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Here’s a Scientific Concept More People Should Know: Gravity

by StacieY77so Posted on January 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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Happy New Year!

Every year, Edge.org asks scientists a question. This year it’s “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?” Various worthies proposed things like neurodiversity, regression to the mean, Bayes’ theorem, matter, and—

Wait. Matter? That’s pretty widely known already, isn’t it? Sure, but Hans Halvorson doesn’t think most of us really get matter. Fair enough, and in that spirit I offer up my concept: gravity.

The truth is that I’m twisting the spirit of the question to gripe about one of my pet peeves. What I really want is a permanent ban on the infamous trampoline picture used to illustrate how Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity explains gravity. Here’s an example:

The idea here is that the trampoline illustrates the concept of warped spacetime, and it’s adequate for that purpose. But if you place a marble on the trampoline in the picture, what causes it to roll toward Earth? This illustration only makes sense if there’s some kind of secret gravity machine underneath the trampoline that pulls on the marble. This is not just oversimplified, as complex concepts often are in books for general audiences, it’s flatly wrong. But even notable scientists continue to use this metaphor in books on relativity.

So how does relativity explain gravity? The weird thing about the trampoline metaphor is not just that it’s wrong, but that the correct explanation is both easier to understand and way more interesting. All bodies in the universe are in motion: even if they’re stationary, they’re moving through time at a rate of one second per second. However, in the presence of mass (or energy), spacetime is warped very slightly and this causes motion through time to be converted into motion through space. In a slightly more formal sense, we can say that neither space nor time by themselves are constant under all conditions, but the spacetime interval is. However, in order for that interval to stay constant, motion through space has to increase (i.e., objects speed up) whenever motion through time is reduced (i.e., time slows down).

The equation that describes this includes the term c2 (the speed of light squared), which is a huge number. In the famous equation e=mc2, it explains why a tiny amount of mass produces a huge amount of energy in an atomic explosion. In general relativity, it explains why a very tiny change in motion through time gets converted into a pretty large change in motion through space.

Now, in addition to being correct, isn’t that more interesting? In the presence of mass, time slows down slightly, and this slowdown is converted into spatial motion toward the mass. That motion is gravity. And because spacetime is warped only slightly by mass, gravity is a very weak force compared to all the other forces we know about. Better than anything else, this gets across the idea that space and time aren’t truly separate entities any more than length and breadth are separate entities. They are merely components of the broader concept of spacetime.

So here’s what I think more people should know: how gravity actually works. And here’s my New Year’s resolution for other people: knock it off with the trampoline. You can find other ways of illustrating the warpage of spacetime, and it causes nothing but confusion when you (incorrectly) use it to explain gravity.

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Here’s a Scientific Concept More People Should Know: Gravity

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Sprint Update: 5,000 New Jobs, But They Still Don’t Know What They’re For

by AlfredoParnell Posted on December 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last April, Sprint announced that it planned to hire 5,000 workers to deliver cell phones to customers at their homes. A few days ago it announced it would be hiring 5,000 new workers for…something. I surmised that these were actually the same 5,000 workers, and Sprint wasn’t doing anything new. But apparently I was wrong. Max Ehrenfreund reports:

Representatives of Sprint have said the company will create positions for about 5,000 more people in the United States, counting both new employees and workers at Sprint’s contractors.

….Spokesman David Tovar said that the new positions would be in addition to Sprint’s previously announced plans to expand its presence on the street with 2,500 new stores and a fleet of vehicles for delivering phones. However, he added, the company has not yet determined exactly what the new workers will do or how many of them will work for Sprint as opposed to contractors.

Well…OK. But this is damn peculiar. We’re going to hire 5,000 new people, but we don’t really know what they’re going to do. What kind of company does something like that? It’s nuts. But they do know that a bunch of them will work for contractors. How do they know that? It’s all very mysterious. But I guess Masayoshi Son wanted to suck up to Donald Trump, so he sent down word to hire 5,000 people and find something for them to do. Welcome to free enterprise, Trump style.

