Equiity And Horizon

 Let's look at grass growing and see what this blog can show you.

I think that we have all known about grass growing, but did you ever really think about it implications? Most people know that if you do not keep your grass mowed it will take over your yard.  That is because we have seen the future when it comes to lawns and know what will happen if we do not get out the lawn mower and mow that lawn.  What about situations where you have not seen the future?  That can be real interesting.

Now let's take a step back and bring in Equity.  You may ask how that applies to grass growing?  Well it does and I will show you why.  Exactly what is Equity or the lack of Equity.  Think about it this way.  If we take something like income and use that as a measure of Equity and then compare the average to the median.  What we will fine is that the median is lower then the average when it comes to income.  If you look at a chart of the distribution of income, you will find that there are a few people who have very very high incomes.  These are the really rich people and there are not many of them.  On the other end at the low end, we find many more people.  I guess it means there are many more poor people than there are rich people.  This is why the median or 50% of the people's income is lower than the average because those few very rich people bring up the average, but have no effect on the median.  I hope you follow that.

Now to the punch line.  The really rich people are looking far out into the future to see ways that they can make more money and get even richer.  Those on the poor end are concerned about their next meal. As the difference between the rich and poor gets greater, the more these two get separated in terms of how far into the future they consider in their day to day decisions.  What this means is that their "Horizons" get farther and farther apart.  Now for how this affects you and the world around us.

Here in the USA I think that most of us can see that the difference between the rich and poor is getting worse, but in the whole world it is getting even worse.  Look at the number of people who are crossing our southern border illegally?  Rather than starving in their home land, they will do anything to just get here.  They do not see that they are over breading and caused their own problems.  They do not look that far into the future.  This is just more proof that the poorer a person is the shorter their horizon.

If you look around you will see all kinds of things that are happening that have the affect of lower or shortening the horizons of our kids.  How about the advice to "follow your dreams".  We hear this all the time from high school career advisors and what does it lead too?  Kid do go to college, but take all kinds of fluff classes that have zero chances of ever paying back their student loans.  It gets even worse. How about grade inflation where all kids are equal and no one can do simple math?  This gives the kids the idea that there is some kind of free lunch, but there is not.  How about the computers?  The kids today can punch the buttons, but none know how a computer really works.  They say, " why do I need to know that?" since they can look up facts on their computer.  The problem is that they do not understand the facts and nor can they tell if the facts are correct or not.

All of this has the affect of lowering or shortening the horizons for our kids and eventually our country.  I think that you know the end results of this down hill trend.  The grass that does not appear to be growing by your kids eventually takes over our whole country.

Quality Of Life & Global Warming

In this blog, I am going to try to show you the link between our Quality of life and Global warming.

If you look at the objective of capitalism, it is to raise the quality of life for the players.  I will admit that it does not always turn out equal for everyone.  That is because it is mostly determined by merit and we all know that all people are not created equal.  Of all the other economic systems, the best one that we know of is capitalism and the free enterprise system.  If there is a better one, I have not heard about it.

My point is that we start out with Quality of life as we now know it and we should recognize that is at the current level and mostly by a process of merit.  Now to Global warming and all the efforts of people trying to bring that about.  The efforts are in several basic areas, (1)  Rewarding some kind of behavior that the Global warming people feel will help their cause, (2) Mandating various new types of conduct that reduce one's quality of life. (3)  Passing laws that limit our personal freedom.  This last one would be things like passing a law against drilling oil wells or against building pipe lines.

What all of these things do is to lower your Quality of life in one way or the other.  Look at the list and see if each one does not lower your quality of life in some way.  They limit your freedom for you to use your God given merit to improve your Quality of life.  If all of the things that the Global warming people improved our quality of life, that would be a good thing, but it does not.

In a prior blog I introduced the Rule of 70 which allowed you to easily calculate when the population doubles based on the annual growth rate. There are countries with a low Quality of life that have an annual population growth rate of over 4%.  That means their population will double in just 17.7 years.  Do you see any way that we can prevent all Global warming with in 17,7 years?  I don't.  I don't even see us keeping up with population growth no matter what they do.  Remember that the only way to keep up with Global warming would be to drastically lower our Quality of life.

Here is another thing about all those who want us to lower our Quality of life.  Most are filthy rich and fly around in their jet planes making Global warming worse.  Why don't they start at home and give us an example by the way they live.  Why don't they lower their own Quality of life to the median level of the Earth?  That would be a good first step.

I proposed that if we could raise the age of females having their first baby to about 25 that it would have more impact on Global warming than any thing that is now being done.  At the same time we could focus on those groups that have median population age under 35or 40.  Some of the most irresponsible countries in the world have median population ages of under 25 and some under 20.  Why don't the other responsible people call these countries and their people out?  It would help Global warming and at the same time raise the Quality of life for them and their children.

Are you willing to give up the Quality of life you have earned?  I am not.

Bourbon Balsamic Vinegar

 Here is a good one.  I love cooking, wine making, brewing and making moon shine so in this blog I am going to tie all this together.

I made a 50 gallon batch of wine about 30 years ago from a combination of apple juice and cranberries. I had so much that I used second hand 2 liter plastic bottles to bottle it.  It has sat in my wine cellar for all of these years.  Sure, I have used some of it, but my use did not put a dent in the 50 gallons.  Recently I started giving it away as gifts to some of my friends.  They all thought that it was great and it was.  As I went from bottle to bottle, I found a few that had turned to vinegar.  Given that this was bottled in used plastic pop bottles, what would you have expected after 30 years?  I threw some of the first out, but then I got to thinking.  How about balsamic vinegar?

I had some fresh grapes that I juiced and boiled down the must and added it too the vinegar.  It was technically balsamic vinegar, but it lacked some of the expected taste.  I then got the idea of adding some toasted white oak chips and a few drops of vanilla. It worked, but I was not quit where I wanted to be.  I needed more of that rich flavor and maybe a little higher percentage of vinegar.  The original wine was a little low on alcohol and thus the vinegar percentage was also a little low.  This got me to thinking.

I had made some bourbon from my moon shine by adding a little vanilla, a few drops of glycerin and then adding some toasted white oak chips to it.  Once that had aged for a few weeks the moon shine had extracted both color and flavor from the chips until it really tasted like good bourbon.  If you did not know it, that is basically how real bourbon is made.  Now that I had the aged bourbon, how about adding it to the vinegar to make balsamic vinegar?  I did it and it worked.  After aging, the alcohol in the bourbon was converted into vinegar with taste and color of the bourbon.  I think that I had found a winner.

This seemed so natural that I decided to check on the internet to see if anyone else had tried this.  To my surprise several out fits had been doing this.  That surprised me, but it did not discourage me.  I am now going to make my own special version of balsamic vinegar for my friends.  I just hope they like it and appreciate my efforts.

Now when it comes to you, you could do this same thing with your old bottles of opened wine that had turned to vinegar and by adding a shot of cheap bourbon to it.  Experimenting with this type of thing can be a lot of fun and it can impress your friends.  Good luck.

Rule Of 70

 I was looking up some data on Google when I came across the Rule Of 70 and thought that I should share my discovery with all of you.

I had just been watching a news show on TV about Global Warming and thought that I should check out some of the data.  The news was about problems in Pakistan regarding Global Warming.  They were concerned that Global Warming was having a sever impact on life in Pakistan.  They were having problems producing enough food for their people.  They also had all kinds of economic problems too.  Here is what I found.  Pakistan has about 900 people per square mile. For comparison the USA has less than 10% of that and we have all kinds of lakes, rivers and good farm land.  Pakistan is mostly mountains and desert.  It is no wonder that they are so poor and can hardly feed their people.

I checked the population data further and found that they had an annual population growth rate of 4% just a few years ago and it was now down to 3%, which was good.  That is when I stumbled onto the Rule Of 70.  It means that if you divide 70 by the annual growth rate you find out how many yeas it takes for the population to double.  That means if the annual growth rate is 4% then it doubles every 70/4 = 17.5 years.

Right now Pakistan has 150 million people and just 17.5 years ago their population was only 75 million.  Now when you look at their situation and try to blame it on Global Warming, it is clearly a lie.  Even if they now have their growth rate down to 3%, it still means that their population doubles every 23.3 years.  I am sure that their farmers are now producing more food than they did 20 years ago, but it is clearly not enough to off set their true growth in population.

You can find all kinds of numbers about the percentage growth rate of different countries population, but knowing how often it doubles seems to tell you a lot more about the problem.  Remember the Rule Of 70 and share it with your friends.  Use it to counter all the BS about Global Warming.  Check out the real problem with Gaza and the Muslim countries including Africa.  Turn the clock back and see what the world looked like regarding population just a few hundred years ago.  You might be surprised.

