1940s Greece
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 11:21:56 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: [2.2.16.19961219112154.22df0948@mail.bnl.gov]
To: Vasos Panagiotopoulos +1-917-287-8087 Bioengineer-Financier
Samani Marions Panyaught NYC-11357-3436-287-USA [vjp2@dorsai.dorsai.org]
From: Leon Petrakis [petrakis@bnl.gov]
Subject: Re: A new historical novel on growing up in Nazi-occupied Greece
MANY THANKS FOR TAKING TIME TO WRITE, AND ESPECIALLY FOR SHARING YOUR
FAMILY'S TRAGIC ENCOUNTERS DURING THOSE HORRIBLE YEARS (WHICH I HOPE WE WILL
NOT FORGET). YES I DID "LIVE" THROUGH THOSE YEARS. I HAVE MET HARRY MARK
PETRAKIS, BUT I AM NOT RELATED TO HIM.I AM A SCIENTIST BY TRAINING, WORKING
OVER THE YRS ON PROBLEMS AT THE INTERFACE OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT. I
AM SENIOR SCIENTIST HERE AND DEPARTMENT CHAIRMAN-EMERITUS. AGAIN, FOR
WRITING. LP
At 01:42 PM 12/18/96 -0500, you wrote:
*+- Dr Petrakis,
*+- I read with interest about your newly self-published novel
*+-on greek life in WW2.
*+- Did you live then? The 1940s stole my parents youth, and in
*+-some way, my own as well. Was it really the Nazis and Reds, or was it
*+-something wierd and wicked deep inside the character of the Greeks?
*+-Stories in my family abound - from the wickedness of allies and
*+-friends to the kindness of enemies. My mom's dad was killed by reds
*+-for being yank, but red friends sent word many times to save my
*+-family. Reds bought pardons later while their victims went ignored
*+-("You have relatives in America, your seven orphans don't need
*+-help"). Nazis looted my mom's parents' home and killed her cousin
*+-merely for being a young bank VP, but what of the soldier who let my
*+-dad's brother leave the Crete POW camp to see his dying son, or the
*+-German officer who offered to prosecute the looters? The irony that as
*+-the Australian Jewish soldier my granpa hid was writing about my
*+-granpa in newpapers, the reds were killing and torturing my granpa. My
*+-mom's cousin still holds on to things his Jewish playmates asked him
*+-to hold, still expecting them to someday return. My mom's cousin whose
*+-mother was held hostage by reds so he would fight on their side - who
*+-stood up to die in battle rather than fight his country - and his
*+-siblings being taken north for fifteen years in an effort to prove
*+-that "Macedonians were Slavs". Or the German colleague of my dad's
*+-who became Orthodox and moved to Greece only to be drafted by the
*+-Nazis. The Nazi officer who kicked my father down the steps of
*+-parliament in order to find where my dad was hiding his boss' Jewish
*+-friend. Ultimately, that period made my parents so sensitive to human
*+-suffering, yet sometimes too timid to really live.
*+- Are you related to Harry Mark Petrakis, the Pulitzer-winning
*+-GrAm Chicago novelist who wrote in the 1950s about GrAm life? What do
*+-you do at Brookhaven?
[VJP2 afterthought: to have really understood the pain humanity
inflicted on itself in the 1940s is to comprehend that if, as extremists
suggest was possible, they also successfully obliterated the planet, it would
have been a comparatively humane climax. The very essence of humanity was
nearly exterminated to instead fulfil some empty human-concocted ideas.]
Valuation with Declining Growth
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.econ:416608
Subject: Declining Growth in Valuation
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2016
Message-ID: noqrth$gij$1@reader2.panix.com
When Liebowitz got the IAQF award he asked about declining growth.
I tried sigmod models but they didn't integrate nicely, hyperbolic did.
Declining Growth: "Integrate[Exp[(g/t-r)t],{t,0,Infinity}]" -> Exp(g)/r
Gordon: "Integrate[Exp[(g-r)t],{t,0,Infinity}]" -> 1/(r-g)
Blockchain Mining Cost
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: misc.invest.misc:55372
Subject: How to fix blockchain mining cost
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018
The problem with blockchain mining expense is that the hashing algorithm is
way too complex. I was wondering if its complexity might not be proportional
to the size of the transaction and that further transactions would be bundled
by size, the way Merrill does retail but GOldman does wholesale.
Venturing Licencing & Biotechnology
The venture capital industry was started by Harvard B-school's
General Doriot when he started American Research & Development in 1946
which funded Digital Equipment Corporation or DEC in 1957. Venture
funds are formed from investments from insurance companies,
endowments, pension funds and other institutional sources - as well as
a small but significant fraction from wealthy individuals. Venture
funds have long lives and are unique in that they expect very few of
their investments to really succeed, but that the extraordinary
success of that fraction of investments to more than cover the failure
of the other investments to grow. Venture capital ran in long cycles
(depending on IPO and/or merger booms as a harvest or exit strategy to
free up funds for new investments) until Peter Grace promoted the 1978
cut in capital gains tax which led to a prolonged boom in venture
capital until 1987, when the populist elimination of the capital gains
exemption caused the market crash and most venture capital to flow
risk-aversely into LBOs and most startups to depend on "angel" (3F:
friends family & fools; tax writeoff) capital instead. As the baby
boomer pension funds began to skyrocket (expected to switch duration
matching to bonds in 2015), institutional investors began requiring
money managers to take on larger and larger amounts of money simply
because the institutional investors could better manage fewer
managers. The result has been that venture funds themselves seek out
"first movers" and give them larger amounts of money (in effect the
same fund does several rounds) and therefore avoid making small
investments. But seed capital was always a fraction (5-15%) of the
total venture capital available and most ventures need several
subsequent "rounds" of financing. And it is also true that (less
identifiable) startup funds make smaller investments than successful
funds, because they have less money and because experienced managers
wish to avoid repeating their painful learning experiences and wish to
capitalise on their success instead. There is also a distinction
between many supposed venture funds being run by risk averse financial
analysts, as opposed to individuals who are in essence management
consultants compensated with long-range equity, with the latter being
exemplified by Doriot student Steve Lazarus of ARCH ventures.
Universities such as MIT, RPI and Utah have also sought to invest a
part of their own endowment in their own ventures, while universities
like the UC system, Stanford and Columbia tend to be averse to this
because their licencing program is so successful instead.
Is the real decision of VC vs IPO vs JV really one due to
business conditions - the eco/reg/tax/demographic environment, such as
capital-gains-preference risk-averseness found in 1978-86, the
baby-boomer pension boom (expected to switch to bonds in 2015), the
move away from Glass-Steagall towards universal banking..?
[KKR was established by major banks to circumvent Glass-Steagall.]
The model of equity investment with strategic alliances comes
from the Germanic model of universal banking, where you practically
marry your banker and the Japanese incestuous cross-shareholdings -
but will we be seeing more of this as we see Glass-Steagall being
eliminated?
In the 1970s we kept hearing oil reserves were going to run
out but then we realised oil companies weren't including expected
future finds in their books to avoid their being taxed - I wonder if
those predicting a dearth of new drug discoveries haven't been misled
by similar conservative predictions inspired by the ghosts of health
reform. In some cases a blockbuster drug already existed somewhere
(either as a market failure or as unfeasible) and a new use was
discovered.
Where I learned to joke about frogs..
or.. that's my dad!
[Manhattan_East 13Oct82 v20#35 Gary Stevens] ..Over a tasty dish of
swordfish at well-patronized JOE'S PIER 52 (now in the Sheraton
Centre), I found myself in conversation with a waiter named John who
has been serving seafood specialties at JOE KIPNESS' place for 12
years. The gent is Greek, so did I talk about the catch of the day?
No, the chat went in the direction of Aristophanes, who wrote
satirical comedies hundreds of years B.C...
Expire Green Cards
From: vjp2@dorsai.org
Subject: Should Green Cards Expire?
Date: 1996/08/23
Message-ID: 4vl640$iao@amanda.dorsai.org
newsgroups: misc.immigration.usa,alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.immigration
I'd like to call for a simple and I believe fair reform in
immigration regarding permanent residents who stay here for several
decades without learning the language, let alone become citisens.
These folks spit in our faces by refusing to assimilate and are
probably much more likely to be terrorists than folks who become
citisens. Why shouldn't a green card expire unrenewably in ten years?
Why shouldn't there be a language test after five years? Is that too
much to ask of them? I'm not anti-immigrant; I'm a son of immigrants
as well as a grandson and greatgrandson of illegals. My family wanted
to become American so much - my granpa was killed by Greek reds for
having worked here - why do we let these people laugh at our process?
Because it's so much more fair and open than anyone else's?
alt.politics 2006-05-08 vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Require English/Civics of Legals & Illegals
For all the problems with illegal immigration, I fear Green-carders
more. Illegal immigrants WANT to be here. Green-carders think it is beneath
them to apply for citisenship and look at becoming American with disdain. Yet
they stay for decades and never learn the language. That attitude of disdain
harbors terrorists more than illegals and it is the Green-carders who set up
and maintain anti-assimilationist institutions. The jet plane and the
satellite dish have changed the old paradigm of assimilation. I believe Green
Cards should be limited to seven years, unrenewably and require an English
test. It is ironic that this suggestion, what I see as "moderate" reform,
seems lost in the fog of the opposing extremes. But if you look at how
Giuliani's policing quality-of-life crimes reduced crime overall (because
they guy who littered also committed other crimes), you should suspect
Green-card reform would solve more problems in the long run. Don't think the
old granma housing illegals and teaching them to hate America is really as
harmless as she looks; Without her, the terrorists would be homeless and
perhaps uninspired and she is sneaking hate fliers into the prayerbooks in
the guise of cleaning them.
Then think of something else: is one Kerry/Blue voter worth two Bush/Red
voters? Well, congressional reapportionment doesn't just count citisens, it
also counts legal and illegal aliens. THey may not vote, but they are used to
weight the legislative vote. In fact, urban political machines play this up
by setting up unelected "neighborhood" organisations to herd immigrants,
delay their assimilation, but keep them vocal enough to frighten
conservatives into inaction. Lincoln objected that slave states could count
non-voting slaves as 3/5 a person to up their census count for
reapportionment. Well, today, illegal aliens count in the census for
reapportionment. The LiverHole DumbOClucks, ever since Andrew Jackson, have
been wise to this. This is why they fund "neighborhood action" groups for
every ethnic minority, to keep them from learning English, from becoming
citisens, from assimilating, from straying too far, but most importantly from
VOTING. See, if they become Americans, they just might have a mind of their
own and vote the rascals out.
Shortermism
From: vjp2@dorsai.org Subject: Re: Workers' Capitalism : IBD Date:
1996/12/31 Message-ID: 5acmq5$pi5@dorsai.dorsai.org
newsgroups: talk.politics.misc, Indeed, most of the "short-termism" comes
from (often union-held) "pension-fund socialism" as well as from the
endowments of some of the very universities badmouthing "short-termism".
Indeed, one extremely reputable university insisted it's internal venture
capital fund provide "annualised returns"! It is ironic, that much of the
merger frenzy of the late 1980s (after long term capital gains ceased to be
treated differently) came from union-managed funds.
Greece was never Agrarian
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe:718412 soc.culture.greek:660441
Subject: Greece was never Agrarian
Date: Thu, 4 May 2017
Message-ID: oee076$93r$1@reader1.panix.com
The statist agrarian fetish is one of the biggest tragedies of Modern
Greece. The appropriate model for Greece is more merchantile Holland than
the Hun obschina. Alexander's father took Byzantium to starve Athens of
Scythian wheat while Sicily fed Sparta. Greek geography cannot sustain
agriculture despite German fantasies that nearly starved Greece off the 1940s
map. Germans and their fellow huns enslave by imposing Romatic Agrarianism
while only commerce enhances freedom. Tocqueville dispels the feudal
casuistry of the family farm as American farming was always industrial and
commercial, while Pericles and Lincoln disdained farming. (Greek industry:
Agri 5% Industry 25% Services 70%; Exports 17% Food 14% Chem 12% Machin 10%
Minerals; Main trade: Germany, Italy, UK, Bulgaria)
Comments on Bloomberg View Disqus.com
[Abandoning Gold Helped Dollar Gain Preeminence ca April 2014] The BIS is
correct to encourage a gold-advised SDR as there is no such thing as an
absolute gold standard because someone has to fix the price. Indeed,
conspiracists demand political currency control in lieu of our uniquely
multicrosssectional federalism revealing their hidden motives. Wonder how
conspiracists decrying Bernancke looseness used to decry Volcker tighness.
And they ignore how in the end of his term Volcker was quite loose because
Weninger showed M1 unmeasurable necessitating a newcomer Greenspan to hit the
brakes.
[Democracy Won't Cure Rising Inequality ca April 2014] Income inequality
is a mirage due to the disintermediation of cuddly benefits and triple
martinis brought about by tax reform making the need to hide higher incomes
necessary.
[August 2015 on Alzheimers] Modern research is hampered by incrementalist
satisficing which avoids breakthrough creative destruction because we have
allowed hun hyperspecialisation bureaucratic silos to displace encyclopedic
learning which would provide cross fertilisation across disciplines. Look at
how only the courageous protection of Fred Seitz allowed Prusiner to follow =
his work on prions whose oligomerisation (under ionic oxidative imbalance)
underlies most neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimers, Parkinso= ns
and Huntingtons. We need to look at problems from a wide perspective instead
of spending more and more on ever smaller advances.
[Too Many Retirement Plans, Too Little Savings ca April 2014] Social
savings accounts should replace entitlements (retirement, health, education,
housing). As Enron, Bear Stearns, GM and Chrysler pensions vanished, these
should be jointly monitored by individual, employer and government. As major
transactions are delayable and deliberate and tax assessors never mark to
market, it is better to use indifference prices than marking to market. When
an individual has fulifilled obligations to social savings, may be considered
"accredited" investor.
[Drunk on Debt, U.S. Tells Teetotaler to Sober Up ca November 2013]
Currency imbalances contributed significantly to the financial crisis hence
we should institute a new Plaza/SDR with one hundred Yen to one dollar to one
euro to five renminbi. The Fed should be given control of foreign exchange in
return for returning all financial regulation to the OCC.
[Health Savings Accounts as Antidote to Obamacare ca September 2013] Yes,
but why should I be required to get an HSA? Even before Obamacare it was
possible to buy $1k deductible with HSA and $25k catastrophic, but nothing in
between, eg $7k catastrophic, which is what I figure is what I really
need. Asking around I found out that insurance regulators did their best, for
ideological reasons, to prevent such a policy from ever being written.
[Wall Street Pay Is a Model of Clarity? ca September 2013] Brokerage fees
need long term residuals. I see no reason why my broker should not benefit if
my funds grow over the years. In March 2009 I was told it was too risky for
me to buy a REIT that was at one quarter of its peak, as if buy-low-sell-high
is something to be regulated against. Although I suspect their concern was
their commission was too low. The current transaction-based fee structure
does not reflect desired results.
[Bank Leverage Is the Defining Debate of Our Time ca September 2013]
Capital ratios are self-insurance, hence lack the moral hazard of deposit
insurance. They should depend on leverage squared and volatility and
countercyclically on GNP growth. A quantitative rule is a lot harder to waive
the way the Volcker Rule or Glass-Steagal can be. To appreciate the quixotic
nature of the Volcker Rule, recall banks were first convinced to sell
securities by the government wishing to sell its own bonds a century ago.
[Republicans’ Immigration Bind, as Explained by Aristotle ca September
2013] As the grandson of illegals who got an Ivy engineering degree at
nineteen, I have two problems with conventional libertarian GOP immigration
thinking: I think illegals love this country more than un-Englished
citisenship-disdaining perennial-green-cards (whose cards I would limit to
seven years and.. require civics and English tests), and I know how tech visa
holders can be coerced, which is why I would rather give them green cards as
soon as they are admitted to grad school.
[Liberals Should Embrace the Ownership Society ca 2013 ] I concur with
elaboration: I suggest we mandate a social savings account jointly overssen
by individual, employer and government (to prevent what happened to Enron and
Bear Stearns folks whose savings was al in company stock). Once one fulfills
all obligations to this account, one becomes an accredited investor. THis
account would be used for health, pension, education, and realty and would
replace all entitlements. Welfare would be a Milton Friedman negative income
tax feeding to this account. Financial, Insurance and banking regulation
would thusly be unified.
[Hamas Shows Its True Colors ca 2012] Israel needs to excel at missile
defense and then draw its own West Bank borders like Sharon did in Gaza. The
USA must simultaneously use bunker busters on Iranian and North Korean nukes
because it is no coincidence both states border Russia which is trying to
keep petroleum expensive.
[U.S. Taxpayers Need Break From Underwater Flood Insurance ca 2012] A
speaker at an Ivy Private Equity club said it behooves firms employing over
500 to self insure because health insurance serves the broker and neither the
employee nor the employer. See also Gillian Tett's Fool's Gold to see how
little financial securities salemen understood or cared about what they
sold. Neither has my homeowner's insurance ever paid. This is because most
insurance salesmen seem to not understand what they sell. Yet they always
seem to appear at all the receptions and lobbying opportunities.Perhaps this
is also true of all financial products, most salesmen don't care to
understand what they sell. Insurance and many financial products are much
more mathematically complicated than buyers or sellers understand.
