Monthly Archives: August 2016

From a University of Minnesota newsletter on the concentration of mammal species on a particular Philippine island:

Among the 28 new species discovered by the team are four species of tiny tree-mice with whiskers so long they reach nearly to their ankles. This new genus was named Musseromys in honor of Guy Musser, an emeritus curator at the American Museum of Natural History who made immense contributions to rodent systematics. The type species was given the epithet gulantang, which means “highly surprising” in Tagalog.

CNN/Politics reports that Paul Wolfowitz may vote for Hillary:

“He says he admires Putin, that Saddam Hussein was killing terrorists, that the Chinese were impressive because they were tough on Tiananmen Square. That is pretty disturbing,” Wolfowitz said, calling him “unacceptable.”

Wolfowitz also called Trump a continuation of President Barack Obama, despite their party differences. Wolfowitz said Obama’s apparent “step back” foreign policy would be exaggerated under Trump, calling him “Obama squared.”

“The only way you can be comfortable about Trump’s foreign policy is to think he doesn’t really mean anything he says. That’s a pretty uncomfortable place to be in,” Wolfowitz said. “Our security depends on having good relationships with our allies. Trump mainly shows contempt for them. And he seems to be unconcerned about the Russian aggression in Ukraine. By doing this he tells them that they can go ahead and do what they are doing. That is dangerous.”

Wolfowitz is one of the nation’s most prominent neoconservatives and interventionists, and has been widely characterized as the “architect’ of the invasion of Iraq. CNN reported back in 2003 that he was the first Bush administration official to push the 43rd president to topple Saddam Hussein — broaching the subject four days after the September 11 attacks.

Mr. Trump must be awfully alarming to scare one of the chief advocates for the disastrous invasion of Iraq. However, regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, a commonly held value is predictability, and Trump will have none of that. Does he mean what he says? Depends on which time you listen to him. As a neocon, it’s been clear that the policies advocated by Mr. Wolfowitz were a disaster for the people of Iraq, predicated on false evidence, and a dreadful mess for ourselves. Trying to make himself into an ally to Hillary should be an uncomfortable position for her, no matter how passive-aggressive he may be about it. But as a leader of a segment of America, his comments may persuade more voters that Trump does not meet any sort of minimum standards.

This article in NewScientist (20 August 2016) is disconcerting:

CAN you hear me now? The US Air Force has plans to improve radio communication over long distances by detonating plasma bombs in the upper atmosphere using a fleet of micro satellites. …

The curvature of Earth stops most ground-based radio signals travelling more than 70 kilometres without a boost. But by bouncing between the ionosphere and the ground they can zigzag for much greater distances. At night the ionosphere is denser and more reflective. …

Now the USAF wants to do this more efficiently, with tiny satellites – such as CubeSats – carrying large volumes of ionised gas directly into the ionosphere.

There are at least two major challenges. One is building a plasma generator small enough to fit on a CubeSat. Then there’s the problem of controlling how the plasma disperses once released.

The current approaches appear to center around heating a metal beyond its melting point and using the result to generate plasma. Radio waves will then bounce off the plasma, permitting the radio to travel further.

I’m frowning over this one. What consideration has been given to side-effects?

And … why again? To make your radio signal go further? But you have this nifty satellite system for that. And if you’re thinking it’ll be jammed by the enemy – what about the communications with these micro-satellites? Won’t they be jammed as well?

ScienceAlert also covered this story and offered an extra tidbit, which might make some sense:

There’s another potential benefit too: a denser ionosphere should offer better protection against solar storms, which can interfere with GPS networks and other communications.

If it offered more protection against solar storms affecting the power grid then this would be very interesting, as that is one of the catastrophes against which we don’t have a lot of protection.

As we can see below, the ambitious ground offensive in my backyard is encountering success.

However, as we can see here, it’s strayed into a busy highway and is beginning to suffer casualties. I have to wonder if it’s going to lever its way up onto the roof and drag its roots up behind it.

Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum. From Gemma Tarlach on Discover’s Dead Things blog:

Whollydooleya, Wholly for short, is considered a hypercarnivore. While that sounds either like some kind of super predator, or maybe a carnivore with a lot of energy, it just means it ate mostly meat. Not exciting enough for you? Okay, well consider that the description of the animal, published in Memoirs of Museum Victoria, paints a picture of a carnivore weighing around 50 pounds (20-25kg), considerably bigger than a Tassie devil (22 pounds, or 10kg), with teeth capable of shearing through all things munchable and crunchable.

And the evidence?

I know what you’re thinking, where are the photos of this wonderful new Beast of Yore? Wholly is, alas, so far known from a single molar. The tooth has enough highly specialized features, however, to tell researchers a great deal about its size and diet.

Paleontologists are just highly specialized detectives.

A question concerning the murky ways of illegal software:

Who or what is the NSO group?

From the article on Lookout Blog:

Trident is used in a spyware product called Pegasus, which according to an investigation by Citizen Lab, is developed by an organization called NSO Group. NSO Group is an Israeli-based organization that was acquired by U.S. company Francisco Partners Management in 2010, and according to news reports specializes in “cyber war.” Pegasus is highly advanced in its use of zero-days, obfuscation, encryption, and kernel-level exploitation.

Business Insider also has a profile, but does not add substantially to the publicly known information.

If you ever need to induce that good old sense of déjà vu, Akira O’Connor at the University of St Andrews, UK, and his team knows how. NewScientist’s (20 August 2016) Jessica Hamzelou is on the case:

The team’s technique uses a standard method to create false memories. It involves reading a list of related words – such as bed, night, dream – to a participant but not the key word linking them together, in this case, sleep. When the person is later quizzed on the words they have heard, they tend to believe they have also heard “sleep” – a false memory.

To create the feeling of déjà vu, O’Connor’s team first asked people if they had heard any words beginning with “s”. The volunteers replied that they hadn’t. This meant that when they were later asked if they had heard the word sleep, they knew that they couldn’t have, but the word still felt familiar. “They report having this strange experience of déjà vu,” says O’Connor.

fMRI scan indicate the decision making areas of the brain are active during déjà vu, suggesting déjà vu to be an indication that an error checking system is signaling there may be problem with your memory. However, more studies are necessary to decipher whether the fading of déjà vu with age is a matter of memory failing or the memory check apparatus getting stronger.

Put this one in the toolkit right next to the invisible hand illusion to drive your brain up a wall.

From the 60 Seconds column of NewScientist (20 August 2016):

Charitable by nature

How giving you are could be down to your brain, according to scans that picked out a region in the cerebral cortex.

Glad to hear it. Nice to know my big toe isn’t in charge these days.

Remember KIC 8462852, that weird star from eight months ago? Corey Powell on Discover’s Out There blog interviews scientist Tabetha Boyajian who led the discovery, and her plans for continuing research, funded through Kickstarter:

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The plan is to observe the star through a full calendar year at the [private] Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT). We  have the funds to cover that, and a little bit more. We’re observing now, running off time LCOGT has gifted us, 200 hours there. At the end of the summer, when the Kickstarter funds get transferred, we’ll be able to set up the process through August and probably through December of 2017.We want to see the star’s brightness dip again—it’s as simple as that. When it dips, how long the dips are, if there are many dips, all of the stuff relevant to any theory that’s on the table. Also, we’ll be able to get more detailed observations of whatever stuff is passing in front of the star, because we have a system to notify us when it’s not at its normal brightness. LCOGT is set up so we can get a spectrum as soon as that trigger happens, and also more intense observations.

She also discusses the pitfalls of government funded science in situations such as this.

[EDIT: 5/31/2017 for better layout]

A reader is concerned about cross-laminated lumber:

Hope it never catches on fire.

A recent achievement should allay this concern. From the Forest Business Network:

D.R. Johnson Wood Innovations, the nation’s first certified U.S. manufacturer of Cross-Laminated Timber, has become the first North American CLT manufacturer to achieve significant fire safety requirements under tests designed to gauge flame spread and fire resistance. No other manufacturer of CLT has been certified under the new APA/ANSI manufacturing standard and has subjected its panels to such rigorous tests.

