Monthly Archives: September 2017

If you’re young, you may not be as well informed as you think you are. Jen Hayden on The Daily Kos has the low-down:

The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania have released the downright disturbing results of a recent survey that shows a majority of Americans don’t know anything about their rights or the rights of others according to our own Constitution. Read it and weep:

• More than half of Americans (53 percent) incorrectly think it is accurate to say that immigrants who are here illegally do not have any rights under the U.S. Constitution;
• More than a third of those surveyed (37 percent) can’t name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment;
• Only a quarter of Americans (26 percent) can name all three branches of government.

Why? Another unintended consequence:

How did we get here? The Atlantic says the decline in civics classes was accelerated during the George W. Bush administration and the launch of No Child Left Behind:

Despite this extra focus on math and science, social studies managed to make it through the end of the Cold War relatively unscathed (in fact, the number of classroom hours dedicated to teaching social studies in grades 1-4 peaked in the 1993-1994 school year at 3 hours a week). But drastic change came a decade later with the passage of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation.

No Child Left Behind was signed into law in an attempt to address the growing achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. It was a controversial piece of legislation from the start, mainly because of its “one size fits all’” approach: It uses annual standardized tests to determine how well students are performing in reading and math and then uses those scores to determine the amounts of federal funding schools receive.

I’m beginning to think most laws should come with a sunset and evaluation provision. Click on Jen’s link and you can get the Schoolhouse Rock lesson on the Constitution. Think of it as some honey to make the meds go down smooth.

Unctuous:

1. characterized by excessive piousness or moralistic fervor, especially in an affected manner; excessively smooth, suave, or smug.
2. of the nature of or characteristic of an unguent or ointment; oily; greasy.
3. having an oily or soapy feel, as certain minerals. [Dictionary.com]

Heard on America’s Test Kitchen in reference to their version of Charlotte Russe. I’ve also run across it in fiction, usually in a slightly repulsive context.

I understand starting Vikings quarterback Sam Bradford is out with a bad knee – maybe for several weeks. Bridgewater, who he replaced, is still not available.

But I understand Colin Kaepernick is available, and has great credentials. Has the Vikings head office thought about bringing him around for a look-see?

So it’s been a bit since Trump tentatively bit on the cookie the Democrats offered over DACA, and how’s Ann Coulter’s attack going?

So far, nothing ascertainable. I’d say if this rolling 3 day average poll doesn’t start showing results soon, we’ll have to deem Counter’s attack to be an utter failure. That would imply that Trump’s followers don’t necessarily support him for the positions he articulated in the campaign, but for his judgment calls.

And, ya know, that is how this is all supposed to work. The alternative of everyone having their hands on the steering wheel has never appealed to me, since most of the electorate is going to be ill-informed on a randomly selected issue, no matter how important; the idea behind electing representatives to a Congress, and for that matter a President, is that they’ll have the time and, one would hope, the perspicacity to make wise decisions.

So the sad part here isn’t that they’re backing their man even when he changes course, but that they picked a lying, uninformed, incurious, narcissistic, unsuccessful, boastful, vindictive and emotionally immature man in the first place.

I can’t decide if I’m pleased that Coulter, so far, appears to be failing, or dismayed that Trump’s support level, scandalously low as it is, remains this high. It certainly brings doubts as to the ability of large masses of mankind to govern itself with any system at all.

Steve Benen on Maddowblog is upset over Sean Spicer’s satiric appearance on the Emmy Awards last night:

My point is not to begrudge Spicer for an unnervingly successful public-relations campaign. Rather, my concern is over the emerging set of incentives: if officials, particularly in Trump’s White House, realize that they’ll face no public penalties for their misdeeds, they’ll have no reason to act responsibly.

And I can see his point. But it also occurs to me that a primary part of the American mythos is the theme of redemption, that we can regret our willful mistakes and try to do better. It’s one of those parts of America that makes it a great place – and has it perpetually teetering on the edge of being a mark, a victim of the repeat scammer.

