 90% are born out of wedlock or that over 50% don't graduate from high school or that 50% of young black males who don't graduate end up in prision, we see all this as a cheap excuse for simple irresponsibility. Now isn't it just the same for the rest of us regarding the state of real estate prices? It is not the millionaires who are having big problems paying their home loans. It is us. Aren't we the ones who bought homes that we could not afford? The home we bought is still the same home. If we could pay the mortgage when we moved in, then why can't we do it now? How is it any different from our cars? As soon as you drive your car off the dealer's lot, it is "under water". It is not worth what you just paid for it.

Under normal conditions there is a restraint on our collective stupidity. Under normal conditions as exist in most countries, you can't buy a home that you can't afford because no one will give you a loan. That was not the case here in the USA. Us voters put pressure on our elected officials to make it easier for us unqualified people to buy homes we could not afford. Like dumb animals, we all started into a feeding frenzie in real estate. Like most animal level feeding frenzies, they end up much like the situtation that we are now in. Don't agree, look in the mirror.

Now how do we get out of this? Do we go after richer people? Who are these richer people? All the ones who I know made their money legally by hard work, so why does a person who did not earn their own money by hard work feel that they have a right to someone elses bank account? The only way to get out of this is for those who were in the feeding frenzie to "work" their way out. 100% of unions are a part of the feeding frenzie problem, unless they are part of this group we call rich. We have to lower our wages and consumption so that our products are competitive on the international markets. Right now the only things from the USA that are internationally competitive are farm products, very high tech and raw materials like coal. Hardly anything that is made by physical labor is internationally competitive and the main reason is labor cost and burdensom regulations.

We have to stop trying to blame someone else and look in the mirror. We all know that we can't solve a problem until we admit that we have a problem. Isn't that how Alcoholics Annomimus works? Members have to go up front of their group and admit that they are a "Drunk". Look in the mirror, are you a "Drunk">

Social Self Selection, Chapter #2, Teacher's Union

This one is a little outside my normal area, but I feel that my ideas are interesting and have merit. My position is that in distributed systems, things like "Self selection" can be very significant even if the forces are very small. Notice that I am a gardener and have been a Bee keeper for many years. A hive of Bees is a perfect example of a distributed system. That is there is no central governmental control of the hive and it is left to each Bee to conduct him or her self for the sole benefit of the hive. The Queen Bee is not the boss or in direct control of the hive. All she is is a egg laying machine and if she is not doing her job to the satisfaction of the hive, they will kill her and hatch new Queen. The reason that I point out how a Bee hive works is that I feel that many aspects of our human system are based on a similarly distributed system and thus follows similar rules. Now how does "Social Self Selection" fit into all this?

I have trying to figure out why our country and particularly our educational system has changed and changed to the worse here in the USA in such a short period of time. I think that it is clear that the quality of our teachers in our public schools have significantly declined over the past 40 years. You may disagree, but that is my observation. Since I am familiar with public schools around the world and have an opportunity to compare, I find that the quality of their teachers have not declined, but may have actually improved. Agree or not, those are my observations and I want to know why. I have presented similar positions before, but did not go into why the decline occurred. I think that is has been mostly due to "Self Selection". For the past 40 years kids of lower teaching competence have "Self Selected" to become teachers rather than assembly line workers.

I belonged to a fraternity while in college and to this day the students that I met and associated there are still some of my closest friends wtih whom I still share many common values. That has not been true of any group or association before or since. Was it just luck? I don't think so. I knew a lot of students from other houses and still communicate with many to this day, but I did not at the time have a similar relationship with them nor do I today. We "Self Selected" ourselves in the individual fraternities and it was very efficient where few exceptions got thru. The whole process took a couple of weeks, but it was through. This is what i contend is happening right here under our noses all the time.

Did you read the book "Bell Curve" It was one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. One key point from the book was about college graduates and non-college graduates, but would apply to many segments of our population. The research states that, "if you are a college graduate, then 90% of your best friends will also be college graduates". With me so far? The other side of this is that, "if you are not a college graduate, then 90% of your best friends will also not be college graduates". Interesting. If you don't think that this is true, then test yourself and your friends. You could do this with marriages too and the results would be similar. What is the force that causes this to happen? The force is so small that most of us are not even aware that it is having any impact on our decisions and judgements, but it is clear that is has.

Try this one. In a chemistry class, we mixed several different liquids of different colors together that had very near the same density. We let the bottle stand for a while and it did not take very long for the colors to separate according to their densities. The force on each molecule was so small that it could not be measured, but it was enough to, over time, to cause each to find the location in the density chain where it was most comfortable. Now in a population of 300 million don't you think we have the same thing going on?

