Friday, January 08, 2016
Cultural Photography
The Hand of Ethelberta
Jockulsarlon at 4 am
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Compositional Signatures in the Photographic Art of Larry Sultan
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Ideas in the Stream
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Casterbridge
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Observing Life: Preliminary Observations Regarding Gustav Vigeland
Yesterday, June 10, 2014, I returned to the park, with a much better camera, a day and a half to visit the park and a bed at a B&B a short walk from the entrance. With yesterday's late afternoon and evening photography and this morning's sundrise (3:59 am) to 8 am photography I have accumulated over 500 images. About 80% are groups of three bracketed exposures which will be combined into single frame High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos and the rest are single photos making the total about 200+ unique images. I also applied 8 years of photographic study and experience in "seeing." I hope I have progressed since those earlier years.
More importantly though I believe the decade from age 62-70 has brought me more experience with life and the joy and challnge of becoming a grandfather and also older.
The grandfather's eye is most important to "seeing" Vigeland's work, because my view is that the
Sculptor used his art to convey his observations about life, relationships, love, jealousy, anger, sympathy, joy and the full range of human experience. Vigeland does not use words but rather a remarkable language created out of mute granite and bronze to sing life's song as eloquently as Brahms or Whitman or Rembrandt. With the luxury of several hours viewing through my camera's view finder, seeking the light and angle and the patience to try to translate three dimensional art into photography which I hope will convey enough of what Vigeland is, I believe, communicating, that you too will be motivated to come to Oslo and spend time in this unique place. For, as Vigeland himself was stated to have said, "if you want to see my work, you must come to Oslo." Indeed, virtually his life's work is in this one place - no where else. Sphere: Related Content
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Checked baggage weight to Iceland
Making Travel Easy - Norwegian Style
https://www.flytogetkvittering.no/Flytoget/Pages/DC_Initial.aspx
Sphere: Related Content
Monday, May 05, 2014
Long Days and Short Nights
On June 9 I begin a journey to Reykjavik to meet up with a group of photographers who will travel through western and southern Iceland pursuing landscape and wildlife photography. Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, November 08, 2012
The next 12 Months - Can we rise above?
Very soon we face the fiscal cliff. The immediate impact would be an immediate slow down in domestic economic activity to reduce the GDP to -1.7%, increasing health care costs by 1% because of layoffs which means piling on of health care utilization before COBRA clicks in and a probable increase in unemployment backiy to 9%.
Plans are for layoffs and reduction of capital expenditures.
Taxes will increase on dividends and capital gains. The income which supports our seniors will be reduced significantly.
For details of these predictions, see the interview of Mark Bertolino, Chairman and CEO of Aetna on CNBC 11/7/2012.
Sphere: Related Content
Monday, October 15, 2012
Romney v Obama in The Town Hall
Thursday, October 04, 2012
What would you say?
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
create your own personalized map of the USA or check out ourCalifornia travel guide Sphere: Related Content
create your own visited country map or check our Venice travel guide Sphere: Related Content
Monday, September 17, 2012
Making Sense of What is About to Happen
The United States (and the rest of the world) is about to plunge into a recession which could be prolonged. This period might actually be more of a permanent reduction in our standard of living than a temporary downturn.
We have come to expect ever increasing actual wealth but for many years that "wealth" has been an illusion created by our manipulation of interest rates, housing values and deceptive calculation of inflation.
True productivity has been squeezed from technology but there are limits to the amount of information a single worker can meaningfully manipulate and turn to profit.
The fiscal cliff which I last wrote of in July is now only 4 months away and it's repercussions are a constant background discussion which unfortunately is not rising above the shrill cacophony of the election. The cliff is in plain view. The consequences are written into the law. No one, except a few Congressmen, are paying any heed.
Sphere: Related Content
Friday, September 07, 2012
The President's Speech
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Cliff Diving
You all have likely seen the Mexican cliff divers who launch themselves into the air over the rocky waters of Acapulco. They seem heroic and brave before they plunge to disappear for a breathless few seconds beneath the surface to then appear, smiling, arm waving, to the delight, applause and relief of those watching. The divers are called "death defying" and "fool hardy.". Yet their bravado pales next to a president who leads his nation to the brink of the cliff and urges the population to jump. The Acapulco divers know every rock below, every depth at each moment of the surging tide. The President has not a clue. The divers know how far beneath the water their dive will take them and how much breath and strength is needed to rise back to the surface. They survive going off the cliff. We, my fellow Americans, will not.
The current projected shortfall of our underfunded corporate pension plans (low interest rates assumed) is a monumental $400 Billion which is trivial compared to the governments' (state and local) shortfall of $4 trillion. Folks the water beneath our fiscal cliff is as unknown as the dark depths of the Mariana Trench. We don't have enough oxygen to get back to the surface if we take the plunge.
So i ask you, "do you know anyone who voted for McCain 4 years ago that is voting for Obama this time?". In logic that question is called a rhetorical reduction to absurdity. An impossible thought.
Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Joe Dinner Bucket Meets Mitt Romney in Ohio
At a time when more than 16% of Americans who do not have a high school diploma are without work and in total dependence to the social benefits of the government for food, shelter and medical care while only 4% of Americans with a college diploma are unemployed, there is a cultural and societal gap that is widening by every day which passes. No wonder a president who is presiding over a failing economy and a budget which is so stressed it can't even be passed is still likely to be re-elected. He is promising continued benefits and support for those in need. Joe Dinnerbucket has an empty bucket that only the government can fill. These are votes of desperation and the promise of a wise and compassionate businessman doesn't seem enough to create any hope for change.
What can Mitt Romney do in the next couple months to start to reveal his humanity and relate to those who are in need. Go to the edges of America. Visit tenements and trailer parks. Talk to people who have been unemployed for years. Talk to the social workers and policemen and church people who feed and care for them. Speak in Spanish, speak in common English.