“We’re proud of our team and the quality of the CLT panels they’re manufacturing,” said Valerie Johnson, President of D.R. Johnson Wood Innovations. “Our panels are manufactured to the highest possible standards and perform safely under tough conditions. These tests prove you don’t sacrifice safety when you build with CLT.”

The flame spread test was performed by QAI Laboratories in California using the standard flame spread and smoke density classification tests in accordance with ASTM Designation E84-15b, “Standard Method of Test for Surface Burning Characteristics of Building Materials.” The test identifies the rate of the spread of fire across the building material, and it places the results into three classifications: A, B, and C, with A being the highest rating and C being the lowest. D.R. Johnson’s CLT panel achieved an A rating, meaning there was minimal spread of fire across the building material over the test’s standard time period.

Another reader asks:

So, 17-18 stories, or about 170 to 200 feet tall?

From Acton Ostry Architects:

The structure is a hybrid system comprised of CLT floor slabs, glulam columns, steel connectors and concrete cores. When completed in 2017 Brock Commons will stand 53 metres tall.

Or 173 feet. Roughly.

With regard to stadium noise a reader writes,

Noise exposure, like hazardous chemical exposure, is tricky to measure. The relevant concept is DOSE. Dose is a factor of volume (or concentration) and duration. Most high noise exposures are short duration. Think gun shots or other impact noises. Not a real problem unless, for ex, you’re a competitive skeet shooter or pile driver. Of greater import are continuous high volume noises like those experienced by musicians and concert goers. A big deal, especially for higher frequency noise.

Right. Energy / volume¹, basically – with enough volume, who cares how much energy? Although there’s the trickier question of point of origin of the energy, and in a stadium there will be multiple sources. Time to call in an acoustic engineer.

¹Odd how ‘volume’ can mean 3 dimensional space or audio level, and that it is confusing in this context; I mean it in the former sense in this case.

Today we lost Smudge, our little tuxedo cat we inherited from my parents. While she was clearly slowing down, we were still surprised when she abruptly started falling apart Wednesday. The vet confirmed her third bout of cancer, and she wouldn’t survive surgery. Following is the obituary written by Deb, who had been principle caretaker of Smudge.

Today we lost our sweet little black and white kitty, Smudge. She was approaching 17 years old.

When she came to us, she was a scared, silent 14 year old who hid all day long. Within six months, she was a charming, loving lap cat and constant companion. Eventually she developed into the boss of the household, with Hue & I filling the role of loyal servants. She survived two cancer surgeries, but today has finally succumbed to cancer and old age. She was an utter delight, and despite regularly bombing the rugs and peeing in my shoes, we loved her and will miss her terribly.

RIP, Smudge. August 26, 2016.

Lookout Blog is dedicated to tracking spyware and the vulnerabilities they use to accomplish their tasks. A recent posting details how governments may use spyware against those who threaten the power-base:

Ahmed Mansoor is an internationally recognized human rights defender and a Martin Ennals Award Laureate (sometimes referred to as a “Nobel prize for human rights”), based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On August 10th and 11th, he received text messages promising “secrets” about detainees tortured in UAE jails if he clicked on an included link. Instead of clicking, Mansoor sent the messages to Citizen Lab researchers. Recognizing the links as belonging to an exploit infrastructure connected to NSO group, Citizen Lab collaborated with Lookout to determine that the links led to a chain of zero-day exploits that would have jailbroken Mansoor’s iPhone and installed sophisticated malware.

This marks the third time Mansoor has been targeted with “lawful intercept” malware. Previous Citizen Lab research found that in 2011 he was targeted with FinFisher spyware, and in 2012 with Hacking Team spyware. The use of such expensive tools against Mansoor shows the lengths that governments are willing to go to target activists.

Citizen Lab also found evidence that state-sponsored actors used NSO’s exploit infrastructure against a Mexican journalist who reported on corruption by Mexico’s head of state, and an unknown target or targets in Kenya.

The NSO group used fake domains, impersonating sites such as the International Committee for the Red Cross, the U.K. government’s visa application processing website, and a wide range of news organizations and major technology companies. This nods toward the targeted nature of this software.

It’s interesting – and depressing – to note how a government operates at one level of civilization, while a journalist might be argued is unique to another level of civilization. The more barbarian government operates against its own citizen/journalist using the most modern of tools in order to preserve its power.

