One of my favorite political commentators, Dan Henninger, recently published this in the Wall Street Journal.
Where Is the GOP's Jay Carney
...and it made me sadder than Hell.
Sure, that's what this nation needs; better PR flaks pushing the GOP
message in our current steel cage death match struggle for supremacy in
an American totalitarian theocracy.
A pox on both their houses,
the facts since JFK's America speak for themselves. Who grew government
more than Nixon, Reagan and Bush?
What we need is an America
electorate that once again selects state plumbers, hands them a plunger,
and asks that they honorably maintain the plumbing of state for a few
years, if they are willing and able, while the rest of us live our
lives, and which hopefully, they will sometime return to after keeping
the plumbing of state clean and free flowing.
We need to pay attention when they mistake that plunger for a scepter.
We
need to once again focus on the most important aspect of public
governance; what is and what isn't a proper topic for public governance?
What justifies forced association on a local level? On a county level?
On a state level? And highest hurdle of all, on a national level?.
When
we have once again properly sized government, it won't matter who our
leaders are. We can pick the pool of candidates from the phone book or
voter registration roles, like we do jurists(who we trust to make life
and death decisions over their peers.) We could qualify them the same
way we qualify jurors, and we could vet them the same way we vet the
current crop of candidates for office, without the initial bias of
seeking power over others for personal agendas.
Because the America that once was elected plumbers, not emperors.
Why
is the current debate on anything a national debate? Why isn't gun
control a local matter of community standards? Why isn't health care a
local matter of community standards? Why is it necessary to turn every
issue of modern life into a singular Totalitarian solution, decided for
the entire nation? This endless forced association is exactly what is
dividing the nation against itself, not unifying it.
The American
phrase is "United We Stand." Not "United It Stands." We, as in a
plurality. One nation. Of societies, plural, freely formed under rules
of free association. Not one "S"ociety, but many societies forming one
nation.
Our national government should be -primarily- concerned
with matters of the nation, not local or internal matters of a diverse
nation of free people forming societies, plural, under rules of free
association.
Totalitarianism is not an American principle. It is
one that we used to come together for, as a nation, to fight tooth and
nail, because we recognized it as the eater of freedom.
Or, we can get louder GOP hacks.
An American Totalitarian Theocracy? Really?
Really.
Read Scott Nearings "Social Religion." From long before you and I were born.
You
and I have been inculcated to believe in the absolute reality of a
singular myth called "S"ociety. (See also Durkheim, "Religious Formes"
-- especially his summary, where he defines "S"ociety. "S"ociety=God,
and the state is its proper church.)
A corollary: the total myth
of "The Economy." There is no singular 'The' Economy. There are only
economies, plural; the macro concept "all of them in aggregate" has no
basis in reality, only as statistical anecdotes, not as a factual
entity...It is as silly as the aggregate term "weather" applied to the
nation as a whole. What is 'the' temperature in the USA today? We could
average all the surface temperatures...and then decide, for the nation
as a whole, if "it" should be warmer or cooler...resulting in a steel
cage death match struggle for survival between the people of Florida and
Alaska.
So...what should 'the' Minimum Wage be? In rural
Lancaster county...and downtown Manhattan? Let's drive the nation insane
by coming up with 'the' right answer. Sort of like basing our stream
crossing policy on the average depth of the national stream.
And
in the American Totalitarian Theocracy, 99% of Americans alive today
can't have a political discussion without paying homage to the religious
terms of art "S"ociety and/or 'The' Economy.
You and I have had
the absolute reality of those myths blasted into our consciousness
since birth, to the point where we can't even imagine the reality of
anything but.
There is a political reason for this; in order for
power grubbing politicos to convince you and I that they have the first
clue about centrally planning and controlling "the Economy", they have
to first convince us and themselves that they are an it.
Look at the current tribal over-reaction to rare, fringe mayhem.
There is no commensurate national debate on the real epidemic creating
dead five year olds -- DUI. No national commissions calling for national
20MPH limited autos and 3.2 beer.
We don't care about dead five
yr olds senselessly murdered in DUI crashes? Trivial to implement--
replace the Silicon MCUs in most modern cars, limit them to 20MPH. Like
'valet key' mode. (Do I actually believe this should be done, just because it could be done? Hell no, even though it might save even just one -- no, sorry, make that 30,000 lives a year. And neither do you.)
Any one of us can easily prove to ourselves
that the real national epidemic is not rare, fringe 20 yr old kids,
"devastated" by the divorce of their parents, wigging out and carting
Mom's weapons into Kindergartens. It's patently not the case, and easily
provable: nearly every community in the nation has blanket, pre-emptive
DUI stops set up on local roads. No such pre-emptive blanket stops
looking for wigged out kids carting arsenals to school, precisely
because it is exceedingly rare and fringe and it would be highly ineffective to search for, in a blanket pre-emptive fashion, that which
is so fringe and rare.
Not so DUI.
But the response to DUI is local and targeted, not national, with nationwide calls for 20MPH limited autos and 3.2 beer.
You see, some cute dead five yr olds not going to the Prom are more politically abusable than others.
They
could care less that we murder each other on the highways. So, from
where politicians fear of armed citizens? Look at NY. 600+ firearm
related deaths, and only 5 related to rifles of any kind, much less,
semi-automatic assault rifles. So why are NY politicos, especially
Bloomberg, targeting assault rifles so quickly in NY?
From his Bio:
"In
March 2012, Forbes reported Bloomberg’s wealth at $22 billion, ranking
him 20th in the world and 11th in the United States.[29] In March 2009,
Forbes reported Bloomberg's wealth at $16 billion, a gain of $4.5
billion over the previous year, enjoying the world's biggest increase in
wealth in 2009.[30] At that time, there were only four fortunes in the
U.S. that were larger (although the Wal-Mart family fortune is split
among four people). He moved from 142nd to 17th in the Forbes list of
the world's billionaires in only two years (March 2007 – March
2009).[31][32]"
Mr. Mayor, while Mr. Mayor, picks up 6 billion with a b in assets ... during America's "financial crisis."
... is nervous about New Yorkers with assault rifles for some reason.
The
reason is, when he is asked to provide the details of how this magic
could have happened during his servant's heart service to the people of
NY, he has an easier time smirking and saying 'Take it and shut up' in a
world where the dupes are disarmed.
For that matter, nothing new; how did LBJ leave office a rich man after an entire lifetime of 'public service?'
