Right message, wrong format

Alaska Airlines: Note on wing ‘not the best approach’
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/08/travel/alaska-airlines-wing-damage-note/index.html?hpt=hp_bn10

Rather amusing to me…

Wing with missing chunk

The best response was in one of the comments:

If they used some jargon, “Tech log deferral entered per Boeing CDL 4-56-78” this would never have been picked up by the news. This is exactly why people don’t tell you things.

I am quite certain that this is the same reason why trucks have the meaningless placards identifying the contents rather than what is actually in there. The sheeple can’t stampede if they they don’t get spooked!

Amazon extending its tentacles

Amazon’s New Secret Weapon: Delivery Lockers
Online Retailer Expands Use of Cabinets for Package Deliveries
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577567763829784538.html

I spoke about Amazon’s increasing influence earlier, here it is again. It seems I failed to blog (or at least am failing to find the post) that Amazon was now showing willingness to collect state sales taxes and are now setting up distribution centers everywhere. That almost certainly will doom most local retailers, including nation-wide chains, unless they aggressively can manage their sales channel to take advantage (or create an advantage out of) their bricks and mortar existence, though that doesn’t seem highly likely.

So when does Amazon become an evil monopoly? Or has it happened already?

And even then, it is the stock holders that pay

Corporate Fraud Cases Often Spare Individuals
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/business/more-fraud-settlements-for-companies-but-rarely-individuals.html?_r=2&hp

CEOs have wwwaaaayyyyy too much power today. They control the board when it is supposed to be the other way around and in nearly a majority of cases the CEO doesn’t even own any stock (but has lots of stock options!). The way things are _supposed_ to go is that stock holders elect a board of their own choosing which then hires a CEO to operate the company for the greatest good for the stock holders. Plenty of liberals think that that is wrong, that somehow CEOs should be directed to operate the company for the greatest good for society, but that should be up to stock holders. Today, that simply isn’t the case no matter how you slice and dice. Even institutional investors (who I used to complain about because of their outsized influence (due to all the stock they buy) and short-term attention span (they often just want to hold for a few years)) are now treated like second class citizens (not sure why they put up with that, but I betcha a lot of the institutional reps are getting side paychecks to wear a muzzle). I used to lament that US companies had such a short-term planning horizon (often 3-5 years when the Japanese had 25 years or more), but that has become laughable now as typical planning ‘horizons’ are now 2-3 quarters and are all about maximizing the bonuses of the executives (generally at the expense of the long-term health of the company).

You would think that the GOP and Tea Party would be up in arms about the hijacking of shareholder rights by greedy CEOs, yet that isn’t the case. Gotta wonder why that is so…

Hyperthermophilic methanogens

Microbial Life In An Undersea Volcano, New Limits Of Life Defined
http://planetsave.com/2012/08/07/microbial-life-in-an-undersea-volcano-new-limits-of-life-defined/

The range of environments that life occupies here on Earth makes it clear to me that life _must be_ ubiquitous in the universe. While everything on Earth has, as a common element, that it requires water to exist (though that water can be in vanishingly small amounts, see http://www.ecology.com/2012/02/16/microbes-atacama-desert/ for an extreme example), it is rather egocentric to assume that life cannot exist in other forms just because we haven’t proved it possible here on Earth. Still, if we decided that we are going to insist on life requiring water, it is trivial to imagine that life could evolve on all sorts of conditions that are common in our solar system (and presumably far beyond). For instance, a bit earlier I blogged about Bacillus stratosphericus (see here for more info), a bacteria that appears to live its entire existence floating about high in the air. Why shouldn’t we expect to find such organisms in Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and possibly Neptune? Then, once some sort of single-celled organism is established, why not expect further evolution into something much larger? Given the dramatic challenge we have had to get off our planet, imagine that even if an intelligent life form evolved in such an environment it would find it incredibly difficult to make any impact beyond its host planet. I got to think now that there has to be life on several other planets in our solar system and even perhaps on Venus as well.

