WeeklyMusings

Please help spread the word

2010-02-10T07:19:00.001-08:00

Friends,

As many of you know I have been working with a classmate from Bonner (high school) to launch a company that facilitates secure mobile phone money transfers. The technology, patents, legal certifications, banking approvals, etc. have taken us two years. However, we are now active and approved in several states including Pennsylvania, California, and Massachusetts, with more states on the way. The phone companies have issued us a five-digit code "56624" after certifying our processes, data encryption, and security.

So, I can say...

Finally mobile payments have come to the US. Now you can conveniently and securely send and receive (XIP) money using your cell phone.

To enable your phone

Text “connect 230”

To 56624

Once your phone is XIPWIRE enabled you will receive an ID and PIN and then can load your mobile phone wallet with money from any credit card or checking account.

There is no cost to enable your phone. The text message above does not obligate you or cost you anything. It merely enables your phone to XIP payments using XIPWIRE technology.

It may not be obvious at first when you might ever use this technology, however here are a few examples.

Paying a tutor. Paying the plumber. Sending money to a child at college. Receiving payment for your small business from a customer. Authorizing petty cash for employees. Paying for girl scout cookies. Receiving money from friends for theater tickets. Paying for a cab.

We are finished with the first stage and are now trying to build the network or enabled users as quickly as possible. The more people and businesses using XIPWIRE for mobile payments, the more valuable the service is to our customers.

So, I am asking you to please send the text described above form your cell phone and then forward this email to as many people as you can. Our venture capitalists want to see us grow to 10,000 users by the end of the month!

Please help spread the word.

Thank you,

Joe Sweeney

PS We are trying to activate as many phones as possible this month. So, please forward this email. If you have questions, you may email me at Joe@XIPWIRE.oom

XIPWIRE is Live!

2010-01-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

My good friend, Sharif, and I have launched our new venture - XIPWIRE. It allows person-to-person money transfers via cell phones. Please check out the link and give it a try. I think you'll like it. No more writing checks to friends, just xip it to them. No more handing over cash to a contractor or getting frustrated that they don't take credit cards, just xip it.

Secure, easy, and so convenient. Please give us a try.

Thanks,
Joe

XIPWIRE

Weekly Musings© - “If I were China in 2010"

2010-01-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

Weekly Musings – If I were China in 2010

J. Sweeney
1/1/10
I just finished Dr. Paul Krugman’s editorial, “Chinese New Year”. Here is the link Chinese New Year . Dr. Krugman continues the party line that the US is only in danger of losing jobs due to mercantilist behavior in other countries. But, by now most of us realize something else is wrong.

Pennsylvania has a nasty bill coming due in 2012. The government has not been fully funding the retirement pensions of state employees and the tab will add approximately $1,300 per household to state taxes starting that year. Our commonwealth is heading for a fiscal awakening but some are pretending that cheap money will still be available and that we’ll just add to the amount we are borrowing.

The Federal Government is making the same mistake with money spent on non-critical defense, TSA, new health insurance benefits, etc. The misguided thinking is that we will continue to borrow money and then print money to pay off the debt.

Either this year, or in the next few, the US dollar is going to be dropped as the reserve currency of the world. Other countries do not want to lend money to someone that then repays with newly printed dollars created out of thin air. Those countries don’t want to sell their goods for $60 and then a few months later receive payment with similarly devalued currency.

“Too bad, we’re the US, we’re number 1, what can they do about it?”

Here’s what I would do if I were China in 2010. I would use my $2 Trillion reserves of US currency to buy mines, oil fields, timber rights, etc. At the same time I would encourage my people to begin holding their savings in silver, not gold as that is experiencing a bubble. Finally I would go to Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, Germany, France, India, and Japan and talk about creating a new unit of account for foreign transactions.

The new unit of account would either be IMF special drawing rights or some more cleverly named unit like the BRIC. It would be based on a basket of goods including for example a barrel of oil, bar of silver, ton of rice, and a 60-year old oak tree.

Here’s how it currently works. The US borrows money say $1000 with a 5% coupon. Each year the government pays $50 dollars (5% of 1,000) and at the end of the loan perhaps 20 years it pays back the $1000. China lends the money by buying bonds and is repaid with dollars worth less due to inflation and our relentless printing.

Here’s how it would work. The US borrows $1000 at 5% or a $50 coupon. Let’s say for ease of computation that is equivalent to 2 BRICS. At the end of the first year instead of paying $50, we would need to spend however many dollars it took to buy 2 BRICS and pay that number of dollars (perhaps $60 now). If the US tried to monetize the debt (by printing money), like it is doing now, it would take even more dollars to buy the 2 BRICS as the newly printed money decreased the value of all dollars.

Before you think that this is ridiculous, let me point out that China is buying up mines in Afghanistan, oil fields in the Middle East, and soon will be buying timberland in Canada. They are publicly calling for their people to buy silver (not gold). Lastly, they have been pushing in the UN for a new unit of account and reserve currency based on IMF special drawing rights or some basket of goods or currencies.

Every other country on the planet is negatively impacted by our ability to print money to cover our debt and buy goods cheaply. In 1971 when Nixon took us off the gold standard he freed our government to spend money it did not collect in taxes and hide that fact by printing more dollars. The world accepted the arrangement because the US was so dominant.

It is time to return to the prudent behavior of a Republic and give up the illusion of Empire. We simply can’t afford to wait until our currency is dropped to put our house in order.

Either we fix this before the change or we fall into a true financial crisis. If you think this last one was bad, imagine going through it without the power to simply print money to cover the new debt.

Hopefully 2010 won’t be the year of our collapse. But if I were China…

Weekly Musings© - “Snow Down”

2009-12-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

Weekly Musings© - “Snow Down”

J. Sweeney
December 20, 2009

It’s about time to slow down. Thank goodness for the snow and nature’s strong suggestion to stay in for a day. Now the list lays waiting but a quick pause to jot down some thoughts before they fade away like so many other recent ones. Here are a few recent musings that may receive longer treatment when the world turns more slowly. For now I’ll make like a molecule and slow down with the cold.

A few weeks ago, no, perhaps a few months now, I was sitting with a friend when I noticed the tree outside of my window at work. It hit me like the proverbial bolt; lightening.

As water molecules rub against one another in the atmosphere they create a static electric charge. The clouds begin to build a voltage differential with negative on the bottom of the clouds and positive on the top. The negative charge at the bottom begins to draw positive charge in the Earth toward it. Eventually the charge jumps up from the Earth and down from the cloud, lightening.

As I sat there looking at the naked tree it occurred to me that a similar albeit slower process was at work. Charge in the form of minerals, water, and nutrients build up in the soil. The Sun reaches out with its radiation and with a simple spark of DNA, the seed, lightening in the form of a tree.

Look at the bare tree outside your window, as it reaches to the sky and imagine yourself aging and moving slowly enough to witness it as a flash in the vast expanse of time. It reaches up into the sky and down into the soil briefly and then with dying falls apart, the pattern collapses.

It’s beautiful to think that a walk in the wood is really a walk through a slow motion lightening storm.

Awesome.

On an entirely different topic I was driving home on Thanksgiving and passing the same shopping center for the fourth time that day when it occurred to me that it might be fun to see only the copper.

Imagine a shopping center but all that you can see is the wiring, transformers, circuits, the internals of cash registers, just the copper in the wires.

Can you see the beautiful structure, the wire frame of the whole building, perhaps even the parking lot full of copper coils from the inside of cars?

Now, imagine an alien race watching Earth for millennia thru a telescope. Imagine that they could only see copper. For millions of years the copper sat sedately below the surface slowly pushed up toward the crust by heavier nickel heading to the core. Then a few thousand years ago copper starting coming together into little clumps barely visible thru that distant telescope. The Aliens see axe heads, spear tips, bowls, cups, and eventually armor, all shaped by unseen life. (Remember they only see the copper).

Suddenly about two hundred years ago copper begins rapidly coming to the surface and then nearly instantly it spins out across the continents. Copper threads connecting points all over the planet. Huge elegant cobwebs of copper threads forming everywhere and giving off heat and light, electro magnetic radiation emits and travels out to the stars. What a spectacle to behold. Lucky aliens.

Just a few thoughts that today’s snow permitted time to transcribe…

Some day soon the research at MIT and IBM currently underway will allow us to project thoughts from one mind to another. Until then, your comments are welcome.

Happy Holidays,
Joe

Response to "The Priority of Labor"

2009-08-27T07:42:00.001-07:00

A friend recently sent me an email promoting the Catholic teaching or principle of the priority of labor over capital. The Church has been promoting this view for centuries and it is to the detriment of the working poor. What they should be teaching is equity in pay, freedom of movement, and promoting education that would enable workers to become skilled. Below is my initial response to the lead in line to Pope John Paul II's "The Priority of Labor". I reserve the right to respond in greater detail.

B.D.,

Thank you for bringing the thread up again. This is part of why I think it would be interesting to explore the topic, but I am not interested in taking up positions and then defending them. I am more interested in exploring the assumptions of both sides and testing the ideas a bit. For example, the mondragon link you sent has a line "We must first of all recall a principle that has always been taught by the church, the principle of the priority of labour over capital." On the surface that seem compassionate and consistent with deferential treatment of the poor. Until that is, you consider what is meant by capital. Capital is simply stored labor. Nothing more. It is the product of labor that was not consumed but was rather saved. Understood this way there can be no preference between capital and labor. If anything, once basic needs are met, surely there should be a preference for the moral behavior of delayed gratification that enables the accumulation of capital versus the luxury consumption that is usually the alternative.

Moreover, capital, that is the saved product of labor, is the property of the producer created by their moral act of delaying gratification for the purpose of improving the well-being of their family, business, or interests. This is different than excessive profits that exploit the laborer. For indeed the working class have proven better savers (creators of capital) than the debt ridden upper class of recent years. Surely the church would not think that the labor of a financial engineer on wall street should receive priority over the lifetime savings of a grocer, plumber, or dare I say, teacher?

There is an aversion to capitalism within the tradition of Catholicism. I was raised with it and still find myself falling into the pattern of thinking that money is a corrosive element in our society. However, specialized labor leads to surpluses, which can be consumed or saved. The saved (delayed gratification) product of labor can be used to hire new workers, build public goods, or even just protect the worker from downturns in income or the vagaries of life including health crises. I think we need to reconsider the basic assumptions of what is right behavior and what the principles we hold lead to as consequences. A society or tradition that teaches labor over capital might just as well teach consumption over saving. This is the worst thing we could possibly teach the working poor if we want to help them overcome their poverty.

Thanks again for the example.

Healthcare Reform Comment

2009-08-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

Here is my brief response to Frank Rich's latest column.

I would like national healthcare. It would be great not to worry about whether we can afford medical care for our children or have to consider the loss of benefits before switching employment. The problem is that enacting such a plan continues to move us away from the model of a restricted role for federal government where only those powers enumerated in the constitution are available to it and the rest are reserved to the people as individuals or to the many states.

You may choose to demonize our fellow citizens and lump the majority of conservatives in with the gun toting crazies but that dismissive attitude fails to illuminate their legitimate reluctance to grant ever more authority to politicians in DC.

How is it that states, not the federal government, are able to provide education to all their students yet you think it appropriate that they not do the same for health care? Maybe you don't see a difference between the roles of state and national governments except that the national government can be used as a means to achieve your goals in one swoop.

The rights we maintain, the gift of Liberty, is the result of a conscious choice on the part of our society and is only maintained by restraining the power of the government. As much as you don't want to give Republicans authority to say who can and cannot marry, so too we must not be seduced into using the awesome power of the federal government to coerce behavior that is not within it's constrained and enumerated authority.

What Massachusetts has begun let others follow. Let our states compete for workers by enacting health reform that improves their competitiveness. Let's keep the Federal Government out of anything for which it is not absolutely necessary. Failing that, let's have a real national debate and amend the Constitution if needed to facilitate the form of government we find preferable.

What are you reading?

2009-08-22T08:46:00.001-07:00

With the blessing of downtime peculiar to the teaching profession many of us have been catching up on our reading.

Our school's "One Book, One School" book this year is

"Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David Relin.

I've also been reading:

"The Road to Serfdom" by Freidrich von Hayek

"Thomas Paine: The Right's of Man" by Christopher Hitchens

"The Discourses" by Machiavelli

"Why Lazarus Laughed" by Wei Wu Wei

"Banks and Politics in America" by Hammond

"Investments" by Bodie, Kane, and Marcus

"In Defense of Property" Dietze

"The Dirty Dozen", Robert Levy and William Mellor

As well as a rereading of some favorites...

"The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins

"The Tao te Ching" translated by Stephen Mitchell

Among the numerous children books read out loud to my daughters was one stand out

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling

Still to be completed before summer's end:

"Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstader

"The Word in a Phrase: A Brief History of Aphorism" by James Geary

"The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living" by Fritjof Capra

"The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century", edited by John Brockman

Thank you to those that recommended or in some cases even lent the books above. There is little finer than a good book from a friend. Please mention some of your own summer reading especially if you recommend them to fellow members of WeeklyMusings.

Response to Paul Krugman's "Obama's Trust Problem"

2009-08-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

I am an independent who voted for President Obama. He won my vote by promising to leave Iraq and to repeal the outrageous doctrine of preemptive war. As a conservative I would prefer to see healthcare, education, etc. left to the many states. However, elections have consequences and we should expect candidates to live up to their stated principles.