[Predicting the Next Shock to the Global Economy ca 2012] Al Gore's Y2K
scam coaxed the Fed to create a bubble which went from Asian Contagion to
internet to oil, commodities, real estate and gold. Near zero, the exact
interest intercept in the Cagan exponential velocity is not determinate and
may even go complex/harmonic. Hence a slightly higher interest rate, like 2%
is needed, offset by tax cuts to prime the pump out of a liquidity
trap. China's abuse of commodities (not because of currency, but because
their command economy leads to such abuses) caused the financial crisis, but
this is self-limiting due to the (one baby) aging. Bear Stearns collapsed the
day the first boomer retired because of a statutory requirement funds move
from equity to bonds. When CHina hits the aging bump, they will take pressure
off our economy, leading to a recovery.
[Can Morgan Stanley’s Gorman Save Wall Street? ca 2012] Indeed, but we
must change the incentives. Commissions should include residuals on capital
gains. At the bottom of the market (3/09), brokers wouldn't let me "buy low,
sell high" because there wasn't enough commission for them. Yet I more than
doubled my money in two years.
[Making the Volcker Rule Better for Markets and the Economy ca 2012]
Instead of a waivable binary Volcker Rule, they should use a Taylor-like Rule
that changes with leverage squared, volatility and inversely GNP (the SDE is
(L-1) dr + L d var)
[The Trouble With Private Equity Is Privilege Not Profits ca 2012] I
concur: debt should be taxed but LT gains and dividends not. Debt is feudal,
pre-capitalist finance while equity is heart of capitalism. The debt
community, led by Henry Kaufman, opposed Reagan tax cuts. Irrational to
penalise trivial externalities to near bankruptcy so as to renegotiate.
Equity convertability is far more modern and would salve the pious of all
Abrahimic faiths in this time of crisis. Instead of a Tobin tax, use a
sliding sclae with instantaneous speculators paying regular tax and two
Autocracy is Bunk
From vjp2@biostrategist.com Sun May 25 15:31:15 2014
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox:310541
soc.culture.greek:636881 soc.culture.russian:537295
Subject: Re: Autocracy is bunk
Message-ID: lkp70m$kp5$1@reader1.panix.com
God was displeased when his people asked for a monarch in place of
judicial federalism (1 Samuel 8:1-22), so he could not possibly think
monarchy sacred. Besides, Gregory's notion was opposed to the peacetime
duarchy of the Roman Republic and does not contradict the monarchical form of
presidential republics. Just as fascism arose in shocked reaction to
bolshevism, autocracy arose in shocked reaction to the Frech Revolution whose
Napoleonic outcome Russia ended. The result was Russia suppressed 1848
central European revolution sending refugees to become USA abolitionists and
laborists, leaving behind those who would become fascists and nazis. The
populist autocracy Vatikiotis (1998) shows also motivated Metaxas inevitably
extended free health care and the Mokosh pagan obschina which defeated
Stolypin's reforms by claiming land to be one's unsellable "mother". One
cannot deny therefore that populist autocracy inevitably devolves into
bolshevism as even the most leftist Greeks today admire Metaxan socialism
(although Metaxas' rightist fans are ever-quick to deny this, the Metaxan and
communist youth leagues were both not coincidentally called Little Eagles or
Aetopoula) and Hitler considered himself a National Socialist. Even the New
Deal was based on General Johnson's admiration for Mussolinii's economist
Viglione. Perpetual Metaxan, Venizelist, and Peronist coups (which dared to
censor and revise ancient authors) owe their notions to Napoleon. Bikelas
(1890) shows us instead that Byzantium was the most democartic state of its
day. Likewise before tatarism (Schmemann HREO p305) stole Russia's soul from
within, Russia elected the Romanovs to replace the Ruriks. Novgorodian and
Varangian Rus was definitely democratic and commerialist rather than
autocratic and agrarian. Whereas Walter RUssel Meade shows Anglo-Dutch
commercialism revised that of the Greeks, Anglophobia inevitably derives from
those nostalgic (Dalin, Mufti) for franchises under the Kaiser's Ottomans
that the British, with their Jordanian and Israeli allies, terminated when
they defeated and ended the Ottoman Empire.
[I suspect the idea of Autocracy derives not from Byzantium, given
Vatikiotis showing byzantium was the most democratic state of its time, but
from Catherine the Great corresponding with Diderot and Peter trying to
emulate France. That the same fate befell the Russian monarch as the French
should be warning enough.]
Newsgroups: alt.news.cyprus:778 alt.news.macedonia:10515 soc.culture.british:53398 soc.culture.greek:49792 soc.history.ancient:35829
Subject: Re: Democracy: Whose idea was this?
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010
Message-ID: hsf9s6$sdk$2@reader1.panix.com
In 1204 Baldwin's Crusaders Byzantium found themselves forced to adhere to
Byzantine governance which in 1215 they plagiarised into the Magna
Carta. Byzantine emperors were subject to Senate vetoes and impeachment as
well as Hippodrome town hall meetings. Autocrats hence have referred to due
process as "byzantine" complication. Furthermore, the Acropolis Parthenon
spent more time as a Christian Church than a pagan temple. Byzantium was
founded by Athenians seeking Dniester wheat (as Spartans sought Sicilian
wheat) which is why emperors sought Athenian brides. Russia was divided by
the Tatar Turks and Litwo Polish 1200-1667 while Greece was split between the
Ottoman Turks and Venetians 1452-1947.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox:32087
Subject: Mecmetising Innovations
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007
Message-ID: enahlo$39k$4@reader2.panix.com
Those who would force us to retain mecmetised innovations have the
audacity to call our search for the premecmetised Orthodoxy in turn
innovational? All of Orthodoxy has suffered under Turk, Tatar and Arab
occupation where we were forced to generate superficial practices on matters
the occupiers cared about but were irrelevant to our faith. Not until
Orthodoxy cleanses these mecmetisations away will it be fully restored.
For those who don't want pews to obstruct liturgical cocktail parties:
Massie, Land of Firebird, Touchstone, 1980 ISBN 0-671-46059-5
p5 Englishmen found the custom of moving about in and out of church very
disturbing; people, said one, "gaggle and cackle like geese"
For those who oppose musical instruments in Church: Psalm 150
150:3 Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!
150:4 Praise Him with the timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
150:5 Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Furthermore, many of these so-called Byzantine cantors who went to be
trained in Europe use vacuous endless syllable-repeating medieval flourishes
that make the words of what they chant unintelligible. Their vacuous
rererems seem intended to endear them to motorcycle gangs. It is better to
have an organ and have the congregation understand and indeed sing along than
have the pomposity of these supposed masters obfuscate the services.
For those who want to fast on Thanksgiving: In Orthodox countries,
if fasting falls on national holidays, there is no fasting.
Masonry is the reason we enjoy religious toleration and furthermore, is
not syncretism, but rather the Platonic deism that posits humans who do not
believe in higher being are not capapble of being good because of resulting
hubris.
Imperial Russia, 1198, ed Burbank, indiana.edu, 0-253-33462-4
[Smith, USIA]
p291 But why was so much attention devoted to Freemasonry?.. lodges'
sence of mystery distinguished them from other new institutions: secrecy was
anathema to the logic of the public sphere
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: soc.history.ancient:38843 soc.culture.russian:22774
alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox:69113 alt.religion.christian:254150
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2010
Message-ID: ibkc4l$qmi$1@reader1.panix.com
Western Christians believe Russians not the Mongol Hordes are the Gog &
Magog. Yet Alexander the Great fought off the Gog & Magog at the Dervent
Gates in the Caucasus Mts. Further note the etymological transistion: Magog,
Mongol, Magyar, Hungar, Uyghur, Hangook, Gog. American Indians, Koreans,
Japanese, and Turks are the true heirs of the Gog and Magog. Yet those same
people who see Russia as this force of Armageddon embrace Genghis Khan and
"Young Turks" and similar Magoguery.
Sons of Conquerors, Hugh Pope, Overlook Duckworth, 2005
p25 core genius of the Turks is military organization. It is Turkic rulers
who forged most of the great empires of the Middle East and Central Asia.
p189 In the centuries prior to the Russian conquest in the 1860s, Central
Asia's governing class and military were as a rule Turkic, and preserved the
clan structure of the steppe.
p221 Izvestia, for instance, reported in 1998 that scientists had found a
72% correlation between genes of American Indians and a village in Russia's
Central Asian republic of Tuva - and that the TUrkic Tuvans looked exactly
like American Indians too. Likewise, a University of Arizona study found a
strong linkage between 19 native American groups and 15 from Siberia
p223 "Native Americans and Turks worship the wolf. They value the color
turquoise. Shamans exist in both world,"
Great Recession,New Depression
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.econ:416672
Subject: 1929=2007 4th Turn Liq Trap
Date: Thu, 4 May 2017
Message-ID: oedres$6ev$1@reader1.panix.com
I think low interest rates (and perhaps some negative or complex natural
or real rate) is what drives the Kagan eponential velocity into harmonics and
strange attractors, explaining the "liquidity trap". Having been schooled in
Sargent Wallace 1975's high rate rational expectations strange detractor, I
feel the only peggable rates are between 2-6%, and that anything else can't
be pegged, begging for other intstruments. However, given that electronic
money (Wenninger 1987 & Partland 1992, FRBNY QR) make money suppl no longer
measurable. That Metro card and Kinko card is really the "Commodity based
currency" the Fed supposedly terminated in 1913.
Financial panics resemble epidemics and blackouts both in terms of
contagion and interconnectedness. Like power, it is the grid which makes
finance work.
Interest rates are an exponential quantity in economics (whether in Kagan
velocity or just compounding), but the real rates are a function of the rates
we use, hence we cannot be sure if the transformation at very small rates
crosses over into the imaginary (complex number) range, triggering harmonics
(theory of oscillations and stability). Hence we do not fully understand if
the liquidity trap is caused by low rates or the other way around. This may
explain Haugen's observation of persistent volatility during the Great
Depression (Keynes said makrets are irrational longer than you can stay sovent)
which suggests we should be looking at higher order moments and
maybe chaos theory to fully understand the perplexing complexity.
Clearly the government creates our worst problems: In 1902 OCC banned
banks selling corporate securities but chose not to block National City from
using a subsidiary in 1911, then in WW1 encouraged banks to sell government
bonds. (Broome& Markham 2001 p731& 747) Enron masked phantom profits by
claiming to reinvest them instead of paying dividends. In 2008 mortgage risk
was masked from Basel ratios by stripping. THis suggests that Basel can only
be effective if part of the reserve capital is placed with the Fed. But at
the same time, deposit insurance also creates a moral hazard by promising to
rescue bad behavior. Instead of a waivable binary Volcker Rule, they should
use a Taylor-like Rule that changes Basel Capital Ratios with leverage
squared, volatility and inversely GNP (the SDE is (L-1) dr + L d var)
I would use Basel ratios across the board on banking, finance, insurance,
and make them hold it as interest-bearing excess reserves at FRB to avoid
phantoms (like pre-Hubbard-dividend retained earns). Capital ratios are
self-insurance, hence lack the moral hazard of deposit insurance. A
quantitative rule is a lot harder to waive the way the Volcker Rule or
Glass-Steagal can be. To appreciate the quixotic nature of the Volcker Rule,
recall banks were first convinced to sell securities by the government
wishing to sell its own bonds a century ago. They should depend on leverage
squared and volatility and countercyclically on GNP growth.
Income inequality is a mirage due to the disintermediation of cuddly
benefits and triple martinis brought about by tax reform making the need to
hide higher incomes necessary.
Social savings accounts should replace entitlements (retirement, health,
education, housing). As Enron, Bear Stearns, GM and Chrysler pensions
vanished, these should be jointly monitored by individual, employer and
government. As major transactions are delayable and deliberate and tax
assessors never mark to market, it is better to use indifference prices than
marking to market. When an individual has fulifilled obligations to social
savings, may be considered "accredited" investor.
Two decades ago at NYC's Harvard Club, I got Andy Spindler to concur that
moving regulation to the Treasury OCC would eliminate the conflict of
interest that inspires conspiracy theories.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc:5699536
Subject: Infrastructure
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2017
Message-ID: o75uvs$sja$1@reader1.panix.com
When I first heard ab Trump's infra plans I thougth how would you do a GOP
super infra project? Lots of synergy and national defense, like Ike's
roads. So I thought they should build a hardened loop one hour inland from
major cities, mostly under the Appalachians and Rockies - for autobahn, high
speed rail, oil pipeline, coal slurry (screw conveyeor), electric grid &
communications. Some folks actually liked this because of their fear of nuke
or stellar EM pulse. I first thought of soemthing like htis when everything
was locked down right after 9/11 - that you should have big inland airports
like Narita and none near the cities.
Revive Usenet
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: How to Revive Usenet
Sun, 29 Jan 2017 talk.politics.misc:5698566 news.software.readers:307819
I feel social networks and blogs risk monopolisation and censorship, force
conformity, use unnecessary resources, require too fancy software, and
fragment users. Usenet in the 1990s united the world. I was at an event
discussing crowdsourcing for science and folks lamented the demise of usenet.
I'd like to see a reader both online (accessible by lynx browser) and as
an app that looks and feels like a social network. It should most of all
notify you when somone replies to your posts and when your friends post. It
should let you rank (1-10) how important posts are and so decide what to show
you first. I had a celfon in 1990-2009. Dumped it. I really get annoyed when
they ask me for a celfon or to update my browser.
I think MS Outlook's downloading a use list of groups crippled usenet, and
Google has not maintained the deja news franchise (some stuff seems to have
disappeared). Also they did not maintain the hierarchy, which would have
better followed academic departments.
I also think the moderator fanaticism was crippling. You can use kill
files instead of depend on the whim of others. We should allow individuals to
control what they view, not others.
One special peeve is, since I work in fields where brainstorming is
important, I would crosspost to groups I wanted to bring together. But the
narrow minded would complain they didn't want to hear it. I've actually seen
a strong enough current of support for crossposting (now disabled by google
groups, BTW) on the grounds it was more efficient than multiple posts to
multiple groups.
I really do think the internet of the 1990s was freer. Too many search
engines try to control what you see. They even disable booleans. Maybe they
do it to try to be helpful, maybe they are doing it to protect paying
customers, I can't tell. I have an analogy in Otmar Mergenthaler's linotype
leading ot an explosion of press freedom and hence democracies (in places
like Iran, Russia, Germany) in the late 1800s. Of course we know what
happened, govt learned to control the press. Well, look around, same with
internet - maybe not here, but most places.
Remember the orig net was peer-to-peer. Now everyone seems to be logged
in from a server farm in Texas. So where's the "inter" in internet?
Before the Great Recession
From: Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II
Newsgroups: sci.econ.research
Subject: Re: PROBLEMS WITH MONEY SUPPLY MEASUREMENTS
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 13:29:58 -0500
Message-ID:
Hank Reardon writes:
>I am looking for info regarding the recent problems the FED has faced
>in its measurement of monetary aggregrates.
Call the New York Fed public relations department and ask for
the Weninger paper debunking M1 in ca?1987 and the
Weninger-Partland paper debunking M2 in ca?1993.
I think the working papers are still free.
the ?'87 paper might have been in the Quarterly Review (FRBNY) so it
should be in your local campus library.
(I'm almost sure it was in QR)
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.econ:416870
Subject: New monetary paradigms
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020
Message-ID: rd5hco$deb$1@reader1.panix.com
We are undergoing the largest Paradigm Shift (cf Pinkerton 1990) in half a
millenium. It is about then that Copernicus penned the Quantity Theory of
Money, and electronic money is changing the way stuff is measured, and maybe
it has less friction. (Nondigital cashless currency: Sweden 1%, Euro 5%, USA
10%, USA distorted by foreigners holding cash abroad) Wenninger FRBNYQR 1987
showed M1 can't be measured. Partland FRBNYQR 1992 showed M2 can't be
measured. So Greenspan was called "Broad Money Al" (M3) in 1993 Economist
caption before turning to pegging fed funds rate. But Sargent Wallace JPE
1975 showed pegging rates is destabilising. Well, maybe not in the 2-6%
range. Above it becomes a strange detractor of hyperinflation. Below it goes
into the strange attractor of liquidity trap or secular stagnation (ZIRP and
negative rates concealed as exorbitant bank fees). Once the Kagan
exponential velocity goes into the zero range, it's trapped. And who knows
what the real rate in the exponent really is, maybe it produces harmonics.
Recently I have heard anecdotal evidence Velocity can't be measured. And how
did we measure Y (GDP) before Keyenes, anyway? Perhaps a separation of
variables is needed, maybe find a way to tease out population from income
(GDP/capita times population), maybe treat supply times velocity (MV) as a
single quantity. The Taylor rule is but the logarithmic derivative
(elasticity) of the Quantity Theory constrained by the FRA 1913 requirement
of elastic currency. In the mid90s, about when Fourth Turning came out,
Greenspan began worrying about deflation and brought in Ben Bernancke who
worked with Vincent Reinhart (AER 2004) developed ZIRP/QE in case we become
like Japan: GM, A&P and Greece all went bankrupt because of pensions
(abortion); Bear Stearns went broke the day the first boomer retired.
Electronic money is the future. THose who argue gold is the opposite of fiat
money forget someone has to peg gold, which makes it fiat, too.
From: vjp2@dorsai.org
Subject: New Old Economics
Date: 1998/03/24
Message-ID: 6f8351$7lh@enews2.newsguy.com
Newsgroups: sci.econ.research
[With the moderators' indulgence, I post a collection of some
comments on recent economics discussions I got dragged into. Given the
questions raised as to what he future brings in theoretical
approaches, I thought they might be relevant.]
