Category Archives: Politics

When future historians view this pandemic

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Some historians in the future will focus on this time period and try to make sense of the social and political turmoil we’re now experiencing in this endemic of COVID-19. Many US citizens are in conflict with knowledgeable authorities who are trying to limit the spread of this viral disease. As of this writing the endemic has not yet fully played out.

There are several particularly good questions that must be investigated- How should we view a culture that can’t bring itself to cooperate internally in the prevention of a communicable disease that has so far caused more than 900,000 deaths? Would one expect that roughly 1/3 of the adult population in a highly advanced culture such as ours would refuse to cooperate with the most minor measures to prevent the spread of contagion? That is, wearing a light weight mask when around others. Standing apart just a little bit and washing your hands a little more. These are simple requests yet they appear to be outrageous forfeitures of liberties to many people in the USA.

What kind of civilization is this where an appreciable fraction of the citizens refuse to act in the direction of self-preservation of the population? When shouting about personal rights to not wear a mask or get vaccinated outweighs the rights of the majority to remain infection free?

As bad luck would have it, the endemic coincides with a far right wing-leaning conservative political movement in the USA. This crowd had issues with the government anyway. They are especially furious that experts within various health agencies have issued instructions and mandates on containment of the disease.

We might have thought it obvious that when presented with a highly infectious virus that is spread through the air, it would be in our self-interest to voluntarily control where infectious breath goes, dial back our movement a bit and increase interpersonal distances temporarily in order to avoid mass infection and mass casualties. One might also think that given the long and highly successful use of vaccines, volunteering to get a shot would seem reasonable and also be in our self-interest.

The US constitution is silent on personal freedoms in a time of contagion as it is on many other things. I interpret that as wiggle room to figure out solutions for the problems of our time that serve to further the cause of survival against a mindless but efficient virus.

One of the purposes of government has always been to protect ourselves from each other. What we’ve experienced when government has tried to intervene is loud hysteria and political pressure from an infectious vocal minority who are actually dying from COVID at a higher rate than the vaccinated public. Aggravating matters greatly, some of the opponents of masking and vaccination have very large commercial platforms from which to broadcast self-serving misinformation. It has been obvious for a long time that this is done to increase viewership and profit from the misinformed. Capitalist organizations are using their broadcasts to increase the bottom line on the backs of the volatile misinformed.

At the moment, it doesn’t look like persuasion with solid information will work with the anti crowd. Do the rest of us have to wait around until these folks, many of whom are fervent authoritarian Trump supporters, just live out their lives and die hoping that they don’t crash democracy along the way?

Is this really the direction that the American experiment goes? What kind of country are we? I thought that I had a good grasp of that. I was wrong.

GOP Evangelical Dread-Fear Machine In Action. Again.

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The weighty voices of the GOP evangelical propaganda wing have activated following the awful soaking that Houston received. The wagging fingers of TV evangelists were not far behind to remind us of the looming existential threat.

We’ve witnessed a burlesque of  righteous-sounding preachers leaning in from the video pulpit and warning, solemnly and in no uncertain terms, that hurricane Harvey is only the latest in a series of calamities to befall our nation. Our corrupt society is wallowing in a fetid pit of sin and depravity. The storms were heaven sent they intone, to show Who is actually in charge.

It’s all so very clear to these folks. The root cause of the mass murder at Sandy Hook and hurricanes Katrina, and now Harvey is the grievous sin of omission. For what? For failing to put an end to abortion and gay marriage. They’ve been connecting the dots and these dots lead to perdition. An existential threat is on the move. It’s Old Nick up to no good.

The conservative fear machine has kicked into full ruckus configuration. They deploy their weapons of incitement via their heavy presence on AM radio and cable TV. For elections and in the face of national debate, these evangelical conservatives know that they can dependably frighten just enough people to swerve the Republican hive mind. Who are these pliable voters? I think more than a few of them are people who for one reason or another did not take advantage of the education opportunities decades ago and now find themselves near the terminus of a life of toil.

Conveniently for those right of center, the Democratic Party is comatose and strapped into an iron lung, wheezing away the years in an undisclosed location.

9/10/17, Addendum.  In case I was not clear, it’s my observation that conservative protestant evangelical organizations have become a menace to American civilization. It seems to me that the election of Trump and the support bestowed upon him by conservative Christian groups, many of whom can be found out in the open on his evangelical advisory board, has opened the door to opaque theocratic influence on the large scale conduct of American government.

