Musicians and Smack

Disturbingly many great musicians have died or been destroyed by drugs, especially Heroin.   Here's a list of some of them, in no particular order

Jerry Garcia  1Aug1942-9Aug1995 (53)  Garcia had been addicted to Heroin for many years, had kicked it, fallen back in and was trying to kick it again when he died of a heart attack.
Charlie Parker 29Aug1920-12Mar1955 (34).  The founding pillar of BeeBop was a Heroin addict.  The coroner said he appeared to be in his 50s.
John Coltrane 23Sep1926-17Jul1967 (40)  Arguably the greatest and most original saxophone player ever, died of hepatitis, thought to have been a complication of his Heroin addiction
Chet Baker 23Dec1929-13May1988 (58) The great Jazz trumpeter struggled with addiction most of his career. He apparently fell out of his hotel window while on Heroin.
Janis Joplin 19Jan1943-4Oct1970 (27) Heroin Overdose
Mike Bloomfield 28Jul1943-15Feb1981 (37) Heroin Overdose
Tim Buckley 14Feb1947-29Jun1975 (28) Heroin Overdose
Brian Jones 28Feb1942-3Jul1969 (27) The Rolling Stones founder drowned in a swimming pool.  It was thought he'd passed out from an OD but authorities and family were inexplicit.
Alan Wilson 4Jul1943-3Sep1970 (27) The Canned Heat leader died of barbiturate overdose.
Kurt Cobain 20Feb1967-5Apr1994 (27) He shot himself after several failed suicide attempts with drugs.
Jimi Hendrix 27Nov1942-18Sep1970 (27) Asphyxia after ODing on sleeping pills.
John Kahn 13Jun1947-30May1946 (48) Jerry Garcia's long time friend and Bass player for most of his projects away from the Grateful Dead, died of a Heroin overdose.  Some of Garcia's friends blame Kahn for re-addicting him after he'd kicked the habit.
John Belushi 24Jan1949-5Mar1982 (33) The Blues Brother and Comedian died of a Speedball (Heroin and Cocaine) overdose
Brent Mydland 21Oct1952-26Jul1990 (37) The Grateful Dead keyboardist died of a Speedball OD.

Peter Green 29Oct1949-  Founder of Fleetwood Mac and one of the most talented and soulful of all guitarists.  He was clinically depressed and did too much LSD, and was submitted to years of shock and drug therapy.  He's still alive and can still play the guitar, but the amazing talent is gone.

Date Formats

There are quite a few formats in common use for presenting the date.  The most common in the US is

MM-DD-YY, which represents today's date as
September 23, 2014, and can be abbreviated as Sep 23, 14 or even 9/23/14

In Europe, the most common is
DD-MM-YY, which represents today's date as
23 September 2014 and be similarly abbreviated
Some people also use the "big endian" version of this
YY-MM-DD, which comes out
2014 September 23, which has a certain appeal. (This is ISO 8601)

as long as everybody is using the same format, it doesn't really matter that much which we use.  But too often, you can't tell.  After a lot of thinking about it, I've concluded that little endian euro style is the way to go.  the biggest advantage is that it requires no punctuation or even spaces to remain readable:

23Sep14 is almost as decipherable as 23 September 2014 and requires only 7 bytes to represent all possible 21st century dates.  (it takes 3 letters to disambiguate March from May and June from July.)   by adding two more to indicate the century, 23Sep2014 is completely unambiguous, self documenting, (no Y2K problem!) and can represent any date from the reign of Augustus to 31Dec9999 in 9 human readable bytes.   If for some reason I choose to write it 2014Sep23, you can still read it correctly.

If I write it Sep2314, you can still probably figure it out, but it could also be 14 Sep 2023.  If I go really crazy and write "91101", you aren't really sure it's a date at all--it could be a zip code (it happens to be Pasadena, CA).  Or it could be 1 Jan 1991, 9 Nov 2001, or 11 Sep 2001.

So, unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, I use Euro little endian when I write the date: 23 Sep 2014.

