jims musings

My pre­vi­ous post about a few of the less-than-mainstream Olympic events sparked a wave of feed­back and sug­ges­tions.
My wife thought it would be great if, dur­ing the Track and Field relay events, the run­ners used a real baton and had to twirl it as they ran. Another par­tic­i­pant in this con­ver­sa­tion extended this idea so as to include pink and sil­ver tas­sels on the batons– how pretty that would be!
Base jump­ing, hang glid­ing, caber toss­ing, wing­suit fly­ing, street luge, park­our, darts and BASE jump­ing have been a few of the more rec­og­niz­able sports.
But… how about:

• Chess­box­ing (The think­ing person’s con­tact sport!)
• Korf­ball (I– it.… um… well, a ball is involved. And it’s Dutch.)
• Sheep tack­ling (Any game that involves chil­dren, ani­mals being dressed up and wrestling and incurs the wrath of ani­mal rights groups has surely got to be worth playing.)
• Pooh stick­ing (Are you really brave enough to click the link?)
• Camel jump­ing (And I thought this was lim­ited to fleas.)
• Splash div­ing (aka “Ger­man Arse Bombing”)
• No-chute sky­div­ing (Wow.)
• Cheese rolling (“As… you… wiiish!”)

Odd sports, all.
Which raises the ques­tion, what is the most unusual sport on the planet?
I pro­pose Wife Car­ry­ing.

I’ve been say­ing this for years now, but am only now get­ting around to post­ing this thought online.

Mankind has reached the pin­na­cle of soci­ety. Actu­ally, we prob­a­bly reached it around 1980, give or take a decade.
It is this: Air con­di­tion­ing, tele­vi­sion and beer. These three things keep Amer­i­cans (and other west­ern cul­tures) sedate and com­pla­cent. Take one away, and every­thing will come unglued.
“Why should I go out there and protest? It’s much more com­fort­able here, in my Lazy Boy.” These three com­forts rep­re­sent the pin­na­cle of soci­ety. After obtain­ing these lux­u­ries– really, what is there to com­plain about?
Think about it. Where do we see mass protests? Coun­tries where this magic recipe is incom­plete. In west­ern coun­tries, in the rare rally or demon­stra­tion, who is involved? Largely the poor, or peo­ple who eschew the ben­e­fits of mod­ern life. (Yeah, you gra­nola I-don’t-eat-it-if-it-casts-a-shadow peo­ple, I’m talk­ing about you.) Lets call these ABC — Air con­di­tion­ing, Beer and Cable TV. There are vari­a­tions, of course, but it cap­tures the essen­tials.
The dan­ger is, gov­ern­ments are aware of this fact, and will exploit it. This sounds evil, but the iron law will require it. Gov­ern­ment will expand and increase its pow­ers, and it will do so along the path of least resis­tance. Gov­ern­ments have already learned they can do almost any­thing, so long as ABC is pre­served.
Ask your­self this ques­tion: what are you will­ing to let peo­ple get away with, if they leave your ABC alone?

In a pre­vi­ous post, I dis­cussed how deficit spend­ing causes infla­tion. I’d like to take a moment now to talk about money itself. Get your popcorn.

Remem­ber, the paper dol­lar is a Fed­eral Reserve Note. This is not the same as a dol­lar. The descrip­tion of the Fed­eral Reserve Note from the U.S. Trea­sury web­site is revealing:

Fed­eral Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, sil­ver or any other com­mod­ity, and receive no back­ing by any­thing. This has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for them­selves, but for what they will buy. In another sense, because they are legal ten­der, Fed­eral Reserve notes are “backed” by all the goods and ser­vices in the economy.

In other words, the value of the dol­lar is rep­re­sented by the econ­omy of the United States. More specif­i­cally, by the tax­ing author­ity of the United States Gov­ern­ment– the abil­ity of the gov­ern­ment to pay its debts and oblig­a­tions. Viewed another way, a Fed­eral Reserve Note is equiv­a­lent to a share of stock in a cor­po­ra­tion. Just as shares of stock can rise and fall in value, the value of the dol­lar can change, too.

