Monthly Archives: November 2015

Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog takes a shot at the right wing ACA critics:

But aside from the garden-variety nonsense, the debate’s audience also heard a more specific claim from Marco Rubio: “[W]e have a crazy health care law that discourages companies from hiring people.” To which the reality-based community responded, “We do?”

The oddity of the criticism is how easy it is to recognize how wrong it is. We know, for example, that in 2014 – the first full year of ACA implementation – the job market in the United States had its best year since the late 1990s. Indeed, hiring in 2014 was so strong, it surpassed literally any single year in either Bush presidency, and even many of the years in the Clinton era.

How do “Obamacare” critics explain this? As best as I can tell, so far, they don’t even try.

While it’s a convenient turn in employment, how do you go about proving the ACA is causative?  A single chart won’t do it, regardless of how you fly in the debate.  If you take a psychological view of the matter, then is it really a valid claim – or is it just that confidence was boosted (despite the efforts of the GOP to denigrate the legislation at every step), which is not a rational attribute – but undeniably exists.

And at the next depression/recession (which this fellow thinks is imminent), do we also blame the ACA for it?  And if we don’t, is it all cherry picking?

For me, one of the primary attractions of the now-dormant The Dish was the nature of the primary blogger, Andrew Sullivan, was that he was a British ex-pat now living – and loving – the United States.  The observations of a place by someone embedded in, but not of, it may yield insights not apparent to those who grew up here – or don’t live here at all.

In that spirit, I offer up this post from Nancy Graham Holm on The Daily Kos.  She is an American ex-pat embedded in the small nation of Denmark, where they speak as if their mouths are filled with ball-bearings (my observation from long ago), and seem to be uncommonly decent folks:

Personally, I like how Danes value work and workers. They seem to understand that nothing is produced or accomplished in society without labor and they honor rank and file workers just as much as managers. In Danish society, human beings are judged by the strength of their character, not by their professional status or size of their pay-check.  Weekend getaway planning conferences often include everybody-at-the-office, not just upper and middle management, but secretaries, cantine workers and custodians.  Everyone is entitled to express opinions and they do. In Denmark, medical doctors do not wear white coats (except in hospitals) and they normally introduce themselves by their first names. Professors and teachers are also called by their first names and everybody else too that you might meet on the job. The majority of work places have a kitchen and eating area so that mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks are social events with freshly brewed coffee served in cups and saucers and bakery goods – including, on occasion –  wienerbrød  (yes, what Americans call Danish).

A reader comments on Kentucky’s possibly self-inflicted schadenfreude:

The people who most benefited from Kentucky’s improved health case system are also among those who Republicans spend the most effort trying to prevent from voting — and most of them already have enough hurdles in their way. I’m speculating that a lot of the people who would have supported the Democrat opponent also have a hard time getting to the polls, or being informed. Or I’m all wrong and lots of Kentuckians will be reaping what they sowed in a couple of years to their great dismay.

In a press release from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Kentucky sits at nearly the bottom of the heap when it comes to ballot access:

Kentucky ranks 48th in a new report released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund that gives each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia an overall rank and examines and assigns grades for the categories of accessibility of the ballot, representation in state government, and influence in the political system. The authors’ analysis reveals that these issues must be addressed in sum, not in silos. “The Health of State Democracies” report gives Kentucky an F in accessibility, an F in representation, and a D+ in influence.

Each state, including Kentucky, has areas for significant improvement, with all states specifically needing to address disproportionate representation—no matter where they finish in the rankings. The report also provides recommendations for improvement for Kentucky, including modernizing voter registration, removing structural barriers to full participation, and mitigating the influence of money in the political system.

The report evaluates Kentucky on measures such as voting laws, redistricting outcomes, campaign finance laws, fair courts, and others as vital, interconnected pieces of a state democracy. There are 22 factors in the three categories, which together paint a much clearer picture of the actual environment within Kentucky than when measured alone.

The referenced report, including a chart of results, is here.  I do not know if this group has a good rep or not, but their bias is obvious and probably appropriate.