Do I really think this could happen? Do I have any way of knowing what is in Mitt Romney's heart? The answer is a qualified yes. In 2002, in preparation for the Salt Lake Winter Olympics, I was invited by a client to accompany the U.S. Delegation to Athens to "pick up the flame." There was a ceremony in the original Olympic Stadium and we met the U.S. Ambassador at the embassy. In just 24+ hours we flew from Salt Lake to Athens to Atlanta and delivered the flame to the torch which started the relay across the nation. Mitt Romney was the leader of the delegation because he was the President of the U.S. Winter Olympics. My mother, then 81 years old was with me.
During the flight home Mitt came back to our seats and knelt down and spoke at length with my mother. The conversation was caring, listening, encouraging and I smiled as my mother reacted so positively to his warm concern for her comfort. When he left, I said to my mother, "That man could be president of the U.S." I still think he could, but he needs to kneel down and talk to America the way he spoke to my mother, is low quiet tones, listening and encouraging. This peaceful gracious man is what America needs now. I am sure he can do this, but the question remains, will he? Sphere: Related Content
Friday, March 02, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
Cleaning out the office
Over the many years of Bridgestone’s Explorer cases and my fling with mass torts, my office had become piled with paper, magazines, notebooks, novels and odd pieces of electronics which, when assembled into my trusty Tumi rolling office, became my life and business support system when I traveled to a mediation or a meeting. The detritus included fishing notes, maps, books as well as a hearing aid to hear high pitched women’s voices in a large conference rooms, reading glasses, cd’s of regulations and statutes, pens, batteries, recorders, an iPod, ear phones, a ruler and the small magnifying glass that my grandfather left me.
As 2011 wound down I made a firm resolution to clean the place out, dust off the furniture and bring some order to evidence which would lead some to believe that I should be the subject of a reality cable show called, Hoarders. Unusual as it may seem to those who know me well, I have kept my resolution. My rug is visible and more than 5 fifty gallon garbage bags of paper and trash have gone to the recycling center. The result is a decent room, some organization of the remaining materials and the jarring confrontation with lots of old memories that lay buried in the flotsam.
Mostly the items, like the recollections mentioned in Wordsworth’s Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, were pieces of what came back from great fishing trips and encounters with friends from all over the country. Venezuela, New Zealand, Oregon, Montana, Pennsylvania, Idaho, South Dakota, Virginia, North Carolina, Vietnam and on and on.
There are pictures of Fred Bush that I need to scan. I am awash of recollection.
January, 2012, was the first month in this century that I haven’t traveled for business. Maybe I am like my dad, an old soldier.
Any way, what prompted this outburst was a note from a good friend quoting an entry from a blog called Trout and Gin, which I am sure has significance for us all.
http://flyandgin.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/old-gear/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FlyGin+%28Fly+%26+Gin%29
Larry
Old Gear.
Posted: 01 Feb 2012 10:20 AM PST
I browsed a roadside thrift shop the other day. Its basically a cinderblock four-car garage stacked wall to wall with….junk. Old furniture, books, ornaments, paintings, sporting goods, electronics, you name it. It’s shopping’s version of the treasure hunt, never knowing what you might find. In this case, I found a few old fishing items I thought I’d share.
Amongst some old ski poles, pool sticks and an ancient looking pair of ice skates stood a collection of old fishing rods in various stages of decay and disrepair, some with bobbers and line still attached that clearly hadn’t been cast in decades. I examined them for brand names I may recognize as classic or deceased, just in case I was staring at a collectors item, and concluded there was not much more than junk here. None the less, it makes you wonder who owned them, and what kind of fish they caught, and where. More, it makes me wonder who decided to give away all of their fishing gear, and why. Maybe it wasn’t the original owners choice at all. Maybe they were just clutter in someones garage; remnants of people long gone.
My favorite find were these fishing publications from the 60′s. Sports Afield, complete with hand drawn covers of fisherman in row boats or standing alongshore, a nod to a time before there digital cameras and fisherman covered in sponsorship badges making them look not unlike Nascar drivers, and standing in $40,000 boats and holding $700 rods. The bold tagline on it the cover was optimistic: “The Best Ideas on Fishing Ever Assembled in any Magazine!’ The back cover was for cigarettes, promoting how this particular brand would make you stand out in a social crowd.
Another copy from the 70′s showed an older man in jeans and a button down shirt and the obligatory fishing hat, standing in a beat up old boat and holding a three-foot pike. A sub line promises an extensive article on wilderness trout, of which there had to have been many more of than there are today, and the opportunity to order, from Sports Afield, a kit that would allow fisherman to test for acid rain.
Though absent long,
Wordsworth
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life; Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Electing a President
Would you review the record of sitting president and grade that president on his or her accomplishments? Would you look at the economy, employment, the value of the dollar, our relationships with trading partners and competitors, the status of relations with other countries, the status of social issues that are important to you (list some other important elements) OR would you simply say:
1. I have always voted for that party so I will be faithful and vote based on party alone
or
2. I am a "liberal" or "conservative" and so is the current president so I will vote that way
or
3. I think the current president has charisma and makes great speeches and inspires me so I will vote for that
or
4. Things aren't so good right now but its not the president's fault so let's give the president a chance to get it right
or
5. Things aren't so good right now but the alternative is worse for one reason or another so I will vote for the least bad choice?
How are you approaching the decision? Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Reducing the Deficit Through Taxation and the Law of Unintended Consequences
For another take on the Buffett tax see:http://www.cnbc.com/id/44584116
If you earn too little, you pay no tax on income. If you buy stocks and sell them quickly, you pay tax on the gain like the gain was ordinary income. If you buy stocks and hold them for a longer time, you pay a tax only on the gain that you have made and it is lower than the tax on ordinary income. So if you are one of the very successful business people who have climbed the corporate ladder and you are now a vice president or CEO of a large company, you don't get paid as much in ordinary income as you do in stock. If your administration is successful and the stock of your company goes up, then you are paid for that success with capital gains, taxed at the lower capital gains rate. That is why Warren Buffett pays a lower percentage of his total income in taxes than his secretary. Most of Buffett's income is in capital gains, not ordinary income. If his company is not successful (Bershire Hathaway ticker symbol BRK) then Buffet has no capital gains and he is not able to sell his stock at a long term profit to take advantage of this rate.
