“Deep Woods Night”
Oil on Canvas
William H. Hays
http://www.theartistsloft.com/oil7e.html

Come out from the warmth to escape the cold.

As hard as it may be to believe, there is a hardy group of Torontonians that make a monthly pilgrimage into the north in search of yet colder temperatures and more snow. Several ski resorts offer a moonlight cross country ski with lantern lit trails.

Before you even strap on your skis there is a 100 KM trek up highway 400. My ski buddy and I occupied ourselves with banter of generational ski stories hearkening back to our youth. The pauses in conversation offered opportunities to observe the gradual shift in climate from the then snow-less tundra of Toronto to the more typically Canadian snow covered countryside. Upon our arrival, the sun surrendered to a crystal clear sky, as only a winter night can offer. The stars which quickly revealed themselves didn’t twinkle as they do in the heated updrafts of a summer night. Instead they shone resoundingly as if in contempt of the bone chilling -12 Celsius. The wind was strong in the parking lot and I was curious to know how the 6K trek was going to work out, feeling chilly already.

In the clubhouse there was a line of people purchasing trail passes and renting equipment. Mockingly, while under my visible breath, I wondered if I had found the world’s largest collection of long underwear-wearing masochists? The diverse lineup consisted of bus groups, — such as the Toronto Bicycling Network (which offers ski programs) — the old and young all speaking different languages and dialects.

We were soon underway. There is nothing like cross country skiing to warm up on a cold day. The forest canopy blocked the wind and all noise we urbanites were familiar with. We were all collectively struck by the deafening silence and serene darkness of the Copeland Forest. Some skiers wore headlamps looking like obstetric doctors cutting their way through the night.

Despite the occasional paraffin lantern, our more gradual, less illuminated trek was similar to an experience in a sensory deprivation tank. The only interruption in the isolation came from the occasional distant chugging of a freight train and the gentle trickle of a forest creek. About halfway through, my heightened senses detected fragrant burning pine and distant the flicker of a bonfire.

Marshmallows and apple cider were provided free of charge to the welcoming congregation. A toasted marshmallow offered my taste buds a throwback to my youth. I felt a kindred joy with the assembled children who were having so much fun that it could have just as easily been a midsummer night. The temperature was a distant memory left some 3K behind at the parking lot.

The trail continued from there in a loop which offered a gentle uphill and a brisk downhill. Effort and reward; cross country has no ski lifts; either does life. Slowly, while trudging upwards, the sky over the valley wall brightened with an indomitable light. In a seeming instant, the moonlight pierced the forest canopy casting dots of light over the sylvan glade creating a live impressionist painting. I have no talent for painting but seldom think much of it; however, beholding this site I felt the lacking.

The trail looped back to the bonfire such that you were never very far from warmth, food and drink. The experience offered the perfect balance between thoughtful isolation and warm camaraderie and uniquely balanced dark and light. Most Torontonians bitterly bemoan the winter and can’t wait to be rid of it. The moonlight ski offered a terrific opportunity to escape the cold by heading straight into it. Cold is only a problem if you are not in motion. Perhaps this notion offers a wider metaphor for life.

—–

Toronto Bicycling Network Pictures
http://www.tbn.ca/gallery/v/xcski/Horseshoe-Valley-February-11-2006/
http://www.tbn.ca/gallery/v/xcski/January+30+2010/

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afIu492CyWMw&refer=home

Make no mistake about this folks, this is a depression era move.  Paulson, Bernake and Schumer are no less than a triumvirate of fools.  Ironically, Bernake claims to be a student of the depression.    There were so many bailouts that the government is forming a government agency to bailout companies.  As I read this article I seemed to remember a similar venture from the Great Depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Finance_Corporation

There has been another corporation like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation which was used in the late 80’s as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Trust_Corporation

Whatever the acronym, whatever the intent, the purpose is singular.  Let no one try to dissuade you from understanding.  The goal of any such organization is to pass the buck on to the taxpayer.

As far as finance goes, this is a hail mary pass which hurls the debt in the air and hopes the market has time to recover to land the touchdown.  Such a venture did work in the case of the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 80’s, however, many believe the Reconstruction Finance Corporation served only to prolong and worsen the Great Depression.

This latest crisis is by all accounts much worse than the Savings and Loan crisis and as far as the amount of debt shouldered per capita, could easily be a gre’08er depression than that of the 30’s.

Buckle up, we’re in for a wild ride.

bailout · bernake · Case · finance · gre08er depression · great depression · http · paulson · reconstruction finance corporation · Red · resolution trust corporation · rls · savings and loan · schumer

Dumb:

Project Lifeline is a Bush administration initiative to give distressed mortgagees an additional month before their homes are foreclosed upon. This reprieve goes not only to subprime borrowers but to all distressed borrowers. The subtext to this move is that not only are subprime borrowers in distress. One month’s grace is dumb because the amount of debt that we’re dealing with coupled with the loss of equity from falling housing prices is not something that is going to resolve itself that quickly. This is akin to giving a starving man a rice cake. We all know that rice cakes are good only as coasters, so too is Project Lifeline.

Dumber:

Interest rate cuts are an even dumber idea. Last month the Fed cut rates by a staggering 1.25%. There is strong rumour that more cuts are coming. This is a dumber idea for a few reasons. First interest rate cuts are the cause of debenture spending. The reason we’re in the mess we’re in is because people are/were spending money they didn’t have. Next, lowered interest rates cause economic bubbles such as the housing bubble which is just in the process of bursting. Finally, interest rate cuts increase government debt. The way that the Fed lowers interest is by buying treasury bills with printed money. This devalues the currency and increases government debt. Thus, interest rate cuts are the cause of the current economic quagmire, and certainly aren’t the cure.

Dumbest

The US Stimulus Package is the dumbest possible idea. Under the package, people could see $600 to $1200 in tax rebates. First off, the amount itself is a pittance. Next, where is the money coming from? The money is being borrowed from China to be repaid with interest. Where is the money going? The money, it is hoped, will be spent into the economy to buy ’stuff’. Where does all the stuff come from? The stuff comes from… China. The real underlying problem is that the US economy has shifted from a production based economy to a consumer based economy. Until you address that problem, any attempts to throw money at the problem will simply throw money in other people’s pockets. I’ll give the government some credit though, the US Stimulus Package does manage to stimulate an economy; perhaps the government will fund moving its citizens to Beijing where the positive effects can be felt.

AID · Beijing · bubble · bush · Bush administration · China · Coming · Economy · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · george bush · http · interest rate · life · mortgage · OJ · prime · project lifeline · Red · stimulus package · subprime · the fed · United States · US Federal Reserve · USD

There was an amazing dance sequence during the 2010 Oscars.  It’s a little hard to track down on the internet due to copywriting etc etc.  LXD is the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (often misquoted as the League of Extraordinary Dancers).

LXD is a testament to the power of social media and its ability to provide a medium for artistic collaboration and a new forum for its appreciation.  LXD is the brainchild of Jon M Chu who isn’t a choreographer or dancer, but rather a cult filmmaker who discovered the potential of hip-hop dancing.  (Jon M Chu produced and directed “Step Up 2 The Streets”.)

Here is a youtube excerpt:

choreographer · dancer · jon m chu · league of extraordinary dancers · legion of extraordinary dancers · lxd · oscar · oscars · oscars 2010 · social media · the 2010 Oscars

Marx once said that “religion is the opiate of the masses”.  If one is to believe this graph:

it would seem to suggest that the poorer you are, the more inclined you are to be religious.  Perhaps it’s not so odd that most religious television programs are constantly begging for money.  However, they may do better by making their pleas for money to the aetheists instead of ‘preaching to the [poor] choir’ as it were.

Most interesting are the outliers on this graph.  The US is more religious than its overall wealth would suggest, so perhaps George Bush does indeed hear the voice of God.  Also note Kuwait which is highly religious and relatively prosperous compared to countries with similar levels of religiousity.

More information can be found here:

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=258

AID · bush · choir · George · george bush · God · http · king · Kuwait · levis · marx · opiate · php · RAM · Red · Religion · United States · wealth

On this anniversary of Sept 11, I am privy to a pre-release of a recent report from the 9/11 committee.  The report details the wholesale destruction of the US economy by Al Qaeda operatives operating within the United States in a coordinated strategy to bring the US economy to its knees. 

Evidently the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001 were really just a smokescreen for the more prolonged strategy to destroy our economy.  It started with Fedr Al Grin, a high ranking operative deeply embedded in the US banking system, decided to lower interest rates under the guise of stabilizing the economy. 

