Australia and global warming

The anti-Kyoto Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard(*), has been defeated by the pro-Kyoto challenger John Rudd. Rudd has proclaimed global warming will be his first priority. Maybe now Australia will join the 21st century.

* Howard did make a recent, semi-conversion from being a climate skeptic. Politically motivated, no doubt.

Popping the Universe's Bubble

Oh boy. As if it's not bad enough that humans are destroying the planet, now we may be responsible for destroying the Universe, too.

Specifically, Saul Perlmutter appears to be the one to blame :-). Wait until the conservatives and anti-science people get ahold of this one.

Physicists Lawrence Krauss and James Dent have a paper out that says our (well, Perlmutter's) discovery of dark energy in 1998 may have changed the quantum state of the Universe and shortened its lifetime.

Of course, this story comes from Britain (originally from New Scientist), and my rule of thumb for any science story from Britain is to treat it essentially as a press release -- that is, assume it's hyped until someone shows that it's not.

Out of It

I have been out of it for about three weeks now, with a bad case of the flu, or some damn virus.... All I know is I feel like I've had three or four different, serious colds all on top of one another, or maybe in serial.... but all I've been able to do for most of the last several days is sleep or cough my lungs out. Apologies for the lack of blogging. I'll try to get back into it in the next day or two.

In the meantime, I recommend getting a flu shot.

Mexican floods

I really love this picture that currently appears atop the Drudge Report, about the floods in Mexico:


Is there any better illustration of the precariousness of life? One day you're going to bed, the rain hard on your roof, your beloved dog at your feet -- you, worried about the storm, he, dreaming of rats and squirrels and kibble in the morning -- and you both wake up to an unimaginable flood and suddenly you're swimming for your life, you and your dog, out there, all alone. You're half hanging on to him for support and half because you don't want to lose him, and the dog, the poor dog, is just wondering what ever happened in life that it has come to this, and he wants you to make it as much as you want him, even more than yourself, and all you and he can do it strive for the shore, together, alone.... and it all happens so fast. Today is nothing like yesterday and yet, what did you ever do to deserve this? What did he?

Life is surely no easier for a human than for a dog, but probably no less, and sometimes, in a rare moment of struggle and love and candor, all you have is one another, just you and your dog. And so you swim.

Westboro Baptist Church

A couple of years ago when I lived in Lee, New Hampshire, there was a big ceremony a few miles down the road at the arena of the University of New Hampshire, for the Rev. Gene Robinson, who was being made the Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson is gay, so this was a big deal, and my friend Holly and I went down to watch the protests. There were plenty of people on the pro-gay side of the argument, all standing around in the rain, and after a good while a small delegation from the Westboro Baptist Church rolled up and took their appointed place amongst the protest ropes laid out by the police. These are the followers of the odious Fred Phelps of Kansas. They had all their "God hates Fags" signs out, and stood around in their appointed spot and tried to make a scene.

I had a notebook and an umbrella and so I pretended I was a reporter on a deadline and went up and talked to someone in their pit. I stood next to a woman who was protesting and asked her for her thoughts. She started talking but there was something really weird about her, like she was strung up on something and not really herself. She talked to me about her feelings about gays, but it was more like a rant, and more like something she had had drilled into her -- there was something robotic about her words, and nothing that seemed to convey any emotion. It seemed all very rote. The most notable thing was that she refused to look anywhere close to my eyes.... After about two minutes I stopped and since it was raining really hard I stepped aside and let them protest another 10 minutes or so, when they they marched out of the area, to jeers mostly, and got back on their bus.

All in all they seemed pretty pathetic. And completely ineffectual.

So I am surprised to see someone awarded $10.9M dollars because the Westboro Baptist Church protested at his son's funeral. His son was a fallen Marine. I am more than sure than this man grieves for his son. I think the Westboro Baptist Church are bastards who one should get their comeuppance. But I don't think that matters. I think the Westboro Baptist Church has a right to protest at this guy's funeral, and express any thoughts they want, however odious. I don't think the courts have any business fining them for expressing their First Amendment rights. This is a classic first amendment case -- that is, the only ones who really need first amendment rights are those don't seem to deserve it. They were cited for emotional distress and invasion of privacy, but come on, any judge should surely know this kind of speech is allowed under the First Amendment. This is why the First Amendment was invented. But all-in-all I think they have the right to be there.

I can't take the Westboro Baptist Church seriously, especially based on what I saw that day at UNH. I saw that there is no passion behind their words, just a form of... well, evil. Not inherent evil -- I don't believe in that. These were just poor people -- and they were mostly kids who were protesting -- who had been severely warped by their parents and grandparents. The parents and grandparents were noticeably absent. But when you looked them in the face, you saw they were just pathetic, not threatening. They won't look you in the eyes. In a way, it says all you need to know.

Bumper Sticker

Bumper sticker I saw on the way to the store:

The Emperor has no brain.

Biology animation

One of the reasons I've felt like I never have understood biology to the degree I feel I understand physics is because I can never understand how all those big macromolecules get all that cellular work done. Maybe I never will, but this neat animation seems to give a glimpse of the poetry of what might be going on.

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

response to "The End of Science"

Lubos Motl has a pretty good response to John Horgan's continued insistence that science is coming to an end. There have been very significant findings since Horgan's book came out about 10 years ago, in physics, and especially in biology/genetics. Every day my Inbox overflows with new discoveries -- every day, it seems, literally, a new human gene is discovered.... and in any case I don't know what Horgan expects. It seems to me that science is progressing at least at the average rate it has over the last 400 years, and probably a lot faster. I don't buy Horgan's argument.

Romans

Wikipedia:

"...60 percent of Roman citizens died, from all causes, before age 20...."

Universities and Colleges

I see that some conservative organization named Family Security Matters has named the Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America. They list "Universities and Colleges" at #2.

OK, let's take them at their word. I'm sure, therefore, if they think Universities and Colleges are so dangerous, that they will be more than willing to forego the discoveries and benefits which have come from these institutions. Let's construct a partial list:

1) x-rays, discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Rontgen at the University of Wurzburg. When they break a bone, Family Security Matters members can decline an x-ray and just let their doctors feel around for a bone break, guessing as to its extent.

2) nuclear fission, finally demonstrated by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago. Family Security Matters members will, I'm sure, be more than willing to do without the Gigawatt-hrs of electricity produced in this manner around the world.

3) Giant magnetoresistance, discovered at a university in Paris. Family Security Matters members can do without hard drives or anything of the sort which make a modern computer useful.

Do we really have to go on? You can fill in the rest as well as I can. FSM can decline to take many of today's pharmaceuticals. I'm sure they won't mind exiting themselves from anything having to do with gravity or astronomical research, discovered and perfected by Newton, Einstein, and others all at universities. Are they willing to live with polio? In 1950 William Hammon at the University of Pittsburgh isolated a serum from the blood of polio survivors.

