The waves in Saturn’s A ring are formed by the gravitational pull of tiny moon Daphnis, the bright dot (only 5 miles in diameter) in the ring gap just to the left of center.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

A 1999 bill signed by then-governor George W. Bush allows an attending physician in Texas to refuse to continue life-sustaining treatment at his sole discretion, in which case “an ethics or medical committee” reviews the circumstances with the patient or representative present and makes a determination to uphold or deny the doctor’s decision. If the committee affirms that

“life-sustaining treatment is inappropriate…the patient shall be given available life-sustaining treatment pending transfer…[and t]he patient is responsible for any costs incurred in transferring the patient to another facility. The physician and the health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment after the 10th day after the written decision.”

Wikipedia describes the process in detail:

For the hospital personnel to take advantage of legal immunity from prosecution for this the following process must be followed:

• The family must be given written information concerning hospital policy on the ethics consultation process.
• The family must be given 48 hours’ notice and be invited to participate in the ethics consultation process. Family members may consult their own medical specialists and legal advisors if they wish.
• The ethics consultation process must provide a written report to the family of the findings of the ethics review process.
• If the ethics consultation process fails to resolve the dispute, the hospital, working with the family, must try to arrange transfer to another provider physician and institution who are willing to give the treatment requested by the family and refused by the current treatment team.
• If after 10 days, no such provider can be found, the hospital and physician may unilaterally withhold or withdraw the therapy that has been determined to be futile.
• The party who disagrees may appeal to the relevant state court and ask the judge to grant an extension of time before treatment is withdrawn. This extension is to be granted only if the judge determines that there is a reasonable likelihood of finding a willing provider of the disputed treatment if more time is granted.
• If either the family does not seek an extension or the judge fails to grant one, futile treatment may be unilaterally withdrawn by the treatment team with immunity from civil or criminal prosecution.

This part of the Texas Advance Directives Act, also known as the Texas Futile Care Law, is good legislation. It is designed to prevent a patient or her family from forcing a physician, nurse, or hospital do what they believe is not in the patient’s best interest or that causes the patient needless harm and suffering without benefit. If the family disagrees, this law creates a fair mediation procedure. Good idea, Gov. Bush.

Why am I still surprised when politicians serve hypocrisy as an entree?

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Account Protector from American Express helps during many of life’s ups and downs by canceling the minimum monthly payment, up to $500 each month of the eligible event term, if you experience a covered event.

American Express offers its Account Protection for just 85¢ per $100 of your monthly statement balance. Maybe Account Protection is just what you need.

American Express lists 14 “covered events”…also referred to as “life events.” They are, with maximum number of months of coverage in brackets:

hospitalization [1]
marriage [2]
purchase of a new home [2]
relocation of more than 150 miles [2]
starting college [2]
divorce [2]
birth of a child [2]
adoption of a child [2]
death of a spouse [2]
call to active military duty [2]
leave of absence [3]
involuntary unemployment [24]
long-term disability [24]
death [all debt canceled]

At 85¢/month, this kind of “insurance” sounds cheap, but it’s not a good deal…except for American Express.

Here’s a simple example that shows how costly this protection is. Let’s say you have an unpaid balance of $1,000. Your Account Protector fee would be $8.50/mo (85¢ x $1000/$100). But your benefit, which equals your minimum monthly payment (2.5% of your account balance), is only $25.00. That means that in just three months you will have paid slightly more in fees than the benefit that comes from one month of protection. And American Express’s fine print states that you are eligible for no more than two life event benefits in any 12-month period and only one life event benefit in any two-month period. So if this year’s two life events each yield, say, two-month benefits, you would have paid $102 (12 x $8.50) and received benefits of just $100 (4 x $25). You could have saved $2 by doing nothing.

Looked at in another way, Account Protector adds 10.2% (85¢/$100 x 12) to your nominal credit card interest rate, which on some cards may already be more than 18% per year (American Express is one of the lowest at 13.24%).