Years ago, I had the good fortune to have sat and had a cup of coffee with Linus Pauling. You know, they only person to ever earn two Nobel prizes. He told me that he lived in a small town in Oregon and his first prized gift was a chemistry set. Back in those days, you could get all the chemical refills at your local drug store. Myself, like Pauling prized my first chemistry set as did most of the kids of my age. Now the reason that I bring this up is that at one time the Chemistry set was the most prized gift and now it is not even in the top 100. What has happened? Do you think it is some kind of evil conspiracy or something a little more simple like "Self Selection"? It might be both, but Self Selection is in there some place. Some thing significant has changed and we should what to find out why.

Now do you see why I am taking the position that "Self Selection" has cause the USA to have ended up with lower quality public school teachers? I have mentioned the "Brain Drain" that has benefited the USA over the past 60 years. Weren't those the result of "Self Selection"? The affect was to cause the average IQ of the USA to be raised to above 100. The change may have been small, let's say just an additional 1%, but as you can start to see, even small changes can make a big difference in how a distributed system works. What would happen if the brain drain stopped or reversed? I would expect it to have a significant affect.

We just had another example of how something that did not seem all that significant could almost bring down the economy of the USA. And what would that have been? How about the affect on the real estate market when our government said that they would insure new home loans with no money down and would not require any verification of the borrower's ability to pay back the loan. It would be like sitting a jar of honey about 100 yards from a Bee hive. Within 30 minutes there would be over a thousand Bees fighting for the honey. Isn't this about what we had?

If you agree that we have had adverse "Self Selection" in our public school teachers, how do we reverse the process or at least not let it get any worse. You know that to get better, we have to first stop getting worse and we have not been able to do that yet.

When I was in public school, it was common for a teacher to take papers home to grade them. Do you think teachers do that today? Some thing has changed and it has not been for the better.

Teacher's Union Gone Wild, Chapter #1

All of us have had some kind of relationship with public school teachers and thus have some basis to judge the current situation with our public school teachers and their Union. During most of my schooling, I had the good fortune to have not had any teacher who were memeber of any Teacher's Union. I can not say the same for my children or my grand children. All I can say for sure is that something very significant has occured since the time that I was in school and now when my grand children are attending public schools. Here are some of my thoughts on what has happened.

The teachers who I had in school were all products of the Great Depression. Now why do you think that might be important? They were the ones who won WWII and help to free most of Europe and Asia. They were given an almost impossible job and they did it without serious complaints. These were the teachers that I had. Were these teachers better than those who came before them? Maybe, but I don't think much better. I do know that those who came after were different and different in many ways. These new teachers were the children of those who survived the Great Depression and we know thru history that every parent wants to take the best care of their children that they possibly can. It is normal and natural. Now compared to before WWII, most parents were poor and were clearly limited in what they could provide to their children. Now after the war, with our new wealth, parents were able to provide more and more for their kids. Right? More is better isn't it. My point is that the teachers who were teaching mine and your kids were children of these Great Depression and WWII survivors. How about a little story?

I was having coffee with a friend who is now a retired teacher who was also the child of one of these survivors and we were talking about what has happened with our public education system since we were in school and she had these comments. She said that in her classes in the Education Department, it was full of unqualified student and that the faculty seemed to be dumbing down the classes so as not to flunck too many students out. I have always thought this due to my own experiance as an Engineering student. Between 60% and 75% of the kids who I started out with as Engineering freshmen never graduated as Engineers. Those who did not leave college altogether mostly went into teaching. That's right, teaching. The point that I am making is that given a natural selection of a hundred kids from the 40's, only the top 10% to 15% went on to college. Think of the Football college draft just picking the top 10% to 15% of the top players. It is the same for teachers. Now after the WWII, we again select 100 average kids, but now we send 25% off to college rather than the old 10% to 15%. Now when these kids get to college there is a "draft" like in football where many are not selected for the most difficult majors and thus go into fields like Education. Have you ever seen a public school teacher claim that they are a good teacher even though they are not very good in Math or Science? I have heard it a thousand times and so have you. This is not just a fluke, it is a sad fact of life. Our average teacher is a few steps down on the ladder. In one study on the East Coast, they found that the average IQ of the teachers was lower than that of their students, which was 100. This is what you get when you take a group and select out many of the really smart ones before you start picking the ones to become teachers.

After WWII, we had a surge of our kids going into Math and Science well beyond the ratios prior to WWII. The best were also going into other areas rather than Education a higher rates. This was a key factor for girls. Most girl survivors of the Great Depression were funneled into Education and Nursing. This is where the smartest girls went. It was the normal thing to do. Now after WWII things were reversed and smart girls started going into all kinds of things rather than Education. Prior to WWII 98% of Dentists were men as were lawyers. Now what is it? If you go to any law school or dental school, you will find that most of the student are girls. Things have changed and they have changed in a big way.

