ColonelZen's Blog
From Beast to Brightman, An Opera of the Evolution of Consciousness in Five Acts
2009-03-25 21:47:26
From Beast to Brightman, An Opera of the Evolution of Consciousness in Five Acts
This is my model of how human consciousness evolved. It is a gross model of how I see the larger flow of information occurring in the human brain with separation into "acts" as to what I think was present at an earlier stage versus what I think occurred in later stages. I've made some pen and paper sketches of this, but in monochrome it's hard to see what's going on amid the detail. I've tried doing it with some graphic tools on the computer using various colors, but there I turn out to be woefully inept in using so. So here is the sketch, clumbsily, in words.
I've thought of doing an extended article, but as I'm a hack business computer programmer not an academic, and this puts no money in my pocket. But I am interested, so I've put a few hours into writing this up. For now, at least, I'll leave it at this.
It's a lot clearer in my head, but getting it into a communicable medium proves difficult. Hopefully at least a few others can make sense of it and possibly find it useful and/or refine it.
Very little of this is "original" except perhaps the way I've laid it out. To be sure my introspective phenomenology, aided by some meditation practice over years has aided it, but mostly it comes from Dennett, Minsky and others I've read through the years with some late refinements by reading Edelman. There are a couple of sketches in Edelman's "Wider than the Sky" which anticipate this in some ways.
I don't think of this as necessarily a detailed and direct path of how the evolution occurred, in particular I suspect Acts 4 and 5 were fairly blended together, but drawing a boundary at any one act and saying this ended before this began would be a mistake, just as saying that the separation of various "levels" would also be a mistake. I suspect large areas of overlap, both in internal organisation of the levels and in time among the acts.
Act 1. Beasts of the Earth.
(Wherein our noble selves only react to what is before us; our history guides us but has only reinforcement of past consequences)
1) The senses come in at the top. There are very short term buffers. Senses include things like bodily state, e. g. hunger or thirst.
(cartographic note. I shall use "top" to indicate raw sensory data and "bottom" to designate the processes prior to action, but I while the "flow" is generally top to bottom I am aware that there is a great deal of side to side and even some "upwards" movement of information aside from that directly mentioned. Similarly I doubt the "levels" are as clear cut is this looks like I'n saying; this is just a crude sketch, There is very little distinction between levels save for what the result of that level of cognition is and no reason to presume any physical isolation between where each kind of informational resolution occurs)
2) The sensory data gets sliced, diced and filtered, and various data from senses gets recombined and the recombinations compared other memory of similar slice and dice at this level. When the recognisers see a "significant" correlation they pass the appropriate signals and data to the next level down (a simplification). Likewise sensory data important to action, say kinaesthetic senses are shunted very directly down to action.
3) The recombine and compare with memory at a like level goes on through many layers ... though the layers are not necessarily distinct. Higher priority recognised patterns can be shunted nearer to action more quickly (say you recognise a tiger with a toothy grin bounding your way).
4) Predecision. A decision is reached ... but this is also a decision on the significance of recent data. Information gets propagated upwards on what data was important at each level and a signal upwards may cause the information at any layer involved in the antecedent processes to be committed to longer memory for subsequent comparison and the weights and depths of the downward processes may be adjusted ... including shunting comparisons deeper at any stage.
5) Action, not directly germane to this discussion, but it is the ultimate target of our information processing so here it sits to ground things.
Act 2. Anticipation.
(We get better at using the past as a guide)
2) gets expanded into 2a, the real sensory data and pseudo-sensory data, 2b.
3) The recognisers have some mutated younger but heftier siblings ... full fledged comparators comparing the pseudo-sensory anticipatory data with the "live" data. Throughout the comparison and filtering now the comparison of the pseudo-data to the real data is part of the mix, and variance given heavier weight and shunted more deeply toward the decision level. This results in more efficiency in terms of deciding action faster but may result in some loss of potentially valuable information saved and compared relative to the earlier 3 level. Let's call these new responsibilities 3b just for consistencies sake.
4) The decision stage now takes on an additional role, itself splitting. It knows what decisions it has passed on to action and the traceback to the data from which the data was made. Aside from passing an action in 4a, new piece 4b signals 2b to take the original data out of store and build anticipatory models to match the expected results of pending action.
Act 3. The Fork in the Road.
(Wherein our hero not only uses the past as a guide but learns to anticipate the future. First level abstraction was always implicit in the slice, dice and recombination of data, but now it becomes explicit in the decision process)
2) This level now opens a drama wing, 2c. Here under direction of the new wing of level 4 (4c see below) anticipatory data much like 2b is played out... but there is no immediate sensory data with which to compare. When level 4 makes a decision the scenery anticipated here in 2c is shifted to 2b rather than regenerated on the fly from scratch. This gives added weight and import to the results of the comparators farther down.
3) New wing 3c is opened and does the recombinant comparison with past (not present) sensory data such as is handled by wing 3a. But as things are passed down the wing designation remains.
4) Well if we're adding a wing on the upper floors we need something in beneath them, so 4c opens as well. Where once 4a and 4b in concert could only reach a singular decision, the entirety of level 4 now accepts multiple possible action candidates, but if there's no emergency in progress, it defers decision and 4c tells 2c produce simulations for of the expected actions exactly as 2b would for anticipatory data, and the correlations come back down through the layers of 3 ... but tagged to know that these are simulations and which decision candidate they match (In earlier posts I've been calling 4c the producer/writer). Using this new data, perhaps iterated, 4 as a whole finally makes an action decision.
Act 4. The Puppet Master.
(Wherein we dance on tangled gossamer ourselves enweaved before on path of destiny a single step be trodden)
2) No new wing in this stage, but something just as significant, we now have an actor. By now in the memory cells of various layers there is a wealth of knowledge about what this mind has done before in various situations and the consequences that resulted. So under the direction of 4c 2c now runs the scenario with a puppet standing in for itself making different decisions up to each decision point, but instead of just the pseudo sense data being passed down, the alternate actions in similar situations are passed down.
3) As in stage 3, level 3 passes on tagged information but the correlates from the alternate action options from the events in 2c rather than just desirability weighting are passed "downward". This includes not only what one actually did in prior cases similar to the situations shown in 2c, but also the alternate options which were previously considered action candidates in that situation along with some ancillary information on why they were rejected.
4) Level 4 now gets not just base options for actions but ongoing updates of what possibilities for action arise from preceding possible actions. 4c now coordinates these ongoing threads of possible actions from the consequences of possible actions and prompts 2c to simulate them for the outside world keeping track of the decisions, actions desired and consequences, saving the earlier actions required for each step. This proceeds until immediate action is required or the plausible possibilities are exhausted and the decision to act is made and passed down.
Act 5. The Fat Lady Sings.
Nothing happens at first except that over time things get faster and better through wing c which essentially obviates the deficiency noted in Act 2. Note that all of these processes are mechanistic ... they could be called deterministic except that these happen through billions or trillions of synapses in grey goo where said synapses are triggered by a handful of molecules diffusing by brownian motion so it is impossible to say which would fire first. But of course there is significant predictability to the brain's decisions, so this "noise" is overcome by either redundancy or some kind of synchronisation mechanism.
