Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Is the momentum continuing behind this idea? Walter Einenkel @ The Daily Kos reports that New Zealand may be moving towards UBI:

New Zealand’s Labour Party is considering the concept of a basic “citizen’s wage.” Andrew Little, leader of the Labour Party, confirmed this as the result of the potential for higher unemployment in in the coming months and years. “Citizen’s income” is also known as Universal Basic Income (UBI). The idea is that everyone gets a basic amount of money to live off of, like a wage, and benefit systems are gotten rid of.

In October 2015 Keith Rankin contributed this observation from the inside of the movement:

With a UBI, taxes are simple, high by neoliberal standards, and everybody (subject only to age and residency criteria) claims an equal share of that public revenue as a basic income. While a UBI should never be understood as the only form of publicly-sourced cash income (some ‘needs-based’ transfers will always be necessary) – and is a dividend rather than a ‘hand-out’ – for a substantial majority of the resident adult population, it would be their only publicly-sourced income.

A UBI on its own is not a cure for poverty. Rather, it’s a public-property-rights-based payment that incidentally serves as a hand-up rather than as a handout. Of particular importance is the additional bargaining power it gives to the relatively poor. It tides-over people during spells without income – like ‘strike pay’ once did – enabling them to hold out for fair private-sector wages; and it reduces pressure on self-employed people who might otherwise under-tender to get work. Of equal importance is the way it addresses the low-income poverty trap that accompanies all forms of targeted redistribution. The GMI accentuates the low-income trap. The UBI eliminates it.

I have some difficulty buying the use of the term ‘dividend’ in this context, as dividends usually refer to the profits spun off from a business back to the shareholders, although occasionally a dividend is funded buying borrowing money against the prediction of future profits – which sounds like a little nutty to me. Back to the point, mixing private sector terminology, even as merely analogies, worries me as it tends to let private sector practices to leak, perhaps inappropriately, into the public (government) sector. See here for that discussion. Keith concludes with the obligatory claim of Paradise.

On its own a universal tax-benefit regime cannot end poverty. Rather it creates a power-balance; and a dynamic that confers dignity and puts an end to poverty traps. It enables people to say ‘no’ to exploitation, and ‘yes’ to private initiatives that contribute to social and economic wellbeing; to initiatives that, among other things, raise productivity and thereby raise the future level of universal basic income payable.

Sounds good to me. Keith has an additional, more recent piece in the Evening Report here. Geoff Simmons at Gareth’s World has a list of the ten categories of people in New Zealand who would benefit from this scheme. The big winners are #5 on his list:

The working poor would be the biggest winners under an unconditional basic income. They wouldn’t lose their unconditional income as they work more, so the working poor would be better off than they are now, and definitely better off than people who chose not to work.

For low-wage earning couples currently receiving Working for Families, most would still receive more money if both adults received an unconditional basic income. More importantly, they wouldn’t lose this income as they earned more, so they have a stronger incentive to work harder and smarter than they do now.

The rich? Not so much.

A behavior which I’ve read about and observed via news reports, but have never personally observed, is fanatical efforts to avoid taxes. I’m not referring to tax evasion, which by definition is illegal, but efforts that may border on illegality, and are sometimes in quite bad taste. The efforts imply a certain crass materialism on the part of the tax(not)payer, a desire not to contribute to the communal good, although the actor would not agree. If of a libertarian bent, the counter-claim would involve the considerable amount already contributed to society through the implied productivity which generated the income in the first place, or, if of an older generation, the endemic corruption of government, and associated waste of funds; another popular claim is the alleged immorality of the government. An example might be the notorious, late Marc Rich, who escaped the United States just prior to the filing of charges (by Rudy Giuliani), and never returned, despite an ill-advised Presidential pardon from Bill Clinton.

So how would this behavior change if UBI were implemented in the United States? Assuming a more or less standard definition, the government stipend would be tax free. A flat tax of 33% might be enough to fund government operations, assuming all welfare was abolished and military spending was finally brought under control. One has to wonder if Social Security would disappear as well.

So my point would be that there would be some obsessive (but trivial) calculations of when one transits from benefiting (paying less tax) from the government stipend to paying for the lazy bums (as the unfortunate would no doubt be characterized) would be performed, and no doubt many folks, indifferent to the many benefits government brings, would gnash their teeth as they inadvertently helped the less fortunate begin to escape the traps they are so often within. Such is our fascination, even idolatry, this country has to do with personal wealth.

I look forward to hearing how New Zealand does with this new notion. The law unintended consequences is always fun, but, to grab one more item from Mr. Simmons’ list of benefiting people …

In fact, some young entrepreneurs believe an unconditional basic income would be one of the most business friendly policies around. It would provide some secure income as entrepreneurs during the all-important start up phase.

If you want to sell UBI in the United States, a form of that paragraph is the place to start. Right next to money in the idolatry list is the phrase free enterprise.

In Marty (1955) we’re introduced to Marty’s (Ernest Borgnine) Italian family, where, for the elder generation, marriage is the only thing, having a son is a close second, and the bitterness of no longer being useful is brought forcefully to the fore. In the background, an argument, centering around the lustful, dishonorable urges of wolfpacks of young men, is made for the importance that everyone be married, for otherwise the emotional pain of objectification and consequent cessation of social bonds will come to the fore; it’s an interesting argument, but given our knowledge of social heterogeniety, perhaps not as forceful as it once was.

But Ernest gives a fine performance as the butcher taking care of his mother and, for that matter, the rest of the family. The unhappiness of a branch of the extended family in having the mother living with the young married couple with baby is examined in fine detail as the young people show their problems in superb, yelling fashion: his concern that he’s abandoning his mother and blaming it on his wife, while she is not amenable to the constant criticism and micromanagement of her mother-in-law, who happens to be a hyper-competitive flying witch on wheels.

