NDI and Tomas Ramos

Marvin Weissberg invited Katherine and me to NDI's annual gala..the featured guest was Trevor Noah...Katherine stayed home with L'eau...Micheal Higgins went instead...

I met Tomas Ramos...a young community advocate in the North Bronx...son of a Dominican mother, whose father was in prison for some years, mother moved 4 children to Pennslyvania to avoid drugs, sent all to college...Tomas graduated from Temple...was born at Columbia Presbyterian.

Read about him here...and his campaign for Congress...in the mode of Occasio-Cortez.

Encouraging..really encouraging

I also sat with another guest ..old friend of Marvin's who I have met before but can't remember her name..who described herself as a trust fund woman...Exxon Mobile stock from Texas...which helped put her daughter through college but she has regrets about Exxon..not enough to sell the stock...

The Golden Sled...The Jess and James saga

The Golden Sled

In the beginning, Tripp, Chris, and Lauren learned the secret of the Golden Sled. Some years later the secret passed to Jess and James who honored it.  It is in the nature of the secret that after it moves to the next generation, those who held it before only remember that they once were the keepers. And they are happy in the memory and urge the next to use the secret wisely.

And Jess and James have agreed to keep the secret of the Golden Sled and to use it for good.

James is the older brother. He is bright and eager and clever and a leader. He possesses, even at his age, a wry sense of humor. He begins to understand that life can be ridiculous. He often responds to a question with the expression "Oh Yeah" and in a tone that belies the obvious meaning.

Jess is the younger sister. She loves James. She observes what James says and does and often emulates him. In fact, she sometimes tries to do what James has done even better. She is courageous..and mischievous. But Jess has a mind of his own. Often she does the opposite of what James does just to show her independence.

Jess and James live in a wonderful house with lots of rooms and especially a big kitchen.

In the morning, they get up earlier than anyone else in the household and meet in the big kitchen and congregate around the radio.
It may seem strange that they listen to the radio rather than listen to CDs or watch the television. But they have a favorite National Public Radio newsreader who they eagerly look forward to hearing. His name is Carl Kasell.

Carl often reads items that interest the Jess and James.

It is from these newscasts that they get assignments that require the powers of the golden sled to be used for good.

They must be alert every day to the possibility that a situation will arise when once again the brothers set fear aside and honor the obligations of the keepers of the secret of the golden sled. This Friday Kailen and Liam turn on the radio and drink their hot chocolate. Nyal is away in Pakistan. The radio crackles: "This is NPR News and I'm Carl Kasell. Fierce fighting continued today in Iraq. The toll in lives remains heavy......."

James' mind drifts. Jess is still hungry.

Carl's voice intrudes on the thoughts of each as he says "... and in local news from Washington, DC, the National Zoo alerted the media today it faces an extraordinary situation. A local golden retriever...named Beau...has inadvertently found his way into the lion's den. Just how adds to the drama. The Director of the National Zoo speculated to our reporter that the following probably happened: Robin Bolton-Smith, a family friend, agreed to look after Beau while his masters were away for the weekend. She took Beau for a walk north along Rock Creek toward Mary Anne Foster's house when the great deluge that recently drenched Washington, DC, flash flooded the creek valley, sweeping Beau away while he was swimming to retrieve a thrown ball.


James sits riveted.

He looks toward Jess and says: "Did you hear that? That's Beau-Beau!"

He turns to face Jess: "Jess I think this is your initiation. I think we have an 'assignment.'"

James decides mentally and says out loud: "Jess, get your jeans and sneakers on and get your bike from the garage." James grabbed a backpack from the hook in the mud hall. He leaves a note under the flower pot on the table. The note says: "Dear Mom and Dad, we are off for a ride down by the creek off the woods road. We'll be back later in the morning. Love, James." (Note: One of the powers of the golden sled is to make time pass very slowly so that no matter how much time an 'assignment' requires it appears to normal people to be only a couple of hours.)

James always rides 'point' when heading out on an 'assignment.' Jess is newly assigned 'rear.' Since Nyal is away Liam must, under the new arrangements to accommodate Liam, now ride 'cover'...Nyal's normal job.

He checks both front and rear to assure himself all is under control. The responsibility of the 'point' is to foresee any things that might delay or expose the two brothers to delay or exposure as keepers of the secret of the Golden Sled.

The responsibility of the 'rear' is to be alert to anyone who might be overly curious or even intentionally following the brothers. No one must be allowed to learn the secret of the Golden Sled except when the brothers pass it on to the next acolytes.

The boys are on the road now. They head out of the driveway out onto Willow Road. They come quickly to the village and turn onto Main street.

Kailen slows to allow Liam to close beside him and says: "see anyone?"

Liam shakes his head. "no."

They turn on Oak Road and left again on Raeford Road.

Kailen turns and over his shoulder in a controlled shout says: "Hey Liam..come on up for a second."

Liam stands on the pedals and quickly accelerates up beside Kailen. Keeping his eyes on the next upcoming turn at Elroy Lane Kailen says: "Watch this kid on the Marin mountain bike. I have seen him before when we were heading out."

Without incident, they make the Rocky Road near the turn-off. At an exact point in the featureless bramble, Kailen pulls off quickly and hops off his bike to usher Liam into the woods. He grabs a fallen branch and brushes away the tire tracks so that no one would be able to detect where the bikes left the road. They reach rapidly the rocky outcropping that hides the entrance to an outer cave. Kailen reaches the leaning rock and easily shoves it aside, knowing exactly where the fulcrum point is. Kailen gestures Liam into the revealed entrance. Then he brushes the ground and rolls back the rock.

The boys are somewhat breathless and suddenly quiet in the semi-darkness of a cavern. A thin light slants down from a small slit in the ceiling stripped by the small roots that make the opening above invisible to even the concentrated scrutiny of a determined searcher. Kailen advances, in the dim light, across the cave toward another rock leaning against a cave wall. He touches a certain point; it pivots under the slight force exerted by Kailen to reveal a narrow tunnel at the end of which a light glows brightly.