Consciousness is now complete. It IS 2c ... with leakage from the rest of level 2 with which it is tightly coupled. Evolution doesn't care about *how* we think, but only *what* we think about ourselves in relation to the outside world ... and the only "self" the brain has to think about is the puppet actor dancing in 2c. That is the only self the brain is aware of, and "self", The Mind's I to use Dennett's title is just the relationship - both past and projected for various alternate and future scenarios in relationship to the outside world. Until we get where we are today, discussing the how's of how the mind works among ourselves, there isn't any value in knowing more about it the self than how it reacts to potential outside phenomena, and nothing on the outside cares about whether the whole animal decides upon action or just a few million neurons at such and such place(s) in the brain.
But language happens. This throws a monkey in to wrench the machinery ... adding a lot of monkey grease to speed things up. What, in terms of making decisions were once solely internal representations and abstractions which could have remained close to their original sensory predicates, now have to be rendered solely as sounds in a highly abstracted format. It is now necessary to look at and describe the predilections of the self, already in at least first level abstraction as per Act 3, in this alternate representation, words. Thus second level abstraction becomes a necessary part of our mental machinery. This rerepresentation of the self often involves MANY iterations through 2c down through 4c, and 3c becomes hugely populated with these second level abstractions and their consequences.
This in turn, means that we focus more and more upon our representation of ourselves and our options as puppets in the theater. The image of self becomes habituated on the self as representation, with options in a fluid future. We see ourselves as having "free will" because of the fluidity of the future even though the machinery is mechanistic because that is what we see in 2c, the Cartesian Theater, even though that is a small part of our minds and the work is actually happening mostly in levels 3 and 4.
The ability to share these second level abstractions through language and build upon them gives us the capability to store and share information across time and space. This in turn gives us the power of dominion over the earth. We can be fruitful and multiply ... or subdue it...
And the fat lady sings ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7rZEKClk4 (she ain't fat, rather cute in my opinion, but it's her voice I'm in love with, Bocelli's voice is pretty good too.)
-- TWZ
This is my model of how human consciousness evolved. It is a gross model of how I see the larger flow of information occurring in the human brain with separation into "acts" as to what I think was present at an earlier stage versus what I think occurred in later stages. I've made some pen and paper sketches of this, but in monochrome it's hard to see what's going on amid the detail. I've tried doing it with some graphic tools on the computer using various colors, but there I turn out to be woefully inept in using so. So here is the sketch, clumbsily, in words.
I've thought of doing an extended article, but as I'm a hack business computer programmer not an academic, and this puts no money in my pocket. But I am interested, so I've put a few hours into writing this up. For now, at least, I'll leave it at this.
It's a lot clearer in my head, but getting it into a communicable medium proves difficult. Hopefully at least a few others can make sense of it and possibly find it useful and/or refine it.
Very little of this is "original" except perhaps the way I've laid it out. To be sure my introspective phenomenology, aided by some meditation practice over years has aided it, but mostly it comes from Dennett, Minsky and others I've read through the years with some late refinements by reading Edelman. There are a couple of sketches in Edelman's "Wider than the Sky" which anticipate this in some ways.
I don't think of this as necessarily a detailed and direct path of how the evolution occurred, in particular I suspect Acts 4 and 5 were fairly blended together, but drawing a boundary at any one act and saying this ended before this began would be a mistake, just as saying that the separation of various "levels" would also be a mistake. I suspect large areas of overlap, both in internal organisation of the levels and in time among the acts.
Act 1. Beasts of the Earth.
(Wherein our noble selves only react to what is before us; our history guides us but has only reinforcement of past consequences)
1) The senses come in at the top. There are very short term buffers. Senses include things like bodily state, e. g. hunger or thirst.
(cartographic note. I shall use "top" to indicate raw sensory data and "bottom" to designate the processes prior to action, but I while the "flow" is generally top to bottom I am aware that there is a great deal of side to side and even some "upwards" movement of information aside from that directly mentioned. Similarly I doubt the "levels" are as clear cut is this looks like I'n saying; this is just a crude sketch, There is very little distinction between levels save for what the result of that level of cognition is and no reason to presume any physical isolation between where each kind of informational resolution occurs)
2) The sensory data gets sliced, diced and filtered, and various data from senses gets recombined and the recombinations compared other memory of similar slice and dice at this level. When the recognisers see a "significant" correlation they pass the appropriate signals and data to the next level down (a simplification). Likewise sensory data important to action, say kinaesthetic senses are shunted very directly down to action.
3) The recombine and compare with memory at a like level goes on through many layers ... though the layers are not necessarily distinct. Higher priority recognised patterns can be shunted nearer to action more quickly (say you recognise a tiger with a toothy grin bounding your way).
4) Predecision. A decision is reached ... but this is also a decision on the significance of recent data. Information gets propagated upwards on what data was important at each level and a signal upwards may cause the information at any layer involved in the antecedent processes to be committed to longer memory for subsequent comparison and the weights and depths of the downward processes may be adjusted ... including shunting comparisons deeper at any stage.
5) Action, not directly germane to this discussion, but it is the ultimate target of our information processing so here it sits to ground things.
Act 2. Anticipation.
(We get better at using the past as a guide)
2) gets expanded into 2a, the real sensory data and pseudo-sensory data, 2b.
3) The recognisers have some mutated younger but heftier siblings ... full fledged comparators comparing the pseudo-sensory anticipatory data with the "live" data. Throughout the comparison and filtering now the comparison of the pseudo-data to the real data is part of the mix, and variance given heavier weight and shunted more deeply toward the decision level. This results in more efficiency in terms of deciding action faster but may result in some loss of potentially valuable information saved and compared relative to the earlier 3 level. Let's call these new responsibilities 3b just for consistencies sake.
4) The decision stage now takes on an additional role, itself splitting. It knows what decisions it has passed on to action and the traceback to the data from which the data was made. Aside from passing an action in 4a, new piece 4b signals 2b to take the original data out of store and build anticipatory models to match the expected results of pending action.
Act 3. The Fork in the Road.
(Wherein our hero not only uses the past as a guide but learns to anticipate the future. First level abstraction was always implicit in the slice, dice and recombination of data, but now it becomes explicit in the decision process)
2) This level now opens a drama wing, 2c. Here under direction of the new wing of level 4 (4c see below) anticipatory data much like 2b is played out... but there is no immediate sensory data with which to compare. When level 4 makes a decision the scenery anticipated here in 2c is shifted to 2b rather than regenerated on the fly from scratch. This gives added weight and import to the results of the comparators farther down.
3) New wing 3c is opened and does the recombinant comparison with past (not present) sensory data such as is handled by wing 3a. But as things are passed down the wing designation remains.
4) Well if we're adding a wing on the upper floors we need something in beneath them, so 4c opens as well. Where once 4a and 4b in concert could only reach a singular decision, the entirety of level 4 now accepts multiple possible action candidates, but if there's no emergency in progress, it defers decision and 4c tells 2c produce simulations for of the expected actions exactly as 2b would for anticipatory data, and the correlations come back down through the layers of 3 ... but tagged to know that these are simulations and which decision candidate they match (In earlier posts I've been calling 4c the producer/writer). Using this new data, perhaps iterated, 4 as a whole finally makes an action decision.
