Author Archives: Hue White

Speaking of elephants and political boundaries, it turns out that ivory contains DNA, and elephant DNA varies with respect to location, as explained in this 2007 NewScientist report:

A DNA test that reveals where ivory has come from has been used to pinpoint the geographic origins of hundreds of tusks seized from poachers, providing law enforcement agencies with valuable clues.

The test was developed in 2004 through a comparison of elephant DNA from different regions. Theoretically, it can pinpoint the origin of a particular sample to between 500 and 1000 kilometres.

Now, the DNA test has survived its first genuine challenge. It revealed that a huge sample of 532 tusks – seized in Singapore in 2002 but originally shipped from Malawi – came mainly from Zambia, not from multiple locations as originally suspected.

The recent ivory crush thus represents a loss of evidence for tracing exactly where the ivory is poached – i.e., where the elephants are killed.  A recent NewScientist report (27 June 2015) details the potential loss:

Their analysis reveals that since 2006, almost all the seized ivory has come from just two places: Tanzania – which has lost 60 per cent of its elephants over the past five years – and an area of western Africa spanning parts of Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and Cameroon (Science, doi.org/5h6).

“We were very surprised to find that the ivory came from just two locations in Africa,” Wasser said. “It means we can target these areas for law enforcement.”

The DNA information has already been useful in targeting poachers and smugglers, and to unravel trafficking networks, says William Clark of Interpol. “Every tusk should be sampled.”

Another way to locate corruption in Africa.

What is the purpose of the crush action?  The Ninety Six Elephants site explains:

 In the fall of 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pulverized six tons of ivory, rendering trinkets it had confiscated into shards no bigger than a dime. A few months later, China did the same. And these nations are not alone—countries like Kenya, Gabon, and the Philippines have all crushed or burned from their stockpiles. A number of others have scheduled such an action for the near future.

What’s the point of all the crushing and burning? These events send a clear message to traffickers around the world that the trade in ivory won’t be tolerated.

Curious about the possibility of the economic consequences of crushing the ivory in the presence of a black market, to wit, reducing supply => increases prices => increases motivation to kill more elephants, I tracked down the Wildlife Conservation Society’s response on HuffPo:

Much of the commentary around these destructions has been favorable, but some people have suggested that ridding ourselves of ivory might be harmful for elephant conservation by reducing the supply and thus stimulating prices (a key driver of elephant poaching).

A recent misleading headline commenting on Malawi’s destruction of ivory stockpiles (since postponed) read: “One of the Poorest Countries in the World Is About to Burn $7.6M Worth of Ivory.” This misunderstanding is widespread, with some commentators erroneously suggesting that countries are foolish to burn such valuable national assets. Such criticism ignores two facts about confiscated ivory.

First, because it is prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to sell seized ivory, it should not be compared to other confiscated consumer goods or to legal ivory from legitimate channels

This strikes me as a non sequitur.  On the other hand, the crushing of the ivory really has an effect if it was previously available to the trade.  As it was stockpiled, one may presume it was unavailable; however, coming to a binary conclusion is probably improper as the existence of stockpiled ivory may influence the activities of traffickers – i.e., attempts to obtain that ivory, through licit (change the laws) or illicit means may affect the price of available black market ivory.  The money saved by no longer having to safeguard the illegal ivory may well outweigh the cost in dead elephants, since the latter may be quite low, depending on how the now-lost ivory had been valued by the black market, factoring in the possibility of acquiring it.

Second, in assigning commercial value to poached and trafficked ivory, we may forget to calculate the social and ecological worth of living elephants for Africa.

The primary benefit in eliminating confiscated ivory is to prevent this material from re-entering the illegal trade and further stimulating trafficking, which has been a significant problem across Africa and Asia. If not destroyed, stockpiles must be secured in perpetuity. This is very expensive, logistically challenging, and often dangerous to those guarding them.

Destroying this ivory sends a strong signal that governments will not tolerate trafficking and associated poaching. The awareness-raising value of stockpile destructions can be even more effective if the government destroying the ivory uses the occasion to announce new effective trafficking deterrents, including actions to fully prosecute criminals (particularly kingpins and major traffickers), significant fines, long jail sentences, and asset seizures.

I fear that, absent studies proving otherwise, I find this assertion that “strong messages” are being sent to be a bunch of hooey.  The black market is already illicit; there’s little reason to believe anyone is paying any attention when the real focus is the greed for the ivory.

From Neil Freeman.

(h/t David Nir @ The Daily Kos)

One of the premier future victims of climate change, besides, ya know, OURSELVES, has been corals, those bizarre marine invertebrates which collectively form reefs by secreting calcium carbonate.  Most live in symbiosis with dinoflagellates, exchanging safety for energy derived from photosynthesis.  Coral bleaching, according to NOAA, occurs when

Warmer water temperatures can result in coral bleaching. When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

In 2005, the U.S. lost half of its coral reefs in the Caribbean in one year due to a massive bleaching event. The warm waters centered around the northern Antilles near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico expanded southward. Comparison of satellite data from the previous 20 years confirmed that thermal stress from the 2005 event was greater than the previous 20 years combined.

Acidification is important as it affects the ability of coral to build a form of calcium carbonate called aragonite.

Back in 2000 NewScientist (paywall) summarized coral reef research in connection with climate change:

The team manipulated carbonate concentrations by regularly adding acid to the water to recreate the effect of increased CO₂. For the first two years of the project, the team held the carbonate concentration near the low level predicted for 2050, which is 30 per cent lower than today’s ocean concentrations. The following year they increased it to the current level, and the next year raised it beyond pre-industrial levels.

To determine calcification rates, they measured how much carbonate and calcium were removed from the water between acid additions. The reef showed no sign of acclimatising to lower carbonate concentrations, says team leader Chris Langdon of Columbia University, and their results suggest that the decrease in coral growth between 1880 and 2065 will be about 40 per cent. “That’s an enormous hit on shallow marine ecosystems,” says Buddemeier.

“It was quite surprising to see that it was so strong,” says Langdon. Previous projections were lower. But the idea that rising levels of CO2 would have such a heavy impact on corals is well supported in the geological record, he says. At least twice in Earth’s history, levels are thought to have risen even higher than those predicted for the end of this century. During those times large reefs were nonexistent and whole coral families became extinct.

