Monthly Archives: April 2015

… think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  At least in the sense of memory manipulation.  Jessica Hamzelou in NewScientist (14 March 2015) reports scientists can implant false memories in mice.

[Karim] Benchenane’s team used electrodes to monitor the activity of mice’s place cells [neurons that fire in response to being in or thinking about a specific place] as the animals explored an enclosed arena, and in each mouse they identified a cell that fired only in a certain arena location. Later, when the mice were sleeping, the researchers monitored the animals’ brain activity as they replayed the day’s experiences. A computer recognised when the specific place cell fired; each time it did, a separate electrode would stimulate brain areas associated with reward.

When the mice awoke, they made a beeline for the location represented by the place cell that had been linked to a rewarding feeling in their sleep. A brand new memory – linking a place with reward – had been formed.

It seems so reasonable, but assuming this can be scaled up to human memory, it’s a trifle unsettling, especially if an electrode could be replaced with an electric cap.

Or a remote device.

I suppose I could talk about how memories are notoriously unreliable; pictures and videos are much  more trustworthy.  But then think about how they can be modified.

Reality is becoming far too plastic for my tastes.

For those of us who live on the instant, here’s a recent measure of Obama’s approval:

The fascinating question, for me, is what will be the long term analysis?  In twenty years, scraping away the barnacles of the petty partisan politics of today should give a much clearer view of whether continuing the Bush-era policies of bailing out the financial industry, stopping wars, starting wars, and transforming healthcare were negatives or positives.  And, of course, coming to a tentative deal with Iran regarding its nuclear ambitions.

But who can resist a chart of a snapshot?  Here we see Obama’s recent run at getting his head above water in the approval ratings game has come to nought.  With the tentative Iranian deal now publicized, I expect it’ll get worse on the next poll as the GOP’s superior PR game will, at least temporarily, persuade a portion of the electorate that we are now doomed (here’s the preemptive shot over the bow by former Rep. Bachmann).

The Iraqis win back Tikrit, home town of Saddam Hussein, with a little help from some allies:

The push into Tikrit came days after U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS bases around the city. Al-Abadi said those tactics would now be replicated in other areas.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. deputy special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, tweeted that the coalition’s airstrikes had destroyed numerous ISIS shelters.

“We will continue to support courageous Iraqi forces operating under Iraqi command as they work to reclaim their territory from #ISIL,” McGurk tweeted.

The key to victory in Tikrit this time, the Prime Minister said, was surprise. But help from the coalition of Shiite militiamen and volunteers also played a part.

The militia members, estimated to number around 20,000, are backed by Iran. The offensive marked the first open participation of Iranian advisers on the front lines in Iraq.

The Iraqis of Tikrit are Sunnis Muslims, as is ISIS; the government forces are, for the most part, Shiite, as is Iran; some reports suggest the inhabitants of Tikrit may suffer for it, especially as they are a minority within Iraq.

But the ability to work with Iran against  a common foe shows that America and Iran are not irreconcilable, despite the apparent wishes of the GOP.  I haven’t noticed a great deal of publicity concerning this temporary alliance in the United States, and I’m guessing that Iran will not emphasize it, either, as it won’t serve their purposes.  Time will tell.

Governor Jerry Brown of California calls for mandatory water cutbacks of 25% in comparison to a baseline of 2013 usage:

With new measurements showing the state’s mountain snowpack at a record low, officials said California’s drought is entering uncharted territory and certain to extend into a fourth straight year. As a result, Brown issued sweeping new directives to reduce water consumption by state residents, including a mandatory 25 percent cut in urban water use.

On Wednesday, Brown attended a routine snow survey at 6,800 feet in the Sierra Nevada, near Echo Summit on Highway 50 along the road to Lake Tahoe. The April 1 survey is an annual ritual, marking the end of the winter season, in which automated sensors and technicians in the field strive to measure how much water the state’s farms and cities will receive from snowmelt.

The measurements showed the snowpack at just 5 percent of average for April 1, well below the previous record low of 25 percent, which was reached last year and in 1977.

