Smart Meters

 

One of the new "smart" meters. Somehow these things are supposed to provide some valuable service to both the consumer and the utility, sending information in both directions. The promotional material provided by manufacturer Itron is very nearly incomprehensible. I dare you to figure it out.

One can be exempted from this innovation but it will cost $15 per month to remain in the not-so-smart era. It seems unlikely that any but homeowners that are electrical engineers will be able to make real use of the meters, although some additional information on the bills are supposed to be introduced along with the devices. Since most customers couldn't tell you how much they're paying per kilowatt hour for power, its difficult to say how good a use they'll make of that information, should they even look at it. They already know that they should turn out the bathroom light when finished brushing their teeth and unplug the iron before leaving for work.
 

The Dawn of Everything

"...one of the most puzzling aspects of living in history is that's almost impossible to predict the course of future events; yet, once these events have happened, it's difficult to know what it would even mean to say something else 'could' have happened. A properly historical event has, perhaps, two qualities: it could not have been predicted beforehand, but it only happens once. One does not get to fight the Battle of Guagamela over again, to see what would have happened if Darius had actually won. Speculating what might have happened--had Alexander, say, been hit by a stray arrow, and there had never been a Ptolemaic Egypt or Seleucid Syria--is at best an idle game. It might raise profound questions--how much difference can an individual really make in history?--but nevertheless, these are questions that cannot ever be definitively answered. 

The best we can do, when confronted with unique historical events or configurations such as the Persian or Hellenistic empires, is to engage in a project of comparison. This at least can give us an idea of the sort of things that might happen, and at best a sense of the pattern by which one thing is likely to follow another. The problem  is that ever since the Iberian invasion of the Americas, and subsequent European colonial empires, we can't even really do that, because there's ultimately been just one political system and it is global."

 

Graeber, David and Wengrow, David, The Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2021, pg. 449. 

Ketamine

An interesting story in Sin City. A VIP gambler with a long history with the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas, NV is suing the parent company over an incident that involved his being drugged and signing marks worth a fortune while in a stupor that he claims was induced by drugs in his drink. A doctor examined Dwight Manley, a California real estate executive, after he cut his hand on a broken ash tray and advised him to supply samples of his hair for testing. The hair was said to contain levels of ketamine, an animal tranquilizer that's also used as a date rape drug. He has offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever "slipped him a mickey".

The interesting aspect of this affair is speculation on how often this might happen in different circumstances. When a driver is arrested for DUI, he is tested for physical agility and alcohol impairment. It's also possible that he could be tested for other drugs. There are ordinarily no tests made for ketamine or other "date rape" drugs. It's statistically certain that an unknown percentage of arrested drivers may have consumed alcohol but were not over the legal limit. The ketamine in their system would mimic the effects of alcohol and being impaired isn't 100% determined by blood alcohol level. DUI can be charged at any percentage if the officer feels that the driver is impaired.

 

 

Why would someone in a bar or restaurant put an animal tranquilizer in another person's drink? There's been a long history of this, perhaps as long as consumption of alcohol itself. The usual explanation is that spiking a drink is a first step toward theft or sexual assault. But there can be other reasons.

Perhaps the "spiker" has some kind of grudge against the victim. Leaving a bar in a seriously compromised condition can cause all kinds of problems for the victim, as can be easily imagined. 

There's another, even more sinister, possibility. As law enforcement uses women pretending to be prostitutes to trap "johns" or poses as an underage girl on the internet to catch child molesters, they can also use drugged drinks to corral drunken drivers.

Policemen could team up, one or more tainting a victim's drink, another making a traffic stop a few blocks away. All that's necessary is for the impaired driver to have "some" alcohol in his system for the case to be made. The driver is already befuddled by the drug and probably isn't coherent enough to demand testing for ketamine or GHB or any other drug. He wouldn't be accommodated in any case. 

What would the law enforcement motive for this be? Actually, cops that make many DWI arrests get awards and promotions. Those benefits are much easier to gain when the process is directed from the beginning. 

If the above is in fact happening, there's little that can be done about it other than what's already the best approach. If drinking, never let the drink leave your hand. Better yet, don't frequent saloons.

 

Disaster Capitalism

Astute writer for British on-line publication Spiked Brendan O'Neill has enpixelated an interesting article comparing and contrasting two other writers that are often confused with one another: Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf.

The most interesting thing isn't the differences between the two but the assumption by both that "disaster capitalism" is a major feature of capitalism itself. Of course, to a certain extent, that might be true. Disasters are opportunities for capitalists just as changes of other kinds are. Technology advances, social changes, cultural fads and more are  also spurs to the entreprenurial mind set. Some of the disasters aren't as apparent as others.