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Sprint Update: 5,000 New Jobs, But They Still Don’t Know What They’re For

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If Obamacare Is Repealed, 3 Million With Pre-Existing Conditions Will Instantly Lose Health Care

by Shaun4585ihdn Posted on December 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 52 million Americans have pre-existing conditions. How many of these are in the individual insurance market? “In 2015, about 8% of the non-elderly population had individual market insurance. Over a several-year period, however, a much larger share may seek individual market coverage.”

So let’s say 10 percent as a conservative round number. That’s 5 million people. Since Obamacare requires insurers to cover these people—and this is something Republicans can’t repeal—they will still have access to coverage even if other parts of Obamacare are repealed. However, there will be no subsidies, and the price of insurance will likely be high since this population skews older. At a rough guess, probably around 3 million of these people will be unable to afford insurance.

The full disaster of an Obamacare repeal goes far beyond this, of course, but it’s worth keeping this tidbit in mind. Once Obamacare’s subsidies are repealed, it’s likely that 3 million people with expensive pre-existing conditions will be instantly tossed out of the health care system, unable to get insurance and unable to afford proper care. And that’s just the beginning.

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If Obamacare Is Repealed, 3 Million With Pre-Existing Conditions Will Instantly Lose Health Care

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Revealed! Where Donald Trump Gets His News.

by Heriberto7391 Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last night Donald Trump tweeted this:

There is a kernel of truth to this. Ford had planned to move production of its Lincoln MKC to Mexico, but then decided not to. However, there was never any plan to move a factory to Mexico. The Louisville Assembly Plant would have kept all its workers thanks to expanded production of the Ford Escape.

So where did Trump get the notion that a plant was slated to be closed down and moved to Mexico? Here is Jim Tankersley:

Trump appeared to be relying on information gleaned from an article posted on a website of a shop that sells business cards and door hangers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the president-elect of the United States.

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Revealed! Where Donald Trump Gets His News.

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Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Is No Big Deal. But Something Else Is.

by LatishaEyre1860 Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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As Republicans go about their plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, attention is now turning to the second half of that mantra: what will they replace it with? Oddly, this is not something that Republicans have come to a consensus on even though they’ve had seven years to do it. It’s almost as if they never had any intention of replacing it in the first place.

But that’s just me being cynical. There may not be any consensus, but there are Republican plans out there. Andrew Sprung rounds up a few of them and concludes that one particular piece of Obamacare shouldn’t cause any real trouble:

One change that need not be too disruptive, I suspect — if done right — is replacing the individual mandate with continuous coverage protection — that is, protection from medical underwriting for anyone who maintains continuous coverage.

“If done right” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, isn’t it? But that’s just me being cynical again. So let’s get serious. Is Sprung right?

Yes he is. The details get a little complicated—click the link if you want to dive into them—but the “individual mandate” is nothing more than an incentive: buy insurance or else you’ll pay a tax penalty. Likewise, “continuous coverage” is an incentive too: buy insurance or else you’re going to be screwed when you get sick and no one will sell you a health care policy. Both are ways to motivate young, healthy people to buy coverage and help subsidize all the old, sick people like me. Honestly, the biggest difference between them is semantic: “mandate” just sounds a whole lot more coercive than “continuous coverage.”

So sure, there are more ways to skin the incentive cat than a tax penalty. But I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. We really ought to be talking about something else: the pre-existing conditions ban. Unlike the individual mandate, which can be repealed by a simple majority because it affects the federal budget, Republicans can’t repeal the pre-existing conditions ban without Democratic votes. And if it’s not repealed, Republicans can’t do much of anything else. As long as the ban is in place, any Republican plan is almost certain to cause total chaos in the health care market.1 It would be political suicide.

So if Republicans want to do something that’s not political suicide, they need Democratic votes. And that means Democrats have tremendous leverage over the final plan. They can either negotiate for something much better than what Republicans are proposing, or they can simply withhold their votes and leave Republicans between a rock and a hard place: either abandon Obamacare repeal, which would enrage their base, or pass a plan that would cause chaos for the health care industry and for millions of registered voters. This is not leverage to be given up lightly.

