Monthly Archives: June 2016

This site is a fascinating bit of history I had not heard about until now.

The Human Computers at NASA project is a student/faculty collaborative project at the Macalester College’s American Studies Department that seeks to shed light on the buried stories of African American women with math and science degrees who began working at NACA (now NASA) in 1943 in secret, segregated facilities. Dozens of African American women worked for NASA as expert mathematicians from the 1940’s to the 1960’s and no one knows about it. These well-educated African American women performed calculations and data analysis that was crucial to flight test and space exploration.

The African American women are often referred to as the hidden Human Computers. With their contributions at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the hidden human computers paved a path for black women in the fields of STEM. This website is for the general public to learn about the untold story of when African American women were computers. In digging for their stories, The Human Computers at NASA project serves to educate the public about a part of the national history that is absent in our memory of NASA.

Macalester College is in St. Paul, MN, where I currently reside.

Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist and columnist, contributed an opinion piece to AL Monitor about a month ago on the Clinton/Trump matchup. If accurate, it’s fascinating for someone like me – not living in the Middle East:

The anticipated race between Trump and Clinton is likely to place [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu in a bizarre situation: He will not have a clue which candidate to support, or which is the lesser evil. Everyone agrees that it’s an impressive matchup.

The Clintons have a tradition of animosity toward Netanyahu. Netanyahu views Clinton as a sworn enemy, worse than Obama, for a simple reason: It will be very hard for him to set Israeli public opinion against her.  …

The last thing that Netanyahu wants is an American president who knows her stuff and has well-formulated opinions. Clinton is viewed as a supporter of Israel, but one that does not like Netanyahu. “We think that she won’t allow herself not to renew the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians,” a source close to Netanyahu told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. This is bad news for the prime minister, who has succeeded in freezing the process and totally keeping it from the international agenda, at almost no cost to himself.

Clinton was secretary of state; she managed the contacts with Netanyahu and was party to the demand to freeze Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. In retrospect, this emerged as one of the salient mistakes of the Obama administration in his first term of office. With regard to this aspect, Netanyahu has some faint hopes. “We believe that Clinton understands the enormity of the error of that [settlement construction] freeze,” said a senior diplomatic source, quoting words of another associate of Netanyahu who spoke to the premier. “Hopefully, she’ll draw the [correct] conclusions.”

The Israeli paper Haaretz reprinted an article from Jewish Insider wherein a poll indicates Israelis think Clinton would be better for Israel than Trump:

According to the poll conducted by TNS/Teleseker for Channel 1/Mabat, 42 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu would get along much better with a President Trump, while 32 percent think the prime minister would have a better working relationship with a President Clinton. The remaining 26 percent did not know or had no opinion.

Politico has a report that also must nettle Netanyahu:

The real estate mogul does not have a coherent position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, except to break with decades of Republican orthodoxy and announce that he would be “neutral.” His GOP rivals repeated that line endlessly, hoping it would blunt Trump’s rise in the polls. It didn’t. …

All of this presents a major dilemma for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has worked for years to align Israel with the GOP. The party’s presumptive nominee is now being spurned by the same establishment figures, men like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who make up Netanyahu’s “base” in Washington. Trump has no emotional attachment to Israel. And his success has upended the long-held belief that Republican voters care deeply about a candidate’s position on Israel.

Not being a superpower must lead to different mindsets and worries than those of American citizens. More attention is paid to foreign politicians whose dyspepsia may cause chaos in your country. With Netanyahu’s GOP strategy beginning to back-fire on him (you can look at it as Trump not swearing unconditional allegiance to Israel, or the GOP losing the upcoming election), he must be looking for backup plans that will both safeguard the allegiance with the United States, and not nettle his constituents too much.

Michael LePage reports an update on climate change modeling in NewScientist (28 May 2016, paywall):

The bottom line is that low values for the immediate warming in response to a doubling of CO₂ can now be ruled out. Similarly, low values for the warming in the decades following a doubling of CO₂ can also be ruled out.

In its last report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) changed its estimate of warming after a doubling of CO₂ from between 2 and 4.5 °C to between 1.5 and 4.5 °C, based on studies like Forster’s. This relatively minor change was seized upon by climate-change deniers as proof that the dangers of global warming had been exaggerated.

