McCain and Honor

From Willamette Week, a biting but spot-on comment:

As for John McCain, what five-plus years in a POW camp couldn’t do—make McCain forfeit his honor—the hunger to be president has.

Fixing FFFD boxes in Firefox

Perhaps you're experiencing strange little boxes with "FF FD" in them when using Firefox 3.0. Here's the fix that worked for me:

View >> Character Encoding >> Auto-detect >> Universal

More in the Firefox Support Forum.

Smashing Bugs

Once when I was an undergraduate I was in a backyard sitting at a picnic table reading Messiah's book on quantum mechanics. A bug landed on the page and I instinctively swiped him off, killing him completely, leaving nothing but a thin red smear across the page.

Suddenly I realized: my God, what had I just done? I had obliterated a life without hardly even thinking about it. I had reduced it to essentially nothing.

I still think about that when I find a bug where I'd rather he not be. (I still have Messiah's book, too.) Sure, I kill my share, but often I'll simply coax them onto a piece of paper and take them outside. (And yet, I have not committed to vegetarianism.)

So there is something becoming in this video of Obama brushing a spider off his shirt:



In my book this speaks highly of his as a person.

World's First Nuclear Accident, in Idaho

It's often said that there have been no fatalities from nuclear accidents in the US, including Three Mile Island, but I was doing some research today on another subject I was surprised to come across this:

On January 3, 1961, the first and only fatal nuclear reactor accident in the United States occurred at the NRTS ["National Reactor Testing Station," near Idaho Falls, Idaho]. An experimental reactor called SL-1 (Stationary Low-Power Plant Number 1) was destroyed when a problem control rod was removed incorrectly leading to core meltdown and explosion. All three military personnel working in the reactor were killed. Due to the extensive radioactive isotope contamination, all three had to be buried in lead coffins. The events are the subject of a book published in 2003, Idaho Falls: The untold story of America's first nuclear accident.

By the way, Idaho National Laboratory's budget is about $800M/yr. Who knew?

Peak Oil and all the Crap

In retrospect, a lot of people who blamed the recent oil peak on Peak Oil seem to be quite wrong, including myself. Oil is now 43% below it's peak, and down 6% year-to-year. It seems a lot of people saw in the market what they were predisposed to see (including, again, me).

That's not to say that Peak Oil will not be a factor in the long run. It will be (if it's true that we're running out oil.) I think the lessons, though, are that

1. few people really know what's going on when markets are in turmoil, and
   
2. few people really know what's going on otherwise, and
3. people tend to find what they're looking for.

Sure, we may be running out of oil, i.e. oil production may be peaking. But it's a long process and you can't expect the world to turn around on a dime. And you can look very stupid in the process.

Krugman on Interstellar Trade

Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize in Economics is richly deserved, from everything I've ever heard about him, though naturally the right will call it politically motivated, etc. (What isn't considered politically motivated these days?)

Here's something he wrote tongue-in-check in 1978: The Theory of Interstellar Trade.

Einstein letters

A new batch of letters from Einstein have come up for sale. There are several highlights:

• Einstein brands religious beliefs as "childish superstitions" and the "product of human weaknesses." (Of course, he also said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," so maybe he wasn't completely clear in his own thinking.) In it he writes: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
• Of the Jewish people, he wrote: "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
• He absolutely rejected that his theories implied any kind of "moral relativism": "Unfortunately, I cannot recommend your manuscript for printing, because it doesn't reflect the essentials of the theory. This topic has nothing to do with the superficial statement that 'everything is relative' ... This is, by the way, not a philosophical theory, but purely physical."
• He doesn't seem to like journalists much either: He also chides journalists for failing to understand one of his greatest scientific achievements. "The twaddle that the theory is extremely difficult to understand, is complete nonsense, spread out by superficial journalists."

(I don't think he's right on this last point. Maybe it was obvious to him, 35 years after the fact, but if it was that easy to understand there wouldn't be advanced undergraduate and graduate physics classes in special relativity.)

Sad Guys

There's at least one funny thing to come out of this financial crisis: Sad Guys on Trading Floors.

Bush

Has a US president ever appeared to be so weak, so useless, so unneeded, and so uninterested in a crisis as Bush does right now? I can't recall one.

--

I still think my theory of the impact of rising oil prices is a good one. What popped the housing bubble? It was a bubble, sure, but it was popped by the oil bubble. From that came all the decline and lock-up of the credit markets, etc. The fundamentals of just living became significantly more expensive, and energy is the one place you can't cut back on -- you have to have so much gas a week, and so much food, and so much heat or A/C. You can't live without these. And so the difference came out of mortgage payments.

At least, it's worth mentioning.

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, Oct. 2008:

And before we leave the theme of falls and collapses, I hope you read the findings of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration that followed the plunge of Interstate 35W in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River last August. Sixteen states, after inspecting their own bridges, were compelled to close some, lower the weight limits of others, and make emergency repairs. Of the nation’s 600,000 bridges, 12 percent were found to be structurally deficient. This is an almost perfect metaphor for Third World conditions: a money class fleeces the banking system while the very trunk of the national tree is permitted to rot and crash.

Chalfie

Martin Chalfie, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry (today):

Dr. Chalfie never received the phone call from Sweden. “I slept through it,” he acknowledged at a news conference at Columbia. He said he had inadvertently turned down the ringer on his telephone a couple of days ago. He woke up at 6:10 in the morning and thought the soft ring was coming from a neighboring apartment.

