2016 « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Monday, February 8, 2016

Personal Reflections ...

I’m (hopefully) in the last few years of my full-time “professional” career, and at this point, I’m not putting as much effort into maintaining a “power wardrobe” as I used to. Oh, I still like nice suits and sports jackets and dress slacks, and I appreciate a good mix of plain and patterned shirts of different colors, and an assortment of interesting but tasteful ties. But in my heyday, I strove mightily to keep all of that battle armor in top condition. That meant regular visits to the local cleaners. But in recent years, those visits have become fewer and farther apart; unless a garment has an obvious stain or really starts smelling unpleasant, I’ve learned to tolerate a more rumpled and dusty look. To put my whole working wardrobe thru the cleaners now costs close to $200, and I can think of lots of other good things to do with that money.

Nonetheless, I recently pulled out a jacket that really was looking rather sad. So I gathered a few other of my workhorse jackets and two pairs of slacks, and headed over to the local cleaners (I’m lucky enough to have a decent one just up the street from me in easy walking distance). This past Saturday, I went back to pick up my newly dry-cleaned duds. It was mid-afternoon, and one or two other customers were in the shop, likewise dropping off or picking up something. The overall atmosphere was calm and relatively pleasant. The young woman at the register gave me a nice hello, took my ticket and went to the moving rack to dredge my stuff up from the basement. (As a kid, I was always fascinated by those moving clothes racks in cleaners).

While waiting for this, I did some people watching. This cleaners shop was a rather busy place behind the counter. Obviously it was doing a bit more than simple cleaning; a woman was busy at a sewing machine, and at an adjacent table, a gentleman wearing a sports coat and a tie was busy with a needle and thread, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:19 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

◊ John McWhorter or Ta-Nehisi Coates?

Current Affairs ... Society ...

If you want to be a respected and respectable liberal today and your racial heritage is Euro-Caucasian, it’s pretty clear that you need to support Ta-Nehisi Coates (even if he wasn’t looking for your support; I suppose that fact makes it seem all the more real). Earlier in my life, I definitely wanted to be a respected and respectable liberal. But at the same time I was never a guy who likes to follow a crowd; and at some point in my life, it occurred to me that liberals like to follow trends as much as conservatives do. And they often made up complicated but questionable reasons to act like lemmings, post hoc. Just like any other tribe, little or big.

So, as you might guess, I’m not necessarily in awe of the writings and views of Ta-Nehisi Coates regarding modern American racial matters. I’ve been reading The Atlantic Magazine for about 20 years now, and thus I’ve been familiar with Mr. Coates’ writings for quite some time. He originally wrote small pieces reflecting on the American Civil War and its implications for black history — and how those implications weren’t always as sunny and positive for blacks as many non-black Americans might think. Eventually he was allowed to publish longer pieces addressing more modern racial issues, and his tone at first seemed to balance challenge with reserve. However, within the past two years or so, he’s come into his own, offering wholesale indictments of white America (see his recent blockbuster book, “Between the World And Me“), along with sentencing recommendations (i.e., his call for reparations).

There was a recent dust-up when Democratic-Socialist presidential nomination candidate Bernie Sanders rejected Coate’s reparations idea, and Coates immediately attacked Sanders (in an intellectual fashion, of course). It’s interesting to see that » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:21 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, January 24, 2016

◊ Nor’easter Mosaic

Photo ... Weather ...

Old Man Winter finally got around to us here in metro New Jersey. Took him long enough! Because of the big El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean, we’ve had a relatively mild and dry winter. We reached the 3rd week of January without any snow on the ground. But that’s all changed this weekend, as a big nasty nor’easter came rolling up the coast and dumped over a foot of snow on us. Right at the mid-point of winter too (Jan 23-24 is the “meteorological middle” of winter, when the temperature trend tips ever so slightly away from getting colder and starts the long path to spring, getting slightly warmer every day — on average, anyway). The snow and wind decided to decorate my kitchen window, just to remind me that this winter still has plenty of life left in it. But then again, the advance forecast for next weekend is sunny and in the mid-40s. It’s all just part of the ups and downs of the weather, and of life.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:41 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, January 21, 2016

◊ An Axion in Time . . .

Science ...

Ever since June, 2013 I’ve been discussing a possible new kind of fundamental particle that helps make to make up the universe, something that physicists call the “axion”. In a way, I am trying to anticipate the next big break-through in particle physics, something that you could perhaps look at as the next “Higgs particle” in terms of its impact on science and cosmology — and public understanding of all that stuff.

