Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Tim McDonnell at Mother Jones has a must-read article illustrating the efficacy of a carbon tax on the output of CO₂, a critical greenhouse gas:

Now, new data from the Australian Department of the Environment reveal that whether or not you liked the carbon tax, it absolutely worked to slash carbon emissions. And in the first quarter without the tax, emissions jumped for the first time since prior to the global financial crisis.

Australia’s Liberal Party has a trouble relationship with climate change science, much like the United States’ GOP, and NewScientist has been covering this little science drama.  (Confusingly, NewScientist sometimes refers to the Liberal Party as the Conservative Party; NewScientist articles are paywalled).  In their 09 August 2011 issue Clive Hamilton observed:

THE battle over global warming, reaching fever pitch in Australia amid plans to introduce a carbon tax, is part of a long-running and bitter culture war between conservatives and liberals dating from the 1960s. …

There, climate scientists report death threats, figures on the right of the conservative opposition party mutter about excessive United Nations power, and protesters wave placards calling Prime Minister Julia Gillard “Bob Brown’s Bitch” – a reference to the leader of the Australian Greens party, who holds the balance of power in the upper house of the nation’s parliament. …

Leader of the Conservative opposition, Tony Abbott, is vigorously stoking the fire with his trademark blend of alpha-male swagger and hyperbolic claims about the ruinous effects of the carbon tax. On paper, the opposition party has committed Australia to the same emission cuts as the government – a 5 per cent reduction on 2000 levels by 2020. Against the advice of economists and the Federal Treasury, Abbott insists the target can be reached more cheaply by “direct action”, such as paying farmers to enhance carbon sequestration in soil.

And on the corporate side:

Behind it all has been perhaps the most potent force in the nation, the mining industry. Miners have always been powerful, but the China-driven minerals boom of the last few years has created a cadre of militant rich with an enormous sense of entitlement and a willingness to fight “government interference”. A dispute in 2010, which was sparked by a proposed mining super-profits tax, was a defining moment.

The similarities to the United States situation is unmistakeable.  Mr. Abbot had led the Liberal Party in a coalition with other parties during the 2010 elections, which resulted in a hung Parliament until the Labor Party made common cause with a Green MP and two independent MPs.

Meanwhile the Australian climate worsened, as reported by Andy Coghlan (07 January 2013):

Australia is baking in a record-breaking “dome of heat“, threatening to unleash the worst firestorms since those that claimed hundreds of lives in 2009. Temperatures reached almost 48 °C on Monday at the Oodnadatta airport in South Australia, and 43 °C on Tuesday in Sydney. The typical January high is 37.7 °C at Oodnadatta. The average across the country is tipped to break the previous record of 40.17 °C in 1976. …

Lack of rainfall in recent months has left soils completely dry and unable to release moisture that would take up heat from the air through evaporation. At the same time, vegetation across the continent that had been revived by rains over the past two years is now completely dried out. “Much of this grass is fully dried and is ready to burn,” says Gary Morgan of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre in Melbourne.

But it wasn’t all about drought, as was reported just a week later by Michael Slezak:

The east coast of Australia has been drenched by floods and torrential rains, even as recent bush fires affecting much of the country continued to burn. Four people are known to have died as Australians get a further taste of extreme weather that is predicted to become more common as the planet warms.

Mr. Abbot gained the position of prime minister in September of that year, as covered by Mr. Slezak:

AUSTRALIA’S landslide election result seems to be bad news for the climate. The new conservative government, headed by prime minister elect Tony Abbott, says it will axe the country’s carbon tax, disband a climate advisory body and institute a carbon reduction policy that climate scientists say will fail to meet even its meagre targets.

It will also scale back plans for a national broadband network and direct funding away from research it deems “ridiculous”.

And, in a petulant gesture of denial, the new Australian government rid themselves of that troublesome pest, science, that proxy for reality:

The government clashed with scientists almost immediately, when it dramatically switched strategy on climate change, including by dumping the nation’s emissions trading scheme. Now the prime minister, Tony Abbot, has cut the science minister post, saying education and industry can pick up the slack.

Projections are not rosy for Australia, Catherine Brahic reports:

Australia is drying out, and it’s largely our fault. The south-west of the country can expect to see average annual rainfall drop by 40 per cent compared with the mid-20th century, and a new model suggests that the main cause is human greenhouse gas emissions.

Water from the skies is the stuff of life but the expectation is that many parts of the world will see less of it with climate change. But predicting how much rain will fall where is devilishly difficult.

It is an important question, because it affects water supplies. Since 2000, the average annual amount of water flowing into reservoirs in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, has dropped to less than a quarter of the yearly average between 1911 and 1974, says David Karoly of the University of Melbourne, citing national figures. As a whole, the south-west of Australia has seen a 20 per cent decline in winter rain since the 1960s, says Nerilie Abram of the Australian National University in Canberra.