Would FSM members like to benefit from solar energy? Fuel cells? Nanowires?

Do we really have to go on?

The fact is, the liberal traditions of free speech and open inquiry are exactly what have brought us these advances over the decades. FSM can put their conservative ideas out in the intellectual marketplace for approval and advancement -- the truth is, over the last several decades, these ideas have mostly been found to be wanting and deficient. It has almost always been open, liberal ideas that lead to advancements of our society, not closed, regressive, conservative ideas.

FSM can criticize these ideas if they want. If they do, they should be forced to live without them.

Morning

This is not far from my typical morning:

Your Phone Number

Via David Brooks in the NYT:

I read in a piece by Clive Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can’t remember their own phone number.

Wow, is this really true? Is there anybody out there who really doesn't know their own phone number?

David Reinhard wrong... again

The other day David Reinhard,the conservative opinion-monger for the Oregonian, thought he could get away with disparaging the parents of Graham Frost, implying that that they were so well off financially that they could afford private tuition for their children, and that, thus, they didn't deserve government-sponsored health insurance (SCHIP).

Mr. Reinhard is, in fact, quite wrong, and I don't understand why he won't admit it.

As reported in the Baltimore Sun on Oct. 10, and in Time magazine on the same day, the Frosts received financial aid (a scholarship) in order to privately school their children.

Mr. Reinhard is unwilling to accept this error. He needs to be called out until acknowledges the truth. Isn't that what journalism is supposed to be about?

Bridge article

I have an article in the November issue of Scientific American, just out:

"Repairs without Rivets:

Carbon-fiber composites could lead to quick fixes for old bridges"

Haka

The problem with my profession: no haka.

Carbon Intensity

I am really astonished at yesterday's announcement that the world's carbon intensity has been increasing since about the year 2000. Carbon intensity had been decreasing for a hundred years and I thought it was akin to a law of nature that carbon intensity always and forever decreases, because people are always and forever naturally striving to use energy more efficiently.

Up until 2000, carbon intensity had, over the last 30 years, been decreasing by about 1.3% per year. Since 2000 it has been increasing by about 0.3% per year.

This is huge, it seems to me. I still do not really understand it and am still studying this paper to figure out what's going on.

Dot Earth

Andrew Revkin of the NY Times now has a blog:

Dot Earth
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

Oil Production Peaks

Oil production peaked last year, says an energy group in Germany, much sooner than experts predicted. (The International Energy Association isn't worried.) Production will now be decreasing 7% a year, they say.

"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy...."

Current supplies are good only for about 30 more years, they predict.

May you live in interesting times.

Conscious machines

A British Telecom futurologist, Ian Pearson, predicts that there will be conscious machines by 2015-2020 (whatever that means--in fact, he predicts that we won't really understand it) and that one will win the Nobel Prize by 2020. (Imagine the conservative snipping about that.)

Oceans taking up less carbon

This is not encouraging: in the last 10 years the oceans have been taking up significantly less carbon dioxide than they once did: 50% less in the North Atlantic, since measurements began about 10 years ago.

The researchers who did the study admit they can't attribute this to human-caused climate change -- they simply have no baseline against which to compare, and it's possible there are significant natural fluctuations in the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide. Definitely something to keep an eye on. If the ocean sink saturates climate change is going to happen even that much faster.

Lucinda Williams - Drunken Angel

In memory, supposedly, of Blaze Foley:

NYT Letter to the Editor

Mitchell Turker, here of Portland, has a letter in today's New York Times that perfectly encapsulates my feelings after seven years of the Bush administration:

As an American citizen, I am tired of being disgusted with my government. We deserve better.

How to Save the World

This is a pretty screwed up world, there's no doubt about it. Answers seem few and far between, and it's hard to believe we are not doomed in 50 years, if we will even make it that long. But some people refuse to accept this fate, and they speak out, with answers that are simple but aren't easy to admit:

Marburger and 2 C

Wow, I am amazed to read this: John Marburger, the President's science adviser, yesterday refused to acknowledge that climate change ought to be limited to +2°C.

2°C is 3.6°F. That is a huge amount of warming. It is absurd for Marburger to claim that that amount of increase "is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives." Simply absurd. It is one of the most unscientific statements I have read in a long time.

In its April report, the IPCC outlined a range of environmental impacts that could transpire if temperatures rise 1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above 1980 levels. These include placing between 20 and 30 percent of all species "at increasing risk of extinction" damaging most coral reefs; and "increased morbidity and mortality from heat waves, floods and droughts."

Marburger said, "you could have emerging disasters long before you get to two degrees. . . . There is no scientific criterion for establishing numbers like that."

There is no scientific criterion for establishing any number -- such establishment is a question of values, not of science. Marburger looks foolish for even implying otherwise.

In 50 years, the world is going to look back on the climate criminals of the turn of the century. Marburger just established himself as one.

Oregon & Storms

The thing I miss the most about living here in Oregon compared to New England is...the lack of storms.

It just doesn't storm here. It was supposed to be a big, stormy day here today, wind and rain, but in the end it was all just a little breeze and some pissy rain. Nothing at all. Certainly nothing like a nor'easter. Nothing at all.

Back east, when it storms, you know you've been rained upon. It clouds up and either rains all day or, in the summer, it gathers in the afternoon, and builds up to some unsustainable level of humidity where it lets loose and rains a good half-inch in 20 minutes, absolutely pounds the ground and trees and scatters twigs all around.

Nothing like that here. Here it rains a little and a few leaves come down, but then it stops and you can walk out and stay dry. The sodden leaves are scattered all along the roads and sidewalks, and they get plenty slippery, but it's not the same. No one takes the storms seriously. They just wait it out. It is anticlimactic, and it is somewhat disappointing.

There are plenty of beautiful things about Oregon, but its storms aren't one of them.....

"Choctaw Bingo"

"Choctaw Bingo"
James McMurtry:

Strap them kids in
Give'em a lil bit of vodka
in a cherry coke
we're goin' to oklahoma
to the family reunion
for the first time in years
it's up at Uncle Slaton's
cuz he's gettin' on in years
no longer travels but he's
still pretty spry
he's not much on talk
he's too mean to die

Giuliani and Alien Attacks

Could you write a more preposterous account if you even tried?

Giuliani, campaigning in New Hampshire, was asked how the U.S. would respond in case of an alien attack. Without even pausing to think, he replied,

"Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," said Giuliani, who spent the day campaigning in the key early voting state.

That's right, folks, we'll be prepared to confront beings who have the means to travel hundreds of light-years across the galaxy and who are most likely millions, if not billions, of years more technologically advanced than we are, because, well, damn it, because we're the United States of fucking America.

More than likely, the aliens will land here and step out of their massive spaceship, saying, like Kid Rock, "You've never met a motherfucker quite like me."

-=-=-

And we're supposed to take these politicians seriously.