The Egyptian elections have led to some surprises, assuming the corruption is not overwhelming.  Amongst them is one of the newest political parties coming in second in the first round of parliamentary elections, the Nation’s Future Party, and the failure of a more traditional party.  Mada Masr has a report on the various results:

The For the Love of Egypt electoral list, known to be a major supporter of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, swept the vote in Upper Egypt and the West Delta, while its main competitor, the Salafi Nour Party, experienced a somewhat surprising defeat.

The Nour Party lost in Alexandria, its strongest power base and the birthplace of the affiliated Salafi Dawah movement. The list only won in the Amreya district, losing the other nine districts in the governorate to For the Love of Egypt. …

One of the more surprising outcomes so far has been the rise of the Nation’s Future Party. The party was founded by 24-year-old Mohamed Badran, who was the head of the Egyptian Student Union in 2013.

Badran is known for his close relationship with Sisi, and many observers have predicted a powerful career for the budding politician. The party fielded 88 candidates in the first round of the elections, 48 of whom reached the runoffs. One of only four independent candidates in the country who won a seat outright in the first round of votes comes from Nation’s Future, while five other party members won seats as part of For the Love of Egypt.

Badran was optimistic about the runoffs in an interview with the privately owned Youm7 newspaper.

Older and better-established political parties did not seem to perform as well. The Wafd Party will see 35 of its candidates in the runoffs, while only five Egyptian Social Democratic Party candidates are still in the running.

Egyptian electoral systems are a little different than others, and Mada Masr has a tutorial here.  The short description of an electoral list is that it can be made up of one or more parties and/or individuals, and they can be thought of as a package deal: if you vote for an electoral list, then you’ve voted for everyone/thing on it.

AL Monitor has an interview with Mr. Badran of the Nation’s Future Party:

Al-Monitor:  How did the Nation’s Future Party manage to rank second in the first round of parliamentary elections, only a year since a young man established it?

Badran:  The Nation’s Future Party started as a campaign by a group of young people who dreamed of bringing about real change, eradicating corruption and confronting crises that emerged after the two revolutions of January 25 and June 30. These crises include economic crises as well as domestic and foreign conspiracies. Following the success of the campaign, we decided to turn the revolution’s slogans, Molotov cocktails and demonstrations into action, and this is how the campaign turned into the Nation’s Future Party. Subsequently, we acquired a popular base and established several headquarters. The party’s victory in the first round of parliamentary elections was expected. It did not come as a surprise, as it was the result of a lot of work, and I expect greater success in the second round. …

Al-Monitor:  Being the youngest head of a party in Egypt, what is your take on the low voter turnout, especially among young people?

Badran:  Such low turnout is only natural because the youth have not felt that the two revolutions have brought about any tangible change. Also, the Egyptian people only take action when they feel that the state is seriously threatened. This was exemplified by the very high turnout for the 2012 presidential elections between former President Mohammed Morsi and Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shafiq.

The low turnout suggests either a lack of faith in the candidates, or in the system itself; the success of Mr. Badran’s party might be put down to simple statistical anomalies which can occur during low turnout elections.  Then again, in a few years he may be the prime minister.  AL Monitor provided coverage of this election just prior to the big day:

Hassan Nafehah, a professor of electoral sciences, told Al-Monitor, “The electoral scene may be boisterous, but there is no hope for the political factions that led the January 25 [2011] or June 30 [2013] revolutions to regain their status; the main competing forces now are those that predominantly lean toward Mubarak’s regime. Electoral lists do not reflect the real roles played by Egyptian political parties, which number around 100, as most of those lists have been imposed by security agencies.” Commenting on the state of individual candidates, Nafehah said, “Political money, partisanship, clan affiliation and personal interests prevail.”

Continuing on this thread, some folks have claimed that higher CO₂ means that plants will grow faster, producing more oxygen and, in some cases, food.  NewScientist (24 October 2015, paywall) reports on some knock-on effects:

THE carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere is fertilising plants, making them grow faster – but now those plants are sucking our streams dry.