Conservatives weren't able to stop President Bush from launching his ill-conceived war of aggression nor were we able to restrain his prolific spending. Even though he was elected on a campaign of fiscal discipline and humility in international affairs. We all remember his promise to avoid "nation building".

The financial crisis was shared by both administrations and both spent our children's money to prop up corrupt financial institutions. The wars, the spending, the bailouts, all were done against a backdrop of enormous protests and flagrant disregard of the people's will.

The vested interests of lobbyist and corporations are winning on every major issue. In regards to the war, Blackwater, Bechtel, Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, etc. won massive contracts, billions of dollars. The people lost. We lost our brothers and sisters in arms, our standing among the nations of the world, and some would argue our opportunity to defeat radical Islam.

On the issue of the bailouts, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Berkshire Hathaway, etc. won to the delight of their again enriched executives. The people lost and will be paying for it dearly. The massive bailouts are a redistribution of wealth from the many to the connected few.

Now, on healthcare, the insurance, medical equipment, and drug companies are winning. Once more the forces of special interests are arrayed against the will of the people and look ready to win.

If with a majority in congress and a Democrat in the White House, progressives are not able to have their voices heard and enact universal healthcare then I fear it may be time to reconsider the efficacy of our national government. The system is not working.

Debt Payments

2009-07-31T14:12:00.001-07:00

Weekly Musings – Debt Payments
J. Sweeney
07/31/2009

Imagine for a moment that upon the death of your parent, you became responsible for their debts. The phone rings and calls start to pour in from banks, credit card companies, the mortgage company, the nursing home, even the state and local government. In total you find that you, your siblings, and all of your children each owe approximately $37,700 (or $60,000 per worker). Further, the amount that you owe is growing each day.

The western world has a tradition of debts being obligations of the individual not to be passed on to the children. After all, how can you hold me accountable for the choices of my parents? Since I have no say over their spending, no authority, then it stands to reason that I cannot be held accountable for the outcome, no responsibility. We take this idea very seriously. In fact it underpins our financial freedom to act as individuals instead of patriarchal family units.

Unfortunately, it is breaking down. Indeed, you, your siblings and worst of all your children and any living grandchildren now each owe approximately $37,000. Our national debt has grown to over eleven trillion dollars ($11,000,000,000,000.00).

So what? For as long as most of us can remember (except briefly with President Clinton and a Republican Congress) we have run deficits and the debt has thereby grown. We’ve grown accustomed to the idea and for a long time the rest of the world celebrated our debt-based spending spree.

Soon, very soon, the bill is coming due. In the past this meant that the government issued bonds and then printed money and bought back (retired) some of the bonds. Nice trick eh? Let me explain that again. Our government is not allowed to print money to pay the bills. So, if there is not enough money from taxes, they issue bonds to the public. Then, the government goes out and buys the bonds back with new money.

Sounds good right? Well, obviously not. Imagine that you hold a lot of our debt and a lot of our currency and we start paying you with these newly created dollars. You might get a bit annoyed. You might, and here is the big change coming, demand that we start paying our debt with something other than dollars.

If, instead of paying our debt with dollars, our children and grandchildren were required to pay in Euros, or gold, or oil, what would that be like?

For example US proven oil reserves are approximately 21 billion barrels. At today’s spot price of $70 the total proven reserves of the country are worth $1,470,000,000,000 or only $1.47 trillion. Clearly, we’re not paying our debt with oil.

We also have about 11 or 12 billion dollars of gold bullion, and an estimated 63 billion in foreign currency.
In other words, we could nationalize every drop of oil in this country and hand it along with all of our gold and foreign currency over to China to pay that share of the debt and we would still owe other countries and private citizens more than $10 trillion.

China is not the problem. We are.

The problem is that we are spending money without earning it. Unless we dramatically slash government spending across the board but especially for Social Security and Medicare or dramatically raise taxes, we will go broke.

How will we actually go broke? When foreign governments begin to require payment in goods or currencies other than our phony dollar bills, we’re toast.

My solution:

The Baby Boomers are about to retire. But, they can’t afford it. We can’t afford to let them leave us with the tab for the debts they’ve run up. They have spent without prudence or thought for the future and are about to leave without paying the tab.

It’s time to start demanding responsible government. No more bank bailouts, clunker car incentives, National Endowment of the Arts, bridges to nowhere, or rainforests in the Midwest. It is time to stop spending. It’s going to hurt like hell because it will lead to a massive recession. Unfortunately this is the inheritance the Boomers are leaving us.

The Social Security and Medicare minimum age requirements need to be moved immediately to 75. Not tomorrow, not in over a decade, immediately. It should then be means tested, meaning only the very poorest would qualify.

Private Property and Theft by Desire

2009-06-28T11:05:00.001-07:00

Last week Alison and I took the children for a little vacation at their Grandparents’ vacation home in Rock Hall, a small community on the eastern shore of Maryland. My Mother, “Gran”, had graciously provided a copy of the local paper for us to enjoy with coffee in the morning. It was fun to read about the goings on in a different place. One article in particular caught my attention and in light of having recently read Ayn Rand’s, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” I began to muse…

It seems that the foolhardy folk of Chestertown, Maryland recently passed revisions to their Tree Ordinance. The new guidelines would, “require a permit for the cutting of large, healthy trees on private property.” Mayor Margo Bailey is quoted by the Kent County News as saying, “You need to consider their other uses beyond decorating your property.”

Alice McNow, a member of the planning commission said that she, “would be heart-broken if her neighbor cut down a large tree that shaded her house.” Another member of the committee, James Tobriner, said that the ordinance did not apply to pruning and trimming to maintain a healthy tree, indeed that was not only permitted but encouraged!

So, the private property owner is encouraged to spend his capital to provide an unearned benefit to others simply because they want it. This is a scandalous assault on private property, capitalism, and most importantly on the founding principles of this country.

Our nation is the unique experiment in human history where Capitalism was first attempted as an organizing principle for a society. This government of the people determined that our society would be organized and its production distributed to the producers, the innovators, the organizers, in short, the doers, not the consumers.

Chestertown’s ridiculous ordinance turns that concept on its head and allocates unearned benefits to those that want something, not those that produce or maintain the production of the benefit. This form of majority rule is the empty husk of freedom. It is the final stage of a collapsing society attempting self-rule.

You may be wondering how we get from a silly ordinance to the collapse of a free society, but sadly the walk is not long and I hope to illuminate the path a bit so that we can turn aside. Let us consider the consequences of the ordinance.

The stated goal of the ordinance is to maintain and increase the amount of the tree canopy in the town. I maintain that the real political goal is to further accumulate to local bureaucrats power to which they have no legitimate claim, but let’s take the official’s at their word.

If the goal is to maintain and increase the amount of tree canopy you would expect the town to enact a policy which was likely to lead to the desired outcome. Consider instead the likely outcomes of this ordinance.

Imagine yourself a property owner with a tree now at 35’ in height (the ordinance currently applies to trees over 45’ feet). Each year you find yourself paying some fee that is likely to grow over time for the pruning of the tree to keep it from growing over property lines, into electrical lines, and over useful land for gardens, skylights, etc. You now have a choice. You can continue to let your tree grow and lose the right to decide or you can exercise your right now, to cut the tree, and replant a smaller growing tree, perhaps a dogwood or a dwarf.

Even if you think it unlikely that most property owners would choose to cull a healthy tree approaching the ordinance minimum, consider the effect on your property value were you to allow the tree to continue to grow. Potential buyers of your property would see the over 45’ tree as an impediment to putting on an addition, creating an outdoor living space, adding a pool, creating a large cutting or vegetable garden, etc. You have reduced future owners’ options, and therefore your property value.

Perhaps instead you are considering the planting of a new tree for the purposes of shade or aesthetics. Would you plant a tree that would become a financial burden and property restriction, or would you plant a tree that avoided the ordinance?

I ask you then, what kind of tree canopy can we expect in Chestertown in just 30 years? Would you expect most new trees to be over, or under, 45 feet?

So, the town fails to reach the stated goal of maintaining and extending its tree canopy.

Now, let us ask why. When you allow the majority to take what it wants by government fiat (force), you remove the incentive for production of the desired good. If you leave private the costs but make public the benefit, the producers stop producing.

Chestertown will learn the consequences of its misguided policy soon enough. It will be a good lesson for the backward thinking “citizens”. Sadly, it is not a lesson they needed to learn by experience, for it has already been taught to us by history. Communist Russia is the easy example but there are many others.

How could Chestertown achieve the intended result? They could offer a stipend to any property owner with at least one healthy tree over 45 feet in height. If you wish to enjoy the benefit, provide incentives for its production.

If the small-minded choices of some backwater town seem too insignificant to warrant mention I ask you to reflect on the lesson as it pertains to current national debates.

This slow transformation of our society from one based on production to one based on consumption is corruption our very nature. It is undermining our long-term growth and success. We must go back and consider what has facilitated our remarkable achievements and turn aside from the modern day socialists currently calling themselves Democrats and Republicans.

We have fallen victim to the trap of consumption, the belief that wanting something badly enough entitles us to it. Wanting something does not entitle you to it. Only the producer has a moral claim to the produced.

All is Meeting

2008-03-31T06:58:00.000-07:00

Weekly Musings – “All is Meeting”
J. Sweeney
03/31/08

Yesterday I went to Meeting again. This morning, at work, I attended our school weekly chapel service. Chapel service, with its strong similarity to the Catholic mass, has been a challenge for me to attend in recent months without strong feelings of anger. Today was easier.

The difference today was that I treated the man on the stage (altar) as a Friend rising to speak in what is becoming my broader meeting. I am not an expert on the Friends Meeting, but I am the expert on my experience of the Friends Meeting. Therefore, I will describe it a bit and perhaps you will find it useful in your own journey.

A Meeting is a time for communal worship characterized by a period of silent contemplation often followed by one or several of those attending rising to speak. Speakers are not restricted by topic though they usually offer some personal anecdote or insight related to the values of tolerance, simplicity, peace, or compassion. There is no priest, or clergy. There is now formal recitation of faith. If you have never been, the closest analogy from our culture is the circle around a fire with people sitting quietly and sometimes saying something and then sitting quietly again.

I sat yesterday by a window and gazed out upon the pasture behind the Meetinghouse. While my eyes and mind were soothed by this bucolic view of nature, my spirit expanded to consider forgiveness and gentleness of spirit. In my meditations, I lingered on the challenge of self versus unity. In our culture, the rugged individual is celebrated. That the concept of individual is mainly an illusion is not celebrated. However, when we let go of the illusion of self, our divine selves emerge and this more expansive self, who can be neither harmed nor helped, has nothing to offer but perfect love.

Various Friends rose to speak. One asked for a specific poem to be read at his memorial service.

“Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.” – Mary Frye

I had something to contribute, but I held back and did not stand. I am always a bit too ready to add my two cents and Meeting has become a place that challenges me to stay silent and listen to others. So, I passed on speaking.

The poem coincided beautifully with what I was contemplating. It is about the expanding of self into the ego-less reality of our deep unity.

Next, another Friend arose and spoke about holistic thinking and peace. The Friends are firmly committed to non-violence. Perhaps some day I will join them in this belief, but I am not there yet.

I am committed to forgiveness, at least to learning how.

Whether real or imagined there are wrongs from my past that I have yet to forgive. People that the memory of whom wound me.

Yet, I found in my meditation that by letting go of Joe, and taking on the larger nature of the divine, the difference between them and I melted and forgiveness became easier. We are all broken vessels for the light within. Imperfect dancers of a perfect mover. By meditating on this, broken quality and our deeper nature my mind moved toward forgiveness. I am finding this is different from the say of “I forgive”. It is different from the forgetting of grievances.

Forgiveness is a return to the state of compassion and love temporarily lost when we perceive harm from another.

I left the Meeting yesterday calm and at peace. I was not finished my journey but had made another step in the long walk toward who I would like to be.

I debated going to Chapel this morning. The last time I attended, the good state from Meeting was disrupted and since I take turns watching the girls on Sunday mornings so that Ali can attend her service for worship I knew I would not be back to the Friends for two weeks. So, I was reluctant to go this time and lose what had taken me several hours of work to gain.

I went to Chapel because I am a part of this community at the school. I went because I want to be at ease once more with the symbols and rituals of my youth. I went with trepidation.

The priest gave a homily calling us back to the Acts of the Apostles and especially to the call for community. It was hard not to see him as a man on an altar lecturing to followers. But, I chose to see him as a friend rising to speak as the spirit moved him.

This choice to see the world as a broader meeting is enticing. Each person we meet becomes a brother or sister, a distinct broken vessel for the divine light. Hidden within each of them is that deeper reality, our unity. Forgiveness is our challenge. We must forgive us and them our broken-ness. We must sit quietly with the challenge of the truth that all is meeting.

Weekly Musings - "Check Please!"

2008-01-16T05:55:00.001-08:00

Weekly Musings© - “Check Please!”

J. Sweeney
January 16, 2008

The U.S. National debt as of this date is approximately $9,202,283,466,694.03. Based on recent census data there are slightly more than 304 million Americans. Your share of the tab, and the share of every man, woman, and child in this country is now more than $30,000.00. Please do not mail your check yet. The Federal Government would prefer that you carry the balance and pay interest to the lien holders.

You may remit your interest payments and apply for limit increases to foreign governments such as that of Dubai, China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc. These interest payments are an essential part of their annual budgeting when providing health care, housing, education and other basic services to their citizens. We appreciate your selfless act and willingness to send your present and future wealth oversees even when so many in the United States do not have health care or decent education.