Horizon

Horizons is one of the most significant concepts, but most people are totally unaware of it.  I will try to explain in this blog.

Exactly what is a Horizon?  When you look out in an open area eventually the land will disappear with a line where your view of the land ends.  It could be a flat line or the ridge of mountains in the distance.  It could be less obvious if you were on a boat look at where the water ends and the shy starts.  It is clear that the distance one can see varies and thus the horizon varies that is the significant concept or point. 

If this does not make much sense to you, here is how the concept applies to you and your life.  When you think about some thing that is related to time, how far into the future do you include events in your set of passivity's?  That length of time is your horizon.  Some people consider events or facts farther into the future than others.  That is one reason the concept of horizon is so significant.

Let's discuss some applications of the concept of horizon.  One of the best examples of a person or a society that had a very long horizon is when the Chinese started the building of the famous "Wall of China" knowing that he would never see it completed nor would his children,  It was much the same with the Pyramids of Egypt.  There are also examples right here in the USA as well.

Look at early farmers here in the USA 200 years ago/  They had to farm fields what were covered with rocks and stones as well as trees.  Those original farmers knew that they would never reap the benefits of their efforts, but their children might so the dug out rocks and tree stumps.  The lesson from all of this is that horizons can and do change over time. Today most people have a much shorter horizon than those of 200 years ago.  If you have not noticed. our younger people are showing that many have an even shorter horizon.  We often call this "instant gratification{ because that is what it has become.  Few now want to do the work that is required to gain the benefits, they want every thing right now.

How short can ones horizon get before the whole society fails?  I think that we can now see the change and know that there is no free lunch which is what a person with a very short horizon expects.  What is your horizon and how does that compare with the horizon of your children.  You could even look at one of the differences between Liberals and Conservatives in terms of horizons,  What do you think the answer is?  Think about horizon and ask your friends about them as well. 

Abortion

 We just saw democracy in action yesterday on abortion. I will try to shed a little light on this subject.

If you have been reading my blogs, then you know that too many voters in the USA seem to only want "perfect" solutions.  In my prior blogs, I have tried to point out that the world is not only black and white or yes or no/  The world and everything has degrees of more right and less right or more wrong and less wrong.  I just do not understand why so many people still cling to perfect.  It is like a little kid who will not eat their dinner and when asked they want some thing else that they can not define.  I see mature people still acting like children in so many areas and particularly in politics.

That brings me to abortion. It seems like a logical choice that democracy should be able to resolve it the problem were defined as analog rather than digital.  I have been watching the media and how they present the question of abortion.  99% of the time they report abortion as either you are for abortion or you are against abortion when that is just a validation that the question is digital or black and white when it is not. 

Here is how I see the whole question. The question of abortion is made up of two simple element/ The first is who pays for abortion and the second is where along the 9 months of pregnancy is it restricted. First off, who pays and how much. This can range from who pays, federal or state to how much is paid, from zero to 100%.  Why was this whole question not on the ballot recently?.  I think it is because most of our electorate are so stupid that they do not understand nor have they ability to structure the question. Next how about answering the question of when an abortion can be performed.  It could start from zero or go up to a day after the birth.  If this clear question is asked on the ballot in our democracy, I guess that is the legal description.  

Will everyone be happy with the vote?  No, but at least 51% of the people will be happy and that is how democracy works.  That means 49% may still want the perfect solution that is impossible.

Per Capita Income

 It seems that the current craze is to save the world no matter what is costs.  This blog will explore this craze.

I went to the internet and looked up two numbers.  The first was the median per capita income for the world which was $2,900.  I then looked up the median income for the USA and that number was $37,400.  Now what is the significance of those numbers?  It is the starting point for those who want to make the world more equitable.  I defined their objective before and that is to get the median and the average quality of life closer together.  What they do not realize or appreciate is the fact that dividing the wealth ends up lowering the median quality of life/  How can that be?

The current capitalism economic system has been proven to produce the largest pie and in the process it provides a larger piece of pie for the median person.  Various systems have been tried to take earnings and wealth away from those who produce it and give it to others with the objective of raising their quality of life.  It can actually work, if the penalty on those who are responsible for producing wealth are not penalized too much.  I think that you can see that this is a balancing act that needs to be done correctly. Further. the reason that I showed the numbers above is that there is not enough wealth in the world to significantly raise the median income and thus the median quality of life.

There are now too many humans on Earth compared to the resources that are available to create enough wealth to significantly raise the median quality of life for the median. For some reason many humans and our colleges and universities teach that wealth is only a function of human effort or work.  They completely leave out the impact of natural resources and those are clearly limited.  Do you get that? 

Here is a side note.  If the median per capita income is $2,900, that means half of world earns less than $2,900.  if the pie was reduced by just 10% by these stupid economic policies and if 25% of the wealth of the top 25% of people was given to those in the lower 50% the net impact would be "zero".  Further in the process it would significantly lower the quality of life for those on the top side of the median. As I pointed out it has to be a delicate balance that keeps the productive people productive so that the pie does not get smaller.  The merit system is the only economic system that has produced the largest pie and the largest share of that pie for those in the lower half of the median.  Remember the Pie! and also the role that natural resources in GNP and quality of life.

Global Warming Math

 How about putting some numbers to the whole global warming thing?  I am going to try to do that in this blog.

How do we put numbers to global warming?  That is the big question that needs to be answered.  As long as it is just talk, everyone who has a mouth can shoot it off and that is exactly what has been happening.  My numbers might not be exactly correct, but is anyone's?  So here goes.

First off I want to start with population.  I think that we can all agree that when there were "zero" humans on Earth that you could not blame humans for causing global warming plus, I think that most can agree that global warming did not exist as defined today.  One conclusion is that global warming has gotten worse over time and most blame it on humans.  If it is worse today when we have the most humans on Earth that we have ever had, you might even consider that the more people, the worst for global warming.  There was probably a time when the number of humans was not a factor.  My estimate is when the population of the world was about 6 billion.  Now it is a little more than 8 billion.  That is a 33% increase over the 6 billion.  The impact of humans on global warming is not linear, but for short periods we can assume linearity.  I think that most of you understand that.  I look at the slope as .33, then when we get to 9 billion the global warming will be over twice as bad as it is now.

Here is another factor that needs to be taken into account and that is "quality of life".  Remember that Native Americans could feed themselves better than people were being feed in Europe back in the 1600's.  We know that because the Native Americans were much larger and were not suffering from starvation as were Europeans at the time.  My point is that the Native Americans could sustain their quality of life as hunter gatherers back then.  No one can do that today and why?

Look at the industrial revolution back in the 1700's. It had a big impact on raising the quality of life for the humans in those days and in the process they changed the earth in ways that started to contribute to global warming as it is defined today.  The point is that the impact of a human on global warming today is very significantly more than it was a few hundred years ago.

What you should be seeing is that if anyone wants to turn back global warming that they have to do two things and those are to lower the number of people on Earth and lower the quality of life for them.  If you do not want to significantly lower the quality of life, then you will have to significantly lower the number of people.  Simple isn't.

If you try to combat global warming by switching to a more expensive form or source of fuel, it does not exist.  As the fuel cost goes up, the quality of life goes down.  As the number of mouths increase the need for more food goes up.  I am sorry, but there is no free lunch here.

AI

 Artificial Intelligence has become so popular that it now goes by the abbreviation, "AI".  In this blog I will give my views on AI.

Xactly what is AT?  How is it any different than a simple "recipe".  Some person came up with a way to make or do something and wrote it down in the form of a recipe.  I think that we all know what that is and how it works.  Do you agree that it is a form of AI?  How about a recipe that is more complete and tells you how to substitute different ingredients if you are missing some.  What if you went one step farther and put the recipe on the computer in the form of a video.  In that form, it could show you specific techniques on how to make or perform the function.  Isn't the recipe, thus getting more and more flexible to show you how to do some thing?

What if the person who wrote the recipe were able to stand next to you while you followed the recipe?  They could show you special tricks or could correct you when you did something wrong or they could give you the OK if you did some thing not in the recipe.  What if the person documented their experience they had with you and wrote a simple computer program that showed you all the possibilities of how you could perform the recipe?  Are we getting closer to what is being called AI?

Are you starting to see AI from a different perspective?  Is it really much different from when us humans invented writing where we could put down on paper what people had been speaking?  If you don't know it, but you can do with simple relay circuits every thing that a modern computer can do and we have know how to do all of those things for hundreds of years.  What has happened with modern computers is that now we can do the same thing cheaper and faster. 