California’s mountain snowpack is crucial to determining summer supplies, normally accounting for at least 30 percent of total fresh water available statewide. The poor snowpack means California reservoirs likely already have reached peak storage and will receive little additional runoff from snowmelt, an unusual situation.

Snowpack 5% of normal may be indicative of climate change, rather than chance deviation.  Brown certainly seems to think so:

“I would hope that we don’t see this in some punitive way, but that we see the challenge,” Brown said. “(The) reality is that the climate is getting warmer, the weather is getting more extreme and unpredictable, and we have to become more resilient, more efficient and more innovative. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

California residents curious about water resources may use the Water Education Foundation website to learn more.

Of interest is the Colorado River:

California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of water annually from river. Most of that water irrigates crops in the Palo Verde, Imperial and Coachella valleys, located in the southeastern corner of the state, but the Colorado also is a vital source of water for urban southern California.

And water stored in aquifers:

About 30 percent of California’s total annual water supply comes from groundwater in normal years, and up to 60 percent in drought years.

Aquifers do not necessarily recharge quickly, so they cannot be regarded as eternal.  They can also become contaminated by pollution and other sources, although I do not know whether California supplies are vulnerable.

Water is also transported within the state to supply population centers.  Given the large population, the drop off in usable precipitation (that which runs off into the ocean may not be usable) and recent inclination towards drought, and the State is looking at quite the challenge.  The Colorado River usage itself may not be sustainable, as suggested by a recent government study:

It is widely known that the Colorado River, based on the inflows observed over the last century, is over-allocated and supply and demand imbalances are likely to occur in the
future. Up to this point, this imbalance has been managed, and demands have largely been met as a result of the considerable amount of reservoir storage capacity in the system, the fact that the Upper Basin States are still developing into their apportionments, and efforts the Basin States have made to reduce their demand for Colorado River water.

Concerns regarding the reliability of the Colorado River system to meet future needs are even more apparent today. The Basin States include some of the fastest growing urban and industrial areas in the United States. At the same time, the effects of climate change and variability on the Basin water supply has been the focus of many scientific studies which project a decline in the future yield of the Colorado River. Increasing demand, coupled with decreasing supplies, will certainly exacerbate imbalances throughout the Basin.

This is an interesting insight into Iraqi psychology, insomuch as such a thing can exist in such a fragmented country:

Ghayyath al-Kateb, a writer and social researcher, sees the Abu Azrael phenomenon in the context of Iraqi mythology. “This extraordinary and legendary hero is a product of Iraqi thought throughout the ages. Iraqi mythology, across multiple eras, has seen the emergence of many superheroes, the most prominent of which was Gilgamesh, who appears in the epic tale named after him,” he said.

Before Abu Azrael,​ Adnan al-Kaissie was a popular hero among Iraqis in the 1970s. Pictures of the professional wrestler, a media favorite, filled Iraqi homes and streets. Everybody wanted to be like Adnan.

According to Kateb, it is the nature of Arabs, and Iraqis in particular, to create legendary men who accomplish great things. Because of this tendency, political parties in Iraq have tried to exploit the Abu Azrael phenomenon. A number of government ministers and officials have met with him. The local media reported that Transport Minister Bayan Jabr received him March 16.

This probably explains Saddam Hussein’s survival at the top – a willingness to believe in the importance of the role of the strongman, which he certainly fulfilled.

She may have retired from the House of Representatives, where she founded the Tea Party caucus and did …. exactly what else?

Anyways, the Minneapolis StarTribune reports her latest headline grabber:

Bachmann likens Obama to ‘deranged’ Germanwings co-pilot

Make of it what you will.

A multitude of factors will affect the water supply of the world: pollution, climate change, politics, and geoengineering is just a partial list.  As the world population continues to grow, most of these factors will also grow, exacerbating the situation:

• Pollution contaminates water;
• Climate change causes some bodies of water to grow, while others shrink; and just as importantly, the composition of that water can change;
• Politics can result in the control of the supply of water flowing from one entity to another to be manipulated to achieve political goals
• Geoengineering, the building of dams, levees, and other structures to control a water supply can have side effects seen and unseen: think of the Aral Sea, a victim of Soviet hunger for cotton, and now a drought.