The next IPCC report will be revised back upwards, Shindell thinks. But the IPCC was right to lower it when it did, he says: its reports have to be based on the evidence available at the time.

While we can now rule out low estimates of climate sensitivity, Shindell says, we can’t rule out high estimates. “There’s a long tail of very high sensitivity that should dominate our thinking,” he says. When we buy house insurance, we take the worst-case scenarios – fires and floods – into account, Shindell points out. With climate change, we should also act based on the worst case scenarios.

MIT’s latest report on Climate Change, ENERGY & CLIMATE OUTLOOK PERSPECTIVES FROM 2015:

With emissions stable and falling in Developed countries, on the assumption that the Paris pledges made at COP21 are met and retained in the post-2030 period, future emissions growth will come from the Other G20 and developing countries.

Growth in global emissions results in 64 gigatons (Gt) CO₂-eq emissions in 2050, rising to 78 Gt by 2100 (a 63% increase in emissions relative to 2010). By 2050 the Developed countries account for about 15% of global emissions, down from 30% in 2010.

CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels remain the largest source of GHGs, but other greenhouse gas emissions and non-fossil energy sources of CO₂ account for almost 1/3 of total global GHG emissions by 2100, slightly down from the 35% in 2010.

Emissions from electricity and transportation will together account for about 51% of global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel use in 2050, decreasing slightly from the 56% in 2010.

Energy from fossil fuels continues to account for about 75% of primary energy by 2050, despite rapid growth in renewables and nuclear, in part because the natural gas share of primary energy also increases.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributes this time series on CO₂ advancement.

Meanwhile, at Mauna Koa’s NOAA station:

The march upward continues.

This is interesting, from CNN:

Britain’s £1bn ($1.4bn) warships are losing power in the Persian Gulf because they cannot cope with the warm waters, MPs have been told.

Six Type 45 destroyers have repeatedly experienced power outages because of the temperatures, leaving servicemen in complete darkness.

During the Defence Committee hearing on Tuesday, MPs questioned company executives about the warship failures.

It’s not clear if this can be cleared up with a software fix, or if this is a hardware fix.

The obvious question is whether or not US warships are at risk. Less obviously, what’s the long term implications as the world continues to warm, resulting in higher ambient operating temperatures world-wide? Will we see American carrier groups floating helplessly in the Pacific? Or will our defense contractors be frantically patching ships? And on whose penny?

CNN:

Nearly 20% of large U.S. corporations that reported a profit on their financial statements in 2012 ended up paying exactly nothing in U.S. corporate income taxes, according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which conducted its analysis at the behest of Sanders.

That’s well below the 35% top corporate income tax rate.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Switzerland voted to decisively defeat the institution of UBI. TechCrunch reports on the failure and a proposal on funding the failed initiative:

The people of Switzerland have rejected a proposal to give a universal basic income (UBI) to every citizen, with almost 77 per cent saying ‘no’ vs 23 per cent in favor. …

The obvious question for any universal basic income is how to fund it, with critics suggesting large tax hikes would be required. In the Swiss example authorities had estimated the costs of funding the proposal at an additional 25 billion francs, according to AFP.

However the Swiss non-profit behind the referendum believes funding could easily be achieved by placing a micro-tax on all electronic transactions.

Given there are some 100,000 billion Swiss francs worth of electronic transactions annually in Switzerland, a tax that takes 0.2 per cent would generate 200 billion; more than enough to fund the basic income proposal — and more than enough to replace all other taxes, according to Marc Chesney, a professor at the University of Zurich, who was interviewed by Bien-CH (in the below video [go to the link if you wish to see the video – Hue]) ahead of the referendum vote.

SWI (swissinfo.ch) has a nifty interactive map of the vote. Business Insider supplies some of the Swiss political wisdom on the subject prior to the vote:

politicians in Switzerland have described the ballot measure using language like “cocked hand grenade that threatens to tear the whole system to pieces” and “the most dangerous and harmful initiative that has ever been submitted.”

One liberal party politician called it a “bomb in the heart of our society and our economy.”

The UK’s Independent supplies one more – perhaps more pertinent:

A key argument believed to be swaying voters had been put forward by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) that the UBI will cause widescale immigration due to Switzerland’s agreement to the free movement of people with all 28 EU member states.