Another thing that has happened is similar to what happened with adding machines of the past.  Many people who did not know how to add, multiply or do division where able to operate an adding machine. They could not design an adding machine just like they could not design a computer nor the program withing the computer, but they could operate it.  Isn't that exactly what we are talking about with AI?  

We have always had a situation where we had a limited number of humans who were able to make tools for people who were able to operate the tools but who could not make the tools themselves/.  Historically these two groups were close together, but with the advance in technology the gap between the creators and the users is getting greater.  In the limit, it appears to me that their will become less and less a need for the users and a greater need for the creators of the AI. 

In the end you can see the social impact and how it will divide society between makers and users to the point that there will be no need or value for users.  If you look at the rate of change and the acceleration of it that the end will be sooner than you may think and it may be driven by something as simple and benign as AI.

 

 

Entropy Is Happening

 Have you noticed that the USA is going down hill?  I will explain why in this blog.

It is all because of "Entropy".  That's right "Entropy" is doing it too the USA.  Don't know about "Entropy"?  It is a little like time, it only goes in one direction and that is away from order.  It is a concept that originated as part of the steam engine and thermodynamics, but it applies every place where time applies and that is every place.  You can think of "Entropy" as the enemy of order and order requires the use of energy of some kind. 

Here is a simple example.  If you had a random pile of lumber and you took that pile of lumber and built a house, that would be something representing order.  Now "Entropy" comes along and starts tearing down your house one splinter at a time until you no longer have a house.  That is how it works and it is working all the time even when you don't know it.  If you want your house back, then you would have to come up with the energy to put those splinters all back together again.  If you were out of energy the house would be gone for ever.  Do you follow that?

Now look at the USA.  It did not really exist until the Europeans came here and took the land away from the Native Americans and started building all the stuff that is now the USA.  We are talking about roads, farms and cities that they built.  It was not here and each part had to be built from scratch.  They used muscle energy and their intellect plus all the resources that were already here.  You could look at the whole project as one of organizing by the use of energy what was already here.

Now let's look as what "Entropy" has done to their work.  What they had built and organized, has started to fall apart and the USA has gotten worse.  It has gotten old just like you and me have gotten old and gray haired.  For us it will take a new generation to replace us and it will be the same for the USA.  The only problem is that those who have come after us are not putting the same amount of effort or energy into building or even maintaining what we have built.  They want to work less and take advantage of what others have built before them.  The USA is thus, going down hill just like a home that is not being maintained goes down hill.  It is a little like the old expression, "Dust to Dust".  It all started out as "Dust" and will end up as "Dust" if the same amount of effort that went into building it does not continue.  Do you see the problem and the cause?  Entropy is there waiting to undo what we have built.

Look at the concern about global warming and what we have done as a result?  We declared war on coal. oil and natural gas.  Most know that all energy on Earth comes from atomic energy from the Sun. That is where the coal and oil came from and it is where the energy for all the solar panels comes from. When we declare war on one form of energy it has to be replaced from some where or Entropy is going to take over.  The cheaper the energy is the better it is for us to fight Entropy and what we have done is to make energy more and more expensive and that means Entropy is going to win.

Good bye to the USA as we have know it.  

Global Warming & Population

 I do not know why there is not more discussion about population growth when people are discussing global warming.  In this blog I will show you the impact of "compounding" on global warming.

Before I get into explaining "compounding", I would like to tell you a short story that opened my eyes on the subject.  I was living in Buenos Aires and I knew that the growth rate of their population was much slower than here in the USA.  I did not think too much about it, because I thought that the main reason for the population growth rate of the USA was immigration.  My eyes were opened after having dinner with an Argentine family with three kids.  I only had two kids, so that was more than I had.  When I thought about the contradiction I became aware of a major difference between the USA and Argentina.  What was that?  In Argentina the girls get married and have kids later in life than do girls in the USA and that is one of the big keys to why their population growth rate is lower than the USA.  Now I am going to explain why.

Most people understand compound interests and they know that the longer you keep your money in a saving account that pays interest the more money you are going to earn.  If you were earning 10% interest and you had it in the bank for two years, you would have two compounding periods and your one dollar after two years would be worth $1.21 and after three years it would be worth $1.331. Here is how that affects population growth

Let's examine three examples. (1) The girl has her first child when she is 15, (2) The girl has her first kid when she is 20.  (3) The girl has her first kid when she is 25.  For this example, let's compound the numbers of kids for 75 years.  That being the case, the 15 year old would compound 75/15=5 times and the 20 year old 3.75 times and the 25 year old would compound 3 times.  Got that so far?

Next, let's do the compounding. The 15 year old compounds 5 times at 2 times which comes out to 32.  Nest, the 20 year old compounds 3 75at 2 times which comes out to 14.  Next the 25 year old compounds 3 times which comes out to 8.

Now, let's look at the impact in my example above.

*15 years old----------------32 kids

*20 years old----------------14 kids

*25 years old----------------- 8 kids

Are you starting to see the impact of having kids so young?  It would be even worse if I added in the second or third kids and you know that the chances of a second or third kid is very much higher if the first one comes when they are much younger.

Look around and see what is happening right under your nose.  The young immigrants are mostly from over populated countries and that are much young when they have their first kids.  You know that if you have your eyes open.  If you are worried about global warming and understand that it is caused by our over population of the Earth, then you know what we need to do to slow it down.  In the example above, I am not proposing that families have fewer kids, only that they have that first one when they are older.  Look what it would do for education, poverty and homelessness.  I don't think this would be a big burden on anyone.  It would only require that they be more responsible.  I can also tell you that most out of wedlock births come to those who have their first kid at a younger age and many just keep on doing it.  Wake up.

PS--Do your own research.  Here is what I found for age of mother when she had her first child.

* Africa---------------------------below 20

* Central America ------------------20-21

* Europe------------------------------25-28

* Japan-----------------------------Over 30 

It has to be clear to all the impact of mothers being old when they birth their first child. Only Africa has a higher rate of teenage child birth than Central America in the world.  Exactly what is the :root cause" of the illegal immigration across our southern border?  

#1 Danger For The USA

 The #1 danger for the USA is our National Debt.  It is about 35 trillion now and growing.  This blog will show you why this our #1 danger.

I know that most people can not deal with a number like 35 trillion.  Most don't even know how many zeros to add to the number.  What I am going to try to do is to show this number and its impact down to the lowest level so that everyone can understand it.  Now, let's get going.

Let's start with the national debt at 35 trillion dollars.  That is $35,000,000,000,000. Count the zeros, there is a total of 12.  Remember that.  Now our total economy for one year is represented by our GNP or gross national product.  It has a growth rate of almost zero in real dollars.  My estimate today is 28 trillion dollars.  To put that in perspective let's look at the national debt as a ratio to the GNP.  That comes out to 1.25 or the national debt is 125% of our GNP and the national debt is growing much faster than our GNP.  It has been an accepted rule that a country should never let the national debt go over 100% of GNP.  Only third world countries have ever done that and we do not consider the USA a third world country, or do we?

Now let's look a little deeper.  We now have a population of about 320 million and if we divide our national debt by that number, we get a figure of $109,375 debt per every man, women and child in the we USA.  That is a lot more than the average net worth of us citizens.  Here is another way to look at it.  How about per family?  Figure that the average family is 3.5 people.  That means that for every family the national debt is $382,813.  How many families have that kind of money?

Here is another way to look at the problem.  What if the above was the size of the mortgage on the average home and the interest rate was 6.5%?  How much would be the monthly payments?  It is easy to calculate, but a little more difficult to pay each month.  It is $2,075 per month.  Think about this.  Right now we have to pay interests on the national debt and the rates are going up every day.  If each family paid the above, the debt would not actually go down because we would just be paying the interest.  Can you imagine what the monthly payments would have to be to the national debt off like a home loan?

Here is another one.  Remember that 10% of the people pay 90% of the federal taxes and the other 90% only pays the 10% that is left.  That means the average person in that 10% is responsible for $984,375 while those in the other 90% are only responsible for $12,153 each.  Who says that the rich do not pay their share?  Think about it?

If our national debt is not big enough, how about adding in the student loans that we have signed for? They are now over 1.5 trillion dollars all by themselves.  What we did was to co-sign the student loans made by banks.  We know that a very high percentage of those will never be paid and will default.  What if Biden was able to excuse those loans?  They would then be added to the national debt just like they would or will if the student defaults.  What then?  How much liability to you think each family has for the student loan program?  Guess?   It works out to $16,406 per family of 3.5.  Amazing isn't it and Biden wants to write it off.

Are you starting to see that our national debt is our biggest danger?  Check out my numbers and you will get similar results.  Talk to your friends about the problem that we and our kids face.  One hope is that the Republican Party in the House of Representatives just agreed with their selection of a new speaker that the national debt is our number one problem and they just might be able to do something about it.  Now that you can see and understand some of the numbers, shouldn't you get on board?