Below is a transcript of the interrogation of the recently captured Al Qaeda operative Hanny P’Alsin:

This [Fedr Al Grin's actions] led to freely available money which the “infidels gulped up like candy.”  Fedr Al Grin smiled happily watching the infidels load up on overpriced housing and cars they couldn’t afford until 2005 when he started to tighten the noose he had placed around the necks of the infidels.

In 2005 Fedr Al Grin started to raise the interest rates, again under the guise of protecting the economy, and the foolish infidels fell for it.  Suddenly they all began to realize that they were living beyond their means as the money supply evaporated.  Fedr Al Grin played the clarinet as the mortgage market burned.  The Department of Homeland defense became wise to Fedr Al Grin and had him removed from office.  Under water boarding at Abu Ghraib, Fedr Al Grin admitted to many of his sins and wrote an expose detailing the turbulent times he had overseen. 

However, while Fedr Al Grin was on one hand admitting to the evils of the system he had overseen, he had already placed a backup, his protoge Bin Bernik in place.  Bin Bernik watched as banks suffered and fell.  In their weakest moment, he offered help with a secret system to bail them out with infidel taxpayer dollars.  Bin Bernik was well trained by Fedr Al Grin to use a financial terrorist tactic to counterfeit US treasury notes.  By printing too many of them and using this counterfeit money to bail out and own financial institutions, Ben Bernik was and is covertly taxing the entire infidel population into bankruptcy.

One by one the mighty infidels fell.  Bear Sterns, survivor of the great depression sacrificed itself at the feet of Ben Bernik and his plan.  Freddie and Fannie, sacrificed themselves to Bin Bernik saddling the infidels of America with $5 trillion dollars in debt in a single weekend.  Even to this very day, the great intelligence of this plan is still giving fruit.  Lehman Brothers of New York is faltering, soon to fall. 

The US infidel automakers are also rallying to the cry of Bin Bernik.  They too want this free money which secretly bankrupts the US economy.  Airlines, insurance companies, all too big to fail, will sing the song of Bin Bernik to their destruction.  Bin Bernik will happily supply all these companies with counterfeit currency and thus dilute the savings of all the infidels until their lavish economy implodes.

On this anniversary of 9/11 we as Americans have come to realize that all our problems exist overseas.  Clearly this latest report serves only to amplify our need for our continued efforts in the Middle East occupying more sovereign nations to ensure our freedom.  I call on all Americans to pick one of the non-invaded ’stans (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) for immediate attack.  It doesn’t matter which one, clearly any country ending in ’stan will harbor some sort of terrorist.  Only in so doing will we secure freedom for our children and security at home.

9/11 · Al Grin · Al Qaeda · ale · Allan Greenspan · America · anniversary of 9/11 · anniversary of Sept 11 · bank · banking · bankruptcy · bear sterns · Ben Bernake · Ben Bernik · cent · Department of Homeland · Economy · fannie · fannie mae · fed · federal reserve · Fedr Al Grin · financial terrorist · freddie · freddie mac · great depression · Henry Paulson · high ranking operative · ILS · insurance · interest rate · king · lehman brothers · middle east · MIT · mortgage · New York · operative · Pakistan · printing · quote · Red · Tajikistan · Turkmenistan · United States · USD · Uzbekistan

At age 35, having recently been laid off, I found myself at a career exploration workshop run by the Jewish Vocational Services. [ed. note: The Jewish Vocational Service now serves people of all races and ethnicities. It is as identifiably Jewish as the star of Dennis; that is to say, not.] Coming from a lucrative yet unfulfilling career in Computer Sciences, I was looking to marry my other talents with my career or perhaps start a new career altogether. Other classmates were either seeking career guidance or training. Whatever our immediate goals, we were all in the same boat, fighting against the tide of layoffs and restructurings unleashed in this latest economic maelstrom. My shipmates flew the flags of many diverse nations, had charted the courses of many differing careers and hailed from all ages and walks of life. Just the same we found common steerage on our upstream battle for employment or fulfillment or perhaps the confluence of both.

Our first day consisted of pen and pencil cognitive tests adding numbers, mentally folding boxes, and figuring out which way a submarine will go when its control surfaces were adjusted. Rudely, I knew exactly where I’d like that submarine to go upon first inspection, but there was no entry on the form for my proposed destination. Despite the continued assurances of the counselors that these tests were only a part of the overall equation, they were a shot across the bow for many of us since these tests are becoming ever more popular in interviews. I personally lost several points on one test after falling into a daydream where I asked: “If I took a five pound weight and used a 10 meter lever, would it be enough to crush the infernal 5 minute timer which callously and repeatedly told us we were out of time?”

Were we out of time? Were we too old, too obligated to family, short on funds, or too far removed from Canadian culture to find the employment and fulfillment we sought? Despite healthy doses of gallows humour about the testing process and the general state of the economy there was a palpable weight on people’s shoulders. While we all smiled and shrugged off the indignity of the return to school days, we all feared that the next spatial visual acuity box we might fold might very well be a coffin in which we would be forced to bury our dreams.

Fortunately the rest of the program returned our egos to an even keel. Patricia, a course facilitator guided us through assessments of personality where the only wrong answer was to have no personality to speak of; fortunately this was a fate suffered by no one. She is a veteran of many lands, many careers and I imagine many recessions who seems to pay them no mind. Her right and proper British manner seems to remind us of Mary Poppins who would advise us all to take “a spoon full of [optimistic] sugar to make the [recession] go down.”

Then there was Derek, the course facilitator with a coy and sly smile which hinted at his razor sharp interviewing style sure to eviscerate any unsuspecting and inauthentic candidate. While we would rue having him on the opposite side of the interview table, luckily for us, he was on our side and was willing to share his insights. He built our confidence and ability to market ourselves and revealed some insider interviewing secrets such as having his secretary work on his behalf as a covert agent. Candidates be forewarned: be nice and polite to the secretaries – while you cannot remain silent, everything you say can and will still be used against you.

Career change is never easy, under any financial climate. I note that some attendees proudly claim that they can do anything while others are more reserved about their dreams and ambitions. Our facilitators would quickly point out that the differences in expressions were due to the different personality types we had studied that week. Both types of expression however are a defense against the underlying fear that our high flung ideas will run aground on McDonald’s Island where we’ll be forever enslaved serving cheeseburgers to other people who somehow managed to make it. There was tremendous talk among attendees of the economic climate and other external factors which the course could not possibly change. The course however, spent precious little time on the economic situation and instead looked to what it could adjust, our attitude and direction. Ultimately we all cast off and sought our own safe harbours but we did so with the benefit of a true and straight compass. For the beacon lighthouse JVS offered me in navigating a foggy and tumultuous job market, I am truly grateful.

AID · aig · ale · cent · Coming · Computer Sciences · Economy · equation · flu · Health · Jewish Vocational Service · Jewish Vocational Services · king · life · lighthouse JVS · Mary Poppins · McDonald’s Island · RAM · Red · secretary · secrets · the Star · unsuspecting and inauthentic candidate

PDF Version: AncientInjustice.pdf

Growing up, my Jewish education consisted of an after school program (‘cheider’ to the Yiddish inclined) while I attended public school by day.  On my walk to Hebrew School I would often try to marry the two bodies of knowledge from the two respective school systems.  A happy romance occurred around 1987 between the religious and secular bodies of knowledge.  As many may recall 1987 was the year of the big crash on the stock market.[1]  Debt and the economy were on the lips of many in those days.

In the secular world there was tremendous talk of personal and national debt, interest rates, unemployment and the like.  All the while, the Torah I was reading in Hebrew school was definitely running on about the sabbatical forgiveness of debt and the precept that “there should be no poor among you”. (Deut 15:1-4)  Now my mental image of the ancient Israelites was that of a pastoral, agrarian people.  With hindsight I can say that this image was only slightly misguided.  Despite the rumored grandeur of the Davidic kingdom, archaeologists hold that their society was more rural than urban.

But this left me with a theological problem:  I saw debt as a product of banks which were on city streets.  I failed to conjure an image of rolling agricultural fields dotted with banks and/or ATMs at the Temple gates. (Parenthetically, it turns out that if the Gospels have any historical veracity, there may have been just such an ancient equivalent of an ATM at the Temple gates.  More to follow shortly.)  Failing to imagine ancient banks, I was puzzled about what the ancient Israelites knew of debt and how then did this prescient warning against the accumulation of debt make it into the Torah?  I questioned my Hebrew school teacher along these lines and I was given the answer that ‘the Torah contained the writ word of God and all His wisdom.  It was written for all times and addressed all the problems that we would encounter until the end of days.’

