Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Once again, Republican pollster Frank Luntz is investigating the Trump phenomenon:

Over three hours Wednesday in Alexandria, Luntz lobbed dozens of Trump-seeking missiles. All 29 in the group had voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. All either supported Trump or had supported him earlier in the year. To Luntz’s amazement, hearing negative information about the candidate made the voters, only a few of whom gave their full names to the press, hug the candidate tighter.

“Normally, if I did this for a campaign, I’d have destroyed the candidate by this point,” Luntz told a group of reporters when the session ended. “After three hours of showing that stuff?”

With only two exceptions, the three hours of messaging, venting and friendly arguments revealed the roots of Trump’s support. Participants derided the mainstream media, accusing reporters of covering snippets of Trump quotes when the full context would have validated him. They cited news sources they trusted — Breitbart News was one example — to refute what they were being told.

“You know what Trump does?” said Teresa Collier, a 65-year-old retiree. “He says something completely crazy, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God!’ Then he dials back and starts explaining it and saying how he’d do it, and it makes sense.”

And Trump continues to lead:

Beating back the competition using an array of supporters who prefer to believe in their preconceptions to the point of disbelieving standard sources of information.  He appears to have a hard core of supporters who are best described as fringe occupants.

But, unlike Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, his lead is only relatively commanding against his melange of challengers.  The current polling numbers in Iowa are a somewhat different story, as a Monmouth University poll reveals likely GOP voters in Iowa favor Cruz, 24% to 19% for Trump.

So we’ve watched as the Republican rivals, with two exceptions, have remained in the race despite highly disappointing numbers.  Steve Benen, commenting on the Luntz story, may have stumbled across the reason why they’ve stuck around despite the hurdles they’ve yet to traverse:

Collect enough voters who’ve lost their favorite, and you catch up with Trump.  The successful strategy will, of course, involve money, along with the preservation of capital until a sizable number of your rivals have dropped out and then you try to collect them.  In the meantime, you must be their second or third choice, emphasizing your qualifications, while you hold your breath and suck up to your sponsors donors.  Communication skills will be critical, in some cases to clarify your achievements, and in others to obscure your lack of qualifications.  In the former camp might be governors Bush and Christie, while in the latter camp might be Cruz and Rubio, neither of which have achievements, merely ideology.  It is my personal belief that ideology is not the same as achievements or competency.  Whether that’s true for GOP voters is unclear.

In other news, both Trump and Carson have insinuated that they may leave the GOP if any ‘dirty tricks’ keep them from winning the nomination.  Does the GOP risk losing perhaps 30% of their base as they realize the leadership will do what’s necessary to save the party from a bad nominee?  Is the GOP in a no-win position?  They may be better served by letting the nomination process go its natural route and endorsing the winner – and thus their candidates for other offices will stand a good chance of winning.  But if 30% of their base stays home out of despair at the treason of the leadership, it could lead to quite the trouncing of the Republicans.

Last weekend we watched ZOOLANDER (2001), a movie reminiscent of the cult favorite THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984), which spoofed rock and roll with a rock group which existed only to be be a rock group.  In Zoolander, Ben Stiller and his proud papa, as well as a number of other famous comedians and members of the fashion industry bring to the screen the life of Derek Zoolander, he of the perfect facial structure and amazing walk, not to mention a level of narcissism not seen since, well, since Metamorphoses .  He and Owen Wilson bring their spoofs to near perfection even as they try to understand the motivations of a mysterious designer and why Derek doesn’t remember his week at the man’s spa.

It is incredibly trite, and that is part of the charm.  You don’t watch this movie to learn how to navigate the ways of celebrity, or fashion, or for that matter how to be a father to the perfect boy.  You simply watch it to see how Ben & Co will next ridicule an industry which, quite likely, was ripe for ridicule in any case.  They saw the grapes, and sensed they were good; out came the scythe, and the harvesting, all so important, began.  It’s worth a gander, especially if you’re inclined towards pairing a fine wine with your movies.  This might be worthy of a Reisling: bright and sunny, with many fruity flavors.  A darker red might bring too much gravitas to a movie too flighty and ridiculous to credibly sustain it.

Being an American.  It’s more than simply existing at a location, or a set of parents, a collection of advantages, or even hatreds for received insults.  It’s a concept, an experiment, and a revulsion at the old ways of governing and conducting the entire business of running a society.  It’s a responsibility for understanding, honoring, and implementing our underlying principles.

The most important of those principles is mutual respect for diversity of religion.  We may have strong opinions on matters concerning the divine, but we should remember that which led to the formation of this Nation, the incredibly strong emotions evidenced in France, in Spain, and, most importantly for this nation, in England¹, in the matters of which version of Christianity should be followed.  We need to remember the mistrust, the terrible hatreds, the killings, the burnings – all between nominally Christian people.

When our forefathers came together to design the new government and society, one of their gravest concerns was to avoid such abhorrent disturbances in civil society, and to that end they designed a government which insensitive to the delicate matters of religion: a secular government, not permitted to favor or despise any particular sect.

It was a new path to follow, and it has served us well – when we’ve honored it.  But as a principle, it’s also a test of us – are we good Americans?  Do we understand the hows and whys of this wonderful principle?

Tonight, in the wake of the grim tragedy in San Bernardino, CA, I will name three people who are alike in their abject failure to pass this test, their lack of understanding of the importance of this principle in our success – and how this has created failure at the most fundamental parts of their lives.  Two have cemented their failure, their unworthiness, beyond all redemption, by committing final atrocities against their fellows: Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik.  They, like white supremacists, slavers, and various others who hate their fellow man for trivial reasons, condemn themselves.  Little more need to be said for these criminals.

But such accusations need not be leveled at out and out criminals, and in that vein, I believe Donald Trump also fails this most basic tests of being an American.  He calls for suspicion of Americans, born and naturalized, of a certain flavor of religiosity, his words inflame the opinions of those who listen him to unjust, intemperate actions, and then he tries to defend himself with mere implications, not facts. For a citizen who wishes to lay claim to the lead position in the Nation, he needs to be an embodiment of the principles we enshrine and follow in hopes of a peaceful, successful society; his abandonment of this principle, thrust aside as if it were some superfluous undershirt, unnecessary as he digs that ditch, very much clarifies his unworthiness to assume the Presidency.

This American test.  It’s a hard one.  Thrusting away the distrust, the fear, it’s quite against fundamental nature to hug that neighbor from across the street, across the cultural divide, across the divine abyss.  Yet, that’s what Americans, at their best, do.  And it’s something Mr. Trump has yet to learn to do.

¹See In God We Trust vs. E Pluribus Unum.

Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog steps up to explain that the ACA is not costing 2 million jobs – it’s just enabling worker mobility:

Nearly two years ago, the CBO initially found that, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, in the coming years, many Americans will be able to leave their full-time jobs – by choice – because of the available benefits.

Much of the media interpreted this as evidence of the ACA hurting job creation and causing mass layoffs, but that isn’t what the findings said at all. In fact, this was good news for the reform law, not bad – we’re talking about a feature, not a bug.

One of the purposes of “Obamacare” is to help end something called “job lock.” The phrase describes a dynamic in which many Americans would like to leave their current jobs – to retire, to start a new business, whatever – but can’t because they and their families need the health benefits tied to their current job.

He notes that the GOP lawmakers are using this as evidence of the vast disruption ACA is causing the economy.  Well, in a sense, they’re right – when a worker leaves a job, that means the employer has to hire and, possibly, train a new worker.  The company is disrupted.