Spicer certainly does not have a serious reputation left, given his repeated lies and outré behavior in his position as White House Press Secretary. But is he regretful of his behavior? Beats the hell out of me – I haven’t tried to keep track of him since his departure from the White House in humiliation over the hiring of Scaramucci, nor did I watch the Emmy show last night. He may be trying to finesse his way to a better public standing through willing self-parody. I’d prefer the traditional full public apology (and none of this “if anyone was offended”, which puts the responsibility on those lied to – I’ve discussed this before) to this new-fangled self-parody approach, but perhaps that’s the best the morally defective right-wing extremists can offer these days.

And Colbert? I keep in mind that he’s a comedian/commentator, an entertainer, and the entertainer who’s not exploring the edge of the art is not going to be leading edge. I don’t know if the offering of Spicer was successful – but it’s in keeping with the tradition of being on the edge.

Besides inspiring conspiracy theories concerning scientists, another problem of CO₂? Inadvertent carbohydrate loading, according to Politico‘s profile of Irakli Loladz, a mathematician assisting biologists puzzling over why adding algae to zooplankton’s food source was killing them, rather than causing them to grow more:

Not as nutritious as it once was?

The biologists had an idea of what was going on: The increased light was making the algae grow faster, but they ended up containing fewer of the nutrients the zooplankton needed to thrive. By speeding up their growth, the researchers had essentially turned the algae into junk food. The zooplankton had plenty to eat, but their food was less nutritious, and so they were starving.Loladze used his math training to help measure and explain the algae-zooplankton dynamic. He and his colleagues devised a model that captured the relationship between a food source and a grazer that depends on the food. They published that first paper in 2000. But Loladze was also captivated by a much larger question raised by the experiment: Just how far this problem might extend. …In the outside world, the problem isn’t that plants are suddenly getting more light: It’s that for years, they’ve been getting more carbon dioxide. Plants rely on both light and carbon dioxide to grow. If shining more light results in faster-growing, less nutritious algae—junk-food algae whose ratio of sugar to nutrients was out of whack—then it seemed logical to assume that ramping up carbon dioxide might do the same. And it could also be playing out in plants all over the planet. What might that mean for the plants that people eat?

Maybe it’s a negative feedback loop – starve the critters causing the planet’s atmosphere to go out of balance. Keeping in mind that “fat” doesn’t mean they have too many nutrients, only that their intake of certain substances is out of balance for the organism.

Carbohydrates have an empirical formula of C_m(H₂O)_n (where m could be different from n), so keeping in mind the rise of CO₂ in the air, and being a simple software engineer just freehand speculating here, this shouldn’t actually be that big a surprise – an increase in the density of atmospheric CO₂ should displace other atoms in an organism that processes for CO₂, once the CO₂ is decomposed. Assuming plants break down CO₂ for the constituent atoms / molecules. Anyone know if I’m just blathering here?

The results, as he collected them, all seemed to point in the same direction: The junk-food effect [Loladze] had learned about in that Arizona lab also appeared to be occurring in fields and forests around the world. “Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO₂ levels keep rising,” Loladze said. “We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history―[an] injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.”

It also shoots holes in the argument that higher CO₂ concentrations will benefit us through better plant production, as they point out. It’s a good article – go and read it. Even bees are affected:

Sugar crash city?

[Lewis] Ziska devised an experiment that eliminated the complicating factor of plant breeding: He decided to look at bee food.

Goldenrod, a wildflower many consider a weed, is extremely important to bees. It flowers late in the season, and its pollen provides an important source of protein for bees as they head into the harshness of winter. Since goldenrod is wild and humans haven’t bred it into new strains, it hasn’t changed over time as much as, say, corn or wheat. And the Smithsonian Institution also happens to have hundreds of samples of goldenrod, dating back to 1842, in its massive historical archive—which gave Ziska and his colleagues a chance to figure out how one plant has changed over time.

