* 23 entries including: US Constitution (series), technology & African development (series), progress in DNA nanostructures, public random-number generators, flickering quasars, CO2 concentrations growing, cobalt mining boom, more on insect farming, peas as a protein source, Netflix as a global TV powerhouse, & odorant systems.
* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR AUG 2018: As discussed by an article from CNN.com ("China 'Likely' Training Pilots To Target US, Pentagon Report Says", by Ryan Browne & Ben Westcott, 16 August 2018), a recent US Department of Defense (DOD) study claims that China is expanding its fleet of long-range bombers, and is "likely" training its pilots for missions against the US. The report stated: "Over the last three years, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against US and allied targets."
The DOD's "Annual Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China" is mandated by Congress, to detail changes in Chinese military posture. The 2018 report states that Chinese long-range bombers have acquired a nuclear mission: "The deployment and integration of nuclear capable bombers would, for the first time, provide China with a nuclear 'triad' of delivery systems dispersed across land, sea, and air."
The military buildup is no secret, the Chinese government having publicly established a policy to modernize Chinese armed forces -- measures including weeding out widespread corruption in the ranks, and updating the country's military hardware. According to the report, the PLA is undergoing "the most comprehensive restructure in its history to become a force capable of fighting joint operations."
The report comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US and China, in the context of an escalating trade war, along with disagreements over Beijing's actions in Taiwan and the South China Sea. Even before the release of the report, the Chinese were angry about America's new $717 billion USD defense bill, which encourages closer cooperation with Taiwan. Other items in the report stated that China:
The report comments that Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature infrastructure policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), serves to encourage countries to fall into line with China's ambitions: "China intends to use the BRI to develop strong economic ties with other countries, shape their interests to align with China's, and deter confrontation or criticism of China's approach to sensitive issues."
In response to the report, China's Ministry of Defense released a statement saying it misrepresented China's strategic intentions, and exaggerated the "so-called China military threat." The statement declared that "China's military expresses resolute opposition to this, and has lodged stern representations with the US side."
China, according to the statement, is on the path of peaceful development and pursues a defensive national strategy, and has always been a contributor to world peace and protector of the global order. The report emphasized that the " Chinese military's strengthening of modernization is to protect the country's sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as global peace, stability and prosperity ... The Chinese military's reform, weapons development and defensive capabilities in the internet space are just and reasonable. The criticism in the US report is pure guesswork."
* According to an article from REUTERS.com ("Iran-Based Political Influence Operation: Bigger, Persistent, Global" by Jack Stubbs & Christopher Bing, 28 August 2018), a REUTERS investigation has helped unveil an Iranian influence operation targeting internet users worldwide is much bigger than previously thought, involving a sprawling network of anonymous websites and social media accounts in eleven different languages.
Facebook and other companies recently said that multiple social media accounts and websites that were recently shut down were part of an Iranian project to covertly influence public opinion in other countries. REUTERS found ten more sites and dozens of social media accounts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. US-based cyber security firm FireEye INC and Israeli firm ClearSky have identified the accounts as linked to the "International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM)".
IUVM pushes content from Iranian state media and other outlets aligned with the Tehran government across the internet, often concealing the original sources of the information -- such as Iran's PressTV; FARS news agency; and al-Manar TV, run by the Iran-backed Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah. None of these organizations replied to requests by REUTERS for comment, nor did representatives of the Iranian government.
Ben Nimmo -- a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, who has previously analyzed disinformation campaigns for Facebook -- says the IUVM network reveals the extent and scale of the Iranian operation: "It's a large-scale amplifier for Iranian state messaging. This shows how easy it is to run an influence operation online, even when the level of skill is low. The Iranian operation relied on quantity, not quality, but it stayed undetected for years."
Facebook officials say the company is still investigating accounts and pages linked to Iran, and continues to remove them. A Twitter release stated that the firm had suspended 770 accounts, with the release saying: "Fewer than 100 of the 770 suspended accounts claimed to be located in the US, and many of these were sharing divisive social commentary." Google didn't comment, but has removed the IUVM TV channel on YouTube.