Only if your employment is terminated (and here you must apply and qualify for state unemployment benefits and register with a recognized employment agency) or you suffer long-term disability (doctor’s report required) does Account Protector pay off.

Even death may not make it worthwhile. Under existing law, when an individual dies, credit card debt becomes a debt of the estate, and if there are no assets to pay the credit card company, the card company can’t legally force someone else to pay.

How do financial institutions get away with selling snake oil masquerading as insurance? First, credit card issuers are an oligopoly with minimal competition (there is no “public option”). Second, Account Protector and its competitors’ similar services (almost every other credit card issuer offers a something like it) are never referred to as insurance. For that reason, they is not regulated by state insurance commissions; they slide into your email or mail box as one of the many fine services financial institutions offer to their customers.

Account Protector is a high-profit item for American Express. Avoid.

Speaking about insurance non-insurance, in case you’ve forgotten, credit default swaps, so named to hide their true nature as insurance policies, were the arcane, unregulated, black-mustachioed, villainous non-insurance instruments that allegedly murdered Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Merrill Lynch.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

…the nearby hipster donut shop, Dynamo, whose most popular item is the Maple Glazed Bacon Apple donut…

…reserving sweet dishes for the end of a meal is thus a recent development. In the Middle Ages, a main course in England or France might include a dish like rabbits or beef tongue in gravy covered in sugar…

…as French cuisine develops from the 14th and to the 18th century, main courses become more and more savory rather than sweet, and sweet dishes slowly shift toward the end of the meal…

…Chinese dates with “snow frog”, 雪蛤. Snow frog is the poetic name given to frog fallopian tubes…

—flavor elements for sour tend to be rice vinegars in China, tamarind in south-east Asia, lemon juice or grain vinegar in the United States, sour orange or key lime in Central America, and wine vinegars in France (hence the name vin-aigre, ’sour wine’). The Yiddish souring element is crystals of citric acid called “sour salt”.

I encourage you to consume Jurafsky’s entire meal.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

HBS women -- 1963

One thing hasn’t changed, however: business managers are still viewed as grasping, self-interested, and greedy. Think Madoff, AIG, Enron, almost all the Wall Street firms, and Name-A-Bank. Few think that businessmen would honestly affirm, “My purpose is to serve the greater good.”

Yet this year, a couple of Harvard MBA students decided to do something about their image—to say “My purpose is to serve the greater good”—and to get others to say the same. They created an oath with a goal of getting 100 Harvard MBAs to sign on.

They greatly exceeded that goal; nearly 500, over half of the class, took the pledge.

The MBA Oath:

As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face choices that are not easy for me and others.

Therefore I promise:

• I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
• I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.
• I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
• I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
• I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
• I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
• I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.
• I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.

This oath I make freely, and upon my honor.

Word spread, and students at other business school students opened chapters and signed the oath. In June, BusinessWeek wrote about the phenomenon, “Harvard’s MBA Oath Goes Viral.”

Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath. It is ceremonial, but the license required before the practice of medicine is real and essential. Business management requires no such license. Will taking the MBA Oath make a difference? I suspect not…unless teeth appear.

But what if Harvard and other business schools decided that ethical behavior was not only a subject to study, but also a requirement for their MBA degree, with taking this Oath mandatory? In that case, if any MBAs were subsequently guilty (as ascertained by a non-judicial, university-run tribunal) of breaking their oaths, their MBA degrees would be revoked.

Would it matter to Madoffs, Lays, and the like? Probably not, but it could create a different climate within the graduate schools, one that might have a positive influence on all but the most venal.

What a dreamer I am.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

In a formal complaint and petition addressed to the Board of Supervisors of Lake and Sonoma Counties for “Remedy of Ongoing Public Nuisance from Geothermal Earthquakes Caused by Operations of Calpine Corp./Geysers Power Company, LLC at The Geysers,” ASCA specifically cited a September 5 magnitude 2.8 earthquake as the latest of more than a thousand magnitude 2.0 or higher temblors epicentered within five miles of Anderson Springs since 2000. These, ASCA contends, constitute an ongoing public nuisance. [A link to the complaint will be posted here when it goes online.]