Just this April came this note from Ove Hoegh-Guldberg in NewScientist:

Once, it might have taken the extra ocean warming of an El Niño to cause bleaching, but we’re now getting to the point where even regular temperatures are getting high enough. When we predicted this in 1999, I became a pariah. People were saying “No, that’s not possible.” But it’s coming true – no one’s been able to knock that idea off. And I think that 20 years from now, every summer will be too hot for corals: they will disappear as dominant members of tropical reef systems by 2040-2050. It’s hard to argue it any other way.

But now NewScientist‘s Michael Slezak (20 June 2015) reports on a new discovery – some corals survive these newly stressful situations.  Some of the surprise is due to using poorly chosen proxies for reality:

As carbon dioxide is pushed into the oceans, it forms an acid. This causes a subtle change in chemistry that lowers the water’s saturation in aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate that corals use to grow and build reefs. Above a saturation state of 1, aragonite begins to precipitate out of the water and can be used to form shells. For years, coral biologists have used this measure as a proxy for estimating reef growth rates. Oceans are currently at an aragonite saturation state of around 3.8. Early experiments suggested corals would stop building reefs when the saturation state dropped below 2.5.

Recently, that crucial level has been put in doubt by people looking more closely at how corals build reefs. “All those alarming predictions were based on just the chemistry,” says Adina Paytan at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

So after some research, there’s a tentative push to update the predictions:

Overall, the team found that acidification had about half the impact on coral reef building than previously thought. They calculate that under the worst climate change scenario, with a rampant rise of greenhouse gas emissions, reef-building will slow by between 15 and 35 per cent by 2100, depending on the coral species. Studies by Alexander Venn at the Scientific Centre of Monaco came to similar conclusions. “Ocean acidification doesn’t help, but it’s not by itself a major problem,” says McCulloch.

In an ironic twist, when McCulloch plugged in the added effect of ocean warming, the story got even better. “Corals in warmer temperatures tend to calcify faster,” he says. “Warming helps the process if it’s not stressful.” His conclusion: coral reef building rates won’t change as CO₂ emissions rise this century. Not one bit.

But don’t sit back comfortably in your chair:

And there’s still the other impact of climate change. When things get too hot, the algae that live in symbiosis with corals – lending them their vibrant colours and a ready supply of energy-rich sugars – move out, leaving the reefs looking pale and ghostly. Low-level coral bleaching isn’t uncommon or irreversible. But when temperatures rise rapidly, these algal battery packs move out for too long and the corals die.

And these results are not yet fully accepted by the marine biology community – such as Hoegh-Guldberg.  However, keep in mind that corals are living organisms, with DNA that mutates – meaning genes coding for phenotype features useful to survival in the new environment can be passed on.  So if corals die, it doesn’t mean they all die – or can’t come back:

Of all the world’s reefs, those in the Seychelles were worst affected by the 1998 bleaching, says Nicholas Graham at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. He and his colleagues gathered data from 21 coral reefs around the Seychelles during the 17 years following the El Niño. At first it was near-total destruction. More than 90 per cent of the coral was gone, a state of affairs that was largely unchanged for a full decade. Nine of the 21 reefs were taken over by seaweed and, in Graham’s words, are as good as lost. In 2006, his team published a gloomy report on the reef’s outlook whose pessimistic conclusions have often been cited in reports about corals and climate change.

But between 2005 and 2011, something remarkable happened: coral cover returned almost completely on every other reef. Hard coral had covered 28 per cent of the area before the bleaching; by 2011 it was back up to 23 per cent. Graham says the reefs are on a clear path to a full recovery. Similar findings have been coming in from reefs all over the world.

A useful reminder that if climate change overwhelms humanity, it doesn’t mean a dead world – just a world without humanity.  Other organisms will adapt and continue.

Here’s a lovely picture of a detail of San Miguel Arcángel at the Archaeological Conservancy site.

“If you are attacked by a crocodile there is nothing you can do but accept your ultimate fate as water-lily fertiliser.”

– Carlos Magdalena, horticulturist, water lily researcher.

(NewScientist 20 June 2015, paywall)

The recent tussle over the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the meaning of that tragic era, as noted by Virally Suppressed @ The Daily Kos, reminds me of a greater, ongoing conundrum in American education.  First, a couple of definitions:

1. Information will be defined as logical assertions divorced from their true or false value;
2. True and false values are determined by the best understanding of reality.  (Note that given the connections of government to public schools, and the ban on the favoring of one religion over another in the US Constitution, it would be disingenuous to claim that any given religious text has priority in the understanding of reality.  Science has, as its primary mission, the study of reality; given its many successes, and in accordance with American meritocracy, it is accorded the priority for understanding reality.)

These let us admit that textbooks are full of information without implicitly endorsing the individual components of that information as being true or false.

So the conundrum is simply this: who gets to fill these textbooks with information?  How can we certain that the textbooks contain true information?  American primary education is typically controlled by local school boards, which are responsible for the selection of the textbooks to be used in the classes.  They may also be responsible for meeting standards set by the State and, in some cases, standards set by the court system following lawsuits by various agencies and individuals.

At this juncture, it’s useful to remind the reader that the system of creating textbooks is hardly cost-free, neither in terms of intellectual effort, or creation of the tangible product; creation must be followed by a cross-check, and in cases where information is not, or cannot be, rigorously presented and analyzed, opinions will inevitably intrude into the process.  The fact of cost skews any “market” that may exist, as does the question of how true any given textbook might be, possible discount deals offered by publishers, and other rigors of the marketplace.

Thus, these textbooks are actually supplied by a limited number of publishers.  Decades ago, I recall reading reports concerning the attempted capture of textbook publishers in Texas, the leader by virtue of the size of the state market, by anti-evolutionary theory forces, and the conflict apparently continues, as a 2003 report from the National Center for Science Education indicates.  Entitled “Evolution: Still Deep in the Heart of Textbooks,” it notes,

As the adoption process for biology textbooks began in early 2003, the ranks of those vocally opposed to evolution education swelled. For decades, Mel and Norma Gabler’s Educational Research Analysts — “a conservative Christian organization that reviews public school textbooks submitted for adoption in Texas” which places “scientific flaws in arguments for evolution” at the top of its list of concerns (http://members.aol.com/TxtbkRevws/about.htm) — has urged the Texas Board of Education to minimize evolution and even to include creationism in the textbooks adopted for use in the state (see, for example, RNCSE 1999 Jan/Feb; 19 [1]: 10). In 2003, the Gablers were joined by a host of homegrown creationists as well as by the Discovery Institute, the institutional home of “intelligent design”, in seeking to undermine the treatment of evolution in the biology textbooks under consideration.

