A brief primer on the origins and purpose of the income tax

The economic debate is now clearly abuzz with the publication of Thomas Picketty's book, Capital in the 21st Century. Capital in the 21st Century is now the top selling book on Amazon. What is the draw? Why would anyone want to read a 700-page tome of economic history?

We finally learn, without much doubt, that capital will outperform labor no matter the state of the economy. Picketty shows that capital can reliably produce 5-8% annual returns over long periods of time. In a nutshell, capital will outperform labor every time. We see it now and in the past with 40 years of wage stagnation.

Republicans have been keen to point out that the capitalists are taking all the risks. Really? Which risks are those? The ones where you lose your shirt or the risks where you might lose a few million from your billion? Name a wealthy investor who lost so much money that he was out on the street. Name one.

If you want to talk about risk, talk about people who work for a living and live paycheck to paycheck, risking homelessness, life without access to healthcare or robbery from living outside of a gated community. That's risk.

Paul Krugman has reviewed this book and has very nice things to say about it. It's a long review, so take your time. But there is something very interesting in what Krugman writes. He invokes the term, "patrimonial capitalism". Yes, that is what you think it is. Inherited wealth. We are returning to a time where the captains of industry owe their position due to inheritance not talent.

Consider that more than 30 years have passed between the massive tax cuts of Reagan and the financial collapse of 2008. That's a bit more than a generation, but it was long enough to make the transition from an economy run by talent to an economy run by patrimonial capitalism. That would explain the collapse in 2008 very well to me.

Republicans would have us believe that they want to eliminate the income tax. But they won't tell us that they introduced the first income tax with Abraham Lincoln signing the bill. The first income tax was signed into law to support the Civil War effort. It was a tax laid on interest, rents, royalties and dividends. It was, pure an simple, a tax on capital. The original income tax did not contemplate ordinary income from labor. Perhaps they knew then as we know now, that the real risk is being a laborer, not a capitalist.

Republicans would have us believe that they want to abolish the 16th Amendment, when in fact, they introduced the 16th Amendment in Congress in 1909. The idea was not to get it passed, it was intended as a joke to show that Democrats wanted to soak the rich. Never mind that there were liberals in both parties that wanted to see passage of the amendment. You know, like Teddy Roosevelt.

Republicans will not tell you, however, that abolishing the 16th Amendment would do nothing to change things now. The amendment was intended as a clarification to ensure that the courts knew better the intent of Congress. In Brushaber vs Union Pacific, the Supreme Court determined that the 16th Amendment conferred no new taxing power to Congress, it merely clarified a power it already had. Congress already had the power to tax income before the 16th Amendment. What a surprise. And Republicans call themselves conservative.

It is interesting to note that the court found that "a tax on income derived from property such as interest, dividends, or rents was or should be treated as a direct tax." They were talking about capital. Even the Founding Fathers knew the power of capital and feared it. To them, patrimonial capitalism smelled like royalty - and it still does. The Founders knew that our economy had to be built and maintained by talent, not inheritance.

Look at the wealthy now, not just the millionaires, but the billionaires. They are treated like royalty, not necessarily because they have talent (we know they are royalty because they don't go to jail). If they had talent, we would not have had the financial crisis of 2008. Our economy would be strong and remain strong, like it was in 1955. They have returned us to an economy very much like 1890, with the Robber Barons running the show.

What we have now is an economy built on monopolies, bubbles and trade imbalances that only the wealthy can take advantage of. Believe me, if the wealthy were job creators, we'd have full employment now. But alas, we spent a long time at greater than 6% unemployment and that doesn't count the long-term unemployed who have given up looking for a job.

So you see my dear reader, the entire agenda of the elite, with conservatives in both parties promoting it, is to distract us from the wealth of their benefactors and how it is created and grown. It has nothing to do with creating jobs, but rather, the goal is to create distance between the patrimonial capitalists, the people who want to be treated like royalty, and the rest of us. The income tax was designed at its inception, to prevent anyone from being treated like royalty.

But the capitalists have turned the income tax on its head for their own advantage by creating uncertainty in the laws so that only a legion of lawyers can protect income from taxation. They would prefer instead, that everyone else pay the tax for them with sweat, boredom and time.

The economy visualized as an ecosystem 2.0

Carl Sagan is famously quoted as follows, "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception." This is the law in every ecosystem humans have ever investigated and explored. Noam Chomsky has observed that every dominant species lasts about 100,000 years, and we're getting toward the end of that. Everything, it seems, has a beginning and an end.

But there is one ecosystem that seems to defy the principles set out above: the American economy. This is particularly true at the tippy-top. You know, those "too big to fail" businesses like banks?

Once the extent and size of the financial crisis had to be admitted, a fair number of very wealthy people had to admit their mistakes. Worse, they were going to lose a fantastic sum of money in a very public way, unless...

They got the help they wanted. Bailouts by the trillions ensued, saving the banks from the great humiliation and calamity of investing in subprime mortgages that went south for the recession. Lucky for them, and thanks to President Obama, no one went to jail, and no one lost any money except the taxpayer. Where did that money go? Why, offshore, of course.

You just won't see anything like this in the animal kingdom. There is no species so completely dominating that they use up all of their resources. Nor will you find any animal at the top of the food chain hoarding food for themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's not practical and it's not really possible for animals to hoard food the way wealthy people hoard money.

There is something else that would happen if there were a few lions keeping it all to themselves: the other lions would starve. Extinction would be close at hand. An elephant stomping here and there, and the gazelles gang up on the remaining lions to kill them off with some serious goring. That's the end of the hoarding business for the lions in this fictional scenario.

Darwin says that the fittest shall survive, he does not say that the strongest survive, only the fittest. The fittest are those most able to adapt to changes in the environment. As we saw in 2008, the banks were not able to adapt to changes in the environment, changes that they themselves helped to precipitate.

The financial meltdown is the result of a very slow train wreck: a collision of more than 30 years of wage stagnation and a strong dollar abroad, combined with a predatory housing bubble. Somebody lost money in that collision, and it wasn't the top 0.1%. They got their money back and more with help from the government. But no one can honestly say that they adapted to the changing environment...without help from the government.

In Iceland, they let their banks fail, put the unruly bankers in jail, wrote off the debts as much as they could, and got their economy back on sound footing. Their unemployment rate is about 4.2%. The Icelanders saw how unfit the banks were to survive. Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Had we allowed our banks to fail, wrote off the debt, and put the unruly bankers in jail, the real capitalists would have swarmed in like sharks to pick up the pieces at fire sale prices. Capital would have been freed up to get the economy moving again. People would have money to spend again. We might be looking at 4% unemployment now instead of almost 7%.

If you're a capitalist and you're at the top, do you really need help from the government? If you own any business and you need help from the government to compete, you're probably not a capitalist, more likely, you're a socialist. Most certainly, you're not a fan of Darwin.

The lesser of two evils

Sometimes, when we vote, we have to choose between what turns our conscience and what turns our stomachs. We may find ourselves facing two candidates that offer very little hope that we will be represented in government.

There is a lot that I like about Obama and I voted for him in 2012 even though I was not happy with the way he has defended the men and women responsible for the meltdown of 2008. I wanted to vote for a third party candidate. But I was afraid that my vote would be needed to keep Mitt Romney out of that office. After seeing the kinds of dirty dealing that Mitt did, I could not stomach the idea of having a predatory capitalist sitting as president.

So we may have to choose the lesser of two evils for president, the Senate and the House. Often we have to do that at the state level, too. Third parties have been marginalized to the point where we don't have a democracy, we have a duocracy, where two parties rule, and sometimes, they rule as one.

Who chooses these candidates? Most of the time, it is not us. Candidates have to raise money for their campaigns. Why go door-to-door when you can just call up a local billionaire to get financial aid for your campaign? This is what we do in Lesterland. The billionaires have the final say about who runs for office and who does well in the primaries. That narrows the field to only the people that the billionaires want for office. Then we get to choose between the lesser of two evils.

Until we get money out of politics, our choices for political office are going to be less than appealing. We will be voting as if we're rich, when we're not. What to do, what to do?

Back in the 90's, I solicited signatures for ballot propositions. You know, that guy that was standing outside of the supermarket, asking for your signature? That was me. I was there, offering you a chance to gain a little bit of influence in politics. In California, it's perfectly legal to do that. In Utah, they don't like uppity citizens trying to decide their own fate, so they don't let citizens propose ballot propositions and get them turned into laws directly. But I digress.

