Ideas Matter. What you believe affects what you do.
Introduction
Welcome to “The Work.” I am not yet sure what the end result of this effort will be, but I invite you to participate along the way. The idea for this blog series was originally an effort to improve my teaching. At Palm Beach Atlantic University, our Provost, Joe Kloba, had the wild and squirrelly idea that a Christian university should not merely provide a Christian atmosphere but should provide something uniquely Christian in terms of intellectual life and ideas.
Lacking a better plan, the Provost asked that faculty use worldview thinking (**write a worldview article later and link here) as presented in James Sire’s book, The Universe Next Door, as a way to bring Christian thought to the traditional university curriculum and material. Naturally, this caused a bit of controversy. Some faculty embraced the effort, many tried the best they could to bring Sire into their course material, and some rebelled.
Over time, the de facto policy became to have one or two courses in a major introduce and discuss Worldview and then ignore it for the rest of the curriculum. In the School of Nursing, I became the go-to person to provide the Worldview lectures, but I became more and more dissatisfied with both Sire and the Worldview approach as a whole. The season of my discontent came to a head Spring 2011, when I heard nursing seniors discussing The Universe Next Door, completely bewildered by what it meant and confused as to how it could it possibly have any impact whatsoever on their lives.
I first thought about redoing The Universe Next Door, addressing its perceived inadequacies, however, the problem goes much deeper than Sire’s work. The problem is in our culture. For better or for worse, as a society, we have abandoned philosophy to professional philosophers. We have divorced thought from reason. We have isolated technology from science. Science has been rent asunder from the arts. We have no historical perspective, and when we do, more often than that we fall into the twin traps of disdain for primitives or ancestor worship. No. The work I intend to write goes far beyond revising and systematizing Sire’s worldview questions. I will settle for nothing less than understanding why the answers to these question matter, how the answers to these questions have affected the course of history, how they color the pursuit of science and politics.
In some respects, I am writing this book for my son, Logan as a guide to what he should get out of high school and college. Personally, I believe that our education system does us a great injustice, filling our children’s minds with facts and information, much of them quite vital and important but without any understanding of how the ideas interconnect, why they are important, and why they are worth remembering. It teaches them that science is copying the results of an “experiment” in a text book.
As I begin to write, I am heavily influenced by two historical scholars. The first is Murray Rothbard, who’s Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought was mind blowing. I am amazed at how much epistemological perspectives have influenced schools of thought. The other scholar is historian Ralph Raico, who’s podcast lecture series History: The Struggle for Liberty shared one of Rothbard’s insights, that one of the great tragedies of the English (language) dominated world is that more English and American scholars do not speak French. Otherwise, they might have known that the French economists Cantillon and Turgot were far more cogent and developed than Adam Smith (Rothbard’s insight) and they might have known that the French Liberal class warfare analysis predated Marx’s Hegelian analysis of class struggle. I, however, do not speak French, but I will try to step out of my anglocentrism for a few moments.
I have also been tremendously influenced by Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate physicist. He truly understood science in a way that I believe most scientists today do not. Despite his protests that he did not like the humanities, I think that he understood the humane tradition and its relationship to the sciences better than most liberal arts professors. What he did not like was the formal study of humanities…and who can blame him?
Richard M. Gamble, a former colleague helped open my eyes to the need to study history, art, and politics together through reading Dante’s Divine Comedy. It has taken me years of post school study to begin to glimpse how the broad web of history is integrated with philosophy, history, economics, science, art, and religion. Hopefully, this work will help others to get to the glimpse faster and with less effort than I have expended.
In this work, I will attempt to answer the philosophic “worldview” questions mentioned above and show that how they have been answered throughout history has had enormous impact on history, science, religion, and on our culture today. It is an enormous task to do all that and wind up with a readable book. I may not be up to the task. We shall see.
Here is yet another reason not to see movies at the theater. In Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Robert Rodriquez’ sequel to Desperado, Johnny Depp’s character is just crazy about Puerco Pibil. On the DVD extra “Ten Minue Cooking School,” Robert Rodriguez shows how to make Puerco Pibil. (Of course, now with the magic of youtube, anyone can watch the extra.) Having made the dish several times, I’d like to present this dish along with some tips and modifications.
Using the coffee ginder, grind Annato, Cumin Seed, Cloves, Allspice, and Peppercorns into a fine powder.
Remove seeds and inner membrane from habanero.
Add vinegar, orange juice, habanero, salt, garlic, and spice powder to blender. Blend on high for 30-60 seconds.