This is chapter #1 on the subject and you can start to see the change taking place. Like any big change, it takes a while for the change to work its way thru the system until it starts to dominate. That can take as much as a generation or about 15 to 20 years and that is about the time frame we are talking about here.

Think about it.

What Does School Really Cost?

This is a somewhat of a repeat, but I think you will that it is justified. We all want good schools and our kids to do well in school. This has always been the case here in the USA. Early pioneers were quick to build country schools where ever they settled. Most we just one room and the teacher was some young person who could read and write and who often boarded with one of the families in the area. That was how it was done and to the surprise of most people today, the results were as good or better than our results today. These people did not have much money so they had to make sure they got their monies worth from their one room schools. From the begining it was thought that if they could just afford more, they could have better schools and their kids could get a better education. Spend more and get more. What a logical sounding theory. Like most theories, it has never been "Double Blind" tested. We all know that many things that we take for granted when "Double Blind" tested turn out to be wrong. I feel this is the case with our educational system.

We would all accept that spending more does not give proportional results. It is a simple case of "Diminishing Returns". I think we can all accept that. If we actually get more by spending more, we must agree that the addition benifit cost more per unit of improvement. At some point the benifit of more spending is almost zero. In the case of the USA, I feel that we hit the zero benifit point a long time ago, why else would our kid's test scores be going down rather than up?

Let's look at what it is costing. To make this as simple as possible, I am going to make the following assumptions;
(1) Every year your kids is in school it costs us taxpayers $10,000. In some states it is more and some less, but $10,000 is a close number and is simple to use.
(2) Our kids go to school from pre-school or head start to 12th grade or for as many as 14 years.
(3) Figure you kid graduates at age 18 and does not have a real tax paying job until age 25 when they start paying back their cost of education.
(4) I assume our kid is responsible and works and pays taxes from age 25 to age 65 for a total of 40 years.
(5) Finally, I assume a 5% interest rate necessary to analyse expenditures over a period of time. I use compound interst just like for your mortgage or your savings account.

With me so far? If your kid was part of the head start program where they went to pre-school before Kindergarten, you kid would have been in school for 14 years when he graduated from high school at age 18. Now, as explained above, they don't start paying off the taxpayer's investment in them until age 25 or 7 years after they graduated. I think that you have to agree that these assumptions are not out of line. Now the big question is how much does your kid owe or have to pay back? Well, the number is $275,760. Bigger number than you thought? Now let's look at how much your kid would have to earn free and clear per hour for the next 40 years to pay back the taxpayers, just like you would pay off your home loan at 5%. How about $8.04 per hour?

For a kid who just went to Kindergarten and 12 normal years of school, he would still have to pay back at the rate of $7.26 per hour for the next 40 years. Now do you think we have some kind of problem?

Now think about the fact that only 60% of our kids graduate from high school and that about 50% of our population don't pay any income tax. That means the ones who graduate and pay taxes have to pay a lot more. What to see what those numbers look like? First, let's adjust the $7.26 per hour for the 40% who don't graduate. Now the number is $12.10 per hour. Now, let's adjust for 50% don't pay income tax and let's assume that all the drop outs fall into this group. That means that 83% of the high school graduates pay income tax. Now the figure goes upto $14.58 per hour. If you don't agree with my numbers, do your own calculations.

As you can clearly see, there is no way that we can afford these kinds of costs for education. We have to make some changes and just where do we need to make those changes? Note, that if I were to adjust the figures for what it cost for a high school degree and the kid went to school for 14 years, rather than the number of $275,760, it would be $459,600. Hey, those are the numbers.
(1) We have to get the cost per student down per year by lowering teacher compensation, increasing class size.
(2) We have to get the graduation rate up significantly.
(3) We have to reduce or eliminate the number of years that our kids are in school and skew the investment toward the latter years rather than the younger years.

Think about these numbers and see what you think we should do.

Malt Your Own Barley

You know that I am the Brewmaster and as such should Blog on beer making from time to time. The reason that I brew my own beer is that I am Cheap and for that reason I need my malt to also be Cheap. It has taken several years and several failures to perfect my malting technique. Now against my better judgement, I am going to share the fruits of my labor with all of you.

First, go to your local farm feed store and buy a bag of barley, but not just any bag of barley. Buy "Seed" barley. There are a lot of types, but the type does not matter all that much. Seed barley has been selected and cleaned so that it has a very high germination rate. That means, most of the seeds will sprout. With regular barley, there is no concern about the germination rate, but with malting there is.