On Vox Sarah Kliff digs into the recent Epipen controversy, and I found some parts … unsatisfying – because they are not thought through:

In Europe, Canada, and Australia, governments view the market for cures as essentially uncompetitive and set the price as part of a bureaucratic process, similar to how electricity or water are priced in regulated US utility markets.

Other countries do this for drugs and medical care — but not other products, like phones or cars — because of something fundamentally unique about medication: If consumers can’t afford the product, they could have worse odds of living. In some cases, they face quite certain odds of dying. So most governments have decided that keeping these products affordable is a good reason to introduce more government regulation.

So if I can find an example of an unregulated product without which life is worse – even endangered – and yet the very thought of regulating the product will cause gales of laughter, then Sarah’s argument is in trouble.

Here’s one.

Parkas in Minnesota. (Sure, we could go with heavy coats or even clothing, but parka is more fun.)

Regulating the price of parkas seems, on the face of it, to be silly – but take it from me, being in Minnesota, in January, without a parka is just begging to make you either housebound or cold enough to hurt. Even die.

This is one of the kinds of arguments which will erupt – and rightfully – from the free markets crowd. Why would we regulate the price of parkas? Understanding and stating why we don’t is important.

Details matter.

Get the details wrong and you may end up with a solution that solves nothing and engenders scorn from the other side of the aisle. And while some will scorn you regardless – these are the dead-ender ideologues – there will be those who listen, who think, and if you can convince them, you may find you have a bi-partisan effort. But you have to have the details right, and understand that these sorts of arguments are often non-linear – that is, a detail may skew a solution way out of its apparent importance.

Understanding the differentiating factors between life saving drugs and life saving parkas may lead to a better understanding of how to solve what appears to be a problem – and to understand what might be a temporary problem. Let’s abstract a bit – why do we forbid monopolies and price-setting conspiracies? Because this is how prices get too high.  The latter case is clearly a violation of the ideals of free markets, where competition is cherished; in the real world, we only cherish it when we’re not on top, but once we’re king of the hill then, for most folks, competition is a bane on one’s existence. It’s much easier to influence lawmakers to suppress that up-and-comer than to come up with the topper to the competition’s new product. Company’s must be forced to compete.

In the former case, that of monopolies, this time we’re protecting consumers from an instability in the free market system. Free marketers will claim that a competitor will spring up to depose the king; I’m not certain about market histories to comment on the claim.

Back to Sarah’s article:

When drug companies set their American prices, they don’t focus on the price of making the pills. Instead, they look at what their competitors already charge for similar products and try to land their price somewhere in the same range, regardless of production costs or how good the drug actually is. Since most drugs are already expensive, new drugs keep matching those prices.

This does not match the traditional narrative of a market in which competitors step the prices of the products down as costs slide over production runs and competitors slide their prices down in hopes of securing market share. Because it doesn’t, I think it’s important Sarah state why she believes this narrative doesn’t apply in general.

More detailed, “they don’t focus on the price of making the pills” is no doubt accurate, but the follow-on is misleading – because most pharmaceuticals have to cover the costs of not only the research to validate the efficacy and safety of this particular pill, but also the costs of those products which failed somewhere along the development path. There’s more to this process than just manufacturing.

Her description is actually reminiscent of a monopoly situation in which there’s a conspiracy to raise prices – which is illegal and can lead to serious fines and jail time. I don’t think this is happening in general. But perhaps that assertion, or a related assertion, could be fruitfully applied to the Epipen situation. But evidence should be supplied.

Sarah goes on to reference how prices are set in other countries – an interesting process – but doesn’t address the free market concern of how regulated pricing would affect the decisions of the pharmas in deciding which biomed problems to pursue next. How much are pharmaceuticals developed for the American market vs regulated markets? If we went regulated, how would that change?

I’ve talked about the problem of the intrusion of the practices of one sector into another in this thread, but I have no ready solutions of my own. While many researchers are motivated by personal losses or a sense of contributing to society, or even just ravenous curiosity and drive to achieve, the investors who fund the efforts, whose funds by the critical supplies and pays the salaries, often, though not always, are driven by a quest for profits – often large profits. How do you replace them? How do you replace those researchers who are driven by money? How do you handle the lost investments, of those efforts which failed?

