Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Original Party Crew.

Long after I’ve seen Night of the Living Dead (1968), just one question will persist in my mind.

In the meantime, the production values and acting are surprisingly good in this original shock flick. The reference to radiation from Venus struck me as a half-hearted wave at the old “B” sci-fi movies, which was probably just as well, since the movie really didn’t share much thematic material with that genre.

And after that red herring activity of mine, I’m left to return to that question:

Why?

Not, Why didn’t they ever use the word Zombie?

Just Why?

OK, so I’ve read some of the critical reviews and noted how it was supposed to be commentary on the times. I suppose this is why we have film studies, since I was barely coherent when this flick was made.

But I’m still fairly well bewildered by it.

The bounce in water in California has continued. Earlier this year there were reports of a dam causeway being near collapse after historic storms; now NewScientist (4 March 2017) reports the rollercoaster may be getting so high that the air is getting thin – metaphorically speaking, of course:

The drought and floods can be traced to the bands of water vapour being carried up from the tropics, says Michael Dettinger of the US Geological Survey. California gets almost half its rain from these “atmospheric rivers”, but they brought fewer storms than usual to the West Coast over the past few years, causing drought. This year, however, there have been close to 30 such storms already, says Dettinger.

Years of drought have dried up hillsides and killed vegetation, creating the right conditions for mudslides and flooding, says Lynn Ingram of the University of California, Berkeley.

Historically, California often sees periods of drought punctuated by years of intense flooding, she says. “The past really is telling us to prepare for both extremes,” she says.

And I suppose the excess just runs off into the ocean rather than recharging aquifers, as well. Nor is excess water good for crops, although I don’t know if they’ve reached that level just yet – it’s not quite growing season. And while I didn’t run across any before or after pics of Lake Mead, here’s a water level chart from Lakes Online:

Lake Mead Water Levels

That purple junk appears to be a leftover from interactive mode, and I’m up too late to redo it.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com reports on the creation of a bike highway in the sky in Xiamen, China, and hates it:

Image: Dissing + Weitling

Now forgive me for dissing Dissing, but there is something wrong with this picture. Steen Savery Trojaborg of Dissing + Weitling justifies putting cyclists up in the air by noting:

In the densely packed Asian cities, you often experience urban life at different heights. Restaurants and shops are seldom only at the ground floor of skyscrapers, and in compact million cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, the pulsating skyways often function as entrances to shopping centres and public buildings.

Yes, the do this, they fill the roads with cars to that a pedestrian cannot cross them without getting killed (and barricade them too) and stick the pedestrians up in the air where they can suck on all the exhaust fumes. It is not a desirable condition. It is not fair that pedestrians have to climb up and down stairs so that cars can rule the ground plane.

I cannot help but note that cars are even less likely to climb stairs. And, with some luck, the trend towards electric cars will accelerate in countries lacking backwards political movements. Back to Lloyd:

Image: Dissing + Weitling

I was curious to see if Mikael Colville-Andersen, Mr. Copenhagenize [i.e., an admirer of an earlier Dissing + Weitling project in Cophenhagen], had anything to say about this, and Surprise! he does.

An eight kilometer long shelf designed to place cyclists out of sight and out of mind. This is what happens when architecture gets drunk at the christmas party and sleeps with car-centric engineering, without listening to the wise advice of urban planning and anthropology.

An attitude that will get you nowhere for a long, long time. Perhaps they should have engaged Dissing + Weitling in a discussion and published that, rather than coming off as self-appointed Gods. I was all set to be sympathetic until I ran into that expression….

Because tau day isn’t half as cute. I would have let it pass in silence, but Dr. Ogden’s¹ post concerning Buffon’s Needle approach to calculating pi is just too damn cute.

In 1777, a French philosopher called Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, wrote out a very elegant theorem which turned out to be the earliest problem in geometric probability.

Buffon discovered that if you draw a set of equally-spaced parallel lines (say, d centimetres apart) and drop sticks on them which are shorter than the spacing (say l centimetres long, where l is less than d), then the probability of a stick crossing a line is

2l/πd.