While evolutionary theory faces no serious disputes within the scientific community, it clearly has its opponents external to the community, and they are not shy in attempting to capture the publishing step of education.  Problems of this sort are not limited to inconvenient science, either.  In the somewhat less rigorous area of history, an article from The Washington Post, entitled “Americans believe false things about the Civil War because even our textbooks bow to the apologists,” covers the problem of the Civil War:

So thoroughly did this mythology take hold that our textbooks still stand history on its head and say secession was for, rather than against, states’ rights. Publishers mystify secession because they don’t want to offend Southern school districts and thereby lose sales. Consider this passage from “The American Journey,” probably the largest textbook ever foisted on middle school students and perhaps the best-selling U.S. history textbook:

The South Secedes

Lincoln and the Republicans had promised not to disturb slavery where it already existed. Nevertheless, many people in the South mistrusted the party, fearing that the Republican government would not protect Southern rights and liberties. On December 20, 1860, the South’s long-standing threat to leave the Union became a reality when South Carolina held a special convention and voted to secede.

The section reads as if slavery was not the reason for secession. Instead, the rationale is completely vague: White Southerners feared for their “rights and liberties.” On the next page, the authors are more precise: White Southerners claimed that since “the national government” had been derelict ” — by refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and by denying the Southern states equal rights in the territories — the states were justified in leaving the Union.”

The article points out the seceding states each declared their motivation for leaving the Union was to preserve slavery, but the history books obscure this fact with, instead, concerns about state rights.

Given the costs of producing textbooks, and the limited offerings necessarily available, how do we ensure true, full facts are contained in these books?

Some might advocate a governmental approach, i.e., all facts in this textbook are government-approved.  This almost makes sense for primary schools, as nearly all information in such schools should be of a basic nature, and not controversial – which is not to say they are all, in actuality, true, but they are generally accepted as true.  The nature of the human condition requires all knowledge to be contingent, and we should be aware of this.

However, by assigning to a political institution this decision, the entire question of what belongs in textbooks, and what are true facts, becomes an exercise in politics.  For even the most casual observer of the American political process at the State and Federal levels, we know that will result in the committees in charge becoming coveted positions, subject to the most violent of political passions and conflicts.  If the questions is assigned to a bureaucracy, then either decisions will happen at the speed of a glacier, or just a few individuals will become responsible, and the possibility they will be untrained in the specialties in question, or maintain positions outside the mainstream with regard to those subjects, will be substantially non-zero.

Texas uses a State Board of Education, as explained by the New York Review of Books:

… and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.

The vulnerability of this system to manipulation by individuals holding opinions at wide variance with the current perceptions of reality should be obvious.  As Texas and Texas publishers have undue influence over the industry of educational materials, they are certainly the most important of all States in their manner of selecting textbooks.  The article goes on to cover the many eccentricities involved in this most important of processes.

Do I cover all important issues here?  No.  Open Source textbooks may be the answer – or they may become part of the problem.  Here is a link to a Utah project, which is interesting but dismaying in that it compares test score results of kids using open source vs kids using traditional textbooks; I should prefer an analysis of the content of the books and how relevant scholars evaluate the books.

To my engineering mind, there does not appear to be that useful solution which we can implement and forget, just continual battle with those who so violently disagree with established knowledge models that they will do anything to interject their views into the mainstream.  I hope someone smarter than I comes along with a better solution.

(h/t Hunter @ The Daily Kos)

And in the category of strangely useful software:

Now even computers are going to be critical of how we look: algorithms are getting into style. New software judges outfits from a photograph and offers tips to make them look even more chic. …

To teach the software about fashion, Urtasun’s team showed it thousands of pictures from Chictopia, a popular style website. The more positive votes left by other users, the more “fashionable” the software perceived the look to be.

It also noted other information about the photo, such as the user’s geographic location, the date they had posted it, the background of the picture, and written descriptions of the clothing.

The resulting software uses this information to categorise outfits and make suggestions based on what was successful for others in similar situations – for example, to add black boots or try something in pastel. The team plans to hone the results further by showing it a more diverse array of photos from other sources.

The next step being the creation of the latest fashion trend by an algorithm?

(NewScientist 20 June 2015, paywall)

(Random thought on four hours of sleep: are algorithms the souls of computers?)

NewScientist (20 June 2015, paywall) reports on an owl-based innovation in wind turbines:

… the team made its own wings by taking an aerofoil and adding a number of fins that trail across and off the edge of the surface. The fins replicate the owl’s evenly spaced bristles, and also disrupt surface pressure on the aerofoil, reducing the sound waves it produces. …

The best-performing fins cut noise by a factor of 10 compared with finless aerofoils. The team will present the work at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference in Dallas, Texas, later this month.

We’re back.  We saw four plays (in three days) in Stratford, ON, at the Festival, and then made out leisurely way to Traverse City, MI, to visit with Deb’s family.

Beyond the single review posted for Possible Worlds, we were not compelled by the plays in Stratford.  The productions were, of course, excellent, but the plays themselves did not really draw you in.

Pericles, our lone actual Shakespeare play, seems a gigantic contrivance to amaze the audience with the possibilities of coincidence.

Oedipus Rex must be moving from Classic to Ancient at this point: a play so far from its cultural mores that, to make sense of the true horror it must convey, modern audiences must thoroughly disable their sense of incredulity.  And while I’m certain there are multiple essays on a number of its facets, I’m equally certain they’ve all been done by a thousand theatre students; I have nothing insightful to add.

The Physicists, while intriguing and unpredictable, also felt dated – it’s a Cold War farce.  And would it be worth a second viewing?

During the trip I finished The Outer Limits of Reason – last referenced here.  I also read in their entirety Niven and Lerner’s Fleet of Worlds and Thomas King‘s The Inconvenient Indian – the latter caused me periodic bouts of outrage and then depression.  While I wouldn’t class him with Twain, as does one blurb, his remark that every single war and treaty between the North American Indians and the Europeans was about Land, Land, Land certainly rang true (which for no particular reason reminds me that Heinlein said the same thing in Starship Troopers).  Definitely recommended.