Add juice of five lemons and Tequila and blend for another 30-60 seconds. Congratulations, you’ve just made achiote paste.
Cut pork into 2 inch cubes and place in a large ziplock bag; pour achiote paste over pork. Seal bag and mush bag around to spread the paste over the pork. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours.
Cooking:
Line the baking pan with banana leaves (or foil if you don’t have leaves).
Pour pork and achiote paste into pan.
Cover with more banana leaves and then foil. Crimp foil around pan to make sure steam doesn’t escape.
Bake in the oven at 325° F for 4 hours.
And bam, a dish so good you might just get whacked for making it.
Serving Suggestions:
This dish is very strong in flavor, and some people might want to dilute it a bit. Ideal candidates are white rice and pico de gallo. Shred the pork and mix into or serve on top of white rice and pico.
Notes:
Annato seed (also called achiote) is often available in grocery stores in small plastic packets (Badia brand in Florida). A one ounce packet holds about 2.5 tbs, so two packets should do the trick.
Lately, I’ve stopped putting the spice powder in with the liquid blend. When you pour it out of the blender, a lot of the spices are left behind. So I just pour the spice blend direcly on top of the pork in the ziploc bag and then pour the liquid over it.
Habanero is the hottest chile in the world, so you might want to "wimp it down a bit." Here are some tips: 1) use less habanero or even a half or quarter of one; instead of blending the habanero, just slice into strips and place them whole in the ziplock bag; make sure you don’t get the seeds or membrane into the dish. Don’t pick your nose or touch your eyes or contacts for two days after handling the inside of Habanero (or just wear gloves while cutting it).
It doesn’t really matter what kind of Tequila you use as long as it’s real Tequila. This means it should say 100% agave, and no Cuervo Gold or any other "gold" Tequila. For me a "splash" means a 1/4 cup.
For you Alton Brown fans, the achiote paste is technically a marinade, so it will not really tenderize or penetrate the meat. You don’t need to let it soak for long periods of time, although I usually make it the night before I cook it for convenience. Also because of the acid, you probably won’t want to line the pan with aluminum foil.
The slow moist cooking over low heat, however, will tenderize the pork. The pork will be very tender and is easily "pulled."
I have also made this recipe with rib end roast instead of pork butt with excellent results. Cut the meat off the bone, but leave at least some of the bone in the mixture for added flavor. I’m going to try this with whole chicken some time. Just butcher it according to Alton’s instructions.
What’s Games for Windows Live?
It’s supposed to be an online account that allows users to save their game progress online, purchase games, play online with friends, etc. It was announced five years ago, but MicroSoft has never developed it properly. It started out as XboxLive, and embarrassingly, five years later, when you actually sign up for Games of Windows Live, it takes you to XboxLive. Does Microsoft have any idea what message they are sending?
Hot off the heels of my story about Google’s incompetence comes a display of Microsoft’s ineptitude. One of the great joys of Thanksgiving time are the fabulous discounts for computer games offered by Steam. Discounts from 50% – 90% are common. So naturally, when Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition went on sale for 75%, I snapped it up. Unfortunately, the good folks at Eidos have saddled, Batman: AA with Windows Live.
You can’t save your progress unless you use Games for Windows Xbox Live. Okay, so sign up for an account. But you have to do an e-mail verification…wait a little longer…ask it to resend the confirmation…check to make sure the e-mail address is correct…check the e-mail server…send a test message to yourself…20 minutes later, still no e-mail…sign up again with a different e-mail.
Okay, it worked. Let’s play…no, there’s an update for Games for Windows Xbox Live, and I can’t continue unless I let it install…wait five minutes, it looks like it finished, let’s play!. Wait, no…it wants to install the update again! After two more cycles of this, I’m beginning to wonder if Steam will give me refund. Finally, I close all windows including Steam and try to run Games for Windows Xbox Live by itself, and it takes me to Windows Update. I have to patch Windows before I can update Games for Windows Xbox Live…why didn’t it tell me this earlier?? I’m now installing the patch, which will hopefully allow me to update Games for Windows Xbox Live, which will hopefully allow me to play Batman: AA. Now reboot…Wait! Logan’s up from his nap. I’m beginning to wonder if Eidos really wants me to play this game or not.