Tough questions. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced by Sarah’s narrative. And if you can’t get reasonable free marketers and conservatives on board, any solution appears dubious.

And if the Epipen is suddenly faced with a competitor priced at a tenth of the Epipen’s, much like happened to Daraprim? Sarah mentions Daraprim – but not the competition aspect which arose a few months later, and what happened to Shkreli, the CEO that raised the price of Daraprim. How will this impact her argument, if it happens?

I have my doubts about how the medical sector is impinged upon by the private sector (see here) – and I wish Sarah had perhaps asked whether the free market, as defined by Adam Smith, is appropriate for the medical area. The arguments made here are uneven, and in several cases, unconvincing.

This post sparked some worries from readers. Here’s one:

Just more fuel for my arguments that (1) there are already too many people, (2) larger corporations never behave in any kind of moral or sustainable fashion — it’s just inherent to the system and rules surrounding large* institutions. (*where “large” is some unknown size but at which any moral helm provided by the founders ceases to have major effect)

Quite possibly. In my book, one of the functions of government is to prevent harm by the corporations, seeking redress when necessary. Another:

What about the old munitions plant I believe it is Shore View. After all this time, what about the ground water there? They say it has been cleaned up but to be honest I don’t think it has been either.

Later corrected to Arden Hills. I know it’s been unused for decades, but I’m not sure how the water has been treated. I think my Arts Editor knows more. Its official name was Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant. That page notes,

What’s left to do

• Groundwater treatment is expected to continue until approximately 2040. The Army will continue to operate and pay for groundwater treatment, even if part of the property is sold.
• While the historical waste disposal areas have all been addressed, some areas of soil contamination, particularly under existing buildings, require additional investigation and possible cleanup. The best time to complete this task is when the buildings are demolished.

Frank Vyan Walton on The Daily Kos mounts a spirited defense of the Clinton Foundation:

Mr. Mook mentions some of the above, but he doesn’t elaborate because Bash should already know all this, but quiteobviously she doesn’t. He does point out that while George W. Bush was president, members of his family were a part of several foreign boards, specifically George H.W. Bush. He was a member of the Carlyle Group which had Saudi investors including members of the Bin Laden family.  GHW Bush also ran the Points of Light Foundation while he was President. While Senator Bob Dole was running for president in 1996, his wife, Elizabeth Dole, was collecting a$200,000/year salary as head of the American Red Cross.

So what Bill Clinton is offering to do, stepping down from his own charity organization and ending his paid speeches which essentially kills his own personal revenue stream, is actually going far, far above and beyond what anyone has ever been expected to do in the past.

It is true that Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to the Foundation largely to help fund the Clinton Library (they also gave a similar amount to support the George W. Bush Presidential Library) but that they stopped giving anything while Clinton was Secretary of State. The Clinton Foundation lists its donors, which actually goes above and beyond legal requirements because charities don’t have to do that, but it doesn’t specify exactly when they gave in most cases, so many of the claims that they accepted foreign donations between 2008-2012 are not very well confirmed as noted by PolitiFact.

While ambling about the parking lot at work today, I chanced upon a delivery truck with the logo FedEx Express on it.

Now, I recall when FedEx was actually Federal Express, which leaves me wondering …

Does that logo really expand to Federal Express Express?

Or am I just sliding down the hill into literality hell?

Back in October 2015 I mentioned the University of British Columbia was building the tallest wood structure in the world. Treehugger.com reports the structure is finished – not meaning it’s ready for occupation, but the essentials are in place:

Image: Acton Ostry Architects

And of course TreeHugger loves it because wood is a renewable resource, and building with it sequesters carbon dioxide. In this building, according to Hermann Kaufmann, “the carbon stored in the mass timber structure, plus avoided greenhouse gas emissions, results in a total estimated carbon benefit of 2,563 tonnes of CO2, which is equivalent to taking 490 cars off the road for a year.”