First Presidents

George Washington    First President
John Adams               First Ivy League President (he went to Harvard)
Thomas Jefferson       First President to cite Executive Privilege.
Thomas Jefferson       First President to get over 100,000 votes
James Madison           First President to ask for Declaration of War (war of 1812)
James Monroe            First President not known to have been a Deist. (he may have been.  We just don't know)
James Monroe             First President to ride on a steamboat
John Quincy Adams    First President of whom we have a photograph (although it was taken after he'd left office)
John Quincy Adams    First President who was not a "Founding Father"
John Quincy Adams    First President to have a middle name
John Quincy Adams    First to win the presidency without winning the popular vote
Andrew Jackson          First President to ride on a train.
Andrew Jackson          First President to have been openly religious.
Martin Van Buren        First President born after the Declaration of Independence was signed
Martin Van Buren        First President not of British descent.
William H Harrison      First President to die in office
William H Harrison     First President to get over 1 million votes
William H Harrison     First President to be photographed (the photo has not survived)
William H Harrison     President who served the least time (one month)
William H Harrison     Last President born a British Subject.
John Tyler                    First President to have impeachment proceedings initiated against him
John Tyler                    First President to have been made a widower while in office
John Tyler                    First President to marry while in office
James K Polk               First President of whom we have a photograph from while he was in office.
Zachary Taylor             Last President born before 1800
Zachary Taylor             Second President to die in office
Millard Fillmore           First President born after 1799
Millard Fillmore         Last president to be a member of the Whig party.
James Buchanan         First (and so far, only) President to never marry
Abraham Lincoln         First President to be murdered while in office
Abraham Lincoln         First President not born in one of the original 13 colonies.
Abraham Lincoln         First President to hold a Patent.
Andrew Johnson         First President who was neither a Lawyer or military officer
Andrew Johnson         First President to have been impeached
U.S. Grant                   First President to write a memoir.
U.S. Grant                   First President to have a mustache.
Rutherford B Hayes    First President to use a telephone while in office.
Rutherford B Hayes    First President to visit the west coast while in office.
James Garfield            First Left Handed President
Benjamin Harrison      First President to use electricity while in the White House
Benjamin Harrison      First President of whom we have an audio recording
Benjamin Harrison      Last President to have a beard
William McKinley      First President whose inauguration was filmed.
William McKinley      First President to ride in an automobile

William McKinley      Last President to have served in the Civil War
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to leave the country while in office
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to ride in a submarine under water
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to make a public appearance from an Automobile.
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to ride in an airplane (but after he was out of office)
Theodore Roosevelt    Youngest person to be President
Theodore Roosevelt    Last President to not have a middle name
William H Taft            Last President to wear facial hair.
William H Taft            First (and so far, only) President to serve on the Supreme Court
Woodrow Wilson        First (and so far, only) President with a PhD
Woodrow Wilson        First President to cross the Atlantic
Woodrow Wilson        First President after the Civil War born in a state that seceded
Warren Harding          First President born after the Civil War.
Warren Harding          First President to get more than 10 million votes
Herbert Hoover           First President born west of the Mississippi River
Herbert Hoover           First (and so far, only) president to have a successful business career before entering politics (excluding farmers and lawyers)(several others have been failed businessmen)
Herbert Hoover           First President to have a phone on his desk.
Herbert Hoover           First President to get more than 20 million votes
Franklin Roosevelt      First President to appear on TV
Franklin Roosevelt      First President to fly in an airplane while in office.
Dwight Eisenhower     First President born in Texas
Dwight Eisenhower     Last elected president to not have a full head of hair.
Dwight Eisenhower    Last President born before 1900
John F Kennedy          First President born after 1899
John F Kennedy          First non Protestant President.
John F Kennedy          First President to have served in the Navy.
Lyndon Johnson         First President to be inaugurated on an airplane.
Richard Nixon            First President born west of the Rocky Mountains
Richard Nixon            First President to leave office through means other than death or election.
Gerald Ford                First (and so far only) President to have been a college All-American in any sport.
Gerald Ford                First President to serve as president and vice president before having run for either.
Jimmy Carter              First President born after WWI
Jimmy Carter              First President born in a hospital
Ronald Reagan           First President to have been divorced.
Ronald Reagan           First (and so far, only) President to have been a union leader
Ronald Reagan           Oldest person to be President
Ronald Reagan           First President to die in the 21st century
George HW Bush       First President to have piloted a plane
George HW Bush       First President to have been in a plane crash
Bill Clinton                 First President born after WWII

Barack Obama            First President born west of the Pacific Coast

Donald Trump            First President to lose the popular vote by more than 255,000 (he lost by nearly 3 million)

Donald Trump            First President to have told more than 20,000 documented lies while in office 

Donald Trump            First (and so far, only) actively anti-american president

Donald Trump            First President to have been impeached for an actual crime. (Nixon committed actual crimes too, but resigned before he was impeached.)