They found that the protein content of goldenrod pollen has declined by a third since the industrial revolution—and the change closely tracks with the rise in CO₂. Scientists have been trying to figure out why bee populations around the world have been in decline, which threatens many crops that rely on bees for pollination. Ziska’s paper suggested that a decline in protein prior to winter could be an additional factor making it hard for bees to survive other stressors.

That gets a wow out of me. If you’re interested, here’s an academic report by Ziska, et al, as published in the Royal Society Proceedings B.

I wonder if we can blame the fall in human sperm counts on this as well. Scientific American reports:

Sperm counts in men from America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have dropped by more than 50 percent in less than 40 years, researchers said on Tuesday.

They also said the rate of decline is not slowing. Both findings — in a meta-analysis bringing together various studies — pointed to a potential decline in male health and fertility.

“This study is an urgent wake-up call for researchers and health authorities around the world to investigate the causes of the sharp ongoing drop in sperm count,” said Hagai Levine, who co-led the work at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine in Jerusalem.

No definitive cause is known, although various factors get generous helpings of blame. But consider, for those of us who believe the evidence of observations leads to the inevitable conclusion that biological evolution is a real-world process, we then must conclude that organisms, and the processes which they utilize, are always evolving, slowly, towards some optimal state in relation to their environment. For a couple of million years our forebears evolved in an environment in which CO₂ concentrations were much lower and relatively stable. Now they’re changing rather rapidly, as measured at Mauna Loa and other data collection locations, and given the likely pace at which species change and adapt, I doubt our current operating environment is much like the one we evolved to fit. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that this mismatch is causing our bodies to misfire.

This entire apparent revelation depresses me, convincing me once again that the human population on this planet is driving the ecology that it depends on towards the edge of stability, and once it’s over that edge, the human population level will be at risk of being forcibly lowered – by Nature and by War. We’re over-populated.

Our current population is in the neighborhood of 7.5 billions (short scale – 10⁹). My estimate, based on nothing but gut feeling, is that a human world wide population of 500 millions would assure long term survival for the species, in a tolerable civilization, in combination with long term ecological stability, all other variables held constant.

That’s so easy to write, but so hard to consider. 7 billions dead would be a horrible tragedy that would paralyze a generation, but I fear it’s either that or 7.5 billions dead, with scattered survivors faced with some awful plague that will keep people from banding together, or radiation from a war contaminating most of the surface and unbalancing the world-wide ecology.

Or worse.

We raised these last year as well: candy-corn plants. This one’s just hanging out with the gang, being a wallflower.

Now he appears to be rushing to scale the walls and pay back its war debts in full with interest. Silly flowers!

And lazy insouciance is the final pose for this series. He may know the winter is coming, but for now he’ll enjoy the heat.

I thought this was an interesting bit of unsettled science. Gina Rippon discusses sex roles, nurture, and nature in the pages of NewScientist (2 September 2017):

And the relevance of social and cultural context was demonstrated by a paper showing that differences in cognitive abilities between men and women in 26 countries varied as a function of attitudes to gender roles.

Now comes a timely paper by researchers in Australia, Israel and the UK suggesting that the roles of biology and environment as sources of stability and variability might be reversed when it comes to the evolutionary processes shaping sex/gender differences. …

The authors propose a model emphasising biology as a source of variability and environment as a source of stability, suggesting that biological variability is in fact being “suppressed” or masked by highly stable cultural forces and socio-environmental conditions.

Why might this matter? The authors, admirably cautious in discussing the balance between biology and environment, do note that the long, intense socialisation of infants is full of emphasis on differences between the sexes, via toys, clothing, names, role models and expectations.

They talk of this influence as creating stability, of holding the phenotype steady. But it could equally be described as repressing the benefits of variability.

And the idea that gender is accompanied by a collection of genetically preset preferences is actually fairly risible in the context of evolution. After all, flexibility is one of the hallmarks of human survival, the flexibility to live in the heat of Africa or the barren tundra of Scandinavia. Why should we expect certain parts of ourselves be described in such a cast-iron manner?