Platitudes such as this are to young inquisitive men, such as I was, like drinking sea water when thirsty:  quenching only at first and then leaving you more thirsty than ever.  If my teacher’s answer was to hold water (pun intended) then there were conspicuous absences from the ‘writ word of God’.  Where were the foundations for democracy?  Where were the specific prohibitions against slavery (beyond the sabbatical release of Hebrew slaves)?  Where was the discussion about protecting the environment beyond the scant ordinances for burying excrement beyond the outskirts of camp (Deut 23:14)?  From those grandiose absences there were more mundane absences like: Where were the prohibitions against smoking and where were the prohibitions against high cholesterol foods?  My attempts to marry the religious and secular belief systems were thwarted by the absence of these secular guidelines which I had determined to be legitimate and necessary.  After a brief flirtation the attempted marriage failed in divorce with the judgment pronounced by my rationality decreeing that the Torah was not indeed the writ word of God.

Literalists may be tempted by the previous sentence to toss this work out of hand directly into the fire.  Indeed this may provide needed warmth to those suffering the effects of debt.  Just the same, with a bit of patience on both sides of the theist/atheist debate, I believe there is commonality to be found in the good intentions of the Torah.  While we may debate its authorship I will not debate that it was written with the best of intentions.  Further, I hold that it was written to describe an ideal rather than the actual practice of the day.  There is a common modern Israeli expression: “The synagogue I don’t go to is Orthodox.”  Similarly, I believe that the Torah describes an ideal set out for the people to follow which was likely, based on archaeological evidence, considerably different than religion actually practiced by the ancient Israelites.  Specifically, archaeology reveals the rampant practice of polytheism and idolatry up to the Babylonian exile.[2]  Biblical archaeology contends that the Torah was a compendium of tales written by a reformist movement railing against the practices of the day.  Setting aside the issue of biblical authorship, I will continue the discussion in the context of the good intentions of the author presently.

The now dubious authorship of the Torah made my original question even more pronounced.  If the Torah was not written by God, then who wrote it and how were the ancient Israelites aware of debt and its effects?  My research would lead me to the field of biblical archaeology.  I studied the works of William Dever and Israel Finklestein amongst others with the following results.  The ancient Israelites never conquered Canaan as told in the Torah canon.  They were instead Canaanites themselves who survived and replaced a decaying social order with a more egalitarian one.  For those interested in how I arrived at this conclusion there is a wonderful précis of biblical archaeology available on Public Broadcastings’ NOVA series: “The Bible’s Buried Secrets.”[3]  There you’ll find a terrific summary of all the archaeological and scientific findings to date.  I only wish this series had existed at the outset of my research for it would have saved me much trudging through many inaccessibly written academic works on the topic.  Researching biblical archaeology was much like archaeology itself: sifting through piles of academic detritus to yield occasional relics and then putting the pieces together.

So, accepting for the moment that the Israelite race emerged from the nadir of the Canaanite civilization, Zephaniah 1:11 becomes ever more clear:
“The dwellers of Machtesh [, a quarter of Jerusalem,] howl;/ For all the tradesmen [nation of Canaan] have perished, All who weigh silver are wiped out.”
Two things are critical in this passage.  First the time of Zephaniah, well past that of the Canaanite era, and second the reference to the weighing of silver.  Zephaniah was not admonishing the Canaanites but rather the Jewish merchants of Jerusalem who were acting like Canaanites.[4]  As to the reference to the weighing of silver, silver was then as it is now, a monetary metal.  All throughout history, every society has been plagued by the manipulation of their currency leading to their ultimate downfall.  Economists call the process seigniorage gain.

Seigniorage gain is the process by which the minter (usually the government) gains on the difference between the face value of the coin and the actual value of the metal used to make it.  I often think it is the job of economists to construct palatable names for what in the end turns out to be sheer larceny.  Those unfamiliar with the term may be more familiar with the contemporary synonyms such as ‘inflation’.  Whatever you choose to call it, ‘a lemon by any other name would taste as sour’ and inflation, currency manipulation, or seigniorage gain is quintessentially a tax on the middle class leading to widespread debt, poverty and wealth inequality.  It is a fundamental violation of the biblical injunction to have “fair weights and measures” (Deut 25:13-16).

It is my supposition that it was an economic collapse brought about by currency manipulation which spelled the end of the Canaanite civilization.  I will support this supposition by reviewing the log roll of history vis a vis currency manipulation and the subsequent unfolding of the relevant civilization.  Biblical archaeology tells us that the proto-Israelites literally fled for the hills in the face of the collapse of the Canaanites.[5]  There they regrouped and sought to set themselves apart from the evils of their past.  After the dust had settled they returned with a renewed spirit and purpose to set out a more equitable system.  To that end they developed laws against the accumulation of debt and the slavery that results.  Those laws were later canonized in the Pentateuch around the end of the Babylonian exile (4th to 6th centuries BCE).[6]

Some 600 years later we know that these laws were largely being ignored and that corruption again loomed large.  We have the historical testimony of the gospels of Luke and John which recount Jesus’ banishing of the money changers from the temple gates.  Around the time of the year 0 CE Roman currency was the common currency in the holy land.  These coins typically bore the images of pagan gods and were unacceptable for use in temple worship.  At the temple gates, benches of money changers would exchange these coins, at predatory exchange rates, to Levite coins for use in temple services.  These same money changers would charge the Levites unreasonable rates to change these coins back into Roman coins such that the Levite priests could make purchases in the markets.  Jesus found the entire process abominable and forcibly drove them from the temple.[7]  Whether you believe the historical veracity of the gospels is beside the point here.  What is known is that currency manipulation was clearly on the mind of the authors of the gospels and the gospels were known to be written around this time (admittedly within 400 years).  As a pertinent aside, the word ‘Bank’ comes from the Latin for ‘bench’ precisely referring to this historical antecedent.[8]  I believe it is social disarray caused by the financial ruin of Israel which led to its overthrow by the Romans.  There is textual evidence for this in the bible itself:  Jeremiah 7:11 reads “Is this house, whereupon My name is called, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”  Amos 5:7 reads “Ah you who trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the ground, and make the humble walk a twisted course.”

It is an irony of history, if not a recurring leitmotif, that the very same financial snare which destroyed Israel also destroyed its captors.  In Hebrew school we all learned of the famous (infamous) “Judea Capta” coin.[9]  This coin depicts the pride of the Romans in defeating ancient Israel.  It is in the silver or precious metal content of roman coinage with which we can track the decline of the Roman Empire.  The backbone coin of the Roman economy was the Denarius which started out with a silver weight of approximately 4.5 grams.  Have you ever noticed the ridges on the edge of a quarter?  These same ridges were present on the Denarius and there intention is to make any shaving of the coin obvious.  This made it harder for individuals to debase the currency but the government was free to mint coins with less and less silver content.  By the year 274 CE under Aurelian’s reign the coins had almost no silver content at all.[10]  The causes of the fall of Rome are admittedly complex, including the outsourcing of their military defense to barbarian mercenaries.  Just the same, the economic decline of Rome is certainly one of the principle causes and is yet another exemplar of the debasement of currency leading to the debasement of the underlying civilization.

The collapse of the Roman Empire led the world into the dark ages.  The Christian religion took hold championing the cause of the poor all through these long dark ages.  Eventually a fair monetary system was developed called the tally stick system.[11]  Very strict Christian based laws against usury (interest) prevented any monetary abuse.  However, in the 1500’s Henry VIII, obviously unaware of the peril, deregulated the economy and allowed for certain forms of usury.[12]  The economic maelstrom unleashed destroyed the English economy.  In the wake of the upheaval and in the aftermath of the English revolution of 1642, the Bank of London was established.  Oddly enough, the initial shares were bought with no other currency than talley sticks.  The bank of England replaced this monetary system with their own manipulated (or ‘fiat’) currency.  Currency manipulation was now institutionalized in the form of this ‘Central Bank’ put in place to ‘protect and regulate’ the money supply.

