How Many Tax Savings Accounts Do Americans Need?

Posted: 6/21/2015

Trigger

These are two articles celebrating the recent passing of a law in Nevada establishing education savings accounts:

http://www.pacificresearch.org/article/all-states-should-emulate-nevadas-universal-school-choice-plan

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/nevada-passes-universal-school-choice

Besides, I know the Goldwater Institute has been a strong advocate for such accounts for some years.

Too Many Tax Savings Accounts In The Tax Code!

Do you know how many different retirement savings accounts there are already available in the federal income tax code (e.g. Simple IRA, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, Keogh plan)? Too many!

Besides that we have e.g. health savings and college savings accounts (Section 529).

A Principled View

The current tax code is already complex enough, simplification and tabula rasa are in order not piling on.

1. Savings accounts are complex contraptions serving tax accountants, subsidizing colleges, health providers and so on. They tend to proliferate and become more complex over time once established. Politicians can not resist to tinker with them all the time
2. Savings accounts cloak the reduction of tax revenues and they usually benefit more clever people or those with good tax preparers
3. Foremost, the tax code should serve only to generate tax revenues for government in the most uniform, simple, fair, and transparent way possible. Any welfare programs or government subsidies should be strictly only on the expenditure side of the government budget. This would greatly enhance transparency etc. Politicians would have to explain their largesse etc.

The Perfect Spy

Posted: 6/18/15

Trigger

Has China learned how to build the perfect U.S. spy? This article wants us to believe that China hacked into the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to train the perfect spy or mole.

Why Open And Free Societies Will Always Beat Totalitarian Or Authoritarian Regimes

Yes, perhaps Russia, Iran, North Korea, or China or any other repressive totalitarian or authoritarian regime will be able to train the most perfect spies to penetrate the deepest secrets of the U.S., but they will lose nevertheless. The former Soviet Union is a great example.

A free and open society willing to credibly defend its individual freedom will most always innovate faster and be stronger than any totalitarian/authoritarian regime no matter how much these repressive regimes try to spy.

The Ultimate Strategy

Is it not even perhaps the ultimate strategy of the U.S. to allow spies to report back how much more advanced the U.S. is compared to these totalitarian/authoritarian regimes? This is the ultimate awe and shock strategy, isn’t it?

Identity Ideology

Posted: 6/17/2015

Trigger

The recent, public outcry over a woman (i.e. Rachel Dolezal) who identified herself as black and was the head of the NAACP chapter of Spokane, Washington. She is also reported to have sued predominantly black Howard University for e.g. racial discrimination. Media like CNN reported for hours about her. Here is a just one of the many stormy articles published in the New York Times. Was she just a dishonest person? Was this a case of transracialism in an age of transgenderism? What is wrong with a white person in a leading position of NAACP? How many white people were in the inner circle of Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X?

The other prominent case of recent times is the sex change of past Olympic decathlon winner Bruce Jenner.

Personal Or Group Identity

Personal identity has long morphed into some kind of religion and groupthink. It is supposed to make one feel better after recognizing one’s identity.

It is a convenient political tool to classify voters by their imposed identity like moving pawns on a checkerboard.

Transracialism

Is Rachel Dolezal an outlier? Or does it happen more often than most people are aware of it that people of one race seriously wish to be of another race?

How many black people have seriously wished to be white? Is it a sacrilege to ask?

Have there not been a significant number of European people who expressed very strong affection for or identification with Asian or Persian culture etc.

Transgender

Bruce Jenner ever a showman/woman and it is so lucrative too?

Or how about celebrity convicted spy formerly known as Bradley Edward Manning? Has he not immediately increased his fame or notoriety by intending to change his sex in the wake of his verdict? Is the taxpayer on the hook for his sex change?

In general, is becoming transgender a fad? Is it done for vanity? It’s so cool, right?

In 50 years from now will humans looking back consider today’s humans as hopelessly antiquated? Will gender matter any more in 50 years from now? Probably not!

Homosexuality Or Bisexuality

All these cult rites about homosexuality are curious like coming out etc. And all the cachet associated with being gay or lesbian etc.

Is there a moral issue here or is it up to adults in a free society to decide for themselves what they want to do with their lives?

Feminism

Another example of hyper identification and exaggerated advocacy of victimization and superiority.

Regressive To Civil Society

We are all humans irrespective of origin, skin color etc. Thus the identification with some kind of identity as pointed out here is definitely not progressive, but rather backward. It is a form of modern tribalism.

It is high time to move on and away from this personal or group identity narrow-mindedness!

