Pro Commerce

Two/three parties

I think it is possible to make out some long term trends in American Party politics.  I know I am on shaky ground on this.

The Republican Party was dominant from 1861 to 1933. The Democratic Party was dominant from 1934 to 1980, the Ghost Party has been dominant ever since.  To say this requires accepting many oscillations and digressions between the two non-ghost parties.

What I wish to argue is that there is now a genuine third party of significant size and great volatility.  It is really the Independent Party but it refuses to become an official party.  The members of this party are registered, in most states, as Democrats or Republicans but they vote their own Ghost Party platform and candidates.

In general the Ghost Party tends to be conservative. The Ghost Party has become more powerful over the past twenty years and has developed its platform due to two key men: Rush Limbaugh who created a vast political radio audience and Rupert Murdoch who created the Fox Network on TV and Cable. 

These two men emerged after the American defeat of the USSR and are helping America shape a post-Cold War identity. The identity is part of the Ghost Party platform of: pro commerce, secondary role for government, free trade support, acceptance of a diverse palette of religions and support for America's role as a reluctant global peace keeper.

I think the conservative leaning Ghost Party of independents is here for a long time.

FLIC

We all know what the FDIC is (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation).  I am proposing the FLIC as a solution to avoid future financial catastrophes spreading to the commercial world.  The FLIC will be the Federal Loan Insurance Corporation which will guarantee that business loans will not be withdrawn because a bank is in trouble.
 
What happened from mid 2008 until now was that banks in trouble for bad investment decisions forced businesses to immediately repay loans.  In most cases the loans were solid, secured by solid assets.  Quick repayment of loans required businesses to fire employees and reduce the size of the business.  The financial catastrophe was transmitted directly to the commercial world because banks were forcing businesses to immediately repay loans.

I've discussed this before in earlier blogs (July) (December). 

We must separate the financial volatility, which can never be controlled because investors will always outsmart regulators, from effects in the real business world.

The FLIC will insulate jobs and business from banking and investment recklessness.

I feel sympathy and sorrow

Sympathy is what one human feels for another who is suffering.  Sorrow is a feeling that arises from loss. Loss of hope, loss of confidence, loss of pride.  Those are the attributes that President Obama has lost in fourteen months since his election.

Here is a man from a Hawaiian high school who got into an above average private college in California and very quickly was able to get a scholarship to a prestigious East Coast University. From there he went to an even more prestigious law school.  All this for a man who saw himself, by then, as good looking, loquacious and black.  Good fortune followed him at every turn, from non-profit jobs, to academic positions, a law firm role, two accidental elections to the State and then U.S. Senate and finally, with every form of luck (Democratic primaries based on caucuses and a presidential race at the time of the worst financial melt down in 80 years) the U.S. Presidency.

 From that election night on it has been downhill.  A series of horrible affronts.  At his first global leaders meeting the French President came out and publicly said that Barack Obama was naive, by the time of his first G8 meeting in Italy in July he found that the Chinese left the meeting early and the meeting was over.  Here he was president of the most powerful, richest nation in the world but the meeting was over when the Chinese left. He went to Copenhagen in September, as the first U.S president to do so, to use his personal influence to get the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.  The Olympic committee actually voted against him. In October he campaigned for the Democratic Governors in Virginia and New Jersey where both were expected to win.  The president put his personal prestige on the line in both cases and lost.  In Virginia the loss was very large. In November he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for being a black Democrat elected president on an anti George Bush campaign. In December he again went to Copenhagen to lead the anti-global warming campaign.  In a meeting with India and a low level Chinese delegate President Obama was forced to sign a global warming statement that was worthless and soon ridiculed by the European Union. 

The final slap in President Obama's face was the election of Senator Scott Brown in the most Democratic state in the Union on a Stop-Obama platform (photo of Brown above left).

I feel genuine sympathy and sorrow for President Barack Obama who has gone from hero to publicly humiliated failure in 14 months.  Unfortunately I don't think the man has the competence, wisdom or experience to redeem himself.