I recently purchased a Samsung Captivate. It’s a smartphone that runs on Google’s android operating system. The phone itself is very nifty, and Android is mostly fine, but Google—in the stupidest, most idiotic, boneheaded move ever—decided that you absolutely must have a gmail account to use the phone. In order to install apps from the “Market” you must enter a gmail account. All apps that you download or purchase are tied to this account forever. Moreover, when you purchase an app, it sends your receipt to the gmail account.
This is a problem, because my wife and I use a special e-mail account for all our orders. As she keeps track of our finances in Quicken, she can see online purchases that we have made, but now thanks to the evil incompetence of Google, Market purchases don’t go to that e-mail, and since I’ve already purchased an app, in order to change the e-mail, I would have to reset the phone (lose all data and settings) enter a new e-mail address. Oh, but wait, the previously purchased app? Gone. It’s associated with the despicable gmail account and cannot be retrieved. The internet is rife with stories of people inadvertently putting in their work e-mail first, and now that they’re changing jobs, they want to transfer their apps to a new e-mail. Can’t do it. To quote the evil insurance company from The Rainmaker, Google must be stupid stupid stupid.
But wait you say. You have a Google checkout account with a different e-mail address. Oh yes, there’s another e-mail address associated with the account, but no e-mail gets sent there. Here’s the not helpful at all Help Answer from Google:
Will I receive receipts for my mobile purchases?
If you already use Google Checkout on your computer, then you will continue to receive receipts for your mobile purchases.
You will also be able to view your mobile purchases on the Purchase History page of your account.
If you’ve only ever used Google Checkout from a mobile device and you’d like to receive email receipts for future Google Checkout mobile purchases, visit the Settings page to enter the email address at which you’d like to receive the receipts.
Here’s how:
Click Settings along the bottom of the Buy page.
Enter your email address in the Change Email Address field.
Click Save.
If you’d like to change the email address at which you receive receipts, simply visit the Settings page to enter the new email address.
It’s a complete sham. First of all, do they mean the settings page from the Market in the phone or Google checkout? Guess what? There is no settings page in the market. There is no chance EVER to change the e-mail in the Market app. So perhaps they mean within Google Checkout itself? No, there is no “settings” link in Google Checkout; only a My Account link, which takes you to an overview of all your Google Accounts. (There is an e-mail preferences link in Google checkout, but do not be fooled. All it does is let you “opt in” to merchants’ “special offers.”
The bottom line is that the Captivate is a fine phone marred by Google’s utter incompetence, but even that can be mitigated if you know understand the issue. The moral of the story is be extremely careful with what e-mail you put into the phone before you make any purchases. Forewarned is forearmed.
Here are some basic techniques for loading and unloading a gun. While you practice these, you will want to practice the four laws of gun safety, particularly focusing on 2 and 3: 2) Never let the muzzle cover anything you don’t want to destroy (including your own body parts); 3) keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.
You’ll also want to obtain some snap caps (fake bullet cartridges) to make you practice session safer.
Naomi Campbell is in the ridiculous position of having to give testimony at the war crimes trial of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor on the grounds that she received a blood diamond from him. One might question the company she keeps, but on the diamond issue she should tell her inquisitors to go to hell.
Blood Diamond was a fun movie and no doubt had elements of truth to it. Leonardo di Caprio’s South Africa accent was passable (actually he portrayed an ex-Rhodesian who had moved onto bigger, badder battles fighting the white African cause wherever that calling took him). His real crime was attempting to smuggle diamonds supposedly obtained by slave labour and destined for the grand arms bazaar that turned countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia into giant, open-air slaughter houses. A somewhat embarrassing sub-text to this story is that it was a company of South African mercenaries, called Executive Outcomes, that brought peace to Sierra Leone in the 1990s, allowing 300,000 refugees to return home safely before the World Bank forced the bankrupt government of the time to terminate its contract with the company. The result? Aluta continua (“the struggle goes on”) as they used to say in Mozambique, as the warlords recaptured lost ground and the blood diamond trade flourished once more. If there were no diamonds in Sierra Leone, the warlords would have traded cassava, cows or rhino horn.
Today, we have a semblance of peace in these countries. Whether we like it or not, it was mercenaries who did the job in West Africa with the kind of resolve noticeably lacking by our peace-loving UN troops. Even Goma in eastern Congo enjoys a tentative peace. For these tender mercies, are we to thank the great minds that brought us the Kimberly Process Certification (KPC) that forces traders in rough diamonds to certify the source of the stones as conflict-free?
