Category Archives: Current Events

Texican on the move

4 Replies

So Tejas governor Rick Perry is going to throw his hat into the ring for the republican nomination. Really, people?  Are you kidding me? A smarmy, neo-confederate, evangelical Texican praying for a resolution to the debt crisis? I have no doubt that Jesus Christ himself would tell us in lilting Aramaic to pull our thumbs out of our asses and reach for a settlement, not stand around in a stadium groveling for forgiveness of our sins with outstretched arms. Fix the bloody thing and save your wishes prayers for grandma’s recovery from hip surgery.

Christians should be grateful for the concept of sin. The whole religion is built on it. Sin is the denominator of Christianity- if it collapses to zero the whole religion becomes undefined. Without sin, our cherished fraternal hatreds would resolve to mere anthropology and lose that zesty cosmic fizz that we so enjoy.

Thursday links

Leave a reply

Do the Math has a zesty essay on the physical limits to economic and technological growth.  Rabid libertarians and free market triumphalists may need a maintenance shot of Viagra after reading this. I’m just sayin’ …

Have you noticed that numerous states with conservative governments (especially Ohio and Wisconsin) are on strikingly similar trajectories? You can thank ALEC for that. I think that the authorship of legislation should be transparent. On any given bill, the sponsors should be able to cough up the names of those who wrote the code.

Have you read any of Pliny’s Natural History?  Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) was an amazing fellow. He was a Roman polymath who commanded military regiments yet found time to chronicle an encyclopedic collection of writings on life as a Roman. His Natural History is a detailed recollection of customs, medicaments, natural history and metallurgy. I’ve been reading his chapter on metallurgy in the 1855 translation by Bostock and Riley.  Pliny died in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. His body was found covered in pumice. Had the Romans known how to sail up wind, he would have survived.

David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy and Mather, was a master of advertising. This link is a distillation of his thinking on the enterprise of advertising.

Before I pass from this earth I want to take a tour of Iceland.

Kunstler is the Master

Leave a reply

James Howard Kunstler is the master. There comes a time when one must step back and acknowledge your betters. This is such a time for Th’ Gaussling.

Europe is arguably worse off money-wise, more broke, flimsier, crapped out, crippled, and paralyzed. Sad, because in outward appearance Europe  is – how shall I put this? – better turned out than America. Europe is a fit, silver-haired gentleman in a sleek Italian suit and a pair of Michael Toschi swing lace wingtips, holding a serious-looking Chiarugi leather briefcase. America is pear-shaped blob of semi-formed male flesh, in ankle-length cargo shorts, a black T-shirt featuring skull motifs, tattoos randomly assigned (as if by lottery) to visible flesh, a Sluggo buzz-cut, and a low-rider sports cap designed to make your head look flat. In other words, he lacks a certain savoir-faire compared to his European cousin. But both are broke. Neither has any idea what he will do next – though, for the American, it will probably involve the ingestion of melted cheese or drugs (or both). When the European collapses, a certain air of delicacy will attend his demise; the expired American will go up in flames in a trailer and they’ll have to sort out his remains from the melted goop of his dwelling-place with a front-end loader.

The influence of a committed minority

Leave a reply

A paper recently published in Physical Review Letters E is stirring some attention on the web.  The citation and abstract are below.  The work was funded by the Army Research laboratory.

J. Xie1, S. Sreenivasan1,2,*, G. Korniss2, W. Zhang3, C. Lim3, and B. K. Szymanski1
1Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA
2Department of Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA
3Department of Mathematics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA

Received 17 February 2011; revised 25 April 2011; published 22 July 2011

We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc≈10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when p<pc, Tc~exp[α(p)N], whereas for p>pc, Tc~lnN. We conclude with simulation results for Erdős-Rényi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.

I’ll confess that I have not paid for a download nor have I been to the local university library to look at the paper.  There is an RPI website that details the highlights of the paper. 

The results of the work seem very intriguing, though. And making a tie to current events is all too easy, so I’ll attempt to restrain myself.

If you have ever done simulation work, you know not to confuse simulation with reality.  However, the great value of simulation is that it forces one to think hard about the parameters of a system and to develop quantatative relationships. This is especially useful in iterative or non-linear processes where intuition easily breaks down.  Even if you do not succeed making a bullet proof model, you have almost certainly come to understand the system better.

Thr RPI article goes on to say-

Once the networks were built, the scientists then “sprinkled” in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.

“In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models,” said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models “talked” to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener’s belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.

This seems to connect quite naturally with Chomsky’s notion of the “Manufacture of Consent” by the ever burgeoning political-media complex in operation today.  My guess is that the backers of conservative media have had an intuitive grasp of the benefits of repetition and existential certainty for a long while.  When you claim to have the “founders” and a deity on your side, logic and reasoning becomes distinctly non-linear.

Borders Books to close its doors this week.

Leave a reply

The Borders books chain is set to liquidate, possibly this Friday according to this link. But, like the elk with a broken leg, if the grizzlies don’t get it, the winter surely will. According to reports, the firm was beset with poor management, superior competition, a paradigm shift in buying behavior, and a crummy overall economic picture. The creditors- publishers to a large extent- must be satisfied.

As a frequent patron of Amazon, I hold some personal responsibility for this. I did enjoy browsing in the local store. I bought my issues of Nuts and Volts, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Kitplanes. But in the end, Amazon had the selection I wanted to spend money on. Obscure print-on-demand books from the 19th century. Not your basic consumer fare at a Borders.

For we browsers of the world, this is a definite loss. Of course, the lesson for browsers is to actually buy something while in the store. That way they can keep the doors open. Or so I’ve heard.