Tim Ball's comments

The other day I challenged Tim Ball's assertion that "the world is cooling." I showed temperatures plots for the last several years, and of course it depends on how you want to define "climate" -- do you consider it the last one year of temperatures, the last five years, the last ten years, etc.? Of course, none is inherently correct -- there is no fundamental definition -- but all are meaningful to consider.

As I noted, all moving overages over the last 25 years are increasing, though there is perhaps a small flattening in the last few months of the 5-yr moving average, which frankly doesn't seem all that important.

I wrote Tim Ball and challenged him on these facts, and got back some answers that frankly don't make a lot of sense to me. First he accused me of being with NASA (when really my email address is from NASW), as if that matters to the facts, but then he responded:

Your use of moving averages is misleading.

This didn't make much sense to me, since what is a climate time series except moving averages? So I wrote him back. He responded:

Moving averages have considerable limitations, not the least of which is leaving out data and smoothing a curve to obliterate information. There is also the problem of the loss of data at the beginning and end of a curve depending upon the period chosen for the moving average. Both these points are evident in your curves. You concede the curve is flat "for the last year or so" a vague comment maybe because of the limitations of moving averages, but it requires explanation. It certainly doesn't fit with the CO2 trend.

Of course, I included several different moving averages in my analysis precisely to overcome the problems he tries to imply. You have to have endpoints to your data somewhere. Then he writes:

I am in agreement with Sherwood and Craig Idso that there is no warming evident in the record since 1930. The problem with global temperatures as reported by NASA GISS are well documented at Climateaudit (http://www.climateaudit.org/) including the problems of not adjusting for the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) adequately and the condition of the recording stations.

This strikes me as absurd. The NASA GISS temperature series is corrected for the urban heat island effect, and the "problems" cited at ClimateAudit are neither systematic (as Eli Rabbett has shown) or peer-reviewed. They're just some amateurs trying to poke holes here there, without much success as far as I can ascertain.

I've asked Ball for the data which he thinks does show no temperture increase since 1930.

Oil

Oil is now about $86/barrel, about 45% higher than it was a year ago. Are we really supposed to believe that the Consumer Price Index is only 2% above a year ago? I just don't believe it.

Oil and heating and transportation costs permeate our economy. I just don't believe that a 45% yearly increase in such a basic commodity leads to only 2% inflation. I have some idea how they calculate the CPI, and although I don't know every detail I don't for a minute think that the cost of living is increasing only at 2% a year and yes, I am even prepared to believe there is collusion among economic officials to keep the stated CPI down. I have no evidence for this, and I'm sure one couldn't get it without a 6-month investigative study, and I hope someone is doing this, but something here seriously does not make sense....

Colbert

"...winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace."

-- Stephen Colbert

Gay rights in Oregon

Gay-rights opponents fail to get second referendum on ballot.

As a result, on Jan. 1 Oregon will have a law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and a law allowing domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

Hunting

Here in Portland this week the newspaper has been overwhelmed with letters about this hunting story, where 10-year old Vanessa Smith was introduced to grouse hunting via her grandpa Al Thomas. People seemed especially upset about Al's gleeful countenance during the shoot, wondering how he could be such a bloodthirsty bastard:

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

"A-Hunting She Will Go" (Oct. 7) was a shocker! It turned my stomach. The picture of grandfather Al Thomas's face registering such ecstasy because his granddaughter had killed the grouse was sickening. Why are they so happy when they kill something? Fortunately hunting is becoming an anachronism -- no longer needed. We can achieve conservation without the blood sport.

CLIFF GOLDMAN Northeast Portland

OK, I'm on-board with that. I don't enjoy hunting and there is an element of barbarism to it. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where everyone hunted, and we even had the first day of deer season off from school. My dad took me hunting when I was 12, and mostly it struck me as a good way to walk around with a heavy gun in your hand, trying to stay warm. My mom gave me some chocolate bars beforehand.... out in the field, my dad stationed me at a trail intersection and told me to keep my eyes open while he tried to drive some game down my way. 20 minutes later he crept up on me as I was opening a Hershey bar, and I think it was about then that he decided I just wasn't going to cut it as a hunter and we walked straight home. We never went hunting again, to his great disappointment. I was always more interested in algebra.

Anyway, the Portland urbanites have been making their displeasure known about hunting and hunting stories, but someone today finally hit the nail on the head:

Friday, October 12, 2007

If I were a prey animal, I would rather pit my natural wits against a hunter in the wild than be caged in a factory farm -- something to consider for all you nonhunting meat eaters out there.

MARTIN J. CLAXTON Southwest Portland

And I think Martin Claxton has hit it right on the head, as much as I hate to admit it. It's easy to dismiss hunters as bloodthirsty barbarians, but almost all of us are eating meat and the way it's raised and slaughtered in this country is a moral tragedy. Factory farming is about the worst genocide you can imagine. Each and every one of those lives matter no less than do a deer in the wild. But I'm eating chicken and beef and (although I try and avoid it) pork, and I feel extremely morally culpable about it. I have tried to be a vegetarian, and it works for 3-4 months and then I start to feel weird, and seriously start to crave meat. I am, let's face it, an omnivore. Perhaps I should suck it up morally and stick to vegetarianism, cravings be damned. But so far I have not been able to do that. I hate thinking about the tens of millions of pitable chickens and cows and pigs who are suffering here and around the world for the sake of our diet. They lead horrible, horrible lives. I try to buy free-range chicken when I can afford it (not always). I would prefer stickers on my meat about the conditions under which it was raised, but so far Safeway won't comply.

Deer in the wild certainly lead better lives than do the factory farmed animals that all of us eat, and in that sense it's better they be shot in the wild than herded in a slaughterhouse. It's easy to categorize hunters as murderers, but they are only being honest about the situation. Too many people are forgetting that.

It has come to the point where I hate thinking about my diet, and I hate that I hate thinking about it. Frankly I'd like to live on a little farm and raise a few chickens and a pig and a cow, beings I could pamper until it came time to quickly slit their throat. Sometimes I hate the compromises of the modern age.

Flying to Oslo

You knew this was coming:

John Tierney:

I don’t want to dampen the celebration over Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, but I wonder if this is, as they say, a “teachable moment.” Should he skip the trip to Oslo, Norway, on a fuel-burning jet and instead accept the award by teleconference?

Tierney quotes Gore on flying, and Gore would not doubt reply something like that he has been buying carbon offsets all along. Whatever. It'd be nice if Gore flew a little less, but let's be honest, global warming is not going to be solved by returning our standard of living to the 18th century. Or even by eating kangaroo meat instead of beef. We are still going to drive and fly and explore the world, not matter what. We will heat our homes by cheapest means possible -- that's human nature.

What will make a difference is if it becomes cheaper and easier to buy electric or even hydrogen cars. If solar technology makes it amenable to heat our homes most of the time via the sun. If wind and tidal technologies become so well understood that we use them the rest of the time. Despite what Joseph Romm says, we are not going to tax coal plants out of existence, as long as they are what is cheapest. It is going to be new technology that makes the difference.