They don’t make movies like this anymore, and probably thank goodness: a less than excellent version of this sort of movie would be a failure and make my teeth itch. But this is Marty, a 4-star effort which will repay a close viewing with insights, laughter, and a real empathy for all the characters who are not part of a wolfpack.

The effect of big predators on the web of life makes the page in NewScientist (27 February 2016):

Predators don’t control populations of their prey just by killing them. They also paint what is termed a landscape of fear, inhibiting prey from feeding and turning parts of their habitat into no-go zones. Now it appears that this has far-reaching effects throughout the food web.

Domestic dogs are the main predators of raccoons on the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. Justin Suraci and his colleagues at the University of Victoria in Canada wondered what would happen if they stoked the raccoons’ fear of dogs without increasing predation. They set up speakers along the shoreline on two islands and played either the calls of dogs, or of seals and sea lions, which also live here but are not a threat to raccoons.

The dog sounds cut the raccoons’ foraging time by 66 per cent over the course of a month. They also led to a rise in the abundance of crabs, fish and worms that raccoons feed on in the intertidal areas, and in turn, to a decline in numbers of those animals’ prey and competitors (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10698).

It’s work like this, in which the logical chains of reaction, behavior, and its effects on population dynamics are explained in a logical manner, that does two things for me (besides giving me a thrill down my spine).

First, it documents how important the large predators are to a geographical area. Their presence, or absence, affects their prey, the resources their prey use, the physical nature of the land used by their prey, and then rinse and repeat with those prey, now as predators in their turn, as all those numbers change and resource usage changes. This understanding of the underpinnings of what poets dream about has its own magic, its own manifold, tangible meanings, and these central logical connections do not exist in a vacuum, but they instead affect us as well – because we are intimately connected to that landscape.

Second, it permits a more essential and understandable ecological advocacy. While some folks, with a superfluous understanding of ecology, may merely shrug and advance the notion of ‘circle of life’, and suggest that commerce must come before ecology, this sort of deep understanding permits the inversion of such arguments. How? By the important understanding that we are tied to the landscape we live on. Even us software engineers, we have to live somewhere, and if we do not put our understanding of our real-life surroundings into a central place in our society, we risk ending up like the folks who have – and are – building houses near the coastline (see the section on Science & Government). That is, doomed to lose our houses, our belongings, even our lives, to the subtle forces of Nature, and how we have changed her. Despite our attempts to live apart from Nature, she is always there, always around us – and, unless we want to live in the E. M. Forster’s Machine, giving up all control, then we need to think about how that ecology works, and give it prime place in our society – with commerce a good second. So when someone advances the notion of commerce first, suggest that perhaps their commerce will self-immolate if mature thought is not given to the effect they will and are having. If they’re exterminating big predators, for instance: what if this destroys half the town in 20 years? (What? Patience. I’ll let an expert cover this in a moment.)

But there’s one more reason I like this article, and that’s this: it reminds me of a wonderful video which really illustrates the entire effect of big predators. It’s logical, it’s full of facts, and it’s gorgeous. Not in a visual sense, but in the entire gestalt of senses, and with the added informational load and logical chains, it’s really a wonderful riposte to those who believe they can exist apart from Nature. Click and enjoy.

Shouldn’t have pushed her off that wedding dress, Mz Arts Editor….

Since weather forecasters never promise anything, their wedding ceremonies must be kind of a bummer.

A conservative is terrified of the future and clings to the past for its comfort and wisdom, even if it must be imagined.

A liberal is horrified at the injustice of the past and looks to transform society in order to void the presence of those injustices in the future, even if the results of the changes are speculative – at best.

We need both conservatives and liberals, for otherwise our lifeboat will tip over and drop us amongst the sharks.

Of, perhaps, the breakup of the conservative media bloc as journalists who understand the importance of ethics engage in critical actions. From CNN/Money:

Reporter Michelle Fields and at least three other staffers have resigned in opposition to [Breitbart News‘] coverage of Trump and to its handling of an alleged assault on Fields by a top Trump aide.

Fields, who has claimed that she was yanked and bruised by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and Ben Shapiro, one of the site’s top editors, told BuzzFeed late Sunday night that they would be leaving the company.

Then on Monday, Breitbart editor Jarrett Stepman and national security correspondent Jordan Schachtel announced they were also resigning in protest.

“Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” Fields said on Sunday. “I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways.”

When old Pravda is used in comparison, you have to wonder just how big the lies have grown.

Of course, there’s a practical component as well. If they do not exercise their ethics, they risk their careers as the lies become more and more brazen. For those Breitbart News employees they leave behind, the risks become even greater as the publicity of their former colleagues becomes well known. They must fear becoming known as hacks, as journalists in only the loosest sense of the word.

American civil society is not built for cultural warfare as has been advocated by those on the fringe right; it is constructed such that disparate groups that obey a common ethics, often defined by the law, can live side by side with minimal friction. That is the goal of the Founders. When Breitbart News breaches journalistic ethics to the extent that top people begin leaving abruptly, all in the name of propelling a chosen candidate onward to a nomination with little concern about truth and honesty, by the Founders’ rules, Breitbart News risks being tarred with disrespect, with the tar that stinks of distrust, and a tar that sponsors may abhor.

I’ll be fascinated to see Breitbart’s fate. Fox News reportedly is losing influence in the race as Rubio fades and no other candidate particularly cares about them. Is Fox now too liberal for the candidates? Or do they not trust Fox, an organization whose concern for fair and accurate reporting is so poor that it must proclaim its adherence to it from the rooftops?

A few nights ago we finally finished watching the classic Zorba the Greek (1964), starring Anthony Quinn. Without a doubt, Quinn deserved the Oscar nomination for Best Actor, as his Zorba displays and embraces character faults that might sink a lesser man.  The film is luxurious, never hurried, exploring nooks and crannies that a lesser work would have shunned as superfluous; through these metaphorical treks, Zorba’s lack of education may limit him in some ways, while letting him see reality so much more clearly in others, and this we get to see in all the nauseating detail one might imagination. We squirmed in our chairs and sighed away the disappointments.