Next you will need a bucket or some other container to wet the barley down in. I use a 10 gallon water canteen like you see at football games where the team dumps the Gatoraide onto the winning coach. These are cheap and have a good lid and a spigot on the bottom. They are also insulated and that will come in handy later. I like to use two of these containers. Fill the container about half full with barley and cover it with tap water at about 65-75 degrees and let stand for a couple of hours. Next, drain off any water and dump the barley into the other container and again cover the barley with water and imediatly drain off all the water from the bottom. This should wet the barley well enough to stimulate germination. Let stand at room temperature over night and next day dump the barley back into the other container. The purpose of this is to assure that a lot of air gets to the barley and that the barley at the bottom of the first container is not over soaked. Next day, do the same thing again and inspect the barley to see if little sprouts are starting to form. Keep this process up until the sprouts are about the same length as a barley seed. The sprout will fold back onto the seed so it will be easy to judge. If the barley starts to get hot during the process, pour on some cool water and dump it back into the other container. This whole process should not take more than 3 days.

Now comes the special part. Buy from one of the brewing supply houses a stainless steel convex shaped filter screen that will fit into the bottom of one of your 10 gallon containers. These screens are sold for use later in your Lautertun. The screen will come with a fitting in the center. Take this out and adapt a new fitting so that a garden hose can be connected to it. Now it gets interesting, but this is the big pay off. You will need a turbine type air compressor like those used for the new type of "High Volume Low Pressure" paint sprayers or HVLP. Attach he air hose to the center of the stainless steel convex screen and place it in the bottom of the empty container. Now you are ready to dump the sprouted barley into the container and turn on the compressor. Clean compressed air will now be forced down to the bottom of the container and up thru the wet sprouted barley. It may take upto 6 or 8 hours to completly dry down the wet barley. During this process, the new sprout on each barley seed will dry up and die. Now the first stage is complete.

Turn off and take out the air hose and filter and start dumping the barley back and forth between the two containers. This will cause the dried up sprouts to seperate and fall off. If you do this outside in the wind, the wind will blow all the dead sprouts away and you will end up with "Malt" that looks almost like the barley that you started with. If you have been buying malt from a supplier, this is what basic pure malt looks like.

From this point on you can use the malt like you would anyother pure untoasted malt. If you were to use this malt in beer making it would yield a very light colored and flavored beer. It would first have to be crushed and mashed, but that is the subject of another blog.

Events Or Trends?

Us humans think about everything in terms of our own existance and the experiances that we have accumulated in the short period of our lives. Some times this leads to good conclusions and some tines it does not. What I have found is that many of the things that I concluded were "Trends" were in fact the simple results of a single event. If you look at a many trends and try to look back to the start of that trend, you will find that it is the result of some single event. The further thing that you will find is that is was a "one time" event and will not happen again. This is why I feel that thinking of things as "trends" misses that main point of the cause and the liklyhood of such an event or trend to occur again or even contine.

Take some thing big like the human race. If someone in your aicent history did not take part in sex, you would not be here to day. Going all the way back to what ever the start was, 100% of those who came before you were into sex. This is an example of where some required event continued to happen in order that the trend or continueance of the human race was made possible. See, it was and event and not some trend.

We hear all kinds of things about how great the USA is and of all the things that we have accomplished. There is a strong trend of the USA continuing to grow in economic strength and power. It is a trend that will just continue on and on. Right? I don't think so. Now let's take a look at events.

The Native Americans were here for about 30,000 years and during that time they never had an "Event" of smelting iron for did they have an "Event" of making gun power. They did have an event of discovering how to grow corn, potatoes, beans and tomatoes amoung many other crops. They had the event of discovering how to select the best seeds and thus develop corn and other corps that were far superior to those that they started out with. They did this for about 20,000 years and were able to feed and cloth more people here in America than there were in all of Europe at the time Columbus first came to America. Columbus did not discover America, he was lost.
Because Europeans had the "Event" of iron and gun power, it was easy for them to kill off most of the Native Americans and take over their land.

The price that Europe paid for all of America was very small. As an "Event", it was one of the biggest in all of human history. It was, however, a one time event that can never be repeated. Now what happened after that event? It appeared to be some kind of special trend of growth and power in America. If a few people today could take over as much wealth so easily, don't you think that such an event would create what appeared to be so great trend?

A more recent event was the aftermath of WWII. This old USA went into WWII broke, much like we are today. The big evert, however, was that after WWII we were the only ones standing and could easily pick up the pieces and we did. The Great Depression was a thing of the past. Us hard working Americans with just our skill and intelect were able to become very wealth after WWII.

I might remind you that Argentina was considered the richest country in the world prior to and just after WWII, not the USA. They had rich farm land and were neutral during WWII and sold to all sides. There used to be a saying, "Rich as an Argentine". After the Eropeans killed off all the Native Americans in Argentina, they were able to grow cattle and wheat for almost nothing. The power and wealth of Argentina was clearly driven by a single event that can never be repeated.

