Recommended: Two more good STRATFOR articles

George Friedman of STRATFOR has written two more good articles which I can recommend. One is called A Net Assessment of the World, in which he discusses the overall geopolitical situation today. The second article is entitled World War II and the Origin of American Unease, and is also quite insightful.

Visiting an American WW2 Cemetery

On our Rhine-Moselle river trip we made a stop a couple of days ago at the American WW2 cemetery at Hamm, near Luxemburg, the last resting place of about 5000 American servicemen (and 1 woman, an Army nurse) most of whom died in the 1944/45 Battle of the Bulge. Nearby in the German WW2 cemetery lie about 11,000 young German soldiers who lost their lives in the same battle. There is something terribly poignant about all those young people, American and German alike, who could in other circumstances have been the best of friends, but instead cut each other’s lives so short.

 As a group (we are all Americans on this river cruise) we laid a wreath at the central chapel. The superintendent called forth all the veterans in the group, and I found myself terribly moved as a number of old men (we are almost all old in this cruise) stepped forward to form ranks and place the wreath while taps were played.

I cannot help but reflect what madness, what political incompetence on both sides  led us into all the senseless devastation and lost lives in World War 2, and wonder whether the world isn’t repeating this madness today. Our Middle Eastern wars haven’t produced as many American deaths, but it has produced tens of thousands of physically and/or mentally damaged American soldiers whose lives and whose family’s lives will be blighted by their disabilities for the rest of their lives. And of course millions of the native residents of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan have been killed, wounded, and/or displaced in the senseless fighting

Traveling through the Rhine and Moselle valleys one learns about the many invasions and conflicts that have washed over these areas repeatedly since before Roman times right up to World War 2. What, one wonders, would it take to permanently restrain the inevitable ambitions of demagogues (President Putin comes to mind)  and religious fanatics (the IS comes to mind) and end this senseless cycle of destruction.

About Hi Fi equipment and suckers

There are some items, like watches, cars, wines and hi fi audio gear where people with enough money (more money than sense, some would say) spend inordinate amounts for little or no real gain. A $250,000 Rolls-Royce is no doubt better constructed than a $25,000 Chevrolet, but is it really 10 times better, especially on a slow daily commute? A $50,000 Patek Philippe watch certainly has more status than a $50 Timex, but it doesn’t really tell time any better – certainly not $49,950 better.  And as several researchers have shown, even people who fancy themselves wine experts often can’t really distinguish $10/bottle wines from $200/bottle wines in blind tests.  In fact in one published test experts confidently rated two glasses of wine quite differently in a blind test, although both glasses were in fact poured from the same bottle.

The world of hi fidelity music has always had roughly three levels – (1) the cheap boom-box level for casual listening of popular music, (2) a mid-level where a reasonable living-room system might cost $1000-$3000 including speakers, receiver/amplifier, and cd player.  Above that (3) is a stratospheric level where people obsess about things like $7000 audio cables (Pear ANJOU Speaker Cables), $200,000 hand-built amplifiers (Dynaudio Arbiter monoblocks), $40,000 speaker sets (Waterfall Audio Niagara Platinum Speakers) and $8000 headphones (Final Audio Muramasa VIII).  I have no doubt that to a very experienced audio engineer with decades of experience in the studio these may possibly sound a bit better, but are they really $20,000-$300,000 better for the average listener?

I am thinking about this right now because my Logitech Duo wireless music devices just died. They were discontinued several years ago and support/repair is almost nonexistent, so I had to replace them. In the process of researching on the web what was available these days (I went with Sonos devices) I discovered - typical for the web - numerous highly emotional and acrimonious debates on such subjects as whether it was worth buying expensive external DACs (digital to analogue converters) for the Sonos Connect, and whether 16-bit digital files (CD quality) were adequate for “real” audiophiles or whether one had to move up to 24-bit files, which are not supported by the Sonos system.

Of course many of these people are absolutely convinced they can hear differences with more expensive equipment (especially expensive equipment they have just bought) but few have really done blind A/B tests, and if they did many would no doubt be surprised and dismayed to find out that they really couldn’t reliably tell which was the output from the more expensive system. 

