First Blog

Peering Through the Corona Looking Glass The coronavirus will catalyze changes in society. It will cause future suspicion, caution, and fear of contagion. (We do not yet know if there are carriers of this disease. Compare Typhoid Mary.) There is more, mostly about life-style and government operations. The use of masks and gowns will become widespread, at least for a while. The elderly will be more careful; nursing homes will require medical tests prior to admission.   Hospital will require tests as well, with new patients possibly quarantined on their day of admission.   These provisions you would expect.   There are more, and they apply to all. Many students, now forced to stay at home to study, may never return, preferring another career direction for their lives. New employees will be given thorough medical exams. Many companies will discover that many of their functions are better served by workers at home, thus saving office costs. Supervision issues will be solved.

Nowadays we hear a lot about whether the COVID-19 is an actual BLACK SWAN event.   This means the Coronavirus is actually and totally unexpected, novel, and unpredictable. ( Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2010) [2007].  The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable  (2nd ed.). London: Penguin.  ISBN   978-0-14103459-1 . ) In fact, every year we have a devastating virus attack, the flu.   It usually claims tens of thousands of lives. This year is no different. Yet, all we are told to get a flu shot.   That’s it! This year we have COVID-19, a rather contagious virus not well understood.   It seems to claim more lives of the aged than for younger citizens. It’s scary.   It became more scary when China basically shut down an entire province of multiple millions.   People were dying all over the place. But it is not too scary because we’ve had similar deadly viruses attack us in past years.   (SARS, MERS, etc) This makes our current virus as a surprise but not unexpected.   Another

FUTURE SPEAK “I can write but I can’t read.” Who could ever say that?   In fact, much of what you read today is generated by such entities.     Huh? You need a couple of active, commercially available products in wide application today.   Both are a part of NLP – Natural Language Processing.   The first is NLG – Natural Language Generation.   This is an outflow from AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can generate text from data (with templates and bias if you want). It is almost undetectable as machine generated, makes sense, and can be generated at the rate of thousands of pages per second.   It is used by news organizations, corporations, Investment firms, accounting firms, and the like.   It can be and probably is used by political parties to generate manifold texts for wide distribution.   Input is data, headline texts, and articles. It is nearly grammatically perfect. NLU – Natural Language Understanding.   Also, it is an application of AI. You Alexa uses this alr

A few weeks ago the keywords in society were well known.   Among them were, organic, green, carbon footprint, worker, shareholder value, new capitalism, social justice, healthcare, impeachment, big data, electric cars, and global.  The new keywords have changed to healthcare, quarantine, sequester, infection, risk, pandemic, survival, vulnerability, lock down, separation, work-at-home, coronavirus, school closures, work-place closures, isolation, and more. In just a month, the axis of the world has tilted from the direction of selective prosperity to a direction of possible depression and decline. Adjustment is difficult. Reconciliation is difficult. Acceptance is nearly impossible.

You may think billionaires have a natural advantage in the investment business. They do. They are offered deals never available to you and me.   But that’s not all. Case-in-point. Consider Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world.   He is known for taking over companies by buying a controlling share of their stock.   He did it again this year.   He privately bought about 20 million shares of Krogers for about $25+/share.   This expense cost him about $450,000,000.   So what happened?   The shares, in the past three months have risen about 16% to $33/share, implying his investment has already accrued at least $70,000,000.   In addition, he gains $40,000,000 in dividends.    That is a considerable increase (more than 20%) on his original investment - in just a few months.   But why did the stock go up so much?   Because he announced that he bought the stock. That meant thousands of others piled on hoping to cash in on whatever Buffett was thinking, driving the share pri

“There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.” ― Samuel Johnson If you recall this quote, it may be from the 1946 Sherlock Holmes movie, “Dressed to Kill” starring Basil Rathbone.   It does make you think, but it also gives you hope. It gives hope we can solve anything we come across.   It gives hope we can ultimately answer every question – though some may take more time than others. Unfortunately, Dr. Johnson was wrong.  The problem here is that from the work of mathematicians, particularly Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), we see there are true propositions that cannot be proved, and can never be proved, true. Many have already been discovered.   It seems almost paradoxical that we can prove them unprovable, but cannot not prove them.   The implication is that problem can be set and then found can never be proved. Such problems are beyond unknown unknowns, they are undecidable.   In other language, we can with a slight linguistic stretc

