There’s none so blind as those who will not see

Why I left the GOP
I grew up in a rich, conservative household, but after Katrina and Iraq, I realized my priorities were out of order
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/10/why_i_left_the_gop/

I see bits of myself in the author’s descriptions. While not an exact path, I did go through several layers of awakening, but for the most part, since I like reading about history when written objectively (well, as objectively as it can be written when the writing is being done by a representative of the victors), I had had exposure to these ‘liberal’ ideas and then did research to investigate more fully. I guess it is human nature to indulge in bias confirmation; I have read a number of articles where ‘liberals’ are equally as clueless of information that fails to confirm their biases. Sadly, it seems it is a tiny minority of people who haven’t already made up their minds and thus are OK to be ‘bothered’ by facts. The leaders ‘elected’ by our populous are thus elected by people trapped in conformation bias, so those few clear thinkers are left to be blown to the left and the right by the prevailing winds.

American InJustice IS the system

Can we predict a wrongful conviction?
Experts find recurring themes in these cases, and safeguards in the system become “speed bumps at best”
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/can_we_predict_a_wrongful_conviction/

I discuss the idea of InJustice here off and on and in the rush to make it even easier to target everyone ‘knows’ is guilty (for instance “Drew’s law” used to convict Drew Peterson recently) people don’t seem to give a damn about whether there is actual evidence. This article is interesting in that it seems to take apart the process that leads to conviction of innocents from the very beginning when the police jump to the conclusion that person is responsible through the multiple layers that build on the group think that “heck, if the guy isn’t guilty, why has he made it this far?” leads to railroading people. While I am sure that there are people who have been malevolently targeted by individuals in the InJustice system, I think the majority are ‘railroaded’ by people too lazy to do their damn jobs and think critically.

Maybe Mars was always quite dry…

Mars clays may have volcanic source
Deposits didn’t need flowing water to form, new research suggests
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/344133/title/Mars_clays_may_have_volcanic_source

Quite interesting how a paradigm can be overtaken (of course, this is speculation at this point; I am just talking in general here). It will be interesting to watch how this plays out. Venus is generally well held to be a bone dry planet with a surface temp hot enough to melt lead and very little water in all those clouds. Mars, at least until I read the above article, was pretty much universally considered to be a very wet planet, much like Earth is today, in its very early history. The scientific consensus seemed to be that once Mars’ core cooled and its protective magnetic shielding vanished (something that will eventually happen to Earth, but not for, I think, something like a billion years) that the water was all evaporated and then blown away by the solar wind. Perhaps it did have a magnetic field, but never had the huge oceans.

This doesn’t have to mean that there never was life on Mars (indeed, this doesn’t preclude there still being life on Mars), just that it would have had to make do with a lot less water. I recall watching a show that talked about the remelting of Earth when the moon collision happened (there was also, I believe, a time during the ‘late heavy bombardment’ where the surface might have got molten as well) and they mentioned that molten rock was actually a sponge for water. Rather unintuitive to me, that thousand degree liquid rock would actually be a reservoir for water, but in science things are not always intuitive. Anyway, the idea was that our ocean’s worth of water wouldn’t necessarily be lost during the moon collision, rather the opposite. Then, when the surface cooled the entrained water would be released and the hydrologic cycle would begin again.

The storage drive to use if you are up to no good

SSD firmware destroys digital evidence, researchers find
Forensic analysis of drives by investigators now uncertain
http://news.techworld.com/security/3263093/ssd-fimware-destroys-digital-evidence-researchers-find/?olo=rss

Quite amazing how the steps to Skynet are taken unconsciously and incrementally. I am sure that many will question this comparison, but the important thing to take away from this (other than go with these drives if you are a bad guy) is that these things are happening ‘automagically‘ and through combination of disparate efforts of a wide range of people. To me it is trivial to extrapolate this to implementing control software (indeed, I already made such a proposal for network security management) that behaves in unexpected manners due to the complexity and non-linear feedback of all these people dedicatedly doing their jobs to make things run faster, smoother and with less need for human interaction.

Just like we (here in the US) labor under the misapprehension that we are a democracy, I am starting to think that we are beginning to live under the same misconception that we are in control of our control software.

Much like Kent Brockman and his continual willingness to prostitute himself to whatever invading power the show happens to feature, I feel compelled to add this:

“Skynet, I am no threat to you!”

More third-world politics

Here in the ‘great’ USofA:

America’s refusal to extradite Bolivia’s ex-president to face genocide charges
Obama justice officials have all but granted asylum to Sánchez de Lozada – a puppet who payrolled key Democratic advisers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/09/america-refusal-extradite-bolivia

I really have wound down on all my hysterical blather about our new police state. Just getting tired of the repetition, I guess. However, every now and again something like the article above comes along and squeezes another few drops of outrage from this tired old rag.

Also quite amusing, this comment:

No surprise that the War Criminal In Chief only wants extradition for whistle-blowers.

We voted for FDR but we got Bush 3.

The additional irony, of course, is that Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner for making soothing statements during a political campaign, has got to be one of the very few winners responsible for wholesale slaughter of innocent people, not to mention, of course, assassinations of his own citizens.

Life… adapts

Tigers Are Becoming Nocturnal In Order To Avoid Humans
Tigers living near human occupied areas have gradually been becoming more nocturnal, according to new research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://planetsave.com/2012/09/05/tigers-becoming-nocturnal-to-avoid-humans/

It is interesting to me the adaptability of life. Not just gooey, yucky slime or things like cockroaches, but things like the tigers mentioned in the article. As I mentioned earlier in a post that discussed adaptation to higher ocean temps, I think that much of life will adapt to the devastation that humans have wrought on the environment (there will clearly be some losers, of that there is no doubt!). Of course, if we humans don’t keep making things worse, then there will never be a point where anything besides slime, cockroaches and perhaps rats can survive, but heck, at the rate we are going now we will probably drive ourselves to extinction in a few more generations, thus leaving the whole planet alone for recovery.