Without your indifference to the doctrine of perpetual war and ravenous over-spending by the Boomer generation, we could not continue to send so much money overseas or into the pockets of such magnificent executives as those at Halliburton and Bechtel.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

The Bastards Mortgaging Your Future

PS For your convenience, you may now make monthly payments by direct deposit via your paycheck. Just work and we will simply take a cut of all your earnings.

"Days of Gratitude" - William M. Denny

2007-12-25T06:29:00.000-08:00

One of our faithful readers has just published his first book. It is an historical account of the steamship Gratitude. We hope you'll support our little community of readers and writers and purchase a copy.

Merry Christmas,
J. Sweeney

Merry Christmas - Happy Winter Solstice

2007-12-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

We at WeeklyMusings would like to wish all of our readers a very Merry Christmas and Happy Winter Solstice! Whether you celebrate the magic of long-lasting lamp oil, the birth of Jesus or the end of the shortening of the days and lengthening of the nights, we can all join in the celebration of light and its increase in our world.

J. Sweeney

PS For our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, we are delighted to have you with us and hope that you enjoyed you longest day.

Open Letter to Senator Clinton

2007-12-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

Dear Senator Clinton,

My wife and I are teachers and looking forward to buying a home in a better school district. We have been waiting for the market to correct itself rather than use an ARM. For the last few years prices in our area have increased much faster than incomes due to over-borrowing. We and other financially prudent families do not appreciate the idea of our government now meddling with the appropriate collapse of prices.

This is going to make more of us have to use terrible levels of debt to get into a home.

Please stop. Don't allow the Bush administration to bail out the banks and the millions of Americans that have not learned to balance their checkbooks. What the hell are you people in Washington doing?

Looking for a new candidate,
Joe Sweeney

Weekly Musings "A Booming Whimper"

2007-10-04T06:05:00.000-07:00

Weekly Musings© - “A Booming Whimper”
10/4/07
J. Sweeney

I saw a lovely conversation with Charlie Rose and Alan Alda last night. They were discussing meaning in their lives and how near death experiences had served to focus their attention on the quality of their time and choices. They struck me as two thoughtful and worldly men entering the “wisdom” phase of their lives. I frequently give thought to the likely impact of the impending retirement of the “Boomers” and last night I began to hope that the impending retirement of the Boomers would translate into a golden age of volunteerism and reflection… well I got to Musing.

You’ve already read plenty about how the largest segment of our population is about to retire. Media outlets are quick to pander to the egotism of the Boomers with comments about how they have transformed every stage of life in our culture. Most of this is said with an eye on capturing a Boomer audience delighted and puffed up with self-importance. They are a large segment of the shopping population and have more dollars to spend on consumer items than their offspring or parents, so such marketing is effective.

I think the Boomer retirement will bring about some significant changes and it is possible that some of them will be positive. However, most of the impact will be felt as a shift in spending across the broad economy. You should expect a relatively flat housing market for the next ten years. There will be brief interludes of irrational exuberance. But, on the whole the number of people selling homes in order to downsize will match and at times exceed demand for single homes. Real estate will remain a local phenomenon until we have near instant transportation across large distances. So, there are some markets that will continue to appreciate in price, but for the most part price increases will be constrained to niche retirement and nursing communities.

Economic growth will be substantially slower over most of the next two decades. The productivity gains realized by the additional worker in most households (women to work) and the impact of personal computing will not be repeated in the near term. Productivity gains due to outsourcing will not be as large in the future. The low-hanging fruit has been picked and economic growth in various developing countries is slowly closing the gap in compensation that generates the bulk of savings.

The focus of spending on health and life extending technologies will eventually result in massive productivity gains due to increasing levels of intelligence in infrastructure, shipping and power generation. The enabling technologies are likely to arise from the fields of bioengineering and nanotechnology. This surge in productivity will not occur within the next fifteen years and should not be relied on for the rapid returns on investments realized in the 1990’s via Internet related technologies.

Due to inadequate planning and savings, most Boomers will constrict spending relative to recent levels in the final years prior to full-retirement. Fear, which seems to be the hallmark of the Boomers, coupled with anemic retirement investments, and low returns on savings will result in lower-than anticipated budgets for most. This constrained spending, on all but health related consumables, will have a downward pressure on revenues across the US economy.

Health failures will be substantially higher than planned for in the United States relative to other industrialized countries. Low levels of physical work, few vacations, and years of stress (often coupled with smoking) will bear a terrible fruit. Boomers who expected to live longer and healthier than their parents will require more maintenance drugs and surgeries. This spending and the fear of such spending will further erode their sense of financial security.

Now, the big one, currently Boomers are the most financially solvent and highest earning members of our economy. As stated so many times before, they are also the largest group. As Boomers begin to retire companies are looking forward to hiring cheaper replacements and realizing savings. What this means is that our economy will lose high wage earners and tax payers at the very same time that demands on benefit programs, like Social Security and Medicare, spike. The replacement workers will be fewer in number (companies looking for net attrition) and earn less on average than previous workers.

The required governmental outlays for retirees will be paid for in service reductions and tax increases. Lower government spending and higher taxes will lead to a recession in an environment with flat consumer spending.

While I would like to join the rosy picture club and paint for you an idyllic golden age of volunteerism and reflection I think it is much more likely that we will experience a sharp and prolonged recession. It will start in the next two years and it’s going to get nasty.

Buckle up.

A little thought on water...

2007-08-16T19:39:00.001-07:00

I was taking a glass of cool refreshing water up to the office with me when a thought struck, "Water isn't clear."

The musing began thus:

Isn't it odd that water is so essential to life, the one liquid we most need, and it happens to be clear.

I wonder if anyone has thought about this before.

Wait, maybe it isn't clear. Maybe it just looks clear because being the liquid we evolved in it is both necessary and our light perception system (eyes and brain) filter out the distortions in water.

Our eyes and brains evolved in a medium of water and so the eyesight that evolved is one that manages the water distortions to such a degree that they virtually vanish...

So, that is what happened in my head on the way up from the kitchen.

Cool, now what do you think?

J. Sweeney

An Awful Juxtaposition

2007-08-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

Weekly Musings – An Awful Juxtaposition

J. Sweeney
August 16, 2007

I am going to keep this brief. If they show up, please consider the two articles linked below. One is about women in Iraq forced to prostitution in order to feed their children. The other is about the engagement of the U.S. President’s daughter.

Some women are struggling to keep their children fed after their husbands died in a war started by a man who lives in a palace and gets to look forward to his daughter’s wedding.

George Bush deserves to be impeached. If he were a decent human being he would have resigned after no weapons were found. If the democrats were capable of leadership they would force his resignation or impeach him.

It is essential that we as citizens send a message to the world that our leaders are not tyrants, free to make war with our children and treasure without being accountable. We owe it to the dead in Iraq and to the millions suffering to hold our leaders accountable.

IMPEACH BUSH

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/15/iraq.prostitution/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/16/jenna.bush/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Thank you Jessica (and Amazon)

2007-08-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally happened. After years of working in software and building websites for others, I finally sold a simple product online to a customer. Using Amazon's website I listed and sold an old book. I'm heading to the UPS store to ship the book.

If I were making a list of things young people should know how to do, selling a product online would definitely be one of them. This is the equivelent of working at the corner store for a summer back in our nation's golden era. Partcipating in the exchange of goods and services as a provider not just as a consumer has value for young people trying to acquire a real sense of how society works.

Anyway, I'm off to ship the book. Who knows, this may be the start of a new way to fund my main hobby, stock investing...

J. Sweeney

"Mixed Progress"

2007-07-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

The White House released the Administration's progress report on Iraq today. They claim mixed progress and are now trying to spin the results to seem like half of the benchmarks are met. You can read the report for yourself, and I think as a voter and taxpayer, you should. The results are not balanced. See for yourself. The White House seems unwilling to square with the American people. If this were a report card about a student's progress (something we all have experience with) the student would be failing.

You can argue that the benchmarks were too hard, and they do argue that in some cases. For example spending our money on captial improvements is not progressing fast enough to spend $10 billion in time. Maybe they need our congress over there... we could build a couple of bridges to nowhere for them.

Or, take the "Satisfactory Progress" rating they gave to the benchmark that the Maliki government deploy three additional brigades of Iraqi Army units in Bagdad. This disingenous rating was achieved by drawing forces from other units around the country, not by establishing new units as proscribed.

Once again this administration is playing fast and loose with the truth and demonstrates their aversion to accountability.

You're doing a hell of a job Bushie...

Democrats - Bill Richardson

2007-07-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

I just watched an interview by Tim Russert of Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico on the Meet the Press website. If like me you thought that he represented a reasonable candidate for the Democrats to nominate, it might be instructive.

He is a former Ambassador to the United Nations, Energy Secretary, and Congressman. The guy should know his stuff. Sadly, it looks like he knows politics and polls, but not foreign policy or consistency.

His call for immediate withdraw of all US troops from Iraq is a direct contradiction of his statements in his recent book. (Not named here to keep from giving him revenue.)

When pressed by Russert for a reason for the change: hot air.

Click the link above to go to the video clip. Once you get to the video page, the Richardson clip is down on the right. If the link doesn't work, head on over to the site via Google or your favorite search engine. Just watch and scratch off another Democratic hopeful.

J. Sweeney

Income Investor

2007-07-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

Please take a look at the new Income Investor Blog at your convenience. On it I'll be posting content focused on building financial freedom. The first few posts will mostly be about building a foundation of knowledge. Motivating essays and How To guides will foloow.

J. Sweeney

Letter from Bob Casey

2007-06-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

I received a letter from Bob Casey today asking for funds to support the campaign of embattled Democrat, Senator Tim Johnson.

I offer my brief reply here publicly in the hopes that others will share the message with Democrats and Republicans alike.

"Why would we want the Democrats to keep the majority? You have not ended the war or achieved anything substantive with it thus far. End the war, close all funding of private armies (Blackwater), and stop deficit spending or we will vote you out of office.

A former supporter,
J. Sweeney"

Here's hoping that our representative form of government begins to represent the voters.

Here's a fresh link to the Podcast project for Weekly Musings (c)

http://web.mac.com/josephesweeney/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html

Weekly Musings PODCAST Project

2007-06-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

The link here is to our new Podcast project. Please go and check out the new site. We'll be adding our Musings to the site soon.

Thank you,
J. Sweeney

iMac

2007-04-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

We purchased an iMac to replace our failing PC. It's like someone handed us the keys to an arts studio...

WeeklyMusings - Too Much of a Bad Thing

2007-02-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

WeeklyMusings © - “Too Much of a Bad Thing”

It was my custom in the months and years prior to the new millennium to gather my thoughts each week and attempt to put into specific language the swirling content of my mind. I came to call these expositions my WeeklyMusings. Events in the life of our great nation call me back to the task once more. Perhaps in these pages I can contribute some small part to the dialogue…

“The Lord of the Rings”, J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece opens with a dappled mare pulling a cart down a well-worn country path. In the light of that sunny day we are introduced to characters I fondly recall from my youth. Seated on the cart is dear Gandalf the Wise. Soon he will call on young master Frodo in that most idyllic of settings, the Shire.

I love the Shire. I love the sunshine, and the rolling hills. I love the gardens, small paths carved by ponies and bare feet. I love the smell of fresh cut grass, of baking bread, and even the slow scent of pipe smoke blown in gentle puffs onto the breeze. It is a tranquil picture of domesticity, of quiet moments and friendly visits. How I wish I could raise my family in the peace of the Shire.

So, I sit tonight in a quiet room with a stopped clock and a fireplace that is always ready to receive a log. I sit down deep in a soft sofa, wrapped in a wool sweater that Gandalf would have reached for in his study had Mr. Tolkien thought to write him one. I sit here and contemplate whether my children and my wife will ever feel the innocent surety of a Shire life. I sit here and write of these things while my fellow citizens bleed on a battlefield across the sea and my brothers at home spend restless nights watching evil men plot evil deeds.

Is the dream of the Shire incompatible with the reality of modern man? Can such a place of peace and simple prosperity exist in a world torn by religion and resource scarcity? Am I merely delaying the inevitable call to arms and will one day soon yield to duty and like Cincinnatus of Rome, or perhaps even Frodo, go and fight, forsaking the labors I love for the most detestable of toils?

I came closer today than I have in many months to signing on for a tour of duty. Men are dying in the uniform of our nation.

I did not ever vote for George Bush. I wrote letters to my representatives in Congress, to the Senators from our Commonwealth, and to others urging that they resist what I perceived to be an unnecessary war.

In my humble opinion Mr. Bush was unfit for office due to a lack of executive experience and a history of poor judgment. He lacked the foreign policy experience and liberal education required of a global leader. But, elections have consequences, and if a democracy (or democratic republic) is to survive we must honor the results of elections. I was against the war, but like the election we must stand united once a decision is made or we are doomed to fall.

War is evil. It is always evil. But, sometimes evil is required for survival. The trouble with this war is not that we are losing, though it seems obvious that we are. The trouble is that this war was not required for survival. The consequences of voting for incompetence are now being showered upon us all.

We brought down a government of tyrants in a land of hatred. They are killing one another in the name of a fairy tale. They believe that God will reward them for their sacrifice, for their murders. They believe that it is preferable to exchange violence rather than compromise. They are never going to live in the Shire.