This means that if you drop lots of sticks randomly and count how many cross the parallel lines, you can calculate what π is by rearranging the formula:

π=2ls/cd

where s is the number of sticks you drop and c is the number that crossed a line.

Go see Dr. Ogden’s post if you want the footnotes or more commentary. Or learn about the mathematician who gave it a go by spinning in circles.

Deb’s Raised Game Pie

BTW, the second to last pie I baked was supposed to be lemon meringue, but turned into caramel meringue. We discovered squirrels and other local wildlife would actually eat it.

The last pie I baked was an emergency replacement apple pie.

¹Via SciFri via Spaceweather.com.

Sometimes misleading arguments come attached to really pretty things, trying to catch their audience with their critical thinking guards down. This came through my mailbox recently with a lovely story about the Bentley Speed Six, a car introduced in 1928. In fact, the fair body of the mail is available here – enjoy the great lines of the car! (I’d put it in my garage, except it’s bigger than my garage.)

Now we move on to the hookworm (or lamprey) attached to the mail. I’ll reproduce it and then point out its errors:

A guy looked at my Corvette the other day and said, I wonder how many people could have been fed for the money that sports car cost.

I replied I am not sure, it fed a lot of families in Bowling Green, Kentucky who built it, it fed the people who make the tires, it fed the people who made the components that went into it, it, fed the people in the copper mine who mined the copper for the wires, it fed people in Decatur IL, at Caterpillar who make the trucks that haul the copper ore. It fed the trucking people who hauled it from the plant to the dealer and fed the people working at the dealership and their families.

BUT,… I have to admit, I guess I really don’t know how many people it fed.

That is the difference between capitalism and welfare mentality. When you buy something, you put money in people’s pockets, and give them dignity for their skills. When you give someone something for nothing, you rob them of their dignity and self worth.

Capitalism is freely giving your money in exchange for something of value. Socialism is taking your money against your will and shoving something down your throat for which you never asked.

I’ve decided I can’t be politically correct anymore.

Unfortunately for this chap, the money he spent on his Corvette didn’t go to the PTSD-afflicted war vet sprawled in the alley, sleeping off his drunk. It doesn’t go to the woman born without arms, the construction worker with pancreatic cancer, the boy with brain cancer, the infant born with a bad heart to the former coal miners who never had the opportunity to retrain.

But that money does go, in very large part, to the executives at GM, executives who make millions of dollars a year, and yet clamor for their tax breaks, for the muzzling of the EPA, for the unions to go away. Why? Because of the mindless clamor of their shareholders. All those hungry hands, held out for the dollars of the car buyers. It ain’t going to the workers.

It’s all very self-satisfying to speak of robbing someone of their dignity, but when that dignity was robbed by society OR Mother Nature (sometimes a cruel, cruel joke), it rings very, very hollow, and speaks to the immaturity of the writer. We do not band together into societies just so we can grow crops and make stuff and trade it with each other, driving out the weak and elderly and unfortunate out into the cold to die lonely deaths.

We come together to protect and care for each other. Mistaking free enterprise or socialism or authoritarianism as the purpose of society is to make the mistake of thinking roads exist so cars can drive on them.

No, they exist so people can travel more conveniently, whether it’s a Corvette, a Tesla, or a horse drawn carriage.

Fortunately, neither participant in this imaginary scenario, annoying as both may be, realizes that we’re not playing a zero-sum game. What this means that we’re a rich enough society that we can buy Corvettes and take care of OUR unfortunates. Remember that phrasing, because it’s very important – from that infant with a bad heart to the veteran who’s thinking of suicide, they are all OUR people, black or white, straight or gay. Not THE unfortunates, but OUR unfortunates.

It may not be as sexy as funding our war machine, but it’s more important.

And, speaking as a free-thinker (the 19th century term for an agnostic or atheist), it seems to me that a good alternative phrase for welfare mentality might be Being Christian. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure seems like the best Christian message has always been Love Each Other. And that includes the helping hand.

The King and JFK, ready to rumble!
And that’s no typo.