Have you ever been to a true Ghost Town? There are all kinds of them around the world where some event put them on the map. It was Gold or Rubber or some other special event that caused them to grow and become wealthy. Denver was where the dish Oysers Rockefeller was created. The reason was that rich Gold miners in the Denver area wanted to buy the most expensive dish in the house and that was Oysters. The fact that they had to be brought overland by wagon on ice made them very expensive and many would start to go bad. By adding spinach and baking them, they could be made palitable, thus Oysters Rockefeller. The point is that most of the old mining towns are now ghost towns. The single even that started the trend toward wealth just "played out".

How about the light bulb or the transistor. These were events that appeared to have started trends. They are like throwing a stone into a pool of water and seeing the rings that form as trends that continue, but decline over time and distance. Notice that both the light bulb and the transitor were the work of single individuals or private companies, not governments. There would be no computers today without the transistor. A "Chip" or integrated circuit is just a bigger more complex transistor. Did you ever think about what the USA or you life would be like without the transistor having been invented. Notice that even the word invented comes from the base, event!

In a prior Blog, I mentioned the event of all those smart technical people from Germany coming to the USA before and after WWII. What if they had all gone to some other country? How about all the smart Russians who also came here? Now when was the last time we had a bunch of really smart and well educated people come here from some other country? OH! That's right, we get 40% of our medical doctors from some place else. It has been a long time hasn't it. Do we have a trend down? Do we need some more special events that will benifit the USA, or are we smart and hard working enough to pull ourselves out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves?

Did you know that it was not that long ago that we were the largest oil producer in the world? We still have more coal than anyother country and it is easy to get and is of high quality. How about farm land? I mean really good farm land. China has more, but we still have most of the best.

One final note, we are 25th out of 30 in the world in math and yet spend more than anyother country on education. Do you really think we are going to make it by keeping doing what we are now doing?

When Did It Really Happen?

I think you must know by now that I am a very simple person and that I don't find most things very complex. I have found that when you don't know much about something, It always seems complex, but when you finally understand it, it turns out to be very simple. Now take the state of our country? We are in a big mess and many feel that the country is not only broke financially, but basically broken. This place is not like the place that we were all born into. If you don't agree, you must be smoking something. We all know that we are in a mess, but "when did it really happen"? It is like being stuck in the mud. You look out and see that the wheels of you car are sunk hopelessly in deep mud. The fact is that you were stuck in the mud long before you looked out the window and saw mud all around you. This is what I am talking about with respect to our economy and the state of our Union.

I'm going to try to trace what happened by way of our educational system. Further, to keep this simple, I am only going to trace engineering graduation rates. For years we produced engineers in colleges and universities at a slow but steady rate. After the big economic crash of 1929 we could not continue to send as many of our kids to college so that they could earn engineering degrees. But wait, something happened. The best educated country technically in the world, Germany, came crashing down worse than the USA. This resulted in some of Germany's best engineers and technical people moving to the USA. Many got jobs a teachers and professors in our universities. I think you must know a few. This helped, but it was not enough to push us over the top. We still had our "Great Depression" to deal with. Then along came WWII where we drafted every farm boy in the country and trained them and sent them off to war. Now it gets interesting. When the war was over we had all these well trained and motivated young men on our hands. We also had most of the rest of the world bombed to rubble. Some one go the idea of the "GI Bill" where the government would provide a very small almost a subsistence allowance for these kids to go to college. All their young lives college was a dream outside their reach. They were all willing to work hard and only needed a very small helping hand to realize their dreams.

So in 1945, we were off to the races with respect to graduating engineers. Our colleges and universities were over run with engineering applications. Many were turned away and only the best were accepted. The USA continued it growth in engineering graduations until we hit the peak in 1986, after which we started to decline. My point, how ever, is not 1986, but exactly when did the decline start to happen. You all know that before something that has been going can come down, it has to first stop going up! So when did we stop going up? Due the prosperity in the USA after WWII, many more families could afford to send their kids to college and they did. The point of this is that while college enrollment was going up, the percentage of engineering students was going down. This means that the problem recognized in 1986 started far earlier. Our population was growing and the numbers of kids going to college was growing, but not for engineering.

I'm going to guess at some of these numbers to make a point. We know the problem started before 1986 and we know that big things with a lot of inertia don't change fast. On this basis, my guess is that the decline in our kids being motivated to take up engineering must have started at least 16 years before. I say this, be cause even the increase in the number of our kids going to college was not enough to counter the trend. This means that about 1970, we turned some kind of corner about who we were as a nation. This means that our kids about the age of 18 or 19 who were going off to college in 1970 were different from the ones who had gone off before them.

