Mark Byron

Vocabulary Lesson: Derecho

The DC area got hit with a bad line of thunderstorms, knocking out power to about 2M folks and doing a number on this weekend's golf tournament. Both the BBC and ESPN pieces mentioned a new word to me-derecho.

Here's an interesting 2006 piece on that style of storm; check out the video on that page for a quick primer-

Derechos are elongated, straight-lined windstorms that often have bands of rapidly moving thunderstorms associated with it. These little-known atmospheric phenomena often stretch for hundred of miles and cause multiple tornadoes. Meteorologists usually issue a severe thunderstorm watch when they see an approaching derecho.

If this Wikiepedia list of derechos is any indication, we get a few of those each year.

I've never seen or heard that used before; I'm not a meteorologist, but I picked up quite a bit and was surprised that this one showed up on my radar for the first time today.

Saturday Musings

Is it Mursi or Morsi? Either way, he got sworn in as Egyptian president. He rattled some cages yesterday in a speech prior to his inaugural

He told the Tahrir crowd he would work to secure freedom for Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed for life over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"I will do everything in my power to secure freedom for detainees... including Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman," Mursi said in his address to the throng packing the hub of the 2011 revolution.

That will not sit well on this side of the Atlantic.

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Lamar Odom gets to head back to Tinseltown, as the Clippers picked him up from Dallas in a four-way deal. What Odom could use is to borrow from Dallas the TV show, and wake up to find that the last year was all a bad dream. Running fast breaks with Blake Griffith on the other wing would work nicely if he can get the bad taste and inactivity of last year out of the way.

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One posited legal solution to nixing "Obamacare" is to dwell on the fact that the Senate essentially wrote the law when the House is required to start money bills in the Constitution; Samidzata has an example of the meme here.

Minor problem-lots of laws nominally start in the House, but then the Senate deletes almost all the House's origional and put in their version as an "amendment." If the House agrees to the changes, it goes to the President; if not, we get a conference committee to hash out the differences, which then gets voted on by the House, then the Senate.

In the case at hand, the House approved the Senate version without a conference committee; by the time the House had voted, Scott Brown had gotten into the Senate and took away the 60th vote to get any new revisions past, so they passed the Senate version as-is to avoid having a second vote in the Senate. It was a nasty fight, since pro-life provisions in the starter-version had been trimmed in the Senate and pro-life Democrats like Bart Stupak had to be strong-armed into going along.

Nuking Obamacare on those grounds would throw a truckload of laws (likely most) that were amended wholesale in the Senate; that would create a mess that neither Roberts or Kennedy is likely to sign off on. Even Thomas and Scalia might pass on going that far.

Edifier du Jour:1 John 5:10-12(NIV)

¹⁰ Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. ¹¹ And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. ¹² He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The second part of verse 10 is interesting, for it seems to assume that everyone has a built-in knowledge of Jesus. There is an extent where God speaks through His creation and puts a level of hard-wired awe and respect for Him into even folks who haven't darkened a church door or even heard a sliver of the Gospel.

John would lead us to think that that level of knowledge gets to the point of being able to reject the Son of God that they might not have even heard of. That's heavy.

It might also answer the question that the more universalist among us would ask-"How can God send someone to Hell for not believing in a Messiah they never even heard of?" If this passage is any indication, they may have heard in their hearts if not in their heads. That might also give hope to those unreached folks who might have Jesus in their heart even if they haven't heard His name proclaimed.

That's not standard evangelical theology, which would lean towards that poor unreached person getting roasted for eternity; all the more reason to get off our butts, get out our checkbooks, and reach him, the missions sales pitch goes. This casts some doubt in that meme, but it's novel enough to not want to dive into without further thought; misreading a single passage can create some rather funky theology.

Fast, but not That Kind of Fast

Celebrity flirting, Christian style. The old joke about a virgin in [insert tough town] being a girl who runs faster than the boys might fit Lolo Jones; she was on with Jay Leno Monday.

During the interview, the 29-year-old hurdler said she never thought she would get so much attention for simply revealing that she is still a virgin.

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Jones jokingly told Leno that she knows a foolproof way of getting Tebow to agree to a date: she will take him to church.