One of the most interesting ballot propositions that I worked on was "None of the Above", or NOTA. I read it, liked it, and signed it myself. What a novel concept. You mean, I can say I think that all of the candidates stink and refuse them all? Sign me up! It was a great concept, except that this particular proposition had one glaring omission: even if NOTA won the election, someone would still be elected to office. Someone could still sit in that seat.

A NOTA option with real teeth would not allow anyone to sit in office unless we could vote for candidates we really liked. No longer would we have to hold our nose and vote for someone who is a little bit better than bad. Better still, NOTA would give the people veto power over the billionaires. Then the billionaires would have to put someone out there that we want to elect for office, if they want someone to govern. Or, they could get out of politics and run a business. It would be nice to have someone running for office that would actually represent everyone, not just the guys at the yacht club.

Imagine...with a "None of the Above" option on the ballot, the people can say "Oh, no you don't!" to the billionaires. Now that is something to think about.

The GOP voter fraud campaign is a ruse

For a few years now, we have seen concerted efforts by the GOP to deal with what they claim to be a voter fraud problem. Never mind that almost every study on the subject of voter fraud shows the problem to be either negligible or non-existent in every place they've cared to look.

What I find most interesting is that the GOP has almost completely ignored the voting machines and tabulation systems in any discussion of fraud in elections. Many of the voting machines in use are made by Diebold, and during the 2004 election cycle, there was some news about the CEO of Diebold promising to deliver the votes to the GOP. I guess the GOP didn't feel like the voting machines were a huge problem then and they sure don't seem all that concerned about them now.

But if I were the one calling for better detection of voter fraud, I wouldn't be looking at the voters. I'd be looking at the voting machines and the tabulation systems that gather votes. In fact, I'd be calling for an open source end to end solution, for vote collection and tabulation. Why?

Computer science researchers often find flaws in our voting machines such as security vulnerabilities, programming errors and seemingly intentional flaws have all been found in our voting machines. Take Diebold for example. Their systems run an embedded version of Windows. As far back as 2006, Princeton University researchers ran tests on Diebold machines to show how easy it is to steal an election.

Diebold has demonstrated significant partisan practices in the past as well, with other executives openly supporting George Bush for his 2004 re-election campaign. It is not likely that Diebold is the only company out there with a vested interest in steering elections their way, the practice may be widespread and bipartisan.

After the 2010 Census, many Republican majorities in state legislatures got busy redistricting their states to their advantage. But that wasn't enough for them, it seems. They have also been working hard to limit voter access to the polls, cutting the number of early voting days available and voting hours and polling places. They have also loosened restrictions on observers at the polls, allowing them to challenge voters at the polling places. Their tactics are well documented with a few examples here, here and here. But if voter fraud is so rare, why is it a problem now?

Considering the rarity of voter fraud, the GOP voter fraud campaign seems more like a ruse to divert attention from a potentially far bigger problem. From what I can gather, all of the voting machines are proprietary - the code is secret, it all runs on Windows in some form or another and it's subject to serious security flaws that have yet to be addressed. Why the GOP (or the Democrats) does not have a laser focus on voting machine integrity is beyond me.

There are several very interesting websites that have reviewed the election process in detail, two of which I'd like to bring to your attention now. First there is Blackboxvoting.org. This is an all-around voting issues website that looks at all aspects of election transparency, including voting machines. It's a great place to get an overview or go into details on any aspect of elections and how they work. Note also that this website looks at elections worldwide.

The second site is Open Source Voting. This site is dedicated to using open source software, machines and open standards to create an accurate, transparent and accountable election system that is not easily susceptible to fraud. This technology is not pie-in-the-sky. It is here now, and has been demonstrated to show how practical it is.

Open source voting may seem like a vague concept, but there are three main benefits that I see here. First, with open source code, anyone can look at the code to see what it actually does. The source code for voting machines and tabulation systems should be open source and available for any citizen to see and to submit improvements if flaws are found. System images used for installing a voting machine operating system and software can be verified by cryptographic hashing. What this means is that a signature can be created so that each and every machine can be verified to have the same code on disk before and after the election.

Second, open source hardware means that any manufacturer can create the hardware as long as it meets a reference specification. A reference specification is similar to what IBM did with the PC more than 30 years ago. The first PC was built by IBM, but IBM allowed others to create clones by releasing a specification and design that anyone else could follow, build and sell. If all the election machines are based on the same hardware specification, it becomes easy to ensure that all the voting machines required for an election are deployed where they are needed. No need to create 8 hour lines when machines are easy to build, certify and deploy from a variety of manufacturers.

The third benefit is open standards. All machines can be required to generate output that conforms to open standards so that anyone can build the software that produces and reads the information generated by the voters. An example of an open standard is the PDF, the Portable Document Format created by Adobe. To promote the utilization of PDF, Adobe released the specification as an open standard and then Adobe created a committee that manages and publishes the standard. Anyone can write software that creates PDFs, as long as the resulting document conforms to the PDF standard. With open standards, we can avoid the vendor lock-in that vendors like Diebold seek and enjoy when they can get a government hooked on their machines. Using open standards will also make it easier for observers to verify that results are accurate during the entire chain of custody for voting records.

The voter fraud, I mean, voter suppression, campaign perpetrated by the GOP in Congress and in state legislatures across the country seems designed to misdirect public attention from the problem of election fraud to voter fraud. Simple logic dictates that voter fraud on a massive scale is difficult to organize and execute without detection. But if someone wants to steal an election, gaining control of the voting machines and tabulation software would provide a far greater chance of success without detection, a fact that few politicians are willing to acknowledge on camera.

Throwing money at ideas doesn't make them good

So, the Supreme Court still thinks that money is speech? I see that the Roberts Court has not only repeated this tired idea, but they have strengthened it with language in their ruling to suggest that all campaign finance limits are an infringement of speech. Never mind that Citizens United overturned more than 100 years of jurisprudence already. Early analysis suggests that this is only the beginning of the attack on campaign contribution limits and that many laws will be subject to attack and scrutiny with this ruling.

So lets assume that they're right and that money is speech. The Walton family owns more wealth in this country than the bottom 40%. If money is speech, and they get the laws they want, will they take responsibility when things go wrong?

I have seen first hand, what happens when only a few people get to make the decisions in any group. The outcomes go south for everyone except the proponents of the idea. Consider a contrast in software. Microsoft sells Windows worldwide. Windows is written by a few select programmers within the company. No one gets to see their code outside of the company. Fewer still have any meaningful input into the direction of the development of the software.

Compare that to Linux. Linux is shared code. It runs most of the internet today, the securities exchanges and more than a billion devices worldwide known as smart phones. Anyone who chooses may submit code for use in the Linux Kernel. Every time the code is shared with another person, that person benefits. In terms of the market, Linux has been favored over Windows in almost every sector of the IT industry except a few servers and the typical desktop computer.

Because so many more people had input on the direction of development in Linux than in Windows, Linux can deliver what the people want. The people who manage Windows assume that they know what the people want, but also have their own, pecuniary interests that they hold higher than what the people they serve want.

This is the problem with American politics in general and the latest decision by the Supreme Court. The assumption being made here is that the best ideas will draw the most money. Maybe, maybe not. But if the most money supporting an idea or ideology come from only a few people, with limited experience or exposure to the implementation of those ideas, what incentive do they have to vet the idea to ensure it is sound?

I used to be conservative. I voted for Bush Sr. when I was a young man. I liked Reagan then, too. But after 30 years of watching the middle class slide into oblivion, I've lost my enthusiasm for conservative politics. We have a greater concentration of wealth at the top than many countries which we disdainfully refer to as "banana republics". Most of the conservative pedagogy is really about ideals without much empirical evidence to back it up.

Since Reagan, all I've ever heard from conservatives is that if we lower taxes, more jobs will be created. When the top marginal tax rates dropped to 28% we should have had a boom. We did not. We had a bubble. And another bubble, and another one, each followed by recessions and each became more severe than the last. At the end of the reign Bush Jr., we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. People were losing their houses, losing their retirement, losing their cash flow. The money didn't just disappear. Where did it go? The top 1% got it.

Now that wealth is concentrated in fewer hands than ever before in this country, the billionaires are chomping at the bit to get guys like John Roberts in a position to help them out even more. It's not enough that money can buy the laws needed to concentrate wealth. Now they need courts to affirm those laws just to remind the rest of us that it's too late to save our democracy.

Money is not speech and it will never be. It is time for a constitutional amendment to clarify the matter and Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed one in Congress. Maybe someday, that will become law that the Supreme Court cannot overturn.

