Being reluctantly dragged into a Big Data world.

Our Twentieth Century analog legal, government, financial, corporate, news and infrastructure systems are reluctantly being dragged into a digital future that is mostly incomprehensible to them. I'm no tech expert. It's incomprehensible to me too.  And digital information is expanding extremely rapidly.

2010 Digital Universe Study Title: A Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready? 

Twitter adds 2,500 megawatt hrs. of demand globally per year. Equivalent to 2,850 k households. - Science Friday

Our power grid has rapidly fallen from number 1 in the 1980s among nations. Now we are ranked in the 30s. The US power grid has not kept pace with the power demands. Most of the new power demands are from digital storage and usage.

Some people still use the analog system reading newspapers and TV for news. Unfortunately many of the analog people are government officials, such as school board members and local government officials trying to make sense of financial data.

Amish and Mennonite sects are voluntarily separate from the modern world. People that refuse to Tweet or buy a computer are involuntarily separated from the modern world. 

The amount of analogue information has stayed the same:

 "As recently as the year 2000, only a quarter of the stored information in the world was digital. The other three-quarters were on paper, film, vinyl LP records magnetic cassette tapes, and the like."  In 2013 ratio of analog to digital was 2% to 98%. 

"Meanwhile the danger to us as individuals shifts from privacy to probability ; algorithms will predict the likelihood that one will get a heart attack (and pay more for health insurance), default on a mortgage (and be denied a loan) , or commit a crime (and perhaps get arrested in advance). It leads to an ethical consideration of the role of free will verses the dictatorship of data. Should individual volition trump big data, even if statistics argue otherwise? Just as the printing press prepared the ground for laws guaranteeing free speech - which didn't exist earlier because there was so little written expression to protect-the age of big data will require new rules to safeguard the sanctity of the individual.  

In many ways, the way we control and handle data will have to change. We're entering a world of constant data-driven predictions where we may not be able to explain the reasons behind our decisions. What does it mean if a doctor cannot justify a medical intervention without asking the patient to defer to a black box, as the physician must do when relying on a big-data-driven diagnosis. Will the judicial system's standard of "probable cause" need to change to "probabilistic cause" - and if so, what are the implications of this for human freedom and dignity?"

From:
Big Data. A Revolution That Will Transform  How We Live, Work and Think
By Victor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier 

Is a gas powered electric power generation plant still possible in 19320?

I haven’t heard that a company is interested in building a gas fired power plant on the property that the City of Coatesville is offering for Auction on August 13, 2013.

There is both a gas line and an electric power line near or on the properties being auctioned. It’s hilly and might not be a good spot to build on.  

But at least 2 power companies are aware of Coatesville. They have been to Coatesville and failed to build on the Carlson Steel part of the “Flats” property. 

I believe that Harry Walker, Al Baxter Jr. and Andrew Lehr allegedly met at the Whip Tavern in 2007 with power company representatives to talk about bringing a power plant to Coatesville. 

The property is owned by the City not the RDA. 

I wouldn't want to see a power plant there but the City is required to sell to the highest bidder. 

PUBLIC AUCTION

SEE:

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2010

What could have been

About: "A House Divided" G. Terry Madonna & Michael L.Young

“Most attention in the bruising battle to adopt the recently enacted Pennsylvania budget focused on whether the state budget passed on time.  It did. 

But a story far more important than budget passage itself was largely missed in covering the late night, last- minute theatrics now de rigueur with state budgets. That story poignantly revealed to those watching the deep polarization that now exists within the Pennsylvania legislature…”  

"What happened can be summed up in a single word: “partisanship”-- pervasive, prevalent, pernicious, partisanship--more intense than any in modern times.  Partisanship also has polarized not only Republicans from Democrats, but likewise the state house from the state senate, ominously mirroring the same toxic partisanship so virulently widespread in the U.S. Congress."  

READ MORE AT:  

A House Divided 

July 8, 2013 

G. Terry Madonna & Michael L.Young

I believe the division between extremist Republicans and everyone else will increase in the near future. I can't be sure and I could be wrong but there seem to be more young Republican local office holders of "Tea Party Patriot" persuasion in Chester County. The younger local office holders on school boards and municipal government are the future candidates in statewide and federal elections.

For the next decade or so I can see the Republican Party growing even more extreme. Whether the voters will put them in office or not is too be determined.

If you have an interest in politics, especially Pennsylvania politics, make sure to check "Politicly Uncorrected" frequently:

Politically Uncorrected Column 

"Politically Uncorrected is published twice monthly.  Dr. G. Terry Madonna is Professor of Public Affairs and Director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll (formerly the Keystone Poll) at Franklin & Marshall College, and Dr. Michael Young is Managing Partner of Michael Young Strategic Research."

Fireworks and bike race- Coatesville, PA July 7, 2013

 The Flags are up. 

Video of First Celebrate Coatesville 2011 COATESVILLE CLASSIC VIDEO Video production by 

John Hutelmyer

RACE MAP

Transportation bill: it’s hard to see into the dark Machiavellian chambers of the Statehouse

But what I can see through the toxic mist, the hang-up for the transportation bill is that Republicans shrunk the Senate version which had a $2.5 billion transportation bill to about a $2 billion transportation bill to get a few of the more extreme right wing house members in the boondocks to vote for the bill.

 I think that the SEPTA service extension to Atglen, Parkesburg and Coatesville may be covered either way but I’m not sure of that. Maybe we need more than a 2 billion-transportation bill to get SEPTA service here. 

Either way we’re not getting more new roadways in SE Pennsylvania. Public transit especially rail and light rail is the only way to move more people and goods in SE Pennsylvania. And even the PA boondocks that suck on the tax money that we generate in SE Pennsylvania depend on expanding transportation here in SE, PA. 

 Democrats appear to be gunning for a larger transportation bill. They don't appear to be very far apart. But then I am watching this through that toxic mist. 

 “The plan sets a higher spending level than Gov. Corbett’s initial proposal, which topped out at $1.8 billion by the summer of 2018; but less than package that would raise $2.5 billion in new money.”

From:

House committee approves transportation funding bill, andfuel tax increase to support

See Harrisburg Patriot News for the latest on the budget.

VIDEO: “Going Public” exposes wealthy conservatives’ aim to gut public education.

What I have been saying since we encountered the Amway Betsy DeVos school privateers & their bussed in thugs when we tried to do an after school program at in the Perkiomen Valley School District in the 1990s.

Also see:

SOLIDARITY FOREVER: How the Amway De Vos family is taking aim atunions and public education... Teamsters tracking union busting, teacherbashing billionaires

There are ordinary jerks and there are jerks that are essential to the growth of the Democratic Party like Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R)

Legislator Blocks Openly Gay Colleague From Speaking About DOMA, Cites ‘God’s Law’

Even after historic ruling, Republicans still just won't give up.

Pennsylvania state lawmaker: Veterans who support climate change legislation are ‘traitors.’

To the jerk:

"Global warming is inextricably linked to national security, with the potential to “aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions” around the world, which “could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity.” 

By Amanda Terkel on Oct 20, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Jerks like Rep. Metcaffe are essential to the growth of the Democratic Party and the demise of the Republican Party. Talk it up Daryl!