Elvis Presley. Jack Kennedy.

In a nursing home together.

Menaced by a possessed mummy.

Sounds awful. It’s not. It’s Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). Bruce Campbell, real life author of a memoir of B-movie acting, portrays The King, who, in a complicated deal, jettisoned his life style burdens without jettisoning his life. But he awakens in a nursing home, weak and hurt, the victim of an accident – and now the small town hearse is making more than frequent stops at this nursing home as something, heralded by scuttling scarabs of monstrous girth, has begun harvesting the simple souls who have gathered here for their final years.

But Elvis and his buddy, JFK, are a hobbling step faster than whatever it is chasing after them, and soon they’re in full investigative mode, discovering what it might be – and what might best deal with something that can disappear and reappear in its nightly quest for sustenance.

Even this plot summary may sound ghastly, but intertwined are the realizations and regrets that come with 40 or more years of the bigger-than-life living that both men ventured upon – lost connections to loved ones, the relentless chasing after desires vs the responsibilities that could have been their’s to bear – and how those responsibilities might have enhanced their lives. Add in the random humiliations of nursing home living, and this moves from a trite caricature of a plot to an off-beat story that captures one’s interest, makes one think about the choices to be made before the end comes for you – and what you’ll do if that end is a shambling, soul sucking mummy from Egypt.

In the middle of Texas.

Not quite recommended, but chances are you’ll enjoy this if you chance upon it – and give it that chance.

Georgy Toloraya surveys a landscape of question marks when it comes to the assassination of Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia, from 38 North:

This attack also raises a strong doubt that a new, likely liberal South Korean government will start a dialogue with Pyongyang, as was widely expected. Relations with China also suffered, as Beijing immediately punished Kim Jong Un by banning coal exports for the rest of the year. Russia’s hopes for restarting multilateral negotiations were also dashed, quickly dissolving any warm feelings in Moscow. And, of course, North Korea’s relations with Malaysia—one of the few partners and outposts abroad—have been severely damaged over criticisms over the investigation process.

These are just a handful of the questions still to be answered about this ordeal. Numerous theories have emerged thus far about who perpetrated this act, why now and to what ends—everything from Kim Jong Un ordering the hit to something more complex such as some “reactionary” or China-biased forces in the North staging the event to curb Kim Jong Un’s influence. (For example, a group of intelligence people may have felt threatened by the Marshal and instructed their unsuspecting agents to stage the event to undermine Kim Jong Un’s standing both domestically and abroad.) We may never know the full story, but we should be watching closely to both the Malaysian investigations and North Korean responses over the next few weeks for more answers to why Kim Jong Nam was killed.

I hadn’t considered a false flag attack. Certainly, ridding the world of a Kim family member while also eliminating an export market for North Korea might count as a two-fer for certain groups.

It can’t be good when you make it into this column, and Wells Fargo did make it there. Chuck Shepherd of News of the Weird notes how suspension of access to the judicial system is impacting the recent Wells Fargo debacle:

Wells Fargo Bank famously admitted last year that employees (pressured by a company incentive program) had fraudulently opened new accounts for about 2 million existing customers by forging their signatures. In an early lawsuit by a victim of the fraud (who had seven fraudulent accounts opened), the bank argued (and a court agreed!) that the lawsuit had to be handled by arbitration instead of a court of law because the customer had, in the original Wells Fargo contract (that dense, fine-print one he actually signed), agreed to arbitration for “all” disputes. A February Wells Fargo statement to Consumerist.com claimed that customers’ forgoing legal rights was actually for their own benefit, in that “arbitration” is faster and less expensive. [Consumerist, 3-1-2017]

Perhaps Wells Fargo will consider returning to the name of one of its earlier incarnations after this tar baby of a mess becomes part of the public consciousness: Norwest. Escaping bad publicity may become a necessity.

I’d never thought about this before, but accounting for all trade and then balancing it across the border … isn’t that easy. From WaPo:

But don’t assume the import/export data we have is accurate

Critics miss a less flattering truth about trade statistics, however: Import and export data are much more messy than their champions suggest and millions of users assume.