But, in the end, it’s a good thing as this also enables some folks to retire early – thus opening up jobs for those on the hunt.  It just all depends on who you are – an employer, an employee – or a government worker tasked with getting that pesky unemployment rate down.

Steve’s source is The Hill, which I take to be deliberately misrepresenting the truth.  Here’s the relevant outtake:

ObamaCare will force a reduction in American work hours — the equivalent of 2 million jobs over the next decade, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper said Monday.

The total workforce will shrink by just under 1 percent as a result of changes in worker participation because of the new coverage expansions, mandates and changes in tax rates, according to a 22-page report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The first paragraph explicitly claims ACA will enforce a reduction in work hours, while the second, while sounding like an elucidation, is actually quite different – it cleverly tries to make voluntary, desirable activities enabled by ACA seem like an inevitable, awful consequence.  As Steve notes, workers will retire earlier, with more stability and confidence in their future, or they will change jobs, following such urges as fewer hours, more risk, or whatever else will motivate them – and thus making room for other workers in the ranks.  One paragraph references total work hours, while the other references the size of the work force.

It’s a semantic shell game designed to suck in the uncareful reader.

Finland is reportedly considering taking a step towards UBI.  From CNN/Money:

The Finnish government, elected earlier this year, is planning to introduce a tax-free monthly payment of 800 euros ($865) to all adult Finns, regardless of income, wealth or employment status. The payment would replace most other state benefits.

The government thinks that the move will actually save money. Finland’s welfare system is very complex and expensive to run, and the government hopes that simplifying it could reduce costly bureaucracy.

It also argues that the change may encourage more people to look for work. About 9.5% of Finns are currently out of work — the highest rate in more than a decade — and the government believes some people are deterred from working because they’re better off on unemployment benefit than accepting a minimum wage job.

Tim Worstall at Forbes.com approves:

From the right it gets rid of the thing we worry most about welfare: the immense tax and benefit withdrawal rate that makes poor people not desire (because they are rational in the face of 60 and 70% tax rates) to increase their incomes. And from the left it actually increases workers’ bargaining power without, of course, needing those potentially self-interested unions standing in the middle. If you can live, just, without working, then the boss’ power over you is vastly reduced. Another way of putting this is that reservation wages rise–the amount you have to be offered to go to work rises.

This will, of course, reduce inequality. The big problem has always been that while in theory it works no one has ever really tried it. Now someone is: the Finns. So, we all get to see whether it really is the deus ex machina that theory states it is.

My best guess is that it is and that we should all be adopting it. But given that someone else is doing it, perhaps not just yet. Let’s actually be scientists about this, observe what happens and only if it works, as I’m sure it will, do we adopt it.

Abolish the entire welfare system in its totality and just give every citizen just enough to scrape by each month. Why not? We’re a rich country, we can do this. After someone else has proven that it works of course.

Dylan Matthews @ vox.com may have a more comprehensive look:

Ideally, Kangas told me, he’d like to take several different kinds of samples. In the scientifically ideal research setting, there would be a national lottery so he gets a representative random sample of Finns across the country who’ll receive a basic income. But he also wants to do regional lotteries that are regionally representative, and then lotteries confined to large towns. He also wants there to be some smaller municipalities that have a large portion of their populations (30 percent, say) get checks. In the PowerPoint, he suggests that in a couple of districts 100 percent of households could get checks.

The idea is to see what happens to a community under a basic income, rather than just to individual people. Having a whole town get benefits could have cascading effects as households escape poverty, as some people use the income guarantee as insurance so they can take risks and form companies, as universities see increased enrollment from people better able to afford supplies, etc. “If people in a smaller area are getting the benefits, their behavior vis-a-vis other people will change, employers and employees will change their behavior, encounters between clients and their street-level bureaucrats (social workers, employment offices, etc.) will change, and the interplay between different bureaucracies will change,” Kangas says.

There is a basic tension between the American tradition of everyone taking care of themselves, and the older societal imperative of sticking together and taking care of all the members, sick and healthy, young and old.  It’ll be interesting to see how the basic American suspicion that everyone is on the take plays out if Finland’s trial is considered a success and they decide go all in.

While listening to a Minnesota Public Radio discussion today on anti-bacterial drugs (no link available, but it was the Kerri Miller show) (the bad news: new antibiotics are not under development) (the badder news: antibiotics of last resort are becoming ineffective against drug-resistant bugs), it occurred to me that the invasion of private sector practices into the health sector has somewhat twisted the purpose of the health sector.

To an extent, it’s inevitable, because the health sector has a dependency on two elements: process, the procedures used by medical personnel to diagnose and treat patients; and things, such as drugs, surgical tools, and the like.  The latter class could be supplied by entities entirely within the health sector, but they are not.  This is a mixed bag: entities not subject to market forces are not forced to develop efficient procedures with respect, and for those talented individuals motivated by wealth might not choose to provide their talents to such an entity, to the communal loss of the patients.  But the impingement and, perhaps more accurately, dominance of private sector practices with respect to the development and delivery of medicine has its well known deleterious effects: the sudden hiking of the price for Daraprim, and the lack of interest in developing new antibiotics are two of the most obvious problems; less salient, yet perhaps more important, is the perception of a sizable portion of non-medical personnel that the medical community really only exists to parasitize the citizenry while the citizens are blind to a cornucopia of simple cures for all sorts of problems, from carrot juice to acupuncture.  This latter point induces ill persons to waste critical time on homeopathy and other failed approaches, all the while convinced the people most able to help them really only wish to relieve them of their cash.  Such is the bane of a culture dominated by the superstition and ignorance.

But there is worse news descending from this dilution of the medical sector’s operationalities: the marketing of drugs to the general citizenry, the suggestion that drugs are necessary even for minor ailments, is exerting an evolutionary pressure on the pathogens, and they are responding by becoming immune to the drugs of the day – and, as noted, because it’s not profitable to develop antibiotics, we do not have a new generation in the pipeline.

Because we are a social species (or so I’m told), communicable illness doesn’t affect just the guy across town, or the kid in Altoona – but all of us, potentially.  We’re not islands, nor can we control the communications medium of pathogens all that easily in many cases – and even those we think we have under control can prove slippery.  But the activities of the private sector ignore or even contradict these realities of the medical sector – each person’s individuality is sought out, their separateness from others, and their capacity to spend the fruits of their labors on the things produced by the private sector.

In contexts where these assumptions are true, the private sector does an admirable job of fulfilling its function.  But when it dominates an area where these assumptions are not true, then we see tension.  Pollution control is a common example; the examples from the medical sector are not as familiar, to which we may need to adjust – perhaps by rescinding the FDA decision permitting direct to consumer advertising (DTCA)¹ by drug companies.  No doubt more compromises and/or approaches will be necessary, as we explore how to make these two sectors work together to efficiently treat the citizens’ health.

Because, without recognizing these differences, we will continue to see the supply of drugs become uneven and, possibly, dangerous to our very health.  Private sector advocates will claim the demand for these drugs will result in their supply, yet the reality contradicts them; nor are they simply widgets to be built, but the results of research (which reminds me of yet another tension, wherein business people want reliable schedules, while folks who are actively researching, whether it be biomedical or, in my case, just developing new software, can find it difficult to hit a schedule while maintaining quality).  Yet, this is not to advocate that the medical industry take over development of drugs and devices on some sort of non-profit basis.  It’s not clear to me how to crack this nut.