Just around this time, gold was being used as a currency.  Carrying ones gold on their person could be cumbersome and moreover, dangerous.  A robbery could erase ones savings.  The goldsmiths of the day agreed to hold gold for consumers at a nominal fee and issued them a certificate which they could then use to redeem their deposits.  These little slips of paper were much easier to work with and in a very short time, the slips of paper would be used in transactions instead of gold.  The goldsmiths made an astute observation.  Not all of their clients came to collect their gold at one instant.  As such they could lend out some of the deposited gold at interest making money on money they did not really have.  While this seems relatively harmless provided customers do not all come for their gold at once, it is in fact at the core of everything wrong in the world today.  The fraud is subtle yet essential to understand.  By using gold that say a farmer had deposited to make loans, you are using the hard labour of the farmer to make money with very little labour.  In a nutshell, this practice siphons up the value of labour and puts it in the hands of the advantaged few who are in a position to leverage it.  This is the practice of fractional reserve banking with is with us to this very day.[13]  When a middle class family takes out a loan to get an SUV, the bank does not lend you their money.  They lend you the savings of an auto worker who drives a compact sedan.  The banker turns interest on money s/he never owned and drives a luxury sports car on the profits.  Such is the food chain of fractional reserve banking.  Bankers love the practice for obvious reasons.  Politicians love it because they can finance their projects without reaching for tax dollars.  Projects can now be financed with thusly conjured money with only a nodding concern for inflation and the ever growing national debt. The average person neither loves it nor hates it because they do not understand it.  Hopefully, that is, until now.

The Bank of England was aware of the practice of the goldsmiths but instead of outlawing it, embraced it.  As such they succeeded in protecting and regulating the money supply insofar as her citizens of wealth were concerned but all to the detriment of the English parliament and the general public.  The bank so bankrupted England that England was forced to place a heavy tax burden on its colonies.  The American colonies revolted to the cry against ‘taxation without representation’ in the war of independence of 1762.  By the end of this revolution, with the effects of the Bank of England in mind the Americans set out to “form a more perfect union”.  Into their new constitution section 10 forbids “…emit[ing] Bills of Credit; mak[ing] any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…”.[14]  It was pursuant to this section that the United States was on the Gold Standard for most of its existence up until 1933.  The Gold Standard ensured that every bill was backed by gold.  Bills printed prior to 1933 were marked “redeemable in gold”.  After 1933 they were marked as only “legal tender”.  The founding fathers knew of the threat of a manipulated currency but that memory and warning was, as we now see, historically fleeting.

The Americans had the first and second Banks of America which again started to manipulate the currency.  Andrew Jackson famously put a temporary stop to the banking cartels saying: “You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out.”[16]  For a short while he succeeded.  From 1836 to 1913 the United States was free of a central bank and the currency manipulation they bring with them.

During this hiatus in central banking while financial crises persisted, inflation was flat.  That is to say that one dollar was worth one dollar for this interim period.[17]  This allowed for the accumulations of savings which is the true practice of capitalism.  Indeed by the early 1900’s bankers were concerned with the prevalence of self-financing of business development.  So concerned were the bankers that they sought to reassert themselves and in 1913, taking advantage of a recent (some say engineered) financial crisis, the Federal Reserve was born and central banking was reborn in America.[18]  Again too, the promise of the Federal Reserve was to regulate the money supply and again, so it did, to the advantage of the wealthy few.  As it has always been throughout history, currency manipulation manufactures debt and poverty.  Since the inception of the Federal Reserve, the purchasing power of the dollar has decreased by 95%.  Inflation has increased by 1929% (that’s 19 hundred and twenty nine percent!).[19]  The effect of this is that wealth inequality is now staggering.  As of 2001, in the U.S., the top 20% held 84% of all the wealth.[20]  For those who have trouble dealing with math, what this means is that if you are in the class of the remaining 80% (most of us are) then in a more fairly distributed economy – which would necessarily feature a fair currency – you would have approximately 5 times your current assets.

As common as monetary manipulation is throughout history, so too are the attempted fixes when the system gets out of whack.  A fiat currency (recall a ‘fiat’ currency is an ‘on faith’ currency) is a sort of monetary Golem: this time made of minted coins instead of clay.  Generally it functions impeccably as designed, siphoning wealth upwards but occasionally and often dramatically, it causes large financial upset.  When this Golem takes a swat at its banker creators the solution is to placate it with, yes, ever more printed or minted money.  This maneuver results in one of two results: 1) a temporary stabilization of the monster or 2) a hyperinflationary death when the monster collapses under its own weight.  Note that in either outcome, the best that can be accomplished is a temporary shoring up of the system.  Inevitably, the Golem collapses back into the imaginary ore it came from, only after raping the value of the land and passing it into the hands of the elite few.  Revisiting the economic death of Rome, Nero and other Emperors debased the currency via inflation fiddling and minting as it were while Rome burned.

However, one need not look as far afield to find a terrific example of the hyperinflationary death of an empire.  Just recently, the Weimar republic died just such a death.[21]  In the 1920’s Germany forced under the WWI reparations act to make payments to the victor nations.  The victor nations, most notably France and England who were in their own financial distress due to – you may have guessed by now – their own currency manipulation, pressured the Germans to make good on their obligations.  The German coffers were largely empty and as a result they decided to print money to meet their obligations.  The German citizens were wary of the stability of their currency and began to hoard cash fearing a crisis.  Simultaneously the German creditors began to fear default on their loans and closed the taps of credit.  The German economy stalled and went into a brief bout of deflation.  The Germans did what every other economy has tried all throughout history to solve the problem:  they threw more money into the market to try and jumpstart it.  The German citizens feared for their nest eggs which caused them to attempt to convert any cash they had on hand to real assets.  This unleashed a torrent of cash on the market which immediately lead to hyperinflation.[22]  Hyperinflation is runaway inflation fueled by panic and distrust of the underlying currency.  A corollary to the loss of trust in currency is an inevitable loss of trust in the government that promotes it.  It was thus that the Weimar republic fell leaving a political vacuum in its wake which would soon be filled by the Nazis.  Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that: “It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”[23]  History will record that this is equally applicable to the cessation of belief in government.

Historians and economists alike may be quick to point out that there would appear to be a historic precedent for economic spending or stimulus as an escape to recession.  They undoubtedly would point to the Roosevelt era and the “New Deal”.  So hope filled were the citizens of the day that the New Deal was rhapsodized into the Great Depression era musical: ‘Annie’.  Daddy Warbucks swooned “I know the depression is depressing… But we’ll get a new deal for Christmas this year.”[24]  The character Daddy Warbucks was modeled after Paul Warburg.[25]  It was common knowledge at the time that this was so.  Warburg was one of the chief architects of the Federal Reserve which is the United States arm of the Bank of England.  The bitter irony here is that it was the Federal Reserve System which caused and exacerbated the Great Depression.  They were anything but the cure.  The famed economist Milton Friedman spent a lifetime promoting this interpretation of events.  On the occasion of his 90th birthday Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the Fed said: “I would like to say to Milton… Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”[26]  While I believe that Roosevelt was well intentioned, he was fatally naïve.  His New Deal served only to confiscate all public monetary gold and transfer yet more power to the Federal Reserve to manipulate currency.  The hidden tragedy of the musical Annie is that while she shares a stage with the theatric Roosevelt and Warbucks (Warburg) singing their accolades as her saviour, she is actually praising the instrument of her orphan plight.  (Annie was orphaned due to the financial insolvency of her parents.)

While unwittingly kissing the hand that starves you may be tragic when it occurs on stage, it is far more tragic when it occurs in the real world.  It is still a mainstream notion that Roosevelt’s New Deal was what rescued the Americans from the Great Depression.[27]  Even though all through history, government salvation through spending has led to financial ruin at every attempt some still espouse the idea that it is possible to spend our way out of the damage wrought by currency manipulation.  Currency manipulation is good for bankers and bankers fund business schools which produce bankers.  It is no wonder then that currency manipulation which goes hand in hand with government spending ‘has’ to be a good thing.  If you want to be at the top of this pyramid scheme you have to support the bricks that build it.  In this light, when the financial meltdown of 2008 hit, how did the pyramid builders propose to deal with the ‘Gre08er Depression’?  You guessed it, with more government spending.

Journalists are already pointing out the similarities in circumstances between Barack Obama and Roosevelt.[28]  I believe the comparisons are justified and that Obama is, like Roosevelt, well intentioned but critically misguided.  Mind you, not only is Obama misguided but most people are ill aware of monetary policy and its implications.  Obama promises trillion dollar deficits running for the next many years.[29]  It is his hope that this massive spending will shock the economy back to life.  The only shock it can reasonably hope to achieve though is shocking the Frankenstein of currency manipulation to life to turn on its creator.  The only reason Roosevelt’s New Deal appeared to work was that by the end of WWII, the US had developed tremendous manufacturing capabilities and the US was a burgeoning economy; the US emerged from the Great Depression despite Roosevelt’s New Deal, not because of it.  The situation in this Gre08er Depression is different.  There is no new manufacturing potential, indeed it is declining.  The US is not a burgeoning nation but is instead a declining one.  Thus the only shock government spending is capable of producing on the US economy is an electrocution.