From where we are now I see no path that leads us to peace. These people are barbaric and beneath our contempt. So to those in this nation that would replace reason with religion, science with superstition. Our society is an opportunity for humanity. We are blessed by the bounty of nature and history and can make of ourselves nearly any truth we desire.

I long for the Shire; for a people of peace, learning, community, and tea. I am not a luddite. Far from a technophobe, I embrace the promise of modern technology as a way out of our many challenges. But while technology may solve energy needs, it will not solve the great human need to live in tolerance and peace.

Tolerance is not a lack of judgment, rather it is a willingness to accept the differences of others and to refrain from judging their personhood. But, tolerance does not require abdication of freedom and defense of one’s liberty.

My fellow citizens it is time for the United States of America to let Iraq fight for Iraq. It is time to bring our brothers and sisters home. It is time to spend the taxes raised in this nation on the future of this nation. We should be building schools here until they learn to build bridges there.

Money Managers

2007-01-27T06:11:00.000-08:00

Friends,

A few days ago a friend's email had me pondering why professional money managers seem more willing to risk their client's money than individuals are to risk their own. Now, it might seem obvious to you that a person is more concerned about risking their own property than someone else's, but to me this conjecture doesn't hold up to evidence from personal experience.

For example, imagine that your friend lends you their car. Aren't you more cautious driving that vehicle than you are even your own? (I hope the answer is yes, otherwise please don't ask for a loaner.) Likewise when watching a friend's child, aren't you just a little more attentive and protective than usual?

So, why are professional money managers willing to take on higher levels of risk than individuals with their own money?

As the gerbil in my head ran on his rusty wheel, I began to muse...

There must be something in the way money managers are incented that causes them to alter their ethical bias away from protecting their client's fortunes toward risking it. I submit that the cause is the way that manager performance is measured. If you read investment prospectives you'll notice comments like "marketing beating performance for the last 10 out of 15 years". You might see marketing material with statements similar to, "twice the returns of the S&P 500 since inception". Of course it only mentions that inception of the fund was two or three years ago in the small print at the bottom or on the back of the advertisement.

Is it possible that money managers are measured like sports teams, by wins and losses? Is it possible that their careers depend on people looking at the number of times that they've beaten or fallen short of the average market or index returns? If their perofmance is measured by wins and losses instead of cumulative returns then they could be incented to choose a slightly riskier strategy than someone investing for the long-term.

The table below is an example of a "successful" money manager. The returns in the first column were generated by a random number generator and a slight (3%) upward drift. In other words the money manager is choosing riskier investments than the index but still getting the natural benefit of inflation.

The second column is the annual return for the money manager. The third column is showing his "wins" or "losses". A win is a year with an annual return greater than 3%, the average market in our example. A loss is any year when the manager's return is less than 3%, in other words a year when he does not beat the market.

Notice that our money manager is a winner! He beats the market 12 out of 19 years. He is beating the market 63% of the time! If this were baseball, that would be equivalent to a .632 batting average. He'd be worth millions.

However, look at the last column. The lowly individual investor in an index fund that is just treading water. He is beaten by the money manager 12 out of 19 times. In professional investing circles he is a loser. But, look at the final totals. The money manager with his .632 batting average has a cumulative return of only 65% whereas the individual loser has a more impressive cumulative return of 75%.

I did not assign these values for the purpose of proving my point. Instead I generated multiple examples randomly and then selected one for illustrative purposes. The problem here is not with the numbers. The problem is with how we track performance for professional investors. Too often the industry pushes the "wins" count, or batting average, instead of cumulative returns. Why?

I have some theories and will express them later, but for now here is the table. If you'd like a copy of the spreadsheet for your own modeling, please drop me an email. Special thanks to Shawn for initially sending me the email that got me musing.

J. Sweeney

Changes to Comments

2007-01-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

Friends,

WeeklyMusings has changed the comment process to include a verification process meant to weed out comments added by spamming software and only allow comments by persons. Please feel free to continue to comment. It is our intention to continue the policy allowing anonymous comments. We would certainly prefer that people take ownership for their comments, but the anonymous feature allows people not registered with Blogger or Google to comment without having to register. The new verification process is not meant to restrict commenting by any person, it is only meant to stop comments added by software. For an example of the kind of commenting we are attempting to block please see the comment associated with the Senate Debate below.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you,
J. Sweeney

Income Investing

2006-11-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

If you've never read the book, "The Richest Man in Babylon", you owe it to yourself to do so. I've bought and given away several copies of this book over the years. It was while reading that book that I first encountered the idea of generating income from capital as opposed to labor.

A little over two years ago the thought struck me that there are not really three economic classes in our country. There also aren't more than three as some would suggest by offering labels like upper-middle, lower-middle, etc. No, there are really only two classes in this country and the delineation is growing sharper with each passing fiscal quarter. What used to be a nation of some wealthy, many self-employed, and some laborers, has devolved into those that are paid money for their work and those that earn income from their invested capital.

Such distinctions may seem arbitrary at first but I submit that careful examination of the way these two classes are treated is proof enough of their existence. For example, the tax rate on money earned from work tops out at over 30%, while the tax rate on income earned from investments tops out at 15% for dividends and 20% for long-term capital gains. Money earned from a job is taxed before you can even buy your groceries. Money earned from investing is taxed only after all expenses on earning it have been paid. Could you work without paying for food? Is not your nourishment a cost of your labor? But, I digress.

If we continue to look we will find more indicators that the true class distinction is not between lawyers and doctors on the one hand and maids and waiters on the other, but on those that give their time and effort in return for pay and those that lend out their capital for income.

Now, this may all sound very obvious to you, but for a financially naive physics major like me it was quite the revelation. Post financial enlightenment I have endeavored to learn more about the workings of finance in the hopes of shifting my reliance on work to investing for income.

My first goal was to begin to save some capital to invest for income. I decided on a goal of 1% of annual income from investment as opposed to labor (so labor pay would only make up 99%). This goal seemed easily achievable. While it was achievable and simple in theory the practice required some pain. We all grow accustomed to certain creature comforts. Saving more money nearly always requires some sacrfices. So it was in our home.

Keep in mind I am not talking about retirement savings, 401(k)'s, IRA's, Thrift Plans, or any of the other tax preferred retirement vehicles. No, I am talking about saving money and trying to generate a real income from it with the eventual goal of parity with work-earned pay.

Imagine 20 years from now having twice your annual income with half of that money coming in every month whether you work or not!

"20 years? But I want that money now!"

Sorry, unless you were born lucky or can pick 6 random numbers in advance of their drawing by public officials, you are in the same boat as most of us and need to accumulate capital the old-fashioned way, saving it.

I am going to post Musings from time to time on this site, but periodically I will continue this theme of investing for income and the great class divide. All questions regarding saving, investing, etc. are welcome.

You can move your family from the stress of the labor class to the relative comfort of the investor class. It takes work, patience, and emotional fortitude, but it is the way to continue what your ancestors started when they came here to make a better life for themselves and their descendents.

Good luck and post a comment!

Joe

Casey vs. Santorum Debate

2006-10-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I just finished watching the Casey vs. Santorum debate. I hate to admit it, but Santorum clobbered an empty suit. I can't in good conscience vote for Casey. He is so obviously unprepared for the job that it would be like voting for a democratic version of Bush. He simply isn't fit to represent the Commonwealth. When will the Democrats learn to nominate qualified candidates instead of simply endorsing the best name?

Reason and Faith?

2006-09-17T06:15:00.000-07:00

The entire text of Pope Benedict's recent speech that so infuriated Muslims around the world is given below. I think that you will find it an interesting read if you have ever considered the question of faith and reason. Can you know the nature of things by reason and scientific method or must you approach them only through the authoritarian structures of religion?

Not surprisingly Pope Benedict hedges his bets in the speech below. He seems comfortable throwing stones at a world religion which eschews all reason in deference to the revealed word, but he remains unwilling to put to much trust in the system of science he credits for the improved lot of mankind.

If you read the text carefully, I think you will find a scholarly mind at work, but you may also note the absence of the compassion informed by grace present in so many of his predecessors comments.

Someone asked me the other night why the world seemed to be teetering on the brink of crisis. I said that I think the world is always poised thus and that what we are witnessing is not particularly difficult times but an unusual confluence of incompetence in world leadership. These men with their strong convictions and unyielding egos are dangerous both by way of their positions and their closed minds.

As we go forward our nation must renew itself by demanding greater competence from our leaders. Whether it is greater stewardship of the church or a deeper commitment to democratic principles from our leaders of state, we must expect and demand more.

Text of Pope Benedict's Speech

2006-09-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

Faith, reason and the university: memories and reflections

Following is the speech given by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany on September 12

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium.

I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn.

That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves.

We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties.

Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience.

The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole.

This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.

That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.

The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an.

It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation [text unclear] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion".

According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ... is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident.
But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Word".

This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, [text unclear] with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis.
In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy.
Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am".

This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature.

Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity.

A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done.

This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.

As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language.

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul [text unclear] worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.

Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system.
The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization.

Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message.

Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific.

What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences.

This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology.
On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature.
On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity.

A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self.

But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical.
In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures.
The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age.

The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us.

The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit.

The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.

In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions.

A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.
Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology.

For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo.
In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss".

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.

It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

"The Worldly Philosophers", Robert L. Heilbroner

2006-09-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

There are times when I feel wholly inadequate to the task of considering any issue of import. Instead of a bedrock of historical lessons from Livy or a paragon from Cicero, I find myself forced to draw on less carefully considered narratives from the genre of popular fiction.

Such was the nourishment of my tepid liberal arts education. My high school years were spent studying such important works as McGraw Hill - Physics, or McGraw Hill - English Reader, or substitute any other poorly organized and uninspiring text. When we weren't being bored to death by the Reader's Digest versions of science or literature we were reading novels.

Now, in my thirties I find myself wanting to know so much more about history as understood by Machiavelli or economics as considered by Smith, Marx, and Keynes. I wish we had been required to read Darwin instead of listening to a teacher read a biology text. We should have been reading Hitler and dissecting his flawed vision for Germany under the tutelage of Marcus Aurelius, Plato, and Augustine, not only looking at pictures and learning how awful it is to attempt genocide.

If like me you long for a firmer grasp on the "classics" or worse, if you feel like there is no reason to study history for anything more than entertainment, that the lessons have all been learned, then I encourage you to read, "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner. It will assault your notion that humanity has found lasting solutions to the problems of government and production. You will find yourself in the company of careful thinkers who dared to look beyond the paradigms programmed into their beings by common consensus. You will most likely be exposed and stand naked in front of human history bereft of the comfortable armor of self-satisfied ignorance. I am.

It is a rare treat to be challenged by a book, to renew our intellectual curiosity and question those convictions we hold so deeply that we don't realize they actually possess us. I hope this book offers you such an opportunity.

Santorum Clobbers Casey

2006-09-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

It will surprise absolutely no one that knows me that I am not a big Santorum fan. I think he represents some of the worst inclinations of partisan politics and that he is a poor representative of this commonwealth's pragmatic, centrist tradition. So, I was quite dismayed to watch Santorum handily defeat Casey in the debate on Meet the Press. If it comes down to deciding who you would rather have working for you in the Senate, the answer is clearly Santorum.

Casey made some major mistakes in the debate including apparently choosing decaf that morning. He allowed the debate to center on foreign policy and war. He was unable to articulate a coherent plan on Social Security or fiscal policy in general even though he is the State Treasurer. His chief argument should have been that the Republicans have had control of the White House and the Congress for 5 years and still we have no border security, out of control spending, and a huge crisis with Social Security and Medicare looming as the boomers prepare to retire. 5 years, 3 massive issues, and nothing accomplished. Senator Santorum is at the heart of the leadership of the party that has gotten nothing of substance done in 5 years. He should be fired. They all should be fired.
So he missed his footing, but Casey also lacked vigor and passion and used obviously rehearsed, smug retorts to counter his opponent's arguments. I could forgive him his phlagmatic performance if I sensed a thoughtful and deliberate mind working behind the veil. But, I fear that like too many democrats he is uninformed about the real workings of our society.
So, I am left to chose between a man I think is competent at politics as it is practiced today and will bring dollars back to PA but with whom I disagree with on major issues or a man that but for his last name would not have been on the show.

I may go into more detail later, but for now I must rage against the choice we voters are left with this November.

Labor Day

2006-09-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

Below is my off the cuff response to the article, "It's Labor Day, Let's Celebrate" posted on Fast Company. I hope it gets some people thinking.

In many ways we are better off than our parents. More of us are college educated. More of us own our homes. Our productivity is higher as well. The major difference is that capital and labor have changed their respective ratios in American life. As wealthy as we are, there is actually less capital per laborer if you include the populations of nations to whom we now outsource. The result of this change is that labor is less expensive than it was and capital is dearer (when compared to the number of potential investments, not in raw numbers). So, wage earners in the US will continue to watch their earning power decrease while capitalists or investors should continue to see their profits increase."What should be done?"Each of us has a responsibility to look out at the world and recognize the reality of our times. The reality now is that you must begin to derive more of your income from investments and over the course of your life rely less and less on wages."How?"Don't buy a new car. Don't buy a house beyond your reach. Don't go out to dinner as often. Cut back on luxury spending. Accumualate capital and then select good opportunities to invest in for income."But I don't want to cut back."Too bad. Our world is changing and the standard of living purchased with labor is dropping. The standard of living purchased with investing is improving. Which side of the change do you want your family to experience?If you keep relying on labor as your sole source of income, your family will soon be poor.