1If you don’t understand why, shame on you! My blogging has been in vain. However, Jon Gruber explains it here. Also, check out conservative Michael Cannon at National Review. He gets it too. The pre-existing conditions ban is the key roadblock in the way of Republicans repealing Obamacare.

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Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Is No Big Deal. But Something Else Is.

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Why Did Trump Win? A Roundup of the Most Popular Theories.

by JessikaLetters Posted on November 15, 2016

Mother Jones

In the past week, I’ve seen hundreds of pieces about why Donald Trump won and why Hillary Clinton lost. In the next few months, I’ll see thousands more. So do we have an answer yet?

Ha ha. Of course not. For the most part, people are just blaming all the stuff they already believed in. I recommend skipping those pieces entirely. I haven’t entirely made up my mind yet, but for the record, here’s how I’m currently feeling about all the usual suspects:

James Comey. Yeah, I think he made a big difference. Pretty much everyone on both sides agrees that support for Clinton shifted in response to Comey’s first letter and then again in response to his second letter. My guess is that his last minute intervention swayed the vote by about 2 percent. That’s not a lot, but in this election it was the difference between winning and losing.

Whitelash. In general, I’m unconvinced. White voters made up 72 percent of the electorate in 2012 and 70 percent in 2016. This doesn’t suggest that Trump motivated white voters to turn out in unprecedented numbers. Nor did white voters support Trump at a higher rate than they supported Romney. However, there’s more to this….

The white working class. Maybe. They did vote for Trump in greater numbers than they voted for Romney, but that merely extended a trend that’s decades old. The white working class has been getting steadily more Republican since Nixon, so it’s not clear if Trump accelerated this trend or merely benefited from it. It’s also possible that rural blue-collar whites had a substantial effect in a few key swing states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) even if they didn’t have a big effect nationally. We need more data here.

Racism. This one is tricky. Obviously Trump appealed to white racism, but it’s not as if racism suddenly spiked in 2016. It’s about the same as it’s always been, and it’s hard to see in the data that it made a big difference compared to previous years. However, we did learn something new and disheartening: it didn’t make a difference. In 2012, 93 percent of Republicans voted for Romney. This year, 90 percent voted for Trump. It turns out that Republicans just don’t care about explicit appeals to racism and misogyny. You can be as openly bigoted as you want, and you’ll only lose 3 percent of the Republican vote.

Third parties. This doesn’t explain anything. Third-party candidates did double their vote share compared to 2012, but so what? Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were candidates in 2012 too. If they got more votes this year, it’s because the two major party candidates were less appealing than Obama and Romney—which is what we’re trying to explain in the first place.

The fundamentals. This probably had a bigger effect than it’s getting credit for. There are lots of models out there, but generally speaking they mostly suggested that 2016 was a very winnable year for Republicans. The economy was OK but not great; Democrats had been in office for eight years; and Obama’s approval rating was mediocre. Clinton was fighting a modestly uphill battle the whole way.

The media. I think the press played a significant role in Trump’s victory, though the evidence is all anecdotal. Two things were in play. First, Trump hacked cable news. He figured out that they’re basically in the entertainment business and will provide endless coverage to anyone who drives ratings. The more outrageous he was, the more coverage he got. Second, the media’s gullible willingness to cover Clinton’s email woes so relentlessly hurt her badly. It’s easy to say that Clinton has no one but herself to blame for this, and there’s something to that. Still, even long after they should have known better, the press reported every new development in breathless tones and 60-point headlines—even though, time after time, it turned out there was nothing there. They got played—and what’s worse, they got played by the same wide-ranging cast of Hillary haters that’s played them before.

Sexism. I don’t know. It obviously seems likely that it played a role, but I haven’t seen any real data to back it up.

Lousy turnout from Democrats. Maybe. It appears that voter turnout in general was down from 2012, but only slightly—and once all the votes are counted it might be dead even. In any case, turnout seems to have affected Democrats and Republicans about equally. We need more data before we can say much about this.