And water is one of the two most critical substances for survival, so when supplies become constrained, tensions can build.  A facet of this situation in Brazil has already been covered in an earlier post, where NewScientist reports that the prospect of dams on the Amazon may be reduced as scientists predict that the mere act of building dams may result in their becoming ineffective.

In Iran, on the eastern border with Afghanistan, the situation is degenerating, not improving.  As reported by Bloomberg’s Golnar Motevalli, one of Iran’s largest lakes is rapidly disappearing, leaving the locals in deep trouble:

A decade ago, the three lakes comprising Hamoun’s wetlands covered 5,600 square kilometers, the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. They served 420,000 people, two cities and 935 villages, EPO says. Today, only a few shallow patches of water remain.

The drying has almost doubled seasonal dust and sandstorms from 120 days a year to 220 days, increasing respiratory, heart and intestinal illnesses and rates of cancer, according to a 2014 report published by EPO and the United Nations.

It’s a fate mirroring that of Urmia, 2,100 kilometers to the west. Once the Middle East’s largest saltwater lake, it’s now 20 percent of its former size. Salt-infused winds blowing across barren sections are causing “serious” local health problems, according to the UN Development Programme.

Iran links the Hamouns’ problems to Afghanistan, urging its war-stricken neighbor to control irrigation of the Helmand River that starts in the Hindu Kush mountains and traverses agrarian provinces before reaching the border.

An Iran government report about the Hamouns says increased irrigation, diversion of water for crops, population growth and largely U.S.-funded projects including the Kajaki Dam started reducing flows to Sistan-Baluchestan in the 1950s.

Efforts to reach a water-management pact on the border date to the 1970s. Talks revived in the mid-2000s, a few years after after the Taliban government was deposed. They stalled again in 2008 when Afghanistan refused to endorse a UN-backed proposal from Iran to save the Hamouns.

It’s an explosive region within Iran, and now its water supply is imperiled.  It’s difficult to blame the Iranian government with the chaos that has infested Afghanistan for decades.  There’s little the United States, or indeed anyone but the two involved parties, can do, beyond mediation.  Perhaps that could be an opening for Obama or his successors: find a way to help in this area.  Unremitting hostility is not always a workable strategy.

(h/t Mohammad Ali Shabani, AL Monitor)

Or so says New York Times columnist Aaron E. Carroll (Professor of Pediatrics):

We’re eating too many calories, but not necessarily in the same way. Reducing what we’re eating too much of in a balanced manner would seem like the most sensible approach.

And, superficially, it seems right: after all, we do tend to gorge.  Yet, having a wife with a weight problem and having watched her not eat her head off, this is all entirely too simplistic and disappointing.  Speaking as a software engineer, you can’t just measure what goes in one end and comes out the other, even making allowance multiple destinations (exercise, defecation, etc) for those calories; you have to ask if the processing is a constant or a variable, and in at least this column Carroll is treating it as a constant.  Yet evidence is just beginning to accumulate that the stomach flora can influence how calories are processed (covered earlier here), and the amount of sleep can influence how your gut is working as well, discussed here (paywall) and here.

So, sure, eat less if you’re feeling tubby.  But don’t expect that, or even regular exercise, to fix you up.  Keep an eye on the research if this concerns you.

As the saga continues, Wal-Mart now enters the fray:

In the statement, Walmart CEO, Doug McMillon says, “Every day in our stores, we see firsthand the benefits diversity and inclusion have on our associates, customers and communities we serve. It all starts with our core basic belief of respect for the individual. Today’s passage of H.B. 1228 threatens to undermine the spirit of inclusion present throughout the state of Arkansas and does not reflect the values we proudly uphold. For these reasons, we are asking Governor Hutchinson to veto this legislation.”

And the Arkansas governor obliges:

The first-term Republican governor said he wants his state “to be known as a state that does not discriminate but understands tolerance.”

