In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I've been thinking a lot about another unacknowledged 20th-century classic, Gerald Weinberg's The Psychology of Computer Programming (1971). In my view, the book's title is misleading, snce it has little actually to say about either psychology or compuyter programming. The reviews at the link, in fact, suggest it focuses on organizational behavior. I read it not long after it came out, around the time I refocused my career into IT. My main takeaway was his point that in a typical tech organization, one or two people have most of the necessary knowledge and skills, while everyone else does very little and refers any critical problems to the key people. In other words, "You're getting an 808? Check with Herb, he knows what do do." But as a practical matter, whether it's an 808, a blue screen of death, a system crash, a power outage, or a user error, Herb is the guy who has all the experience and job knowledge with the system and knows how to fix things....

Thursday night, the Conspiracies Decoded show on the Science Channel had a segment that asked, but never got around to answering, the perennial question, what happened to Amelia Earhart? Well, she got lost and sisappeared. So anyhow, they found a bunch of bones on an island she might have wound up on before World War II, but the bone doctor who looked at them at the time didn't think they belonged to a skinny female, and they got put in storage in some museum. They were rediscovered in 2019, but a DNA test said they still weren't Amelia Earhart, so the bone doctor was right. This was thin gruel indeed, and it probably wasn't worth even the segment on the show, but after all, it was Amelia Earhart, huh? Except it wasn't. The question I had was she had a guy with her on the flight, Fred Noonan, the navigator. Did anyone check those bones for Fred Noonan's DNA? Even if he wasn't Amelia Earhart, if it was Noonan's DNA, that could have solved the mystery....

All the glee over the GameStop short squeeze in the past several days actually reminds me of a very good recent film, The Big Short (2015), We have it on DVD and watch it at least once a year. It's a fictionalized version of a true story about various contrarians and outsiders who foresee the 2008 housing crisis and in effect short the US economy via the housing market. The 2021 short squeeze actually reverses the circumstances of The Big Short, since in the current case, the forces of dark financial consensus are looking to clean up by shorting GameStop, expecting its price to go down, while the contrarians and outsiders see an opportunity to confound the establishment by buying up GameStop stock, forcing the big boys to buy it back at inflated prices. In The Big Short , the outsiders and contrarians realize the housing economy is a bubble and find a way to short the market, expecting it to go down when the establishment expects prices to rise forever. But the message is th...

I've followed Angelo Codevilla for 20 yers, since he outlined the tension between the "ruling class" and the "country class". His most recent piece suggests the lizard people, or whoever it is, have decided to back off the COVID lockdowns. But as much as the oligarchs enjoyed COVID powers and dreamt of segueing them into a “new normal,” they knew that America could not be locked down forever. They especially knew, were they to unseat Trump and become responsible for the country, their charges that he had failed to stop the pandemic would come back to haunt them. “Why can’t you stop it?” would be the natural question they would have to face as the virus did what airborne viruses do: spread. Hence, after January 20, dismounting the COVID tiger, albeit gingerly, became the order of the day. He cites in particular California Gov Newsom's lifting of his regional supplementary lockdown on Monday. After Codevilla wrote, New York Gov Cuomo made a similar move...

Because I'd been thinking about East of Edem lately, my wife and I watched the 1956 Elia Kazan film on DVD over the weekend. It's unquestionably one of the greats, but because Kazan limited its scope to the last third of the novel, there's an enormous gap in the portrayal of Adam Trask, Caleb's father, that leaves an important issue unexplained. As I've said, East of Eden covers a swath of what might be regarded as recent memory as of the early 1950s, much like Middlemarch in the early 1870s. a 65-year period between the Civil War and World War I, three generations of the Trask family. Kazan leaves the patriarch, Cyrus Trask, completely out. The problem is that, like Middlemarch , East of Eden has secrets, and a key one is buried in Cyrus Trask's career as a professional Civil War veteran who becomes some sort of Washington, DC fixer -- exactly what he does isn't specified, except that although Cyrus loses track of his son Adam, he leaves both A...

On December 9, Gov Newsom issued a completely new regional lockdown order based on prospective ICU capacity that covered most of California. This was over and above an existing color-coded lockdown order that was itself draconian, limiting family gatherings and prohibiting indoor restaurant service. The new order went farther, banning haircuts, manicures, facials, outdoor restaurant service, and most travel. This was effectively the same as the lockdown imposed between March and May 2020, with some added permission for limited "non-essential" retail. I've callled this the double secret lockdown. Yesterday, Newsom lifted it, with little notice -- he telegraphed it only the night before, when the California Restaurant Associatioin released a letter from him giving them a heads-up. Newsweek, clearly unhappy he'd done this, nevertheless pointed out the contradictions: Up until this week, California has been under one of the harshest lockdowns across the country...