It’s axiomatic that people have an inherent right to worship as they please. So imagine the nightmare of trying to control what people believe when religion is folded into the curriculum of the public schools. What a tragic misunderstanding of human nature it would be to attempt to impose religious doctrine upon students. Parents would have none of it. But, a private school may have much more flexibility to teach a particular sect of religious belief. Is it  a coincidence that privatizing schools is favored by many religious organizations?

Finally, there is the matter of magisteria. Steven J. Gould wrote about religion and science as being non-overlapping magisteria. A magisterium is defined as a “a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution”. A magisterium may or may not recognize an external system of laws, facts, or values. Gould maintained that science and religion were non-overlapping magisteria in the sense that the tools of science were of no use in solving religious questions.

The secular world can be thought of that which describes what is human made and of human concern. It can also be thought of as that which is independent of religion. It is not atheistic or better or worse in any way. In chemistry we might say that the secular is orthogonal or perpendicular the religious. A bolt, an integrated circuit, or a tractor would be in the domain of the secular. So would the National Electrical Code, city ordinances, and state and federal law. All of these items are contrivances made by people for purposes living a better or safer life. Added to these items would be mathematics, the sciences and engineering. That which is measureable like the Volt or the kilogram have no defining attribute which traces back to religious definition.

It has been said that the purpose of government is to protect ourselves from each other. I would extend that to include the general domain of the secular. Having secular government means that subjective interpretations of religious matters must be secondary. This is owing to the reality that there are many religious beliefs in the world and the question of whose religion will prevail in an action involving the public will rapidly become intractable due to disparate beliefs. The secular world has elements of logic, measurement and guidelines for evidence or objective observation. All of these examples could be contained within a secular magisterium.

Public schools have long been the institutions where secular matters were introduced and learned. Government at all levels has been steadfastly kept within the secular domain. There was and remains to be a need for government to manage the secular details of a thriving civilization. The religious magisterium has a heavy reliance on beliefs which is a subjective matter subject to interpretation. A democracy requires a goodly amount of objectivity and evidence.

The notion of non-overlapping magisteria raises an interesting question. What if elements in one magisterium want control of elements in another magisterium? To have elements of a subjective domain in control of elements in the objective domain is to introduce chaos in both. Since neither side has the tools to operate in the other we have to conclude that this circumstance makes no sense for either domains.

 

God in the image of man

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The portentous return of American protestant evangelical politics on the coattails of the Trump win has certainly been startling to me at least. As if to underscore this return is the announcement that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will take on the case No. 16-111 Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd., et al., v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, et al. Petitioners.

According to the petition for a Writ of Certiorari, at issue is the following:

Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment

I for one sympathize with both parties. I would like to think that as a business man I had some control in the business arrangements I enter into. On the other hand, it seems quite reasonable that an order for a wedding cake should not be complicated by the theology of the baker. I gather that the sign over the door did not say “Bakery for Observant Christians Only”.

Having been in sales, I know there are a hundred ways to purposely kill a sale without it descending into a fight or bad feelings. A sky high price, a ridiculously long delivery time, kitchen remodeling, a diseased baker, etc. Ok, so it is a lie. It happens.

From my purchasing experience I know it is possible for a careful buyer to disclose as little information as possible so as not to cue a vendor to raise the price or decline to make an offer. The couple in question could have discretely asked for a cake without giving away their relationship or could have sent in a proxy. The figurine of a gay couple on top of the cake could have been purchased separately and set in place at a different location. Alternatively, the gay couple could have simply found another baker willing to do the job, say in Boulder to the north.

Yes, yes, yes. I know. Neither side should have to use subterfuge to complete this simple transaction. And neither side, in principle, should have to fear the consequences of their core values. But for crying out loud, this is Colorado Springs. A more conservative Christian enclave would be hard to find. The city is full of conservative retired military and a number of fundamentalist Christianist organization headquarters like Focus on the Family among others. But what are you going to do? Fight to the death everyone you find disagreeable? Does everything have to be consecrated to God? Crimony! Can’t there be secular activities like putting a lug nut on a bolt or buying baked goods?

If SCOTUS rules against Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage, then they will have set back the cause of LGBTQ rights, possibly for generations. Likewise, a ruling for the respondent might do similar damage for the conservative cause. Both sides could live with some ambiguity in this matter.

The notion that baking a cake for a gay couple somehow validates LGBTQ values seems to be a bit of a stretch. It seems to me that a conception of a God who would see the act of baking this cake with so negative a view as to impose an existential threat to the baker’s eternal salvation is to conjure up a very strange picture of the deity. If a human were to wield this kind of existential threat to the baker, that human might be regarded as psychopathic.