The Return of the Muse

2006-08-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

Weekly Musings – “The Return of the Muse”
J. Sweeney
August 14, 2006

“We have been away attending other matters. Now, we have returned.” – R. Captain

The slow wheel turns and summer will soon give way to the glories of the fall. So passes one season to the next, so passes the torch of civilization from empire to empire.

I left my Musings three years ago to focus on other matters. During that time I have been thinking of you and our society. I’ve been examining the fabric of things man made and of nature. No one knows what moves the heart to sing or the mind to churn, but I call her Muse and trust she shall return.

Some things moving from the back burner:
War on Movements
War as a Culture
The American Flaw of Individuality
An Economic Study of Sid Myers Civilization III
The Fractal Nature of Reality
Time: Discrete or Continuous
Measuring Performance: How do we know when our politicians are serving us?
Robotics, Intelligence, and the Big Change
Two Classes: Investors and Workers in a Global Market
DRIP Strategies for Creating Income Streams
Fundamental Constants and the Problem of Irrational Numbers
Information Value in Daily Items
Pervasive Connectivity: The Many Becoming One
The Byzantines, Machiavelli, and Life-Long Learning

Those are a few of the recent topics competing for processing time, and of course editing time. I’d love to hear your preferences. Drop a comment below or email me at josephsweeney@rcn.com and let me know what you’d like to think about together.

Good to be with you again,

Joe

July 15 2006

2006-07-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

Weekly Musings – While the US Sleeps

J. Sweeney
7/15/06

There is no question that Israel is choosing to attack rather than be attacked. But what remains open for question is whether the citizens of the United States are going to allow our nation to be pulled into a global conflict by Israel.

Israel is looking at a future with more enemy regimes in possession of advanced weapons technology. Pakistan is already a growing nuclear power. Iran is rapidly developing delivery systems including underwater missile technology designed to push out the perimeter of allied aircraft coverage. Combined with angry rhetoric, continued support of Islamic terrorists, and an aggressive nuclear program, Iran is quickly becoming a regional power that poses a grave and gathering threat to Israel.

Now, Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States of America, is struggling through domestic political positioning to decide when our troops will leave the region. We are contemplating pulling out just as their future becomes less secure.

So, now is the time for Israel to act. It must pull the regional powers into a conflict that will accomplish the following goals.

First the immediate downgrade of terrorist networks and their military infrastructures. Second Israel must significantly degrade any WMD program sponsored by opposing regimes, particularly those of Iran and Syria. Third and most importantly for readers of this Musing, Israel must keep a significant United States presence in the region.

Israel now has a vested interest in keeping our fellow citizens in the region as allied combatants. We are an extremely effective second army for Israel and they cannot afford to let us leave before they have marginally diminished the opposing forces.

Israel’s strategy is understandable and perhaps even necessary given their position and likely future challenges. It is known to our national security and intelligence communities yet somehow the American people are not being informed of the strategy.

It is time to consider whether you are willing to fight for the survival of Israel.

Because, we’re about to…

Letter to Senator Specter

2006-06-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Senator Specter,
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is unfortunately correct when he reasons that a nation with nuclear weapons is safer from foreign military intervention than one without weapons. He needs only to examine our economic approach to North Korea as compared to our choice of war with Iraq. While it may be true that war with Iraq was conducted as a last resort, it is reasonable for someone not familiar with our internal workings to draw the alternative conclusion that the United States perceived a war with Iraq as preferable to drawn-out and less enforceable economic pressure. Given our recent shift in policy toward pre-emptive war and our branding of three particular nations as constituting an "axis of evil", would it be just for any leader of one of those nations to choose any path but that which seemed most likely to ensure the safety of their people from western agression?

We are a proud society with a history of several hundred years of self-determination. Is it possible that our success has blinded us to the pride and history of other nations? Is it possible that our policy of denying nuclear weapons as reasonable tools for the deterent power other sovreign nations seek is hypocritical given our singular history as the only country to deploy such awful weapons?

It is conceivable that we may yet coerce or force Iran to forego nuclear ambitions. It is also possible that our arrogant and even hypocritical posture in the world is the very cause of our national insecurity. We could choose to lead by promoting an international program of weapons maintenance and command and control safeguards. We could lead other nations to a greater sense of security and thereby difuse tensions that naturally build as we trade resources. I strongly encourage the Senate and you, our best representative in that august body, to deny the Administration the path of violence. Let us find a way to lead the people of the world toward self-determination by way of tolerant example. Let us find a voice of prudence and wisdom so that our time of leadership is remembered as a time of peace and prosperity.

One day we will not be the hyper-power. How our children and grandchildren are treated in those days to come is completely dependent on how well we serve and lead the nations of the world now in our time of power.

Thank you for your time and continued service,
Joe Sweeney

DPR 100 - Create a Blog

2006-04-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to www.weeklymusings.blogspot.com or "WeeklyMusings" as I call it. Please feel free to browse the older essays on this page.

Tonight in class we will each be creating our very own Blog.

What is a blog? Great question. Usually described as a web log, they are often used for recording the daily activities of their authors. However, blogs can be used for more than simply online diaries.

You can create a blog for any kind of content. Maybe you'd like to keep your local community, church, or organization informed about upcoming events. Perhaps you'd like to publish a list of your favorite recipes and share them with others.

Do you have a hobby or a band? Do you want to share your experiences on a vacation or an extended stay in a foriegn country? You can create a blog and thereby a web presence of your own for any of these and so many more topics.

What's more, you can even earn a little money for writing what you want. Notice the advertisements on the left column. They are placed by Google with permission of this blog's author. Each time someone clicks on one of the ads, the blog's author makes a few cents. It doesn't sound like much when you only have a couple of readers, but imagine what could happen if your site became popular.

Tonight we will work together to publish your first article on your own blog. Your homework assignment is to publish two more articles on the same blog and send the link to the instructor.

Enjoy,
Joe

Snow Day!

2005-12-08T08:50:00.000-08:00

Weekly Musings © – “Snow Day”

It’s a cold sunny day in early December. The students remind me of quantum particles or theoretical strings vibrating too quickly and in too many directions. Soon St. Nicholas will be here and the school will release these energized particles on their overworked parents. But, still there are 6 days left before the break, and so there is one dream that remains to be fulfilled before the great prison break; a snow day.

For eleven years I worked in industry before moving to academia and during that time of aggressive goals, bonus checks, and potential layoffs the one great hole in my work life was the small chance of a free day due to semi-solid water, captured in fractal elegance, dancing from the heavens; snow.

Tomorrow is the first snow day of the year. And while I will be busy pulling out my remaining hair while working on a Linear Algebra take-home final, there will still be hot chocolate, a warm gray sweater (yes, with the leather elbow patches), and hopefully a chance to stand with my beautiful wife and watch our daughter sled down the little hill (all by her big self).

A Circle Forming

2005-03-28T08:53:00.002-08:00

Weekly Musings© – “A Circle Forming”

J Sweeney
3/28/05

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capitol, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Their Authority is only the Esteem of the People, and ceases the Moment that Esteem is lost…here we see the natural Origin of all Power and Authority among a free People”
. – Lt. Governor Cadwallader Colden of New York in 17127, speaking about the Five Nations

There is a veil lifting, a fog dissipating and what shines forth from behind the shroud of ignorance is the truth that we are not the apex of history, that we are not the natural conclusion of all cultures, civilizations, and peoples before us. Indeed we slowly recognize that we are children of a thousand choices and those choices were not predestined, fated, or obvious. They were frequently agonized over but far too often surrendered to those with the means to endure a fight, the prize of which we knew not the value.

Do you feel empowered? Do you feel represented?

Asked another way, if this society of ours had a great circle around the fire where the braves sat and discussed the choices of the tribe, would you be seated among them?

Do you have a voice that is heard?

It has been several weeks now since my letter to Senator Santorum. His office responded with a form letter detailing the White House administration’s position. I have no doubt he will never read my letter or respond thoughtfully. And why should?

In 2004 my candidate of choice was committed to balancing the budget, preserving social security as the safety net of the elderly in our society, improving education, returning strength to the working class, decreasing abortions, and promoting a foreign policy that focused on the United States of America as good neighbor and servant to other nations.

Of course my candidate didn’t exist.

Did yours?

Did you vote for someone that you felt had studied the issues and understood the long-term implications to our people? Did you vote for someone with wisdom?

Did you vote for someone that appreciated the impact of health care costs on the middle class or did you vote for a millionaire son of a millionaire?

Did you vote for someone that chose to tax labor more than investment income?

Once again we had the choice of no choice. The circle around the fire only has so many seats in a two-party system, only so many voices. Perhaps it is time that we demanded more…

A Circle Forming

2005-03-28T08:53:00.000-08:00

Open Letter to Senator Santorum

2005-03-01T07:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Senator Santorum,

Thank you for appearing on the Sunday talk shows this week. You and Senator Biden both expressed your points of view well and I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about the issues and politics you are currently working on in the nation’s capital. It was also gratifying to hear you mention Pennsylvania's interests and clarify any differences that might exist between them and the current administration’s plans.

I am writing to ask you to carefully consider the long-term impact on Pennsylvania if Social Security is treated as an investment vehicle instead of a safety net protecting the elderly from poverty in retirement. Different strategies are appropriate depending on the role we envision Social Security serving in our community.

Social Security was never intended as a means for creating prosperity. Indeed relatively simple mathematics will show that such a system would be significantly more expensive and still require a safety net like the current social security system to protect individuals who fail to prosper.

You will be told by the investment community that average returns on investments will mean that each dollar contributed today will be worth more in the long-term if it is invested by the individual rather than spent on today’s beneficiaries. That is factually correct but leaves out very important information.

First, today’s beneficiaries will still need to be covered while transitioning to the new system. That means we will pay all of the costs of today’s benefits with less revenue from the current plan or need to increase revenues from some other source.

Second, when a beneficiary stops receiving funds today (due to death) the monies are re-directed to cover the costs of other beneficiaries. Private accounts would curtail this practice and thereby further reduce revenues in the system.

Thirdly, the projections for investment returns are on the average, and based on historical models. The models are beginning to fail due to global economics and the new higher level of private investment in the market. Meanwhile, the average is only that, an average. People with small accounts may not be able to afford the average when one or two significant investment losses can seriously erode their long-term prospects. Someone with a large account can better manage the highs and lows than someone in the lower quartile. This is why in any free market system the wealthy get wealthier than the poor even when presented the same investment opportunities.

Further, I remind you that it is not the government’s job to make people wealthy. We as individuals are blessed with the freedom to start businesses, use tax sheltered 401k and 403B plans, IRA's, Roth IRA's, etc along with other investments to build wealth and non-labor incomes.

In Pennsylvania our tax dollars taken for Social Security are best spent by applying them to offering relief to seniors who's life circumstances, choices, and health leave them with less money than they require in order to live securely during their retirement.

I don’t need to remind you that Pennsylvania has the second largest population of senior citizens in the country. We are a strong state in part because manufacturing pensions and social security benefits allow our seniors to participate actively in the local economy.

The pension system is eroding quickly as more workers are given responsibility over their own retirement investments through employer sponsored 401k plans. These plans are calculated to work in part on the assumption that social security will preserve those whose investments do not fair as well as the average.

I recognize that you are in a political environment and that our commonwealth’s interests may best be served by compromising on issues in order to achieve more important points on some other matter. I submit that this issue is one where Pennsylvania cannot afford to be on the losing side of any compromise. You and Senator Specter are our best advocates in the national government and we rely on you to preserve the fiscal security of our state by aggressively pursuing the interests of our citizens. Please preserve the safety net of social security and turn back the administration’s policy of privatization.

Thank you for your continued service to our community,
Joseph Sweeney

Recent Reading

2005-02-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

Weekly Musings© -Recent Reading

J Sweeney
2/24/05

I was laid up last week after a minor operation and had more than my regular share of time to read. After completing Tom Wolf’s new novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons” and then Emmanuel Derman’s autobiographical account, “My Life As A Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance”, I greedily began an exploration of game theory.

I purchased three highly acclaimed books on game theory from the online retailer Amazon. Selected to provide a gradually increasing level of technical detail they are “Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction”, by Morton D. Davis, “The Complete Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy”, by J.D. Williams, and finally “The Mathematics of Games of Strategy; Theory and Applications” by Melvin Dresher.

A quick review:
Unless you have teenage children about to enter college or your work requires insight into the youth culture of our county, I suggest you avoid Mr. Wolf’s book. It is sloppily written, un-ambitious, and lacks any new information about the modern college experience. If you don’t already know that students are engaged in historically high levels of immoral and imprudent behavior, and that a culture of decadence is actively promoted to our young people, you are wildly out of touch with our society and should stop voting immediately.

Dr. Derman’s book about the Wall Street intersection of financial derivatives, computer science, and stochastic mathematics is a jaunty ride through a world that many of us (especially Catholics according to Harvard’s President Lawrence Summers) will likely never experience. He relates his movement from academia to investment banking and back. It has the merit of not only offering interesting details but is a great source for answering that timeless question from students, “When will I ever use this stuff?”

It seems some of them think they will graduate and immediately be free from ever thinking, speaking, or estimating the fair value of anything ever again.

Save the best for last is the truism of ice cream and in this case it was true. Morton Davis’ little book on game theory should be required reading for business people and citizens of a democracy. It is a wonderful read.