SVP spokeswoman Luis Stamm told the BBC: “Theoretically if Switzerland were an island [basic income] would be possible.

“You could cut down on existing social payments and instead pay a certain amount of money to every individual.

“But with open borders it’s a total impossibility. If you would offer every individual a Swiss amount of money you would have billions of people who would try to move into Switzerland.”

James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute manages to get his feet on both sides of the question:

Finland and the Netherlands are planning limited experiments, as is the American startup accelerator Y Combinator. If you believe automation fears have driven renewed interest in the basic income, then the idea should have some staying power. It has proponents both on the left (“Yay, redistribution!”) and the right (“Yay, no more intrusive welfare state!”). In that way, the basic income has an edge over another policy also offering an appealing elegance and simplicity, at least in theory: the flat tax. Then again, the basic income also has opponents on the left and right.

But as I recently wrote in The Week, the basic income is a disruptive and risky policy choice lacking a truly compelling rationale. A big answer needs a big question. And widespread technological unemployment might be just that.

Yet, if the past is a good guide to the future, such fears are overblown. Then again, given what’s happening in artificial intelligence and robotics, maybe the past isn’t such a good guide this time. Perhaps my AEI colleague Charles Murray is right when he argues, “We are approaching a labor market in which entire trades and professions will be mere shadows of what they once were.” I wouldn’t bet against it, at least not much.

To my eye, it’s hard to be optimistic about the future when you can’t see how it’s going to play out. The standard Libertarian (big L or little l) line concerning the advance of technology is that the more jobs are automated, the more it frees up humans to do something else that no one had time to do before. And, without a doubt, there are many jobs which are, or were, real soul-killers, from coal-mining to fast foods to, well, just think of which job you hated the most. Maybe being a shoe salesman.

QZ’s take on the purpose of the referendum matches mine:

As awareness of basic income grows, so does support. The main goal of the Swiss campaign has been to educate the public. The campaign has increased support for basic income in Switzerland and has sparked conversations around the world.

A recent poll done by DemoScope, in January 2016, showed 59% of people under 35 (link in German) believe basic income will become reality in Switzerland. Young people seem to overwhelmingly support a universal basic income–making it a political likelihood in the decades to come.

As income inequality becomes more and more extreme, fewer people have money to buy things. But we need a broad consumer base to ensure jobs and keep businesses afloat. Economists and business leaders who support basic income argue it combats poverty while also ensuring a strong middle class, because everyone gets an income boost.

So the failure is not a failure, just a strategic step. And the point about 59% of people under age 35 are in favor is very interesting. It appears that, at least in the West, the younger generations have a different view of how the world should be run vs most of us oldsters.

Continuing an old discussion under a more apropos name, quantum physicist Nicolas Gisin writes a summary of his position on free will in NewScientist (21 May 2016, paywall):

But are the mathematical real numbers physically real? Certainly not! Most real numbers are never-ending strings of digits. They can be thought of as containing an infinite amount of information – they could, for example, encode the answers to all possible questions that can be formulated in any human language. Yet a finite volume of space-time can only hold a finite amount of information. So the position of a particle, or the value of any field or quantum state in a finite volume, cannot be a real number. Real numbers are non-physical monsters.

That’s a bit puzzling. Sure, they can be thought of containing an infinite amount of information, but that’s just one interpretation, one amongst many. He’s posted a longer paper to the academic pre-print server arxiv:

The use of real numbers in physics, and other sciences, is an extremely efficient and useful idealization, e.g. to allow for differential equations. But one should not make the confusion of believing that this idealization implies that nature is deterministic. A deterministic theoretical model of physics doesn’t imply that nature is deterministic. Again, real numbers are extremely useful to do theoretical physics and calculations, but they are not physically real.

The fact that so-called real numbers have in fact random digits, after the few first ones, has especially important consequences in chaotic dynamical systems. After a pretty short time, the future evolution would depend on the thousandth digit of the initial condition. But that
digit doesn’t really exist. Consequently, the future of classical chaotic systems is open and Newtonian dynam-ics is not deterministic. Actually most classical systems are chaotic, at least the interesting ones, i.e. all those that are not equivalent to a bunch of harmonic oscillators. Hence, classical mechanics is not deterministic, contrary to standard claims and widely held beliefs.

