Originals

originals
ideas

     What if the new President empanelled a "blue ribbon" task force to tackle what looms as precipitous threats to the republic?

•      how to unlock government grid lock
•      how to create a new job generating economy
•      how to initiate a multi decade rebuilding of America's infrastructure
•      how to shorten federal elections and pull the big money out of politics
•      how to bring accountability and greater efficiency to the federal bureaucracy 

       There is certainly more on the horizon but almost everything else follows these critical needs.

        The panel would consist of economists, theorists, scientists, political scientists, big data analysts and be led by real doers. Who would be the leaders? People like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Amory Lovin, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Larry Page, Safra Catz, Mary Barra, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Meg Whitman, Mary Daly, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Michael Bloomberg, Lawrence Ellison, Jamie Diamond and that caliber of person. With a group think process "managed" by these innovative thinkers, the process would produce more results than leaving politicians to sort it out.

       Political leadership would be there to listen and to be questioned. Writers and thinkers as diverse as Noam Chomsky to Charles Krauthammer, Tom Friedman to David Brooks, Midge Decker to Peggy Noonan, Barbara Ehrenreich and others would also be invited to be quizzed and asked to feed ideas. 

       The work process would glean ideas right to left. It would amount to a huge intellectual product, idea and data dump that would then be assimilated, studied and processed by the blue ribbon managers. They would author a document.

        Nothing like this has happened in American governance. Dwight Eisenhower began to approach the concept when he'd invite eminent scientists and scholars to have a sandwich and talk about what's new.  Eventually bureaucrats took it over and it morphed into something else as is typical in Washington.

       Getting the full range of problems, potential solutions, practical applications and real political understanding would help not only probe the depth of the crisis, but would begin to build a road map to solution.

       The world has changed since I began studying political science. The complexity of problems facing our government and others, has woven so intricately and our guardians have so blown their assignments we now face waves of pressure and force than can force modern civilization into a tail spin.

Partisan politics has replaced a desire to fix, solve, lead and serve. This presidential election is a marker as to how bad it is. 

       Congress cannot function, but they have created a special class for themselves. The White House, under almost any person, is terribly outgunned and over worked. Our Supreme Court is not at capacity and is more political now than in a century. The political class has failed. It is past time for a new Ap, an application of innovation and professionalism.  We need the help. It would be hard to say no the President.

original skills

    Cowboy is a job description here on the California central coast. Skills we used to see in the old movie westerns are still well practiced here.

         Below a young male is being branded and is about to be castrated. The missing parts are put into the bucket you see to the right of the frame, and moved promptly to a grill where they become Rocky Mountain Oysters. 

     Fisherman still go down to the sea off the central coast with Morro Bay being the nearest local port. 

     On this day this particular catch was taken some 30 miles off shore.

     As seals and gulls hope for a snack, a couple of fishermen 
prepare the catch of slimy eels. 

    They are  processed and put in a transportation tank to be sent to Asia.

original genius

the young lion 

who should have been president

    In 1979 Senator Richard Lugar, a runner, sponsored a fitness festival. Years later the highly respected Senator made a bid for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. 

    I've often wondered what a difference that would have made. Lugar was admired by both sides of the aisle and played a key role in stabilizing the world by controlling nuclear war heads and biological weapons that fell to local control when the former Soviet Union collapsed. He and Senator Sam Nunn intervened and kept weapons of mass destruction off the black market. 

    In this post featuring American originals I wanted to pay tribute an original political thinker. 

     I remain stunned how young we both were. I was producing a documentary on running and this was a break in that day's shooting. 

author, author

   Kudos to a tennis friend for his creative writing. Ray Derouin plays a skilled game of tennis and writes with depth and aplomb as well. The Pewter Plough Playhouse, an historic Cambria theatre presented readings of three of his one act plays, Perfect Strangers, Tea Time and A Week of Mondays. 

   Intricate and thoughtful scripts and nicely read by Janice Peters, Randall Lyon, Viv Goff and Mikaele Alicia.

original defense

    Why not outlaw open fires unless in the rainy season and why not find a stepped up enforcement plan?