America
used to laugh about those things, took it in stride. But that was
before we started to act out our own version of The Hunger Games, with
The Capitol only booming.
Soon enough at this rate with real hunger in The Districts.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Stop looking for economic reasons.
They aren't there.
Work, savings, investment; uphill human effort in a Universe filled with cold gradients. Where is the incentive to run uphill? The universe provides the incentive, with its harsh rules.
So, what happens when the tribe shows up and tries to finesse the rules, via force? Well, a handful of tribal leaders argue that if they show up at the point of a gun and take $1 from someone who worked, saved, and invested-- either, by taxing them today, or by committing to tax them in the future by using their credit-- and then take that same $1 and simply give it to a connected political crony, that somehow 'stimulates' something that they refer to as 'The Economy.'
Lather, rinse, repeat. $1 becomes $1T.
And for some reason -- largely Schadenfreude -- most of the tribe believes it.
There is no economic reason in taking a dollar from point A and simply displacing it to point B in the economies, at the point of a gun. It is simply an attempt to shed risk from some onto others, in such a manner that those who are able to manage risk have no incentive to continue to do so, and at the same time, those who have no ability to manage risk have no incentive to modify their behavior.
It is pure tribal insanity, and we are knee deep in its throes.
America can take all the time necessary to finally figure this out, it isn't going to alter the end result.
They aren't there.
Work, savings, investment; uphill human effort in a Universe filled with cold gradients. Where is the incentive to run uphill? The universe provides the incentive, with its harsh rules.
So, what happens when the tribe shows up and tries to finesse the rules, via force? Well, a handful of tribal leaders argue that if they show up at the point of a gun and take $1 from someone who worked, saved, and invested-- either, by taxing them today, or by committing to tax them in the future by using their credit-- and then take that same $1 and simply give it to a connected political crony, that somehow 'stimulates' something that they refer to as 'The Economy.'
Lather, rinse, repeat. $1 becomes $1T.
And for some reason -- largely Schadenfreude -- most of the tribe believes it.
There is no economic reason in taking a dollar from point A and simply displacing it to point B in the economies, at the point of a gun. It is simply an attempt to shed risk from some onto others, in such a manner that those who are able to manage risk have no incentive to continue to do so, and at the same time, those who have no ability to manage risk have no incentive to modify their behavior.
It is pure tribal insanity, and we are knee deep in its throes.
America can take all the time necessary to finally figure this out, it isn't going to alter the end result.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Capitalism Version 2012 and the endgame in Atlas Shrugged
She's been dead for 30 years, there is no Atlantis, there is no John Galt. But, there is the ending of Atlas Shrugged, and the 'state capitalism/capitalism with a Chinese flavor' of Thomas Friedman's article, "Capitalism Version 2012." seemed to come right out of those pages.
After Galt's 'long speech,' there is a panic by the political power elites. Dagny tells them to 'give up.' But they are still struggling to scheme to hang on to their gig.
Quote:
"Oh, you theoretical intellectuals!" said Mr. Thompson with exasperation. "What are you all gaping at? It's simple. Whoever he is, he's a man of action. Besides, he's got a pressure group: he's cornered all the men of brains. He knows what to do. We'll find him and he'll tell us. He'll tell us what to do. He'll make things work. He'll pull us out of the hole."
"Us, Mr. Thompson?"
"Sure. Never mind your theories. We'll make a deal with him."
"With him?"
"Sure. Oh, we'll have to compromise, we'll have to make a few concessions to big business, and the welfare boys won't like it, but what the hell!!--do you know any other way out?"
"But his ideas---"
"Who cares about ideas?"
"Mr. Thompson," said Mouch, choking, "I...I'm afraid he's man who's not open to a deal."
"There's no such thing," said Mr. Thomspon.
They, too, have concluded that 'capitalism' is the way to go, but it must be a 'state capitalism', in service to the state. (Aka, how we are supposed to fund paternalistic megalomania in this once free nation and a handful of pet Soc. grad school theories. Not going to ever happen in a nation whose kids are devouring "The Hunger Games..." while lefties are waving off their parents from Ayn Rand, as if this was 1969...)
Then there follow some public broadcasts where these masters of the political universe make all kinds of unilateral appeals/assertions about what John Galt is going to do/must do, etc., none of which is true in the least; he and his are just waiting for these folks to just fail in plain sight, as they must.
Then Dagny suggests they 'Start lifting taxes and removing controls' and they of course protest that they can do no such thing. Well, OK. Take all the time it takes to figure this one out…
They eventually find Galt, and have a discussion about what to do, and it is clear they can't do even the simplest thing that he suggests; his purpose in suggesting these things is to identify to them that he understands they can do none of what he believes needs to be done. They then accuse him of concerning himself with 'politics' because these emperor wannabees only want him to address the 'economics.'
They want to maintain power and their own irrational politics, and they want him and his to somehow make all that slop work for them.
We’re not here…yet, but the irrationality of what they want eventually leads to the spectacle of them literally torturing him with the demand that he become the economic dictator of the nation, charged with making their nonsense work for them.
Quote:
"Get this straight," said Dr. Ferris, addressing him for the first time. "We want you to take full power over the economy of the country. We want you to become a dictator. We want you to rule. Understand? We want you to give orders and to figure out the right orders to give. What we want, we mean to get. Speeches, logic, arguments or passive obedience won't save you now. We want ideas-- or else. We won't let you out of here until you tell us the exact measures you'll take to save our system.. Then we'll have you tell it to the country over the radio."
Then, in Rand’s romantic novel, they torture Galt with some screwy abomination of a device, it fails, they can't fix it, and Galt tells them how to fix it, and then ... laughs at them, because he knows they are finished. And finally, they know it.
That was some wishful thinking; those tracks on the table top of history are the fingernail marks from some folks clinging to the gig until their fingers bleed…
So...the politicians wanted to 'hand the decisions over to John Galt to run the country' ... sort of. But not really. They wanted to keep their political power and irrational whims, but force him and his to somehow make all their irrational slop work for them.
Exactly like modern politics. ("Capitalism won!") Only there is no singular ‘John Galt’ to conveniently put on a rack and no singular ‘Atlantis’ in what was at most a romantic wave off from half a century ago.