In my view, American evangelical Christianists have constructed a model of God in the image of a very cranky, peevish male human. A God who set the galaxies spinning, ignited our sun, breathed life into inanimate earth, and accounts for every flea riding the tail feathers of every bird would certainly have the insight and fatherly patience to see this gay Wedding Cake matter as a tempest in a teapot. Yes? Maybe? But perhaps that is me constructing God in the image of a mensch.

I like that- God as a mensch.

 

 

 

Nerve Agents vs Bombs. Why ban one and not the other?

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The recent news footage out of Syria showing victims of a chemical attack is haunting. When I first saw it I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was looking at. But after a minute of increasing discomfort I began to grasp the horror of the situation. Victims lying on the ground in puddles of water or in the midst of being flushed with a stream of water, gasping for air and limbs quivering in wide-eyed disbelief and fear of what they were experiencing. Others were unconscious or dead. Rescuers were moving around the victims not knowing what to do beyond rinsing off the bodies. Those handling the water, I’m sure, were grateful to be giving some kind of aid no matter how small.

It is interesting to see how people, myself included, react to this kind of news. I mean, this shouldn’t be happening. After all, the world has international conventions and treaties banning the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare. Humanity has gone to some length to bar the use of war shots designed to release toxic gas or aerosols over anyone anywhere.

When we shudder and express sincere horror at the barbarity of a chemical attack on civilians, along what track is our thinking guided? What kind of decision process might lead us to believe that a sarin attack is a higher level of depravity than a bomb blast? Could it be true that people who release chemical agents are actually guilty of a higher crime than those who send bombs in the direction of a civilian neighborhood or even just 50 caliber bullets?

Explosives are chemicals that unleash kinetic and thermal violence for a few seconds per explosion. Nerve agents move like the wind, breathing lethal aerosols or gas as they flow and leaving who knows how much contaminated … everything … and for how long. Bombs can be aimed, a gas cloud not so much. Bomb violence is much more common than death by acetylcholinesterase inhibition, yet our attention is always drawn to chemical violence.

We have an industry called show business that exploits bomb violence in its entertainment products. And we the viewing audience have become desensitized to the horrific effects of explosions by sheer repetition of highly staged portrayals. Perhaps it is the very novelty of a chemical attack that captures our attention. If you survive a bomb blast, there is a chance that you can be sewn back together again. If you receive an exposure to sarin, well, what do you do to stop the inhibition of an enzyme? Find a dose of atropine if possible from someone who knows it’s in stock somewhere.

The acceptance of explosives but not chemical agents as legitimate weapons of war is at best a false dichotomy. But, we are a world of men and women and weaponized conflict. If a ban on chemical and biological weapons can be negotiated faster than a ban on the use of explosives, then we take what we can get. But let us not get desensitized to high explosives and the horrific tragedies they produce.

Oh, one pet peeve. They’re not ‘explosive devices”, they are bombs. The former may infer skillful and clinical dispassion. The latter suggests dumb, blunt force. The latter seems more to the point.

Lamar, my boy, show ’em how it’s done.

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Dear Rep. Lamar Smith,

Yer a smart feller there, Lamar. Ya have a BA from Yale and that JD from SMU. Ya passed the bar exam and started private practice in San Antone. In 11 years ya worked yer way up ta national ‘lected office.  It’s an accomplishment no matter how’ya look at it. And that America Invents Act piled on some mighty fine improvements ta the patentin’ process. That was good work there boy.

As chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Tech-nology, ya been perty skeptical ’bout them snooty climate science boys with their jar-gon and their uppity attitudes actin’ all high’n mighty-like ’bout climate n’such. A good ole’ boy from the Hill Country ought ta be able to pick up on that fancy c’mputer modelin’, right?

I think that ya ought ta throw some of yer many talents inta climate modelin’ yerself. You’d be doin’ the scientific folks a favor. You’d roll up yer sleeves an’ dig in ta clean’n up that po-litically correct climate data. Darn tootin’ you would. I’m sure the folks at NOAA would give ya a desk er somethin’ ta do yer cipherin’.

Give it some thought, Lamar. Shouldn’t take more’n a few Saturday afternoons ta make a big dent innit. Don’tcha think? Keep yer head on a swivel.

Th’ Gausslin’

 

(Texican language services provided by Elroy)

 

 

 

 

A fossil fuel job justifies X units of pollution

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A lot of science is about trying to find the best questions. Because the best questions can lead us to better answers. So, in the spirit of better questions here goes.