And the film is … bothersome. The gentle sex gets short schrift in this slightly maniacal commentary on Greek tribalism, as one woman is stoned and then has her throat fatally slashed, while another, the gentle Boubalina, is mislead, misused, and ultimately dies of a fatal fever. As she lingers, the vultures gather: the old ladies of the village, clad in black cloaks from brow to toe, some even worse clad in apparent dementia, wait with little patience for the demise of the gentle B, and even as she sings her final swan song, the bald birds begin the clatter of greed and disagreement, fighting in their old women ways over towels, rugs, frocks, and other incidentals, shrieking and cackling with no regard to the woman from whom they steal, for she is not of their village, not of their island, indeed, a consorter with foreign Admirals, is she not?

It is an impressively repulsive scene, worth catching for its wonderful staging.

Zorba works for an Englishman, a withdrawn writer with some Greek in his background, who has come to Greece to claim an inheritance: a plot of land containing important minerals. He hires Zorba on impulse to run the mine, and then compulsively clings to his view of life as something to fear and handle with extreme care; Zorba, his opposite, plunges through life like a mad bull chasing a cap clinging to its horn, spinning and kicking as men, women, and mad Englishmen fall into its path, feel its pummeling feet, and drag their battered bodies back to the walls to watch him continue his dance. For but a moment a drag on a cigarette, and a play on the Greek mandolin, and then back to the dance, the drink, and the women.

In the end, Zorba outplays his boss in this movie; the English repression is too strong, even if he finally relieves himself of its reins in the end. Did the failure of the mine mean anything? Did it mean anything to work it, to dream of riches? Was it all an illusion, the illusion of material riches when people are dying around you from the illnesses of the day? Even Zorba cannot know all the answers.

But we watched in dribs and drabs; some of it was genius, some of it was hard to watch, and some was both.

An uproar has erupted, as NewScientist (27 February 2016) reports, over anti-Female Genital Mutiliation (FGM) strategies:

Two US gynaecologists have proposed legalising some forms of female genital mutilation. They argue this would protect girls from more extreme operations.

Worldwide, around 3 million girls every year undergo FGM. The practice can range from cutting genitals to removing the clitoris and labia then stitching up most of the vagina.

The practice is illegal in the UK and US, but Kavita Shah Arora and Allan Jacobs argue that attempts to clamp down on FGM haven’t succeeded, and can be viewed as racist or culturally insensitive.

Instead, they suggest doctors should perform operations that they think will not affect women’s ability to have children or sexual satisfaction (Journal of Medical Ethics, doi.org/bcqw).

The actual article, written by Kavita Shah Arora and Allan J Jacobs, is here:

Procedures that surgically alter the external genitalia of children are quite common throughout the world, though the distribution varies greatly by geography. The majority of male children in America are circumcised.1 While non-therapeutic female genital alteration (FGA) procedures in children are unusual in the USA, an estimated 80–140 million women throughout Africa, the Middle East, India and South-East Asia have had such procedures.2 ,3 The WHO, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have policies in place to support circumcision; however, FGA has been deemed a human rights violation by these same organisations as well as by the United Nations.2–4 In fact, the US government has expressly outlawed any procedure that incises or changes a female child’s external genitalia in the absence of medical indications.5

While years of advocacy and legislation aimed at eliminating non-therapeutic procedures on female external genitalia has resulted in a decline in the prevalence of the practice, the magnitude of this decline has been soberingly small. In Egypt, the percentage of women who had any procedure that altered external genitalia performed on a daughter only fell from 77.8% to 71.6% over 5 years from 2006 to 2011. This relatively small decrease in prevalence was associated with minimal change in attitude towards the procedures.6 In a study in Somalia, the country in the world with the highest prevalence of these procedures, 81% of subjects underwent infibulation and only 3% did not have FGA. Eighty-five per cent had an intention to subject their daughters to an extensive FGA procedure, and 90% supported the continuation of the practice.7 There have been some more encouraging studies, however. In Kenya, for example, prevalence has dropped from 49% in women ages 45–49 years to 15% in girls ages 15–19 years and in Liberia, the prevalence has dropped from 85% to 44%, respectively.8 ,9

With this background:

Immigrants to Western nations may continue to subject their daughters to genital alteration,10–12though the frequency is difficult to assess. While laws enacted in these countries make procedures that alter a female’s external genitalia illegal, they may in some instances worsen health outcomes by driving the practice underground by sending female children to Africa or by inviting circumcisers to the West.11 Making the practice illegal also hampers the ability to study the actual incidence and effects of these procedures, limits an open dialogue regarding changing the practice, and may impede efforts to voluntarily reduce the incidence of these procedures (thereby improving public health).13 ,14 This local culture of silence is due to a distrust of the global eradication campaigns as being ‘sensationalized, ethnocentric, racist, culturally insensitive and simplistic’.15

So they propose permitting harmless forms of FGM (or FGA, for Alteration, as they prefer) “… in recognition of its fulfilment [sic] of cultural and religious obligations …“, as a practical approach to minimizing the harm to children, where harm is a wide ranging term referencing not just physical health, but the consequences of jailing or otherwise penalizing parents responsible for the infliction of FGM on the children.

It’s an fascinating article which raises many interesting points, including the non-equivalent treatment of male circumcision in the West, a re-examination of the several methods of FGM and how they range from barely a nick to severe impairment of function, the impact of penalties on children, the impact of Western campaigns on other countries, how higher portions of women vs men are in favor of FGM as this gives them power over there bodies, and much more.

I have a lot of reactions as I read through the article, starting with the standard Western “ewwww” reaction. For all that Western nations have not treated women equivalently to men throughout history, at least we’ve not inflicted FGM on them.

I can see the point of controlling your own body, and using FGM to symbolize that control, rather than allowing a patriarchy to decide whether or not FGM is appropriate; I do not necessarily agree with the position. I see the equivalence of FGM and male circumcision, and equivalences with cosmetic surgery and FGM.