However, Buffett got most of his stock when he STARTED the company. He was the founder and the risk taker. So he would pay 15% of the huge gain on every share he sells (basically he would pay $15,000 Federal tax on each share so because each share is worth something over $100,000.) So what did Buffett do with the money? He gave it away instead to a charity - run by Bill Gates....... Great for charity and great for the people who receive the benefits of the charity. What did the government lose in taxes? Around $4.5 billion on the $30,000,000,000 or so Buffett gave away. Would that make much of a dent in the deficit? Yup, a little one. The deficit needs to be reduced by $1,000,000,000,000 this year or so. Maybe the same next year and for some more years to come. Would paying the tax on all this wealth at ordinary income rates help out? Sure would? Instead of a measly $4.5 billion, the tax at ordinary income might be $14,000,000,000. A little bit bigger portion of the $1,000,000,000,000 needed this year and next. And if we did this to all the capital gains of all the fat cats like Buffett, then maybe we could pay off the deficit. Hmmmmm...... is this why Buffett already decided to give it away?
This now focuses us on the law of unintended consequences. Which is, basically, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and maybe not the one that was intended.
If someone magically seduced the congress to join hands and pass the fat cats tax, effective for all sales of long term assets effective tomorrow, what would happen today? All the stocks owned by U.S. citizens long term would be sold to get the lower capital gains tax, the market would crash and we would all be in a depression.
Maybe someone ought to think this all through before we get wrapped up in making sure Buffett's brethern (remember he already gave his away) pay their fair share. Sphere: Related Content
Friday, July 29, 2011
How Does It All Add Up?
I, for one, do not believe that addressing the cost of these entitlement programs requires reduction of benefits. The systems that support the delivery of medical care and administrative process for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are so bloated with excess redundant and unnecessary overhead costs that the U.S. would come a long way towards the reductions it needs simply by modernizing the systems, cutting out the wastage from inefficiency and focusing on lower cost delivery of services. Wasn't that what Ross Perot promised to do nearly 20 years ago? Sphere: Related Content
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Detroit 187 - Chicago Code 0
.
Fitch, a central character, played by Michael Imperioli, like Casals played the cello, has tones of insight and nuance rarely seen in series television. The character becomes real in all his tormented life. Face with moral decisions of dire consequence to his son and his partner and his unit, he bravely accepts potential ramifications to himself which most less clear persons would run from.
This is a show that makes the post GM bankruptcy Detroit come alive. The exteriors are clearly in Detroit. The fabric of the city is the fabric of the story. Don't miss this. If there is a hint that it might not be renewed for another season, write ABC and tell them you want more. And you will. Just watch the latest episode online. Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Being a Cat
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Organic Gardener in an Urban Setting
Watch this space for updates as my wife's organic garden is prepared for the winter and planted for spring. Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Tree at Lake Needwood Park
October, 2009
What a difference a year makes! The economy has pushed local governments to begin selling commericial rights to the use of local parks. Here is an example of one such concession, Go Ape!, on a beautiful meadow at the entrance to Needwood Lake Park in Rockville, Maryland. For some reason the concession has not yet opened for business. I plan to give them a copy of these pictures when they do. Sphere: Related Content
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Value of Photography
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Economic Stimulus: The Question of Who
However, the situation is still pretty grim. There is uncertainty and the government, the Federal Reserve, the Congress and the Executive branch, all have little left to do. They are hamstrung politically and economically. There just isn't much left to give. Interest rates are low. Shouldn't that stimulate risk taking and entrepreneurship? Taxes are low. Doesn't that encourage private spending?
The answers are no and no.
Why? Because it was the government that chose how to spend the money and how to make future tax policy totally uncertain. The "cash" in America is in the hands of small businesses and those businesses just don't want to bet the farm. The administration in Washington has said that if you are successful - earning in the higher brackets, we are going to tax you. Well, at least, maybe we are going to tax you. The uncertainty is palpable. How does the government "allow" small businesses, the backbone of the country, the source of job growth, to just get on with it?
Easy, it would seem. Just allow the small businesses to make those decisions without fear of some new government program or tax policy sweeping away their freedom of choice. Sphere: Related Content
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Transformative Power of Narrative Fiction
What brings me to comment? I picked up Crow Road by Ian Banks from my bookshelf this morning. I had purchased this British paperback version at Waterson's near the Water Tower on Michigan Avenue some cold January in the last century along with a couple other books. The black bound tome had rested, waiting, on the shelf upstairs, in the Ian Banks section, next to the Ian M. Banks section, for more than a decade. My books do that. They wait for me. I am not sure in the randomness of my life if there is a plan for when my books are read, but they are, eventually. Each one takes me back to where I was when I purchased it, my frame of mind and the why of the choice of author or subject.
This is a draft beginning of an unfinished entry Sphere: Related Content
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Photograph of Xavier Torres
I sent a friend of mine this photograph and told her that I thought it was possibly the greatest photograph I had ever seen. She asked me to explain.
Why it is a great photograph? I knew, as soon as I understood the image, like reading words but instead getting the visual information from a photograph, what the story was. The incredible human without legs, was swimming in a competition pool. Obstacles had been overcome and the splash was like, well to me, triumph, applause, joy. It made me cry because a person who had suffered something I could not imagine, had overcome, become, was, competing. Because of the great concept of the photographer, all this information came through the image without one word spoken. There did not have to be a language. Every human could "see" what was being communicated. How brilliant! And to think that a mechanical tool, a construct of plastic, metal and mind, a machine - a camera, had been used to make me feel emotional connection to another person I did not know.