IUVM did not respond to requests for comment; however, documents on the main IUVM website IUVM.org said its headquarters are in Tehran, and its objectives include "confronting with remarkable arrogance, western governments and Zionism front activities." Reuters found outlets of the IUVM network operating in English, French, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Russian, Hindi, Azerbaijani, Turkish, and Spanish -- with materials often passed on by false-front websites.
For example, an article run by in January by Liberty Front Press -- one of the fake US news sites exposed by FireEye -- reported on the battlefield gains made by the army of Iranian ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That article was sourced to IUVM, but ultimately came from two FARS news agency stories.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations has dismissed accusations of an Iranian influence campaign as "ridiculous." To be sure, Iran has a perfect right to broadcast its point of view to the world; but it is perverse of Western social media to give Iran a platform for doing so -- with the attempts of the Iranians to cover their tracks demonstrating that they really aren't up to any good.
* As discussed by an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("The Trump Trade", 24 May 2018), few are indifferent to American President Donald Trump: they either detest him, or passionately defend him. In general, the leadership class is not very happy with him: foreign-policy wonks don't like his "wrecking ball" diplomacy; fiscal experts don't like his reckless deficit spending; scientists don't like his rejection of climate change; and some legal experts see Trump will have hell to pay down the road.
The one big exception among the leadership is the heads of American companies: overall, they like Trump. Bosses calculate that the value of tax cuts, deregulation, and potential trade concessions from China outweigh the hard-to-assess costs of weakened institutions and trade wars. While Trump's theatrical hob-nobbing with tycoons, much in evidence in his first year in office, fizzled out in controversies, captains of business are generally willing to play along with Trump's economic vision -- in which companies are freed from burdens imposed by the state and unfair foreign competition, envisioning that profits, investment and, eventually, wages will soar as a consequence.
Although the Republican tax cuts are certain to run up budget deficits, they did have sensible features, such as reducing the headline corporate tax to European levels. Financial deregulation has also had its positive aspects -- though business may be more excited about the appointment of regulators who are friendly to business. America's financial report card in the first quarter of 2018 gives them confidence in the Trump vision: the earnings of listed firms rose by 22% compared with a year earlier, while investment was up by 19%. If Trump's trade war with China actually manages to get serious concessions from the Chinese, so much the better.
A closer look suggests the road ahead is bumpy:
The bigger picture presented by the Trump Administration does not look so good. During the Obama years, corporate America was convinced it was under siege -- when the numbers show it was actually in a literally golden era, with average profits 31% above long-term levels. Businesses, having trading exaggerated pessimism for exaggerated optimism, are now excited about reaping bonuses from Trump's trade policies, while failing to realize that, although Team Trump's agenda is deregulation at home, it means an over-reaching regulation of foreign trade. Every tweak with tariffs leaves the businesses that are affected scrambling.
On top of that, implementing the new trade policies demands the construction of an overbearing government bureaucracy to monitor and police trade. The Trump Administration and Congress are launching probes into imports, with cumbersome laws sure to be passed down the road. Worse, Trump doesn't have any concept of long-term policy; all he has is grandstand plays. The corporate tax cuts will partly go away after 2022, while negotiations on NAFTA have been a protracted muddle. The focus on grandstanding means that those relying on Trump may be in for a rude surprise when things don't work out for him, and he abruptly reverses direction.
Trump has demonstrated his whimsicalness in his attacks on Amazon.com, one of America's biggest corporations -- it seems because Jeff Bezos, Amazon's boss, owns THE WASHINGTON POST newspaper, which is unfriendly to the White House. Trump has similarly blown hot and cold on ZTE, a Chinese telecoms firm. Trump's confused notions of policy have also generated friction with America's trading partners, while China has shown much more inclination to hit back than cave in.
