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Friday Cat Blogging – 4 September 2015

by CarmonKTRqhvjz Posted on September 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Like Hillary Clinton, we’ve been watching a lot of HGTV lately. This has inspired Marian to create a long list of renovation projects she’d like to do. It’s inspired me to wonder if literally everyone in the world wants an open-concept floor plan these days.

And one other thing: It’s also made it clear that most interior designers on TV are dog people. How do I know? Because they seem to be very fond of rectangular sinks in bathrooms. However, as we more refined types know, this is entirely unacceptable. Ovals fit the requirements of a properly outfitted household much better.

BONUS FEATURE IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The prefecture of Hiroshima, in the cat-crazy country of Japan, has created the first cat’s-eye version of Google Street View. Check it out.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 4 September 2015

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Germany Has Taken In 800,000 Syrian Refugees. Guess How Many the US Has Taken In?

by CameronByrne88 Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Germany is set to take in 800,000 refugees from Syria by the end of the year.

America, a country that won two World Wars, went to the moon, and did “the other things,” has taken in, well, far fewer.

Quoth the Guardian:

The US has admitted approximately 1,500 Syrian refugees since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011, mostly within the last fiscal year. Since April, the number of admitted refugees has more than doubled from an estimate of 700.

…

Anna Greene, IRC’s director of policy & advocacy for US programs, said the 1,500 people the US has admitted thus far “doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what is needed and what could really make a difference”.

Oxfam wants the US to up that number to 70,000 by the end of 2016.

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Germany Has Taken In 800,000 Syrian Refugees. Guess How Many the US Has Taken In?

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In the Contest for Worst Automobile-Driving Species, the Winner is Homo Sapiens

by ElsieGiltner Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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A reader tells me this story seems right up my alley:

Google, a leader in efforts to create driverless cars, has run into an odd safety conundrum: humans.

Last month, as one of Google’s self-driving cars approached a crosswalk, it did what it was supposed to do when it slowed to allow a pedestrian to cross, prompting its “safety driver” to apply the brakes. The pedestrian was fine, but not so much Google’s car, which was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan.

….Dmitri Dolgov, head of software for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, said that one thing he had learned from the project was that human drivers needed to be “less idiotic.”

That’s the spirit! And when Skynet takes over, humans will finally cease to be such a nuisance. Driverless car nirvana will be at hand.

Ahem. In reality, of course, this whole story is sort of silly. Of course the biggest problem with driverless cars is humans. What else would it be? Plop a few thousand driverless cars into an empty city and they’d get along swimmingly. No one is unaware of this, least of all Google.

But I suppose from Google’s perspective, stories like this are useful as ways to calm fears about driverless cars. And there is a good point to be made about that: driverless cars don’t have to be perfect to be useful. They just have to be at least as good as humans. So while the fact that humans are generally idiotic drivers might be a short-term annoyance, in the long run it’s a huge bonus for Google. They don’t have to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, just the local high school JV team.

This, by the way, is why I’m so generally bullish on artificial intelligence. It’s not because I have such a high opinion of computers, but because I have such a low opinion of humans. We really are just overclocked chimpanzees who have convinced ourselves that our weird jumble of largely Pavlovian behaviors—punctuated by regrettably rare dollops of intelligence—is deeply ineffable and therefore resistant to true understanding. Why do we believe this? Primarily for the amusingly oxymoronic reason that we aren’t smart enough to understand our own brains. The silicon crowd should be able to do better before long.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, I’m a lovely driver. It’s all you other folks who are causing so many problems.

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In the Contest for Worst Automobile-Driving Species, the Winner is Homo Sapiens

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Climate change will do strange things to this hungry little microbe

by cardpayoneerromania Posted on September 1, 2015

Climate change will do strange things to this hungry little microbe

By on 1 Sep 2015commentsShare

For CO2-eating bacteria, climate change is kind of a sweet deal. It’s like someone sneaking into your kitchen every night and dumping a bunch of cookies on your counter — except, in this scenario, humanity is the one breaking and entering, your house is Earth, and those cookies are ruining everything.

But if you’re a marine microbe just chillin’ in the tropics and subtropics, munching on CO2, and watching the rest of the world go up in flames, there’s no downside, right? Wrong! Researchers at USC and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute tested how Trichodesmium (nickname: Tricho), a cyanobacteria that consumes CO2 and pumps out crucial nitrogen for the rest of the marine food web, would behave under the high-CO2 conditions projected for 2100, and they found that poor lil Tricho faces death-by-gluttony.