So ultimately Gore will be flying to Oslo via some low-carbon-emitting airplane. And the rest of us will still be vacationing in Venice or London or Cancun. That's the future we need.

2006 Heat

Most of the anomalous heat in the US in 2006 was due to human influences, conclude scientists:

Martin Hoerling, et. al., Geophysical Research Letters: "...over half of the anomalous warmth in 2006 is attributed to greenhouse gas forcing, whose strength now exceeds the standard deviation of natural fluctuations. We conclude that the record warmth was primarily due to human influences."

Gore's Money

SF Chronicle:

Gore, 59, said he planned to donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection....

Classy.

IPCC

"About 2,000 scientists from more than 100 countries have participated in the IPCC since 1988."

Science & Morality

I really like how NYT's Andrew Revkin captures the essence of today's Peace Prize: how appropriate it was that both the IPCC and Gore received the prize -- the IPCC representing the cold, logical, scientific side of this huge equation, and Gore representing the ethical, moral, emotional part of the story. Both are absolutely necessary, as in any big story. Some people understand or prefer to listen to one side of the story; others respond to the other side. But the latter is not cut-and-dried -- it is as big any value-laden issue, and global warming is as value-laden as it gets. Gore might not always get every iota and detail correct -- his critics don't either -- but there is still a lot of uncertainty about all this and someone has to say, look, this can get really serious. Recently we've seen that predictions made 7 or 10 years ago underpredict today's reality -- the situation does indeed appear to be on the serious side of things. In a very real way Gore has done more good for the world than had he been elected President in 2000.

Portland's Toxicity

Closer to home, Portland, Oregon, widely vaunted as a center of green environmentalism, is ranked the third most toxic city in the United States. Lovely.

Nobel Peace Prize

I guess the Nobel committee is not as tight-lipped as I thought.

I like that they gave the prize both to Gore and to the IPCC. The latter certainly deserves it as much as Gore, probably more, and it's an acknowledgment of a lot of work done by a lot of scientists over the years. It's too bad they all can't get a little medal out of this.

I am skeptical that this will mean much change, though. It will give Gore some moral authority, but only among the choir. The right long-ago dismissed the Nobel institution, and their attitudes about global warming aren't going to suddenly change this morning. People aren't going to suddenly drive less or fly less or even, I think, be more willing to pay something like a carbon tax. The corporations that fund and control the reins of power in this country are not going to stop digging in their heals -- the stakes are far, far higher than that. The Chinese will not suddenly agree to dial down their 8% rates of growth. And, of course, this prize won't mean one iota to the current administration.

Gore will gain even more rock star status among the converted, and if anything, this award is a personal victory for him, especially after all he's been though the 2000 election. He could have gone back to Tennessee and walked around with his head down, but he reinvented himself and kept going.

One hundred years from now the Iraq War and "war on terrorism" will look as meaningless and inconsequential as does the Spanish-American war today. Instead, the world will be wondering how in the hell we knew the facts and consequences of greenhouse gases and yet still didn't act on it. This will at least tell them that some people were trying.

Gore's Nobel Prize?

It doesn't make sense to me that Al Gore's cancellation of a Thursday appointment means he's been tipped off about winning the Nobel Prize. Prize recipients do not need to be in Sweden when they receive word of their winning -- indeed, Americans are usually rousted out of bed for a phone call. Secondly, I have never heard of a Nobel Prize being tipped off (it may happen, but I've never heard of it), and I think the prize officials are about as secretive as they come....

We'll see soon.

2nd Warmest September

Last month was (tied for) the second warmest September in recorded history, +0.71°C above the long-term average.

Year-to-date, 2007 is tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record, +0.76°C above the long-term record.

Pregnant Moose

This makes sense, although I wouldn't have guessed it: pregnant moose in Yellowstone move closer to human roads and infrastructure as they're about to give birth, for protection from predators who customarily avoid those areas.

More Climate Hypocrisy

Thomas Friedman of the NY Times tells us that he spent last week flying and driving around the country -- Alabama to Mississippi to Chicago to Massachusetts -- and then acts angry when his daughter asks him why the Arctic ice is melting.

It's melting because you won't stay home, Thomas. But he thinks it's up to the presidential candidates to propose a climate change mitigation plan, and I guess he is just along to observe.

Nobel Prizes

Yesterday when Americans won 2/3rds of the Nobel Prize in medicine, the NY Times had it has a headlined story on their top screen. Today when two Europeans win the physics prize, it's a one-line headline tucked away under "More News." A little American bias there, I think.

Sons and Mothers

A really interesting study from Finland, discussed in the October issue of Scientific American, shows that:

• sons reduce a mother's life span by an average of 34 weeks.
• girls from mix-gender twin pairs are 25% less likely to have children, had at least two fewer children, and were about 15% less likely to marry than those born with a sister.
• mothers of opposite-sex twins end up with 19% fewer grandchildren than moms of same-sex twins.
• 100 to 150 years ago, 40% of babies died before they reached adulthood.

Top 50 Dystopian Movies

Dark Roasted Blend, an absolutely great blog, has a nice list of the top 50 dystopian movies of all time. I love dystopian movies, I'm afraid. The sad thing about my life, I think, is that over these last few decades, it has not become clear which direction the future of humanity will take -- utopian, or dystopian. We had our chance. But frankly, at this point I can see it going either way, but as I get older and older and shit like this keeps cropping up, the dystopian branch seems more and more likely. Technology is not a clear good, and the forces of darkness crop up all around, even here, even in the last seven years. You cannot count on anyone with a good word and a smile. I worry -- frankly I am not so sure I'd want to be alive in the year 2100....

the Nobel Peace Prize

It is Nobel Prize season, and I'd like to suggest that the Noble Prize committee track down this man and give him the Peace Prize -- name me one person who was more courageous in the last 50 years, who demonstrated what it is all about:



The older I get, the more I realize how fragile democracy is, how easily it is escaping us, and how brave a few people can be. This man deserves a medal if anyone ever did.

Tim Ball is Wrong

Via Deltoid I see that Tim Ball is back with his assertion that global temperatures have been flat since 1998.

"The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998...."

This is simply wrong. Just plot the NASA GISS global temperature data:



Blue = 1-year moving averge
Orange = 5-year moving average
Yellow = 10-year moving average
Pink = 25-year moving average

Not one of these is declining. Ball's claim is false.

Gay Rights in Oregon

I am certainly happy to see this: efforts to roll back gay rights in Oregon are failing. Maybe this will be the end of it and the troglodytes will start to realize that the point of freedom is to move it forward, not backwards.

How Far We've Come

My God, Matchbox 20 actually has a cool song out, a really cool song: "How Far We've Come," which rocks to the first order:

Nobel Prizes

Wow, it is already October. I feel like I have barely even enjoyed the summer, and I'm certainly not prepared for autumn. Here in Portland the weather has quickly turned from the endless sunny days of summer to the cloudy, pissy days of autumn. But what can you do? -- life churns ahead and there's nothing you can do about it.