To answer another way the question raised, I went to the internet. Google produced more than the 1,000 words which the picture replaced. I found that the man who dove into the water in the photograph is Xavier Torres of Spain. He is renowned not only as a great champion in the pool but also as a great champion for adapted swimming and those who overcome challenges and turn them into triumphs. Without the photograph I never would have met him.
Without the idea of the photograph in the mind of the photographer, Bob Martin, I never would have felt just a little of what it is like for Xavier Torres to swim. I am certainly glad that I have.
Google the picture:
Xavier Torres, 2004 Summer Paralympics
Caption: GREECE - SEPTEMBER 20: Swimming: 2004 Summer Paralympics, Aerial view of ESP Xavier Torres prosthetic legs during olympic 200M freestyle handicapped action, Athens, GRC 9/20/2004 (Photo by Bob Martin/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (SetNumber: X71893 TK4)
Date created: 20 Sep 2004 Sphere: Related Content
Monday, August 23, 2010
Singularity and Complexity
Occasionally I stop by the silent piano in my living room. I don't play, but I understand, the instrument.
I touch a key and a single note reverberates through the high ceilinged room. It crescendos and then fades - a skewed bell curve of vibration, battered by the currents of the air conditioning and the resonance of the glass, brick, stone and wood that cluttered the room. If I were to think that this single note is simple I would be very wrong. If my hand's fingers were to randomly touch several keys of the piano in rapid succession, it could be a concerto or chaos. Such is reading Pynchon. Sphere: Related Content
Monday, August 16, 2010
Who Ought to Run Pepco?
They listen and keep going from one unending job to the next. Thanks to them. I vote that they have a representatives on the Board of Directors. Maybe the suits would find out what is really going on out here.
As for the customer service / emergency line department..... well my vote is to start all over again and get people from New York's Con Ed. Sphere: Related Content
Urban Survivalist August 15 2010
I live in a 5,600 square foot home built in 1991. My wife has diligently seen that all possible maintenance has been performed. We have a geothermal heating and cooling system. We have storm surge protectors on the fuse boxes. We have battery backups (two hours) on the servers and phone system. The appliances are all energy star certified. But……
We didn’t count on the local power company monopoly to not be able to promptly return current to our home after a power outage, nor did we anticipate that there could be some many outages in one year.
Last Thursday morning, August 12, 2010, there was a severe local thunderstorm which woke me up at about 6 am. The power went out. It has happened so many time before, I did not realize that this would become a catastrophe. Our own minor version of the BP oil spill, not even close to the horror that Louisiana and its sister states are suffering, but in its own way, a wakeup call to the reality of our lives in America in the 21st century and how close to the precipice above the abyss of becoming a third world country we have become.
Because this type of outage has happened on a regular basis, we believe that there is something flawed about the design of the grid, feeder or connections at our home or that something has deteriorated and is no longer sufficient to prevent minor storms from shutting down our power. However, when we called our power company, which has a monopoly in this area, Pepco, we got quite a different message. First it was our fault for not letting them cut the trees back from the above ground lines. I said, I don’t have any above ground lines. So next it was that we didn’t have our home fused properly. Sorry again there, madame, but we have two industrial strength fuse boxes and a surge protector in between us and you. Next it we were told that it had been fixed hours ago. I asked, “why then would I be calling you?” Silence. Then came a river of excuses about too many customers, we had been put on the wrong grid by our contractor and we weren’t enough people to be concerned about because people in apartment houses should be fixed first. OK, I said, when do we get fixed. By 6 pm on Sunday I was told but check back for updates. Total to date. 7 apologies, more excuses and no service.
Lesson learned from all this is that the Pepco has a standard set of responses and if you call enough they will start over again at the top of the list. Next their complaint unit is really not connected to the field and they are not trained to listen but rather to attack the customer and blame external forces for everything. Maybe that is true. There are external forces at work. We have given up the right as a society to expect to have first class service and robust infrastructure. We have sold our consumerist soul to China and over spent on our national credit card. We have to face the harsh reality. Our currency is becoming worthless. Our infrastructure is rotting. Our leaders are constantly bickering instead of leading. Blame is the occupation of most. The solutions are not apparent. We have dug a hole from which we cannot climb only to find it is a foxhole and we are at war with ourselves.
So what to do?
Move to the woods. Get a generator. Learn to smoke and preserve meat and grow vegetables. Store up some small gold coins and other supplies with which to barter. Buy an axe and figure out how to defend your property and install solar panels and a wind generator. Get a lot of books. Don’t depend on power. Learn to survive. “There is a beauty underneath the gold and silver in my teeth that preserves us, not for specialists.” WD Snodgrass April Inventory.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Freedom of Information Responses of MMS - BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Please note that we will be adding to this collection regularly as we continue to process and release documents that have been requested by members of the public and by members of Congress. We are providing this service in recognition of the intense public interest in this material and in furtherance of the Administration’s commitment to open Government through increased proactive disclosures.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Oil in the Gulf
When will it be stopped? Wednesday, June 16, Washington, D.C. time, the President will meet with the Chairman of BP. Will the U.S. Marshalls be there to arrest this criminal (Justice Department has a criminal investigation underway, so someone has to be arrested. Why not get the desperado before he can get away?)?
Will the IRS be there to hand the Chairman a bill for excess spillage taxes that will reduce the pension payments for 1,000’s of Brits? Will the President take over control of BP – as if he doesn’t have enough on his mind already?
None of these are likely.
They will talk. The President will ask him to bend over and let him kick him and the Chairman will politely refuse. Nothing will get done. The oil will still keep gushing. Don’t we have submarines and technology to get down there and plug the leak? Maybe we should ask Holland. They might be able to find the descendant of the little boy who put his finger in the dike………….
In the United States there is a Consitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press.
Sorry BP, we will take the pictures:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html
Sphere: Related Content
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Res Ipsa Loquitur
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/assignment-35
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The Necessity of the Impossible
In 2004, Richard Posner published a book length essay entitled “Catastrophe: Risk and Response.” In the book he limited his range of discussion to those possible future events which could threaten the existence of mankind. His thesis is that there are some risks that might be very unlikely to ever occur but whose consequences are so grave as to be unacceptable no matter the corresponding potential benefit.