Two years ago BoNY's Bannon showed NYC Beta Sigma Gamma (MBA
honors fraternity) a cartoon of Clinton bragging about creating so
many new jobs, and the waiter serving him water saying "Yeah, and I
have three of them." (Meaning part-time.) Recently when I was told my
native Long Island has more that regained the defence conversion lost
jobs, I asked about the Grumman engineers and was told they either
became programmers (glorified clerical workers, if you ask me), worked
at Home Depot, took early rerirement or left the region. Yes, we live
in deflationary times. Hopefully this deflation is fragmented across
segments of society (as in 1880s) and will not hit us in an aggregated
global wave (as in 1930s, thanks to protectionism). What should we
expect when all this real estate (not to mention production) that was
taken out of the market by communism is now returned, boosting supply,
hence pressuring prices downwards? How much of the Asian crisis is due
to the bolshevisation of Hong Kong and how much is due to western
socialists explaining their dislike of markets through a fantasaical
insistence that Asians somehow follow different semi-socialist market
realities?
In the meanwhile, as debt tax deductions were removed by
1986's tax reform, we have desubsidised debt (as well as removed the
regulatory pressures which kept energy expensive), hence lowered
pressure on interest rates, cheapening and reducing the federal
deficit, allowing us to break the spiral of its continuous growth. But
credit has also cheapened as the aging of the industrial world has
increased the supply of investable funds. But this aging has also
brought us a dangerous potential source of a revived inflation, namely
the labor shortage. Would the return of a capital gains tax break
provide a Mundellian offset to the supply shock of such a labor
shortage? Would we be able to maintain the discipline to keep our
budgets in surplus as well as reduce taxes and keep money tight enough
to provide the balanced growth specified by Mundell in his 1971
Princeton International Finance essay Dollar&Policy Mix.
The question arises as to whether a prolonged period of
deflationary increases in productivity will lead to labor unrest, as
in Bismark's Germany, the times of the French Revolution, the times of
the Bolshevik Revolution, the times of the Ayatollahs and the times of
William Jennings Bryant. Would such unrest lead us back to more New
Deal style socialism or would we be able to disintermediate its
effects through such things as a privatisation of social security and
a desubsidisation (whether subsidisation was through tax breaks,
grants or federal insurance schemes) of health care and education
(especially catastrophic health care and higher education)? Will we be
able to reform, defragment, and modernise our financial (banking,
securities and insurance) system in time (perhaps allowing for
deregulation of all finance except that pertaining to health,
education and housing)?
At the same time, we have lost the ability to control the
money supply as new instruments and electronic money have allowed
Wenninger and Partland to argue M1 and M2 are no longer
measurable. Now, through vendacards and other electronic money, we are
returning to interest pegging, which was shown as destabilising by
rational expectations. It is argued that Greenspan doesn't really peg
interest rates when he sets the discount rate, rather excercisies his
sole remaining instrument, the bully pulpit, from where he semaphors
us with either discount rate setting or talk of "rational exuberance".
Greenspan is remarkable - the man is the model - he digests raw data,
picking at individual, disagreggated numbers to arrive at his
intuitive conclusions - will we be able to maintain his policies in
the unfortunate event he left us?
Greenspan is Geoffrey Moore's student. Geoffrey Moore and
Milton Friedman were both Arthur Burns students. Arthur Burns was the
Fed chair Carter dumped in order to get G William Miller to inflate us
to insanity. That whole school is heavily influenced by the German
hyperinflation experience earlier this century. Greenspan is clearly
the closest thing to a gold standard we could have under the current
system. What happened in some part in 1987 is that Greenspan looked
at a lot more data than Volker was looking at and hit the brakes
(although the market itself was also reacting to Smoot-Gephardt-301
and most importantly, the end of capital gains preference). About
1986, Milton Friedman had come out with an article in Journal of
Political Economy (macroeconomics used to be called political economy
before Keynes) about the cost of holding currency. The buzz was then
that he was gonna become a gold standard supporter. About that time,
Manly Johnson had gotten the Fed to look at yield curve slope and
ALCAP instead of M1. (ALCAP was a commodity basket of Aluminum Copper
and Ammonium Phosphate, meant to have the net effect of a gold
standard without all the supposed negatives.) In 3/95 I met a chap
named Heinnemann who insists on measuring what he calls M0, or tight
money, which is demand deposits plus currency abroad - well, that
sounds great, and it's certainly a great heuristic for customers of
his who don't have huge market-moving accounts like the grubmint does
- but what happens when your account is so big it has highly nonlinear
effects and approximations don't cut it? Also, a bit earlier, we had
the Plaza Accords. About a week later I was at the NY Academy of
Sciences listening to my favorite econs prof, supply-side founder
Robert Mundell (the preface to Laffer's 1984 Intl Eco text clearly
attributes this to him) sparring with Princeton's Peter Kenan and
LBJ's Roosa, and the general feeling was then that the Plaza Accords
were a precursor to a new Mundellian Bretton Woods. But that was an
INTERNATIONAL gold standard - one in which national currencies got
devalued based on their gold reserves in the sub-basement vault of the
NY Fed. (C. Lowell Harriss wrote a book on banking or international
banking in the 50s or 60s which gave a very clear description of the
gold transfer mechanics.) The bottom line is "gold standard" means
many thing to many people and the trouble is in agreeing on what it
means. There is also the very serious question that, since gold has
now become a commodity used in electronics manufacturing, it may have
fundamentally changed its economic behavior. What we seem to be
approaching now (if deflation doesn't wreck it) is a return to
private, commodity-based currency, in the form of magnetic
venda-cards, which is what the system was in the 1870s and which is
even more "right wing" than "gold standard". The big question in my
mind, as I was schooled in rational expectations, which said
interest-pegging was destabilising, is why we now basically peg the
discount rate. My suspicion is that the instability isn't very
relevant at low interest rates, but if interest rates start going up,
it will destabilise again.
From: vjp2@dorsai.org
Subject: Re: Supply-Side Questions
Date: 1996/08/23
Message-ID: 4vl3ev$8d3@dorsai.dorsai.org
newsgroups: alt.politics.economics
No one can claim to understand supply-side economics without reading
the Princeton Intl Finance essay "Dollar & Policy Mix: 1971" by
Supply-Side Founder, Columbia U Professor Bob Mundell. (His son
recently retired as CEO of Wharton/WEFA econometrics). If you see the
intro to Laffer's 1983 Intl Eco textbook, you see him admiting Mundell
founded Supply-Side. Wanniski even calls it Mundellian
Economics. Mundell & Tobin were Samuelson's quickest PhDs - both a
year after the baccalaureate. Kemp, Lehrman and Giscard have all been
very close to Mundell. If you are serious about studying the economics
of the 1980s also look at the Partland (1992) and Wenninger (1987)
FRBNY QR papers showing M1 & M2 can't be measured - then contrast
these with Lucas/Sargent rational expectations showing interest can't
be pegged. Also look at work by Steve Entin regarding US deficits in
the previous century. You might also look at Congressional record
debate by Sen Bob Kasten regarding the rescinding of portions of
Reagans tax-for-cuts deal in 1982 when the Dems didn't come thru on
their promises - esp the repeal of savings interest witholding.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.society.liberalism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Why Today's "Conservatives" Cannot Win
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 03:50:29 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: cf47u5$qjn$2@reader1.panix.com
Well, conservatism and liberalism mean a lot less after the Cold
War ended. So many Social Conservatives are downright socialist. So
many supposed Social Liberals don't really want to live in a socially
liberal environment, they are instead just afraid the supposed
conservatives are out to take their rights away. No one really wants
to pay high taxes and let criminals run free and to have their
children converted into perverts. Those people who are genuinely and
fundamentally opposed to the Reagan-Thatcher message are a very small
minority, it's just that they have been confused by demagogic fog.
And it is also true that many demagogues who proclaim themselves
adherents of the Reagan-Thatcher message do not act according to their
supposed beliefs when their own special interests are concerned.
Therefore those who lend their support to the left are afraid of the
false conservatives, not the real ones.
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism:566727
Subject: How COnservatism went astray
Date: Thu, 4 May 2017 00:16:41 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: oedrt9$mic$1@reader1.panix.com
Edmunde Burke was not against change, just for carefully measured,
restrained change. Podhoretz Prophets (2002,p357) concluded ideology is
idolatry, the worship of human creation. Conservatism is the
ANTI-ideology. The idea of "conservative movement" is merely a tranferenace
of leftist situation ethics and ideolatry to supposed conservatism. (1975
Bickel p141, 122), using the language of the left. If conservatism be
apophatic restraint, then conservative activism can only be a cataphatic
oxymoron. If Bickel, Bork and Scalia condemned judicial activism how can we
not falsify the integrity of political activism, which magnifies the 47%?
(1944 Mises p81) Instead of seeing conservatism as Grover's "Leave us alone
coaliton", we ended up with an entire cadre of people who wanted to make
their living out of messing with other people's lives just like the left. And
Trump paid many of them to do just that. Real conservatism is deeper than
that, it is a surrender to divine will, and a disbelief that we can solve
everything (like poverty) or that we even cause everything (like climate
change).
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian:2583741
Subject: Ideolatry
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2017
My dad commented on his experiences in 1940s Athens "Christianism is the
only ISM". Abp (Iakovos Faith for a Lifetime p169+) had similar admonitions:
"Avoid Headlines.. Forget liberal-conservative distinctions.. Be suspicious
of trendy issues.. Take time to think.. In most cases, focus on immediate
issues" But the conclusion of Podhoretz Prophets best summed it (p357) as
Ideology is ideolatry is idolatry, the worship of human creations. It is
worth appreciating that religion, psychology, economics all suffer from the
fact that it behooves those in powers to manipulate them much more than other
fields. It's not the fault of those fields. Entomologists rarely face such
pressures. Ultimately all ethics depends on individual consideration
(mandated in Leviticus 19:18 "Love your neighbor as yourself," also found in
Confucius Analects 12:2, Buddhist Udana Vagna 5:1 and Matthew 7:1). That
idea in your head is a mental map, an approximation, a heuristic, but that
person next to you is in the image and likeness of GOD and therefore more
perfect that any idea. The worst atrocities occurred when humans tried to
IMPOSE their imperfect ideas on more perfect divinely-created reality. The
attempt to cataphatically conform the divinely created human into the
imperfect heuristic map of ideology instead of accepting the
incomprehensibility of the apophatic divine dialectic is evil. Yuval Hariri's
recent Sapiens says how humanity is the only creature who lives by myths
instead of reality. If God is incomprehensible then reason is idolatry, which
is why Jews answer with questions and Greeks with dialectic. Leo Strauss
trumps Karl Popper. Meekness is devoid of the melgibsian passion of just war
which divides and obfuscates. (Jer 17:9, Eph 2:3) (The Greek word Praos means
inagitable, calm, tame, devoid of passion. But also note it says inherit the
earth, not heaven, Kung Fu master. In Greek the word can be used to refer to
a banker or lion. See Molyneaux, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 48, No. 4
Dec., 2003, pp. 347-363 ) Lossky's apophatic revival prompted Popper's
falsifiability which in turn made genomics possible, "A foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of little minds" (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance 1841).
Gregory Nazianzen, the Great, tells us all creativity is divine (28:6; 1 cor
3:5-9) and denounced anti-science at Basil's funeral (42:11) as ignorant,
lazy and stupid. We allow canonical scripture to disagree (synoptics, James
v Paul) is because we believe in the dialectic pluralism of faith, language
and culture via Babel. The Huns contort science without the guidance of
Encyclios Paideia much as they contort Scriptute without Tradition.
Politicans like ghettos
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Walter Williams on Bill Cosby's Remarks
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 05:07:56 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: ca3hjc$jag$4@reader2.panix.com
The problem is the POLITICIANS WANT GHETTOES.
They are easier to manipulate than a diversified, educated suburb.
Any political consultant will tell you the easiest way to
segment voters is by ethnicity. I've seen them do mailings by
ethnicity, age and neighborhood forever. I never saw them do it by
income, education, or other demographics.
My parents left the Greek ghetto I was born in when I was
four; I only returned when I was 23, at the request of some politician
to "help us with the Greeks".
Popular Piety
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox
Subject: Re: Greek Popular Piety
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 02:49:45 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: c4qhg9$3mp$1@reader1.panix.com
Some afterthoughts
Massie's, Land_OF_Firebird said something like Russians are
Christendom's Muslims! The fact is Turk, Tatar and Arab muslims have
occupied nearly all Orthodox lands. I am not quite sure if the
muslims somehow encouraged Pharisaism (even if the Romans encouraged
Pharisaism in Jews). If an occupier cliams to respect your religion,
then one way he can put you down is by saying you don't really follow
your religion. If your occupier's popular piety is very strict then
you could be criticised for not being strict enough. It may be a
defensive mechanism. Problem is: I'm not sure we will ever know..
In c476pj$f9...@reader1.panix.com by vjp2@biostrategist.com
on Sun, 28 Mar 2004 18:50:27 +0000 (UTC) we perused:
*+- [This is largely a result inquiries after my shock that a
*+-Greek-born USA-raised colleagues recently mocked my fasting as "Greeks
*+-don't fast!"]
*+- It is rarely understood how western powers encouraged a
*+-Byzantine-free Greece, even today as the EU's pagan theme
*+-park. London, Paris and Rome wanted a Greece that proved them right
*+-(and a pagan Greece allowed them to claim they were colonially
*+-continuing the civilising influence of pagan Greece). Greece had
*+-foreign monarchs, who gradually became totally Orthodox, but even then
*+-aligned with their western relatives. Russia was not immune from this
*+-as the Petrine patriarch-less synod (emulating Lutheran-Anglican
*+-national churches whereas the pentarchy tradition was for one
*+-patriarch per continent) served as a model for the newly liberated
*+-Church of Greece. It is also rarely recalled that Greece was
*+-liberated gradually and the newly liberated portions tend to be more
*+-religious. Macedonia was held by the Turks until 1912 and many island
*+-by Italy until 1947 - parts of Epirus, Thrace and Cyprus are still
*+-occupied. Russian efforts on behalf of Bulgaria (exasperated that the
*+-Balkans couldn't unify, the Russians picked one) at Sen Stefano to
*+-forcibly Slavify Macedonia in the 1870s (sparking the 'plyletism'
*+-controversy) was also used to turn Greeks westward. (I would argue
*+-this controversy was deliberately revisisted in the 1990s to keep
*+-Greece from helping Serbia. Yet I must also note that due to the
*+-resulting misbeliefs fifteen of my relative were forcibly taken north
*+-in 1949, the last returning only in 1965.) It was Hitler who claimed
*+-Christianity was a Jewish plot but today secular Greeks (esp working
*+-in Asia) tend to see Christianity as having denied them their
*+-classical glory. (Never mind that Socrates began the greatest era of
*+-Classical Greece by throwing off the shackles of paganism hence laying
*+-groundwork for spread of Christianity!) Only in 1972 did Greece cease
*+-to be a net exporter of labor. The greatest social upheavals of our
*+-time occured during industrialisation as peasants were uprooted into
*+-cities always angry and lacking social structure. Spyridon,
*+-Papandreou and Junta were all symptoms of this. But please do not
*+-take theloudest anecdotal representations of popular piety as
*+-representantive lest such an approach be reciprocated! And way too
*+-many of our problems reflect our secular times (and the media
*+-misrepresenting the extremes as the "American Way") and not any
*+-particular ethnicity. Also, we Orthodox all tend to be too
*+-self-critical and seek to emulate the "west" by force - but I would
*+-argue those who emulate will always fall behind, and it is best to
*+-build on one's own strengths if one is to excel on time.
Trypsin vs Metastasis
[My late client Myron Arlen would add folic acid to the trypsin and pyrvinium]
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.med.diseases.cancer:85042 sci.med:558498
Subject: Propose giving antimetastatic with any antibiotics to cancer survivors
Date: Thu, 2 May 2019
Organization: Samani Marions Panyaught NYC-11357-3436-287-USA
Message-ID: qadd8c$91v$2@reader2.panix.com
Macrophages recycle (Vascul Pharmacol 2016 Mar; Vol. 78, pp. 17-23)
materials for remodelling during stress. Myeloid-derived cardiac stem cells
may become macrophages under stress (Delphine Gomez). My mentor pioneered
inflammatory metastatic extravasation on his deathbed. (J Biomec Eng 8/90
v112p295+) Therefore, under some inflammatory stress (possibly a bad cold),
it is concievable that macrophages extravasate long dormant metastatic cells.
Since bacteria have been known to eat tumors, I am inclined to believe
somehow antibiotics are responsible for many metastases. Lampe proposed that
antibiotic use may be associated with cancer through effects on ant-cancer
cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (Cancer Causes and Control 14: 739-747, 2003. ) This
is why I propose cancer survivors be given antimetastatics like trypsin or
pyrvinium along with any antibiotics - as well as a full-torso x-ray a month
later. "tumor growth mainly supported by the infiltration of M2-
tumor-associated macrophages, and high levels of C3a and C5a, whereas
M1-macrophages contribute to immune-mediated tumor suppression" ( J Biomed
Sci 2015 22:58) "macrophages can stimulate angiogenesis and enhance tumor
cell invasion, motility and intravasation. During metastasis, macrophages
prime the pre-metastatic site and promote tumor cell extravasation, survival
and persistent growth. Macrophages are also immunosuppressive preventing
tumor cell attack by natural killer and T cells during tumor progression and
after recovery from chemo- or immuno-therapy." (Immunity. 2014 J 41#1:
49?61.) Lonnie Shea (Nat Biomed Eng 2017; Vol. 1) has shown polycaprolactone
pods with MDSC attract metastatic cells. I speculate the M2 macrophages are
responsible (PNAS 111# 11 2014, pp. 4221-4226) as GM-CSF & IL-6 induce the
differentiation of myeloid precursors into functional MDSCs (PNAS 111# 11
2014, pp. 4221-4226) Pyrvinium could delay or inhibit cancer by inhibition of
Akt and Wnt-?-catenin-dependent pathways and cancer stem cell activity (J
Cell Physiol 2018 233#4, pp. 2871-2881) I was in a physiology seminar on
antitrypsin and the profile was intriguing but I found instead antitrypsin
does seem to promote metastasis Mol Cell Proteomics. 2012 Nov;11(11):1320-39
and trypsin has been resurrected as a cancer treatment Cancer Res. 2003 Oct
15;63(20):6575-8 & Cancer Chemother Pharmacol. 2001 Jul;47 Suppl:S16-22 BMJ
p240 27Jan 1906
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.med:556777
Subject: Trypsin v metastasis?