There are just millions of Americans hiding in plain sight while all this tribal elite slop fails on its own, as it only can and must and will and clearly is, in plain sight.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
The Tribe's Reaction to Tim Tebow
Tim Tebow isn't speaking for God; he is speaking to his God, as is his right in freedom.
It isn't at all clear that Tim Tebow believes God cares about who wins a football game.
If I understand the concept of God, then who speaks for God? The practical answer to that is, any one of us with a long weekend to kill, which happens with alarming frequency in the world.
If it offends, then look away. Isn't that -one- of the essential aspects of peer based freedom in America when we share the commons? Because we share this existence in our free political context as peers, not emperor wannabees.
Tim Tebow makes no demand upon any of us by his mere existence and joy and celebration and thankfullness.
What is most revealing about the Tim Tebow 'controversy' is the source of the hairshirt that he represents to some of the tribe-- as if his existence and choices were an affront to others.
I am not a Christian. I am a devout non-aligned agnostic, grateful to a largely benevolent universe for my time and mote of heat and light and opportunities given to me here in this wondrous playground. But I love freedom, and recognize that one of the keystones of cherishing that freedom is respecting his.
One of the most important ways we defend freedom in America is to respect the freedom of others. Christians. Gays. Businessmen. Athletes. Artists. Vegetarians. Meat eaters. Atheists.
Even the odd agnostic.
Freedom ultimately means, freedom from each other except by free association, tempered by recognition that the mere existence of each other in the public square is not the same as forced association. Freedom demands tolerance and forbearance(failure to enforce, as in, uniformity of thought or opinion or association)or else, there is no freedom. Our FF gave us the tools for free association; especially the 1st Amendment. It is an under-appreciated aspect of the 1st it is ultimately a tool for free association, and a tool which operates in two directions: when we freely speak, we are also freely heard. When we freely speak, we are freely identified as friend or fool. When we freely practice our religion, ditto. And here is the key element to freedom: no matter how each of us freely defines friend; no matter how each of us freely defines fool. The goal being, a peaceful tool of free association.
The 1st Amendment is 1st for a reason. Free association is the keystone of freedom, and the 1st amendment is its most powerful tool; it operates in two directions. Our FF were brilliant for realizing this.
Freedom is not the freedom to sprint headlong across the public square, oblivious to the existence of others. Freedom is the freedom to navigate the public square, arriving at our separate destinations, mindful of the existence of others. The 1st Amendment is an illuminating navigation aid which permits us all to peacefully navigate. Tim Tebow practicing his freedom is not a compunction to steer either towards or away from Tim Tebow, the choice is yours and mine, and our systematic encouragement to freely express our thought and religion is the necessary illumination required for all of us to peacefully choose..
Freedom is also an impediment to the totalitarian wishes of existentially terrified children, some driven by their overwhelming fealty to their atavistic herd mentality genes. AKA, America's once external and today largely internal political struggle.
There, I used the most used and least defined word in all of politics: "Politics."
Politics: the art and science of getting what we want from others using any means short of actual violence. mega-politics: the superset that includes violence.
What some want is "to be left alone." What others want is "to ride others like a tribal property pony as a birthright, modulated only by ability to be ridden." Those are both political and are also mutually exclusive.
Tim Tebow isn't speaking for God; he is speaking to his God, as is his right in freedom.
It isn't at all clear that Tim Tebow believes God cares about who wins a football game.
If I understand the concept of God, then who speaks for God? The practical answer to that is, any one of us with a long weekend to kill, which happens with alarming frequency in the world.
If it offends, then look away. Isn't that -one- of the essential aspects of peer based freedom in America when we share the commons? Because we share this existence in our free political context as peers, not emperor wannabees.
Tim Tebow makes no demand upon any of us by his mere existence and joy and celebration and thankfullness.
What is most revealing about the Tim Tebow 'controversy' is the source of the hairshirt that he represents to some of the tribe-- as if his existence and choices were an affront to others.
I am not a Christian. I am a devout non-aligned agnostic, grateful to a largely benevolent universe for my time and mote of heat and light and opportunities given to me here in this wondrous playground. But I love freedom, and recognize that one of the keystones of cherishing that freedom is respecting his.
One of the most important ways we defend freedom in America is to respect the freedom of others. Christians. Gays. Businessmen. Athletes. Artists. Vegetarians. Meat eaters. Atheists.
Even the odd agnostic.
Freedom ultimately means, freedom from each other except by free association, tempered by recognition that the mere existence of each other in the public square is not the same as forced association. Freedom demands tolerance and forbearance(failure to enforce, as in, uniformity of thought or opinion or association)or else, there is no freedom. Our FF gave us the tools for free association; especially the 1st Amendment. It is an under-appreciated aspect of the 1st it is ultimately a tool for free association, and a tool which operates in two directions: when we freely speak, we are also freely heard. When we freely speak, we are freely identified as friend or fool. When we freely practice our religion, ditto. And here is the key element to freedom: no matter how each of us freely defines friend; no matter how each of us freely defines fool. The goal being, a peaceful tool of free association.
The 1st Amendment is 1st for a reason. Free association is the keystone of freedom, and the 1st amendment is its most powerful tool; it operates in two directions. Our FF were brilliant for realizing this.
Freedom is not the freedom to sprint headlong across the public square, oblivious to the existence of others. Freedom is the freedom to navigate the public square, arriving at our separate destinations, mindful of the existence of others. The 1st Amendment is an illuminating navigation aid which permits us all to peacefully navigate. Tim Tebow practicing his freedom is not a compunction to steer either towards or away from Tim Tebow, the choice is yours and mine, and our systematic encouragement to freely express our thought and religion is the necessary illumination required for all of us to peacefully choose..
Freedom is also an impediment to the totalitarian wishes of existentially terrified children, some driven by their overwhelming fealty to their atavistic herd mentality genes. AKA, America's once external and today largely internal political struggle.
There, I used the most used and least defined word in all of politics: "Politics."
Politics: the art and science of getting what we want from others using any means short of actual violence. mega-politics: the superset that includes violence.
What some want is "to be left alone." What others want is "to ride others like a tribal property pony as a birthright, modulated only by ability to be ridden." Those are both political and are also mutually exclusive.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Gradient drives everything.
That is an old, supposedly silly chestnut from engineering school salad days, but it is alarmingly insightful.
Ask 100 people what gradient is, and maybe 3 will know it well enough to define it; simply put, gradient is the rate of change of some quantity with respect to some other quantity, most often, space or time.