In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the researchers report that at first, things won’t look so bad for Tricho. With more CO2, the bacteria grow faster and produce 50 percent more nitrogen. So not only are the bacteria getting stronger, they’re also making more food for other marine organisms that eat nitrogen. But then things go sour, because of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or in this case, cookie). So here’s the bad news from USC News:

The problem is that these amped-up bacteria can’t turn it off even when they are placed in conditions with less carbon dioxide. Further, the adaptation can’t be reversed over time — something not seen before by evolutionary biologists, and worrisome to marine biologists, according to David Hutchins, lead author of the study.

“Losing the ability to regulate your growth rate is not a healthy thing,” said Hutchins, professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “The last thing you want is to be stuck with these high growth rates when there aren’t enough nutrients to go around. It’s a losing strategy in the struggle to survive.”

Let’s put this in terms of cookies, because I’m hungry. You can’t really have cookies without milk, right? (That’s not actually a question.) So if someone’s stocking your kitchen with extra cookies but not extra milk, and you start pigging out on cookies, you’ll eventually run out of milk. When that happens, you’ll probably be bummed out but will continue to stuff your face.

Unfortunately for Tricho, the milk in this metaphor is phosphorous and iron — crucial nutrients that are in limited supply — so when Tricho runs out of “milk,” it’ll die. Here’s more from USC News:

With no way to regulate its growth, the turbo-boosted Tricho could burn through all of its available nutrients too quickly and abruptly die off, which would be catastrophic for all other life forms in the ocean that need the nitrogen it would have produced to survive.

Even after the researchers put the bacteria back in a CO2-low environment, its enhanced appetite didn’t subside. They basically developed an irreversible evolutionary adaptation which, according to USC News, Hutchins described as “unprecedented.”

“Tricho has been studied for ages. Nobody expected that it could do something so bizarre,” he said. “The evolutionary biologists are interested in it just to study this as a basic evolutionary principle.”

The team is now studying the DNA of Tricho to try to find out how and why the irreversible evolution occurs. Earlier this year, research led by [Eric Webb of USC Dornsife] found that the organism’s DNA inexplicably contains elements that are usually only seen in higher life forms.

“… the organism’s DNA inexplicably contains elements that are usually only seen in higher life forms.” Twenty bucks says Tricho’s an alien. Hell, let’s make it $20 million. It’ll probably be dead before we get a chance to figure it out. (Unless, of course, part of its plan for invasion involves eating up all the phosphorous and iron, then entering a death-like dormant phase until the rest of the marine ecosystem spirals into chaos, and we find ourselves on the brink of extinction …)

Until then, I’ll just be eating cookies and milk.

Source:

Climate change will irreversibly force key ocean bacteria into overdrive

, USC News.

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Climate change will do strange things to this hungry little microbe

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Let Us Now Praise Passionate Politics

by ShadRix5723 Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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German Lopez notes the reaction in some quarters to the recent shooting of a Texas deputy sheriff:

Despite any solid leads and facts about the motives in the shooting of 10-year deputy veteran Darren Goforth, some conservative media outlets and local law enforcement officials have already settled on the real culprit: Black Lives Matter.

….Fox News’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck later wondered aloud on air why Black Lives Matter isn’t considered a “hate group.” Bill O’Reilly was more blunt, concluding the movement was indeed a “hate group.”

….It’s not just Fox News — other reports painted narratives that put Black Lives Matter and police as inherently in conflict. A CNN report, for instance, described Black Lives Matter’s advocacy as “anti-police rhetoric.” What does it say about American society that advocating for black lives and ending racial disparities in the criminal justice system would qualify not as pro-equality but as anti-police?

This is hardly a surprise. Nor is it limited to conservatives. Liberals frequently fault anti-abortion rhetoric when someone kills an abortion clinic worker or anti-government rhetoric when someone shoots up an IRS office.

That won’t stop, but it should. People and groups have to be free to condemn abortion or police misconduct or anything else—sometimes soberly, sometimes not. And it’s inevitable that this will occasionally inspire a maniac somewhere to resort to violence. There’s really no way around this. It’s obviously something for any decent person to keep in mind, but it doesn’t make passionate politics culpable for the ills of the world. We can’t allow the limits of our political spirit to be routinely dictated by the worst imaginable consequences.

This is no apology for obviously incendiary speech. If you get on your soapbox and tell your followers to kill the pigs or murder the child murderers, then you bear a share of blame for what happens next. That’s both common sense and legal reality.