By loosening environmental regulations aimed at pollution prevention or remediation, the mandarins reporting to POTUS 45 have apparently made the calculation decided that some resulting uptick in pollution is justified by the jobs created thereby.

Question 1: For any given relaxation in regulations that result in an adverse biological, chemical or physical insult to the environment, what is the limit of tolerable adverse effect?

Question 2: How will the upper limit of acceptable environmental insult be determined?

Question 3: Will the upper limit of acceptable environmental insult be determined before or after the beginning of the adverse effect?

For a given situation there should be some ratio of jobs to acceptable environmental damage.

Example: By relaxing the rules on the release of coal mining waste into a river, X jobs are created and, as a result, Y households are denied potable drinking water. What is an acceptable ratio of X to Y?

Those are enough questions for now. Discuss amongst yourselves.

In support of the US Chemical Safety Board

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A grim message from Chairperson Vanessa Allen Sutherland of the US Chemical Safety Board reads-

“The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is disappointed to see the President’s budget proposal to eliminate the agency.  The CSB is an independent agency whose sole mission is to investigate accidents in the chemical industry and to make recommendations to prevent future accidents and improve safety.  For over 20 years, the CSB has conducted hundreds of investigations of high consequence chemical incidents, such as the Deepwater Horizon and West Fertilizer disasters.  Our investigations and recommendations have had an enormous effect on improving public safety.   Our recommendations have resulted in banned natural gas blows in Connecticut, an improved fire code in New York City, and increased public safety at oil and gas sites across the State of Mississippi.  The CSB has been able to accomplish all of this with a small and limited budget.  The American public is safer today as a result of the work of the dedicated and professional staff of the CSB.  As this process moves forward, we hope that the important mission of this agency will be preserved. ”     -posted 3/20/17

I want to voice my support generally for this elite group of accident investigators. As a chemical safety professional myself I am disappointed to see the CSB regarded low enough by the President’s budget writers to warrant being in the proposal for elimination. The job of the CSB is to investigate the cause(s) of chemical, petrochemical, or other facilities that handle materials having the potential to produce serious accidents. Having done accident investigations myself, albeit at much reduced scale from a petrochemical refinery, I appreciate what a difficult job this is and the great value of the disseminating findings to the industry.

The value of any given CSB report is the story of how an accident is initiated, how it propagates, and how it may couple with diverse systems. As a crucial part of the report is a detailed dissection of the relevant operational systems and human/machine interfaces and how they may have coupled to the event. It is educational and very useful for the safety community to learn how unfamiliar failure modes initiate and how knock-on effects may steer the accident in directions that are difficult to predict.

Planning for process safety involves input from the fields of chemistry, engineering and operations. Importantly, it requires imagination because planning safe operations is about predicting the future. Shutting down CSB investigations will deprive the engineering and safety community of a valuable resource detailing subtle or non-obvious ways in which complex systems can fail.

Recall the Apollo 1 fire or the Challenger explosion and how inquiry into those events lead to better appreciation of failure modes and the layers of protection that can be put in place to prevent the failure. If this kind of investigation is kept confidential, the advance of safe system design will stagnate.

Panic in Greenhouse Community

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Guapo, AZ. The American Greenhouse Association (AGA) released a statement Friday in response to the Trump Administration’s denial that greenhouse warming is not based on established science. The spokesperson for the AGA, Mr. Harlan Stamen, announced that the greenhouse industry has begun a fundamental reexamination of the science behind the greenhouse effect. The AGA was one of many organizations meeting last week at their industry’s annual conference at Pultroon University.

Mr. Stamen, standing before a packed room of reporters, bluntly stated “we thought we understood how the greenhouse effect worked. Honestly, we thought that problem was solved. Then we hear from the new administration in Washington that as many as a few percent of scientists were unsure.” Stamen went on to say that greenhouse researchers were working feverishly to understand how certain substances, CO2 among them, in fact just do not absorb solar energy as believed. “Clearly”, Stamen allowed, “we have to figure this thing out. We have no clue how our greenhouses get warm in sunlight.”

The spokesperson for the White House Office of Inquisitions,  Olivia Gastly, Esq., released a statement saying that the Office is “aware of many individuals in Democrat science who think they understand these issues of climate- I mean, who knew it was so complicated-  but our belief .. our belief … is backed by many years of assurances by the very best people that using fossil fuels cannot possibly produce global warming.”

Trump’s wrecking crew. The beginning of a new confederacy?

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President 45 has chosen a cabinet, with senate confirmation, that outwardly seems chosen specifically to deconstruct the large scale structure of the federal government. This has come out in the open by admission from the likes of Steve Bannon, but serious dialog about the consequences of this has only just started.

