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Ask Dr. Science: Campaign Trail Edition

by BonnyTobias Posted on October 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Presidential candidates have been asking a lot of questions lately. Science can help answer them, but this year scientists are in notably short supply on the campaign trail. Asked about the age of the earth, Marco Rubio famously told GQ, “I’m not a scientist, man.” Likewise, Mitch McConnell is not a scientist, Rick Scott is not a scientist, John Boehner is not a scientist, Joni Ernst is not a scientist, Bobby Jindal is not a scientist, and Hillary Clinton is not a scientist—just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain. Luckily, I can help. Here are answers to some of the most pressing questions asked by major party candidates recently.

Bernie Sanders: “Why are we the only major country that doesn’t guarantee health care for all?”

In 1986 James Buchanan won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in public choice theory, which can shed some light on this. In layman’s terms, public choice theory says you should follow the money. So let’s follow it. Universal health care is expensive. This means higher taxes, which rich people don’t like. Conservative parties cater to the rich, so they generally oppose expansions in health care coverage. In the US, the rich are the richest of all, and the Republican Party therefore caters to them more enthusiastically than anywhere else in the world. As a result, they’re more rabidly opposed to national health care than any other conservative party in a major country.

In other words, it’s because no other country has the Republican Party.

Ben Carson: “Gravity, where did it come from?”

Well, Ben, when a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold and a Landau–Lifshitz stress-energy tensor love each other very much, they produce a geodesic in curved spacetime. And that’s the story of gravity.

Kevin McCarthy: “Everyone thought Hillary was unbeatable, right?”

Let’s look at this statistically. According to a CNN poll from last year, 44 percent of respondents thought it “very likely” and 34 percent thought it “somewhat likely” that Hillary would win the Democratic nomination. Let’s assign p=.9 to “very” and p=.65 to “somewhat.” Then P(Nomination) = .62. The same poll assigned Hillary a conditional probability P(Presidency|Nomination) of .51. Thus, since P(A ∩ B) = P(A) * P(B|A), her perceived chance of winning the presidency was p=.32 and her chance of being beaten was a whopping p=.68. She was light years away from being considered unbeatable.

Or, in simpler terms you’re more likely to understand, there was never any need to brag about the awesome Hillary-smashing power of the Benghazi committee. You’re an idiot.

Donald Trump: “Let Russia do it. Let ’em get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?”

In the neorealist school of international relations, hegemonic stability theory tells us that the world is a better place when a single nation-state, or hegemon, is the dominant player on the global stage. Vladimir Putin is challenging us for this role. If he succeeds, the outcome is either a disastrous multipolar world or an equally disastrous world in which Russia is dominant. Ditto for China. In other words, Russia is killing us! China is killing us! We need to beat them!

Marco Rubio: “How can it be that we sent a Republican majority to Congress and yet they’re still not able to stop our country from sliding in the wrong direction?”

The study of political science can provide some insight into this phenomenon. In “Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyism,” George Tsebelis explains the crippling effect of having too many agents who can obstruct legislative agendas. “The potential for policy change,” he says, “decreases with (a) the number of veto players, (b) the lack of congruence (dissimilarity of policy positions among veto players) and (c) the cohesion (similarity of policy positions among the constituent units of each veto player) of these players.”

Taking those one by one, (a) Democrats can filibuster your endless Obamacare temper tantrums, President Obama can veto them, and the Supreme Court can send you packing; (b) the Republican Party has gone nuts; and (c) Democrats are united in stopping you. Did you really not know this?

Carly Fiorina: “Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Do you think this is not happening?”

Of course it’s happening. In Hugh Everett’s relative state formulation of quantum mechanics, the multiverse is composed of a quantum superposition of an infinite number of increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes or quantum worlds. Thus, every possible thing is happening at every possible instant. And stop calling me Chuck.

Hillary Clinton: “Another conspiracy theory?”

Yes.