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 00:32:33 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: nnopn1$puh$1@reader2.panix.com
My mentor pioneered metastatic inflammatory extravasation, so when I
attended a talk on antitrypsin a few months ago, I began a jstor gedanken
experiment which led me to wonder if trypsin can combat metastasis. Just a
crazy thought: would it make sence to give any cancer survivors with a
serious (eg strep) cold trypsin, heparin, and retanoic acid along with any
(mycin antibiotic; followed by a full body xray a month later. There's
another hunch I got about a strep/mycin/NMDAR pathway just anecdotally based
on folks I've know who got a bad cold just before their cancer showe dup.
I don't have any lab or funding, so I'm just guessing here.
Immunity, inflammation, and cancer. Grivennikov SI, Greten FR, Karin M.
Cell. 2010 Mar 19;140(6):883-99. Inflammatory responses play decisive roles
at different stages of tumor development, including initiation, promotion,
malignant conversion, invasion, and metastasis.
Macrophage diversity enhances tumor progression and metastasis. Qian BZ,
Pollard JW. Cell. 2010 Apr 2;141(1):39-51. There is persuasive clinical and
experimental evidence that macrophages promote cancer initiation and
malignant progression. During tumor initiation, they create an inflammatory
environment that is mutagenic and promotes growth. As tumors progress to
malignancy, macrophages stimulate angiogenesis, enhance tumor cell migration
and invasion, and suppress antitumor immunity. At metastatic sites,
macrophages prepare the target tissue for arrival of tumor cells, and then a
different subpopulation of macrophages promotes tumor cell extravasation,
survival, and subsequent growth. Specialized subpopulations of macrophages
may represent important new therapeutic targets.
Condeelis J, Pollard JW. Macrophages: obligate partners for tumor cell
migration, invasion, and metastasis. Cell. 2006 Jan 27;124(2):263-6.
Macrophages within the tumor microenvironment facilitate angiogenesis and
extracellular-matrix breakdown and remodeling and promote tumor cell
motility. Recent studies reveal that direct communication between macrophages
and tumor cells leads to invasion and egress of tumor cells into the blood
vessels (intravasation).
Nitric oxide synthase II suppresses the growth and metastasis of human
cancer regardless of its up-regulation of protumor factors. Le X, Wei D,
Huang S, Lancaster JR Jr, Xie K. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Jun
14;102(24):8758-63. Inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase (NOS) II has been
implicated in macrophage-mediated antitumor activity. However, use of the NOS
II gene in cancer therapy is problematic because of the double-edged nature
of NO action. Herein we show that adenoviral vectors mediated effective NOS
II gene transfer into various human tumors. Production of NO significantly
up-regulated multiple angiogenic molecules. However, the NO-producing tumor
cells did not form tumors or metastases in ectopic or orthotopic xenograft
nude mouse models. The dramatic loss of malignancy was due to NO-mediated
apoptosis.
A tumor-suppressive role for trypsin in human cancer progression.
Yamashita K, Mimori K, Inoue H, Mori M, Sidransky D. Cancer Res. 2003 Oct
15;63(20):6575-8. Our results support the notion that trypsin plays a
tumor-suppressive role in human carcinoma.
Mixture of trypsin, chymotrypsin and papain reduces formation of metastases
and extends survival time of C57Bl6 mice with syngeneic melanoma B16.
Wald M, Olejr T, Sebkov V, Zadinov M, Boubelk M, Pouckov P.
Cancer Chemother Pharmacol. 2001 Jul;47 Suppl:S16-22.
Our data suggest that serine and cysteine proteinases suppress B16
melanoma, and restrict its metastatic dissemination in C57B16 mice.
Trypsin In Cancer Author(s): F. W. Lambelle British Medical Journal,
Vol. 1, No. 2402 (Jan. 12, 1907), p. 113
Secretomic analysis identifies alpha-1 antitrypsin (A1AT) as a required
protein in cancer cell migration, invasion, and pericellular fibronectin
assembly for facilitating lung colonization of lung adenocarcinoma cells.
Chang YH, Lee SH, Liao IC, Huang SH, Cheng HC, Liao PC. Mol Cell
Proteomics. 2012 Nov;11(11):1320-39. Molecular and pathological confirmation
demonstrated that altered expression of A1AT correlates with the metastatic
potential of lung adenocarcinoma. The migration and invasion properties of
CL1-5 cells were significantly diminished by reducing the expression and
secretion of their A1AT proteins.
Angiogenesis inhibition and tumor regression caused by heparin or a
heparin fragment in the presence of cortisone. Folkman J, Langer R, Linhardt
RJ, Haudenschild C, Taylor S. Science. 1983 Aug 19;221(4612):719-25.
Heparin or a heparin fragment administered with cortisone inhibited
angiogenesis, caused regression of large tumor masses, and prevented
metastases.
Sun vs Alzheimers
[After hearing a crystalographer describe how sodium can leak thru calcium
channels, I'm wondering if prionising free radicals, Fe, Cu, Zn which have
same charge as Ca might not be leaking thru Ca channels. ++ channels have two
chambers while + channels only one. These act like Lewis acids in prion
oligomerisation. I had mistakenly been calling them Bronsted acids. Also there
is a lot of new work involving channels like TMEM16 which do other things
that have to be looked into. PNAS 95:6010 confirm the acidity of prion
oligomerisation. Maybe channels allowing excess free radicals past blood brain
barrier (into glymphatics?) also reduce them from neuron lysosomes? ]
From: vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
Newsgroups: sci.med:558497 sci.med.diseases.osteoporosis:14132
Subject: Speculative Unified Alzheimer Theory
Date: Thu, 2 May 2019
Message-ID: qadd5p$91v$1@reader2.panix.com
I'd like to speculatively propose a unified alzheimers hypothesis. The
TrpC5 calcium channel leaks free radicals into the blood brain barrier,
oligomerising prions. Trpc5 is the leakiest calcium channel and is mediated
by leptin, insulin and serotonin. Insulin ties into the idea that alzheimers
is typer 3 diabetes. Obesity and lack of sleep are also known to cause
leakage. The free radicals Fe/Cu/Zn have the same charge as Calcium and
produce bronsted acids which oligomerise amyloid and tau prions. Warfarin
and protom pump inhibitors have been implicated in alzheimers because of
calcium channels. I wonder if there is a similar chennel mediated by dopmine
instead of serotonin for parkinsons? I speculate if obsessives have
alzheimers and paranoids parkinsons? I would also like to speculate the
following therapeutic sequence: Rapamycin, Ketamine, Pyramidine, leptin, then
maintenance dantrolene and vitamin D.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.med:556778 sci.med.diseases.osteoporosis:14103
Subject: Sun vs Alzheimers?
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 00:59:39 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: nnor9r$gfi$1@reader2.panix.com
I attended a seminar by Stutzmann suggesting dantrolene and rapamycin as
Alzheimer treatment. A speculative jstor gedanken experiment that perhaps
too much sunless indoors causes modern prion neurodegenerative and other
aging diseases?
The pathogenesis of Alzheimers disease is it a lifelong "calciumopathy"?
Stutzmann GE. Neuroscientist. 2007 Oct;13(5):546-59. Recent studies in AD
models have identified marked dysregulations in calcium signaling and related
downstream pathways, which occur long before the diagnostic histopathological
or cognitive changes. Under normal conditions, intracellular calcium signals
are coupled to effectors that maintain a healthy physiological state.
Consequently, sustained up-regulation of calcium may have pathophysiological
consequences. Indeed, upon reviewing the current body of literature,
increased calcium levels are functionally linked to the major features and
risk factors of AD: ApoE4 expression, presenilin and APP mutations, beta
amyloid plaques, hyperphosphorylation of tau, apoptosis, and synaptic
dysfunction.
Dantrolene, A Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease? Li Liang, M.D.a,b and
Huafeng Wei, M.D., Ph.Da, Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord. 2015 Jan-Mar; 29(1):
1-5. Previous studies support that the disruption of endoplasmic reticulum
(ER) Ca2+ via overactivation of Ryanodine receptors (RYRs) plays an important
role in the pathogenesis of AD. Normalization of intracellular Ca2+
homeostasis could be an effective strategy for AD therapies. Recent
preclinical studies consistently support the therapeutic effects of
dantrolene in various types of AD animal models.
Calcium channelopathies and Alzheimer's disease: insight into therapeutic
success and failures. Chakroborty S, Stutzmann GE. Eur J Pharmacol. 2014
Sep 15;739:83-95 Multifaceted involvement of calcium signaling in the
pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and summarize the various
therapeutic options currently available to combat this disease.
Genetic reduction of mammalian target of rapamycin ameliorates Alzheimer's
disease-like cognitive and pathological deficits by restoring hippocampal
gene expression signature. Caccamo A, De Pinto V, Messina A, Branca C, Oddo
S. J Neurosci. 2014 Jun 4;34(23):7988-98 Elevated mammalian target of
rapamycin (mTOR) signaling has been found in Alzheimer's disease (AD)
patients and is linked to diabetes and aging, two known risk factors for AD.
Novel mechanisms of calcium handling by the osteoclast Zaidi M1, Moonga
BS, Adebanjo OA. Proc Assoc Am Physicians. 1999 Jul-Aug;111(4):319-27. The
change in cytosolic Ca2+ is transduced finally into inhibition of bone
resorption. It has been shown that a type 2 ryanodine receptor isoform,
expressed uniquely in the plasma membrane, functions as a Ca2+ influx channel
and possibly as a Ca2+ sensor. Ryanodine receptors are ordinarily Ca2+
release channels that have a microsomal membrane location in a wide variety
of eukaryotic cells, including the osteoclasts.
Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune
diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease. Holick MF. Am J Clin
Nutr. 2004 Dec;80(6 Suppl):1678S-88S. Solar ultraviolet B photons are
absorbed by 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin, leading to its transformation
to previtamin D3, which is rapidly converted to vitamin D3. Vitamin D
deficiency not only causes rickets among children but also precipitates and
exacerbates osteoporosis among adults and causes the painful bone disease
osteomalacia. Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with increased risks
of deadly cancers, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid
arthritis, and type 1 diabetes mellitus.
Association of coronary artery calcium with bone mineral density in
postmenopausal women. Xu R1, Ni Yang H, Li YQ, Wang QF, Guo AH, Ayiti A,
Chen XC, Gong R, Banu G, Dang Jian L, Gao Y, Sheng K, Maimti Y. Coron Artery
Dis. 2016 Jun 29 Atherosclerosis and osteoporosis (OP) are common diseases in
elderly individuals and may share common pathogenetic mechanisms. The aim of
this study was to investigate the association between bone mineral density
(BMD) and coronary artery calcium (CAC) inpostmenopausal women.
Suppression of glymphatic fluid transport in a mouse model of Alzheimer's
disease. Peng W, Achariyar TM, Li B, Liao Y, Mestre H, Hitomi E, Regan S,
Kasper T, Peng S, Ding F, Benveniste H, Nedergaard M, Deane R. Neurobiol
Dis. 2016 Sep;93:215-25 Importantly, glymphatic failure preceded significant
amyloid-? deposits, and thus, may be an early biomarker of AD. By extension,
restoring glymphatic inflow and ISF clearance are potential therapeutic
targets to slow the onset and progression of AD.
Sleep facilitates clearance of metabolites from the brain: glymphatic
function in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. Mendelsohn AR, Larrick JW.
Rejuvenation Res. 2013 Dec;16(6):518-23. Xie and colleagues now report that
in mice the clearance activity of this so-called "glymphatic system" is
strongly stimulated bysleep and is associated with an increase in
interstitial volume, possibly by shrinkage of astroglial cells. Moreover,
anesthesia and attenuation of adrenergic signaling can activate the
glymphatic system to clear potentially toxic proteins known to contribute to
the pathology of Alzheimer disease (AD) such as beta-amyloid
(Abeta). Clearance during sleep is as much as two-fold faster than during
waking hours.
Antibody against early driver of neurodegeneration cis P-tau blocks brain
injury and tauopathy. Kondo A, Shahpasand K, Mannix R, Qiu J, Moncaster J,
Chen CH, Yao Y, Lin YM, Driver JA, Sun Y, Wei S, Luo ML, Albayram O, Huang
P,Rotenberg A, Ryo A, Goldstein LE, Pascual-Leone A, McKee AC, Meehan W, Zhou
XZ, Lu KP. Nature. 2015 Jul 23;523(7561):431-6. Traumatic brain injury
(TBI), characterized by acute neurological dysfunction, is one of the best
known environmental risk factors for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and
Alzheimer's disease, the defining pathologic features of which include
tauopathy made of phosphorylated tau protein (P-tau). Treating TBI mice with
cis antibody blocks cistauosis, prevents tauopathy development and spread,
and restores many TBI-related structural and functional sequelae.
Scraperchutes
From: r.pixley@verizon.net
Newsgroups: alt.building.health-safety,rec.org.mensa,nyc.transit
Subject: Re: Skyscraper Parachutes
Message-ID: 3HOp7.8642$Na7.1653952@typhoon1.gnilink.net
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 21:06:07 GMT
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Instead of condemning the idea, try some brain storming and build on the
idea.
Would putting in fire poles, like in fire houses, with stops every few
floors work?
I've hears of jump tubes, made of nylon, that workers can jump into and
control their fall by spreading their elbows. I wouldn't recommend 100
stories, but I believe 10 stories has been done.
Perhaps these ideas can't help everybody, but it should help those in better
shape and give the emergency workers a faster route out when the time comes.
vjp2@biostrategist.com wrote in message news:9o83tu$dnl$1@news.panix.com...
- In rec.org.mensa Uncle Al wrote:
- *+- 1) Did you ever static jump from 300 feet? Go ahead, try it.
- You would have to redesign the parachutes for such use. I'd bet
- they could be a lot smaller.
- *+- 2) Do you have any clever ideas for getting the windows open?
- Did you see the pictures of people hanging out of the WTC windows?
- *+- 3) How do you plan to train the munchkins in their use?
- For one, I'd put it in a fire-alarm type of box.
- You'ld be surprised at how popular skydiving is amongst some yuppies.
- They see it as a stress-reduction excercise.
- (I once dated this lass who would go skydiving whnever she changed jobs.)
- And when they put such things in airplanes, do you complain just as much, Mr
- Naysayer, Oh Grand Sultan of Negativity?
- *+- 4) What happens to 10,000 idiots who try to close order jump amidst
- *+-a bunch of tall buildings, wind, and surface traffic?
- Well, they did jump. Some stayed in because there was no hope.
- If only a handful more survived it wudda been worth it.
Medical Epistemology
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.med:556795
Subject: Med Epistemology (Bayes, Burke & Barzun)
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2016
Message-ID: noqt49$ot7$1@reader2.panix.com
I have come to realise that what keeps science from spurious results is a
priori encyclopedic knowledge. Two Anecdotes. When my dad was diagnosed with
stomach cancer, I was told it was caused by nitrates in cold cuts. But when
the cancer came back, as the Viagra Nobel showed nitric oxide to be the
primordial mammalian neurotransmitter, I was told the 1930s theory of
Helicobacter Pylori had been revived. In grand rounds a year ago, a young
resident presented a case of an 89 yr old with enlarged heart as genetic,
only to have an older doctor insist it was caused by 60 yrs of high blood
pressure. I asked someone at the genome center and he said adding Bayesian
priors to expert systems reduces spurious results. Bayes Law brought Kant's
concept of a priori to mathematical probability. I have always felt
uncomfortable with this concept of evidence based medicine precisely because
every few years a totally new theory throws out all previous knowledge and
makes new claims. Instead it pays to see why the old theory was wrong and to
learn from our mistakes, not totally dismiss them. This really extends from
the Hun or German peerless (hence uninspectable) hyperspecialist model of
education which now seems to overtake the anglohellenistic model of peer
reviewed encyclopedic (encyclios paideia) general education championed by
Barzun. The peerless hyperspecialist might as well be a shaman or guru
shrouded in mystery. I accept the errors of those who rejected Galileo,
although you could argue they weren't based on scientific study but blind
ideology, hence a different type of problem. I view ideology as the worship
of human hueristics and the cause of atrocity when the heuristics take
precedence to reality. I believe Burke's central thesis, that change should
be measured and studied because if we replace everything at once, we will
have nothing to stand on, or pulling the wrong thread could unravel the
fabric. Further, as Sydney Hook warned, studying our old errors (or claptrap)
keeps us from repeating them. Before "Japanese Innovation" we were taught
that we should follow standards so we could continue to use old results,
algorithms and equipment. As an example I learned electronic devices should
be designed to handle (fan out) five accessories, but the modern ones reduced
it the the bare minimum of one. Everything is now designed to only work in
the short run, as if Keynes admonitions "In the long run, we are all dead"
has been extended to science and engineering.
