I work for the University of Minnesota's network and telecommunications department, and we've recently received some complaints about mysterious after-hours phone calls coming from this telephone number. We traced the telephone number to a malfunctioning fax machine on campus. The office that owns the device is not actively using it to send faxes to the people who called us, and a repair technician has since been out to fix the device.

But, we don't know if this has fully resolved the issue.

If, after November 05, 2009, you are still receiving telephone calls after hours from this phone number, we would appreciate it if you could call the 1-HELP technology helpline at the U, and reference the phone number above, or ask to speak to an analyst at the technical assistance center. The technical assistance center needs to know if the matter is resolved or if people are still getting calls from this device.

The telephone number for 1-HELP at the University is 612-301-HELP.

As I mentioned before, a repair technician has gone out to work on the device and has hopefully fixed it at this point, but it might still be acting up. If so, please give us a call so we can help resolve the matter.

When: Wednesday, August 26th 2009, 5:05 p.m. (be early, just in case)
Where: Minneapolis City Hall, 350 South 5th Street Minneapolis, Room 317

Here's a map to the event:

View Larger Map

There's also more information at the Star Tribune:

http://www.startribune.com/local/54635737.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

Ramp parking is located below city hall, but you'll need to bring money to pay for parking. Alternately, you can ride the bus or the light rail downtown. The weather forecast is 77º and sunny, so if you prefer to walk or cycle, that is also an option.

Thanks to Michael Tupper for sending me the invite. It's important for property owners to visit this meeting and let their voices be heard.

Last May, at the Minnesota State Republican Convention, the Minnesota GOP chose to deny the supporters of then-candidate Ron Paul their voice on the subject of realigning the party with its roots. Our delegates were systematically shut out of the proceedings, our candidate was denied the opportunity even to speak, after coming all the way to Rochester.

I want Ron Carey, Mark Drake, and the rest of the Minnesota GOP stalwarts to know that the series of events that unfolded last May at the state convention cemented my decision not to vote for one single Republican in this year's election. Not one. I didn't give one shiny nickel to the MN GOP, didn't canvas, didn't do any literature drops, didn't volunteer at any phone banks, didn't put up any yard signs, bumper stickers, didn't tell a single one of my friends or colleagues to support a single republican candidate. Nothing. Not even a supportive comment on a news website.

For all her misguided and unsupportable policy positions, Senator Clinton from New York knows about the importance of catharsis in the matter of a federated government structure. When only six counties around the state -- only two more than went to Paul -- went to McCain on Super Tuesday, faking a unified front for McCain last May was dishonest and disenfranchising to the party activists who came out in the cold last February in support of the other candidates. The majority of the state voted for Romney and Huckabee, not for McCain! You didn't let them represent their real choice at the state convention, much less the national convention. Did you expect us all to just fall in line and pull the lever for McCain? Manipulating the machinery to feign the illusion of "unified support" showed just how much you actually valued our participation in the process. Not quite, but thanks for playing.

I cannot express, while maintaining civility, the low opinion I hold of the people who are presently in charge of what, I'm told, used to be the GOP. If you have anything to say, I'll be curled up with some Hayek, Rothbard and Mises this winter. That's stiff competition, so make it good.

When you invite the state to become involved in the private institution of marriage, you expose yourself to the tyranny of the majority.

The United States, and for that matter, the California Republic, is not a democracy. We are a Federal Republic! Look at your state flag! This means that any powers not expressly granted to the Federal Government by the U.S. Constitution are deferred to the State Governments, and any powers not granted state governments (read: yours) by their state constitution should be deferred to the counties. In this federated republic structure, people actually get to live under their own local laws.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people in the United States, and I daresay the majority of people in San Francisco have unwittingly bought into the lie of democracy, despite the advice of the founders. There are people who continue to fight, tooth and nail, for this essential aspect of liberty, but most in San Francisco would not give us the time of day, because we supported a little known Republican doctor from Texas in last year's primary. That man recognized that in a democracy, the majority gets to run your life and dictate their morals to you. If we can agree on no other principle, it should be that everyone has the sovereign right to liberty, and that a "majority vote" cannot strip that right from you.