October means Nobel Prizes, is how I've always thought about it. I have no idea who will win the Physics prizes -- I never do, it always seems to be people I've never heard of in subjects I've only vaguely guessed were important -- though Wilcek's prize in 2004 was a notable exception, because QCD is sometime I know a little bit about, even if it's 20 years old.... -- but I would be really happy to see Al Gore win the Peace Prize for his work on global warming. I'm not really sure he deserves it -- he made a film and has had a lot to say, but the world hasn't exactly come around to his point of view, and I don't think he's defended his position particularly well -- but, frankly, the world's governments don't seem to give a shit about global warming -- not the US, not China, not India, not Australia, not any of the European states that matter. Who does -- Norway? Big deal..... So you can give it to Gore, but I'm not sure it will matter.... the world already knows his message, and although he has done yoeman's work in advancing it, it has not mattered down on the ground.

PNW energy generation

Though it has just 3.5% of the nation's population, the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) accounts for 24% of all renewable power in the U.S.

That's exclusive of hydropower. Most of this comes from wind.

That's pretty good.

Nike Football Ad Music

I'm still hoping someone can tell me what music is playing along this Nike Football ad.... I feel like I have to know.... C'mon, one of you must be able to tell me....

UPDATE: After some Web searching, I've determined that the song is "Promontory" by Trevor Jones, from the movie version of The Last of the Mohicans. A great movie, perhaps the quintessential movie about the northeastern United States -- I knew I loved that song from somewhere. Here's an MP3.

Missing TV during the Baseball Playoffs

I got rid of my cable TV about three months ago. I was watching a little too much of it, and it costs $50/month, but it was all the same old crap again and again -- I'd seen every episode of Star Trek:TNG about three times, and every episode of Seinfeld at least five times, and I felt I was starting to seriously waste my time. I haven't really missed it until the last few days when the days are becoming noticeably short and the baseball playoffs are on. The MLB playoffs are usually about the most exciting sports drama around, in my opinion, and I definitely miss not being able to tune in and be part of the story for three weeks or so. I have great memories of watching the Red Sox win the World Series in 2004. It definitely mattered that I was in New Hampshire then and there was a real feeling of team identity and even of history--at least for those who grew up soaked in the story of baseball. I remember the crisp, cool nights back there and the feeling that baseball mattered. That was reason enough to watch.

Here in Portland there is basically no team identity whatsoever, not for the city, and not for the entire state. A few people cheer for the Seahawks, but really they're pretty far away, and usually losers besides. And I'm sorry, but I just can not care less about the Trailblazers, or anything to do with basketball for that matter. It is a game for mutants, not the average person. It is meant to be a winter game, when the gym is warm and the security guards struggle to keep the doors closed again the cold and the locker room smells like used-up socks. Here in Portland we get none of that, just pissy rainy that sadly passes for a season. It is not really fair that Portland lives without an ML baseball team, and I hope that someday it gets one. Even if they are perennial losers like I'm sure they will be, like my boyhood Pirates. There is just something noble about baseball, that other sports lack.

Great Commercial

This commercial from Nike is pretty good (although they could use a better server).

Does anyone know what music accompanies it?

Water Bridge

Some results in science aren't earth-shattering, just really cool, like this water bridge.

When you place a high voltage on the water in the two beakers, the water climbs out of each beaker to meet in mid-air. The diameter of the bridge is about 2 mm, and remains if the beakers are less than 25 mm apart.

Another Global Warming Poll

There's another global warming poll out, and this one has some information on how much people are willing to sacrifice.

• 38% are "completely convinced" global warming is happening, and 34% are "strongly convinced. 57% think is is mostly caused by humans.
  
• Surprisingly, though (and someone of a victory for skeptics, I think), 40% think there is "a lot of disagreement" among scientists that global warming is happening.
  
• 68% support cutting GHG emissions 90% by 2050.
• 85% support requiring automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, trucks and SUVs to 35 miles per gallon, even if it meant a new car would cost up to $500 more; and 82% support requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from renewable energy sources, even if it cost the average household an extra $100/year.
  
• Over 2/3rds oppose carbon taxes on gas or electricity.

So better technology good; carbon taxes bad.

40% say that a presidential candidate's position on global warming is it at least "very important." I guess I'll believe that when I see it -- I don't see much discussion of global warming on the campaign trail, which seems to be dominated by Iraq and then next by health care. Personally, I'd rather see the next president solve the health care crisis than the global warming crisis, if I had to pick one over the other.

The Speed of Evolution

This is very interesting: no more than 6 mutations per genome per generation, or a species has a strong risk of becoming extinct.

Giuliani Visits Portland

Rudy Giuliani briefly alighted in Portland on Saturday, and in his short time here he was taken not to any local landmarks to meet local people and experience local diversity, but to a "New York-style" deli so he would feel "at home." Yes, why would he want anything like a local experience to see what the people he wants to represent are all about? Let's show him whatever makes him comfortable....

Tainted Toothpaste

Why it pays to know a little science: you might have to tell your national regulators how to do their jobs.

Brad Pitt on Climate Change

Gristmill highlights this video in which Brad Pitt make an appearance:



Pitt says: "It's nice to be sitting in a room with a bunch of people who are not debating the existence of climate change."

Oh please, please, fucking please. Every time I turn around I'm reading about how Brad Pitt and Angelie Jolie are flying to Africa or New York or Cannes or some such place. These people are more responsible for greenhouse gas emissions than 99% of the human population, probably more. And yet he has the nerve to get up on stage and look down on the rest of us for not taking global warming seriously. Stop the moralizing.

Either we think global warming is a problem or we don't. If we do, we will stay home and, well, emit less carbon. Otherwise, let's admit that we're not going to curtail our greenhouse gas emissions and get busy with the business of developing less emissive technologies or at least geoengineer the planet. Just stop the hypocrisy.

Climate change and technology

Joseph Romm over at Climate Progress makes fun of President Bush for stressing technology as a solution to climate change. Now I don't for a minute think Bush is serious about climate change, or technology -- Bush is now irrelevant, frankly -- but that aside, I'd like to know what Romm thinks is going to solve the climate change problem. We are never -- never -- going to regulate greenhouse gas cutbacks of 75% with today's technology, what's needed to stabilize the climate. Never. People just can't afford that and they'll never stand for it. People want to drive, and they want to fly, and they want to heat and air-condition their homes at a reasonable price. They want food at today's prices, not 30% higher. They just are not willing to significantly cut back their standard of living, even a little.

