Yet another Constitutional Amendment that will go nowhere

Keep states’ hands off your right to vote
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/10/opinion/pocan-voting-rights/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

In the list of things-that-ain’t-gonna-happen this has to rank near the top. Our government only agrees on two things: reducing privacy and giving massive taxpayer handouts to millionaires and billionaires. Other than that, our government can’t even agree on the weather, day of week, if it is sunny or dark, etc. So what is the chance that an amendment to our (shredded) Constitution is going to get any forward progress? Never mind that the states that are so intent on taking away the rights of them poor stupid people to vote would block this amendment every single step of the way.

Personally I think fewer engaged voters are better than more idiot voters (see here and here), but what we have now is the worst of all worlds (funny how Americans are so damn good at achieving that exalted state).

More on diet soda

Diet soda may do more harm than good
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/10/diet-soda-may-do-more-harm-than-good/?hpt=hp_c3

I have talk about the dangers of diet soda before, this report is about a meta analysis of a variety of other studies. Meta analysis can sometimes really bring something into clarity and just as often further muddy the waters, so it is wise to take these reports with a grain of salt. Also, as the beverage industry was quick to point out, it is an ‘opinion’ piece and as such likely got minimal peer review (but note that Cell is a major scientific primary literature journal and as such the editors are even going to review opinion pieces). Still, the conclusions do jive with the other accumulated information, so on the other, other hand (or the gripping hand), it is worth taking note.

However, the author of the above article is clearly an airhead:

There are five FDA-approved artificial sweeteners: acesulfame potassium (Sunett, Sweet One), aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet), neotame, saccharin (SugarTwin, Sweet’N Low), and sucralose (Splenda).

All of them are chemicals. “Saccharin was one of the first commercially-available artificially sweeteners, and it’s actually a derivative of tar,” says Swithers.

Natural sweeteners, like Stevia – which has no calories and is 250 times sweeter than regular sugar – is not a chemical, but is still a processed extract of a natural plant, and increases your health risks similar to artificial sweeteners.

“Just because something is natural does not always mean that it is safer,” says Jampolis.

Yep, watch out for them chemicals! As I recall from my biochemistry education (but what do I know?), all molecules are chemical, thus glucose (sugar) is a member of that dreaded chemical clan that is so dangerous.

What happens when you put morons in charge

Federal agency spent $3 million fighting non-existent malware
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/09/technology/security/commerce-malware/index.html?source=cnn_bin

Even more interesting than the $3 million thrown away was that the agency wanted to toss another almost $30 million after it:

The report has a silver lining: Government watchdogs eventually caught on to the EDA’s unnecessary panic and turned down a request for $26 million to fund further “recovery efforts.” The agency’s remaining laptops and computer mice are safe from the incinerator.

If the government would simply pay the going rate for qualified people (or actually listened to their 3x more expensive contractors (though contractors are just as likely to inflate a problem), how that is supposed to save money is a mystery to me) they could get people that actually knew how to do their jobs instead of relying on people unable to get jobs in the private sector (at typically a substantial pay premium!). Sure, there used to be a life-time equivalence for govt vs private sector work (when the govt had its great pension plan), but that was then, this is now. Only dummies and a handful of patriots are going to give up the 2x paycheck for work in these fields. What is the chance that the patriot is going to wind up in the critical decision making position? And just because she is a patriot doesn’t also mean she is qualified, keep in mind!

Hybrid planes?

Once a Joke, Battery-Powered Airplanes Are Nearing Reality
Aerospace companies are working on hybrid electric airplanes, and the earliest versions will likely arrive before the end of the decade.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516576/once-a-joke-battery-powered-airplanes-are-nearing-reality/

To get a 25% decrease in fuel usage is quite amazing, the article indicates that up to 50% might be feasible which goes beyond amazing to incredible. Fuel is by far the greatest expense in air travel so the idea of cutting fuel costs in half could have a dramatic impact on the cost of travel. If they could only produce the super capacitors they keep talking about we could do away with the limitations of batteries and all sorts of alternatives start to make a lot of sense.

Solar Shingles

Flexible Glass Could Make Tablets Lighter and Solar Power Cheaper
NREL shows that Corning’s Willow glass can be used to make flexible solar cells that could be installed in place of roofing shingles.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516471/flexible-glass-could-make-tablets-lighter-and-solar-power-cheaper/

Not quite ready for prime time, but interesting to me because I have read about solar shingles for years but have yet to see them in any sort of mainstream applications. I am not sure how they would work in practical reality, when I do roofing I walk all over the shingles I have just laid (and I have yet to work on anything more steep than 4 in 12, much steeper and you need to nail in supports to keep you from sliding off the roof) and those shingles are very rough and therefor keep me from slipping. I have to imagine that glass covered shingles would be incredibly slick and difficult to walk on (if you have to avoid walking on them it makes shingling really a challenge!). However, if they manage to solve all those issues and can drop the price to where it is competitive with regular roofing I can see this becoming something significant quite easily and rapidly. However, as I have said, I have been hearing about this sort of concept for well over a decade with little to show for it.

Self limiting safety net?

