Pro Commerce

Buddhism is born dead

I admit to being associated with a Zen group in San Francisco.  I think the Zen ideas of being present, meditating, practice, right livelihood , non-attachment and the importance of nothingness are powerful contributions to American thought and life.

On the other hand I doubt that the current wave of Buddhism has a significant future in America.  Buddhism came to our shores in the 1890's and was popular among Boston Brahmins.  That elitist entre made sure it would fail and it did.

The current entre of Zen Buddhism, which began in 1960, has found its adherents among the wimps, wusses, peaceniks and Lefty Fundamentalists. Having fallen into this tragic brain-dead cohort Zen Buddhism will die quickly.  To survive in America Buddhism needs to go in a different direction.

For a new and vital direction I suggest creating the following groups in our Zen temples: Zen Samurai endurance training, Zen Motorcycle Lovers monthly rides, Zen Fighter Pilots support group and Ultra-depth Zen Scuba Daredevils.

Let's get real alive people into Zen and let the cookie and chamomile wimps find some other home.

My friends expect

My friends expect me to report on yesterday's San Francisco torch protest event.

I only know two things that aren't reported in the press:  One, for the first time in modern history the entire Chinese community (which was anti-Mao for decades) is up in arms and furious.  They are identifying with the torch and China and feel that the Lefty demonstrators who tried to ruin the torch parade are their enemies.  The Chinese in San Francisco are now prospering on their contacts and investments in China. This is a major and long term realignment in San Francisco politics.

Second, the Mayor who created a national press fiesta about gay marriage in San Francisco and eliminated his chances for higher office, just redeemed himself with much of the State of California by switching the route of the torch and outfoxing the PC demonstrators.

Will

I wrote a blog a month ago about mental health and sports for young people. I focused on sports and other disciplines to help individuals understand that their mind, their emotions and their 'selves' are not the same. 

More thought and discussion has led me to replace the term 'self' with another category: intent.  Intent is very close to will.  I discard will because it has such a heavy Germanic overtone from Nietzsche and a few other Huns.

When you are in a competitive race or having to perform before an audience your emotion can be terror, your mind can be telling you to find an excuse to escape.  It is your 'intent' that gets you to act and carry through.

Intent is the by-product of discipline and grows over time from repetition, experience and persistence. Intent is what makes us alive and interesting people.

The great Winston

I got this off-color story from a Congressman who got it from a member of Parliament.  The Congressman, a friend, and I were peeing next to each other in a john in D.C.

Aneurin Bevan was in the Labor government that replaced Winston Churchill as prime minister just after the war.  Bevan joined his colleagues around the world in socializing their countries.  Bevan's role in the Labor government was to nationalized steel, coal, transportation, utilities and most importantly health care.

Bevan was in the Parliament bathroom at one end of the long urinal; he was closest to the door.  Churchill came in and went around Bevan to pee at the other far end of the urinal.  Bevan calls out: 'Winnie, we've been friends for a long time, what is this all about?'  Churchill responded 'Nye, you've been nationalizing everything you see that is large.....that's why I'm at this end.'

This story is obviously third-hand and can not be checked in Wikipedia.

CIA story

I have a number of CIA stories. This one comes from Santa Fe, New Mexico in the mid-1980s.  I met a retired CIA employee who had been asked by the Company to open an art gallery for the purpose of laundering money.  Laundering is about taking illegal cash and turning it into taxable legitimate income.  The scheme was going to be to buy paintings for $100 and sell them for $15,000.  Or at least pretend to sell them for cash at $15,000. 

So John, the retired agent, opened his gallery, got a painter in Texas to sell him 200 oil paintings for $100 a piece.  John hung them in his gallery and went about his life.  The story should end there. Good old Company retired employee.

But this was Santa Fe with hordes of wealthy Texas tourists aimlessly wandering the streets, shopping.  John had $15,000 as the prices on his paintings and low and behold the paintings started selling fast.  That was the end of the hoped for laundering business.  John had a colossal business success.  He bought thousands more paintings from the same artist for the original $100 a piece and made a personal fortune.

When I visited the gallery, John had put some real Remingtons and other famous western artists' work scattered around the gallery.  He also had some alligators in a pond in his garden behind the gallery.  John showed me a room filled with video screen monitors.  True to his Company training, John had the garden and gallery totally 'wired' and he could listen to conversations to know what prices patron's were thinking of paying for his products.

True story. Laundering plot foiled by rich Texans' taste for sentimental art.

Business as usual

The San Francisco Examiner regularly publishes my Letters to the Editor and most often it is the first one displayed.  You already know I like the Examiner and hold it up as a model for future newspapers.

This letter concerns an early article in which the business-ignorant politicians of San Francisco were talking about creating more business in the poor and dangerous neighborhoods.

"Luring businesses to S.F. doomed

 

This City makes it very difficult to create businesses in residential neighborhoods, or anywhere else for that matter (“Neighborhoods losing denizens’ cash,” The Examiner, April 4).