According to the complaint, “Most residents of Anderson Springs were awakened by the jolt and noise of this earthquake; many were frightened and had difficulty going back to sleep.  Over the following 10 minutes, residents were disturbed by the rumblings & noise of numerous smaller earthquakes, most of which did not register on the USGS seismic network.” The September 5 earthquake was “epicentered next to Calpine’s MLM Wellpad by Castle Rock Springs, 1 mile from Anderson Springs (1,300 feet from the closest residence), and at a shallow depth of 1.6 miles (consistent with man-made, geothermal earthquakes).”

ASCA’s cover letter states:

There is now a significant body of qualified, independent scientific evidence about induced seismicity, along with extensive public comments, documentation, and media coverage, demonstrating the extent of problems for residents and their property.  It has become clear that most of these earthquakes are caused by geothermal development activities, and the instrumentation is now adequate to pinpoint their exact location and quantify resulting ground-shaking in Anderson Springs.

Although the impacted communities are primarily in Lake County, Calpine’s operations causing geothermal earthquakes occur both within Lake and Sonoma Counties and are permitted by their respective County planning/community development departments.  We recognize the importance of geothermal power production; we are not against geothermal energy, nor are we seeking to halt geothermal operations.  However, the wastewater disposal needs of Lake and Sonoma Counties, along with the business interests and profit motivations of Calpine Corporation, are being served at the expense of our small community and its residents.

California Civil Code Section 3480 defines a public nuisance as “one which affects at the same time an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons, although the extent of the annoyance or damage inflicted upon individuals may be unequal.” Complaints of public nuisance most often reference local concerns such as excessive noise, overflowing trash, or neighborhood blights such as drug selling. To file such a complaint against a major corporation involved in an activity as important as energy generation pits a gnat (ASCA) against an elephant (Calpine).

Calpine could try to defend itself by:

•  casting the temblors as insignificant annoyances that cause little or no damage
•  contending that residents knew about the problem when they moved in
•  demonstrating that the earthquakes had been ongoing for a many years without complaint

Since Calpine supplies a huge amount of energy to Northern California and ASCA has not documented any earthquake-related injuries and no incidents of dramatic property damage, the public nuisance complaint could get treated as a minor attack on an important corporate presence. And if Calpine pays significant taxes to the county governments (undetermined as of this writing), officials may be under tremendous financial pressure to find for the revenue producer over the NIMBY complainants.

ASCA has been researching induced earthquakes for a long time. Its chart of the number of earthquakes with magnitude greater than 2.0 shows a dramatic increase over the last several decades.

In addition, ASCA’s three-year survey (2002-04) indicates annoyances that may add up to a public nuisance:

•  85% of Anderson Springs residents reported that they or members of their family had been “woken up in the middle of the night by earthquakes.”

•  66% reported that smaller household objects (e.g., pictures, clocks, planted pots, knickknacks, etc.) had been moved or disturbed.

•  56% reported problems with doors/windows not closing properly due to earthquakes.

•  54% reported that “the earthquakes affect[ed] me or members of my family emotionally.”

Jeffrey Gospe, president of the ASCA, emailed me on September 24, “We are confident that the California Civil Code and its case history support our community’s rights to abatement of this public nuisance, and we hope that Lake/Sonoma Counties and Calpine will be proactive about remedying the situation without the necessity of court proceedings.”

Two previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) described the EGS project that AltaRock had undertaken in The Geysers, a geologically active formation in California’s Mayacamas Mountains of Lake and Sonoma Counties. The Geysers is the world’s most productive geothermal field. A third post noted the halting of that project.

With energy such a prominent public and governmental concern, it is surprising that local news coverage of AltaRock, ASCA, Calpine, etc., has been almost non-existent. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat is MIA. Only the weekly Lake County News and the New York Times (which owns the Press Democrat) track this story with any consistency.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

From an AltaRock Energy press release dated September 2, 2009:

AltaRock Energy Inc. has encountered a number of physical difficulties in the drilling of well E-7, the first well planned as part of its engineered geothermal systems (EGS) demonstration project in the Geysers, resulting from geologic anomalies particular to the formation underlying this well location.