Are there consequences of such magnitude, but less than global annihilation, whose implications for disaster, maybe involving a negative life's outcome for 10's of thousands of humans, entire eco-systems and a plethora of species of animals and plants, such that taking that risk to achieve a benefit is not acceptable?
Imagine what will happen to the Lousiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama coastal area as the oil inundates each plant root system, soaks far into the soft soil, seeps into the smallest aveolae of the lungs of birds and the gills of fish and the lives of so many people who live and love in that special area. Imagine the even more hideous possibility that this oil spill could find its way around Florida and up the coast of the United States towards the mid-Atlantic and out in the ocean towards Europe. Is there any risk worth taking for any reason that could allow even the remote possibility of such an occurrence?
Yet British Petroleum took this risk, a risk which BP and its subcontractors, Transocean and others could have minimized but simply failed to test batteries, interlocking overrides and fail / safe activators on the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) which they knew or should have known was the final link in the risk analysis which could have kept this catastrophe from occurring. Simple mechancial failures and shobby cost centered lazy management judgments may have global consequences which last decades.
Can mankind ever again afford taking what seem like infinitesimally minute risks but which have infinitely large negative consequences? A risk management analysis which perceives such consequences as tangible possibilities is no longer a viable criteria for decision making.
Business judgment must therefore be restrained by the magnitude of possible consequence.
Who should apply the restraints? Who should decide that an acceptable risk is no risk at all? Is it now necessary to eliminate the remotely possible? Has the impossible become necessary?
In 2010 Southern Louisiana and other Gulf of Mexico contiguous states are threatened by a seemingly unstoppable regurgitation of the earth’s past, an uncapped deep sea oil well which is spewing forth 5,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil per day. There is even a live cam situated somewhere a mile below the surface, sending back continuous color pictures of the flow.
This “catastrophe” has been ongoing for 45 days as of this writing and ingenious efforts to stop the leak have been unsuccessful. Even the personal attention of the President of the United States, at the urging of his daughter, has not quelled the flow. Where is Superman or Iron Man or Doc Savage or Dr. Who (he ought to be involved as it is British Petroleum that is the lead villain in this story, though there are many henchmen who are claiming not to have been involved)?
Recently, I was fortunate to have had a full day in the swamps of Louisiana taking photographs with my son. We were guided by Captain Rae Donaldson, who lives near Houma, and has significant knowledge of the area both as a fishing guide and as an environmental expert.
We learned that the giant platforms out in the Gulf of Mexico are actually floating ships, kept in position by engines turned on an off by computerized gyroscopic devices which are a lot like the vibration reduction mechanisms in the most modern camera lenses. This precise positioning is necessary because the platform, after the oil well has been drilled, is the top of a sometimes mile long pipe that connects the top of the well on the ocean floor with the platform which then connects the output to either a tanker or a pipeline to take the oil to the refinery.
Imagine a mile long straw, flexible enough and strong enough to withstand the sea currents, the movement of the “ship” to which it is tethered above. This straw is filled with oil, being driven upward by the immense internal pressure on this pool of liquid under the surface of the sea floor. The connection must be designed for rough seas, of which, during hurricane season, there are a plenty. The possibility of some incident occurring which snaps the pipe is quite real; neither remote nor unimagined. When the hole is made in the sea floor, a huge device, a Blow Out Preventer (BOP), is placed between the well and the pipe. The device has massive steel rods, much like the lock on a massive bank vault, which are snapped into place if the connection between the well and the rig is broken or the device is activated by either affirmative decision from the platform or any of several possible fail / safe circumstances.
A picture of a much smaller form of the same type device is pictured here. The one in the picture is about 12 feet high and is used on stationary rigs where the platform is actually secured by pylons sunk into the sea floor in locations where the water is not too deep. Much of downtown New Orleans’s buildings are anchored into the soft delta earth in the same way.
So it is a given possibility that an event where the pipe between the platform and well is broken could occur. In fact it is even a planned for event, so one could not ever claim that it is an event of remote or infinitesimal possibility. The odds are real. The event which initiated the horror that now floats towards our Southern coast and beyond was a contemplated risk.
However, the sudden explosion and collapse into the water of the platform must not have been considered or at least not considered in conjunction with the failure of the device which was to immediately cap the hole into the well. Plus, there are some disturbing elements to add to the analysis.
First, the collapse of the platform was not an event that took place in a matter of minutes, as I had first thought. A blazing fire followed the explosion and the fire was fought over a period of days, with the rig surrounded by boats that pumped thousands of gallons of water onto the fire.
Second, flammable gases coming up the pipe from the well on the sea floor were feeding the fire. Therefore the responsible parties must have had knowledge or should have understood that a collapse of the platform could break the pipe connection between the well and the platform and then trigger the device designed to cap the well.
The fire on the platform was intense. The photographs taken from helicopters confirm that extent of the disaster. However, a haunting question remains: Why was not the device which would have capped the well triggered during the fire? The fuel for the fire was coming up the pipe. Without fuel the fire would have gone out and the rig would not have collapsed. Did BP try to cap the well during the fire or was the decision made that it was potentially more profitable to put out the fire, save the platform and not cap the well at that time?
I do not know the technology of initiating the capping process. Could it have been triggered remotely during the fire? Was the capping process a permanent irreversible act that would have meant a re-drilling of the well would have been, perforce, required? Is there a claim that the capping device was not functioning properly and that BP had already tried to cap the well and failed as a part of the fire fighting? There is some evidence already obtained by Congressional hearings that there was a dead battery in the BOP, that the proper rods were not in place in the device and that the fail / safe links onboard the platform may have been disconnected by the fire. Mention is made of possible favorable inspection reports that could not have been actual reports of the condition of the BOP. I don’t know the answers but I suspect that someday, as the sequence of events is made known, we will find out who are the culprits.