     I ask this as 5,552 men and women continue to battle the fire north of Big Sur that has spread to 71 square miles, 51 thousand acres and has destroyed 57 homes with thousands more threatened. The most terrible thing about the fire is that it cost the life of a bulldozer operating trying to prepare a firebreak.

    How did this fire get started? A camp fire. True it was an illegal camp fire, but open fires are permitted in state and national parks and that is just wrong. We all have memories of sitting around a campfire, sure, but in the future those memories should be written only in the rainy season. The idiots who caused this fire are being pursued. Nothing can undo the damage, but justice can be punitive and in that way make an example of the fools who in all honesty may never have been taught about the danger of a camp fire.  

    See you down the trail.

Safe Google-Magnificent Undulations-Would you say Vivid?

PAINTING THE SKY

 Sweet light on the California central coast.

more scenes follow below

WHAT IS REASONABLE?

     Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt opened the window on the tenuous world we inhabit at a Surveillance, Privacy and Civil Liberties conference Friday, but the light he let in captures a multi dimensional web where the map is being improvised as we go along and the perils are grievous.

     Schmidt explained how shocked he was to learn from the Washington Post that his own Google empire was being surveilled by the FBI.  Google now encrypts data between their data centers to protect privacy. Schmidt believes Google to be the safest information purveyor if you wish to avoid surveillance.

     The CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank, sponsored the first Surveillance conference hosting experts across the disciplines and issues involved in surveillance, privacy and civil liberties. I spent hours at the conference, thanks to  C-SPAN, that special blessing of our information age.

      It appears all of us will move into a time of greater use of encryption. An affect of the Snowden NSA leaks is  everyone now knows a lot more about who is spying and how they are doing it thus the free market response is a series of applications, technology, services and methods of operation to protect privacy.  

     Schmidt observed the rules of this new world are hammered out in a cat and mouse game where governments seek and push Google and the other tech companies who then respond. Legal discussions or suits ensue and become  the process to negotiate a path to established policy. It's all new and the dynamic is ongoing.

     The Google leader said we could almost "end all criminal activity" with greater surveillance but said we should not allow that. Schmidt said even the kind of surveillance used in Britain, facial recognition and other means employed by GC Hq (General Communications Headquarters) is counter to the American way of life. He said we must be careful to protect information privacy.

     Law enforcement has never discovered a surveillance technique it does not like. It gives you pause to learn how many local and state police departments use the FBI developed Stingray technology. That's the system that mimics a wireless cell tower. It's a cell sight simulator that forces all phones in an area to connect with it where it then gathers all of the stored data on a phone.  It can also deny cell service.  Think about it for a moment. The police can turn on a Stingray, which penetrates into your home, car or pocket and makes your phone connect with it where all of your private information is gathered up. How do you think Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, George Washington and our other founders would respond to that?

      Don't American's equate privacy with freedom and liberty? We do not tolerate a loss of freedom nor should we which is why we continue to fight over civil rights, gender equality, economic fairness. We remember the Nazis, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, et al.  We even intervene in foreign wars to "spread democracy" or "guarantee liberty." How seriously then are we considering implications of our communication practices? Your phone, pad or computer are extensions of your life and often are repositories of your most private or valuable artifacts or information. Don't you have a reasonable expectation to privacy/freedom from surveillance?

      Already batches of metadata have been collected. Algorithmic data analyzers are at work. How long should that information be kept? Washington Post National Technology Reporter Eric Timberg asked Schmidt about what happens in 20 years, or sooner, when he is gone from Google. Schmidt deferred to  Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saying they share values and a belief in privacy. Schmidt noted they are young men.

      So it seems that a "belief" by young entrepreneur tech capitalists is our firewall. The personal belief of the men and women who have created these marvelous systems and technologies is the wall protecting our privacy and information security? Sorry, being a rich inventor or genius seems a thin credential. Henry Ford, for example, was a notorious anti-Semite. Then of course this is a world with other players, China, North Korea, Russia, Isis, NSA, CIA, GCHQ, FBI, all of whom come with their own idea of privacy, freedom and liberty. 

      Still loving that cell phone or pad?

SANTA LUCIA UNDULATIONS

shadows

post rain greening

THE EVENING SHOW

From a bluff near Harmony Headlands

    See you down the trail.