Deficit spend­ing is sim­i­lar in effect to that of a cor­po­ra­tion issu­ing more shares. The over­all value of the stock decreases, because the num­ber of shares has increased but the value of the com­pany– its rev­enues– has not changed. How­ever, if that same com­pany later increases its rev­enues, or if shares of stock are taken out of cir­cu­la­tion, the value of each share of stock will increase. The value of the dol­lar can change in a sim­i­lar manner.

1933, by the way, is when the United States made indi­vid­ual own­er­ship of gold ille­gal and began to move away from a gold-backed cur­rency. Alan Greenspan once said this about the gold standard:

…under the gold stan­dard, a free bank­ing sys­tem stands as the pro­tec­tor of an economy’s sta­bil­ity and bal­anced growth… The aban­don­ment of the gold stan­dard made it pos­si­ble for the wel­fare sta­tists to use the bank­ing sys­tem as a means to an unlim­ited expan­sion of credit… In the absence of the gold stan­dard, there is no way to pro­tect sav­ings from con­fis­ca­tion through inflation.

There is one other impor­tant item. Dur­ing the course of the oil shocks of the 1970’s, Pres­i­dent Nixon man­aged to con­vince Saudi Ara­bia and Iran (and thus OPEC) to accept only U.S. dol­lars as pay­ment for oil. This link between oil and the dol­lar is very impor­tant today. The dol­lar is now essen­tially backed by oil, rather than gold. Because of this, a weak dol­lar means expen­sive oil, and sec­ond, the U.S. must main­tain good rela­tions with Saudi Ara­bia so that Saudi and OPEC con­tinue their dol­lar pol­icy. If OPEC were to accept other cur­ren­cies, the dol­lar would loose much of its value. (In 2007, Iran attacked the U.S. dol­lar by accept­ing other currencies.)

Okay. Now comes the hard part– decid­ing on a mon­e­tary pol­icy.
I’ve shown that deficit spend­ing causes infla­tion. I’ve talked about how the value of the dol­lar changes in the mar­ket­place, and how to drive the value up or down. Mon­e­tary pol­icy is choos­ing a strong dol­lar or a weak dol­lar policy.

If you want cheap imports, cheap oil, cheap for­eign vaca­tions, decreas­ing U.S. exports and man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs to flow out of the United States, you want a strong dol­lar. If you want expen­sive imports, expen­sive oil, expen­sive for­eign vaca­tions, domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs and increas­ing U.S. exports, you want a weak dollar.

Next essay: Mon­e­tary pol­icy. Stay tuned!

A few of the events at 2008 Olympic games in Bei­jing have caught my eye, namely: Bad­minton, BMX Rac­ing (yes, with motor­cy­cles), Hand­ball, Rhyth­mic Gym­nas­tics and Tram­po­line. Note­wor­thy, base­ball and soft­ball make their last show­ing in Bei­jing.
Now, I enjoy the Olympic games, and I admire the incred­i­ble ath­leti­cism of the com­peti­tors, but some of these– are they really Olympic events? My per­sonal opin­ion was that the Olympics were an ath­letic com­pe­ti­tion, mano y mano, as it were. I’m not sure BMX rac­ing or Tram­po­line fit in with my view.
So… fine. What else can we do at the Olympics? Mat­tress jump­ing? Team C++ cod­ing? Run­ning with Scis­sors? Blind­folded Traf­fic Dodg­ing? (Los Ange­les has a num­ber of venues avail­able right now for train­ing…) How about Team Syn­chro­nized Blind­folded Mat­tress Jump­ing with Scis­sors? Good stuff, there! Boy, if we could only throw in chain­saw jug­gling and flam­ing hoops, we’d have it for sure. I’d pay to watch that event.

An unpaid announce­ment. I haven’t gone corporate.

About a month ago, when climb­ing Mt. Olym­pus, I lost one of my favorite pieces of out­side gear– the Garmin 101. The Garmin 101 is a wrist-worn GPS unit, opti­mized for run­ning. I got it a a gift, and was sur­prised at how much I liked it. Until that point, I had thought of GPS units as play­things for peo­ple who failed Cub Scouts.