And my thanks to Chris for blogging in my absence!

An update on this project and the informal methodology I’m adopting.  The BNF approach has, as previously noted, simplified the work necessary for syntax – the work has been mostly done for me.

It also appears the semantics are also greatly simplified, at least when it comes to recording them.  I’ve been very slowly working on the DTD section of XML, which requires various options for recording allowable data formats.  I decided to take the naive approach of simply recording the metadata in question as implied by the BNF, and I’m now predicting this will be very useful when the time comes to actually implement the strictures implied by the DTD.  And it appears that it just works.

Typically, I’d try to be clever and probably wrap myself around an axle or two; here I’m letting the BNF tell me what metadata is important and, given their Validity Constraint notes, how to save it and apply it.  No real cleverness, just paying attention to the spec.  I really can’t emphasize this enough – my usual tendency to be clever (or cleverly obvious) is being suppressed here, and that’s unusual.  Except you could say that I’m being cleverly obvious by taking this approach.

Interestingly, I’ve also observed something similar about Mythryl, the implementation language.   In general, once you can get something to compile, it does what you want it to do, at least at the top levels – No Debug Necessary.  In C and MODeL (a C-based OO language – company proprietary), my primary development languages, once you start writing anything complex, compilation is only the first step.  Once you have it compiling, then the loosy-goosy type systems mean you can have written something that is illegal in the last analysis – but not in the first analysis, i.e., the compilation.

The extremely tight type system of Mythryl quite often means that compilation can be quite laborious, but once you’ve satisfied the type checker, your code is now so good that you don’t need to worry about it.

This is not 100% certain.  I’ve found when working with parsers, I can often get it wrong and it still compiles.  I suspect a language expert could tell me exactly why.  (It does make intuitive sense – and has something to do with parsers working with languages.)  But it happens often enough that the lead has coined the phrase It Just Works.  (To help realize that dream, he’s written an informal tutorial on how to write better code in Mythryl.)

Speaking of parsers and the XML parsing project, I also plan to use a different parser to test the DTD against the actual data in the XML document.  The parsers will be built dynamically using the DTD, and then run against the applicable data elements as they are encountered.

Bonus: there should be no memory leaks.  In C and many other languages, if you have garbage collection at all, it’s slow.  In Mythryl, according to the lead developer, it’s devastatingly fast.

I’m also guessing that in production systems handling enterprise-levels of data we may run into problems.  But evaluating that capability is a future post and probably dependent on the cleverness of the programmers – not to mention contributions of other programmers in the areas of DB access, etc etc etc.

Reporting from Stratford, ON, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, I should clarify to any who read this that my expertise, as it might be termed, is strictly as a casual theatre goer; a single college level course; an enthusiastic, but unrabid, fan of the annual Fringe.  Should plays cater to the enthusiast, the cultist, or the uninformed?

This evening was occupied with the viewing of a production of Possible Worlds, by John Mighton.

Off on another topic, the lady to the right of  my lovely wife, along with five or six other audience members, appeared to think the entire play was a comedy.  If the thought processes of some members of an audience are not congruent with those of the balance of the audience, are they fully members of the audience, or members of some other ontological category?

Am I?

The play concerns the actions of a man who is aware of a dozen, a hundred, possible lives, how he handles such an awareness – or how to break down when confronted with hundred variations of someone else.  Each decision brings forth the results for all of his possible decisions, and it’s gradually driving him towards isolation, paralysis, and all that follows.

How many times should someone have a chance to love that special someone?

The play concerns a man of a hundred lives, as he watches it change as he makes a decision.  As a science groupy, watching this reminded me of the Multiverse theory: the idea that new universes are generated each time a decision is made, such that all possible values of a decision are covered by the new additions of universes to the Multiverse.  Into this seemingly insane scientific maelstrom is injected a man who has become aware of himself in all of those other decisive Universes – his own little corner of the Multiverse.  He sees what happens in response to each decision – and then he tries to adjust for those decisions that went terribly wrong – and then those adjustments go –

Possible Worlds is a murder mystery play.  The victims have had their brain excised.

So, as a few members of the audience insistently laughed at inappropriate moments, I wondered at their laughter, it’s effect on my perceptions of the play, and whether they were, perhaps, plants intended to produce just such an effect.  Which did not stop me from feeling anger at their reactions; for God’s (Gods’?) sake, do you not feel any pity for these poor characters?  But the anger was diluted with suspicion of outside manipulation; mixing with exhaustion from today’s trip throws my emotional state off on a strange tangent of self-awareness, down a dusty lane hardly ever taken.

Good thing I didn’t follow through on my reactions.

Physically, the production stage consists of a pool of water, perhaps a half inch deep and maybe twenty feet in diameter, some floating boxes, a chair or two, and a concourse.  Lighting was critical, as it illuminated the functioning of brains, and projected certain textual information for the audience; most of the projections were on, or into, the pool of water, easily visible to the audience.  The Studio theatre, which will be the production’s home for the season, is a stadium-style venue, with a very high pitch; it will host 260 audience members.

As an audience member who may not be equipped with the same operating instructions as most of the rest of the audience, perhaps I reach very different conclusions than did the majority.  Did Mighton, the author, intend any conclusions?  The production’s program implies not; it also, coincidentally or not, mentions Dr. Mighton holds a doctorate in mathematics, so perhaps the Multiverse theory impacted the construction of the play, though not mentioned in the program.

Given my possible atypicality, is it appropriate to report my reactions to the production, as they may mislead potential attendees into mistaken expectations?  Were I truly circumspect, I would delete this report.  Instead, I offer it in the spirit of self-examination, in honor of this unusual mind-state borne of exhaustion and novel theatrical conception, as refracted by my peculiar preconceptions.

To my untrained and inexperienced eye, the acting seemed uneven; but I suspect this is a very hard play.  Portraying insanity, as at least two actors must, due to a break in the very fabric of reality, must be difficult, at least in a striking, empathetic manner.  But what defines a great performance of a role?  What does an actor strive to achieve?  I have given little thought to the matter and so should be cautious offering up judgments on the matter.

What happened to me in those other Universes where I was not so cautious?