But we also need common sense toward speech that’s less immediately incendiary but still fiery or angry—or both. This is where change, liberal and conservative alike, comes from. It’s sadly inevitable that in a country of 300 million, even the minuscule fraction that fears change enough to go on a killing rampage amounts to a lot of people. But it’s neither a good reason to rein in our political vigor nor a good reason to blame passionate engagement in politics for every related tragedy. That way lies atrophy and rot.

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Let Us Now Praise Passionate Politics

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This Week’s Great Showdown: Denali vs. McKinley

by c7u433n Posted on August 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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So the big news this weekend was President Obama’s decision to change the name of Mt. McKinley back to Denali. As near as I can tell, the only people who truly care about this are:

Alaskans
Ohioans
Mountain climbers
Trivia buffs

Of these, Alaskans are pro-Denali; Ohioans are proudly pro-McKinley; mountain climbers have been calling it Denali for years already; and trivia buffs are almost certainly pro-Denali since they love it whenever something changes that allows them to pedantically correct other people.

So far—to my pleasant surprise, I admit—there’s been very little complaining about how Obama is—again!—bending to the forces of political correctness and identity politics by kowtowing to the icy cold branch of the native American community. But the week is young and the easily outraged are probably still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Give them time.

For the time being, though, the pro-McKinley side has only the Ohioans, who have been battling Alaskans over this for decades. Ohioans are mighty defenders of William McKinley, proud son of Niles, Ohio. So proud, in fact, that one of their own renamed Denali to Mt. McKinley in 1896 merely because McKinley had just been nominated for president. Alaskans probably had no idea this was even happening, and in any case they weren’t yet a state and could do little about it. They finally tried to officially reverse this power grab in the 70s, but sneaky Ohioans took advantage of a loophole to prevent the US Board on Geographic Names from acting. That ended yesterday when Obama decided to rename America’s highest peak himself.

The obvious solution to all this is to rename Ohio’s tallest mountain. Unfortunately, Ohio is flat and has no mountains at all. Its highest point is Campbell Hill, topping out at a pedestrian 1,550 feet. They could rename it McKinley Hill—unless, of course, that would outrage the descendants of Charles D. Campbell—but that’s quite a comedown from the majesty of Denali, as the pictures on the right show.

What to do? Nothing much, I suppose, except for Ohio’s congressional delegation to rant and rave about Obama’s unilateral power grab etc. That’s fine. Hometown pride demands no less. Even at that, though, I have to give props to Rep. Bob Gibbs for this masterpiece of outrage:

I hope my colleagues will join with me in stopping this constitutional overreach. President Obama has decided to ignore an act of Congress in unilaterally renaming Mt. McKinley in order to promote his job-killing war on energy.

Constitutional overreach? Sure, whatever. That’s garden variety stuff by now. But how does removing the name of America’s 25th president advance Obama’s job-killing war on energy? Inquiring minds want to know.

As for the political implications, all you need to know is this: Alaska has three electoral votes. Ohio has 18 and is routinely a critical swing state. You may draw your own conclusions from this.

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This Week’s Great Showdown: Denali vs. McKinley

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Waiting For Number 34

by WSIMargene Posted on August 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama has the support of 31 Democratic senators for his Iran nuclear deal. So naturally we’re now beginning to ponder the truly important stuff:

It looks increasingly likely that the nuclear agreement will survive its congressional trial — even opponents are starting to accept that seeming inevitability.

Which leaves just one question: Who will be the deal-clinching senator No. 34?

Quite so. Who will be the history maker? Or, if you prefer, the final nail in the coffin of treachery? This is what truly matters.

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Waiting For Number 34

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Apple Hates Me. I Hate Them Right Back.

by WillDriggers Posted on August 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Apple has never allowed ad-blocking software on the iPhone or iPad. This is one among many reasons that I ditched both. Not because I hate ads all that passionately, but because it’s an example of the obsessive corporate control Apple maintains over its environment. But it’s my iPad, dammit. If I want a different virtual keyboard, why can’t I get one? If I want access to a file, why does Apple forbid it? If I want ad-blocking software, why should Apple be allowed to stop me?

Apple is still a serial offender on this front, but apparently they’ve decided to relent on ad-blocking software. As usual, though, there appears to be a deeper story here:

The next version of Apple’s mobile-operating system, due out as early as next month, will let users install apps that prevent ads from appearing in its Safari browser.