I watched Bp Barron's Sunday homily yesterday, in which, beyond discussing the reading from Johah himself, he urged listeners to go to Fr Mapples's sermon from the 1955 film of Moby Dick on YouTube. I've embedded it above. I would have embedded the whole film as well, but YouTube won't let me, as it's age-restricted. (There are gruesome scenes of actual whales being killed, which probably carry out Melville's purpose more than that of the Hollywood version.) The actor portraying Fr Mapples is Orson Welles, by the way. I had been thinking about Moby Dick anyhow. I think I've read it five times, once as an undergraduate, once in grad school, and three times since then. I'd set it aside for some time, as I'd begun to have my doubts about how serious Melville actually was as a writer. (Joseph Conrad annotated a copy of Moby Dick and thought little of it.) On the other hand, I've had almost ten years of Catholic Bible study, and this has made ...

A press release from the LA County health department on Friday read, in part: Key COVID-19 Indicators Trending in the Right Direction in L.A. County New cases are considerably lower this week, with a decrease of 30 percent in the seven-day average of daily cases from last week. The test positivity rate has also dropped to 12.7 percent. On January 1st, the test positivity rate was 20.8 percent; this is a reduction of 39 percent in three weeks. On November 1st, just before our surge began, the County’s test positivity rate was 3.8 percent. Nevertheless, While we have come a long way this week with community transmission, we have a long road to go and must continue to practice infectious control measures: wear a face covering and maintain physical distance when out of your home. blah blah blah. What stands out for me is that while there's now lots of happy talk, there's no indication of any prospective change in the most draconian lockdowns we have in much of the...

Yeesterday I brought up one cause of the 1980s day care Satanism panic, the underlying social tension resulting from wives and mothers working outside the home. This is actually one factor in the amorphous populist rebellion represented by Trumpism, the fact that middle-class incomes have been stagnant since the 1970s. The economic need for two-income households has been a direct result, and one source of Trump's support was his advocacy of policies that would raise middle-class incomes. In fact, I recall a Wall Street Journal editorial in the 1970s recognizing the issue in a backhanded way, patting the US economy on the back for its ability to grow at all, given the numbers of women it had sudddely had to absorb into the workforce. But was this because women suddenly chose en masse to take outside jobs, or because they had to? And if the latter, why? The Journal didn't go into this, and given its contemporary never-Trump posture, will not now. Women entering the job mar...

As an Aristotelian, as I've said here, my job is to look for causes. The project I don't seem able to put down for the time being is to look for the causes of 2020, one of the chief features of which was the COVID crisis and what I think is an associated moral panic, which appears to me to far outwigh the actual medical issues of the disease. The last clear moral panic, as far as I can see, was the Day Care Satanism panic of the 1980s, most clearly exemplified by the McMartin Preschool case in the Los Angeles area. I was prompted by an offhand remark in a recent TV special on the case that moral panics reflect underlying social tensions, and in that case, the real issue was changes in family life and child care caused by wives and mothers working outside the home. (Although this had become acceptable following World War II, it wasn't until the stagflation and fuel crises of the 1970s that it became economically much more essential.) Then, for reasons I can'...

Yesterday, I twlked about s really dumb multibillionaire, Jack Dorsey. Today I want to talk about Marty Lagina, who so far doesn't seem to be a multibillionaire, but he's a much smarter rich guy nevertheless. Lagina, who is the senior figure on the Curse of Oak Island show, is in effect a star, but it's pretty well implied that he also approves the project plans and signs the checks. The publicly available estimate of his net worth is $100 million, altough he didn't make this money off TV appearances. It looks like he got rich on fracking in the 1990s, which was smart, . But according to the link, His company Terra Energy was a pioneer in extracting natural gas from shale around the mid-west in the 1990s. Marty eventually sold Terra Energy to a company called CMS Energy for $58 million. He then launched a new company called Heritage Sustainable to focus on wind power. Heritage is currently planning to build 60 wind turbines in Missaukee, Michigan. That will mak...

Ferdinand Lundberg said that industrialist families tend to work in combination, and I would say that's generally true, but Lundberg at the time he published The Rich and the Super-Rich in 1968 was still living in a culture dominated by the post-Civil War robber barons' desendants. The major industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lumber, mining, steel, railroads, oil, and automobiles were still staples of the economy, with air transport on the rise. Computers still used punch cards. One of Lundberg's main theses, in fact, was that more recent fortunes made from the 1920s onward were mostly hype, and few new industrialists of the 1950s and 60s started from scratch -- their opportunities arose because their families were already wealthy, and a closer look would show that modern fortunes were often smoke and mirrors. This was before the rise of authentic new multibillionaires like Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. While the super-rich do often w...