He signals Liam to enter and cautions him: "Liam keep your eyes on the light or you will get claustrophobia. Don't slow down or stop but move steadily. You'll be alright. I will be directly behind you."

Liam nods his assent, and bending down, falls to his knees and begins to crawl along the dusty floor. Kailen follows and keeps his focus on the end after he rolled the cover rock carefully back, brushed again the dirt in front, placed the brush inside the tunnel for the next time, and began to crawl resolutely and bravely toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

Liam arrives at the end finally with great relief,looks quickly behind him to check that Kailen is just behind him, and shielding his eyes against the bright light that floods down from the top of the stairs that rise steeply from the rocky floor of the large cave, gasps at the unexpected sight of the golden shoes that lay in splendor on the floor at the bottom of the first step. Kailen stands behind Liam and smiles with the remembrance of the first sight he had of the big cave. Kailen closes quickly the entrance to the tunnel. (Nyal and Kailen had decided, soon after the secret of the Golden Sled was revealed to them, that they should take the precaution of closing the exit from the tunnel in the unlikely event that someone would have breached all the defenses established to prevent discovery of the cave complex.)

The two boys sit and change into their golden shoes. Liam's shoes are there together with Nyal's and Kailen's and fit and he is pleased to be included as a bona fide keeper of the secret of the Golden Sled. Kailen knows that the staircase is endless unless it is climbed wearing golden shoes. Kailen attempted to climb the stairs once on a dare from Nyal but he was never able to progress beyond the eleventh step. He sheepishly had to retreat, exhausted, to pay up.

The two boys now cinch the laces of their golden shoes and race rapidly up the stairs. Liam is amazed at the lightness of his steps and the endless flow of steps as his speed increases. Before he can catch a breath, the two land softly on snow-covered rocks on the top of a mountain. Liam is dazzled.

Kailen moves smoothly into action. He unzips the tarpaulin that covers the Golden Sled; it slides down and Liam is delighted at the sight of what he had only been told about from his brothers.

The sled sits poised as if about to fly and sparkles with splendor in the sun. Kailen checks a list.


The sky-hook is a clever device that includes a balloon which inflates with compressed carbon dioxide, a sky hook that locates an energy filed and fixes itself solidly into its atomic structure, a stabilizer powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that enables the Golden Sled to hover noiselessly and endlessly over a point on the ground accurate to an inch or less, an unlimited-length Kevlar cable able to lift infinite weight, and an intelligent end tool that configures itself to hundreds of forms depending on the requirement at the moment of use. It might be an emergency medical bed, a power shovel, or an emergency rescue extraction tool. This tool is known as the 'Liberator.'

Liam nods to Kailen that the kit is stowed and Kailen then shouts: "Saddle up, we're off."

Liam straps himself in. He sits the middle seat responsible for operating the stabilizers that control the attitude of the golden sled.. an awesome responsibility for a neophyte golden sledder. Kailen is the navigator, operating the computer installed in a small box near the runners, and normally sits the rear seat. And he is also, in the absence of Nyal, the pilot and he now sits the pilot's seat, steers the sled and operates the visual phone that links the sled to the vast worldwide store of information that often assists the brothers to perform an 'assignment.'

The sled begins to move. It sits upon a carpet from Afghanistan and appears to float. But it rides upon runners made from steel from Damascus, Syria, folded eleven times upon itself to ensure hardness capable of withstanding the most intense pressure. The runners morph into whatever requirements the 'assignment' demands. The steel contains buckyballs... unusual arrangements of carbon atoms that form super strong material. The 'steel' is configurable when magnetic fields are applied to the atomic structure.

The sled increases its speed. Liam is frightened as the trees pass by so rapidly that he becomes dizzy. Kailen increases his hold on the handle as the speed presses him into his seat. He takes a deep breath, tenses his stomach muscles, receives the signal from the sled's computer that elevation speed is achieved and speaks quickly into the sled's intercom: "OK buddy..lift off."

Kailen's first thought after liftoff is of Beau-Beau. He knows that he's scared and miserable and that he may attempt to escape and be attacked by the wild animals in the zoo who have been freed from their cages and en-fenced areas. He quickly queries the guidance computer of the golden sled and directs it to locate the National Zoo and to proceed immediately to the location and to hover.

Kailen turns to Liam and he says:' Liam we will need to move very fast when we arrive. Are you ready to help?

Liam replies instantly: "I'm ready."

Kailen thinks: I think that as soon as we arrive and locate the exact place where Beau is hiding that we should use the Sky Hook to hover and the Liberator to retrieve Beau-Beau. If everything goes well, it should be an easy rescue.

The guidance computer beeped that the destination point at been reached. Kailen, Liam and the Golden Sled were over the National Zoo. Kailen looked over the edge of the sled and below was Rock Creek...still at flood crest...its banks overrun by the deluge of water still flowing down the stream caused by the torrential rains from the passage of Hurricane Ricki.

And faintly, then louder, came the wail of Beau..agonizing because that meant he was still frightened...wonderful in another sense because it meant that he was alive and in the place where he could be rescued. "Liam" called Kailen...look carefully... can you locate Beau?

Liam replied: "Kailen I see him...He's in a crack in the rocks near the lion's refuge. He's barking. A huge lion is standing over the crack growling fiercely."

Kailen quickly turned to the controls of the Sky Hook and deployed the great apparatus. Up...up it went until a gage indicated that a magnetic field was present. Kailen hit the 'set' button on the control panel and the hook planted itself firmly in the invisible energy field always present in the clear sky unknown to most...but identified readily by the Skyhook's sensors. Then he turned to the Liberator and lowered it carefully to just above the lion crouched over Beau's sanctuary. The lion did not notice the end of the Liberator configuring itself into a giant loudspeaker.

Kailen's idea was to send a loud sound through the loudspeaker to frighten the lion into retreating, giving him time to figure out a way to rescue Beau. As the end of the Liberator hovered above the lion, Kailen transmitted the one sound that a lion fears: the bull elephant.

