31 Dec 1999

Read Cold Mountain.  A reviewer on the dust jacket points out that it is similar to the Odyssey, because it is about a warrior returning home and encountering all sorts of obstacles on the way.  But The Odyssey had a happy ending.

There are two fundamental principals about gravity I should be able to prove: (1) there is no gravitational pull inside a hollow sphere; and (2) The gravitational pull of a sphere is the same as a point mass (with the same mass)  located at the sphere's center.   (1) is easy to prove by picking any arbitrary point inside, and creating two opposing cones at the point, and considering the gravity from the hollow sphere within both cones:  Gravity increases as 1/d**2, but the surface area increases by d**2.  So the two cones counteract each other.

Proposition (2) is tougher:  I haven't found a trivial proof.  Maybe it is not true?

23 Dec 1999

Read A Map of the World (1994, Jane Hamilton).   A very compelling, tragic novel about a farm wife that suffers a nervous breakdown, after a friend's child drowns in the farm's pool.  The novel focuses on relationships: the marriage, the mother-in-law, the children, the friend.  A bit too melodramatic, but maybe that is what kept me riveted.  The prison stay and the trial scenes were spell-binding.     The book mentions Oprah's TV show, and guess what, the book was selected by Oprah's book club.

Ordinary life was laced with miracles, ... and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated. 

25 Nov 1999

Read Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999, Jared Diamond).   An excellent book, though I disagree with some of his conclusions.  He discusses some really important topics that are rarely discussed (ranging from failure of various cultures, to the importance of grains in the success of a civilization), and he sincerely tries to answer the age old (but politically incorrect) question:  Why are some cultures successful, and other less successful? 

His answer, in a nutshell, is geography.  He says that all races and cultures are born equal, with similar potentials, but that the success (measured in terms of tools, achievements, leisure time, possessions, toys, health) is a function of how well situated the local is.  Successful cultures are located (1) where cross-roads are; (2) hospitable climate;  (3) where natural resources (iron, copper) are abundant; and (4) where beasts of burden are available (horses, cows, oxen, etc); (5) availability of abundant, hardy crops; and (6) no ravaging diseases.

On the whole, his book is well reasoned and persuasive.  My objection is that he never addresses the many obvious counter-examples to his thesis.    For instance:  Japan is super successful, but is cold, out-of-the-way and has very little in the way of natural resources.  Ditto New Zealand, Iceland or Norway or Israel or New Zealand.     The natives in North and South Americas (Incas, Mayas, Aztecs, etc) had plenty of resources in a huge continent, but were not successful.   He also doesn't address the very touchy subject of cultures within successful locales that are underachievers, due to cultural (taught, handed-down) attitudes about work or materialism.   Conversely, he is blind to the dozens of examples of two cultures living side-by-side (in the same geography) yet vastly different successes.    What about the protestant work ethic?  Does that count for nothing?   

23 June 1999

Speaking of Jung:   

If it were possible to personify the unconscious, we might think of it as a collective human being combining the characteristics of both sexes, transcending youth and old age, birth and death, and - from having at its command a human experience of one or two million years - practically immortal. If such a being existed, it would be exalted above all temporal change; the present would mean neither more nor less to it than any year in the hundredth millennium before Christ; it would be a dreamer of age-old dreams and, owing to its immeasurable experience, an incomparable prognosticator. It would have lived countless times over again the life of the individual, the family, the tribe, and the nation, and it would possess a living sense of the rhythm of growth, flowering, and decay.

10 June 1999

Reading parts of The Greek Myths (Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius).  Utterly entrancing:  makes me think about my ancient roots, and what my ancestors had to deal with and imagine.   Graves ridicules the Jungian hypothesis that myths reveal the workings of our inner psyche.  Instead, Graves posits that myths are political propaganda:  stories invented and disseminated by ruling powers, to solidify or rationalize their victories, policies, and rule.  The stories, says Graves, were ritually performed by the current ruling religious caste.  The figures in the myths represent various races, classes, or factions, and the storyline often tells of some significant power shift.  The stories may reflect the true history, or they may be fabrications by the ruling class designed to cement their power  ("the victors write the history books").   

6 June 1999

Read October Sky (1998, Homer Hickam Jr), originally published as Rocket Boys.   A rather inspiring tale of high school kids in a post-sputnik small coal town in West Virginia.  Reminds me of Tom Sawyer, but with more appeal to nerds.  The protagonist builds small rockets, which eventually win him a National Science Fair award.   On the way, he gets laid, and gains an understanding of his workaholic father.  Now a major motion picture.   

13 Apr 1999

Read The Deep Hot Biosphere (1998, Thomas Gold).  A radical new set of ideas about geology and petroleum.  The author is an iconoclast, and his ideas (or rather, the ideas of Russians that he is recapitulating) are wild.    His two main theses are (1) oil, gas, and coal come from hydrocarbons inside the earth - there from teh time the earth condensed - and rising up to their current levels.   

This is contrary to the mainstream notion that fossil fuels come from decomposed vegetation.  (2) About 100 to 200 km below the earths surface, lives a huge collection of microbes (archaea - a kind of bacteria) whose collective mass equals that of the surface biosphere. These microbes get energy by oxidizing hydrocarbons (oxygen from SO2 and FeO2).   These microbes escaped upward into the ocean via rifts, and evolved into the cellular life forms we now have.