What Happened?

 What I am going to try to do in this blog is to explain :What Happened?" to our country in just a few short years.

First, I am going to give you my list of the things that have changed and then to explain how they all add together and impact our USA in the wrong direction.  My list may look strange, but I think you will see that these items each had a very significant impact.

(1)  Decline in family size

(2)  Urbanization shift.  

(3)  Females working outside the home

(4)  More children born out of wedlock  

(5)  School consolidation

(6)  Public employee unionization

(7)  Governmental student loans

(8)  Liberal welfare

(9)  Mega churches

Before I get into explaining how each of the factors above impacted the change that has occurred jn the USA, I want to point out that these factors link and impact each other.  This may be a little difficult to follow as a result. I am going to go thru the factors as listed above.

(1) Decline in family size. 

If you go back thru the census records, you will see that 150 years ago the average family size was several time that of today.  With a large family it meant that the adults had a much larger focus on the family rather than things outside.  While the father was working to feed the family, so were the kids.  The older kids helped the younger members in many ways.  As the size of the family declined the help that the kids were providing disappeared.  Most people do not realize how much an older brother of sister can impact a younger member.  Individuals were more concerned about how their conduct might impact the family.  Today kids "do their own thing" and you know what that is.  Having fewer kids allowed the wife to work outside the home too.

(2) Urbanization shift

Which came first?  The reduction in the size of the family or the moving from the farm or rural community to the city?  In the city. there was no need for a big family to help provide food or work for the welfare of the family.  In the rural situation. it was clear to all that they had to take care of themselves while in the city, they looked for government to provide those services. The skills that kids learned at an early age did not happen for city kids.  Think about driving a car for the first time or sewing your won clothing.  Kids fill a vacuum with the skills they earn only in the rural community they learn good skills and in the city they learn from other children worse skills. I recall visiting my relatives who lived in cities and they did all kinds of bad things that we never would have considered in the rural area.

(3)  Female working outside the home

I think this really started to happen after WWII ub 1945.  It looked to most families that earning more money would be good for the family, but they did not see the impact on their kids of not being in the home.  This was the first big shift to pass raising their kids off to the state or strangers.  The extra money had to be deducted for the extra cost of running the home.  Home cooking declined as did home made clothing.  Kids wanted clothing from the store that looked like all the other kids.  Rich and poor kids stood out much more in the urban situation and when the mother worked.  Help with the home work declined as did important learning.  Families often needed two cars where they only needed one before.  For the record, my wife never worked outside the home and we had cookies frequently!

(4)  Children born out of wedlock

This seems to have started in the Black community first, but it has moved to other areas. I think that it was started by liberal government programs that tried to help single mothers, but had the impact of taking the father out of the family so the state could help the kids.  Like many systems, this start that was good, turned bad.  School drop outs, shootings and all kinds of crime are several times worse with kids that were born out of wedlock   Out of wedlock births is virtually zero in the Asian community and the positive impact is clear.  The cost to the USA is many times what most people think.  How many people does it take to care for a criminal?

(5)  School consolidation 

Most people do not see this as a problem.  They see it as good.  I went to a country school that had 45 kids and eight grades.  It is still there after being formed back in 1835.  In the country school, the parents knew every teacher and every teacher knew their kids.  The teachers had responsibility for each kid for more than just a class or a year.  In the consolidated big school the teachers only knew the kids in their class which lasted about an hour.  Their personal commitment to a single kid was minimal. The big school offered all kinds of special classes, but did not concentrate on the basics for all the kids.  It may be true that advanced kids did well, but what about the average or below average kids?  Remember that 59% of the kids are below average!

Problem With School Testing

 What happened to our schools and young students? Read on and I will explain in this blog.

I am speaking from my triple perspective of being a student, a teacher and an employer of the product of our schools and colleges.  Before I get started, I would like to say that I am very disappointed with the current product from our schools and colleges.  While we are spending much more, we are clearly getting a lot less for our tax money.  If this does not change, we can expect and predict the end of the USA that we have known.  It is that bad and it is getting worse.  Now I am going to dig in and show you the details and reason that I feel this has happened.

Look at the schools of old.  I went too a two teacher school with a total of 40 kids.  In that school the teacher has the same kids for a total of 4 years.  Not like today where they only have the kids for one year at most.  In the old school the teacher did not just pass a slow learner onto the next teacher, they knew they would have that kid for 4 years so they were committed to teaching him or her.  Their grading was based on much more than just the test.  They saw the total kid and graded them accordingly, not like today where the test is 100% of the grade.  Grading was much more accurate in the old school.

The teachers in the old school were cut from better cloth in the first place.  The bottom line was that teachers were much smarter than teachers of today.  That has to be clear to everyone.  Back after WWII about the only choice a girl had was to be a teacher or a nurse, so the best and brightest went into teaching.  Now girls go into law or business and you can see the change if you look.  Over 50% of kids in law school are girls and over 75% of those in dentistry or veterinarians are girls.  What is left go into teaching.  Many of those who are smart who went into teaching have left teaching for some other profession.  You can see this all around you.

Remember when  school teachers unionized?  Have you noticed what has happened after that?  Do you think that unionization is part of the cause for the decline of the quality and attitude of our graduates today?  Think about it.  We pay more and get less.  Do most teachers take papers home to grade them like they used to?  I don't think so.  Do they base the grades on yes and no tests?  Yes.  What impact do you think that has on kids?  They see the world as a yes and no place with nothing in between.  You are either right or you are wrong.  How about adding in grade inflation?  You know what that is.  Now almost everyone is on the honor roll while in the old days only a few were on the honor roll.  Are they now smarter?  No.  It is grade inflation to keep parents from complaining about the quality of their schools.  It also has another effect and that is that more and more kids feel that they are so smart because they are on the honor roll.  It has gotten so bad that kids have learned how to "cram" for these yes and no tests.  With grade inflation and what amounts to cheating on the test we have kids who go around thinking and acting like they are smart. 

The impact of all of this is that kids now reject those who have different opinions about things because they have been taught that every thing is either right or wrong.  They do not want to waste their time discussing any subject with a person who is clearly wrong.  They just reject the person and that is the end of it.  We see this happening again and again all over the place.  I think that we have created a bunch of cowards who can not face another person who disagrees with them.  Even if they are clear thinking, they know that to get along with other kids that they have to go along with this whole idea,

It does not even end with the schools.  Companies who hire the product of our schools use the graduation certificate as a major criteria for hiring and the kids know that.  They take it one step further and want to see their transcript and the grade that got.  They look the other way knowing that the grades have been subjected to grade inflation.  If you have noticed, we have a lot more young people in responsible positions in major companies who are the product of this failure of our education system.  They seem to carry on the same bad ideas that they learned in school, like attacking anyone who has a different idea.  You never see them considering a decision as "good enough".  It is always just good or bad.

I tested the above position in real life.  I interviewed 20 recent electrical engineering graduates for a position in my company.  These were graduates for colleges that had good reputations too.  I asked then some simple questions to see if the really understood the basic concept of electricity, not some yes or no question that they could have crammed for.  I asked for them to explain how a spark plug worked in a normal car.  That was simple enough.  We know that it is the spark plug that ignites the gas mixture by having a hot spark leap across the two points of the spark plug.  Only one of the 20 young graduates could explain how the spark plug worked.  How is that?

I have since tested medical doctors about their familiarity with Bayes Theorem.  If you are not familiar with Bayes Theorem, you need to look it up.  Of the 10 or so doctors that I tested, zero ever even heard of Bayes. It is because our medical schools are making the same error and only using yes and no testing and most doctors have figured out how to cram for the test and only the test.  You can see this with spelling contests where young Indians from India are the frequent winners because they are very good a short term memory required of spelling contests in our schools.  You see it and you know it.

The bottom line is that we need more attention in our education system focused on "why" rather than just simple regurgitation of yes and no questions.  It is more difficult to test for "why", but we have to do it if we don't want our total civilization here in the USA to go into the toilet.

 

  

  

The Poison Pill Is Enough

 This blog is related to an earlier one, but this is a new slant.  Read on and you will see.

In that original blog, I took the position that when all of the religions were first created they operated in isolation and were contented serving their followers.  What happened is that they expanded until they started bumping into other religions. At some point they started losing followers to other religions and that was bad.  In order to prevent the loss of followers, they accepted the "poison pill".  It stated that their religion was the only correct religion and all others were fakes and frauds.  Only they provided a path to ever lasting life.  Who would not want ever lasting life and that was their payoff.  If any other religion had that path, they would not have anything to sell to their followers.  That is why all of them and I mean hundreds of religions took the "poison pill".  That is where we all are to day.