The one particular situation that disaster capitalism is trying to exploit at the moment is climate change, something that no one has yet to experience in a measureable fashion. The capitalists don't have the information or research or mitigation techniques or funds to delve into these subjects. Their sources are research universities. No social entity has taken advantage of a crisis more than the research community. By creating the very climate change issue they have been able to define its parameters, explore its dimensions and prescribe its treatment. To do this requires funding tantamount to waging war, which, in a way, it is. The funding for this conflict, even if provided by government and business, is eventually deducted from the standard of living of the population. Money spent on chimerical problems like climate change will enter the accounts of businesses set up to gather subsidies but won't be used for a necessary up-date to an aging infrastructure, the construction and maintenance of transportation and the alleviation of social problems. Making an attempt, even if somewhat successful, at cleansing the atmosphere of CO2 will make matter worse for humans, especially in economic terms.

For this we have the nation's most prestigious universities to thank. Long regarded with pride by the students, alumni and proles who live in their shadow, the fact is that they have created a monster meant to enhance their own status. At a crucial moment in their history, with their incredibly expensive tuition purchasing a product pretty much designed and delivered in the manner of its 16th century European predecessor, the American university has moved away from education to research, two very different things. Their educational reputation shines a flattering light on their research efforts. We often hear of their successes in research in agronomy, medicine, nanosystems, etc. but the inevitable failures receive no attention.

Since researchers, unlike students, don't pay tuition and are, in fact, university employees, funds must be found to keep them around, build and maintain the facilities needed for their experiments and finance the experiments themselves. 

Of course, the universities have changed through the years. The oldest and most prestigious ones, like Harvard, founded by the Puritans in 1636, had at least a tacit religious affiliation that is now more or less ignored. It was one of the founders of the Association of American Universities in 1900, an organization devoted to maintaining the research predominance of the member schools. The latest news about Harvard is that almost all students in all classes receive A grades.

Be that as it may, perhaps the dual roles of education and research of the AAU universities and others needs to be broken up. Is there a real connection between the two other than that students can be cheaply hired to perform the grunt work of research? In the past research was carried on by branches of corporations as an adjunct to their own development programs. Was there something wrong or inefficient about that? After all, the transistor was invented by the Bell Labs division of AT&T in 1947. The first patent application for a television device was made by a Westinghouse employee in 1923.        

Hydrogen In North Dakota

There is an obsession with carbon, element 6 on the periodic table. It's one of the most common elements on earth, and is 18.5% of the human body, second only to oxygen. Unfortunately, when carbon is combined with oxygen CO2 is the result and that molecule, which makes up .00421 of the earth's atmosphere, is said to be causing an immediate rise in global temperatures and must somehow be removed and stored deep into the earth, perhaps forever. 

The most common and reliable source of energy is currently the combustion of fossil fuels that produce electricity, power transportation and industry and heat homes and businesses. This process also creates gaseous CO2, ultimately causing the melting glaciers, rising seas, wild fires, torrential rains, floods and other tragedies laid at the feet of global warming. 

This entire scenario is written by research institutions of western academia. Government efforts in exploring the situation are through contractual alliances with research institutions. Scientists employed by business and industry have been occupied with other, commercial, research often with the aim of more efficient destruction of ideological opponents. 

The latest effort to arrest the baking of the planet has been federal awards of funds to research the development of hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels because its combustion produces no CO2. The US Department of Energy, created by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and headed today by former Democratic Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, has authorized the establishment of seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs across the country with about $1 billion for each one. Grand Forks, North Dakota will be the site of the Upper Midwest effort, centered at the University of North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center. The federal funding will enable UND to hire more employees, administrators and faculty, build bigger and better facilities, and carry on vital research. 

No doubt some of that research will be devoted to safely handling extremely inflammable hydrogen. Films remain, if not actual memories, of the incineration of the German zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, NJ in 1937. The incident set back the use of hydrogen in transportation, maybe forever.

President Biden and former law professor Granholm must believe that a $7 billion "investment" with no promise of a practical return, is a wise move. The research institutions involved agree. UND already has its EERC, currently a 15 acre on-campus facility with over a quarter of a million square feet of labs, offices, etc. The supervision of their disbursement of millions of dollars isn't mentioned.

 

 eercphoto

 In the free market, entreprenurial, economic environment that is supposedly the United States, we'd like to think that if the development of hydrogen as a fuel and its displacement of fossil fuels was of great importance, an existential thing, private companies would be scrambling into the fray, confident that they would be able to solve the problem and reap the rewards. That hasn't been the case. Basic, or even advanced research, especially in areas that may not be financially fruitful, is no longer done by the private sector. They don't need to. Research institutions are standing in line for federal funds financing research that, if it produces practical results, will be used by profitable private entities. Considering the post-modern accounting system used by the federal government it would be interesting to know exactly how the $7 billion figure came to be.  The country is about half-way to a socialist scientific community in the wrappings of education. 