Cardioengineering Ideas
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.med.cardiology:327631
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014
Message-ID: ltgd4e$po9$1@reader1.panix.com
When a body part is stressed in excess of the ordinary it sustains micro
injuries which act as remodelling markers to strengthen that body part as
needed. However the repair mechanism picks up available material which may be
there inappropriately. Hence the heart of a Korean War soldier showed
artherioschelorosis of someone twice his age. But an obese person, when
devoid of stress-induced microinjuries might exhibit no artherioschlerosis.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.engr.radar+sonar
Subject: Reading EKG/EEG w/o contact
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 22:24:17 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: cm14ah$cnt$1@reader1.panix.com
I'm curious if there are techniques that could read a person's EKG
or EEG without contact? I'm thinking maybe some eigencovariance
techniques could be used to split up the signals? How much of what was
used in DOD TEMPEST in the 1980s is now publicly known? You could
read things that are characteristic to a potential terrorist and
profile them that way. Some of the work done with heart rate
variability seems like it could apply. How do they split the signals
coming from a binary star (ie two stars close together) into two?
This has scores more medical apps than Homeland Security apps, I
believe. Look at Biosence, which does a 3D electrical map of the heart.
From: vjp2@biostrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.security.terrorism:96987
Subject: Radio Interfer Heart Rt Var Attitude Detection
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 18:04:11 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: ajonir$sb9$1@reader2.panix.com
Has anyone ever used radio-interference heart-rate variability
for attitude detection? Back in the 1980s they argued they could read
what was typed on a remote e-typewriter via radio interference. More
recently, they can detect all sorts of psy stuff from the EKG-R-R-peak
data. So why not combine the tow and read an EKG remotely using radio
interference to find out if someone's mindset meets the neural network
profile of a terrorist?
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.math.num-analysis:2634 comp.dsp:6372 sci.nonlinear:2199
comp.compression:22674 sci.image.processing:13081
Subject: Using Data as Fundamental (Basis) 1d Wavelet
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:43:54 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: c0jgep$p69$1@reader2.panix.com
I have a certain form of data which is the behavior of a sample subunit. I
also have a data of the output which is the aggregate behavior of the entire
collection of subunits. Assuming all the subunits behave the same, how can I
use MatLab wavelets to determine the relationship. For example, it may be
f(n)=g(n)+g'(n)+g(n+k)+g'(n+k) but it may have different coefficients and
lags. What is kind of interesting is that both the input and output data have
naturally occuring "Gibbs Phenomena" an the sharp edges!
From: vjp2@biostrategist.com
Newsgroups:
sci.physics.computational.fluid-dynamics,sci.engr.analysis,sci.engr.biomed,
sci.engr.chem,sci.engr.marine.hydrodynamics,sci.math.num-analysis,sci.mech.fluids
Subject: Optmsg Flow Chamber Shape using FEM/CFD/Marquardt
Date: 8 Jul 2001 23:27:31 GMT
Message-ID: 9iaq93$vm$1@news.panix.com
What is the best (and relatively more economical - more for
personal/academic than professional/commercial use) software to use to do a
Zukofsky-style optimisation of the shape of a flow chamber based on certain
flow criteria? Basically it would need a mutli-PDE (eg, fluid, elastic,
heat, mass, MHD) solving system with FEA collocations that also has some sort
of Marquardt-Levenberg optimisation to keep changing the shape of the chamber
wall until some objective function of flow criteria was optimised. I don't
mind using FORTRAN or C, or my relatively older versions of Mathematica or
Matlab. (My machine is kinda old - but I might be able to borrow something.)
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.engr.biomed,bionet.neuroscience,alt.med.equipment,sci.med.laboratory
Subject: EKG/EEG Software Compatibility
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 07:48:57 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: dubgp9$qem$1@reader2.panix.com
I'm wondering why some labs seem to tolerate such a level of proprietary
incompatibility between all the EEG/EKG products like Biosence Webster Carto,
Neuroscan Source/Curry, EGI, Besa, Igor &al. I mean, I see so much
advancement, but the major obstacle is lack of simultaneous interoperability,
wasting away the major promise of all the great computing speed. Is there
anything like SourceForge.net for such products? As an undergrad in 1980 I
had to explain to a senior medical professor why the CP/M computer the
microscope salesman was selling for $25,000 was identical to the one Radio
Shack was selling for $2,000. Has nothing changed in this cost-plus world
where no one takes the time to understand one another? Isn't there some place
that got it all figured out and working together? It all seems like broken
promises by those glorified clerical workers we call programmers just to keep
themselves perpetually employed
COVID Respirator Design
From: vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
Newsgroups: sci.engr.biomed :14721
Subject: COVID Respirator Design
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2020
Message-ID: r59hrt$d9k$1@reader2.panix.com
First of all, the design has to be extremely simple and robust so anyone
can manufacture or repair it. Think easy to fix Lada vs better Traband, or
the development economist calling for "appropriate technology". Time cannot
be wasted waiting for a specialist. Also see HBR article ca 1987 about the
IBM Chapel Hill the printer design being simplified for robot so it became
easier to make by hand.
Off pump CABG and asceptic milk came about because power is not relaible
in most of the world. Plus in emergency, power may not be reliable even
here. So diesel seems preferable but a room full of MASH diesel repsirators
would kill faster than COVID. So I'm thinking you have to generate motion
outside the building and transmit it inside. Also it should be at the
opposite end of the building from oxygen concentrators or electrolytic
generators, for smoke and fire reasons. One idea was a pump, with a big
bellows, like induction, powering smaller bellows. The other would be like a
car transmittion shaft running through the building. (Cooney p413 200-400
cc/min, 10-15 pulse/min, Bronzino ch 11 has the advanced math for
sophisticated designs) I believe you would been to adjust volume flow and
pulse rate by patient, and you need some random sigh to assure the lungs work
right. In the bellows case, I thought maybe to convolute the pipes into some
turbulence, which might however release projectives, blocked by the inductive
discontinuity. Maybe the pumps should only move the lungs, and to be sure,
beter to do the gas exchange through the blood via canula like dialysis. I
cringe at the thought of some third world kid having to manually pump his
granma's lungs but also wonder why it wasn't done in China and italy to those
who were triaged against respirators because of supply. If this goes to the
third world manual ventilators need to be considered. Musk might well provide
wonderful batteries but when I was a tee my uncle-in-law was responsible for
the batteries of Greek sub and had nightmares of them exploding; of course,
they too, might be kept at a distance from patients.
Exacerbating pre-existing medical conditions should also be treated
pharmacologically to minimise respirator time. I was blown away a few weeks
ago at grand rounds that they use colchicine to reduce heart compression from
TB. I've used it for gout and it is brutal, but it really works. Maybe it can
reduce lung inflamation. Fibrotic lungs could be treated with relaxin, a
pregnancy antifibrotic hormone which, however, could cause aneurisms.
Further, asma could be treated by rapamycin analogs (DL001 and SAR943).
Nerve-Computer Interface
[In 1983 I sat in Gregor's Colloid chemistry and
in 1982 I took neurophysiology from Kandel's colleague Bill Nastuk (the
founder of the Columbia Bioengineerig Inst) but then Bill Dobelle described
how he plugged eight parallel (edge image only) wires into a 19yo German's
brain and the brain scavenged how to interpret them.]
Newsgroups: sci.engr.biomed
From: vjp2@news.dorsai.org
Subject: Re: Brain implants: vision, hearing, etc...
Message-ID: D60Hx8.7zJ@dorsai.org
I once worked for someone that submitted a proposal to put a sonar-like
screw into someone's skull and make the skull vibrate to emulate hearing.
I've also been in the discussion phase for a few projects to develop
neuron-computer acetylcholine-detecting smart-membrane interfaces.
But no one ever discussed putting these things into the brain itself.
Although some of the surgery that burns epileptic lessions with an
electrical matrix is pretty advanced, I don't think anyone would dare
do what you suggest directly. (Colin Ferguson's paranoid delusions
notwithstanding!) For limbs, things are better. There was someone on
Sixty Minutes over a decade ago that had a quadruplegic walking under the
commands of an Apple ][ machine!! ..
Biofuels that work
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.energy.renewable:185364
Subject: Biofuel survey
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2017
Message-ID: o7lg3h$aap$2@reader1.panix.com
For biofuels to succeed, they can't be ALMOST as good a gasoline (linear
and aromatic alkanes with fewer than twelve carbons used in internal
combustion) or diesel (larger alkanes used in external combustion, originally
food oils transesterified with lye and methanol) but BETTER (refer to
blending manuals preceding the current environmental and energy fads or for
racing and you will find BTU/LB = 14.6 + 62(H -O/6) +4.05 S) Nitrogen
enriched gasolene, nitroglycerin and rocket fuel show nitrogen bonds, esp
rings, to be the most potent, albeit needing their toxicity and explosiveness
mitigated. Ethanol production counterproductively destroys existing carbon
bonds and ethanol attracts water which rusts engines. Past biofuel research
has floundered when the price of oil fell (why not fund it countercyclically
with automobile stocks?). Silage, sewage, landfill and sawdust provide the
most economically sustainable source of biofuels. Cellulose is a sugar
polymer but as its chirality is left-handed it cannot be digested by most
animals. Fiberight.com will make ethanol from its unique garbage separation
methods, probbly by shredding and washing as organics float. Plastics may be
made more useful for fuel with cyclohexane, xylene, horseradish peroxidase
and radiation. Westpheling has reengineered thermophilic C bescii to produce
ethanol from switchgrass. Dumesic produces dimethyl furan by repeatedly
dehydrating sugars with acid then hydrogenating them with a metal catalyst.
Also tomishige. This method has been speculated elsewhere to also work with
ammonia in the presence of copper to turn sawdust into alkane. Ruan produces
diesel from sewage via algae. I would like to see the enzymes used by algae
(typ chlorella minutissima) isolated and engineered to better take advantage
of nitrogen bonds and accelarate production. Algae can also be used to
recycle engine and factory (oxidant alkaline) scrubbing fluids used to
capture carbon, nitrogen and sulfur compounds if there was a way to increase
solar exposure surface area the way a heat exchanger exposes to heat.
Reaction surface area is increased by flocculation. Garbage may also be
gasified by steam or even plasma; flash heat has long been known to
hydrogenate coal. Xylene depolymerises plastics. Venter has already gotten
the algae to excrete the lipids so he can reuse the same algae repeatedly;
His Synthetic Genomics was bought by Exxon. But it has also been suggested
that E Coli might be more efficient for sewage.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups:
sci.geo.petroleum,sci.engr.chem,sci.engr.mech,alt.energy.renewable,
sci.econ,misc.invest.futures,sci.bio.technology,sci.chem
Subject: EtOH-Ethylene pipe/engine conversion/corrosion
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:24:30 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: e74jqu$kav$2@reader2.panix.com
Can EtOH be CHEAPLY converted back and forth to Ethylene? What
does 170'F and H2SO4 cost? Why do they make ethanol from
petro-ethylene instead of using the ethylene?
All the corn in the USA would only supply 10% of the EtOH to power
our cars. If we are engineering bugs to make cellulosic ethanol, why
not have them produce something which won't rust pipelines and
engines. In WW2 some made gasolene and methane from coal. Just
because bootleggers once used ethanol to power cars doesn't mean it's
the best choice now.
I'm thinking there have to be conversion innovations (like using
platinum to convert kerosene to gasoline) that will only come with
extensive use, and hence accidents and experimentation. You should be
able to take in anything (corn silage, apple waste, garbage) and
produce energy (EtOh, H2, CH4) or convert them all to a common transit
fluid line ethylene.
What's the economics at $10 $20, $40, $90 oil? (Assume $90 oil for six
months in the near future, the life of $60 oil to be five years and a return
to $20 oil in fifteen years.) The panicmeisters are going to destroy this
process if they force you to bet on permanently high oil prices: You have to
assume the "windfall" that can be plowed back into R&D will only last like
seven years; maybe we need 20yr energy futures and other risk derivatives?
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Subject: MHD plasma to release shale or liquefy coal/shale
Newsgroups: sci.chem
Message-ID: m0sler$h2h$1@reader1.panix.com
Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 23:49:50 -0000
I have seen plasma attempted for either removing haz mats from trash
or in gasifying trash. I have heard of nuke radn or EMR used
to release shale oil. So I'm wondering why not plasma for shale?
Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics:1238874 alt.society.conservatism:566726
misc.invest.misc:55257 alt.energy.automobile:739 uk.politics.economics:2687
Subject: Merge oil to car firms to balance R&D cycles
Date: Thu, 4 May 2017
Message-ID: oedrq1$18l$1@reader1.panix.com
In a perfect world, the idea is abhorent, but in a world were the
grubmint gets car companies to merge with other car companies, banks
with other banks and oil comapnies with outher oil companies, it seems
to make more sence to balance R&D cuyles by merging oil and car
companies. I have been thinking about how one would fund continued
alternative energy development under the inevitable return of low oil
prices, so I realised when cars are doing well, oil sucks and vice
versa, so they could essentially finance each other's R&D.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: sci.bio.technology:22264
Subject: Ions to leak Algae
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2019
Message-ID: qtlncs$n1d$1@reader2.panix.com
Craig Venter's Exxon Synthetic Genomics is still trying to get algea to
exude their photosythetically produced oil. I wonder if he isn't being too
clever by half. Nanoparticle antibiosis is really the age old idea of
getting ions to make holes in celulose plant cell calls so other defences (or
antibiotics) can go to work. Ions can be silver, chlorine, Iodine, copper (eg
patina), or ozone. SO, might there be some ions which can ever so slightly
puncture those walls enough to get them to leak oil? I'm thinking the algae
might even exude oil to protect themselves from minor injury the way other
life forms do. Also, the way reflective particles like persekovites can make
solar panels capture a lot more light, why not impregnate alge with such
deeply reflective particles so they could work in geater depth on
sewage. Also, instead of burying CO2, why not just get the algae, which turn
CO2 into Oxygen to "scub" it?
From: vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
Newsgroups: sci.physics:2459104
Subject: Desalination by ddesert
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2023
Message-ID: u1rpmn$e4f$1@reader2.panix.com
Went to an energy&minerals conf here they decried cost of desalination.
So I was thinking, they need it most in the desert, why not used the desert
heat in some cogeneration way and as a side benefit cool off the Burj
Khalifa. So I found << Lenan Zhang and Lin Zhao, postdoc Zhenyuan Xu,
professor of mechanical engineering and department head Evelyn Wang, and
eight others at MIT and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China>>. Any
similar ideas/developments?
Climate Engineering
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.india,sci.geo.meteorology,
sci.physics.computational.fluid-dynamics,alt.culture.us.asian-indian,
soc.culture.russia,soc.culture.israel
Subject: Need Meteorological Engineering for Monsoons
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:24:25 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: cifa4p$obe$1@reader1.panix.com
A quarter of India suffers from Monsoons.
Why don't we all figure out ways to manipulate the weather to help them?
Maybe we could use bombs to absorb the energy of storms?
Maybe we could seed clouds over the water to keep them from raining on land?
I don't really know, all I am doing is asking.
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups:
soc.culture.indian,sci.geo.meteorology,sci.physics.computational.fluid-dynamics,
soc.culture.israel,sci.environment,alt.society.conservatism,alt.religion.christian
Subject: Climate Engineer Moral Imperative
Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 10:19:14 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: eb4fn2$5ss$1@reader2.panix.com
Instead of arguing over the causes of "global warming" why not just
do something positive.. all the global warming funding has eliminated
funding for climate modification.. Alexander the Great gave up on
India because of the monsoons, both the blessing and curse of India's
agriculture today.. Hurricanes have been deadly for centuries.. why
not devote our energies to helping people instead of keeping them poor
because of some hypothesis. In 1930s central Greece they drained a
lake named Carla to fight malaria. Now they want to refill that lake
because draining it has eliminated the water table, hence also
eliminating the humidity to produce rain. Nearby Pinios River has been
reduced to a trickle (amusing when you see huge bridges over
it). Maybe selectively draining waterways can change monsoon patterns?
N.J. scientists eye method for reducing hurricane power HOBOKEN, N.J. (AP
8/4/2006 ) -- Two New Jersey scientists believe they may have found a way to
tame hurricanes.. Professor Alan F. Blumberg of Stevens Institute of
Technology.. billion-dollar concept that he and Princeton University
Professor George L. Mellor are advancing is based on.. storm weakens when it
passes over cooler water. Cooler water is available several hundred feet
below the ocean surface. They suggest deploying an array of 1.6 million
wave- or wind-powered pumps.. 200 miles offshore in the path of a
storm.. tubes perhaps 3 feet wide and 400 feet long, would be put in position
just 24 hours before landfall.. reduce the temperature of the top layer of
the ocean by about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius.. cut the strength of a hurricane
by about one category.. yet to secure the $1 million to $3 million for the
first step, to test small versions of the pumps at the Stevens wave tank, a
renowned 310-foot-long indoor research pool.. government funding for weather
modification evaporated almost 30 years ago in favor of grants to improve
forecasting.. "In terms of theory, there is no question that the scheme
would work, " said Hugh Willoughby, the former director of the Hurricane
Research Division at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration..
Michael Garstang, a tropical meteorologist and professor at the University of
Virginia in Charlottesville, also would like to see the project get money.
"There certainly is a moral imperative that such a proposal be funded,"..
report to the National Academies of Science that found a lack of support for
weather modification research.. Garstang said, "It's quite paradoxical that
large amounts of money are spent on global warming research, and almost
nothing on weather modification research." Other methods to produce cooler
water have been proposed over the years.. Towing icebergs into the storm's
path.