¹ See this publication from Milbank Quarterly for a scholarly look at the issue.  The suggestion of a difference between patients and consumers highlight the problems of using a sector’s terminology in another sector, as it brings expectations that are not necessarily appropriate.  A similar discussion of the difference between students and consumers has been on my mind of late.

Lloyd Alter @ Treehugger.com writes approvingly of an out of date idea – the window tax:

Writing in the Financial Times, Tim Harford, AKA “the Undercover Economist” describes the English tax, introduced in 1696 and lasting until 1851, that was charged on the number of windows in a home, unlike the property taxes of today that are based on value of the property.

The details of the tax varied across the centuries but with the broad theme that the more windows your house had, the more tax you had to pay. At first glance, the tax seems clever, even brilliant. Rich people had larger houses, and so paid more tax. Windows are easy to count from outside the premises, so the tax was easy to assess. Poor people didn’t own large houses, so they weren’t affected by the tax. And the number of windows in a house doesn’t change, so the tax was impossible to avoid.

And it is brilliant. Dare I say that like the windows, it is totally transparent- everyone can see it, if you have a window (which is a big energy hole in the wall) you pay the tax. But Harford says it was “wrong, wrong, wrong” because people adapted their houses accordingly reducing their tax.

There are a couple of problems here:

1. Humans are not nocturnal – we need sunlight in order to be healthy, and while it may be convenient to suggest we should all be outside as much as possible, that’s not going to cut it in the real world.  Those of us with SAD are in particular trouble, and using special UV lighting when a window could bring in the same light without the associated electric bill seems … ungreen.
2. Using the taxation system for social engineering has a long history of going awry and engendering resentment in the populace.
3. The taxation system exists to provide funding to the government sector, and a predictable fund flow is important for planning purposes.  As Harford notes, folks adapted – and the flow of funds dried up.
4. Such a blunt taxation instrument ignores, and even discourages, innovation that could render windows much less of an energy drain.  For example, this solar advance [add link] might prove to render the energy cost of windows trivial, or even negative.

As a historical note, it’s in the same class as taxing closets – an interesting look into the minds of folks from centuries ago.  But I find the argument to return it to be unconvincing.

So tonight, as we drove home, we passed the frontage of our home and admired my Art Editor’s efforts:

I then, of course, had to disrupt her critique by suggesting the tree was “unsupported”, by which I meant, but failed to elucidate, that further house adornments might be in order to further enhance her efforts.  But she, puzzled, asked why she should lash the tree to the house, for wasn’t its current support system adequate to the effort?

Ah, to lash, to hold tight, to steer yon ship into the teeth of the hurricane by dint of lashing the old wooden wheel into place and not allow the ship to heel over in the grip of the wild wind; worse yet, there are darker nuances of meaning to be found and measured, and those are what really came to mind: the vengeful Captain Ahab of the Pequod, notorious for lashing his crew onward in their relentless harvest of whale-kind as he pursued his private war against the greatest of the leviathans, in the end finds himself lashed to the white devil itself as it readies itself to become the vessel of his doom in a great depth-sounding dive in the last pages of Moby Dick….

So, ah, does anyone know where to find blow up effigies of white whales, suitable for positioning in the garden below our Christmas Tree, ready to take its revenge on this cousin to the wood composing the Pequod?

The Importance of Categorization

Of course, if you’re not accustomed to categorizing entities, you may question it’s worth.  Let me try to address this important question in the context of society (with an American bias) and how it compels certain conclusions.

In general, the process of categorization consists of the identification of certain characteristics of entities that are considered critical to understanding the behavior of those entities.  The differentiation of those entities on those characteristics will dictate final differences or similarities, depending on their selection.  When classifying living organisms, scientists use the similarity of differences on certain characteristics, such as being warm blooded, to infer common ancestors on the evolutionary tree, which in turn will have consequences for important biological and behavioral differences – such as sluggishness, or not, in cold weather.  Or possible vulnerability to certain poisons.

In the context of human society, it’s common to talk about sectors such as health, education, business, government, and others, and we can categorize activities according to the context in which they primarily occur.  Each sector has a purpose, which serves as the primary (and perhaps only) differentiation point for each sector: health for improving the individual and collective health of society, education for improving the knowledge base and thinking capabilities of individuals, etc.

Now, how is this useful?  Once we understand that activities are primarily part of one category by virtue of their use in the operationality of that sector, we can also clearly understand this very important point: activities are naturally oriented in purpose and operationality to support the purpose of their category or sector.  If they were not, then their efficiency in contributing to the accomplishment of the overall purpose would be compromised; in fact, we often see activities “optimized” in order to improve their usefulness in just such a pursuit.

From the point that sector’s do not share immediate purposes, since that’s their point of differentiation, we may draw the conclusion that activities optimized for one sector’s purposes are not necesssarily optimized for another’s.  Furthermore, it’s just as reasonable to assume the members of one sector, regardless of their success, are not to be regarded as equally qualified in another sector without proof; indeed, they most probably are not.

A contemporary example would be to refuse to attribute such competencies to Donald Trump; his business sector success has little predictive power to his competencies in the government sector, nor to his proposed policies in same.   Which is not to suggest that it cannot occur.  George Romney, CEO of American Motors Corp, was also a popular governor of Michigan in the 1960s, if one may take popularity as a fair proxy for success in the governmental realm.

But the real point is that the individual must prove themselves in a transition from one sector to another, and both candidates and the voting citizenry must be aware the processes of one sector may not be appropriate to the purposes of another sector.  Thus, the ongoing proposals for the privatization of certain governmental functions, such as prisons (discussion starting here, ending here), should be viewed with the great suspicion and with the application of the points above.

It appears business continues to take climate change more and more seriously.  Bloomberg Business, a publication, has opened a fascinating site covering the problem.  Simply by scrolling down the page, information ranging from real-time (estimated) to historical is presented to you, illustrating the problem.  All you have to do is trust that a horde of scientists are measuring carbon levels in the atmosphere properly, and trust that experiments that show carbon dioxide and methane contribute to the heating of the atmosphere, repeatable for those who know science, to realize that there is a problem.

And, for business folks, this is important.  Most business folks are narrow focus on the creation, marketing, and selling of products of various sorts.  The product is typically, if not always, a tangible thing they can touch, smell, and see.  This is in contrast to the by-products of the manufacture, which if not always invisible, can always be herded off and disposed of into the vastness of Nature.

Or so was the historical narrative; today, there is little vastness left as we continue to breed and improve medicine.

(Source: Wikipedia)

But this is not consonant with the historical narrative, so unless the business’ owners and manager have some serious moral/ethical chops (often seen from left-leaning business people), they tend to be ignorant, ignore, or even deny the damage done to Nature – and, distant in time, but certain to happen, to themselves and their successors.  Progeny, if you like.  But the social costs of externalities such as pollution go up as a function of population density of the affected area.  At some point, these external costs outweigh the worth of the product; this represents a business failure, and hence the frantic denials by some entities such as the Western Energy Alliance.

In this vein, Sami Grover @ Treehugger.com reports that Unilever, the third largest consumer goods company in the world, is making significant positive moves in this arena:

Take Unilever, for instance, which has just pledged to achieve 100% renewable energy (not just electricity!) across all its operations by 2030 and become “carbon positive” by the same date—meaning the company is responsible for more emissions cuts/sequestration than it is emissions. Significantly, that pledge also includes nearer term goals like phasing out coal and buying all grid-sourced electricity from 100% renewable sources by 2020.