As someone who has toiled the rivers of Congo for diamonds and interacted with traders of many nationalities, I have a somewhat jaded view of the monopoly-seeking grubbers who have criminalised trading in these precious stones. It is possible to buy stones in Goma, Angola, Zimbabwe or even South Africa, ship them to Kinshasa in Congo and then have them sanitised by way of a locally-issued KPC. A few hundred dollars is all you need. That’s what happens when proscription enters the scene.
In truth, an experienced dealer will be able to tell you the source of the stones, since diamonds of every region carry their own unique DNA. But he will not be able to tell you whether that particular stone is conflict-free. Zimbabwean stones have flooded the market in recent years, and one has to marvel at the resourcefulness of Zimbabweans who scramble beneath the barbed wire of state interference. A few years back, close to the border with Mozambique, an enterprising Zimbabwean stumbled on what turned out to be perhaps the largest diamond field in the world and happily set about exploiting his find until the Zanu-PF big-wigs who control that country’s black markets decreed it state property. The state unleashed the dogs of war and killed scores of diggers trying to eke out a modest living. Still the traders find ways to smuggle and bribe their way to South Africa, clutching parcels of stones to trade and feed their families back home.
This is the latest cause célèbre of the blood diamond lobbyists, though Zimbabwe’s case hardly fits the KPC template: the conflict, such as it is, is purely economic. That it sustains and nurtures a despicable regime is an argument without contest. The same diamond thieves who run that country also control the black markets in fuel and foreign exchange. Perhaps we need a Kimberly certification process for these too.
Reports from Mozambique suggest between 100 and 1,000 smugglers do errands for Zimbabwean army officers each day, taking stones to Mozambique’s Villa da Manica, across the border from Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe, where they are purchased for about $25 a carat by Lebanese traders and then on-sold to overseas buyers for as much as $1,000 a carat. That still does not classify these stones as blood diamonds. There is no on-going war to warrant such a label. The KPC website says “The Kimberley Process (KP) is a joint governments, industry and civil society initiative to stem the flow of conflict diamonds – rough diamonds used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments.”
I scratch my head and try to think of a rebel war anywhere in the world currently funded by diamonds. Maybe there is one I haven’t heard about. Call Zimbabwe’s diamond trade it an economic crime if you will, but these are no blood diamonds. A Congolese friend was recently robbed of R100,000 (US$13,500) at gunpoint in Lesotho when attempting to purchase stones and smuggle them across the border to South Africa. Should we classify these as conflict stones, or simply a trophy of crime?
In Congo you can visit the open air diamond markets any day of the week. You can buy stones – and, yes, they try to rip off foreigners – but no-one will ask about licences. Nor will the buyer insist on a KPC. The bureaucrats who handle this end of the paperwork are bought and sold. Every Comptoir (or diamond-dealing house) in MbujiMayi or Tshikapa, central Congo, has government officials present at all times to keep count of the diamond transactions. These officials are bought off with $50 or $100 a day. The under-count at this end of the global diamond trade is stupendous.
Despite all the hoopla about blood diamonds in Congo, the conflict was confined to the eastern Goma region of the country. Other than an occasional skirmish, there was no conflict in Kasai province, where some of the world’s richest alluvial diamond deposits are found. In fact this is one of the most peaceful places I have ever had the pleasure to visit. You can walk around MbujiMayi at 11:00pm at night and feel safer than you do in Johannesburg, London or Nairobi.
The argument for free trade in diamonds is rooted in the ancient human struggle for economic liberty. If I buy a product with my hard-earned money, it is then my private property. The law says so. Not in the case of diamonds.
In South Africa it is illegal to carry rough diamonds without a rough diamond trading licence. Polished diamonds, no problem, according to the monopoly rules. The same is true in Congo, though I suspect less than 5% of Congolese diggers and traders carry such licences. Any day of the week at the heavily fortified Jewel City in central Johannesburg you will find traders of every stripe hawking rough stones from Zimbabwe (the newest source of “blood diamonds”), Congo, Angola and Lesotho. Few of them have the necessary licences. The diamond police set up snares to catch them, and those without licences are likely to have their stones confiscated. What then happens to these stones is anybody’s guess, but it is a scheme ripe for corruption. We know that many of these stones then reappear on the market for resale. As a diamond trader recently remarked to me: “This must be the only country in the world where a private company has its own police force to enforce its monopoly.” He was, of course, talking about De Beers, whose grip on the world diamond trade has ebbed in recent years.