Here's something to think about the next time you vote

Could we be living in an oligarchy? An oligarchy is a society where only the super rich have any influence on public policy. Worried about the environment? Nothing is going to happen unless the wealthiest among us are willing to do something about it. Worried about Social Security? Hey, if the wealthy don't need it, it will be cut to ribbons if the oligarchs want to cut it. Consider yourself lucky if you even get anything after paying taxes for it.

Average citizens don't get to decide who runs for office and who wins. We think that the decision was made in an election. The decision of who gets to run and do well in the primaries was made long before the election by the oligarchs. Lawrence Lessig was the first to publish clues about the problem of oligarchy. He says we live in "Lesterland", a place where 0.05% of the people get to decide who runs and wins elections.

A recent study confirms that America is no longer a democracy. The study has conducted a detailed analysis of more than 1700 issues to compare influence of the government by business, individuals and grass roots organizing. The finding? If you're wealthy, and you happen to own a very large business, hey, you're in the club. Set theory says that everyone else is not in the club.

I see our representatives inviting ordinary guys like you and me to come to the town hall when they're in town. I used to have the idea that I could go there and ask a few pointed questions to help influence policy, to let them know that they represent me. But the evidence is growing larger to show, rather decisively, that they don't represent me. The town halls are all for show as far as I'm concerned.

Now I understand why I get these bland, uninspiring letters from Congressmen in reply to my communications with them. They can't do anything for me. Their hands are tied by the people that bankroll their campaigns. Now I see that their Facebook pages are just for show, too. They want us to feel engaged, but they're not really doing anything for us. They're still thinking about their benefactors while they pretend to take average citizens seriously.

We used to be a democracy. Average citizens used to have influence over public policy. We can see it in our history. The civil rights movement is a great example, with people like Rosa Parks. But today, what do we get? Edward Snowden? A contractor who made off with classified data and released it to the media. He has done a great deal to educate us all about how our government thinks about us, so don't get me wrong. But if we want social change, we may have to do better than that.

This is a good reason for high marginal tax rates like what we had in 1955. This is also a good reason for effective taxation of corporations. When the wealthy have real limits on the amount of money they can accumulate, they have real limits on the amount of influence they can impose on government. High taxes can be used to support society, no doubt. Canada, Finland and Norway are fine examples of that. 

I'm not so sure that the high tax rates of the previous century were imposed just to raise revenue. I think their original purpose was to limit the influence of the wealthy over government so that everyone can have a say in how government works. You know, like a democracy.

The mental narrative has changed

I have a voice in my head. It talks and makes observations. It has suggestions. It can be angry, happy, sad, and it is the voice I hear in my head all the time. Some people have voices, but they're not here. We're talking about having one voice in the head. Yeah, I have just one.

I've been recalling the voices I've heard over my life, the influences on my thinking and now notice a dramatic shift in the way that I think due to the internet.

I remember the days before the internet. Quiet times were really quiet. It was just me, a great sandwich, a bag of chips and a Coke, all in the shade of the trees at the bottom of Sand Dune Hill. There was no cell phone, no smart phone, no computers. Just thoughts running through my head as I ate my sandwich, my chips and drank my Coke as an adolescent boy.

What ran through my head was everything that I heard from other people in school, what I saw in TV (not that much) and what I read in books (all over my mind). There was no phone to peer at while I'm looking for something to do. I made something to do with my mind. I carried magazines or books around when I wanted something to read. That is what I did before the age of the network.

If I wanted to call someone, I needed a payphone or I had to go home to make the call. I might stop in to see someone on the way home on my bike. I would think while I was riding. I did not play music from a little box connected to a headset. There was no distraction available to take away from the ride, the wind and the moment of riding downhill.

I can recall days when I was kid, where I had truly quiet and peaceful moments. I enjoyed spending time under shade trees at the park, sunsets at the end of the pier on my bike and the thoughts running through my head during long walks alone. I know from that experience that true solitude is hard to attain in the age of the internet.

I can also recall a time that I spent at a yoga retreat on Mount Palomar for a week. It was a great time and I learned a lot about myself while I was there for a week. No phone, no computers, no nothing. Just me and the other people seeking some peace. On one particular day there, we had a no talking day. We made gestures to communicate but said no words. That experience allowed me to empty my mind to find other parts of my mind that I didn't know were there. I had peace.

Now I see myself today, on the internet everyday, reading, writing, texting, watching videos and listening to music. Some of the music I listen to I own, most I do not. There is no DJ blather to muddy my mind. No commercials beating on my brain to tell me what to do. In the morning, I listen to really quiet music and write as I'm writing here. I read for inspiration for articles. I watch videos to learn more about the world I live in.

There is so much information available on the internet now, that I've noticed that it tends to crowd out the personal narrative. It is easy to become overwhelmed with all the minutia, the trivia, the facts - whatever. Want to follow the story on Flight MH370? You can do that all day, every day for as long as they still cannot find the plane. Even after they find the plane, CNN will still be analyzing the facts of the story until God knows when.

I like to read on the internet, so don't get me wrong. I enjoy the media that I get to sample every day from the internet. It is a part of our culture. There are some stories that I like to follow in detail, but for every story that I follow, I lose a little bit of my own story.

When we follow all that stuff on the internet, we can lose sight of who we are, where we belong, and where to find peace and quiet. I can only read so many stories, but when my daughter trundles in to see me, I stop what I'm doing and spend time with her. She has her own narrative. She sees me as I really am because there is no distraction available to her so that she can ignore me or make me go away. She reminds me that I am here, not there, on the internet.

It is easy to get lost on the internet, to forget oneself. The internet is a very interesting place, but I wouldn't want to live there. The people in my life remind of where I am, they are a point of reference I can see whenever I'm not looking at a screen. They are the anchor I need to reality, the true source of personal narrative, because they reflect me exactly as I am. Now.

Who does the NSA serve with Heartbleed?

The tech world is abuzz with word of the Heartbleed bug, a bug that makes OpenSSL, the software that makes your shopping safer with Amazon, susceptible to attack. Responses in the media and blogosphere range from outrage and paranoia to "ho-hum, another bug - did you update your computer yet?"

Two sources seem to have confirmed that the NSA has been exploiting the bug for a couple of years since it was introduced, Bloomberg and Wired Magazine. Wired Magazine quotes Bloomberg, but has more details on what the bug is about. This is a server side bug, which means that if the server is configured to use the Heartbeat service for OpenSSL, clients connecting to the server may not have a secure connection if the Heartbeat code is unpatched. Proffered solutions abound.

The NSA has been consistently hunting for and exploiting bugs in software for years in an effort to fight the so-called war on terror. I've heard it said by the NSA that if they save even one life from an act of terrorism, that all of their surveillance is justified. Yet, the NSA and other surveillance agencies are not reporting the bugs they find to anyone, not as far as I know, nor have they suggested that they have any responsibility to do so.

Their attitude suggests that as long as the rest of us are insecure, they can maintain security for the people they serve. So, who exactly do they serve? The 60% of the population that owns 2.5% of the wealth in this country? I submit that they are not serving most of us, that they have a higher interest in mind: the 400 hundred families that own most of the wealth in this country.

Ordinary people like you and me did not vote for candidates for federal office with 24/7 surveillance in mind. We did not elect our government to watch everyone and everything. Some of us are even aware that if the moneyed interests want privacy, oh, they'll have it, at the expense of everyone else.

There will always be bugs in software, even very important software like OpenSSL, the software we've come to rely upon when we're shopping on the internet, sending out business proposals to our clients, or merely sending a job application to an employer. But just because the bug is there doesn't mean security agencies get a free-for-all blank check to read and record everything just because they think they might need it to fight terrorism. Why don't you get a warrant like you're supposed to?

The odds of dying from a terrorist attack are about 20 million to 1. The odds of dying from a natural disaster that is a result of global warming are rising every day, albeit slowly. "Extreme weather" has become a phrase of common usage in the media and in culture. Remember Hurricane Katrina?

The war on terror is about control over energy, people and information. The priorities of the 1% are clear: money and control before the environment. We no longer live in a democracy. We live in an oligarchy. We can talk about where you're going to live, later.

Movie Review: We're Not Broke

I know, it's a couple years late. I've been really busy, so getting a movie in here and there is hard. Fortunately, I figured out how to get Netflix running on my Linux machine and it works great. So, last night, I took some time to watch "We're Not Broke" an interesting historical analysis of the financial meltdown of 2008.

The viewing coincides nicely with a wave of book reviews for "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", by Thomas Piketty. Picketty has shown that the ultimate conclusion of capitalism is a plutocracy, using 200 years of data. The plutocracy has resulted not in capitalism. Capitalism is dead, due to its own hand, and has been replaced with something else. It's an economic system that allows a small fraction of people (the top 0.1%) to accumulate wealth, invest it and hold it, with little to no risk. Dean Baker calls it "The Conservative Nanny State". Whatever it is that we have now, it isn't going to support a democracy.