This level of commitment is significant on several levels. Firstly, Unilever is leveraging its own emissions cuts to demand more ambitious political action too. And rightly or wrongly, when corporations talk, governments tend to listen. (Unilever is by no means the only corporate giants demanding a strong Paris deal.) Secondly, the sheer size of Unilever (2013 revenue was €49.797 billion) means that any commitment to phase out coal and buy only renewable energy will send an important signal to utilities, to financial markets, and to regional governments too. If you want to do business with Unilever, you’d better be planning on creating a clean energy future. Lastly, Unilever is couching its efforts in terms of immediate and medium-term change—not some far off goal that can be easily discounted once the current crop of executives retire.

(h/t Michael Graham Richard @ Treehugger.com for the new Bloomberg site)

I’ve been meaning to get back to the subject of societal categorization (starts here, previous here), but time constraints, etc.  An article by Zachary Slayback, published on LinkedIn, caught my attention, however, with a title which rather summarizes the problem from my point of view: “It’s Time To Admit College Is Driven By Speculation — Not Investment.”

The unspoken assumption is not that the private sector (as defined here) has primacy, but that it has become the only viewpoint from which activity is to be evaluated.  Right from the get-go:

One of the most popular tropes among career advisors, guidance counselors, school officials, and college recruiters today is that going to college is an investment. As more and more options for work experience and education outside of the higher education cartel crop up, those pushing the college option on young people are forced to fall back on telling the young that, though it may look costly now, it will pay off in the future. Like their Housing Crisis predecessors, they urge young people to take on the seemingly-unimaginable cost with some statistics and graphics showing that, in the recent past, a college degree pays for itself over a lifetime.

Sounds like he’s on the right track, doesn’t it?

It’s time that we admit that this isn’t the case.

The “it’s an investment!” strategy of sending young people to universities is one of the last options available to those urging people to take on this stodgy, quickly-outdated, and inefficient way to build the life that they want. If anything, this idea that it will pay off in the long run is mere speculation, not investment.

By retaining the language and thought patterns of the private sector, he cedes the entirety of society to the private sector, even though much of society is ill-suited to the operations of the private sector.  Education should be desirable and celebrated because of how it improves society in so many ways – not just because it may make you more money.

(Says the guy who went into Computer Science because he didn’t want to live under an overpass.)

Many students attend college to get a good job without asking why they are going in the first place, what kind of job they want to have, what kind of life they want to live, and what they want to make of themselves. They think in general terms. This applies to their spending and saving habits once they get out of college. Why should they save now? The money has always been there for them, they can get loans to go to college, buy a house, get a car, etc.

This leads people to speculate not only with their educations but with their careers, too. Speculating with your career leads to speculating with your family life, your hobbies, your friends, and generally leads to an indefinite, unstable future.

I can’t help but note that most college students are what we like to call “young adults”, only beginning to learn how to think.  Part of the college experience is learning how to think, how to recognize your interests and how to pursue them in a environment constructed to facilitate learning – and to learn things that maybe don’t seem interesting, or pertinent.

This article is fixated on the individual to an extent that I find somewhat unsettling.  There’s, of course, much more to it, but I found it rather boring because he’s approaching the educational sector using the lens of the private sector, rather than understanding that the goal of the educational sector is different from the goal of the private sector – and so of course there’ll be some disappointment if your life is constructed around that paradigm.

PeerJ publishes an academic study on how to reduce the litter of bags:

Littering constitutes a major societal problem, and any simple intervention that reduces its prevalence would be widely beneficial. In previous research, we have found that displaying images of watching eyes in the environment makes people less likely to litter. Here, we investigate whether the watching eyes images can be transferred onto the potential items of litter themselves. In two field experiments on a university campus, we created an opportunity to litter by attaching leaflets that either did or did not feature an image of watching eyes to parked bicycles. In both experiments, the watching eyes leaflets were substantially less likely to be littered than control leaflets (odds ratios 0.22–0.32). We also found that people were less likely to litter when there other people in the immediate vicinity than when there were not (odds ratios 0.04–0.25) and, in one experiment but not the other, that eye leaflets only reduced littering when there no other people in the immediate vicinity. We suggest that designing cues of observation into packaging could be a simple but fruitful strategy for reducing littering.

Melissa Breyer @ Treehugger.com likes it:

The work of the experiment is based on the idea of “nudge psychology,” a theory that people behave better when the best option, in whatever situation, is presented to them, but they still have a choice of other options as well. By removing the idea of being forced into something, the theory goes, people will often choose to do the “right” thing. The researchers note that this could be a boon in fighting fast-food litter.

“In the fight against anti-social littering, this study could be a real help. Fast food retailers might want to think about using it on packaging to discourage people discarding the wrappers,” says Bateson. “The flip side is, for those handing out leaflets, it could help people take in the messages are they are less likely to throw away a flyer with eyes on.”

Fighting litter, one pair of printed eyes at a time.

I’m left wondering about the durability of the effect (if it’s not just an artifact of some variable).  That is, once this effect becomes known in popular culture, it may disappear as people learn to ignore it, or demonize, or turn it into a collectible, or any of a dozen other behaviors.

Another interesting study would be to repeat it in Shanghai, Moscow, and Jakarta.  Same results?  Different?

A reader comments about private justice:

Seems to me since I can’t sign away my right to say freedom (sell myself into slavery) I shouldn’t be able to sign that right away. Simple law to remove mandatory arbitration. It can be a better option and keep court costs down, but it is abusively used right now.

Seems to me, too, but evidently not to SCOTUS.  The Arent Fox website has some convenient summaries of two of the relevant decisions from 2013:

… on June 20, 2013, the Court decided American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, holding that class action waivers in dispute resolution clauses are applicable to federal statutory claims. Specifically, the Court held that a waiver of class arbitration cannot be defeated under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) on the basis that the individual arbitration of claims is too expensive for any individual claimant in light of the small size of the individual claims (known as the “effective vindication” theory). The Court extended its reasoning from its earlier decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, which allowed for class action waivers in arbitration agreements at the state level.

… on June 10, 2013, the Court decided Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, which addressed the questions of whether — and if so, how — courts may review an arbitrator’s determination that the parties intended to authorize the use of class proceedings, even where the arbitration agreement does not expressly address class arbitration. Here, the Court upheld the lower court’s decision to maintain the arbitrator’s ruling, determining that the overarching test for Section 10(a)(4) challenges is not whether the arbitrator’s decision was correct or erroneous, but whether the arbitrator was “arguably construing” the contract.

A libertarian would argue that restricting access to arbitration is an unreasonable intrusion into private contracts, I suspect.  My response is that today’s reality is that no one reads all the various contracts to which they are party, and many of them are not within the competency or time constraints of the average citizen (I’ve noted that libertarians and self-sufficiency nuts don’t seem to have a sense of time, but, being ideological nuts, they assume everyone is like them and fixated on the subject of their fascination).  A reasonable compromise might be to permit arbitration when both parties indicate in the initial contract that they are explicitly aware of the provision by initialing the provision, and that neither party may deny a contract based on the removal of such a provision.

Would it ever happen?  Nyah.

Tonight’s treat was TIGHT SPOT (1955), starring Ginger Rogers, the venerable Edward G. Robinson (he of the marvelously lived-in face), and Brian Keith.  Initially, I couldn’t stand Ginger’s character, a cracking wise ditz on vacation from her home in the state penitentiary, nor did she really rise above her initial station in the life of the movie; yet, she rather grew on me, despite her wretched choice in hair styles, as the screenwriter gifted her with some excellent lines; her sallies at Mr. Keith’s romantic defenses were both charming and believable.