Growing up I had trouble relating to the ancient Israelites I was reading about.  I could relate only to their enslavement in Egypt which I read as an allegory for my forced attendance at school.  Beyond that, they were a people very far from me both spatially and temporally.  My time was dominated by discussions and anxious anticipation of new technologies and new scientific discoveries.  While I could ‘upconvert’ an ordinance to help a neighbour right a fallen cattle to a more modern equivalent of assisting ones neighbour with a crashed computer in general the setting for torah morality written in terms of cattle, oxen and sheep failed to connect with me.  I was always amazed then as to how these seemingly simple people understood concepts such as debt.  Most debt in modern times comes from securing shelter.  In ancient Israel this could be accomplished by erecting four poles and securing canvas.  So where did these biblical injunctions come from, what wrong were they trying to right?

In trying to answer that question I would have to journey through studies of biblical archaeology and general history.  After so doing, I have found a new connection with the ancient Israelites.  They were trying to solve a very old and fundamental problem:  how to govern a large group of people equitably while preventing corruption.  Currency is one of the fundamental cornerstones of any civilization.  It is fundamental to most of our interactions and if it is corrupt, so too will inevitably be anything built on top of it.  Disappointment then comes in reading the scroll of history with each entry echoing the previous:  “Empire rises with high ideals.  The high ideals erode under complacency.  Corruption then leads to inequality and fiscal malaise.  Empire manipulates the currency to buy time.  Empire runs out of time.”

The tenet of monotheism according to the bible started with Abraham.  What the Torah describes as a moment of epiphany is revealed by biblical archaeologists to in fact be a long arduous process which took several hundreds of years.  Key here is that a stated ideal can become a practiced ideal with exertion of effort over time.  It is thus to the commandment that we “should have no poor among [us]” that we must redirect our time and efforts.  I have recently come to a conclusion that the reformed Canaanite predecessors of the world’s ‘big 3’ monotheistic religions likely came to long ago; poverty is not the result of a lack of wealth but instead a lack of justice.

——————————-

[1]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)
[2]   William G. Dever: “Did God Have a Wife?”
[3]   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/program.html
[4]   http://books.google.ca/books?id=sIWn6lYS-MQC&pg=PA171
[5]   Smith, Mark “The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel” (pp 6-7)
[6]   McDonald & Sanders, editors of The Canon Debate, 2002, The Notion and Definition of Canon by Eugene Ulrich, pg 4
[7]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_money_changers
[8]   http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bank
[9]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaea_Capta_coinage
[10]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Michael_Rostovtzeff.2C_Ludwig_von_Mises.2C_and_Bruce_Bartlett [11]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talley_stick
[12]  http://books.google.ca/books?id=pnszAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA8
[13]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#History
[14]  http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec10.html
[15]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
[16]  http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/andrew+jackson
[17]  http://www.economics-charts.com/cpi/cpi-1800-2005.ht ml
[18]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
[19]  http://postworthy.com/Worthy/ex/US_Dollar_Purchasing_Power_Decline/205.aspx[20]  http://mwiner.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wealthdistribution.gif
[21]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_German_inflation
[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
[23]  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/malcolm_muggeridge.html[24]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2vGeaqM33g
[25]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Warburg#Legacy
[26]  http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/default.htm[27]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
[28]  http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20081124,00.html
[29]  http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-06-obama-economy_N.htm

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My tried, tested and true recipe.
3 leeks, trimmed, well washed and quartered
3 carrots
1 parsnip
4 celery stalks
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 bunch dill stems
2 bay leaves
6 peppercorns
3 tsp white wine
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1.2 kg chicken bones, parts
14 cups water

Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low, simmer for a few hours. Refrigerate overnight and then skim off fat. For a clearer broth, strain through cheesecloth.

Yield – approx. 12 cups chicken soup.

chicken soup · http · oil · recipe · Red

Walter Kirn on The Colbert Report (Canadian Link): http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/#clip174780

Walter Kirn on The Colbert Report (USA Link):  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/228190/may-19-2009/walter-kirn

Review of:
“Lost in the Meritocracy:  The Undereducation of an Overachiever”
By: Walter Kirn (Doubleday)
Reviewed By: Martin C. Winer
June 28, 2009

When I picked up “Lost in the Meritocracy:  The Undereducation of an Overachiever” by Walter Kirn (Doubleday), I expected a semi-dry expose on the problems facing the American Education system with an emphasis on the Ivy League schools.  The only semi-dry thing in the book was the champagne Kirn poured over two fawning exchange students during a graduation night orgy on his way to Princeton.  Told with prose and wit more common to novels, Kirn details his experiences as he rises out of the rural Minnesota winning one of 20 transfer student spots at Ivy League Princeton.

By Kirn’s account it is a wonder that there is any ivy left due to the propensity of the students to smoke any mildly herbaceous looking thing.

“There is no drug scene like an Ivy League drug scene.  Kids can’t just get high; they have to seek epiphanies.  They have to ground their mischief in manifestos.  The most popular one around … held that drugs, … especially plant based psychedelic drugs helped to break down the rigid inner partitions that restricted one’s full humanity.” (p. 124)

Recreational drug use was pervasive at Princeton as were many other illicit activities, with education taking a back seat.  I was so engaged with the stories that I was half way through when I reexamined the title and asked “what is a meritocracy anyways?”

Meritocracy was introduced as a more equitable replacement for aristocracy. Insofar as education, Harvard’s James Conant championed the cause of educational reform towards meritocracy as a realization of Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a “natural aristocracy among men, founded on virtue and talents.” (Jefferson used the term ‘natural aristocracy’ instead of ‘meritocracy’ because it wasn’t coined a term until the 1958 book “Rise of the Meritocracy” by Michael Young.  Incidentally it was intended pejoratively.) As with many high minded theories, the implementation often renders an imperfect reflection of the ideal.

Conant set the controversial School Aptitude Test (SAT) as gatekeeper for the bastions of higher learning guarding all the rewards of power that lay beyond.  When Walter Kirn took the SAT, he discovered he “had a natural talent for multiple-choice tests [which] landed [him] without the vaguest survival instructions [at Princeton]”. (p. 6)  Throughout the course of the book which details his experiences at Princeton Kirn suggests that his education consisted of learning how to succeed in the education system;  this is a far cry from becoming educated.

The distinction is eloquently revealed when Kirn is asked to discuss the ‘critical assumptions’ he’s made in reading the Norton anthologies;  unfortunately, Kirn had done little reading at all:

“With virtually no stored literary material about which to harbor critical assumptions, I relied on my gift for mimicking authority figures and playing back to them their own ideas as though they were conclusions I’d reached myself. I’d honed these skills on the speech team back in high school, and l didn’t regard them as sins against the [Princeton Student] Honor Code. Indeed, they embodied an honor code: my own “Be honored” it stated. “Or be damned.” To me, imitation and education were different words for the same thing, anyway.  What was learning but a form of borrowing? And what was intelligence but borrowing slyly?” (p.119)

Throughout the course of the book Kirn refers to himself as a fraud – sometimes proudly but more often with remorse.  But is Kirn a fraud or instead a sufferer of “Fraud Syndrome”?  Fraud Syndrome (also Impostor Syndrome) is not an official psychiatric diagnosis, but it is a topic well known and documented by psychiatrists and psychologists.  It is an intellectual condition where the intellect feels disconnected from any accomplishments or abilities.  If the intellect were a tree, then the tree would lack any knowledge of its roots and thus mistakenly think that its ability to grow upright was the result of undeserved serendipity.

Kirn’s notion that he somehow managed to beguile and finesse the system into accepting him to its highest ranks is significantly, and ironically, weakened by the quality of the writing he uses in making said point.  What follows is an example of Kirn’s average writing:

“Certain questions which grown-ups deem unanswerable begin as answers which children find unquestionable.  For example: what is Death?  To me at eight years old, death was the signal for a person’s loved ones to cry and look stricken for a while and then begin dividing up his stuff.” (p. 30)

Witty and clever turns of phrases such as these are found on every other page.  While this made for a delightful read, it served to undermine one of his main tenets.  It seems far more likely that Kirn didn’t finesse the system, but that the system managed recognized his talent despite his own inability to do so – marshalling him exactly where he ought to be: in the commensurate Princeton English Program.