Exciting times to be alive, presuming the anti-science Fundamentalist GOP doesn’t destroy it all in the next few years (just couldn’t resist getting a political dig in).

Heyzoos Christie! Can you believe this? In an effort to provide a link to the bacteria-living-in-salt-crystals above I found all these links to questions about how salt crystals can be distinguished from living organisms! Is any wonder that our critical thinking skills have atrophied to uselessness in this country?

Yet another reason to shake your bootie

Can weight training prevent diabetes?
http://www.boston.com/dailydose/2012/08/07/can-weight-training-prevent-diabetes/u8dBg9XLWx85FUXpsru2nL/story.html

That’s what Harvard School of Public Health researchers found when they followed more than 32,000 men for nearly two decades: Those who reported doing 30 minutes a day of resistance training at the beginning of the study had a 34 percent decrease in their diabetes risk compared with those who didn’t exercise. Men who did 30 minutes a day of aerobic activity had a 52 percent lower risk of diabetes compared with couch potatoes, according to the study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The best form of exercise when it comes to diabetes prevention? Doing a combination of steady exercise and weight training for at least 30 minutes a day on most days of the week. Study participants who did both had nearly a 60 percent reduction in their diabetes risk.

An interesting statement by a doctor later…

I cannot help but note that none of the time I spend trying to decide whether to increase the dose or add a new medication for my patients with type 2 diabetes is likely to result in a 38 percent reduction in mortality

So, simply getting of your fat ass and engaging in moderate exercise can reduce your chance of dying (from all causes, not just diabetes) of 38%! Yet for some reason Americans seem to find this too much to bear.

I am not sure what it would take. Exercise in a pill, I guess, is the only way our country can keep from eating itself to death.

I guess in this one respect the meek won’t inherit the Earth. Though, now that I think of it, these meek can breed a hell of a lot before they die of trivial to prevent diseases, so maybe in addition to Idiocracy, life spans will shrink back to 35-40 (actually, what started out as a sarcastic joke strikes too close to home, I believe life expectancy in the US has actually shrunk in the last generation).

Moral relativism

Unrestrained savagery
In Yemen, Al Qaeda bombs a funeral of someone it killed days earlier. How can Terrorist monsters do this?
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/unrestrained_savagery/

Glenn is such a far out voice in the wilderness. Shouting in a vacuum all the time surely has to be bad for you; I hope he doesn’t get sick of it, though it seems clear to me nothing will change.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many Americans hold such a high opinion of their own government. Our country’s history is replete with situations where the moral low ground is fully occupied. How to explain to these people our country’s willingness, nay eagerness, to turn a blind eye toward morally and ethically heinous behavior. Where to start? Where to end? Of course, there is no end as the above article clearly delineates.

Do these ‘true believers’ really not know? Are they really that ignorant that they failed to learn anything about our country’s history and are incapable of reading newspaper headlines today?

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? By that logic 9/11 was perfectly justifiable on the part of Al Qaeda, as are any future attacks. Indeed, these moronic shootemups we have been experiencing lately (I wonder if that idiot who shot up a Sikh temple thought they were Muslims) might be divine retribution for the US having so utterly fallen from grace in the eyes of their Christian Lord (though I am quite certain the Fundamentalists would find it impossible to believe so).

The theoconservative agenda

GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party
A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/05/republicans_slouching_toward_theocracy/

Will the pendulum swing back? _Can_ the pendulum swing back?

The author makes some very plausible arguments about the hijacking of the GOP by ultra conservative Christians as well as the typical craven way that politicians suck up to whoever they think will get them elected. I guess I have been a bit like the proverbial frog in the heating pot and didn’t really see the takeover, though it is/was clear as day. Though not quite an atheist (more a polytheist), this ‘conversion’ of the GOP to the religious right is probably one of the things that have soured me over the years. Of course, the GOP’s willingness to cut taxes while increasing spending, not to mention starting wars without bothering to fund them, was another issue, but how much of that was driven by the Christian Fundamentalists now in charge?