Mr. Keith also did well, starting from a somewhat stereotypical cop portrayal to copping to a few spritely lines of his own, not to mention the obligatory dashes to save the distressed damsel from a horrible end at the machinations of a mobster, played by Lorne Greene, who does not relish a return to his homeland.  Alas, Greene was merely in a supporting role and did not have the opportunity to inflict an entire barrage of brooding evil upon his unsuspecting audience; we merely caught glimpses of a sordid underworld.

And Robinson.  What more need to be said, than he brings gravitas not only to his roles, but to his jowls?  He should be a lesson that an actor need not be exceedingly pretty to be on the screen.  (Random thought process: can you imagine Edward G. Robinson in the title role of Disney’s recent flop, JOHN CARTER?  Granted, he’d be too short – or would he?  I’m reminded of a lecture I once attended concerning the play Cyrano de Bergerac, and how the lecturer once saw a version featuring a shorter, somewhat plump actor – and thought it was most memorable.  In any event, I know I wouldn’t have grit my teeth every time he was on the screen.  And smooching with Dejah … !)

As to the movie itself, we had planned to sample it only, and found ourselves watching the entire production instead.  Now, in all verity, we did have cats planted firmly in our laps, so to some extent we were merely playing to their vanities; but, indeed, we enjoyed the movie, the death of Willoughby, the gradual learning process of Rogers, the heroism of Keith, and the irascibility of Robinson; such was the chemistry that we found them believable – and worth watching.

This lidar-derived digital elevation model of the Willamette River displays a 50-foot elevation range, from low elevations (displayed in white) fading to higher elevations (displayed in dark blue). This visually replaces the relatively flat landscape of the valley floor with vivid historical channels, showing the dynamic movements the river has made in recent millennia. This segment of the Willamette River flows past Albany near the bottom of the image northward to the communities of Monmouth and Independence at the top. Near the center, the Luckiamute River flows into the Willamette from the left, and the Santiam River flows in from the right. Lidar imagery by Daniel E. Coe.

Or just damn beautiful.

From Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.

(h/t Kimberly Mok @ Treehugger.com)

A couple weeks ago Don midwest @ The Daily Kos penned a piece (it’s a little confusing as it references a 5th cousin related piece on plea bargains) on the loss of access to courts as enforced through the fine print of contracts that no one reads, as documented by The New York Times:

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

Examples:

Patricia Rowe of Greenville, S.C., learned this firsthand when she initiated a class action against AT&T. Ms. Rowe, who was challenging a $600 fee for canceling her phone service, was among more than 900 AT&T customers in three states who complained about excessive charges, state records show. When the case was thrown out last year, she was forced to give up and pay the $600. Fighting AT&T on her own in arbitration, she said, would have cost far more.

By banning class actions, companies have essentially disabled consumer challenges to practices like predatory lending, wage theft and discrimination, court records show.

I had noticed these arbitration notices from time to time, but had not paid attention: no more.

I think there are a few options to follow up:

1. Change state and/or federal law to disallow the use of arbitration, or to expressly permit class action suits despite arbitration clauses.
2. For those companies that are public, become shareholders in the more egregious offenders and raise a ruckus!  Any shareholder may submit a shareholder proposal to be voted on at annual company meetings.  A rough draft of the text might be,

Whereas the American legal system applies to everyone with a legal grievance, and the right to profit in the free market system is secondary to the right to legal redress, this proposal asks the board of XYZ corporation to ban the use of arbitration clauses in all contracts made with consumers.

• A more difficult option is to take the GoFundMe approach to consumers who face problems typical of the one in the example.  The central problem seems to be resources to fight what is, individually, an unjust but non-crippling action by the corporation.  By provision of resources, the consumer can continue the fight; conversely, a corporation that expects almost all arbitration cases to be abandoned could be in for a shock when most of the cases are retained and fought.  This will require extra resources from the company.I do regard this approach as problematic.
• Question the neutrality of the arbitration.  If that can be broken, then where be the contract?  Consider this recent example:
  

  Even some N.F.L. cheerleaders have had to agree to [arbitration clauses]. When a group of cheerleaders sued the Oakland Raiders over working conditions, they discovered that Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, would preside over the arbitration. The Raiders later agreed to use someone else.

  The importance of the legal system as a neutral arbitrator, under the law, of disputes cannot be exaggerated; private systems of justice are too prone to corruption to be trusted, as history shows.

Spread the word.  The Supreme Court is not a friend to the consumer:

One of the players behind the scenes, The Times found, was John G. Roberts Jr., who as a private lawyer representing Discover Bank unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case involving class-action bans. By the time the Supreme Court handed down its favorable decisions, he was the chief justice.

This will have to be resolved legislatively.

My apologies for the formatting of the above, the software is not cooperating in my efforts.  The two dotted items are really 3 & 4, respectively.

Steve Benen @ MaddowBog constructs a graph illustrating the literacy of the various candidates for President in the area of climate change, based on an Associated Press survey of scientists, given a set of anonymized statements.  Best quote:

All eight evaluators placed Cruz dead last. Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor, wrote of Cruz’s statements: “This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner.”

This is the guy who’s surging in the Iowa polls due to his popularity with the evangelical crowd.  And the graph?

Sometimes computer folks simply see the world a little differently than everyone else.  NewScientist (14 November 2015, paywall) reports on the latest attempt to do something serious in the world of politics with Big Data:

There is a long history of companies and other vested interests influencing legislation by lobbying politicians. So researchers at the University of Chicago’s Data Science for Social Good programme have created the Legislative Influence Detector. This scours the text of US bills, searching for passages that have been cribbed from lobbyists or the legislatures of other states.

“Our hope is that the public can use this to keep the government accountable,” says team member Julian Katz-Samuels, now a graduate student at the University of Michigan.

To get the real story behind a bill, the software digs through 500,000 state bills, as well as thousands of pieces of text drafted by lobbyist groups that were saved into a database. An algorithm then calculates the top 100 documents most relevant to the bill in question before examining each one more closely, searching for passages the two have in common.

What this reveals can be telling, says Katz-Samuels. The software can turn up lines of text originally written by activists and special interest groups. Or it might find that the bill borrows largely from laws already in place elsewhere, giving concerned citizens the chance to explore how the policy worked out there.

The Legislative Influence Detector project is located here.  They explain:

To solve this problem, we have created a tool we call the “Legislative Influence Detector” (LID, for short). LID helps watchdogs turn a mountain of text into digestible insights about the origin and diffusion of policy ideas and the real influence of various lobbying organizations. LID draws on more than 500,000 state bills (collected by the Sunlight Foundation) and 2,400 pieces of model legislation written by lobbyists (collected by us, ALEC Exposed, and other groups), searches for similarities, and flags them for review. LID users can then investigate the matches to look for possible lobbyist and special interest influence.

The screenshot below shows LID at work. On the left-hand side is text from Wisconsin Senate Bill 179 (2015), which bans most abortions past the 19th week of pregnancy. On the right-hand side, LID found and presented SB 179’s highest-ranked match, Louisiana Senate Bill 593 (2012). The highlighting shows that these text sections match each other almost perfectly. Where differences exist, they are usually misspellings like “neurodeveolopmental” or formatting differences like “16”/“sixteen”.

LID finds legislative influence more quickly and easily than other tools. Reading bills manually takes too long. Google helps, but users can only search for short strings, not complete documents, and they must weed through many non-legislative results to find good matches. Inspired by Wilkerson, Smith, and Stramp (2015) and Hertel-Fernandez and Kashin, LID takes seconds to use, searches the entire document for matches, and returns only state bills and model legislation in the results.