The lion jumped away from his perch looking rapidly around him trying desperately to locate the sound. Kailen used the controls of the liberator to keep the now configured loudspeaker behind the lion so he could not locate it and the sound continued to roll forth the trumpeting roar of the elephant.

The lion quickly turned and ran rapidly away back to the shelter of his den. Kailen's strategy had worked. The lion was now away from Beau and Kailen could set to work to rescue him from the crack in the rocks. Just as Kailen sent the signal to the Liberator end to configure itself into giant claws that would reach through the cracks in the rocks and slowly close around Beau, the Golden Sled lurched and rose and fell rapidly in a wildly gyrating motion.

Liam yelled to Kailen: "Grab the controls..this thing is going to crash if this motion continues. I'm frightened. Can we get closer to the ground?

Kailen quickly regained control of the Golden Sled, quieting its motion. Liam was relieved but now Kailen observed that the Liberator's arm was not operating properly. Beau started up at the Golden Sled...recognizing both Kailen and Liam...barking loudly and happily... obviously glad to see them.

But no matter what Kailen attempted the Liberator would not respond. Kailen carefully let his eyes travel the length of the Kevlar cable that connected the golden sled and the Liberator end and then he noticed the large piece of wood that somehow had become stuck in the claw that the end has become. He could not shake the piece of wood lose no matter what maneuver he attempted.

He looked at Liam: "Liam, your initiation is going to come sooner than you might want. I need you to pilot the Golden Sled while I descend the cable and free the Liberator claw."

Lian gulped and thinking and said to himself: "I don't have the slightest idea how to do this."

Kailen sensing his concern said: "Liam you can do it. Just read the directions on the control screen. ...the computer will give you options and you choose the one that I call up to you. You yell the choices to me and I will choose one and you click the button. We can do this together."

Liam said to Kailen: "Let's do it. I can fly the sled. I promise."

Kailen decided that Liam could just do it and before either had time to worry more, he went over the side of the golden sled and using rock climber's jumars quickly 'walked' down the Kevlar cable to the end. There he was suspended over the lion's compound, just above Beau barking loudly, when the Sled lurched again. Kailen banged into the rocks almost losing his handhold on the cable. From the corner of his eye he saw the lion appear at the mouth of his Den. He was attracted by the motion and the color of Kailen's red jacket.

Kailen yelled to Liam. "Liam can you stabilize the Sled?" Liam called" "Yes, the screen is asking me to choose between 'adding uplift or lowering down lift." What should I do?"

Kailen called: "Lower down lift...quickly Liam. I'm in trouble here... the lion is slowly creeping toward me."

Liam selected the correct command and the sled slowly stabilized and lifted slightly and Kailen rose at the end of the cable until he was out of reach of the lion who had now crept stalkingly toward the rocks near Beau. The lion has forgotten the sound of the bull elephant and not seeing one, his fearlessness returned.

Kailen thought rapidly. How can I scare the lion away and get Beau?

"Meat" he said to himself mentally. He quickly inputted a control sequence into the Liberators computer to configure a refrigerator. Before his eyes, a sleek stainless steel refrigerator appeared at the end of the cable to replace the claws. Kailen quickly opened the freezer door, spotted a package labeled steak and tore its package open and tossed the meat a considerable distance away from Beau's hiding spot. The lion caught the scent immediately and raced to the meat and began to eat. Kailen watched carefully because, in addition to asking the computer to configure a refrigerator with meat, he has asked that the meat contain a sleeping drug.

This tactic now appeared to work because the Lion began to waver and it slowly collapsed and fell fast asleep.

"Great" Kailen thought. "It worked."

Liam watched from above glancing at the control screen often checking to see if the computer was presenting to him control options. He felt very much in control. He was confident that he could now participate as a true member of the small group of brothers to whom had been entrusted the secret of the Golden Sled.

But the mission was not complete. Beau had to be retrieved from the crack in the rocks. Kailen manipulated the controls of the Liberator to configure a claw. But the configurator seemed to be malfunctioning. The refrigerator disappeared but nothing took its place. The cable just ended in a blank. There was nothing at the end ...the cable just stopped in mid-air almost as if there were something there but invisible to Kailen and to Liam.

Kailen thought quickly.

He said to himself: "What am I forgetting? Is there something that I am not doing?" and then he remembered. The Liberator was programmed to anticipate. And it had been programmed to make itself invisible when it became a claw so as not to alarm the prey. The sight of a giant claw descending open would frighten even the tamest animal or accustomed human. Cleverly the subject to be rescued would not see anything until the claw was already around them. Then the claw became visible to Kailen. He could see the claw in outline. The complete capacity of the Liberator then jumped back into his mind. Of course, the Liberator would make itself visible to me because I need to tell it where to move and when to close. Liam watched from above eager to help Kailen and yet watchful of his own responsibilities to pilot the Golden Sled.

Kailen called to Beau: "Beau Beau you're a good dog...a brave dog...We're coming to get you. Good dog...brave dog. He instructed the Liberator to move the claw so that it wound its way through the narrow passage that had been too small for the Lion to get through...otherwise Beau would have been eaten...and suspended over Beau. Kailen issued the instruction and the claw slowly closed over Beau's body. Then Kailen realized his mistake. How was the claw to bring Beau back through the narrow passage...it and Beau were bigger than the opening?

Instantly acting, Kailen caused the claw to open just before it was to close on Beau. Kailen retracted the claw and re-directed it instead to close on the large boulder forming the narrow entrance. He caused the claw to toss the heavy rock away into the creek. It appeared to be without effort. He then maneuvered the claw back into the opening now wide enough to retract Beau.

He checked quickly that the lion was still asleep.

He gulped to see that the lion was rousing from sleep and turning toward Beau. His eye caught the commotion of the rescue and the lion began to lope slowly back toward Beau and then increase its speed to a run.

Kailen called to Liam: "Liam be ready to lift when I signal."

Liam answered: "Kailen, I'm ready. I've got the command queued."