Without gradient in the universe, identity itself would not exist. Assuming you are finite and not infinite, if the rate of change of 'you' with respect to space was everywhere and for all time zero, then 'you' would not exist at all. At the boundary of your skin, there is an abrupt rate of change of 'you' with respect to space. Assuming you did not exist forever, if the rate of change of 'you' with respect to time was everywhere and for all time zero, then you would not exist anywhere. At the boundary of your conception and death, there is an abrupt rate of change of 'you' as 'you,' even as the borrowed heavy elements and molecules and atoms that you as your process once enjoyed wind their way as part of new gradient driven process to something other than 'you' as 'you.'
The biological details of life itself fundamentally depend on gradient; varying concentrations of chemicals with respect to both time and space and even each other define and drive biological life.
In fact, in the entire universe, there are no known examples of processes -- including life itself, but including natural processes themselves -- that are not totally dependent on the existence of gradient.
A lack of gradient in the universe is consistent with death and even non-existence. Death is another word for stasis, and vice-verse. Homeostasis is not the same as stasis; homeostasis is a balancing of gradients against each other. Even a state of homeostasis is itself dependent on gradient.
Light/dark.
Hot/cold.
Gravity itself is a gradient, perhaps the most understood example of gradient.
Uphill/downhill.
Hard/easy
Poverty/wealth
Health/disease
Risk exists as a gradient.
Reward exists as a gradient.
Weather is jammed packed with examples of gradient.
This applies to everything in the universe. Everything. All natural and even artificial processes. Including and especially economies.
Including Love. Love is one of the strongest gradients known to man. (Think about it; you do not love 'equally.' You love some more than others, and often, one more than all others combined. Love is an intense example of gradient. Your 'rate of change of Love with respect to humanity' is not 'zero, unless you love not, and claims to love all 'equally' are tantamount to not loving at all. If you are confronted by a fellow naked sweaty ape that actually claims to love all 'equally' then my best advice is to run.
Speaking of love, I'd love to hear an example of a process in the universe that is not driven by the concept of gradient.
Another observation, evident in the universe, is that the universes laws tend to act in a manner which consume all local gradients.
Hot and cold becomes warm.
Motion, via friction, becomes heat, and then, see above.
The universe appears, at least in our current branch of existence, to be running from a condition of intense gradient to a future terminus in which everything -- everything that exists -- will be a dim, grey, 3 deg K uniform field of cold, inanimate matter. The ultimate stasis. (Whether some other unknown physical process, such as a contraction of that universe, results in a renewed domain of gradient as King is a question for the future.) Yet where we now exist as life in a still vibrant universe is among a diversity of gradient still driving process, where life itself is dependent on the existence of gradient, gradient is indeed King; gradient drives everything of interest(unless our interest is a static universe of dim 3 deg K matter.)
So, how does this fact of existence in the universe, as it is, impact our economies?
Our economies are overflowing with examples of gradient. This is evidenced by the very crude mathematical models that pretend to model economies; there are literally terms of gradient inevitably found in all of the serious models, not just simple magnitude or amounts of parameters, but the rate of change of those parameters with respect to other parameters.
Wealth and poverty is an example of gradient.
Earning and spending is an example of gradient.
Effort-at-risk and risk-free-effort is an example of gradient.
Running uphill and running downhill is an example of gradient, and is especially applicable to our economies.
It is hard to run uphill, it is easy to run downhill, and yet, if we all make no effort to run uphill, then we will all be at the bottom of the hill, and although 'equal,' we will be equal only in stasis at the bottom of the hill.
There are gradients of opportunity, and if you compare those gradients over time, it is clear that even those gradients are changing over time(a gradient of gradient...)
There is the literal dirt simple gradient of geopolitical two dimensional earth surface growth over time. If you were to view a historical time series of political maps drawn on the surface of the earth over hundreds of thousands of years, you would see little until very recently, when change would be rapid, and we call that 'modern history.' Depending on what time scale you zoomed in and viewed these maps, you would notice periods of varying rates of change (gradient) in the distribution of colors on the map. You would see, for example, various stages of near stasis juxtaposed alongside of various stages of rapid change/gradient.
Not that humanity is mold, but humanity is biological, and you would see mold growing over the surface of an orange, but an orange that had only partial skin/rind/land mass.
One of the latest such development waves was 'the New World' which is presently a quaint reference to what used to be a developing North America. In the US, we put our last star on the flag over 50 years ago. We are generations from being 'the New World.'
There are still pockets of development waves, in India and China, but there is something brand new, as well; the end game of two dimensional dirt simple geopolitical gradient in the world. It is also a characteristic-- unavoidable happenstance -- that as the limited surface 2D growth paradigm reaches its end game, our technological range -- the distance over which we can effectively conduct command, control, communication and commerce -- is more than overwhelming the surface of the planet, completely consuming dirt simple gradient at an accelerating rate as we near the end game. Like mold on the surface of an orange, we eventually reach the end of the orange peel, but unlike mold on the surface of an orange, as we do, we have reached it faster and faster. at an accelerating rate towards the end.
This is not a nefarious scheme by the Bilderburgers, but the inevitably confluence of progress and a limited 2D surface planet.
Think about the history of mankind and the consequences of the 2D growth paradigm. Our technological range was once limited by how far a man could walk in a day. Our tribal structures and areas of influence were limited in size, but there was always geopolitical pressure to grow our tribal structures; the area under our control grew as our technological range squared, but the distance to and the length of border of that area only grew as our technological range. Resources thus always tended to grow faster than the costs of defending/claiming those resources from competing political/tribal structures. This influenced the shape of our geopolitical/tribal structures, as it was most efficient to defend/govern/control more circular domains (with the lowest ratios of border to area)and least efficient to defend/govern/control more slender or meandering domains(with the highest ratios of border and/or distance to the border to area.) This fact of nature is a kind of geopolitical 'pi.' Unless there are structural geographic aids, such as mountains or natural divides, geopolitical regions tend to be 'blobs' and not 'streaks' because blobs are more efficient to defend/govern than streaks, for a given technological range of command, control, communication, and commerce. It's just easier to be 'blobs' and so, nations are 'blobs.'
Why are nations like Chile an exception to this observation? Because of the Andes Mountain Range.
Within a given nation, there was a natural gradient of markets from the capital to the border/frontier. There was also push back at the border from neighboring geopolitical tribes. The border is where gradient was strongest.