The first fallout from the SOTU

This is what the energy experts say about the President's State of the Union remarks.  Not so polite.

Enlightenment II

In early Fall I asked the question: "Why are enlightened people so reluctant to say they are enlightened?"

I finally found the answer, thanks to Hans D.  There are actually people on TV who claim to be enlightened and sell their personal guru program.

That is enough to convince me that announcing one's own enlightenment is wrong. 

What would be the case if one said that he/she were enlightened but enlightenment is not really a big deal... it is just the ability to be present?

In this case Michael W. answered the question. Many people think enlightenment is a destination, once you get there you can't fall back.  Of course that too is nonsense. 

Enlightenment is more like being awake or asleep.  You aren't awake all the time, even when you are dressed and walking around you aren't always "awake" in the sense of being present.

My question is answered. There is no way to say you are enlightened. Thank you all.

What might happen, is happening

A short while back I wrote a blog on the way the Left has developed a new political platform designed to make all Goody-goodies happy and force the rest of us to conform to Goody-goodie standards.

My good friend Alex G. has suggested that as this increasingly becomes the way Lefty local governments behave, there will be a counter trend that will segregate our society.

Brilliant Alex.  Now that you suggest it I realize it is already happening. 

In San Francisco we have driven out hundreds of businesses for many reasons so that a major part of San Francisco talent is now in the less Lefty surrounding suburbs. We are already segregating. 

Smokers, workers who don't want government health insurance, workers who don't want to be run by unions, small business owners and start-ups of all sorts that want to avoid S.F.'s onerous regulations and taxes and families who hate politicized racist schools have all moved to Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Mateo, Pleasanton, Walnut Creek, Orinda and Daly City. All these suburbs are becoming more Conservative and Independent and much less Democrat.

The process of social segregation of Goody-goodies away from freedom-loving citizens is already underway.

We could close the barn door after most of the horses have escaped. For example: in Los Angeles the mayor has just appointed Austin Beutner, a venture capitalist, to fix the city so the many businesses that have left the Iron fist of Lefty government will want to come back.  In LA, there are many small towns nestled in the sprawling tentacles of LA City so you can easily move one block and be out of LA Lefty reach.

Segregation is happening... it is not racial it is political and moral.

Ise Jinja

Since 1965 every Japanese prime minister has been visiting the Ise Jinja. Why?

There has been no Chinese or other outcry because no one is buried (to my knowledge) at Ise Jinja. 

Why is Ise Jinja so important?

First a digression.  There are only three ways to pass on information through history.

1. Create a ceremony that is repeated annually. Think of Passover, Easter, July 4th and Christmas.

2. Build a durable object.  Think of a pyramid, a statue and the Parthenon.

3. Create a combination of 1 and 2.  The only example is Ise Jinja.

Ise Jinja is near the Pacific Ocean about one third of the way from Kyoto to Tokyo. It is a large forest with a river, there are two elevated spaces, one has a temple on it.  The other identical adjacent space is empty.  Every 20 years a brand new temple is built on the empty space.  It take 8 years to build the new temple, so work begins on the 12th year.  Most of the wood is 200 years old so the whole process is continuous and long term using roughly 12,000 workers and administrators who are part of the Imperial household.

Ise Jinja is over 1,600 years old; it is surround by a forest and river filled with animals, birds and fish that are not afraid of humans.  The animals walk among the human visitors comfortably.

My guess is that Ise was a global center for awarding a global peace prize in an earlier global era(see yesterday's blog).  The current Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize is a farce and has nothing to do with the original function of Ise Jinja.

I'm glad Japanese prime minsters have made a ritual out of visiting Ise Jinja; it is a great and valuable practice to renew the importance of this site in the modern world.

Second global world

We are having a little trouble getting along in the world since Magellan (500 years ago) first showed everyone that we live on the same planet.