If you step back a bit and think about what role the federal government has had in modern US culture, you might realize that the federal governmental superstructure has provided a framework and a shelter for many things citizens and businesses have come to rely on.

Some science oriented services the federal government has provided-

  • Funds for industrial expansion in 2 world wars
  • DARPA, which funds for the development of advanced military hardware, including aviation, communications, orbital platforms, electronics, robotics, computer technology, and more. All of this has spillover benefits to the nation at large.
  • A military establishment that countless young men and women joined that helped them build a career for life after enlistment
  • The GI bill post WWII credited with aiding the formation of the American middle class
  • The FAA regulates the operation of a large scale civilian aviation system, including organizing the airways, aviation safety, air traffic control
  • NIST, which provides for common weights and measures as well as the definition and standardization of many other units of measure for science and industry
  • CDC, which monitors and aids in the identification and containment of diseases
  • NOAA, which provides a large array of satellites and computer capacity for weather forecasting
  • EPA, that agency much maligned by pollution-generating industry, is charged with oversight of surface waters of all kinds as well as the purity of the air we breath.
  • The NIH which serves as an effective national resource for the advancement of medicine in research and in practice
  • The NSF has for many years funded basic scientific research, and in doing so provided many generations of scientists and engineers for industry and academics
  • NTSB is charged with investigating transportation accidents and promoting transportation safety
  • you get the picture …

I am not entirely sure what the slogan “Make America Great Again” really means. It is a brilliant piece of propaganda in the sense that it stirs the emotions of voters, but cannot be pinned down to any one meaning. The image of greatness is in the eye of the beholder.

When I think of this greatness business, my mind naturally goes to the source of our vast science and engineering prowess. The US evolved a unique and effective system of research and development.  The American university/government R&D machine has over many years provided breakthroughs in technology, but also it provides a constant supply of valuable scientific and engineering talent for any and all who need it.

Another benefit of our scientific establishment is the treasure trove of knowledge it leaves behind for posterity. Working in an R&D heavy manufacturing environment, I have at my finger tips the largest collection of international scientific references in the world. This is the CAS registry at the Chemical Abstracts Service and it is in fact national treasure.

I use this resource almost daily to uncover known technology and substances dating back to the late 19th century. A great resource to have because in business, you can’t afford to reinvent the wheel. And a lot of wheels have already been invented. Highly detailed information can be retrieved to provide the knowhow to solve problems encountered in industrial R&D today. Information that is in the public domain. Even better, because of the practice of peer-review, the information usually can be considered highly reliable.

Our government/university R&D complex is the goose that laid the golden egg. It is part of the engine of ingenuity that drives our economy.

Industry benefits from tremendously from a constant supply of talented engineering and scientific talent graduation from the best university research establishment in the world. It is this way in large part because of financial input from federal government funding agencies. Yes, there are monies available from private organizations. But I don’t think it compares in magnitude and breadth to funding from DoE, NSF, NIH, etc.

When I see that the present crew of republican elected officials and their appointees gunning for the large scale teardown of government agencies and reductions in force, I am naturally worried about the future of our education and R&D apparatus. I have trouble believing that the present congressional majority and the White House have the knowledge and intellectual bandwidth to comprehend the consequences of their actions.

This whole deconstruction of the federal government in favor of state control has the smell of a return to confederacy. Ask yourself how a confederate states of America would function when challenged by China or Russia militarily. How would the disunity by strong state control of resources respond in the case of an incremental land grab like the Russian takeover of Crimea. What if China takes over Taiwan and threatens hegemony of the Pacific?

The present political regime in DC threatens to do great harm to a civilization that used to be the envy of the world. Opportunity, wide open spaces, modernity were an attribute of a productive, unified nation. Do a majority of the citizens want what amounts to the libertarian dream of personal responsibility in the form of isolated bubbles of humanity? Does every aspect of our lives have to be a potential profit center for someone? Competition thrives with individual choice. But civilization requires cooperation. I vote for civilization.

 

 

Scott Pruitt- A man without scientific credentials. Yet, he speaks.

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EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has made clear by his comments that he knows little about science generally, let alone those areas that EPA is charged to oversee. If the Wikipedia site is to be believed, Pruitt’s education and career track in no way qualifies him to direct or make assertions on behalf of the EPA.

I would say that Pruitt does not have the credentials to speak authoritatively on the matter of climate science. This contention should be printed everywhere 24/7.

Plainly, he is the boss man of a wrecking crew for dismantling environmental protection.