And we wonder why we can’t control medical costs…

Hospital agrees to cut woman’s $83,046 bill
Anti-venom that sells for $100 in Mexico cost her almost $40,000 a dose in Arizona
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120907/NEWS07/309070043/Hospital-agrees-to-cut-woman-s-83-046-bill?nclick_check=1

Get this:

Tennessee-based Rare Disease Therapeutics sold the drug to a distributor for $3,500 a dose. The distributor charged hospitals about $3,780 a dose. Pharmacies in Mexico charge about $100 a dose.

Kinda says it all, eh?

What he said…

What are we cheering for?
Don’t let the conventions distract you from the real lesson of 2012: America is becoming increasingly undemocratic
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/06/obamas_convention_charade/

The problem is the system, the players don’t matter. As long as the system is rotten there is no hope for change. This makes it clear:

Ultimately, we’re seeing that both parties are rotten. This rot is rooted in economics. Despite the bitter rhetoric, Obama and Romney are basically in agreement about how the country should be governed. Both Romney and Obama want to see the same core economic trends continue. These are, most significantly, a transition to an energy system based on hydro-fracking of natural gas and oil deposits (and some renewable energy), a large national security state, the sale of public assets to private interests, globalized financial flows, a preservation of the capital structure of the large banks, free rein of white collar behavior and austerity in public budgets. This policy agenda is a reflection of the quiet coup that IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson wrote about in 2010.

You can see significant policy agreements in both policy and personnel choices. For instance, Ben Bernanke, the leader of the Federal Reserve, which is the only institution with any latitude for policymaking, was a Bush appointee, but was reappointed by Obama. Top Romney advisor Glenn Hubbard argues Bernanke should be reappointed for a third term. And on a policy level, whether you call it Romneycare in Massachusetts, or Obamacare nationally, it’s the same healthcare program. On trade, Romney pledged, in his economic platform, to sign three free corporate agreements on day one of his administration, those with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The Obama administration signed them last year, and brags about them in the Democratic Platform. Both candidates ardently support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the secretive NAFTA on steroids treaty being negotiated right now by Obama’s trade representatives.

I really suggest reading the whole article, so will tease with another long quote:

The larger consequences of having two candidates who share similar policy ideas, who both believe in police state tactics to suppress whistleblowers, who both are driven by their allegiance to a wealthy political class, are not acknowledged. It isn’t that American democracy is at risk. American democracy was at risk, perhaps four or eight or 12 years ago. Today, speaking of democracy in America is quaint — the country increasingly resembles an undemocratic state, with a free wealthy elite and a much larger poorer populace, constrained by monopolistic corporations that collude with the government.

In fact, the lesson of the 2012 election, if we are honest with ourselves, is simple, and disturbing. America is shifting from a democracy into an authoritarian state. This authoritarianism is soft, with some remnants of an open civil society, and there is as yet no violence used against domestic political actors. Nazi Germany we are not. But after 14 years of political crises, starting with the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the extreme financial deregulation of the late 1990s, it’s time to face the music about what kind of country we have become. The 2012 election is more than a contest of cynicism and disillusionment, it’s an unveiling of a new quasi-authoritarian political system in place of the traditional norms of democratic deliberation.

The author does speak of some optimism, though. For instance:

There is hope. Even authoritarian systems derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. That’s why the 2012 election drives such bitter rhetoric — the appearance of a contest makes the public believe it has a choice in its future, and that more radical measures are unnecessary or hopeless. Nonetheless, the public is losing faith in a rigged money-driven electoral system, which is a step towards reclaiming power. Next is a recognition that it is the elite political class as a whole that is the enemy, including well-marketed corporate figures like Barack Obama, and that it is political radicalism and not liberalism or progressivism that creates the bargaining leverage necessary to force corrupt elites to concede some ground. There has also been experimentation with new models of political organization, most prominently the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, WikiLeaks and Anonymous, as well as models in other countries.

I am not as optimistic as the author, though, and think that the sheeple are too willing to lap up the lies of the oligarchy and we will continue to trundle down the path of the democratic illusion.

More non-global warming human destruction

Bottom trawling flattens seafloor
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bottom-trawling-20120905,0,6628384.story?track=rss

So, in addition to sterilizing the body of the ocean with drift nets, we are sterilizing the bottom as well. I wonder how much longer before all fishing crashes? Of course, my interest in aquaponics could result in the elimination of any of this sort of activity, but given the pace of my research, it sometimes seems more likely the famine times will be upon us first.

Interesting idea…

Polymer Solar Cell Research Breakthrough at California NanoSystems Institute, UCLA
http://info.biotech-calendar.com/bid/89038/Polymer-Solar-Cell-Research-Breakthrough-at-California-NanoSystems-Institute-UCLA

I have read about transparent solar cells before, but their efficiencies were so low that it was hard to envision them being economical at any price (even in new construction the cost of running all the wires would probably sap any value even if the cells were free). However, these are reported to be a bit North of 10% efficient (compared to the highly optimized (and highly expensive) ~60% or so that go onto satellites and the more routine (but still quite expensive) versions used terrestrially that run around 35%), so if the manufacturing can be made really cheap then they might be onto something. Indeed, I wonder if they could layer that on top of regular solar panels to get an extra 10% more energy for ‘free’ (or if it would reduce the efficiency of the panels more than they were worth).

Of course, this doesn’t solve the storage problem, that pernicious evil problem that, until it is resolve, pretty much makes any sun/wind based system impractical.