Kailen closed the claw quickly over Beau and instructed the claw to retract. Beau jumped when the invisible restraint lifted him. He whined. He barked loudly. The lion jumped at Beau... he couldn't see the claw either. Kailen entered the command to cause the claw to quickly brush the lion as it rose in midair to attack Beau. The lion fell into the raging creek. Kailen and Liam watched the lion swimming frantically to get to the other side. He was unhurt but unable to menace Beau any longer.

The cable with the claw in which Beau lay and on which Kailen stood signaling to Liam slowly shorten until Kailen and Beau arrived at the sled...Kailen fell over the side and quickly commanded the claw to open to release Beau. Beau jumped up and down and licked Liam and Kailen. He was so happy to be free and to be back with his friends.

Kailen and Liam looked at each other and smiled. They were happy to have been empowered by the secret of the Golden Sled to made another rescue and especially because the rescued was Beau...their very good and loyal friend.

Belvedere Island in Marin County, Ca

Belvedere in the 1890s

History of Belvedere

The area of Tiburon was originally populated by the Coast Miwok indigenous people. There is evidence that they would have visited the island.

In 1834, the first Mexican land grant in Marin gave the island to John Reed. It was called El Potrero de la Punta del Tiburon (The Paddock of Tiburon Point) during the time.^{[citation needed]}

Israel Kashow, an American from Ohio who came to California as a Forty-Niner, was one of the first people to establish a permanent habitation on the island. He lived on the island and ran a fishery.^[1] He was later evicted from the island by a court order filed by heirs to John Reed's estate. During this time the island was known as Kashow's Island.

In 1890, the Belvedere Land Co. acquired the island and renamed it to Belvedere Island and developed the island into a summer retreat for the wealthy.

In 1896, Belvedere incorporated as a city (composing the island, nearby Corinthian Island, and part of the Tiburon Peninsula) and a post office was established the following year.

Throughout this time, the marshes that separated the island from Tiburon Point had become paved over by roads for direct access to the island, with the first state highway being built in 1930. It is now connected by two causeways (Beach Road and San Rafael Avenue) and connected to the mainland via landfill, therefore not being technically an island anymore. The two narrow strips of land for the causeways now form the artificial Belvedere Lagoon.

Belvedere is currently primarily residences and is home to the eighth highest-income community in the United States.^[5]

Tripp's 60th Birthday Announcement

Here

Bahama Rescue

Frank Leister and I set out from Lake Worth, Florida to sail to Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco in the Bahamas. 

Frank and I were friends from IBM days in Germany. His wife Re, a German, Katherine, and I had great adventures while living Am Taunus, in Falkenstein,  outside of Frankfurt Germany. We skied, road motorbikes in England, Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.

After we all moved back to the US, Frank bought a Catalina 32 and we decided that he and I would sail the boat to Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas and Kath and Rae would fly and join us for a 2-week vacation in a house we rented on the water.

The trip across the Florida Straits to the Bahama Banks is only about 90 miles but when sailing, the practice among most is to gather in Lake Worth and flotilla to the Bahamas in case some boat gets in trouble. Boats leave about midnight so that the Bahama Banks are reached before dark the next night.

But the Florida Straits are known to be very difficult under the right wind conditions. The Gulf Stream flows through the straits at about 5 knots and under a Northeast wind against that current, a 6-foot short chop is raised that can pound a sailboat hull unmercifully.

After coming down the Inland Waterway, we anchored in Lake Worth, had dinner ashore, and about midnight got on channel 16 and asked for any boats making the passage to the Bahamas tonight. About 12 boats responded, and we made a line...we were in the lead, and started out the channel, marked by buoys and lights from Lake Worth through an inlet to the ocean.

The wind was right off our port bow...the channel is a straight line out to deep water so we motored... no tacking under sail, the chop was big and we pounded...As we glanced back to check on the line, we noticed that several boats had turned around...within 10 minutes all the boats had turned around... so we did too.

The next night the same thing happened...the third night the same thing, even though we thought that the wind had shifted...but, by then, we were tired of Lake Worth so we said the hell with it and kept going, although we were the only boat.

It was pitch black and there were no friendly flotilla boat lights to keep us company. We rigged jack lines and put on harnesses and life jackets and clipped in. I steered because, if not, I get seasick. The chop came at us just over the port bow first, then the wind shifted to the Southeast off our starboard bow, but the waves were high enough that on occasion we would almost broach, so we headed into the waves, off course slightly, now to the Southeast instead of the rhumbline due east...and while we pounded the boat made some way under power. About dawn, we were able to set sail, and the pounding eased a little because we sailed off the wind a little....a bit more east-south-east. Frank had to manage the jib halyard ...we changed to a smaller storm jib...because if I went even as forward as the mast, I would get sick.

We maintained a course using handheld GPS receivers and the compass...but our aim was to reduce the pounding.

A rogue wave hit us right after noon and green water came over the starboard side and soaked both GPS devices. We had Loran on board, but neither of us knew how to use it...we were somewhere between Florida and Grand Bahama... but where exactly we had no real idea, especially since we had been heading off course from the beginning to ease all the pounding.

So we decided to seek help.

I ventured down into the cabin after all night at the helm, got on channel 16 and said the magic word...Mayday...Mayday...this is sailing vessel Puff...yes that was its name...Puff...Mayday... Mayday we have lost all electronic positional equipment ...This is sailing vessel Puff.

Almost immediately, a voice, laconic, speaking slowly and emphasizing each word, came on channel 16 and said:

"Sailing vessel Puff, this is Bahama Rescue, who is in command of your craft..over...

This is sailing vessel Puff, my name is Jim Ingram..over...

This is Bahama Rescue, sailing vessel Puff, "Captain" Ingram, please tune to channel 20 and callback...confirm....over...(It is the maritime practice to identify the person on a vessel talking as the 'captain', although I did not feel like a captain at that moment...nor did I believe Bahama Rescue thought I was 'in charge' either.) 