Discerning the difference between reality and modeling is interesting, but I can’t help but notice the argument is merely symmetrically applicable, i.e., you also can’t use the argument to disprove the suggestion the Universe is deterministic. The rest of his argument is either way beyond me, or gibberish – I can’t tell.

On an unrelated note, he also gives the reason for the name real numbers, which I thought was interesting. From the NewScientist article:

It took me a long time to identify what I believe is the key to the problem: a crucial detail of the mathematics we use to describe the world. Fittingly, it goes back again to Descartes. He gave the name “real” to the numbers commonly used in science: 1, 2, ¾, 1.797546… His point was to distinguish them from the imaginary numbers based on the square root of -1, numbers that intuitively cannot exist in the real world.

A few days ago Steve Benen noted on Maddowblog that Trump has international boosters:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, doesn’t care for President Obama, though the Russian autocrat seems to have more of a bond with Donald Trump. And North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un not surprisingly has no use for President Obama, though he too seems rather fond of the Republican Party’s would-be successor.

Two weeks ago, the GOP candidate raised a few eyebrows when asked whether he’s open to talking to the North Korean dictator. “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” Trump told Reuters. This led to yesterday’s developments, in which the North Korean government made clear how much it likes the presumptive Republican nominee.

Gordon Chang at The Daily Beast also contributes a report including China’s Xi Jinping endorsement of Trump.

I’ve been musing on the motivations of these  leaders. Surely they realize that any influence they may wield in an American election would be diffuse and complex, i.e., hard to predict. Would the electorate move in a contrarian way? Ignore them? Surely not gravely consider their advice & endorsements.

But perhaps they just can’t restrain themselves. NK News notes,

Referring to the Trump’s speech in March to potentially withdraw the U.S. military forces from Seoul if it does not pay more for its defense costs, the North Korean editorial welcomed the policy with open arms.

“Yes do it, now … Who knew that the slogan ‘Yankee Go Home’ would come true like this? The day when the ‘Yankee Go Home’ slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification.”

The same story contains an interview with an unnamed researcher:

A researcher said the odd editorial indicates Pyongyang’s wish to break through Washington’s strategic patience policy.

“He’s the Dennis Rodman of American politics — quirky, flamboyant, risk-taking. At the moment he’s also an outsider,” John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy In Focus told NK News.

“But Pyongyang is hoping that either he’ll be elected (and follows through on his pledges) or that his pronouncements will change the political game in the United States and influence how the Democratic party and mainstream Republicans view Korean issues.”

At The National they talk to an analyst:

Jeung Sang Wook of Korean Business News Daily has been following this developing story and adds that, “Kim Jong-Un is not in favor of Donald Trump’s policies on guns as, obviously, he’d like to see an America that is weaker militarily. However, he does apparently feel that of all of the potential United States candidates, Trump has the closest mindset to himself.”

Jeung Sang Wook continues, “Surprisingly, Kim Jong-Un was nearly ready to endorse Jim Webb as the official DPRK backed candidate, but he felt that Jim Webb’s showing at the recent Democrat political debate was lacking. His (Kim Jong-Un’s) overall support of Trump’s immigration policy, combined with Webb’s inability to conduct himself on the world stage helped solidify the decision.”

Perhaps the most cataclysmic is the aforementioned Gordon Chang report:

Our main Baptisia.

I forget the name of this, sheltering from the horrid elements ‘neath a friendly rhododendron.

The University suggests this is dames rocket, with honeysuckle in the background.

The clematis is hidden in the above picture, so we’ll show it in its precursor to greatness phase:

And tomorrow’s dinner.

Before we knew him as a pre-teen, now he’s a raucous teen.

I worry that he may want to throw parties of his own.

Or the beginning of elegance.

Just a little odd.

Our garden tends to start out in purples and then move to reds. First, dianthus.

And then two shots of the rose bush, safe in its cage.

Today my Arts Editor and I attended Transatlantic Love Affair’s production of The Ballad of the Pale Fisherman, a play that originates with Artistic Director and performer Isabel Nelson and was TLA’s very first production in 2010.