Will this have an appreciable effect?  Hard to say.  I’m not feeling the love, but I’m self-aware enough to know that sometimes my skepticism is ill-worn.  So if we think about this, this will be very dependent on the quality of the data it is working from: while the text of most or all laws (proposed and passed) are available online from known sources, other sources, such as ALEC, will not be as freely available – and those will be the important ones if you want to find the “silent influencers”.  I’d say, in fact, that finding similar laws will be in everyone’s interests, while those from corporate, foreign, and other sources will not want to be known as they try to manipulate laws to their personal benefit. The ability of LID to determine a collection of disparate bills might have a common source, and then begin deducing what that source might be, could be an interesting future phase for the project.

They do complain about performance problems of their software.  I wonder how they’ve coded this baby up …

Sunday I was listening to MPR’s Live Wire Radio and, lacking a transcript of the show, am forced to paraphrase something said: they asked a famous person, some musician I believe, if he had read the primary guest’s latest novel, and he replied “No, I don’t read fiction because in the back of my mind I’m saying ‘No, this is not real!'”

(The reaction of the guest was an enthusiastic non-sequitur, insofar as I could see hear.)

This served to remind me of some totally untrained speculation I’ve indulged in over the years concerning, for lack of a better term, Theory of Story.  Not Storytelling, because that glues us to the perspective of, say, the novelist; I’m really speaking to the obverse side of the coin, the reader, the (graceless phrase) movie-goer, the audience – that person, for whom I lack a good generic-equivalent to storyteller, who likes stories in any of its forms, and so I’m left with the somewhat ambivalent phrase Theory of Story.

A theory of story (discarding the capitals which lent an air of self-importance, which I find slightly laughable) should give us a reason for pursuing stories; by having such a theory, those involved in the production of stories, which includes the primary content generator, as well as the support staff and the independent critics, stand a better chance at success by understanding the territory they tread.

Now, I’m sure such a theory already exists; but I didn’t run into it during my college days, being a computer science dude.  Nor have I run across it since, except in a book by Lisa Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction, which I bought a few years ago upon hearing that it seemed congruent with my thoughts.  Being the scattered sort, I read the first chapter or two, nodded to myself, and then wandered off on some other tangent; I should get back to it.  Perhaps she connects it as I do.

But.  I do value the occasional insight of the ignorant outsider.  Not that they are many, but, to draw an analogy from programming, sometimes a new set of eyes sees the problems the old eyes avoid: bringing a viewpoint NOT steeped in the study of Literature might lend some insights.  Or a good laugh, which is worthwhile in and of itself.

So, here I am, a science groupy.  Why does most of humanity prefer a good story?  I find it compelling to connect it to survival strategies.  Survival may not seem an everyday struggle to us, yet it is, because survival is the prerequisite to reproduction, a primitive, fundamental drive.  In these days of specialization, it’s not necessary for everyone to reproduce, but in order to specialize and contribute to society, survival is still necessary.

So what does the story bring to the survival game?  It brings knowledge, both subtle and vulgar, in many forms, but perhaps at its most basic lesson: how people react have consequences.  One of the favorite generic plots of all time is to dump your neighbor Fred (or call him Odysseus if you like) into an impossible situation, watch him struggle with it, perhaps even wriggle out of the handcuffs dangling over the molten lava and get away.  We often talk about how you learn from your mistakes in real life, but there are some mistakes which are fatal to make – but if a fictional character makes the mistake, then no one is really hurt.  Through these lessons conveyed through stories, we learn, for future reference, how one action leads down one path, while another leads down another – and how one enhances your chances at survival, while the other does not, if only by implication.

From this general observation many explanations can be drawn.  For example, the believability of a character becomes important because that correlates with the applicability of the experience and choices.  Backstory may be explained as delineating the background of a character in order to explain the choices they are making with which the reader may not agree – or even understand.

I hesitate to plunge along to suggesting that stories are about teaching, although I suppose, in the end, it’s true in some sense.  They are not didactic writing; they are, in many ways, exercises in sensuality, as the human animal thinks without necessarily rationality, or logic; and then it uses the entire body in the act of thinking, not just the brain.

So next time you’re reading fiction, consider if you’re learning from the choices of the characters in the story, given their backgrounds, predilections, and other provided evidence.

Sometimes a deal delayed is a deal unconsummated.  American firms bidding to supply nuclear power plants to India have been hung up on liability laws passed in the wake of the Bhopal disaster and other catastrophes.  Reuters covered the issue back in 2010:

A stalled nuclear liability bill, delays in land acquisition and political squabbling are hobbling foreign investors keen for a share of India’s newly opened civilian nuclear energy market worth about $150 billion.

Since a 2008 U.S. deal ended India’s nuclear isolation of more than three decades, firms in the United States, Russia, France, Canada and Britian have scrambled for a foothold in the energy-starved country, which aims to double the share of nuclear power on its grid to more than 8 percent over two decades. …

But protests over the liability bill seeking to limit damages to private nuclear operators and suppliers in case of an accidents has put the government on the backfoot, and delayed the entry of U.S. commercial nuclear firms.

Earlier this year a breakthrough was announced through some creative reading of the law, as reported in The Hindu:

Two weeks after U.S. President Obama announced that India and the U.S. have reached a “breakthrough understanding” on the civil nuclear deal, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) put out a press release to explain the agreement that India and the U.S. have reached, in order to enable commercial negotiations to begin.

In a press release, the Ministry has answered 19 frequently asked questions (FAQs) that make it clear that the government is not making changes to the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act (CLND) 2010, but will read the Act to mean that supplier’s liability is not a mandatory part of the contracts to be signed.

The need for supplier’s liability has been raised in the recent past after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan raised questions about the manufacture of the reactor and parts, and the possible damages of as much as $200 billion. However U.S. manufacturers and even Indian suppliers have raised concerns over India’s CLND law saying that it would be unviable for them to conduct nuclear business in India with the risk of that kind of liability being “channelled” to the suppliers.

The Ministry of External Affairs makes it clear that immediate liability for any incident would be channelled only to the operator, in this case PSU Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL).

Now WorldPress.org reprints an article from Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, by Amit Bhandari, suggesting it may be too late for the suppliers of nuclear power because of that upstart, solar power:

Hard on the heels of falling oil prices and affordable shale comes another dramatic energy change for the industry: the falling cost of solar energy. This has many implications, but the most immediate impact is on the nuclear power industry, large parts of which may have just become obsolete. This means that the new nuclear power plants being planned by India, especially those with foreign collaboration, must be reconsidered and scrapped if they are financially unviable.

Most significant is the impact on the India-U.S. nuclear deal, held up by the liability clause to enable these reactors, and a sticking point in the bilateral negotiations for several years. Technological advances have addressed an issue that negotiators couldn’t resolve.

This transformation environment is the result of U.S.-based renewable energy major SunEdison winning, on Nov. 4, the bid to supply solar electricity in India at a record-low price of Rs 4.63 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). News reports indicate that as many as nine companies offered to supply solar electricity for less than Rs 5 per kWh, indicating this isn’t a one-off bid delinked from market prices. This price is still some way off from the cost of electricity supplied by government-owned utilities such as National Thermal Power Corporation, National Hydel Power Corporation and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India—which sell electricity at prices ranging from Rs 2.7 to 3.3 per kWh. However, NTPC, NHPC and NPCIL have lower electricity costs because many of their plants are old and fully depreciated, bringing down the fixed costs and therefore the average cost of supply. These utilities are also the lowest-cost suppliers of electricity in India.