Two previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) described the EGS project that AltaRock had undertaken in The Geysers, a geologically active formation in the Mayacamas Mountains of Lake County, CA.

Problems with the drilling, executed by Nabors Industries under contract from AltaRock, were made public on August 19 in the New York Times:

[T]he project has been delayed because the bit on a giant rig, meant to drill more than two miles underground, has struggled to pierce surface rock formations, [anonymous federal] scientists said. The bit has snapped off at least once and become repeatedly fouled in a shallow formation called cap rock, and the drillers have twice been forced to pull it out and essentially start the hole over again.

The Times and Reuters also noted that AltaRock, in addition to the DOE commitment, has raised $30 million in venture capital from investors  such as Google and the investment firms Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures, Vulcan Capital, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Further review of AltaRock’s drilling had been requested by Anderson Springs Community Alliance (ASCA), a group of citizens concerned about the increase in local earthquakes since large-scale water injection began in the late 90’s. Anderson Springs is just a few miles from AltaRock’s drill site. ASCA president Jeffrey Gospe, a resident of Santa Rosa and Anderson Springs, said that federal regulators disclosed that once the AltaRock/Nabors rig got stuck for a third time after only 800 feet of new drilling, AltaRock halted the project and released the rig. He guessed that AltaRock had been spending about $100,000 per day, and had already gone through $12-14 million of their capital. “I think there’s now a 50% chance that AltaRock will pull out of the Geysers completely and move to Nevada or elsewhere, someplace that doesn’t have such a high level of seismicity.”

In July, in response to such concerns about engendering large earthquakes, the Department of Energy and the Bureau of Land Management forbade AltaRock to fracture rock until completion of a study comparing the potential for engendering large earthquakes in The Geysers with the experience of a similar EGS project near Basel, Switzerland, that did create a 3.2 quake in 2006. After that event, the Basel project was shut down. The DOE/BLM report, according to Gospe, is expected to support AltaRock’s claim that mitigation of earthquakes is practicable., but with AltaRock’s cessation of drilling, the study may now be less important. The real question, Gospe said, is, “Can you really believe that AltaRock can do this with no seismic effect, if they can’t do the easiest part of the project? They could not even complete the drilling phase in an area where wells 8,000 feet deep are routine.”

*     *     *     *     *

Note: EGS is a acronym for “Enhanced Geothermal Systems” and “Engineered Geothermal Systems,” both of which refer to the same technology.

*     *     *     *     *

Addendum 9/10/09:

Prompted by John Stewart’s comment below, I changed the opening to this post. It used to read (incorrectly):

Late in 2008, Barack Obama’s Department of Energy, led by Nobel laureate Steven Chu, committed $6.25…

Here is the relevant information from DOE:

AltaRock Energy Inc. and Northern California Power Agency, University of Utah, Texas A&M University, Science Applications International Corporation, Temple University (Seattle, WA): to use an innovative stimulation process to create an EGS reservoir that will drill below the permeable zone, stimulate in the contained zone with infrastructure in place, and increase power production (up to $6,014,351)

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Today I was trying to complete this phrase: palms up in a gesture of _____? I was stymied because that gesture seems to have an unusually wide range of possible meanings.

In Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance, Adam Kendon writes:

Open hand Supine (or “palm up”) family gestures…are used in contexts where the speaker is offering, giving or showing something or requesting the reception of something. It also includes gestures in which, very often, both hands, sustained in the Open Hand Supine pose, are moved away from one another, as if being withdrawn from the space immediately in front of the speaker. The semantic theme of these gestures is that of the withdrawal of action or of non-intervention.

I did a Google search and found Kendon’s explanation to be generally accurate, but writers who utilize this gesture in their works stretch it much further. Here is the surprisingly long, and in parts contradictory, list I assembled from just the first 75 or so Google hits.

