A Flag for People Like Us

The Chronicle is running a contest to design a new flag for San Francisco. Shown above is William Leidenthal's entry:

Fog (gray background)

Pacific Ocean (dark blue bar)

San Francisco Bay (green bar)

Cultural diversity of the people of San Francisco, where an inclusive society is the city’s pillar of strength (a four-color tower — Coit or Salesforce)

Gold Rush, which gave birth to a world-class city (gold stripe at the bottom).

The explanation is all well and good, but what's the first thing you see, dear reader? Right, and I wouldn't call it "cultural diversity".

The work is too phallocentric. That's not us, Mr. Leidenthal. Now, if you had depicted a mansion with poop, drug needles, a homeless encampment, and a vacant storefront right outside, that would be us.

PG&E Bankruptcy as a Demo for Socialists

We held PCG for 20 years and sold it in 2005 for $37.75. It's now at $13.

We've long subscribed to the Peter Lynch principle "invest in what you know"; for example, if you know, like and use Apple products, buy AAPL because many people may think like you and you are Everyman/woman/other, right?

Pacific, Gas, & Electric (PCG) is a hard company to "like", but as a utility its captive customers provide a steady stream of cash flow and dividends. In 2005, when PG&E's raw materials cost became more volatile and customers were beginning to look at alternative sources of energy, we sold our shares after holding them since the 1980's.

We got out 13 years early. Now PCG is about $13, a precipitous fall due to the calamitous Camp Fire that began on November 8th, not coincidentally the 12-month high ($49.42) for the stock. The utility declared bankruptcy on Tuesday. One doesn't need an MBA, or even a calculator to figure out why: [bold added]

The company, which says there will be no interruption in gas and electric service, listed assets of $71.4 billion and $51.7 billion in liabilities....

“If the liability is anywhere close to the $30 billion estimate, they will lose market share tremendously because customers can in essence walk, especially the commercial and industrial customers,” said Terry Boston, the former chief executive of PJM, the power grid that serves parts of 13 states from Virginia to Illinois.

The lawsuit damages, plus existing liabilities, exceed PG&E's assets. To preserve what's left, and to continue to provide service to its millions of customers, declaring bankruptcy was the prudent thing to do.

IMHO, the PG&E bankruptcy is a tremendous opportunity for the Progressives who run California to show how much better Socialism is than Capitalism. The Government could buy the company for a pittance. Then, without having to deal with noisome shareholders and the Board of Directors, they can:

force the complete conversion to alternative energy from fossil-fuel sources

keep rates at current levels (or lower);

repair its aging infrastructure to prevent more San Bruno pipeline explosions

pay their unionized workers a fair wage;

bury more power lines both to prevent forest fires and to protect the public from downed lines. Sure, it'll cost a lot:

A new underground distribution line across most of PG&E’s territory costs about $1.16 million per mile, according to data filed with state regulators during the utility’s most recent general rate case. That’s more than twice the price of a new overhead line, which costs about $448,800 per mile. Most of the difference comes from the expense of digging a trench for the cable.

Prices rise within cities, where the work is more complex. A 2015 San Francisco report found that recent costs for moving power lines underground in Oakland had averaged $2.8 million per mile, while similar work in San Jose had cost $4.6 million per mile.

Accomplishing all of the above shouldn't be too difficult since a government entity need not show a profit or pay dividends.

Actually---and I'm being serious now---if Socialists can accomplish all of the above without losing money, they would have a much better chance of convincing the public that they could own and operate the health care system.

Guess That's Why They're the Expert

Sewer backup: one of the least
disgusting photos on the Web.

Roto-Rooter identifies 3 Signs a Sewer Backup is Coming: [bold added]

1. A foul stench coming from drains.
2. Slow draining bathtubs or laundry lines.
3. If the use of other fixtures associated with your main line lead to water backup in places such as toilets or showers.

Foul stenches, slow-draining washing machines, and toilet backups mean that a sewer backup may be coming. Brilliant. That's why they're the professionals.

Round and Round It Goes

Composer Michel Legrand, 86, died on Saturday. Famous within entertainment circles, he won three Oscars and five Grammys. Speaking of circles, his "Windmills of Your Mind" is one of those songs that gives me an earworm ("a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing").

Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel....

A Good First Step

First Amendment at Independence Hall (WSJ photo)

Leaders and scholars from major religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, among others), universities, and politics combined to produce the American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience, a project that has spanned years.