Now, why is this important?  It is the reason that some religions are killing followers of other religions.  Look at what is happening in Israel with all the killing.  You would think that accepting the "poison pill" would be enough, but apparently it is not for some religions.  Are they so insecure that they can not deal with any kind of challenge?  That may be the case.  It would seem to me, that if you are correct that your religion is the only one with the path to ever lasting life, that that would be enough and you would just fill sorry for those who have wasted their lives following other religions.  For the Muslims, they do not seem to be satisfied by just being "right" and allowing all other religion followers to just perish or not get to the happy hunting grounds of heaven.  

We see it all the time in our lives where people given freedom do very stupid things and end up hurting themselves or not having the quality of life that they could have had.  How about dropping out of school and ending up poor?  How about having children out of wedlock and ending up poor and on welfare?  There are all kinds of situations where we allow freedom of choice and people make stupid choices and we just allow it and they suffer the consequences of their decisions. 

Why is it that we have this one religion that wants to kill people who make decision that they disagree with?  They seem to want a world where there is individual freedom, but for some reason it does not apply to selecting another religion?  If you are a Catholic and you see a neighbor who selects the Lutheran religion, the Catholics don't want to kill the Lutheran.  It seem good enough for the Catholics to just feel sorry for the Lutheran.  This is a very strange world where some humans feel so strongly about one part of their religion that they want to kill others, just because they have different opinions.  What if Republicans wanted to kill all Democrats?  What would our world be like then?

I thought that just accepting the "poison pill" would be enough to satisfy all the different religions, but in the case of Muslim, it apparently is not enough.  Is the only choice for all of the others religions to eliminate the Muslims religion and its followers as a means of returning to some type of sanity?  It my have to get down to that if there is not another alternative. 

Israel's Objective

 What do you think is Israel's objective.  It is much different than it would be for the USA as I will explain in the bog.

First off, let's look at how the USA would or should handle a similar situation.  The USA would immediately strike back with all kinds of arms.  We would focus on their army and their government. We would bomb them into dust so that they could nor would they ever want to try that again.  We would make life very difficult for their citizens, but we would not try to kill them.  Once the dust settled. it would be clear that they had made a very big mistake attacking the USA.  We might then station a large army there to be sure that the country shaped up and never again thought about attacking the USA.  After a time and once we were sure that the country had learned their lesson. our army would be removed.

The bottom line of all of our efforts would be to give them a deep "fear of punishment" if they ever tried that again.  If that country was a normal society that fear of serious punishment would be enough to convince every man. women and child would get the message and would never do that again.  Do you see how this whole thing works and has worked for us in the past?

Now. how about Israel?  Their response will and has to be totally different than it has been historically for the USA.  That is because the attack was by suicide terrorist within and an integral to the country from where they had come.  That means that because they are suicidal terrorists. they have  zero fear of punishment. so Israel can not use the same methods that the USA and most of the world have used in the past.  Those in Gaza who did not directly participate, did participate by their in action.  Many people see them as non-combatants. but they are not.  Israel has to kill those who directly conducted the terrorist attacks and should have less concerned about injury or death to the non-combatants.  In the end. Israel should kill at least 90% of the suicide terrorist and those who directly supported them. Those who sat by silently should have enough fear that they would not nor would they support suicide terrorist action.  Israel should expect that a large percentage of the Muslim's in Gaza should have enough fear so that they would turn in those among them who would attack Israel in the future.

I think that it has to be clear that what Israel does in this battle will be different from what the USA would have done or what USA citizens would agree with/  Sorry but that is the case.  Rather than being critical of actions by Israel. we need to understand the uniqueness of their enemy.   

Clean Hydrogen

The ding-a-ling in the White House is leading the charge to Hydrogen as a primary fuel.  How stupid can he be?  I will try to explain in this blog.

Hydrogen is both a good fuel and an impossible fuel at the same time.  Biden likes to propose impossible ideas and many simple minded liberals eat it up.  Where does the Hydrogen come from?  It has to come from some place here on Earth.  If any happens to leak it leaves the Earth and ends up in outer space.  That is because the Earth's gravity is not strong enough to hold it in the Earth's atmosphere.  It goes up like smoke and never comes back down.  That is just one problem.

If I understand this right, the Hydrogen will come from water by a process of electrolysis.  Where the electrical energy comes from the energy from the Sun.  The energy from the Sun is free, but it cost a lot to collect it and turn it into electricity.  That does not count the loss or cost of using it to separate the Hydrogen from water.  It is not for free.  Remember that.

Here is another problem with Hydrogen.  The atom and molecules are so very small that it is almost impossible to contain then.  My experience with Hydrogen is that it leaks from almost any vessel like pipes, and tanks of all types.  It is explosive too.  If you think natural gas is an explosive problem, then you have never dealt with Hydrogen.

Hydrogen is our lightest atom and thus it is the most difficult to compress and impossible to liquify in any practical way.  Thus I do not see anyway that it could be practical as a universal fuel for cars or trucks.  It is true that when you "burn" hydrogen it forms simple water.  That is great, but the whole process in totally economically impractical.  How liberals could get on the band wagon is because most are so stupid that they fear global warming more than any thing else.  Any thing else is a very big area, but liberals never think about that.  They believe in and support ideas that anyone knows are impossible.  That is their stock and trade and that is the problem.

Every time you hear someone proposing that we spend our tax money in support of Hydrogen as a primary fuel, challenge them again and again.  If you do, you will find that they are totally ignorant about Hydrogen.  Most don't even know that water is made up of two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen.  Ask them if water vapor is lighter than air and they will not know,  It is lighter and that is why we have rain and clouds.  I give up.  

Suicide Terrorists

 I am not an expert in this whole area, but is anyone?  Here are my ideas in this blog.

Remember that 9/11 was carried out by "suicide terrorists".  They all committed suicide in the process of flying those planes into buildings.  There is something very different about suicide terrorists and what is that?  They are very cheap and can be equal to very expensive counter terrorist alternatives.  I don't have a figure on that, but it has to be at least a ratio of at least a million to one.  That means one suicide terrors is equal in potential damage done by a million dollars worth of regular civilized expenditure or equipment. That means if they had 100 suicide terrorists that it could take 100 million dollars of people and equipment to prevent them from doing their mission.  I think that might even be low.

Now look at 9/11.  I think it was only about 4 or 5 suicide terrorists who took over each plane that was full of fuel, just like a bomb.  They did not have to spend more than the cost of a ticket to get control of the  planes.  They then drove them into three buildings and totally destroying two, the twin towers.  What do you think it would have cost if the suicide terrorist had to bring their own flyable bombs to the party?  Do you think it would have cost them at least 10 million dollars, because that is about what those two planes were worth. Starting to see how cheap a suicide bomber is?

Now look at how an army works or a police force.  They have all kinds to tools, like guns and planes. They have a reputation of "getting their man".  Most bank robbers get caught and punished so most think first and decide not to rob the bank.  Now suicide terrorists are different.  They know that they are going to get killed in the process, but they do not care.  That means that you can have all the policemen or armed soldiers you want and the suicide terrorist does not care.  Our civilized system of law works on the concept of "fear of punishment".  It works with civilized people, but not with suicide terrorists.

What does work to prevent suicide terrorist from carrying out their plan?  The problem is that if you were to set up a system where you were protected from suicide terrorist, you would refuse to live that way. The bottom line is that you have to find these "potential" suicide terrorist and eliminate them and that is the problem.  Where is the line between "potential" suicide terrorist and normal people?  How sure to you have to be?

Another thing about these Moslem terrorist is that their religion teaches that if they kill a Jew and die in the process that they will go to heaven and further their family will get paid.  One other thing that no one wants to say is that because of the inbreeding within the Moslem religion that their IQ's are lower than other humans.  If you were to examine those who are the suicide terrorists, I feel that you would find that the average IQ is significantly below 100.  Sad but true.

Recall one of my prior blogs about "rewards" and "punishment".  I am not sure that this works with suicide terrorists.  Some people want to "reward" them to prevent their terrorism while others want to "punish" them.  It seem to work on normal civilized people, but I am not so sure about these suicide terrorists   Think about it. What do you think that we should do?

You Can Never Catch Up

 I know that a lot of people will take exception with this title, but it is absolutely correct.  In this blog I will explain why.

This is a real easy one if you understand just a little logic.  Let's say that you are in a race to run a 100 yard race as fast as you can.  The way to do that is to run as fast as you can for the full 100 yards.  That is what track stars do.  I know that most of you are not track stars, but the same concept still applies.  Think about it for a second.  Running full out for the 100 yards will result in you running your fastest time.  Do you understand that?