Enough of boring equivalences. The primary goal of the West has been to stop the practice of FGM; this may be usefully transformed to the confrontational statement “Is FGM a positive or a negative for societies?”, although I suspect anthropologists would wince. In this new light, it would not be improper to suggest that acceptance of the proposal to permit the least damaging FGMs would constitute a victory for the pro-FGM forces in the confrontation over FGM: a major power (the USA) forced to permit FGM is certainly a noteworthy event. This may indeed happen as the authors of the article suggest the primary legal bulwark against FGM in the USA, the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, is unconstitutional as it tramples on religious freedoms. (One wonders how Donald Trump would react to a question on this subject in a debate, or indeed any of the GOP candidates.)

As a citizen of one of the more extreme Western countries, I have to be aware that individualist tendencies are a matter of cultural inculcation, so when I state that I have deep concerns about the involuntary infliction of FGM, even in its least damaging forms, on young girls, I need to be aware that I’m not being entirely objective. In this country we have a strong belief that the individual should control what happens to them when they are adults, and that children must be managed responsibly; we occasionally see clashes when the religious sensibilities of parents are not compatible with the laws currently governing the raising of children. A similar problem, with different origins, has been seen recently with respect to the anti-vaccine sentiment that has appeared. In other cultures, the individual’s worth is more deeply discounted, and within that culture the use of FGM, voluntary or not, serves a useful purpose.

But this lets us transition back to the point of the article: the use of FGM in the USA. My position is that the underaged should never be subjected to it, voluntarily or not, because we are an individualistic culture, and individualism requires a degree of mature and responsible thought on the part of the individual, which is not likely to be found in those less than the age of majority (yeah, yeah, even that’s arbitrary, but forcing people to pass a test before they’re considered adults would just result in riots). Once the age of majority is attained, then medical procedures by surgeons may be permissible; I have trouble finding an objection. I do object to a religious figure having any meaningful part in the procedure, on the other hand.

I do recommend the article, not only for the subject matter, but also because it’s a good example of taking apart what appears to be a simple subject and displaying the complications that are its constitutional parts.

A related post on boys is here.

Professor Brent Hecht of the University of Minnesota introduces Atlasify:

In Hecht’s announcement on the GroupLens blog, he describes Atlasify as “a system that lets you make a map of almost anything.”

And when Hecht says “anything,” he means it.  The examples he demonstrated during a recent interview with CS&E ranged from “badminton” and “country music” to “World War II” and “Star Trek.”  Additionally, he showed many more sample queries that he and his team have set up on the Atlasify homepage so users can see the search engine in action.

Unlike many popular search engines that generate a list of hyperlinks, each Atlasify query generates its own, unique interactive heat map for users to explore.

“Atlasify allows you to create maps there are no atlases for,” said Hecht.  “For example, there isn’t an atlas for ‘ice hockey,’ but we can make one—in fact, we made one.”

(University of Minnesota’s Computer Science & Engineering newsletter)

I mucked about with it for a few minutes.  It’s a neat concept that needs some refinement. For example, the Geography category is … too political.  That is, information is mapped to political boundaries, rather than discovering a more information context.  In the below sample, I asked for the Geography of Iron Ore. Here in Minnesota, iron ore is a big part of our history, but only up in the Arrowhead section of the state, in the northeast; the mined material would then be sent to Duluth for shipping. So I’d like to see a gradation of the green (indicating ‘relatedness’) from northeast to southwest.  The difference on the map from Minnesota to North Dakota is misleading at best.

Or here is a Geography of oil production:

But these are recommendations for refinements, not condemnations. I look forward to seeing how the project evolves and how the bright and creative reach out and make this a useful tool in their own endeavours.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3xWW4sTp4wA%3Frel%3D0

… is not the fossil fuel industry.  It’s lack of wind, and NewScientist (27 February 2016) is on it:

The first half of last year saw the lowest average wind speeds for almost half a century across much of North America. The electricity output of US wind farms fell 6 per cent despite their capacity increasing by 9 per cent.

Now, weather watchers say the wind drought is back. “Low-wind conditions have returned to the US,” says Michael Brower of AWS Truepower, a wind-power consultancy. “The possibility of a prolonged wind drought is on the minds of many in the wind industry.”

So far, the wind drought hasn’t had a significant impact on investment in wind plants, says Daran Rife of energy consultancy DNV GL. But he adds that “investors naturally want to understand what happened in 2015, and what to expect in the future”.

The same issue notes the impact of tropical cyclone Winston on Fiji – the strongest tropical cyclone, and second strongest storm ever recorded with 300 km/h (186 mph) wind speeds.

A reader writes about new construction:

Tornado-proof-ness is my concern. I like wood. But concrete seems sturdier. I am building a home.

It’s an interesting point – just how likely is any given home in the United States, or in tornado prone areas, to be hit by a tornado?  I did a little poking around the web and ran across this page from 2005 by Chuck Doswell, who, according to Wikipedia, is

… an American meteorologist and prolific severe convective storms researcher. Doswell is a seminal contributor, along with Leslie R. Lemon, to the modern conception of the supercell, which was developed originally by Keith Browning.^[3] He also has done research on forecasting and forecast verification, especially for severe convective storms, and is an advocate of ingredients-based forecasting.

So, with those credentials, Doswell leads us through a calculation of probabilities given a number of very rough assumptions.  His conclusion?