I don't think Jones' walking-UN pedigree would be an issue; even an anti-miscegenation Bob Joneser would make an exception for her. What type of church the two go to might be an issue.

Penalty Phase

Chief Justice Roberts created an interesting problem for the administration in his logic of signing off on "Obamacare;" Roberts opted to look at the taxing power of the state as the root of its power to do an "individual mandate" rather than the oft-abused Interstate Commerce clause.

That means that the ACA is financed by a tax increase on the uninsured. No, sayeth the White House, it's a penalty on the uninsured. Is it a 2-minute minor or a 5-minute major? If it's the latter, than the house band for the ACA is Five for Fighting.

Mark Roth couldn't spin it any better.

Friday Musings

Reality sets in for Republicans after last night's contempt-of-Congress vote on AG Holder; who gets to do the proscecuting? The Justice Department, headed by a guy named Holder. They'll work like good BBQ, low and slow rather than fast and furious.

The interesting question is whether a Romney-era Justice department can bring charges on the former boss if we get to that point. Is there a statute of limitations on a contempt charge so that if Obama does win, a future administration might bring it up in 2017 or later?

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On a lighter note, the draft was interesting. Kentucky tied its own record by having six players drafted, including the top two for the first time ever. Detroit's pick of Andre Drummond was a good one, an 18-year-old shot-blocker who looks like a poor-man's Anthony Davis, or a taller Ben Wallace. If Big Ben can be persuaded to stick around, either as a player or assistant coach, he could even help his free-throw shooting, which was at 29% at UConn last year. That can't be said of too many players.

Little Ben, Ben Gordon, got shipped off to Charlotte for Cory Maggette; the Bobcats get a future #1 as well for eating Gordon's bloated (at least a on bang-for-buck basis) contract. Maggette might work well as a off-the-bench swingman, getting starter minutes in a four-man 123 rotation with Knight, Stuckey and Prince.

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Interesting story out of Foggy Bottom, where our Keynan ambassidor resigned, seemingly having issues with the most famous Kenyan since Kip Keino.

US envoy to Kenya Scott Gration has announced his resignation, citing "differences in leadership style and priorities" with Washington.

That is what we call diplomatic. There is a far bigger story there, if Gration or one of his aids is willing to talk. Since Keyna borders Somalia, it is a key location geopolitically, and a former Air Force general might have wanted something different from what his bosses wanted.

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"Zimmerman Seeks New Bond." I'm not a big fan of Daniel Craig, either. Hugh Jackman would be a nice change.

Here's to You, Mister Roberts-san

Now that I have my work slate behind me for the day, I can look at the SCOTUS ruling of the morning. The saving grace of the ruling is that Roberts opted to find the power for the individual mandate in Uncle Sam's taxing power rather than the fit-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink interstate commerce clause. SCOTUS has had some kitchen-sink rulings on that, like pointing out that having a gun near a school isn't effecting interstate commerce.

Had the court backed up the mandate on IC grounds, the kitchen sink would now fit and all bets would be off on future regulation.

Mitt Romney's mug was on Fox while I was getting my allergy shot, calling this a "job killer." It will tend to lead to slower job growth, since the cost of hiring folks, especially in lower-end or temp jobs that generally don't come with health care coverage, just went up. It won't hurt higher-end jobs as much, since most of those generally come with coverage.

Thus, the plan will help those folks get health care if they have a job once the dust settles, since the job might get priced out of the market if health care is tacked on to the employer's tab. Those that do stay on the payroll might see decreased raises or even pay cuts to cover the added costs.

The upside is that those folks in that working-poor bucket who aren't poor enough for Medicaid but not commanding enough of a wage to afford health insurance might well get helped here in getting health care. However, it will come with a non-trivial drag on GDP and a bit of inflation as costs get passed on to consumers.

As one of those people in that bucket at present, I can see some of the merit of the plan.

However, as a once-and-future economics teacher, I can see the number that the plan will do on the economy, especially on the lower-end payrolls that will have to adjust to health insurance being required. I think there are better ways to get to where the left wants to go that are less toxic to job growth; however, they would most likely require a tax increase to offset the added benefits, which goes over like a lead balloon.