If the kid went off to college at age 18 or 19 in 1970, this means they were in our public high schools from about 1966 to 1970. Now I think we might be getting some place. Isn't this the middle of the hippie movement and free love and the flower people? How about Pot? How about Dr Spock? I think this is when it all really happened. It was about this time that we as a country went off the tracks. It happened in the bigger cities first and in the Northeast and on the West coast, but it eventually spread nation wide. Now to fix a problem, you have to first find the cause. Now I think that I have found the cause, but I leave it to you to come up with the cure.

Back To Class Size

You hear a lot of talk about class size and why we should have smaller class sizes. This all sounds good on the surface and that is where most voters stop their analysis. They work on the basis, "if it is good for the kids, then we should do it". This might work if we had unlimited resources, but we don't. We don't have unlimited money or time. We have to prepare our kids for life and there is a limited amount of time and money to do the job. Now if you agree with this basic point, we can go on to see if we can come to some compromise. Yes, that's right, a compromise. You might notice that about everything in life is some kind of compromise, so start getting used to it. The compromise here is exactly how many kids should we have in a class? Where do you start and what do we consider? Let's see.

If you read some of my prior Blogs, you will already understand that 99% of optimization decision points are on the flat area of the optimization curve. That is the point where the slope or first derivative is zero. I like to show off a little calculus once in a while, but you don't need to know calculus to understand this. We know that there is an optimum class size and it is some where between one and infinity and we know that the area of optimum is in a flat area. We also know that all the data that we use to calculate this optimum class size is subject to differing degrees of error. That is just a fact. If anyone tells you that they know or have calculated the optimum class size, I can tell you that they are incompetent. The point is, we know in advance that the optimum class size we calculate is going to be off to some degree. Now this is where it gets interesting. Just to make this easier to follow, let's assume that we have calculated that the optimum class size is 25. If we test the "value: function for a class size of 20 and 30, we will notice that they yield about the same "value" function as the optimum 25 class size. Conclusion is that it does not make much difference whether the class size is 20, 25 or 30. Interesting isn't it? This takes us to how to interpret these interesting results.

Now if you were the teacher's union who only has the sole interests of the kids at heart, you would push for the class size of 20. Smaller is always better. If you were a tax payer, you would push for 30 because the "value" function for 30 was about as good as for 25 and you would save a lot of tax money by needing fewer teachers. See how this whole thing works? The teacher's union would never claim that the reason the want the class size of 20 was so that the school would hire more teachers. Teachers are the good guys.

Now,let's look as some more aspects of the problem. We know that the school has newer and older teachers. Does it seem logical that newer teachers should have smaller class sizes and older teachers larger? Seems logical to me. Years of experience teaching should result in teachers being more "productive". Older teachers get paid more, so why can't they teach more kids? Interesting isn't? How about the complexity of the course being taught? Can a teacher teach more kids in a history class than they can in a math or physics class? Complexity should come into the consideration at some point.

Here is another. The teacher's unions look at the national school system when they come up with their recommendation for class size. The national average high school graduation rate is only 60% and in some cities it is below 50%. At the same time there are some districts where the high school graduation rate is over 90%. Do you think that all schools, no mater what their graduation rates are should have the "same" optimum class size. I you got thru 4th grade, I think you would agree that in schools where the kids are well mannered and have responsible parents that the optimum class size should be larger than the national average.

What I have tried to point out is just another way the the teacher's union is screwing the tax payers of this nation. You must already know that the "Head Start" program had "zero" affect on improving school performance. After the fact studies have clearly shown that these expensive programs were a 100% waste of tax payers money. As tax payers and parents, it is your responsibility to see that your kids get a good education and that it is done at a reasonable cost. We spend more than any country in the world and we get the worst pop for the buck. We need change and it is not going to come from Obama and his teacher's union buddies.

VAT Value Added Tax

A few years ago I wrote a Blog on the "Value Added Tax" concept. I don't think most people here in the USA have any idea about exactly what a VAT is or how would affect our economy. Now I see some of the new Republicans talking about VAT again as part of the solution. To understand how a VAT would impact our economy and jobs here in the USA, you have to first look at how things work now.

Everyone knows that social security is on a course to failure. When it started we had 12-15 workers for every retired person. Now and in the future this ration will do down to 2 to 1. That is just one of the problems. All the money that was paid into the social security pot over the years by individuals and companies has been used to buy government bonds. It was not a lot different from what the Fed is doing now by buying new government bonds. In both cases the government spent all the money from selling the bonds and are now selling more bonds to anyone who will buy them. All of this adds to the national debit. The bottom line is that there is "no" money in the bank for future claims by social security. The other point is that we have entered into all kinds of trade agreements around the world with counties like China. We have agreed not to place tariffs on products from these countries. The result is that we are now in a "one way" trade program with China and a lot of other countries. Because of our legal, banking and distribution systems, it is a lot easier to sell products here in the USA that for us in China. We lose in 90% of these trade agreements. Now we have agreed not to tax imports to level the playing field. See the problem. Back on social security, our government did a slight of hand on how the social security is funded. The worker pays about 8% of his gross pay into social security and the employer matches it. Sounds good, but the affect is bo bury 100% of the social security in every product that we produce. That is where we screw ourselves. We make every thing that we make here more expensive by at least 15% while imported items from China don't have to add this 15% onto their products. I can only conclude that we are stupid to have such a system. Now a little history. If we produced 100% of what we use right here in the USA, it would not make any difference how we collected the tax to pay for social security, but that is not what we have now. Back in the 1930's we made 90% of what we used. In the 1940's and 1950's, the rest of the world had to buy our stuff, no matter what it cost. That is not the case now. I think that by now, you must have a better understanding of why were are in the mess that we are in.