In retrospect and in an atmosphere of cries for more regulation of the drilling process, it is reasonable to ask whether the potential immensity of a spill made a necessity of more robust and redundant devices to cap the well and whether there could never be a choice of trying to save the well and platform which the alternative could result in a spill. It may be impossible to anticipate all possible causes of a spill, including malfunction of equipment that has redundant means of activation, but it seems clear now that the horror, which awaits Louisiana and the other states, cannot be avoided. The inevitable and destructive oily tide slowly makes its way through the habitat of so much life, leaving sadness and dislocation for so many.
Once again we are presented with a moral dilemma and compelled to ask, “is this remotely possible failure of precautions too great a risk to bear to achieve the comfort of more oil. Is it necessary to attempt the possibly impossible - a riskless deep sea drilling method?”
Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Life Changing Events
Friday, March 26, 2010
America: Wednesday Morning March 24, 2010
I had not gotten a response so I called the doctor's office. He was on vacation but his substitute would look at the file. Shortly thereafter I got a call, "Please come in for a full physical, substitute doctor can not refill without the physical." (I had just had a physical in the late fall of 2009.)
"O.K.," I said, knowing better than to argue with a doctor. I went in, submitted to the physical, paid the charges and got an order for blood tests that went along with the physical. I returned home with the prescriptions. Later that evening, my wife brought to my attention that the prescriptions, instead of being for 90 days, were in the form of a 30 day prescriptions with 2 refills. I said, "Well that adds up doesn't it? 3 times 30 = 90." She responded, "Yes, but not to the insurer's pharmacy. If I send it in that way, there will be a $ 254.00 surcharge for delivery in three separate units."
So, 8:30 am the next morning, March 24, I leave my home for the 6 mile drive to the doctor's office to get the prescriptions rewritten and then to go 1.2 miles further to the blood laboratory to get the blood drawn for the tests.
I live on a cul de sac which exits on to a two lane narrow country road on the outskirts of town. There aren't a lot of houses out here. In fact the population of this unincorporated area might be a few hundred people and some cats and dogs at most. Many more trees than people.
However, it took 18 minutes to exit my driveway. Apparently the world has found that our little country road, at 8:30 am, is the closest and quickest way between a larger two lane road to the north and a 4 lane thoroughfare about 1 mile to the south. The cars just kept coming, fast, much faster than the posted 30 mph and I couldn't get anyone to slow to let me in, even though 400 yds. further is a stop sign where the line of stopped cars is quite visible to the traffic coming along.
I got out. Then another 15 minutes to go the next mile. I turned right onto the thoroughfare and was immediately in a traffic snarl that took over half an hour to get me the next mile. So now 53 minutes into the 6 mile trip to the doctor, I had made it half way.
At the doctor's office I signed in and took my seat. You know the rest of the story, sort of. I sat. Finally I got to tell a receptionist why I was there, without an appointment. I had the fact of the $254.00 penalty printed in letter form. She took it back to the doctor. Time passed. She returned with the prescriptions. "The doctor is keeping this letter in the file." I thanked her and left.
The good news is that the technician who drew my blood at the lab was very efficient, stuck me only once to find a vein and smiled while she did it.
I can't wait until this process is controlled by the Department of Health and Human Services. Somehow I think the word, "Human" ought to have an "e." Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Left Undone Those Things I Ought To Have Done
I did a survey of my shelves recently, inspired by the publication of Ralph Ellison's posthumous "second" novel, the 1136 pages compendium of 40 years of writing, Three Days Before The Shooting ... which was reviewed in the Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2cb8e368-1ce5-11df-aef7-00144feab49a.html
I looked for other novels which fit into the category of "Three Days" and which I should put onto my read and study list for my undetermined but still far in the future retirement.
Here is my list:
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
Babel Tower - A.S. Byatt
Rememberance of Things - Proust
In the Spoirit of Crazy Horse - Matthiessen
Colossus - Stephen Marlowe
An Instance At the Fingerpost - Pears
Antarctic Navigation - Elizabeth Arthur
Giles Goat Boy - Barth
Women and Men - Joseph McElroy
JR and The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Divine Days - Leon Forrest
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Royal Family - William Vollmann
Harlot's Ghost - Norman Mailer
Gravitiy's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Underworld - Don Delillo
French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
Night's Dawn Triolgy - Peter Hamilton
Shannara Saga - Terry Brooks
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
Robert Angstrom (Rabbit) - John Updike
Quiet Flows the Don - Mikhail Sholokov
The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
Inherit the Earth Future History - Brian Stableford
Cyteen - CJ Cherryh Sphere: Related Content
Monday, February 22, 2010
More Musing on First Edition Electronic Book Collecting
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Patricia+Cornwell&sortby=1&x=0&y=0
Postmortem (SIGNED).
Cornwell, Patricia.
Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: Scribners: NY 1990 1st ed/1st printing, 1990. SIGNED with a rare contemporary signature "Patricia D. Cornwell Hardcover. Fine in fine jacket A truly stunning copy of this Edgar Winner. Bookseller Inventory # 14408 Price: US$ 2500.00
The collector/investor who was willing to buy the book early in its history and who got it signed at that time obtained a valuable collector’s item for probably $22.50.
Later, authors might sell their digital signatures in person via email executable program which would search out a legitimate purchased copy of their book on the collector’s iPad, attach itself to that electronic copy with a date and inscription, like “Thanks for reading my book, sincerely Patricia Cornwell” and that signature would be imbedded in the file. It might even contain a facsimile of the signature that goes on the first page of the electronic edition making that owner’s copy uniquely different from anyone else. The owner of the iPad could then proudly show off the signed copy. The interesting legal challenge then becomes whether “used” copies of the electronic edition can be sold in the aftermarket……….. Maybe only the first 500 are transferrable or there could be a premium paid by the original buyer for the book which would allow it to be transferred X times. Like loaning your wife your copy to read on her Kindle. Lots of interesting legal challenges. Sphere: Related Content
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Last Edition, First Edition: Electrontic Book Collecting
The world is about to experience a sea change in publishing. Electronic iPads, Kindles, Nooks and Sony Readers and any host of other form factors and content delivery systems are going to make finding a true First Edition near impossible - thousands of digitally identical publishings will exist, each simply a copy, downloaded, of the first.