The final act offers a rational explanation to the whole of the madness, a decision which I must admit, at least in this single production I have seen, I detest.  A full-fledged bull-roar of madness has been offered for the appreciation of the audience; and now that they have grasped the nettle in trying to accept it, they have it pulled away, the mad logic at once falsified through the removal of a foundation of the play: now it was all a dream.  A mad dream of a sane man, driven over the precipice by disembodiment and deprivation.  The nettle may leave its thorns embedded in the minds of the audience, but the poison is now dilute, and the more conventional audience members will nod and say to their dinner-mates, But it was just a dream, the rest was madness, and from madness one learns so little.  Care for another tart?

Best to have left this little peek into madness, of decision-making, and into a special little bit of scientific insanity, to stand defiantly on its own.

Time.com:

Under the new rules [in California], families without the medical waiver face a choice: get your kids the shots or prepare to home-school them, which ensures they get an education but protects other children from whatever pathogens they may be carrying.

I think TIME is missing the converse.

Ma’am, we cannot permit your child to attend public school, because if some child’s vaccination was improperly done, or faked, then your child would run the risk of becoming ill.

And then dying.

Because you thought you knew better than the Doctors who’ve studied these problems for years.

There, don’t you feel better?

I know I do.

(h/t Kevin McLeod)

My Arts Editor and I will be heading off on vacation tomorrow, leaving the house in the hands of some friends who will be caring for the cats as well.  While I may blog whilst on the road, I’ve left blogging duties in the capable hands of my old friend Chris Johnson.  He’ll keep all amused with his trenchant views on, well, I guess we’ll find out.

The Iran negotiations are going into the final lap, and AL Monitor is covering the issues.  Laura Rozen reports from Vienna:

“We and the Iranians understand that this is a very important moment in the talks,” a senior US administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told journalists June 29. “It is certainly possible to get a deal here, and we do see a path forward to get an agreement that meets our bottom line.

“But there are real and tough issues that remain which have to be resolved to get a comprehensive agreement, and we still don’t know yet whether we will be able to get there,” the US official said. “We want to, we hope, but we do not know.’’ …

Iranian politicians are struggling in recent weeks with how to reconcile the prospective nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary identity, said Adnan Tabatabai, a Berlin-based political analyst of Iranian affairs.

For Iran, “this is about more” than a nuclear deal, Tabatabai told Al-Monitor on June 28. It can potentially make way for a new era in Iran’s foreign policy, he said.

“In the end, it goes back to the key principles of what the revolution is about,” Tabatabai said. “’Some say, ‘We are an anti-imperialist revolutionary state. We are not willing to give in to the supreme powers.’ They will have to say we made the six most powerful countries in the world acknowledge our right to enrichment, force them to accept that we maintain what we achieved; at the same time, they will have to say we remained the unshakeable one.”

Jullian Pecquet reports on American reactions:

Key players both on and off Capitol Hill are raising their voices in the hopes of preventing what they say would be unacceptable concessions. Their statements suggest that a final agreement may yet attract broad bipartisan support, even as more conservative groups are already actively seeking to kill any deal. …

United Against Nuclear Iran, under the presidency of former Obama administration arms control coordinator Gary Samore, for example has begun a multimillion TV and newspaper campaign ahead of the deadline. The nonprofit advocacy group is critical of past concessions on uranium enrichment and the easing of many restrictions after a decade but says it can get behind a final deal if it avoids further concessions. …

The liberal Jewish organization J Street, for instance, has launched a multimillion campaign that includes advertising, polling and a website dedicated to pushing back against what it calls “misinformation about the nuclear negotiations and the likely parameters of a deal.”

Meanwhile, several conservative groups and publications, such as Secure America Now and William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, have reached the opposite conclusion.

“The impending deal is an embarrassment,” the magazine concludes in its July 6 edition. “The world’s greatest power prostrate before the world’s most patiently expansionist, terror-sponsoring, anti-American theocracy.”

Ali Hashem gives some insight into the various participants:

In a negotiating room overseeing Theodor Hertzl Platz in the heart of Vienna, US and Iranian delegates sit facing each other; sometimes they are joined by others from France, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and China. It’s rare to hear a word from the Chinese, except when it comes to calling for more effort for a better solution; the Russians have been relatively inactive, and along with China are silent observers. The UK is aligned with the US, while France sometimes plays the role of troublemaker. However, this time around, France has been relatively quiet; it’s now Germany that seems to have its own special view on what is taking place. It has tended to play a role whenever there are serious dilemmas, but are we in the middle of a dilemma? …

The official emphasized that the moment of truth has come and that the United States shouldn’t be hostage to the past, and should make use of the opportunity to start a new era.

I think the comment about not being held hostage by the past is an interesting statement.  There was certainly a lot of public trauma caused by the hostage crisis; there is no denying that the Iranians certainly inflicted a public punishment on the USA for perceived and probably very real outrages.  The question is how much longer that should be borne in mind by the politicians of the United States – when does it no longer have any bearing?

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports the deadline may be moved:

In his speech, Mr Khamenei said sanctions relief under any deal would need to be immediate and there would be considerable limits on where international inspectors would be allowed to visit in Iran.

Western governments insist that sanctions can only be lifted after Iran has completed curbs on its nuclear programmes and once inspectors have unrestricted access around the country.

Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, struck an upbeat tone on Sunday at the meetings in Vienna. “If we need to have a couple of additional days more, it’s not the end of the world,” she said.

However, there would be “no long term extension” and she insisted that “I see the political will to finalise the deal.” She added: “We are near to closing the deal, it is a good deal.”

Philip Hammond, the UK foreign secretary, sounded more sceptical after a day of discussions. “There is going to have to be some give or take if we are to get this done in the next few days,” he said.

(7/14/2015 – added link to previous posts)

A reader writes in reaction to the Chief Justice’s dissent:

This is from a Facebook post by Jessica Eaves Mathews.  I think she got it completely right.

I say this with sincere love to my many friends who are passionate fundamentalist Christians who believe that the SCOTUS’s decision yesterday on marriage equality is an abomination to themselves and to God: As a lawyer, I need to attempt to set the record straight.

Our country was created by our founding fathers very deliberately to prevent the establishment of a national religion from our governance. The Church – Catholic or Anglican – was central to almost every other country in the world historically, especially England from which our founding fathers separated. It was critical to our founding fathers that one central religion NOT be declared and NOT be incorporated into our Constitution or governance. They understood that an establishment of a national religion would ultimately abridge the very rights they believed were fundamental and were meant to be recognized and protected by the Bill of Rights and ultimately the Constitution.