Australia is already parched and will only become dryer as the planet warms and rainfall decreases. On top of this, the country has lost about a quarter of its streamflow over the past 30 years, as plants given an extra boost by our carbon emissions are growing faster and slurping more water. …

Since there is a lot more carbon in the air than there used to be, plants can partially close their pores and still get the same amount of CO₂ while retaining more water, says Ukkola. So early models concluded that if plants lose less water, then there should be more of it in the streams, so streamflow should increase.

But later models disagreed, showing that it depends on exactly how the plants’ growth is affected: if they become more leafy, then they will lose more water to the air.

Usable water is already a problem on this overpopulated planet, as noted here, here, here, and here.  But how will losing greater amounts of moisture to the air affect weather patterns?  Will other areas by affected by more precipitation?  And what will the form take?  Gentle rain or horrendous storms?

Tom Summers has passed away.  He was a leading member of the Twin Cities Citadel users group, an informal, yet tightly knit group that included his late brother, Joe, his daughters, and many of the Twin Cities computer geeks of the ’80s and ’90s.  As an older member of the group, we were fortunate to have his example of maturity, quirky humor, and how to conduct a debate, and this benefited the group greatly as many of the members matured from teenagers into adulthood.  His example to all of us was invaluable.

He also provided technical resources at a time when computers and phone lines, the lifeblood of bulletin boards like Citadel, were scarce and expensive.  As an executive at retailer Schaak Electronics, he could and did dedicate a computer and phone line to running a Citadel bulletin board, a decision which led to a very popular system as his light handed guidance let users’ interests and creativity run rampant.  Tralfamador, as he named the system, managed to achieve a unique termination when Schaak Electronics sank into bankruptcy.  Tom left the system running when the doors were locked, and the usership began bidding it a sad farewell … and weeks later it was still operational.  It finally stopped answering the phone when a creditor representative noticed the computer was plugged into a phone line and disconnected it.

As the Internet melted the Citadel group, I lost direct contact with Tom, but retained contact with one of his daughters, and so heard occasional news: a new career at Honeywell, a heart attack, followed by forced retirement, and gradually fading health.  So this chapter comes to an end, although other chapters continue on in those of his friends and family.

I do not know, nor even have faith, in what comes after death.  But I feel compelled to not say goodbye, but rather Bon Voyage, Tom, and enjoy your next adventure.

A trifling little bit of schadenfreude memorabilia from Kylopod @ The Daily Kos:

Oct. 27, 2006: “[Obama] should run in ’08. He will lose in ’08. And the loss will put him irrevocably on a path to the presidency.” For him to win in ’08 would require a “miracle.” — Charles Krauthammer

Dec. 17, 2006: “Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.” — William Kristol

Dec. 22, 2006: “Obama’s shot at the top will be short lived…. Hillary Inc. will grind up and spit out any Democratic challenger that gets in its way.” — Joe Scarborough

Mar. 19, 2007: “The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun.” — Mark Penn

&etc.

Of course, these could have been strategic pronouncements designed to influence voters – except the readers of these pundits are hardly a measurable percentage of voters – even likely voters.  And deciphering any devious intent is more than I care to think about; so I will take them at face value and ask how these pundits could be so wrong about a man who won two Presidential elections (particularly in the face of the Bush disaster) and has displayed a competency quite beyond his predecessor, and arguably going quite a ways back – perhaps to Eisenhower.

But that may be truly unfair – like jury trials, voters are unpredictable in their choices – or lack thereof.  Consider the overwhelming victory of Matt Bevin in the Kentucky gubernatorial race last week, as Steve Benen documents on MaddowBlog:

Arguably more than any other state, Kentucky has created an amazing health network. Under Gov. Steve Beshear’s (D) leadership, the state’s success story has served as a national model for overhauling an ineffective system, replacing it with an effective system that costs less and covers more.

And now it’s likely to be torn down on purpose. Gov.-elect Matt Bevin (R) ran on a platform of dismantling Kynect and scrapping Medicaid expansion on the state, despite the fact that it’s been a literal life-saver for many families in his adopted home state. Last week, the Republican won his race easily, offering him the opportunity to do exactly what he promised to do: gutting health security for much of Kentucky.