Mr. Abbot may have sensed he had gone too far, for NewScientist reports in October 2014 a small gesture to science:

A YEAR after his government was criticised for failing to appoint a science minister for the first time in decades, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has announced he will be chairing a Commonwealth Science Council. Its aim is to “improve the focus on science” and be “the pre-eminent body for advice on science and technology in Australia”.

The budget is paltry, however.

Finally, Australia experienced an unique event: a double cyclone.  Michael Slezak reported in 23 February 2015:

It was a shocking double blow. Australia is picking itself back up after being battered simultaneously by two severe tropical cyclones last week, in what meteorologists are saying is a first for the country. One of these appears to be the southern-most cyclone of such a strong intensity to make landfall, giving Australians a taste of what climate change is expected to bring.

Tropical cyclone Marcia was categorised in the highest possible category – category five – when it made landfall in Queensland on Friday and brought wind gusts of up to 285 kilometres per hour. On the same day, cyclone Lam, a category four cyclone, made landfall in the Northern Territory, knocking out a wind station with gusts up to 260 kilometres per hour.

Australia may be a continent, but it’s a small continent.  Mr. Slezak continues:

Climate change is expected to make tropical cyclones less frequent but more severe on average. But global warming is also expected to bring them further south as warmer conditions move tropical weather further from the equator. And cyclone Marcia appears to fit that trend.

Which brings us back to Mr. Abbott and Tim McDonnell’s article, which reports Mr. Abbott

… declared that his government is committed to signing on to the next major international climate accord, set to be hammered out in Paris later this year.

It certainly appears Mr. Abbott may be changing his tune on climate change science; perhaps reinstating the carbon tax should be the next step, regardless of the outcry from corporations and citizens.

But it’s impossible not to ask what magnitude of weather related natural catastrophe will be necessary for the GOP to begin to understand that an adherence to ideology over reality will cost more in the long run?  Sure, a carbon tax will result in higher energy costs – that’s the point.  For those US citizens who cannot afford such costs, we can certainly provide help, as we already do – a simple expansion of current programs may be all that’s necessary.  In the corporate sector, some companies already exist to help other companies optimize their energy use (full disclosure: I have investments in this area).

A carbon tax fits nicely into our economic system: recognizing an externality and putting a price on it is not unusual, as seen in pollution regulation; it is, in fact, simple justice to adjust the economic system to reflect the true costs of corporate operations.  And some even see it as a matter of national security, as retired General and former Democratic Presidential hopeful Wesley Clark asserts in an interview with The Oregonian’s Oregon Live operation.

But it makes sense.  Aviva Rutkin at NewScientist (14 March 2015) (paywall) reports on a new way for trial lawyers to run test trials:

I HAVE only a few pages of evidence with which to decide the fate of a maintenance man from Texas. While at work trying to untangle a spool of wire on a crane, his right hand was caught and severed when the line pulled taut. He sued for negligence, and I am leafing through his lawyer’s court strategy trying to decide who is to blame and what damages are due.

This is the work of an online juror. For 20 minutes to an hour of work and up to $1 per minute in pay, ordinary people can offer their opinions on real cases to the attorneys who are working on them. These amateur assessments, crowdsourced and interpreted by online services, give lawyers insight into how an actual jury might rule long before anyone steps into the courtroom.

Mock juries are nothing new, but they are typically performed in person. Lawyers often bring volunteers into a courtroom to observe a fake trial and reach a verdict. But these run-throughs can cost tens of thousands of dollars, all for a single jury’s opinion. Adrienne LeFevre of the service OnlineVerdict, based in Chicago, says online mock trials allow attorneys to pick the brains of dozens or even hundreds of mock jurors.

Another provider is eJury. But not everyone thinks this will work out:

Rich Matthews, a trial consultant in San Francisco, is sceptical that these sites can replace traditional mock jury research. By soliciting opinions virtually, he says, all of the subtle non-verbal cues that go into a real trial are lost. The jurors miss out on the dynamic experience of deliberating with one another, and the lawyers do not pick up on the intensity or the tone of the jurors’ opinions.

Having sat on a trial many years ago, I think Mr. Matthews’ argument has some merit.  On the other hand, the jury room can be quite dynamic, and if one or two jurors, having come to an improper conclusion, assert themselves, they could easily sway a jury in a case if the balance of the jury is not strong-minded, or, more importantly, if either side was not clear in its delivery; thus, having the evidence in written form without someone hanging over you is appealing, at least to this engineer – I would not have to separate facts from emotion.  And then there may be the back and forth with the judge concerning various matters – but that would not occur in a traditional mock trial, either.

Update on the current project: I’ve finished the entry of the compilation and encountered two or three places where recursion occurs; as noted earlier, they result in code that is not BNF-like.  That’s reality.