Act 4. The Puppet Master.
(Wherein we dance on tangled gossamer ourselves enweaved before on path of destiny a single step be trodden)
2) No new wing in this stage, but something just as significant, we now have an actor. By now in the memory cells of various layers there is a wealth of knowledge about what this mind has done before in various situations and the consequences that resulted. So under the direction of 4c 2c now runs the scenario with a puppet standing in for itself making different decisions up to each decision point, but instead of just the pseudo sense data being passed down, the alternate actions in similar situations are passed down.
3) As in stage 3, level 3 passes on tagged information but the correlates from the alternate action options from the events in 2c rather than just desirability weighting are passed "downward". This includes not only what one actually did in prior cases similar to the situations shown in 2c, but also the alternate options which were previously considered action candidates in that situation along with some ancillary information on why they were rejected.
4) Level 4 now gets not just base options for actions but ongoing updates of what possibilities for action arise from preceding possible actions. 4c now coordinates these ongoing threads of possible actions from the consequences of possible actions and prompts 2c to simulate them for the outside world keeping track of the decisions, actions desired and consequences, saving the earlier actions required for each step. This proceeds until immediate action is required or the plausible possibilities are exhausted and the decision to act is made and passed down.
Act 5. The Fat Lady Sings.
Nothing happens at first except that over time things get faster and better through wing c which essentially obviates the deficiency noted in Act 2. Note that all of these processes are mechanistic ... they could be called deterministic except that these happen through billions or trillions of synapses in grey goo where said synapses are triggered by a handful of molecules diffusing by brownian motion so it is impossible to say which would fire first. But of course there is significant predictability to the brain's decisions, so this "noise" is overcome by either redundancy or some kind of synchronisation mechanism.
Consciousness is now complete. It IS 2c ... with leakage from the rest of level 2 with which it is tightly coupled. Evolution doesn't care about *how* we think, but only *what* we think about ourselves in relation to the outside world ... and the only "self" the brain has to think about is the puppet actor dancing in 2c. That is the only self the brain is aware of, and "self", The Mind's I to use Dennett's title is just the relationship - both past and projected for various alternate and future scenarios in relationship to the outside world. Until we get where we are today, discussing the how's of how the mind works among ourselves, there isn't any value in knowing more about it the self than how it reacts to potential outside phenomena, and nothing on the outside cares about whether the whole animal decides upon action or just a few million neurons at such and such place(s) in the brain.
But language happens. This throws a monkey in to wrench the machinery ... adding a lot of monkey grease to speed things up. What, in terms of making decisions were once solely internal representations and abstractions which could have remained close to their original sensory predicates, now have to be rendered solely as sounds in a highly abstracted format. It is now necessary to look at and describe the predilections of the self, already in at least first level abstraction as per Act 3, in this alternate representation, words. Thus second level abstraction becomes a necessary part of our mental machinery. This rerepresentation of the self often involves MANY iterations through 2c down through 4c, and 3c becomes hugely populated with these second level abstractions and their consequences.
This in turn, means that we focus more and more upon our representation of ourselves and our options as puppets in the theater. The image of self becomes habituated on the self as representation, with options in a fluid future. We see ourselves as having "free will" because of the fluidity of the future even though the machinery is mechanistic because that is what we see in 2c, the Cartesian Theater, even though that is a small part of our minds and the work is actually happening mostly in levels 3 and 4.
The ability to share these second level abstractions through language and build upon them gives us the capability to store and share information across time and space. This in turn gives us the power of dominion over the earth. We can be fruitful and multiply ... or subdue it...
And the fat lady sings ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7rZEKClk4 (she ain't fat, rather cute in my opinion, but it's her voice I'm in love with, Bocelli's voice is pretty good too.)
-- TWZ
Discuss
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Some Problems with Libertarianism
2009-01-31 22:10:37
Originally posted at
http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mn=76225&pt=msg&mid=6198473
Once upon a time I was Libertarian.
No, as far as I could tell, the god botherers had little to nothing to do with the libertarians. A couple of people I knew called themselves Christian and were rather wearing it on their sleeve, but they were the mostly sensible sort, and were as committed to separation of church and state as were the rest of us. To the best of my knowledge no religious organization nor zealots had anything to do with the heirarchy of LPUSA proper.
I began to doubt libertarianism when I learned a bit about economics and how hard currency MUST lead to economic busts (a "leak" or increase in savings reduces the amount of currency available ... it becomes a self reinforcing phenomenon). Some means to create and issue currency to prevent this is required for a stable society and accomodate growth. Fractional reserve banking isn't a perfect answer but it does address the problem in a dynamic way with at least some interaction with the market as a whole.
Secondly, even when I was a libertarian, I felt the libertarian "answers" to ecological problems were far too glib. There just isn't any way to practically force internalization of all ecological costs into a market model.
Thirdly, and this was the point at which the LP's inability to answer, despite my searching for their thoughts on it, eventually caused me to drop capital L standing, none of their programs or ideology address the market inequity posed by corporations.
Finally, and returning to the first point, the heart of libertarianism is the "what you've earned, you should be able to keep" simply does not reflect material reality. Any material wealth more complex than a pile of bricks degrades (often rather quickly) with time without regular (and often costly) maintenance and protection.. Libertarianism's "keep yours" philosophy focuses, naturally in an economic milieu, on money ... but money is a completely artificial store of value across distance and time, and being artificial, is dependent upon the society that created it. Which is a long way around to say that nobody earns their money solely by their own labors. Simplistic philosophy aside, no man is an island.
Ultimately I simply had to conclude that libertarian ideology is not a good match for the real problems posed by real human civilization.
-- TWZ
http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mn=76225&pt=msg&mid=6198473
Once upon a time I was Libertarian.
No, as far as I could tell, the god botherers had little to nothing to do with the libertarians. A couple of people I knew called themselves Christian and were rather wearing it on their sleeve, but they were the mostly sensible sort, and were as committed to separation of church and state as were the rest of us. To the best of my knowledge no religious organization nor zealots had anything to do with the heirarchy of LPUSA proper.
I began to doubt libertarianism when I learned a bit about economics and how hard currency MUST lead to economic busts (a "leak" or increase in savings reduces the amount of currency available ... it becomes a self reinforcing phenomenon). Some means to create and issue currency to prevent this is required for a stable society and accomodate growth. Fractional reserve banking isn't a perfect answer but it does address the problem in a dynamic way with at least some interaction with the market as a whole.
Secondly, even when I was a libertarian, I felt the libertarian "answers" to ecological problems were far too glib. There just isn't any way to practically force internalization of all ecological costs into a market model.
Thirdly, and this was the point at which the LP's inability to answer, despite my searching for their thoughts on it, eventually caused me to drop capital L standing, none of their programs or ideology address the market inequity posed by corporations.
Finally, and returning to the first point, the heart of libertarianism is the "what you've earned, you should be able to keep" simply does not reflect material reality. Any material wealth more complex than a pile of bricks degrades (often rather quickly) with time without regular (and often costly) maintenance and protection.. Libertarianism's "keep yours" philosophy focuses, naturally in an economic milieu, on money ... but money is a completely artificial store of value across distance and time, and being artificial, is dependent upon the society that created it. Which is a long way around to say that nobody earns their money solely by their own labors. Simplistic philosophy aside, no man is an island.