Allow me to explain. The movie We're Not Broke, demonstrates over and over again, that cutting taxes will not create jobs. There are tax policy experts on the left and the right in the movie who recognize the problem of a system whereby the people who benefit the most from international tax law get influence and access to the people who pass the laws.

In the movie, you'll hear phrases like "transfer pricing", "tax haven", and "repatriation". All of it is about how the richest corporations are hiding their money from the authorities, legally. The authorities know that it is there, but wealthy corporations have teams of lawyers who can hide the money across borders to keep it from being taxed. It is estimated that there is more than $2 trillion hidden offshore. Our esteemed corporate leaders say that if they can have a tax holiday, they will bring that money back home to create jobs and make investments.

The conservative refrain is to cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes. Well, for the last 30 years, we did. How did that work out? The movie goes into gory detail about a natural experiment, the 2004 tax holiday under the Bush administration. The tax holiday temporarily cut the corporate tax from 35% to 5% to allow repatriation of money held offshore.

The results? Shareholders and managers got dividends and bonuses - employees got laid off by the thousands. This is just one tax holiday in a giant game of keep-away, with what was once known as the middle class, in the middle. That was one very expensive experiment, one that former President Bush is quite proud of.

This movie only confirms what I've been seeing and saying: conservative economic policy is not about creating jobs. It's about creating distance and removing risk from investing and holding capital. Consider the rise of monopolies like Comcast, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the wireless giants, AT&T and Verizon. They sprang up after the Reagan Administration to become giants that no one could touch. Their stocks are valuable because they are monopolies, not because they entertain true risk in the ordinary sense of the word "capitalism".

Today, the Huffington Post reports new estimates are that there is somewhere between $22 trillion and $32 trillion sitting in accounts offshore. If you're wondering where the "job creators" went, they went offshore. Too greedy and selfish to support the society they live in, paying taxes is seen as out of fashion by this cabal of billionaires. Never mind crumbling infrastructure, expensive education and healthcare, with few if any national initiatives to improve the country. They're shorting America and taking their profits now, before it's too late.

I know a few capitalists. They don't have access to a team of lawyers that can reduce taxes to zero as do Bank of America, GE, Exxon and a host of other multinational corporations. Since the capitalists I know are not running monopolies, they entertain a certain risk of losing customers, and rising supply costs. Their concern of paying higher taxes is urgent simply because the titans can bend the laws to their will, at the expense of everyone else. If you own a monopoly, you're not a capitalist, you're a plutocrat and you're not interested in a free society, unless its high society that has the freedom.

With that kind of money being siphoned from the economy, we can easily explain the wage stagnation over the last 30 years that precipitated the 2008 meltdown and the recession that followed. "We're Not Broke" is a well though out analysis of the crisis we face today and offers some very interesting solutions to restore the balance of power necessary to support and sustain what makes this country great: democracy.

When everyone has a voice in determining our collective fate, we all prosper. But you won't hear that from the plutocrats.

Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory

Last weekend, my wife and I had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, courtesy of a gift card we received sometime ago. I must say, it was a fantastic meal. I had somosas and fettucini alfredo. Alice had soft chicken tacos and a big plate of pasta with marinara sauce topped with some chicken. For desert, we had the Black Out Chocolate Cheesecake. All of it was delicious, all of it well worth experience of eating there.

But the one thing I won't forget about our experience is the size of the portions. They were huge portions. Even the cake was big enough for two. The meal was so big that I didn't even eat dinner that night. Around dinner time, I was still buzzing from all the food that I ate for lunch.

As I sat in a chair at home shortly after the meal, I could feel my stomach working, I could feel the pulse through my hands as my body worked to digest this massive meal. I wasn't hungry and I could feel the urge to take a nap. I think I did take a nap that day.

Upon reflection, I started to think about my other restaurant adventures and noticed a similar pattern. The portions are very large, too large for me, probably too large for most people, but you know, "waste not, want not" is running through our minds, so we eat all of it.

Years ago, I read about a study where college kids were invited to eat a bowl of soup. This was no ordinary bowl of soup. There was nothing special about the soup, but there was something special about the bowl. The bowl would keep filling up from the bottom as the students ate the soup. Another group ate from a different bowl that did not fill up. But they ate until the soup was gone. The conclusion of the study is that most people eat until the food is gone, and won't stop even if they feel full.

These two conditions, portion sizes and the tendency to eat beyond the point where we need no more, could easily explain obesity in America.

I know this tendency in myself. I will eat until the food is gone. So at home, I make sure that the portions are small. If I need more, I can get more later. My wife is like my Mom, they both cook more than we need and often, there are leftovers. No big deal. I don't like the feeling of my stomach working late into the night to digest food. I actually like a little hunger pang so that I know my stomach is getting a rest.

You see, the stomach is a muscle, and it has to work hard to digest food. This takes energy away from other processes that the body will perform to assimilate and rebuild. I make sure that my stomach has time to rest every day. You wouldn't want to do situps all day now, would you? But if you snack all day, your stomach is working all day.

Cooked food also leads to another form of work: enzyme production. Raw food is packed with enzymes that digest food for us. This is what causes fresh food to decay if we leave it out of the refrigerator. Animals use these enzymes to assist with digestion of the food they eat. There is significant documentation on the subject of enzymes, but most of what I know comes from two sources: Enzyme Nutrition, a book by Dr. Edward Howell, and the Wheatgrass Book, by Ann Wigmore. Both of these books are a huge influence in the choices I make when it comes to food.

The easiest food to digest is raw food. Salads, fruits, even raw vegetables, they're all there, ready to eat. Meat is much harder to digest, even when cooked because the enzymes are dead by then. Enzymes are at work in our bodies, 24/7, and they do almost all of the work of keeping us alive. Enzymes mediate every step of metabolism in our bodies. Food that comes with living enzymes makes for light work for our bodies.

You might have heard of caloric restriction as a way to increase lifespan. I think it is a good practice and practice it myself. I eat when I'm hungry and I don't eat when I'm not hungry. Eating is not a sport, it is not recreation. It is something I do to live and live well. You just won't see me in a pie eating contest.

The reason caloric restriction works is not fewer calories consumed, its because your body is not producing enzymes to digest cooked food. As your body produces enzymes, that effort takes away energy for other work that the body needs to do to stay healthy and young.

The next time I go to the Cheesecake Factory, I will probably split the entree with my wife for better sleep. I will also rest easier knowing that my stomach will get some rest before the next meal.

Chromecast review - the media revolution

I finally got one. After weeks of patient and quiet negotiation with my wife, Alice, I got a Chromecast. My wife was worried that, like the Rasberry Pi before it, I would have to buy accessories that would bring the total price up to $100. I won't have to this time.

Chromecast is like a thumbdrive, but it's bigger than that. Chromecast plugs into an HDMI port on your TV and connects to your wireless network to bring your favorite media to your TV.

I had been reading about it for the last few months and my curiosity grew by leaps and bounds over the last few weeks as I learned of an ecosystem that Google is cultivating. The number of applications for Chromecast is growing quickly because Google has created a software development kit to help developers make use of it. This is a revolution in the way we view and listen to media.

Chromecast is a $35 HMDI dongle - for lack of a better word - that turns your TV, any HDMI TV, into a smart TV. It's a little computer that fits in the palm of your hand. I found one for $30 on sale at BestBuy, in the store and there were plenty in stock for sale.

Setting it up is a dream and you do not have to be a nerd to get it done. first, plug it into an open HDMI port. The Chromecast needs power and comes with a USB cable that provides power to it. What is really cool about this is that you can use a power outlet with the provided power adapter, or you can plug the USB cable back into an available USB port on the TV for power.

Then bring up the TV and select the source HDMI port for viewing the Chromecast. If nothing else is powered on, the TV will automatically select the right input. If you have a cable box or a DVD player that is already on, you will have to manually select the right port to view Chromecast.

Once you have Chromecast in view, find any Android phone, tablet or ChromeOS computer and install the Chromecast app. Follow the prompts on the TV to connect to the Chromecast with your device and connect the Chromecast to your wireless network. Once connected, the Chromecast will get the latest updates and reboot. Then you're ready for your first cast.

I started with YouTube and played a few videos just to see how it works. It works well.

I started to get excited about this because I know I can do the same thing with my Samsung DVD player. Yeah. The slow to boot, slow to move anywhere DVD player. Before I got the Chromecast, I could "cast" videos to my DVD player. This was nice because moving around in the DVD player was slow and clunky. I hated it. Using the phone gave me much more freedom and latitude to get to where I wanted to go. The phone is the remote control for the Chromecast. Or you could use a tablet to do the same thing.

