Tag Archives: island

Hobby Drones: Not as Cute and Cuddly As You Think

by MyrnaLigertwood Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Somebody at the FAA leaked several hundred rogue-drone reports to the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock:

Before last year, close encounters with rogue drones were unheard of. But as a result of a sales boom, small, largely unregulated remote-control aircraft are clogging U.S. airspace, snarling air traffic and giving the FAA fits.

Pilots have reported a surge in close calls with drones: nearly 700 incidents so far this year, according to FAA statistics, about triple the number recorded for all of 2014. The agency has acknowledged growing concern about the problem and its inability to do much to tame it.

And we saw something similar a few weeks ago, when private drones interfered with firefighting in California.

This is the reason I’m more skeptical about a laissez faire attitude toward drones than many people. Once they’re out there, they’re out there, and all the new regulations in the world won’t put the genie back in the bottle. Conversely, if you regulate them more tightly and ease up slowly as the consequences become clearer, we can avoid things like drones bringing down a 747 about to land at LaGuardia.

Nobody likes the idea of the government getting in the way of cool new technology. I get that. But governments regulate driverless cars for an obvious reason: they’re dangerous. Drones probably ought to be more tightly regulated for the same reason. When one person in 10,000 owned one, they seemed harmless. When one person in a hundred owns one, it suddenly becomes clear that a sky full of hobby drones might not be such a great idea. When the day comes that everyone has one, it will be too late.

This is true of a lot of things. When they’re rare, they seem harmless. And they are! But you need to think about what happens when they get cheap and ubiquitous. In the case of drones, we might not like what we get.

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Hobby Drones: Not as Cute and Cuddly As You Think

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Word of the Day: Trumpery

by MittieAvila Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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This may be the greatest, classiest entry in any dictionary ever. Yes, it’s real.

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Word of the Day: Trumpery

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Carly Fiorina Plans to Run America Via Smartphone

by BethanyPreece Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Soon we will all be Trumpists. Trumpets? Trumpettes? Trumpies?

Ahem. Anyway, at a town hall today a veteran told Carly Fiorina that he was having trouble getting a doctor’s appointment through Veterans Affairs:

“Listen to that story,” Fiorina said. “How long has VA been a problem? Decades. How long have politicians been talking about it? Decades.”

Fiorina said she would gather 10 or 12 veterans in a room, including the gentleman from the third row, and ask what they want. Fiorina would then vet this plan via telephone poll, asking Americans to “press one for yes on your smartphone, two for no.”

“You know how to solve these problems,” she said, “so I’m going to ask you.”

Until now, I had been willing cut Fiorina a little bit of slack over running HP into the ground. I figured other people shared some of the blame too.

Now I’m not so sure. Is this the razor-sharp leadership savvy she’s been bragging about? Just ask a bunch of vets what they want? Press one for yes and two for no? That’s how she’s going to whip the VA into shape? Somebody just shoot me now.

POSTSCRIPT: Do you think that Fiorina (a) thought this up on the spur of the moment, or (b) gamed this out with her consultants and was just waiting for the right time to use it? And which is scarier?

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Carly Fiorina Plans to Run America Via Smartphone

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Iran Agreement Looks Like a Done Deal in Congress

by Marcella5971 Posted on August 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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From the Guardian:

Barack Obama has enough votes to get the Iran deal through the House of Representatives, despite Republican efforts to block the historic nuclear accord, the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, has said.

With a Senate vote looking increasingly secure for the president, Pelosi’s comments suggest it is now extremely unlikely that Congress will halt the deal.

Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, said on Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press that she was confident House Democrats would have the votes if necessary to see the Iran deal through.

Nancy Pelosi is a pretty shrewd vote counter. If she says there are enough House Democrats to see the deal through, I believe her. It probably doesn’t matter, though: there are now 25 declared supporters of the deal in the Senate, and Obama only needs nine more to ensure passage of the deal. That shouldn’t be too hard.

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Iran Agreement Looks Like a Done Deal in Congress

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Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

by HassanD97urycmei Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby on emailgate:

Yesterday, Candidate Clinton said it again, during a press avail:

“No matter what anybody tries to say, the facts are stubborn. What I did was legally permitted, number one, first and foremost, OK?”

It certainly wasn’t OK on today’s Morning Joe! In that program’s opening segment, everyone said that statement was false—without naming the law or regulation Clinton had violated.

Meanwhile, there’s that passage from the New York Times’ front page, two Sundays ago:

“When she took office in 2009, with ever more people doing government business through email, the State Department allowed the use of home computers as long as they were secure…There appears to have been no prohibition on the exclusive use of a private server.”

We never assume the Times is right concerning such matters. But as is always the case in these matters, the heated discussion of “emailgate” begs for clarification—a service the national press corps is rarely equipped to provide.

I’m perfectly willing to believe that Clinton’s use of a private server was unwise. It probably was, something that I think even she’s acknowledged. And Clinton has certainly provided some dodgy answers about what she did, which naturally raises suspicions that she might have something to hide. This kind of chary parsing on her part may be due to nothing more than her longstanding distrust of the press, but that only makes it understandable, not sensible.