Cristian Farias at TNR believes the Arkansas law, as originally passed, is more extreme than the Indiana law:

In the event the victim of discrimination brings suit against the business, the locality would likely join the action, since it’s interested in enforcement of its nondiscrimination edicts. But at that point, the new Arkansas law would require the locality to show that nondiscrimination toward gays and lesbians “is essential to further a compelling government interest.” The italicized language is exclusive to Arkansas, and presumably would lead courts to afford great deference to the religious beliefs of the business owners vis-à-vis the customers or the municipality’s interest in a nondiscriminatory environment.

The bill’s definition of “substantial burden” on religion also seems broader because it specifically singles out any action designed “to prevent, inhibit, or curtail religiously-motivated practice consistent with a sincerely held religious belief”—these are the oft-cited wedding-vendor scenarios. And “religious belief” itself is defined nebulously as “the ability to act or refuse to act . . . whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.” It’s not hard to imagine the range of attitudes that fall into this definition—including a flat denial as “God told me it’s wrong for me to serve you.”

This is the old hierarchy problem: what takes precedence, government or religion?  Well, of course government does; but religion claims a special place in the minds of humanity, or so it claims: an all wise entity (or entities) not subject to the whim of man, but instead commanding them.  But, of course, not everyone gets the same message; indeed, messages are conflicting.  Thus the clashes, ranging from today’s tragedies in the Middle East to the various wars, insurrections, etc in Europe in most any age range before 1900 that you care to pick.

So the US government has the ticklish problem of not stepping on religious beliefs while still running a coherent system.  A thought experiment: my sect practices human sacrifice.  The government prohibits murder and even suicide and the courts have ruled the government has a compelling reason to prohibit those sacrifices.

So this is another, interesting push at the envelope.  Can businesses pick their customers dependent on religious sensibilities?  Hobby Lobby has a foot in the door, and now the religious fundamentalists are trying to assert a new right.  Much to their surprise, though, they’ve discovered their allies do not automatically follow along in all things; Big Business does not wish to risk the talent upon which their success rests, and they’ve moved to make it clear this is not acceptable.

My sense is that a good court would overturn this law.  “Religious sensibilities” may seem common-sensical and logical to the sect members holding them, but everyone not a member of that sect may find them bewildering – and at some point that will include right-wingers who find themselves kicked out of a restaurant because they’re whatever-they-are.  This leads to distrust, based on religious differences, and in a nation that depends on ignoring religious differences, by not permitting them to rule our reality, by actually not even knowing – or caring – what sect you worship within – well, this cannot be permitted.

(Updated 7/27/2015 to fix an incomplete – and incoherent – sentence)

Continuing the thread, it turns out we’re pumping so much oil we don’t know where to put it:

Never before has the U.S. had so much oil spurting up out of the ground and sloshing into storage tanks around the country. There’s so much oil that the U.S. now rivals Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer.

But there has been some concern that the U.S. will run out of places to put it all. Some analysts speculate that could spark another dramatic crash in oil prices.

Oil is down a little bit today.  Sources for oil can be found here and here.  Of course, prices vary by location; and so do costs.  If the price drops below the cost, then the more expensive sources will shut down until it becomes economical to restart, per standard theory; of course, the costs of stopping and starting must also be figured into such decisions.

Not to mention strategy, politics, and pride.  I don’t see Russia stopping production just because it might cost more.

“got”.  There are plenty of synonyms and it’s plumb-ugly.  Only good for dialog.

As the thread continues, Governor Mike Pence defends Indiana’s RFRA in the WSJ.

I am happy to state that I am not a migraine victim; my wife is currently fighting one off, as is, I’m sure, my sister, my brother-in-law, possibly my nephew, and indeed half of my friends. NewScientist  (7 March 2015) reports in “Not just a headache: How migraine changes your brain” (paywall) by Helen Phillips that at least migraines do not lead to mental declines:

To find out what’s really going on, these changes needed to be monitored. Do regular migraines cause more areas of stroke-like damage? And to what effect? Kruit and his team rescanned most of their volunteers nine years later. Interestingly they found the number of spots had slightly increased over time in women with migraine, but not in men, but they didn’t correlate with migraine frequency, severity, or treatment. Neither did the spots seem to have any bearing on cognitive functions like memory or attention. Another long-term study in France found no link between migraines and cognitive decline, all the way to age 80.