So it's only going to be technology, in my opinion, that makes the difference. We are going to use all the oil there is, and then we are going to use coal, and we will only use alternative technologies if they are cheaper and more readily available. So the best thing Bush could do -- although of course he will not -- is to establish a massive program that develops these alternative technologies. Yes, regulating greenhouse gases will put a price on them that will promote the development of greenhouse gases. But that's a kind of secondary effect. If you want to regulate greenhouse gases in order to promote the develoment of new, greener technologies, OK, but to dismiss the role of technology and expect greenhouse gas regulation to solve the global warming problem is just silly.

CFL article

I have an article in the October issue of Scientific American on compact fluorescent light bulbs: Toxic Bulbs: Recycling rules vary for mercury-containing fluorescents, p. 30.

Pat Michaels reveals

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via Deltoid:

[Pat] Michaels withdrew as an expert witness in a recently decided landmark court case in which automakers sought to turn back state efforts to rein in cars' production of greenhouse gasses. Michaels said he would testify only if his funders' identities could be kept secret, court documents show.

That pretty much tells you all you need to know, doesn't it?

Bush on Climate Change

It is impossible for me to work up any enthusiasm about anything Bush had to say yesterday -- I can barely even bring myself to read the newspaper articles on it. It has long since been obvious that he has absolutely zero intentions of doing anything about climate change, and that's certainly not going to change at this late stage. "New rhetoric?" Please.

"I want to get the job done," he [Bush] told environment ministers and ambassadors at the State Department. "We've identified a problem. Let's go solve it together."

Yes, except he proposes not solutions whatsoever. Meanwhile, his government officials are busy actually colluding with lobbyists to oppose California's efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

Of course, there isn't really much evidence that any other country in the world is doing much about climate change either. The European countries, by and large, can't make their Kyoto commitments. China and India certainly value economic growth far above limiting global warming. For almost all of them, it is all talk and no action.

California Elk

My friend Clinton was up visiting recently, and on the the way back to California took this picture of a elk just south of Orick, CA on the Redwood Highway. Click to enlarge.

"Climate Pricing 101"

The Sightline Institute up in Seattle has a nice little primer on pricing issues in climate policy.

They also publish a weekly newsletters on Fridays, which is a good way of keeping up on environmental issues here in the Pacific Northwest. You can sign-up here.

"You'll Be Comin' Down"

Several more songs from Springsteen's new album Magic have leaked out, and so far my favorite is "You'll Be Coming Down." It sounds both old and new, with some poetic yet vicious lyrics. It's not an uplifting song at all, yet there's something to like about it. I wonder who he had in mind when he wrote it.

Beth Ditto & Gossip

When I hear new music, which these days is usually through YouTube, I usually listen to the clip a few dozen times, until it is good and sunk in. After that I can't stand it, but until then it is great stuff. Boobs and all.

The latest clip: Beth Ditto and Gossip, "Standing in the Way of Control":

Lundberg denialism

Here is an incredible statement from Trudy Lungberg, publisher of the "Lundberg Survey," a national survey of gas prices quoted regularly by major news organizations. She does not think American's should conserve gasoline in any shape or form:

Q (CNN): As far as conservation, what are the trends you are seeing?

A (Lundberg): I'm hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our environment that we [should] deprive ourselves of gasoline for our personal mobility as well our commerce. And to suppose that it is good to do that, and pretend that we have consensus and put our heads together to deprive ourselves of this great product that makes the country go around, commercially and individually, I think is flawed. I'm hoping consumers and voters will see through that and be able to ignore some of the most extreme suggestions.

The woman seems to have absolutely no understanding of modern climate science as developed in the last 20 years. Or any sense whatsoever that oil supplies might actually be limited, as market trends seem to suggest. It is not immediately apparent to me that her schtick depends on increasing prices -- she seems to have a fair lock on price reporting, regardless of where prices are going -- so it is difficult for me to believe someone in her position can be so blind.

Bond's 756 HRer

I don't care too much about Barry Bonds, but this branding of his 756th home run with an asterisk really strikes me as wrong-headed. It almost seems sacreligious, and I say that with no particular fondness for him -- in fact, if anything, I suspect he probably did take performance-enhancing substances. But maybe he didn't. And if he didn't, the ball will be forever branded as if he did.

This is an ugly situation all around, and I don't blame the 49ers for cutting Bonds loose -- he has done absolutely nothing to show any nobility in this situation. But baseball has a long, glorified history and I don't think it's up to the very temporary, rich owner of his 756th HR to decide how the ball should be viewed for eternity.

First Landis, now this. Sports is getting very, very ugly, and who wants to follow it at this rate?

gas and oil prices

This is happening quietly and almost under the radar screen, but year-over-year gasoline prices are up 18% and oil prices are up an astonishing 39%.

Favoring Action on Climate Change

65% of the people polled in a world-wide poll said "it is necessary to take major steps starting very soon ... to take steps to reduce the impact of human activities that are thought to cause global warming or climate change." In the U.S. the number was 59%.

I do not believe these numbers. The poll notably did not ask what actions its respondents favor. It is all good and easy to be in favor of "action." Does that mean you're willing to drive 40% less? Pay 50% more for your gasoline and electricity? Tolerate significant increases in the cost of your food? I don't think any one of these would poll successfully.

People want action, as long as it doesn't cost them any money.

--

By the way, the true cost of gasoline in the United States is more like $7/gallon, when you consider all the money we spend to secure oil resources.

More on Clotheslines

Today's Oregonian says that clothes driers use 6% of U.S. electricity usage. The U.S. uses on average 3.3 Tera Watts, so that's 200 billion Watts just for clothes driers, or an incredible 650 Watts/person. Or 480 kW-hr/month.

If electricity costs 10 cents per kiloWatt-hour, as it does here in Portland, that's $48/month. Per person. Yikes.

That is to say, it's as if each and every one of us were constantly and continually burning six-and-a-half 100 Watt light bulbs just to keep our clothes dry. Every single minute of every day.

--

By the way, this same Wikipedia article says that in 1999 computers used 13% of total U.S. electricity consumption, expected to grow to 35-50% by 2020.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Someone pointed out in the comments that the 6% number for electricity use by clothes dryers is probably of total residential consumption, and that seems to be the case. Here is some EIA data from 2001: 107 million households in that year consumed 1.140 billion kW-hr, or 130 billion Watts, or 0.13 TW. Or only ~5% of total US electricity consumption. That sounds low, but that's what I get. Air-conditioning and refrigeration each accounted for 14% of the US total. Electric clothes dryers consumed 66 B Kw-hr, or 5.8% of total residential usage.

Wolfgang Panofsky Dead

Wolfgang Panofsky, the founding director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) and a renowned physicist and science administrator, died last night at the age of 88.

Breathing

You often find global warming smart alecks, like Ben Shapiro here, suggest that we should all stop breathing in order to solve the carbon dioxide problem. I've always been (extremely) skeptical, but never really ran the numbers. It turns out the idea is indeed absurd -- of all the CO2 humans emit, only about 8.1% is from respiration:

• The US Department of Agriculture says the average human exhales about 900 grams of CO2/day.
• There are now about 6.62 billion people on the planet, says the US Census Bureau.
• That works out to a total of 2.2 billion MT (metric tons) of CO2 exhaled per year by the human species.
  