In fact human hearing isn’t really all that good compared to many other creatures.  At our best when we were young we may have heard a range from about 10 Hz to 20k Hz, and by the time we are old enough to afford expensive audio equipment, and to have lived with loud city noises, rock bands and music around us for several decades, our hearing is much worse, especially at the upper end.

The spirited debate about 16-bit vs 24-bit music files is largely based on a faulty understanding of the physics involved. Despite the prevalent myth that more bits somehow gives more “accurate” music, it really only gives more dynamic range (loud to soft), and 16 bits already encompasses the entire loud-soft range (up to about 96 db, about the sound standing next to a loud gas lawn mower.) that the human ear can comfortably listen to. A 24-bit range just pushes the upper end to about 144db, which is about the ear-damaging sound level standing right next to a 155mm howitzer when it is fired.  For studio work where the digital files are going to be merged and manipulated, it may well be worth working in 24-bit formats to avoid introducing rounding errors, but 16-bit final output is more than enough dynamic range for any meaningful music listening.

What does actually make a difference in the “accuracy” of digital music is the sampling rate. There is an arcane thing called the “Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem” that says that to accurately digitally record a wavelength of frequency x one needs to sample at  least 2x times the frequency plus about 10%. CDs sample at 44,0000 samples per second, which happens to be 20k Hz times 2 plus 10%, meaning that (not by accident)  standard CDs already sample at a rate capable of accurately recording up to the  maximum 20k Hz frequency that a young person can hear, and far better than most of us older folks can hear.

The upshot of all of this is that, once again, as with cars and wines and watches, a lot of people are apparently being sold very expensive stuff that they really don’t need for their purposes with appeals to “status” and “more expensive is better”.  I suppose this is a natural feature of any economy.  As the old saying goes ‘There's a sucker born every minute”, except that it is now probably down to every 10 seconds or less.

If I had enabled comments on this blog I would no doubt be swamped with emotional and outraged flames from people who have sunk a lot of money into their expensive audio systems (or cars or watches or wine collections) and desperately need to believe their money was well spent. As a classical music lover with normal adult ears, I find my rather modest mid-level system (320kbs MP3 files or internet streaming stations fed through the Sonos wireless system to a $500 Denon receiver and $100 AR-6 speakers) more than adequate, and in fact I really can’t hear the difference between 320kbs files and 160kbs files, or even some 128kbs files, so even my setup is probably overkill.

The Iranian Nuclear deal – take 2

The administration is still trying to sell the nuclear “framework” that has supposedly been agreed upon with Iran.  I say “supposedly” because as time has passed it has become increasingly clear that Iran has no intention of agreeing in any final deal to some of the key terms proposed. The supreme leader has made it clear he will not agree to any deal which doesn’t remove all sanctions on the day the deal is signed.  The Republican Guard has made it abundantly clear that they will allow no inspectors on any military sites – which happens to include many nuclear facilities. In fact, it is pretty clear from recent Iranian speeches and statements that Iran really cares much less about getting a deal that the President, which is always a bad negotiating position to be in.  I see that David Brooks has much the same view in his New York Times Op-Ed piece The Revolution Lives! , and that two eminent forign policy expers, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz express similar misgivings in their Wall Street Journal piece The Iranian Deal and its Consequences.

Meanwhile Iran continues to stir up trouble and arm and fund jihadists throughout the Middle East. Iranian generals and "experts" are popping up all over the place in all the current Middle East trouble spots. From a strategic point of view we may be better off trying to keep sanctions in place to at least slow Iranian intrusions than agree to a weak nuclear deal that freed Iran from the sanctions, even though it will be a tough job to keep effective sanctions in place.

I rather suspect the President’s sudden about-face this week on the issue of allowing Congress to vote on any deal is a back-door way of trying to cover his rear when it becomes clear that there is no good deal to be had.  If the negotiations fail, he can always blame Congress, and especially the Republicans. On the other hand, Congress is (rightly, I think) suspicious that the President is too focused on getting something to bolster his rather anemic "legacy" rather than looking out for the nation's welfare.  So forcing a deal to go through Congressional scrutiny is probably not a bad thing in this case.  And my current bet is that Congress, including a significant number of Democrats, will not feel the proposed deal is strong enough.