Incorporating examples from fields as diverse as marketing, defense, to genetic evolution Davis cites the theoretical work of notables like John Nash and Von Neumann. Each chapter begins with a series of situational puzzles and the reader is encouraged to choose their winning strategy before reading the chapter related to that type of game. After carefully explaining the concepts of the chapter and sharing several examples to illustrate the concepts, Davis provides mathematically sound but very accessible solutions to each of the opening questions.

You’ll be amazed at the number of parallels to daily life game theory provides a framework for thinking about. I intend to make it required reading in my high school math class during the fourth quarter. I am already using examples drawn from the book to write more interesting word problems and tie classroom topics to non-traditional applications.

Well, this musing was originally going to be about US strategic dominance and the risk of decline as the EU begins selling advanced weapons to China, but I need to complete more research and thinking before committing anything to paper…oops, paper, yeah right.

Snow Day!

2005-02-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

There are few sounds more welcome at 5:30 AM than the phone ringing on a day when snow is forcasted. An unexpected day off is a special gift of time to my way of thinking. We all seem to fill our days to the brim, leaving little room for the multitude of little things we wish to do but seldom find space in our lives to actually address. So it has been that I have mused and considered a multitude of topics on my daily commute but not composed a single missive to you in so long.

Welcome to our Sponsors!

2004-11-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

This is very exciting! Google has agreed to sponsor our site by placing discreet, content relevant text ads on the page. Let me know what you think...

Poker Puzzle

2004-11-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

This puzzle is brought to us by Aaron J. Friedland. You are also welcome to send me an email with your puzzle and receive credit.

Which of the following poker hands is best? Which is the worst? Which hands are of equal strength? The game is being played with an ordinary 52-card pack. There are no wild cards. (AS means ace of spades, etc.)

(a) AS AH AD KS KH
(b) AS AH AD QS QC
(c) AS AH AD QS QH
(d) AS AH AD 6S 6C
(e) AS AH AD 3S 3C

I'd like to thank Aaron for sending in his puzzle. I'll give the readers a day before posting the solution.

If you would like to have your puzzle posted, please be sure to include your solution so Fritz can manage the volume of editing.

You may post your solution to Aaron's puzzle by posting a comment below.

Pre-Matrix Dreams

2004-11-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

Musing

I had a dream a few months ago that left me lying awake in the dark, in a cold sweat. I lay there waiting for the lingering trauma to subside; for my breathing to slow, and my heart to stop racing. I was worked up like I had been running for my life, fleeing some horrible, nameless foe. Slowly it disapated and I remained. Now calm, I can relate what I saw...

It was the future, or perhaps the world as perceived by a future me. Imagine that every object and every surface, animate or inanimate, were completely covered with streaming data. Information puring over everything, and filling the space between them. What I remember was that everything about everything was knowable. For example, the wall of my house is normally a plain, painted wall (well now it has some stenciling :) but you get the idea. In my dream it was filled with moving lines of text. They were streaming by, even going in different directions and overlapping. One line of text going by told me about the paint on the wall, the color, the chemical makeup, the thickness, the number of layers, the age of the paint, the brand, shelf-life, number of times mixed, number of brushstrokes, and on and on. And that was one line! There were countless others racing past simultanously. Some about the stone in the wall, some about people that had been near it. Some about the position and velocity of the individual molecules present in the wall. Information about the air molecules that had bombarded it. Data about the light wavelenghts reflected, refracted, and absorbed. There were stars that had been destroyed billions of years ago, gave off matter, formed planets, became lava, turned to rock, crushed to sand, and used in the mortar. The name of the fellow that laid the bricks. The name of the inventor of the brick. Historical references about bricks, etc.

When I say that there was streaming information content on every surface, I mean it. Every fiber of each rug, every fork in the kitchen drawer, they all had lines and lines of blue lettering conveying all that was knowable about the object. Nature, origin, history, relationships, events, etc. all there. Imagine it coming to you from everywhere.

It was so vast and so overwhelming my mind reeled. My heart raced to pump blood to my eyes and brain in an effort to keep up. I broke out in a sweat. The walls disappeared, the room flew apart. Replacing everything was this nothing of information. All of the lines of text and numbers still streaming by but now the objects had become unnecesary. I was looking directly at the structure and information and they had become the only substance of reality.

Then I stepped back. I gave up. I stopped trying to know it all and it swept past me. The letters began to blend into the background. I began to see shapes and colors. I no longer knew the details of everything in the room, but the things themsleves started to return. The walls came back. The chair reformed. The forks lay in their drawer. The world became solid again.

I woke from my dream. I lay still in the dark and watched as the last lines of blue text faded into the pale wall of our bedroom. Ali lay quietly beside me, sleeping peacefully as she had before the world disappeared. And I lay there wondering...

What had I seen?

Had I seen some IBM manufactured future where we all wear sunglasses that stream data to us about whatever we are looking at? Had I been shown the futility of the human mind's struggle to know the details of nature? Had I caught a glimpse of the workings behind the curtain of reality? A chance to see what the Universe's Chief Engineer works with? Or had I just learned that sharing a piece of cold pizza with Fritz before going to bed was a good way to ruin a night's sleep?

Guest Contributor: Fritz

I had a dream some months ago that left me panting. I had followed the usual routine that night, went out to my Master-Bath Garden area around 11:30 PM or so. I had just turned and bowed to the moon for evening prayer, when the human started making noise and I had to run inside to make sure he didn’t hurt himself. He was yapping about splitting a piece of pizza (which is a pretty stupid thing to do at bedtime but that’s humans for you). I mentioned one bark about it being too late and we should go to bed when he started dangling it above me out of reach. Damn impertinent. I snatched it to shut him up and respecting the blessing that is food, ate it. (A human would probably have hidden it in some giant cold box without any respect for the gift of life and sustenance).

I showed him how to go up the stairs again but I don’t think he’s really learning. He still walks on only two legs and can’t seem to go up the steps any faster than one or two at a time. Finally the humans were asleep and I could rest my head without worrying about what they would do to the house. Last week they tore up all of the carpeting while I was outside one afternoon. You just can’t trust them while they’re awake.

Then it happened. I fell asleep and in my dream the humans had become the masters and we had become they’re slaves! I had to rise in the morning when the human wanted to use the Garden Bathroom instead of their indoor one. Then I had to prepare their breakfast! Later we went out for a walk and I had to watch where we were going, look out for cars, clean up after they pooped, etc. It was awful. Then they sent me off to labor to earn money to buy them food and treats. I and all the other slaves sat on the road for hours “commuting” and we lacked the brains to solve the “congestion” problem. Meanwhile the humans had the house to themselves. They relaxed, played, ate and drank. It was horrifying.

Finally I awoke from the nightmare and realized it had been a dream. I was still panting but the horror was over and the humans were back to serving us. I don’t know if I saw what the future would look like if humans got smarter? Or what might happen if we outbreed them? Or perhaps I just learned not to eat pizza before putting the humans down for the night.

Poem

As I grapple with the shrapnel of an early morning wound
and wonder at the thunder of my life's impending doom

I writhe upon the scythe that is Death's favorite toy
and miss the youthful bliss that was with me as a boy

we gaze into the haze of the mist upon the ground
and fear the end is near for us soldiers gathered round

we tired, nearly expired, broken sons strewn about
all dread to be dead and prolong living with a shout

our blood was like a flood that abandoned its fleshy banks
while these bones like brittle stones were crushed beneath the treads of tanks

we can't remain and yet we stain the ground with our last fight
and we don't pretend or hope to end the rule of might makes right

we pray, that we may, return to you in some dream
but you won't hear, the dreadful fear, in our dying scream

now go and show that we died not in vain that you might freely live
while we're remembered as the dismembered who did their all finally give

Biographies

2004-11-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

Biographies are like tour guides for the soul. You open this special kind of book, and if it’s worth the paper it’s printed on, you find yourself transported to some other place and time, seamlessly integrated into the life of another. The first “biography” I read was a short children’s book on the life of Abraham Lincoln. From his birth in Springfield, Illinois, to his early failure on the campaign trail and eventual heroism as our country’s President during a time of war, I was enthralled by the life and times of this great man.

Recently I have been reading, “Memoirs of a Geisha”. A fascinating look at a woman’s life in a culture with values far different from those taught to me as a post 1960’s American Catholic, raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Other tours have included the lives of Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, Saladin, Leif Ericson, Kublai Khan, Gautama Buddha, Ben Franklin, Harry Potter, George Washington, Andrew Carnegie, Saul of Tarsus, Jacques de Molay, and the list goes on.

Each tour brought unique revelations, insights about the subject, the world they lived in, and also about myself, and my relationship to the world we live in. The real magic of the tour only comes if you allow yourself to live in the story. When you let your imagination run free and explore the world, ideas, challenges, and opportunities offered to a person in that place, time, culture, etc. you come to a new knowing, far superior to the facts relayed by the author.

It is so engrossing to immerse into the story, to consider how you would have responded, adapted, struggled, floundered or flourished in that other world. I often find myself humbled by the sheer effort and will displayed by these famous few remembered for their deeds long after their corporeal deaths. Sometimes though, I lean the other way and with pride consider how I might have strode the world like a colossus if only I could go back to that moment in history knowing what I know now (and perhaps bringing a Bic lighter to impress the peasants of the day).

But would I really have succeeded where they failed? Would I have recognized opportunity knocking? Would I really be willing to trade comfort for passion? Would I have avoided the mistake of procrastination? Would I ever have developed the confidence to try my hands at the reigns of destiny? Or would I merely drift as we all so often do, down a path of mediocrity, consoled by the domestic successes of hearth, home, family, friends, and food. For after all, what does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?

These great, tragic few, these masters of the universe that carved into our collective memory a niche that outlasts their works, what did they gain and really lose?

I think it was Socrates that said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Prince Hamlet would perhaps have countered that constant examination made his life unlivable. In the end it is neither wealth, nor power, nor an historian’s praise or damnation, or even that priceless woe-bringer fame that is the measure of us. Our biography it seems is nothing more than the sum of our environment and our response to it, our character. What is the measure of a person, but the depth of their compassion, the weight of their resolve, breadth of their wisdom, and the length of their patience?

How can this humble reader ever hope to measure someone? Neither book nor conversation, nor years of observation can assure me of someone’s character. And, just like the storm cloud rolls by to reveal a blue sky and the Sun, so to can someone in darkness swiftly be transformed by life’s journey.

None of us truly chooses our course in life. What we choose is our response to each moment brought our way. It is our character and habits that choose our responses.

Our life is a dance between what happens to us and how we choose to respond. Since we cannot control what happens to us, we do not lead the dance. Trying to lead the dance with destiny leads to stumbling, for two cannot lead, one must follow. Destiny leads, and we follow. We can only work to become the best dance partner possible and this can only be accomplished through practicing our dancing skill, honing our character. In life, our dancing skill is our character and we can only work on that, and let destiny lead us where it will.

A master dancer does not look on the unskilled as creatures beneath her, but rather as students on a journey, improving their skill. They may stumble when they take Destiny by the hand and try to lead, or misstep and fall into her path, but it is not her place to become angry. It is instead an opportunity to respond with poise and grace, to train further and avoid becoming entangled in a collision with the unskilled.

When our nation clashes with the likes of Osama Bin Laden, it is not our compassion, wisdom, or patience that leads us to conflict. He may have been aiming for us on the dance floor, trying to force destiny to follow him, but we failed to avoid him. Were we known for our character, would not the world have warned us? Would not one of our admirers have taught him of our compassion?

Now, it is nearly done. Soon he will be dead for daring to harm us. His biography written and his place in history fixed. The world will learn again that our will is supreme. But, what will we have learned? Will we learn to be less trusting of others, build security around our lives, barriers on the dance floor? Or will we learn to avoid conflict by knowing and caring about the plight of others in our world? Will we seek to improve ourselves, or merely protect ourselves?

This dance with Destiny is the birthright of each individual. It is also the burden of every nation. I believe our national response is always a reflection of our individual characters. My hope is that by working on my dance, our Nation’s will improve as well.

See you on the floor,
Joe
Stevie Wonder and Tiger Woods are in a bar. Woods turns to Wonder and says,"How's the singing career going?"
Stevie Wonder replies, "Not too bad. How's the golf?"
Woods replies, "Not too bad, I've had some problems with my swing, but I think I've got that going right now."
Stevie says, "I always find that when my swing goes wrong, I need to stop playing for a while and not think about it. Then, the next time I play, it seems to be all right."

Tiger says, "You play golf?"
Wonder says, "Oh, yes, I've been playing for years."
Woods says, "But you're blind! How can you play golf if you can't see?" Wonder replies, "I get my caddy to stand in the middle of the fairway and call to me. I listen for the sound of his voice and play the ball toward him. Then, when I get to where the ball lands, the caddy moves to the green or farther down the fairway and again I play the ball toward his voice."
"But how do you putt?" asks Woods.
"Well," says Stevie, "I get my caddy to lean down in front of the hole and his voice."

Woods asks, "What's your handicap?"
Stevie says, "Well, I'm a scratch golfer."
Woods, incredulous, says to Stevie, "We've got to play a round sometime." Wonder replies, "Well, people don't take me seriously, so I only play for money, and never play for less than $10,000 a hole." Woods thinks about it and says, "OK, I'm game for that, when would you like to play?"

Stevie says, "Pick a night."