I would propose that the publishers begin thinking about how to imbed a digital tag in the first X copies downloaded, that can only exist in those copies and somehow continue to imbed in those copies the history of their transfer and use. How wonderful it might be, to some future obsessed collector, to be able to prove that the edition of the next great novel which is stored on his or her iPad, in fact, was at one time, in the possession of the author and there is a unique digital signature tag that establishes that fact which cannot be removed or altered.
Think of the money to be made and the DNA mandates to be satisfied. Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Conseqences of Financial Change on Behavior
People will just change their behavior. If someone really wants a blanket, they will bring a blanket with them, further clogging overhead bins and making movement to seats slower and more crowded as people carry on larger and blanket stuffed baggage.
What in the world does American Airlines believe will be accomplished? Do they simply want to raise revenue? How odd! Why not add a tax to people who wear shoes with laces who are going through security at the airport?
Stopping food service on planes has merely increased the pressure on airport concourse takeout food establishments, resulting in discomfort at boarding areas as people have bought their greased potatoes munch on luke warm french fries during flights and juggle their McDonald's sack and beverage with their blanket stuffet carry-on as they search for their boarding pass as the next boarding group is called.
Hasn't anyone who has actually flown on a commercial airplane ever been hired to figure out the consequences of these daydream insanities from the ivory tower executives at the airlines. Maybe the executives just farmed out the question to focus groups peopled by phone answering employees at a phone centers in Mumbai who of course, are qualified to opine on such issues because they talk about air travel all day long.
My head spins in sadness for my grandchildren. They will not only have to pay off an unpayable debt that Washington is incurring, they will have to deal with fear of arrest for using a styrofoam coffee cup. Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, January 30, 2010
It's an Easy Choice!
Stimulus through law. That's an idea. Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Irony: The U.S. Banks vs. The World
Bring the unemployment rate down to 7% and manage the Treasury without bankrupting our grandchildren and you will certainly get a lot of votes. Publically asking for a fight with our major financial institutions may be populist rhetoric but how can it be effective goverance? Sphere: Related Content
Dancing Tango Vertical
Click on the title Dancing Tango Vertical to view the dance
Argentine Tango is a horizontal dance, in which the partners, with knees always bent, are into the floor. Or is it? Here two amazing acrobats interpret the music vertically with great success. Sphere: Related Content
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Nano Seconds
Recently it was disclosed in an article in the Financial Times that financial programmers were contemplating how to profit from an increase in the processing speed of the computers which perform automatic trades in securities. That increase is measured as 400 nanoseconds. I think that means 400/1000000th of a second. There is a variable in all financial trading related to the ever decreasing value of the dollar due to the time value of money. It is called the Theta factor and is an important element of options trading. Every second that passes imposes inflation, risk and interest costs (and I suppose all kinds of other costs about which I am unaware) on the value of a dollar. If you can trade fast enough, before everyone else catches the change, then that intermediation will make you a gain over what other traders can achieve. Hence the new programming gives the 400 nanosecond advantage to those those control it. Wow~!
If our dollar loses value in microscopic time increments which we cannot perceive, how much greater is the loss if we can perceive it? Last week there was an auction by the U.S. Treasury of $30 bln of 3 Year Treasuries. A significant portion of that auction's sale was purchased not by the usual brokers who then make a living distributing those securities to individuals and companies who want them, but by some individual unknown source which gobbled up about $ 7 bln of the $30 bln auctioned. Now I can't count that high (my grandson can if you give him enough time) but that seems like an awfully large amount to be privately bid. That kept the interest rates low, held some of the dwindling strength of the dollar and no one can find out who spent the money that way. I fear that it was the Federal Reserve Bank or China.
On a more interesting note but still in the nano world, Kodak, remember them they used to be America's pride - the leading photographic company in the world, filed suit against RIMM and Apple for alleged infringement of Kodak's patents in digital image processing. Amazing that there is anyone left at that decimated company who actually understands the patents they own. Also remarkable is that there are enough different ways to accomplish the same end product - video and images on your phone - that these companies can each manufacture and sell rival products that work.
When will our phone just be built into a chip that is implanted at birth? In the scheme of things, it will probably seem like it happened in nanoseconds. Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, December 12, 2009
"Non-Existent" Inflation.......
How could that be?
The hot water heater and the heating system were getting the first 55 degrees of heat from the earth for "free." We still have several computers (including 2 servers running all the time) and a large house, but it should have been a 40% or better reduction down to $568 or lower.
The answer is that electricity costs in Maryland have gone up by 11.5% (according to our calculations of our billing rates in the last 24 months. That means that unless this levels off somehow (yeah right!!) our heating bill for this house and the same useage will be right back where it was before we installed the geothermal. I don't want to tell you how much the new system cost. Consider it my contribution to global warming reduction......though I suspect the government is going to ask me to contribute a little more to that soon enough. Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Life Well Lived
A fly fisherman's obituary from Boston
Home / Globe / Obituaries
Jack Gartside, 66; fly-fisher lived simply to pursue goal
Jack Gartside was well known for his devil-may-care lifestyle.
By Bryan Marquard
Globe Staff / December 9, 2009
Jack Gartside invented some of his much-prized fishing flies while using a vise clasped to the steering wheel of his cab as he sat in Logan Airport’s taxi queue, waiting for a fare. Even behind the wheel, Mr. Gartside kept one wader-clad leg planted in the trout streams of Montana, a secluded nook in New Zealand, or a neglected fishing hot spot in Boston Harbor.
“In my high school yearbook, other people listed doctor or lawyer in the space provided for their future job,’’ he told Field & Stream magazine in 1999. “I put fishing.’’