Shifting to a VAT tax for 100% of the social security tax that amounts to about 15% will have the affect of making our products cost 15% less, while making the products imported from China 15% more. Now if we look at our consumption based on 50% being imported and 50% being produced here and a VAT of 7.5%, we would collect the same amount of tax from the VAT as we collect by the current method. You can do the math. The big difference is that our home made products would cost 7.5% less and those made in China would cost 7.5% more. I feel that this would go a very long way toward leveling the playing field. Our exports to the rest of the world would also go down by this same 7.5%.

Think about VAT and do some math and see if you don't agree? The problem is that our politicans have lied to us for so long that now when they seem to be on the right track, no one believes them. It is like the kid who cried "wolf" one too many times. I would be interested in your comments.

Sea Salt, Make Hydrogen?

Have you noticed all the TV adds about how good "Sea Salt" is? I see all kinds of claims in TV adds, but never any rebuttal or correction. I think "Sea Salt" is one of the great ones. Campbell Soup's TV adds claims that they now use "Sea Salt" and that now they can use less to get the same old good taste. This means their soup has less Sodium. Isn't that great? If anyone took chemistry in high school, they know that "all" salt is the same. Sodium Chloride. The only way that I can see that "Sea Salt" might have less Sodium per pound is that "Sea Salt" has more contaminates than other salt. The fact that a pound of "Sea Salt" actually does not contain a full pound of salt could prove that a pound of "Sea Salt" has less Sodium than regular salt. Sounds like splitting hairs to me.

How about this one? One of the big oil companies ran this add on TV. They showed a young woman who claimed she like math and science. She explained that the oil companies have had "big" machines that produced Hydrogen for years and have been working on reducing the size of these units. They claimed that if they could get the units down to a small enough size, then they could put them in cars so that they could make their own Hydrogen. They claimed that this would result in much better mileage and save the environment. Sounds OK, except that their claims are 100% Bull Shit. It is almost impossible to "make" Hydrogen and no oil company ever "made" any Hydrogen. What they have done is to sperate Hydrogen from other compounds. 90% of the time the Hydrogen is "seperated" from natural gas. This is the cheapest way to get pure Hydrogen. If a car was to "seperate" Hydrogen on board the car, the Hydrogen would have to come from some place, and what would that be? They would have to carry a very large amount of natural gas and also have a place to store the Carbon that was left over from the "seperation" process. It also takes energy to do the seperation since pure Hydrogen and pure Carbon are at higher energy states. This fact from physics proves that the claim by the oil company is total "Bull Shit".

Any high school graduate who has taken any science class would know that the oil company TV add is BS.

Interesting Data On California

I was just digging thru some data on California and thought it was insightfull. The average home price is $467,000 while the average family income is only $61,021. This means the average home costs 7.65 times the annual average family income. The rental rate that my father used to charge was 1% per month of the value of the rental home. It took 1% to make any money on the rental property. Now if you look at what the $467,000 home as a rental, it would rent for $4,670 per month. That works out to $56,040 per year. That means the average family in California would have to spend 91.8% of their gross annual compensation. Given deductions from their gross pay, the rental cost of their homes would take over 100% of their pay. Now, maybe you can see why California is so screwed up financially.

I could not believe these numbers, so that is why I did this blog.

How About That Post Office?

We just found out that our US Post Office lost $8 billion dollars last year. We are always seeing these large numbers in the news, but do people really have any understanding of the significance of these big numbers? I don't think so. My guess is that 90% of our citizens could not tell you what the $8 billion dollar loss by the Post Office amounted to per person. Seems that most people get all mixed up when the numbers are followed by more than one or two zeros. I guess that is because the USA ranks about 25th in the world of the top 30 economies in basic math.

We know that there are about 300 million people in the USA. 300 million is 3 followed by 8 zeros. 8 billion is 8 followed by 9 zeros. To divide the $8 billion dollars by the 300 million people, we subtract 8 zeros from both numbers. This leaves us with $80 for every 3 people. Now if we assume the aveage family size is 3, then the US Post Office has a loss of $80 per family or $26.67 per person. I don't think that I buy $80 worth of stamps per year. If that is the case, the US Post Office would have to more than double their rates to break even.