I’ve decided to attack the semantics problem in a consistent manner.  For each production BNF, I will append a processing parser.  A recursive descent parser consists of multiple parsers strung together using currying; about half of them consume input, the rest check whether the consumers are happy with the inputs.  These processing parsers will evaluate the results of the parsing in the production, which will be stored during the parsing, and take appropriate actions.  So, for example, Production 5, which in pure BNF form is

Name ::= NameStartChar (NameChar)*

and in Mythryl is currently

name = name_start_char & <name_char> ;

will become

name = name_start_char & <name_char> & five_p;

Some processors will place results in a result parameter before calling the next parser, while others will collate results and invoke callback functions.  five_p will be of the former sort.

The Passover story … told by a superior race.

(h/t Sydney Sweitzer)

David Gagne delivers a report on homicide rates in the Americas, south of the American border.  The highest?

El Salvador:El Salvador tallied 3,942 murders in 2014, according to the country’s forensic unit Medicina Legal, a 57 percent increase from the previous year. While El Salvador‘s forensic unit states that the country’s homicide rate is 68.6 per 100,000, if that figure is calculated using the World Bank’s 2013 estimated population for the country, it would be around 61.7 per 100,000.

The disintegration of the 2012 gang truce between the country’s most powerful street gangs, Barrio 18 and MS13, was widely considered the principal reason for El Salvador‘s elevated homicide rate in 2014. The failed truce was also credited with having reduced the country’s murder rate from 70 per 100,000 in 2011 to around 40 per 100,000 in 2012 and 2013.

The lowest?

Chile: Chile registered 550 murders in 2012 for a homicide rate of 3.1 per 100,000, according to statistics (pdf) from the UNODC. Chile is widely considered the least violent country in Latin America.

Here’s a lovely map:

David omits the smaller countries, such as (randomly selected) Guyana, so I did some research and discovered the website for the “Department of State – Bureau of Diplomatic Security“.  With regards to Guyana,

The most recent information from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime lists Guyana’s 2010 homicide rate as 18.4 per 100,000 people — the fourth highest murder rate in South America behind Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. Guyana’s murder rate is three times higher than the United States’.

No mention of the top of David’s list, El Salvador, but it’s not clear which year is referenced in the Diplomatic Security’s report, while El Salvador’s report is for 2014 and is stated as having doubled.  This site claims the United States murder rate (2011) is 4.7 per 100,000 people.  While using the homicide rate as a proxy for violent crime is not a good idea, it’s still interesting that our country, often touted as being terribly violent, is actually rather peaceful.  Particular chilling is another report, also by David Gagne, on Brazil’s police violence:

A new report by a citizen security body in Brazil says that police have killed more than 11,000 civilians in the past five years — while the number of police killed during the same period nearly doubled — suggesting strategies aimed at lowering police brutality have not had the intended effect.

The report (pdf) published by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security — a body comprised of security officials, research centers, and NGOs — counted 11,197 citizen deaths perpetrated by both on and off-duty police in the country from 2009 to 2013, representing an average of 2,239 people killed by police per year over that period (see graph).

Presuming Brazil’s population to be 199,321,000, I calculate a police homicide rate to be .9 per 100,000 persons.  The highly respected FiveThirtyEight website states that it’s difficult to get comparable statistics for the United States, as the FBI doesn’t collect them. I’m appalled, although I could see an argument that the FBI collecting such statistics would be a fox and hen house scenario.  FiveThiryEight and The Daily Kos reference the Killed By Police website, which reports, from news reports, 111 people killed by police in March 2015.

I was a horrid public speaker before.  Now this from NewScientist (paywall) (14 March 2015):

WATCH what you say, or rather, how you say it. People judge whether you believe in what you say after just 0.2 seconds.

A specific type of brain activity that relates to increased processing of information appeared 200 milliseconds after the start of the clip, whatever its confidence level. However, more confident speech produced higher activity than unconfident speech.

Now I’m more nervous.

NewScientist‘s (14 March 2015) Michael Slezak reports:

The device is surprisingly simple: just a drop of metal alloy made mostly of gallium – which is liquid at just under 30 °C – with some indium and tin mixed in. When placed in a solution of sodium hydroxide, or even brine, and kept in contact with a flake of aluminium for “fuel”, it moves around for about an hour. It can travel in a straight line, run around the outside of a circular dish, or squeeze through complex shapes.

“The soft machine looks rather intelligent and [can] deform itself according to the space it voyages in, just like [the] Terminator does from the science-fiction film,” says Jing Liu from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. “These unusual behaviours perfectly resemble the living organisms in nature,” he says, adding that they raise questions about the definition of life.

Hmmmmm.  I don’t get excited about definitions of life until we see some reproductive capacity.

More here.

(h/t Amanda at LifeBuzz, via Arts Editor Deb White)

Warmer than here in Minnesota?  Natonal Geographic is monitoring it:

Scientists have measured what is likely the highest temperature ever on Antarctica: 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 Celsius).

The measurements were made last Tuesday at Argentina’s Esperanza Base, on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, according to the meteorological website Weather Underground. The previous hottest known temperature on the continent was 62.8°F (17.1°C), recorded at Esperanza Base on April 24, 1961.

