Monday, October 10, 2005A summer ice-free Arctic Ocean will change the world
The ramifications of a transition to this new system state would be profound. The deglaciation of Greenland alone would cause a substantial (up to 6 m) rise in sea level, resulting in flooding along coastal areas where much of the world’s population resides. Shrubs and boreal forest will likely expand northward, further decreasing the albedo. Less certain is the fate of vast stores of carbon previously frozen in the permafrost. Would they be exhaled as carbon dioxide and methane, further accelerating warming?The article also says there's nothing we can do to stop this from happening:
The change appears to be driven largely by feedback-enhanced global climate warming, and there seem to be few, if any, processes or feedbacks within the Arctic system that are capable of altering the trajectory toward this “super interglacial” state.As Mike Davis writes about this:
The demon in me wants to say: Party and make merry. No need now to worry about Kyoto, recycling your aluminum cans, or using too much toilet paper, when, soon enough, we'll be debating how many hunter-gathers can survive in the scorching deserts of New England or the tropical forests of the Yukon.
Link to PDF Link Mike Davis essay.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:03:44 PM -
Scott on Vonnegut
It has been my experience with literary critics and academics in this country that clarity looks a lot like laziness and ignorance and childishness and cheapness to them. Any idea which can be grasped immediately is for them, by definition, something they knew all the time. -- Kurt Vonnegut, from an essay cited in A.O. Scott's appreciation of the writer in the NYT book review, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut."
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:01:46 PM -
2005 Ignobels And there are some doozies. My favo...
And there are some doozies. My favorites:
The Ignobel for Physics went to The Pitch Drop Experiment. The experiment began in 1927 and demonstrates the high viscosity of pitch:
The pitch was warmed and poured into a glass funnel, with the bottom of the steam sealed. Three years were allowed for the pitch to consolidate, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date the pitch has been allowed to flow out of the funnel and a record kept of the dates when drops fell. The observations which appear in the illustration are brought up to date in table 1. The pitch in its funnel is not kept under any special conditions, so its rate of flow varies with normal, seasonal changes in temperature...
Table 1 Record of pitch drops.
Year Event
1930 The stem was cut
1938(Dec) 1st drop fell
1947(Feb) 2nd drop fell
1954(Apr) 3rd drop fell
1962(May) 4th drop fell
1970(Aug) 5th drop fell
1979(Apr) 6th drop fell
1988(Jul) 7th drop fell
2000(28 Nov) 8th drop fell
The Ignobel for Economics was awarded the inventor of The Clocky, an alarm clock that rings, rolls off the night table, and hides. Repeatedly.
The Ignobel for Chemistry went to the co-authors of a report that answers a question that has puzzled mankind for aeons: Will humans swim faster or slower in syrup?
And the others are also most enlightening.
And for the 2006 Ignobel Peace Prize, I'd like to nominate The Faith Converter 1.9:
Found an admirable tome but it's in praise of the wrong god? Faith Converter is a godsend for priests, vicars, rabbii and holy men of all descriptions. Preach next Sunday's sermon from the Vedas, Noble Eightfold Path, Torah or Das Kapital!
The premier theological plagiarism solution for OS X...
Converted text can be copied, saved or printed.
Sample Conversions:
"Attend church at Christmas or else God will send you to Hell, with Satan, for not reading your Bible."
becomes:
"Attend collective farm #897 at Leninmas or else Dialetical Materialism will send you to the poverty-striken capitalist democracies, with abundant consumer goods, for not reading your Manifesto."
"If you are a true bodhisattva, you will also appreciate the insights into the Three Baskets (Tripitika) presented by the monk. Be warned not to be a heretic or sell your soul to Mao, as this usually ends badly."
converts from Buddhism to atheism as:
"If you are a true science-guy, you will also appreciate the insights into the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican presented by the scientist. Be warned not to be a religious nutter or sell your reticular formation to Pope Paul V, as this usually ends badly."
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:01:09 PM -
Ask philosophers about the mind
Ask Philosophers is a site where anyone can pose a question to be answered by some of the leading lights in world philosophy, including specialists in the philosophy of mind.
Scientists are often disappointingly dismissive of philosophy, usually without a good understanding of the breadth and depth of the modern discipline.
Philosophers are increasingly taking the role of 'theoretical scientists' - by understanding the scientific data in great detail and applying the tools of conceptual analysis to make sure current theories are conceptually water tight (or highlighting areas where they are not).