But there is another problem with the DVD player, and this applies with almost any DVD player that has some smarts built in. The DVD player manufacturers are in the hardware business, not the software business. They have little incentive to keep their devices up to date. They can use slower hardware and still get the job done, but maybe not as fast as consumers would like.

Google is in the search business. They want people to use their products because when people use Google, advertisers find customers. Google uses software to make the search business work. But Google isn't content with just the PC, and they know who rules the PC for now: Microsoft. So Google went around Microsft and put Android on phones and tablets that could connect to media, cause you know, people like to watch media on any screen they can find. Android is the locomotive that punched a massive hole right through Microsoft's business.

Google has every incentive to make their hardware fast. The Chromecast boots up fast. It found updates on the first boot on my TV. The Chromecast is just getting going and I expect it to evolve quickly into the tool of choice for accessing media on big screens.

So far, I've used Chromecast for Netflix, Pandora, YouTube, Google Play (to access my own music collection in the cloud) and my pictures. In each case, my user experience faster and easier than using the DVD player. Notice that I didn't mention Hulu yet. I won't bother with Hulu because the amount of advertising shown for a "one hour" episode is beyond irritating, it's nauseating. So far, the top 4 remain a great experience and they're even better on Chromecast.

Pandora has made their Chromecast version easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to listen to. Netflix runs pretty much the same way as the DVD player runs, but the phone is the remote control, so it's easier to find movies you want to watch, but maybe a bit more effort to pause, play, and so on. Note that with all media, when the screen is locked on the phone, you can still pause or play without unlocking the phone. Very cool.

I can already see very interesting uses for Google Chromecast. Here's an example. I'm on vacation in a hotel. I'd like to take some downtime after some fun on the slopes and watch the videos we made today with the kids. Why watch videos on a laptop or an itty-bitty phone screen when we have Chromecast? We can use the hotel TV to see what we want to see. We don't have to be content with the advertising laden content provided by the hotel.

When I'm visiting with Mom in California, I can use Chromecast to send pictures of of our kids to her TV while we are there. I can play videos on the TV without any other cables. We can put on Pandora while we're there. Chromecast can go anywhere there is an HDMI TV.

There is even a business case for using Chromecast. You want to make a presentation in your client's boardroom? No problem. You can use Chromecast to receive a presentation of slides from your phone, tablet or Chromebook. You could even use Chrome on your windows machine to make the presentation. But do you really want to risk a blue screen of death in front of a big customer?

These are early days, but I can see the momentum building for Chromecast. Chromecast will make cable TV irrelevant. Chromecast makes TV personal, portable and convenient. The revolution has begun, so grab a bag of popcorn, sit back and watch.

Have a laugh and live

I'm a funny guy. I know this because I have empirical evidence that shows that what I say makes people laugh. I don't know exactly what it is that makes people laugh, but I enjoy the feeling I get when they do laugh.

I can remember the zingers I made when I was in kindergarten. Yes, kindergarten. I was at an open house with my mom, talking with my teacher and I remember saying funny stuff even then.

As I grew up in school, I found that humor saved me time and again. It didn't save me from being teased relentlessly every day, but it did give me some relief from the stress of having to face kids who insisted on teasing me. This experience taught me to make sure that my humor is never personal. My humor is pretty benign, innocuous, aimed for the circumstances and not the person stuck in a moment.

Through working construction, many office jobs and finally, in IT, I found humor indispensable. My timing was good, too. I never got fired for making a casual joke during a heated moment or crisis at work. I was even able to bring my humor to a farewell speech I gave to the retirement community I used to work at.

Throughout my life, I have found people who were receptive to my humor and laughed at my jokes. They inspired me to be funny. They gave me reason to celebrate that small bit of chaos in the brain that arises from humor. They inspired me to choose my words carefully for a laugh.

Back then, at the retirement home, I actually had bad days. You know, days where no matter what happened, I could not be happy or even grateful for what I had that day? Yeah, those days. I often had a cloud over me, following me around. But even on my darkest days, I could not resist the opportunity to make a joke for a few laughs. I kid you not.

I remember being so miserable one day that I made a decision for the day that I was going to keep quiet most the day. I wasn't going to talk to anyone unless absolutely necessary. And I sure as hell wasn't going to say anything funny. No, these people that I served didn't deserve that. No soup for you!

But then I encountered my cheerfully giddy friend at work, Laura, as she worked the reception desk. I have shared many fine moments of laughter with her. Except on this particular day, I had already made a decision not to say anything funny. Somehow she said something that totally set me up for a zinger, a funny quip, and she was laughing for almost a minute. I stood there, reveling in the glow of her laughter. For a moment, the cloud was gone. Then I forgot about it for awhile, only to remembered it again when I saw my supervisor.

I look for cultural cues for humor. Recently, there was a story about a Girl Scout who sold 117 boxes of cookies outside of a cannabis store in Colorado. I had already found a great line to go with it, thanks to the comedy of George Carlin. I noted that and put it in the back of my mind. A few weeks or so later, I'm at Harmon's on Redwood. Just inside the entrance, there was a girl and a man selling Girl Scout cookies.

I engage the man in conversation and bring up the story about the Girl Scout cookie sales in Colorado. He recalls it and seems engaged. I say, "I can just imagine how the conversation between a customer and the Girl Scout might turn on a simple question, 'Dude, where are the Mallomars?'" I got a hearty laugh and enjoyed myself to boot.

I used to do standup comedy, too. If you have a few minutes, you can see me here, having  great time on stage, entertaining the audience. I would love to do more, but there are only so many hours in a day, am I'm spending one of them writing this article now. I love being funny and that will never change. It's just too fun to give up.

I have a simple principle that I follow in my relationships. If you laugh at my jokes, you get to stay in my life. If you make me laugh, I will find every reasonable means to keep you around. But if you can't laugh, I'm sorry, I can't help you.

Remember those old people I used to work with in the retirement home? They taught me that when you're 82 and your body is slowly going to pieces, you need to have a sense of humor. I will never forget that, and hope that you won't either.

What day is it?

I used to work in a retirement home, but I didn't take care of the old people. I worked on the network that supported the business of caring for the old people. I worked at what could best be described as the Four Seasons Retirement Home. Here, wealthy people get to live out their waning years in plush accommodations with food prepared by professional cooks, landscaped grounds, and round the clock medical staff. They were the people we used to call Middle Class in the 60s and 70s.

It was a great time in Irvine, California. I got out of the office quite a bit to get my work done. I took time to talk to everyone and get a sense of what was going on with their computers doing desktop support. I got to walk among the lush vegetation carefully planted everywhere. I felt the cool Pacific breezes on hot sunny days as I walked the grounds.

There were three areas of living for the retirement home. Independent living, where you get to come and go as you please, go on group trips to Europe and play bridge together. Then there was assisted living, a place for people who weren't quite all there. They'd forget stuff, like who they were, where they were and why they were crossing the street off the grounds. Then there was skilled nursing, that's where you're in a bed and you know the end is getting pretty close. I spent time working around residents in all three areas and learned quite a bit about how people live in retirement homes.

One thing I noticed about the independent living section is that the people living there are the happy people that were walking every day and making jokes. Once you stop walking, you've just greased the slide to your demise. If you stop making jokes, who wants to be around?

Some of the residents are even, shall we say, "spunky". One resident I got to know actually slapped me on the butt as I was walking by. Imagine my surprise. She was one of the funny ones, too. She laughed and she made jokes. She also walked every day, without fail.

In case you were wondering, the average age of the residents was 82 years old, mostly female. If you're a male wallflower, they're going to find you, so there's still hope.

I got to know a few people in the assisted living section, too. I remember one lady very well. I would talk with her frequently because I found myself in that area almost every day. She was there, walking around, just enjoying the sunlight, the breeze and the day passing by. I would tell her stories and she would laugh and seemed to enjoy herself.

One day I found myself telling her a story that I had already told her before. I was worried that I had been caught, but she didn't say anything. She just listened. I continued as if nothing happened and then stopped to let her know that I had already told her that story. She said that I should continue because she didn't remember.

Hmmm. "What day is it?", I asked. She didn't know. She said that every day is pretty much the same. She doesn't know what day of the week it is and doesn't seem to mind or care. There is no difference to her.

What an interesting state of mind. I've had that briefly as an adult while on vacation. I recall the feeling of not knowing what day it is and not caring. The last time I had that feeling was when I was a kid, and that was only for a few years during the summer months. The people living at a retirement home can go on for many years like that and not know what happened.