In principle, all trade flows are recorded twice. The exporter counts when goods leave the country and the importer counts the goods when they arrive at their destination. As mirror statistics, Mexico’s exports to the United States should not differ very much from U.S. imports from Mexico. Here’s the trouble — the gap in these figures is huge, and it has been growing, rather than shrinking.

Take merchandise trade with Mexico, roughly 90 percent of total trade across the United States’ southern border, and much easier to measure than trade in services. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2015 U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $63.4 billion. The Mexican government, in contrast, put the figure roughly twice as high, at $122.1 billion (the import figures are here, the export ones here).

Makes it a little harder to plunge into international trade arguments with gusto, doesn’t it?

John Bellinger III explains on Lawfare why the Guantanamo Bay facility should be closed:

Although it may be politically popular with some of the Administration’s supporters, it would be a mistake for the Trump Administration to try to repopulate Guantanamo with new detainees from the Islamic State or Al Qaida-affiliated groups, as President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have said they want to do.   The Trump Administration should learn from the bitter legal and policy experiences of the Bush Administration: adding new detainees to Guantanamo will produce more (and more risky) lawsuits; difficult practical problems down the road as to what to do with the detainees; and unnecessary friction with allies.  Guantanamo detainees have prevailed in numerous challenges to their detention in federal courts (including four cases before the Supreme Court).   Any new ISIS detainees in Guantanamo would undoubtedly claim in habeas petitions that the 2001 AUMF does not authorize their detention because it is limited to the organizations responsible for the 9-11 attacks.  As Jack Goldsmith has pointed out, “it is easy to imagine a habeas court ruling that the President does not have the authority to detain a member of ISIL because the 2001 AUMF does not extend to ISIL.”   And as I explained in my Lloyd Cutler lecture last fall, our allies are likely to cut back on intelligence, law enforcement, and military cooperation if they believe the United States is not acting consistent with international law and our shared democratic values.

I’m sure tired of seeing it as a political football rather than a sanely managed facility. John blames both Democrats and Republicans; I don’t care. It does more damage to our reputation than any positives it may bring to the table.

Remember the North Korea missile launches from last week? John Schilling on 38 North notes this occurred at the same time of joint South Korean – American exercises:

This was probably the point of the latest exercise. Foal Eagle is a training exercise aimed at maintaining and demonstrating the ability of the US-ROK alliance to wage war against North Korea. They’ve just demonstrated that they can wage war right back, with weapons they have in operational service today. And the trajectory also carried a not-very-subtle message to Japan: that North Korea understands the role Japanese ports and airfields play in allied plans for war on the Korean peninsula, and that Japan will be a battleground if those plans are carried out.

The four-rocket salvo was likely intended to demonstrate the ability to saturate allied missile defenses, such as the THAAD anti-missile defense system that the US recently started to deploy to South Korea. THAAD, in conjunction with the existing Patriot system, should have no difficulty stopping a four-missile salvo at a high-value target; it has successfully stopped a five-missile salvo in tests. But four missiles at once almost certainly isn’t the limit of North Korea’s capabilities, nor is it in their interest for us to know what those limits are. We don’t know how many missiles they can launch simultaneously, or from how many sites. They don’t know how well our missile defenses can deal with large salvos. Even we are not absolutely certain.

John also notes no new capabilities were revealed by this launch, making it more likely to be a message than a true test.

Pimpernel:

a plant belonging to the genus Anagallis, of the primrose family, especially A. arvensis (scarlet pimpernel) having scarlet or white flowers that close at the approach of bad weather. [Dictionary.com]

Mentioned in The Court Jester, and part of the title of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Yeah, I don’t see a them, either.

In the vein of very light entertainment comes The Court Jester (1956), a medieval England romp, perhaps a cross between Robin Hood and the infamous deaths of the two Princes (Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury). Danny Kaye stars as a common man tasked with spiriting the royal heir, an infant, away from the man who murdered the royal family and usurped the throne. Through misfortune and broad farce, the baby ends up at the usurper’s castle during a gathering of attractive wenches, Kaye is knighted and fighting for his life in a duel with Griswold while being hypnotized by a witch, and eventually fighting a duel with Basil Rathbone.