Ultimately I simply had to conclude that libertarian ideology is not a good match for the real problems posed by real human civilization.
-- TWZ
Discuss
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Hahahahaha. Circuit City Closing and Followup to eMachines Laptop
2009-01-17 00:42:15
See my previous blog about buying an eMachines laptop from them.
I wish I could take credit for it, but this has been in the works for a long time. But I'll consider it a case of cosmic kharma.
Meanwhile, since the updates - or I may just have been doing something wrong - the hibernate and suspend functions are working on the laptop. Boot time is so fast that hibernate barely seems worth the effort, but it works. Suspend gave me no problems when I shut the laptop for dinner.
Getting the flash player to work in firefox on my 64 bit Ubuntu install took a little work. There are a lot of pages out there telling you how to do it. It wasn't hard for me with lots of Linux experience and no fear of messing around, but it's not something I would suggest for the technically naive. If you want flash working in firefox (who doesn't?) I would recommend newbs stay with the 32 bit version of Ubuntu, at least until it's announced that it works out of the box. The skilled don't need my advice.
On another techie note, a year ago I was given an iPod Nano as a Christmas gift. A great at little music player ... but the third gen Nano's have locked firmware so that no application can update it without Apple's blessing. As a result I had to occasionally move back go to my Windows box and fire up iTunes just to update the iPod. Or at least it used to be that way. While surfing today I saw that someone has hacked the firmware so that now the songs on the iPod can be synced through Amarok. Hooray! I'll give that a try this weekend.
-- TWZ
I wish I could take credit for it, but this has been in the works for a long time. But I'll consider it a case of cosmic kharma.
Meanwhile, since the updates - or I may just have been doing something wrong - the hibernate and suspend functions are working on the laptop. Boot time is so fast that hibernate barely seems worth the effort, but it works. Suspend gave me no problems when I shut the laptop for dinner.
Getting the flash player to work in firefox on my 64 bit Ubuntu install took a little work. There are a lot of pages out there telling you how to do it. It wasn't hard for me with lots of Linux experience and no fear of messing around, but it's not something I would suggest for the technically naive. If you want flash working in firefox (who doesn't?) I would recommend newbs stay with the 32 bit version of Ubuntu, at least until it's announced that it works out of the box. The skilled don't need my advice.
On another techie note, a year ago I was given an iPod Nano as a Christmas gift. A great at little music player ... but the third gen Nano's have locked firmware so that no application can update it without Apple's blessing. As a result I had to occasionally move back go to my Windows box and fire up iTunes just to update the iPod. Or at least it used to be that way. While surfing today I saw that someone has hacked the firmware so that now the songs on the iPod can be synced through Amarok. Hooray! I'll give that a try this weekend.
-- TWZ
Discuss
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New Laptop, putting Ubuntu on the eMachines D620-5133
2009-01-16 04:06:33
Well, I finally got a laptop. I was going to buy myself one last year, but just before doing so my job came through with a better faster one than they had issued me before, so I put it off. But a few weeks ago I changed jobs and my new employer is a bit less generous in the perks, especially those that cost them money (pretty good on the others though, and benefits).
Anyway, the purchase itself was a minor adventure in aggravation. My wife wanted a gift for our daughter from Circuit City, and I wandered over to the laptops. I saw two that were ideal. They had this eMachine D620 for 450 and an HP G60-230 *advertised* at 500. Well, I wanted the HP initially, but Circuit City is notorious for "bait and switch" and that was exactly what the HP was. Though they had the demo in the store, the tag said "sold out". No problem, I went home and looked online, figuring to order it or pick it up at another CC. It turns out that you could not order it online; and through there store finder for it ALL zips and all stores said "Not in stock". I wrote a few nastygrams, including comment on their site for the product - which, surprise - was quickly deleted. And the next day - the next day! - the price was upped to 630 and it was available to order online.
So Circuit City are scum with a bait and switch history. Almost this exact chain of events happened to me a few months back when I was helping my sister-in-law buy a laptop for her son. So it really wasn't a surprise that they advertise something cheaper than it can be found anywhere else, but will refuse to actually sell it to you.
Yeah, so I'm a sucker for buying the eM from these scum. Not really, it's a good price - there was one other place online (tiger-direct?) offering it for ten dollars less, but I'd have had to pay shipping and probably make a trip to pick it up at the shipper's depot. They can't be making much profit on it in any case. So I bought it. Write it off to being a prisoner of consumer culture with the note that this blog will probably wind up costing them more than the profit in the long run anyway. Buy it elsewhere if you can.
Anyway, it came with Vista Home Basic. I ran it just long enough to take an eyeball at it, my first experience with Vista. What a dog. It was sllllooowww - and this laptop specs out higher than any computer I currently own.
No problem, I planned to put Linux on it in any case, and that both the eM and HP had reports of successful Linux installations, which was the tipping point of my buy decision.
I burned Ubuntu 8.10 in both the AMD64 and the i386-32 bit versions, just in case. I tried the AMD 64 and it's running on it now.
Installation was only minorly aggravating, mostly because of some quirks with my home network. The install of the operating system went without quirks or problems. I had to run a little program from within Vista which allowed it to install from the CD. This was on the disk and did it's job without issue, but the instructions could be clearer. After running the installer, (I surmise it installed an alternate boot loader) I had to shut vista down and reboot. It offered me the choice of windows or Ubuntu, and I naturally chose Ubuntu. This comes up in "trial" mode, where it doesn't actually write anything permanent to the disk. But the "install" icon is right there on the desktop and after looking around a bit, I clicked it.
In partitioning, it asked if I wanted to leave a partition for the installed windows. No.
It then asked for a user id to start automatically (optionally) and some timezone information and away it went. It took about half an hour.
After the completed installation it tells you to take out the CD and goes for a reboot. Up came Ubunto native on the laptop! One obvious problem was that the display was "twitchy" and ugly. Well, almost immediately, it popped up a note about proprietary hardware drivers for Nvidia and Broadcom. Well I tried both. The Nvidia driver would not click to "active" and the Broadcom would not install at all. The driver install for the video appeared to have completed, but the wireless driver seemed to fail because it was trying to connect to the network - which I hadn't set up yet. Well, I rebooted again, and the video was crisp, clear and stable. The video driver was working.
Well I piddled with the settings but could not get the wireless working. I plugged in the ethernet to my router ... it connected. I did the driver for Broadcomm again. It completed. I still had some problems getting wireless working, but I have an off brand wireless router and had it set for non-broadcast. I turned it to broadcast on and then (after unplugging the ethernet) I could see my router in the list. I had to fiddle with the security settings and password a bit, but after a couple minutes it connected fine.
At some point I tried the hibernate and suspend modes. Bad news. it wouldn't even boot until I disconnected the power cord and replugged it. I'm not overly concerned about this, as shutdown takes about 10 seconds and it reboots in less than a minute. I later ran the updater task which updated about 218 packages. I haven't tried hibernate or suspend since then. But tonight, the second day with the laptop, it booted fine.