Talking with this woman showed me just how arbitrary our timekeeping system is. We have years, days, hours and seconds. Nature determined the number of days in a year, but only bankers could give us the calendar we have now. Someone decided that we needed 24 hours not 10. Someone decided that we needed 60 seconds, not 100, even though a decimal system would make more sense. But even a decimal system can seem arbitrary to brains that really haven't evolved to track time. That's why we have clocks.

As I write this, I lose track of time. The creative process does not run by clocks. It runs by synapses in the brain, firing, connecting and synchronizing. All of it comes from somewhere, and time is the space that lets it happen.

We use time as a reference so that we can synchronize our efforts to cooperate. It's an arbitrary reference that we must agree to use together or nothing will get done on time. We use it measure work, measure output, and measure results. But for anyone who is not working, there is no need to keep time. Not that I can think of.

If you're not working, time isn't a big deal, especially when you've already had your day in the sun. The only time that matters is now. The past is gone and the future isn't here yet. Working with the retirement home really helped me to put this in perspective. Whatever was important to the residents living there when they were 20 doesn't matter now, it's just a faint memory.

I drive a car to work every day. I know that someday, the work routine I have now will change. I may come to a point in my life where driving car is not a requirement for living, it might just be something that I enjoy doing. Working on computers may no longer be relevant for me. Anything can happen. But now, I'm here, doing what I know how to do.

Knowing what day it is didn't matter until I was maybe 5 years old. At some point in my future, that won't matter anymore, I don't know when that will happen, whether I will even notice and I don't need to find out now. I know what day it is now, and that is enough for one day.

Why do Christians want equal time for Creationism?

I note with interest how the host and producers of the new television series Cosmos: A Space Odyssey, have been besieged with requests to give equal time to creation theory. Yet, the overwhelming consensus among scientists is that creation is a belief, not a scientific theory. There is simply not enough evidence to support the theory promoted by some Christians that God created everything. What I find interesting is that Christians seem to be the only religious faction that wants creationism taught in schools.

Albert Einstein was a scientist who believed in God. "God does not play dice with the universe", says Einstein. But as scientist, Einstein kept his religious beliefs distinct from his scientific inquiry. I don't recall that Einstein ever promoted the idea that creationism should be taught in schools, either. Oh, wait. He was of the Jewish faith.

So I wonder, what is the ultimate aim of the creationists? Could it be that they just want Christianity to be the primary and dominant religion of the United States so that they can feel safe and secure in their beliefs? They will find friends and allies in places like Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, with Oklahoma and Kansas to boot. Maybe even Utah. Could it be that some Christians want state sponsored religion?

Turn the tables for the moment. Let's say that the Muslims were promoting creation in school. Imagine the uproar we'd see from the Christians over that. Accusations would fly at the Muslims insisting that the Muslims were trying to turn this country into Iran. Imagine that!

I have known a few Christians and have attended church here and there. From what I am able to gather, many Christians have a sincerely held belief that if they don't absolutely, without reservation, believe in God and the Bible, that they will go to Hell. You know, that place where everyone suffers and there is no air conditioning? Yeah, that place.

Now I won't pretend to read minds, but allow me to speculate for just a moment here and consider with you, what might be going on. Let's assume for the moment that adult Christians, like anyone else, want to do the right thing. We all want to go to sleep at night, knowing we did the right thing, agreed?

The most likely conclusion that I can draw from the debate is that Christians are thinking about their kids. They want creationism in school so that they can be sure their kids will still believe in God when they leave school and that they won't go to Hell from changing their beliefs. I can't think of a better explanation than that.

If that is the case, and I think it is so, there is a really big problem with their attitude. There is no consideration for anyone else. Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims - they are all going to school, too. The reason that science has been so successful it that scientists are not afraid to admit that they are wrong when they are. Science is our best tool for understanding reality. Scientists understand that science is a quest not to be right, it is a quest for knowledge that allows us to be wrong, to eventually find a better answer. That is not the case with creationism. Creationism does not allow for or hold up to scientific inquiry and cannot be verified because it is a belief without factual support.

I want to come back now to the concerns about "going to Hell" that many Christians might have about not holding a firm, true belief in God and the Bible. I have a problem with a demanding, browbeating God who punishes me for not believing a certain thing, anything, even a book written by men who didn't know what the sun did when it went down.

I have faith in God, which I hold as distinct from belief. Belief in the Christian sense is a belief in God and the Bible without regard to new information. That is not faith. Faith is the reservation of judgment, a willingness to accept and acknowledge new information.

I have faith that there is a God, but I don't believe in God because I don't know for sure. I just take the days as they come, with faith that God is there, helping me, showing me the way. I do not believe that you must believe as I do, either. What I think that God may be, could be entirely different from what you think and that is OK with me.

I don't know how anyone could live under the crushing pressure of a God that punishes me for any deviation from belief in a book written by men who are prone to error. As Thomas Paine said, if you want to know God, look around you. God is everywhere if you want to find him.

Neither Thomas Paine, nor any of the Founding Fathers promoted the idea that we should teach creation in school as science. They were all wary of state sponsored religion, and we should be, too. If that were to happen here, we wouldn't have to hop on a plane to go to Iran.

How the tables have turned...

In 2001, I took a UNIX class at Orange Coast College. I really enjoyed the class, having learned bash programming in the class, but nothing about UNIX system administration. I did learn a few other interesting things though. I learned how to write programs in VIM. I learned how to make a file executable. I learned how to take notes that put me in the top ten of that class.

There is one thing that I learned that turned out to be wrong. There was some discussion over whether it would be worth the effort to pursue UNIX administration as a career. After much discussion, the professor seemed to think that he had settled the issue by saying that he thought Windows would win out and that it would be a better career choice to get certified in Windows than UNIX.

I was heartbroken. Even then, I wanted out of Windows. I wanted to work with something that was not controlled by Microsoft. My first computer was an Amiga and I missed having that choice. I was actually disappointed to learn that I wasn't even using UNIX in the classroom. I was learning to program on Linux.

I left the class with an A grade and a feeling of defeat that I had wasted a semester learning something that would not support me later on.

I look around me now and find that had I talked to a few more people, I might have seen what was to come. Around 2001, Linux was just starting to go mainstream in server rooms in the biggest businesses. Many developers were finding freedom in knowing where the programming interfaces were in Linux as they were published and the source code to Linux was freely available to all who wanted to read it.

At the same time, developers became wary after learning that Microsoft lied about programming interfaces to software companies that developed software that ran in Microsoft DOS and Windows. Why? To maintain an advantage over the competition.

Also at the same time, Linux was being ported to work on x86 processors to make it work on low cost, commodity hardware while UNIX was still working well on mainframe computers. Linux received help from big companies like IBM to make it a server class operating system.

But I was supporting Windows and didn't think that Linux or UNIX was going to make it. I was wrong. I was also clueless.

Linux now runs on more than a billion devices when all Android smartphones are factored in. Linux runs on 97% of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world. Nearly every securities market in the world runs Linux - think New York Stock Exchange, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, NASDAQ. If you use the web, chances are, you're using a web based application that runs on Linux. Linux is running in DVD players, smart TVs, tablets and other consumer devices. Linux is used in routers, switches and other network devices.

It used to be that you couldn't get fired for buying IBM. Then IBM was pushed aside for Microsoft and you couldn't get fired for buying Microsoft. The time is approaching where people can get fired for buying Microsoft because Linux can do the job better, faster, more efficiently with lower hardware resources. Less RAM. less disk space, less CPU.

A review of salaries for system administrators finds that Linux admins consistently draw higher salaries than Windows administrators. This is because Linux talent with experience is hard to find. I remember how Microsoft flooded the market with certified professionals and that was sort of depressing.

If you're planning or even thinking about a career in IT, make it a career in Linux programming or administration. The field is wider and greener than ever, and Windows administration doesn't even hold a candle to Linux in terms of opportunities. If you would like to learn how to work in Linux, consider this free course. It's online and the normal cost is $2400. This summer, you can learn Linux for free.

You might have read my previous article on how sharing information can help you to remember it. Sharing information with members of your team can help your team to succeed. When source code is shared, that leads to success for everyone who is involved. Even the users. Sharing source code means that the software can be improved on a fast, consistent basis, creating benefits for everyone that uses it. The source code of Linux shared among the programmers and the users. It is constantly evolving and improving.

If you have a job in Linux administration or programming, be grateful. If you don't, there is still time to change the road you're on. The money is nice, but the freedom is what counts with Linux work. Even ATM companies are finding freedom in Linux.