"Globalization" has been not a nefarious plot, but a consequence of the fact that, as we reached the end game of 2D surface development with diminished frontier, this end game has not slowed down the technological increase in effective range of command, control, communication and commerce. Our quaint geopolitical borders remain, but our technological range now complete overwhelms them, jumps over them, and in fact, dominates the planet.
Increasingly, there is no more dirt simple frontier. There is no more dirt simple geopolitical growth paradigm, for two reasons: 1] The surface development wave has newly swept the planet and 2] our technological range now exceeds the circumference of the planet we are; that is the true source of 'globalization.'
In this new reality, there are still plenty of frontiers, but unlike the days of dirt simple 2D geopolitical frontiers, the new frontiers are all exclusively intellectual in nature, and the cost of admission is increasingly more specialized education. There were always intellectual frontiers, but there used to be other fundamentally different types of frontiers in addition to intellectual frontiers, and this new 'decreased gradient of types of frontiers' is impacting global economies. Especially because of the accelerating rate as we neared the end of this 2D surface development paradigm, the end game is resulting in a kind of grinding of the gears, as humanity is largely failing to broadly paradigm shift. It is resulting in increased disparity between those taking advantage of gradient in the modern frontiers, and those dealing with stasis in the old frontiers.
Again, not the nefarious plot of the Bilderburgers, but a consequence of consumption of gradient.
One of two things will happen in the future; the tribe will broadly recognize that the nature of gradient is key to the health of our economies, or not, and if not, will try to (futile, in my opinion)target a brand, new paradigm in the universe based on stasis as the underlying foundation. (Homeostasis is not really stasis, as it is a balance between competing gradient; stasis is a dearth of gradient. Homeostasis requires gradient, is not a choice without gradient. Stasis is always a choice, but is devoid of gradient, and the universe is missing any examples of processes or life without gradient.)
How does the tribe restore diversity of opportunities(gradient of gradient)if we are at the historical end game of 2D surface based development?
In fits and starts, and success is not guaranteed. In fact, effort at risk is unavoidable in the universe. All that is certain is, without that effort, we slip back to stasis, and stasis s certain death.
JFK tried. He had a clear vision. Mankind, pausing once again at the edge of a broad gulf, looked up at the stars. And for a very brief moment in mankind's history, over 50 years ago, at the very cusp of putting the last star on the flag, JFK looked at the Moon and declared, "We are going to the Moon." And in short order, we did.
Going to the Moon was not about putting 12 sets of footprints on a distant dusty plain. It was about the restoration of gradient(and, what a gradient.) Literally, a gravity gradient. But as well, a gradient of opportunities. For 12 men? Sure. But the gradient of that intense human effort reached all the way back to Bethpage, to Huntsville, to Cape Canaveral, to Houston, to Los Angeles. The gradient of opportunities spread across many industries, and the economic results are still driving economies today, 50 years after the intense effort. The intense push in microelectronics, for one, gave us microprocessors, which rapidly exploded, creating the entire PC and smart device explosion that drive economies even today. The advances in aeronautics and avionics, navigation, satellite services and communication, environmental monitoring, all have that intense focused human effort in the 60s as their foundation. It was mankind's attempt to reinvigorate gradient that created this massive economic explosion of humans struggling to go uphill, to make a focused effort, to go somewhere, to do something hard -- in JFK's exact words, "We choose these goals because they are hard."
What are the less obvious benefits of that reinvigorated gradient? That same technological range that used to drive 2D surface growth paradigm had a quality about it. Even if sparsely and in fits and leaps, as technological range grew, so did the frontier, proportionately, as our domain grew by that range-squared(area.)
In a new 3D growth paradigm, even if sparsely and in fits and leaps, as technological range grows, the frontier will grow as that range -squared, and domain by range-cubed!
As well, and we have a hint with the Internet about this fact, as mankind fills that domain with technological range fueled command, control, communication and commerce, it is not actually necessary for mankind to physically travel throughout that domain in order to benefit from that domain. The reason for that is, the ability to share intellectual content transported at the speed of light. The Internet totally dominates and overwhelms the thin, 2D surface of the earth, and the concept of point-point free flow of intellectual content will just as easily fill an ever expanding volume/domain.
This is true of purely intellectual content today, but we are at the Kitty Hawk stages of transporting even physical objects across distances, certainly in the following sense; imagine if it was possible to manipulate local matter at the atomic level. (We are definitely at the Kitty Hawk stages of that technology.) If we then transmit just the intellectual content necessary to describe any object between point A and B, we can in effect recreate an object at A at point B. Said another way, the UPS of the future may no longer be hauling actual mass across the nation(or galaxy), but instead, be long hauling the intellectual content necessary to reproduce that arrangement of matter from an encryption/encoding capability at Point A to a decryption/decoding capability at point B.
Imagine a development wave of actual human beings expanding into this new 3D growth development wave. When they leave earth, the current level of technology is at 'level 1.' When that wave reaches a certain point in the future, the new current level of technology is at 'level 2' and is defined by the cumulative experience in the volume of that expanding development wave, and can be shared throughout that volume. This means that even the leading edge of the development wave redefines itself as it expands. As this '3D Internet' fills the galaxy with mankind, it is not restricted to the space/time state of technology that existed when it left the earth. As well, the expanding domain/volume increases the sum of mankind's resources, especially human intellectual resources.
Most importantly -- as evidenced by JFK's experiment with the Moon effort -- the immediate benefits to mankind, even here on earth, are enormous, simply by making the effort.
Where does that new 3D development wave end?
It doesn't. Not until the end of the universe.
Some species, somewhere, will achieve this dynamic. In order to do so, it will need to survive the end game of its 2D surface growth paradigm. It will need to survive it's technological adolescence. It will need to solve this ultimate problem of gradient in the universe.
And when it does, the reward will be that the universe will be theirs. Not just the universe of space, but of time as well.
It may not be we naked sweaty apes. But...we are so damn close to realizing this. It wasn't a technological limitation which is keeping us from taking our children out this very night in 2012 to inspire them, to watch them look up and view the lights of the new colonies on the Moon. It was purely a political tribal choice. Instead, some said, "No, we must address the problems that we have right down here on earth."
Well, how has that worked out? Where is that going?