In case you’re wondering about the Cassini probe’s last views, here’s a video from SciNews:

I wonder if we would dare to put an artificial intelligence on such a probe, knowing it to be a one way trip – or if we would dare not to do so. The ethical debate would be intensely interesting.

Andrew Sullivan, an insomniac and asthmatic, is also a stoner (habitual user of marijuana), and after years of experience gives forth on its effect on him. Summing up:

My mind, moreover, shifted into a much more nonlinear and creative mood when I was high. I never write when stoned. But I do let my mind wander, revisit my writing in my head, see better its flaws, drill down past my defenses, and allow myself to explore alternative ideas. One more thing: My experience of music changed. For the first time, I was able to turn off the ordeal of consciousness and allow myself to listen properly. It hasn’t really enhanced my appreciation of food (eating still basically bores me) but it has sharpened and deepened my visual capacities. It can make Cape light even more transcendent and transforming.

But my memory? Much worse. My lungs? They’ve taken a hit, even if vaping has helped. Weed may shorten my life by hurting my lungs — but endless insomnia might have shortened it more. Could I go cold turkey? I have from time to time, but it’s not easy, largely because the insomnia always returns. In that sense, I’m busted. By some criteria, I am dependent. Others may find that dependence an impediment to their lives and work, and legalizers don’t need to deny that. We’re all different, and weed most definitely isn’t for everyone. But compared with all the other substances available, and most other avenues to chill and friendship, it remains, it seems to me, a no-brainer to legalize it, and for many sane adults, one of God’s great gifts to humankind.

Given weed’s effects, both negative and positive, on the human organism, it seems to me this should be one of those decisions left up to individuals rather than taken away by government. In a sense, government embodies the most overwhelming opinions of the day, tempered by certain timeless principles. Weed does not appear, to my eye, to fall into the category of overwhelming opinion, but rather the sort of thing that should be explored by individuals and evaluated as to its usefulness in their lives. Andrew, for example, is well aware of the tradeoffs and is willing to pay the costs for the benefits.

Me? I’m not interested in trying it. Maybe when I’m a bit older.

Zoë Quinn was a central figure in the Gamergate controversy, which has led to her co-founding the Crash Override Network, dedicated to helping those subject to online abuse. In this NewScientist (2 September 2017, paywall) interview she talks about what happened during that shitstorm:

“People don’t understand how this sort of thing can happen over less than nothing, so they think there must be some truth to it,” says Quinn. “The rumour persists because people don’t bother to look it up. Even if they do, there’s so much garbage on the internet, it’s hard to tell what’s true.”

Within weeks, the mob organised a crusade against what it framed as corruption in the games industry. Some websites cracked down on users who supported the harassment – and were in turn accused of censorship. Still, each credulous story from mainstream news sites gave the campaign validation. “The adults running these outlets should have damn well known better,” says Quinn. “Every scrap of legitimacy the abusers got was a new circle of hell for me. That’s the shocking part, and arguably the most upsetting.”

The news media is often running on the fringes of profitability, and sometimes the first to go will be those responsible for validating the facts in an article. This failure in their central-most responsibility – to get the facts right – have in her a poster-child for the results of their neglect of this responsibility.

Not that any of this is unique, except in scale. Computer are multipliers, and they are disinterested in truth or fallacy. They just multiply.

My reader notes how a potential signaling mechanism for NASA’s Venus automaton resembles another device from a previous era:

The Russians did something similar during the cold war. A mechanical bug (passive resonator) was placed in an artwork and used to eavesdrop on the US ambassador’s office. http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1274748

From the EE Times article:

While there are a great many myths about when and where the bug was most famously deployed, the NSA provides a definitive history. From the NSA web site:

“On August 4, 1945, Soviet school children gave a carving of the Great Seal of the United States to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman. It hung in the ambassador’s Moscow residential office until 1952 when the State Department discovered that it was ‘bugged.’

The microphone hidden inside was passive and only activated when the Soviets wanted it to be. They shot radio waves from a van parked outside into the ambassador’s office and could then detect the changes of the microphone’s diaphragm inside the resonant cavity. When Soviets turned off the radio waves it was virtually impossible to detect the hidden ‘bug.’ The Soviets were able to eavesdrop on the U.S. ambassador’s conversations for six years.”