• Humans activities emit a total of about about 27 billion MT of CO2 per year.
• So human respiration is responsible for 8.1% of all human CO2 emissions.

Of course, that is probably dwarfed by emissions of all the other species, but still it's a bigger percentage than I thought. But stop breathing will come nowhere near to solving the problem.

"tomorrow"

Yesterday I spent some time with my nephew Quinn, who is one month shy of 3 years old. We were talking and he used the word "tomorrow," so I asked him what it meant. I know he knows it intuitively, but I was curious what he'd say.

He said, "That's when I'll be older."

I thought that was an excellent answer, better than I could ever do.

Galileo's middle finger

Did you know that Galileo's middle finger of his right hand was cut off 100 years after his death and preserved? It's on display at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy.

Appropriate that it was his middle finger.

(From the August 2007 issue of symmetry magazine.)

Bruce Springsteen - Mrs McGrath

"All foreign wars I do proclaim
live on the blood and the mother's pain
I'd rather have my son as he used to be
Than the King of America and his whole navy"

Super-smart Artificial Intelligence by 2030

I really, really hate articles like this one by Ronald Bailey of Reason:

By 2030, or by 2050 at the latest, will a super-smart artificial intelligence decide to keep humans around as pets? Will it instead choose to turn the entire Earth, including the messy organic bits like us, into computronium? Or is there a third alternative?

Please. 2030 is only 23 years from now, as far into the future as 1984 is into the past. Life just doesn't progress that fast. In 1984 we had the beginnings of personal PCs. We had an pseudo-intelligent telecommunications network -- AT&T's CCS7 signaling network had been in effect for about a year. The Internet existed and email, especially on a single computer, was well-established. I exchanged my first IM-type messages over the Internet sometime like 1985 or 1986, while a graduate student at Stony Brook.

Yes, there have been amazing advances since then, mostly in networking, in the development of HTML and Web browsers and all kinds of transactions over the Web. We now have cell phones and wireless communication most places.

But really there hasn't been all that much change. Especially in the arena of artificial intelligence. I do not feel threatened by robots or artificial intelligence any more now than I did in 1985. I spend absolutely no time worrying that some robotic intelligence is plotting to undo me and turn me into a biological slave. Robots are still not a part of our daily life, or even tangential to our lives. They are good at helping make cars, and some other basic manufacturing tasks. In no way do they threaten to undo us all.

I'm sure Reason spent a lot of money to send Ron Bailey to the Singularity Summit in San Francisco, and he had to come through with a provocative article. But we're not more threatened by robots in 2030 than we are by genetically engineered kittens. Try to calm down, please.

Hawaii v. Mt. Everest

I did not know this:

Hawaii is sometimes referred to as Earth's greatest mountain because its height above the seafloor exceeds the height of Mt. Everest above the plains of India.

Loudon Wainwright -- The Swimming Song

All I have been listening to for the last week, 200 times probably by now, is this Loudon Wainwright tune, "The Swimming Song." I just love it.



I'm about sick of it now -- only a few more dozen times to go. This is usually how I enjoy music.

Beastie Boys: "Sure Shot"

Incredibly, this Beastie Boys song was censored by Clear Channel Communications after 9/11: "Sure Shot" was deemed too controversial because a couple of airplanes slammed into the twin towers, and "sure shot" someone invoked that. Lame, lame, lame.

Sabotage

"I'm gonna set it straight
this Watergate...."

-- Beastie Boys, Sabotage

On Not Treating Water

So there's been this lost hiker in Whatcom County up in Washington, Mary Wingfield. She's been lost since Sunday. OK -- anyone can get lost -- I was lost once in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, on a late January day, and it was a little scary. But I got out alright.

But this person is leaving notes around saying she has no water, when all around the Cascades there are plenty of streams and waterfalls for her to fall into. What she means is she has no treated water, but really, if you've been lost for four days, and you really going to leave notes that you're short on water, when really you're refusing to drink from the many, many streams that flow your way? I mean, even if they're not treated? Of course not -- you suck them up, and if you get giardia you deal with it later. Your chances are pretty small to begin with -- I've been drinking from streams my entire life, and I have yet to ingest any giardia. Better you die from giardia than you die from dehydration -- it will take a lot longer (though might be just as ugly).

Come on -- how can you die from lack of water in the autumnal Cascades?

I'm Goin' Down

You know, I love Bruce Springsteen -- I used to haunt him on the Jersey Shore, to little avail, although I once did go trick-or-treating at his house, even though I was an old fart and so was he -- and I like to think that he is some kind of genius about the human heart. And yet, here he is in this video, grasping awkwardly for the truth of the human heart. He is surprisingly awkward about it, with nary an insightful thing to say, until he gets to his music. Then it all takes off and it all makes sense. But I am surprised about how little he actually has to say before he gets to the singing part. It really humanizes him....

Souring on the Blogosphere

I am really beginning to sour on the blogosphere. I mean, I am more than happy to read the blogosphere as long as I get a significant percentage of my news from it. But when pseudo-intellectuals like Andrew Sullivan insist on running useless contests like the Best Movie Line Ever and Front Porch Window Views, then I tune out. Sullivan hardly ever seems interested in ideas any more, but merely in accumulating traffic. And he thinks the blogosphere is some kind of great advance for writers, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It would be, if he had something to say. But I have read him for about three years now and I just have not seem his great contribution to human thought. And so I am giving up on him -- I've deleted him from my reading list. I just can't deal with this waste of time, even at 20 seconds a pop. The more I read the more I think the blogosphere is merely derivative on original thought and original reporting and original investigation, and really, who has the time?

What I Hate About the YouTube Era

Here is what I hate about the YouTube era: are we so fucking desperate to appear online that we will admit to every single stupid thing we have ever done??

The answer appears to be yes.

Evidence: this idiotic Oregonian who put a rattlesnake in his mouth.

Yes, a rattlesnake. In his mouth.

He admits he was drunk at the time. He admits that he was stupid. And yet these conditions seem to have absolutely no effect on his willingless to share his stupid and repulsive story with the rest of the world. I really think he thinks he's something special for all his efforts.

How utterly fucking depressing.

I don't know about you, but if I was so drunk that I tried to put a rattlesnake in my mouth -- I feel foolish even typing these words -- you can be sure I would wake up feeling so utterly stupid and foolish that there's no way I'd ever -- ever -- never ever -- share this information with anyone at all, let alone with my town's newspaper.

I mean, I have done some stupid things -- though nothing near as stupid as putting a rattlesnake in my mouth -- but in any case I am quite happy to keep each and everyone one of these stupid things to myself and avoid the extreme embarassment of the Internet and of YouTube. It simply kills me that someone is so stupid -- that, specifically, Matt Wilkinson of Southeast Portland is so stupid -- as to admit to this kind of utter stupidity.