The Benefits of the Safety Net, Part 2
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-benefits-of-the-safety-net-part-2/

I have talked about the “greatest good for the greatest number” before (that blog entry is more or less a link to here). It is my firm belief that a robust (which we lack at the moment) safety net is critical to the long-term health and welfare of society, but the information discussed in the article above makes it clear that the benefits of the safety net actually extend forward in generations. Infants (indeed, even fetuses) that are supported by the safety net are actually less likely to grow up needing any of the benefit of the net than those who lack access to it! Not counter intuitive to me, but a bit surprising that there is enough data upon which to produce such a conclusion. What is clear, though, is that there is an opposite effect of what the hard-core ‘conservative’ (how is it ‘conservative’ to want to condemn your fellow citizens to a life of poverty simply because they had the bad luck to be born into it?) whereby providing the safety net does not produce extended dependency.

Let us talk about the weather…

El Niño Was Unusually Active In The Late 20th Century Possibly Due To Climate Change
http://www.ibtimes.com/el-nino-was-unusually-active-late-20th-century-possibly-due-climate-change-1329255#

I talk about “global warming” off and on here, mostly complaining about the inability for our society to have a conversation discussing the possibility that doing nothing (i.e., letting status quo prevail regarding the burning of fossil fuels) is at least as viable a ‘solution’ as any other. This article is quite interesting to me because of this:

“Many climate models do not reflect the strong ENSO [El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which is popularly known just as El Niño] response to global warming that we found. This suggests that many models underestimate the sensitivity to radiative perturbations in greenhouse gases,” Shang-Ping Xie, meteorology professor at the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii, said.

This is a rather polite way of saying that “your models suck if they can’t predict the El Nino variations”. Based on everything I have read on climate models (a lot, but certainly not at the PhD level), the models are all pretty much in the ‘you suck’ range and the modelers can get anything from an ice age to boiling temps simply by tweaking the input numbers. If the output of the models depend on the whims of the modeler, then as far as I am concerned the models have zero predictive value, yet it seems to me despite this incredibly shaky ‘foundation’ our society can only focus on one solution to our ‘globing warming problem’: jamming our economy back into the stone age via the elimination of fossil fuels.

That our climate average temp is rising is a scientific fact.

That humans are instrumental in a large (40%+) proportion of that increase is highly likely and widely accepted by the vast majority of scientists.

That that human caused warming is exclusively (or even predominantly) due to humans burning fossil fuels is when the evidence starts to get thin and personalities take over.

That the only remedy is to eliminate fossil fuels becomes something with no scientific basis whatsoever, yet our global economy is at stake.

Too bad humans seem incapable of rational thought!

Sausage making

The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis
It’s long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s helped trigger the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-20130619

In this case, the sausage was chock full of e. coli and we all got violently sick. But hey! Look over there! The problem is immigrants, the poor, terrorists (especially terrorists!), not the financial industry which has done more damage to the US (and world!) economy than 100 9/11s. Ignore the man behind the curtain!

Rhinebridge, cheyne and a hell of a lot of other subprime investments ultimately blew to smithereens, taking with them vast amounts of cash – 40 percent of the world’s wealth was wiped out in the aftermath of the mortgage bubble, according to some estimates. 2008 was to the American economy what 9/11 was to national security. Yet while 9/11 prompted the U.S. government to tear up half the Constitution in the name of public safety, after 2008, authorities went in the other direction. If you can imagine a post-9/11 scenario where there were no metal detectors at airports and people could walk on carrying chain saws and meat cleavers, you get a rough idea of what was done to reform the ratings process.

Also of great interest to me is this bit:

‘You F–ked Up, You Trusted Us’: Talking Ratings Agencies With Chris Hayes
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/you-f-ked-up-you-trusted-us-talking-ratings-agencies-with-chris-hayes-20130621

where there is talk about how the rating agency’s statements about “objectivity, integrity and independence.” were basically just marketing material and thus should be totally ignored:

In that case, the Second Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs suing S&P could not make a fraud claim based upon the company’s reassurances in its Code of Conduct of its “objectivity, integrity and independence.”

Moreover, the Court said, plaintiffs could not make a claim based on a public statement by S&P touting its “credibility and reliability,” or another saying, “[S&P] has a longstanding commitment to ensuring that any potential conflicts of interest do not compromise its analytical independence.”

Why, you might ask, could one not make a fraud claim based upon those statements? Because, the Second Circuit ruled, those statements were transparently not meant to be taken seriously. The following passage is a summary written by S&P’s own lawyers describing the Second Circuit ruling (emphasis mine):

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims in their entirety, finding that the statements concerning the “integrity and credibility and the objectivity of S&P’s credit ratings” were exactly “the type of mere ‘puffery’ that we have previously held not to be actionable.”

More from that same memo from S&P’s lawyers:

The Court found . . . that “generalizations about [S&P’s] business practices and integrity” were “so generalized that a reasonable investor would not depend on [those statements]. . . .”

Because S&P’s statements about its objectivity, independence and integrity are the sort of vague, general statements that courts both within and outside this Circuit have found insufficient to support a fraud action, the Government’s first “alleged scheme to defraud” fails.

Our own courts are against us. You are either on the gravy train or you are in the gravy, there is no place else to go!

On a lighter side…

Car crash leaves Australian woman with French accent
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/20/world/australia-car-crash-new-french-accent/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Perhaps not as amusing for the sufferer, but amusing to me considering they are otherwise unimpaired.

I wonder, though, if they really have an ‘authentic’ accent (meaning they make the same sorts of changes a native person with the accent would) or if they just sort of sound like they have the specified accent. Perhaps their voice patterns are changed by the injury and the perceived ‘new accent’ is just an artifact of how people hear them as altered.