That said, even when I do my best to take off my tribal hat and look at this affair dispassionately, I just don’t see anything:

Using a private server was allowed by the State Department when Clinton started doing it.
Removing personal emails before turning over official emails appears to be pretty standard practice.
None of the emails examined so far has contained anything that was classified at the time it was sent.
There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that Clinton used a private server for any nefarious purpose. Maybe she did. But if you want to make this case, you have make it based on more than just timeworn malice toward all things Clinton.

What am I missing? I don’t begrudge the press covering emailgate. Republicans are all over it, which makes it a newsworthy issue whether we like it or not. And there has been an inspector general’s investigation, as well as an ongoing FBI investigation. That makes it newsworthy too.

But I still want to know: what exactly is being investigated at this point? If you just want to argue that Clinton showed bad judgment, then go to town. That’s a legitimate knock on a presidential candidate. But actual malfeasance? Where is it?

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Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

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Social Security Cuts Are Fairly Popular If You Talk About Them Right

by MahaliaJGJN Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Paul Krugman writes today that Republicans are engaged in an act of “political self-destructiveness.” They consistently support entitlement cuts, including cuts to Social Security, despite the fact that only 6 percent of Americans want to cut Social Security while 51 percent want it increased. Why are they doing this? Krugman suggests that it’s because they’re trying to curry favor with wealthy donors, who generally favor cuts.

I want to push back on this a bit. Krugman’s comment is based on a post by Lee Drutman, which in turn is based on data from the 2012 National Election Studies survey. But there have been lots of other polls about Social Security too. Here are three taken at random from PollingReport.com:

Opinions about Social Security are very sensitive to question wording. If you flatly ask “Do you think we should cut Social Security benefits?” almost everyone will oppose it. But if you preface it with a question about the solvency of the system, more people are in favor of cuts. And if you ask about, say, raising the retirement age, you get even more people in favor—because most of them don’t automatically associate that with “cuts.”

This is the context for understanding the Republican position. First, they talk loudly and endlessly about how the system will collapse unless changes are made. Second, they make sure never to propose changes for retirees already receiving benefits. Third, they don’t talk overtly about cuts. They talk about raising the retirement age. They talk about slowing the growth of benefits. They talk about means testing. They talk about private accounts.

None of this is to say that cuts to Social Security—even when couched in veiled terms—are popular. They aren’t. But support is a lot higher than 6 percent. Usually it’s somewhere between 30-50 percent, and it’s often a substantial majority among Republican voters.

So that’s how Republicans get away with this: they appeal to fellow Republicans and they’re careful about how they frame their proposals. In other words, politics and salesmanship. But I repeat myself.

POSTSCRIPT: Why did I bother writing this post? Because it’s important not to kid ourselves about what the public really thinks. Opinions aren’t shaped in a vacuum. They’re formed in the context of time, place, tribal affiliations, external events, and framing. Simple, isolated questions don’t capture any of that.

We do ourselves no favors if we blithely assume that Republicans are committing obvious suicide without understanding exactly how they maintain support for a position that seems pretty unpopular at first glance. The answer is that they do it very skillfully, and if we want to fight back we have to understand that.

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Social Security Cuts Are Fairly Popular If You Talk About Them Right

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Indicted Ron Paul Aide Is Also the Target of a Police Investigation Into a Mysterious Burglary

by Remona86L Posted on August 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, a trio of conservative operatives with close ties to Rand Paul and his father were indicted for their alleged role in an effort to purchase an influential Iowa Republican’s endorsement of Ron Paul during his 2012 presidential bid. Mother Jones has learned that one of these operatives, Dimitri Kesari, is also a target of a police investigation into a mysterious burglary last year at the Rhode Island home of a Ron Paul staffer who died in 2013. All that was taken, according to local police, was the deceased staffer’s laptop.

Kesari, who served as Ron Paul’s deputy campaign manager during the 2012 campaign, faces federal conspiracy, campaign finance, and obstruction of justice charges for his alleged involvement in paying more than $70,000 to then-Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The burglary case involves the childhood home of one of Kesari’s colleagues on Paul’s campaign team, a young and well-known libertarian activist named Jared Gamble, who died in 2013 at the age of 26. Gamble had worked on both of Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns, as well as on Rand Paul’s 2010 senate bid. He also had a connection to Sorenson, whose 2008 campaign for Iowa state senate Gamble had assisted. Sorenson eventually acknowledged taking money from both the Paul and the Michele Bachmann campaigns and resigned his Iowa state senate seat. He pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges last summer and is awaiting sentencing.

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Indicted Ron Paul Aide Is Also the Target of a Police Investigation Into a Mysterious Burglary

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Medicare Cost Projections Are Down Stunningly in 2015 Report

by AbdulTihtsobwxb Posted on July 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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As long as we’re on the subject of annual trustees reports, the 2015 Medicare report was released today too. And if the Social Security report was slightly good news, the Medicare report is, once again, spectacularly good news. Here’s the 75-year spending projection from ten years ago vs. today:

Ten years ago, Medicare was a runaway freight train. Spending was projected to increase indefinitely, rising to 13 percent of GDP by 2080. This year, spending is projected to slow down around 2040, and reaches only 6 percent of GDP by 2090.

