THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/15/05 -- Vol. 24, No. 3, Whole Number 1291
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
King Kong Trailer (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Jules Verne Stamps
Amazon's Take on Calculators (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Day Has Come (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Mathematics (letter of comment by Jim Spinosa)
Letter of Comment on War of the Worlds (by Fred Lerner)
This Week's Reading (THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO, MURDER ON MAIN
STREET, Robert E. Lee's WARTIME PAPERS, and
Captain Robert E. Lee's RECOLLECTIONS AND LETTERS
OF ROBERT E. LEE) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: King Kong Trailer (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The trailer for the new KING KONG movie by Peter Jackson is
on-line at http://tinyurl.com/e4nhq. I think Peter Jackson is
doing the right sort of thing if he is going to remake a classic.
It looks like he is following the original story very closely and
in each scene just trying to be more imaginative than the original
film could be in the early 1930s [-mrl].
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TOPIC: Jules Verne Stamps
Many countries are honoring the centenary of Jules Verne's death
with a series of stamps. You can view all of them, as well as
earlier ones, through links at http://jv.gilead.org.il/stamps/.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Amazon's Take on Calculators (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was pricing graphics calculators in Amazon. Amazon started out
as an on-line bookstore and has branched out. Their product
description pages have a standard format. For example, whenever
you look at a page, they try to increase the sale. They have a
box that says, "Better together." If you are buying a book they
suggest you buy it with a similar book. At one point I think they
gave a price-break deal, but actually these days generally if you
check they don't. But it sort of makes sense that if you are
interested in the topic of a book, you might be interested in
another book on the same subject. What surprised me is that they
have a "Better together" box with graphics calculators. They are
saying essentially that it is better to buy two graphics
calculators at the same time and use them together. It would be
one thing if they were to try to switch you to a better and more
expensive calculator, but they are not geared for the fact that if
you have one graphics calculator you don't need a second one.
[-mrl]
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TOPIC: The Day Has Come (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Back in the mid-1970s when I was working for Burroughs
Corporation in Detroit, at lunchtime we talked a lot about the
company and stock. I was interested because the current CEO was
responsible for big budget cuts that were unusual for that time
period. In the 1980s and 1990s I came to expect that sort of
thing, but Procrustean belt-tightening was less usual in the
1970s. Our local expert was Steve who knew or pretended to know
a lot about economics.
If people saw that the company was doing well, the stock would go
up in value. It did not matter if the company really was doing
well. But if you have a good CEO, Steve said, the company would
probably do well.
But, I asked, what kept our CEO from doing the right sort of
thing and running the company well? He was getting this big
salary and at the same time cutting our budget. Steve assured me
that the CEO would always do what is good for the stock. After
all he was a stockholder. And there was a check on him. If you
have a bad CEO the rest of the board would vote him out. (In the
1970s it was invariably a "him.") The rest of the board members
also owned a lot of stock and they want to see that stock do
well. If you have a bad CEO they will vote him out.
Well, I asked, what was to stop the whole board from raising
their salaries and stealing the company? The rest of the
stockholders would do that. He said that the real power was in
the hands of the stockholders. What happens when the board has so
much of the stock nobody can outvote them? Steve said that could
never happen. People would never buy stock in a company where
there was so little control over the fate of the company. The
stockholders would sell their shares and get out. I let it go at
that because it almost sounded like it was a reasonable system
and it apparently worked. Even so I thought to myself that if
the day ever comes with the boards of major companies knew how
much power they really had, the whole country would be in
trouble. I thought that stockholders really have too little
control and the system was not as stable as Steve smugly thought.
A lot those days I used the phrasing that the board could "steal
the company", but I did not use it again until much more recently
when my nightmare started coming true.