Millennials. This clearly had an effect. Young voters abandoned Clinton in much greater numbers than older voters (about 5 percent vs. 1 percent, by my calculation). Likewise, third parties got about 9 percent of the millennial vote, compared to 3 percent of the older vote. There’s not much question that Clinton did poorly among millennials, and this reduced her overall vote total by 1-2 percentage points. The question is why this happened. The options are (a) Clinton was a corrupt, neoliberal sellout that young voters were never likely to warm up to, or (b) Bernie Sanders convinced millions of millennials that Clinton was a corrupt, neoliberal sellout who didn’t deserve their vote. Take your pick.

Voter suppression. This had, at most, a small effect. Among the key “firewall” states that Clinton lost, Pennsylvania has no voter ID law; Michigan has a loose ID law that allows you to vote without ID if you sign an affadavit; and Wisconsin has a strict photo ID law. Wisconsin was very close, and voter ID might have made the difference there. But Clinton still would have lost.

The electoral college. Yeah, there was that.

Once again: this is my best take on all of these theories right now. But the actual evidence is still weak. CPS data won’t be available for years, and in the meantime we have exit poll data—which is suggestive but not much more—and a lot of people looking at county and precinct level data, trying to tease out who voted for whom. We’ll eventually know more, but it will take a while. Until then, it’s probably best not to be too sure of whatever your own pet theory is.

Except for James Comey, of course. That guy sucks.

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Why Did Trump Win? A Roundup of the Most Popular Theories.

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There Was No Apparent “Whitelash” This Year

by RustyEbersbache Posted on November 9, 2016

Mother Jones

Among liberals, one of the most popular explanations for Donald Trump’s victory is that it was a “whitelash,” a primal scream of lost influence and latent racism among white voters. I myself certainly talked about racial animus quite a bit during the runup to the election. However, in the spirit of figuring out where we were wrong, the actual voting patterns suggest this is flat wrong. Using exit poll data from 2012 and 2016, here is Trump’s share of the vote compared to Romney in 2012:

Whites voted less for Trump than for Romney, while both blacks and Latinos voted more for Trump.1 There’s nothing here that suggests Trump appealed to white backlash in any special way. Quite the opposite. But now let’s add a column to the table:

Among whites, Trump lost 1 percent of white votes, but third-party candidates gained 3 percent. Among Latinos, third-parties gained 4 percent, and among blacks they gained 3 percent.

This is the big difference. Who did third-party candidates hurt the most, Trump or Clinton? And why? Or was the damage equal? You need to answer this question before you can say anything sensible about race.

It’s worth nothing that this doesn’t mean that race played no role in this election. But it does mean two things. First, white racial animus seem to have played no more of a role than it did four years ago. Second, although Trump’s blatant appeal to white ethnocentrism did him little good, it also did him no harm—and that was true among all racial groups. That’s disheartening all on its own.2

When more detailed data is available, it might turn out there are specific subsets of the white vote that moved very strongly toward Trump. But what we have so far doesn’t suggest anything of the sort. If you still want to claim that whitelash played a big role in this election, you need to contend with this.

1You can break this down by age or gender, but it doesn’t really change anything. For example, white men moved slightly toward Trump while white women moved slightly away from him. Likewise, middle-aged whites moved slightly toward Trump while young and old whites moved slightly away. But the differences are small enough that they don’t change the picture much.

2Since I first put up this post, several people have suggested that national data isn’t the right way to look at voter demographics. Instead, we should look at the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But that doesn’t change things. If you look at the exit poll data, Trump did slightly worse than Romney in Pennsylvania and slightly better in Wisconsin and Michigan. But the operative word is “slightly.”

Still, maybe turnout was up among white voters? That’s possible. But we don’t have that information yet, and I’m not sure when we’ll get it.

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There Was No Apparent “Whitelash” This Year

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These Maps and Charts Show Where Clinton and Trump’s Essential Voters Are

by TheoAlilyxoxn Posted on November 1, 2016

Mother Jones

Three weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver made an hypothetical map of what would happen if only women voted for president on November 8. The results were strikingly lopsided: Hillary Clinton would trounce Donald Trump, 458 electoral votes to 80.