This is Captain Ingram, sailing vessel Puff, confirm to tune to channel 20...out

This is Captain Ingram, sailing vessel Puff, on channel 20...over...(it is the practice to move off the public channel 16 to another channel so as not to monopolize the public channel 16. Going to another channel does not provide privacy, however, as anyone can tune to any channel and listen in.)

Sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, this is Bahama Rescue, we understand that you have NO positional equipment ...confirm...over" 

This is Captain Ingram, sailing vessel Puff, affirmative, we have lost two GPS devices due to water damage. We have Loran but do not feel competent to operate it...over

Sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, you have lost two GPS devices and do not know how to operate your Loran... confirm..over..

Bahama Rescue, this is sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram speaking, confirm we have lost 2 GPS devices and do not know how to operate the Loran. We hope that you can assist us in determining if there is a boat in the vicinity with directional equipment...over

Sailing vessel Puff (by this time the voice has taken on a slightly incredulous tone), Captain Ingram (the voice emphasized the word 'Captain' in a way that led me to believe he really did not think I deserved that title.)...we would be happy to assist you as soon as we determine where you are likely to be...

Where do you 'think' you were when you last checked your GPS device before it was damaged by water...over

Bahama Rescue, this is sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, we believe we were 90 miles east of Lake Worth on heading 110 degrees...(The 'rhumb line' from Lake Worth to Bahama Banks is about 90 degrees or due East.)

(We actually were not absolutely sure since it had been an hour or so since we last checked the GPSes before they were doused, but we decided that we had appeared as idiots too long so we guessed and hoped...and the 110-degree azimuth would give Bahama Rescue a position.)

Sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, this is Bahama Rescue...are you under sail?.. over

Bahama Rescue, this is sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram. Yes, we are under sail...

Sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, please take in your sails, proceed under power on course 48 degrees, sail for 40 minutes, and contact us again on channel 20...confirm..over.

Bahama Rescue, this is sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, we are to take in sail, proceed under power on a course of 48 degrees for 40 minutes, and call again on channel 20...over

Sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, this is Bahama Rescue...affirmative, out.

We proceeded for 40 minutes; by this time, the wind had shifted more south, and the chop had subsided significantly, and off our starboard bow appeared a small island that we both recognized from our charts as the entrance to the Bahama Banks that we were steering toward when we lost GPS.

Bahama Rescue did not perform magic...48 degrees was a reasonable course given our direction and the current and the wind.

Bahama Rescue, this is sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, we have proceeded course 48 degrees for 40 minutes...over

Sailing Vessel Puff, Captain Ingram what do you see off your starboard bow?...over..

Bahama Rescue, this is sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, we see an island which we believe is the marker for entrance onto Bahama Banks...over

Sailing vessel Puff, Captain Ingram, this is Bahama Rescue, we believe you are correct.

We suggest that you stay in the area until you sight another vessel approaching, make contact on channel 16, and ask for assistance. And, if you remove the covers GPS devices and carefully dry out the circuits with a cloth, there is a good possibility that the GPS units will begin to work...We hope that you enjoy the remainder of your voyage...and you might consider taking a few moments to familiarize yourself with the features of your Loran directional equipment.

Bahama Rescue... out.

We didn't need to wait...the GPS devices ...without removing the covers.. had dried out and we continued the voyage, seasoned... but chagrinned...sailors now, to Marsh Harbour without further incident...hoping to never again encounter the implicit derision of 'Bahama Rescue'.  And we did read the Loran manual.

Marvin Davis Limerick

To ole Marv who had a tough life

We got to know each other in Sunset Park

a mutual love of sports probably the spark

but as friends the main reason

is that we defined as treason

any activity that was not fun and a lark

we built tunnels and forts and fashioned rubber guns 

fought fierce battles against the Japs and the Huns

we kicked tin cans down the long dusty road

searched for Camel packs with a certain code

drank RC cola, ate peanuts & moon pies by the tons

played football on a vacant lot on Jefferson Street

hitched to Wrightsville Beach to escape the heat

body surfed waves off long Lumina Pier

swam out to the shrimp boats with no fear

lived an innocent carefree life that was hard to beat

we shot out the tire of a guy who dated West's girl

visited Bill Orr's men's fancy shop all in a whirl 

feigned to repair a car on Front Street

and to abuse a friend inept on his feet

foretelling the lives that were just about to unfurl

Marvin's favorite thing was a good old tale 

Irty Glover or Mitch Celibi just out of a jail

He had tens if not more

And after if not before

He would always laugh the loudest never fail

Communitarianism...how I would define it..

I'll try to write this web log entry emulating the style of the Economist newspaper...its writers (or editors) construct...  typically... an article that poses a question...then spends the first part of the article discussing all the reasons why it's possible to answer the posed question oppositely to the response warranted by the facts presented...and then takes the remainder of the article to patiently persuade the reader to come around. 

 So!!! The modern version of communitarianism arose, I think, and in my mind, as an alternative to the cult of individuality and personal freedom rampant among conservatives. ...that is an ideology with little emphasis ...maybe paying lip service ...'oh sure we have to have an army'.. ...on responsibly to the common. 

I maintain that individual freedom is only desirable in the context of the presence of other human beings. It is not a relevant subject, for example, if there is only one individual on earth. 

So to the eternal question of whether the individual exists first and then the community, I think the answer is obvious...the individual technically...but it' an irrelevant question... except in the context of a community of people....don't you agree?...

It's not an issue independent of context....so in the important and salient sense, community precedes the individual...that is an individual exists in concept only when there is more than one...and more than one means there is a 'community' and by the existence of more than one, there is a necessity to begin to define the rights and responsibilities of the individual versus the rights of the community. 

Succinctly, then, communitarianism is, again to me, the belief that individual freedom (i.e., the condition where minimum restraint is imposed by individuals or groups on any other) must be balanced by individual responsibility. 

And until that goal is accomplished (which, of course, it never will be...at least not in my lifetime because its Utopian or non achievable) the 'community' or 'civil society'.... within the confines of which individualism defines itself by 'contrast' .... must assume the responsibilities not otherwise accepted by individuals who shirk or are unable to fulfill ...that is the community must assume it if there is to be a just society. 