Up and ahead of schedule. Gotta like that. They report the stairs are made of poured concrete – I wonder if the next ‘tall wood’ building will try to avoid that as well?

Kate Raddatz at local CBS affiliate WCCO reports on a problem at the new US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis:

“Stadiums for a long time have had noise levels that can be damaging to your hearing,” Dr. David Geddes, an audiologist for HealthPartners, said.

U.S. Bank Stadium could be the loudest stadium Minnesota has ever seen. The Minnesota Vikings website says the roof on U.S. Bank Stadium features more “acoustically reflective material” and “should make the stadium louder” than the Metrodome.

A local radio station measured the sound during the soccer match at U.S. Bank Stadium reaching over 105 decibels. HealthPartners says that is ten times louder than the volume at an average NFL stadium.

Dr. Geddes says any sound over 85 decibels can damage tiny cells inside the ear. Even if your ears stop ringing after a loud event, you could have problems down the line.

And what is stadium management doing about this damaging environment?

The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority said ear plugs will be handed out for events at U.S. Bank Stadium.

I’m sorry, but I’m just an engineer. I generally prefer to fix problems – not offer band-aids while not covering the runaway band saw that’s cutting children in half.

I suppose someone will tell me why a class action suit is just not possible. Maybe ticket buyers give away their constitutional rights when they agree to buy a ticket. I know I’d write that into the purchase agreement if I were the lawyer in charge of writing the legal verbiage of a stadium ticket.

But the fact is that this is a human-created environment, and there’s no reason it should damage your hearing.

We step into A Blueprint for Murder (1953) to the cries of a little girl, in a hospital setting off-camera, screaming, “no one touch my feet!”

That’s known as a hook.

We follow the travails of a man (played by Joseph Cotten) called to the bed of his niece by her stepmother, the attractive Lynne (Jean Peters). The father, his brother, died months ago. The girl begins to recover and the man and woman, along with the man’s young nephew, go to the stepmother’s luxury condo for dinner.

And then the little girl abruptly dies. Eventually, the delayed autopsy indicates strychnine.

This tense, gripping drama is a psychological exploration masquerading as a murder mystery. Make no mistake, there’s a murder mystery, but it mainly serves as a backdrop for the emotional torment of a man who’s gradually led to believe that his highly attractive and now available ex-sister-in-law may have killed his niece, and even possibly his brother. He can’t believe it – women don’t kill. But the meddling wife of his lawyer points out some uncomfortable facts.  Police become involved, but the legal system rebuffs the attempts to put her on trial and to separate the boy from his stepmother.

And now our protagonist is left with a terrible dilemma, as he believes his nephew is in danger.

My Arts Editor and I had seen this before, but we were still riveted. These moral questions that are posed and resolved in the plot exist for every society built on the belief that justice is a key to a peaceful, satisfying society, and the concepts are as relevant and important today as they were in 1953. The movie may involve old fashioned phones and ocean liners, but rather than feeling dated, it’s simply part of the background. The mental agonies of our protagonist are fully motivated, Right up to the final twist, we’re wondering – what would we do?

Highly Recommended.

And now, having written this review, I read the “Critical Reception” section in Wikipedia, from which I learn the New York Times had little good to say about it. IMDB gives it 6.8/10. Rotten Tomatoes has an audience score of 62/100, with only 1 critic contribution (“well-acted”).

So your mileage may vary.

Fair warning: The 3 Day Novel contest is upon us, namely September 3-5. My Arts Editor & I participated several years ago, and while we didn’t make the short list, we had both fun and some pain as we spent three days madly writing, rewriting, and (at least the AE) cursing the computer that ate a sex scene revision.

It’s an interesting experience because the rough ideas with which you plunge into the contest begin to refine, mutate, explode, reassemble – and generate people. Oh, sure, they’re characters in your story, but if you’re doing this right their voices start to echo in your head, asking you why you’re forcing decisions upon them with which they disagree, even haring off on adventures which you never planned.

We do not plan to enter this year, we’ve been too busy to plan anything. Not that plans are all that necessary, but we (or at least I) don’t feel ready to devote three days to just writing.

Although put that way, it’s a bit tempting.