The existence of the bug was accidentally discovered by a British Radio Operator when he heard conversations on an open radio channel.

I found particularly interesting the fact that the whole scheme was dreamed up by Leon Theremin, inventor of the theremin^[1] and prisoner in the “… prison camp/gold mine of Kolyma.” Because of the Stalinist purges depleted the technical ranks, Theremin was recruited out of the camp.

The value of a device undetectable when inactive is hard to over-estimate. I wonder how much valuable intelligence was gathered, and could have been gathered but for the BRO, through this fiendish device.

And if we have a way to detect the damn thing these days. Trick me once …

¹If you’re a Star Trek fan and think the lead-in music was done on a theremin, shame on you. The theremin-like sound was provided by Loulie Jean Norman.

Three couples, three problems, involving communication, assumptions, and being true to one’s principles. A Letter to Three Wives (1949) uses the plot contrivance of suggesting one of these couples is about to collapse, due to interference by an unseen old flame of each, as an excuse to explore these problems.

Brad and Deborah Bishop met in the service during the war. She’s from a poor family, he has money and friends that go with it, leading to insecurity on her part. Perhaps the least complex and satisfying of the stories, the question seems to be whether she can gather up the gumption to be herself, rather than what she thinks her husband’s friends want her to be.

George and Rita Phipps are a school teacher and radio mystery writer, respectively, and have possibly the most interesting story for today’s audience. Rita has changed from the woman George originally married – independent and principled – to a woman obsequious to her boss, who benefits from the commercials that play during the radio plays. Her husband is dismayed at her loss of faith in herself as well as her dedication to her craft. This leads to a relevant rant on his part concerning how school teachers (especially male school teachers) are disliked by society as well as underpaid. Why is he still in the profession? Because he can’t imagine not being a teacher, using literature to teach the children and young adults of the day. To a great extent, school teachers still suffer this problem, this lack of respect for the entire idea of education. His rant remains well worth a watch.

Porter and Lora Mae Darnell are the epitome of the central problem of the boss marrying an assistant – is the assistant marrying for money or …? This, in turn, influences his responses to her until she, smart enough to have caught him, doesn’t feel like a woman so much as merchandise; he simply feels as if he’s a bank, not a husband. Neither wishes to budge from their assumed positions until their pride is ready to destroy the marriage.

While some will point to the interfering woman, Addie Ross, as the connector of the stories, to my mind it’s actually a housekeeper, Sadie, who works for two of the couples and is related to Lora Mae. Every scene she appears in is her scene, and she dares the other actors to take it away from her. She’s a blast.

And the entire movie is just darn good, which you might expect from an Academy Award winning movie (Directing, Screenplay). It’s not a high octane thriller like today’s offerings, but it has fine acting from everyone, a subtle screenplay, good touches of humor, and some memorable characters.

Recommended if you don’t mind leisurely pacing.

A friend sent me this e-mailing, which I think is quite interesting, even if I did fail to click on the link to see all of Coulter’s article. (I will admit that I translate “POWERFUL CONSERVATIVE VOICES” to “WE YELL LOUDER FRIGHT-STORIES THAN OTHER SNAKE-OIL SALESMEN”.) It’s an attack on the idea of restoring DACA legislatively.

But it’ll depend on how Trump ultimately ends up playing this. Last I heard, Trump was leaning towards an agreement with the Democrats which would seriously leave the GOP looking bad. If this happens, then it appears that Coulter’s is one of the lead blows in the savage criticism to descend upon Trump from the extremist right. For example, Jeremy Carl on National Review sees this happening:

The short-term politics of a DACA amnesty would likely be devastating for Trump — for his most committed voters and supporters, immigration was his key issue of differentiation. For these voters, DACA amnesty is a knife in the heart. It’s no coincidence that some of the president’s staunchest defenders (Sean Hannity, Breitbart, Ann Coulter) are attacking the possibility of a DACA amnesty, and at times even Trump himself, in an unprecedented fashion. Helping to pass a DACA amnesty would likely be a strategic blunder of historic proportions for the president and his team.