I've said here before that Ferdinand Lundberg's The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today is one of the most important literary works of the 20th century if considered in the same genre as Milton's prose or Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. (It's available in pdf here. ) Lundberg's thesis was that US politics are dominated by an exclusive combine of wealthy families who manage centers of corporate and social power in the Fortune 500, the Ivy League, foundations, the federal govenment, and other institutions. I think he would have found no surprises in the saga of Parler, the social media upstart, over the past week. According to the Wall Street Journal, In a complaint filed Monday in Seattle federal court, Parler alleged that Amazon Web Services kicked the company off its cloud servers for political and anti-competitive reasons. The conservative social network founded in 2018 exploded in popularity among supporters of Preside...

A news item yesterday was American Thinker's retraction of allegations against Dominion Voting Systems that it acknowledged were "completely false". But this wasn't the end of the story. At the same time, alhough apparently for reasons umrelated to Dominion, the site deleted its comment section . And although there doesn't seem to have been an announcement, the site no longer carries ads. My reaction to this is somewhere between "no great loss" and "good riddance", and I characterize myself as conservative. I used to visit it now and then, but I never did during the 2020 election cycle. The pieces there showed no particular insight and usually amounted to just preaching to the choir. In fact, the site has a lot in commom with the other currently popular sites like Breitbart, Red State, Conservative Treehouse, and so forth -- it runs hysterical headlines about days-old news and reiterates same old-same old viewpoints. What we aren't see...

So we've had two of the most respectable blue politicians, Gov Cuomo and Mayor Lightfoot, announce that lockdowns don't work and economies must reopen. There are headlines of a "narrative shift" with the appearance in Newsweek , which nobody has read for decades, of a respectablke study that says lockdowns don't work . So, where is the groundswell of opinion that says, "What came over us? Of course lockdowns don't work. We're destroying the economy! I hereby decree that schools immediately return to in-person classes, sports resume, restaurants and bars reopn!" Er, no. Not happeing. Gov Cuomo, in whose power it is to say those very words, has been silent. He may as well decree that the rain stop, or start, as the case may be. The lockdown is a force of nature over which he has no control, it would appear. I more or less expected this, though I'm not sure what the reasons for it are. One might be that Cuomo and Lightfoot are holding...

An unintended consequence of the 2020 electoral cycle is that it's put full responsibility for handling the COVID crisis in the hands of Democrats. This is another parallel I see with 1976, where Democrats took over in the face of worsening inflatoin and a fuel crisis and were incapable of handling them, which led to a Reagan landslide in 1980. This morning's headline is that Chicago Mayor Lightfoot is "seeking to reopen Chicago’s bars and restaurants for indoor service as soon as possible". The public rationale is that alllowing indoor drinking and dining will provide a "safer outlet" for people who will otherwise, apparently, make their hookups elsewhere. I assume that's what's meant by "cut down on underground parties where attendees do not social distance or wear masks". I suspect the real reason is that the city can't tax underground parties. I think Gov Cuomo was slightly more ingenuous when he said, “we are looking at mo...

The photo above is from a January 4 anti-mask protest at the Westfield Century City mall, where protesters caused disturbances in variouis stores at the upscale venue in the Beverly Hils-West Los Angeles area. Videos of the event went viral, although it doesn't appear that large numbers were involved. Nevertheless, just yesterday the Hollywood Reporter belatedly covered it: Amid the last gasps and bellows of the Trump presidency, it seems no place is immune to recent spikes in outgoing MAGA madness — not even deeply blue Los Angeles County. Over the past few weeks, numerous sites across the city have been converted into ideological battlegrounds pitting maskless, Trump-supporting agitators against, well, everyone else, even as more than 7,000 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 around the L.A. area and ambulances are being told not to bring in patients unlikely to survive. . . . But the ugliest event has to be the action that occurred at Westfield Century City on Jan. 4. As ...

In another update to the story of how much worse the COVID hysteria is outside the US, the video above from Montreal YouTuber David Freiheit of the Viva Frei channel outlines arrests and fines being imposed on Quebec citizens for violating an 8 PM - 5 AM COVID curfew. What interests me is that, as in the UK, local law enforcement is doing this. In the US, both police unions and police command structures have been near unanimous in announcing they enforce legislatively enacted statutes, not temporary executive orders or health regulations. As a result, governors have had to call on resurces under their direct control, such as state highway patrols, and health departments have had to rely on food inspectors, to do enforcement of COVID orders, which limits their reach. The next question is one that I don't see asked seriouisly very often. which is what effect a curfew is intended to have on the pandemic. The germs presumably spread 24/7, and people are less active at night anyhow,...