Madness In Global Monetary Policy Continues

Posted: 5/30/2015

Trigger

Just read “http://www.nzz.ch/finanzen/devisen-und-rohstoffe/devisen/die-idee-des-bargeldverbots-steht-fuer-eine-irrsinnige-welt-1.18551125”. This article is about leading Swiss monetary economists discussing the pros and cons of a government mandated abolishment of cash.

I have blogged here frequently about monetary policy, central bankers and so on.

The Madness Continues

1. Dominant central banks still maintain basically zero interest rates for now over 10 years. This large scale interest rate manipulation by dozens of governments is perhaps unprecedented in the past 100 years or so allowing for cheap finance through accumulating of government debt
2. We have entered the bizarre world of negative interest rates thanks to government manipulation (also known as removal of the zero lower bound interest rate favored by some lunatic economists)
3. It appears there is a trend towards governments mandating the elimination of cash money. There is no doubt that the use of cash money (coins and notes) is outdated. However, it should be left to the free markets and sovereign consumers to phase out cash money if they wish to do so. Privacy or anonymity concerns are probably overblown, but I am sure could be addressed as well.

Aristotle On Slavery

Posted: 5/25/2015

Trigger

Unfortunately, I forgot which article made me aware of Aristotle's writing about slavery.

In His Own Words

“Part V

But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?

There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule. ” (Emphasis added. Source: Politics, Book 1 written 350 BC)

Aristotle described his world view at the very beginning of his magnus opus Politics in 7 volumes, where he described basic principles.

No Wonder

No wonder it took more than 2,000 years to abolish slavery in most parts of the world or is slavery not still with us today?

Nuclear Fusion In Compact Spherical Reactors

Posted: 5/25/2015

Trigger

Just read “The new shape of fusion”. This is a summary of current developments in tokamak fusion reactor technology. In particular, it contrasts torus versus spherical shaped tokamaks.

Compact Spherical Reactors

“ Later, one of the company's suppliers showed them a new multilayered conducting tape, made with the high-temperature superconductor yttrium-barium-copper-oxide, that promised a major performance boost.

Lacking electrical resistance, superconductors can be wound into electromagnets that produce much stronger fields than conventional copper magnets. ITER will use low-temperature superconductors for its magnets, but they require massive and expensive cooling. High-temperature materials are cheaper to use but were thought to be unable to withstand the strong magnetic fields around a tokamak—until the new superconducting tape came along. The company changed direction, was renamed Tokamak Energy, and is now testing a first-generation superconducting spherical tokamak no taller than a person.

Superconductors allow a tokamak to confine a plasma for longer. Whereas NSTX and MAST can run for only a few seconds, the team at Tokamak Energy this year ran their machine—albeit at low temperature and pressure—for more than 15 minutes. In the coming months, they will attempt a 24-hour pulse—smashing the tokamak record of slightly over 5 hours.

Next year, the company will put together a slightly larger machine able to produce twice the magnetic field of NSTX-U. The next step—investors permitting—will be a machine slightly smaller than Princeton's but with three times the magnetic field.”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this private company or any other private company can finally pull of the feat of generating energy through nuclear fusion.

Looking Forward To Synthetic Meat

Posted: 5/25/2015

Trigger

Just read “This is the future of meat”. A salient quote from the article: “Professor Mark Post, who is part of the faculty at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, … Two years ago, Post's team of researchers presented their first major discovery in the form of a five-ounce hamburger patty, which was created in a lab, but still was remarkably similar to ones sold on supermarket shelves.”

Here is the professor’s webpage: http://culturedbeef.net/mark-post/

Synonyms: Lab grown meat; in vitro meat; cultured meat

A Salvation To Humanity

1. A roughly estimated 4 billion humans would like to eat more meat, but can’t
2. The killing of so many animals for food might become obsolete
3. And much more

Perhaps, this approach is not working, but I am convinced that humans will develop some form of synthetic meat or synthetic food within the next 20-50 years and thereby significantly reducing humanity's dependence on traditional/conventional agriculture and livestock farming.

The Price Of Lab Grown Meat Is Falling

Apparently, Prof. Post made further progress in reducing the price of lab meat: “Now, Post is working to overcome some of lab-grown meat's biggest obstacles, including its price. And he believes it's only a short matter of time before he succeeds. "It was $350,000 when we first publicized the patty," said Post. "At this point we've already managed to cut the cost by almost 80 percent. I don't think it will be long before we hit our goal of 65 to 70 dollars per kilo."That would drop the five-ounce burger to below $10, a number that Post hopes will eventually drop even further.”