If Fraud Syndrome ever does make it one day to be an official diagnosis, then Kirn should appear on the Public Service Announcement poster.  The text is rife with examples of Kirn’s detachment from his talent and feelings of being a fraud:

“My genuine tears [over the news of John Lennon’s death] flowed along with my false tears, as they did the distinction between them blurred.  I wasn’t ashamed of this.  My fraudulence, I was coming to understand, was in a way the truest thing about me.” (p. 77)

“The need to finesse my ignorance through such trickery [(using catchphrases)] — honorable trickery to my mind, but not to other minds, perhaps — left me feeling hollow and vaguely haunted.  Seeking security in numbers, I sought out the company of other frauds.” (p. 121)

“I grew to suspect that certain professors were on to us, and I wondered if they too, were fakes.” (p. 122)

“[My poems] were concerned with grander matters such as the creeping loss of “personhood” in an era of technological change. How I’d hit on this theme I wasn’t sure, but the more time I spent on it the more convinced l grew that I’d borrowed it.” (p.140)

“I confessed that my poems were all a sham and that [my] Bittman [character] was a hybrid version of Eliot’s Prufrock and Berryman’s Henry two famously beleaguered characters from the North anthologies.” (p.144)

“I felt in [my friend’s] company, as in no one else’s, that my bullshitting was a defensible activity, a circular approach to enlightenment.” (p. 168)

One of Kirn’s Princeton encounters offers a possible cause for Fraud Syndrome.  Kirn has a conversation with Julian — undoubtedly Dr. Julian Jaynes best known for his book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” – in a bar following the production of one of Kirn’s plays.  Julian explained that the human mind was actually two distinct entities, that in ancient times were:

“… virtual strangers to each other.  When a thought arose in one of them, the other one, acting as a receiver, processed the thought as a voice, an actual voice.  …  But who was this being?  …  Man had answered these questions in many ways.  He’d conceived of gods and spirits, angels and demons, trolls and fairies.  Muses.” (pps. 93-94)

When Julian asked Kirn: “did you ever feel, during the composition of your script, that someone else, not you, was in control?” Kirn replied: “Honestly, I feel that way a lot.  Down deep, in a quiet way, I feel it constantly.  And sometimes it shakes me up a little.” (p. 94)  Perhaps this is why Kirn was unable to identify with his obvious talent; it felt external to him.  While Kirn makes this point incidentally in his book, it is nonetheless a very important one.  While Kirn fails to connect with his talent due to this separation of the mind, many more do something far worse:  Many fail to express their talents at all – failing to listen to that other ‘voice’.

While Kirn fails to impress upon me that his placement at Princeton was either coincidental or accidental, he does make some well taken points about the education he received once there.  It seems that when reading in the English program, pretension superseded comprehension.

“We … concluded, before we’d read even a hundredth of it, that Western canon was “illegitimate,” a veiled expression of powerful group interests that it was our duty to subvert.  In our rush to adopt the latest attitudes and please the younger and hipper of our instructors, … we skipped straight from ignorance to revisionism, deconstructing a body of literary knowledge that we’d never constructed in the first place.” (p.121)

“To thinkers of this school, great literature was an incoherent con, and I — a born con man who knew little about great literature had every reason to agree with them. In the land of nonreadability the nonreader was king it seemed.   Long live the king.”  (p.122)

Kirn found that many of the supposed ‘greats’ they were asked to read were completely incomprehensible by students and professors alike:

“Here is a sentence (or what I took to be one because it ended with a period) from the contribution by the Frenchman Jacques Derrida, the volume’s most prestigious name. “He speaks his mother tongue as the language of the other and deprives himself of all reappropriation, all specularization in it.” On the same page I encountered windpipe-blocking “heteronomous’ and “invagination.” When I turned the page I came across – tucked in a footnote –“unreadability.”

That word I understood of course.” (p.120)

For Kirn, university was a process in learning to jockey jargon words and phrases effectively.  Phrases like ‘semiotically unstable’ (referring to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”) and words such as ‘hermeneutical’, ‘gestural’, ‘recursive’, ‘incommensurable’ were all synonyms for ‘hard’.  Kirn was extremely confused by the works he read but he realized that confusion was not something to be escaped by understanding, but instead something which could be exploited by mirroring it back at its source.

“I was a confused young opportunist trying to turn his confusion to his advantage by sucking up to scholars of confusion.  The literary works they prized — the ones best suited to their project of refining and hallowing confusion — were, quite naturally, knotty and oblique.  The poems of Wallace Stevens, for example.  My classmates and I found them maddeningly elusive, like collections of backward answers to hidden riddles, but luckily we could say “recursive” by then.  We could say “incommensurable”.”  (p.122)

Kirn was adrift in a sea of confusion but it seemed that he was managing to navigate it by drinking the sea water and rolling with the currents.  It wasn’t long before Kirn’s thirst for meaning caught up with him, just as he had become completely intellectually dehydrated, basking in the scorching sun of the top percentile.  Kirn suffered a collapse, unable to continue the charade:

“For a few weeks I was still able to write, but it was a punishing, grind, self-conscious labor. I began most of my sentences with “the.”  Then I went looking for a noun. “The book” was often the result. Next, I seemed to remember, should come a verb. “Is” is a verb. It because my favorite verb. I liked it for its open-endedness — the way it allowed for a wide range of next moves. “The book is always . . .”  “The book is thought to . . .”  “The book is green and . . .” Impermissible. Yes, a book might be a certain color, but starting an essay with the fact wasn’t what college was all about. What was it all about? It was about making statements that weren’t obvious for people who made such statements professionally. “The book is a gestural construct possessed of telos.”

There I could rest.  I’d done it.  An hour’s work.” (p.178)

Eventually Kirn recovered after undertaking a course of self guided education which he found more fulfilling.  He continued his academic career at Oxford as a recipient of the “Keasbey Prize”.  Kirn draws two broader conclusions from his experience.

The first is a ‘roll with the punches and everything will turn out alright’ sort of message.  “… I discovered the truth — if words like “truth” mean anything.  And even if they don’t perhaps.  Pause in your knowing to be known.  Quit pushing — let yourself be pulled.  Stop searching, frantic child, and be found.”  (p. 205)  This advice may bear meaning for someone like Kirn with an innate and wonderful talent.  Its relevance to the rest of us who must work at it is somewhat questionable.

The second conclusion comes out more strongly in the interviews surrounding the book, but it is mentioned briefly.    In an interview (The Colbert Report: May 19, 2009.) Kirn claims that the current meritocracy does not reward depth, but instead rewards the “ability to define ‘incipient’. “Basically people who are very good at cross word puzzles end up running the country.”  “They are able to shine in every cocktail party they attend, but when it comes to running the economy, fighting the war on terror, … not very good.”  Kirn is referring to Donald Rumsfeld and to certain Lehman Brothers board members, who are Princeton Alumni.  Given Kirn’s experiences, it is easy to imagine jargon slinging economists brandishing terms like “Collaterized Debt Obligations” and “Credit Default Swaps” using them as talking points, rather than understanding their deeper implications.  Terms like these undoubtedly are mentioned in numerous A+ Ivy League Economics theses, confounding both the authors and the readers while leading to economic ruin.

This second summation is made in the book when Kirn discusses a run in, after graduating Princeton yet before going to Oxford, with an old friend who was self taught and well read.

“We had a great deal in common, Karl said.

But we didn’t, in fact, or much less than he assumed, and I didn’t know how to tell him this. To begin with, I couldn’t quote the transcendentalists as accurately and effortlessly as he could. I couldn’t quote anyone, reliably. I’d honed other skills: for flattering those in power without appearing to, for rating artistic reputations according to academic fashions, for matching my intonations and vocabulary to the backgrounds of my listeners, for placing certain words in smirking quotation marks and rolling my eyes when someone spoke too earnestly about some “classic” or masterpiece,”       for veering left when the conventional wisdom went right and then doubling back if it looked like it was changing.

Flexibility, irony, self-consciousness, contrarianism. They’d gotten me through Princeton, they hadn’t quite kept me out of Oxford, and these, I was about to tell my friend, were the ways to get ahead now–not by memorizing old Ralph Waldo. I’d found out a lot since I’d aced the SATs, about the system, about myself and about the new class that the system had created, which I was now part of, for better or for worse. The class that runs things.” (p. 210)

AID · aig · ale · America · artist · author · cent · CHIEF · Coming · Deconstruction and Criticism · drugs · economist · Economy · God · Harvard · head · http · ILS · Impostor Syndrome · Ivy League · Jacques Derrida · John Lennon · Julian · Julian Jaynes · Karl · king · lehman brothers · logic · Martin C. Winer · Martin C. Winer June · Minnesota · MIT · OJ · Oxford · Princeton · professor · quote · Ralph Waldo · RAM · Red · Rome · Stephen Colbert · The Colbert Report · video · Wallace Stevens · Walter Kirn · Walter Kirn (Doubleday) · writing

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=394892

Louis de Branges has made a critical error… he has tried to solve the Riemann hypothesis.  The problem is not so much that the Riemann hypothesis has remained unsolved since it was proposed in 1859 but more a human problem.  When a problem of this grandeur survives for such a long time it takes on a life of its own.  It is almost like Hank Aaron beating Babe Ruth’s record;  he was more hated for his accomplishment than admired.  The Riemann hypothesis is something like this… attempts to prove it are met with more derision and hatred than curiosity and exploration.

