Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Earlier this year Spaceweather.com was discussing solar activity and cosmic rays, and now they’ve returned to whether the two continue to exhibit an inverse correlation. Here’s the chart:

A fascinating exercise in high energy physics.

A reader comments on the big houses:

I’ve bee [sic] in a lot of those McMansions and have always thought they had a lot of wasted space (to heat and cool). One had a double staircase in the foyer, when one would have worked nicely. And, yes, “Welcome to my triple garage. The house is around the back.”

I’ve not been in many, as we prefer older houses with more character, although we have to be careful about that statement – we’ve visited one or two painted ladies that were charming on the outside and an utter disaster on the inside.

And then there was this monster in a chi-chi part of Minneapolis, just outside of Uptown, it I think, hosting an estate sale – tremendous sweeping staircase, no doubt the house’s usable footage measured in acres … and not new. I wonder how it was characterized when it was new.

A reader has more information on this production:

Since our very good friend Naomi Karstad plays Carly Davidson in this production, I can tell you that at least the leads are all professionals. You seem to have neglected to mention that part of production is the serving of some quite tasty food.

We saw the Loring Park show on Friday. It was quite humorous, even if one doesn’t understand Italian (only a few of the pieces are actually sung in the original Mozart / Da Ponte Italian, anyway).

Oh, excellent! I thought they were professionals, but had failed to bring the program home and their website didn’t actually list the cast anywhere I could find.

And I did mention the food: “… with some finger foods served during the performance.” However, I was not particularly impressed by them, nor do I consider them necessary – just a nice touch.

As you can see in this gallery of product!

Soon we’ll start the bidding process.

My Arts Editor and I like to walk neighborhoods, looking at homes new and old (so long as they’re not tract housing from the 60s-80s). This has led to the inadvertent substitution of the word ‘chickenshit’ for ‘gingerbread’ while admiring the fine work on Victorian, and the depressing observation that people must be sleeping in their garages since the garages on the new houses are bigger than the balance of the house.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com observes that the McMansion craze may have run its course:

There were many reasons for the McMansion boom. After the recession the banks tightened up lending so that only the rich with huge downpayments could get a mortgage; increases in income inequality meant that there were a lot fewer people able to by cheaper, smaller houses; there were millions of them on the market, left over from the crash.

Builders loved them because they were really profitable; the hard expensive stuff is the same whether the house is big or small (services, plumbing, kitchens) but they are selling a lot more air. They get a lot more profit per square foot.

They also sold for a lot more money; four years ago, the average McMansion cost 274 percent more than an average house in Fort Lauderdale. Today, the premium is down to 190 percent. In fact, the premium has dropped significantly in 85 of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. In most places, the bottom has fallen out of the McMansion market.

The Worst of McMansions blog he references features some lovely snark, but also a tutelary section:

The mass is the largest portion of a building. Individual masses become interesting when they are combined together to form a façade. The arrangement of these shapes to create weight is called massing. As the pieces are combined, they are divided into categories: primary and secondary masses (1).

The primary mass is the largest shape in the building block. The secondary masses are the additional shapes that form the façade of a building.

Windows, doors, or other openings are called voids. Voids allow creation of negative space that allow for breaks within masses. Placing voids that allow for natural breaks in the mass create balance and rhythm across the building’s elevation.

Swedenborgian Church:

The Swedenborgian Church draws its faith from the Bible as illuminated by the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). In 2003, the Swedenborgian Church of North America had about 1,800 members, almost identical to the membership it had in 1981 but rather less than the 5,440 it had in 1925.

As a loose affiliation of regional associations, the Swedenborgian Church does not make any statements as to the exact authority of Swedenborg’s writings on the Bible or to the correctness of either. Each Society and member is given the responsibility to arrive at their own conclusions, and the denomination allows for discussion and debate. It is also liberal on social issues and sexual ethics, such as the ordination of women, homosexuality, and abortion. [Wikipedia]

I just like the name. They used to have a church in St. Paul at Virginia and Shelby, not far from Moscow on the Hill, but it appears to have been sold to another congregation. St. Paul Historical¹ provides images of this rather handsome structure.