If I assume that the figure of 1 chance in 10 million annually is crudely representative of the odds of experiencing F4-F5 winds, then what about over the lifetime of a family’s residency in the home? I’m going to assume that lifetime is about 30 years. [some pointless nattering about binomial distributions removed – Hue] … In 30 years of living in that house, there are roughly 3 chances in 1,000,000 of having that home flattened by the F4-F5 winds in a violent tornado. This is important, because for frame homes that are secured to their foundations, the chances of riding out (i.e. without serious injury or death) a tornado up to F3 intensity in an interior room of the home are pretty good … interior walls should still be standing. It is only in F4 and F5 tornadoes that avoiding becoming a casualty during a direct hit by a violent tornado when aboveground in an interior room (provided the home is reasonably well-constructed and secured to the foundation) becomes doubtful. Having a special shelter built into a new home to withstand violent tornado hits aboveground costs about $1000-$3000. Retrofitting such a shelter into an existing home would be more expensive. Assuming it’s possible to build a below-ground tornado shelter near the home, it probably would be cost roughly $1000-$3000, as well. Given the low odds of experiencing a violent tornado, it is not obvious how to make the decision to have or not to have a tornado shelter built. The decision has to be a personal one. Peace of mind might be worth something to you, even though the odds of actually experiencing the violent winds in a violent tornado are pretty tiny.

There might be local “tornado alleys” or other factors where the chances might increase by as much as another 2-3 orders of magnitude, although there is no objective evidence for this at the moment. If over the 30-year lifetime of your house, you had about 3 chances in 10,000 of having your home wiped off the foundation by a violent tornado, would you buy a shelter then? What about with 3 chances in 1000?

I’ll not pretend this is anything like a full analysis, for which I’d want to consider subjects such as structure survivability comparisons of the two materials, climate change gas emission comparisons, and how well home replacement insurance stacks up against climate change gas emissions.  But it’s an interesting start, as is the paper.

Yes, a little bit of a giggle, a little bit of shame. Not a great deal. On Lawfare Michael Adams comments on the very serious topic of a 2015 data breach:

The Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”) data breach involves the greatest theft of sensitive personnel data in history. But, to date, neither the scope nor scale of the breach, nor its significance, nor the inadequate and even self-defeating response has been fully aired.

And it’s filled with good information and opinions, which I’d expect from a Lawfare contributor. So it’s a little jarring to run across this:

Although the theft of fingerprint data has been widely reported, there is still another critical component of the adjudication dataset that has been largely overlooked. Certain types of security clearances require the individual to pass a polygraph examination, which can be extraordinarily intrusive and far exceed the subject matter of an SF-86. One former U.S. official noted that “a polygrapher once asked if he’d ever practiced bestiality.” Another said that “he was asked about what contacts he’d had with journalists, including in a social setting. All of the data collected during a polygraph is part of the adjudication data set. While we do not know where and how the full set of polygraph data is stored, adjudication data does include at least some polygraph information and officials have confirmed some polygraph data is shared with OPM.

I would expect Mr. Adams to be a trifle more sophisticated. Polygraph tests, despite their highly questionable use by government agencies, do not have a history of success. Skeptical Inquirer has published a number of articles on the subject (most are offline, unfortunately), referencing academic studies indicating a failure rate in excess of 50%. They do have a recent press release here:

… Morton E. Tavel of the Indiana University School of Medicine lays out a sobering case for its outright abandonment by law enforcement. He cites studies in which nearly half of subjects are falsely judged to be dishonest and points out the lack of any studies that show lying can be linked to any measurable emotional response.

Considering the impact the perception of having lied to law enforcement can have on a person’s life, be it legal jeopardy or social stigma, Tavel asks, “How can we, as a society, react to such a perversion of science? The logical solution is to completely abandon this method of testing.”

Also weighing heavily on our criminal justice system is its reliance on the human memory, something that cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown is troublingly malleable. In her address to Goldsmiths College at the University of London, reprinted in Skeptical Inquirer, Loftus explains how entire events can be implanted into people’s minds through such pseudoscientific means as “recovered memory therapy,” making them believe they have had experiences that never occurred, such as abuse by relatives or having been in a Satanic cult, “accusations that can cause untold misery for innocent people and their families.”

And there’s this gem from Alan P. Zelicoff (M.D. and Ph.D. in Physics, according to SI’s biography) in the 2001 July / August edition of Skeptical Inquirer:

The secret of the polygraph-the polygraphers’ own shameless deception-is that their machine is no more capable of assessing truth telling than were the priests of ancient Rome standing knee-deep in chicken parts. Nonetheless, the polygrapher tries to persuade the unwitting subject that their measurements indicate when a lie is being told. The subject, nervously strapped in a chair, is often convinced by the aura surrounding this cheap parlor trick, and is then putty in the hands of the polygrapher, who launches into an intrusive, illegal, and wide-ranging inquisition. The subject is told, from time to time, that the machine is indicating “deception” (it isn’t, of course), and he is continuously urged to “clarify” his answers, by providing more and more personal information. At some point (it’s completely arbitrary and up to the judgment of the polygrapher), the test is stopped and the polygrapher renders a subjective assessment of “deceptive response.” Even J. Edgar Hoover knew this was senseless. He banned the polygraph test from within the ranks of the FBI as a waste of time.

Much like the fallacious case for torture: the process does not guarantee true information. Indeed, it discourages it from the most interesting targets, those who know they may be subjected to it. I cannot help but wonder if, in both cases, it’s really about making the users of the process feel like they’re doing something. Alan continues,

The truth is this: The polygraph is a ruse, carefully constructed as a tool of intimidation, and used as an excuse to conduct an illegal inquisition under psychologically and physically unpleasant circumstances. Spies know how to beat it, and no court in the land permits submission of polygraphs, even to exonerate the accused.

So I’m a little ashamed, because Mr. Adams is making great points about an important subject, but I’m laughing because here’s a simple fact of the matter: whoever broke into that database is now dealing with a shitload of polygraph data. Of data of extremely dubious usefulness. Someone or some entity put themselves at risk to suck up data from a technology which never passed an academic analysis and failed many.

And do they even know it?