So we will have to see if Secretary Kerry can manage to cobble together an acceptable deal by the June deadline. I would bet he won't. In fact, in the end he may not be able to craft any deal at all, and that may not be a bad thing in the current circumstances.

The Iranian Nuclear Framework

The administration is trying hard to sell the recently-announced "nuclear framework" with Iran, though it is hard to tell yet if their arguments are having any affect on the many skeptics. It is a better proposed deal than many of us expected, but it is far, far from the president's promise of a couple of years ago to assure that Iran would not get nuclear weapons. At best, if no one cheats, it lets Iran get within a few months of weapon production.  It does include an inspection regime, but it leaves almost all of Iran's extensive nuclear weapons infrastructure pretty much in place.

But if course this is just a "framework" so far, not a signed deal.  And the devil is in the details. Within hours of the announcement, Washington and Iran were describing the deal in different, and even opposing, ways. The Republicans and even some Democrats are still skeptical. And within days Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei had publicly announced that he would accept no deal which didn't drop all sanctions the day the deal was signed, which is pretty much a non-starter for the US. So we are still a long, long way from a deal.

Fareed Zakaria makes a compelling case that one can only evaluate this deal in the light of the possible alternatives - continuing the sanctions or military intervention. Military intervention would be a major activity - Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan and it's nuclear program won't be destroyed with just a few "surgical" air strikes. It would probably take a full-scale US invasion of Iran to really destroy the nuclear infrastructure, and most of the world would probably condemn the US for such an action. Sanctions haven't slowed Iran's nuclear program to date much, and wouldn't likely to do so in the future. Moreover, it is very hard to keep the sanctions in place - lots of nations would like to cheat and buy Iranian oil.  So by Fareed's argument any deal is perhaps better than no deal.

But there is another side to this issue. Iran is in the process of sponsoring a massive Shia takeover of large parts of the Middle East through the surrogate jihadists it is arming and funding in places like Lebanon and Syria and Iraq and Yemen. Removing the sanctions on Iran frees massive financial resources which Iran can use to accelerate and increase its efforts to subvert the governments of its neighbors. In that respect a deal, while (perhaps) slowing Iran's nuclear weapons programs, would have undesirable effects elsewhere.

Then of course one must consider whether it really matters whether Iran gets a nuclear weapon. It may threaten Israel, but Iranian leaders know perfectly well that hitting Israel with nuclear weapons would result in their own major cities being reduced to radioactive dust within hours. And in fact an Iranian nuclear attack on just about any of their neighbors might well bring a nuclear response from the US and/or European nations. Like most authoritarian regimes, the survival of the regime itself is uppermost in their minds, and they are likely to be fairly pragmatic about that, whatever fanatical slogans they may chant in public.

Moreover, I am sure the Iranian leadership is perfectly well aware that if they are perceived, or even suspected, of having deliverable nuclear weapons, many of their neighbors in the Middle East will feel the need to acquire nuclear arms as well, which would in the end make Iran less secure. Saudi Arabia, for one, could afford to acquire nuclear weapons fairly quickly, and would probably do so.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It the deal is scuppered, it is still not clear which side's hard-liners will  be the ones to kill the deal. Nor is it clear yet if Congress can successfully impose on the administration a requirement to get Congressional approval of any proposed deal. And it is still not clear if the president is willing to walk away from a defective agreement, or if his commitment to his "legacy" is so strong he will take any deal he can get.

More Hans Rosling

One more good Hans Rosling video to recommend, this one with Fareed Zakaria on world population growth and changes:

Are you ignorant about the world?

Recommended: Hans Rosling presentations

Hans Rosling is a Swedish academic who is well known for presenting enlightening colorful demographics statistics in surprisingly meaningful ways. I recommend several of his recent presentations, which are available on YouTube:

US in a converging world, Hans Rosling on CNN (on Fareed Zakaria's GPS)

Hans Rosling and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world (TED talk)

 

Hans Rosling Discusses Pre-Conceived Notions and a Fact-Based World View (CGI U 2015)

There are others available on YouTube as well.