Nicholas Weaver on Lawfare continues to report on the apparent breach of the NSA by hackers. He has some questions he’d like Congress to ask the NSA:

When did NSA become aware of the breach? The answer to this initial question affects the subsequent questions. Whether NSA knew about the breach in 2013 or shortly thereafter or whether the agency learned of it approximately when the rest of the world did, there are significant implications.

If the NSA was aware of the breach in 2013, why didn’t they contact Fortinet and Cisco?

…

If NSA only recently learned of the breach, what failed?

Nicholas has a series of good questions, but I’m a little curious as to why we think Congress will be asking these questions when they couldn’t be troubled to properly address the potential Zika outbreak – which appears to be slowly blossoming before our eyes.

I also found this interesting:

Further affecting the calculation as to whether these exploits should have been retained is the ease of exploitation. Although both exploits require a privileged location—namely having previously compromised a system administrator’s computer—the actual exploits themselves are easy to recreate—they are classic “buffer overflow” attacks of the sort that undergraduate computer science students learn to exploit.

Credit: WUHAN MACHINE EQUIPMENT CO LTD

The important point here should really be, How much longer will we continue to use error-prone computer languages in mission critical systems? Honestly, buffer overflow attacks date back 30 years if not more, and we should really be using languages that simply do NOT PERMIT these sorts of errors to occur. This is like using humans to dig huge tunnels these days – it’s a waste of the humans’ time. Instead, you rent a tunnel digger and it does the job without risking human lives.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

CNN has a nice video on the rocky planet orbiting nearby Proxima Centauri. Space.com provides a description of how the planet was found, along with this lovely artist’s impression.

The discovery of Proxima b was a long time in the making.

Astronomers have been hunting intensively for planets around Proxima Centauri for more 15 years, using instruments such as the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) and the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), both of which are installed on telescopes run by the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

UVES, HARPS and other instruments like them allow researchers to detect the slight wobbles in a star’s movement caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets.

Astronomers found hints of such a wobble back in 2013, but the signal was not convincing, Anglada-Escude said. So he and a number of other researchers launched a campaign to ferret out the planet. They called this effort the Pale Red Dot — a nod to Carl Sagan’s famous description of Earth as a “pale blue dot,” and the fact that Proxima Centauri is a small, dim star known as a red dwarf.

Local CBS affiliate WCCO is reporting that the water has become undrinkable in portions of Washington County, which is to the east of the Twin Cities, due to leakage from a landfill:

Dozens of homeowners in Washington County are being told not to drink their well water. The Minnesota Department of Health says well water at about 80 homes contains concerning levels of man-made pollutants called PFCs, which are often found in firefighting foam.

Years ago, 3M used the chemicals at their Woodbury, Oakdale and Cottage Grove sites and legally disposed of them at the Lake Elmo landfill.  From there, the pollutants leaked into ground water.

“We never drink the well water,” said Terry Hickey.

Hickey said there is a lot to like about his Lake Elmo neighborhood. But when it comes to his well water, he’ll use it for everything but drinking.

“Ever since we found out about it, we get bottled water,” said Hickey.

And the homeowners will be provided bottled water, partially by 3M.

This isn’t so much condemnatory as emblematic of the future that will be faced by many in the United States in the future as landfills containing noxious chemical degrade¹ and begin leaking. Cleaning these landfills will no doubt be expensive – and time consuming, not only due to the difficulties, but because leaching into aquifers may take years, so cleaning those aquifers will take at least as many years, simply as a result of the physics of the matter – unless we find ways to force-flush cleansers through the earth and into the aquifers, since the pathway to the aquifer also needs cleansing.

This will be a sobering time, and while opportunity will arise because of this unfortunate situation, it’s going to be mostly about the cost and dangers of our previous polluting ways, whether it’s here in relatively clean Minnesota, or out in some manufacturing city.

The truly frustrating part will be the continued pollution by those who don’t wish to acknowledge their responsibility, who still want to be pollute as did their forefathers – and don’t understand that the far greater population density. Perhaps they should have to take a course in conscious capitalism.

¹In a sense, ‘degrading’ is simply what nature tends to do, dispersing concentrations into the general ‘soup’ of the planet, as it were.