Palms up in a gesture…

of acceptance
of amazement
of apology
of benevolence
of blankness
that states, “Case closed”
of clueless irritation
of defeat
of dismissal
that drove home the point
that seems French
of futility
of giving
of greeting
of helplessness
of hopelessness
of ignorance
of incredulity
of innocence
of invitation
of invocation
of magnanimity
of openness
of peace
of pleading
of prayer
of receptivity
of resignation
that asks, “So nu?”
of submission
of supplication
of surrender
of thanks
that states, “There you have it”
that states, “This is easy”
of vulnerability
that asks, “What can I do about it now?”  
that asks, “What the hell is your problem?”
that asks, “What’s up?”

Gesture, because it is non-verbal, opens itself to ambiguity when it is translated into human language. But such ambiguity engenders flexibility and with that comes creativity.

So nu? Palms up. What’s your problem? There you have it!

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

In the abortion debate, by adopting the “Pro Choice” and “Pro Life” frames, each side chose a positive phrase, and neither won the framing battle. In tax policy, however, renaming the estate tax as the “death tax,” gave a huge boost to the anti-tax forces. Who wants to support death?

Framing has greatly influenced the debate on healthcare. Waiting to pull the plug on grandma, a “death panels” bogeyman lurks within Section 1233 of HR 3200, the House bill that is the focus of much of the health care controversy.

Sometimes framing has a valid basis, even if one supports the other side. In this case, it is nonsense.

Here’s what Sarah Palin wrote last week:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil,”

And here’s here are a few citizens speaking out in a similar vein:

“a slippery slope to euthanasia”

“Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!…Government provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death!…Government will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life.”

The provisions of H.R. 3200 clearly extend beyond simply providing information…This bill necessarily pushes people toward ending their life earlier rather than later. The question is why?  I believe it is in the title of the bill, which in part is to, “…reduce the growth in health care spending and for other purposes.”

Why would they require Medicare providers to engage in “Advance Care Planning Consultation,”  but they refuse to pass legislation mandating an abortion clinic be required to counsel on alternatives to abortion?

What is really behind such twisted interpretations is the fear of more governmental involvement in our lives. It is reasonable to question whether an expansion of Medicare is good for society. But it is dishonest to create bogeymen where none exist.

What does Section 1233 really say? The relevant text is below (full text here), with my comments in bold font:

(hhh)(1) Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term `advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years.

This paragraph does not say that grandma must consult with the “death panel” every 5 years. It only says that if she chooses to have the consultation, Medicare will pay for it, but only once every 5 years.

Such consultation shall include the following:
(A) An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to.
(B) An explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses.
(C) An explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.
(D) The provision by the practitioner of a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning, including the national toll-free hotline, the advance care planning clearinghouses, and State legal service organizations (including those funded through the Older Americans Act of 1965).
(E) An explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.
(F)(i) Subject to clause (ii), an explanation of orders regarding life sustaining treatment or similar orders, which shall include-
(I) the reasons why the development of such an order is beneficial to the individual and the individual’s family and the reasons why such an order should be updated periodically as the health of the individual changes;
(II) the information needed for an individual or legal surrogate to make informed decisions regarding the completion of such an order; and
(III) the identification of resources that an individual may use to determine the requirements of the State in which such individual resides so that the treatment wishes of that individual will be carried out if the individual is unable to communicate those wishes, including requirements regarding the designation of a surrogate decisionmaker (also known as a health care proxy).

These paragraphs delineate what the consultation must include in order to qualify for reimbursement. They do not take any authority away from grandma, nor confer any authority on the doctor.

It is possible, as some claim, that access to information about end-of-life issues may encourage more terminally ill patients to limit medical efforts on their behalf. But those decisions would be made by the patient, based on knowledge, not ignorance.

If we shine a light, grandma can see where she’s going. Let her choose the path.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

The shirt was chocolate. The tie was garish.

The suit, of blessed memory, was lemon and taupe.

Nuff sed.

©2009 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.