Hot Recent Science & Technology Articles (11)

Posted: 5/24/2015

Even Robots Now Have Their Own Virtual World A highly realistic simulated world is proving vital to robotics researchers. (“Before many of the robots set foot (or wheel) on the course, however, they will be put through their paces in a highly realistic virtual world. This 3-D environment, called Gazebo, makes it possible to try out robot hardware or software without having to power up the real thing. It’s a cheap and quick way to experiment without risking damage to valuable hardware components. And it allows many researchers to work on a single robot simultaneously.”)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-memory-traces-exist-in-cell-bodies (“Could Memory Traces Exist in Cell Bodies? The long-held belief that memories are stored at synapses—the junctions between cells—may not be the full story”)

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/may/20/extraordinary-magnetic-shield-could-reveal-neutrons-electric-dipole-moment (“The team's shield consists of concentric shells of aluminium and a proprietary, highly magnetizable alloy known as Magnifer. The entire shield occupies a volume of 4.1 m3 and the shielded volume is about 1 m3. It excludes magnetic fields – depending on their frequency – by a factor of roughly one million, which equates to an internal magnetic field of about 0.5 nT (0.5 × 10–9 T). In contrast, the average magnetic field throughout the Milky Way is thought to be about 0.6 nT.”)

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/may/21/spin-currents-endure-at-room-temperature-in-germanium (“that the spin current travels about 660 nm before it begins to suffer significant degradation. This applies at room temperature (about 290 K), and when the germanium was cooled down to 130 K, the spin current could travel about twice as far. This backs up a new theory of spin transport that was proposed last year by Yang Song, Oleg Chalaev and Hanan Dery of the University of Rochester in the US.”)

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537166/a-3-d-printed-implant-saves-lives/#

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/05/ancient-rna-enzymes-ribozymes-freeze-thaw-cycles (“UK researchers have shown repeated cycles of freezing and thawing could have allowed the first complex RNA enzymes, or ribozymes, to form on early Earth – a key step for the evolution of life.”)

New Type of Stem Cell Could Make It Easier to Grow Human Organs The “region-specific” pluripotent cells are easier to grow in vitro and graft into an embryo when injected into the right spot

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/DNA-testing-could-identify-litterbugs-dog-poop-miscreants-180955178/ (“The company that produced the DNA portraits, Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs, calls its DNA portrait technology “Snapshot.” It’s mostly aimed at law enforcement looking to solve cases where there is a DNA sample but no suspects or DNA database hits. With as little as 50 picograms of DNA—the average human cell contains about 6 picograms of DNA—Snapshot can create a composite profile of a person, including likely skin, eye and hair color, face shape and ethnic ancestry.”)

Sixth DNA base discovered? (“the possible existence of a sixth DNA base, the methyl-adenine (mA), which also help determine the epigenome and would therefore be key in the life of the cells.”)

Missing link in evolution of complex cells discovered (“report the discovery of a new group of Archaea, the Lokiarchaeota (or 'Loki' for short), and identify it to be a missing link in the origin of eukaryotes.”)

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/05/silver-turns-bacteria-deadly-zombies (“... scientists first killed a sample of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa using a solution of silver nitrate. Then, they carefully separated the dead bacteria from the silver solution. When they exposed living bacteria to the dead, they witnessed a microscopic massacre: Up to 99.99% of the living bacteria met their doom.”)

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/apr/30/portable-battlefield-mri-comes-out-of-the-lab

Brain scan reveals out-of-body illusion (“Neuroscientists have created an out-of-body illusion in participants placed inside a brain scanner. They then used the illusion to perceptually 'teleport' the participants to different locations in a room and show that the perceived location of the bodily self can be decoded from activity patterns in specific brain regions.”)

http://www.hhmi.org/news/new-method-allows-precise-measurement-transcriptome-single-cells (“HHMI scientists have now developed a transcriptome imaging technique that can characterize the abundance and spatial distribution of numerous RNA species in single cells.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150421084812.htm# (“... a pioneering Oxford University brain scanning study has discovered. It suggests that babies experience pain much like adults.The findings suggest that not only do babies experience pain much like adults but that they also have a much lower pain threshold.” Until today a large number of babies may not receive any kind of pain relief medication when undergoing surgery. What?)