Some raw information on Antarctica temperatures and the general problem of gathering data in such an extreme place is available from Oak Ridge National Lab:

Recording Antarctic station data is particularly prone to errors. This is mostly due to climatic extremes, the nature of Antarctic science, and the variability of meteorological staff at Antarctic stations (high turnover and sometimes untrained meteorological staff).

Result summary?

The annual series shows a warming over the past 40 years but most of this warming occurred before 1970. Table 1 lists the warming trends and their significance based on the t-test for each month of the year. Table 2 lists the anomaly series for 1957-1999. An increase in the annual surface temperatures is shown over this period (1.53C per century), with the largest trend apparent in the winter months, as found for northern hemisphere polar regions (Weller, 1998). This can be compared with the Jacka and Budd (1998) finding of a continent-wide warming of 1.2C per century. The greater variability in the winter season is indicative of a lower significance of the change than in the other seasons. A decrease in Antarctic surface temperatures is found for some months (April and May).

Surface temperature trends are seen to rise quite steadily up until 1991. In that year Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) and Mount Hudson (Chile) erupted, and it has been suggested (Jacka & Budd, 1998) that these eruptions have had a major influence on the general lowering of temperatures after that year.

A complex and difficult undertaking.

On a less sober note, over at the Daily Kos Pakalolo contrasts the report with the Senate GOP.  This reminds me of the Karl Rove meltdown on Fox News as he denied his party had lost – ideology over reality.  Andrew Sullivan was on the case back in 2012:

This looks like it was scripted by Ricky Gervais. I watched with my jaw slowly dropping lower and lower (which was hard since I was smiling so widely as well). James Poniewozik calls it “one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen on cable news”

Having just typed “2012”, I’m a little dismayed as the GOP categorization of ideology over reality started at least with Rep Newt Gingrich, who served as House Speaker 1995 – 1999, resigning abruptly after losing five seats in the midterm elections – a collision with reality.  So this is wenty years of something I would categorize as near-insanity.  It’s certainly been entertaining (which I appreciate – really!), but at some point you have to wish there’d be a little maturity, a little understanding that your refusal to accept reality could result in a lot of people getting hurt.  It’s quite one thing for former Rep Bachmann to compare Obama to the Germanwings suicide, because, offensive as it is, few take her seriously, and the details of the Iranian deal need deliberate analysis by foreign policy experts – not the cacklings of someone whose claim to fame is founding a caucus and precious little otherwise.  But when a sitting Senator writes a book denouncing the findings of honest (but who needs to add that they’re honest?) climate change scientists as a mass conspiracy and hoax, well, now you have a problem because if the good Senator is wrong, every moment spent being obstructive rather than working on the problem may cost lives; wait long enough, and there will be substantial change to our lifestyles, our life expectancies – even our national security.

And that’s not the conservative thing to do.  Not that I labor under the delusion that the GOP is ‘conservative’.  They are reactionaries, but that’s not the same thing as being conservative.

… think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  At least in the sense of memory manipulation.  Jessica Hamzelou in NewScientist (14 March 2015) reports scientists can implant false memories in mice.

[Karim] Benchenane’s team used electrodes to monitor the activity of mice’s place cells [neurons that fire in response to being in or thinking about a specific place] as the animals explored an enclosed arena, and in each mouse they identified a cell that fired only in a certain arena location. Later, when the mice were sleeping, the researchers monitored the animals’ brain activity as they replayed the day’s experiences. A computer recognised when the specific place cell fired; each time it did, a separate electrode would stimulate brain areas associated with reward.

When the mice awoke, they made a beeline for the location represented by the place cell that had been linked to a rewarding feeling in their sleep. A brand new memory – linking a place with reward – had been formed.

It seems so reasonable, but assuming this can be scaled up to human memory, it’s a trifle unsettling, especially if an electrode could be replaced with an electric cap.

Or a remote device.

I suppose I could talk about how memories are notoriously unreliable; pictures and videos are much  more trustworthy.  But then think about how they can be modified.

Reality is becoming far too plastic for my tastes.

For those of us who live on the instant, here’s a recent measure of Obama’s approval:

The fascinating question, for me, is what will be the long term analysis?  In twenty years, scraping away the barnacles of the petty partisan politics of today should give a much clearer view of whether continuing the Bush-era policies of bailing out the financial industry, stopping wars, starting wars, and transforming healthcare were negatives or positives.  And, of course, coming to a tentative deal with Iran regarding its nuclear ambitions.

But who can resist a chart of a snapshot?  Here we see Obama’s recent run at getting his head above water in the approval ratings game has come to nought.  With the tentative Iranian deal now publicized, I expect it’ll get worse on the next poll as the GOP’s superior PR game will, at least temporarily, persuade a portion of the electorate that we are now doomed (here’s the preemptive shot over the bow by former Rep. Bachmann).

The Iraqis win back Tikrit, home town of Saddam Hussein, with a little help from some allies:

The push into Tikrit came days after U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS bases around the city. Al-Abadi said those tactics would now be replicated in other areas.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. deputy special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, tweeted that the coalition’s airstrikes had destroyed numerous ISIS shelters.