After 50+ years of Great Society, ask a graduating college student today "What is it that this nation does today that inspires you?" (ie, motivates them to make the effort to run uphill?) Their blank response will shock and shame anyone who was alive during JFK's 60s in America.
Let's be clear. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo was a $2B/yr program for ten years back in the 60s. What is it that the US federal government does today that is giving our economies anything near that bang for the buck, considering that most of what is actually happening in today's economies is directly attributable to the effort that resulted from those programs back then?
Gradient still drives everything. Including our economies. If we don't intelligently plan for gradient, gradient will find us; wars, natural disasters, plague, famine. All negative gradients that drive economies.
We've got to be smarter then that, if we want to inherit the universe; that is some intelligent filter, gravity.
That is an old, supposedly silly chestnut from engineering school salad days, but it is alarmingly insightful.
Ask 100 people what gradient is, and maybe 3 will know it well enough to define it; simply put, gradient is the rate of change of some quantity with respect to some other quantity, most often, space or time.
Without gradient in the universe, identity itself would not exist. Assuming you are finite and not infinite, if the rate of change of 'you' with respect to space was everywhere and for all time zero, then 'you' would not exist at all. At the boundary of your skin, there is an abrupt rate of change of 'you' with respect to space. Assuming you did not exist forever, if the rate of change of 'you' with respect to time was everywhere and for all time zero, then you would not exist anywhere. At the boundary of your conception and death, there is an abrupt rate of change of 'you' as 'you,' even as the borrowed heavy elements and molecules and atoms that you as your process once enjoyed wind their way as part of new gradient driven process to something other than 'you' as 'you.'
The biological details of life itself fundamentally depend on gradient; varying concentrations of chemicals with respect to both time and space and even each other define and drive biological life.
In fact, in the entire universe, there are no known examples of processes -- including life itself, but including natural processes themselves -- that are not totally dependent on the existence of gradient.
A lack of gradient in the universe is consistent with death and even non-existence. Death is another word for stasis, and vice-verse. Homeostasis is not the same as stasis; homeostasis is a balancing of gradients against each other. Even a state of homeostasis is itself dependent on gradient.
Light/dark.
Hot/cold.
Gravity itself is a gradient, perhaps the most understood example of gradient.
Uphill/downhill.
Hard/easy
Poverty/wealth
Health/disease
Risk exists as a gradient.
Reward exists as a gradient.
Weather is jammed packed with examples of gradient.
This applies to everything in the universe. Everything. All natural and even artificial processes. Including and especially economies.
Including Love. Love is one of the strongest gradients known to man. (Think about it; you do not love 'equally.' You love some more than others, and often, one more than all others combined. Love is an intense example of gradient. Your 'rate of change of Love with respect to humanity' is not 'zero, unless you love not, and claims to love all 'equally' are tantamount to not loving at all. If you are confronted by a fellow naked sweaty ape that actually claims to love all 'equally' then my best advice is to run.
Speaking of love, I'd love to hear an example of a process in the universe that is not driven by the concept of gradient.
Another observation, evident in the universe, is that the universes laws tend to act in a manner which consume all local gradients.
Hot and cold becomes warm.
Motion, via friction, becomes heat, and then, see above.
The universe appears, at least in our current branch of existence, to be running from a condition of intense gradient to a future terminus in which everything -- everything that exists -- will be a dim, grey, 3 deg K uniform field of cold, inanimate matter. The ultimate stasis. (Whether some other unknown physical process, such as a contraction of that universe, results in a renewed domain of gradient as King is a question for the future.) Yet where we now exist as life in a still vibrant universe is among a diversity of gradient still driving process, where life itself is dependent on the existence of gradient, gradient is indeed King; gradient drives everything of interest(unless our interest is a static universe of dim 3 deg K matter.)
So, how does this fact of existence in the universe, as it is, impact our economies?
Our economies are overflowing with examples of gradient. This is evidenced by the very crude mathematical models that pretend to model economies; there are literally terms of gradient inevitably found in all of the serious models, not just simple magnitude or amounts of parameters, but the rate of change of those parameters with respect to other parameters.
Wealth and poverty is an example of gradient.
Earning and spending is an example of gradient.
Effort-at-risk and risk-free-effort is an example of gradient.
Running uphill and running downhill is an example of gradient, and is especially applicable to our economies.
It is hard to run uphill, it is easy to run downhill, and yet, if we all make no effort to run uphill, then we will all be at the bottom of the hill, and although 'equal,' we will be equal only in stasis at the bottom of the hill.
There are gradients of opportunity, and if you compare those gradients over time, it is clear that even those gradients are changing over time(a gradient of gradient...)
There is the literal dirt simple gradient of geopolitical two dimensional earth surface growth over time. If you were to view a historical time series of political maps drawn on the surface of the earth over hundreds of thousands of years, you would see little until very recently, when change would be rapid, and we call that 'modern history.' Depending on what time scale you zoomed in and viewed these maps, you would notice periods of varying rates of change (gradient) in the distribution of colors on the map. You would see, for example, various stages of near stasis juxtaposed alongside of various stages of rapid change/gradient.
Not that humanity is mold, but humanity is biological, and you would see mold growing over the surface of an orange, but an orange that had only partial skin/rind/land mass.
One of the latest such development waves was 'the New World' which is presently a quaint reference to what used to be a developing North America. In the US, we put our last star on the flag over 50 years ago. We are generations from being 'the New World.'
There are still pockets of development waves, in India and China, but there is something brand new, as well; the end game of two dimensional dirt simple geopolitical gradient in the world. It is also a characteristic-- unavoidable happenstance -- that as the limited surface 2D growth paradigm reaches its end game, our technological range -- the distance over which we can effectively conduct command, control, communication and commerce -- is more than overwhelming the surface of the planet, completely consuming dirt simple gradient at an accelerating rate as we near the end game. Like mold on the surface of an orange, we eventually reach the end of the orange peel, but unlike mold on the surface of an orange, as we do, we have reached it faster and faster. at an accelerating rate towards the end.
This is not a nefarious scheme by the Bilderburgers, but the inevitably confluence of progress and a limited 2D surface planet.