¹Paul Nelson, “Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church,” Saint Paul Historical, accessed August 29, 2016, http://saintpaulhistorical.com/items/show/120

The Mixed Precipitation opera group has been performing picnic operettas for a few years now: in a public park, a show is presented, with some finger foods served during the performance. Bring your own chairs, blankets, and bug spray. This was our third year of attending a performance, and they held true to form, selecting a traditional opera as a stepping off point for an eclectic blend of traditional opera, pop songs, and a story which, like much opera, doesn’t care if the it’s plausible or not, only whether it gives the singers a chance to do what they love. Indeed, speaking generally of opera, to quote an opera-loving friend of ours after discussing an opera he had seen, “It was the worst staged opera I’ve ever seen, and the best sung. Therefore, it was the best opera I’ve ever seen.”

So a light review: Donald Giovanni, Carly Davidson, and Ted Snuz have invaded the Midwest to participate in a GOP debate. The infighting is vicious, the character faults on neon display, and the ghost of Ronald Reagan hovers over all until it, too, suffers a fate worse than … death. Donald Giovanni, sporting a hairdo worthy of A Flock of Seagull (a dated guy is worth a dated reference, after all), not only the target of the other candidates, but of other folks who want a piece of his hide, has a dashing line of patter to distract his opponents, along with some lovely caprese and watermelon juice, before he is finally caught and stripped of his hair.

The staging, what there was of it, was good as the company takes full advantage of the venue (in this case, JD Rivers Children’s Garden in Minneapolis, but they perform at several venues). The singing was strong (important in an open-air venue), and if I don’t understand the Italian songs, that’s my fault, not the company’s. The pop songs were well done well. The accompanying musicians are professionals; I’ve been unable to determine if the adult performers in the operetta are also professionals or talented amateurs.

While my Arts Editor thought this send-up was a bit too obvious, I thought it was still great fun and definitely worth a watch.

(This review includes material from Arts Editor Deb White.)

Mazal Mualem interviews experts over how the Internet is mutating the Israel representative democracy, as seen in the ascendancy of Prime Minister Netanyahu, in AL Monitor:

Source: Wikipedia

But Netanyahu’s electoral victory was the product of much more than his own effective internet campaign. His achievement reflects a deep-seated change taking place in Israeli politics as a result of the social network revolution. It is a process that has kept many experts busy working to understand where it is all leading. Four of them spoke with Al-Monitor in an effort to answer that question. Karine Nahon is a researcher of the politics of information and social networks, Asher Idan is a philosopher and authority on social networks and futurism, Alex Rosenfarb is a manager of digital media and political campaigns, and Arad Akikous is a political strategist and researcher of social networks.All agree on one point: Israel’s system of representative parliamentary democracy is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It is in the process of being replaced by direct, personal politics, while at the same time, the traditional party structure is losing power.

“The most prominent trend is the way that politicians are funded. It has already begun in Israel and will only grow stronger,” said Rosenfarb. “The saying ‘follow the money’ is very true in this case.” According to him, “[President Barack] Obama’s model of a mechanism based on small donations, which has since been adopted in Israel by politicians like [Labor Knesset members] Shelly Yachimovich and Stav Shafir, will continue to catch on and impact the political structure. That is because when there are many small donors, politicians naturally grant importance to their opinions. What happens, in effect, is that bargaining power is transferred to the masses.” He added, “We are in the midst of a transition from a distant representative democracy to a form of democracy in which more and more citizens are involved in the various political processes.”

As for how this process will impact the parties, Rosenfarb said, “Everything we knew about mass party registration will disappear. We will move from the model of democratic elections with people going to vote every four years to a model in which the citizen is involved in politics on a daily basis through the internet.”

I really just want to copy the entire article as it fascinates anyone who’s been involved with telecommunications¹ and its impact on how people think about and implement politics.