Donald Trump            First President to have been divorced more than once.

Joe Biden                   Last President to have been born before the end of WWII.

14 Jan 2017 I just discovered that wikipedia has a page on this subject

Recessions by president

Here are all the recessions that occurred since 1947, plus the three main ones that occurred between the world wars, listed by the president and year they began, along with unemployment.  Before 1947, BLS didn't collect these statistics, so these are just approximations for those three.

Truman 1949: 3.9-7.9, back to 3.3 by 1951.
Eisenhower 1953: 2.5-5.9, back to 4.0 by 1955
Eisenhower 1957: 4.1 to 7.8, back to 5.2 by 1959
Eisenhower 1960: 4.1 to 7.1, back to 5.5 by 1962
Kennedy and LBJ did not have any recessions, both lowered unemployment through their terms
Nixon 1969: 3.9 to 6.1, only recovered to 4.9 by 1973.
Nixon 1973: 4.9 to 9.0, only recovered to 5.9 by 1979
Carter 1979: 5.9 to 7.8, only recovered to 7.2 by 1981
Reagan 1981: 7.2 to 10.8, back to 7.4 by 1984
Bush I 1990: 5.4 to 7.7, back to 3.9 by 2000
Clinton 2000: 3.9 to 5.8, no real recovery before 9/11
Bush II 2008: 4.4 to 10.0, back to 6.1 by 2014
Hoover 1929: 4% to 22%, began coming down very soon after FDR took office
FDR 1937: 14 to 17%.
Wilson 1920: 3.5 to 8%

My rankings for these guys is based on the number and size of the recessions that began during their administrations.  You can't blame a guy for things that began before he took office. 

Hoover is the worst, although it was mainly the policies of his two immediate predecessors that were at fault.   But he handled it as badly as he possibly could have.

Bush II is by far the worst modern--had Bush reacted as badly as Hoover had, his recession would have been as bad as the great depression.  Bush and his party deserve 99.9% of the credit for causing it, and they deserve 90% of the credit for preventing it from being cured faster.  I blame Obama for not being strong enough to take the gun away from the psychos, but the damage they are causing is the Rs fault, not O's.

Nixon is next, with a big recession and a small one.  Not entirely his fault but his price controls made it far worse than it needed to be.  (The provocation for the Arab oil embargo that caused the recession--unequivocal US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, was substantially Nixon's doing although it's difficult to find fault in him for that)

Reagan and Wilson are tied for 4th, each with a big recession.  Reagan's was caused by conscious policy choices, which his staff (and Volcker) wisely realized were ruinous and quickly reversed.  GWB and present day republicans fail to notice that part.  Wilson's was caused by the end of the war and the influenza panic.  Wilson himself was very sick at the time and was bullied by conservative advisers into doing the wrong thing.

Eisenhower is #6 with 3 small recessions

Truman, Bush I, Carter and Clinton all rank about equal, each with a medium or small recession that ended quickly.  Carter's recession is really a legacy of Nixon and OPEC.  It was really fairly small but he was politically unable to do anything about it because he was hamstrung by the Iran Hostage Crisis.  Clinton's recession was also quite small and mild (although I personally was hurt by it), but I downgrade him because he supported Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan, and their friends when they set the time bombs that destroyed the economy in 2008.

FDR's small recession was caused by backing away from policies that had been working.   He stopped it quickly, but it was a disaster for the country, because it damaged him politically, and he was no longer able to resist the austerians who had pressed him to do it.