{Maybe an example is useful here: since individual health is mostly beyond individual control...that is health is less a matter of choice and more a function of genes inherited from parents,  lifestyle often influenced greatly, if not outright controlled (as, for example, children by parents) by others, a common physical environment, and eventually age which, at least so far, is inevitable by nature.}

So one's health while not entirely out of the individual's control...but I maintain is mostly so... and since individuals.... and the communities they form... exploit common resources and wealth from a common source...the earth...social justice demands a proportionate contribution from each toward the maintenance of the health of all. 

I like John Rawls on this subject...he developed a theory of justice that boils down to 'fairness as justice.'

If an individual shirks her responsibility or is unable to fulfill it, then the community is obligated to cover the shortfall. The concept of community or civil society emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century in part to describe private business activity. From Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith to Bernard Mandeville and David Hume, the philosophers who developed this idea spoke of the unintended good to society that results from selfish economic activity. 

In Mandeville's famous phrase, "private vice is public virtue." This concept that an unintended consequence of the sum total of all acts of individuals responding to their own desires is collective good is a principal argument against communitarianism.. that communitarianism is, simply, superfluous. 

I'm in complete agreement with the social objective that each individual must be free to exercise as much autonomy as is compatible... in the real-world context that no individual is an island...and moreover...no individual life is really worth living except within the community of other individuals collectively....with the counterbalancing responsibility to the community that ensues from a concept of justice as fairness.

Disintermediation and blockchain...a little wonky

China Club Discussion February 7, 2018

Digital intermediation

As a conceptual ‘lens’ through which to foresee fundamental changes…or is the future pretty random?

This is to be, hopefully, a ‘beyond Trump’ discussion about the future in the conviction that our country is resilient enough to survive the horror of his presidency...not to digress into the political, of course.

So for our purposes tonight, I want to mean by ‘digital intermediation’: the supplanting of the role of the middleman in economic and social transactions by some form of new digital entity.

‘Middlemen’ were the necessary economic innovation to overcome limitations to interactions created by physical distances, the span of control between business and customer and citizen and government, and perhaps a general philosophical bias toward decentralization. Examples of middlemen are: The local drug store is a traditional middleman between you and the drug manufacturer. Online Internet-based websites offer mail order drugs and disintermediate the local drug store and the local pharmacist.

These ‘necessary’ intermediate entities, while a solution at the time, have often become the sources of additional cost and inertia...they naturally resist change and slow adaptation to disruptive technologies… while, at the same time, often offering convenience and diversity.

But the overwhelming cost and convenience advantages of new digital technology has powered a momentum that often overcomes the inertia of intermediates...hence the advent of ‘disintermediation’ which, in the opinion of most writers that I read, is a positive, technological, innovation, not a ‘luddite’ curse.

But ‘cutting out the middleman’ by automated digital processes often results in uniformity and commoditization. Counterintuitively, digital disintermediation often increases the personalization of a service or product, for example, the website digital process is able to check a new prescription easily against all of a customer's prescriptions to determine if one interferes with another.

I propose this ‘lens’ of dis- and re-intermediation’ as an analytic tool, but I do not pretend that it is some ‘silver bullet’ or ‘fundamental principle’ that explains all and solves all… rather it's a concept that might enable interpretation of the technological trends that profoundly influences the future…

and the idea of intermediation as a tool is not original...the subject is written about widely.

Plus to make such a claim would ignore the wisdom of the old aphorism: “If the only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.”...attributed to Abraham Maslow and sometimes to Mark Twain who often is assigned credit for pithy sayings that he never made.

A classic...and current... example of the ‘removal of the middleman’ or ‘disintermediation’ is Tesla which sells its cars via the internet directly to customers negating any requirement for local sales showrooms. But local dealers also service cars and resell used ones...so Tesla will offer regional service centers supplemented by mobile service vans. Resale will be via the Internet...an example of substitution of intermediaries.

Netflix now produces movies and streams them directly bypassing movie theaters.

Geico and Progressive have made the life of local insurance salesman miserable and often obsolete.

An example of substitution of one intermediary for another is Amazon which offers, famously, its digital commerce Internet-based platform as an alternative to local bookstores and, of course, similarly, for many...maybe most... other products…

ATM’s disintermediated bank branches.

Quicken Loans has disintermediated local mortgage brokers.

Amtrak disintermediates its own ticket counters in train stations through its website.

MOOCs ...massive online courses...... disintermediate campus college courses. However, colleges face a supply and demand problem.

FundRise…...a local DC digital web-based platform, created by a son of Herb Miller, who developed Georgetown Park, facilitates small investments in residential real estate...thus disintermediating REITs.

The ‘Cloud’ is the disintermediation of in-house computer capability...Ross Perot started this trend of computing as a 'service' as early as the 1970s.

Even book publishing has been democratized by disintermediating self-publishing services such as are offered by Amazon.

I’m sure you can think of many more examples. It's hard to think of a collective activity that has not been impacted by ‘digital disintermediation.’

Middlemen who have not been disintermediated might be restaurants...although even restaurants are under attack by disintermediating competitors like Blue Apron, and hyper-locally by, for example in Washington, Via Umbria or Stachowski's or any PIzza deliverer.

And writers, athletes, lawyers, scientists, actors,...although animated films seem to me to be a threat..., stuntmen, physicians, ministers, rabbis, priests, and emans...TV evangelists are maybe an exception, and, of course, many people don’t want access to a higher being in any form …

Although many doctors and lawyers are at risk to AI which already reads x-ray images more reliably than a radiologist and certain surgical procedures performed more accurately than surgeons…

and Members of Congress and State Legislatures are intermediaries... perhaps desirable ones... to calm passions and to bring practicality to bear...perhaps not...although State level referenda are becoming a principal means of expressing popular will, prevalent especially in California.

Direct Internet-based voting would be the ultimate political disintermediation.

To create a context for our discussion maybe a paraphrase and shortening of the famous opening sentence of Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens might work: “today..this year...2018.. is the best of times and the worst of times….”