I have a lot of software I'll be putting on it. Sound asked for some proprietary drivers to load the codecs, but this is mostly automated with "wizards" which simply ask if you want to use those proprietary drivers. They sometimes ask for your password to confirm running those things it must do as root, but this is mostly painless and simple. I have lots more to do to get it set up just the way I want - I'm a programmer after all, and there are about a zillion programming packages and tools I'll be loading, but at this point I see nothing that can present an insuperable problem.
I'm extremely satisfied with both the laptop and Ubuntu.
Did I mention that this turkey flys. The hour or so I spent in Vista was instructive just as a comparison in performance. (I should note that I turned off visual effects in the graphics; eye-candy is bad for you ... or at least I don't need it).
-- TWZ
Anyway, the purchase itself was a minor adventure in aggravation. My wife wanted a gift for our daughter from Circuit City, and I wandered over to the laptops. I saw two that were ideal. They had this eMachine D620 for 450 and an HP G60-230 *advertised* at 500. Well, I wanted the HP initially, but Circuit City is notorious for "bait and switch" and that was exactly what the HP was. Though they had the demo in the store, the tag said "sold out". No problem, I went home and looked online, figuring to order it or pick it up at another CC. It turns out that you could not order it online; and through there store finder for it ALL zips and all stores said "Not in stock". I wrote a few nastygrams, including comment on their site for the product - which, surprise - was quickly deleted. And the next day - the next day! - the price was upped to 630 and it was available to order online.
So Circuit City are scum with a bait and switch history. Almost this exact chain of events happened to me a few months back when I was helping my sister-in-law buy a laptop for her son. So it really wasn't a surprise that they advertise something cheaper than it can be found anywhere else, but will refuse to actually sell it to you.
Yeah, so I'm a sucker for buying the eM from these scum. Not really, it's a good price - there was one other place online (tiger-direct?) offering it for ten dollars less, but I'd have had to pay shipping and probably make a trip to pick it up at the shipper's depot. They can't be making much profit on it in any case. So I bought it. Write it off to being a prisoner of consumer culture with the note that this blog will probably wind up costing them more than the profit in the long run anyway. Buy it elsewhere if you can.
Anyway, it came with Vista Home Basic. I ran it just long enough to take an eyeball at it, my first experience with Vista. What a dog. It was sllllooowww - and this laptop specs out higher than any computer I currently own.
No problem, I planned to put Linux on it in any case, and that both the eM and HP had reports of successful Linux installations, which was the tipping point of my buy decision.
I burned Ubuntu 8.10 in both the AMD64 and the i386-32 bit versions, just in case. I tried the AMD 64 and it's running on it now.
Installation was only minorly aggravating, mostly because of some quirks with my home network. The install of the operating system went without quirks or problems. I had to run a little program from within Vista which allowed it to install from the CD. This was on the disk and did it's job without issue, but the instructions could be clearer. After running the installer, (I surmise it installed an alternate boot loader) I had to shut vista down and reboot. It offered me the choice of windows or Ubuntu, and I naturally chose Ubuntu. This comes up in "trial" mode, where it doesn't actually write anything permanent to the disk. But the "install" icon is right there on the desktop and after looking around a bit, I clicked it.
In partitioning, it asked if I wanted to leave a partition for the installed windows. No.
It then asked for a user id to start automatically (optionally) and some timezone information and away it went. It took about half an hour.
After the completed installation it tells you to take out the CD and goes for a reboot. Up came Ubunto native on the laptop! One obvious problem was that the display was "twitchy" and ugly. Well, almost immediately, it popped up a note about proprietary hardware drivers for Nvidia and Broadcom. Well I tried both. The Nvidia driver would not click to "active" and the Broadcom would not install at all. The driver install for the video appeared to have completed, but the wireless driver seemed to fail because it was trying to connect to the network - which I hadn't set up yet. Well, I rebooted again, and the video was crisp, clear and stable. The video driver was working.
Well I piddled with the settings but could not get the wireless working. I plugged in the ethernet to my router ... it connected. I did the driver for Broadcomm again. It completed. I still had some problems getting wireless working, but I have an off brand wireless router and had it set for non-broadcast. I turned it to broadcast on and then (after unplugging the ethernet) I could see my router in the list. I had to fiddle with the security settings and password a bit, but after a couple minutes it connected fine.
At some point I tried the hibernate and suspend modes. Bad news. it wouldn't even boot until I disconnected the power cord and replugged it. I'm not overly concerned about this, as shutdown takes about 10 seconds and it reboots in less than a minute. I later ran the updater task which updated about 218 packages. I haven't tried hibernate or suspend since then. But tonight, the second day with the laptop, it booted fine.
I have a lot of software I'll be putting on it. Sound asked for some proprietary drivers to load the codecs, but this is mostly automated with "wizards" which simply ask if you want to use those proprietary drivers. They sometimes ask for your password to confirm running those things it must do as root, but this is mostly painless and simple. I have lots more to do to get it set up just the way I want - I'm a programmer after all, and there are about a zillion programming packages and tools I'll be loading, but at this point I see nothing that can present an insuperable problem.
I'm extremely satisfied with both the laptop and Ubuntu.
Did I mention that this turkey flys. The hour or so I spent in Vista was instructive just as a comparison in performance. (I should note that I turned off visual effects in the graphics; eye-candy is bad for you ... or at least I don't need it).
-- TWZ
Discuss
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Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still
2008-12-13 06:13:36
I left work early and saw the opening day matinee in IMAX. For this movie the extra few dollars for IMAX was well worth it.
The 1951 version of TDTESS is one of my all time favorite films; I was prepared to dislike this by comparison. I was wrong, it was excellent. It is visually rich, tightly scripted and the modification of the story from the 1951 version is well done.
There are some weaknesses, though. Chief among them is that Jennifer Connelly doesn't work as a scientist, particularly one who was mentored by a Nobel Prize winner. Her character does plausible things when the lead in the scene in the scientist role, but her manner and expressions do not convey the curiosity, wonder and excitement that should have been there. On the other hand, the meeting between Professor Bernhardt (John Cleese in a rare dramatic role) and Klaatu was practically a grand opera perfectly timed and choreographed. It was perfect, and the reprise of Sam Jaffe's Bernhardt line to Klaatu was the perfect homage to the original.
Keneau Reeves slightly creepy persona was played up to make him the perfect Klaatu. Speaking of which what is it with Reeves? The 1951 version is a masterpiece in large part because, without discussing religion in any way, it made innumerable allusions to Christian symbolism and addressed many thematic issues important to Christianity. And of course The Matrix owes much of its mythic impact to exactly the same allegoric root. And in between, Reeves did Constantine. There may be some I missed as the film is rich and I'm still digesting it, but there were only a few and less direct allegorical references to Christianity in this version.
Otherwise Reeves', reserved and stiff, did a very good job of portraying a sophisticated and intelligent but alien being learning from the inside out what it is to be human.
Likewise kudos for Kathy Bates' character. She plays a strong, intelligent and wise woman that one would hope would characterize a cabinet level politician, but at the same time showing just enough arrogance and impatience to tip her encounter with Klaatu over to catastrophe. Her failure is not villainy but mere humanity.