As you recall, the Higgs boson became a ’cause celebre’ in science a few years ago after the Large Hadron Collider in Europe had finally assembled conclusive proof that the little things actually exist. Many scientists had suspected that Higgs actually existed for many years before they were finally discovered (especially by the scientist who the particle was named after, i.e. Peter Higgs). The function by which they are most widely remembered by the public is the capacity to give certain kinds of particle the quality of having mass, i.e. that which causes them to accelerate gradually and resist sudden impulse when subjected to a mechanical force. Mass also allows a particle to be greatly influenced by gravity (although any particle with some sort of energy, be it mass or non-mass energy, will be affected by gravity). But they solve other problems too involving » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:03 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, January 16, 2016

◊ Oil Prices In Economics Wonderland

Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...

Oil prices are currently hitting historic lows; hard to believe that they were above $100 per barrel not so long ago. Now they are struggling to stay at $30. As late as December, 2011, I said in one of my posts that “unfortunately, oil production doesn’t seem to be growing at all anymore”, and I anticipated that oil prices would remain high. I now need to eat my words.

So what’s going on? Oil production definitely has gotten a boost from new technologies that because usable over the past few years, e.g. fracking and super-deep sea drilling. On the demand side, most analysts cite the economic problems in China, i.e. its serious contraction of growth over the past 3 or 4 years. At the same time, the rest of the world in general isn’t doing so well either; world economic growth is expected to remain less than 3% per year. And then add in all of the energy conservation and alternative energy efforts that were started back when oil was above $100 per barrel. Overall world demand for oil is still rising, but not as fast as before, and less than many people had anticipated.

The classic economics 101 explanation for the oil situation is that there is an oversupply in the market, which has allowed oil users to bid down their purchase price. Under that textbook scenario, the producers will soon stop producing and offering so much oil to users, and the users will then have to start bidding more to get what they need. I.e., prices will rise once again, back to the lowest marginal cost of producing a new barrel of oil under present conditions (which is certainly above $30 at current usage levels, although that cost is much lower than it once was due to technology innovations such as fracking).

That’s the theory. But what appears to really be happening is » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:00 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, January 9, 2016

◊ Pseudo Spring

Nature ... Photo ... Weather ...

On the weather front, it’s an El Nino winter. Up here in eastern New Jersey, we’re definitely feeling it. Which is nice for us (not so nice in other places of the world, where needed rainfall is lacking or too much rain comes down), because the warm air coming up from the Pacific equatorial region (where El Nino mainly does its thing) has delayed the onset of cold and snow. The past two winters here were quite cold and snowy, and the temporary reprieve (only temporary, as we will soon get some true cold spells and a handful of snow storms) is definitely appreciated. By me, anyway; there are some “snow people” who have been upset about this, such as “Weather Willy” (who keeps a very good weather blog, despite his bias towards wintery weather).

Aside from a handful of upset winter-weather fans, the El Nino has also caused some consternation in the natural world. We had a relatively cool and normal November, so the 50 and 60 degree temps in mid-December confused a lot of trees and plants. Just a few blocks from my house are these fruit trees, which took the bait. These photos were taken last Saturday, the day after New Years Day. A few days later it was down in the teens and twenties, and the little taste of “way too early spring” was over.

We might still get a handful of temperate afternoons with temps in the lower 40s, but for the most part, the party is over. It’s time to get on with winter.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 3:58 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Monday, January 4, 2016

◊ Taking Trump Seriously, Part 2

Current Affairs ... Politics ...

Damon Linker recently wrote a great article about the whole Trump phenomenon, an article that is both reassuring and scary. Linker repeats the growing wisdom that Trump’s support comes mainly from the down and out working-class white population. As I noted in my previous post on Trump (Time to Take the Donald Seriously?), a growing number of writers are taking the time to think this whole Trump thing through, given that it doesn’t seem to be fading quite as quickly as was expected. As Linker points out, there is a growing consensus that non-professional / non-college whites are the intended target of Trump’s message, and that they have been buying it in bulk.

So, it turns out that Trump is indeed a “populist”, a politician who speaks directly to the problems of an unhappy population and promises direct relief for each malady. But here’s the rub — if Trump’s working class whites only wanted better economic circumstances, Bernie Sanders should be their man. Sanders is making all sorts of promises (which I doubt that he could actually keep)(not in the long run anyway) to improve the lot of those who have been excluded from the dynamic growth of the American economy over the past decade or two. Sanders is willing to address the travesty of an America growing richer and richer and yet sharing its riches with fewer and fewer each year, promising to us whatever means seem necessary. Mostly those means would be a highly interventionist, quasi-socialist government.

Personally, I don’t think that a socialist political economy would be good for us in the long run. But certainly in the short run, a Sanders administration would manage to take from the rich and give to the not-so-rich. You would think that might be attractive to non-professional whites struggling to get by on » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:57 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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