“We will continue to support courageous Iraqi forces operating under Iraqi command as they work to reclaim their territory from #ISIL,” McGurk tweeted.

The key to victory in Tikrit this time, the Prime Minister said, was surprise. But help from the coalition of Shiite militiamen and volunteers also played a part.

The militia members, estimated to number around 20,000, are backed by Iran. The offensive marked the first open participation of Iranian advisers on the front lines in Iraq.

The Iraqis of Tikrit are Sunnis Muslims, as is ISIS; the government forces are, for the most part, Shiite, as is Iran; some reports suggest the inhabitants of Tikrit may suffer for it, especially as they are a minority within Iraq.

But the ability to work with Iran against  a common foe shows that America and Iran are not irreconcilable, despite the apparent wishes of the GOP.  I haven’t noticed a great deal of publicity concerning this temporary alliance in the United States, and I’m guessing that Iran will not emphasize it, either, as it won’t serve their purposes.  Time will tell.

Governor Jerry Brown of California calls for mandatory water cutbacks of 25% in comparison to a baseline of 2013 usage:

With new measurements showing the state’s mountain snowpack at a record low, officials said California’s drought is entering uncharted territory and certain to extend into a fourth straight year. As a result, Brown issued sweeping new directives to reduce water consumption by state residents, including a mandatory 25 percent cut in urban water use.

On Wednesday, Brown attended a routine snow survey at 6,800 feet in the Sierra Nevada, near Echo Summit on Highway 50 along the road to Lake Tahoe. The April 1 survey is an annual ritual, marking the end of the winter season, in which automated sensors and technicians in the field strive to measure how much water the state’s farms and cities will receive from snowmelt.

The measurements showed the snowpack at just 5 percent of average for April 1, well below the previous record low of 25 percent, which was reached last year and in 1977.

California’s mountain snowpack is crucial to determining summer supplies, normally accounting for at least 30 percent of total fresh water available statewide. The poor snowpack means California reservoirs likely already have reached peak storage and will receive little additional runoff from snowmelt, an unusual situation.

Snowpack 5% of normal may be indicative of climate change, rather than chance deviation.  Brown certainly seems to think so:

“I would hope that we don’t see this in some punitive way, but that we see the challenge,” Brown said. “(The) reality is that the climate is getting warmer, the weather is getting more extreme and unpredictable, and we have to become more resilient, more efficient and more innovative. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

California residents curious about water resources may use the Water Education Foundation website to learn more.

Of interest is the Colorado River:

California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of water annually from river. Most of that water irrigates crops in the Palo Verde, Imperial and Coachella valleys, located in the southeastern corner of the state, but the Colorado also is a vital source of water for urban southern California.

And water stored in aquifers:

About 30 percent of California’s total annual water supply comes from groundwater in normal years, and up to 60 percent in drought years.

Aquifers do not necessarily recharge quickly, so they cannot be regarded as eternal.  They can also become contaminated by pollution and other sources, although I do not know whether California supplies are vulnerable.

Water is also transported within the state to supply population centers.  Given the large population, the drop off in usable precipitation (that which runs off into the ocean may not be usable) and recent inclination towards drought, and the State is looking at quite the challenge.  The Colorado River usage itself may not be sustainable, as suggested by a recent government study:

It is widely known that the Colorado River, based on the inflows observed over the last century, is over-allocated and supply and demand imbalances are likely to occur in the
future. Up to this point, this imbalance has been managed, and demands have largely been met as a result of the considerable amount of reservoir storage capacity in the system, the fact that the Upper Basin States are still developing into their apportionments, and efforts the Basin States have made to reduce their demand for Colorado River water.

Concerns regarding the reliability of the Colorado River system to meet future needs are even more apparent today. The Basin States include some of the fastest growing urban and industrial areas in the United States. At the same time, the effects of climate change and variability on the Basin water supply has been the focus of many scientific studies which project a decline in the future yield of the Colorado River. Increasing demand, coupled with decreasing supplies, will certainly exacerbate imbalances throughout the Basin.

This is an interesting insight into Iraqi psychology, insomuch as such a thing can exist in such a fragmented country:

Ghayyath al-Kateb, a writer and social researcher, sees the Abu Azrael phenomenon in the context of Iraqi mythology. “This extraordinary and legendary hero is a product of Iraqi thought throughout the ages. Iraqi mythology, across multiple eras, has seen the emergence of many superheroes, the most prominent of which was Gilgamesh, who appears in the epic tale named after him,” he said.

Before Abu Azrael,​ Adnan al-Kaissie was a popular hero among Iraqis in the 1970s. Pictures of the professional wrestler, a media favorite, filled Iraqi homes and streets. Everybody wanted to be like Adnan.