These days, I find evidence that we are living in the second global world.  The evidence that travelers and traders were functioning globally at an earlier time (before Magellan) are weak and scattered but they are suggestive.

Let me put just a few of them in a list that suggests pre-Magellan world interaction. I apologize for not giving links, that would take too much time and most links would be controversial.

* In many archeological digs, worldwide in the period 3-5,000 years BP (before the present) are found a packet of 21 herbal remedies and seeds to grow the herbs. One such herb is aloe a cure for nearly every skin problem.

* Pyramids were built in Egypt, North America and Mezzo America 3-4,000 years BP.

* Viking traders went to China 3,000 years BP. Their bones and clothes have been found.

* Israelites had a Kingdom with judges and legal protections for widows, infants and slaves, 3,000 years BP.  Israelites traded with China 2,000 BP, Hebrew nursery rhymes occur in Northern Japan.

* Persian Kings sent silk weavings to newly crowned Japanese emperors 1,500 years BP.

* Buddhist monks traveled across the Pacific from China and ended up in Guatemala, naming many towns on their way from their landing point in Long Beach, CA.

* Ropes with similar knots that were used as aids for mnemonic memory exist in Japan and Mezzo America to this day.

That is a sample of my evidence for an earlier global network, take it or leave it. I wanted it one place for future reference.

Market St., 24th St. and Union St.

In San Francisco, Union Street, 24th St. (Noe Valley) and the central part of Market Street are in serious trouble with stores closed, closing and worse to come. (The photo is "For Rent" on Union St.)

Rather than complain about how San Francisco and neighborhood merchants created this problem and failed to solve it I will discuss positive options.

What can a city do in such an instance?

First and foremost, invited in national retailers that automatically attract massive foot traffic.  Trader Joe's, Walmart, Target, The Cheesecake Factory, In/Out Burger, Body Shop (the original Body Shop was on Union St.), Gap, Baby Gap (founded in S.F) Patek-Philip, H&M and Lowes.  Invite several or all of these. Find out what these retailers need to enter your market in the select location and make the regulatory changes. 

Second add to the list appealing tourist retail destinations such as a Disney shop, a high end food court, with BofA, Wells and Citi ATMs. Ask each retailer and bank what they need to move to the chosen location and make the regulatory changes.

Not so hard, if you understand commerce.  When you have brought in foot traffic you will get all the supplemental small local and boutique businesses anyone could wish for.

Solar Array Issue?

This is a photo of a friend's very well designed and highly efficient solar electric array.  This array is designed to generate 5k of electricity at peak output which would happen in midday in mid-summer.  Being over-sized means it can deliver enough juice to power the house on an over-cast day in winter.

Is a solar array a good investment?  My friend, in order to take advantage of this free power has replaced his gas clothes dryer with an electric one and the same for his water heater. 

In our region, the utility (PG&E), will credit your solar generated electricity against your electric bill but not buy the excess generation.  Meaning the best you can do is zero-out your electric bill and reduce your gas bill by the amount of capital you put into converting gas equipment to electricity.

For many that means taking a hot shower and doing laundry only when the sun is out.

Is a solar array a good investment?  No.  Not based on my many professional calculations. 

If you can zero out your electric bill in my region, that is $1,000 to $1,500 a year in cost reductions.  Most solar arrays cost $18-$25,000 and last 7 to 12 years before replacement.  Regardless of the interest rate, or government tax subsidy, that doesn't pay.  Sorry. 

I'm especially sorry for you enviro-activists because you are supporting solar arrays at a time when natural gas prices are going to make natural gas nearly free.

Give them citizenship

Great idea from Max Boot.  I encourage you to read it.  Max, and I, want non-US citizens recruited into the Army and many other U.S. bureaucracies.

Green truck

There is a restaurant in my neighborhood that serves mostly breakfasts and is particularly dirty and greasy.

I took this photo on the right as a joke to show my friends. 