Anti-hurricane technology Jun 9th 2005 Economist How can you slow down a
hurricane? Moshe Alamaro, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, has a plan. Just as setting small, controlled fires can stop
forest fires by robbing them of fuel, he proposes the creation of small,
man-made tropical cyclones to cool the ocean and rob big, natural hurricanes
of their source of energy. His scheme, devised with German and Russian
weather scientists and presented at a weather-modification conference in
April, involves a chain of offshore barges adorned with upward-facing jet
engines. Each barge creates an updraft, causing water to evaporate from the
ocean's surface and reducing its temperature. The resulting tropical storms
travel towards the shore but dissipate harmlessly. Dr Alamaro reckons that
protecting Central America and the southern United States from hurricanes
would cost less than $1 billion a year. Most of the cost would be fuel: large
jet engines, he observes, are abundant in the graveyards of American and
Soviet long-range bombers.
Hurricanes Shelter from the storm [16Sep04 Economist] IVAN, the most
powerful of this year's unusually intense crop of hurricanes, devastated
parts of the Caribbean and killed dozens of people before striking the Gulf
coast.. 1900, for example, a hurricane that hit Texas killed 8,000..
substantial improvements have been made over the past 30 years in forecasting
the track of a storm.. intensity predictions are hardly better than they
were in 1974.. According to Sim Aberson, a scientist at the Hurricane
Research Division of America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, in Miami.. finest resolution these models can manage has
grid points about 1km apart.. features that cause hurricanes to gain or lose
intensity are often smaller than this. In particular, the "eyewall", the
region of most intense winds surrounding the relatively tranquil eye of a
hurricane, is only a kilometre or so wide.. Thomas Cram, of Colorado State
University in Fort Collins.. moist, warm air from inside the eye can bleed
into the eyewall. This is a source of heat, which boosts the hurricane's
intensity. The second is that dry air from outside the eyewall can bleed into
it, too. This calms things down.. James Kossin of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.. saw a complex pattern of vortices resembling a starfish
in Isabel's eye.. asymmetrical vortices are particularly effective at
carrying winds from the eyewall into the eye.. Michael McGauley of the
University of Miami uses so-called neural networks to predict the evolution
of intensity.. significantly outperforms conventional models in its
predictions of hurricane intensity both 24 and 48 hours into the future,
although it is no better if asked to look 72 hours ahead.
06June03 SARITHA RAI (NYT) Parts of India, mainly in the south, have been
reeling under a heat wave that has been blamed for 1,000 deaths. India's
economy slowed last year because of a lack of rainfall, and analysts expect
consumer spending will recover as more normal weather leads to a recovery in
the rural economy.
CSM 20Jul04 Scott Baldauf It is the season of sour milk. India's hot
season - eight months of sweat.. respite from all this heat is the monsoon,
a June-to-September rainy season that drenches the countryside, replenishes
the rivers.. south to north, the monsoon is a veritable conveyor belt of
moisture that is drawn to the heat of India's vast plains. For weeks, the
rain comes in torrential downpours nearly every day.. monsoon has brought
floods that have killed hundreds and left untold thousands homeless..
villagers standing knee-deep in ponds that used to be villages. Over the
weekend, Indian Air Force helicopters were still picking villagers from the
branches of trees in the flooded state of Bihar..
Exploding energy
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox
Subject: Re: How an Electric/Hydrogen Economy Would Work!
Message-ID: g39qea$l0o$2@reader2.panix.com
So when the batteries explode just like the laptop and camera
batteries explode. When the hydrogen piplines explode. Blame
bown off limbs on you: You must be in cahoots with all those IED
juhadists, except you want the victims to pay for the carbombs
ourselves?
Great Recession
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics:123576 misc.invest.misc:1319
sci.econ:39880 sci.op-research:1552 sci.stat.consult:1543
Subject: Financial Crisis Misincentives?
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 04:50:19 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: gtls6b$jg5$1@reader1.panix.com
I wonder how the fees created the financial crisis. How we allowed the
wrong incentives to take place. I find it annoying the way brokers can keep
trying to sell you a different stock because they get commissions only for
sales. Maybe they should have to put skin in the game like getting paid by
how much your stocks appreciate. Before 1975 (Big Bang) they got paid fixed
fees, but the change in fees caused firms to cut staff by a third. They also
say that mortgage brokers had no skin in th game so they got paid by how many
mortgages they wrote and not by how these performed. Brokers don't seem to
fit in a bank because they get paid differently. But it also seems (from the
view of PE LBO consultants) that insurance policies rarely fit the need of
employer or insured, but rather only the salesman. If we want to meld
banking, insurance and finance, they really have to conform to similar rules.
Then there is the story of liquidity, speculation and volatility. Some
trading enthusiasts insist that liquidity is inversely proportional to
volatility, but others point out that decimalisation cut the difference so
fine it actually increased volatility. Bob Haugen shows that the Great
Depression was marked with an unusually persistent volatility. Some have
argued that to reduce speculation we should put capital gains on a sliding
scale: zero tax after two years and full income tax rate at time zero. But
others say speculation is good for liquidity. Big pension funds have so much
money they believe they can make money out of the slightest price movements,
but others find it hard to believe day trading adds to value or efficiency.
Which side is right?
I also wonder if the debt business is all it is cracked up to be. It is
always the bond people like Henry Kaufman who object to supply side tax cuts
and want to raise taxes in tough times. Maybe Islamic (Ibrahimic?) financs is
on to something? Maybe the banks should have more skin in the game if they
owned equity instead of mortgages. In a way the USA no-recourse portgage (vs
European recourse) is more of an equity system? Maybe that's what was missing
in the CDOs?
Solar best for AC
[I think all cars should use only solar power for air conditioning.
Nothing kills cars like standing in jot traffic with a/c on. Further I think
all air conditioning should use solar power as a first resort. Power use peak
in eve offset by cooling while away from home in afn. We should use alt
energy closest to source, offsetting price swings. Sim, as sewage uses 10% of
our energy, it should be powered by fuel from sewage et al..
LEDs waste energy by stepping down voltage, Solar Panels waste energy by
steppimng up voltage, so why not use solar panels exclusively for daytime lighting.]
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: alt.energy.renewable:9275
Subject: Solar Car Air Cond
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 07:37:12 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: e7qn77$bjk$4@reader2.panix.com
I've heard there are flip-on-window solar car air conditioners.
Refs? Web?
Since most cars I know have had their very first failing over a/c,
and since the problem essentially begs the solution, I've
always wondered why this wasn't taken advantage of.
At least flow air through the car when it is parked.
Is this becoming part of car designs? Why or why not?
[The most energy-efficient Prius yet--50 mpg compared to 46 mpg for the 2009
model--comes with an optional solar panel on the roof to power cabin vent
fans.]
Wanted by the Bulgarian KGB
When Vasos had just turned fourteen, his uncles had a bus company in
Athens which availed itself of the Helsinki Accords by being one of the first
Greek tour firms back into Bulgaria (given new instabilities in Greek
politics it was even prudent to do so). Lazily sitting in the back of the
bus, sometimes helping out his family, he was playing with all sorts of
normal Yankee nerdling gadgets like a movie camera and stuff designed to
broadcast portable cassette sound into a radio. He even filmed some (gasp!)
tanks. So, a year later, his uncle's bus gets stopped and asked about "some
American" (Vasos was the only passenger without a Greek passport) taking
pictures of their military installations. (Wierdo constipated soviets were
known to take years reviewing surveilance tapes - so it became apparent when
we found out they were monitoring Glen Cove microwave phonecalls.) This is
how Vasos became WANTED BY THE BULGARIAN KGB - at fourteen!
Quality
Hippies, wishing to show their spite for USA industry turned to small
new-age peacenik cars from Japan, the kind no one in his right mind in the
USA would buy at the time. They gave the Japanese their first
opening. Japanese "quality" is pretentious up-front quality, for the first
few months. In Japan, if you sold something that broke at first, your face,
if not your head, was lost. In the USA, one was used to getting an ornery
horse and breaking it in. But USA cars last twenty years (my family has owned
a couple that long) - the big USA-made cars have long-term quality. The
smaller cars were largely imports, or made from imported parts. Moreover,
local mechanics uncapable of handling the more advanced computer technology
found in USA cars purposely badmouth the USA cars to compensate for their own
ignorance.
A lot of USA academics seeking higher salaries within the protection
of academia but fearful of the real world work environment have vidictively
turned against those who refused to hire their warped minds with bizzare
theories (based on almost no statistical significnce) like "participative
management" in the higher-paying jobs of business schools. At least when
business schools paid the same salaries as other parts of the universities,
you only got faculty who liked business. The reason we keep having fads in
management methods is because this is the way leftists in the academic and
publishing worlds have chose to piecemeal sneak their socialist agendas onto
the corporate world, which being such a soulless dinosaur, seems to
occasionally comply with their assaults.
John Kenneth Galbraith and his ilk felt that ever-larger firms were
the path to socialism, and GM (Alfred Sloan) & GE (Charles Steinmetz)
followed, as we now have "supply-chain management" as the dying death gasp of
the socialist conglomerate.
Another story is instructive. I had an HP2621a terminal on my desk
for fifteen years. It followed the rule of fan-out-of-five I learned in my EE
courses. I had a modem, and two printers simultaneously y-connectored to it,
using only RS232 pins 2,3,8&20. The minute I bought a Japanese made EPSON
HX20 PC, I had to add a switch box because they saved money by skimping on
the fan-out. They cut quality to the levels most people would not notice,
rather than actually have high US-style quality. [1995+2001]
Why Columbia?
Columbia's main focus is research, not teaching, but you DO learn: Often
you learn most from your classmates; because of competition; You could have
the same textbook and professor in another university, but you learn more at
Columbia because you know your classmates are going to study more, spend more
time in the library or the lab, learning something more interesting. In the
end, the best thing a college teaches you is how to teach yourself and how to
reason critically; Real genius isn't like an ordinary savant who becomes an
expert in one field then spends the rest of life with brain switched off, but
instead can become an expert in any field very quickly. Ironically, Columbia
was also a university where the deans felt more of an obligation to connect
with and be accessible to the parents more than any university my friends
attended: many of my professors and deans had kids my age; indeed many times
those kids were also my classmates. My first semester, I felt I had been so
cheated by all the watered-down courses I had in high school, I felt like an
insatiable tiger let loose at a slaughterhouse; at the same time, they never
let us off easy: if we had AP credit, they made us take tougher courses
instead of just giving us credit, their attitude was we were better so we had
to become even better. We were often told getting in was the only hard part
about Harvard, but staying in was the hard part about Columbia; it was part
of New York, the city that never sleeps. Yet Columbia is the smallest of all
the Ivies because real estate is so expensive here: And we are said to be the
least politically correct, but we were also the least cohesive, at least
after the 1968 riots, when the university spent over a decade badly in debt
and every department was its own feudal domain; During those difficult times,
I still had access to the best traditions of Columbia through some of the
professors, particularly my mentor, whose obituary quoted me saying he taught
us "curiosity tempered by discipline, adventurousness tempered by modesty,
and kindness tempered by humility". We used to joke that after standing in
line at Columbia, you learned how to navigate just about any bureaucracy in
the future; but I found that the Columbia bureacracy often made some
incredibly sound decisions: I often went back to see how they bought some
equipment or incentivised some contractor; I also cannot live without my
Alumni Library Reading Card! But at the same time Columbia has so demanding,
and often needlessly overreacted, we often felt so unsure of ourselves once
we left: so much that one professor told us that we should try to remember
how we acted when we were kids and really wanted something, in order to
revive our more natural and long-suppressed instincts; and they also told us
our first two years on the job would be spent recovering our self-confidence.
They also told us once that the reason we learned about art, music,
philosophy and literature was that we would become so hooked on expensive
avocations we would be motivated to earn extraordinary money just to afford
them! Every boss I ever worked for turned out to have some connection to
Columbia, despite my sometimes not finding this out until long after I was
hired; Attending Columbia makes the world a very small place: I never stop
marvelling the places where I've been tapped on the shoulder and told someone
remembered me from Columbia; you can't escape!
[14JUL01 roughly what I tell folks who ask about my Columbia experience]
Ethnic?
Vasos can speak Greek so well and he can READ it. With spellckeck,
he even looks like he went to school there. How come he speaks English and
French without an accent? When did he first arrive in the USA? Oh, about
1885! Huh? Then why does he have such a difficult name, especially the
first name. Well, Vasos is short for Vasilios and his parents gave him that
name as an "international" name (not too common outside old Athens) because
they weren't all too sure where they would end up. And they used to use
"Pann" as a surname a lot in the 1960s until checks and credit cards made it
necessary to use the "real" longer version. His parents may have spoken with
an accent, but they didn't think with an accent. In fact, when reading Henry
James on American women ("it was the very essence of her position not to be
theatened", highly civilized without losing "the value of the puritan
residium") Vasos realised that his late mom was raised to be very American
because her dad and grandfathers had both been to America. Vasos learned to
read and write three languages in first grade: English, Greek and French.
When he was twelve, he was corresponding with relatives in other continents
in four different languages. Unlike most "Greek-Americans", he doesn't see
one "ethnicity" as excluding another in a zero-sum game. Others are 80%
American and 20% Greek or 20% American and 80% Greek, but Vasos is 95%
American and 75% Greek. Vasos rarely fits anyone's stereotypes.
Academic Racketeering Promotes Leftism
Graduate programs look down at students who don't take a hairshirt
approach and then encourage these students to protest every little government
cut. At the same time, universities resist any commercial discipline in their
work habits precisely because if these students got wif of how much their
professors were making from consulting and licensing, they would rebel. This
is why universities want systems based on grants, licensing and consulting
and not on venturing and collaboration - as someone in the 1970s once said
about India "It's not that capitalism doesn't exist, but you have to buy
capitalism, which you can't do if you are poor."
A culture of paranoia predominates in the post-Manhattan-Project
scientific world where no researcher shares even the slightest data or
information with his colleagues or institution. A student would learn more
from working in an identical project in industry than for a professor or by
taking a course in the subject - because faculty are so paranoid and
possessive about their knowledge. Ultimately, the grubmint deserves
responsibility because its system of grants helped create this racketeering
monstrosity. And this is the incubator which keeps leftism festering even as
communism throughout the world has collapsed.
For example, every so often the NSF and its cousins announce that we
are in a dangerous shortage of PhDs and the spigot of graduate students
reopens to slave in the labs only to be dropped at will for not groveling
sufficiently. Moreover, professors detest American-born graduate students
because American students actually expect professors to answer their
questions and curiosities, while foreign students behave like frightened
rabbits, who laugh at "Americans". The result is that American students feel
an inferiority about being American and become transformed into lifelong
America-haters.
Isn't it ironic that a university whose faculty berate American
industry for short-termism demand annualised returns from its miniscule
endowed internal venture fund and yet this same university is one of the
nation's leading receipients of licensing revenues. Isn't it ironic that the
universities who do the very best in the nation with regards to licencing
revenes (but maintian Vietnam-era bans on faculty "commercialism") are the
same universities whose presidents resigned nearly a decade ago due to
federal grant irregularities? What is especially pernicious about these
grants addicts is that they turn to international agencies and eventually
foreign governments, rather than private industry, to support their habit.
The solution would be to follow 1987 Reagan proposals for privatising
the NIH and combine them with the blueprints for the Bobby Inman Sematech
research consortium and have privatised formerly-government foundations
become research consortia that allows firms to collaborate in funding
research and buying results.
Kastorian Shoe Travel
Like most northern Greeks, Kastorians leave their shoes at the door
(most Yanks will say "like the Japanese" - I reply "..and a lot of Northern
Greeks, Slavic Orthodox and Arab Orthodox..") and don't generally wear their
shoes at home. (We've done all my life.) So anyway, this guy walks over to
speak to someone and his dog walks along. Leaves his shoes outside and goes
in. Comes out, no shoes, no dog. The shoes looked out of place to the pooch,
so he carried them back home - which was a mile away! The guy called home
(what happened in the old days?) and someone brought his shoes. A different
pair. Because the dog accidentally dropped one shoe along the way.
Conspiracies
Paranoia consists of people having an inferiority complex, being
unusually perceptive and vigilant, suspicious, racist, sneaky, blaming others
sfor their own faults, vengeful, and unusually concerned with fidelity. They
can be "cured" by making them relax, seek criticism, be more tolerant and see
unulterior motives for accidental coincidences. Their writing is small and
narrow, with unusually tight knoting of o and a, tapered, and right slanting.
Paranoid individuals often excuse their own immoral acts on the grounds that
everyone else is much worse and their own personal purpose for acting
immorally actually has a moral cause. Paranoid individuals are not only
paralysed by conspiracy theories, they also sometimes use them to advance
their goals or to excuse their own moral or intellectual failings. Those who
believe conspiracy theories tend to give up on normal democratic and
participatory processes because the conspiracy theories have convinced them
that this is futile. Therefore, conspiracy theories tend to cause
head-in-the-sand approaches, such as that seen by ROCOR and the Serbs in
recent global events. Richard Nixon, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler,
however, are/were paranoid individuals who used their paranoia to divide and
manipulate others. In Europe, I have seen believers in conspiracy theories
blame the Jews and masonry for their woes, while in the USA, the Trilaterals,
CFR and international bankers are blamed, yet in Japan, it is the UFOs; I
shall never forget when a reasonably educated Japanese insisted on showing me
a video that "proved" JFK was assassinated by his own chauffer under UFO
orders.