The obvious question, of course, is why voters who stood to lose so much would vote for a gubernatorial candidate intent on deliberately making their lives harder. Republican officials, however, assumed that many of these Kentuckians wouldn’t bother to show up on Election Day, and those assumptions largely proved true.

Wondering why, you can blame racism, psychology, several other possibilities, or my favorite – disinterest.  That is, many voters have other things to do than ponder the nuances of national politics and how they may impact their lives on a practical level.  Add in a real distaste for the apparent conduct in just about every party, and I suspect that most voters look for something they can hang their hat on – such as Bevin’s claims of being a political outsider – and go with it.

A new species of extinct raptor discovered at the Hell Creek Formation.  Sci-News:

Paleontologists have discovered what they say is a new giant raptor that lived in what is now South Dakota during the Maastrichtian stage of the Upper Cretaceous, approximately 66 million years ago.

At 18 feet (5.5 m) long, the new creature is among the largest of the carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs called dromaeosaurids, or ‘raptors.’

“This new predatory dinosaur fills the body size gap between smaller theropods and large tyrannosaurs that lived at this time,” said team member Dr David Burnham, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas and a co-author of a paper in the journal Paleontological Contributions.

Fossilera:

The most startling item revealed from the analysis of the bones were the presence of “Quill Knobs” located on the ulna. The robustness of these attachment points for feathers would have given Dakotaraptor very long wings when outstretched. While Dakotaraptor was far too large of a creature for flight it is suggested that it could have used its large wings to stabilize itself when pinning down prey.

It is likely that Dakotaraptor evolved from a creature that already had the ability to fly and lost it. That a creature of this size would have seemingly kept adaptations for flight raises interesting questions since the “quill knobs” had been thought to be a flight specific adaptation. This discovery will reveal a lot of information about the evolution of flight and feathers.

(h/t Jon Tennant on D-brief blog)

Stephen Gorard opinionates in NewScientist (17 October 2015, paywall) about the problems of entering the world in September, at least in the UK:

ARE you an August or a September baby? This is a vexed question for parents; whether their children are born at the end or start of the UK school year can be crucial when it comes to performance at school.

The gap between these groups is substantial throughout primary and early secondary education. Attainment, self-esteem and the chances of being selected for sports teams or university are lower for children born in the UK summer, all other things being equal.

Figures suggest the attainment gap may be widest in the early years. In England, 49 per cent of summer-born children who start school in September having just turned 4 achieve a “good level of development” in their first year, compared with 71 per cent of autumn-born pupils, who are nearly five when they start.

In terms of numbers reaching the “expected” levels of writing, reading and maths, the gap is around 8 per cent from ages 5 to seven and drops very little from ages 7 to 11. By 15 or 16, around 6 per cent more autumn children gain five or more “good” grades at GCSE, in subjects including English and maths, than their summer peers. This suggests the possibility of different futures for many young people based on birth month.

OK, so there may be a problem.  His solution?

There is one solution to much of the problem though: to age-standardise all assessment results. This would mean pupils still sit annual tests or exams at the same time, but with results adjusted for age. These would form the official record for educational decisions by schools, universities, employers, individuals and family.

For the sake of fairness, this is what should be done.

Because … because … why?  How does this help when they are out of school, doing work … and finding it’s not up to snuff?  Do they then apply to the courts to force the employer to keep promoting them because of the month of their birth?  And when that bridge he designed falls down, who gets the blame?

Existence is not about making sure everyone is treated fairly because they bloody well exist, but to attempt to improve the populace on the assumption that an improved populace will make for a more prosperous, safe society; the populace must be treated fairly, but in such a way as to improve society, not just make the members feel better.  The former approach is full of unexpected consequences that pique my interest only because of a streak of morbid interest to which I really shouldn’t admit; and while the latter will have some, I don’t fear them nearly as much.