Strange Bedfellows

Anthony Kennedy did vote to strike down the individual mandate, but he found himself in the odd spot of being on the short-end of a 5-4 vote. Chief Justice Roberts crossed the divide and sided with the four liberals in upholding "Obamacare" and its individual mandate.

That gives an interesting spin to the fall election, where the debate will be, to borrow from Slick Willie's construct on affirmative action, whether to mend it or end it.

As one of those folks who currently fall through the insurance cracks, that would seem to be a good thing, but it will tend to slow the economy down as the cost of hiring folks will go up for companies are looking at being forced to either get fined or provide health insurance.

Organized LIBOR

A quick finance primer-LIBOR is shorthand for the London Inter-bank Offered Rate, the interest rate that banks lend dollars (and other currencies) to each other on the international market. It's often used as a key benchmark for floating-rate loans, where loans might be stated as LIBOR plus a premium and go up and down as LIBOR does.

Big British bank Barclays got caught mistating LIBOR to its benefit; if it issued LIBOR-based loans, having the stated rate be a few hundredths of a percent (basis points in financese) higher than it should be can net them an extra $100 per million per basis point fudged.

LIBOR would seem to be more market based than the Fed Funds rate, which is managed by the Fed, but if it is being manipulated to a bank's benefit, that will mean that some other more neutral measure of interest rates will have to be looked into.

Edifier du Jour: 1 John 5:1(NIV)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.

That should be the case, but not everyone wants that pesky Brat in the way, the One that insists on being Lord and Savior. Many of those people who are "spiritual but not religious" want a relationship with God without having His son in the way, but it's a package deal. Jesus can't be shipped off to boarding school.

Edifier du Jour: 1 John 4:1-3(NIV)

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³ but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

That's a fairly easy order for many modern-day prophets to meet; acknowledge the Incarnation.

However, you can meet that spec and still be well off the reservation. One example might be of this odd Happy Science Japanese mash-up that messed with the Ugandan Olympic Trials; the national stadium got double-booked and the track team wound up running on a slower track, costing Ugandan runners some qualifying times.

The Wikipedia for HS has their founder channeling Jesus as one of many of his predecessors; "Okawa claims to channel the spirits of Muhammad, Christ, Buddha and Confucius." That sounds a bit like Bahai's take of their prophets being God's Rep 6.0 and 7.0 to Jesus' 4.0 and Mohammad's 5.0. They might be able to pass the Incarnation test above, but not a broader spiritual sniff-test.

Where it gets tougher is where a preacher is orthodox on basics like the Incarnation but winds up losing it on secondary issues. There is a lot of room for heresy and leading people astray while not being read out of Christendom at first look.

Discernment can be abused word, running anyone off who doesn't agree with your detailed theology 100% in its more allergic form. We need discernment to make sure a preacher's take isn't his Saturday night wet burrito talking, but we also need to make sure our rejection of his take isn't our bratwurst from this afternoon talking. A faulty spiritual filter can let in bad stuff or reject good stuff.

That's where an ongoing relationship with God, including His Holy Spirit, is vital.

Vowel Movement

I was wondering how many players had no conventional vowels in their name as Drew Smyly was pitching for the Tigers. 50 others was the total, including Fred Lynn, Tony Gwynn, Early and Jimmy Wynn. There was a mob of Lynches (11 total), 9 Flynns and one real Dyck.

On the other end, Al Alburquerque is one of 12 folks tied for the record with six vowels, including the guy with the longest last name on record in the bigs, Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

A database, the ability to write a vowel-finding function in Visual Basic, and a little time; yes, I do have a life, but it takes me on odd tangents at times.

Between the Hedges

No, we're not talking UGA, although I am looking forward to a funky college football season.

In this case, we're talking about airlines hedging their fuel costs via oil futures. That works fine when oil prices stay high, but when oil prices come down, hedgers are stuck paying for high-priced oil. Delta took a $155m hit in the last quarter on hedges.

I recall two cases where hedges like this were costly. Locking in electricity prices at peak levels cost CA billions and Grey Davis his job when prices dropped back, sticking the Grey Gentleman with a hedge loss. Another had ethanol maker VeraSun hedging corn prices when they were causing riots in Mexico; once the market adjusted and corp prices came back down, VeraSun was stuck with their high hedge prices and proceeded to go CH11, since their peers were unhedged and could afford to drop prices.