Six percent! That’s half what we thought a mere decade ago. If that isn’t spectacular, I don’t know what is.

The 2005 projection was based on past performance, which showed costs rising ceaselessly every year. That turned out to be wrong. This year’s projection is also based on past performance, which shows that costs have flattened substantially since 2008. Will it turn out to be wrong too? Come back in 2025 and I’ll tell you.

In any case, this illustrates the big difference between cost projections for Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is basically just arithmetic. We know how many people are going to retire, we know how long they’re going to live, and we know how much we’re going to pay them. Do the math and you know how much the program will cost us. It can change a bit over time, as projections of things like GDP growth or immigration rates change, but that happens at the speed of molasses. There are very few surprises with Social Security.

Medicare has all that, but it also has one more thing: the actual cost of medical care. And that’s little more than an educated guess when you start projecting more than a decade ahead. Will costs skyrocket as expensive new therapies multiply? Or will costs plummet after someone invents self-sustaining nanobots that get injected at birth and keep us healthy forever at virtually no cost? I don’t know. No one knows.

Beyond that, it’s always foolish to assume that costs will rise forever just because they have in the past. Medicare is a political program, and at some point the public will decide that it’s not willing to fund it at higher levels. It’s not as if it’s on autopilot, after all. We live in a democracy, and after lots of yelling and fighting, we’ll eventually do something about rising medical costs if we simply don’t think the additional spending is worth it.

Still, the news for now is pretty good. I happen to think the slowdown in medical costs is real, and will continue for some time (though not at the extremely low rates of the past few years). For more on this, see here, here, and here. Others think it’s a temporary blip due to the recession, and big increases will return in a few years. We’ll see.

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Medicare Cost Projections Are Down Stunningly in 2015 Report

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Trump Takes Big GOP Lead, But Plummets After McCain Remarks

by Renaldo98Y Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today brings the latest presidential poll from the fine folks at ABC News and the Washington Post. The big news is that Hillary Clinton has maintained her 63-14 percent lead over Bernie Sanders.

Just kidding! I know you don’t care about that. You want to know what’s going on over in GOP-ville. Your answer is in the chart on the right. Walker and Bush have both gained slightly over the last month, but nearly every other candidate has lost support. And where has that support gone? To Donald Trump, of course. But then there’s this:

How long the Trump surge lasts is an open question; this poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday, mostly before his controversial criticism Saturday of Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero. And Trump’s support was conspicuously lower Sunday than in the three previous days.

In a hypothetical three-way matchup between Clinton, Bush, and Trump, Trump’s support was 21 percent from Thursday to Saturday, vs. 13 percent in Sunday interviews.

There’s no telling how this plays out. If Trump implodes—and he will eventually, even if his McCain comments don’t do the trick—it’s likely that his supporters will shift to tea-party conservatives: Huckabee, Cruz, Perry, maybe Rubio, and probably Walker. But not Bush.

Or….well, who knows? ABC News tells us that Trump’s support dropped in Sunday interviews, but they don’t tell us who that support shifted to. We’ll have to wait and see. Maybe Bush will come out of this better than I think.

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Trump Takes Big GOP Lead, But Plummets After McCain Remarks

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Koalas Get Laid By Making This Horrifyingly Disgusting Grunting Sound

by SherrieRuckman Posted on July 10, 2015

Mother Jones

Listen to the sound in that video. If I had to guess what it meant, soliciting sex would probably be pretty far down my list. It strikes me more as the sound a Chicago Bears fan might make after swilling a pitcher of Bud Light.

But new research has revealed for the first time that this mysterious bellowing is most likely the male koalas’ mating call.

Weekends are always better when they start with koalas.


This Koala Is So Cute You’ll Want It To Get Away With Stealing This Kid’s Car


Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.


We Have Some Good News For You About the Koala That Was Burned in the Fire


Please, Please Stop Making Mittens for Koalas


Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala


Koalas Get Laid By Making This Horrifyingly Disgusting Grunting Sound

Despite their popularity, relatively little is known about koalas’ social interactions, since they tend to be solitary and thus difficult to study. To overcome that challenge, researchers at Australia’s University of Queensland fitted 21 koalas on St. Bees Island with GPS tracking collars during the summertime mating season.

Over two months, the GPS devices recorded how often koalas came into contact with one another. The scientists found that while male-female interactions increased during mating season, male-male encounters remained rare, suggesting that the male koalas had a way of avoiding each other while attracting females.

The most likely explanation is that bellow, lead author William Ellis told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Researchers suggest that the male koala’s bellowing serves to warn other males away from their territory, so there’s no need for close-up grappling and competition.

Ellis says the bellows may also be a way of communicating important information to potential mates.

“Our studies on the bellows have certainly shown us that the bellow itself contains information on size but also individuality; they are distinct for each particular male,” he says…

Given the often isolated nature of koala groups, individuality of bellows may help female koalas avoid mating with close relatives, thereby maintaining the population’s genetic diversity, says Ellis.

Happy Friday!

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Koalas Get Laid By Making This Horrifyingly Disgusting Grunting Sound

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