This is particularly important in the cognitive and clinical sciences because many philosophical problems are encountered on a day-to-day basis.
For example, the mind-body problem - that tries to understand the relationship between physical biological processes and thought - comes into stark relief when a clinician encounters a patient with brain injury.
Similarly, the age-old philosophical problems of understanding belief and knowledge become particularly important when the medical community have to define what it is to have a delusion - something that is usually considered a form of 'damaged' belief.
In the Ask Philosophers philosophy of mind section there are already some fantastic questions and answers online.
One person asks if a person who is given medication to make her forget a potentially terrifying surgical experience was ever actually afraid, another asks about whether it is possible to think about the thought you are thinking.
Anyone can pitch a question, so if you have any burning queries, philosophy's finest are waiting for your challenge.
Link to Ask Philosophers Mind section.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:00:28 PM -
WSJ on Rove and Plame
Wall Street Journal on Rove and Plame: Among the problems besetting the White House, the CIA leak investigation appears most threatening...The evolution of Mr. Bush's statements on the CIA leak case indicate how loath he is to lose the man he has described as his political "architect." Early on in the controversy over the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, the president vowed to fire anyone involved. Later, after testimony implicating Mr. Rove became public, Mr. Bush expressed a looser standard, saying he would remove aides who committed crimes. Last week, amid speculation that Mr. Rove might face charges from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Mr. Bush wouldn't say whether he would remove an aide under indictment.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:58:32 PM -
PENTAGON PSYOPS FOR ITS OWN EMPLOYEES
These kinds of signs have been around a long time, of course. . . Now, they’re official policy - according to military regulations, such security warnings have to be displayed in certain areas.
But do they work? Consider this: According to an Army security manual, "after a while, a security poster, no matter how well designed, will be ignored; it will, in effect, simply blend into the environment. For this reason, awareness techniques should be creative and frequently changed."
GREAT EXAMPLES
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:57:01 PM -
Coming in November: the Jimmy Smits/Alan Alda live debate!
Filed under: Drama, NBC, West Wing
Now, this is a great idea: NBC will air a live episode of The West Wing in November. The episode will be a live Presidential debate between Vinick and Santos.
This is great because a debate format automatically lends itself to a live format: it will be one stage, so they won't have to have multiple sets and crazy timing, and even the "look" of a live show means that the debate will look like an actual debate. I hate when a TV show is supposed to show something that is "live" but they film it the same way as the rest of the episode, so it still looks taped on film. The show made their last debate, the one between Bartlet and Richie, look live, and now they can do an entire episode like that. I'm really looking forward to this.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:45:17 AM -
BOOKSHELF: THE OBESITY MYTH
Paul Campos
PAUL CAMPOS - Contrary to almost everything you have heard, weight is not a good predictor of health. In fact, a moderately active larger person is likely to be far healthier than someone who is svelte but sedentary. Moreover, the efforts of Americans to make themselves thin through dieting and drugs are a major cause of both 'overweight' and the ill health that is wrongly ascribed to it. In other words, America's war on fat is actually helping cause the very disease it is supposed to cure.
The facts of the matter are:
- The health risks associated with increasing weight are generally small, in comparison to those associated with, for example, being a man, or poor, or African American.
- These risks tend to disappear altogether when factors other than weight are taken into account. For instance, fat active people have half the mortality rate of thin sedentary people, and the same mortality rate as thin active people.
- There is no good evidence that significant long-term weight loss is beneficial to health, and a great deal of evidence that short-term weight loss followed by weight regain (the pattern followed by almost all dieters) is medically harmful. Indeed, frequent dieting is perhaps the single best predictor of future weight gain.
- Despite a century-long search for a 'cure' for 'overweight', we still have no idea how to make fat people thin. The war on fat has reached the point where systematic distortion of the evidence has become the norm, rather than the exception. The basic strategies employed by those who profit from this war are to treat the most extreme cases as typical, to ignore all contrary data, and to recommend 'solutions' that actually cause the problems they supposedly address. . .
The war on fat ultimately has very little to do with science. The doctors and public health officials prosecuting that war would have us believe that who is or isn't fat is a scientific question that can be answered by consulting something as crude as a body mass index chart (the BMI is a simple mathematical formula that puts people of different heights and weights on a single integrated scale). This, like so many other claims at the heart of the case against fat, is false. 'Fat' - or as our anti-fat warriors prefer to put it, 'overweight' - is a cultural construct, not a scientific fact.