More than a simple affirmation of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...") the charter tries to deal with questions such as government constraints on religion:

government must protect the peace and order of society. Freedom of religion does not give any faith community the right to hold a noisy revival meeting at 2 a.m. Nor does it give any community the right to engage in practices that violate core norms of any civilized society. Even if a faith group sincerely believes human sacrifice is essential for salvation, the state is obligated to forbid this practice and punish anyone who seeks to engage in it. Whenever government limits free exercise, it must be to protect a compelling public interest, and the means it employs must restrict free exercise as little as possible.

While acknowledging that there must be some constraints in civil society, the document is clearly weighted toward limited government. It returns to the original worldview behind the founding: [bold added]

the right to freedom of religion and conscience, rooted in the inviolable dignity of every human person, is not the gift of any government. It exists prior to governments, whose duty is to guarantee and protect this right. Though this thesis might seem tendentious, it is a restatement of the argument of the Declaration of Independence, which declares that people create governments to “secure” rights that governments do not create.

Too often contemporary issues are framed as whether government should "allow" a religion to do something, when it is really government that must show a compelling reason to forbid a practice. The American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience is a good first step in (re)stating a philosophical framework with which to defend all religions in the legal, political, and public square.

Journalist in the Wings

Little Peyton Burns interviews NHL All Stars, including her Dad Brent Burns:

If This Doesn't Work, We'll Try Beatings

Retail vacancies are increasing in San Francisco: [bold added]

In the Castro neighborhood (Chron)

A 2018 study by the North Beach Business Association, Telegraph Hill Dwellers and North Beach Neighbors concluded that the commercial property vacancy rate in North Beach is 10.25 percent, double the rate recorded by the same group in 2015....

According to the association’s study, many factors contribute to the sharp increase in vacancies, including seismic retrofits and numerous construction projects that keep pedestrians away. The study also reports that only two property owners control 21 percent of the vacant properties in the neighborhood.

San Francisco’s cumbersome permitting processes and strict formula retail controls also make it difficult to find tenants, said David Blatteis, board chairman at Blatteis Realty,

Progressive politicians don't think that the high cost of operating is the reason that spaces are empty but greedy landlords who are holding out for more:

Supervisor Aaron Peskin sees another culprit: landlords who intentionally keep their properties vacant until they can extract higher rents from potential tenants. Now he wants to repopulate those storefronts by taxing property owners with consistently empty units.

“This is by no means meant to be a revenue generator,” Peskin said Tuesday. “It’s meant to be a behavior changer.”

The proposed fine is $250 per day per unit. Owners of hard-to-rent properties that have mortgages may as well kiss off their equity and turn the keys over to the bank. No way are they going to service the debt, pay property taxes, insurance, and utilities and pay the vacancy fine.

Easily foreseeable: the banks will stop writing new loans, and the blight will spread.

Also foreseeable: after more sections of San Francisco have been ruined, the politicians will say that the socialist experiment would have worked were it not for the greed of property owners.

Still Going Strong

"YES": the 3 leading currencies (Dreamstime graphic)

In 2011 Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+. The rating agency cited government debt (then $11.4 trillion) and mismanagement of fiscal policy. Not following suit, Moody's and Fitch, the other two major rating agencies, maintained their triple-A rating on U.S. Debt

7½ years later, outstanding government debt has nearly doubled. Citing this as his reason, Starbucks chairman Howard Shultz is running for President: "I think the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future generations."

Meanwhile, S&P, Moody's, and Fitch have not changed their respective ratings on U.S. debt since 2011.

But what does the rest of the world think? WSJ -- Dominant Dollar Bests Challengers:

after a drawn-out crisis in the eurozone, and a more recent slowdown in China, the dollar’s international pre-eminence looks safer than ever. Concerns that a U.S. administration with an America First platform would diminish the dollar’s global role haven’t been borne out, either.

U.S. debt may be risky, but the dollar is still on top because currencies, which are an imperfect proxy for national strength, are graded on a curve.

International use of the euro, once the dollar’s clearest challenger, has diminished since the eurozone sovereign-debt crisis raised the specter of default on debts previously believed safe. The euro’s share of global reserves shrank to 20.5% in the third quarter of 2018 from 28% in 2009...

But to make the yuan an international force, economists and investors have long maintained, Beijing must permit freer movement of money across its borders.

Instead, facing a flood of capital outflows in 2015-16, it clamped down on investment outside of China.

You can't replace something with nothing, and the dollar is more something than its rivals.