The best of times:

“Every day, the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty (less than about $2 a day) goes down by 217,000, according to calculations by Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs a website called Our World in Data. Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity. And 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water…...” Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times

Homo Deus..a Brief History of Tomorrow Yuval Noah Harari

“If I could give each of you a graduation present, it would be this—the most inspiring book I've ever read." —Bill Gates (May, 2017) “Steven Pinker's point is that over the last thousand years, violence has gone down and people have gotten nicer. He sketches out possible causes for this but without ever going as far as saying violence has been conquered or that this or that institution will guarantee peace. Quite the contrary. Violence might return, and it would be foolish to be blind to that possibility. Nevertheless, it would be equally foolish to deny that things really are much better today than they were 100 years ago.“ The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker

So  the question must be asked: Is intermediation a factor in these ‘best of times?’

Quickly, the answer might be yes, while not digital so much but in general: Increased food production may be attributed to the disintermediation of small farmers and the improvement in world health to the disintermediation that resulted from formation of large agents such as drug companies (Pfizer), University Laboratories (Johns Hopkins), and centralized government support (NIH) and health care ‘insurance’ organizations such as Social Security.

And the worst of times...

Poverty... extreme poverty persists......in a capitalist economy ...is there really any alternative economic system today even contemplated..so don’t we have to deal with capitalism?

A potential advance toward a solution to extreme poverty in a capitalist system is the empowerment... by technology... of every human being in the world as an economic entity and the identification and credible recordation of each human being’s assets as well as liabilities….

Such a scheme is possible using BlockChain technology that disintermediates bureaucracies at all levels and smart cell phones as mobile depositories of identity as well as communication.

Read Hernando De Soto on ‘Dead Capital.’

Inequality of income and wealth...maybe the creation of a ‘birthright’...proportional ownership of the world’s net worth by each individual human being...

maybe something like a small value added tax on an economic activity such as financial transactions that funds ‘birthrights’ in the form of baby bonds that can be accessed at age 18 and used for a limited number of economic activities...to pay for education...a business start-up...a home…’Baby Bonds’ would disintermediate traditional social support programs…

(Baby Bonds are the name given to small denomination bonds that are exchange-traded and often have attractive yields..for example...at 5% yield a baby bond for each child born in the US would require the investment of ~$19K to create a fund of $50K at the end of 18 years.

About 4M babies are born each year in the US…$84B would be required to fund a baby bond for each child born in America that invested at 5% would be valued at $50K for each child in 18 years…$84B is about 2% of the $4T federal budget.

~130 Million babies are born in the world…$2.6T would be required each year to fund 130 Million baby bonds at ~$20K each year. The world’s wealth..that is its net worth... is estimated at $281 Trillion. A value-added tax of 2.6% on the world’s GDP of roughly $100T collected easily by taxing money transfers would fund a baby bond for all children born in the world each year.

Perhaps ‘birthrights’ are utopian...requiring political will never before exerted..but less utopian, maybe, when actual numbers are considered and means of funding identified..then the idea becomes at least ‘contemplate-able.’

Various universal basic income schemes are being tested around the world and it is technology and in particular, disintermediation that makes such schemes practically feasible, if not, in fact, politically adoptable. Practical, feasible implementation of a scheme is, I would argue, a ‘necessary’, if not sufficient, prerequisite to change...hence digital, technological, disintermediation plays a ‘huge’ ‘enabling’ role.

Global warming...the only solution may be a disintermediated global agreement between entities other than or in addition to national governments... when the US refuses to participate. Global warming, a transnational threat, is a classic example of a  free ‘market failure,’

Food availability.. Inadequate food availability has always been mostly a matter of distribution, not availability, but the creation of economic identifies for every person embodied in each individual’s smart cell phone can cause markets to come into being that reduces the distribution problem..

Healthcare….remote sensing and remote diagnosis and remote treatment plans implemented on smart cell phones disintermediates the lack of critical intermediary effects such as government health care support, physicians, and hospitals. Economic identities for individuals enable markets to be created to distribute drugs at affordable prices.

Infrastructure...public-private partnerships..as Trump via Cohen wants to do have some merit. Such a scheme leverages cheap federal money with private incentive schemes ... disintermediates the federal/state bureaucracies but more importantly the Congress...digital mediation enables taxing the revenue or capturing part of the revenue for the public so as to not enrich private companies, but gain the efficiency of private construction and profit incentives to manage well...best when there is a revenue stream earned from infrastructures like toll roads, air and sea ports and intercity train...water and sewer systems ..even schools.

Factory animal farming...The substitution of alternatives to animals as sources of food such as synthetic biology may triumph when compassion for animals has failed. Technology will create synthetic biology's that can be created from readily available local materials. This synthetic food will disintermediate the current system that relies upon ‘factory’ efficiencies to enable cheap food from animals.

Incarceration...the most pernicious of policies...recent data in states indicates crime rates decoupled from incarceration rates...phone apps would enable parolees to be monitored... disintermediating prisons...happy days

Guns...universal registration is easily done technologically..maybe universal gun management education is a more realistic achievable objective..

Syria/Yemen...both of these conflicts have... and will most likely to a greater extent.. become proxy wars...mediated by drones, cyberwar tactics, disinformation...all disintermediating ‘troops-on-the-ground’.

Cyber...all the intermediate computer-based systems that manage activities are vulnerable to criminals, accident, negligence, and state action

AI….the ultimate technology that has the potential to disintermediate humans

Nuclear War...remediation may be in order here..some mechanism between Trump and the trigger.

Gambling…NBA proposing a new federal law permitting gambling which will quickly migrate to the Internet disintermediating bookies etc, generating huge revenues, and enabling easy taxation..a tempting opportunity.

Drugs…If marijuana legalization extends rapidly to more states, interstate marketing of cannabis-based products will occur...already marijuana is packaged in so many forms and other drugs will soon follow. Already ‘Canadian’ pharmacies are disintermediating US controls. But Internet-based marketing is also a technological basis for regulating and taxing the sale of drugs.