As science fiction, there are a few quirks in the science. Clarke's law says "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", which excuses a lot in science fiction. But the inhuman powers exhibited by Klaatu could have used just a touch of bafflegarb to "explain" them. He is examined in detail while being "born" human; a sentence saying there were some oddities in some tissue would "explain" a connection to the technology of his ship; without that his ability to suborn our electronics is just a little too much of a deus-ex-machina.
The director obviously had a lot of hard science input. The harvester bots, self reproducing miniature scale robots large enough to see but very tiny are an excellent disaster threat. The "grey goo" threat of nano technology but more realistically rendered. Nano machines cannot move fast, and dramatically are invisible. Now practically these mite size robots really could not move as fast as pictured either, but granting some artistic license they cater to our fear of insects - the scenes of the bot cloud descending was reminiscent of several old B movie insects attack movies, particularly "The Swarm".
While I very much like this movie I think that others will not be so appreciative. As said, it is tightly scripted - perhaps too much so - and keeps a fast pace with a lot of action. But the story here, from the rationale for the invasion through the Klaatu's awakening to the value of humanity is very subtle and done much "between" the action scenes where the less attentive might presume there is little but filler. But that's where the story really unfolds to justify the eye candy.
-- TWZ
(Spoilers Ahead)
The 1951 version of TDTESS is one of my all time favorite films; I was prepared to dislike this by comparison. I was wrong, it was excellent. It is visually rich, tightly scripted and the modification of the story from the 1951 version is well done.
There are some weaknesses, though. Chief among them is that Jennifer Connelly doesn't work as a scientist, particularly one who was mentored by a Nobel Prize winner. Her character does plausible things when the lead in the scene in the scientist role, but her manner and expressions do not convey the curiosity, wonder and excitement that should have been there. On the other hand, the meeting between Professor Bernhardt (John Cleese in a rare dramatic role) and Klaatu was practically a grand opera perfectly timed and choreographed. It was perfect, and the reprise of Sam Jaffe's Bernhardt line to Klaatu was the perfect homage to the original.
Keneau Reeves slightly creepy persona was played up to make him the perfect Klaatu. Speaking of which what is it with Reeves? The 1951 version is a masterpiece in large part because, without discussing religion in any way, it made innumerable allusions to Christian symbolism and addressed many thematic issues important to Christianity. And of course The Matrix owes much of its mythic impact to exactly the same allegoric root. And in between, Reeves did Constantine. There may be some I missed as the film is rich and I'm still digesting it, but there were only a few and less direct allegorical references to Christianity in this version.
Otherwise Reeves', reserved and stiff, did a very good job of portraying a sophisticated and intelligent but alien being learning from the inside out what it is to be human.
Likewise kudos for Kathy Bates' character. She plays a strong, intelligent and wise woman that one would hope would characterize a cabinet level politician, but at the same time showing just enough arrogance and impatience to tip her encounter with Klaatu over to catastrophe. Her failure is not villainy but mere humanity.
As science fiction, there are a few quirks in the science. Clarke's law says "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", which excuses a lot in science fiction. But the inhuman powers exhibited by Klaatu could have used just a touch of bafflegarb to "explain" them. He is examined in detail while being "born" human; a sentence saying there were some oddities in some tissue would "explain" a connection to the technology of his ship; without that his ability to suborn our electronics is just a little too much of a deus-ex-machina.
The director obviously had a lot of hard science input. The harvester bots, self reproducing miniature scale robots large enough to see but very tiny are an excellent disaster threat. The "grey goo" threat of nano technology but more realistically rendered. Nano machines cannot move fast, and dramatically are invisible. Now practically these mite size robots really could not move as fast as pictured either, but granting some artistic license they cater to our fear of insects - the scenes of the bot cloud descending was reminiscent of several old B movie insects attack movies, particularly "The Swarm".
While I very much like this movie I think that others will not be so appreciative. As said, it is tightly scripted - perhaps too much so - and keeps a fast pace with a lot of action. But the story here, from the rationale for the invasion through the Klaatu's awakening to the value of humanity is very subtle and done much "between" the action scenes where the less attentive might presume there is little but filler. But that's where the story really unfolds to justify the eye candy.
-- TWZ
Discuss
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John McCain Shows He is Still a Man of Honor
2008-10-11 04:18:29
In Jonathan Martin's blog today http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/ , he reports that while the crowd was growing restive Senator McCain told his supporters:
"I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States"
and later on to a woman who called Obama "an Arab":
"No, ma'am," the Arizona senator assured. "He's a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not [an Arab]."
To this, I can only say, Thank You, Senator. You have confirmed that you, yourself are also indeed a man of decency and honor.
Now it is true that I'm an Obama supporter, and this cannot change that. Senator Obama strikes me as a man of poise and intelligence, a deep understanding of the complexity of the world in which the United States is only one country (an important one - hey it's MY country, but still just one) which must bargain, and compromise and lead others when and where it can by example, rectitude, and wisdom, not by privilege or might. The long and wearying "no drama Obama" campaign conducted with low key professionalism first against Senator Clinton and now with you as his rival convinces me of his stature as a skilled administrator who can get done what needs be done. And he is incarnate a repudiation of the disastrous policies of the current administration foisted upon us by your party.
The conduct of your campaign to date had had me seriously doubting your integrity. The Presidency of the United States is indeed a grand prize. I have no doubt that when it appears within grasp, it can too easily tempt a man to abandon sober judgment and blindly take what others can only consider unconscionable risks to reach it.
There have been reports in the last days of vile epithets and divisive caricatures coming from your "supporters" at your rallies. These are the inevitable results of the plays you have made. The payoff on the bets you have placed.
But today, you have woken up. You have proved that you are not one to be mesmerized by the action. You will not double down until it leads you, and perhaps others, to ruin. You have shown us that you do indeed know when to stop. And the nation can only be grateful that you do.
Today you have shown us, that however poorly we judge some of the decisions you have made, that at rock bottom you still are a man of basic goodness and honor.
You have shown us, even we who believe your rival the better choice for the office you both seek, that you are a man that America can be proud to have selected as a candidate for the Presidency.
With deepest respects.
Terrence W. Zellers (King of Prussia, PA)
"I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States"
and later on to a woman who called Obama "an Arab":
"No, ma'am," the Arizona senator assured. "He's a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not [an Arab]."
To this, I can only say, Thank You, Senator. You have confirmed that you, yourself are also indeed a man of decency and honor.
Now it is true that I'm an Obama supporter, and this cannot change that. Senator Obama strikes me as a man of poise and intelligence, a deep understanding of the complexity of the world in which the United States is only one country (an important one - hey it's MY country, but still just one) which must bargain, and compromise and lead others when and where it can by example, rectitude, and wisdom, not by privilege or might. The long and wearying "no drama Obama" campaign conducted with low key professionalism first against Senator Clinton and now with you as his rival convinces me of his stature as a skilled administrator who can get done what needs be done. And he is incarnate a repudiation of the disastrous policies of the current administration foisted upon us by your party.
The conduct of your campaign to date had had me seriously doubting your integrity. The Presidency of the United States is indeed a grand prize. I have no doubt that when it appears within grasp, it can too easily tempt a man to abandon sober judgment and blindly take what others can only consider unconscionable risks to reach it.