Brush Your Teeth, Save Your Brain

Tools to prevent Alzheimer's?

The battle against Alzheimer's Disease has been frustrating because definitive causes haven't been identified. Genetics, trauma, depression, sleeplessness, and obesity have all been proposed.

The most promising candidates have been amyloid plaques and tangles found in the brain tissue of deceased Alzheimer's sufferers. While suggestive, plaques and tangles have also been found in the brains of people who evidenced no Alzheimer's while they were alive.

Some researchers are now looking into the bacteria responsible for gum disease:

Multiple research teams have been investigating P. gingivalis, and have so far found that it invades and inflames brain regions affected by Alzheimer’s; that gum infections can worsen symptoms in mice genetically engineered to have Alzheimer’s; and that it can cause Alzheimer’s-like brain inflammation, neural damage, and amyloid plaques in healthy mice.

Plaques, according to this theory, develop as a defense against the bacteria and are not the cause of Alzheimer's Disease. (Aside: if true, this would be a textbook example of correlation not equalling causation.)

After reading this article, your humble blogger will floss more often and run the electric toothbrush for the full recommended two minutes.

Perhaps Now He'll Get His Due

Albert Einstein called him “The greatest mind in American history”. In 1943 the NY Times science editor said he was “the most distinguished creative scientist this country has ever produced, yet...a man whose name means nothing to the multitude.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) was one of our greatest scientists, yet it's doubtful that one in a thousand Americans recognize his name. His accomplishments: [bold added]

like Newton’s synthesis of celestial and terrestrial physics, Gibbs’s work on thermodynamics unified myriad seemingly unrelated concepts, bequeathing to future generations the challenge of developing each into its own field of study...

Then came On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances. In this 1878 book-length paper, Gibbs provided what amounted to a unified theory for thermodynamics. Gases, mixtures, surfaces, solids, phase changes, chemical reactions, electrochemical cells, sedimentation, osmosis: Gibbs showed how thermodynamic principles can describe each of these seemingly separate phenomena...

He enshrined his concepts in his second masterpiece, Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics Developed with Special Reference to the Rational Foundation of Thermodynamics, published in 1902, a year before his death. Statistical mechanics—a term he invented—was the methodology that would allow chemistry, almost alone among sciences, to make the transition from the classical era of cause and effect to the quantum universe of all probability all the time.

Thermodynamics hasn't captured the popular imagination like cosmology (the origin and fate of the universe) or astrophysics (which has a lot to say about space travel, black holes, etc.), but perhaps with the resurgence of interest in alternative energy and energy efficiency Willard Gibbs will finally get his due.

Now, More Than Ever

From a speech by a great American in 1963:

(Washington Post photo)

In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

Push ahead determinedly but always peaceably, and dream of an America where "my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." I miss that guy.

Still Relevant

One Gospel narrative whose interpretation has undergone significant change over the centuries is the episode regarding Barabbas. Brittanica: [bold added]

Christ or Barabbas? (Mitrushi)

Historically, the release of Barabbas at the crowd’s behest, and their subsequent demands to crucify Jesus, have been used to justify anti-Semitism. Many have placed blame for Christ’s death on the Jews, commonly citing Matthew 27:25, in which the crowd shouts, “His blood be on us and on our children!” However, numerous modern Christian scholars and leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI, have explicitly denounced this position, claiming that the crowd on that fateful day consisted of Jewish Temple authorities and Barabbas’s supporters, not of the entire Jewish people. They have also maintained that, in the light of the New Testament as a whole, the crowd can be understood as comprising all of humanity and Jesus’ blood as effecting reconciliation between humanity and God, not as crying out for retribution.

During the Easter season many denominations, including the Episcopal Church, read aloud the events of Holy Week ("the Passion of Jesus Christ"). While individuals are assigned parts in the drama (Pontius Pilate, Jesus, Peter, etc.), "Crucify him!" is said by the entire congregation. Everyone was complicit in Christ's death, not just the Jews on the scene. The violent criminal Barabbas was freed, and good, innocent Jesus was executed.

The blood lust of the mob, and the fear that it engendered in Pontius Pilate, had seemed like an anachronism in Sunday School. Of course, individual people still behave emotionally, but society had progressed in matters that counted. The fiction that we grew up with, for example TV's Perry Mason and "To Kill a Mockingbird", promulgated the myth that sweet reason would prevail eventually. Those works turned out to be aspirational and far from reality.