With other suppliers and newer power plants, especially nuclear, the equation is reversed. The electricity tariff from the under-construction Units 3 and 4 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project will be Rs 6.3 per kWh. The latter price can increase in case of cost and/or time overruns, which are common in nuclear power projects globally and in India.

The turbulence in the general power industry has been fascinating, even as American gas prices fall to unforeseen lows due to Saudi Arabian production levels.  In this case, nuclear power suppliers may find themselves without a market if India can make solar work.  Certainly during some seasons, such as winter, generally the sun is not obscured much by clouds; but during the monsoon season, will it work?  If, of course, the monsoon stays on schedule; my work colleagues in Pune (3 hours out of Mumbai) have told me that the monsoon is less dependable than it used to be.  It may be wiser to have nuclear in hopes that they do receive the rains they depend upon for crops.  On the other hand, given the limited liability demanded by the suppliers, it’s a little difficult to justify such a proposal – if the suppliers are not on the financial hook, why should they be trusted?  Given the Bhopal disaster, it’s easy to understand Indian distrust.

The marijuana story continues to evolve as Mexico declares it’s legal for four Mexican nationals to have it, opening the door possibly for more.  NewScientist (14 November 2015, paywall) gives an overview:

The Mexican Supreme Court ruled by 4 to 1 that banning the consumption and cultivation of cannabis for personal use violates the human right to free development of one’s personality.

A distinctly individualistic approach to the issue, without regard for damage, or advantage, for the greater societal structure.  An analogous analysis with alcohol would be to ask about how many deaths are caused by inebriated individuals.  CIP Americas‘ Simon Schatzberg covers the decision in more depth:

The Court’s decision, written by Justice Arturo Zaldívar Lalo de Larrea, tests the law prohibiting marijuana for proportionality and necessity. After quantifying the harm caused by marijuana use and balancing it with the level of intrusion into personal liberty that prohibition implies, the decision found that the intrusion is disproportionate. Furthermore, the decision found that such intrusions are “unnecessary,” considering that the harmful effects of marijuana could be mitigated through forms of state action that are less intrusive than prohibition.

Juan Francisco Torres, a 50-year-old lawyer who is one of the people who was granted an injunction, believes that the ruling is a “historic step,” but the first of many. “Today there are four of us, but tomorrow there could be 120 million,” Torres said after the ruling. “Today we achieved something enormous for human rights, for individuality and for liberty.”

The four plaintiffs are members of Mexicans United Against Crime (MUCD), an organization founded by family members of victims of the drug war that works to end the violence associated with crime in Mexico. To push for marijuana legalization in the courts, members of MUCD created the Mexican Society for Responsible Consumption (SMART). After being denied permission to grow and smoke marijuana from a federal health agency, members of SMART requested injunctive relief on constitutional grounds. A district judge denied that relief, and SMART appealed to the Supreme Court.

So it appears to be a classic approach to crime – remove the profit motive and hope the gangs break up.  Marco Torres at PreventDisease.com has some assertions:

We now know that accepting and promoting the powerful health benefits of marijuana would instantly cut huge profits geared towards cancer treatment and the U.S. would have to admit it imprisons the population for no cause. Nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana.

Bills to legalise cannabis for medical use are under debate in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica. The world is moving towards its inhabitants finally being able to once again possess, sell, transport and cultivate the plant.

Several other countries have moved towards more lenient laws on cannabis use, but none have done so solely on the basis of human rights. Most, like Ireland, which in early November moved towards legalising supervised heroin use and possible decriminalisation of other drugs, have cited health, compassionate and economic grounds.

I recall reading something somewhere (a classic inside view of my brain), probably WHOLE EARTH REVIEW, where the remark was essentially that drugs were mankind’s approach to reaching out to God; those who were the gatekeepers of God didn’t like being bypassed.  I wonder if this was ever true, and if it’s changing.

Surprising enough, tonight’s offering, THE KILLER SHREWS (1959), does not have it all.  Some bad, bad acting, but just a little touch of barely adequate acting.  The lone female is NOT a goody two shoes daughter, looking for a hubby and that’s all, but is a zoologist … still a daughter looking for a hubby and to get away from the horror her work may have created, but with an offputting accent.  The shrews are not metaphorical, but monstrous versions of the little critters, and, en masse, they’re clearly dogs (Airedales, we speculated) with some shameful costumes; but, in close up, they were actually just a trifle upsetting.  And for all that the idea that shrews could grow to this side is silly, my idle auditing of the science is that the plot’s idea of human motivation is a lot worse than the actual cited science in this sordid spectacle of drunken jealousy, all set to encompassing terror of a punchless hurricane that does little more than drive the sad first mate of the boat to his doom (presumably to be licked to death by the aforementioned Airedales).

Despite all these positive attributes, I find it difficult to recommend this obscure tale.  Being a bit of a story junky, it was disappointing, and while I was riveted, it was only for the next laugh at the bad plot.  Although I will grant the idea used to escape the plague of rodents was unusual – which, being American, means I had to like the novelty of it all.

And I gotta say the daughter really put out at the end.  So to speak.

The story concerning KIC 8462852 appears to be moving away from alien megastructures and onward to …

Just when the world thought that signs of life outside of Earth have already been found, experts have to cut the excitement short. In a new study, astronomers found that the so-called alien megastructure orbiting around star KIC 8462852 is most probably just a swarm of comets. …

Now, in a new study from Iowa University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers found that the most acceptable explanation for the unusual dimming of KIC 8462852 is the destruction of a cluster of comets.

The investigation involved two different types of infrared wavelengths. The first one was shorter and was consistent with a common star. The second one is longer and exuded infrared components but are not sufficient to achieve detection threshold.

The scientists found that there were no additional infrared emissions thus warranting that neither an asteroid belt collision, huge impacts on a planet nor clouds of debris and rock were present.

The researchers further explained that the comet fragments that come swiftly at an elliptical and arduous orbit form huge clouds of debris, are dimming the star. The clouds created will then move, thus bringing back the star’s original brightness and leaving no signs or evidence of excess infrared light.

(Tech Times)

Crossing my desk is a petition from Change.org:

Kill the Bill H.R. 2232 (114th Congress) “Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015”

A petition to not force parents to have their children vaccinated.  This controversy has been bubbling along for years, but it’s instructive to decompose a petition for insight into at least one objector’s reasoning.  The contents of the petition are as follows, somewhat abbreviated (misspellings retained):

>This bill is a violation of a number of our natural, God given rights protected by the Constitution.

–Since no provision is given in this bill for religious exemption, the first right infringed upon is the right to the free exercise of religion. For those who believe, according to their religion, that putting certain substances into their bodies is sinful, to have that mandated by the government without possibility of exemption, is a clear and direct violation of this first amendment right. …

However, all rights are limited.  Religious rights, for example, do not include the right to human or animal sacrifice.

–This bill violates the fourth amendment right of the people to be secure in their persons…and other natural rights as covered in the ninth amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Two points.  First, the minor point of slipping in the phrase “natural rights”.  There really is no such thing.  There are simply the rights negotiated between the governors and the governed; they are arrived at through mediation, laws, riots, wars, etc.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the refusal to recognize that the fourth amendment applies to everyone, and is in itself, because of this requirement, a limited right.  Let us honestly assess reality: we are not independent islands, inviolably separate from each other.  Along with voluntary bonds which we often assume with each other through association, contract, and other forms, there are also the involuntary bonds over which we have no control, as we share the resources of this reality, amongst which we can enumerate air and water.  Because of these involuntary bonds through which pathogens travel, we are vulnerable to the illnesses of the age: mumps, measles, etc. — their names are legion.