The green truck is a grease truck that picks up grease from restaurants in San Francisco and liquefies the grease with a small gas heater then sells the cleaned output for tallow, soap, cosmetics and even as bio-fuel.

I joke that at this particular restaurant stop, the green truck sells the grease to the restaurant rather than collecting it.

Maybe that is not so funny and a little unfair to people who eat regularly at the restaurant and who are sentimental about greasy breakfasts.

Per asks for common ground

My friend Per who is a lifelong Lefty and reads my blog regularly asks a wonderful question: is there some common ground between the Pro Commerce world view and Lefty Fundamentalism?

Sure. Most of my friends are Lefties and they are wonderful, intelligent and admirable people.  The simple way I would state the nature of our common ground is that there is a spectrum of understanding about commerce, its benefits and its mechanisms and the scale of understanding is greatest in the conservative pragmatic business world and least in the Lefty Fundamentalist world.   People like John Kerry, on the Left, understand that government redistribution of income in a society like ours is harmful to commerce. Most other Lefties don't.  People like Bill Clinton understand that global trade is beneficial for everyone as David Ricardo proved more than 200 years ago, many other people Left and Right don't understand this and unions have the least understanding of the benefits of global trade.

There is a whole category of contentious differences what are not easily determined by facts as those above.

Government is needed for: (1) stopping free riders, (2) protecting the disadvantaged and (3) penalizing negative externalities.*

When there are no historic facts we have every reason to argue these matters.  In the current healthcare debate Lefties belief that among the 44 million Americans without health insurance that forcing 20 million who can afford it (free riders) to pay will reduce the costs for everyone.  That is a reasonable argument without a test basis to look back on. 

However, Per, when I am hostile to Lefties it is because the facts are highly visible and the Left ignores them out of ideological blindness.  Conservatives do that ocassionaly but the long record of history indicates that there is not much ideological blindness among conservatives. 

The Left believes in CO2 Armageddon as all the evidence disappears.  The Left hung on to their love of communism regardless of Stalin's and Mao's million-man murders, many still love Fidel, Che and Hugo Chavez. The Left still favors more government (more welfare payments), fewer big global businesses, and is against free trade despite the incredible disproof of those ideas in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, China and all of East Europe in the past 60 years. 

How can I stop pointing out the failure of the Left to replace ideological blindness with an open eyed look at recent history?

*Footnote: Accepted government functions.  (1) Free riders. A fire department where some people don't pay for the fire protection yet they still get fire protection to protect the other houses that do pay for it. (2) Protecting the disadvantaged.  The oldest moral imperative we have.  Found on a Hebrew shard 3,000 years old.  (3) Negative externalities.  Using a dirty bucket to get water out of the common well or spilling toxic effluent into a common river.

Scott Brown hits this issue hard

"..And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation — they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them."

Humor is politically powerful.

Swallow the bomb

With all the expensive and extensive airplane screening technologies that are being installed why does everyone involved assume that a person willing to die in an airplane explosion won't swallow the bomb?

It would be easy to swallow the chemical ingredients to create a binary bomb in plastic bags along with the mechanism to activate their mixing.

The Israeli's know how to solve this problem.  Intelligent questioning of all suspicious people.

Unfortunately the Israeli approach won't work outside of Israel.  The Israeli approach requires very intelligent young non-union people willing to work 3-4 years in a boring job before moving on to something interesting.  No other country has enough such people in their labor pool.  Nothing will ever work, outside of Israel, if it requires many long-term intelligent employees.

So we are stuck with very thorough background checks on everyone who wants to fly, lifetime background checks that put people in categories from 1 to 4.  Some categories (2-4) are allowed to fly unhindered, others (1s) are only allowed after thorough examination (including x-rays).  A few more airplane bombings and we will be forced into this social stratification system.

John Brown and Scott Brown

John Brown led an insurrection in 1859 that taught all of America that a nation half slave and half free was not possible.