It’s great schadenfreude. Hell, if they know that some of the data might be bad, then they have to ask if the rest of the data is of similar quality. There’s a qualitative difference between simple data like credit card information, and fuzzy information such as that collected with a polygraph – or means that are similar, such as, say, surveillance, where truth values may not be entirely clear. I know I’d be nervous if I was the project leader. The implication of intellectual lack of discipline on the part of my target would taint all the data, ruining its future usefulness for the circumspect. Only the bold would be willing to use it…

Really, my life is not a cascade of fiascos – it’s just one of those weeks.

Our beautiful black long-haired cat, Mischief, has come down with an aggressive carcinoma in her lungs and chest, which will probably kill her, according to the vets at Blue Pearl (described by a former vet tech friend as “the Mayo of veterinarians”). They tried to surgically remove the tumors, but they were too well entrenched, and proved inoperable. A call just a few minutes ago suggested a possible chemotherapy approach, but that’s for a different story…

So, fiasco, part 1: my beautiful long hair black princess of a kitty has this … bare spot on her flank.

Just for fair and balanced reporting, I present an opposing view:

We brought her home from the surgery this last Tuesday, along with a clutch of pain meds, and we stayed up with her for part of the night, but eventually we did go to bed. The next morning it was time for her first med. She was entrenched in her traditional resting place, which is on top of some of my Art Editor’s artwork underneath the pool table in the basement (you can see parts of it, above). Thus, we hauled out the artwork, grabbed her, and unceremoniously squirted her mouth with the med.

An hour later, it was time to give her a second med. Alas! She had disappeared!

Eight hours later, she was Still Missing. We knew she wasn’t outside, and we were afraid she was hiding in the ceiling of the basement. Our two original cats (Mischief and Mayhem) access the ceiling in several ways, but their favorite is a hole in the wall of the laundry room, since patched:

The white square is foam core now covering the hole. The shelf is reached via washing machine, so our freshly stitched kitty attained security in 3 pretty large jumps.

Indeed, we did eventually discover her in the ceiling – by first hearing her wheezing pathetically.  We verified her presence by ripping down some of the paneling visible above, but could not reach her from our small access port.

Then came Phase II: Recovery.

It didn’t go well.

Six hours of requests, begging, calling, waving tuna fumes in her direction, poking with a tape measure (quite gently), and the occasional frustrated screech could not dislodge her from the top of the (warm) vents upon which she was resting or entice her to any opening.  We pulled down more paneling, sawed holes in the sheet rock and unscrewed ceiling access panels, but we were never able to reach her.

Finally, the basement in a shambles and with horrid visions of having to retrieve her body from the ceiling in a few days, I halted my proceedings, and left a light on in the basement for her.  I went upstairs exhausted and frustrated, and drowsed on the couch as a rerun of Family Guy played on the TV.  At midnight, deep in depression, I fell asleep.  Startled suddenly awake, I heard Deb hiss at me:

“Hue! Look!”

Mischief was sauntering across the living room, with nary a cobweb in sight (Deb & I were filthy by comparison).  She walked right across to Deb, jumped into the chair, and settled in her lap.

So, fiasco part 2: Two adult humans are defeated by a partially bald, very ill, elderly small cat, who, having achieved her aims, finally comes out to applause and adoration.

Sheesh.

Deb transferred our little furry fink to me, then spent the next hour boarding up all the access points in the ceiling so that, hopefully, we don’t have to repeat this process ever again.

Lloyd Alter @ TreeHugger.com presents the arguments for building with wood  in one long, persuasive presentation:

But the real breakthrough for tall wood was the timber apartment building designed by Waugh Thistleton architects and built out of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) in 2007. At the time the nine storey building was the tallest residential tower in the world. It was assembled in nine weeks by four workers with less dust, disruption, and a far lower carbon footprint.

This is the building that put Cross-Laminated Timber on the international map.

If I were thinking of building a home, I’d have a long conversation with the builders and architect about using wood.

FP Innovations

A reader contributes her recent fiasco:

While I was responding to a text from my father-in-law today, my husband texted me from Target to ask if I had thought of any additional items for him to pick up. I jokingly wrote, “How about some ribbed condoms, big guy?”

The condom text went to my father-in-law.

Wish I could see the look on my face when I realized what I’d done! All I remember is screaming, “Nooooooooooooooo!!!”

It has always been important to me to seek unconventional viewpoints. Before the Internet era, one of my favorite magazine subscriptions was to World Press Review (now known as WorldPress.org), which reprinted articles printed in newspapers and magazines world-wide – except those in the United States. Reason Magazine also fell into that category for a while, as did the venerable Whole Earth Review. So, too, did The Daily Dish, with Andrew Sullivan being a gay conservative Brit living in the United States. The fresh eye, not yet entrenched in the inevitable societal patterns, will see facets unremarked by the familiar eye, which may be banal or may give rise to exciting insight. A similar phenomenon comes in programming with the aphorism fresh eyes, which simply means bringing in someone unfamiliar with the code for a review.

And now a blog that is just going dormant has come to my attention, SaudiInIran, a blog written by a young Saudi woman who, until the recent tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, was living in Iran, studying the culture.  I haven’t had a lot of time to survey the blog, but this caught my attention:

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to negotiate myself into a zoorkhaneh. The term literally means ‘House of Strength’, and refers to an ancient Persian institution where athletes practice rigorous regiment training in a domed structure, a sort of traditional gymnasium (the zoorkhaneh). As a system of athletics originally intended to train warriors, it dates back to the Parthian era and is currently recognised by UNESCO as one of the world’s longest-running forms of such training. Although there were efforts to curb the sport, first during the modernisation campaigns of the Pahlavi era due to it being a ‘relic of the past’, and then shortly after the Islamic revolution due to its pre-Islamic origins, it is currently promoted as varzesh-e bastani (ancient sport) and is a symbol of Iranian culture and pride for many. In their contemporary form, zoorkhaneh rituals blend elements of pre-Islamic Persian culture (including Zoroastrianism and Mithraism) with the spirituality evident in Shi’a Islam and Sufism. While difficult to do it justice in words, the sport is ritualistic in essence and consists of a series of exercises combining martial arts, physical aptitude and special skills which are practiced against the backdrop of sacred poetry chanted by a musician, with drums and bells being sounded to mark the beginning of the different sections.