FiveThirtyEight

After that map (right) went viral, Trump fans rushed to reinforce his resistibility to most women by tweeting the hashtag #Repealthe19th (as in the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote). Another Silver map, showing that a male-only electorate would elect Trump in a landslide, confused Eric Trump, who blasted it to his dad’s supporters, proclaiming, “Right now all the momentum is on our side.” These maps also sparked a slew of “What if only ____ voted” joke maps.

Ste Kinney-Fields

Yet Silver’s gendered election maps also inspired a set of maps (right) that further broke down various electoral scenarios by demographic group, which was shared widely.

While there were some initial questions about their origins and sourcing, the maps’ creator, Ste Kinney-Fields, came forward and revealed that her data came from FiveThirtyEight’s Swing-O-Matic. That’s a nifty tool that lets users generate presidential election outcomes by tweaking the political preferences and voter turnout among different demographic groups.

These maps highlight just how essential demographics are for each candidate’s path to the White House. Clinton can not win without the votes of women and people of color, and conversely, Trump can not win without men and white people. But these maps’ emphasis on winner-take-all electoral math obscures the depth and variance of the candidates’ support among key demographic groups. Silver’s map of women’s votes assumes that because Clinton is beating Trump by 10 percentage points nationally, a women-only election would boost her performance by 10 points in every state. And the viral maps based on the Swing-O-Matic uses 2012 election data to predict voter preferences and turnout rates.

For more current, state-level numbers on how various demographic groups might vote, I pulled data from YouGov, whose election model is based on more than 46,000 recent interviews with potential voters. Using its data, I generated a series of “What if only ____ voted” maps show which states the candidates would win, and by how much. (They’re based on YouGov’s October 22 data.)

What if only women voted?

Let’s start with women. In Silver’s map, women would hand Clinton 458 electoral votes. (A candidate needs 270 to win.) In the map below, based on the YouGov data, Clinton still has a lock on 330 electoral votes. (Texas and South Carolina were too close to tell, but they would probably go to Trump.) In all 50 states, she gets more support from women than men, but her level of support among women varies widely. Their support for Clinton ranges from a high of 86 percent in Washington, DC, to a low of 30 percent in Utah. In New York and California, she’d win by more than 30 points. But in Wyoming and West Virginia, she’d lose by more than 20 points.

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What if only men voted?

Relying just on men, Trump would easily win with 338 electoral votes. Overall, Trump has a consistent advantage among men, ranging from 2 points (Delaware) to 10 points (Montana). Men’s support for Trump ranges from a high of 61 percent in West Virginia and Wyoming to a low of 12 percent in Washington, DC. The map below is a bit bluer than Silver’s: Clinton could win over dudes by a small margin in Virginia.

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What if only white people voted?

Trump’s strong support from white voters is no secret. If only they voted, he’d win handily. Here, the YouGov data is similar to the FiveThirtyEight data. It shows the depth of support that Trump enjoys among white people, especially in the South, where Clinton trails by 40 points or more in every state from Texas to South Carolina. And in most otherwise blue states, Trump and Clinton are within several points of each other.

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YouGov doesn’t provide state-level data for white men, white women, or white people by education level. However, by plugging its national-level data into the Swing-O-Matic, we can compare how various categories of white people would affect the election according to the FiveThirtyEight model and the YouGov model. (One big difference between two data sets is that FiveThirtyEight’s assumes two percent of the vote going to third party candidates; YouGov’s shows nine percent of the white vote going to third party candidates.)

The YouGov data for white people overall generates a pretty bleak electoral scenario for Clinton. However, its data for white women and college-educated whites looks much better for her. If either of these groups voted alone, Clinton would eke out a victory with 280 electoral votes.

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What if only black people voted?

Electoral maps don’t get any bluer than this. African-Americans support Clinton by huge margins. Only in Idaho does her support dip below 80 percent of black respondents—to a still-respectable 74 percent. Even though there’s no data for super-white Montana, it’s highly likely that its small black population backs Clinton—creating a scenario in which she’d pick up all 538 electoral votes. (So far, Trump’s Twitter followers haven’t suggested #Repealthe15th.)