….Apple says it won’t allow ad blocking within apps, because ads inside apps don’t compromise performance as they do on the browser. That distinction serves Apple’s interests. It takes a 30% cut on money generated from apps, and has a business serving ads inside apps. What’s more, iOS 9 will include an Apple News app, which will host articles from major news publishers. Apple may receive a share of the revenue from ads that accompany those articles.

The basic lay of the land here—assuming the Wall Street Journal has this right—is that Apple’s move is aimed at Google, which makes most of its revenue from browser ads. Conversely, it doesn’t hurt companies like Facebook much, since they have dedicated apps. In the big picture, this motivates more and more companies to build Apple-specific apps, since those will become more lucrative over time. And it helps Apple’s bottom line since it gets a cut of the revenue. Plus it annoys Google.

So here’s the lesson: Apple is happy to allow users more control over their devices as long as it also happens to benefit Apple. If it doesn’t, then tough.

This is why I generally loathe Apple. Obviously all companies are run in their own self-interest, but Apple carries this to absurd lengths. Say what you will about Microsoft, but they’ve never pulled this kind of crap on their customers. If I buy a Windows machine, I can do pretty much anything I want to it.

Needless to say, lots and lots of people couldn’t care less about this, and Apple has made a ton of money catering to them. But I care. Whether it’s because Steve Jobs insisted on the one perfect way of using a computer, or because Apple’s accountants want to limit customers’ choices in order to maximize corporate revenue, Apple has never cared much about allowing me to choose how I prefer to use a computer. That’s not thinking different. It’s how IBM operated half a century ago. And it sucks.

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Apple Hates Me. I Hate Them Right Back.

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GOP Hauling Out Tired Old Weapons to Sink Iran Deal

by DarylPolanco Posted on August 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal reports that as the Iran deal looks increasingly impossible for Republicans to defeat, they’re thinking of new ways to undermine it after it goes into effect:

As their chances dim, they are preparing to push a rash of new legislation for the fall to increase sanctions on Tehran for its role in supporting terrorist organizations and militant groups active across the Mideast, which could cause Iran to back out of the deal. These politicians also are devising new ways to target the finances of Tehran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

….The fresh sanctions push has the potential to put the White House and leading Democrats, such as the party’s presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, in a quandary. Those supporters of the deal could later face a tough decision over whether to back increased sanctions against Iran.

It’s possible that Republicans can scrounge up enough Democratic support to overcome a filibuster and force an Obama veto on some of these measures. But I assume they don’t really care about that. Obama’s coming up on his last year in office and probably doesn’t care much if he has to veto a few bills. Rather, as the Journal suggests, this is just normal election-year game-playing. Republicans want to introduce bills that will force Hillary Clinton to take a stand that will hurt her no matter how she responds. Oppose the sanctions and she’s a Hezbollah lover. Support the sanctions and she’s an AIPAC stooge.

There’s nothing very original about this. Both parties do it whenever they can, and if Hillary Clinton is even a half-decent politician she’ll be able to maneuver her way through without any big problems. As long as Republicans don’t threaten to shut down the government over this, it probably won’t be a very big deal.

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GOP Hauling Out Tired Old Weapons to Sink Iran Deal

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Quote of the Day: "Love, Fidelity, Devotion, Sacrifice and Family"

by Sung70Pxftqvrcj Posted on August 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is becoming a favorite prologue to wedding vows across the nation:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.

That’s from Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. At the time, Antonin Scalia mocked Kennedy’s writing for its “straining-to-be-memorable passages,” and it turns out he was more right than he knew. Both gay and straight couples around the country have begun incorporating it into their wedding ceremonies:

The night the high court’s ruling was announced, Sandy Queen of Weddings by Sandy called Craig Lamberton and David Ermisch, whose wedding she was performing in Rockville, Md., the next morning. She suggested including Kennedy’s opinion in their ceremony.

The couple immediately agreed. “We thought it was perfect,” said Lamberton, an administrative officer at USAID. He and Ermisch, a cartographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have been together 15 years.

….She isn’t the only one. “Honestly, in the 14 years I’ve been ordained, there has not been a passage that struck a chord as quickly as Justice Kennedy’s statement,” said the Rev. Pamela Brehm of Berks County, Pa. “Perhaps there may never be another quite so touching.”

Who knows? This may just be a passing thing. But if it’s not, Anthony Kennedy could end up as the most famous Supreme Court justice of the early 21st century, quoted in hundreds of marriage ceremonies every day. Kinda nice.

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Quote of the Day: "Love, Fidelity, Devotion, Sacrifice and Family"

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