2004-11-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

Weekly Musings© – “No Solomon”
J Sweeney
9/1/04
Many Americans recognize that one duty of citizens in a democracy, perhaps the first duty, is to be an educated voter. While our two-party system has some weaknesses, one of its undeniable strengths is that via the national conventions voters are offered the opportunity to learn more about the people and platforms allied with each candidate. It is a chance for us to listen for what they say and don’t say. By reading the documents and listening to speeches we can gain some insight regarding potential policy directions and perhaps even how a candidate might respond to unforeseen events.

So in an effort to be an informed voter and a good citizen, I patiently sat through the speeches of the Democratic Convention. This week, during the Republican Convention, I am actively listening to the speeches that are aired and trying to find online the content of the speeches that the various commentators think we can live without hearing for ourselves.

During the Democratic Convention the dominant theme from the candidate, Senator John Kerry, was his record as a war hero, a defender of our nation. But, that was not the only theme of the convention. Former President Bill Clinton gave an impassioned speech about choices, particularly in domestic policy. The media appointed heir-apparent of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama called for recognition of our unity as a people and our need to establish a society that more equally distributed the prosperity created by our capitalist system.

I was never a fan of President Clinton. I thought his Presidency lacked focus and his economic policies benefited from a surge in productivity due to information technology that Former Vice-President Gore had more to do with as a senator than either of them did while in the executive branch. Our standing in the world may not have been diminished by unpopular policies but our workers were negatively impacted by NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and his personal choices served as an opportunity to divide our country. However, his speech was the clearest articulation of values and choices given in recent political history. He set the stage perfectly for the democrats to remind Americans about the gravitas of decisions outside the arena of international terrorism.
Kerry however demurred and spent his time highlighting four-months of heroic service thirty years ago instead of submitting evidence from his legislative record to earn our trust and ensure his election to high office. John Kerry may have been a war hero, but his twenty-four years in the Senate apparently do not support adequately in his mind the claim that he is a strong leader.

Now we are in the midst of the Republican Convention. Not surprisingly the party has chosen to disingenuously highlight the presence of socially moderate republicans during the prime time speaking slots. It is a blatant attempt to show a reasonable, compromising, big-tent party that welcomes dissent, discourse, and the exchange of ideas. I call it disingenuous because the platform statement is right-wing diatribe of exclusion and government enforced morality.

Of course the speakers like Former New York Mayor Rudolph Guliani and Senator John McCain are popular with swing-voters and independents specifically because of their socially moderate positions on choice, stem-cell research, campaign finance and fiscal responsibility. However, they are not permitted to speak to those very issues where they differ from the President. Indeed they are carefully presenting the argument that their differences are not important in the face of international terrorism and that they support the President because he is a strong leader in the “War on Terror.”

Even Barbara Bush as she spoke last night merely mentioned policy initiatives like “No Child Left Behind” on her way to saying that such issues were not the big reason to support her husband’s re-election, that the main factor in her mind was his single-minded pursuit of evildoers.

The only two issues that most Republicans are grudgingly willing to talk about outside of terrorism are tax-cuts and the Presidents decision regarding stem-cell research. The first is promoted proudly as an effective stimulus of the economy and a wise decision in the face of criticism. All economic evidence to the contrary social conservatives continue to claim that the tax cuts have been good for the economy. Even moderate republicans, and fiscal conservatives recognize that the massive deficits are having, and will have a nearly incalculable negative impact on our economy.

Please allow me this small diversion from the larger theme for an economics lesson. Tax breaks can be economic stimulators. If the tax break serves to concentrate capital into the hands of the financially savvy the long-term impact can be greater investment into capital improvements and business development. Such investments serve to drive down prices, increase jobs, and can lead to increased tax revenues. However, the increased revenues in such a scenario traditionally come from higher corporate profits and income growth for the middle-class. This tax break will have a different effect.

Corporate taxes are a dwindling percentage of total revenues as collected and reported by the IRS. Due to the globalization of the economy, free-trade agreements, and tax breaks given to corporations in an effort to compete for their presence in our local economies (so as to stimulate job growth) tax revenues will not appreciably grow from the corporate sector in the near future. Our leaders have been required by necessity to shift the tax burden from corporations to individuals. This means that any increase in corporate profits will have a smaller impact on tax revenues than traditionally.

Meanwhile, middle-class tax revenues now make up a larger portion of the tax base then before the targeted tax cut. This means that any loss of revenue from the tax break must be compensated for by a significant increase in middle-class incomes or a net increase in tax rates on the individual. The only other possibility is a surge in the employed population. The challenge is that increases in the employable population and wage increases are economic counter-balances. The more people that compete for jobs the lower wages can go in order to attract qualified employees. This is true locally as well as when US workers compete against foreign compensation models. So, because of modern realities regarding international competition, free trade, and tax burdens, the traditional stimulus effect of a tax break will not necessarily improve the economy to the degree necessary to return higher revenues.

In addition the tax cut was introduced during a time of peak housing prices coupled with both historically low interest rates and increased federal spending due mainly to the war in Iraq. Neither low interest rates nor the war in Iraq are causes of economic insecurity. The low interest rates were a primary factor in rising individual wealth, as home values increased. The financial costs of the war in Iraq are low when compared to other large-scale wars from American history in light of total gross domestic product, GDP. Yet, because the federal budget moved from surplus to deficit thereby requiring the government to borrow money from the marketplace in the form of bonds interest rates are beginning to rise even as the Federal Reserve was already inclined to raise rates in order to stem inflation.

Deficit spending raises interest rates. Because housing prices are so high when compared historically as a multiple of household income and because lending practices have loosened, people around the country at all income levels are carrying more debt then was considered tolerable by financial institutions even 5 years ago. We have already seen a substantial increase in personal bankruptcy (up 45% since 2002). This means that housing prices are going to slow and are likely to begin declining for a period of correction.

Median Household Income declined last year by 9% according to US Census figures. Any decrease in household incomes puts further downward pressure on housing prices, more importantly in the short-term it decreases tax revenues exacerbating the budget problem and leads to increased borrowing by the federal government.

That was a longer diversion than I had hoped for, however the material is complicated and required the space.

Now, back to the conventions.

The President’s economic policy can be summed up in one phrase, Tax Cuts. I personally think the tax cuts and deficits are an intentional plan on the part of republicans to starve the federal budget and create popular support for drastic cost cutting measures. But, that may be unfairly cynical and I accept the proposition that they enacted the tax-cuts from a principled position of letting people keep more of what they earn and a belief that the cuts would stimulate the economy.

The simplistic choice based purely on historical models is I think indicative of the mentality of this white house. They look at the past, choose a previously successful strategy and then pursue it with determination regardless of differences between the situation studied and the present one.

During this week’s convention you’ll also be treated to verbiage comparing President Bush’s policy on stem cell research to Solomon’s famous handling of the two women, one baby, situation.

I’ve heard this comparison before and it got me thinking. I began to muse, as I’m wont to do from time to time.

King Solomon had two women standing before him both claiming to be the mother of a child. Each woman had given birth recently. One morning they found one child dead and one living. Both women claimed the living child as their own.

Solomon said that the child should be severed in two and then each could have half.

One woman agreed to his proposal. The other woman begged him not to kill the child. She claimed she would rather he be given to the other woman than destroyed.

Thus Solomon knew by their choice which woman spoke truthfully and he returned the child to the real mother.

Now let’s consider the stem cell issue.

Before I begin I should disclose my bias. I am the Founding President of Monsignor Bonner High School’s Pro-Life Club. I have marched in Washington, DC against abortion, and Ali and I adopted a child rather than pursue any fertility program.

So, now let’s consider the stem cell issue.

Bush very publicly expressed his consternation with the issue of whether stem cells from embryos should be used for experimentation. His pressroom made it known that the President was carefully weighing the decision and called upon ethicists, scientists, and clergy to help him navigate the issue. He took some time away from DC and reflected in Crawford, TX on his ranch before announcing his choice.

In a well-orchestrated media blitz the administration announced its “Solomon Like” decision to compromise. The President had “wisely” determined that federal funding could not be used to destroy human life, but that federal funds could be used to conduct experimentation on the cells from life already destroyed. He attempted to capitalize on the issue with social conservatives and moderates. He would fund research with tax dollars and allow private culling and experimentation but no federal funds could be used to generate new lines of research.

Solomon like? I don’t think so. Solomon did not seek a compromise. He used a false compromise to demonstrate the insincerity of one side and thereby legitimize the claim of the rightful mother.

President Bush’s decision offers no such legitimacy to either party. At first it sounds wise. It sounds like a policy of compassion to those that might benefit from stem-cell research and protection of the unborn. But, if you really examine the issue closely you’ll see it is a fraudulent compromise. It is splitting the baby in half and trying to please both women.

Let’s pretend that one woman is the pro-life movement the other the scientific community. That’s a little simplistic, I know, but it is useful for the following mental exercise. The two women go before the President and make their case that the child, the issue, is theirs. President Bush deliberates and decides to split the baby. Solomon would have expected one woman to protest and the other agree. Well, let’s see what happens.

The Christian Right has decided to back Bush’s decision. They agree with his wise choice to split the baby. Let funds be used for some experimentation on embryonic stem cells. Since they were created in the dark of the night before, it is the fair thing to do. The scientific community continues to protest. They claim that splitting the decision is paramount to killing the baby, as weak federal funding won’t do enough to keep the US competitive.

Weird isn’t it? I would have expected the religious right to decry the decision and thereby demonstrate moral consistency and clarity. Instead they fall lockstep behind President Bush and call him wise. Wasn’t there a woman in the story that praised the false compromise offered by the king?

If President Bush believed that research done on unwanted embryos created during fertilization treatments was more morally reprehensible than their outright destruction he could not allow federal funds to be used to pursue research on strains of stem-cells already culled. If on the other hand he believed it was reasonable to use already discarded embryos for stem cell research, then to deny the funds for political cover with his base is a disingenuous choice.

Put simply he is saying that he won’t use your tax money to experiment on embryos that will be thrown out, but he will use your tax dollars to experiment on those that have already been thrown out. In other words the arbitrary line in the sand is the time when the President made his decision. If he had made it 3 years earlier none of the embryonic stem cells would have existed and if he made it 3 years form now perhaps 50 more lines would have been available.

He’s no Solomon. On the choice of the economy he used an old, outdated model to make a decision and continues to pursue that single solution disregarding good economic science.

On the choice of protecting life President Bush decided to split the baby, but unlike Solomon before him, he actually split the baby thereby undermining the entire Right to Life platform.

In both cases, and similar arguments could be made regarding Iraq, gay marriage, the fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, social security, and Medicare, President Bush and his advisors lack the intellectual integrity and creativity to effectively lead in a world so strikingly different from the time in which they were raised.

They are not capable of deeply considering long-term consequences or recognizing new opportunities and threats before we suffer the impact. As long as he is President we will continue to be a step behind the terrorists, a cycle behind economically, a generation behind technologically, and a lifetime behind morally.

President Bush is no Solomon and from what I’ve seen so far, Senator Kerry is not a leader.

But, let’s just argue about who did what 30 years ago.

The End of History?

2004-11-06T22:31:00.000-08:00

Weekly Musings – The End of History?
J Sweeney
5/22/02

This topic has been on my mind quite a bit of late, but no organizing theme has come forward to serve. I’d like to discuss the nature of historical perspective, political freedom, and the pursuit of meaning in life, but how to tie them together? Perhaps I can’t, at least not yet.

I’ve been writing “Weekly Musings” for over two years now. Like any hobby or craft you learn things as you go. It’s the act of doing that makes progress possible. Often I have stumbled to produce a piece for weeks at a time, and I have yet to produce a work worthy of the ideas or attention provided by you the reader. However, I have learned this lesson. Sometimes, you just have to go forward even though the path is unclear. It is very easy to wait for the perfect answer, the right choice, the ideal moment to act, but that never arrives. We end up waiting for something external to occur before we initiate the internal work, and that leads to stagnation.

So, here I go. I’ll just start writing and we’ll see what comes of it.

I believe we live in the dark ages. In case you missed that or thought it was a teaser phrase to get you thinking, let me repeat. We live in the dark ages. This is not the age of reason, the dawn of the future, the moment of humanities greatness. This is an age of darkness. It is not the end of history, but rather a moment in time that future generations will look back on and shake their heads in wonder. They’ll review our works of art, our political structures, our social compassion, and arrogance, planetary isolation, and anonymity with horror. They’ll be amazed we survived at all.

Before you begin to espouse to me the Herculean achievements of our age, the wonders of modern medicine, the unprecedented freedoms, the unrivaled standard of living, and the power of communications technology, let me remind you of a secret you may have forgotten. We don’t live at the end of history.

I know it seems like it. I know that during school most of us were told how early man developed agricultural technologies about five to ten thousand years ago that let former hunter-gathers settle down and farm somewhere in Samaria. A little later that culture was taken up in the valley of the Nile. The flooding river gave rise to a surplus economy. Trade and culture were born and shared. Not long thereafter Hamurabi codified specific laws that would be applied equally and the concept of social justice was born. The gods, Astrology, craft specialization, etc were born.