There have been reports in the last days of vile epithets and divisive caricatures coming from your "supporters" at your rallies. These are the inevitable results of the plays you have made. The payoff on the bets you have placed.
But today, you have woken up. You have proved that you are not one to be mesmerized by the action. You will not double down until it leads you, and perhaps others, to ruin. You have shown us that you do indeed know when to stop. And the nation can only be grateful that you do.
Today you have shown us, that however poorly we judge some of the decisions you have made, that at rock bottom you still are a man of basic goodness and honor.
You have shown us, even we who believe your rival the better choice for the office you both seek, that you are a man that America can be proud to have selected as a candidate for the Presidency.
With deepest respects.
Terrence W. Zellers (King of Prussia, PA)
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The Three Million Dollar Overhead Projector
2008-10-09 02:28:12
DKos ( http://dailykos.com ) has tracked down some of McCain's remarks, and one spectacularly poor choice of attack was his claim that Obama had "earmarked" three million dollars for "an overhead projector".
The projector turns out to be a projector for Chicago's Adler planetarium in it's overhead projection dome.
According to later sources than this, the money was never actually allocated.
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/10/08/opinion/08wed1.html?permid=71#comment71
Given how pathetically poor our country's students are doing in STEM curricula compared to many other countries, McCain's statement is an outrage.
I urge Senator Obama to not only renew this "earmark", but to do everything in his power to see that the money is actually delivered soonest. And boast about it!
-- TWZ
The projector turns out to be a projector for Chicago's Adler planetarium in it's overhead projection dome.
According to later sources than this, the money was never actually allocated.
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/10/08/opinion/08wed1.html?permid=71#comment71
Given how pathetically poor our country's students are doing in STEM curricula compared to many other countries, McCain's statement is an outrage.
I urge Senator Obama to not only renew this "earmark", but to do everything in his power to see that the money is actually delivered soonest. And boast about it!
-- TWZ
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Rationalizing the Bailout
2008-10-04 20:57:19
Credit is the creation of new money based upon the presumption that the borrower will be able to create the material wealth to back the new money issued. When money is created based upon credit instruments rather than upon material assets this creates a multiplier where the new "money" created will far outstrip the ability of the original borrowers to create new wealth.
The Federal Reserve is responsible for overseeing our nation's money supply. They had the right and responsibility over the last decade to intervene in these new markets or at least a strong obligation to be screaming to congress about the dangers. Note that in these last couple weeks Bernanke was running around Congress with his hair on fire. Greenspan and Bernanke have drastically dramatically failed in their prime obligation of oversight of our money supply.
To look where we are and stop pointing our fingers at the past (where have I heard that meme floated recently?) the question is what do we do now.
It actually does make sense to buy the most "toxic", highly leveraged and least valuable (as related to real assets) of such instruments and flush them. This removes the most "funny" money from the system at the lowest cost. It is certainly inequitable from a zero-sum view of economics and rewards those who did the most damage. But economics is not a zero sum game. This really is the best strategy - short of declaring such instruments null and void - for destroying the most of this "funny money" in the shortest time - Bernanke does know what he's doing with this bailout - and it is the FR being bailed out even more than Wall Street..
There will still be far more "money" in circulation than can be grown as material wealth in the economy by the time the remaining instruments become due. High Inflation is both necessary and inevitable. But the slowdown of the economy will at the same time create deflationary pressures greatly exacerbating the problem since traditionally expanding the economy is achieved by increasing the money supply. Today's problem is not a lack of money, but a concentration of money (funny money, but real in economic consequence) in institutions and vehicles which lock it away from investments that grow material wealth enterprises.
The next administration will have its hands full trying to deal with this mess. The biggest and most necessary trick is to get that funny money growing the "real" economy in the least amount of time. The first order of business is to find a means of discerning between income on credit wealth versus wealth created by investment in goods. Unfortunately any such distinction will be somewhat artificial, but if we can find a workable one taxing the former at a high rate while rewarding the latter is mandatory.
One such measure with political resonance would relate revenue to the number of employees and employee compensation. When the difference between revenue less raw materials exceeds some number - say quarter million - per employee, then the excess between that end employee compensation (capped by individual employee) should be highly taxed. Similarly financial institutions should be rewarded for investments in companies meeting this metric and disincentivized fof chasing money rather than wealth (consumable goods and services). A short term emergency wealth tax along similar lines should also be considered. Yes the neocons will argue - correctly - that this discourages people from making money. But that's the problem; we've allowed the creation of money in preference to the creation of wealth. As the foreclosure rate shows, we've now actually reached the point where the incentives for creating money are actually destructive to the creation and maintenance of real wealth.
As a country we need to dramatically change our policies so that they reward the creation of wealth far more than the creation of money.
-- TWZ
The Federal Reserve is responsible for overseeing our nation's money supply. They had the right and responsibility over the last decade to intervene in these new markets or at least a strong obligation to be screaming to congress about the dangers. Note that in these last couple weeks Bernanke was running around Congress with his hair on fire. Greenspan and Bernanke have drastically dramatically failed in their prime obligation of oversight of our money supply.
To look where we are and stop pointing our fingers at the past (where have I heard that meme floated recently?) the question is what do we do now.
It actually does make sense to buy the most "toxic", highly leveraged and least valuable (as related to real assets) of such instruments and flush them. This removes the most "funny" money from the system at the lowest cost. It is certainly inequitable from a zero-sum view of economics and rewards those who did the most damage. But economics is not a zero sum game. This really is the best strategy - short of declaring such instruments null and void - for destroying the most of this "funny money" in the shortest time - Bernanke does know what he's doing with this bailout - and it is the FR being bailed out even more than Wall Street..
There will still be far more "money" in circulation than can be grown as material wealth in the economy by the time the remaining instruments become due. High Inflation is both necessary and inevitable. But the slowdown of the economy will at the same time create deflationary pressures greatly exacerbating the problem since traditionally expanding the economy is achieved by increasing the money supply. Today's problem is not a lack of money, but a concentration of money (funny money, but real in economic consequence) in institutions and vehicles which lock it away from investments that grow material wealth enterprises.
The next administration will have its hands full trying to deal with this mess. The biggest and most necessary trick is to get that funny money growing the "real" economy in the least amount of time. The first order of business is to find a means of discerning between income on credit wealth versus wealth created by investment in goods. Unfortunately any such distinction will be somewhat artificial, but if we can find a workable one taxing the former at a high rate while rewarding the latter is mandatory.
One such measure with political resonance would relate revenue to the number of employees and employee compensation. When the difference between revenue less raw materials exceeds some number - say quarter million - per employee, then the excess between that end employee compensation (capped by individual employee) should be highly taxed. Similarly financial institutions should be rewarded for investments in companies meeting this metric and disincentivized fof chasing money rather than wealth (consumable goods and services). A short term emergency wealth tax along similar lines should also be considered. Yes the neocons will argue - correctly - that this discourages people from making money. But that's the problem; we've allowed the creation of money in preference to the creation of wealth. As the foreclosure rate shows, we've now actually reached the point where the incentives for creating money are actually destructive to the creation and maintenance of real wealth.
As a country we need to dramatically change our policies so that they reward the creation of wealth far more than the creation of money.
-- TWZ
Discuss
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Bailout the Villains?