As for what to do about it, I am not sure there is anything that can be done. Politicians, as a species, are con men and opportunists, so will latch on to whatever idiocy they think they can to ride into office so they can steal at a larger rate than their previous office, so the idea of starting a third party seems totally wasted. Also, with the sheeple so trivial to lead around by their biases and preconceived notions it would be an upstream swim against a torrent. I have spoken about my becoming more liberal as I get older, but now I think I have more stood still while the left has moved toward center and the right has blasted off at light speed. BTW, you can identify right wing zealots immediately because they will spout nonsense like Obama is a socialist/communist/etc. It is clear to _anyone_ who has studied politics that Obama is actually to the right of center given our historical politics. However, I understand why the left still supports him; the alternative is a theocracy run by Christian Fundamentalists (it is ironic to me that they are now supporting a Mormon).

Grab you by your myths

5 Ways You Don’t Realize Movies Are Controlling Your Brain
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-you-dont-realize-movies-are-controlling-your-brain/

For those of you who refuse to follow the link…

#5. No, You Can’t Separate Fact from Fiction

#4. Stories Were Invented to Control You

#3. The Writer of a Story Always Has an Agenda

#2. You Were Raised — and Educated — by Pop Culture

#1. Everything in Your Brain Is a Story

I think that each Cracked author is contractually required to have the word ‘dick’ in each article. Despite that, there are quite a few great ones there and I like this one a lot. We are all being led around by the myths we believe in (despite the best efforts of the Mythbusters) and what we believe in is a construct that has been built for us. Some of the construction is more obvious, but it is all due to our human nature to believe in stories we hear. We can try to deny our tendencies, but in many respects that makes us more vulnerable to exploitation. If you deny that you are capable of being trivially lead around by your biases, you can’t possibly recognize when it starts to happen thus making it impossible to choose to do something different.

The whole article has a lot of thought provoking stuff in it, I think it is really worth your time to read it…

Confirmation bias

How Bias Heats Up the Warming Debate
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444405804577558973445002552.html

Yes, it is the WSJ and yes it can be easily interpreted as ‘anti-global warming’, but I think the article has a great deal to offer. As I have lamented many times before (there is a bit of noise in this search), there is no room in this debate to question the costs of the drastic measures proposed by the ‘warmists’. Even if we accept that humans are exclusively responsible for warming (something I have substantial doubts about, though I quite firmly believe humans are _impacting_ our environment in a negative fashion) AND we accept that the exclusive reason is due to burning fossil fuels, thus increasing CO2 (I find much better explanation for the increase in CO2 in the conversion of wild land to cultivation), we are still left (or should be left with) a substantial debate on what it the best course of action. I do not think that causing our global economy to crash back to the stone age is an appropriate course of action (even if that is inevitable in the long-run, see the many posts at Do The Math (but brace yourself, it is not for the faint of heart!)). However, we can’t have any of these discussions because as soon as you suggest anything _besides_ total elimination of the use of fossil fuels you are labeled a ‘denialist’ and all rational discussion ceases. This article speaks eloquently to that point; however I am quite sure, particularly since it is on the WSJ, that it will be ignored when it isn’t denigrated.

New York, the nanny state

Breastfeeding Wars: Why Locking Up Baby Formula Is A Bad Idea
Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign against formula feeding in hospitals is profoundly out of touch with the realities of motherhood
http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/03/why-locking-up-formula-is-a-bad/?hpt=hp_c2

If this wasn’t on Time I would have thought it was satire (I admit I didn’t investigate, maybe it is BS, I dunno). I can understand banning something where there is solid scientific evidence that it will seriously impact a child’s future (I like the idea that kids are required to wear bicycle helmets, for instance), but this and other idiotic Bloomberg bans (trans fat in restaurants, large sodas, etc.) just goes to show that he is a tyrant in liberal cloths, but a tyrant none-the-less.