Soon the Greeks, the Fathers of Western Civilization, took all that had come before them, and created a Golden Age of arts, science, rhetoric, and political freedom. Here our history classes usually got fuzzy again, and the demise of Greece, Athens and Sparta, etc. were left to barbarians, our imaginations, and the conquering Romans. Fine, let’s pretend. So Rome the small city, became the Republic, became the Empire. Ah, the end of history. Each of these societies is chosen in our history classes because we know of them, and they each seemed to be the result of history up to that point. We pretend that the line of succession of better and better civilizations leads right past the Rennasiance, the Magna Carta, and up to the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the lessons of Vietnam, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the end of Communism. What a joke.

This history we have been sold is not only erroneous and self-serving for the elite, but it is dangerous. It leads us to feelings of contentment and also social arrogance. We are not the result of history. We are merely a spurious offshoot and perhaps an altogether unimportant one.

Choose any objective measure of a culture and we shall come up wanting against many of these that I mentioned. Choose any measure and compare it to where we might have been if we didn’t succumb to the deceits of our age and we shall fall so short of the mark as to be truly depressing.

Art? What piece of art, what theater or play, what music or song will be in the hearts of humanity two thousand years from now? What piece of our artistic culture resounds so deeply with the human experience that you would expect it to survive transition to another culture, another nation, or perhaps even another planet?

Science? Fundamentally what new and provable truth is the product of our country’s pursuit of technology? The atom was described in the Vedas (ancient Sanskrit writings) over six thousand years ago. The anatomy of the brain is described in detail on the wall of the tombs of mummified Egyptian kings. Perhaps you would point to the horseless carriage, but it still travels on roads built by the Romans in some places, so not much has changed there. We went to the moon you say, that can stand as our achievement. Did you go? Can you even prove anyone did?

Communication? Yes, we communicate more quickly and with larger audiences than any other civilization we know of throughout all of history. But, has the quality improved? Is something faster always better? Do our news broadcasts and web sites convey more clearly the totality of events and their meaning than the carefully crafted speeches and letters of medieval France? Do our politicians tell us more truth than Hammurabi did to his subjects?

Standard of Living? Do we not still stack bricks, sticks, stones, and steel into the shapes of caves to guard ourselves against the weather and others in our tribe? Do we not still wrap cloth about our bodies to preserve them from the elements and the eyes of others? Do we not still eat roots taken from the ground and the flesh of other living creatures? Do we not still seek entertainment to free ourselves from boredom? Do we not still work more hours than we wish, doing things we would not do unless we were paid to do them? Do we still not die younger than we hope with more things left undone than we’d like? Our waste is still carried from our house by pipes that may eventually rot and burst. Many families still collapse under the weight of the pursuit of material goods.

Freedom? Ah, freedom the bell weather of the great US culture. Surely in this realm we are supreme. If nowhere else, at least in this we are masters of history. Really? Whose voice was heard loudest in the Oval Office when energy policy was being decided, yours or some wealthy man’s, or some corporation that was lying to us? Did the popular vote win the election last time? Do you not lock your car door at night? Does your house have an alarm or a dog to protect you? Can you freely walk the streets at night without fear? Can you travel the world without threat of being targeted because of your country’s actions (which you don’t have a voice in anyway)? Can you say what you think without the “PC” police calling you a racist, sexist, or bigot? Can you practice your religion without others labeling you as an extremist or pagan? Can you grow an herb in your garden and smoke it without first checking if it is legal? Can you drink fermented beverages without waiting three years until after you have registered to die in a foreign land in a war you disagree with? Can you choose? Does some government-enforced monopoly determine your “choice” of cable provider, medical insurance, or local phone company? Can you elect not to pay taxes that support programs you wholeheartedly disagree with?

What freedoms we think we have are not new. Choosing what job to work at and pay taxes from is not freedom. An election where wealth controls the outcome is not self-rule. Closing your mouth at of fear of persecution is not free speech. A National Guard sent oversees in service of the government is not a militia that will protect us from infringement of rights. Holding suspects indefinitely for visa violations is not justice. The use of conversations with your advocate being used against you in a court of law is not privacy. Random screening of all travelers is an assumption of guilt, not innocence. New Federal Agencies with broad “Security” mandates, armed and organized beyond the capacity of a State are a threat to Freedom, not an assurance of it.

We are moving slowly (or quickly depending on your perspective) toward tyranny. We are doing so because we believe in the righteousness of our leaders, whom we believe are serving our interests because we elected them. We did not elect them. More importantly they do not serve us when they choose our safety over our freedom.

History is a long story of, often unrelated, chapters. It is not a planned movement from one high society to the next. It is instead a record of the choices made by various peoples in their most trying moments.

This nation has never chosen science before technology or art before commerce. Art and Science are the long-term achievements of significant investments in education and research. Throughout history, they have required the benefit of wealthy donors for their sustenance. So it is not surprising if history does not look back and marvel at our achievements in this regard.

Freedom, self-rule, these are our hallmarks. We have repeatedly thrown off the shackles of elitism, tyranny, and slavery here and abroad. We have been the beacon during our dark age for those willing to sacrifice any luxury or comfort for the inalienable right of self-determination. We have always chosen to risk our lives for the sake of freedom.

Now, once again we are faced with a choice. Do we wish to live in a free society where we rely one another to preserve safety, or would we rather hand over our freedom to a national government that promises to protect us? We already know that the Federal Government is unable and potentially unwilling to protect us. We also know that the same body does not trust us to regulate ourselves.

Have we come too far? Is our violence to great, our lower class too desperate, our population to aged and too comfortable? How do we turn back the hands of a government that seeks to number us, monitor us, search us, label us, and protect us? How does our voice become heard if our votes don’t count?

Is this the end of our history?

Perhaps future historians will look back at this “Great Experiment” in democracy and say, “Here, here is the point when they grew weak, when they yielded to fear and handed over their freedom. Here is when the Republic died and the Empire was born.”

Cameras in the Classrooms

2004-11-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

Below is an old rant that I decided to add to this site for your enjoyment.

Weekly Musings – “Cameras in the Classrooms”
J Sweeney
08/14/03

Classes for the new school year began in Biloxi, Mississippi this week. Along with the normal jitters of starting a new schedule, the pleasure of seeing friends, and the mirth of guessing what kind of meat product the cafeteria is attempting to pass off as beef, the students have a new presence in their environment to consider. Over the summer every classroom and hallway had a web-enabled camera installed.

So far, most of the feedback from those affected, as reported by the district, is positive. Parents are quoted as saying they feel that their children are safer. Some are reported as having stated that they are willing to surrender certain freedoms if it means better security. The only slightly negative comment noted was from one teacher wondering whether the added oversight would negatively impact the student-teacher rapport.

So, the town of Biloxi has apparently used its proceeds from legalizing gambling in a way that has popular support and may even deter violence or other crimes against students. Civil libertarians will sound an alarm about the erosion of privacy and the danger of “Big Brother” watching, but considering the cameras are installed in a public setting, they do not have a leg to stand on. Unless of course you consider that the students are required to attend the school by law and are therefore being coerced into being monitored without their ascent. Seeing that most students don’t vote and given the popular support among parents and administrators, I expect that nothing short of a successful lawsuit will remove the cameras.

Perhaps this is where we’re headed. A little over a year ago I had the opportunity to dine with a Judge and his wife. They’ll remain nameless, as I did not request permission at the time to quote them. The dinner was full of stimulating conversation. Both the Judge and his wife were active in other areas of our democracy and had served in the defense and education sectors respectively. Among the many issues discussed that evening was the topic of videotape surveillance and its role in our society, public life, and work environment. Joining the conversation was a medical doctor and a technology consultant.

The Judge described the value that adding video and audio recording to his courtroom had produced in reducing errors, creating an objective record, and protecting him from inaccurate claims by defendants and lawyers. He was convinced that every professional, particularly doctors should immediately begin demanding that their interactions with clients, patients, and the public be recorded for their protection.

The doctor at our table was deeply concerned about the potential for harm if patients felt their doctor patient relationship compromised by a recording. Would they be willing to share intimate and potentially embarrassing details about behavior that may have led to disease contraction? Would they be as forthcoming with very personal details about symptoms they were suffering from?

As the Doctor and the Judge argued and periodically turned to the consultant for technical details about security, encryption, and capabilities, I had the opportunity to begin to muse, as I’m inclined to do from time to time.

What about psychologists, lawyers, accountants, teachers, guidance counselors, priests, rabbis, imams, etc.? Was the Judge correct in thinking that once professionals had an opportunity to try the technology they would come to appreciate its benefits so much that they would demand its presence?

The concept of being taped when entering a stadium, using the ATM, or just walking into a department store is something we have all become accustomed to even if we have not grown quite comfortable with it yet. But, when the airports and stadiums added recognition software that identifies facial mappings and then compares them to a database to watch for terrorists and criminals, things changed. The very logical argument was that the police could do the same thing but they would have to increase manpower, and thus costs, significantly to have as much coverage as the automated system. I agree but what police don’t do currently that is within the capability of the system is to record all faces and begin to build a record of places and times where and when that face has been recorded.

Layer that concept with the idea of cameras in the schools and we can begin to map out a possible misuse of this technology. Imagine a school with cameras installing the recognition system. Imagine them then using it to improve school security by alerting officials if an unknown person was wondering the halls, perhaps selling drugs or seeking revenge on a student. The facial mapping software would alert school security that a known drug dealer was on the premises. They could detain him, call the police, or they could watch to see who interacted with him while he was present. Sounds like a great idea and one that would have popular support in some locations.

What it requires is a record of all students’ faces and a system that can maintain detailed time logs of comings and goings. What it precedes is a national, albeit disconnected, network of systems that have similar logs and profiles. A government agency would then merely have to gain access to the disparate systems and search for an individual to get a detailed record of their movement map for a given period of time. That could then be cross-indexed with movements of known terrorists and we could someday begin to unravel support networks for these international criminals.

Given the scope of the Patriot Act, the fear of the average citizen, and the pace of technological advances. I believe it is a forgone conclusion that Big Brother will be watching. I also believe we’ll be safer for it. My only question is, at what cost?

“If you are living within the bounds of the law you shouldn’t mind them looking into your backyard or house”, more than one law enforcement official has told me. Maybe, maybe not, I don’t break any laws in my house but does that mean I am willing to relinquish my privacy? Should I have a say in whether my image can be recorded, stored, searched, tracked, etc? Should I even care if like they say, I “have nothing to hide?”

The word that comes to mind is Trust.

It just keeps moving in and quietly reminding me to consider it. Trust. What happens to “Trust” when we get used to having our lives on tape? Does it improve? Does the fabric of society become stronger because we all live more carefully inside the law? Does it erode as people realize that someone or some agency can edit, manufacture, or destroy records that we rely on for “objective” truth?

Does the human capacity for self-control improve through this silent coercesion or does it erode our internal and individual sense of right and wrong in favor of a socially acceptable code of behavior? Does doing the right thing become something we choose because of our values or instead become a decision made in fear of potential retribution? Are we moving forward or moving backward?

The message of the Old Testament for me was that there was one god and only one god. He was watching and stood in judgment over all creation. He punished the evildoer in this life or the next. The people of the Old Testament lived in awe and fear and behaved accordingly or were punished. The message of the New Testament is that there is a god, he loves us and expects us to love him and to treat our neighbor with the same love that we have for ourselves. There’s more to both stories and I’ve left out everything about his chosen people, but those were the two main themes I learned.

Here’s my question, if this nation was founded on the whole of the Judeo-Christian tradition which story do you want to run the country by? Because this recording and the technologies that come with it sound a lot more like the Old Testament than the New. I’m all for punishing criminals and rehabilitating them if possible, but I deeply prefer that my society and fellow citizens choose the good from a knowledge of our shared inheritance, shared divine love, and unity, rather than that they choose the good from a place of fear of the all knowing eye.

You may think it naïve to expect to live in such a place, a society where people choose the good because it is the good, not for a reward or fear of punishment. You may think it unrealistic given our diverse culture and the lack of a homogenous value system. I may be naïve, but it wasn’t cynicism that caused twelve men and two women to found a tradition of love and forbearance upon the death of their spiritual leader. It wasn’t cynicism that caused the people of the colonies to rise up and create a new society with hope for the self-rule of nations. It wasn’t a lack of faith in his fellow man that gave President Lincoln the confidence to take the North to war and win freedom for an oppressed people. It wasn’t a society of the Old Testament. We are not Israel.

We as a nation have many, many choices ahead of us in the next twenty years. Most of them have to do with public policy as it relates to technological advancements. We should begin to develop a framework for how these decisions will be made. What is most important is to devise a way to determine if a specific technology serves the common good in the long-term, or if it erodes some foundation of our society. I am not sure into which category intelligent video surveillance falls, we probably all need to keep an open mind and consider the testimony of experts from various sciences. Law enforcement, ethicists, legal advocates, educators, national security agencies, civil liberties groups, and religious leaders all have something to add to this debate. Future debates will require even broader gatherings of experts, particularly from the medical and genetics fields.

Our politicians will need to be held to a higher standard than they are currently. They will have to demonstrate intellectual integrity, and I think a degree of intellectual curiosity. It is not enough that they have good advisors and follow their counsel. It is essential that they can read, comprehend and extrapolate against a wide variety of highly technical and emotionally charged topics, without relying too heavily on the advice of industry supported expert testimony.

They will have to balance our needs for international leadership with our internal class dynamics. These forces will be in direct opposition for most of the decisions concerning engineered improvements to the human genome and life expectancy.

It’s time for me to stop typing and go back and cut huge sections out of this overlong missive. I apologize in advance for any failures in editing.

Peace, be upon you and your home.

Joe