Now, think about this.  What if you started our just walking for the first few yards and then decided to run as fast as you can?  Would your time be shorter than running full out?  I do not think so and you know that too.  Here is the punch line.  Once you get behind, you can never catch up to where you would have been had you would have run full out from the beginning.

Now, let's look at it another way.  What if your kids have gotten behind in reading or math?  Could you then catch up to where you should have been?  It is, again, clearly no.  True you could have caught up to where you would have been if before you were not putting out much effort, but you can never catch up to where you could have been.

Now, look at a country like China where the kids are working full out almost all of the time.  They are well ahead of our kids, that has to be clear to all.  Now, do you think that we can ever catch up?  We can do better than we are now doing, but we can never catch up with China unless they stop working so hard.  What do you think the chances of that are?  What do think the chances of us working as hard as we can?  Remember also that we first have to stop going down hill from where we started before we can start going up.  The data shows that we are still going down and I do not even see that happening very soon.

It really does not matter what the issue is, the principle still applies.  You can never catch up to where you would have been had you worked just as hard.  In the USA we used to feel that we were behind and so we worked harder in our schools.  Now, many people feel that we can take a brake and work hard later.  It is true that one can do that, but "You Can Never Catch Up".  Are you concerned about the future of the USA and your children?  If not you should be!

Root Cause

 We hear all this talk about "Root Cause", yet no one really digs into exactly what it means or is.  Well, I am going to do that in this blog.

To understand "Root Cause", we first need to step away so that we are not so close to the trees that we can not see the forest.  I think that you can follow that.  I want to start with banks.  We all know about banks so we all can get off on the same foot.  The big problem with banks is that they get robbed from time to time and we can lose our money and that is bad.  The whole idea of a bank is to put our money some place where it is safe and that is the bank. 

The "Root Cause" or problem faced by a bank is robbery and we need to examine exactly what is the "Root Cause".  I think it is because we have money in the bank.  Think about what a bank would be like if it did not have any money or any thing of value in it?  Isn't that the definition of "Root Cause"?  We eliminate the money and we eliminate bank robbery.  Easy enough.  With that knowledge, I could be come Vic President.

Wait, there may be another solution and that is to have a vault or armed guards with guns to protect the money in the bank.  That works, but not 100%.  Now, the people of the USA expect that if it is a real solution that it would work 100% of the time or be perfect.  Vaults and guards are not perfect and thus are not an acceptable solution, but they are a "reasonable" solution compared to not putting our money in banks.

Now the border.  Here again the voters of the USA expect a perfect solution and what is that?  The only one that I can see is the same as the bank solution and that is to take the money or any thing of value out of the USA.  That means we first need to bankrupt the USA and then people will not want to come here.  Now, that is a perfect solution and I think it is exactly what Biden is trying to do.  Look around and tell me if the USA is a better place to want to come to now than it was just 5 years ago?  I think that answer is an easy one.

Now, let's look at banks again.  How did they come up with a solution that was not 100% perfect but one where they could keep their money safe enough to give customers enough confidence to put their money into it?  I think they used vaults and armed guards.  From time to time the guards even shoot a few bank robbers.  With all of this effort, we don't have very many bank robbers and the few that we do have 99% get caught and put in jail.

When I look back on the problems that we face with the border, isn't it easy and logical that we should look at our country just like a bank and that we should protect it just like they protect banks?  Simple, simple.

Preppers

 Do you remember the TV series about the Preppers?  It was a very interesting series and it contained some very important lessons.  I will try to point out some in this blog.

When I first saw the Prepper series, I did not take it very seriously because the people seemed a little strange.  They believed that the world was going to end and very soon.  Some of the reasons seemed crazy, and many were.  The problem was that one needed to look a little deeper into what they were saying.

As strange as their reasons for the various end of world possibilities, they all seemed to have a common way that they were going to deal with the end of the world.  Actually they did not believe that the world was going to totally end.  They thought that some event was going to occur that would kill a very large percentage of the people on Earth, but some had a chance of survival.  What they wanted was to be one those few who had the possibility of survival. This was a common thread that went thru all most all of the Preppers.

Given the above, what did the Preppers do and why?  That is my key point and the lessons that I picked up from the Preppers.  Before I get into more detail about the Preppers, I am going to explore a possible end of world event.  How about the big flood where, according to the Bible, they built the giant boat to survive the giant flood.  First off how about this flood?  I think that it was caused by a natural lake up stream of the Bosporus where the water in the lake gradually kept going up for thousands of years until one day it got higher than its natural boundaries.  At that point the water started flowing over the land adjacent to the lake until it started cutting a river channel deeper and deeper.  It grew rapidly form a small trickle to a massive flood in just a few hours or days.  The people down stream who had lived safely along the river for centuries were suddenly in the middle of a giant flood.  The flood did all kinds of damage, but in a few days or weeks the water in the lake was all out and the river returned to its banks,  True, it might have killed thousands of people, but it was a one time event.

Now the question is how would you have prepared to deal with a end of the world event like this,  It is how the Preppers are preparing right now.  What is going to happen is an event like that that kills 90% of the people, but 10% are not going to be killed.  There is going to be all kinds of damage and you will die if you don/t have enough food.  Other people are going to survive too, but what if they have not prepared with food?  They are going to be desperate and are going to try to steal your food,  As part of your preparations, you are going to also have to prepare on how you are going to protect your food.  Now the other thing is that the end of world event will probably not last any longer than the flood above and if you can survive and protect yourself long enough, you and other lucky people like you will be the only ones left.  The others will be dead and thus you have to figure out how you will continue to survive in this new world situation,

Do you follow that>  Notice that they did not try to sand bag the flood from the river.  They prepared to survive.  Now when you really think about global warming, is it really any different?  I don't think so.  I do not think that actions now can stop global warming it is really true and we went over the tipping point years ago when the world/s population topped 6 or 7 billions.  Notice that the world/s population is over 8 billion.  It is like we jumped off a high cliff when the population topped 6 or 7 billions and the final crash will begin when our population tops 9 or 10 billion.  

What the USA and much of the world is doing is using up all of our food to help people in places who now can not feed themselves.  If we keep this up, we will not save them in the end, but we will kill ourselves and that is exactly what we are doing.  First we lower our own quality of life to help those who have been part of the over population.  We invite them to enter the USA and we feed them until we can no long feed them nor ourselves.  Who ends up surviving?  Countries like China who take care of themselves first.  What the USA is doing is committing suicide.  Don't you see that?  I know that you and I will be gone, but are you concerned about your children and grandchildren?  You should be if your really love them.

The Preppers figured this all out and all we have to do is to learn a lesson from them and act like most of them have been doing.  America first.  Didn't some one propose that?

Trends

I was watching the News on TV today  and all of the talking heads were bad mouthing the various trends that they were reporting on.  It kind of caught me off guard and that is the reason for this blog.

I do not know why, but many people see various trends as bad.  The really big one is global warming.  Since zero of the talking heads knows anything about probability, it is no wonder they shoot off their mouths without thinking.  As I looked deeper into what they were saying it came clear to me that these people had no idea what optimum was.  If the Earth is actually getting warmer then optimum must be where it is now or even cooler.  Otherwise getting warmer would be moving away fromnoptimum and that would be worse.  What do you think?

Another really big one is that we do not have enough workers and thus we should welcome immigrants.  Is that really true?  What is the optimum number or density of people here in the USA that would be optimum?  Apparently many people feel that we do not have enough.  It is my position that we have too many people at about 75 per square mile.  I guess places like central America at over a !,000 people per square mile is more optimum than our 75.

How about age of the workforce?  The trend historically has been that the USA work force was getting older and only recently has it started to trend the other way.  This begs the question of exactly what is the optimum age of our population.  It is now about 38.5 and it was, a few years ago, 39.5.  Canada's is about 41 and they have a higher median net worth, home ownership and income. I think that Japan's workforce is several years older than ours.  It is also very interesting that virtually all the countries who have the higher median age are also those who have the highest quality of life, net worth and income.

I used to work with a guy who really got on my nerves because when you said something, he would frequently respond by saying, "compared to what".  Isn't that what people should start doing when they shoot their mouths off about different trends?  It would be great if the news media would start doing that.

You could also look at the population of the Earth at one billion and growing.  Do we need more or less?  What is optimum?  Has anyone discussed that?  I don't think so.  Why not?  Is the problem that the people are not distributed correctly?  How long before we will not be able to produce enough food to support them?  Remember that back in about the 1,400's the average European was about 5 feet tall and Native Americans were almost a foot taller.  That was becasue the Europeans were starving back then.  Did you know that in Ireland girls had a difficult time getting pregnant because the were also starving.  They did not start to get their population boom until they got the potato form the New World.