I think what Steve did not take into account was that while the
board was rewarding themselves with a high salary they were also
rewarding themselves with stock. Stock has two values. It has
its face values of the stock price, which is tangible. But it
also carries with it the less tangible value of the power over
company policy it gives the holder. The country saw top
executives rewarding themselves a lot more with stock and options
for stock in the 190s and 1990s. For a while stock options
seemed to be the answer. After all, it seemed like a reward that
would be of value only if the stock price really went up. But it
was not such a good idea. The board had so much power, they could
make the stock price go up when it was convenient for them, then
let it drop again.
The power of the individual stockholder eroded to very little over
those years. Now in this decade we are seeing the effect of
that. The executive reward juggernaut has gained force and power
so that the individual stockholders cannot stop it. Claudia
Deutsch at The New York Times reports, "The chief executives at
179 large companies that had filed proxies by last Tuesday--and
had not changed leaders since last year--were paid about $9.84
million, on average, up 12 percent from 2003, according to Pearl
Meyer & Partners, the compensation consultants." Now it has to be
admitted that a lot of these companies actually did better last
year, but that was probably because the economy was
improving. Executive salaries rose when the economy was good, but
they had not fallen the three previous years when the economy
fell. It seems the salaries for most CEOs can ratchet only
up. I do not think that Steve envisioned that situation.
It used to be we thought that executives would want to do what is
best for the company because they owned stock in it. Now too
many are, to use my phrase from the 70s, "stealing the company"
and there is no longer much of a check as the upper management has
realized the power that they actually have. Reading shareholder
proposals in meeting announcements, it is clear that a lot of
stockholders are very concerned to curb executive powers. But the
executives have given themselves so much stock that the concerned
stockholders have no voting power. They are like fleas trying to
stop elephants.
Where will this executive greed all end? Without some sort of
government controls shareholders are going to have less faith in
companies they hold stock for or consider buying stock. After
all, why buy stock where you have no protection from executives
over-rewarding themselves to insulate themselves from falling
stock price? Why give money to a group of people who have
demonstrated so many clever ways to legally steal it? There seem
to be perfectly legal if not legitimate ways to run off with the
company's value. Eventually what will happen is fewer people will
dare to invest in stock at all. That would make the stock market
fall and would bring a serious change to the economy of this
country. That is just one more factor making the future of this
country seem less than rosy. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mathematics (letter of comment by Jim Spinosa)
Jim Spinosa responded to Mark's article on mathematics in the
07/08/05 issue of the MT VOID, saying, "Mark R. Leeper's topic,
'Mathematics is Discovered, Not Invented' was interesting; with
his views he could survive a "Spectre Of The Gun" scenario without
a Vulcan mindmeld. He has the right mindset to study/debunk
Einstein's General Relativity. Here is a snapshot of Einstein's
explanation of the Principle of Equivalence. Gravity is equivalent
to acceleration blah, blah, blah, blah. OK, gravity is equivalent
to acceleration but only under special circumstances. Here is an
example where gravity is not entirely equivalent to acceleration.
(Einstein doesn't mention that his example applies to every
material object in the universe.) Yet, gravity is still equivalent
to acceleration. There are other aspects of General Relativity
that M. R. Leeper should find interesting. Questionable
derivatives: There are formulas that specify how to transform
points (x,y) from the standard Cartesian coordinate system to other
non-standard systems with points(x',y'). The derivatives of these
formulas are taken, but what do the derivatives of these formulas
represent? General Relativity is a theory that depends on Ockham's
Razor. The simplest explanation, which takes into account all the
relevant facts, is the correct explanation. If one of A or B is
true, and A is false, then B must be true. What if A, the false
explanation, is simpler than B and takes into account all the
relevant facts, then according to Ockham's Razor the false
explanation is true. " [-js]
Mark replies, "I cannot say I follow your entire argument. As for
your last question, there are various levels of confirmation of
statements from hypothesis to tautology. Ockham's Razor is a
principle which is a low level. The rules of logic are on a much,
much, much firmer footing than Ockham's Razor. There are all
sorts of over-simplifications that Ockham's Razor says are true,