This business of people not understanding basic math affects the quality of our voters in many areas. I have heard on the news that the state of California has a deficit or about $28 billion. The state of California has about 30 million people and about 10 million 3 person families. Their deficit works, out using basic math, to $933.33 per person and $2,799.99 per family of 3. Once you take these big numbers down to an understandable level, people can see their significance.

How about a nation debit of $14 trillion dollars? Our population is about 300 million. $14 trillion is 14 followed by 12 zeros. Recall that 300 million is 3 followed by 8 zeros. Again, using simple math, we subtract 8 zeros from both numbers and get $140,000 divided by 3 for $46,667 per person. For families of 3 this works out to $140,000 per family. We know that half of Americans don't pay any tax at all, so the families who do pay taxes will have to come up with twice this amount for a total of $280,000 per family.

See what happens when you understand basic math and can boil big numbers down to a size that one can understand?

Is Anyone Listening"

We are "Broke"! How are we going to be able to pay back China? First, we have to stop spending more than we are earning. Until we get even we can not expect to start paying anything back. To pay back China, we have to earn "more" than we spend. Now how do we start doing that? We have to look at every thing that we do and spend. Sounds good so far, but what are the specifics? I think it is clear that our governments at all levels spend to much and get to little value for that big expenditure. I am big on "efficiency". Quality of life is based on primary productivity and productivity is a function of "efficiency". See how most systems connect at some point? Everyone is looking at Washington DC when much of our public expenditures and waste are at the state and local level. We need to start close to home with our expenditure reductions. That means our own homes, our local goverrnments and state governments.

At the state and local level, our biggest expenditures are for education. From my prior Blogs, you know that we are not getting our monies worth from our education dollars. Our education system is simply not efficient. Education is a primary investment that we spend large amounts of money on so that we will get a big payback at some point in the future. Why do we make investments in anything? It is to earn back more than we have spent. Education is no different. Try this?

I just looked up on Google what the "10 worst paying college degrees" were. Here they are: (1) Social Worker, (2) Elementary Education, (3) Theology, (4) Music, (5) Spanish, (6) Horticulture, (7) Education, (8) Hospitality, (9) Fine Arts, (10) Drama. This is the list. It is intersting to note that the number 1 Masters Degree at the University of Wisconsin is "Social Worker". Does that tell you something? Most of the degees on the list are more like "hobbie" degrees. Note than none of these degrees require a person to know any Math or Science. To my thinking, these are all "Bull Shit" degrees and should all be eliminated. The tuition for these degrees should be doubled or trippled because they are not a good investment by us taypayers. We should produce 100% of the education degrees at our local tech schools, not take up space at our universities. People who earn "real" technical degrees, like Applied Math, Physiscs, Chemistry and Biology at our universities should be allowed to teach in our public schools. Now, you have to be dumbed down before you can teach in our public schools.

Try this other one. Who is the highest paid public employee in most states? It is the football or basketball coach at one the state's public universities or colleges. Itn't that interesting. I propose that we eliminate 100% of the PE teachers in our public schools and colleges. Notice that most local news papers spend 100 times more ink on sports than they do on the real mission of our schools. Notice how many kids get atheletic scholarship to go to different colleges. This whole concept is stupid. I know from participating in college sports that it takes up so much of your time that you are forced to take easy or fewer classes. Most kids get "gift" classes where they all get "A's" from the coach. Notice that 90% of kids who play football or basketball in our colleges "don't" graduate or don't graduate in the normal number of years. This costs up millions. Notice that over 50% of our college kids who are lucky enough to play profession sports are bankrupt within 10 years of being out of sports. This whole thing sounds like a poor investment for us taxpayers and our society.

Here is a summary of my position:

(1) Eliminate "Bull Shit" majors and degrees from our universities or tripple the tuition for them.

(2) Eliminate PE teachers and sports from our public schools and universities.

(3) Eliminate Education degees from our universities and colleges and shift them down to local community colleges.

(4) Allow university graduates with real degrees to teach in our public schools.

(5) Eliminate "Bull Shit" classes from our public schools, just like proposed for colleges.

(6) Require that we graduate 90% of our medical doctors and that 90% of the students in our medical schools were born in the USA.

(7) Require that in every university Phd program have at least 80% of the students born in the USA.

(8) Require that all universities and colleges base their acceptance solely on qualifications not race, economics or diversity.

(9) Require that all full time college professors teach at least 9 semester units.

(10) Put up for bid all new teaching positions at our universities and public schools. Hey, they have been doing this for coaches for years!!!

I don't see anything wrong with being a little radical during these radical times.