Regarding global warming, I think it is good for me personally, but I am not sure about the median.  What do you think and :compared to what?"

Probability In Education

 I am an old guy who has been around for a while and it appears to me that one of the biggest and most important concept that is missing from our education system is the understanding of probability. I am not talking about being a card shark, but a concept that is basic to operating as a human in the real world.  In this blog I will develop my point.

Most people seem to understand that if you flip a coin that the chances of it ending up heads is the same as it ending up as tails, but is about where their understanding stops.  What if you asked them about the chances of the coin coming up heads twice in a row?  I know the answer.  They would draw a blank.  How about playing cards?  What if you asked a simple question like, "what are the chances of drawing a Spade to complete a flush if you already have four Spade cards?"  You could appear to complicate the situation by adding that there were four other players in the game.  My point is that these are very simple problems and over 95% of people would draw a blank and that is our problem.

I was just watching the news about a lady who had some form of brain cancer and was pregnant.  The doctor told the lady that she would die if she did not abort her baby so that he could give her the cancer treatment.  The lady rejected the doctor and had her normal baby and did not die.  What was the problem in this case?  The doctor saw things in terms of black and white or right and wrong when he should have been thinking in terms of probability and advice the lady on those terms rather than right or wrong.  Are you starting to see my point?

Look at our current situation with the Eucrain war.  You will hear things like, "If we don't stop Russia from taking Eucrain, then they will next take over Europe."  They say and believe this with 100% certainty when there are many reasons why this may not happen.  You could name a few, like.  What if Putin were to die suddenly?  What if the army or the country revolted against Putin?  What if the soldiers refused to fight?  You could go on and on with things that might happen that would stop the war or prevent Russia from expanding further.  Each one has a probability of greater than "zero" and it could be smakk, but the simple minded conclusion is clearly not 100%.

I will admit that the whole concept of probability can be complicated, but that is no reason to totally reject the concept.   

Root Cause

 What is the root cause of illegal immigration into the USA?  It is so simple that a child could easily understand the Root Cause.  I am not going to keep it a secret in this blog.

Here it is in plain english.  The Root Cause is:  :"The quality of life is better in the USA than the place where people immigrate from".  That is why they want to immigrate here. We could solve the problem like we have done with the banks.  We guard the banks and keep the robbers out.  If they rob the bank, we catch them and punish them.  We have an economy where most people do not need to rob the bank to get enough food or the have the morality not to break the law or the are fearful of being caught and punished.

We can't do much about the quality of life in those countries, but we could try to discourage the churches from promoting over breeding.   We could show them fear of punishment just like we do for banks.  Like bank robbing, we may not get it down to zero or "perfect", but we could get it to a level that was acceptable.  

The bottom line is that those countries where the illegal immigrants are coming from have to solve their own problem in their own countries.  If they want to continue to live in shit holes, so be it.  It is up to them and we should start focusing on the quality of life for legal US citizens for a change.  We need to be realistic.  There are a few things that we can change or improve and some we just can not.  We have to stop bing the blind do gooders that so many still want to be.

If you have another "root cause" I would like to hear it. 

Global Warming Screw Job

 I am so fed up with our government that I am becoming a radical and in this blog you will see why.

It is difficult to dig out many fact that one needs to make informed decisions about global warming and immigration, but I think that I may have stumbled onto some keu data.  It is from some group called "Center For Immigration Studies".  They have a lot of data and several blogs based on the data.  I am not totally sure about the quality of the data, but you can be the judge of that.

For some reason the communications about global warming always seems to leave out the impact of the number of people here on Earth.  Why is that?  We now have just over 8 billion people on Earth.  That is the most that there have ever been.  It is my opinion that the driver of global warming if there is actually such a think is (1) Quality of life (2) Number of people on Earth.  It is as simple as that.  

Think about this.  When there were many fewer people here on Earth and their quality of life was well below what it is today, there was no problem with global warming, but as the quality of life improved and the number of people here on Earth things changed.  Many thing have changed and that is very clear, but is there such a thing as actual global warming?  I am not sure and no one else is either.

Do you or did you ever watch a TV program called "Preppers"?  These are people who feel the world is going to come to an end in their life time.  They have all kinds of reason for why and how.  The common denominator of most of them is that it will happen rapidly and for that reason they have developed plans to deal with the situation.  They prepare in two ways.  (1) They want to be sure that they have food and water and thus do not starve. (2)  They know that many people will not prepare and will try to steal their food or kill them.  Because they feel this whole thing will play out rapidly, that they only need food for about a year or so and the means to protect themselves for a short period of time until most of the people who are not prepared will die off.  

The reason that I mention this story is that it clearly applies to the global warming concern.  The USA appears to be putting its resources into preventing global warming to the point that we will be broke and starving if it ever happens.  Other countries are getting richer just like the Preppers prepared themselves for the event.  Do you see that and do you understand what is happening.  In the end the USA will be so poor that we can not help any one.  Countries who have protected their economies will be able to squash us like a bug.

Now to my main point and that is population.  Most of you have so few facts that most of you are not in a position to see what is going on right around you.  Most have to "do gooder" mentality and want to give away their own and other people's money to save the world.  I don't want the quality of life to have to go down to save the world, I would much prefer to address population. I don't mean killing people, I mean "don't have them in the first place".  Like most problems I feel that you will get your most impact by focusing on the "tall tent poles" and what are they?  Population and those who are over breeding right now.  Who are they and what can we do about them.  Here is what I found and you will be very surprised with these number.  

If you look at the USA that you and your parents grew up in, well it is changing and the "tall tent pole" is breeding by immigrants both legal and illegal.  Most is by illegal immigrants because many of them have come here from countries that are already over crowded with population like over 1,000 people per square mile and median ages under 25.  Here is the data that I dug out. It is the worst states in terms of the percentage of births to immigrants legal and illegal.

California------------------35.7%

New York------------------30.4%

Massachusetts-------------27,3%

Nevada---------------------27.2%

Florida----------------------27.7%

USA-------------------------19.9%

How long do you think it will take before these states look to most Americans like foreign countries if they do not already.  Think of our schools?

I could go on, but I think that most of you get the message.  We don't need more people in the USA.  If the number goes down it will mean that we will have a higher quality of life and we will not cause more global warming.  We will have more of every thing per individual.  The pie could be smaller, but we would have a larger piece of pie and isn't that objective?

Pilot Ejected

 I just heard on the news that a pilot ejected out of a plane that cost the taxpayers over a hundred million dollars over a populated area.  This blog will explore this whole area of pilots ejecting out of planes.

If you look at our military since the Civil War, you will notice a big change.  In the Civil War the army would have several thousand men charge across an open field directly into cannon and rifle fire with many being killed on the way.  I have been to several of the Civil War battle grounds, like Gettysburg and have seen where thousands died in a afternoon. If you have not been there, you should. 

 War and battles today are much different.  The US military goes to great lengths to spare the lives of our soldiers, but that take care of some more than others.  I am talking about pilots compared to infantry men. I know that the military wants to fight by standing off with special weapons that can reach an invisible enemy without risking the soldier.  I think that a little of this type of thinking may be good, but it can be take too far and that is what I feel about pilots who can eject and thus destroy the expensive plane that us taxpayers work and paid taxes for.  I think we need to revisit the whole business of pilots ejecting.

In the case of this recent fighter that crashed and waisted over a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money is a good place to start.  Are there places, times and situations where it is best to eject?  Yes!  Are there similar situations where a pilot should not be allowed to eject?  Yes!  Now let's explore some of those different situations.  Here is just a few of the things that need to be considered (1) The cost of the plane (2) The location in terms of damage to people and property on the ground (3) The chances of the pilot being killed by ejecting (4) The chances of the plane and pilot surviving by not ejecting.  All these and more should be taken into account.  Think about this?

What if the plane was small or inexpensive or if  it was a hot air balloon?  Should the criterial be the same for all?  I don't think so.  What about a ship's captain who goes down with his ship? Should a pilot be allowed to eject over a big city like New York?  I don't think so.  What normally gets into the discussion is exactly how much is a life worth.  I think you have been challenged with that one a time or two, well I have.  Is the pilot's life more valuable than a grandmother on the ground?  That sort of thing.

Would the rules be different if it were a battle in war vs training some place.  I think so and you do too. What I am concerned about is that I do not see this discussion going on anyplace.  If it is and it does not include us taxpayers, then I do not have much confidence in the conclusion.