The balance of the entry is a wonderful view from the outside of a Persian institution of which I had never heard. I don’t know if the balance of the blog is as interesting, but if you like unusual viewpoints, Saudi In Iran may be worth your time.

AL Monitor presents an interview with the blogger, Sara Masry, here.

This is exactly the premise of her popular blog, A Saudi in Iran. Masry has written extensively about her various encounters with Iranians as a means to break Arab stereotypes of the country. “As the political scene got more and more tense over the past few years, I felt there’s just one narrative of Iran — and it’s mainly a political one. There’s no disconnect between political and human aspects … politics is one thing, but from my [Iranian] friends — the people I know — other things I see on social media is not how Iran is,” she said.

Masry said this view is mutual. In her telling, many Iranians see Saudi Arabia solely as a puritanical Wahhabist state. Confronting these mirroring stereotypes was what compelled her to move to Iran in the first place. “I felt going there would be the ultimate thing, to see it in person and actually live there and at the same time [see] how people react to me as a Saudi. Obviously there’s this whole thing between Saudi Arabia and Iran — or Arabs and Iranians. I felt like this is something that should be put to the test. I was really happy with the results that I got.” She added, “It’s very important that we tap into our common ground and stop viewing each as the ‘other.’”

The sanctions against Iran have been lifted, which makes it timely to consider their effects. While their purpose was to modify the behavior of Iran’s leaders, it’s worth considering unintended consequences, and to this point Abbas Edalat, professor of computer science in both London and Tehran, speaks in NewScientist’s (20 February 2016, paywall) One Minute Interview section:

What impact did sanctions have?

Ironically, virtually none on the government, but for many ordinary people they were devastating. Because the Iranian banking system was cut off from the rest of the world, vital medicines could not be paid for. A lot of cancer patients died. For a couple of decades, researchers couldn’t download software from the US or buy vital equipment. As sanctions deepened, they could not even pay for journal subscriptions. US researchers were barred from visiting or giving advice without permission, and a lot of Iranian researchers could not get visas to travel to the US or to Europe. It was very difficult to do any collaborative work.

And yet Iranian science seems in relatively rude health. How come?

Scientists in Iran took the view that failure was not an option. They would just try to get around the problems posed by sanctions – smuggling in the part they needed, building it themselves or devising ways to do without it. They innovated.

They innovated, which might be best considered as they evolved. Using the language of evolutionary biology, selection pressures were brought to bear on Iran, and they adapted to them.

Frankly, this had not occurred to me, but I presume most direct observers of Iran had noted it. But do our political leaders? We advocate for sanctions as a peaceful approach to stopping aggressive countries who do not share our ideology, but we never consider the possibility that a sanction may result in the development of a better technology than our own, in part or in total.

This seems to me to be an underappreciated risk of the strategy – and something to think about.

And don’r forget this guy.

The Big Heat (1953) has occupied a bit of our time of late, a Fritz Lang film starring Glenn Ford and Lee Marvin. Ford is a policeman faced with a nightmare situation, and we witness his reactions, his choices, and how those choices can damn a soul – or save it.

This is a dark bit of lightning in a bottle, featuring ordinary, yet memorable, characters faced with the problem of crime overcoming law and order, and what to do about it. It is a classic treatment in that, while horrid violence resulting in death or ugly scarring occurs, it is not emphasized as it is today; the important element is the influence the violence has on the lives connected to those afflicted, and the implications for society at large. The lessons have to do with greed and heedlessness and the chaos it inflicts on society.

Technically an astute movie as well, it’s hard to find anything to really criticize.  The dialog might have been better, but the plot specializes in the tension of choice, not in the question of who: we know, or can credibly guess, those responsible for the crimes, and their motivations. The tension comes from the decisions facing those who need to respond to the antagonists, and whether or not they are fit for their roles.

NASA Heliophysics (one of my favorite words, BTW) has released a video created from observations by the Solar Dynamics Observatory of the Sun at 171 angstroms.  About 3 minutes in, a researcher begins to explain what we’re seeing.  Fascinating, gorgeous stuff.

This also serves to remind me that one of the disappointments of the Obama Administration is their apparent lack of interest in space exploration.  For example, NewScientist (20 February 2016) is reporting the agency would suffer a funding cut under the latest (and last) proposed budget by the current administration, compared to Congress’ final provision last year.  Over at The Planetary Society, Casey Dreier gets into the details:

The President proposes to cut the space agency by roughly $260 million, down to $19.025 billion in 2017. On the plus side, this represents the highest-ever request from the Obama administration, representing a 2.7 percent increase over their 2016 request. That’s a step in the right direction, though NASA needs to grow, not shrink, if we want it to achieve the goals set out for it by the nation. …

Well, we’re five for five. This is the fifth year in a row that the White House has proposed cutting NASA’s Planetary Science Division.

While every other science division at NASA would receive a funding boost in this budget, Planetary Science, the year after flying by Pluto and confirming flowing water on Mars, earns a $110 million cut.

Now, credit where credit is due. The request is for $1.52 billion, which, compared to previous requests, is a marked improvement and very much a step in the right direction. We’ve been advocating for at least $1.5 billion for this program for years now, and it is satisfying to see this number reflected back in the President’s budget.

But the fact of the matter is that this program has been underfunded for years and needs to rebuild. Congress stepped up and provided $1.631 billion last year, and that number needs to continue to improve in order to position NASA for a spectacular decade of planetary exploration in the 2020s. As expected, most of the cut appears to impact the Europa mission (which would get about $50 million in 2017, down from $175 million in 2016). The Administration is sticking with its intent to launch in the late 2020s. The request tones down some of the optimistic planning for the Europa flyby mission set forth in last year’s budget. NASA runs the numbers to assume an Atlas V launch, not SLS, though SLS is very much under consideration.