Scott Brown led a political insurrection in 2010 that taught all of America that one political party can not write important legislation entirely by itself.

The first time in a long time

The Senate currently has a 60 seat Democratic plurality. Enough votes to ignore the Republicans, as they have done on the Healthcare bill. The election today in Massachusetts may change that number.

Since the end of WWII the Democrats have had a filibuster proof control of the Senate for only two years from 1975 to 1979. It was in 1975 that the number for cloture was reduced from 2/3s to 60.

The Republicans last had such a cloture proof Senate in 1923.

As I see it, one of the reliable political statements I can make is that: "Revenge is the greatest source of pleasure for the elected class".

Consequently, if the Democrats win in Massachusetts and use their current filibuster proof control of the Senate to pass legislation without any Republican support, they can expect that kind of treatment in the future when the Republicans are in the same position.

The Republicans could easily eliminate or demolish the EPA, OSHA and funding for the UN, with my full support.

Cotton Mather and Jeremiah Wright

After realizing that Jimmy-boy Carter had become afraid for his afterlife, probably based on a recent reading of the Torah and Prophets, I started contemplating the God of the Torah.

There can be no question that the God of Moses punished the enemies of Israel, entire tribes and nations for their hostility to Israel. 

How do we interpret that divine behavior today?  Answer: the early Protestants, particularly Cotton Mather and the New England Puritans believed that God punished entire peoples, which is the reason for enforcing strict morals on the entire community: our definition of Puritanism.

Another believer in punishment of entire nations is our contemporary Jeremiah Wright.  Barack and Michelle Obama were his close personal friends and he was their religious mentor of twenty years.  Wright's statement about "God damn America" for the 9/11 twin towers attack was entirely based on the notion of a whole nation being punished by God for immorality.

If Cotton Mather and Jeremiah Wright are correct about the Christian God then all Spaniards can expect to go to Hell and so can the Brits and Norwegians who all seem to be boiling over with Israel-hate. 

I assume any God would also punish the Arabs and Persians for their Israel-hate, but I'm not so sure that there is the same god in charge of Muslims who handles Jews and Christians.

Global CO2 market votes against global warming

What could such a statement mean? 

There is a global market in carbon offsets.  In Europe, California and many other places in the world, a business wanting to increase the amount of CO2 it will produce must buy a permit.  The permit is issued by other businesses that will reduce their CO2 by the amount of the permit.

After the abysmal failure of Copenhagen where China and India joined hands to refuse any restraint on carbon emissions and President Obama signed on with them, the price of carbon permits fell. From December 8th when carbon permits were selling for $43 per permit to last week when the price was $17. Less than half price in one month.

The world of people in the global-warming-CO2 control business have voted: Copenhagen was the end of the global warming hysteria. Even real global warming, if it ever happens again, couldn't get nations to take the issue seriously.

Rabbi Dan Lapin on: the Left

I listened to Rabbi Dan Lapin one night recently on the radio.  I had never heard him before. He's fun.

The subject that attracted my attention was that he was pondering why the big coastal cities are Lefty havens.  I started thinking about that back in August of last year and went much further than Rabbi Lapin because I have the facts: all cities vote Democratic.

Rabbi Lapin's explanation is the people who earn their money with little or no effort or special skill feel guilty and vote Lefty (to ostensibly give tax money to poor people).  He points out that Hollywood actors and performers are nearly all Lefties because they earn $ millions without hard work or skill while athletes are mostly conservative because they work hard and know they have unique skills.

Rabbi Lapin connects that psychological analysis to coastal cities because trust fund kids and government employees predominantly live in coastal cities. That is his explanation.

I like his explanation but it doesn't fit the data.  Cities have been Democratic in almost every instance since they became big, even Northern cities during the Civil War when the Democratic Party was pro-slavery. Hollywood is Lefty because it was founded by Lefty Russian Jews and run by Lefty Jews to this day.