   

  

Insects On The Menu

They're serious. Yes, they are. The climate change- sustainability obsessives think that the ultimate answer is to forego beef, pork and chicken for dinner and instead make insects the basis of the human diet. The Nobel 59 conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in bucolic St. Peter, Minnesota was devoted to encouraging the consumption of bugs.  The original Gustavus Adolphus, an early 17th century Swedish monarch that helped make his country a European power, was unlikely to have dug into a bowlful of grasshoppers even if served with a tasty sauce.

 superiorwallpapers.com

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal has run an article looking into the closing of meat-packing plants all over the USA. Their focus is on the negative economic impact this will have on the small towns where many of them are the principle industry and largest employer.

"Industry officials say more closures could come as meatpackers report declining profits. Chicken and pork producers are grappling with an industrywide glut, suppressing wholesale prices. Beef cattle herds are shrinking, lifting livestock prices and pushing weekly slaughter rates down nearly 10% compared with last year, according to the US Agriculture Department."

Meatpacking executives say that plants being closed are in need of major capital improvements to make them viable. Meanwhile, Americans are eating more chicken than ever, about 100 lbs. per person annually, and chicken prices are at record highs. Beef and pork consumption has diminished from previous levels as discretionary spending has been mauled by government financial policies, inflationary legislation and executive orders.

Others explain the situation as simply part of a strategy by the nefarious World Economic Forum and its acolytes in national governments and academia. The pressure on the agricultural sector world-wide has been noticeable. In the Netherlands the government intends to take 3,000 farms out of production to cut nitrogen in half by 2030. The Irish government would need to shrink the country's cattle herds by 1.3 million in order to cut their burping and farting methane emissions that are causing the glaciers to melt. Of course McKinsey & Company has its own recipe for both climate change and agriculture.

For much of the world's history, producing enough food for survival has been the focus of the human race. After all, sufficient food and reproduction are necessary for any form of life to endure. Technologically, that goal seems to have been reached almost everywhere. 

Only in the last few years have humans been able to wake up in the morning confident that their personal energy requirements for the day will be met. Now warped academic and governmental western elites wish to change that happy circumstance to their own fantasy.  

 

Corporate Management and Artificial Intelligence

 

 

 laderimmo.weebly.com

AI, and its effect on the future, are the subject of growing speculation across much of society and many of its issues are already presenting challenges. The effects it might have on corporate governance are only now being contemplated.

The fact is that no corporate executive, or a board composed of experienced management types, can possibly have the education and experience that can be displayed by the current first generation AI systems. These systems are certain to evolve to even more sophisticated levels.

Correctly predicting the future is perhaps  the most important task of business leaders, and in fact, all humans. This can be done only by an analysis of the past and present. History is littered with predictions and subsequent actions that resulted in disasters. Assuming that these actions were believed at the time to be the best choice of the available options, they were the result of either faulty analysis or incomplete and erroneous information. An individual responsible for an important decision may very well disregard important factors based on his own personal idiosyncracies. There isn't any truly scientific methodology for choosing one course over another.

Until now. Future AI will be able to scientifically evaluate the decision-making process to such an extent that corporate management will be tied to its recommendations even more than they are now to those of consultants. In fact, consultants like McKinzey and Company should go out of business. Making a decision that ignores AI input will be an act of career destruction if it fails so executives will be extremely reluctant to follow a path that diverges from the AI map. 

What does this mean? Or rather, what should it mean? There will, of course, still be corporate governance through upper management and boards. But their role will not be the same as it is now. The rules will change to the extent that AI input will be regarded as akin to the laws of physics. 

So what this really means is that the era of incredible compensation packages for corporate superstars is over. Almost any literate person will be able to successfully run a corporation. Why would consultants be able to bill millions of dollars for much cheaper AI services? If this is so, why would a spectacular compensation package be needed? The current payoffs to executives will no longer be subtracted from the potential dividends to stockholders. Stock options for corporate nabobs will end and stock buybacks, much of which are disguised rewards, will no longer take place.

It's possible that this scenario may not take place. If so, it will be because the AI revolution is being ignored in favor of retaining an obsolete paradigm that defies science. We'll see what happens.

Update: I told you so. A survey of executives indicates that they feel that their work could be done better by AI. Oddly, they also believe that they'll still find employment in the C-suite even when replaced by AI. Maybe the new Luddites will be management types rather than people working at looms. 

   “This data makes clear the startling ways AI is transforming the world of work,” said Anant Agarwal, Chief Platform Officer, 2U, Founder of edX, and former director of CSAIL, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. “As a leading developer of talent, edX continues to rapidly expand its portfolio of AI-focused educational offerings, including hundreds of AI-related courses and a new AI Boot Camp in partnership with top universities across the U.S."

Yeah, there has to be a buck to be made somewhere in all this. The whole idea of AI is to take human decision-making out of the business process. AI is computer work done by computers, not by nerds and its produce eventually won't involve any human choices. Who needs to go to a "boot camp" in order to say "OK, that's what we have to do"?