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What if only Hispanics and Latinos voted?

Clinton also would enjoy a monumental landslide if only Hispanics and Latinos voted. However, her support among this key constituency dips in the deep South: In Mississippi, 47 percent of Hispanics prefer Clinton, while 42 percent support Trump.

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What if only 18- to 29-year-olds voted?

The viral “What if” maps didn’t look at age, but YouGov’s data does include age cohorts. Young voters are another important Clinton base: If only Millennials voted, they’d overwhelmingly vote to make her America’s second-oldest president ever. However, her support among the young and youngish varies widely by state. In otherwise red states like Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota, significant chunks of these voters say they’re supporting third-party candidates Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. The real question about this voting bloc is: How many of them will show up to vote? About half of eligible 18- to 29-year-olds voted in 2012.

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What if only people 65 or older voted?

On the flip side, America’s oldest voters would elect fellow Baby Boomer Donald Trump. Clinton would still hang on in coastal blue states, but would still lose to a candidate who says he feels 35. And this group doesn’t slack on Election Day: About 72 percent of voters 65 or older cast ballots in 2012, one of the highest turnout rates for any demographic group.

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While these maps are a fun way to generate poli-sci-fi scenarios, they’re still a useful tool for exploring the demographic coalitions Clinton and Trump need to win.

Or here’s another way to look at the data: Could Clinton and Trump win if any one of their major demographic bases didn’t show up to vote? If white voters or any subgroup of white voters didn’t vote, Trump would lose. If Hispanic voters didn’t vote, Clinton would still be safe. But if black voters went AWOL, she’d be cutting it uncomfortably close. If Clinton does win next Tuesday, she’ll probably thank all Americans for their support. But she should really thank women, people of color, and younger voters.

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Read article here:

These Maps and Charts Show Where Clinton and Trump’s Essential Voters Are

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We fact-checked Donald Trump’s latest comments on renewable energy.

by Kelley0030 Posted on October 25, 2016

According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, accounted for more than half of all new electric capacity added in the world last year, a 15 percent jump from 2014. Globally, there is now more renewable power capacity than coal power capacity.

Clean energy growth was especially high in China, which was responsible for about 40 percent of all new clean energy capacity. Get this: In China in 2015, two wind turbines were installed every hour.

This surge in renewables, according to the IEA, can be attributed to policy changes, lowered costs, and improvements in technology.

So renewable energy hit some big milestones last year, but it’s still just the beginning: The IEA — which has been accused of underestimating the growth of renewables — expects 28 percent of electricity to come from renewables by 2021, up from 23 percent today.

“I am pleased to see that last year was one of records for renewables and that our projections for growth over the next five years are more optimistic,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “However, even these higher expectations remain modest compared with the huge untapped potential of renewables.”

So let’s keep this moving, folks.

Read More:

We fact-checked Donald Trump’s latest comments on renewable energy.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, solar power, Springer, Uncategorized, wind energy, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We fact-checked Donald Trump’s latest comments on renewable energy.

It’s a good day to be a seal, for once.

by KevinJackson Posted on October 25, 2016

According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, accounted for more than half of all new electric capacity added in the world last year, a 15 percent jump from 2014. Globally, there is now more renewable power capacity than coal power capacity.

Clean energy growth was especially high in China, which was responsible for about 40 percent of all new clean energy capacity. Get this: In China in 2015, two wind turbines were installed every hour.

This surge in renewables, according to the IEA, can be attributed to policy changes, lowered costs, and improvements in technology.

So renewable energy hit some big milestones last year, but it’s still just the beginning: The IEA — which has been accused of underestimating the growth of renewables — expects 28 percent of electricity to come from renewables by 2021, up from 23 percent today.

“I am pleased to see that last year was one of records for renewables and that our projections for growth over the next five years are more optimistic,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “However, even these higher expectations remain modest compared with the huge untapped potential of renewables.”

So let’s keep this moving, folks.

Link to article:

It’s a good day to be a seal, for once.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, solar power, Springer, Uncategorized, wind energy, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s a good day to be a seal, for once.