America's economic boom has been going on for nine years, longer than the historical average suggests can be maintained before a fall; rising interest rates are a warning of a recession down the road, at which time the current exuberance of business bosses will evaporate. The Trump, and Republican, agenda has been to provide short-term benefits -- at the expense of long-term investment in infrastructure, control over sprawling monopolies, and reform of America's educational system. For now, companies are riding high, and not paying too much attention to the growing public resentment against soaring corporate profits, which are fueling economic inequality. Soon the time will come when payment is due, with THE ECONOMIST predicting:
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American business may one day conclude that this was the moment when it booked all the benefits of the Trump era, while failing to account properly for the costs. A strategy that assumes revenues but not expenses rarely makes sense.
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* As discussed by another article from ECONOMIST.com ("Stuck In The Past", 9 August 2018), bringing up the subject of taxation tends to rouse people to outrage. At least for those who aren't anarchists, it's not really because they have to pay money to the government; obviously, governments need taxes to run, and people are willing to pay for good governance. The biggest problem is that tax codes are bewilderingly complicated, and they aren't even-handed, fair, or up-to-date. Tax systems vary from country to country -- Europe likes value-added taxes, America does not -- but their tax systems uniformly tend toward the creaky and inefficient.
Consider, for example, the skyrocketing value of housing, which has been squeezing young people out of house ownership. The surge in the value of housing has been a windfall for homeowners, but governments have been reluctant to see that windfall as a source of revenue. Property taxes have stayed roughly constant at 6% of government revenues in rich countries, the same as before the boom.
For another example, inequality in developed countries has been growing. In the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), the richest 10% of the population earn, on average, nine times more than the poorest 10%. Unfortunately, over this period, most economies -- the US is an exception -- have shifted the composition of labor taxation slightly toward regressive payroll and social-security levies, and away from progressive income taxes. The rich tend to denounce progressive taxes as unfair; the not-so-rich then ask how anyone can describe regressive taxes as fair. After all, don't the rich acquire proportionally greater benefits from governance? Their business and financial operations wouldn't be workable without government regulation and public infrastructure.
Tax systems have also been slow to deal with technological change. The modern importance of intellectual property means that it is painfully difficult to pin down where a multinational company really makes money. Tech giants like Apple and Amazon stash their intangible capital in havens such as Ireland, and pay too little tax elsewhere. One recent estimate suggests that close to 40% of multinational profits are shifted to low-tax countries each year. Attempts to solve the problem tend to make it worse, generating revised tax codes that are even more complicated -- while sneakily hiding more loopholes in the complications. America's supposedly simplifying recent tax reform included staggeringly complex new rules for multinationals.
In reality, the principles behind sensible tax systems are not that hard: taxes should target rents, preserve incentives, and be hard to dodge. A rent, in economic terms, is different from a sale, in that a seller sells a product for the cost of generating the product, plus some profit -- with services being similar, in that providers offer labor and expertise in exchange for enough payment to cover operating expenses, plus bring in some profit. Rents, however, mean indefinite charges for a product, even after the cost of generating the product has been paid off. Rents mean, in effect, a secure stream of profits, and so are a more attractive target for taxation than product sales or service contracting.
A tax system that focuses on rents sensibly taxes both property and inheritance more: ownership of property means the ability to charge rents, while inheritance means passing rentable property down though generations. A straightforward fix would be to roll back recent cuts to inheritance tax. A more radical approach would be to introduce a land-value tax, meaning a tax of the value of land without considering any improvements on it. Ownership of land, after all, implies the most easily recognizable source of rents. Of course, home-owners wouldn't be so happy about skyrocketing house values if it also meant a skyrocketing tax bite.
Economists are skeptical of taxing other forms of capital, for the good reason that it discourages investment. However, competition is declining in many markets, with businesses increasingly milking "cash cows" indefinitely; as monopoly expands, sales become more like rents. Taxes on accumulated capital can target those rents without disturbing incentives, so long as they include carve-outs for investment.