And rescued by dwarves.

This is entertainment that doesn’t stick to the ribs, but it’s a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours, I suppose. And it does appear that Danny Kaye learned fencing at one time. Or, unsurprisingly, stage combat. Keeping Basil at bay while drinking a mug of beer was impressive.

I couldn’t help but notice CNN reporting Breitbart speculating that the Trump Administration is lying:

My friend (even if I haven’t seen her in years) Dr. Amy Myrbo is fighting for the future of science by spreading the message Strong Science == Strong America, which is, to my mind, very true. From her organization’s web site:

Our main purpose is to spread the message that public funding of science is good for the US economy, quality of life, competitiveness, and future.

Where do the proceeds go?
Right now, we’re plowing everything back into printing more stickers and buttons.

And it’s certainly very true that publicly funded science has been a priority of the US Government for decades – regardless of the party in power. (I recall my father, a liberal hawk for his time, arguing very quietly – because he’d been ordered not to my by sister – with my sister’s father-in-law, a card carrying Republican who insisted the Republicans had been more generous with government funding of basic science than Democrats.) The ideology that free enterprise will cover basic science has failed over and over during the years, as the financial profits from basic science are a chancy business, unpredictable, “lumpy” – and it’s a rare business who can invest with a 20 – 40 year horizon. There’s simply too many shorter term opportunities available for the limited cash available. Then there’s the problem of markets that appear and disappear like flowers in a desert after a once-a-decade rainstorm.

I urge you to consider her plea.

UPDATE: Forgot they also have these links:

https://www.facebook.com/strongsciencestrongamerica
http://z.umn.edu/strongscience

Mark Sumner on The Daily Kos writes a love letter to the coal miner – and bids them good luck in the future in new occupations:

But the reason miners are so passionate about their job goes beyond just that close bond with fellow miners. It’s that thing at the top of the article. That “work of the world waits on him” bit. There are songs about how “coal keeps the lights on.” There’s a romance that wanders through “16 tons” and past a lot of coal miner’s daughters. From the stickers on the hardhats to the banners in the mine parking lot, miners are reminded every day that what they are doing is important, vital to the nation. They are still Wilson’s “great service army.”

They’re not just risking their lives. They’re risking them for you, America. Only … that’s no longer true. And I’m sorry. Really sorry. But it’s not.

Mark says he used to work in the industry. I found this bit interesting as well:

In fact, the regulations that Trump is repealing will make [coal miner job losses] happen faster. The rule that was changed on allowing more coal waste in streams won’t make new coal jobs. It will allow mining companies to replace underground mines with mountaintop removal mines. Those mines use far fewer people. When Trump signed that document and handed you the pen, what he was repealing was coal jobs.

Clearly a guy who knows and loves the coal miner families. And I agree with him, they once did crucial work and deserve honor for it. But natural gas is replacing coal for free enterprise reasons – and coal carries a load of environmental problems as well. This doesn’t impact the honor of the coal miners, which remains intact. But it’s time to move on.

Eric Levitz in New York Magazine reveals a dirty little corporate secret – attempting to use the stick and carrot to improve employee heatlth didn’t actually work in one celebrated case:

Burd explained that, in 2005, Safeway had instituted a “voluntary” wellness program, which gave employees the opportunity to undergo tests of their tobacco usage, body fat, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. If they passed all four tests, their annual premiums were reduced by $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families.

Or, put another way, if Safeway employees failed any of the tests — or refused to participate in the “voluntary program” — their premiums were increased by $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families.

This system allowed Safeway to achieve the unthinkable: Between 2005 and 2009, the company kept its per capita health-care costs flat, even as most American companies saw theirs increase by 38 percent. …

There is no evidence that this new rule produced a significant drop in America’s health-care costs. And that isn’t terribly surprising — since Burd’s column was composed almost entirely of lies.