So, if you are gay in California and wish to marry, but don't want to defend yourselves against the biases of the popular majority in your state, then please continue on as cheerleaders for democracy, and ignore the fact that you live in what was intended to be a Federal Republic. Otherwise, my advice is to start a campaign to diminish the power of your state government and strengthen the power of your county governments. For my part, I wish you the absolute best of luck, and hope you are able to live happily as you wish, and as your own morals instruct you to live.

To the rest of you in California who feel you can dictate morality through the ballot, be forewarned. Your liberties are next.

The cross-pollenation from Data Visualization and Intro to Computer Security is potentially very interesting. We're studying channel capacity for various human perceptions. There are many references to different aspects of neuroscience, but I'm interested in the channel capacity concept as it pertains to perceptions of trust.

I wonder what the human univariate channel capacity is for judgments of trust?

I think that notions of "integrated assessments" as we view these puzzles and illusions are thought provoking to say the least.

"The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that --- however bloody --- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave."

Sage advice, especially given the current rime-locked national discourse. I submit that the "two party" system is actually not two parties, but a binary tree of counterweighted factions.

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

Over the next three years to six months, oil will be the best investment you can make. Here's why.

An oil producer, "Party A", produces X number of barrels of oil per day, and places this supply on the local market. At this marketplace, buyers from the United States (population 301,139,947) line up beside buyers from China (population 1,321,851,888), India (population 1,129,866,154), Europe (population 490,426,060).

Party A decides to put the X barrels on the market at price P1. Conversely, the buyers from these respective populations place bids for Y barrels of oil at price P2. There can be a large gap between what people are willing to pay for oil, and what producers are willing to sell it for. In this case, no barrels of oil are sold.

However, in non-oil-producing nations, especially industrialized nations, there is no option but to consume oil, or face immediate starvation and collapse. Further, there are far more consumers than producers. In the past, when there were fewer consumers (the U.S. and Europe alone), the buyers had more leverage on the market. When there are only a handful of parties producing a commodity, it is called a production cartel.

In short, we need their oil more than they need our money. And China and India need the oil as well, because their economies are growing at rates that dwarf the economies of the U.S. and Europe.

Further, the U.S. Dollar is worth less every day than the day before. Our rate of monetary supply inflation is about 17% per year. This means that for every 100 dollars that exist in the world in 2007, there are $117 in 2008, $137 in 2009, $160 in 2010, $187 in 2011, and so forth. The Federal Reserve controls all aspects of monetary policy in the United States. It is not answerable to the United States Congress. The President has no control over it, aside from appointing the Fed Chairman.

Further still, in addition to there being more dollars in existence, there is declining supply of oil. There are very few discoveries of new oil fields in the world today. There are few new refineries being built. Because of well-intentioned environmental concerns, many known oil fields such as those off of the coast of Santa Barbara California and Anwar Alaska are being ignored.

Finally, consumers from industrialized nations are using more energy each year. In the United States, this equates to bigger vehicles, more air travel, bigger houses, fewer marriages (which imply the need for more dwellings and more heating requirements), more computers, big screen televisions, etc. One gulp of the atmosphere in Beijing is proof that China is quickly industrializing and using greater amounts of energy each year than the year before. Finally, especially in the United States and Europe, existing nuclear fission plants are being left to rot while no new fissile plants are being built, and there is little to no funding for serious research in advanced fission or groundbreaking (nonradioactive) fusion technologies such as that being conducted by Lawrenceville Plasma and Physics.

Wind and solar power do not have enough energy flux density to perform the heavy labor needed in the real world. Here are several examples:

1. Solar powered airplanes do not and will never exist.
2. Wind powered airplanes do not and will never exist.
3. Solar powered cars and trains are not viable technologies.
4. Solar power cells produce no energy at night.
5. Wind power doesn't work when there is no wind.
6. You cannot melt large quantities of steel with the electricity generated from solar panels.