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station Alert

2 Replies

An alert was declared on June 7th, 2011, at the Fort Calhoun nuclear generating plant north of Omaha, NE.  The plant is next to the Missouri River which has been at some level of flood stage recently.  According to the NRC, a fire ocurred briefly affecting some electrical equipment necessary for safe operation of the plant. Within a few hours the plant operators exited the alert when the necessary access to equipment was regained. 

For a short time the plant lost its ability to cool the spent fuel pool cooling water.  While the incident did not result in any unsafe temperature rise in the pool, the licensee was obligated to declare the alert. The plant remained safely shut down during the event, though afterward the plant remained under an Unusual Event Declaration due to the condition of the Missouri River. The FAA issued a temporary flight restriction within two nautical miles of the plant.

Ft Calhoun Nuclear Plant in the Missouri River

The Puyehue Volcano

Leave a reply
The Puyehue (poo-YAY-way) volcano in Chile is presently in an eruptive phase. This stratovolcano is part of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex (PCCVC). The Andean Cordillera is zoned with isolated volcanic belts along the length of the continent.  As is the case along the rest of the Ring of Fire around the Pacific rim, the vulcanism is due to subduction, in this case of the Nazca and Antarctic plates.
 
Eruption of Puyehue Volcano in Chile (photo AFP)

It was suggested (tongue in cheek) that the volcano be renamed Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings.

Puyehue Eruption, June 2011. (Earth Observatory)Puyehue Eruption (June 14, 2011, Earth Observatroy)

 Today’s image (below) from the Earth Observatory is telling of the scale of the ash cloud. It has traversed the width of the continent due east- from the Andea’s on the Pacific to the Atlantic and beyond.

Puyehue Eruption 6/14/11 (Earth Observatory photo)

Challenging the paradigm

4 Replies

Increasingly I am a fan of LinkTV. It is one of the very few alternative content networks around. I try to catch Deutche Wella  and Al Jazeera on Link a few times per week for a different perspective of world events. 

News programming in the US evolved decades ago into a business model which delivers manufactured consent to those who’ll pay for it.   News programmers in the US for the most part seem to have a notion that only they know what we really want to see. So they roll their tape for us.  Who really decides where the beady eye of scrutiny is pointed?

Really now. Why do we have the same tedious group of talking heads making the rounds on the news programs? In a country of 300 million, we can’t find a few others who will say something new or at least unexpected?  It’s just like the stars who appear on Leno.  In exchange for a free “performance”on the show, they get to promote their latest gig. It’s about low cost content.

In the case of news, the network gets “compelling commentary” for free by a guest who is calculated to cause eyeballs to linger a few moments.  News content has the shelflife of squid. It is no good tomorrow.

If you’re not alarmed by this kind of thing then you’re not paying attention.  Knock knock!! I’m talking to the 2/3 of the bell curve who may suspect that Fox, for instance, occasionally makes things up to suit the needs of its backers.  The 1/3 who watch Fox assiduously are perhaps not recoverable from their trance.

Numerous coworkers claim to be independent thinkers, but to a man or woman, will spout the same vocabulary and pre-framed concepts. They get their talking points from Fox, as directed.  I love these people, but their view of the world is a cartoon drawn by a couple of guys in a sound booth. It is sad.

A Modest Proposal for the Eurozone

Leave a reply

Here is what I propose as a solution for the European debt crisis.  Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland should be given the option of swapping land in exchange for their debt. What land? Take a line of latitude from the southernmost tip northward until an area of land redeemed is equal to (debt (Euro) / 5000 Euro/hectare) which covers the debt. 

It should be pointed out that Napoleon voluntarily swapped the Louisiana territory for cash to raise operating funds for his adventures. After all, he was coming into new property in Europe.

As my consulting fee, I’ll take the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. It’s a charming spit of land and will be more than suitable.

Texas Justice. Fishing Crimes.

Leave a reply

You know, I really do like Texans. I lived there for a few years and I think I have an accurate sense of the place.  But Texans are Texans. It really is “like a whole ‘nother country” sometimes.

The Texas legislature recently passed the Fish Fraud law which specifically addresses the problem of fraud at fishing tournaments. The bill passed the house 142 to 4 and the senate 30 to 1 and awaits signing by the governor.  The bill provides penalties for fraud starting at a Class A Misdemeanor for the first offense to a third degree Felony for fishing crimes involving greater than $10,000 in prize money.  

According to the article, game wardens and prosecutors approached Representative Dan Flynn about  a fish fraud incident at Lake Ray Hubbard east of Dallas in October of 2009. Rep Flynn jumped on this outrage and brought the beady eye of scrutiny to bear on those dark hearted anglers who dare to flim-flam fishing tournaments. Case in point:  A semi-pro angler forced a 1 pound weight into a 9.5 lb bass, misrepresenting the weight of the fish and thus defrauding the tournament organizers. 

Without the benefit of a Fish Fraud law, the crooked angler got 15 days in jail, 5 years of probation, and loss of his fishing license for the duration of his probation.

It certainly seems to me like Texas Justice was swift and unblinking in this case without a special law on the books. The miscreant who perpetrated this act was nabbed by the local constable and thrown behind bars.

Ever wonder why there are so many laws on the books? This is an example of how it happens. Somebody games the system and legislators rush in to pack legislative caulking into a perceived hole in the wall. The Texas legislature has felonized yet somethng else. 

Are we really better off with an ever expanding definition of felonious acts?  The fisherman’s wickedness is plain for all to see. But does this one case merit the enactment of yet one more piece of legislation?  If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Maybe it’s best if we take some time off from inventing new laws and look at what we’ve wrought?