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Ask Dr. Science: Campaign Trail Edition

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The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

by DeanaRqopw Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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So how’s the ol’ US of A doing under the free-market-hating presidency of the socialist Barack Obama? Probably badly, I’ll bet. Let’s see what the World Economic Forum has to say. Their latest set of competitiveness rankings came out today, and among countries with populations over 10 million, the US was….

First. How about that? But it was probably even better before Obama took over, wasn’t it? Let’s see. In 2009 we ranked #1 among big countries with a score of 5.59. This year we’re #1 with a score of 5.61. That’s hard to fathom. But there you have it. Our competitiveness in the global free market seems to have improved a bit during Obama’s tenure. I wonder if Fox News will bother reporting this?

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The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

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Let Us Now Praise Authentically Stiff Politicians

by YoungT08gxixm Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Brendan Nyhan thinks we spend too much time yakking about which candidates are “authentic” and which ones aren’t. For example:

George W. Bush and Al Gore were both born into powerful political families, but were perceived very differently. Mr. Bush successfully reinvented himself as a down-home Texas ranch owner despite being the son of a president with elite New England roots, while Mr. Gore was widely mocked as a phony who grew up amid wealth and power in Washington, especially when he invoked his childhood work on his family’s Tennessee farm. Again, one simple explanation for the disparate treatment they received is that Mr. Bush was a better political performer.

I would remind everyone that Brad Pitt gets paid millions of dollars for doing a very good job of pretending to be authentically charming. The ability to feign authenticity is called “acting,” and it’s a lucrative profession if you’re good at it.

Was Al Gore authentic? Hillary Clinton? Mitt Romney? Sure. Gore is genuinely sort of wonkish and stiff. Hillary is earnest and cautious around people. Romney is careful and detail-oriented. That’s authentically who they are. If they studied up and adopted a hail-fellow-well-met persona, everyone would think they were authentic, but they’d just be pretending.

If you prefer politicians who are bluff and emotional in public, just say so. If you can’t stand being around people who natter on about policy and guard their private lives, say so. But cut out the “authentic” nonsense. That’s not what this is about.

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Let Us Now Praise Authentically Stiff Politicians

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These Striking Photos Will Change the Way the Way You Look at Coal Country

by MadisonMilerum Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the many years Stacy Krantiz has been documenting life in Appalachia, as seen in her ongoing project, As it was Give(n) to Me, she has deftly navigated the minefield that comes with photographing in this often misrepresented part of the county. At least since Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the 1941 book by writer James Agee and photographer Walter Evans that chronicled the lives of poverty-stricken sharecroppers in the South, residents have rightfully complained about how outsiders have portrayed them in photographs—nothing short of a kind of visual openmouthed gawking and pointing. By living with her subjects, Krantiz challenges and plays with common stereotypes of the beautiful hill region of southern Ohio, West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky. Kranitz’s photos show her living it up with the subjects of her photos, deeply embedded, fully embraced, sometimes even appearing in the images herself. She photographs as a member of the family, showing the good and the beautiful, along with the bad and the ugly. Nothing to hide.

Drawing on these sensibilities, Kranitz shot in and around Mingo County, West Virginia, for Mother Jones, to provide a sense of what life is really like in Don Blankenship’s backyard.

Cheerleaders prepare before the first football game of the season at Mingo Central High School, home of the Miners.

A former Massey-run mountaintop removal mining site in West Virginia. The tiny patch of grass at the top of the mountain is a cemetery to which families have fought to have regular, safe access. Stacy Kranitz/SouthWings

A poster for R. T. “Tommy” Blankenship, candidate for the Knox District Member School Board in Buchanan County, Virginia

Part of a new mural in downtown Matewan, West Virginia, depicting life in the coal mines

Vernon Haltom of Coal River Mountain watch, photographed at the Kayford Mountain strip mine, once operated by Massey Energy

Left: Mingo Central High School cheerleaders and marching band. Right: Alpha Resources, the company that absorbed Massey Energy, donated the land for the new school on top of an old surface mining site.

Left: Mingo Central High School marching band and football team. Right: Mingo Central High replaced Don Blankenship’s old high school in Matewan, which was closed due to a declining population.