Cities are definitely filled with trust fund kids, bureaucrats, academics and firemen who are paid high wages and do very little serious work, but in most cities that is not enough votes to account for the oblivious Lefty Fundamentalism.

At this point (I'm still thinking about the reasons and searching for data) the two dominant facts I keep in mind are that (1) there is a founder effect; the founders of big cities are historically immigrants, laborers and social outcasts (think New York, Boston and San Francisco).  These kinds of founders tended over long periods to support unions and corrupt city machines. There is also a (2) 80% rule of social life; people new to an area or institution need to have 80% of the same ideas and values of the people they live with in order to remain... which keeps cities Democratic over long periods.

I'm not satisfied with my theory yet... but it fits most of the data I have.

Thanks to the 2009 Nobel speech

I have to give thanks to President Obama for his wonderful speech in Oslo on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?  Why?

Because I went to a Norwegian-American party and that speech was the subject of conversation.  There were three men who liked the speech and this gave the four of us a common topic.  Two of these men have always taken a straight Lefty position around me in the past. They were aroused by the speech to appreciate the exceptionalist role of America in the world and the vital need for America to be the global protective force against rogue tyrannical regimes.

Thank you Mr. President (whether you believe what you said or not) for generating a wonderful intelligent conversation... one of the greatest gifts anyone can ever give me.

Newspaper review

I encouraged an historian friend to write a book on the history of capitalism.  Here is the NYTimes review.

My question is whether a newspaper book review sells books.  My books never saw any results from newspaper reviews that was noticeable or from guest radio and TV appearances...over a thirty year period. (In total my books sold over half a million copies).

One of my friends (Kent) has a successful Internet business directed at teens.  Major reviews in major newspapers, one was nearly a full page in the LA Times, showed no increase in sales or site visits.

On one of my blogs about politics I've pointed out that newspaper endorsements are worthless.

So what about book reviews?

Stair cards

Occasionally I forget where I parked my car in a garage. 

The photo on the right is relevant to the problem of forgetting where you left your car.

This is a very thoughtful reminder I found in a parking garage in Salt Lake City. 

On every floor there is a holder on the wall with a bundle of pieces of paper that gives the floor number. Take one.

Thoughtful and much appreciated.

Mistletoe

Back in the Xmas season I took this photo and meant to write a blog about it.  Sorry about the delay.

On the main intersection in the Castro District, 18th and Castro, there was mistletoe hung over the corners.  You can barely see it hanging just above the 24 on the bus destination panel.

The significance I see is that this neighborhood is very friendly and celebrates the holiday season with inter-personal and impersonal affection. 

Great neighborhood and getting better with the new Frances restaurant and Trader Joe's next year.

I want my micro-wave rooms

I read of an MIT professor who was studying the effect of microwaves on mammals.  She did her research in a lab in Texas and in Boston.  After years of having monkeys in the anechoic chambers she went in herself and liked it because even in cold air she was warm.  She allowed students to sit in the microwave rooms (wearing very little clothing and no metal) and they all loved it.  Cool air but a warm body, great for studying.

When can we buy one of these rooms?  I want mine with glass all around, in my garden, so it feels like I'm siting outside with little or no clothing in the winter. I'd also like to put a bed in mine so I don't need a blanket or duvet.

I couldn't find the MIT research reports (typical of arrogant-selfish science), all I found was a 15 year old article.

Activists and journalists

Two articles I recommend.  The first tells what the Japanese have on video. The anti-whaling ship Ady Gil, belonging to the Sea Shepard/Greenpeace organization deliberately cut across the bow of the Japanese patrol ship, Shonan Maru, which is protecting the Japaneses whaling fleet. The anti-whalers lost their bow and probably their ship.  Risking lives to make a point in the very dangerous Antarctic waters is foolish.

The second is Michael Kinsley arguing that newspapers are losing readers because they are too verbose and too politically biased.  I'm with Kinsley... I'm never journalistic in my writing.  Many readers complain that I am too telegraphic to be fun reading.