Sadly, at the sum­mit of Mt. Olym­pus, the Garmin took a header. As I was pulling on my pack, slid­ing my left arm through the shoul­der loop, the Garmin caught on the strap, held for a moment against the strain, and then popped off the wrist band. It sailed high into the air… and over the cliff. Gone.

It only took a few weeks for me real­ize that I missed the Garmin. I liked hav­ing it report and record my dis­tances, speeds and so forth. It was a use­ful piece of equip­ment that I had come to trust. I had taken it on marathons, hikes and many a morn­ing run. It had become a piece of equip­ment to Don’t Leave Home Without.

So I recently pur­chased the Garmin 205. This is a newer gen­er­a­tion, and is much faster at acquir­ing and hold­ing satel­lite lock. It’s got a more com­fort­able form fac­tor, and it does more stuff. It has built-in modes for bik­ing and hik­ing, in addi­tion to run­ning. Bet­ter yet, it’s got a lower pro­file, and thus less likely to snag on ran­dom things like back­pack straps. I’ve already come to like the 205 more than the 101. Recommended.

From 1862 (the Civil War) to 1973, the United States had some form of draft for mil­i­tary ser­vice.
Just for review, in that 90 year period the United States fought:

• The Civil War (1861–1865)
• The Spanish-American war (1898, “Remem­ber the Maine!”)
• World War I (1914–1918, though the U.S. didn’t really get involved until 1917)
• World War II (1939–1945, though the U.S. again was late to the party but ended things with a bang)
• Korean War (1950–1953)
• Viet­nam (1960–1975, tak­ing over from the French)

Mil­lions of peo­ple, mostly young men, were inducted into mil­i­tary ser­vice through the draft. Dur­ing World War II, 200,000 per month were drafted. Ulti­mately, twelve per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion served in the mil­i­tary dur­ing World War II (16 mil­lion from a total pop­u­la­tion of 130 mil­lion). Pres­i­dent Nixon dis­con­tin­ued the draft, with con­scrip­tion ulti­mately end­ing in 1973.

I don’t intend a his­tory les­son, but it is impor­tant to know what has gone before so I can make my point.

This long period of com­pul­sory ser­vice, with mil­lions serv­ing, forced Amer­i­cans to expe­ri­ence each other. Over the decades, an Amer­i­can con­scious­ness was forged. Amer­i­cans came to know one another– the farmer in Kansas had an idea of what New York was like, because he had known a buddy or two from New York. A dock worker in Seat­tle knew some­thing of life in Florida, because his CO was now a store keeper in Miami. Mil­i­tary ser­vice had a way of mak­ing peo­ple get to know one another.

Amer­i­cans were a diverse group of peo­ple in the 1950’s, but there were cer­tain things that were sim­ply just under­stood. Vic­tory in the Cold War would have been unlikely with­out this shared, Amer­i­can, expe­ri­ence. Every­body knew the Rus­sians were scary.

Now, with the draft ended, there is no Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence. The clos­est we have today is the Col­lege Expe­ri­ence, but this is very dif­fer­ent. Despite their attempts at diver­sity, uni­ver­si­ties will attract cer­tain types of peo­ple. Har­vard will attract not only the very sharp minds, but the very sharp minds of a cer­tain social per­sua­sion. The same with Cal­Tech and MIT, Notre Dame, Bay­lor or BYU. The mil­i­tary itself has become a vol­un­teer ser­vice, attract­ing those that believe mil­i­tary ser­vice is impor­tant. Since 1973 the Amer­i­can con­scious­ness, the men­tal pic­ture a given indi­vid­ual has of the needs and wants of the coun­try as a whole, has been slowly erod­ing away.

The out­come is pre­dictable. Those that do not go to col­lege will find them­selves in the lower income groups, dis­cour­aged at being shut out of the Amer­i­can Dream (I’m being very suc­cinct, I know). Those that go to col­lege will have years of expe­ri­ence with peo­ple like them­selves– and end up mis­tak­enly believ­ing that all Amer­i­cans share per­spec­tives and beliefs sim­i­lar to their own. Polar­iza­tion of belief, and decreased will­ing­ness to under­stand other per­spec­tives, will become the sta­tus quo.