So, I understand it’s on me to make a concrete suggestion, so here it is: abandon the concept of school years.  Let’s use science to pick an optimal age for youngsters to start school; as we get better, each kid can be individually evaluated for the perfect beginning age, perhaps (although there’s something to be said for not greasing the skids too liberally).  Let’s say it’s 5 years old, and he was born in March.  The month of his fifth birthday, he starts school with all the other March kids.  They do their school for 9 months or whatever it might be in the UK, take their vacation, rinse and repeat.  The problems of differential development is greatly minimized – it’s 31 days or less, rather than something like 11 months.  The problem resolved in a stroke!

Perhaps this goes against the grain, as traditionally we group students into full years, celebrate with homecomings (in the US) and anniversaries, and damn these traditions must be much more important than the development of the students.  Perhaps this is a measure of how much society cares for its kids – and how much it cares for old, damaging traditions.  Rather than fix the problem, they’d rather paper over it with seasonal adjustments … which of course will be the subject of wretched politics, statistical analyses gone incredibly wrong, and windbags taking liberal potshots at the whole sleazy mess.  (For those of you wondering if I comprehend irony, please be assured that my spine writhes even as I peck this missive out.)

For the sake of the future of the UK, don’t do this.

Regarding that lonely planet, a reader asks:

How do they know how old it is? Without a star as a spatial age reference point, I have no idea how that can be done.

According to this paper on arXiv, while the planet is not orbiting any particular star, it is associated with a group of stars:

A member of the 23±3 Myr β Pic moving group, PSO J318.5-22 has Teff = 1160+30−40 K and a mass estimate of 8.3±0.5 MJup for a 23±3 Myr age.

A trifle obscure.  I’m thinking Myr means millions years.  “Teff” is “effective temperature“, and I will guess MJup is Mass of Jupiter.  And the assumption is the planet was created at the same time as the stars, out of the same dust cloud, although they also use a formula (with which I’m not familiar) based on measurements of the planet to independently confirm the age.

Star ages are estimated using the method gyrochonology.  From Wikipedia:

The basic idea underlying gyrochronology is that the rotation period P, of a main-sequence cool star is a deterministic function of its age t and its mass M (or a suitable proxy such as color). The detailed dependencies of rotation are such that the periods converge rapidly to a certain function of age and mass, mathematically denoted by P = P (t, M), even though stars have a range of allowed initial periods. Consequently, cool stars do not occupy the entire 3-dimensional parameter space of (mass, age, period), but instead define a 2-dimensional surface in this space. Therefore, measuring two of these variables yields the third. Of these quantities, the mass (or a proxy such as color) and the rotation period are the easier variables to measure, providing access to the star’s age, otherwise difficult to obtain.

The Economist describes a new species coming into existence due to competitive pressures and interbreeding:

LIKE some people who might rather not admit it, wolves faced with a scarcity of potential sexual partners are not beneath lowering their standards. It was desperation of this sort, biologists reckon, that led dwindling wolf populations in southern Ontario to begin, a century or two ago, breeding widely with dogs and coyotes. …

Interbreeding between animal species usually leads to offspring less vigorous than either parent—if they survive at all. But the combination of wolf, coyote and dog DNA that resulted from this reproductive necessity generated an exception. The consequence has been booming numbers of an extraordinarily fit new animal (see picture) spreading through the eastern part of North America. Some call this creature the eastern coyote. Others, though, have dubbed it the “coywolf”. Whatever name it goes by, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, reckons it now numbers in the millions.

Of course, there’s already CoyWolf.org:

Initially they were called coydog, then eastern coyote, but we now know that coywolf is the most appropriate descriptor of this animal because the original wolf found in the Northeast was most probably the smallish (~60 pound) eastern wolf (Canis lycaon), which is very closely related to (and possibly the same species as) the red wolf (Canis rufus). The eastern wolf is actually more closely related to western coyotes than they are to the larger gray (western) wolf (Canis lupus). Thus, the coywolf has “native” wolf genes and got here on its own four feet: it therefore should not be considered non-native or invasive. Furthermore, it is questionable if the gray wolf actually ever lived in the Northeast, or if the eastern wolf and possibly gray/eastern wolf hybrids (which are common in the Great Lakes states, Canis lupus x C. lycaon) were endemic to this region.