And relief may be on the way:

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and other techniques that deliver small electrical currents through electrodes on the forehead are already proving effective in some cases of migraine, as well as for chronic pain conditions and depression.

These treatments seem to work by steadily altering and normalising oversensitive brain circuits, though at present it’s not clear how. One big advantage is that they are well tolerated compared with other therapies, including drugs and botox – which is approved for migraine treatment by the US Food and Drug Administration.

For all of us, this is hopeful news.  I do recall as a teenager occasionally having horrendous headaches; but, as I recall, eating a meal usually cleared them up, and I called hunger headaches.  I wonder if they were just a form of migraine.  And one more little tidbit:

Work with children is adding weight to the idea that migraine is a progressive brain disease, which may appear in different ways at different stages of life, beginning with some kind of genetic susceptibility. One startling suggestion is that infant colic, the uncontrolled crying and fussiness often blamed on sensitive stomachs or reflux, may be an early form of migraine.

There’s a family story about Dad sitting up with me one night, out on the porch, watching thunderstorms roll in over Puget Sound while I screamed and fussed and whatever with the colic.

First, let me just say that I’m delighted to see World Press Review continuing.  I was a long time subscriber until the print edition was stopped many years ago; I had been aware the editor took it digital, but did not keep up with it.  Now operating as WorldPress.org, it continues to reprint interesting articles from anywhere in the world.

This January article by Andrew Topf suggests the Russian government retains its imperial ambitions:

We are already seeing this to be the case. As Oilprice.com reported on Tuesday, Putin is set to absorb South Ossetia—Georgia’s breakaway republic that declared itself independent in 1990. Under an agreement “intended to legalize South Ossetia’s integration with Russia,” Russia would invest 2.8 million rubles (US$50 million) to “fund the socio-economic development of South Ossetia,” according to Agenda.ge, a Tbilisi-based news site. The situation is analogous to Crimea because, like Crimea, South Ossetia contains a significant Russian-speaking population with ties to the Motherland.

When the current oil price fall started, I muttered to my wife that this was the start of an unannounced war on Russia.

(Source: Macrotrends)

Russia’s primary export is oil, and dropping the price 50% really put the hurt on them.  She didn’t necessarily agree with my conspiracy theory.  But it looks like Russia is maneuvering in this cool war:

The current move on South Ossetia is a way for Russia to assert its energy independence in the face of Western sanctions and low oil prices. It comes as Russia has announced plans to divert all of its natural gas crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey. As Bloomberg reported last week, Gazprom will send 63 billion cubic meters through a proposed link under the Black Sea to Turkey—after the earlier South Stream pipeline, a $45-billion project that would have crossed Bulgaria, was scrapped by Russia amid opposition from the European Union. By sending the gas to Turkey and on to Europe via Greece, Gazprom is in effect sending Europe an ultimatum: Build pipelines to European markets, or we will sell the gas to other customers.

The proposed land grab in South Ossetia, combined with the snub to Europe by shifting its gas to Turkey and bypassing Ukraine, is a classic Putin power play. “Russia is preparing to absorb a province of neighboring Georgia, and delivering an ultimatum to Europe that it could lose much of the Russian gas on which it relies,” Steve LeVine wrote in Quartz. “Putin has argued that the West is simply intent on ousting him and weakening Russia. … Faced with these perceived attempts to undercut him and his country, Putin suggests that he has no choice but to pull around the wagons and stick it out. This could go on a long time.”

The drop in oil prices has been caused partly by the Saudis, which then clouds the issue: just who’s under attack?  Or is it necessary to wonder: perhaps the the US and Saudi Arabia have multiple targets: Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.