How Markets Emerge
A friend of mine was sitting at a financial conference in the late
1980s where a German CEO was presenting and was taken aback when a brash
American analyst asked "What about cash flow?" and he replied "Yesh, vee hev
it da kesh fluwo, vai iz id yiur biznish? " Yes, even the number two or three
economy is not nearly as transparent as the USA economy. Then we have Maslow
telling us about hierarchy of needs and we have seen how economies surpassing
$300/capita GNP start to provoke democratic aspirations. So we have to
understand that the transparency and integrity of the USA economy is related
to its success, and if we want other countries to be like us, we have to
encourage their commercial success instead of use counterproductive
embargoes. Not that there aren't sections of the USA which genuinely still
belong in the third world. Clearly it was trade with the west which helped
communism collapse in central Europe. Of course, we have to credit the final
abandonment of hipocrisy in Latin America by the genuinely decent Reagan and
Carter presidencies (who no longer tolerated dictatorships) as well, because
it took away any excuse for communists to hide behind. But let's face it,
embargoes don't work. Bob Dole may have wanted embargoes in the 1990s, but it
was he who opposed embargoes in the late 1970s because he was supporting
Kansas wheat farmers.
Dale Carnegie
With rather sophomoric arrogance, I used to think a book named "How
to Win Friends and Influence People" was rather sleazy or manipulative, so I
was in my thirties until someone I really respected convinced me to actually
open the book and read it. That's when I realised that the author was a
friend of Nicholas Murray Butler, who at the time was president of my alma
mater, Columbia University, and that Carnegie extracted the practical lessons
of the then-newly-devised Columbia "Contemporary Civilisation" great books
program (which Columbia - and eventually other universities - used to
assimilate the offspring of varied Ellis Island immigrants into USA
leaders). Ok, Carnegie eliminated all the theory and history behind such
lessons - and all that background makes it a lot easier to adopt those
lessons to a greater variety of situations as well as allow you to see some
of the perpetually recurring fallacies of human reasoning - but the people
who would read such a book either would never read the original works or
would need a reassurinmg overview. Nonetheless, the book is hardly
manipulative, and indeed if properly heeded, should turn a lot of ambitious
manipulators into individuals who have a lot more respect for their fellow
man.
Lessons from the Wall Street Treadmill
Bonuses are an ego trap - you are told that of course, YOU are so
terrific YOU will get the maximum bonus - no one believes they deserve
anything less than the maximum. You can be terrific for ages but if you have
one bad quarter, you are fired. Figure out your net salary, taking away all
the things you are expected to spend on as a result of your new job. Avoid
headhunters like the plague, instead of making you a valuable niche player,
they commoditise you and eventually drive your income down in the long run
Six months after a new building is finished or offices get renovated, you can
bet there will be massive layoffs, because the bravado of building new
offices spilled over into a lot of careless spending. Nepotism pays off on
Wall Street, because the game is one of diplomacy and connections, and who
you can bring to the table. Narcisism predominates, because of those in the
majority who fake nepotistic connections. However, the guys who last the
longest, the Warren Buffets and the Ben Rosens (BTW, both Columbia MBAs) are
quiet and unassuming, because they persevere and manage to be totally
uninfluenced by the narcisistic mirage. [2000]
Supply Side
Cato's Stephen More reminds us: In the 1980s, after Reagan cut
taxes, federal revenues grew faster than during the 1990s with two of
the largest tax hikes in American history. Real federal receipts
climbed from 1982 to 1989 by 24 percent. But overall federal revenue
growth from 1990 through 1997 (as currently forecast by the
Congressional Budget office) will be only 18.5 percent. In the eight
years after Reagan tax cuts the economy grew by nearly 4 percent per
year. In the 1990s with two Herculean tax hikes the economy has
limped forward at less than 2 percent annual growth. In the 1990s
only the rich have gotten richer. In the 1980s the average household
gained $4,000 in income. In the 1990s we've lost half of that. For
more information, see Robert Mundell, The Dollar & the Policy Mix,
1971, Priceton Essays in Intl Finance, whose prescription for dealing
with oil supply shocks involved tax cuts, budget cuts and tight
money. Mundell is widely attributed with founding "supply-side"
economics, even by Laffer in the foreword to Laffer's 1984 Intl
Economics textbook. [1997]
Belchentine
Belching Buzzards of Brick and Broom
Rambling Rivets of Racoon
Mesmell the Carcass of a Dead Baboon!
-----
Thems be unfestooned lizard-eaters who
oughta have their toenails
transplanted into their tonsils!
-----
What the broken-penny does all of that
hard-boiled frog-manure have to do
with the smell of Rumpelstilskin's toenails?
(Sung to tune of "Oh, my darling Clementine")
Oh, the Lizard, in the Gizzard, Of the Buzzard as he fly,
And he drop us such a Blizzard from Up High up in the sky,
Oh, the Yearning, Oh, the Burning, as you drink that Turpentine,
That you drink to clear your Mind, when your wife be Clementine!
Termites and Sweet Plants
Subject: Termites & sweet plants
Newsgroups: alt.home.repair
Message-ID: uibrnn$518$1@reader2.panix.com>
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2023 23:09:46 -0000
In 1967 my uncle brought us some yew bushes from Connecticut. Soon we were
inundated with what appeared to be flying ants. We thought they might be
termites but the popular Greek dictionary (Divry) said termites were white
ants. So every April, for about two days, my folks would have the vaccuum
ready and zap any "ants" that appeared. In 1999, after my mom died, we had
half our windows replaced and were told we had termites. So we call one of
the national chains and they tell us we don't have any. I say, humor me, put
one trap by the kitchen. Oh, you are right. Thanks, so WHY am I paying YOU?
So a year later they come back and theaten to remove all the traps if we
don't pay them for renewal. PLEASE, do! 2009 I see something that spooks me
and I was lucky to have just reconnect with my freshman bio lab professor, an
entomologist. She tells me to never have any sweet plants too close to the
house. So we remove the yews.
Mysticism, Genius and Cognition
Theory of right & left side of the brain and subconscious and
conscious learning could have been deduced from Edmunde Burke's comments on
tradition being the subconscious memory of society or the Orthodox insistance
(as explained by Khomyakov) on BOTH Tradition (which the papacy retains
alone) and the Scripture (which the protestants retain alone). The third
dimension to that Khomyakovian Geometry is the Mysticism of the Jews, which
we also retain as well. There is a lot of osmotic learning (both via
Tradition and Mysticism) going on that the SinoGermanic method of linearised
fanatical hyperspecialisation (vs the AngloHellenistic tradition of the
Generalist) ignores and trivialises. The AngloHellenistic and Byzantine (and
Hindu) cultures are far superior at cross-fertilising fields of knowledge
precisely because they are unwilling to abandon this interconnectedness of
things. But the SinoGermanic model is much better at perfecting existing
innovations. We all know that an idiot savant is someone, usually with a
brain injury, that excels in one area but is totally unable to function in
most other areas. Well, ordinary people get skilled in one area and then stop
learning - they become automatons or "ordinary savants". Real genius
("perpetucognitive supersavantoid") is characterised by the ability to switch
areas of expertise at the drop of a hat. That's because ordinary people are
"cognitive" (ie, actually use their brain) only about an hour a week, whereas
genius uses their brains ten hours a day. To understand what this means, note
the Harvard experiment where students were given pop quizes, but at different
times (ie beginning, middle or end of lecture). The students who had the
quizes at the end of their lectures were more attentive DURING the lecture,
whereas those having the quiz at the beginning paid more attention (ie,
switched on their "cognitive" mode) to rereading their notes instead of
learning it the first time. Well, the Orthodox mind is faced with the
admonition of St Dionysios Ariopayitis that the ultimate knowledge is
admission of total ignorance, and yet the interpretation of St Basil that the
New Testament is the Commandment to Become GOD; what better perpetucognitive
stimulus towards endless educational striving?
JFK's UFO
CompuServe Issues 223084 S2/Political Issues 14-Jan-92 19:08:21
Sb: My JFK Theory Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
In the winter'91 (Kissinger-Brzezinski) National_Interest, Bob Novak
discusses Harvard historian Michael Beschloss' Kennedy_&_Khruschev (Harper,
91), calling JFK "vain, shallow, disorganized,
petty, un[d]ic[s]iplined, deceitful
and frivolous" - showing how soviets were surprised to see Kennedy
rhetorically raise them to superpower level (when they weren't) and that the
defensive, naive Kennedy overreacted to typical soviet theatrics. Some of
JFKs admirers, however, would like to see him return with pointy ears off
some AWACS seagull along with Elvis - just so he can empower their freelove,
freemoney, freedrugs, geopagan, coercive utopian agenda along with ludicrous
concepts like UNIX and the metric system. I was only two years old when JFK
was shot, and believe me, I knew no one who grieved him - indeed I was later
part of the momentous Reaganist revival of the anarchic tradition of the
American Revolution - that caused communism to crumble merely by denying the
existence of JFKs phobic notions of soviet grandeur.
The NecroSmurf Way:To Herd a Nerd
Why was MicroSoft so successful? In short, they always LEARNED from
their mistakes. When the first personal computers came out in the mid-1970s,
Gates and Allen saw them in a magasine at Harvard and realised these machines
would need software. So they approached the manufacturer who said whoever
produced a BASIC language first would get their approval. Gates (actually not
really much of a programmer - the thing he learned best at Harvard was how to
play poker - and his poker style bluffs in business were indeed monumental)
devised using students and free computer resources at Harvard. But they were
immediately victims of software piracy. So when IBM Boca wanted a PC
operating system and the popular Digital Research CPM folks were too
difficult, Gates found a system made by Seattle Sytems and repackaged it to
IBM. This time Gates LEARNED his lesson about pirates and got hardware
manufacturers to include MSDOS with their systems, so he got paid up
front. When IBM wanted to make a deal on OS/2, Gates learned his lessons on
IBM's old tricks and out-IBM-ed IBM by keeping Interface Manager (aka
Windows) on the back burner until IBM's MicroChannel bus stumbled. Then,
learning from Lotus' apeing VisiCalc (but with bigger budgets and more aware
of customer befuddlement - just like IBM overtook RCA with the 360), he aped
everyone, and came out with Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and Internet
Explorer.
So, how would one EMULATE this? Find a cut-rate poor-man's product
(microcomputer) that imitates one only used by the big boys (mainframe). Then
find a way to make that product much more useful - by fixing it's biggest
flaw (lack of software). (Think that's impossible? You can find an old
public-domain drug with a major side-effect and find a way to fix the side
effect. Mike Jaharis' Kos Pharmaceuticals did that for cholesterol.) Then you
turn around and sell one of these fixes (MSDOS) to the firm most theatened by
your innovation (IBM). But be sure to sell your innovation to their
competitors as well, and don't do any selling yourself - get them to do it
for you. Then, when it comes time for the next major variation, you keep
your options open and continue to develop a competing product (Windows) to
the one you are contracting to develop (OS/2). Then you find widely-imitated
trends that depend on your innovations (application software) and you use
their fundamental dependence on your innovation to their disadvantage. (Like
maybe Roche letting folks make tests with its PCR then in a few years Roche
making those tests themselves.)
Threaten the big guy, then partner with them, then beat them at their
own game! 14JAN2K
Mind you, I believe MicroSoft (with its upgrade treadmill) is now
behaving the same obnoxious way Lotus did ten years ago when MicroSoft
started eating their lunch. And when MS went ahead with Windows, it was IBM
and Unix which loomed large as monopolistic threats to the rest of
us. 08JUL01
The First Gonzo
Howard Friedman, who graduated chemistry from Brooklyn College and
worked at the FDA before joining my high school, said he invented the word
GONZO while hanging out with friends of his at the Village Voice in the early
1970s. He defined the term as someone who starts painting a floor from the
door inwards towards a corner that has neither door nor window. I'm told he
now chairs the science department of an exclusive private school in
Connecticut. I had my phototypesetting engineer uncle print a new element
"Gonzonium" which we pasted on the elements chart. We later also added
Bootigunkonium, because Mr Friedman attended Thomas E Bootie High School in
Brooklyn.
Warden Quiltstuffer
1980 presidential primary candidate George Bush told public
television of how Carter ordered Iranian troops to remain in their
barracks so the Ayatollahs could take over. Former Carter
Undersecretary Warden Quiltstuffer went to Greece this past summer and
predicted the return of the leftist Quackandreou. Quiltstuffer has
also engineered the leftist victories in Japan and Canada and went to
call for Russian extremist parties to be relegalised just before
Zirinofsky's success. Given that he serves a draftdodging US president
who made a student pilgrimage to [prototypal Whitewater mafioso]
Breznev, we ought to be very worried now that he tinkers with
still-red China. Moreover, he had achieved GATT and NAFTA only by
turning them into the subsidy-mills that Reagan and Bush fought so
hard to prevent. [1994]
Reagan Intellect
I really have to take exception to those who wish to portray
Reagan as an ordinary man. He started reading at the age of three. For
two brothers, sons of a drunk, to both graduate college in those days
was another indication of unusual intelligence. It is a mistake to
read Reagan's humility as a mark of ordinariness. The professors who
left the greatest mark both on their own fields and in my own life
shared Reagan's unusual humility, kindness and sensitivity to both
human feelings and truth in general. In fact, my bioengineering
mentor, the professor who co-edited my field's handbook also shared a
February birthmonth with Reagan, Washington, Lincoln and even Dan
Quayle. (Not astrology here, but I tend to think that February being
the coldest month provides these people with constantly improving
weather, hence an incredible optimism.) An ordinary man is not one who
fought off both communism and the mafia from one of the nation's most
influencial labor unions - and who later used the negotiating skills
so learned to negotiate communism itself to an intellectually
vulnerable nakedness - achieving humanity's greatest period of
democratic advancement with minimal - indeed, almost no - bloodshed.
And lastly, I have to say something about Peggy Noonan, whose
comments started this idea of Reagan's ordinariness. The only time I
ever met Noonan was in the fall of 1990, when those in my company who
idolised her were sorely disappointed to meet an unusually pompous
fart - Nonnan spent the entire evening posed an angle that would allow
her to be better photographed should the opportunity arise, even by
accident. I never before or later met someone who read an entire
speech, and did an entire question/anser session posed at a 45 degree
angle just in case a photographer was there! [1998]
Biases in Science
Coming from the physical and natural sciences, it became
obvious that social science is biased is because it can be
manipulated. Malcolm Muggeridge said social sciences have been
replaced by natural (and we might today extend, engineering) sciences
as true quests for truth. Some are frightened by the power of their
discoveries and so wish to mask it. Others consciously or
subconsciously blind themselves to their findings and force them to
conform to various ideologies. And of course, others see the potential
for profit from their findings and so mask and package them to do
this. Not that this isn't creeping into other sciences. A lot of
engineering professors don't teach advanced techniques correctly in
class, and only let the cat out of the bag if you do a dissertation
with them (and many times not even then - they prefer to write a
section of their student's dissertation themselves than to allow the
student to learn the new technique). A lot of financial mathematics
papers have intentional errors to trip up competitiors. [1999]
Personal Investing Strategy
Studies show you can eat up up to a third of your profits with
transaction costs (there are other costs besides fees - such as lost
opportunity costs, market moving costs and so on - for example you
never trade the stock at the price you thought you were getting). You
don't get rich by finagling stocks from day to day, you get rich via
asset accumulation. My strategy is when the market is low, put money
into a dividend re-investing general fund with a twenty-year history -
when the market is high, resist all temptations and forget you even
own it (don't put anything in or take anything out). Use electronic
banking to hide some money from your spending fancies every week and
then invest that when the market is low. Resist the macho temptation
to make the big kill. Find something else to do while your eggs are
incubating because if you start playing with them, they might break. I
know alot of the algorithms used to pick stocks (factor models, APT,
stochastic optimisation) but to be honest, I wouldn't put my cash on
them. If you can sock five years income into a fund that provides
for both growth and income, use the proceeds to pay your monthly bills
and then you can use your paycheck for long term investing. Now, also
be careful what happens when the baby boomers start retiring and
taking money out of the market, what fund managers call the "duration
flip" (2005-2025). [1999]
From: vjp2@BioStrategist.com
Newsgroups: misc.invest.misc:55258
Subject: Thoughts on investing
Date: Tue, 9 May 2017
To make money investing, buy low, compound, sell high, not as easy as it
sounds. Prices are low precisely when noone has money to invest, including
you. Then transaction costs can take as much as a third of your money, not
just in fees, but also in missed opportunities, like price movements that
take place in the time between your decision and execution. Investing in
individual securities is probably too risky if you don't have enough
money. But beware that a fund which diversifies your risk may cease to exist
when it is so cheap it makes its organisers and brokers low fees. Indeed,
brokers don't want you to buy low, because it cuts down their
profits. Bagehot and Kindleberger long ago debunked them, but conspiratists
still con gullible counterparties who they further con saying the theory
failed not because it was wrong but because the market was rigged. And
advisors have been burned by customers who overreact that they spend more of
their time protecting themselves than helping their customers; Macchiavel
long ago warned many will turn against their best friends if they feel they
cost them money. Further many investors are confused by bonds which are cheap
when the issuer is risky but the interest is high. A high yield ("junk") fund
is fine for paying utility bills if you have relatively little time left to
live. Deflation and depression imply negative interest rates, where the
opportunity cost is not for holding, but spending, money; Negative rates may
be concealed as extraordinarily high banking fees, but nonetheless cause a
liquidity trap, which is the opposite of an inflationary spiral. Compounding
involves exponential integrals, which are beyond most investor comprehension
but which requires dividend reinvestment minimising transaction fees. Mutual
funds have mutliple securities to spread risk. Exchange traded funds are
mutual funds with fewer transaction costs. But funds could die long before
their underlying securities. First you have a real estate ETF like RFI (5,20)
into which you put money you anticipate to need for real estate, including
taxes; It will go down when real estate goes down, but that is fine because
so will the price of any real estate you want to buy: This is called
hedging. Then you put your safest (most essential) funds into a municipal
bond fund like VTEB (49,52): First it is tax free, then it is likely to be
safer, although municipalities will go broke when interest rises; Again that
is fine because other municipalities in the fund won't, and interest rates
will rise to cover it. The municipal fund is the one you might derive income
from and not reinvest (all?) the dividends. Then, depending on your age you
get more of a growth fund like VUG (37,122) the younger or less risk averse
you are, and a value fund like IWC (24,85) the older or more risk averse you
are. You need to record the all-time highs and lows of these funds: If you
have leftover income, invest it on the fund which is closest to its all-time
low; If you need money (it is best not to touch your investments as the
integral under a sine curve is zero) sell the one closest to its all-time
high. Use the funds I used as a guide but pick your own funds, everything
always changes and you may feel more comfortable with something
else. Research them.