National referenda...the ultimate disintermediation...Here’s a discussion. Internet voting which has many advantages is impossible, however, without a means of unequivocally establishing identity. Read this discussion of how a free-to-use universal identity protocol could be created along with existing public protocols.

So I would argue that intermediation..dis and re... may be such a pervasive trend fueled by technology that it can serve as a lens through which we can imagine the future and predict how we, as a species, might confront the ‘worst of times’ as, at the same time, we preserve the benefits of ‘technological progress’ that make 2018 the ‘best of times.’

Some salient realities to consider:

Many private corporations and even individuals have resources greater than many countries…read Roger Cohen on the disintermediation of nation-states by private companies.

The IOS economy.. which is entrepreneurial independent developers of apps for the iPhone... earned $25B last year greater revenue than McDonald's.

Blackrock manages 5.7 Trillion dollars of assets or 2% of the world’s assets...Besos’ fortune has been over $100 Billion...Entities other than governmental are major ‘factors.’

Oxfam says 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% saw no increase at all.

The net worth of the world is estimated to be $281 trillion...the population of the world is 7.8 Billion...the NW/person is $36K…..

in the US its $94 Trillion of net worth or $290K/person man, women, and child. These numbers often estimate asset values at book value or original cost rather than current market value...so net worth may be higher at the market.

Public entities don’t use double entry bookkeeping so we never see their net worth..that is assets minus liabilities when assets are often enormous but undervalued. The large unfunded debt that so concerns many pales into insignificance when compared to the value of the assets of the US…

For example, the US has about $150 Trillion in assets both private and public or for 340 million population so that’s $441K/capita....a 4% return on those assets would earn ~$18K/year.

So potential solutions via disintermediation and in some case re-intermediation.

Of course, the fundamental, essential, all-encompassing technology that enables disintermediation is the Internet...

But here’s the rub…

“Once the inspiration for utopian dreams of infinite libraries and global connectivity, the internet has seemingly become, over the past year, a universal scapegoat: the cause of almost every social ill that confronts us. Russian trolls destroy the democratic system with fake news on Facebook; hate speech flourishes on Twitter and Reddit; the vast fortunes of the geek elite worsen income equality. For many of us who participated in the early days of the web, the last few years have felt almost postlapsarian. The web had promised a new kind of egalitarian media, populated by small magazines, bloggers and self-organizing encyclopedias; the information titans that dominated mass culture in the 20th century would give way to a more decentralized system, defined by collaborative networks, not hierarchies and broadcast channels. The wider culture would come to mirror the peer-to-peer architecture of the internet itself. The web in those days was hardly a utopia — there were financial bubbles and spammers and a thousand other problems — but beneath those flaws, we assumed, there was an underlying story of progress.

Last year marked the point at which that narrative finally collapsed. The existence of internet skeptics is nothing new, of course; the difference now is that the critical voices increasingly belong to former enthusiasts. “We have to fix the internet,” Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’s biographer, wrote in an essay published a few weeks after Donald Trump was elected president. “After 40 years, it has begun to corrode, both itself and us.” The former Google strategist James Williams told The Guardian: “The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine the human will.” In a blog post, Brad Burnham, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, a top New York venture-capital firm, bemoaned the collateral damage from the quasi-monopolies of the digital age: “Publishers find themselves becoming commodity content suppliers in a sea of undifferentiated content in the Facebook news feed. Websites see their fortunes upended by small changes in Google’s search algorithms. And manufacturers watch helplessly as sales dwindle when Amazon decides to source products directly in China and redirect demand to their own products.” (Full disclosure: Burnham’s firm invested in a company I started in 2006; we have had no financial relationship since it sold in 2011.) Even Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web itself, wrote a blog post voicing his concerns that the advertising-based model of social media and search engines creates a climate where “misinformation, or ‘fake news,’ which is surprising, shocking or designed to appeal to our biases, can spread like wildfire.”

If you have the patience to read about and the interest in what I think is the most profound change in technology, read this article in the New York Times Magazine section for January 21st. It’s worth the time...it's the best exposition... that I’ve read... of the issue.

If you would be interested in a little more detail about the fact that while ‘free’ public protocols developed before the 90s are the basis for Internet connectivity, and that these protocols did not include a ‘user identity’ protocol and therefore encouraged the advertising-supported business models that dominate services offered via the Internet today, then read this. These models have enabled the creation of monster companies that profit from accumulated user data. The user is compensated by free services, but the value of the free services is not proportional to the profit from the data. Read here about an idea for remedying this state of affairs.

So the topic of tonight’s conversation is ‘digital intermediation’...is it a useful tool, and, if so, what predictions does it allow us to make with greater confidence, and if not, is there another way of thinking about the impact of technology in the future…..in addition to, of course, Evolutionary Psychology.

see also this discussion of Digital Identity Management

It is clear that I did not succeed fully in making at least 4 topics absolutely clear to everyone's satisfaction. I'll make another attempt by recommending 4 articles:

1. The history and extent and current funding of the Internet... Here is an excellent presentation by VOX

40 maps that explain the internet Where the internet came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world

2. Bitcoin....most were convinced that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are nothing but scams... they may be, or, if not scams, simply fail, as new innovations often do, but the ideas...anonymity, transparency, security, decentralization... underlying Bitcoin, I predict, will survive in some form...again a good piece by VOX

Bitcoin, explained Timothy B. Lee Bitcoin is the world's first truly decentralized payment network, and advocates say it could revolutionize the f...

3. Blockchain...this is the public ledger technology that underlies Bitcoin and I think will become the next great innovation that is adopted widely...Take a look here.

Take a closer look at Blockchain technology (Infographic) There’s been a lot of noise recently about bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. Some of it is hype, but some...

4. How would a company like Goldman Sachs use blockchain.....and what is this crazy-sounding idea of 'zero-knowledge proof' ...well read this

‘Mind-Boggling’ Math Could Make Blockchain Work for Wall Street Matthew Leising A major breakthrough in cryptography may have solved one of the biggest obstacles to using blockchain technology...