Think about the history of mankind and the consequences of the 2D growth paradigm. Our technological range was once limited by how far a man could walk in a day. Our tribal structures and areas of influence were limited in size, but there was always geopolitical pressure to grow our tribal structures; the area under our control grew as our technological range squared, but the distance to and the length of border of that area only grew as our technological range. Resources thus always tended to grow faster than the costs of defending/claiming those resources from competing political/tribal structures. This influenced the shape of our geopolitical/tribal structures, as it was most efficient to defend/govern/control more circular domains (with the lowest ratios of border to area)and least efficient to defend/govern/control more slender or meandering domains(with the highest ratios of border and/or distance to the border to area.) This fact of nature is a kind of geopolitical 'pi.' Unless there are structural geographic aids, such as mountains or natural divides, geopolitical regions tend to be 'blobs' and not 'streaks' because blobs are more efficient to defend/govern than streaks, for a given technological range of command, control, communication, and commerce. It's just easier to be 'blobs' and so, nations are 'blobs.'
Why are nations like Chile an exception to this observation? Because of the Andes Mountain Range.
Within a given nation, there was a natural gradient of markets from the capital to the border/frontier. There was also push back at the border from neighboring geopolitical tribes. The border is where gradient was strongest.
"Globalization" has been not a nefarious plot, but a consequence of the fact that, as we reached the end game of 2D surface development with diminished frontier, this end game has not slowed down the technological increase in effective range of command, control, communication and commerce. Our quaint geopolitical borders remain, but our technological range now complete overwhelms them, jumps over them, and in fact, dominates the planet.
Increasingly, there is no more dirt simple frontier. There is no more dirt simple geopolitical growth paradigm, for two reasons: 1] The surface development wave has newly swept the planet and 2] our technological range now exceeds the circumference of the planet we are; that is the true source of 'globalization.'
In this new reality, there are still plenty of frontiers, but unlike the days of dirt simple 2D geopolitical frontiers, the new frontiers are all exclusively intellectual in nature, and the cost of admission is increasingly more specialized education. There were always intellectual frontiers, but there used to be other fundamentally different types of frontiers in addition to intellectual frontiers, and this new 'decreased gradient of types of frontiers' is impacting global economies. Especially because of the accelerating rate as we neared the end of this 2D surface development paradigm, the end game is resulting in a kind of grinding of the gears, as humanity is largely failing to broadly paradigm shift. It is resulting in increased disparity between those taking advantage of gradient in the modern frontiers, and those dealing with stasis in the old frontiers.
Again, not the nefarious plot of the Bilderburgers, but a consequence of consumption of gradient.
One of two things will happen in the future; the tribe will broadly recognize that the nature of gradient is key to the health of our economies, or not, and if not, will try to (futile, in my opinion)target a brand, new paradigm in the universe based on stasis as the underlying foundation. (Homeostasis is not really stasis, as it is a balance between competing gradient; stasis is a dearth of gradient. Homeostasis requires gradient, is not a choice without gradient. Stasis is always a choice, but is devoid of gradient, and the universe is missing any examples of processes or life without gradient.)
How does the tribe restore diversity of opportunities(gradient of gradient)if we are at the historical end game of 2D surface based development?
In fits and starts, and success is not guaranteed. In fact, effort at risk is unavoidable in the universe. All that is certain is, without that effort, we slip back to stasis, and stasis s certain death.
JFK tried. He had a clear vision. Mankind, pausing once again at the edge of a broad gulf, looked up at the stars. And for a very brief moment in mankind's history, over 50 years ago, at the very cusp of putting the last star on the flag, JFK looked at the Moon and declared, "We are going to the Moon." And in short order, we did.
Going to the Moon was not about putting 12 sets of footprints on a distant dusty plain. It was about the restoration of gradient(and, what a gradient.) Literally, a gravity gradient. But as well, a gradient of opportunities. For 12 men? Sure. But the gradient of that intense human effort reached all the way back to Bethpage, to Huntsville, to Cape Canaveral, to Houston, to Los Angeles. The gradient of opportunities spread across many industries, and the economic results are still driving economies today, 50 years after the intense effort. The intense push in microelectronics, for one, gave us microprocessors, which rapidly exploded, creating the entire PC and smart device explosion that drive economies even today. The advances in aeronautics and avionics, navigation, satellite services and communication, environmental monitoring, all have that intense focused human effort in the 60s as their foundation. It was mankind's attempt to reinvigorate gradient that created this massive economic explosion of humans struggling to go uphill, to make a focused effort, to go somewhere, to do something hard -- in JFK's exact words, "We choose these goals because they are hard."
What are the less obvious benefits of that reinvigorated gradient? That same technological range that used to drive 2D surface growth paradigm had a quality about it. Even if sparsely and in fits and leaps, as technological range grew, so did the frontier, proportionately, as our domain grew by that range-squared(area.)
In a new 3D growth paradigm, even if sparsely and in fits and leaps, as technological range grows, the frontier will grow as that range -squared, and domain by range-cubed!
As well, and we have a hint with the Internet about this fact, as mankind fills that domain with technological range fueled command, control, communication and commerce, it is not actually necessary for mankind to physically travel throughout that domain in order to benefit from that domain. The reason for that is, the ability to share intellectual content transported at the speed of light. The Internet totally dominates and overwhelms the thin, 2D surface of the earth, and the concept of point-point free flow of intellectual content will just as easily fill an ever expanding volume/domain.
This is true of purely intellectual content today, but we are at the Kitty Hawk stages of transporting even physical objects across distances, certainly in the following sense; imagine if it was possible to manipulate local matter at the atomic level. (We are definitely at the Kitty Hawk stages of that technology.) If we then transmit just the intellectual content necessary to describe any object between point A and B, we can in effect recreate an object at A at point B. Said another way, the UPS of the future may no longer be hauling actual mass across the nation(or galaxy), but instead, be long hauling the intellectual content necessary to reproduce that arrangement of matter from an encryption/encoding capability at Point A to a decryption/decoding capability at point B.
Imagine a development wave of actual human beings expanding into this new 3D growth development wave. When they leave earth, the current level of technology is at 'level 1.' When that wave reaches a certain point in the future, the new current level of technology is at 'level 2' and is defined by the cumulative experience in the volume of that expanding development wave, and can be shared throughout that volume. This means that even the leading edge of the development wave redefines itself as it expands. As this '3D Internet' fills the galaxy with mankind, it is not restricted to the space/time state of technology that existed when it left the earth. As well, the expanding domain/volume increases the sum of mankind's resources, especially human intellectual resources.
Most importantly -- as evidenced by JFK's experiment with the Moon effort -- the immediate benefits to mankind, even here on earth, are enormous, simply by making the effort.