It leaves me wondering about other crossbreeds as well – what is the success rate insofar as new breeds surviving?  1%?  Lower?

(h/t William Cloose)

NewScientist (17 October 2015, paywall) comes up with a new caste of ants: robber ants.  These specialize in stealing food from other ant colonies.  But here’s where I start to goggle:

The thieving ants are not merely foraging ants that get their food from other colonies, says [Terrence] McGlynn [of California State University in Carson]. “When you watch thieves, they act like they’re working to avoid detection,” he says. “When disturbed, they’re more likely to freeze, and then move in the opposite direction. If you grab them, they drop their stolen food. Once they get in the clear, they scamper more quickly, while regular non-thieving foragers will hang onto their food, as they know it was rightfully acquired.”

OK, I suppose I could just take it as Dr. McGlynn anthropomorphizing inappropriately.  In fact, I’m sure that’s right.  But I couldn’t help but immediately speculate this might be evidence against free will – because how could something so bloody small have a sense of right and wrong?

Well, of course, if “right & wrong” has a survival characteristic – and it should – then it makes sense that it could be evolved into a genetically determined behavior.

But still … and it’s cool anyways.

ReverbPress reports on the day of takeover:

The memo went out, and November 3rd 2015 came to the National Geographic office. This was the day in which Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox took over National Geographic.  The management of National Geographic sent out an email telling its staff, all of its staff, all to report to their headquarters, and wait by their phones. This pulled back every person who was in the field, every photographer, every reporter, even those on vacation had to show up on this fateful day.

As these phones rang, one by one National Geographic let go the award-winning staff, and the venerable institution was no more.

WaPo has more solid information:

The National Geographic Society of Washington will lay off about 180 of its 2,000 employees in a cost-cutting move that follows the sale of its famous magazine and other assets to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

The reduction, the largest in the organization’s 127-year history, appears to affect almost every department of the nonprofit organization, including the magazine, which the society has published since just after its founding in 1888. The reduction also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization. Several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday, employees said.

The National Geographic Society said “involuntary separations” will represent about 9 percent of its workforce. In addition, buyout offers have been made to an undetermined number of employees.

Sad day, although not quite the wholesale slaughter ReverbPress lead me to expect.  But it’s useful to keep in mind that layoffs need not have a linear impact – layoff the proper 1% of a staff and the whole enterprise can collapse – or completely change character.

I was not a subscriber, but my parents were and the exposure to NG was formative.  Why not subscribe when I attained majority?  Those beautiful magazines, oddly enough.  They were so substantial that I didn’t want to be responsible for lugging them about, and I knew I wouldn’t reread them; and then, in the back of my mind, were the amorphous questions about disposal and the environmental impacts of actually producing the magazine.  And so, I suppose, I failed them.

So this leads to questions about the future of truly high quality, leading institutions.  A friend was acting out today about those loathesome ads about odd tricks to lose weight, or today’s gem – the one food to “kill diabetes”.  I see these ads on sites I’d call respectable, such as CNN.com.  Are they merely a bubble in the timestream, a temporary inconvenience – or are they our future?  Saturated in false information, we’ll saunter on in trivialities while the institutions which delivered the world to us – no exaggeration! – are gutted by those who worship money?

(h/t Kevin McLeod on the mad cacophany we call Facebook)

NewScientist (17 October 2015, paywall) reports on the impact of the current monster El Niño on corals around the world:

So far coral bleaching has been seen around the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, around Hawaii in the North Pacific and around the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. This distribution was the trigger for the announcement by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that we are seeing the third ever global coral bleaching event. These observations confirmed predictions made by NOAA, giving the agency confidence in its forecast of a much bigger global bleaching event brought about by El Niño.

Which reefs are under threat next?
According to NOAA’s four-month projection, coral bleaching will affect 38 per cent of the world’s coral reefs by the end of the year. That includes everywhere from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to reefs in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean.