For instance, according to the public health establishment's current BMI definitions, Brad Pitt, Michael Jordan and Mel Gibson are all 'overweight', while Russell Crowe, George Clooney and baseball star Sammy Sosa are all 'obese', (A common reaction to such absurdities is to object that the BMI definitions aren't meant to apply to people in 'good shape'. In fact, those who make claims about the supposed link between increasing body mass and ill health do not make exceptions for movie stars, athletes, or anyone else. According to America's fat police, if your BMI is over 25 then you are 'overweight', period. Note also the radical difference between how our culture defines 'fashionable' thinness for men and women. If Jennifer Aniston had the same BMI as her husband Brad Pitt, she would weigh approximately 55 pounds more than she does.)
The truth is that to be fat in America today means to weigh more than whatever a person's particular social milieu considers appropriate. This means it is perfectly possible - and in a certain twisted sense even 'reasonable' - for a 130-pound white college student of average height to consider herself 'fat', while a working-class African-American woman who weighs 50 pounds more is not likely to think of herself as 'overweight' (and she, too, will be correct in her self-assessment). In other words, fat in America is a state of mind, rather than some objective fact about our bodies.
Although race and class are topics that make most Americans nearly as uncomfortable as fat itself, any extensive discussion of weight-related issues must explore the many connections between these three subjects. Americans love to moralize about fat because, among other reasons, fat has become a convenient stand-in for various characteristics that have been traditionally associated with the pariahs of the moment. Americans who would never dream of consciously allowing themselves to be disgusted by someone's skin color, or religion, or social class, often feel no compunction about expressing the disgust elicited in them by the sight of people who weigh anything from a lot to a little more than our current absurdly restrictive cultural ideal. . .
The obesity myth is based on three claims: that 'excess' weight causes illness and early death; that losing weight improves health and extends life; and that we know how to make fat people thin. It is true that these claims are not completely false. After all, as every good propagandist knows, a social myth is much more effective when it is based on a grain of truth.
I do not argue that there is no relationship between weight and health. I argue, rather, that the health risks associated with higher-than-average weight have been greatly exaggerated, while all sorts of related but far graver risks have been ignored. In particular, poverty, poor nutrition and a culture that makes it easy for Americans to be sedentary are important public health issues in America today.
We should be encouraging Americans to be physically active, to eat well, and to provide reasonable access to medical care for those among us who lack it. What we should not be doing is telling Americans that they will improve their health by trying to lose weight. There is very little evidence that attempts to achieve weight loss will improve the health of most people who undertake them, and a great deal of evidence that such attempts do more harm than good.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:44:19 AM -
After Delay, U.S. Faces Line for Flu Drug - New York Times
New York Times: After Delay, U.S. Faces Line for Flu Drug. As concern about a flu pandemic sweeps official Washington, Congress and the Bush administration are considering spending billions to buy the influenza drug Tamiflu. But after months of delay, the United States will now have to wait in line to get the pills. Had the administration placed a large order just a few months ago, Roche, Tamiflu's maker, could have delivered much of the supply by next year, according to sources close to the negotiations in both government and industry.
This is incompetence on a scale that challenges the imagination. Everyone familiar with the deadly potential of the avian flu pandemic that is all but certain to occur has known the basics for at least a year. Yet the Bush administration couldn't be bothered to do the most basic job a government faces: protecting people.
Here's what a more competent and less ideological administration would do. It would say there's an emergency, and launch an emergency effort to get American pharmaceutical companies will make this drug, paying a royalty to Roche. And if Roche balked, we'd do what developing nations are doing in the case of hyper-expensive AIDS drugs: Make them anyway.
Meanwhile, we'd be embarking on a crash vaccine program, one designed so we were not dependent on the same drug industry that left the U.S. without nearly enough flu shots last year, when the avian flu pandemic wasn't, thank God, so likely. There are efforts along these lines already under way, but the speed leaves something to be desired.
Maybe we'll get away with this. Maybe the inevitable pandemic will hit next year, or the year after, and maybe by then we'll be ready.
If not, a lot of people may die in part because of the administration's inertia.
Naturally, Bush admirers will find a way to blame Bill Clinton. But why not? The buck stops everywhere but this president's desk.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 3:42:08 AM -