Where the hell are we headed? I am afraid to think about it.

clothes drying and global warming

We are never going to solve the global warming problem if we can't even make the smallest sacrifices -- and that seems to be the case at least when it comes to hanging out clothes to dry. According to yesterday's Wall Street Journal, neighbors in Bend, Oregon are all up in arms because Susan Taylor wants to hang her clothes out to dry. The nerve! It might affect property values, you see, and what possibly could be more important than that?

Personally, to me a house with a line of drying clothes outside of it says here is a neighbor who is intelligent, economical, caring, and unselfish, and frankly the sight of a line of drying clothes invokes memories of how things were done back in the days of my youth. It would raise property values for me.

American electric dryers use the equivalent of 30 million tons of coal a year, according to today's Oregonian. That works out to 78 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year, or a full 1.3% of US annual emissions. Just for drying clothes. And people aren't willing to make a few sacrifices for that? We will never solve global warming at this rate.

"Into the Wild"

I am deliberately not going to see the movie Into the Wild, directed by Sean Penn and partly filmed here in Portland. It's based on the 1997 book of the same title written by Jon Krakauer, about the short life and mysterious death of free-spirit Chris McCandless. It was a book I liked a lot, which is why I don't want to see the movie -- I don't want the picture I have in my head overwritten by the movie's interpretation. In all my life I've only seen two movies that seemed faithful to my imagination -- A Separate Peace, based on the John Knowles book, a book I absolutely loved as a kid, and The World According to Garp. Every other movie was relatively disappointing compared to the book, but the instant you have the movie's interpretation in your head you lose absolutely everything that you spent so long building so tenderly in your head. I actively tried to avoid all shots and commercials from All the Pretty Horses, a book I was pissed they made into a movie. How can you improve on it? You can't. I feel the same way about Into the Wild. It's not for me.

Oregon suicides

Here is something I never would have guessed:

Suicide accounts for three-quarters of all violent deaths in Oregon, outnumbering homicides by more than 5-to-1, state health officials reported Monday.... Oregon is one of nine states where more people die by suicide than in vehicle crashes.

Hillary's Health Plan

I am intensely interested in Hillary's health care plan -- but so far, I can't make heads or tails of it.

I am a single, childless, self-employed white, middle-class male. I have a beard and a paunch. I am the last person anyone in this country will ever care about. I would like to know how Hillary's plan affects me, but I can't figure it out at all from what it on her Web site. I make enough to eat, but not enough to afford a house. I fall in-between where your average American is supposed to be and frankly, my health has suffered because I cannot afford health insurance right now. I'll spare you the details. I was able to afford it early in my freelance career, when I was under the auspices of COBRA, but when it rose to more than $400/month sometime around 2003 -- and that was without prescription coverage -- I had to drop out. I especially had to drop out when I moved from New Hampshire across the river to Ogunquit, Maine -- only about 20 miles -- and my premium suddenly went up to $680/month. For no reason other than that I lived in a different state. Some politician told me something about the "spiral of death," but fuck them.

So where the hell does Hillary's plan leave me? I won't vote for her until I know. Now -- fuck -- I have to go dig it out. Why can't she just tell me??

"I don't understand it. All we're trying to do is destroy everything.”
-- Johnny Rotten, after EMI released them from their record contract

TimesSelect is No More

I knew that if I held out long enough the New York Times would cave -- and now, ipso facto, they have announced that TimesSelect is going away.

My persistence will save you $49.95/yr, from now until eternity. See how easy that was? Power to the people.

Iraq and Oil

Kevin Drum quotes a line from Alan Greenspan's memoir:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

I have perhaps been influenced by too many Richard Heinberg books, but I have thought all along that this war is all about -- and only about -- oil. I have been amazed and disheartened by the degree to which the media here in the US have ignored this angle and barely even mentioned it. It gets no press at all, even in the liberal papers -- how can that be? I am sad about how easily we have fallen for this Administration's claim that is is all about Al Qaeda in Iraq, and all that crap. We are building massive military bases in Iraq, at least four, and the media is barely even covering this. Oil company profits are through the roof and they are barely even covering that.
This is an ugly, corporate war, and American men and women are dying for these corporations, and they do not even know it. It is an amazing phenomenon, really, and the American public has been completely thrown off by challenges to their patriotism. It all seems so easy, really.

Wave Energy in the Oceans

I was doing a little investigation into oceanic wave energy, and came across this interesting statistic:

The total power of waves breaking on the world's coastlines is estimated at 2 to 3 million megawatts. In favorable locations, wave energy density can average 65 megawatts per mile of coastline.

That works out to an incredible 12,300 Watts of energy per foot of coastline, or enough energy to power nine typical American homes. (The average American household uses about 1370 Watts, or 12,000 KW-hr/yr. In the past 12 months, I have used 5,540 kW-hr. But then, I'm just one person.)

Marburger

John Marburger reiterates to the BBC that that greenhouse gases cause global warming:

I think there is widespread agreement on certain basics, and one of the most important is that we are producing far more CO2 from fossil fuels than we ought to be.

And it's going to lead to trouble unless we can begin to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we are burning and using in our economies....

The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unliveable.

Marburger has admitted before that the climate is changing, but this is the strongest statement I can recall from him about man's role in it. But, in a somewhat illogical conclusion, he's still not sure we should do anything about it:

It's not clear that we'll be in a position to predict the future accurately enough to make policy confidently for a long time," he said.

"I think 2C is rather arbitrary, and it's not clear to me that the answer shouldn't be 3C or more or less. It's a hunch, a guess."

The truth, he said, was that we just do not know what the 'safe' limit is.

How can you believe that the atmosphere will just get "hotter and hotter" and yet still refrain from action?

"I Am Legend"

I am a big fan of any book or movie about the apocalypse -- pre-apocalypse (Deep Impact, Armageddon), apocalpyse (The Day After, The Day After Tomorrow, Children of Men), or post-apocalypse (The Stand, On the Beach, Omega Man, Mad Max, The Postman, Red Dawn, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Oryx and Crake). Maybe this explains my interest in global warming, although I hope not. Anyway, this looks like a good upcoming movie: I Am Legend with Will Smith:



Kind of an Omega Man for the 21st century. Coming in December.

Sort of like Afterworld (afterworld.tv), which has some amazing animation.

Then there's this JJ Abrams film (project name Cloverfield, potential title Monstrous) that is being kept under wraps, which has one of the best trailers I have ever seen....

floating sand

Here's an interesting phenomenon I've never seen before: sand floating on the ocean.

August ties a Record

Last month tied a record for the warmest August in recorded history -- +0.77 C above the long-term average, which ties 2003.

For the year, month-to-month, 2007 is only 0.03 C below the record set in 2003.

Global warming is just a myth, though. Of course.

TV on the Radio, "Wolf Like Me"