This production features TLA’s signature technical approaches: a complete lack of stage scenery and props; the use of a physical approach to the production in which the ensemble itself, onstage, provides special audio and visual cues to the audience, such as the wind whistling over the water (although this time augmented with an accordion’s wheeze), and the ensemble swiftly, but not frantically, switch from one character to a tree to another character; and a tendency to have two, or even three, centers of activity simultaneously on the stage, leaving it to the audience to deduce which may be important and which may not. A challenge to the audience is not an improper choice when working with subtle material, as it may emphasize, in an ulterior manner, the very problems faced by the characters: a multitude of choices, but which are correct, and which are not?

Once we move beyond the technical choices of the production, however, the less certain we were of the result. Briefly, this tale has to do with selkies, mythological creatures that are seals when in the sea, but able to shed their skin and become humans on the land. In this version, a young man, discouraged at his limited choice of maidens on their island, finds a seal in his fishnet, who sheds her skin and then loses it overboard. With no other choice, she accompanies the young man back to the island, gradually falls in love with him and marries, and becomes pregnant. At this juncture, her skin is recovered.

It ruins nothing to admit her now-husband conceals her skin, rather than returning it, and that begins the moral question of the story, with their shared happiness soon to be the line. But what of her husband? He is written and portrayed as being, perhaps, a trifle simple; not terribly so, but lacking both cleverness and self-awareness. Because this lead character seems to be little more than a good-hearted doofus who is stumbling through life, rather than trying to live it properly, we lose a little bit of precious focus on the moral question which should enliven the piece, not to mention the empathy that might have developed with a more self-aware character.

Other irrelevant questions nevertheless come to mind to confuse the issue. What is the significance of a “pale fisherman”? Another character, possibly in the throes of dementa, betrays physical symptoms of being a selkie, and yet the point is not developed really any further. I appreciate that a subtle touch may be appropriate, but I have to wonder if a little more development could have brought more focus to the various questions that must associate with the entire moral tone of the play.

Which is not to say the play is a wreck. The three old ladies are a delight, and the old retired fisherman who provides the occasional narrative and wheezing accordion brings a good touch, while the selkie gains an unnatural touch in this portrayal. But the men are just stereotypical young men: looking for a girl. The last time they crossed the stage may be the last time I’ll think of them, because … they were just men.

And perhaps that’s what I found dissatisfying about this play. Some of the  characters were people, and some were just there to provide a body. Some have lives in the world, and some only exist for the plot. It feels like a production, or play, that is only half finished.

But don’t let that discourage you from attending this, or any other production by TLA. The physical aspects of their effort are fascinating, and we’ve greatly enjoyed other productions, such as Red Resurrected and 105 Proof. The link to their web site is above – go see their efforts!

Our honeysuckle is blooming for the first time. It’s a bit sparse compared to some honeysuckle concentrations, but charming:

The first film effort of Sir Ralph Richardson was The Ghoul (1933), starring the inestimable Boris Karloff, was a horror flick. An Egyptologist dies and then returns to life, hunting a missing locket to present to the god Anubis in hopes of eternal life.

Or so I think. The film was a little unclear on the point.

In the meanwhile, his niece and nephew are notified of his passing and their inheritance, which appears to be a fine hulking mess of a house, plump full of shadows, frightened servants, acquisitive visitors of various professions – but no pets. The relatives arrive, with a friend in tow who is assigned the task of bringing a touch of humor to this otherwise grim tale of family dysfunction and mad belief. For the record, the effort is a trifle shrill, but she is very impressive in her track achievements – keeping in mind that she was in high heels.

For all that ancient gods are invoked to walk the hills again, the horror is all about the humanity – avarice, deceit, fraud, distrust are on display. We see how they play out to the disastrous results of nearly all, and thus are we edified.

The parts are played well for the most part. The cinematography is interesting, as we found the scenes dramatically shown in the black and white, even some special effects of note – yet, we kept confusing characters. Perhaps this is a failure of the script, or of makeup, but it provoked more than a little commentary from my Arts Editor and I.

And, as a special note, The Ghoul has a status as a former lost film. See the link, above, if you want more information.