More than 30 years ago, Mr. Gartside quit teaching high school English to fish more or less full time, living simply and supplementing his fly-tying income by driving a cab or grabbing a temporary job near a fishing destination. Once he helped make caskets; another time, he degreased snowmobile runners.
Mr. Gartside, who was as well known internationally for his devil-may-care lifestyle as he was for his expertise fly-fishing and fly-tying, died of lung cancer Saturday in the Bear Hill Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Stoneham. He was 66 and had lived in Winthrop after many years in a Mission Hill apartment crammed with books and tools of the fly-tying trade.
A devotee of trout fishing, Mr. Gartside spent so much time fishing in and near Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming that for a while his car was registered in Montana.
Then, he logged so many hours in the salt water around Boston that his writings about the best locations became indispensable to those who want to fish the harbor.
“I’ve fished with some of the greats, and Jack was as good, if not better, than anyone I’ve fished with,’’ said Dave Skok, a Winthrop neighbor and fly-fishing ambassador for the Patagonia clothing and gear company. “The same goes for his fly-tying. His flies were exquisite, and his casting and fishing style was precise and graceful. And he was tall and lanky, so he kind of looked like a heron. He didn’t just act like one.’’
The way Mr. Gartside lived drew as much envy as the graceful arc and whip of his casts or the creativity and precision of his flies.
“He’s who we’d all like to be if we all had more guts,’’ said Mike Quigley of Nahant, a friend and fishing buddy.
Said Skok: “Jack Gartside was a trout bum before the term had even been coined. He was the real deal, man.’’
He drove a cab part time so he could leave on a whim, and his fishing travels included California, Minnesota, Mexico, Denmark, Japan, France, Germany, and Norway.
Mr. Gartside liked to tell the story of the day, nearly 30 years ago, when an airline said it would give a round trip ticket to anywhere in the world for $1, plus tax, to 225 people who dressed in clothes depicting a destination. He showed up at Logan in a New Zealand bush jacket and an Australian campaign hat
Chosen from the crowd, he hustled back to his Mission Hill apartment to grab his fishing gear and soon landed in New Zealand with a couple of hundred dollars in his pocket. He stretched the money out for a month, hitchhiking around the country while holding up borrowed waders and a fishing rod.
“I frankly don’t make much of a living, but I make a hell of a life,’’ he told the Globe Sunday Magazine in 2001. “I really don’t look too far down the road, and I imagine I’ll do what I’m doing now until the day I die.’’
Growing up in Revere, Mr. Gartside was the son and grandson of machinists.
As a boy, he began fishing on a breakwater at Revere Beach, but only started embracing his future in fishing after going to a sportsman’s show in Boston to see his baseball idol, Ted Williams.
“He was tying a fishing fly, and I’d never seen one tied before,’’ Mr. Gartside told the Globe Sunday Magazine. “That Ted Williams was doing it made it even more magical. . . . He showed me how to tie a woolly worm, a very simple fly, and from that moment on, I was hooked.’’
Working his way through college, Mr. Gartside graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston and became a high school English teacher in Boston. As student shenanigans escalated, he decided to seek work elsewhere.
“It’s safer driving a cab at night in Boston than it is teaching in a Boston school during the day,’’ he told Sports Illustrated.
Mr. Gartside also eked out a living from speaking engagements, the sales of self-published books, and selling the fruits of his fly-tying.
He never married, and his sister, the last of his immediate family, died several years ago. His friends and admirers, however, can be found from the North Shore to New Zealand.
“He was a fantastic model for someone who wants to go out and explore the world and isn’t necessarily interested in the more commonly tread path in life,’’ Skok said.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. tomorrow in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Winthrop. Burial will be in Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett.
“Perhaps I do resist financial success,’’ Mr. Gartside told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1994. “My grandfather always said, ‘There are no luggage racks on hearses, no pockets in shrouds.’ All we have is this life, and it’s up to us to make the most of it.’’ Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Trying to Be Energy Efficient - Maryland Government Roadblocks Grants
This is just another example of how government gets in the way. Sphere: Related Content
Monday, November 30, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
14 Minutes 59 Seconds Left
Sphere: Related Content
Friday, November 20, 2009
Back to New Zealand: But buy the currency now
Forecast for the US Dollar's deterioration vs the New Zealand Dollar is startling. Sphere: Related Content
Gold and Silver In My Teeth: What This Really Means..............(click on this title for link to news about Gold)
Folks, something really really important is happening and if you aren't tuned into this, well, you might wake up in a few days or weeks and find out that all you have done for your entire life about being conservative and saving and prudent and pinching pennies has not mattered one whit.......
Is that scarey? What I am saying is that the value of your dollars, whether you put them in a bank ($250,000 limit thank you very much) or under the bed with a gun to ward off evil doers, HAS EVAPORATED!!
How bad is that??
In other words, even though the stock market has gained 30%, the ole greenback has deteriorated 30% against the other currencies of the world and you have NOTHING to show for your taking the risk of investing in stocks for the last 6 months.
Around the corner may lurk potential inflation which will whack your bucks even more.
Now this is not the first place that this has been said. Witness the absolutely incredible run in gold and silver. This morning on CNBC a fellow who was very articulate said gold will be $2,000 per oz sometime in 2010. Last night on Glen Beck another guy was talking about $4,000 per oz. Are they looney? Where were the guys in the white coats and straight jackets? They were not running to capture these two "crazies" they were running to their local coin store to buy the only loonies that matter, the Canadian kind, made from gold.
I am just plain old scared again. This is the real deal. This morning someone decided to sell gold. That selling lasted for less than an hour. It was then like Black Friday at Walmart. When the word got out that you could buy GLD for a $1 less than yesterday, well the buyers came back in force and up gold went again. New high. Remember in a couple months it is 2010 and the guy on CNBC said $2,000 and oz. Get some now while your dollars still can buy a loaf of bread for $ 4.00 and a gallon of gas for less than $5..................... Sphere: Related Content