“[A] review of Safeway documents and interviews with company officials show that the company did not keep health-care costs flat for four years, the Washington Post reported in January 2010. “Those costs did drop in 2006 — by 12.5 percent. That was when the company overhauled its benefits … the decline did not have anything to do with tying employees’ premiums to test results. That element of Safeway’s benefits plan was not implemented until 2009.”

In other words, Safeway reduced costs for a single year by raising its employees’ deductibles. It didn’t save money by encouraging its workers to lead healthier lives — it saved money by making its workers pay a larger portion of their health-care costs.

Something to keep in mind the next time your company calls up and asks you to certify that you exercise. Or announces a brand new innovation in their health benefits … and that also raises the question: how many folks have the time to exercise properly? Between 50-60 hour work-weeks (thank goodness my lack of ambition lets me skip out on that), children, hobbies, keeping up on government follies (you do do that, right? Right?), extended family care-taking, and being online at 3am in case the customer needs you, who has time to exercise?

At least at places that would consider this crap? After all, the places that make ridiculous demands are also those most likely to have out of shape employees. Unless it’s construction.

So, along with being an infringement on our freedoms, it also feels like a dead-end, both path way and company.

If you’re in North Korea and want to use some North Korean branded hardware known as the Ullim, be aware that there’s a level of control to which we’re unaccustomed to in the West. Martyn Williams on 38 North notes the changes that, beyond a hardware modification, falls into 4 categories: Constant Surveillance, Approved Apps Only, File Watermarking, and Restricted Media Compatability. Martyn’s thoughts:

Taken together, the various systems and software on Ullim represent a significant barrier to activists who are hoping the greater spread of portable electronics will increase the ability of North Koreans to freely access information.

“If you do manage to get an app on there and try to install it, it won’t work because the signature is wrong,” said Grunow. “The [Android file] must be signed with the government key. Additionally, there is a check to see if the app is in the whitelist and a normal user cannot get into the code to add to the whitelist.”

“This basically finishes all of your efforts to be a normal user in the DPRK,” he said. “It’s virtual[ly] impossible.”

Unfiltered information is one of the biggest enemies of the North Korean regime so it’s no surprise that engineers have gone to such lengths to lock down the tablet.

This brings a couple of thoughts to mind, the one triggering the second.

First, how much data concerning usage does North Korea face? If tablets and other mobile computing is perceived as a positive by the North Korean dictators, then equipping many citizens, military or not, would be expected – and the amount of information to analyze from these modifications might fall into the same league as that of the British spy cameras, initially feared but perhaps impotent because of the sheer volume of data to analyze.

Which leads to the second question: can they cut down the data volume through simple analytical techniques, or will we be seeing the dark side of Artificial Intelligence developed and deployed to retain control over the North Korean populace? I doubt they would develop a truly independent, sentient AI, so it would be a tool, and thus devoid of moral attributes – and moral choices. So we’re deprived of wondering whether an AI developed in an authoritarian country would develop a morality in favor of command and control, or freedom and (to use an unexpected adjective) chaos.

… leads to this:

Keep that hand back when your opponent attacks!

Arrival (2017) tackles the difficult subject of realistically deciphering the script of aliens who suddenly appear in our skies. Depicted against the background of a world that is undergoing a collective nervous breakdown, and military leaders who are increasingly panicky, the American team battles fatigue, pressure, and what seems to be incipient madness of both themselves and their military escort while desperately learning a script with no connection to any Earthly script, which has facets to it never seen before.

The steps they have to take seem what might happen in reality, and they are only lightly touched on, as they are only faintly related to drama. This approach to solving the problem – without a Rosetta Stone – seems both reasonable and difficult to perform, but lends a good touch of reality to the entire performance.

I appreciate one of the central tenets of the movie, the idea that language shapes our thought patterns and even, to some extent, our abilities (which I’ve just discovered is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). However, the particular ability enabled here (which I shan’t reveal, despite it’s playing a part in the apparent madness of the lead character) annoyed me as it seems plainly ridiculous to me.

My Arts Editor disagrees with me.