But there’s an implicit assumption in this assessment – that Trump voters are issue-motivated voters.

I wonder.

I think it’s quite possible that a substantial number of them – over 50%, maybe 75% – are voting for the man, not for his positions on the issues.

This is not actually an exotic position. After all, from an ideal point of view, we do not elect our leaders in order to implement our viewpoints on specific issues in most cases. We elect leaders to assess situations and choose the best alternative. That’s why we pay them. If Trump stands up and says that he’s assessed the situation and believes visiting injustice upon these children of illegal immigrants is unacceptable, it’s not only possible but even appropriate that his supporters will accept his judgment and remain in his corner.

And the right wing extremists who function more on ideology than the strength of character of their leaders (of which Trump has none, but never mind that) will be outraged and attack him – and possibly alienate the Trump supporters until they no longer wish to vote for GOP candidates in general, only those who are Trump adherents.

It’s sort of RINO in reverse. And it may be what frightens independents and liberals the most, paradoxically, because it renders nearly impossible the effort to strip supporters away from the incompetent and frighteningly dangerous President Trump. Until those voters learn that simply blindly following Trump is not good enough, that his actions must be judged, not on ideological grounds, but on competency grounds, they will cling to Trump because of a certain charisma that some think he has.

And that means more and more damage to the United States, within and without.

Matthew Continetti at National Review would have us believe that governmental programs are evaluated in a fair and objective manner in this piece on Senator Sanders’ (I-VT) recently proposed “Medicare For All” bill:

Recall what happened the last time Democrats tackled health care. The designers of the Affordable Care Act went out of their way to get buy-in from all the various players in the health-care system. They based their plan on Mitt Romney’s legacy in Massachusetts. Yet the controversy over Obamacare’s mandates, taxes, regulations, and panels cost the Democrats the House, and the negative reaction to the law’s implementation in 2013 and 2014 cost them the Senate. What would be the fallout if Democrats, reduced to their weakest position in years, took on not only the entirety of the health-care industry but also the status-quo bias of the American people?

This completely ignores the campaign of fright and doomsday run by the GOP and fringe-right organizations who could not permit the Democrats a victory in the healthcare debate, and even today would have us believe the ACA is on the brink of collapse, rather than the truth that, properly managed, most third party experts seem to believe that it’ll be both stable and effective.

This omission may be a convenient way to make his piece stronger, but failing to consider all the facts often has, let’s say, karmic consequences. Let’s suppose the impossible occurs and some version of Sanders’ bill becomes law, and a decade later it’s stable and popular. How does that accrue to Continetti’s reputation?

A mix of Dark Cabaret. Some of the lyrics can be amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUwE4wwes28

A reader is intrigued by the proposed automaton for Venus:

Venusian strandbeets! But how do you get data back home when you have a mechanical rover? Semaphore flags?

Something like. In the link I forgot to add (now fixed in the original post) it says:

Another problem will be communications. Without electronics, how would you transmit science data? Current plans are inspired by another age-old technology: Morse code.

An orbiting spacecraft could ping the rover using radar. The rover would have a radar target, which if shaped correctly, would act like “stealth technology in reverse,” Sauder said. Stealth planes have special shapes that disperse radar signals; Sauder is exploring how to shape these targets to brightly reflect signals instead. Adding a rotating shutter in front of the radar target would allow the rover to turn the bright, reflected spot on and off, communicating much like signal lamps on Navy ships.

Sounds a lot like semaphores to me. But the programming still eludes me. And then materials analysis will also be a bit odd, I’d think. So you can run a (weak) drill fairly easily – but how do you analyze the material you bring up? Reactive chemistry, but you STILL have to figure out the results and how to get your machinery to transmit that result, all without electronics.

Ever wonder if megafauna benefits or destroys the environment?

Ever wonder how to even measure such a thing?