According to Kateb, it is the nature of Arabs, and Iraqis in particular, to create legendary men who accomplish great things. Because of this tendency, political parties in Iraq have tried to exploit the Abu Azrael phenomenon. A number of government ministers and officials have met with him. The local media reported that Transport Minister Bayan Jabr received him March 16.

This probably explains Saddam Hussein’s survival at the top – a willingness to believe in the importance of the role of the strongman, which he certainly fulfilled.

She may have retired from the House of Representatives, where she founded the Tea Party caucus and did …. exactly what else?

Anyways, the Minneapolis StarTribune reports her latest headline grabber:

Bachmann likens Obama to ‘deranged’ Germanwings co-pilot

Make of it what you will.

A multitude of factors will affect the water supply of the world: pollution, climate change, politics, and geoengineering is just a partial list.  As the world population continues to grow, most of these factors will also grow, exacerbating the situation:

• Pollution contaminates water;
• Climate change causes some bodies of water to grow, while others shrink; and just as importantly, the composition of that water can change;
• Politics can result in the control of the supply of water flowing from one entity to another to be manipulated to achieve political goals
• Geoengineering, the building of dams, levees, and other structures to control a water supply can have side effects seen and unseen: think of the Aral Sea, a victim of Soviet hunger for cotton, and now a drought.

And water is one of the two most critical substances for survival, so when supplies become constrained, tensions can build.  A facet of this situation in Brazil has already been covered in an earlier post, where NewScientist reports that the prospect of dams on the Amazon may be reduced as scientists predict that the mere act of building dams may result in their becoming ineffective.

In Iran, on the eastern border with Afghanistan, the situation is degenerating, not improving.  As reported by Bloomberg’s Golnar Motevalli, one of Iran’s largest lakes is rapidly disappearing, leaving the locals in deep trouble:

A decade ago, the three lakes comprising Hamoun’s wetlands covered 5,600 square kilometers, the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. They served 420,000 people, two cities and 935 villages, EPO says. Today, only a few shallow patches of water remain.

The drying has almost doubled seasonal dust and sandstorms from 120 days a year to 220 days, increasing respiratory, heart and intestinal illnesses and rates of cancer, according to a 2014 report published by EPO and the United Nations.

It’s a fate mirroring that of Urmia, 2,100 kilometers to the west. Once the Middle East’s largest saltwater lake, it’s now 20 percent of its former size. Salt-infused winds blowing across barren sections are causing “serious” local health problems, according to the UN Development Programme.

Iran links the Hamouns’ problems to Afghanistan, urging its war-stricken neighbor to control irrigation of the Helmand River that starts in the Hindu Kush mountains and traverses agrarian provinces before reaching the border.

An Iran government report about the Hamouns says increased irrigation, diversion of water for crops, population growth and largely U.S.-funded projects including the Kajaki Dam started reducing flows to Sistan-Baluchestan in the 1950s.

Efforts to reach a water-management pact on the border date to the 1970s. Talks revived in the mid-2000s, a few years after after the Taliban government was deposed. They stalled again in 2008 when Afghanistan refused to endorse a UN-backed proposal from Iran to save the Hamouns.

It’s an explosive region within Iran, and now its water supply is imperiled.  It’s difficult to blame the Iranian government with the chaos that has infested Afghanistan for decades.  There’s little the United States, or indeed anyone but the two involved parties, can do, beyond mediation.  Perhaps that could be an opening for Obama or his successors: find a way to help in this area.  Unremitting hostility is not always a workable strategy.

(h/t Mohammad Ali Shabani, AL Monitor)

Or so says New York Times columnist Aaron E. Carroll (Professor of Pediatrics):

We’re eating too many calories, but not necessarily in the same way. Reducing what we’re eating too much of in a balanced manner would seem like the most sensible approach.

And, superficially, it seems right: after all, we do tend to gorge.  Yet, having a wife with a weight problem and having watched her not eat her head off, this is all entirely too simplistic and disappointing.  Speaking as a software engineer, you can’t just measure what goes in one end and comes out the other, even making allowance multiple destinations (exercise, defecation, etc) for those calories; you have to ask if the processing is a constant or a variable, and in at least this column Carroll is treating it as a constant.  Yet evidence is just beginning to accumulate that the stomach flora can influence how calories are processed (covered earlier here), and the amount of sleep can influence how your gut is working as well, discussed here (paywall) and here.

So, sure, eat less if you’re feeling tubby.  But don’t expect that, or even regular exercise, to fix you up.  Keep an eye on the research if this concerns you.

As the saga continues, Wal-Mart now enters the fray:

In the statement, Walmart CEO, Doug McMillon says, “Every day in our stores, we see firsthand the benefits diversity and inclusion have on our associates, customers and communities we serve. It all starts with our core basic belief of respect for the individual. Today’s passage of H.B. 1228 threatens to undermine the spirit of inclusion present throughout the state of Arkansas and does not reflect the values we proudly uphold. For these reasons, we are asking Governor Hutchinson to veto this legislation.”

