What's on my mind

If it seems like thing have been a little quiet on the blog page, it's 'cause I was fortunate enough to join my family last week on a cruise along the Mexican Riviera. Of course, I had to bring my little soprano sax, and ended up sitting in with Pinnacle, a quartet of some of the coolest folks on the planet. Here's a picture of us after we played the big deck party.

From left to right, Marvelon, Cletus, me, Izanne, and Elmer.

Hedge fund manager's goodbye

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:25:00 GMT

Andrew Lahde, Lahde Capital Management, writes a very interesting parting letter about his business, the state of American government, our economic system, and our reliance on foreign products. Here's a thought-provoking paragraph from the letter: "On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government. Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken."

A sane voice: response to September 11 2001 a "huge overreaction"

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:55:00 GMT

This is nothing new for a lot of us...but coming from former head of MI5, Stella Rimington, it carries some weight. She calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others, and describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction," saying the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism. She criticizes politicians for trying to outbid each other in their opposition to terrorism and making national security a partisan issue. It all began, she suggests, with September 11. "National security has become much more of a political issue than it ever was in my day," she says. "Parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know, 'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly." Which is exactly what's happening with our candidates right now, who are competeing on who's going to be the tough guy. Where does it end?

Back in the day!

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:55:00 GMT

OK...so I'm going through some old memorabilia, and I find this VHS tape of a music video. It was made by one of my best friends for a college class... back in 1991! Talk about way-back machines. This is vintage Rain-bo Tribe performing a tune called Jazz Life. The band features me on sax, Toshi Yanagi on guitar, Rob McDonald on bass, Brian Sherman on keys, and Johnny Castaneda on drums. That really was a cool band :-)

The Rob Hart Trio - Kashmir

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:05:00 GMT

I just completed audio mixing and post-production on this video for the Rob Hart Trio. They're performing Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. My brother, Franklin, and I shot the video.

The dancing Indian boy

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

This makes me smile every time I see it.

Greatest threat to the American republic? The debt crisis

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:15:00 GMT

OK...here is something that's so important, so critical to all of us, yet really receives very little attention in our media. It's the fact that America is in serious financial trouble. And it's all because of our amazing debt. What do we spend all our money on? Well, the main culprit is the military budget, which in 2008 alone accounts for 1.1 trillion dollars of our spending.

If you begin in 1789, at the moment the Constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defense expenditures in comparison with the rest of the world.

The world's top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each country currently budgets for its military establishment are:

1. United States (FY08 budget), $623 billion
2. China (2004), $65 billion
3. Russia, $50 billion
4. France (2005), $45 billion
5. Japan (2007), $41.75 billion
6. Germany (2003), $35.1 billion
7. Italy (2003), $28.2 billion
8. South Korea (2003), $21.1 billion
9. India (2005 est.), $19 billion
10. Saudi Arabia (2005 est.), $18 billion

World total military expenditures (2004 est.), $1,100 billion
World total (minus the United States), $500 billion

This information is culled from a must-read article by Chalmers Johnson. It's worth a careful read.

Data mining for terrorists a really bad idea

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:55:00 GMT

Remember the Department of Homeland Security had this idea of creating a massive database that would collect information on all Americans, and then mine the data to see who had terrorist intents? Turns out even the DHS itself has relized that it would be a massive invasion of privacy. From an article today:

"The government should not be building predictive data-mining programs systems that attempt to figure out who among millions is a terrorist, a privacy and terrorism commission funded by Homeland Security reported Tuesday. The commission found that the technology would not work and the inevitable mistakes would be un-American."

"The committee, created by the National Research Council in 2005, also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of technology designed to decide from afar whether a person had terrorist intents, saying false positives could quickly lead to privacy invasions."