Paul Rosenzweig of Lawfare is excited by a Wired Magazine article by Nathan Bruschi concerning a proposal for Cyber Bonds. Here’s Nathan:

Catastrophe bonds solve this problem [of catastrophes such as hurricanes] by securitizing the risk and passing it on to a wide pool of investors. The bonds pay handsome coupons to investors in seasons when natural disasters don’t happen, and liquidate the investment principal to pay for damages in seasons when they do.

A similar framework for Cyber Bonds would have three parts. First, each country would identify which companies and infrastructure are systemically important to the economy, and compel those entities to buy standardized cyber insurance policies. These companies would pay premiums into a national insurance pool from which damage claims for cyber attacks would be drawn. Second, each country would then securitize its insurance pool on the private market, creating country-specific Cyber Bonds. Third, at the next round of international cyber security talks, each country would agree to buy an untradable basket of each others’ Cyber Bonds and hold them in their sovereign wealth funds that pay out pensions and stabilize government spending. (The equivalent for the US would be the Social Security Trust Fund.) Each basket would comprise Cyber Bonds from every country of the world and be weighted toward each country’s unique historical adversaries. Excess Cyber Bonds and investment-grade variants would be made available for investors to buy and trade on the secondary markets.

Much like a mortgage-backed security, each Cyber Bond would pay out a fraction of the total income generated by the pool of insurance contracts and lose principal in case of insolvency.

Basically, as the article explains, all the countries interested in security from cyber attacks would sign a treaty obligating them to buy the cyber bonds of their historical enemies. When an attack occurs, not only would the country suffering the attack feel pain, but so would the alleged enemies, because they would not receive their dividends, and might be in danger of losing their investment capital: basically, if country A cyber-attacks country B, not only would A not get the dividends they would normally receive, but their own investment capital would be lost to their enemy.

It has a certain poetry to it, a certain balance to the system that will hold a lot of attraction for the technical community.

But there’s a lot to wonder about here. There’s the verification that an attack has occurred, that the damages to be recompensed are such and such, etc. Then there’s the strategic question: just how much does it take to make a country hesitant to initiate an attack? Here’s Nathan:

This system would change the calculus for countries like Russia, whose cyber operations currently operate largely unchecked. Before launching an attack against a foreign company, Vladimir Putin would have to worry about erasing billions of dollars from his own country’s pension funds, possibly leading to riots in the streets.

That’s a lot of money – if you can persuade them to put it up. However, Nathan explains that once the Cyber Bonds are active, then there’s an incentive to be part of the treaty – because otherwise your cyber assets are operating without a net. It also assumes the supremacy of the financial principle, which I think is a result of the capitalist system; what about those folks who do not treat financial motivation as a primary influence, but rather secondary, tertiary, or even worse? Not everyone shares the same value system – just ask the North Koreans. For example, if a leader’s prestige underlies his position, and his prestige is tied to a successful cyber attack, that attack may happen regardless of the cost to the Cyber Bonds held by that country.

But what makes me most nervous (given that I’m a simple software engineer and have little knowledge of international efforts of most any kind) was this toss-off statement:

Securitized insurance began with catastrophe bonds engineered in the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Hurricanes, like cyber attacks, are expensive to insure conventionally given that claims are not independent and often catastrophic.

I worry that an incident basically uninfluenceable by humanity is not the equivalent of an incident that is the result of the machinations of the human mind. One has no motivations, the other is the essential result of motivations, good or ill. How will these differences affect the proposed mechanism? I think those differences would have to be elucidated and their impact on the mechanism better understood. In essence, I worry about the unintended consequence.

Based on a single remark from a former employee, conservatives were up in arms concerning Facebook a couple of weeks ago, as the former employee had claimed there was bias against the conservative agenda at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, invited leading conservative figures to a meeting on the matter. Glenn Beck, noted far-right commentator, was one of those figures, and had this reaction:

I sat there looking around and heard things like:

1) Facebook has a very liberal workforce. Has Facebook considered diversity in their hiring practice? The country is 2% Mormon. Maybe Facebook’s company should better reflect that reality.

2) Maybe Facebook should consider a six-month training program to help their biased and liberal workforce understand and respect conservative opinions and values.

3) We need to see strong and specific steps to right this wrong.

It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges.