Rarely can a single neighborhood store survive alone; it needs nearby dry cleaners, laundries, small groceries, UPS, Kinko’s, a phone store, a bank branch, a Realtor, several coffee shops (Peet’s, Starbucks) and two or three boutiques. Since most of the successful neighborhood stores that can survive within a small physical space are Bay Area chains or national chains, the idea of attracting neighborhood stores is doomed from the outset.

Hostility to chain stores means neighborhood stores have no chance to start and survive. Leon Trotsky might be happy in San Francisco, but local neighborhood stores know that the anti-chain store mentality means they are punished here."

Teen sex

I looked at the CDC study of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers.  The press release was more alarming than necessary.

In a national sample of 14 to 19 year old white girls, half the girls in the sample had had vaginal intercourse and less than half (40%) of those had an STD. Thus for white girls overall there was a 20% rate of STDs. The press release reported an overall 26% rate, but that was because the black girls in the sample had a rate of 48%. We can assume that the black girls had a vaginal intercourse rate near 100% in this age group.

Even with less than half the girls who have vaginal sex getting an STD, the 40% rate is more alarming than necessary because nearly all of it was human papillomavirus (HPV) infection.  HPV can cause cervical cancer in a tiny percent of the adult population, but in most cases it disappears by itself. Moreover, there is an effective HPV vaccine that is now being administered to nearly all girls 11-13 in the U.S.

The CDC sample showed a minor rate of other genital infections for sexually active girls.  Among the whites 6% had chlamydia and 4% had trichomoniasis. Both of these can be treated in a doctors' office.

These minor problems, that the CDC screamed so loudly about, could have been easily avoided with condoms. I hope my granddaughters are reading this.

Ocean Beach gift

I have never seen porpoises in San Francisco.  I have never seen porpoises in the wild at anytime before in my life.

Today at the Cliff House with twin granddaughters and associated family watching, we all saw a pod of porpoises.  There were more than a dozen based on the fins. They were about 75 yards away just beyond the largest rocks on the left in the photo below. We were all standing just to the right of the camera obscura with the peak top in the photo.

We then saw two small pods with three porpoises in each turn toward the beach and surf over the curl of a wave in towards the shore.  After this spectacular display of surfing by real experts, the whole pod continued on its journey South.

I didn't take either of the photos on this page.  The porpoise surfing happened too fast for a pocket digital camera to get turned on, much less catch the action.

Wonderful, exciting...we all appreciated the gift.

Google

Google is notorious for paying high salaries.  I pay attention to the people coming to look at apartments in San Francisco who are ordinary Google employees; they have salaries in the $170,000+ range per year.

There is a strange anti-ostentatious quality to the Google employees as you can see if you look at their parking lots.  The predominant car is a four year old Toyota or Lexus. Most employees can afford a new BMW, Mercedes and many may have Porches and Lamborghini's in their garages at home.

The same phenomenon is visible in their selection of homes in San Francisco.  Their favorite neighborhood is Noe Valley with mostly old Victorians (now being renovated inside at the cost of several million dollars). They eschew the snob areas of Pacific Heights, Seacliff and Russian Hill.  I know the Google choice of neighborhood by the number of people waiting for the Google buses at various S.F. pick-up locations.

Facebook geography

Facebook has an office in downtown Palo Alto.  They are doing something that has powerful environmental consequences in terms of automobile usage and suburban sprawl.

Facebook offers a $600 per month bonus to employees who choose to live within a one mile radius of their Facebook office.

Just thought you should know about a very good, personal resource conservation idea. A better idea than I have heard anywhere else lately.

No Jerusalem

Just about every month some mullah somewhere gets attention by saying that Jews have no historic connection to Jerusalem.

I frankly love hearing this.  It is intended as an insult to 13 million Jews and an attempt to de-legitimatize Israel.

The trouble for the Arab world, that never seems to contradict this standard mullah claim, is that it is an insult to 400 million Christians who believe their Savior was a Jew in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.  In the Christian story Jesus went to Jerusalem often, including to die.  One noteworthy time he drove the money changers (international coin exchange) out of the Temple.

Chinese democracy

I looked in the index immediately to see if James Mann was going to make a strong argument in his book The China Fantasy.

Mann argues that China will not be democratic in the foreseeable future. The problem Mann sees with this reality is that American governments won't come clean and the deception will some day come home to roost. Moreover China supports every anti-American tyrant it can find to enlarge the number of non-democratic countries in the world.

I agree with Mann, I don't see any evidence that the Chinese government is going to crumble or change. I have two very different reasons:

One, China has always had the most advance governmental administrative system in the world.  In the two exceptional periods when the administration broke down it was taken over by the Mongols and the Industrial Europeans and industrialized Japanese.

More than a thousand years ago China invented the Mandarin meritocratic test for government employees, a civil service structure. Half millennium later it first appeared in the Dutch tax system and in the past century in the U.S.

Five hundred years ago China invented the encyclopedia which was used to administer the country. It included the entire national detailed geography and a description of all technical and mechanical operations. (I studied the encyclopedia in the Library of Congress but can't find it mentioned anywhere online.)