Where does that new 3D development wave end?
It doesn't. Not until the end of the universe.
Some species, somewhere, will achieve this dynamic. In order to do so, it will need to survive the end game of its 2D surface growth paradigm. It will need to survive it's technological adolescence. It will need to solve this ultimate problem of gradient in the universe.
And when it does, the reward will be that the universe will be theirs. Not just the universe of space, but of time as well.
It may not be we naked sweaty apes. But...we are so damn close to realizing this. It wasn't a technological limitation which is keeping us from taking our children out this very night in 2012 to inspire them, to watch them look up and view the lights of the new colonies on the Moon. It was purely a political tribal choice. Instead, some said, "No, we must address the problems that we have right down here on earth."
Well, how has that worked out? Where is that going?
After 50+ years of Great Society, ask a graduating college student today "What is it that this nation does today that inspires you?" (ie, motivates them to make the effort to run uphill?) Their blank response will shock and shame anyone who was alive during JFK's 60s in America.
Let's be clear. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo was a $2B/yr program for ten years back in the 60s. What is it that the US federal government does today that is giving our economies anything near that bang for the buck, considering that most of what is actually happening in today's economies is directly attributable to the effort that resulted from those programs back then?
Gradient still drives everything. Including our economies. If we don't intelligently plan for gradient, gradient will find us; wars, natural disasters, plague, famine. All negative gradients that drive economies.
We've got to be smarter then that, if we want to inherit the universe; that is some intelligent filter, gravity.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
PRICE = COST + PROFIT (1)
As if that wasn’t just an assertion, but the actual economic ‘law’ that determined PRICE—ie, that set PRICE. It is true, in that one definition of PROFIT can be expressed as
PROFIT=PRICE-COST (2)
and one can be easily derived from the other, but the cause/effect implication is far different in those two equations, (1) and (2). (1) carries with it the implication that PRICE is determined by COST+PROFIT, while (2) carries with it the implication that PROFIT is determines by PRICE-COST, and only one in fact can be true, in a cause and effect sense. The assertion that PRICE is set by COST+PROFIT is a political assertion, and one that doesn’t bear much scrutiny in the real world.
The required disciplines of the hard science – significance, uncertainty analysis, calibration – are uniformly missing. Not so much dismissed or ill regarded as never recognized as a significant part of the scientific process to begin with. The entire endeavor is perceived, therefore, as an example of what Feynman referred to as ‘Cargo Cult Science’ in his 1974 Cal Tech commencement speech. It is perceived as the veneer of mathematics and science, without the discipline or essence or either.
This impression is not improved by increasing the number of decimal places carried forward in the analysis; in fact, the impression is reinforced. It is perceived as a process similar to someone stumbling into a math or science lecture, seeing the form of presentation, the charts, the tables, the graphs—the white labcoats even, and then running off to an unrelated subject and borrowing just some of what was briefly glimpsed, mimicking the form but not the essence, and attempting to borrow the veneer of actual science to make what is in essence a political argument. Pretty much what a Paul Krugman does 24/7/365. This tactic works well in impressing the majority of folks who have never actually labored in the math and science lecture halls, but not nearly as well with the minority who have. And so, it persists as a political tactic, because as politics, it is an entirely effective tactic.
Another reason that Marx’s naked assertions tend not to sit well with other than technical illiterates is the shallow and incomplete reasoning at the very foundation of his assertions: “Capitalism is inherently exploitive because it pays workers less than their added value.”
This is a naked assertion purposefully blind to the following facts:
1] Risk is unavoidable in the universe. Do we fish the deep or the shallows today? The answer is not always the same. We intelligently assess risk, but we never eliminate it. It is always with us.
2] Wage workers are paid a guaranteed rate of return for their efforts, win or lose. That guarantee is the reason they are paid wages at a discount. The value of that guarantee must be included in the assessment of their compensation. Who guarantees that rate of return? Ultimately, others who participate in the economies with ROI totally at risk, with no guarantees. They expose themselves to unlimited downside in return for the chance of unlimited upside. Marx’s foundational assertions are totally ignorant of the value of such guarantees. Marx and his acolytes want their cake(guaranteed wages)and eat it, too(at the same levels of compensation as those who risk all returns.)
3] In the American model, workers have the choice to participate in the risk/reward model in a self-modulated way; they can choose to hold no stock in companies, a little stock in companies, or a lot of stock in companies, and all of that is at risk, as is, their total exposure.
Marx’s gibberish is totally blind to any of that.
One of the first things a scientist or mathematician would do in any argument is define terms, and so, “Politics: the art and science of getting what we want from other people, using any means short of actual violence.” It is crucial to understand what we are about when we are toiling in the field of politics.
It is also insightful to realize that, in many political arguments, the last thing in the world that those making the arguments want for you or I to understand is the meaning of the word ‘politics,’ which is why, guaranteed, when you ask your basic 4th year PolitSci major to define the word ‘politics’ that they will stare at you like you have C4 strapped to your chest.
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Gradient drives everything in the universe-- especialy economies.
If our economies are dragging -- if opportunities are lagging -- the underlying culprit is gradient, guaranteed.
America put the last star on the flag over 50 years ago. Think about that. This ain't the 'New' World.
There are plenty of frontiers today, but they are increasingly only found in narrow intellectual fields with increasingly specialized education as the cost of entry. There were always intellectual frontiers(where gradient is greatest) but 50 years ago, the world was closer to a time when there were other than intellectual frontiers as well. There was a range of opportunities not all piled up into the intellectual arena. This new fact of existence happened very rapidly, and the world is not adapting to it quickly enough.
That isn't a nefarious plot, it is a simple statement of reality.
There are ways to re-invigorate gradient and restore broad opportunities, but we are not yet(or ever)thinking in these terms. That leaves happenstance gradient drivers (like weather, natural disasters, war, and plague) to drive economies.
The technological eddies of opportunity still vibrant are mostly remnants of the last innovative agenda of reinvigorated gradient(JFK's Moon Mission), but that was 50 years ago, and we backed off the throttle. But, the push for microelectronics spawned the micro electronic revolution, and we are still living off of that gradient...but frittering away energy in cul de sacs like 'social networks' and Twitter and Living Social electronic coupons... in making bitmaps dance to sell boner medicine to aging Boomers. What are we doing today that actually inspires anybody? Ask that question in 2012...and ask it in 1962.