It’s no wonder than that de Branges titles his paper:  “Apology for the Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis“.  Admittedly, he has claimed to have solved the hypothesis before and has been proven wrong.  Just the same, he has successfully proven the Bieberbach Conjecture some 20 years ago winning him much accolade.  I think as such, he’s earned the tenure to make a few flubs without being dismissed as the mathematician who cried wolf.

This points to the basic human problem in the maths which isn’t getting much press.  A proof is offered by an individual, it is accepted or shot down, the end.  I see little evidence of teamwork.  In many failed proofs, there are parts which can be reused as building blocks for other proofs.  The maths are too much, in my mind, an individualistic science with people seeking too much fame and too little truth.  I speak from experience as I myself have published several proofs of the related Twin Prime Conjecture.

Here they are:

Prime Constellations
http://members.tele2.nl/galien8/twins/twins.html
http://www.rankyouragent.com/primes/primes_simple.htm
http://www.rankyouragent.com/primes/primes.htm

The proofs were met with such skepticism that I was never able to get a valid criticism as to the merits or failings.  I was dismissed out of hand as a neophyte know nothing who couldn’t possibly be right.  So much of perception is based on vantage point.  Because the Riemann Hypothesis perceived as unsolvable, it becomes actually unsolvable due to human error of parallax.

My mistake was slightly different than de Brange’s  I made an error in offering too simple a solution.  I didn’t say that my solution was incorrect mind you, just too simple.  When a grand problem survives this long, it’s answer must be 200 pages long.  This is the case with Andrew Wiles’ solution of the epic ‘Fermat’s Final Theorem’ which most experts agree couldn’t possibly be what Fermat himself had in mind when he scribbled ‘remarkable proof’ in the margins of his notebook.  I think it is likely that even though Fermat’s Final Theorem has been proved to the satisfaction of all mathematicians, the nugget of simple beauty that Fermat had in mind is likely yet to be filled in by some future mathematician on a few short sheets of paper.

This brings me to the final point regarding math and proofs of grandeous problems.  No one will be looking for the golden nugget of simplicity in Fermat’s Final Theorem or any others.  Seeking of fame rather than truth has corrupted mathematics.  The Riemann Hypothesis is intimately tied in with Quantum Physics.  If we only seek to prove it true or false, I fear we’ll miss crucial nuggets of beauty which could elucidate our understanding of the universe.

Andrew Wiles · Case · constellation · de Branges · debranges · fermat · fermat's final theorem · flu · future mathematician · gold · Hank Aaron · html · http · king · life · Louis de Branges · mathematician · MIT · pdf · prime · prime numbers · primes · Purdue · Red · riemann · twin prime · Twin Prime Conjecture

Canadian Bill C51 purportedly proposes sweeping changes to the herbal supplement and naturopathic/homeopathic remedies market.  The following excerpted from an anti Bill C51 website, although not independently confirmed, suggests that the bill would (amongst other things):

1) Fasttrack pharmaceutical drug approval and
2) Make over 70% percent of current herbal drugs illegal.

Now, this was taken from an opposing website so all claims must then be taken with a grain of all natural sea salt.  The Government claims that your access to Vitamin C and Echinacea is safe. 

“Under Bill C-51, Canadians will continue to have access to natural health products that are safe, effective and of high quality. The Bill will not limit access to natural health products nor does it call for a change in their regulatory status (from over-the-counter to prescription)” says Health Canada spokesperson Paul Duchesne.

Source :: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080509/C51_protests_080509/20080510?hub=TopStories

From that simple quote we are forced to ask the question, who and how will products be determined to be ’safe, effective and of high quality’?  The contention seems to be over semantics and the definition of exactly which products will and will not be regulated.  Putting semantic issues aside, it looks as though the combatants are missing the more global issue and that is in addressing the manner in which the allopathic (mainstream) and alternative medicine operate.  The issue is probably more complex than first fathomed.  Both paradigms operate under different modi operandorum. 

Big pharma operates under the model of providing drugs and therapies with validated claims.  The drug’s claims and safety are established by clinical drug trials.  The benefits here should be obvious but the weaknesses of this system may not be.  The first failure of the big pharma model is that drug trials can be flawed either intentionally or just by simple lack of scope or experimental design.  Take for example the drug VIOXX which did pass clinical trials and FDA approval which was later associated with heart disease and voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturer Merck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib#Withdrawal  The second failing of the big pharma model is even more subtle in that  only patentable therapies need apply.  Take for example the research Dr. Evangelos Michelak out of the university of Alberta who has come up with a cancer treatment using the chemical DCA. http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/  This treatment has been conclusively shown to remove or eradicate all manner of cancers in test animals.  It is a hugely promising therapy with suprisingly few side effects.  One would expect this drug to be in human trial by now.  However, since DCA is not patentable, (almost as common as table salt) the drug companies have no interest.  DCA will go to human trial nonetheless, but only after Dr. Evangelos Michelak is able to scrape together enough money from other philanthropic investors.

Now let’s examine the world of home or natural remedies.  You can pick up a bottle of an herbal remedy which can make all manner of claims.  These claims need not be validated and, indeed, the only validation you’ll receive is either from the smiling face of the salesperson at your natural foods store or the recommendation of a friend or naturopatic practitioner.  However, you probably won’t be able to rely on any study and you’ll have to adopt a ‘take it and try it’ approach.  The failings of this system are two fold.  First, hearkening back to the days of the snake oil salesmen, there is the potential for you to waste your time and money on ineffective remedies.  Second, in wasting your time on these remedies, you may delay seeking appropriate medical treatment for a potentially serious condition.  The first failure – the lack of study based findings — is compelling.  The natural health product industry needs to provide better support for their claims and adhere to some standard as for quality of composition. The second failure is not as compelling as people typically resort to natural health products only after the failure or reticence of allopathic medicine.

Looking at both paradigms, there is a measure which could marry their strengths and divorce ourselves of their weaknesses.  The summary of bill C51 reads as follows:

This enactment amends the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, to strengthen the oversight of the benefits and risks of therapeutic products throughout their life cycle, to support effective compliance and enforcement actions and to enable a greater transparency and openness of the regulatory system.

Source :: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3398126&File=19

If this is indeed the goal of the Federal Government, then wouldn’t their time and efforts be better spent in implementing a system of subsidized and facilitated human trials?  A subsidized and facilitated human trials system would raise the bar for natural health food products to better support their claims.  Since the studies would be subsidized and facilitated we wouldn’t deny ourselves access to any reasonable therapy but as consumers, claims of product effectiveness and quality of composition could be properly backed by more than a friendly smile.  All therapies, herbal and pharmaceutical would be subject to the same level of testing.  This testing would be reasonably affordable for any given company.  This would satisfy the allopathic community’s demands for rigorous proof and testing while at the same time allow the allopathic community to consider previously unprofitable yet promising treatments such as DCA.

There is a petition circulating to stop bill C51.  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/StopC51  I would be willing to sign it if it could be proved it would make 70% of current natural health care products illegal.  Would I sign a petition to have the Federal Government fund and facilitate human trials of all health care products?  In a heartbeat.

Alberta · ale · alternative medicine · bill c51 · c51 · Canada · cancer · cancer treatment · cancers · cent · China · dca · Dr. Evangelos Michelak · drugs · Evangelos Michelak · fda · fed · federal government · Federal Government fund · food · Health · Health Canada · health care products · health products · heart disease · herbal medicine · homeopathic · http · king · life · Merck · MIT · natural health care products · natural health food products · natural remedies · naturopatic · oil · Paul Duchesne · pharmaceutical · pharmaceutical drug approval · quote · servlet · snake oil salesmen · spokesperson · the fed · therapeutic products · University of Alberta · vioxx · web

Stirling Fan

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/9051/msi_employees_stirling_engine_theory/index.html

I’ve posted information about Stirling Engines before:

can-stirling-engines-coupled-with-solar-power-be-the-key-to-meeting-our-energy-needs/

If you follow that link you’ll find a kit which can I used to build such an engine and video of it in operation.