China with computer record keeping, electronic communication and surveillance should be able to administer the country effectively, indefinitely.

Second, Singapore has had a mixed free market/one party system in place for 45 years compared to China's 20 years.  There is no evidence the Singapore system is fragile or vulnerable. 

"Singapore" was the word I looked up in the Mann book and its absence told me he didn't ever use the strongest and most obvious argument that China's government is not vulnerable.

Trust the Clintons

From what I hear, all the Democratic Party superdelegates are debating one issue: can the Clintons be trusted to avoid ruining the party with attacks on Obama over the next five months.  If not, one by one they will announce for Obama.

I haven't seen this in the national press yet:(source ) "

The Bill Clinton who met privately with California's superdelegates at last weekend's state convention was a far cry from the congenial former president who afterward publicly urged fellow Democrats to "chill out" over the race between his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama.

In fact, before his speech Clinton had one of his famous meltdowns Sunday, blasting away at former presidential contender Bill Richardson for having endorsed Obama, the media and the entire nomination process.

"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said.

According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.

But as the group....

Where did Rodham go?

Just in case you missed it Hillary Rodham Clinton who was married to President Bill Clinton and was a Senator from New York is now running for president as Hillary Clinton.

The Rodham probably got lost in a few focus groups with follow-up low cost surveys that found the use of Rodham was pretentious.  Hillary Clinton already had a serious problem of 'pretentiousness' and didn't need more.... so the Rodham got left behind.

Random inspections

In a story I read about the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., run by Steve Mendell some of the workers said that the downer cows that became a national meat scandal were all put into the food chain when no inspectors were around.  The workers knew exactly when the government meat inspectors were coming.

That is an obvious absurdity.  Surprise inspections of any kind can not be based on a schedule known to the inspectees. What is required is random dates and random times.

Without belaboring the obvious absurdity of not using randomization, let me help out by explaining a simple, everyday way to generate random numbers. (Actually these are not true random numbers as any statistician or mathematician will point out to me.)

First get the date of the inspection (1-31) by finding the square root of the last two digits of the year (08) and the month (04) then get the square root of that number.  In the case of this month 0804 the cube root is: 5.32 49 31 33 82 91 19 43 80 26 32 41 14 43. Write it the way I have, in segments of two. Using the numbers after the decimal I get the days: 14,19,26 and 31. Inspect on those days. You can get as many days as you wish by using more numbers after the decimal which is an infinite string of numbers.  To get the times of the day for random inspection use the month and the day (04)(14) and you get 4.51 07 63 78 78 05 32 07 16 24 80 40 53 65 39. If you work from 9:00AM to 17:00 you get one inspection time of 16:00.  You can get more time slots with more digits.

Of course the easy and most reliable way to generate random inspection times and dates is to use an Internet random number generator.

There are random number tables online that you can use easily. These online generators are very convenient. Use the same methodology I just used for the number (0408) to generate the random numbers. You can specify the range of outputs, in this case between 1-31.

Home Depot poops on San Francisco

Yesterday Home Depot announced that it is giving up on having a store in San Francisco. This is after 10 years of effort and $4 million in bribes. I went to support and speak out for Home Depot at three public meetings.

I hear Home Depot's reasons, declining sales and endless tribulation.

I see several other good reasons.  One, Lowes has opened a full size store in South San Francisco, right next to the freeway that is just as good a spot as the proposed San Francisco Bayshore Home Depot location for East side San Francisco shoppers.

Two, the new Home Depot store in Westlake is probably successfully serving all of West San Francisco.

Three, San Francisco politicos required a reduced store size.  The political kooks who make these decisions have no idea that a reduced store size means costly management to accommodate differences in display, inventory and storage. More costly management in a City that is hostile is probably not worth it.

All in all, I live in a city that is hostile to business, ignorant of the commercial world and a national disgrace.  A perfect town for Michelle Obama to live in and be proud of.

Deflation for 15 years

We have had deflation for about 15 years.  The magnitude of this decline in the cost of living has been covered up by several elements in our Cost of Living indicators.

What has declined significantly? Everything we buy at Costco, Walmart and Home Depot. These three stores have set a pattern in place for better inventory management and significantly lower costs.  That is why these stores are so successful. They have also set the pricing standard for many other retailers.

I don't know how much of the market basket of objects that the Department of Commerce uses to measure CPI comes from these three stores but it is a significant factor in the lives of Americans. I also have no idea how much of the items that CPI measures are measured in these stores, but if the number of items is appropriate, our CPI in most areas has gone down. Really down.

The items that have gone up significantly in the past 15 years are higher education, housing (particularly construction costs) and healthcare. The reason is simple. These are domestic items, in fields with zero productive improvement.

Right now, we have inflation in many items for one reason: we are shipping our dollars to the oil producers in the middle east and Russia.  We cheat these suppliers by giving them less and less valuable dollars. We are also lifting several billion people in Asia out of poverty by buying the exports of their nations.  The consequence is that we are, to some extent, competing with the poor of the world for resources and the resource extracting industries are slow to meet market demands