Beyond genes: Are centrioles carriers of biological information? (“The discovery raises the possibility that transmission of biological information could involve more than just genes. They are currently the focus of much research, since mutations in the proteins that make them up can cause a broad range of diseases, including developmental abnormalities, respiratory conditions, male sterility and cancer. Publishing in the Nature journal Cell Research, EPFL scientists show that the original centrioles of a fertilized egg, which only come from the father, persist across tens of cell divisions in the developing embryo.”

http://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/ultrafast-camera-captures-images-speed-light-0# (100 billion frames per second. “For example, the camera could be used to visualize energy metabolism as it occurs within a cell’s mitochondria or the way light passes through tissue, an important consideration for therapies that use lasers to destroy diseased tissue with the goal of leaving healthy tissue unharmed.”)

Chinese Pyramids And Mummies More Impressive Than Egyptian

Posted: 5/9/2015

Trigger

Recently watched “PYRAMIDS IN CHINA: ANCIENT LOST SECRETS”. The video documentary tells of grand pyramids larger than the famous Egyptian pyramids and of well preserved mummies of the first and other early Chinese dynasties. Until I saw this video I was not aware of pyramids in China only of excellent, ancient mummies.

Very Impressive Mummies And Pyramids In China

On my first ever trip to China in 2000, I visited the museum of Jingzhou City. The mummy was embalmed in such a way that after 2000 years or so the skin was still moist when the mummy was retrieved. The mummy was housed in a Russian doll like nested boxes made of different materials and filled with different materials to protect the mummy.

I also learnt for the first time of the exquisitely preserved mummies of the western deserts of China.

The above video confirmed my observations.

Obamacare Is An Obamination!

Posted: 5/8/2015

Do I need to say more?  I don’t think so! (just in case you did not get it: obamination is derived from abomination)

Another one of those many socialist laws passed by the U.S. Congress over the past 110 years or so.

People Killed By Police In The U.S.

Posted: 5/2/2015

Trigger

Just came across this older article “More Than 1,000 People Have Been Killed by Police in 2014” (published Dec. 9, 2014). It relies largely on this anonymous website “http://www.killedbypolice.net/”. Not sure how accurate the information is on this website.

The article mentions that there is no national database or statistics available in the U.S. that reliably records all killings of people committed by police officers. The FBI statistics is based on voluntary reporting by police agencies, but a significant number of police agencies do not participate or underreport etc., e.g. New York state does not participate at all.

Many Whites Are Killed

Why the mainstream media do not appear to research how many whites are killed by police is a deplorable!

Of the over 1,100 people killed in 2014 according to the article and website above, many were white if you glance over the spreadsheet and if you accept the racial classification as correct. Many entries do not state the race of the killed person. I would estimate that at least 30% of the listed killed persons are white.

Thus, you have again the question of supposedly disparate effect on blacks vs. whites? Right? Wrong, the circumstances and location of where the person was killed matter as well.

Are Overall Too Many Killed?

The FBI numbers reported in the above article of individuals killed by law enforcement per year in 2013 were 461 (source; The FBI calls this justifiable homicide). There is apparently quite a discrepancy between the FBI numbers and the above website.

Between 2009 - 2013, the FBI reported between 397 and 461 killed persons per year by law enforcement officers (source). There is no breakdown given by race, gender etc.

Contrasting this with the FBI reported justifiable homicides per year committed by private citizens “killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony” we see numbers ranging between 266 and 315 for the same period 2009 - 2013 (source).

A quick search on similar German statistics appears to show that on average 1 person per 10 million population were killed by police using firearms in recent years (or about 8-10 people total per year). Other forms of killing (e.g. by car chase) or some police departments are not included in the statistics etc. Extrapolating these numbers to the U.S. would result on average about 33 persons killed by police.

According to the FBI, in 2013 a total of 12,253 individuals were murdered of which 5,537 were reported as white and 6,621 as black (source).

So if it is true that 1,000 or more people were killed by police in 2014, then this would suggest that too many were killed. More research into this would not hurt.

Killed By Police Website

Unfortunately, we do not know who is behind or how accurate the information is.

Unfortunately, gender and race were not separated and you can not sort or filter the spreadsheet. Thus, this information is needlessly useless for further investigation.

Environmentalism = Fanaticism + Misanthropy + Totalitariansim

Posted: 5/2/2015

I would say that this equation above sums it up quite well especially when we are dealing with extreme environmentalism.

Many environmentalists are fanatic and single minded. Emotions trump reason. Environmentalism has become the religion of our time. Deep seated intolerance is standard practice.

Many environmentalists dislike other human beings or believe in the inherent evil nature of humans.

Many environmentalists demand an all powerful state as a solution.