Best global storyline: Avatar

Avatar broke the global income record for a movie.  I think the reason is the storyline.  I compare Avatar favorably with the first global storyline and the first global film success: Star Wars 1.

A global storyline is one that will appeal to the largest number of people on the planet. That means the Latin world, China, India, Europe, Japan, Africa and the U.S.

We have to appeal to members of all major faiths and the even larger number of non-faith people.

Let's look at what Avatar has in its storyline.

1. Divinity.  Star Wars had The Force, an awful lot like the Christian God. Avatar has an animistic divinity (Eyra).  The reality of the world is that in Latin America, parts of Africa and the Philippines Catholicism is patched on top of animism.  All of Africa is animistic with very little gloss of religion on top. Japan and China are purely animistic.  Europe is Eco-apocalyptic which is an abstract animism the successor to Paganism. India is much harder to categorize but there are so many local deities that it is probably close to animistic.   So Avatar has a global divinity message that is right on target; Star Wars missed the boat.

2. Good-Evil.  Star Wars had a clear good-evil split from the beginning to the end.  Good-evil seems to be a global reality.  Avatar has the additional great theatrical benefit of character development and a change in the viewer's perspective.  The viewer of Avatar starts out on the side of Good and changes through the movie to the other side and finally is convinced that the original good is evil; a much more dramatic storyline.

 3. Warrior. Warriors are heroes around the world.  Both Star Wars and Avatar are story-lines built around a warrior hero.  In both cases it is a man of ordinary qualities who grows during the film, and under the duress of the storyline, he grows into a hero.

4. Necessity of war. Nearly everyone in the world (maybe not the Japanese these days or the Norwegians) realize that power, strength and often war is necessary for survival.  Being good is not enough. Star Wars and Avatar are war stories based on the clash of good and evil. No story would succeed without the necessity of a war between good and evil. The global film market demands it.

5. Romance. The American view of romantic love is popular everywhere... often as a superficial notion (the real force in most of the world is still arranged marriage).  No sex on screen is acceptable in the global market;  a kiss maybe.  What Avatar has that Star Wars didn't have is a warrior woman as the romantic love object.  That may just be a change in the times since the 1970's.  Star Wars, for those who forget, was a romance with a Jewish-American princess.

6. Good people.  On this subject Star Wars got the subject of good people wrong.  The good people were dwarfs (Obi-wan Kenobi and R2D2).  In Avatar the good people are correctly ten feet tall.  Most of the world (not the Chinese and Japanese) considers tall people to be superior to short people.  The good people in Avatar are tall but blue.  I have no idea where blue is a good global color.

7. Science.  Most of the world is anti-science as was demonstrated by the total failure of the Copenhagen Global Warming conference.  Cameron, the Avatar producer, couldn't have known about Copenhagen but his film gets anti-science right.  The scientist dies and renounces science as she dies.  Star Wars was neutral on science.

Cooperation.  In the end of Avatar, the Good people organize all their neighbors in a cooperative military assault.  Most of the world theoretically values neighborly cooperation.  This is obviously not a high value in the fractious parts of the world such as Arabia, Africa, Latin America and many other non-democratic locations but cooperation is valued in theory.

Under dog triumphs. This is one element of the storyline that most of the world supports.  That element is in both Star Wars and Avatar but much of the global population doesn't buy it.  I'm thinking of China, Japan and Arabia where the the top dog is usually right, not the underdog.

Is Avatar anti-American?  In the end, the evil military-corporate side resembles America.  But if you look at the list of values I've just listed you will see that Avatar is a triumph of American values.  We can sell tickets to anti-Americans, but the moral message of the film is wonderfully American. 

Put simply, one can read Red Ridinghood as a children's story about not trusting wolves, or more intelligently Red Ridinghood is about the dangers of the world, the forest and straying too far from home alone.  Avatar is really about triumphant American values.