“I was a little bit annoyed that they weren’t answering their phone,” he said. “I then realized because it was after 6, that they must have announced the Nobel Prize in chemistry. I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year. So I opened up my laptop and found out I was the schnook.”

Nobels

US Nobel Prizes (pct), by decade:

Tonight's Debate

I am seriously starting to worry about my country.

Getting older, I suppose part of that is my responsibility, or my right, or perhaps just custom. I'm sure other periods in our history have looked just as dire, and other candidates as doppy. Maybe this isn't a unique time.

But maybe it is. I listened to tonight's presidential debate and I heard nothing -- nothing -- that gave me an indication that either candidate has an idea about how to solve our enormous problems -- let alone the leadership and charisma with which to do it.

I heard platitudes. I heard generalities. If I hear "My friends" again I just might jump off the roof. I am not McCain's friend and I never will be.

But I don't hear any answers out of Obama either. He's on the 35-yard line with 8 minutes left in the 4th quarter, up by a touchdown, and just wants to run out the clock.

Tom Brokaw, supposed to be some kind of heralded superstar journalist, didn't ask anything of the slightest significance. He has neither the balls for it or the understanding, living in some $5M penthouse in New York City. His knowledge of the world is so abstract it's useless and embarrassing.

Who does not think that the US is headed downhill? I don't need to be Number 1...but I'd like us to at least show some competence. Our financial system is collapsing. We are stuck in a war no one cares the least about and no one cares to win. We cannot provide adequate health care for many our citizens. The Europeans, better cared for, are routinely growing taller than we are. Our government and our politicians are completely bought off by corporations and us idiots don't even seem to notice or care, even though they just took $700 billion from us in the course of 2 weeks. There is no help for the ordinary person -- no health care, no retirement benefits, little unemployment benefits, nothing at all -- and yet we hardly even complain about it, let alone revolt. And the planet is going to hell -- climate change rearing up to decimate the future, half of all mammals in danger, the ocean's acidifying -- who really cares? NASA can't keep shuttles in the sky after 2010, and so must rely on the Russians for lifts. How utterly humiliating. Americans can't even seem to win any Nobel Prizes anymore. And all we get are puppet candidates like Bush and Palin who serve at the behest of some tiny group of men hiding in a hollowed-out mountain in Switzerland (my theory).

Where do I get off?

Climate change illustrated

Here's an interesting illustration of climate change in New York City:

This first picture, from the 9/22/08 NY Times, is of the Cubs-Giants playoff game on Oct. 8, 1908 at the Polo Grounds (north Manhattan).


Notice how the trees are bare.

Now compare this to a Webcam picture I just captured today, of Pier A in Hoboken, NJ (just across the river, to the west, of NYC):



The trees are still green and don't even appear to be changing color yet.

This last one isn't the best picture and perhaps you have a better one -- if so, please let me know.

Polar Bears, Noise, and Stress

Greg Pollowitz at NRO's The Corner is making fun of a recent study that shows polar bears are sensitive to excessive noise in their environment. Ha ha.

Just to show you how sensitive animals can be, a black rhino being transported from the Kansas City zoo to the Oregon zoo in Portland apparently died on Monday simply from the stress of being moved. Imagine.

Moving stresses me out. It really stresses my cat Eli -- he spent a week hiding under the bathroom sink, and hardly ate at all. But to actually die from stress -- it really makes you think. (Unless you're Greg Pollowitz.)

Conservation of Calamities, Take 2

Perhaps there is a kind of conservation of economic calamities:

Atmospheric scientist Paul J Crutzen, who has in the past floated the possibility of blitzing the stratosphere with sulfur particles to cool the earth, said clouds gathering over the world economy could ease the earth's environmental burden.

Of course, it won't nearly, nearly be enough, and it's the wrong kind of CO2 cutback--that from reduced economic activity, not changes in energy technology.

"It's a cruel thing to say ... but if we are looking at a slowdown in the economy, there will be less fossil fuels burning, so for the climate it could be an advantage," Crutzen told Reuters in an interview.

"We could have a much slower increase of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere ... people will start saving (on energy use) ... but things may get worse if there is less money available for research and that would be serious."

September Temperature Anomaly

NASA GISS's September temperature anomaly is in: +0.49°F above the long-term average.

Significantly, last month's anomaly was revised from +0.39°F upward to +0.50°F.

Year-to-date, though, this year is still the coldest since 2000.

Kashkari

Neel Kashkari is Paulson's choice to run the $700B financial bailout program. According to the radio item I heard about this, his last name is pronounced "Cash Carry." Really.

Conservation of Calamities

This year's arctic ice loss may not have been as steep as 2007, but this year's ozone hole over Antarctica was larger than last year's. Perhaps there is a conservation of calamity principle we are only now discovering. (Obviously it doesn't apply to the economic realm.)

Maskawa's response

Maskawa had the best response this morning:

"There is a pattern to how the Nobel prize is awarded. I did not think I would get the award up until last year, but I predicted it pretty much this year," he was quoted as saying by Kyodo news agency.

"I am very happy that Professor Yoichiro Nambu was awarded. I myself am not that happy. It's a noisy celebration for society."