Remember, bleaching is not the same as dying.  As noted in earlier in this thread, previous research had used poor proxies for understanding how coral reacts, and, even more importantly, coral can recover, or be replaced, fairly quickly.

Back in 2013 a rather strange object was found floating in space, around 75 lightyears out, and it was called PSO J318.5-22.  From the press release from the University of Hawaii:

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago—a newborn in planet lifetimes.

It was identified from its faint and unique heat signature by the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui. Follow-up observations using other telescopes in Hawaii show that it has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets found orbiting around young stars. And yet PSO J318.5-22 is all by itself, without a host star.

“We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone,” explained team leader Dr. Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.”

During the past decade, extrasolar planets have been discovered at an incredible pace, with about a thousand found by indirect methods such as wobbling or dimming of their host stars induced by the planet. However, only a handful of planets have been directly imaged, all of which are around young stars (less than 200 million years old). PSO J318.5-22 is one of the lowest-mass free-floating objects known, perhaps the very lowest. But its most unique aspect is its similar mass, color, and energy output to directly imaged planets.

Follow-up information from the University of Edinburgh is now available:

Weather map of distant world revealed

Weather patterns in a mysterious world beyond our solar system have been revealed for the first time, a study suggests.

Layers of clouds, made up of hot dust and droplets of molten iron, have been detected on a planet-like object found 75 light years from Earth, researchers say.

Findings from the study could improve scientists’ ability to find out if conditions in far-off planets are capable of sustaining life.

Cloud cover

University researchers used a telescope in Chile to study the weather systems in the distant world – known as PSO J318.5-22 – which is estimated to be around 20 million-years-old.

They captured hundreds of infra-red images of the object as it rotated over a 5-hour period.

By comparing the brightness of PSO J318.5-22 with neighbouring bodies, the team discovered that it is covered in multiple layers of thick and thin cloud.

No star, yet so hot, suggests internal heating.  Must be nuclear.  Fascinating!

(h/t Melissa Breyer @ TreeHugger.com)

A reader comments on Jesse:

Yes it is. Pure ego.

To be fair, none of these candidates lack ego.  They know this is one of the toughest jobs around, and to think they can toss their hats in the ring requires a heady mix of ego and chutzpah.

Watching Jesse talk, though, you get the feel he’s more confident in himself than some of the others are in themselves.  Question: would he dare walk into a debate and say, “I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll find the best expert I can and put him in charge of it”?  Would the electorate accept it?

On the Issues discusses Jesse‘s positions and comes up with this chart:

The summary at Ballotpedia would leave me mostly comfortable on domestic issues, with the possible position of opposing ACA expansion (I am undecided and waiting for results, both short and long term).  His positions are actually quite sensible, as he opposes expanding the military, going into Iran, and favors abortion rights, amongst others.

Yes, as in former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.  A couple of weeks ago one of the local TV stations broadcast a short interview in which he stated that he hadn’t decided yet, but felt he had a credible chance.  It’s an interesting statement, partly because of what he has going for him, and partly in self-analysis of my (and wife’s reaction), which was a slight shock of disbelief, which is no doubt due to his former career as a pro wrestler.

So throw out the emotional reaction, as important as it may be in analyzing his chances, and look at what he brings to the table:

1. Military Service – Navy from late 1969 – Sep 1975, member of Underwater Demolition Team.
2. Highly credible career as a wrestler, along with being an actor
3. Has a wife and children (important to the electorate)
4. Mayor of Brooklyn Park, MN (four years)
5. Governor of MN – 1 term.  The link gives Wikipedia’s summation of his political positions, which seems accurate and quite progressive for the time: for gay marriage, for example.  As I recall, his administration was considered to be quite competent and nearly scandal free, with a problem with someone in the DNR, I believe.  He was a trifle thin-skinned about his privacy.
6. Quite charismatic.