Kennedy/LBJ and Obama have no recessions that can be blamed on them.  Note also that ALL of the significant hikes in the deficit since the end of WWII have been during three presidents: Nixon, Reagan and Bush II.  All others have reduced the deficit or held it steady--including Johnson, who started a major new safety net program and a major wasteful war.   Since WWI, the 4(5) presidents that have been best for the economy are:  #1: FDR.  #2: Kennedy/Johnson, #3 Clinton, #4 Obama.



http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=UNRATE,U6RATE,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#mediaviewer/File:US_Unemployment_1910-1960.gif

Fred Koch

Fred's father Harry was born to a comfortable Texas family and was himself a fairly successful businessman who founded several small companies, one of them a newspaper, in which he wrote fervent editorials against trade unions, pensions, bank regulation, and FDR's New Deal.  Harry died in 1942, by which point it should have been obvious that he'd been wrong about everything.  Koch is a fairly common German name--there are several other companies named Koch, none evidently related.  (In this version, Koch rhymes with Coke--either the drink or the refined coal product)

Fred Chase Koch, born 23 Sept 1900, went to MIT where he got a degree in chemical engineering.  He managed to take control of an existing petroleum engineering firm in 1925, and this became the core of Koch Industries.  In 1927 he invented a cheaper method of separating gasoline from crude oil, which allowed small companies like his own to compete.  The big companies spent several years in the courts trying to prevent him from doing business in the US, and succeeded for several years until he managed to prevail in the courts.  The people suing him were horribly dishonest (one bribed a judge) and he learned that winning sometimes requires lying, cheating and stealing.  While he was fighting in court, he began to sell the process in the Soviet Union.  While there, he found that it was a land of "hunger, misery and terror" and came to despise Joe Stalin.

What he didn't realize is that Russia had always been a land of hunger, misery and terror, long before the communist takeover, and that was why the revolution had succeeded.  Stalin was just exploiting the preexisting conditions and chose to not change that aspect.  Communism made the life of most Russians considerably better than it had been.  Better leaders could have made it better yet, but they didn't.  Extreme policies are inherently unstable--whether they are extremely capitalistic or extremely communistic, and only through brutal force can they be kept in place.  This reinforced his ideas about winning and power: to win, you need to be able to fight as dirty as necessary, and you need to be more powerful than your opponents, be they unions or the government itself.

When Koch's legal troubles were finally settled just before WWII, Koch began expanding his company.  It soon became a conglomerate, mostly in the oil business, including pipelines, drilling equipment and refining equipment, acquiring some, and growing some.

In 1958, Koch and 11 other extremely conservative businessmen, led by Robert Welch, founded the John Birch Society to promote their extreme agenda.  This was very similar to the agenda pushed by Fred's father--opposition to trade unions, pensions, bank regulation, etc.  By 1958, it was pretty obvious that these things that they wanted to destroy had all worked, spectacularly well.  They had not harmed America's prosperity or world power at all, rather they had helped, and where they had been adopted in Europe, Japan and Australia, they were beginning to work as well.  The Birch Society added opposition to the Civil Rights Act and immigration, and were particularly outspoken about (mostly imaginary) communist infiltrators.   More reasonable conservatives, such as Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley were quite outspoken about the Birchers and warned that such fringe movements would damage the credibility of the conservative movement as a whole, and the John Birch Society subsided to the ranks of loonies and pamphleteers.

Fred died in 1967, just as his political movement was reaching its nadir.  The company he'd founded had become quite large and powerful though, and unlike most, had never felt the urge to go public--all the profits went exactly where Fred and his heirs wanted.  Consequently its doings remain largely a secret.  He left it to his sons, Fred Jr., Charles, and twins David and Bill.  Fred Jr was never interested in the business and Bill, not as right wing as Dave and Charles but still very conservative, had a falling out with the others in the 1990s, but Charles and David still run Koch Industries and are the leading exponents of their father's political movement.  They are the 4th and 5th richest people in America and 6th and 7th in the world.  Together, the Kochs are the second richest non-royal family in the world, behind only Sam Walton's descendants.  They have given more to right wing political causes than anyone else in history, including being the sponsors of the movie and advertising campaign that led to the Citizens United decision--which has allowed them to keep the vast majority of their political spending secret.

Fred and his boys may not understand this, but what they are advocating is restoring Feudalism.  They think they are advocates of Laissez-Faire, but without oppressive force, such systems are totally unstable.  There are always a few cheaters, and the moment somebody is allowed to get ahead by cheating, soon everybody else needs to cheat in order to compete.  Regulation is an attempt to keep markets fair, and public institutions like schools, pensions, and so forth allow everybody, including the disenfranchised, to participate in the market.  What the Kochs are striving for is a market where only the cheaters can prosper.