This weekend's trashing of boys from Covington Catholic High School showed how quickly knowledgable, educated adults could form the 21st-century version of a Southern lynch mob. The results weren't as murderous, but not for want of trying. Celebrities and "journalists" called for violence against a particular boy because he was "white, male, Christian, [wore a] MAGA hat" and appeared to smirk in an edited video. His accuser, one Nathan Phillips, checked the good-victim boxes--Native American, Vietnam war vet--and the media elevated him and piled on the boy.

Other, longer videos and accounts revealed that the confrontation was more complicated and involved a third group, the Black Hebrew Israelites, who insulted the Covington tour group with prolonged profanity. Then Nathan Phillips, who was not part of the Black Israelites, walked up to the boys and also tried to provoke them.

The real story turned out to be nearly the opposite of the original narrative. The Covington students were remarkably restrained, and Mr. Phillips repeatedly changed his story. No, the boys aren't Jesus, and Mr. Phillips is not as bad as Barabbas, but the crowd was as mistaken--deliberately or not--as it was 2,000 years ago.

Many of the Catholic boys' vilifiers dismiss Christianity as irrelevant. They would have a stronger argument if human nature was improved from Biblical times, but they are living proof that it isn't.

Strolling the Bay Trail

Redwood Shores homes butt up to the edge of the protected area. Oracle is on the right.

After the rains subsided, we walked the Foster City section of the San Francisco Bay Trail. It was only a two-mile stretch, but given our age and conditioning, it was enough to meet the daily exercise goal on our Apple Watch.

We've been jogging, biking, and walking the Bay Trail for decades. Thanks to environmental restrictions, the marshes look nearly the same as they did 30 years ago.

Someday, I imagine, the hundreds of thousands of people whom we make sit in cars, buses, and trains for hours each day will prevail and we Peninsulans will have to live with more housing being built. We will have to give up our beautiful swamp wetlands and bubbly home prices.

Until that day, however, we will stroll the Bay Trail.

Tough Cookies

Leaf Brands, LLC is trying to revive Hydrox, a chocolate sandwich cookie that pre-dates Oreos (1908 vs 1912). Leaf has complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Mondelez International "started hiding our cookies on shelves to get us discontinued." There are anecdotal accounts of Hydrox packages being moved or hidden.

Big Cookie dominates.

Curiosity piqued, I strolled to the local supermarket to check out the shelves. It was dominated by Oreo products. I asked the person who was stocking the aisles if there were any Hydrox cookies. The name sounded familiar, and she and another clerk looked in the area allotted to smaller brands. No luck.

Mr. Kassoff says he won’t stop making Hydrox cookies, even if he has to sell them exclusively in bulk online. “We aren’t going to give up,” he says.

If I see his product at any store, I'll buy a package. Here's wishing him well.

Hard to Miss

Ants once crawled all over these
nasturtiums. Now they're gone,
without any steps taken by me.

Two months ago the NY Times brought attention to a phenomenon that scientists have been observing for years: vanishing insect populations.

a whole insect world might be quietly going missing, a loss of abundance that could alter the planet in unknowable ways....

a [2017] paper by an obscure German entomological society had brought the problem of insect decline into sharp focus. The German study found that, measured simply by weight, the overall abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had decreased by 75 percent over just 27 years. If you looked at midsummer population peaks, the drop was 82 percent...

the study brought forth exactly the kind of longitudinal data they had been seeking, and it wasn’t specific to just one type of insect. The numbers were stark, indicating a vast impoverishment of an entire insect universe, even in protected areas where insects ought to be under less stress. The speed and scale of the drop were shocking even to entomologists who were already anxious about bees or fireflies or the cleanliness of car windshields.

Santa Cruz Monarch butterfly (Chron photo)

Species extinctions get the headlines, but perhaps more worrisome is defaunation ("the loss of individuals, the loss of abundance, the loss of a place’s absolute animalness"). Insect populations are down more than 75% in places that have been studied, a likely factor in the observed declines in fish, birds, and other animals in the food chain. Some worry that the decline in insects will result in the sudden collapse of eco-systems.

According to the article the primary reason for the "insect apocalypse", unsurprisingly, is man. Herbicides, pesticides, habitat destruction, and climate change have all been posited as causes. While some alarmists are predicting imminent disaster, most responsible scientists acknowledge that we are just at the beginning of understanding the extent and ramifications of the problem.

Meanwhile, we can all mourn the loss of monarch butterflies.