I sat there, looking around the room at ‘our side’ wondering, ‘Who are we?’ Who am I? I want to be very clear — I am not referring to every person in the room. There were probably 25–30 people and a number of them, I believe, felt like I did. But the overall tenor, to me, felt like the Salem Witch Trial: ‘Facebook, you must admit that you are screwing us, because if not, it proves you are screwing us.’

As if the political party and movement which is arguably the dominant political force in the USA is entitled to special privileges. Gotta wonder how the Green Party feels about that. Beck continues:

Mark Zuckerberg really impressed me with his manner, his ability to manage the room, his thoughtfulness, his directness, and what seemed to be his earnest desire to ‘connect the world’. I asked him if Facebook, now or in the future, would be an open platform for the sharing of all ideas or a curator of content? When I asked this question I told him I support his right to pick either direction. They are a private-owned company with investors who can decide what is right for them. They can decide what is right based on profits or based on interests or on principles or on social justice. I hope that they want to be open, but I will fight for their right to be who they want to be even if I do not like their decision. Without hesitation, with clarity and boldness, Mark said there is only one Facebook and one path forward: ‘We are an open platform.’

And at this time I will admit Mr. Zuckerberg is my superior in business sense. By the end of that meeting, had I been there, I would have been helplessly laughing on the floor.

A terribly unfair way of putting it, of course, but the Lawfare folks do appear to be a little flustered at the thought of a Trump Presidency.  Here’s Paul Rosenzweig’s comment on the matter:

The United Arab Emirates, a small nation with big ideas, is now considering building a mountain. Why? To encourage precipitation. de zeen magazine notes:

Mountains are a major factor in rainfall as they force warm, moist air to rise and cool, and thus create clouds.

Increasing the number of clouds provides more options for seeding – a process where chemicals such as silver iodide or potassium iodide are added to clouds in the form of ice crystals, boosting rainfall.

No location has yet been set for the mountain, as the NCAR team is exploring various options.

“Building a mountain is not a simple thing,” Bruintjes told the website. “We are still busy finalising assimilation, so we are doing a spread of all kinds of heights, widths and locations.”

UAE’s The National’s Jonathan Gornall scores some quick comments from the British Meteorological Office:

“Without having looked into it, I can see there is an element of logic to the idea,” says Alex Burkill, a meteorologist at the British Meteorological Office.

Mountains do create rain, Mr Burkill says, because of what meteorologists call the “orographic effect”.

“In simple terms, as moist air meets the mountain it is forced to lift,” he says. “As it does, there is a drop in pressure and temperature, which condenses the moisture and forms clouds. And if there is enough water content, you will get rain.”

But as Newton’s Third Law tells us, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – and one that is something any mountain designer would have to take very seriously into consideration.

Orographic rainfall is all very well, Mr Burkill says, but “it is also worth highlighting the Fohn effect”. When the moisture has been condensed out of the air by a mountain, the air is much drier as it descends the far side, creating hot, arid conditions – something the UAE really doesn’t need more of. In Colorado, heat differentials of up to 30°C have been recorded.

Which brings up a point of immediate concern: what will this change in weather patterns cause in terms of the weather in other locations? Much like the Ethiopian dam that will affect Egypt’s Nile River, if a “river in the sky” is diverted and drained, who will find themselves high and dry?

Gulf News Weather points out there’s no official plans in the works, merely the gathering of data:

But no UAE official or agency has confirmed the existence of any concrete plan to geoengineer a mountain.

Five years after Holland nixed the idea to build an artificial €200 billion (Dh837.76 billion) mountain as cost-prohibitive, American atmospheric scientists have confirmed that they are now simply gathering data on the atmospheric effects a similar mountain in the dry deserts of the UAE could yield.

But this doesn’t stop Jamais Cascio to voice his concerns in the pages of NewScientist (21 May 2016, paywall):

This could affect other countries on the Arabian peninsula, the Middle East in general, even eastern Africa. Rainfall changes in already precarious environments wouldn’t go unnoticed, and may spark conflict in an unstable area.

Even if the UAE builds a mountain, the larger climate problem remains. What’s more, oil-rich nations in the region face a double-whammy: temperatures reaching levels beyond those human civilisation can handle, alongside the imminent end of the fossil-fuel economy.

This could be a last gasp attempt by the UAE to stave off unbearable heat by cashing in on the fact that oil is, for now, still in demand around the world.