There were lots of headlines yesterday over an Andrew Cuomo tweet, which incorporated remarks in his New York State of the State address. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the economy to reopen following strict lockdowns in New York that crippled businesses. “We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely,” he tweeted Monday morning. Even so, left, right, and center, these are the news writers who brought us the kraken. The report in the link above says Cuomo "laid out a plan to stop the spread of the coronavirus while addressing the financial struggles in the state". Er, where? Based on my reading, the speech was nothing but a series of bromides aiming to make the right noises, but I saw absolutely no specifics. Remember, all the lawsuits are plaintiff v Cuomo. As is the case with nearly every lockdown in nearly every state,...

Just so as not to obsess over the idea of impeaching a US president after he's left office (when it seems to me the mature adult reaction would be more or less to say "good riddance, let's go on with life"), I draw your attention to the video above frm a UK YouTuber who discusses a case of UK police who've imposed a £200 fine on two ladies who took a walk and bought coffee while socially distanced. The exact circumstances aren't clear, largely because I can't understand the accents of those speaking on the video, but it appears that a central issue is that the ladies are allowed to leave their homes only once a day for exercise, but the police had been watching them and appear to have detected that this is the second walk they've taken today. In the US, thank a merciful Providence, law enforcement has made it clear that it does not see this type of activity within its responsibility, and generally US civil authorities haven't specified how ofte...

I had another e-mail from the visitor who commented on crowded emergency facilities a week or so ago, this time referring in particular to a CNN story that covered a hospital in Apple Valley, CA Rural hospital staff devastated by Covid-19 patients: A couple things about this piece: Apple Valley is hardly rural; we are one of three large-sized cities in the high desert. We have three hospitals of varying sizes. It's interesting that some people are arriving by foot -- there is a bus stop right by the ER. (Not to belittle their symptoms, but those sick must not be at death's door.) In the "good ole days" the ER at St Mary's was overrun. I dislocated my shoulder 20+ years ago & had to wait three hours to be seen. (I speculate that is why St Mary's has instituted a new policy for pregnant women that come into the er. They are immediately whisked up to the OB ward to be seen instead of sitting amongst the er-ers. In fa...

The situation is fluid, but the powers that be are effectively making sure last year's dumpster fire burns uninterrupted. As of today, Trump has 11 days left in office, and there's no indication that he'll order anyone to seize the White House to keep him inside. Yet, amid calls to invoke the 25th Amendment, there's apparently serious talk of a second impeachment. Just the process of debate on the House floor and scheduling a vote will presumably take enough time to make the whole thing moot come January 20. This is kabuki and an apparent acknowledgement that the US Congress has nothung important to do. Pelosi's position seems to be just an extension of her tearing up of Trump's State of the Union message last winter. With close majorities in both houses following a contentious election, the majoity's position seems to be unified mostly around the position that the plebs must be punished for voting in some proportion for Trump. This isn't leadership. ...

In a remarkably unserious move, California public health officials issued an updated travel advisory Wednesday, discouraging non-essential into and out of the state. The new advisory replaces the pre-holiday advisory that asked travelers coming into California to self-isolate for 14 days. As of Wednesday [Jan 6], the California Department of Public Health says those coming back into the state should self-quarantine for 10 days. . . . That 10-day period does not apply to health care workers and emergency responders coming in to help the state’s struggling hospital system. Residents are also being asked to avoid traveling to places in the state that are more than 120 miles from their homes, or to other states or countries. That recommendation does not apply to residents who have to travel for things like work, study or immediate medical care, or those who routinely travel out of the state or the country for essential reasons. So let's parse this out. Two weeks ago, the...

Last week, LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn wrote to Gov Newsom asking that he try to get the Navy hospital ship Mercy back to LA, although it went largely unused when it was sent here last spring. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn has written a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom supporting SEIU 721’s request for additional healthcare workers in Los Angeles County hospitals in response to the surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Hahn is also requesting that Governor Newsom call on federal partners to dispatch the USNS Mercy hospital ship to the Port of Los Angeles. “Our SEIU healthcare workers are exhausted and our hospitals are overwhelmed. They need backup,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “This surge is the crisis that we dreaded all along. We need as much support as we can get for our healthcare workers and we need the USNS Mercy back in the Port of Los Angeles.” As far as I'm aware, Gov Newsom hasn't replied to the request, and in fact the Mercy is in dry...