And the Arkansas governor obliges:

The first-term Republican governor said he wants his state “to be known as a state that does not discriminate but understands tolerance.”

Cristian Farias at TNR believes the Arkansas law, as originally passed, is more extreme than the Indiana law:

In the event the victim of discrimination brings suit against the business, the locality would likely join the action, since it’s interested in enforcement of its nondiscrimination edicts. But at that point, the new Arkansas law would require the locality to show that nondiscrimination toward gays and lesbians “is essential to further a compelling government interest.” The italicized language is exclusive to Arkansas, and presumably would lead courts to afford great deference to the religious beliefs of the business owners vis-à-vis the customers or the municipality’s interest in a nondiscriminatory environment.

The bill’s definition of “substantial burden” on religion also seems broader because it specifically singles out any action designed “to prevent, inhibit, or curtail religiously-motivated practice consistent with a sincerely held religious belief”—these are the oft-cited wedding-vendor scenarios. And “religious belief” itself is defined nebulously as “the ability to act or refuse to act . . . whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.” It’s not hard to imagine the range of attitudes that fall into this definition—including a flat denial as “God told me it’s wrong for me to serve you.”

This is the old hierarchy problem: what takes precedence, government or religion?  Well, of course government does; but religion claims a special place in the minds of humanity, or so it claims: an all wise entity (or entities) not subject to the whim of man, but instead commanding them.  But, of course, not everyone gets the same message; indeed, messages are conflicting.  Thus the clashes, ranging from today’s tragedies in the Middle East to the various wars, insurrections, etc in Europe in most any age range before 1900 that you care to pick.

So the US government has the ticklish problem of not stepping on religious beliefs while still running a coherent system.  A thought experiment: my sect practices human sacrifice.  The government prohibits murder and even suicide and the courts have ruled the government has a compelling reason to prohibit those sacrifices.

So this is another, interesting push at the envelope.  Can businesses pick their customers dependent on religious sensibilities?  Hobby Lobby has a foot in the door, and now the religious fundamentalists are trying to assert a new right.  Much to their surprise, though, they’ve discovered their allies do not automatically follow along in all things; Big Business does not wish to risk the talent upon which their success rests, and they’ve moved to make it clear this is not acceptable.

My sense is that a good court would overturn this law.  “Religious sensibilities” may seem common-sensical and logical to the sect members holding them, but everyone not a member of that sect may find them bewildering – and at some point that will include right-wingers who find themselves kicked out of a restaurant because they’re whatever-they-are.  This leads to distrust, based on religious differences, and in a nation that depends on ignoring religious differences, by not permitting them to rule our reality, by actually not even knowing – or caring – what sect you worship within – well, this cannot be permitted.

(Updated 7/27/2015 to fix an incomplete – and incoherent – sentence)

Continuing the thread, it turns out we’re pumping so much oil we don’t know where to put it:

Never before has the U.S. had so much oil spurting up out of the ground and sloshing into storage tanks around the country. There’s so much oil that the U.S. now rivals Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer.

But there has been some concern that the U.S. will run out of places to put it all. Some analysts speculate that could spark another dramatic crash in oil prices.

Oil is down a little bit today.  Sources for oil can be found here and here.  Of course, prices vary by location; and so do costs.  If the price drops below the cost, then the more expensive sources will shut down until it becomes economical to restart, per standard theory; of course, the costs of stopping and starting must also be figured into such decisions.

Not to mention strategy, politics, and pride.  I don’t see Russia stopping production just because it might cost more.

“got”.  There are plenty of synonyms and it’s plumb-ugly.  Only good for dialog.

As the thread continues, Governor Mike Pence defends Indiana’s RFRA in the WSJ.

I am happy to state that I am not a migraine victim; my wife is currently fighting one off, as is, I’m sure, my sister, my brother-in-law, possibly my nephew, and indeed half of my friends. NewScientist  (7 March 2015) reports in “Not just a headache: How migraine changes your brain” (paywall) by Helen Phillips that at least migraines do not lead to mental declines:

To find out what’s really going on, these changes needed to be monitored. Do regular migraines cause more areas of stroke-like damage? And to what effect? Kruit and his team rescanned most of their volunteers nine years later. Interestingly they found the number of spots had slightly increased over time in women with migraine, but not in men, but they didn’t correlate with migraine frequency, severity, or treatment. Neither did the spots seem to have any bearing on cognitive functions like memory or attention. Another long-term study in France found no link between migraines and cognitive decline, all the way to age 80.

And relief may be on the way:

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and other techniques that deliver small electrical currents through electrodes on the forehead are already proving effective in some cases of migraine, as well as for chronic pain conditions and depression.

These treatments seem to work by steadily altering and normalising oversensitive brain circuits, though at present it’s not clear how. One big advantage is that they are well tolerated compared with other therapies, including drugs and botox – which is approved for migraine treatment by the US Food and Drug Administration.