A memorial for the 29 miners killed in the Upper Big Branch mine disaster

Former Massey employees and active UMWA 1440 union members Butch Collins (left) and Charles “Hawkeye” Dixon. They are sitting outside the union hall in downtown Matewan.

“These guys are sitting maybe 500 feet from where the gas station/beer store run by Blankenship’s mother used to be. His brother lives in a home right across the street from the old store and in sight from this hangout spot. The town of DeLorme is super tiny and these guys just hang out and drink in this same spot everyday. Just 50 feet away are the train tracks with coal trains running by and 10 feet behind them is the Tug Fork River that marks the border of Kentucky. They all grew up going to the Blankenship’s store and everyone in town knows his brother. They say he is a nice guy.” –Stacy Kranitz

A store in Racine, West Virginia, in Boone county, sells reflective clothing for miners along with t-shirts, flags, stickers, and other items.

A portrait of Wilma Lee Steele, a board member of the Mine Wars Museum in Matewan

After church in Matewan, West Virginia

A river baptism on the border of Kentucky and Virginia. The church that performed the baptism is located in Stopover, Kentucky, where Blankenship was born.

A grocery store called Family Foods in Freeborn, Kentucky, just down the road from the gas station Blankenship’s mother ran in Delorme. The owners told Kranitz that they are not likely to be able to keep the family-run business open after the latest round of coal company bankruptcies, buyouts, and layoffs. They plan to close around the New Year. The next closest grocery store is almost an hour away.

Ellen Hatfield and Vera Hankins work on a mural depicting coal miners in an underground mine. The mural is part of the “Turn This Town Around” grant that also supported the Mine Wars museum. It is across the street from the union in downtown Matewan.

Jacob Knabb shows off his tattoo of West Virginia, with an X marking Boone county, a historic coal county with many former Massey workers. His father and grandfather worked in coal. His father was recently laid off. Jacob left West Virginia after college and now lives in Chicago.

Underground shift workers from a dog mine near Feds Creek, Kentucky. Dog mines are independent and small operations nestled between the big corporate mines.

A man in downtown Madison, West Virginia, in Boone County

Men at an overlook in Pikeville, Kentucky, staring at the cut-through project, one of the largest civil-engineering projects in the western hemisphere, constructed from 1973 to 1987. Nearly 18 million cubic yards of earth were removed from the Peach Orchard Mountain, rerouting a fork of the Big Sandy River as well as rail lines and the highway. The cut-through project was initiated to relocate the railroad and eliminate the coal dust in the community.

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These Striking Photos Will Change the Way the Way You Look at Coal Country

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The Shiny New "Sharing Economy" Is Sure Starting to Seem Awfully Old-Fashioned

by GertieFarfan Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Brian Fung writes today about Amazon’s new package delivery scheme:

Flex, Amazon’s new on-demand delivery service, promises to get your packages to you even sooner by hiring independent drivers to bring them to your house. As a lot of reports have pointed out, Flex is basically Uber for Amazon packages.

But, speaking of Uber, how will Amazon’s leap into on-demand logistics affect the rest of the sharing economy?

….Amazon Flex says it will pay its delivery drivers $18 to $25 per hour. They can elect to drive for two-, four-, or eight-hour shifts. In exchange, they need to supply your own car, a driver’s license and an Android phone so that they can install Amazon’s driver app….Compare that to ridesharing services whose drivers get to maximize their flexibility but whose income is more variable. For some, this trade-off may be worth it.

….Amazon Flex is betting that as the economy improves, there will still be people who are willing to work in the sharing economy rather than returning to full-time jobs….Research from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the sharing economy will become a $335 billion business by 2025 — up from $15 billion a year today.

Let’s slow down here. What exactly is the “sharing economy”? Originally it was sort of like renting. Time rhapsodized about it in 2011: “The true innovative spirit of collaborative consumption can be found in start-ups like Brooklyn-based SnapGoods, which helps people rent goods via the Internet. Or Airbnb, which allows people to rent their homes to travelers.”

Then it morphed into “Uber for ____” companies. Uber, of course, doesn’t really allow you to share your car with other people. It’s your car and you’re the only one who drives it. Rather, Uber provides infrastructure and scale that allows you to become an on-demand taxicab whenever your schedule allows it.

Now it’s apparently morphed even further. In some sense, Uber allows you to “share” your car with your passengers. That’s a stretch, but Flex doesn’t even provide that. The only thing you’re doing is “sharing” your car with the packages you’re delivering. By that standard, all of us are part of the sharing economy, since we “share” our bodies and brains with employers in order to accomplish tasks that our employer gives us.

In this case, Amazon is doing nothing more than hiring drivers as independent contractors so that it doesn’t have to pay benefits and doesn’t have to pay them if there aren’t any packages to deliver. (You can pick your own shift, but only if a shift is available.) The only real innovation here is that Flex might1 allow you to work odd hours here and there, which is convenient if you have other commitments that prevent you from working a normal schedule. Mostly, though, it’s just Amazon taking the 21st century mania for scheduling workers on a day-to-day basis and instead scheduling them hour-to-hour.

In any case, it now seems as though the “sharing economy” is any job that’s somehow related to a scheduling app and provides workers only with odd bits and pieces of work at the employer’s whim. In other words, sort of like manual laborers in the Victorian era, but with smartphones and better pay. No wonder PricewaterhouseCoopers thinks it will grow to $335 billion over the next decade. By that standard, I’d be surprised if it didn’t break $1 trillion.

1I say “might” because it all depends. Maybe jobs really are first-come-first-serve. Or maybe Amazon will start to favor workers who regularly take as long a shift as Amazon wants them to take. Or perhaps Amazon will start to push offers out to workers, and downrate those who don’t accept them frequently enough. Who knows?

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The Shiny New "Sharing Economy" Is Sure Starting to Seem Awfully Old-Fashioned

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Is the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsing? These scientists want to go find out

by FerminFish Posted on September 30, 2015

Is the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsing? These scientists want to go find out

By on 30 Sep 2015commentsShare

Let’s play a game. It’s called “Hollywood or Real Life?” The rules are self-explanatory:

In a world where technology is cutting people off from the natural world, scientists are treated like conspiracy theorists, and government officials can’t agree on what to do about climate change, humanity is in danger. A huge swath of the West Antarctic ice sheet nearly 75 miles wide is on the verge of collapse, and if it takes the rest of the ice sheet with it, global sea levels could rise by a catastrophic four feet. To make matters worse, scientists don’t know when or how this doomsday scenario could unfold, and the only way to find out is to travel to a remote and treacherous part of the ice sheet known as Thwaites Glacier, nearly 2,500 miles from McMurdo Station. Will the U.S. government support such a dangerous mission? Will world leaders ever get their act together? Or will Mother Nature just say “F**k it,” and wipe the slate clean?

You guessed it — this is real life. People have been worrying over the imminent collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet ever since researchers published two papers last year warning that glaciers along the Amundsen Sea were not only retreating, but also unlikely to stop due to the “retrograde,” or increasingly downhill, nature of the seabed below them.

But much of what scientists know about this area comes from satellite data. Thwaites and other nearby glaciers are so hard to get to and have such dangerous weather conditions that only a handful of scientists have ever actually made the journey. Now, because of the potentially catastrophic consequences of ice sheet collapse, a group of Antarctic researchers are asking the National Science Foundation to support a more aggressive research approach. Here’s more from The Washington Post:

That means a great deal more research and direct measurements in this extremely remote environment. It isn’t research on the moon or at the ocean’s greatest depths, but in terms of work on or near the surface of Earth, it’s about as tough as it gets.

To understand the difficulty of the scientific task, consider this — one key problem will be figuring out exactly what is going on at the ground level beneath over a mile of ice. A key unknown involves precisely what kind of terrain the base of Thwaites glacier rests upon, and what it is composed of – which will affect just how much resistance there is to the glacier’s movement.

The late climate scientist John Mercer first alerted the scientific community about the instability of the West Antarctic ice sheet back in 1978. At the time, Mercer thought that warming air temperatures would cause the collapse, but scientists now understand that warm water melting the ice from below is the real threat. Still, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the collapse could play out:

“There has been a pendulum in this community in the last 20 years, from, ‘we’re sure the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is going to collapse,’ to ‘actually we’re not,’ to ‘oh yes we are,’ to ‘oh, it’s happening now,’” says Eric Steig, a University of Washington glaciologist. … “I think that many of the ideas that people came up with for why it won’t collapse have been disproven,” Steig says – although he emphasizes that there is still a great deal of scientific uncertainty about the matter.

Scientists don’t know, for example, how soon a rapid collapse could begin — 900 years? 200 years? Sooner? And they don’t know whether the ice sheet collapsed before during a previous period of warming about 120,000 years ago — something they could find out if they can get ice core samples.

Now, given our short attention span and complete inability to grasp the true existential threat that is climate change, most people will forget about this terrifying drama playing out at the bottom of the Earth within 24 hours, go see The Martian this weekend, and then spend an excessive amount of time pondering the possibility of humans visiting Mars. Which is why, in the interest of getting people to give a shit, someone really should just turn this into a frivolous two-hour blockbuster hit. Picture it:

Lily Tomlin and Danny Trejo play a husband and wife team of Antarctic researchers leading an expedition to Thwaites. They bring along two graduate students — one a wise-cracking source of comic relief played by Jerrod Carmichael, the other a brooding and sarcastic voice of pessimism played by Mae Whitman. A grumbling member of the British Antarctic Survey (Peter Capaldi) joins the expedition, along with his young protege (Parminder Nagra), who’s pretty quiet but vlogs about the whole trip. Roland Emmerich of The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day fame will direct, of course, and the movie will probably be called something minimalist and dramatic like Thwaites.

Source:

Scientists declare an “urgent” mission – study West Antarctica, and fast

, The Washington Post.

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Is the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsing? These scientists want to go find out

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Rumor of the Day: Gay Marriage Martyr Kim Davis Met With the Pope Last Week

by LayneI91ysavpze Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s your spine-tingling rumor of the day, straight from Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican. He claims that gay marriage martyr Kim Davis met with Pope Francis last Thursday at the Vatican embassy in Washington DC, just before he left for New York City:

“The Pope spoke in English,” she told me. “There was no interpreter. ‘Thank you for your courage,’ Pope Francis said to me. I said, ‘Thank you, Holy Father.’ I had asked a monsignor earlier what was the proper way to greet the Pope, and whether it would be appropriate for me to embrace him, and I had been told it would be okay to hug him. So I hugged him, and he hugged me back. It was an extraordinary moment. ‘Stay strong,’ he said to me. Then he gave me a rosary as a gift, and he gave one also to my husband, Joe. I broke into tears. I was deeply moved.”

….Vatican sources have confirmed to me that this meeting did occur; the occurrence of this meeting is not in doubt.

Davis’s lawyers also say the meeting took place, and told WDRB News that although they don’t have photos of the meeting yet, they’ll release them as soon as they get them. Davis herself, though, is silent about all this—which seems a little odd since she hasn’t been shy about talking to the media before. So far there’s neither confirmation nor denial from the Vatican.

Did this actually happen, or is it a truly bizarre hoax? I cannot tell you. But I figured you’d want to know.

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Rumor of the Day: Gay Marriage Martyr Kim Davis Met With the Pope Last Week

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A Super-PAC Just Halted Its Support for Rand Paul

by RefugioLHY Posted on September 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Rand Paul pledged his campaign would outlast “this clown” Donald Trump, and swore he was having no trouble fundraising. Today, he got some bad news. The head of Purple PAC, one of three super-PACs devoted to supporting his candidacy, told Politico that he was holding off on spending any more money for Paul’s election until the Kentucky senator’s campaign “corrects its problems.”

Purple PAC was established by former Cato Institute head Ed Crane two years ago to generally support libertarian candidates. But after raising $1.2 million in the first half of this year, Crane announced the super-PAC was all in for Paul. The super-PAC’s website changed its motif and still features a heavily pro-Paul message. But on Tuesday, Crane told Politico that as long as the campaign continues to languish in the polls without a more resonant message, he’s not going to spend or raise any money on Paul’s behalf.

The libertarian views that catapulted Paul to national prominence had “disappeared,” Crane said, leaving many of Paul’s longtime backers miffed.

“I want to grab Rand by the lapels and say, ‘What are you doing?'” Crane said. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul. But whatever motivates his campaign, I don’t get it.”

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Originally posted here – 

A Super-PAC Just Halted Its Support for Rand Paul

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House Benghazi Committee Breaks Record — Sort Of

by TaniaRizzo Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today’s news:

The House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks is now the longest congressional investigation in history, committee Democrats announced today. As of Monday, the House Select Committee on Benghazi, has been active for 72 weeks — surpassing the record previously held by the Watergate Committee in the 1970’s.

I suppose this is technically correct. But let’s gaze through a broader lens and take a look at the Whitewater investigation:

The House Banking Committee began hearings in March 1994, and they petered out in early 1995. Call it 50 weeks or so.
The Senate Whitewater Committee began in May 1995 and issued its final report in June 1996. That’s 57 weeks.
But wait! The Senate investigation was a continuation of the Senate Banking Committee investigation, which began in July 1994. If you count this as one big Senate investigation, as you really should, it lasted 98 weeks.
But wait again! The Whitewater investigation really started on January 20, 1994, when special counsel Robert Fiske was appointed. It ended on September 20, 2000, when Fiske’s successor, Robert Ray, announced there was “insufficient evidence” to show that the Clintons had done anything wrong. That’s 348 weeks.

So sure: in terms of a single congressional committee in continuous existence, Benghazi is now the all-time record holder. But in terms of how long a political investigation has lasted through all its permutations, I’d guess that 348 weeks is unlikely to be beaten anytime soon. When it comes to political witch hunts, Whitewater was—and remains—the king of fruitless idiocy.

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House Benghazi Committee Breaks Record — Sort Of

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It’s Really Hard Not to Hate the Pharmaceutical Industry

by AngieKerns Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Another day, another drug. Today comes news of Nitropress, a generic blood pressure drug that was priced at $44 per vial way back in 2013. Then it was sold to Marathon Pharmaceuticals, which raised the price to $257. A few months ago it was sold yet again, this time to Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which raised the price to $806. But no worries! According to a spokesman, no one will ever be denied this medication:

“These are drugs that are only used by hospitals — they are not sold in pharmacies — in accordance with specific surgical procedures. This means that whenever the protocol calls for use of these drugs, they are used. Patients are never denied these drugs when the protocols call for their use.”

And there you have it. Hospitals have to use it, and no one else makes it, so Valeant can charge whatever they want. Satisfied?

Anyway, Democrats are “demanding answers” from Valeant, which will probably do about as much good as it did when they demanded answers from Marathon last year about their price increase. Or all the other companies they’ve demanded answers from ever since 10x price increases became the pharmaceutical industry’s favorite new sport. That is to say, none.

It’s a funny thing. I’ve probably read just about every reason in the book explaining why national health care is supposed to be a terrible idea. Most of these reasons are pretty lousy—either unsupported by the evidence or else directly contradicted by it. But there’s one exception: the argument that a national health care plan would drive down the price of drugs—as it has everywhere else in the world—and this would stifle innovation in the pharmaceutical biz. There’s some real merit to this claim.

It’s not quite that simple, of course, and it would take a longish post to go through this topic in detail. Nonetheless, you can put me in the camp of those who want to tread pretty carefully when it comes to regulating pharmaceutical pricing. But these guys are sure making it hard to maintain that position, aren’t they?

Original source – 

It’s Really Hard Not to Hate the Pharmaceutical Industry

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