Is he crazy?  Another Von Danniken?   Or is he just before his time?

27 Feb 1999

Funny ad for Radio show "This American Life":   

Yes, we know we should live each day like it's our last;  yes, we should appreciate life; yes, we should stop and smell the roses ... but sometimes we're just not up to it.   This week:  When numbness prevails.   

Getting ready to buy an engagement ring.   What a rip-off.   The diamond industry has a cartel.   

I'm sure you've seen the ads on TV for diamonds: Engagement Rings ("Is two months salary too much for the love of your life?"), tennis bracelets ("Show her you'd marry her all over again") and anniversary rings ("Show her how special she is" … the ring must have three diamonds in it!). Other slogans, that are embedded in every American's psyche: "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" and "Diamonds are forever".

Diamonds were not especially common before 1950. Sure, people had wedding rings and engagement rings, but those rings rarely had diamonds. Before 1950, it was perfectly acceptable for a ring to be plain gold, or to have some semi-precious rock like a pearl, opal, emerald or amethyst.

But the diamond industry wanted to make some money, so they started what must be the most successful ad campaign in history: Convincing the world that diamonds were required on engagement rings. And it worked.

Relentless TV and print ads have bombarded the American public, brainwashing us to believe that diamonds are needed to prove a man's love. On the web, visit www.adiamondisforever.com or www.forevermark.com.

The diamond industry targeted Japan in 1965. In 1965, at the start of the marketing campaign, only 2% of engagement rings in Japan were diamonds. By 1990, 80% of engagement rings in Japan were diamonds.

Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? Try it.

You won't be able to sell it, or if you can, they industry will buy it back for perhaps 10% of what you paid. No other fact better illustrates the unfair nature of the diamond cartel.

Who is behind the brainwashing? The diamond companies. Which companies? There are only two: DeBeers and Anglo-American. DeBeers has a monopoly on all the diamonds in Africa (about half the world's production) and Anglo-American has a monopoly on the rest of the world.

The entire diamond industry - at the mining and wholesaling level - is controlled by one family: the Oppenheimers. The Oppenheimber family owns more than half of both DeBeers and Anglo-American.

To make it even more incestuous, DeBeers and Anglo-American own about 1/3 of each other!!

DeBeers is, surprisingly, publicly traded on the South African stock exchange. The Oppenheimer family regrets this move (they went public a few decades ago). So they are going to buy-out the non-family shareholders, and return to a more closely-held corporation. They are doing this by having Anlgo-American buy DeBeers (June 2001). See http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2001-04-30-debeers.htm.

Another company, the Diamond Trading Company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of DeBeers, and has a world-wide monopoly on the diamond wholesale trade.

Monopolies are inherently evil: That is why they are outlawed in America. Granted, diamonds are luxury items, and I'm not claiming that blue-collar workers are being hurt as they would be by a monopoly on, say, gasoline or blue jeans. But it does bother me that their ad campaign is so successful. I hate seeing people taken advantage of.

DeBeers controls the supply of diamonds very carefully, in order to keep the prices up.

DeBeers is a bit secretive, too. Visit www.debeers.com and see what it gets you. At least Anglo-American has a real site: http://www.angloamerican.co.uk.

You can't blame DeBeers or the Oppenheimers: they are just doing what good capitalists do. They aren't the first - or last - to use Madison Avenue to sell their products. Who you can blame are the women who demand diamonds. Sure, rings are a wonderful gesture: a very visible demonstration of love and commitment. I wear my wedding band proudly, everywhere, all the time. But my ring is plain gold.

Women should have the courage to tell their fiances: "Hey, I don't need a diamond, just get me a wedding band." Or "Look, we can spend the money on something more important, lets just get a $400 semi-precious ring". Until women do that, DeBeers will get richer and richer.

Another thing people can do is start buying artificial diamonds. I heard that the technology exists today to manufacture diamonds from plain carbon. Apparently, the quality is indistinguishable from natural diamonds, and the price is - finally - cheaper. DeBeers is combatting this threat by buying the companies that make artificial diamonds, and by marketing DeBeer's diamonds as "real" diamonds, and even putting microscopic identifying marks on their diamonds to identify them as "natural".

Join em. Anglo-American (which just bought DeBeers in June 2001) is publicly traded ($1,200 per share!!) on the British stock exchange, symbol AAL. Buy some shares and watch the dough roll in!!

If you want more details, there is a very detailed, objective history of the diamond marketing campaign at http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm.

25 Jan 1999

When the soul desires marriage, it feels like a promise that the soul came into the world to keep. - Not sure where that is from.

1 Jan 1999

I'm limping rather badly this week:  the arthritis in my knee is rather bad.  But I fear not: I simply think of Darwin Rytting, a fellow engineer at General Dynamics.  A 50 year old gentleman with one leg amputated at the knee.  But you didnt notice it at all:  He was always cheerful, intelligent, outgoing, dignified, well-groomed, and polite.     Acting grumpy because of an illness just compounds the problem (reminiscent of Strunks advice to not compound uncertainty with soft-spokenness).   Darwin was - and is - a great inspiration to me.

Ry Cooder - is the guitarist who played the slide guitar in Paris, Texas.