What is cool about this latest application to cool a CPU is that it doesn’t require any additional energy to run.

cpu cooling · energy · html · http · solar · stirling engine · video

This week I will appear in:
http://plasticsnews.com/index.html  (Monday Nov 2, 2009)
and
http://www.goodnewstoronto.ca/ (Tuesday Nov 3, 2009)

9/11 · html · http · Red · toronto · writing · www.goodnewstoronto.ca

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080410153643.htm

This recent study shows reveals that humans do like the birds and bees when they make like the birds and bees.  That is to say, there is tremendous evidence in the animal kingdom of the exchange of sex for resources and vice versa.  Humans, it would seem, not immune to this sort of behaviour despite any influences of class or caste. 

In my study of biology, I attended a class at 8am in the dead of winter broadly titled “Animals”.  The class lacked anything wild despite its title and it was an exercise just to keep my eyes open.  Don’t get me wrong, our Prof was a nice enough guy, it’s just I don’t function at that hour.

One day though our professor Kenneth Davey took a tangent into the mating rituals of the fly family Empidae.  He showed a progression in the evolution of nuptial gifts — the process of exchanging resources for sex — across several members of the family in the following progression.

1) The male mates with the female and is eaten by the female.

2) The male brings a food gift to the female hoping that while she’s eating the gift he can do the deed and escape in a hurry.  They mate, she eats the food he brought her followed by him for dessert. 

3) The male brings a food gift wrapped in a grass wrapping.  While she busily unwraps the grass wrapping, he’s able to ‘wham bam and thank you maam’ before she manages to open the package.  He escapes and she at least is able to enjoy her food.

4) The male brings a package to the female.  As she unwraps it he, as before, completes the deed and escapes.  She finally unwraps the package only to discover that it’s empty.

I have too many comments to offer about this tale, so instead I’ll offer none.  I’d imagine your assessment of this story will be highly dependent on your perspective. 

ale · cent · empidae · evolution · flu · food · food gift · http · Kenneth Davey · king · nuptial gifts · professor · resources · sex

Capturing the voice of the customer is difficult when it comes to web visitors.  They visit, the peruse, they leave.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could allow for your visitors to speak with you in real time?

Now you can.  Simple2Chat.com has added a widget which will allow you to do exactly that. 

http://www.simple2chat.com/embed.php

has instructions on how to generate a widget for your website. 

When a visitor wishes to start a conversation s/he can click on the widget on your website:

Simple2Chat.com Widget

You are notified in a tracking conversation:

Notification in tracking conversation

You can then click on that conversation and speak with your visitor in real time.

Response to Customer

All of this is free, anonymous, and doesn’t require anyone to install any software.

Pretty simple huh?  Shouldn’t everything be this easy?

chat · http · instant chat · Internet · internet chat · king · kwout.com · php · simple2chat · Simple2Chat.com · utility · web · web 2.0 · web presence · web visitors · Web Visitors Capturing · widget · www.simple2chat.com

Being foreclosed on?  No worries if you follow the example of Jerome Daly, a lawyer and political activist of sorts, who successfully had his mortgage declared null and void. 

In order for a mortgage agreement to be legal, the bank must put up legal ‘consideration’.  That’s a fancy lawyer word for ‘money’ or some such other tangible asset.  The Federal Reserve System creates money for lending as bookkeeping entries and as such, the bank fails to provide any real consideration in the contract.  As a result, the whole thing is null and void and you can’t be foreclosed upon. 

Don’t believe me?  Read it for yourself here:

http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/CreditRiver/1968-12-09judgmentanddecree.pdf

This decision has never been overturned and Daly was able to keep his house.

bank · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · http · ILS · Jerome Daly · lawyer · lawyer and political activist · legal consideration · mortgage · Mortgage Crisis · pdf · Red · Rome · the fed · US Federal Reserve

I found a very useful tool for creating nicely formatted equations. I find MS-Word’s equation editor a little lacking when it comes to some math functions. I came across this site:
http://rogercortesi.com/eqn/index.php
which will allow you to enter a LaTeX equation and it will return the properly formatted equivalent in several convenient formats.

For example if you wanted to enter the equation for the prime twin counting function (the number of prime twins between P(n) and P(n)^2) the LaTeX would be:

\#twins[P(n)\to P(n)^2] =
[\frac{(P(1)-1)*(P(2)-1)*...*(P(n-1)-1)}{2*P(1)*P(2)*...*P(n-1)} *(P(n)^2-P(n))]- n*\log_{10}(n)*0.058652

the output would be:

Many thanks to Roger Cortesi for making this tool available.

9/11 · ale · counting · equation · equation editor · http · king · LaTex · php · prime · prime twin · prime twins · Red · Roger Cortesi · twin prime · typesetting

(left)The Knesset Menorah, Jerusalem (detail – Hillel the Elder)
(right) "My question to them is, ‘when is the right time?" Obama told a supportive crowd at Arcadia University, near Philadelphia.

Listening to Obama’s rabble rousing speech on healthcare, the most stirring passage sounded eerily similar:

"My question to them is, ‘when is the right time?" Obama told a supportive crowd at Arcadia University, near Philadelphia. "If not now, when? If not us, who?"

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/03/obama-on-health-care-if-not-now-when/1

I seemed to have heard this in Hebrew school.  Sure enough, a little digging produced:

Pirkei Avot 1:14

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?"

This quote is attributed to Hillel The Elder.

Arcadia University · healthcare · Jerusalem · Knesset · obama · Philadelphia

Roza De Shabbes is one of the most famous cantorial pieces of all time.  One of the most famous recordings was recorded by Cantor Pierre Pinchik.  The album was a single 78 with two sides.  The clip plays both sides back to back with the ‘flip’ at 4:19. 

I’ve heard a rumour which I haven’t yet substantiated (or sourced) that the second half was recorded a half tone lower because Pinchik couldn’t sustain the first key.  Regardless of the veracity of the rumour, the second half is definitely a 1/2 tone lower.  This fact shouldn’t be regarded as a disparagement on this landmark recording, rather just an interesting historical footnote.

The source of this prayer which is recited at the inception of Shabbat (Sabbath) is the mystical (Kabalistic) Zohar.  A translation with commentary follows:

THE SECRET of Sabbath: She is Sabbath.
United in the secret of one
to draw upon her the secret of one.
When Sabbath enters she is alone,
separated from the Other Side, all judgments removed from her.
Basking in the oneness of holy light,
she is crowned over and over to face the holy King.
All powers of wrath and masters of judgment flee from her
There is no power in all the worlds aside from her.
Her face shines with a light from beyond;
she is crowned below by holy people,
all of whom are crowned with new souls.
Then the beginning of prayer,
blessing her with joy, with beaming faces.

Zohar 2:135a-b (thirteenth century); see Matt, Zohar, 132, 257-58.

She is Sabbath Shekhinah is the Sabbath Queen entering the palace of time every Friday evening at sunset. As the seventh sefirah below Binah, Shekhinah is the seventh primordial day. Friday evening is the time of her union with her masculine counterpart, the sefirah of Tif’eret. The Sabbath is God’s wedding celebration.
United in the secret of one … Shekhinah and her angels of escort join together in "the secret of one" in preparation for her encounter with Tif’eret, who has joined together with the sefirot surrounding him in a corresponding "secret of one." Shekhinah and Tif’eret must each be whole before they can unite.
the Other Side Aramaic, sitra ahra, the demonic realm, threatens Shekhinah and humanity on the weekdays. Once Sabbath begins, Shekhinah is safe and provides blessing openly to the world.
she is crowned over and over to face the holy King The Sabbath is referred to as Queen in Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 119a: “Rabbi Hanina used to wrap himself in a garment, stand close to sunset as Sabbath entered, and say: ‘Come, let us go out to greet Sabbath, the Queen.’ Rabbi Yannai would put on special clothes as Sabbath entered and say: ‘Come, 0 Bride! Come, 0 Bride!’" Here in the Zohar, Shekhinah, the Sabbath Queen, prepares to meet King Tif’eret.
All powers of wrath … Once Sabbath has entered, the power of strict judgment disappears. According to Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65b, even the wicked in hell are granted rest on the Sabbath.
she is crowned below by holy people By welcoming the Bride and celebrating her arrival, human beings array her for the union with Tif’eret.
all of whom are crowned with new souls According to Rabbi Shim’on ben Laqish (Babylonian Talmud, Beitsah 16a), "The Holy One gives an extra soul to a human being on the eve of Sabbath. When Sabbath departs, it is taken away." The extra soul enables one to leave behind the turmoil of the week, to experience the joy and depth of Sabbath. Cf. Zohar 2:136b: "Every Friday evening, a being sits in the world of souls."
–Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 1997), at 80, 189-90.

Castle Books · Daniel C. Matt · king · New Jersey · Once Sabbath · Pierre Pinchik · Queen · Rabbi · Roza De Shabbes · Sabbath Shekhinah · Yannai