Compare to the GOP contenders.  Jeb Bush ran a state, perhaps relatively competently, for two terms; Huckabee comes off less well, with hints of scandal.  Fiorina is more or less an incompetent at high posts, while Carson is a brilliant surgeon but doesn’t appear to know much about the principles of American government.  Trump is Trump – near bankruptcy, then success, bankruptcy, user of condemnation proceedings, no public service experience – his focus is money.  Rubio is a midget next to Ventura in terms of experience, as is Cruz.  And etc.

It’s rather eye-opening.  Toss out the emotions, and Ventura actually comes off rather well against that side.  But it’s not clear to me how much foreign policy experience would be available in a Ventura Administration.  Clinton has him badly beat there, and Sanders has at least some as well.

No endorsement here – like his gubernatorial run, I’d have to hear more before I’d consider him worth voting for.  But I did vote for him in that race, and I would have reelected him – the State did well, despite all the outrage from the professional political class, but when the politicians got together to put together a particularly disastrous budget, he stepped out and let someone else take that gig.  Minnesota struggled under Governor Pawlenty, partially because of that budget.

In response to my review of The Man in the Web, a reader critiques:

I had a hard time following that review. So Carolyn Jones plays a corpse for much of the movie? And no mention of her basic sexiness to help enliven the show, must mean she was quite dead — or acted it. What an odd sounding movie.

And, well, she wasn’t sexy.  At all.  No one was really sexy.  Mz. Jones basically played an alcoholic shrew of dubious charm throughout the first half of the movie, after which she disappears, not permitted to actually play her character’s corpse (this opportunity was given to an anonymous sheet).  I would not be surprised if the screenwriter claimed to be taking a subtle dig at the role of women in small town America by making her an alcoholic, money-obsessed woman trading sex for money behind her husband’s back. bored out of her skull – and subject to nervous breakdowns (although the episode did happen in NYC).

After the obligatory happy climax, Ladd’s character marries another woman, who never rises out of her gender-assigned role, has no color, no real personality except to weep when her own marriage ends in travesty.

I did want to mention this was not a traditional murder mystery, as there was no real way to deduce the killer given the array of clues.  You could try to cheat by considering the tropes of Hollywood, but that always deadens the impact of the story, as tropes often do.  Which reminds me, someday (maybe on a lovely blizzardy day in January) I must expound on my (no doubt naive and totally improper) theory of story-telling and its role in any human society.

We saw SHAUN THE SHEEP at the venerable Riverview Theatre (a lovely Art Deco era facility) today, and we’re happy to report that the herd of mildly meddlesome ruminants has successfully leapt from the confining corral of 7 minute long episodes to the wide open spaces of a movie length exploration of the Big City and the importance of shears in the life of a Farmer.  We were kept in ugly suspense as the Shaun assayed the dangers of public transport, only to discover his sheepmates found the bus ride to be of little consequence; their encounters with public service officers, not to mention (no, don’t mention it!  But I must, I must!) scalpels and dressing gowns and gloves (oh my!) were, however, discomfiting to all involved, especially the poor chap transformed into what might be described as a wanna-be Cthulhu before our very eyes.

For little kids and big kids, especially with some sly jokes for the elders, this was a fine movie.

From our Arts Editor: It wasn’t a ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-d movie at all!

A fascinating insight back in 2013 into the use of San Francisco as a towel by Google, Facebook, et al by Sven Eberlein:

I can understand the very narrow and self-serving motivations of these corporations — they are, after all, primarily in the business of making money. I don’t even question their good intentions in terms of wanting to reduce their carbon footprint. I just don’t think they’re quite as smart as they think they are, as their thinking seems to be painfully linear rather than rooted in a deeper whole systems analysis. And even their single-minded focus on transportation is not really yielding the kind of success their powerpoints claim, seeing that last year the Bay Area was one of the worst three congested urban areas in the U.S., on par with L.A.

I have a much harder time though understanding why the city is so single-handedly fixated on transportation stats instead of looking at sustainability from a broader cultural and socio-economic perspective, and why SPUR would fail to get anyone with a deeper knowledge of urban development on this panel. It feels like nothing was resolved at all, and the conclusion of the event was that this is just the way things are and how they’re going to be in the future, just more of it with better apps.

I do not know if things improved.