The freedom to share code is the basis of the success of Linux. Had I known about that in 2001, I would have made very different career choices. Now that I know what I know about Linux, I'm happy to share it with others in the hopes that they won't make the same mistake I made. 

Sharing information can help you remember it

I had a problem at work. I was working through a list of directions for clearing space on a server so that the server could be made ready for an upgrade. As I worked through the list, I came upon a directory that could contain many files each of which could take up a lot of space. The instructions said that all I needed to do was compress files that were older than 30 days and that should free up enough space.

Unfortunately for me, and everyone else faced with this task, the instructions did not provide for an automated method of finding the files. Instead, I was thinking about how much time it would take for me to inspect the files by eye, identify the files that were older than 30 days and compress them. I'm lazy and knowing that I would encounter this again, I recalled how I had managed to automate this before.

In Linux, there is the find command. Find is a great command for finding files that meet certain selection criteria. You can use it to find a file by name if you're just looking for one file. But you can also use the find command to locate files based on size, type and the last modified date or even the last access date.

Gzip is a standard compression utility in Linux. Rather than compressing each file one at a time, like this, "gzip ", I found a way to combine two different commands to get the results I wanted. While I sat there at work, looking at so many files that I could compress to free up space, I remembered the find command and did a little research. The research yielded the following command:

find . * -mtime +30 -exec gzip {} \;

What this command does is can be explained in a few simple steps:

1. find files in the current directory - that's what the dot after the find command is for.
2. Select any file - that's what the asterisk * is for.
3. Select files that are older than 30 days - the option -mtime +30 sets the selection criteria based on modified date.
4. -exec allows me to run a command on the results of the find command. In this case, any files returned by the find command will be compressed with gzip.
5. The last part, {} \;, that is a sort of place holder for the results. This command will check every file in the directory and if the file matches the selection criteria, the {} \; will be replaced with the file name and the gzip command will operate on the file.

I shared this command with the person who wrote the instructions that I was following. The feedback I got was that this command would be added to the article and made available to anyone who needed it.

Although I consider this little command sequence quite fascinating, and hope you do, too, that's not the point of this article. There are actually two points. First, we are both better off when we share ideas. There is a really good reason for this. I think it is best explained by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Ian McPherson, more than 200 years ago, with the following excerpt:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. 

My heart sings when I read this prose, not only for its truth, but also for its beauty, its rhythm and its ultimate conclusion. I can only add one more thing to the wisdom of Jefferson, and it seems such a little thing but it is well worth noting.

I noticed that after I shared my idea with the author of the instructions I used to free up space on the server, and got the feedback, I kept reviewing the command in my mind. When I got home that day, I started to think about how to check the results of the command before running it. I did some experiments on my computer to explore the command some more. The idea got reinforced in my mind after sharing it. It became easier to remember it, you know, in case I ever needed to share it again. That is the second point of this article.

Keystone is a fatuous lie

For those of you who miss my blog, I'm still here. I'm just working a lot. I'm sure it's only temporary, but it's taken time for me to put two minutes together and rub them for a blog.

I've been seeing a lot of commentary on the Keystone XL Pipeline. It's a dream and a lie. Anyone who says that the shale oil from Canada is going to lower gas prices hasn't noticed worldwide demand for oil. They might not have noticed that the pipeline heads straight to the Gulf of Mexico, either. Isn't there an international port down there? I think so.

Here in Utah, we have Chris Stewart in the House of Representatives, pushing hard for approval of the Keystone pipeline. Stewart would have us believe that Keystone will create jobs. Oh, there will be jobs. Temp jobs. Then when the pipeline is built the oil will be sold on the world market where it will fetch more money than we're willing to pay here. Why?

Because the US is a tiny influence on the price of oil. The world has grown dependent on oil around us and though we suck 20 million barrels of oil a day, that is only a tiny fraction of world demand. Even if we produce more, and we are by any measure, that hasn't decreased prices at the pump.

When my wife and moved to Utah, we saw gas prices at about $1.73 a gallon at the low, long before we hit production numbers like we're seeing now. We're now producing more oil than at any time in recent memory, just ask Obama, and yet, gasoline prices are well above $3 a gallon in many places around here, higher still in California.

Any politician who is serious about energy production needs to start talking about thorium. We have enough thorium to last for thousands of years at current energy use. Yet, we don't see anyone in mainstream politics talking it up. No, they're talking about Keystone if they're conservative and solar and wind if they're liberal.

Thorium isn't the answer to all of our problems, but if you're looking for a reliable source of base load energy, thorium is it. It's widely distributed around the world, so there won't be any wars over thorium for quite some time. Thorium reactors are far safer than the pressurized water vessels we use for burning uranium because they operate at normal pressures. Thorium molten salt reactors won't go boom when they fail and they won't leak because the fuel is drained from the reactor in failure. Waste? About 1% of what a uranium reactor produces. Thorium, baby, thorium.

So, yes. I've been away. I'm working 50 hours a week for awhile, but I will get my digs in here from time to time. Thanks for coming by.

Humans can hate objects, but not other humans

Do you hate someone? Have you ever really hated someone? How well did you know that person before you decided you hated him or her?

Yesterday, I read a fascinating analysis on the psychology of hatred. The subject is a bit complex, but the takeaway for me is that once we see the eyes of another, it's pretty hard to hate them. To hate another human, we have to make them less than humans in our minds.

All human beings want love. They need companionship and shelter. We see someone cry and we can empathize with them. We hear someone laugh and we laugh with them. One person yawns in a quiet classroom and everyone yawns with him. We all know that in some way that we are connected.

To hate someone, we must ignore that connection. To hate someone, we reduce the human that we think we know, into an object. In short, hatred is objectification. There is no other way I can see for one human to dehumanize another. Unless we perceive another human as an object, someone who is less than human - less feeling, less thinking, less empathy for how we feel - we cannot hate them.

In a past life, I was an investigator for people in trouble with the IRS and the Franchise Tax Board in California. I worked with people who hated the IRS and wanted nothing more than escape from their very clutches. My job was to use the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act to help uncover what was going on behind the scenes of these two agencies.

I worked directly with disclosure officers, people responsible for answering my requests and determining if there was merit to them. They ensured that the disclosures they made followed the laws. While working with the IRS, I learned that I might not like what they do, but I could not come to hate them. I began to see that they were people who just wanted to go to sleep at night knowing they did the right thing. I had compassion for them.

I developed this compassion by developing a professional relationship with each of them. I talked with them and learned what they liked about their job. One disclosure officer said that I should not move to Sacramento if I were considering it. It was a dust bowl to him. In addition to that, he seemed to have really bad luck at his residence. First someone drove their truck off the street into his living room. Then the next year, a tree fell onto his house. He was thinking of moving. All of this was volunteered information because I went into it with an open mind. I was willing to see their human side.

There is a lot of talk about class warfare in politics these days. Any kind of war is wrong and it doesn't really matter who started it. Nobody ever really wins a war. But in order to foment a war, a common enemy has to be identified. In recent months, some very wealthy people have complained that they are being singled out. Tom Perkins has likened the Occupy movement against the 1% to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. Lately, it seems that the wealthy are really, really unhappy about how they're being perceived.

I suppose that if I had crashed the economy with dubious business practices, made out like a bandit with a few government bailouts, and continue to make more money during a very difficult recession for everyone else, I could expect the perception that greets me now. But that series of events seems to come as a result of the perceptions of the affluent about the rest of us.

I note with interest that Gore Vidal and Chris Hedges, two well known authors and writers, who have spent time with the very wealthy have a lot to pass on about this subject. They have seen first hand, the contempt that very wealthy people can have for others less fortunate.

They are not the only ones to notice, either. We see it in Congress, open, unadulterated contempt for the poor, the disadvantaged and it doesn't stop there. We see in Conservative television and newspaper commentary. The most interesting part of the phenomenon is the language that is used. The people being so denigrated by the media, by the so-called leaders of the right, have reduced the people they have castigated...to nouns. Objects. Mindless beings who will only reproduce and multiply if they are not stopped now.

I have noted before in previous articles that the Conservative agenda is not about creating jobs. If that were true, now that we are hip-deep in neoliberal economics, we'd have full employment with unemployment well below 5%. But that's not what is happening. What I see of the conservative agenda is an effort to create distance. They hate the rest of us, and we mirror them, so they want more distance, psychologically and physically.

They created distance with a super punitive justice that has captured more people in prison than any other justice system in the world. They bail themselves out when they make mistakes, but when the rest of us make mistakes, they cut unemployment, food stamps and other social programs to get everyone focused on one thing: working for them. Whatever it is that "they" do, they are still humans who want love and probably can't fully explain how they came into so much money. But here we are.