Source: whitehouse.gov

The first thought that comes to mind is whether or not we are seeing something similar in the United States, and I’d say that Donald Trump may be a personification of these new trends – a candidate who has appealed to constituencies deeply root in the Internet; with little explicit dependence on the GOP structure; with rhetoric emphasizing his personal brand, and in fact a message that is destructive to the GOP as a Party. By contrast, President Barack Obama is the personification of the best of old-style American politics – identifying with the Democrat brand,  endorsing other Democratic candidates, building coalitions and hiring the best available personnel, regardless of party identification (see the Secretary of Defense and the FBI Director); and most importantly, constantly reaching out to Congress to attempt to work with them. During his first two years, when the Democratic Party held both chambers of Congress, they worked together to implement the ACA, amongst other issues, and it was quite a public process, as compromises were reached and hypothetical consequences worked out and dealt with.

Since the Democrats lost control of Congress, the confounding Republican refusal to consider working with the President has been a discouragement and puzzle, and I suspect bolder commentary than mine might speculate that the hatred of certain segments of the American populace for President Obama communicates to the Republican Congressional members and enforces their current behaviors. Other commentary might suggest that those same Republicans are merely hand puppets for the shadowy funders of the conservative movement, who happen to despise President Obama. I don’t know, myself. Perhaps the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus of the House is really fully in control. Are the fringe-right members of Congress there because their constituents are fringe right, or is the process of selecting candidates in the GOP such that fringe candidates hold an advantage? I suspect the latter, with little solid evidence.

Secondly, is this good for the nation? Does direct democracy trump representative democracy?

I’m biased towards quality results, and to my mind a representative democracy permits a small fraction of the citizenry to become experts in the issues of government. I’m aware of the “wisdom of the crowds,” but my experience is that, in politics, the levers of government and the power they bring, perceived or real, bring out some of the worst elements of the citizenry, the most extreme views, and the ability to mobilize, not precisely public opinion but focused, multiplied opinion tends to distort the apparent desires of the nation as a whole.

And, of course, desire is not always a good measure of where we should go – a statement that might be anathema to an advocate of direct democracy. For them, voting on every issue is the ideal because then the people are participating and in charge of their collective future – never mind what they actually know about sometimes subtle issues.

But sometimes bitter medicine is necessary – the replacement of fossil fuels as the primary power sources of the nation, as a simple, irrefutable example, may not play well in Peoria, but it is necessary for the future prosperity of the nation and the world. When it hits 130° in Peoria it’ll be too late to make the good Peorians happy again – they’ll be busy packing to move to Canada. Florida will be known as the State of Inundation. And where will we be then?

Source: Wikipedia

The Party system of the United States, for all of its quirks and flaws, does serve, when it’s not been subverted (as by the RINO-yappers of the GOP), to train future political leaders, to teach them what is acceptable and what is unacceptably extreme, the procedures and the issues. Consider the exceptional performance of President Obama, his knowledge of the machinery of government, the theory of our government.  And we should expect the same from candidate Hillary Clinton.

Source: Wonkette

And then think about “the Donald.” From his statements we can honestly wonder if he has ever read the Constitution, given serious thought to the issues of race, theory of government, or much else beyond real estate dealings. Does he have any knowledge of what a President can and cannot do? If he is the end result of “direct democracy”, then that model should have little future.

But it probably will continue, and hopefully the nation will develop new gatekeeping mechanisms to train the novices and keep the flakes out.

¹I say “telecommunications” rather than “the Web” because, as a former BBS operator, I recall the political discussions held by people ranging from the far left to paleoconservative throughout the systems in the Twin Cities area; and I also recall reading how in some municipalities BBS software was used for communications with constituents and between city council members. The source for the latter now escapes me; I thought it was Whole Earth Review, but a search was fruitless. The point being, the Web did not introduce change to politics, but it has made it far more convenient and effective.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the evidence?

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

Paleontologists are just highly specialized detectives.

A question concerning the murky ways of illegal software:

Who or what is the NSO group?

From the article on Lookout Blog:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charitable by nature

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

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

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

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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

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

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

A reader is concerned about cross-laminated lumber:

Hope it never catches on fire.

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

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

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

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

Another reader asks:

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

From Acton Ostry Architects:

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

Or 173 feet. Roughly.

With regard to stadium noise a reader writes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIP, Smudge. August 26, 2016.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s one.

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

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

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

Details matter.

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

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

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

Back to Sarah’s article:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s left to do

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

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

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

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

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