Regardless, I think this movie had us on the edge of our seats – not so much for the action as for the intellectual stimulation. The aliens are deliciously depicted in the Burkean manner of sublimity, which is to say we’re always sure there’s more to them than we’re seeing. And if the sudden end action of the aliens bothers me, I can always put it down to Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Recommended.

Evolution continues on despite the opinions of humanity – especially when it comes to poisons. NewScientist (25 February 2017) reports on the growing ability to tolerate arsenic:

For settlers in the Quebrada Camarones region of Chile’s Atacama desert some 7000 years ago, water posed more than a bit of a problem. They were living in the world’s driest non-polar desert, and several of their most readily available water sources, such as rivers and wells, had high levels of arsenic, which can cause a variety of health problems.

The arsenic contamination here exceeds 1 milligram per litre: the highest levels in the Americas, and over 100 times the World Health Organization’s safe limits. There are virtually no alternative water sources, and yet, somehow, people have survived in the area. Could it be that arsenic’s negative effects on human health, such as inducing miscarriages, acted as a natural selection pressure that made this population evolve adaptations to it? A new study suggests this is indeed so.

The body uses an enzyme called AS3MT to incorporate arsenic in two compounds, monomethylarsonic (MMA) acid and dimethylarsinic (DMA) acid. People who metabolise arsenic more efficiently convert more of it into the less toxic, more easily expelled DMA.

Mario Apata of the University of Chile in Santiago and his colleagues looked at variations in the gene coding for AS3MT in nearly 150 people from three regions of the country. They found higher frequencies of the protective variants in people from Camarones: 68 per cent there had them, as opposed to just 48 and 8 per cent of people in the other two. “Our data suggest that a high arsenic metabolization capacity has been selected as an adaptive mechanism in these populations in order to survive in an arsenic-laden environment,” the researchers conclude (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, doi.org/bz4s).

Too bad about the murder mysteries, though.

Burnt Offerings (1976) stars a house looking to suck up the souls of everyone who comes to live there. Even the unsympathetic family that comes to summer at it.

And it wins.

Fin.

Pan is the innermost known moon of Saturn, with a period of about half a day. The Cassini probe recently took a pic of this oddly shaped chunk of rock:

March 7, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

But I like this one better.

March 7, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Makes me ache to go out and actually see it. Where’s the tourism bus?

Ever wonder about the effects of a pandemic other than the deaths? NewScientist (25 February 2017, paywall) mentions the estimated monetary effects:

As global economies become more interconnected, contagious diseases and their knock-on effects spread more rapidly. “Nowadays the biggest risk from epidemics is economic,” says Ramanan Laxminarayan of Princeton University. The 2003 SARS epidemic killed 800 people, for example, but cost the world $54 billion in quarantine measures and lost trade and travel. The World Bank estimates that a flu pandemic as bad as the one in 1918 would lop 5 per cent off world GDP and cause an $8 trillion recession. The faster we respond to an epidemic, the less expensive it will be. So we must be prepared – and that costs. Who will pay?

Probably not the United States. NBC News reports Trump’s anticipated funding of the Prevention and Public Health Fund:

Bird flu has started killing more people in China, and no one’s sure why. Zika virus is set to come back with a vengeance as the weather warms up and mosquitoes get hungry. Yellow fever is spreading in Brazil, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are evolving faster than doctors can keep up with them.

And the new health care replacement bill released Monday night by Republican leaders in Congress would slash a billion-dollar prevention fund designed to help protect against those and other threats.

The Prevention and Public Health Fund accounts for 12 percent of the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2010 Affordable Care Act set it up specifically to try to lower health costs by preventing diseases before they happen. …

Not only would the proposed American Health Care Act explicitly cut the fund, but President Donald Trump has said his 2018 budget would chop domestic spending and funnel more cash to the Defense Department.

It worries federal, state and local health officials, who have seen their budgets steadily cut over the past 15 years.

Penny-wise, pound foolish. The main article is a survey of the possible next sources of a pandemic and how we will try to respond. As one of the richest nations in the world, the United States is the one that stands to lose the most – and can most afford to put up the cash to prepare for it.