NewScientist (2 September 2017) has a short report on the subject of megafauna:

Sometimes those benefits are intended. For instance, giant tortoises from Aldabra in the Seychelles have been installed on Mauritius to replace their extinct counterparts and spread the seeds of native trees.

At other times, it has just happened. In his Master’s thesis, [Erick Lundgren of Arizona State University] describes the behaviour of wild donkeys or “burros” in the Sonoran desert, US. They dig down to uncover underground water that can then be drunk by dozens of native bird and mammal species. When native megafauna disappeared, nothing remained in the area with the ability to do that.

I suppose the measurement stick might be the sheer bulk of life enabled by any particular species. It seems a bit crude. It’s hard to understand how the lack of access to water would be of “benefit” to the ecology of the area, though.

I ran across Theo Jansen’s work years ago, but had forgotten about it until today – the previous post on a proposal to use an automaton as a probe on Venus reminded me of Jansen. His work makes me wonder if he’s modeling, purposely or inadvertently, a part of biological evolution that could be studied fruitfully.

Maybe it is.

Anyways, here’s a taste.

Becalm:

1. to deprive (a sailing vessel) of the wind necessary to move it; subject to a calm :The schooner was becalmed in the horse latitudes for two weeks.
2. Archaic. to calm; pacify. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in my previous post about being becalmed on Venus. The juxtaposition amuses me.

Remember the proposed Venus probe which would not have electronics? NASA/JPL recently released an announcement concerning project progress, which is known as the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE):

Mechanical computers have been used throughout history, most often as mathematical tools like adding machines. The most famous might be Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a 19th century invention for calculating algebraic equations. The oldest known is the Antikythera mechanism, a device used by ancient Greeks to predict astronomical phenomena like eclipses.

Mechanical computers were also developed as works of art. For hundreds of years, clockwork mechanisms were used to create automatons for wealthy patrons. In the 1770s, a Swiss watchmaker named Pierre Jaquet-Droz created “The Writer,” an automaton that could be programmed to write any combination of letters.

Sauder said these analog technologies could help where electronics typically fail. In extreme environments like the surface of Venus, most electronics will melt in high temperatures or be corroded by sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.

“Venus is too inhospitable for kind of complex control systems you have on a Mars rover,” Sauder said. “But with a fully mechanical rover, you might be able to survive as long as a year.”

Wind turbines in the center of the rover would power these computers, allowing it to flip upside down and keep running. But the planet’s environment would offer plenty of challenges.

From a little earlier this year is the NASA page on AREE:

Two enabling technologies, RTG powered cooling systems and high temperature electronics, have been proposed to enable long duration in-situ Venus operations. The former is highly complex and requires billions in R&D to cool a small chamber of electronics, while the latter is not close to the integration level required for a rover. We propose a third approach, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE), an exciting concept which enables long duration in-situ mobility on the surface of Venus through robust mechanisms. An automaton is a mechanical device capable of performing a series of complex actions to achieve a specific result.

They have long been explored as art forms but remain unexplored for space applications. The automaton rover is designed to reduce requirements on electronics while requiring minimal human interaction and based on the subsumption architecture from robotics, where simple reactions of the rover lead to complex behavior. AREE combines steampunk with space exploration to enable science measurements unachievable with today’s space technology.

They also have a short video illustrating a possible implementation:

Which leads one to dread being becalmed. And I have to wonder about remote reprogramming – how would this be possible? It’s questions like these that make places like JPL fascinating.

[EDIT: Added forgotten link to the announcement.]

Every time Kim Jong Un of North Korea fires off a missile, the test data his people are collecting is actually secondary in purpose; because each launch gets so much attention, it’s obvious he’s trying to achieve something more than just perfect the technology. So listening to the report on the radio this morning of a launch that sent a missile over Japan caught my attention. Specifically, this from NPR:

North Korea’s most recent missile launch — on Aug. 29 — was the first to fly over Japan in several years. That one, like this one, triggered the J-Alert Japanese civil defense system to break into television and radio broadcasts and send messages across mobile phones in northern Japanese prefectures saying, “Missile alert, missile alert … please take shelter underground or in a sturdy building.”