For all of us, this is hopeful news.  I do recall as a teenager occasionally having horrendous headaches; but, as I recall, eating a meal usually cleared them up, and I called hunger headaches.  I wonder if they were just a form of migraine.  And one more little tidbit:

Work with children is adding weight to the idea that migraine is a progressive brain disease, which may appear in different ways at different stages of life, beginning with some kind of genetic susceptibility. One startling suggestion is that infant colic, the uncontrolled crying and fussiness often blamed on sensitive stomachs or reflux, may be an early form of migraine.

There’s a family story about Dad sitting up with me one night, out on the porch, watching thunderstorms roll in over Puget Sound while I screamed and fussed and whatever with the colic.

First, let me just say that I’m delighted to see World Press Review continuing.  I was a long time subscriber until the print edition was stopped many years ago; I had been aware the editor took it digital, but did not keep up with it.  Now operating as WorldPress.org, it continues to reprint interesting articles from anywhere in the world.

This January article by Andrew Topf suggests the Russian government retains its imperial ambitions:

We are already seeing this to be the case. As Oilprice.com reported on Tuesday, Putin is set to absorb South Ossetia—Georgia’s breakaway republic that declared itself independent in 1990. Under an agreement “intended to legalize South Ossetia’s integration with Russia,” Russia would invest 2.8 million rubles (US$50 million) to “fund the socio-economic development of South Ossetia,” according to Agenda.ge, a Tbilisi-based news site. The situation is analogous to Crimea because, like Crimea, South Ossetia contains a significant Russian-speaking population with ties to the Motherland.

When the current oil price fall started, I muttered to my wife that this was the start of an unannounced war on Russia.

(Source: Macrotrends)

Russia’s primary export is oil, and dropping the price 50% really put the hurt on them.  She didn’t necessarily agree with my conspiracy theory.  But it looks like Russia is maneuvering in this cool war:

The current move on South Ossetia is a way for Russia to assert its energy independence in the face of Western sanctions and low oil prices. It comes as Russia has announced plans to divert all of its natural gas crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey. As Bloomberg reported last week, Gazprom will send 63 billion cubic meters through a proposed link under the Black Sea to Turkey—after the earlier South Stream pipeline, a $45-billion project that would have crossed Bulgaria, was scrapped by Russia amid opposition from the European Union. By sending the gas to Turkey and on to Europe via Greece, Gazprom is in effect sending Europe an ultimatum: Build pipelines to European markets, or we will sell the gas to other customers.

The proposed land grab in South Ossetia, combined with the snub to Europe by shifting its gas to Turkey and bypassing Ukraine, is a classic Putin power play. “Russia is preparing to absorb a province of neighboring Georgia, and delivering an ultimatum to Europe that it could lose much of the Russian gas on which it relies,” Steve LeVine wrote in Quartz. “Putin has argued that the West is simply intent on ousting him and weakening Russia. … Faced with these perceived attempts to undercut him and his country, Putin suggests that he has no choice but to pull around the wagons and stick it out. This could go on a long time.”

The drop in oil prices has been caused partly by the Saudis, which then clouds the issue: just who’s under attack?  Or is it necessary to wonder: perhaps the the US and Saudi Arabia have multiple targets: Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.

The death of another blogger in Bangladesh:

On Monday, the 27-year-old Rahman fell victim to the same brazen act that killed Roy, hacked to death by two men with knives and meat cleavers just outside his house as he headed to work at a travel agency.

A sobering thought, even for a rank new blog such as this one.  Even more horrifying was this continuation:

Of the three involved in the Monday morning attack, two were quickly caught by bystanders.

In confessions to police, the pair — both students at Islamic schools — said they didn’t know what a blog was, nor had they seen Rahman’s writing.

They said they were acting on orders from another person who told them killing Rahman was a religious duty, Police Commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarkar told reporters.

I would say this is brain-washing, beyond dispute.  And heart-breaking – the murderers are now ruined men; probably incapable of critical thought, as a result of their upbringing; if they are freed through miscarriage or violence, they only have a future in a violent cult that denies its own holy books claims of peace.  And they’ll be at the mercy of the man who ordered them to commit this heartless act.  And the man who ordered this hit will no doubt die from violence, if not from Bangladeshi police, then from a rival who deems him a … blasphemer.  Which leads to the motivation of the crime: he was an outspoken skeptic.

He used to write under the pseudonym “Stupid Man” on a blog but switched to posting on Facebook after 2011.

On Facebook, he is credited for a series, “Jaw-crushing answers to insulting comments of atheists.”

There, he posted questions that critics of Islam often raised and then answered them. But he paired the answers in such a way that they highlighted the contradiction within Islam.

As an agnostic and skeptic myself, it is discouraging to hear of another being killed because his beliefs do not mesh with some fundamentalist fanatic’s view of how society should be ordered.  No doubt the fanatic will die at another fanatic’s hands, and the violence will continue to swirl.  It makes my heart heavy.

The previous death was reported by CNN here.  The Center For Inquiry, a notable organization devoted to secularism, has a statement condemning the murder.

We are Washiqur.