Religion-based loss of basic rights had been their experience in England and they wanted to prevent that here.

The fact is that this decision yesterday was a LEGAL decision about the scope of our Constitutional rights as humans and US citizens. It was not about religion, religious beliefs or religious freedom. It is about equal rights, just as the decision in this country to give women the vote and the decision to abolish slavery were about equal rights. Any decision regarding the scope of a constitutional right (whether passed by Congress or interpreted by the SCOTUS) is a legal decision, not one based in religion or morality.

Rights are not and should not be up for a popular vote or up to the states to determine. Rights are absolute and cannot be dependent upon anything other than the fact that the person is a human being and is a citizen of the US. If those two conditions are met, YOUR belief system about what is MORALLY or spiritually right or wrong does not matter and should not. You should be glad that is the case, because it would be just as easy for another religion to take over and curtail your rights as a Christian (something that has happened throughout history).

In fact, one religious party believing they know the truth for all humans is how terrible oppression starts – that is how Nazism started, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Ku Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda and now ISIS – the most destructive, hateful, murderous periods of human history have arisen directly out of one religious group (ironically, most of these examples were led by Christians) believing their religion and religious beliefs were THE truth, and therefore they had the right to take away the rights (and lives) of those who lived or believed differently than them.

Our founding fathers wanted to prevent that outcome. So does our current Supreme Court. THAT is the law of the land and I could not be more grateful to be an American than when human rights are protected. I don’t have to agree with you to believe with all my heart and soul that YOUR rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be protected against oppression or prejudice. LGBT US citizens deserve exactly the same treatment. God Bless America.

p.s. Those railing against the decision of marriage equality as a basic constitutional right are confusing the idea of constitutional (i.e. human) rights with certain types of behavior (the stuff they call “sin”). But human rights are inherent in all human beings and US citizens – not doled out based on who is behaving “well” and who isn’t. All US citizens should have the equal right to pursue life, liberty and happiness, regardless of the “sins” they commit. The only behavior that should curtail your constitutional rights is if you commit a crime (a felony) and are convicted. But even then, criminals can still marry, have kids, own property, work and live in our communities. The only things they can’t do is vote and carry firearms. If committing a sin was a barrier to receiving basic constitutional rights in this country, we would all be in big trouble, not just the LGBT community.

Parts of this echo an upcoming post that I need to stop futzing with and finish.  Otherwise, I like it!

A number of news sources have reported on the reactions of Cruz, Huckabee, et al to the gay marriage and ACA decisions.  Cruz wishes to call for a Constitutional Convention in order to overturn gay marriage decision (and, of course, for those of us of a naive turn of mind, we’re asking whether he has stopped to check whether a Convention, any form, would overturn or confirm the decision); Huckabee talks about enabling legislation and, without it, the decision is really meaningless.  Benen has some commentary on Huckabee and Cruz, if you’re interested.

But I see this as just another step in the long running story of Americans as drama queens.  Throughout US history we can see the determined drive towards self-importance in the American psyche.  It can be the nationalism of the early 20th century as we joined The Great War and became a great Power, or our ascendance after World War II as we became one of two great powers; when the USSR collapsed, the entire theme nearly collapsed from exhaustion.  In the area of religion, the periodic proclamations about the End Days (after all, those who live in the End Days must be more important, eh?), the proliferation of sects (as everyone starting one must know better than the parent sect), the suicide cults, the rise of the new prophets, such as Warren Jeffs, etc.

So now Cruz says the rulings are

“some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history.”

Think of that.  Really?  Pearl Harbor?  Gettysburg?  No, this is not a statement of direct rationality; rather, it’s an appeal to the sense of (self-)importance of the base .  Suggest there’s a crisis and it’s time to form up ranks.  Battle is to be joined and the righteous shall triumph.  (Everyone’s righteous, right?)

It makes for heady emotions, appealing to the sense of a national crisis – and you can play an important part in heading it off.  It’s dark days, it’s a national crisis, but hey, you’re righteous and don’t stop to think about the other side.

It’s an old tradition with the USA, sadly.  When you appeal to our better nature, we can do some amazing things – save West Berlin via airlift, speed aid to other countries, even go to the moon in one heck of a hurry.  But our dark sides are equally vulnerable – stir up emotions, the fear, our incipient xenophobia (and, for an immigrant nation, we sure have a lot of that), a certain fundamentalism that is happy to live off the creature comforts provided by science without accepting the fundamentals of that science … and so the message about the justice of gay marriage doesn’t really get through.  We’re on stage, the end of days is waiting in the wings, and we have to enact our part, dammit, without regard for how much it costs our fellow Americans.

In short, we’re important.  Vast historical forces converge upon us; it’s important to hold the walls, fight the good fight, throw the barbarians down from their ladders.

As Americans, we don’t usually realize it.  But just two words: Manifest Destiny.  That’s it in a nutshell.  It’s easier to feel those dark emotions than think about what our actions may mean for our fellows.

Welcome to the work of Steve Axford.

http://steveaxford.smugmug.com/

A competitor to the Panama Canal may begin construction soon.  WorldPress.org‘s Ailana Navarez reports on the beginnings of a rival canal in Nicaragua, and the power behind the dream:

In Nicaragua, a dream nearly as old as its independence is finally in development. In December of last year, the country celebrated the groundbreaking of a new canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The “Great Nicaragua Canal” will be a rival to the famous Panama Canal and yet another bridge between two rising international players: Latin America and China.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government says the canal will provide many local economic benefits, including an end to extreme poverty and unemployment via an estimated annual growth of 10 percent. He added that the $50 billion project will open a new era for a “more sovereign” and “interconnected” country. But what are the implications of its competition to the already established Panama Canal? And how far can the term “sovereignty” be used when the project is foreign funded?

Who’s backing it?  China.  Why?

… Chinese maritime vessels are being constructed larger, by an estimated annual rate of 3 to 4 percent. This has led to some of these mega-ships having to navigate around South America through its hazardous southernmost Tierra del Fuego point, all because they were too large for Panama’s canal. And regardless of Panamanian lock additions in recent years—resulting in 13.7 meters in depth and 90 to 300 meters in length—Nicaragua is still projected to more than double both measurements.

