Morning Remembrance

A titan of the global pyramid scheme, economist Milton Friedman, collapsed and expired today. As a legacy he left behind the quite effective witholding tax, something that his wife chided him to no end.

Rest in peace Milton Friedman, big government's best friend.

No one should miss the person that Greg Palast called a "malevolent, dwarfish gnome".

Update: Some TCS dude complimented on Friedman on his competitive tennis game, of all things. Why that has relevance to economic theories -- save for his drive to win -- I can't say. Much like Don Rumsfeld, who has gotten accolades for his squash game, people can't say much about their good deeds and so play up the sports angle. Figures.

Up-Update-date: And this post goes way over the top.

Milton Friedman dignified a simplistic vision of economics, a vision so simplistic it could not but appeal to the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Thus began the popularization of the terms of extreme capitalism and the private ownership fetish.

Scaling ideas

An intriguing article on the origin of capacitance scaling limitations showed up in EE Times recently. In what seems almost an obvious and definitely late-arriving finding, a research team at UCSB claim that capacitance dielectric scaling fails at small thicknesses due to depolarizing of the interface layers. This happens at a scaling where it becomes a significant fraction of the dielectric layer itself. Although ostensibly applicable to microelectronics, the significance may find its way into the manufacture of compact energy storage caps. The caveat: we need lots of expensive gold and platinum electrode material whose high electron mobility counteracts the depolarizing effects.

(standard disclaimer: don't trust too much of the stuff written in trade journals like EE Times, especially in regards to explaining the fundamental physics)

A first?

I heard congressman-elect Jerry McNerney on Air America radio the other day, and host David Bender stated that the US has elected its first Mathematics PhD congressman. (Boehlert and Ehlers have physics degrees). McNerney has used his math education to good effect, running a wind energy company recently. Out of curiosity, I looked up his Phd Thesis at University of New Mexico, A (1,1) tensor generalization of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. A somewhat obscure topic, but it appears to have at least some applicability to 3D medical imaging.

But above all, we have begun to rid ourselves of the dread Pombo affliction. Mathematically eliminated but still squirming, he can still do some damage evidently.

Maybe he (Pombo) will also try to get Arctic drilling and some of his other bills through, in a last-minute, "Hail Mary" assault on the environment.

UK Oil Production

TOD/UK posted that UK Oil Production Lowest For 28 Years

Take a look at the following graph and you can see the trend:


The UK double humped peak has officially ended.

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On the plus side, Air America Radio did a great job reporting on the election tonight. Opposition party reporter/loyalist Lawton Smalls finally broke down over the airwaves. And most of the remaining pond scum on this side of the puddle has dried up. I feel happy for all the bloggers and radio hosts who have pushed for progressive candidates the past few years. We should finally see some progressive energy bills coming out of congress the next few years.

Odd lie

Today, one of the local radio shows (Captain Ed and Mitch) asked congressional candidate Michele Bachmann (R) how she has learned to handle attack ads so well. She responded by saying that she learned to fight back because she had 3 brothers and no sisters growing up. But then I recalled reading that her Brady Bunch-style family had 9 children among them, including at least one step-sister, while she attended high school. It took me a nanosecond to put 2 and 2 together to figure out why she lied on this statement. She then ended the interview with a thought that filled me with pride:

"You have the smartest listeners."

Considering that Bachmann positions herself as a morality/family-first candidate, her lying on such a basic personal fact ranks as one of the most hypocritical statements I have heard. This only further confirms what Chris Hedges documents as a severely twisted view of inclusiveness in 'minionists due to an extreme fundamentalist belief system.

According to the article, Bachmann apparently also has only a narrow grasp on issues outside of the so-called "moral" ones she supports. On the other hand, the radio hosts comically attacked the Lt. Governor candidate of Minnesota, Judi Dutcher (D), for not knowing the term "E85". I find this funny because these bloggers cum radio hosts rarely if ever discuss issues related to energy alternatives, whereas the Democrats go to lunch on this subject matter. I classify this tactic as a case of projection and inoculation to prevent voters from understanding their own vacuousness on these issues.

If you vote against hypocrisy, can detect psychological framing tactics, and strive to find a level accountability, you can't go wrong in choosing the right candidate.

Update: The station replayed the radio program so I snagged the audio to YouTube:

Stupor

I used to routinely listen to Limbaugh years ago during lunch breaks (for the hatebuzz) and then one day I went cold turkey. Kevin Drum indicates that he may have snapped out of a stupor than has gone on longer than my ongoing dittohead detoxification.

Bush: Give me a second here, Rush, because I want to share something with you. I am deeply concerned about a country, the United States, leaving the Middle East. I am worried that rival forms of extremists will battle for power, obviously creating incredible damage if they do so; that they will topple modern governments, that they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West. People say, "What do you mean by that?" I say, "If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.

Rush called this "extremely visionary." It's certainly a bracing call to arms for our troops overseas, isn't it?

Critical Ass

I saw this stunt in a wilderness survival movie once.

Once a month, cyclists gather at Balboa Park and ride around San Diego to promote bicycle-powered transportation. Critical Mass is held in dozens of cities around the country, and when it’s large enough—when it reaches a critical mass—the group often blocks the road and ignores traffic rules in order to assert bicycle independence.

Last Friday, someone decided to express his displeasure with the two-wheeler slowdown. The rage occurred on Broadway near the Gaslamp Quarter.

"These two guys in a black Mercedes were talking shit out the window, wouldn’t turn off the road," said one rider, Jody Polk. "They got surrounded by bicycles, making threats out the window. There was some egging on on both sides."

The banter apparently got serious, because, according to witnesses, the two guys jumped out of the car, possibly ready for a fight. But Polk suspects the pair changed their strategy when they turned and saw 100 or so riders coming down Broadway toward them. That was when one of them pulled "a large pistol" and fired it into the air before getting back into the car and speeding off.