This is not the first such disappointment.  Fortunately, Congress does tend to resolve the budget in NASA’s favor, not the Administration’s, although whether this is an honest belief that a stronger NASA is a national asset or simply a partisan reaction to the Obama Administration’s activities is not clear to me.  Which reminds me of Andrew Sullivan’s general commentary on Obama’s performance vs the GOP: Meep meep!  Perhaps this is precisely what they want to happen…

And here’s the ultimate aim of astronomy: beautiful pictures.

(h/t Tom Yulsman @ ImaGeo/Discover Magazine, who has some lovely information on his blog post.)

Steve Benen has been taking some delight in the antics of Senator Grassley, who represents our neighbors to the south, aka the good people of Iowa.  In particular, Senator Grassley, running for re-election this year, is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

But the GOP senator’s support for an unprecedented blockade against any Supreme Court nominee, sight unseen, has cast Grassley in an even less flattering light. The Iowa Republican, unable to defend his ridiculous antics, has become so embarrassed that last week he “raised a binder to cover his face before hurriedly retreating” from reporters on Capitol Hill with questions about his behavior.

But I’d like to say I’m 100% behind the good Senator’s actions regardless of what he does. Why?

If he reverses field and does begin a normal procedure for Obama’s nominee to replace the late Justice Scalia, then the people of Iowa will know that the Senator has proper respect for the Constitution and they can go on to evaluate him on his merits.

And if he does choose to indulge in this scandalous (is it too much to say illegal?) and unexplainable neglect of his Constitutional duties, the people of Iowa, in particular those of a conservative bent, will know his mind and can begin to choose his replacement, as I’m sure the vast majority of Iowans have nothing but the utmost respect for the Constitution and those servants of the people whose conduct is informed by the Constitution. While a Democratic replacement might be considered to be a good lesson to the GOP, in truth I merely desire a Senator beholden to no covert personality (as it appears most of current GOP Senators have become), who properly respects the Constitution, and is dedicated to proper governance, and not to the current bout of game-playing and incompetence to which we are currently witness.

So who and when decided two spaces after a period is no longer acceptable? All of a sudden I have to edit my posts to remove any double spaces or the formatting potentially goes to hell. This is seriously annoying.

On this thread, I joined Andrew Sullivan in worrying about the effect of the commercial world on the content of Internet publications, and now a couple of more developments come to light.

First, ptressel @ The Daily Kos reports on the demise of Al Jazeera America, starting with this great contrast:

When other news outlets were obsessed with Football! or Oscars! or political horserace!, AJAM was writing about lack of police training in dealing with the mentally ill, or that that PTSD and depression is driving an epidemic of suicide among firefighters (to pick just two recent stories).  If you read the Overnight News Digest diaries, you’ve seen AJAM stories there frequently.

AJAM is closing for financial reasons:

Great journalism doesn’t always draw a big audience. That’s what happened here at Al Jazeera America (AJAM), where superb reporting, bolstered by a first-rate opinion section, found a following, just not one big enough to interest major advertisers.

— David Cay Johnston, The way news should be done

And he continues from a broader viewpoint:

Independent news organizations are hurting across the board. The problem is not a bad economy, it’s not the 1%…it’s the Internet that’s the culprit, and our penchant for free content. We’ve gotten used to advertiser-supported, non-subscription content — we watch shows on YouTube, we read our monthly allotment of free NYT articles, we ignore content behind paywalls, or look for someone to copy it out and repost it. But purely ad supported content isn’t paying the bills for real journalism. So what we get instead is infotainment, scandal, shock-value — we get what sells ads.

I think this is a great point, and I know that, while I subscribe to a number of magazines, I do not currently subscribe to any online-only content¹, instead depending on free articles and using up monthly free allotments. There’s nothing precisely wrong with such an approach, but, as ptressel points out, it turns out there are long-term consequences to the current dominant content model of the Internet.

In contrast, recall Stewart Brand’s assertion

Information wants to be free!

While the original context was somewhat different, the phrase enjoyed a brief period of great popularity amongst the technorati. but has since faded (or at least in my perception). The problem is that production of information can be a costly business. The original context of Mr. Brand’s slogan had to do with scientific information², wherein scientific journals can be a costly investment; the Internet offers a way to lower the cost. Similar arguments apply to information outside the scientific realm. But we’re seeing the downside of this claim: the contamination of information with commercial interests, where the accuracy of the information becomes a secondary consideration to the private interests of the sponsors. (The sponsors need not be commercial, but can come from other sectors as well.)

Second, in the previous post on this thread, Science was reported to have mixed sponsored content with real content. Now this is happening at another online publication, Treehugger.com. I observed this just a day or two ago, but I had not been at the website for a while. They are intermixing commercial advertising with the links to their articles. True, each commercial link is clearly marked with a small, green “SPONSORED”, but these advertisements are intermixed with the standard TreeHugger content. In a very visual manner, they are breaking the old newspaper rule about separating editorial content from advertiser influence, and while maybe the reader should be on their toes when reading any website, I still find it jarring that a website with an explicit purpose of doing good is not properly segregating commercial articles from the important content of the website.

Stay tuned as the parsimony of the typical Internet user continues to influence the information we seek and – sometimes – find.

¹I did subscribe to Andrew Sullivan’s now-dormant The Dish. Andrew indicated in public postings that they thought their model was working, but there was a dependency – explicit – on Andrew’s personality/temperament as an important draw for subscribers, and when his health fell apart, the model did as well. Which is not to condemn the approach – simply be aware that the model, like most, has its weaknesses.

²NewScientist (20 February 2016) reports that Sci-Hub.io

… claims to have 48 million journal papers, and that its mission is to “remove all barriers in the way of science”. It was set up in 2011 by researcher Alexandra Elbakyan, thought to be based in Russia, after she couldn’t afford papers behind paywalls.