Hobos
CompuServe Issues 223412 S2/Political Issues 15-Jan-92 07:24:24
Sb: Subway Hobo AIDS Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
Tell Kimberly Burgales. Subway hobos don't just politely sit down
with their hands crossed - they love to stick their hands in your face, rub
their clothes on you, yell, spit all over and jump up and down. Given that
nine tenths of hobos [Bassuk Rubin Lauriat Am J Psy Dec'84] suffer some
personality disorder (the majority also involving drugs and alcohol) - one
suspects that the reason the Camelot geopagans care so much for hobos is that
they are former comrades in arms.
Leagle Wyzeels
MARSHAL WEISEIS HOLMHUGHS
- ALLORMEY AT LAM -
PHAUGHAN & GAYMES, PC
29823 Leagle Wheezle Dreamway, Khrlugh Phleugh, QW 98989 woice (989) 578-2483 tax (989) 578-2484
Habeas para delictis, del credere, estoppel certiorari?
Nolo contendre, in absentis cerebrum, loco locutum, mutatis mutandis,
with penalty fee complex irreprehensible, with octuple interests!
The vicar of snicker was a vicarious tortfeasor, named Balthaghaster
Festuniarty, whose pecuniary encumbrance on suretyship was hidden in a
covenant to the grantee of privity to the locus of penitance!
By the mere act of using our program you hereby implicitly but
completely acknowledge that should you ever violate any of our
copyrights or perceived claims thereof, you understand and agree to be
totally bound by the terms and conditions stipulated herein as the
complete and exclusive agreement of remedies which supersedes any
proposal or prior agreement, oral or written, or any other
communication or inference between us relating to this copyright and
any licensure thereof. Full and complete remedies shall constitute to
full submittance to undertake studies of the effect of your full and
total dishabilement in arctic climates (including but not limited to
studies inside active volcanic eruptions) within a thousand paces of
the north pole, without holding us, the claimant to the violated
copyright, liable in any way for any consequences of your
dishabilement or climatic exposures. Moreover in appreciation of the
privilege of participating in said arctic dishabilement studies,
consideration of being accepted to compete, you do hereby acknowledge
that because of your participating in, traveling to, and returning
from such studies, you may suffer bodily injury or death, and loss of
property, and you do hereby for yourself, for your heirs, parents,
guardians, executors, personal representatives and assigns, release,
acquit, waive, forever discharge, hold harmless and agree to indemnify
the claimant to violated copyrights and anyone undertaking the arctic
dishabilement studies and any other persons or organizations connected
with the same of and from any and all liability, claims, demands,
costs, damages, actions, causes of action, or suits of any nature or
kind whatsoever that you, your heirs, parents, guardians, executors,
personal representative, assigns or administrators may now or
hereafter have or claim to have, on account of or arising out of
personal injuries, death, or damage to your person or property or loss
of time, loss of service, or for expenses incurred, occurring to me
because of or in any way related to your training for, your traveling
to, your participating at and your returning from said studies or
through the use of any and all facilities connected therewith.
Further, you hereby grant permission in case of injury to be denied
any medical, resuscitory, cannibalistic or crematory treatment you do
hereby for yourself, your heirs, parents, guardians, executors,
assigns and administrators, release, acquit, waive and forever
discharge the claimant to the violated copyright and anyone
undertaking the arctic dishabilement studies of and from any and all
liability, actions, claims, demands or suits whatsoever which you may
now or hereafter have or claim to have, on account of any injury
sustained and suffered by you in connection with said medical,
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agree to accept any and all financial obligations incurred as a result
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Deficits
CompuServe Issues 228443 S2/Political Issues 25-Jan-92 00:31:32
Sb: #228390-#American in Decline Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
"Debt is a problem only if the funds have been spent on consumption
or ineffective capital which has failed to generate useful output..
The United States is a case in point. It ran a current account
defecit for 300 years, from the first English settlement in 1607
until World War I, and was a net debtor throughout the period. This
created no problems. WWe were opening a new continent.. profitability of
putting new physical capital in place in the US was high. Investors
shared this high return.." p5 July 1985 Treasury News "Basic Determinants
of Capital Formation and Financing of Industrial Development" Stephen
J Entin, Depy Ast Secy Eco Policy, Treasury.
More Deficits
CompuServe Issues 248802 S2/Political Issues 01-Mar-92 18:10:19
Sb: #248381-Reaganomics + DeficitFm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
First Reagan did in fact cut the rate of growth of spending, and
the tax cuts did produce revenue growth (check the Economist for the late
80s). If you compare to Carter, trends improved. But accumulation of
defecit, and interest, continued. Carter himself agreed with NATO on a
defence buildup much greater than ever occured under Reagan. You might notice
how Reagan and Bush arrived at the no-new-tax pledge: In 1982 it was agreed
to raise taxes and cut spending (the largest ever peacetime tax increase
until Bush') - but the Democrats never delivered on the spending cuts - don't
you remember all the howls how Reagan supposedly caused homelessness (and not
the deinstitutionalisation of the late seventies) and how bureaucrats
manipulated RIF orders so that it would seem, as Tip O'Neil said, we were
"thowing out the baby with the bathwater". Carter tried to end the defecit
his last year in office, even trying to stop Saturday mail delivery, but his
own party destroyed him. Two thirds of the effective (including off-budget)
defecit is in Socialist inSecurity and Medimare, and Bush' IRA/IMA/IEA
proposals try to deal with this. Moreover, the sum of the trade and budget
defecits may be better sustained by nations with greater savings - hence
the current attempt to cut gains taxes to increase savings.
Productivity
CompuServe FLEFO 98429 S7/East Asian 06-Feb-92 06:17:10
Sb: #98146-Japan/Canada Axis Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
Incidentally, I hope someone looked at the productivity numbers.
Japanese workers - certainly THEY are NOT lazy - are 31% less
productive than Americans, so certainly, on average, Americans are
NOT lazy, either. We both have our problems: lazy Detroit auto workers
and NYC municiapl workers matched to lazy Japanese distribution system workers.
With all the talk of sincerity and relationships, Japanese treating
contracts as "symbolic" rather than binding, resmbles that of
the economically undeveloped soviet union - contracts are essential
for a free market. I don't think it is wise to take sides or make
generalisations: I had a professor in conflict management who helped
found Keio's MBA, and she told us unifying issues increases conflict while
making them more specific diminishes conflict. A recent article here has
shown that some Japanese-name vehicles are the only ones made-in-USA.
A lot of Japanese problems are "anal-retentive" or "obsessive-compulsive"
and go back to how teachers send home students who have not vacated themselves
-- this explains the wasteful and unprooductive and inefficient procrastination
and artificiality and formality. The only real anti-Japanese forces in the
USA are the radical leftist labor unions - and it is no surprise they have
found support in the extreme leftists French socialist government.
More Productivity
CompuServe FLEFO 98681 S7/East Asian 08-Feb-92 20:08:09
Sb: #98493-Japan/Canada Axis Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
In the 1970s Japan's productivity rose faster, not any more.
It's slowed down. If you take the Japan Productivity Center numbers
published by JETRO its 75% ours, but some recent purchasing power
parity numbers indicate more like 69%. It seems to confirm suspicions that
when a country is moving close to the USA, it slows down. Britain and France
are now the only ones with faster growing productivity than the USA.
Also, all these numbers, even the trade defecit, ignore services.
Howdo you measure teh consulting services of a professor "on vacation"
? It is quite likely that if we measure goods plus services, no one
beats the USA in anythings.
Breakup Pinko GM
CompuServe FLEFO 98682 S7/East Asian 08-Feb-92 20:11:29
Sb: #98519-Japan/Canada Axis Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
If Henry Kravis had chosen GM instead of Nabisco Brands for divestiture,
history would have been a lot different. However, GM was needed for
defence - in breaking down the soviets - so restructuring was likely to
always be blocked... hopefully not any more.
Did you guys hear GM actually refused to make right-drive cars for Japan
and still complained the apanese weren't buying?!
Which Japan?
CompuServe FLEFO 98686 S7/East Asian 08-Feb-92 20:25:25
Sb: #98615-Japan/Canada Axis Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
I'm a little skeptical about the bottom-line appearance of Japanese
dedication to work. Has any yankette executive mentioned how she had
to bite a Japanese hand in her dress at Ropongi or a subway? Haven't
we heard about all the marvelous Japanese hangover remedies?
I think the Japanese have a more pretensious, attitude about work
that makes them seem more efficient, but in the end, they are much more
hampered by all this procrastination in the name of consensus - much like
we were in the 1950s - and Japan is now going through a period much like
our own 1960s and 1970s - and most Japanese youth are rebelling.
Even More Productivity
CompuServe FLEFO 98713 S7/East Asian 08-Feb-92 23:34:15
Sb: #98564-Japan/Canada Axis Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
Productivity numbers: Dogramaci, Productivity_Analysis [ISBN
0-89838-039-1, 1981, p.4, this was my text in grad school hence betrays my
age! 1967-78: USA annual growth 2.6%, Japan 10%], JETRO, Business Facts &
Figures [1991, p.128, 1980-89 J 3.8% US 3.9%]. Also check out Wall St
Journal, 12SEP91, which cites the 31% PPP surpassing by the USA - I also saw
this in a recent printed-in-Japan English-language magazine, I believe called
Japanese_Commerce_&_Industry. Also check out Industry_Wk 01JUL91. As for
the comparative rates of growth, I think it was in mid-January, 92 in the
London _Economist_ (You can get it on CompuServe via "GO IQUEST").
(By the way, when I was at the Federal Reserve, we used to rely heavily on
census CENDATA, and this is now also here on CompuServe, via "GO CENDATA")
Short Term, Who?
CompuServe FLEFO 101012 S7/East Asian 28-Feb-92 23:03:30
Sb: Miyazawa Misinterpreted Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
The bigge[s]t practitioners of short termism are institutional investors,
including pension funds of many of the unions that pretend to argue
against short termism (Peter Drucker called it "pension fund
ssocialism"). It's also true that our tax structure encourages
shortermism. The cure would be to abolish mortgage and corporate
interest deductability as well as dividend double taxation and
long term capital gains tax. I understand Germany still has no
long term gains tax and Japan only got one in 1989. I recently read about
an American who wrote Japan's post war tax laws along basically Mundellian
supply-sider lines - and that the structure still stands..???..anyone
recall his name .. wasn't he also Ike's budget director?
[Joseph M. Dodge 53-54 US Budg Dir 52-53 Conslt to Scy St on Jpn Econ]
The Tax-me Billvo Dummy
Billvus Jethroson Flintstone beds dinosaur Flowers
and lives to tax the sax and pet his Socks.
The Tax-Me Billvo Doll never fights like a mannequin.
Yamerkins voted fuh a chu'u'a'a'enge..
..of undawear.. Jennifer's, Paula's, Monica's..
done all the dirty work myself.. except Yellary's..
Vince Froster did her.. so we changed him..
Envriro Gyro's not to eat,
Allbutt Bore thinks it's really neat,
made with beattle juice instead of meat,
makes you puke right on your feet.
Situation Ethics or Situation Mythmix?
Rueben Hurricane Carter: "If you don't love yourself you don't
know how to love anyone else because you gotta know what love is." My
parents basically always said something like that, but somehow my
modern mind saw that as selfish and felt uncomfortable with it. And
all those things about respecting ourselves as temples of GOD seem to
support it. But there was a Russian philosopher of the 1800s (in
Schmemann's Ult_Questions) who asked what if one loses his soul to
save the soul of many more others. Is this latter idea more of the
problematic 1960s "situation ethics", which even a registered Democrat
like Alex Bickel (famed Yale constitutional scholar whose
mother-in-law was my parents' tenant) blamed, because of the Warren
Court, as the way Nixonian actions around Watergate were
self-justified. Machiavelli may be interpreted as having said that a
good Prince should be good most of the time precisely so he can get
away with being mean and brutal when necessary - and even before him,
the clergy told St Vladimir that his abolishing capital punishment may
be correct personally as a Christian, but what type of Christian
ignores his responsibility as a Monarch in order to protect his own soul.
Remember that those great political scientists Popper and
Berlin told us the greatest atrocities of the 1900s were not the
result of nationalism, but because of the attempts to supress
nationalism. Communism and Nazism and all their sibling
totalitarianisms (Zapatism, Ba'athism, Kemalism..) were evil precisely
because they put ideas above people, so ideologues became so enraged
at human nature itself and became misanthropes because the people they
were supposedly trying to improve for the sake of some theoretical
ideal were standing in the way. Remember the risks of The Ladder
(Climacus), where, the closer to GOD you have climbed, the more the
evil one prizes winning you over. If you are so willing to give up
your soul to save the souls of others, then you have crossed the line,
and the evil one now has won you over, so your henceforth evil may
undo the salvations you just bargained for. To say that you are so
trivial as to be unimportant to the big plan is the first step, just
as psychiatric depression is often the door which unlocks the evils
that were up to now hiding as mere personaility type idiosynchrasies,
but through the turbulence of evil become personality disorders and
neuroses. For human calculation is so transcended and irrelevant in
the holy dimensions, that the fraction becomes the whole and the whole
becomes the fraction, just as even time can be transcended and treated
as if temporally distinct events suddenly become simultaneous and
multidirectionally interdependent. This is why former Abp Iakovos
(Faith_for_a_Lifetime p169+) advised against ideology as a primary
motivator "be suspicious of trendy issues.. focus on immediate
issues". I would argue ideology, indeed, any human thinking, is only
a heuristic rule of thumb, no matter how well crafted. But perhaps my
major flaw is that I am looking with scientific eyes at something that
can never be understood scientifically?
FDR, Mussolini & Stalin
CompuServe Issues 225877 S2/Political Issues 20-Jan-92 14:51:28
Sb: #225064-Racism & Protectionism Fm: Vasos Panagiotopoulos 76530,1430
Let's get back to protectionism, which is the left's form of
accepted racism. My great grandparents were sent back from Castle
Garden (before Ellis Island was built) because racist labor unions
had agitated against those dark skinned Greeks and Italians. My
granpa came back and lived in CInncinnati a decade illegally before
going back - for this the Greek reds killed him as an American and buried
him in the Grave of the Thousand on Mt. Olympus. The same labor unions
waged a bloody Stalinist campaign in small American towns in the thirties
with the advice and consent of Stalin-pal FDR - and they succeeded in
denying many people the right to work. These now Brezhnevite labor unions
are corrupt and lazy and even hungrier - and they have denied the
entire American Northeast the right to participate in the Reagan
Revolution. They get stupendous wages for inefficient car workers.
They overstuff urban payrolls with do-nothings, who turn around and
campaign for the people that govern them. They use unions to deny
competitive bidding in construction so that it takes a billion dollars
to dig an unfinished mile-long underwater subway line. Maybe the new
Japanese prime minister can frighten us into a little perestroika of
our own?
The thought of Mario Cuomo and his shop stewards ending up the way
of Ceasescu and his Secutitate is tempting.. but I'll resist it.
QURAPADIDLIAC COLLEGE POLL
23 Lomax Mordeley Court, Giles Arkes Lake, NY 13989
Poll Shows New Results
Political Landscape Shifts
For Immediate Release
Contact: Vraugham Phachaeuer (212) 288-9970
Giles Arkes Lake- In surprising newly
discovered local dambursts were discovered important new demographic
shifts that grealy impact our fleeing society as lakes of
disenchantment provide their ultimate causality. Entire zipcodes
vanish from the map as if their existance was momentary or even
imaginary, making even the most accurate polling look specious. The
impact upon the community is incredible as voting patterns shift to
meet the challenge. Automation alone will be insuffient as new
satellite tracking systems must be implemented with utmost
imaginativeness and creativity. I am here and for all the
cowmoonittie, not just any civic politician but integrally
involved in the civic life of all for all and for your good, here for
the cowmoonittie not just a politician but integrally involved
perpetually here for the cowmoonittie not just integrally involved but
in the civic life not of cowmoonittie for all here unquestioningly
here for the cowmoonittie whose defect I rectify here for the
cowmoonittie not just the politician but an involved, glorified civic
divinity oblong clever just guardian prudently assertive for the earth
a good donor manifestation unconfusingly teach all parks bulbs quilled
for your good! Meticulously casually quilled all and for your good I
am here for the cowmoonittie not just any politician but integrally
inspiration generously devotedly distinctly but empower the bare
squeamish cupboard.