Biggest Existential Threats .   Every day our leaders warn us, scare us, and threaten us about existential threats.   These hint at caution: “Do something now or we will cease to exist.”    What are they? For politicians: anything that will scare you into voting for them.   For scientists: anything they believe may be risky. For religions: anything disabusing the scriptures. For the people: anything they believe to be dangerous in at the moment.   There is much theory involved, projections into many decades ahead, life-style changes, political expediency, and more. Politicians love these things as they generate huge campaign war chests.   Here’s the shortlist: Climate change, Pandemics, Artificial Intelligence, Drones, War, and Black Swans. Climate change – includes global warming, changing animal habitats, enlarged deserts, increased carbon dioxide, eventual degradation of livable area, an increase of disease, rising temperatures, arctic melting, etc. Pandemics – usually hig

For general happiness, research shows that regular, or even occasional, exercise is more important than money*.  Works for me. The Yin and Yang of our lives is the conflict between chaos and order**. Which dominates your life? Today is National Hug Day. Hug somebody! For politicians, now mostly semi-literate, talking points is the preferred literary form. Just listen to political campaigns - all of them. Do you have a favorite President?  And why?*** * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/well/move/even-a-little-exercise-might-make-us-happier.html ** Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos  (A great book) The (symbolic) rules are 1.     Stand up straight with your shoulders back 2.     Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping 3.     Make friends with people who want the best for you 4.     Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today 5.     Do not let your children do anything that makes you dis

Here’s what you’ve been waiting for.  Real fake meat or fake real meat!  This is not meat faked by vegetable proteins, like we see everywhere now.  This is actual meat, grown from biological meat cells. These cells can be obtained by animal biopsy’s or from animals destined for slaughter.  It is grown in tanks with life-giving nutrients. So far, chicken, beef, and pork versions have been grown. First class animal protein from the lab. The company is Memphis Meats. Big investors include Branson, and Gates (yes, that Gates). They see the future and they think money. As well, many big-time meat companies such as Tyson have invested. Consider the problems this will create?   Such will require a new definition of kosher, or a challenge to the “vegan” concept.  It could possibly deliver high quality protein to countries where quality protein is difficult and expensive to obtain.  Imagine China, the world’s largest pork consumer with their favorite and tasty protein produced in a factor

All cruise ships have the same common properties of affluent high population states, meaning unlimited eating, luxuries aplenty, laundry services, entertainment, ports of call for shopping and touring, lounging, shows, Internet, more eating, and on and on. An idyllic life is on board, and the prices range from very high down to high.   You pay the fare to get to the port of entry.   Want to go around the world?   Then you spend all your dough. (You know lifetime cruise ships have been proposed and designed where you buy-in for a life-time residence.)   A beautiful world it is.   No work, no effort, all comfort, and leisure to the max.    This is the promise of the cruise line and mostly the promise of world globalism . We will all prosper on our global ship of the line, where we save the planet, we enjoy luxuries together, we manufacture everything needed, and all are happy onboard – forever. What could go wrong? Just to note, according to quora.com, in 2016 there were 1.5

In the olden days, like only twenty years ago, there was organic chemistry - the study of the chemistry of living organisms.   Biology was the quintessential organic science.   These days, the term “organic” is applied to almost everything.   We have ·        Organic crops – promised vegetables grown with only approved pesticides and fertilizers, and “certified.” ·        Organic growth in business – meaning a business is grown from within as a dynamical organizational process; mergers and acquisitions are considered inorganic. ·        Organic organization – referring to a flexible management style readily adaptable to changes, as opposed to the mechanistic , or top-down management system. ·        Organic military – often meaning a n  organic  (military) unit that is a permanent part of a larger unit with a specialized capability to that parent unit. ·        Organic education – basically meaning that children are born to learn and they want to learn, and educators must f