As fea­tured in many films involv­ing World War II, there was always the guy from Brook­lyn. But what hap­pens to New York when the day comes that nobody gets to know that guy? Do New York­ers then become a peo­ple dis­tant from Los Ange­lenos? More likely, assisted by the Inter­net, we will see an increas­ing social frag­men­ta­tion not by region but by intel­lec­tual bent.

What will the future Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence be? I wel­come comments.

A few days ago, I drove up to Alta in Lit­tle Cot­ton­wood Canyon. My inten­tion was to take some pic­tures, like this one.
I know, after look­ing at that photo, it seems rather pre­ten­tious of me, think­ing I can do some­thing that good… but still, a man should have goals.
Alta is my pre­ferred ski resort. I love it, not the least because board­ers are not allowed. I’ve been there many times, and I knew where I wanted to take my shots.
After park­ing my car– far down from where I should have been, it turns out– and hik­ing my way across the now-grassy ski runs, I finally saw my cho­sen place. I took a num­ber of pho­tos as I made my way up. Saw lots of deer, and found myself sad that I was about a week late for most of the flow­ers.
Sud­denly, twi­light was upon me. Alpen­glow set­tled upon the moun­tains, and I was not where I wanted to be. I ran for it– straight up the boulder-strewn moun­tain­side, rather than tak­ing the longer (but safer) trail.
Halfway up– that is to say, right in the mid­dle of the boul­der field– the rock beneath my right foot rolled away as I pushed off. I went fly­ing, cam­era in hand.
My expen­sive, unpro­tected cam­era in hand.
I reacted with­out think­ing. My right arm swung the cam­era back and away from the rapidly approach­ing gran­ite rocks. At the last moment, I real­ized I should do some­thing about my face, so my left hand came back and cov­ered my face.
I hit the rocks. No time to “tuck and roll”, my friends.

There is some­thing you should know about this gran­ite. Tech­ni­cally, it is quartz mon­zonite, not gran­ite. Quartz mon­zonite has a lower pro­por­tion of quartz than true gran­ite. Mean­ing, there is pro­por­tion­ally more feldspar in it. Feldspar crys­tals, with­out get­ting to pedan­tic, cleave in ways which cre­ate sharp points and edges. In layman’s terms, the bro­ken, frac­tured rocks which greeted my plum­met­ing body were nat­ural cheese graters.

My left arm hit first, directly trans­fer­ring energy from my elbow into my ribs. Things inside my body popped and snapped.
My left leg smashed into a pointy (par­don the tech­ni­cal term) rock. In ret­ro­spect, I believe my left leg was still in motion, swing­ing for­ward to com­pen­sate for the rad­i­cal rear­ward accel­er­a­tion of my right leg. The rest of me hit many other sharp pro­tru­sions. My face some­how missed every­thing; my head sim­ply dropped into a space between some rocks– not that this made my neck happy. The wind was knocked out of me, and my chest prob­a­bly suf­fered a seri­ous CPR-like com­pres­sion.
Dam­age assess­ments flowed into my brain. My left leg hurt so badly I was sure it was bro­ken. I laid on the rocks in pain, try­ing to breathe and assessed my situation:

• pos­si­ble bro­ken leg
• two or more bro­ken ribs
• stuck in the mid­dle of a large, sloped boul­der field
• quickly get­ting dark
• wear­ing shorts and the tem­per­a­ture is dropping
• no flash­light
• is that a wolf howling?

Obvi­ously I was con­cerned, but my cam­era was okay!
Things finally took a turn for the bet­ter. The pain sub­sided. I man­aged to turn over and sit up– no mean feat– and inspect my leg. It was bruised, lac­er­ated and bleed­ing, but not bro­ken. I maneu­vered my way back down to the trail, and thence to a dirt road (where I tried to hitch­hike with some pass­ing trucks, but was ignored) and finally to my car.
I real­ized, as I set­tled into my car, that I had instinc­tively Saved The Cam­era. No thought for the body– Must Save The Cam­era!

I must be a photographer!

And finally, a few pics from the evening– all hand-held HDR: