Tag Archives: michigan

Science Marches On: We Now Have a Yard Sale That Runs Backward In Time

by ScarletCawthorn Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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A sentence to ponder:

The world’s longest yard sale runs for nearly 700 miles along a mostly vertical line connecting Alabama and Michigan, from the first Thursday in August through the first Sunday.

But what if the first Sunday comes before the first Thursday? Do they cancel the sale that year? Does it run backward through time? I demand answers.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

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Science Marches On: We Now Have a Yard Sale That Runs Backward In Time

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One Pollster Has Stopped Polling the Republican Primary. Will Others Follow?

by ShannonKortig Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’ve been wondering for a while who the first pollster would be to stop polling the Republican primary. Today I got my answer:

As candidates jostle to make the cut for the first GOP presidential debate this week, the McClatchy-Marist Poll has temporarily suspended polling on primary voter choices out of concern that public polls are being misused to decide who will be in and who will be excluded.

….“It’s a problem when it’s shaping who gets to sit at the table,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute….“It’s making candidates change their behavior. Kasich is trying to get a big bounce. Rand Paul has a video with a chain saw. Lindsay Graham is hitting cell phones with golf clubs,” Miringoff said. “Now the public polls are affecting the process they’re supposed to be measuring.”

Miringoff is also concerned that candidates may be excluded from the debate due to differences between 10th and 11th place that are so close they’re within the margin of error. I think those concerns are overblown, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real. There’s clearly a certain amount of arbitrariness at work here.

I doubt that very many outfits will pull out of primary polling. But a few more might, and of course that also affects which candidates will make the cut. In the end, then, McClatchy might be kidding itself here. There’s just no way for news organizations that make editorial and placement judgments to avoid affecting the events they report on. It might be best to accept that and deal with it openly instead of pretending they can make it go away.

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One Pollster Has Stopped Polling the Republican Primary. Will Others Follow?

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Why Has Maine Turned Into Crackpot Central?

by ReganRojas Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday, Steve Benen got me up to date on the latest lunacy from Maine Gov. Paul LePage. A few weeks ago, LePage decided to ignore a bunch of bills he didn’t like, figuring he would “pocket veto” them by simply withholding his signature. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand how the Maine constitution works, which means that all the bills became law. So now he says he just won’t enforce any of them. Uh huh.

Next, a private school hired Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves, a man LePage especially loathes, so he told the school to either fire Eves or else they’d lose their state money. Unless Maine law is truly extraordinary, this is so blatantly illegal that only someone completely out of control would even try it. Unsurprisingly, Eves is suing LePage, and this is LePage’s defense:

The Tea Party governor hasn’t actually denied the allegations, and neither have LePage’s allies. The Maine Republican did argue this morning, however, that when he threatened the school it was comparable to LePage intervening in a domestic-violence dispute.

“It’s just like one time when I stepped in … when a man was beating his wife,” the governor said. “Should have I stepped in? Legally, no. But I did. And I’m not embarrassed about doing it.”

Um, what? This is Sarah-Palin quality gibberish. And it’s hardly the first sign that LePage isn’t playing with a full deck. (You can find much, much more like this with any old Google search.) So here’s what I don’t get. It’s one thing to elect the guy once. But how did he manage to get reelected last year? It’s not because it was a 3-way race. He won 48 percent of the vote and probably would have won even without a third-party spoiler. But by then his lunacy should have been obvious to all. Are Maine residents really that attracted to kooks? Did the Democratic candidate threaten to outlaw lobster rolls? Or what? What the hell is going on up in Maine?

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Why Has Maine Turned Into Crackpot Central?

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Chart of the Day: The Economy Continues to Plod Along

by Aaron Duff Posted on July 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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GDP was up in the second quarter, but our economy is still not exactly a house afire. Preliminary results indicate an increase of 2.3 percent:

The BEA explains where last quarter’s growth came from:

The acceleration in real GDP growth in the second quarter reflected an upturn in exports, an acceleration in PCE, a deceleration in imports, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by downturns in private inventory investment, in nonresidential fixed investment, and in federal government spending and a deceleration in residential fixed investment….Real personal consumption expenditures increased 2.9 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 1.8 percent in the first.

Really, the chart tells the whole story. As you can see, 2.3 percent growth is about….average since the recession ended. Not great, not horrible. Every time we manage to get into third gear for a little while, we hit a bump and end up back in second. It’s now been eight years since the economy imploded, and we’re still just muddling along. It’s not clear what it will take to improve things.

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Chart of the Day: The Economy Continues to Plod Along

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Opposition to Iran Nuclear Deal Just Keeps Getting Weirder and Weirder

by kx93z6g Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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The congressional hearings into the Iran nuclear deal continue apace. Steve Benen points us today to this lovely exchange between Sen. Lindsey Graham and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter:

Graham: Does the Supreme Leader’s religious views compel him over time to destroy Israel and attack America?

Carter: I don’t know. I don’t know the man. I only —

Graham: Well let me tell you, I do. I know the man. I know what he wants. And if you don’t know that, this is not a good deal.

Graham: Could we win a war with Iran? Who wins the war between us and Iran? Who wins? Do you have any doubt who wins?

Carter: No. The United States.

Graham: We. Win.

So there you have it: (a) the Ayatollah unquestionably wants to destroy Israel and attack America, and (b) there is no doubt America would win this war. This sounds like mighty poor strategic thinking on the Ayatollah’s part to me, since presumably he knows as much as Lindsey Graham about the relative military strength of Iran and the United States. But I guess his pesky religious views compel him to commit national suicide anyway.

Now, you might be skeptical that Graham knows the Ayatollah as well as he thinks he does, or knows his religious views in any depth either. But even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on that score, his apparent view of things still doesn’t make sense. If the Ayatollah is as committed to war as Graham thinks, why would he bother with this deal in the first place? According to conservatives (I’m not sure what the CIA thinks these days), Iran is currently less than a year from being able to build a nuclear bomb. So why not just build a few and start the war? It can’t be because the sanctions matter. If war is inevitable thanks to the Ayatollah’s religious views, but America is going to win the war by reducing Iran to a glassy plain, who cares about a few more years of sanctions? Most Iranians are going to be dead a few hours after the war starts anyway.

So….it’s all still mysterious. Conservatives don’t like the deal Obama negotiated. Fine. But we can’t go back to the status quo. If we pull out of the deal, economic sanctions will decay pretty quickly and Iran will have lots of additional money and be a year away from building a bomb. The only other alternative is war. Graham is more open about this than most conservatives, but even he realizes he has to be cagey about it. He can’t quite come out and just say that we should go to war with Iran before they build a bomb. So instead he tosses in an oddly pointless question about who would win a war between Iran and America. Why? Some kind of dog whistle, I guess. Those with ears to hear understand what it means: Graham wants to see cruise missiles flying. The rest of us are left scratching our chins.

It all just gets weirder and weirder. The deal on the table, imperfect as it might be, doesn’t restrict American freedom of action at all. Plus it has a pretty stringent inspection regime and would prevent Iran from building a bomb for at least ten years—probably longer. That’s better than what we have now, so why not go ahead and sign the deal and then use the next ten years to figure out what to do next? What’s the downside?

I can’t really think of one except that it makes a shooting war less likely over the next decade. I call that a feature. I guess Graham and his crowd call it a bug.

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Opposition to Iran Nuclear Deal Just Keeps Getting Weirder and Weirder

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Millennials Living In Their Parents’ Home Is Finally Starting to Taper Off

by DannielFrantz Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pew has a new report out showing that even five years after the recession ended, more young adults are living with their parents than before the recession. This is despite the fact that unemployment among 20-somethings has dropped dramatically. What’s more, this trend is pretty widespread:

The decline in independent living since the recovery began is apparent among both better-educated young adults and their less-educated counterparts….This suggests that trends in young adult living arrangements are not being driven by labor market fortunes, as college-educated young adults have experienced a stronger labor market recovery than less-educated young adults.

Trends in living arrangements also show no significant gender differences during the recovery. However, in 2015, 63% of Millennial men lived independently of family, compared with 72% of Millennial women. But a similar gender difference existed during the Great Recession, and both young men and young women are less likely to live independently today than they were five years ago.

But the news might not be quite as bleak as Pew suggests. Take a look at the arrows in the chart on the right. The upward trend in living at home continued to rise through 2013, but it finally began to drop a couple of years ago. That’s not surprising since it’s pretty likely that there’s a certain amount hysteresis in this phenomenon; that is, a lag between the economy improving and kids moving into their own places. This might be because wages remained low for several years after the technical end of the recession. It might be because higher debt levels took a while to pay down. It might be that it simply took a few years for recession-induced fear to end. Why move out if you’re not sure the economy is really on a long-term roll?

There’s not much question that 20-somethings of this generation have it worse than my generation, which in turn had it worse than the previous generation. That means the recession hit them especially hard. But if these trends are right, it looks like optimism about work and income is finally starting to slowly improve. It’s not great news, but it’s good news.

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Millennials Living In Their Parents’ Home Is Finally Starting to Taper Off

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Obamacare Rates In California Will Rise Only 4% in 2016

by NicholeAuricht Posted on July 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Obamacare’s moment of truth is coming. By now we’ve heard all the scare stories about a few health insurers in a few states requesting gigantic rate hikes for next year. But over the next few weeks, states are going to start publishing the actual average rate increases that consumers will see in 2016. California released its report today. It’s still marked preliminary, but you can expect that the final numbers will be very close to these:

I’ve highlighted two numbers. First, the overall average rate increase is 4.0 percent. That’s way lower than you’ve seen in the scary headlines. And this is for a state that makes up more than a tenth of the country all by itself.

Second, the price of the second-lowest-price silver plan has gone up 1.8 percent. This is the figure used to calculate subsidy levels, so it’s an important one. In fact, here’s an interesting consequence of that number: because subsidies will be going up roughly 1.8 percent, and the cost of the lowest-price silver plan is going up only 1.5 percent, the net cost (including subsidies) of buying the cheapest silver plan is actually going down. As you can see in the bottom row, if you shop for the lowest-priced plan, your premiums are likely to decrease about 4.5 percent.

I have a feeling this number is not going to be widely reported on Fox News.

Now, California isn’t necessarily a bellwether for all the other states. Because it’s the biggest state in the union, it has lots of competition that helps drive down prices. A big population also means less variability from year to year. Also: California’s program is pretty well run, and the California insurance market is fairly tightly regulated. All this adds up to a good deal for consumers.

In any case, the headline number here is a very reasonable 4 percent increase in overall premiums, and a 4.5 percent decrease for consumers shopping for the cheapest plans. These are real statewide numbers, not cherry-picked bits and pieces designed to encourage hysteria. Once again, it looks like Obamacare is working pretty well.

This all comes via Andrew Sprung, who has much more detail here.

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Obamacare Rates In California Will Rise Only 4% in 2016

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Sorry Donald, Most Republicans Don’t Actually Care That Much About Illegal Immigration

by AllanThurston Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent has an item today noting that by a 63-34 percent margin in a new CNN poll, Republicans believe the main focus of immigration policy should be stopping the flow of immigration and deporting the ones who are already here. No big surprise there. But when I clicked over to the poll itself I found a couple of things related to immigration that were kind of interesting.

First, CNN asked “Just your best guess, do you think the number of immigrants coming to the United States illegally has increased or decreased in the last few years?” Among Republicans, 83 percent thought it had increased. Granted, asking about the “last few years” is a little ambiguous, but if you assume at a minimum that it means less than a decade, then 83 percent of Republicans are woefully misinformed. As you can see from the Pew data on the right, the illegal immigrant population dropped considerably in 2008 and 2009 and has been basically flat ever since.

(By the way, among Democrats 61 percent think immigration has increased. That’s a little better, but still not exactly a proud moment in voter awareness. It isn’t just Fox News that’s keeping us all misinformed.)

The second interesting question was one that asked about which issues were most important. This kind of thing always has to be taken with a grain of salt, but even so it’s a little surprising how little Republicans actually care about immigration. For all the attention it’s gotten from Donald Trump, only 9 percent said it was their most important issue, the lowest showing of any of the issues CNN asked about. The economy and terrorism/foreign policy were far and away the biggest worries among Republicans. Also surprisingly, health care didn’t register very high either. The tea party may be yelling endlessly about the need to repeal the worst law since the Fugitive Slave Act, but among all Republicans, only a few rate it as a critical issue.

So….immigration and Obamacare probably aren’t going to be gigantic issues this year among Republicans—or in the general election. As usual, the economy will be #1, and #2 will probably be terrorism and foreign policy in general.

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Sorry Donald, Most Republicans Don’t Actually Care That Much About Illegal Immigration

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Added Sugar Is Your Enemy, Not Aspartame

by CharlieRodgers Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Why does anyone still choose sugared sodas over artificially-sweetened sodas? One reason is taste. If you don’t like the taste of aspartame or saccharin, then that’s that. Another reason might be a rare medical condition that makes you allergic (or worse) to certain artificial sweeteners.

But that probably accounts for only a small fraction of the people who continue to drink sugared sodas. The rest are most likely convinced that artificial sweeteners are bad for you. But they’re wrong. It’s sugar that’s bad for you. Aaron Carroll brings the research:

One of the oldest artificial sweeteners is saccharin. Starting in the 1980s, Congress mandated that any product containing it be accompanied by the following: “Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.”….There was a problem, though. This link has never been confirmed in humans….Based on these newer studies, saccharin was removed from the carcinogen list in 2000. But by that time, opinions were set. It did little to make anyone feel safe.