Here is another point.  What if the design of the plane did not even include an ejection system?  The plane would be a lot less complicated and lighter and thus could have a higher performance.  Would it be better to have more planes without ejection systems or fewer or more costly planes with ejection systems?  That is what we are talking about.  I know that the Russian march to the concept that "Quantity has a quality all of it's own".  I think that they have it right when it come to war and that is what we are talking about.  What would you think if the next time you are on a flight to New York City that the pilot ejected and allowed the plane with you and the other passengers crash?  Isn't that about the same thing we are talking about here?

Think about it and talk to some of you taxpayer friends and see what they think if they have even thought about it.

Illegals In Our Schools

 It is about time for us to wake up about our schools.  This blog will show you why.

First off, let's look at our colleges.  Us tax payers pay for them and we expect our tax money to be used to teach our kids.  Isn't that exactly what you think?  Well we do that for our college kids, so why not do it for all  of our kids?  That is the big question.  We all know that our kids are behind most young kids from around the world on reading, math and science.  I think that most of us know that to maintain our quality of life we will have to compete in a much more intellectual economy in the future.  Our current schools are not preparing our kids for the future right now, so why are we making the situation even worse?

Here is what we need to do right now.  Let's take care of the children of our citizens and that means for people who can vote.  If the parents of the kids can not vote, it has to be clear that they are not citizens or worthy of being a citizen.  Colleges do that now so what is the big deal?  That means that all of the children of these illegal immigrants can not go to our schools or they will have to pay extra like they do for college.  Here in the USA if you are from another state, you will have to pay out of state tuition to attend one of the colleges.  Why should it be any different for regular school kids>

The other thing that we need to change in the law is that just being born here does not automatically make you a citizen.  Many other countries don't automatically make you a citizen just because you popped out of your mother here in the USA.  If we would just wake up and take care of the USA citizens first, our quality of life would be a lot better and it would also save us money in the process.  I do not understand why the citizens of the USA are so stupid when it comes to this very simple problem. Do you?

Comprehensive Is Impossible

 If you were lessoning to the Republican debate, then you heard one person call the error of considering "impossible" alternatives as legitimate.  I will explain in more detail in this blog.

How many times have you heard your favorite politician answer a serious question with. "What is needed is a comprehensive solution"?  It has to be thousands of times.  What they are doing is tricking you because they know that most of you are too stupid to understand decision making.  I used to teach decision theory in a major university so I know a little about the process.  Let me explain.

Here are the basics of decision making.  First, you need an objective and second you need a list of all the alternatives.  The final step is how to select the best alternative.  That might include all kinds of calculations and statistical data. but if you have a complete list of alternatives, the best one is some place on that list.  Now, where do people go wrong?  They leave off possible alternatives either on purpose or because they are not aware of them.  The error politicians try to pull on you is to include alternatives that are impossible like "comprehensive" and many of you fall for that one and even try to select it from the list.

If you followed the above, I hope that you are not tricked by slick politicians who keep using the  comprehensive alternative argument when it is clearly not an honest alternative.  Notice that very young children and people with mental problems tend to go for the comprehensive or impossible alternative and I hope that you are not one of them. 

Doctors and Bayes Therom

 This blog is about my total frustration with modern doctors and their lack of understanding of Thomas Bayes.

If you do not know about Thomas Bayes. then go look it up.  He was a minister back in the 1700's who was trying to prove there was a God when he stumbled onto one of the most significant concepts in probability.  Today, I am going to take out my frustration with actual doctors of today.

Several weeks ago I bumped into a sticking out board in my shop and it hit right on my ribs on my right side.  It really hurt at the time and I got a big burse from it.  It stayed sore for a couple of weeks and I noticed later that there was a small lump below the skin. so I went to the doctor.

He examined it and found that it was below my right breast so he scheduled me for a mama gram.  Men don't normally get mana grams, but he wanted one.  I went in and had the mama gram and to my surprise, they wanted me to also have an ultra sound.  That is where I started thinking that "this was enough".  I asked to speak with the person who was reading the mama gram and I did.  He was a few hundred miles away and only saw the images on his computer.  I challenged the need for a ultra sound. He explained that there was no involvement of either of my breasts and that he was not sure about the small lump.  I then explained that I had bumped the spot and that I was 83 years old.  I jumped to the bottom line and asked if he knew the cost of these tests and if they were worth it.  He said that he did not know what the cost was.  At that point, I challenged how he could determine the worth if he did not know the cost.  His response was that it was the "standard protocol".  I then asked if the protocol was the same for a 25 year of and an 83 years old and he said "yes".  He detected that he was not speaking with some simpleton and went on to explain that the additional ultra sound did not have a good chance  of explaining exactly what the lump was.  At that point, I called off any further testing,  He then agreed with me.

Can you now see why medical costs in the USA are so high while we are still far down the list when it comes to life expectancy?  Next time you deal with a medical doctor, ask them if they are familiar with "Bayes Theron".  If they plead ignorance, get another doctor.  You could even ask them how much the visit or any tests will cost and if they do not know, get another doctor.

It is a very sad situation that we all find ourselves in and it will only change if we start demanding it..  

"What" and "Why" in China

 I have been on this what and why kick for a while here in the USA, why not China?  This blog will build on recent data from the Wall Street Journal.

According the WSJ China may be in economic trouble.  They showed all  kinds of data along with their interpretation.  A couple of areas that got my attention were the shift of workers from agriculture and the excess of well educated young people.  It seems that many new young college graduates are finding it difficult to find a job.  As you might have expected there has been a very disproportionate number of technical workers in the growing social computer sector.  It has been the same here in the USA.  What these new numbers point out to me is how "dynamic" and "changing" every thing is in China as it is here in the USA.

Take the shift from agriculture.  We had the same thing here and it was great for the economy just like it was for the USA.  The economy tapped in to the excess intellect that was being waisted on the farm, but that well may be running dry as it has here in the USA.  Like the USA, China has a similar statistical distribution of intellect.  Darwin only made so much and he did not play favorites.

Here is the other area.  China has similar schools and colleges just like we have, but the kids work much harder than ours.  In China the hard work by their students assures that they learn "what" and are able to regurgitate it back on the test just like here, only they do it better.  The end product is that China does not have any more "why" students than the rest of the world.  Like the economies of most of the world, China's is changing just as fast and the "what" people just can not keep up.  Like all economic rushes, they bottom out like a mine or well that goes dry.  Now what?  A "what" person who was prepared for a special event or job becomes obsolete. 

Look at manufacturing.  China came on the scene that was already set and was changing very slowly.  They had an excess of people who were hungry for work.  All they had to do was to organized and set things in motion to take advantage of the Gold rush that they could see in front of them.  You know the history of how things went.  I know that you have the ability to look into the rear view mirror, but can you see the future?  Did you predict the boom in China?  I do not think so.

Here is another thing about the free enterprise system and that is each person is looking at the situation and making individual decisions about what to do.  It is true that most only look a short distance ahead, but the government is so clumsy that even if they are able to look farther ahead, their advantage is canceled out by their clumsiness.  It is worse for a country like China.  What if they got onto the Global Warming band wagon?  If China wants to move ahead, they will have to shift away from central planning and the communist type of system and I do not think that they are capable to do that.

It is interesting when you start to compare China with the USA from the point of education and the statistical distribution of intellect in our populations.  Combine that with an increase in the rate of change and depth of inter relationships of all the variables that impact us. Think about it.

Energy and Global Warming

 In this blog, I am going to try to show you how energy and global warming are tied together.

In my last blog, I tried to trace the growth in quality of life to how us humans harnessed energy to improve our quality of life.  At first it was with human muscle power and then later to electrical and nuclear power'  During all this time our need for more and more energy was driven by the growth in the number of humans here on Earth as well as a higher quality of life.

There is one very simple rule of physics and that is that energy can not be created, only transformed. That means that the original muscle power can only be transformed.  If nothing changed here on Earth except that the population grew to where it is now, we would need the same amount of energy from some place to produce the quality of life that we have.  That means we would be generating the same amount of greenhouse gas that we do today.  People would have to eat more food to generate the muscle power that would be needed and they would be generating more waste and breath out more carbo dioxide.  

Mother nature wants to keep things in balance and us humans want to play against mother nature for our own selfish benefits. Did you ever wonder where all the energy came from that produced oil and coal and the energy that is stored in these two fuels?  It came from some  place and now us humans want to get it back and use it to improve our quality of life.

If you are a normal human then you want some kind of free lunch.  I am sorry that there is no free lunch no mater what you might think or what some politician has told you.  We are all subject to mother natures' laws, like it or not.  The only variable that us humans control is "breeding".  Aa long as the total number of us humans keeps increasing we all have a problem.  The other is quality of life.  It is a trade off.  If we want to keep or improve our quality of life, we have to reduce the number of humans here on Earth.  Again, there is no free lunch!