2008-09-26 03:09:25
I'm certainly not an expert on economics. I do understand that the bailout plan is to maintain liquidity of the economy. That is that if too much money disappears too fast, there won't be money available for the ordinary, daily transactions by which businesses expand and some even use as an ordinary "course of business" transaction of borrowing short term to round the corners. Businesses do rely on their credit, and if there isn't credit available, they not only will not expand, but some will fail. Jobs will be lost; potentially lots of them.
But the "bailout" stinks. It stinks that an administration that lied and got us into an unwinnable war, that repeatedly has ignored constitutional limits on its power, that has downright made a habit of redirecting huge amounts taxpayer money to cronies with little or no oversight (Haliburton, Blackwater), now, in the course of two days wants to give $700,000,000,000 to Wall Street, renowned playground of flagrant and arrogant wealth.
And congress, to some extent or other looks like it is going to go along. And we - at least those lucky enough to still have jobs - will be footing the bill.
To say it stinks is an incredible understatement, particularly when, as I read many commentators and blogs hint that the people who's houses are being foreclosed shouldn't have taken mortgages they couldn't afford.
Let's unwind that a little shall we.
Firstly if the mortgagors weren't loaning money to people who couldn't afford it, they - both the mortgagors and mortgage takers and the Wall Street "geniuses" inventing instruments of collected poor mortgages and insurance on them and then using these as "security" to leverage "investments" of the same quality wouldn't be in this mess.
Next, why did people take mortgages they couldn't afford? Pretty simple - they had to live somewhere, And in most places rents are almost as high as mortgage payments. When the the price of houses was going up combined with the tax breaks, you'd be a fool not to buy a house if you could possibly afford it. And you'd better buy now rather than waiting and saving a bit more, because in another year houses would cost 10-15% more, and your income surely wouldn't increase that much in that time. So they bought, But after having bought right on the edge of what they could afford, if they or their spouse lost a job or have a medical event when the mortgage is such a large part of their income, well it's easy to fall behind a bit. Then come the refi's with teaser rates and hidden lock ins and they're trapped.
And why are housing prices so high in the first place? Also simple economics. Too much money chasing too few goods. And where was that money coming from? Right, Wall Street "making money" by leveraging instruments - this is the same way legitimate banks, if there are any left make money through fractional reserve banking. But real banking by licensed banks legal (and highly regulated) . Leverage is the same thing and nominally legal, but has been essentially unregulated. So Wall Street made funny money and kept injecting more and more of it into mortgage brokerages and bought packages of mortgages from them to turn into more funny money.
So the huge amounts of money that wound up disproportionately chasing the housing market. And that drove the price of housing up to the very edge, and too often a bit beyond what working people could afford. So people needed a place to live, and there is no "affordable" housing, and what they bought often left them with little money to save, so a single event would push them into the "sub prime" market ... and another a few years later or an avaricious ARM codicil into bankruptcy and foreclosure.
Do you begin to see the picture? The "greed is good" people arranged things so that their arrogant lifestyle was underwritten by the middle class.
And the middle class is at its limit and there's no more that can be willingly squeezed out of them. But if Washington does the squeezing for them, say by giving them a "bailout" approaching a trillion dollars and passes it down as taxes maybe the party on Wall Street can go on a little longer while sneering at the people who took mortgages they couldn't afford.
Did I say it stinks?
Maybe some kind of bailout is necessary. But it had better include relief for Wall Street's victims as well as Wall Street.
-- TWZ
But the "bailout" stinks. It stinks that an administration that lied and got us into an unwinnable war, that repeatedly has ignored constitutional limits on its power, that has downright made a habit of redirecting huge amounts taxpayer money to cronies with little or no oversight (Haliburton, Blackwater), now, in the course of two days wants to give $700,000,000,000 to Wall Street, renowned playground of flagrant and arrogant wealth.
And congress, to some extent or other looks like it is going to go along. And we - at least those lucky enough to still have jobs - will be footing the bill.
To say it stinks is an incredible understatement, particularly when, as I read many commentators and blogs hint that the people who's houses are being foreclosed shouldn't have taken mortgages they couldn't afford.
Let's unwind that a little shall we.
Firstly if the mortgagors weren't loaning money to people who couldn't afford it, they - both the mortgagors and mortgage takers and the Wall Street "geniuses" inventing instruments of collected poor mortgages and insurance on them and then using these as "security" to leverage "investments" of the same quality wouldn't be in this mess.
Next, why did people take mortgages they couldn't afford? Pretty simple - they had to live somewhere, And in most places rents are almost as high as mortgage payments. When the the price of houses was going up combined with the tax breaks, you'd be a fool not to buy a house if you could possibly afford it. And you'd better buy now rather than waiting and saving a bit more, because in another year houses would cost 10-15% more, and your income surely wouldn't increase that much in that time. So they bought, But after having bought right on the edge of what they could afford, if they or their spouse lost a job or have a medical event when the mortgage is such a large part of their income, well it's easy to fall behind a bit. Then come the refi's with teaser rates and hidden lock ins and they're trapped.
And why are housing prices so high in the first place? Also simple economics. Too much money chasing too few goods. And where was that money coming from? Right, Wall Street "making money" by leveraging instruments - this is the same way legitimate banks, if there are any left make money through fractional reserve banking. But real banking by licensed banks legal (and highly regulated) . Leverage is the same thing and nominally legal, but has been essentially unregulated. So Wall Street made funny money and kept injecting more and more of it into mortgage brokerages and bought packages of mortgages from them to turn into more funny money.
So the huge amounts of money that wound up disproportionately chasing the housing market. And that drove the price of housing up to the very edge, and too often a bit beyond what working people could afford. So people needed a place to live, and there is no "affordable" housing, and what they bought often left them with little money to save, so a single event would push them into the "sub prime" market ... and another a few years later or an avaricious ARM codicil into bankruptcy and foreclosure.
Do you begin to see the picture? The "greed is good" people arranged things so that their arrogant lifestyle was underwritten by the middle class.
And the middle class is at its limit and there's no more that can be willingly squeezed out of them. But if Washington does the squeezing for them, say by giving them a "bailout" approaching a trillion dollars and passes it down as taxes maybe the party on Wall Street can go on a little longer while sneering at the people who took mortgages they couldn't afford.
Did I say it stinks?
Maybe some kind of bailout is necessary. But it had better include relief for Wall Street's victims as well as Wall Street.
-- TWZ
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The Trillion Dollar Smell
2008-09-26 01:29:44
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202688.html
IOW the clowns whom the administration want to "bail out" are saying the problem is not that they were trading shit, but that some people could smell it.
These are the people we want to give a trillion bucks to?
-- TWZ
At issue is a provision that requires companies to disclose more information about the value of their assets, including how much they could fetch on the open market. The accounting standard, known as fair value or mark to market, has been cited as a contributing factor in the collapses of American International Group, Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers.
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There's only one problem, according to regulators and accounting analysts: The provision does not impose new duties on companies but merely exposes bum mortgage bets, making it a convenient scapegoat during market unrest.
IOW the clowns whom the administration want to "bail out" are saying the problem is not that they were trading shit, but that some people could smell it.
These are the people we want to give a trillion bucks to?
-- TWZ
Discuss
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