Summary.  A global film success needs a global storyline.  I've outlined most of the elements of a global storyline. Avatar has all I can think off.

Languages of Afghanistan and Philippines

How many languages are commonly spoken in Afghanistan and the Philippines? 

In Afghanistan the major languages are Eastern Farsi, Southern Pashto, Hazaragi, Turkmen, Southern Uzbek, Aimaq and three other languages spoken by 200,000 people.

In the Philippines the major languages are: Filipino, English, Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilocano, Maguindanao, Pampangan, Pangasinan and Waray-Waray all spoken by more than 1 million people.

I question whether Afghanistan will ever be a country.  Most people I know, who have spent time in the Philippines, doubt that the Philippines is a nation.  It might not be if weren't separated from neighbors by ocean.

Old, very old people

I admit I'm proud. My ancestors (Israelites) were fighting moral battles and creating the most enduring and influential civilization on earth more than 3,000 years ago.  Nobody goes back that far continuously and is still arguing the same issues. (My blog is an example of the 3,000 year long argument about these issues.)

This was what was found in the Valley of Elah in Israel, about 20 miles southeast of Tel Aviv: a 6 x 6 inch shard with ink writing in proto-Hebrew. This translation was released a few days ago.

"You shall not do it, but worship the Lord. Judge the slave and the widow. Judge the orphan and the stranger. Plead for the infant. Plead for the poor and the widow. Rehabilitate the poor at the hands of the King. Protect the poor and the slave. Support the stranger."

Very pro commerce.

Morality and animals

There are two of my past blogs that have comments worth reading.  One is on the inclusion of pets in the human moral system, the comments are well thought out con and pro (I'm on the con side) and the other is on the Goody-goody program of using government to expand control of our behavior (which is the basis of the new Lefty ideology...I'm also against that).  In the second case, look at David Boxenhorn's interesting take.

Good and bad ideas

I believe that ideas are the most powerful human creation.  That is my reason for creating the national public radio program Social Thought.  Social Thought is about the way all institutions are built on ideas (metaphors and images).  It is also my reason for focusing my life on generating reliable testable ideas.

There are also such things as good ideas and bad ideas.  The notion of good and bad ideas rests on a primary hypothesis of mine: there is a real world; while we live in a human created world, there is an overlap of the created world on a real world.  In our created world we are blind to the real world.  Of course we can never escape our created world and can never know the real world for certain (Pragmatism of the Charles Sanders Peirce sort).  Think of a desert with objects on it and terrain.  We are blind people walking on that desert. When our ideas are based on moving forward on a flat surface (in our imagined world), we will find our ideas turn out to be painful when we encounter a real rock.  Similarly when our ideas run us into a solid pillar (in the real world) we might be seriously hurt of die.  In such cases our ideas are bad ideas, because they are punished by our interaction with the real world.

There are also good ideas, the equivalent of a slight down hill slope for our walking as seen in the real world.

I see people who are living with a large number of bad ideas and their lives seem heavily burdened with miscarriages and disasters. In a few instances I see people with good ideas who seem to lead charmed lives.  Most of the time, the real world does not intrude on our socially created worlds.

Just last week we saw a wonderful example of the real world disrupting the life of a person with a bad idea.

President Obama and most of his friends developed an idea in 2001 that the 9/11 perpertrators were criminals.  This was a bad idea based on the belief that such criminals were angry at Americans, angry at airlines and loosely joined together by their willingness to use violence against the targets of their anger.

The bad idea finally collided with reality nine years after it was first adoped by Obama and friends.  As president of the country, Obama had to examine intelligence data that he and his staff miss-used because they held this bad (criminal actions) idea.  In fact by the time that three criminals had acted in Obama's first year as president he threw away the bad idea and concluded that a group of cohesive determined Muslims were enemy combatants carrying on a terrorist war against Western Society and modernity.

It took nine years for the human created bad idea to stumble in the face of reality.