….Aspartame was introduced in the United States around the time that saccharin began taking a beating….But in 1996, a study was published in The Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology titled “Increasing Brain Tumor Rates: Is There a Link to Aspartame?” Most people ignored the question mark….There were any number of problems with this logic….Because aspartame was approved in 1981, blaming it for a rise in tumors in the 1970s seems impossible. Finally, much more comprehensive studies couldn’t find links….A safety review from 2007, published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, found that aspartame had been studied extensively and that the evidence showed that it was safe.

….But what about sugar?….Epidemiologic studies have found that even after controlling for other factors, one’s intake of added sugars is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, with a 1.1 percent increase in prevalence for each can of sugar-sweetened soda. A study following people for an average of more than 14 years published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine found that those in the highest quintile of added sugar consumption had more than twice the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those in the lowest quintile, even after controlling for many other factors.

Anyway, that’s what science says. Unfortunately, science also says that presenting facts to people almost never changes their minds. In fact, it can do just the opposite as people respond defensively to the notion that they’ve been wrong for a long time. So I suppose no one reading this is actually going to switch to diet sodas. Instead they’ll cherry-pick studies that support their previous point of view. Or claim that all the studies exonerating artificial sweeteners are funded by big business and not to be trusted. Or perhaps make an outré claim about how aspartame interacts with gluten and animal fat to produce….something or other.

That’s life, I guess. However, I suggest that you swamp Professor Carroll’s inbox with all these insights instead of bothering me with them. He’s the expert after all. Or, just switch to water. Then you won’t have to worry about it.

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Added Sugar Is Your Enemy, Not Aspartame

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Is spider silk the fabric of the future?

by Grace62Rbrbmv Posted on June 4, 2015

Is spider silk the fabric of the future?

By on 4 Jun 2015 4:38 pmcommentsShare

What would you rather wear: water guzzling cotton, petroleum-based polyester, or a crazy strong wonder material that comes from spider butts?

The correct answer is spider butts — I mean, spider silk. (Before you jump to the comments, I should say that I know that spider silk doesn’t actually come from spiders’ butts; it comes from their “spinning ducts.” But, come on, spider butts is way more fun to say.)

San Francisco-based company Bolt Threads is planning to have spider-silk clothing available as early as next year, according to Bloomberg Business. The company, founded five years ago by a group of graduate students at UC San Francisco, is pitching the nature-made textile as an eco-friendly alternative to some of the gross fabrics that we wear now.

But here’s the catch: Bolt’s spider silk doesn’t actually come from spiders. It turns out those little eight-legged monsters are terrible at textile mass production. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

Scientists, at least those who aren’t arachnophobes, have tried to mass-produce spider silk for decades with little success. Spiders are territorial and cannibalistic—try to farm them, and they end up eating each other. But scientists have long believed that if spiders would only cooperate, fabric made from their silk would be well-suited for use in military and medical equipment, like wound sutures or artificial tendons, as well as in high-performance athletic clothing and other garments.

When the Bolt crew first started out, they actually bought a bunch of spiders from an insect dealer in Florida and let them spin their silk all over the office. (Not surprisingly, that method of production proved untenable.)

Instead, the researchers genetically engineered yeast to produce the same material through fermentation. They can even specify the softness, stretch, and strength of the material, Bloomberg reports. Oh, and they also have a sweet office:

Bolt Threads occupies offices across the San Francisco Bay, in Emeryville. A copy of Charlotte’s Web is in the lobby, and a chandelier made of silkworm cocoons hangs in the conference room. The real action is in a series of interlinked labs, where billions of bioengineered yeast cells ferment, excreting their protein fibers into slurries of water, salt, and sugar. In another room, centrifuges filter out the silk from the liquid. A larger room will hold 200-liter fermentation units for producing silk in greater quantities. Bolt is working with manufacturing partners such as the Michigan Biotechnology Institute in Lansing, which will do larger-scale fermentation in 4,000-liter tanks using Bolt’s process, and Unifi, a yarn manufacturer based in Greensboro, N.C., which will spin Bolt’s fibers into apparel-ready yarn and textiles.

Of course, any plan to mass produce anything raises a lot of questions: How much water and energy will it take to put us all in spider silk tees? Could spider silk have any negative health impacts? Will spiders confuse us all for giant prey caught in giant webs? And most importantly — is there any chance (any chance AT ALL) that a shy, 25-year-old reporter who’s kind of a nerd could get superpowers from wearing spider silk clothing?

Source:
A Bay Area Startup Spins Lab-Grown Silk

, Bloomberg Business.

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Is spider silk the fabric of the future?

Posted in Anchor, eco-friendly, FF, GE, ONA, organic, OXO, Radius, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is spider silk the fabric of the future?