But there’s more:

It is also worth noting that the new Nicaraguan canal could be of further strategic importance to Beijing, in that it would allow passage of their warships or prevent a NATO country from closing a seaway to Chinese interests during future diplomatic crises.

Wikipedia has an entry:

The 259.4 km long canal as planned will have three sections. The West Canal runs from Brito at the Pacific Ocean up the Rio Brito valley, crosses the continental divide, and after passing through the Rio Las Lajas valley enters Lake Nicaragua; its length is 25.9 km. The Nicaragua Lake section measures 106.8 km and runs from 4 km south of San Jorge to 8 km south of San Miguelito. The Eastern Canal is the longest section with 126.7 km and will be built along the Rio Tule valley through the Caribbean highland to the Rio Punta Gorda valley to meet the Caribbean Sea.

Both the West Canal and the East Canal will each have one lock with 3 consecutive chambers to raise ships to the level of Lake Nicaragua that has an average water elevation of 31.3 m, range 30.2-33.0 m. The western Brito Lock is 14.5 km inland from the Pacific, and the eastern Camilo Lock is 13.7 km inland from the Caribbean Sea. The dimensions of each of the chambers of the locks are 520 m (1,706 ft) long, 75 m (246 ft) wide, and 27.6 m (91 ft) threshold depth. As locks generally define the limit of the size of ships that can be handled, the Nicaragua Canal is being designed to allow passage for larger ships than those that pass through the Panama Canal. For comparison, the new third set of locks in the Panama expansion will only be 427 m (1,401 ft) long, 55 m (180 ft) wide, and 18.3 m (60 ft) deep.

By comparison, the Panama Canal’s length is 77.1 km.

HKND holds a 50 year concession (WaPo claims 100 year) for this project.  Al Jazeera America reports on this issue:

… Nicaraguan environmentalists are horrified. They say the concession is a new form of colonization. “Nicaraguan citizens will have to face grave challenges in order to rid themselves of colonizers,” Mónica López Baltodano, an environmental lawyer and the head of Fundación Popol Na, a Nicaraguan nongovernmental organization, told local media in December. “We’re going to have to initiate a struggle for national liberation, much like Sandino,” she said, referring to Augusto César Sandino, a guerrilla leader who led a struggle against U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s.

The no-bid concession, fast-tracked through the National Assembly in a day, with no public debate, violates Nicaragua’s Constitution and more than 10 international environmental treaties, she said. “The constitution established that any concession of natural resources has to be approved by all the municipalities affected and all representatives on indigenous lands,” she said. “This concession does not do that.”

Sandinista legacy project?  Chinese vanity project?  Obscure Chinese strategy?  They do think big, building the Three Gorges Dam, which has been the center of controversy.

Columbia University has decided to divest from private prisons.  ThinkProgress:

The Columbia University Board of Trustees voted Monday to make the university the first in the nation to pull its investments from the private prison industry. The university will divest from two major for-profit prison companies and create a new policy to ban investment in companies that operate prisons. …

“We targeted the university’s investments in two private prison companies, but we hope that private prison divestment campaigns, with the abolitionist vision of a larger anti-prison movement, can help us start working towards divesting from the idea that prisons equal justice, which we believe to be fundamentally racist,” student organizer Dunni Oduyemi wrote in a statement.

HuffPo notes, however:

The school still holds shares in G4S, a British prison and security services company.

USA Today reprints part of an email from Columbia U:

“This action occurs within the larger, ongoing discussion of the issue of mass incarceration that concerns citizens from across the ideological spectrum. We are proud that many Columbia faculty and students will continue their scholarly examination and civic engagement of the underlying social issues that have led to and result from mass incarceration.”

The Columbia Spectator reports on the views of some of the student organizers:

“All of the work was done by students and especially students of color on this campus,” [Dunni] Oduyemi, a former editor in chief of The Eye, said. “The narrative should really be one of students and the way that we have managed to take power in a small way that is representative of a larger movement.” …

“We’ve said over and over again that we don’t want any investment in racist and classist systems of incarceration and policing, and those are all things that are going on in Harlem,” she said.

“There’s no way for Columbia to fully divest from these systems of racist policing and incarceration. It’s founded in that and uses that violence to maintain its privilege, so there’s a lot of work to do.”

So far it seems the potential for corruption has not been the primary driving force, but rather concern about how subtle racism can result in harsher sentences for minorities.  While it appears it’s effective – and that’s good – recognition of the inappropriateness from the get-go would possibly permit future better decisions.

While I’ve never doubted that gay marriage was a positive social good (and I do mean that – never a doubt – my sister and I call ourselves the mad rationalizers for coming to decisions without rational thought, and then madly backfilling), I fear I must disembowel any notions that I might be a strait-laced liberal/progressive by expressing sympathy for Chief Justice Roberts this evening.  In his dissent (contained in this document, starting on page 40), he remarks:

But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (capitalization altered).

Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not.  …

Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening. Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.

First of all, he is concerned the Court is making law, rather than interpreting law.  His anguish at this is quite evident, and you have to respect the man for it.

Second, he evidences his concern that the decision of the Court will provoke a stronger polarization of society, and while this decision will bring solace to numerous homosexual couples who desire nothing more than stable, society-supported relationships, he is worrying about the other end of the spectrum – the continuing and strengthening embitterment of the far right of society.  And while it may be tempting to write them off as “wingnuts”, I must remind the reader that said “wingnuts” are just as prone to reproduction as are those of who you approve – and thus the embitterment becomes a curse upon the next generation.

His remark about a government of laws, not of men also strikes a chord, as I have been trying to find time to construct a story (movie) involving, as a secondary theme, such a statement.  It’s quite important, in my view, as a way to ensure that all people are equal before the law: you can’t enshrine that important principle in a government of men (where laws are created and enforced at the whim of those at the top), only in a government of laws.  Thus, he accuses the five affirmers in this opinion of degrading the entire institution of our government.  (This being my first time actually reading part of a SCOTUS opinion, I have no idea if such accusations are always made as a matter of form, or reserved for egregious mistakes.)

But the truly strong point is his remark

Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view.