When I say the Fourth Amendment applies to everyone, I mean that I and my progeny have an equal right to protection under the Amendment, and that protection, in my case, is from easily propagated disease.  Here we see the tension to which I alluded: I do not wish to become infected with a pathogen which can cause severe damage or death, yet is easily negated.  The author of the petition does not wish to accept the vaccination.  The tension comes in the fact that we have unavoidably shared resources (air, water. etc.) through which many pathogens travel to infect a new victim.

How to resolve this tension?  The petitioner calls for a religious exemption; but such an exemption leaves all unvaccinated persons carrying the entire burden of their exemption.  These may be partially enumerated: other users of the exemption, infants too young to be vaccinated, other persons to whom the vaccination may be dangerous (typically, people with repressed immune systems, less likely would be a negative response to the agent, or possibly the very aged).  The ideal of a safe and prosperous society is therefore endangered, so a religious exemption is in doubt.

Further, and as an agnostic, I suggest that realizing that science does not sanction absolute doubt as to the administration of vaccination agents must take precedence over religious doubts.  Insofar as the medicine is evidence-based, (i.e., based in science, which is the study of reality) it should move us toward the short-term tangible goal of a happier society.  Religious exemptions are inevitably based on faith, which by definition, has little basis in reality.  Given the stronger call that science has on being correct, I believe a religious exemption is inappropriate.

–Another of those natural rights is the rights of parents to raise their children in the way they believe to be best. This bill, among many other activities in recent decades, seeks to erode the foundational unit of any nation, the family, and diminish the importance of the individual in favor of the state. Parents, not the government, have the natural right given by our Creator, to raise their children by virtue of being the ones to have conceived and given birth to, or adopted them.

I take offense at the suggestion that this bill “seeks to erode the foundational unit of any nation”.  It should be obvious that a family wracked by death due to avoidable disease is not a functional family; beset by grief and loss of resources (i.e., mother, father, children), it is ENDANGERED by this petition, not strengthened.  The petitioner should be embarrassed to have even written this paragraph; instead, it reads as one of the virulent anti-government memes spread by fringe thinkers (of virtually any particular political stripe).

On a lesser note, the suggestion that a couple of 20 year olds have enough knowledge and wisdom to raise a child wisely is laughable on its face.  In an uncorrupt world, the government constitutes a collection of settled decisions from which parents can take direction on subjects outside of easy comprehension: medicine, for example.  Even in our world, parents, young and old, should understand that they do not have any sort of claim of unlimited knowledge; qualified help should be welcomed, and admissions of ignorance, not to mention bewilderment and frustration, are not a sign of weakness, but of strength.  Any other sort of attitude smacks of unwarranted pride regressive to one’s reputation – not to mention the overall health of one’s children.

2> This bill holds states hostage in terms of funding, forcing already financially strapped educational institutions to choose between equitable education for their students and holding to values their individual communities believe. It is essentially using our children as a bargaining tool for political maneuvering and increasing government control of the people.

Or, sometimes folks are stubborn in the face of reason and need to be whacked upside the head.

3> The federal government (and this should apply to all governments) was intended to be a negative force, protecting the rights of one entity (especially individuals) from violation by another entity. The government was not established and should not exist as a positive force requiring action on the part of individuals that has nothing to do with ceasing to violate the rights of another.

This sounds good until an analysis of the situation, in-depth, is presented, as above, and then we realize this simply evaporates into the air that destroys it, as in the common resource through which pathogens are communicated.

As a general philosophy, I think addressing this is outside of the scope of this posting.  But, briefly, as a simple post facto finding, the US government has long functioned as a positive force in the area of scientific and technological development through the funding of basic research.  Without such funding, we’d still be riding horses and maybe using a telegraph once a year, despite the claims of libertarians of the free market cure-all (I speak as a reader of REASON Magazine for 20+ years).  Also consider the thoughts presented a few moments ago on the function of government in an incorrupt world, as I think it gives a different way to consider government in a world where institutions are cooperatively designed and used, rather than coercively applied.

4> The exception for child’s health as outlined in the bill is not sufficient. It reads, “certifying that, in the physician’s opinion, the physical condition of the student is such that the student’s health would be endangered by the vaccination involved; and demonstrating (to the satisfaction of the individual in charge of the health program at the student’s school) that the physician’s opinion conforms to the accepted standard of medical care.”

–Many Physician’s are unaware of the the adverse reaction’s risk of those with certain genetic mutations, such as MTFHR that comes with significant risk as sited by Pubmed.

No comment.  It sounds like an objection on medical grounds, and I’ll leave that to the professionals.

–An Allopathic Doctor’s philosophy on medicine and healing is directly tied to the Pharmaceutical companies that manufacture prescriptions and vaccines since their human resource representatives educate them directly on which prescriptions to use and how often to administer vaccines. Their lack of agreeing upon risk factors is biased. A Naturopathic Doctor should be a viable opinion as well. The revolving door between the CDC and the Pharmaceutical Industries is transparent and a conflict of interest related to public health.

This, on the other hand, is a dig at mainstream medicine.  From Wikipedia:

Allopathic medicine is an expression commonly used by homeopaths and proponents of other forms of alternative medicine to refer to mainstream medical use of pharmacologically active agents or physical interventions to treat or suppress symptoms or pathophysiologic processes of diseases or conditions.

The petitioners have an opinion; they find that mainstream medicine threatens the validity of that opinion– rather than examine the reasons for mainstream medicine’s critique of their opinion, they instead indulge in a form of ad hominem argument as old as the hills. The petitioners may actually believe it, as any argument confirming their bias, reasonable or unreasonable, is naturally more welcome than a challenging opinion.

But the simple fact of the matter is that an ad hominem argument, with little supporting evidence, is not valid.  Worse yet, the rise of evidence-based medicine, even as haphazard as it sometimes appears, and the number of maladies that have gone from terrifying reality to historical curiosity, should confirm to the most casual observer that there really is something to “allopathic medicine” – and the relentless failures of “alternative medicine”, concealed and explained away as they may be, should be taken as a caution.  With regard to the latter point, I will lend a sympathetic ear, as the proper evaluation of therapies is difficult at best; attempting to evaluate therapies on the order of, say, prayer therapy (from The Skeptic’s Dictionary) is very, very hard.

5> The wording in the bill “to the satisfaction of the individual in charge of the health program at the student’s school” gives the school nurse more power than the licensed Physician that has a more thorough knowledge of each child’s health history. It is also a conflict of interest which places pressure upon the school nurse to dismiss validated concerns for vaccine injury in order to obtain funding for the school and possibly retain their position and means to earn a living.

Without being completely familiar with 42 U.S.C. 247b, the law that this bill amends, it’s difficult to speak with confidence.  I’ll note, however, that the law should not permit the administration of vaccines that do have “validated concerns”.  This may be the paragraph of concern:

“(C) demonstrating (to the satisfaction of the individual in charge of the health program at the student’s school) that the physician’s opinion conforms to the accepted standard of medical care.

This may be seen as tying school medical personnel to accepted medical procedures, which are unacceptable when one’s opinion of those procedures is negative.

In general, any epidemiologist will testify that vaccines have been one of the greatest advances in the history of health care, but they are not perfect – like all human endeavors.  That they are not perfect is not a reason for rejecting them, especially as they are the best we have for protecting the greater community.