This sort of thing will alarm the citizens – the citizens who vote and therefore sway their governments. These are not messages solely for the governments of Japan, South Korea, and the United States, but also messages to their citizens. If nothing else, Kim may believe that he’s destabilizing those governments, threatening them with at least temporary dissolution because the citizens, naturally, do not wish to have their lives threatened, however emptily, by Kim’s missile and all he would like us to portend. There’s nothing like a good riot to change the focus of the leadership of, say, Japan, from North Korea to its own citizens.

Kim is no poltroon. He knows one dumb nuclear mistake and his Empire of North Korea will disappear into a pit of steaming lava, and even if he personally survives, his prestige will be shot – and that’s a big deal for him. But he also knows that stirring up his adversaries’ citizens  may make them hesitant when decisions need to be made. Decisions such as assassination teams, dealing with North Korean non-nuclear aggression – and distract us from seeing anything else he may have up his sleeve.

I hope to have this much fun at my funeral.

Death At A Funeral (2007) is an odd mixture of dry British humor and broad farce. A man has died, and his sons and wife are running the funeral. Expenses are piling up, hormones are running high in some of the guests, and there’s a vial of pills blazing a trail of evil through the guests.

Meantime, the man’s lover has shown up to claim a share of the estate. His short share, actually. Too bad he hit his head on the corner of the table.

Its culmination, as hilarious as I found it, also includes an opportunity for many to mature a bit, and that adds a lovely counterpoint to what could have been simple humor. It serves to deepen the movie a nice bit.

This is an old favorite of mine, and after a long day at work, it was great to sit down and watch, even if it was the TV version, and occasionally the dialog disappears completely under the Puritan’s censorious gaze. If you have the patience for the certain slow pace of a funeral gone awry, then I think this is Recommended, or at least not far short of it.

This has been remade in a 2010 version, which I have not seen.

Kevin Drum remarks that it’s not entirely the insurers’ fault in the medical explosion of costs:

Source: Saint Peters Blog

There are two takeaways here. First, these hospitals charge private insurers a lot more than Medicare. The average for outpatient care was 258 percent more. For inpatient care it was 117 percent more.

Second, there’s stunning variation in prices. This is an old story, but it’s an old story that never gets old. The least expensive hospital charged private insurers 71 percent more than Medicare for outpatient services. The most expensive charged 396 percent more than Medicare for the same basket of services.

What accounts for the difference? Did big hospitals with economies of scale, lots of competition, and tight relationships with physicians charge less? In a word, no. In two words, hell no:

At the bottom of the price distribution are the independent CAHs [critical access hospitals, which are all small and rural] and three small systems….Although CAHs are, by definition, geographically isolated and have no nearby competitors, that lack of competition does not correspond to higher negotiated prices. The upper end of the price distribution is dominated by five large hospital systems, with Parkview Health standing out for having exceptionally high prices. Hospital systems and consolidation among hospitals have been cited as drivers of high and increasing prices, and these findings are consistent with that argument.

This is the not-so-hidden story of exploding medical costs. We’ve become so accustomed to hating on insurers that we hardly notice that hospital consolidation is a much bigger villain. When a big insurer has a local monopoly, it can usually negotiate lower prices from hospitals because the hospitals have nowhere else to go. But when there are lots of insurers and only one or two local hospitals, it’s the hospitals that have the upper hand. They can charge high prices because the insurers have no choice except to do business with them. As hospital systems get steadily larger and rope in more and more physicians, their effective competition decreases and they have the ability to demand ever higher prices.

Where hospital consolidation is the equivalent of local monopolies. Perhaps, if we’re going to stick with this idea of free enterprise and the health system being compatible, we should also inject the old idea that government must exercise its oversight responsibilities and break up monopolies which are regressive to price competition.

Which all sounds a little silly when it comes to your health and life, but there it is. In for a penny, in for a pound.