but in reality are false. [-mrl]
Jim also later wrote, "When Mark Leeper first posed this question
(in his parallel lines essay), I thought there was no empirical
way to investigate it. Later I recalled the things I read about
Bell's Theorem. Adherents of Bell's Theorem believe we live in a
non-local universe,which would seem to qualify as a different
universe. Remarkably, modern physics has insights into this
question. It has discovered a different universe with different
physical laws. It is our own universe viewed as a non-local
universe. In the classical, local universe events and their
effects had a limited range. The effects of an event couldn't
travel faster then the speed of light and they couldn't affect a
very distant particle instantaneously. In a non-local universe a
particle can produce an effect on a very distant particle
instantaneously. Do the principals of mathematics change in a
non-local universe? According to the adherents of Bell's Theorem,
principles such as probability and corroboration still exist but
in a different form. For instance, the maximum theoretical
probability of an event is no longer one, it is some number
greater than one. Similarly, if the theoretical maximum
corroboration of a group of experiments (group X) in a local
universe is two, then the theoretical maximum corroboration of the
same group of experiments (group X) in a non-local universe is
greater than two. Many scientists believe Bell's Theorem has been
empirically verified. Others believe the experiments used to
prove Bell's Theorem are flawed. Perhaps, a small minority
believe Bell's Theorem is a pathetic fraud--a fraud that can be
discerned from any accurate description of the theorem." [-js]
Mark replies, "I am not convinced that the mathematics actually
could differ in another universe. The rules of mathematics and
logic would remain the same. The axioms might change, but the
same axioms would lead to the same conclusions. That would change
the physics but not the mathematics. In our universe we have
different geometries: Euclidean and at least two non-Euclidean
geometries. They describe different 'universes' but do not
contradict each other. I suppose it is like in England you drive
on the left, in America you drive on the right, but the laws don't
contradict each other, you just apply each where it is
appropriate." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Letter of Comment (by Fred Lerner)
Fred Lerner writes, "I really enjoyed Kate Pott's piece on "The
War of the Worlds" in the latest MT Void [07/08/05]. [-frl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
G. K. Chesterton's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (ISBN 0-486-43178-9)
has no relation to either of the Hitchcock films of that title,
but is rather a collection of eight stories about sleuth Horne
Fisher, who "knows too much" about the British upper class. The
stories have Chesterton's literary flair, but are not as
appealing as his "Father Brown" stories, perhaps because Fisher
is not as appealing as Father Brown. And I came to this
conclusion well before I read the following speech by Fisher:
"...if you think I'm going to let the Union Jack go down and down
eternally, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the
very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat;
not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires
with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty
Yankee Jewesses, ...." (page 71-72) (Yeah, I know--I seem to be
seeing this sort of thing everywhere. Trust me, I'm not choosing
books *trying* to find these.)
MURDER ON MAIN STREET edited by Cynthia Manson (ISBN
0-56619-927-1), you will be pleased to hear, doesn't have any
overt anti-Semitism, though it's unlikely that someone editing a
book in 1993 for Barnes & Noble would include any of that sort of
material. (Of course, the subtitle is "Small Town Crime from
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine & Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery
Magazine", and one is somewhat less likely to have Jewish
characters to comment on in a small town in Nebraska than in
London.) As a summer beach read, this is pretty good, because
the stories are best read spread out over a week or two of
vacation rather than one after another.
I read General Robert E. Lee's WARTIME PAPERS (ISBN
0-306-80282-1) and Captain Robert E. Lee's RECOLLECTIONS AND
LETTERS OF ROBERT E. LEE (ISBN 0-914427-66-0) simultaneously,
reading first General Lee's papers, and then his son Captain Lee's
recollections of the war and of his father. (The son's volume
covers Lee after the war as well.) For the serious student of
the Civil War, I would obviously recommend General Lee's papers,
which are far more detailed. But for the casual reader,
Captain's Lee's book is probably a better overview that avoids
the minutiae of troop movements and supply requisitions, while
still providing enough extracts of Lee's letters to get some idea
of his perspective. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
-- Lily Tomlin