State-sanctioned monopolies of any kind inevitably attract armies of bureaucrats, criminals and carpet-baggers. Like the hopelessly ineffective war on drugs, the war on blood diamonds has not only been lost, it is pointless and can never be enforced. Diamonds are small – five carats is equivalent to one gram. You can hide a 20-carat stone in your mouth and walk through pretty much any customs post. Depending on the quality, you can then sell that for perhaps US$50,000 and go home to repeat the cycle. You may not win the Ethics in Business Award, but smugglers don’t play in that league.
In reality, bloods diamonds are a giant hoax. All over Africa, tens of thousands of diggers and traders make an honest living finding and selling stones. They carry no guns and do not trade with warlords. Few of them know anything about the KPC. Once the stones leave Kinshasa or Luanda, the exporter simply tidies up the paperwork for the recipient in Brussels, Tel Aviv or Mumbai. It can be done in hours. Every time. Without fail. Even if the stones are sourced in conflict areas, it is guaranteed that for a small fee they can be laundered through the KPC process and end up on someone’s finger in North America or Europe.
This is not to say that the diamond trade is rotten to the core. Not all stones are handled this way – there are many dealers who stick rigidly to the rules of the game. But diamonds are a perfect store of movable value: they are small, light, easy to conceal.
The old argument that diamonds are a fabricated market holds some truth. The diggers in Congo will be mining diamonds 300 or 500 years from now, such is the abundance of stones under its rivers. I have seen yields of 35 carats per cubic metre of gravels in one location, and have heard of pockets of diamonds as much as 800 carats per cubic metre. Compare that with the 2 carats per hundred cubic metres you typically find in the Ventersdorp diamond field in eastern South Africa. Africa is awash with precious stones. No matter the source of the stones, we all turn to the Rapaport price list to determine the selling price, based on colour, clarity, carat and cut (“the four C’s”). Rapaport prices continue to rise, despite a temporary dip following the 2008 commodity bath.
Are diamonds in short supply? Not really, it just costs a lot of money to extract them, and poor diggers will work the most accessible ones. Are they the most beautiful stones? That is a matter of taste.
Wherever taxes and prohibition are involved, smuggling will occur. Diamonds are harmless, if over-priced, commodities, and it’s time we started to fight back against the ridiculous and ineffective encroachment on our freedoms that the KPC represents.
August 11, 2010
Kieron Ryan [send him mail] is a South African-based writer and commodities entrepreneur who has worked in the diamond trade in Congo, South Africa and elsewhere on the continent. He grew up in Africa, studied in Dublin, lived for a while in the US, but prefers the freedom and chaos that Africa offers over just about any other place.
I feel that most investors take far too many risks – often with borrowed money – and fail to diversify sufficiently. They also have little patience, very short-term time horizons and no tolerance for losses. Finally, their expectations about investment returns are completely unrealistic… Most investors buy a stock or make an investment with the view that within a month the return should be between 10% and 20%.
A real return of around 4% per annum is about what an investor (exclusive of costs, and without making the mistake to buy “high” and sell “low”) could expect to achieve over longer periods of time… If you can achieve an annual average real return of just 3% on all your assets (inflation adjusted), you will leave a huge fortune to your children.
For the average investor like myself, I prefer diversification and no leverage. I have seen time and again investors (including myself) be right about an asset class’ future performance but fail to convert those views into any capital gains… All I wish to say to my readers who are not managing risk on a daily basis is that the prime consideration should always be capital preservation and avoiding large losses.
It’s no secret that most kids today are scared to death of math and calculus. But they’re actually quite easy…as long as you don’t let modern school teachers “teach” you any of that “new math” nonsense. If you want to kick it old school, there’s no better way than to teach yourself calculus with Thompson’s Calculus for the Practical Man.
This book was catapulted to world renown when Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman, recounted using it to teach himself calculus when he was 13. Feynman credited his success in calculus to having taught himself and to some of the unorthodox methods presented in this book. Sometimes, when others couldn’t even approach a problem, a method he had learned here made the problem almost trivial.
If you are at all interested in Calculus, don’t let your first experience be in a classroom setting. You owe it to yourself to teach it to yourself. This book was “old” when Feynman read it, so it’s a bona fide classic today. Rest assured, there is no new math here.
(One word of warning: Calculus is a perishable skill. I passed the AP Calculus BC exam with a 5 and then taught myself multivariate calculus while at the Air Force Academy. Within a year of leaving the Academy, I had already forgotten many of the more advanced techniques, simply from not using them. I do remember the basics, but I would have to put in some serious study to replicate that 5 now.)
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