And I do believe this is very true.  Change from below is much more persuasive, much more a chance for truly thoughtful people to understand the motivations and reasons for a change – and to accept them and even support them.  Orders from above?  Many, many people hate to be pushed around by superior forces.  Slamming this change through, as important as it is to the homosexual community and to its individual couples who live in states that had not yet accepted the idea, is going to continue to radicalize the conservatives – and not limited to the wingnuts.  This decision may affirm the rational aspirations of society for stability and prosperity – but … not everyone is rational.  That was unfair and untrue, I think; the proper phrase is Priorities differ.  Whether or not someone believes gay marriage is right, when persuasion changes to brute force, the priority is no longer to discuss the proposal at hand, but to recall that brute force is the tool of the bully, and here, in America, public bullies are not tolerated.

After all, that’s what we were doing in the Revolutionary War, no?

OK, so all that said about my sympathy for the Chief Justice, this bit deserves criticism:

As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?

Never mind that marriage customs differ – sometimes radically – from culture to culture and across time.  It’s almost irrelevant.  This really ignores something fundamental: this is America.  We’re the folks who change things at the drop of a hat if we think that will improve the general lot of mankind.  We’re not the ones caught in the sclerotic social milieus that our ancestors escaped over the last 250 years, and that’s because we were willing to change.  Change social systems, economic systems, clothing styles, our accents.  If, by changing some marriage laws & customs, we can improve – vastly! – the lot of some 5% of our citizens, then we’ll do it, and those few who fear the wrath of their God can go cower under their beds.

That’s who we think we are.  Have you forgotten, Chief Justice?

Noson Yanofsky, in The Outer Limits of Reason, talks about physicists and what some of them most desire:

Another methodology that scientists use to find and select different theories is beauty.  Scientists insist that a theory must, in some sense, be beautiful.  The world-famous physicist Hermann Weyl is quoted as saying, “My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.”  Paul Dirac had similar sentiments: “It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment … it seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.”

First reaction is a little bit of queasy horror: they do what?  They don’t want to verify the theories, the mathematics, are congruent with a bit of real-world experimentation?

In our discussions concerning free will, we mentioned that some physical phenomenon are not easily described by mathematics, and suggested that this means reality is not a mathematical artifact as a few scientists, such as Tegmark have suggested (this is known as Mathematical universe hypothesis), but rather a tool for studying reality.  As a tool that describes a phenomena that doesn’t necessarily have to follow the tool’s rules, it may be acceptable to follow one’s preference for beauty over accuracy.  Although I’m not persuaded.

I’m more inclined to believe this subclass of scientists are simply a collection of romantics.  A very odd bunch, of course.

Or, at least for those following Mathematical universe hypothesis, they see themselves creating new realities as they create these mathematical structures (ala Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber), and strive to create the most beautiful realities possible.

But a bit more from Noson:

What exactly is beauty?  The term is just as hard to define in science as in regular life.  Some physicists have equated beauty with elegance, which is an equally indefinable concept.  Some have said that beauty is related to simplicity, which is basically what Occam’s razor is all about.  And still others have said that a theory is beautiful if it exhibits a lot of symmetry or harmony.  There is much disagreement because no one has a sure-fire explanation for what exactly to look for or why this property works at picking good theories.

So it’s all a little confused and not formalized.  Noson let’s the inimitable Bertrand Russell have the final go:

“Academic philosophers, ever since the time of Parmenides, have believed that the world is a unity … The most fundamental of my intellectual beliefs is that this is rubbish.  I think the universe is all spots and jumps, without unity, without continuity, without coherence or orderliness or any of the other properties that governesses love.”

I suspect Mr Russell would have considered parts of the universe fundamentally unmathematical.

NewScientist (13 June 2015, paywall) reports on elephant migrations:

AFRICAN elephants are crossing borders to escape poaching. They seem to be heading to Botswana, Gabon, Namibia and Uganda. Political stability, relatively sparse populations and low levels of government corruption mean these countries are bucking the trend for declining elephant numbers.

Meanwhile, those countries with high levels of corruption are seeing their elephant populations drop.  For example, Greater Elephant Census reports on Mozambique:

This preliminary data suggests alarming news; elephant populations appear to have plummeted in many traditional habitats including Niassa Reserve, Limpopo National Park, Quirimbas National Park, Tchuma Tchato and The Tete area. It appears from this preliminary data that in five years there has been a 48% decline in Mozambique due to severe poaching, with formerly elephant-rich ecosystems such as the Niassa Reserve experiencing losses of 63% in three years. 

They comment positively on Uganda, negatively on Tanzania here and here.  The Wildlife Conservation Society, which also supplies information on elephant populations, is here.

The reader gives his thoughts on the matter of the Iranian deal and President Obama:

If you give away the store to Iran now for the short-term “look good” your long-term legacy is going to look awful, as the flaws will certainly show up in the next 5 years. I don’t think Obama or any politician would want to risk that, even as strange as politicians are.

The GOP is currently quite short-sighted.

Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators, outlines the problems Iran has with the United States & the West in this article for AL Monitor.  He covers 19 complaints, and while I’m not an expert on the history of the United States and Iran, many of them are familiar incidents and make sense as complaints.  A sampling:

1. Western governments staunchly opposed Iran’s efforts to nationalize its own oil industry in the early 1950s. The United States and the United Kingdom even referred Iran to the UN Security Council as a “threat to international peace” for having the audacity to wrest control of its resources from foreign companies.

4. Since the revolution, the United States’ core policy toward Iran has been centered on regime change through coercive means such as sanctions, isolation and support for opposition groups — which have at times engaged in terrorism. A rethinking of this strategy only began during the 2nd term of US President Barack Obama’s presidency.

5. After the revolution, many Western countries unilaterally withdrew from numerous contractual commitments they had with Iran and left the country with tens of billions of dollars of already paid for but unfinished industrial projects.

10. During the era of moderate Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani in the early 1990s, Iran welcomed the “goodwill begets goodwill” proposal of the George H.W. Bush administration and demonstrated it by facilitating the release of American and Western hostages in Lebanon. Paradoxically, the United States responded to this goodwill by increasing pressure and hostility toward Iran.

Also mentioned is the Shah fiasco, the airliner we shot down, and concerns about general treatment of Iran, particularly since the revolution.  Whether these are all true or not, they have no doubt entered the Iranian collective consciousness as truths that will impact negotiations.  It might also not hurt to have the American public become aware of them, evaluate them for truthfulness, and perhaps learn from them – whether it’s learn not to trust foreigners (a poor lesson, yet always worth keeping in mind), or that mistreating other nations in the name of corporate greed can have karmic results which we’d really rather not experience.