How long does it take for a wind-power generator to generate the energy needed to replace the energy needed to mine the iron ore and cobalt needed to make the steel its made out of? How about the energy needed to smelt that ore, process it, shape it, and the sum combined energy needed to move the ore and the finished products to the generation site? Consider the same question for solar cells. Solar and wind power are net loss technologies.

Hydrogen fuel cells suffer from a related problem. Fuel cells are batteries. They do not produce power, but only store it in a chemical reaction. So, fuel cells are not the answer to the world's energy needs.

In other words, all forms of "clean energy" are actually just as filthy as burning oil and coal and using nuclear fission, because they all, without exception exist as derivatives of the real energy market. So, solar power isn't self supportive. Neither is wind power. They're nice ways to light up a home and provide widespread lightweight offsets to energy consumption, but they don't offset their requisite manufacturing cost. Industrial society is not currently possible without oil, coal and nuclear power. That's reality. The oil is running out, and every new dollar makes it more expensive. Every new mouth to feed in the world increases its price.

So, let's review.

1. The price in dollars of oil is a function of:
   • international supply of oil
   • international demand for oil
   • the supply of dollars available with which to purchase the oil
   • the supply of other currencies available to purchase the oil
   • the availability of other forms of usable energy
2. The United States congress does not control the price of oil.
3. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain do not control the price of oil.
4. There is no conspiracy to hike up the price of oil.
5. In order to halt US Dollar price increases in energy in the U.S., we would need to either increase our own production of industrially usable energy by 17% per year, or reduce the rate of dollar inflation. In addition to this, we'd need to be 100% self-sufficient in energy AND either eliminate world economic growth, OR forbid energy exports.

What the United States as a technologically advanced society and a leader of the world should do is heavily invest in clean (non-radioactive) fusion technologies to replace aging nuclear fusion technologies such as the dense boron-hydrogen plasma fusion reactor, and move aggressively to render oil and fissile energy production obsolete. In the meantime, we should alter our weak dollar policy, make effective use of our native coal and oil resources, and probably invest in intermediary clean fission plants. We should build more railroads, get trucks off of the freeways, and live closer to where we work. More people should ride bicycles for jaunts around town. And we're going to have to do all of these things in concert in order to survive the energy reality of the 21st century. The 20th century is over, and we can't pretend otherwise or legislate our way out of our problem.

The parties most capable of making many of these needed advancements are "Big Oil" and "Big Corporations". Punishing these parties for helping keep us alive is suicidal. Solar and wind power are only a small part of the solution. We should get out of the way of U.S. energy companies and do what we can to help them move the ball forward. Foreign producers have the most to lose from a new energy revolution in the United States, and that would be sweet justice, wouldn't it?

So, I decided to wait and see. I have not been disappointed.

First of all, the improvements made last year to the building have been effective in reducing crime and improving quality of life for this resident, and I imagine others. I am filled with gratitude for the work of Jenny Carrier and her crew. There was not an abundance of obvious criminal activity this winter, no transients sleeping in the hallways, or any of that nonsense. Instead, we have a distinct and firm new ownership whose mettle I unfortunately had to test this winter.

In January, I noticed the distinct sound of a rodent in my ceiling. I figured it was a squirrel, based on the abundance of them in the neighborhood and their repeatedly proven ability to climb up the exterior walls. I did not, however, begin to panic, until I found an 8-inch mound of ceiling-stuff atop my refrigerator, and a clearly chewed hole in the ceiling.

I made several calls to the repair technicians, who over the course of about four weeks attempted to poison the squirrel, then decided to battle cold and icy conditions and effect repairs to the exterior of the building and to eventually patch and repaint my ceiling. Throughout the whole process the repair technicians (notably Kyler) and also the telephone operators at Mint Properties have been the modicum of professionalism and respect. In both cases that I needed to call the repair technician was on site within 30 minutes, which greatly eased my fears of having a remote management office. They've even gone so far as to call me at work in order to keep me appraised of the progress.

So, following my New Year's pledge to write about things I appreciate, here's my hat off to Mint Properties. Welcome to the neighborhood.