Until both sides see each other as humans rather than just "the 1%" or "the Occupy Movement", I doubt either side will gain very much traction. It's clear that the 1% have an economic advantage, but in order to maintain that advantage, they need the consent of the rest of us. To get that consent, they will have to set aside their contempt and see the rest of us as humans. Just as we must see them as humans, too.

Fix the debt?

There is a rather interesting organization of CEOs known as "Fix The Debt". This is a shady little cartel of CEO's who have amassed millions in retirement savings, millions each year as compensation and billions in stock values. This same group has been telling us for years now, to fix the (federal) debt.

They want to cut social programs that have already been paid for with taxes. They want to cut funding for research that no business wants to do, yet the results of that research has supported businesses just the same. If you need an example, consider the benefits of TCP/IP, the protocol that runs the internet.

Oddly, they won't touch the military budget. They won't talk about increasing taxes. They most certainly won't support increasing benefits for veterans. No, these guys have priorities that are different than the 99%.

They won't talk about their plunder of the economy with their fat accounts that permit them to loaf well into their 80s without a worry about income. No, these people will never have to work again for the rest of their lives if they decided to stop working today. Yet, they insist that the rest of us either have to work harder, longer hours, or we have to tighten our belts. The rest of us will have to wait until we're 72 before we can receive Social Security benefits.

One subject noticeably absent from the debate on the debt is the trade deficit. Even liberal economists seem to miss this one. Since the 1980s, not only have we cut taxes for the wealthiest among us, but we've insisted on a very strong dollar relative to other currencies. This creates trade deficits that only the wealthiest among us can take advantage of.

I want to clarify my position and point out the people I'm referring to with more accuracy. I'm not talking about your mom and pop small businesses where net incomes are around $250k or so. No, they don't often have the means to support the trade deficits we have now. I'm talking about the billionaires. OXFAM released a report showing that 85 people own wealth equivalent to the holdings of 3.5 billion people - half the world's population. They hold in total, about $11 trillion, collectively. These people, and the next step down, are directing our economy.

Want to know why we're so mired in a recession? 85 people are making decisions for the rest of us with no skin in the game. Remember, they will never have to work again and they have everything they could ever want, with no need to spend any money. Sure, they are thorough in what they do, they may even be efficient. At what? What else is there to do? Between 2009 and 2012, more than 95% of new income created during that time was vacuumed up by the one percent in the US. It's like they have nothing better to do. They're primary interest is in creating economic distance between the unwashed 99% and them. Conservative policy isn't about creating jobs. It's about creating economic distance between the 1% and everyone else.

Does that kind of behavior create jobs? The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't think so.

This is the problem. Capitalism says that the people with the most money get to make the most important decisions about how to allocate resources, irrespective of the harm those decisions may impose upon others. Global warming? Capitalism. Coal ash spills? Capitalism. 18% of GDP directed to health care? Capitalism. Housing bubbles? Capitalism. Get the picture?

The reason we have democracies is so that all voices can be heard, not just the lucky ones who happen to be born into rich families, or who happened to work for a startup that was bought by Google or Facebook. When more people have inputs into decision making processes, more people can benefit from the decision. Case in point: Linux. Millions of people use it, thousands of programmers built it, and input comes from users, programmers alike - and it's free for everyone to use

The wealthiest among us have created a bubble economy dependent on trade deficits to work. First, create the trade deficits, this will reduce the amount of money the middle class has to spend on things they want. Then create bubbles so that you can keep generating wealth. Stock bubbles, housing bubbles, it doesn't matter, as long as everyone with a brain and a 401k can get in. With insider information, you can get out before the bubble fails, leaving everyone else destitute. 

Then you can tell everyone else to work harder or tighten their belts. Wash, rinse, repeat every few years. But don't mention the trade deficits in relation to a depressed economy. People might wise up and demand a change in policy that requires you, the 1%, to continue working like the rest of us.

Erring on the side of peace, day by day

I'm helping my wife Alice to raise our daughter, Emily. Emily is now 15 months old and even through the seemingly short period of 15 months, I watched myself as Emily reminded me of what tolerance is all about. I watched myself as I remembered that Emily is a fragile human being who has to negotiate for every need to be met. Just like the rest of us. The only difference is that she is not equipped with the same skills and experience adults have.

While watching Emily traverse the chasm from birth to consciousness, I was constantly reminded that Emily is acting mostly on instinct. I saw that she was doing absolutely the best that she could, for if she knew a better way, she would have done it. As her consciousness became more apparent, I began to see evidence of higher order thinking. Noticing, planning and communication. At 15 months, Emily has a lot to say, but she's not very articulate because her brain is still trying to figure out how to make her mouth sound out the words she wants to use. Oh, Emily knows words alright. She just can't say them yet.

Prior to Emily's birth, I had more than 20 years of time to read, experiment, indulge in myself and discover something about what I'm made of. I did a few things I'm not proud of. I used marijuana on and off until I was 25. I think I still had a drink here and there, but I've not had a drink since about 2002 or so - alcohol was not my drug of choice, so I could take it or leave it. I've never really understood tobacco so I never used it. I never got into coffee or soft drinks. The sugar and caffeine made me bounce off the walls and then I'd crash.

All of my studies of the brain brought me to the conclusion that my brain is a 2.5 million year old pharmacy that makes whatever I need to meet the demands of the environment. When I need to wake up, my brain introduces a small amount of adrenaline to start my day. When I need to sleep, my brain sets up the blood with a nice cocktail for sleep. Anger, jealousy, joy, boredom, they are all there. They are just muted at this age to the point where I can see the emotion coming, wait for it to pass, and then think about what to do next.

Emily can't do that yet. Emily has an endorphin factory that unloads undiluted emotions on cue as the need arises in her brain. She is at times supremely angry. Supremely sad. Supremely happy. With no way to dilute those feelings with thoughts, distractions or addictions, she is looking for direction from us, her parents. She has no mechanism by which she can ignore reality. It's all there, in her face, day to day, moment to moment.

So it is remarkable to me to witness that erring on the side of peace really pays off. I don't want to be the strict, overbearing, rule-setting parent early on for what would I get? Someone who will rise to every challenge I place before her. I know her grandfather and I know what he was like. He took and broke every challenge to his authority placed before him and then some. Believe me, I have a tiger by the tail with Emily.

If I find myself irritated by something that Emily does, I work on settling that irritation within me first, then I think about how to address Emily. Emily is not a threat to me or anyone else. She has to negotiate with everyone to get her needs met, but she has no language and absolutely no leverage to get her needs met. She could cry, sure. But without compassionate parents, there is no hope of getting her needs met. So I need to settle whatever is going on in me first in order to respond to Emily's needs. I do it quick so that I'm here, present for her for every moment I'm in the same room with her.

Let me tell you a side story, a story of when I was a young and confused man at the tender age of 20, maybe 21. Back then, I bought a cat from one of those pet mills in the mall. I thought, sure, I can take care of a cat. I fed her. I gave her shelter. I bathed her. I played with her and slept with her.

But I noticed a pattern emerging. She would climb the drapes when I was not home. I'd catch her and she'd run. When I bathed her, she struggled in the water as I picked for fleas. I won the struggle, but I could see that the struggles were becoming more and more severe.

Then one day while bathing the cat, I punched her several times to get her to settle down. She moaned in agony. I knew it was over. I could not care for the cat. I cried as I took the cat to the animal shelter knowing for sure I was not ready. I never forgot that day and I promised myself that I would prepare myself to take much better care of the next cat that came into my life.

My wife was born in the year of the cat. I could not marry her and stay married if I was not and still am an older, wiser, peaceful man today. From day one, Alice reminded me to be gentle to her and to myself, every day. I had to constantly check my thinking, my words, my actions. When I'm around Alice (and my daughter), I strive to be a gentleman in every sense of the word.

My experiences with conflict in the past have led me to a simple set of practices all in support of erring on the side of peace:

1. Let the feelings pass before you speak.
2. Think before you speak.
3. Never raise your voice.
4. Never slam doors or break possessions.
5. Never make threats, even threats you can carry out.

I'm sure there is more, but this is the basic set with the prime directive to err always, on the side of peace. I know that if I fail, I am only encouraging strife, grudges and resentments on both sides. There is no such thing as winning an argument, especially in marriage and in family life. If my wife or daughter lose an argument, I lose. I want all of us to win, together.

I hope you have found this to be useful information. It has taken years for me to develop and today, I just felt like laying it out for all of you. I love everyone. Even the irritating people, for they remind me why I am a gentleman today.