To stop companies shifting profits elsewhere, governments might well switch their focus from firms to investors. Profits ultimately flow to shareholders in the form of dividends and buy-backs, and it's not so easy, and not so legal, for shareholders to hide those profits. Corporate tax can still make a useful backstop, to ensure that investors who do not pay taxes, such as foreigners and universities, still make some contribution. Full investment deduction should be normal; deductions for debt interest, which encourages firms to take on risky debts, should be scrapped.
Of course, with growing inequality, income taxes need to be more progressive, with higher rates for the rich, negative rates for the poor. Few like the idea of confiscatory taxation, but high rates on high earners can be offset by tax shelters that serve the public interest -- tax-free government bonds, for example. Better use could be made of consumption taxes; why shouldn't high-end luxuries be taxed at a higher rate than the necessary and utilitarian?
Nobody likes taxes, and there's no such thing as a perfectly fair tax system: it's just a question of distributing the pain. Nonetheless, the war cry of "taxation is theft" isn't justifiable. The American impulse to run up budget deficits, started by Ronald Reagan, has evolved into a form of sabotage, in which troglodyte politicians attempt to starve the government of funds in hopes of reshaping government in partisan ways that they don't have the political support to achieve through legislation. In declaring taxes a crime, it becomes obvious who the real crooks are.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from ABCNEWS.com ("US Shrugs At Vladimir Putin's Boast" by Patrick Reevell, 1 March 2018), on 1 March 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his "state of the nation" address from the Kremlin, the speech prominently featuring a list of new weapons -- most notably a nuclear-powered cruise missile, which Putin said had been flight-tested in 2017. Putin said: "The missile's test-launch and ground trials make it possible to create a brand-new weapon, a strategic nuclear missile powered by a nuclear engine. The range is unlimited."
However, US officials say they have been following that development program, and state that it is not operational; it's still in development, and the development program is not going smoothly. The US worked on a nuclear-powered cruise missile named SLAM in the early 1960s, and concluded it would be far more trouble than it was worth -- difficult to safely test, unacceptably dirty if fielded, and not particularly effective.
Putin's statements were merely promotional, for Russian presidential elections, and partly in a response to a recently-announced Pentagon policy document that identified Russia and China as US rivals -- with the US also pursuing a nuclear-arms buildup. In the address, Putin complained about US sanctions on Russia, and also about US efforts to develop missile defense systems. That was posturing; US missile defense efforts are focused on Iran and North Korea, with nobody in the US believing that a Russian nuclear attack could be stopped by such defenses. A US Department of Defense spokesperson said: "They know very well that it's not about them. Our missile defense has never been about them."
Other Russian weapons mentioned by Putin included: The Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), assigned the NATO reporting name of "Satan 2", to replace the Soviet-era "Satan 1"; a hypersonic re-entry vehicle to be carried by an ICBM; and a nuclear-powered underwater drone. None are in service yet.
* One weapon system mentioned by Putin is now in service. The "Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (Dagger)" is a single-stage, solid-fuel, precision-guided, air-launched ballistic missile for attacking ground and sea targets. It is actually just a 9M723 tactical ballistic missile, as used by the 9K720 Iskander-M short-range road-mobile TBM system.
The 9K720 Iskander-M system is a successor to the classic Soviet "Scud" TBM. Design work on the Iskander-M began in 1988, and proceeded generally on track after the fall of the USSR in 1991. Serial production began in 2006, with the weapon system being extensively fielded by the Russian Army. The 9M723 missile can be fitted with a nuclear warhead, or one of a number of types of conventional warheads, including a:
The core of the Iskander-M system is an eight-wheel transporter / erector / launcher (TEL) that can haul two missiles. The full system also includes an eight-wheel missile transporter / reloader, a command system on a six-wheel truck, and three other six-wheel support vehicles.
The 9M723 missile is preprogrammed to perform precision attacks on targets; it can be retargeted in flight, is said to be capable of high-gee evasive maneuvering, and may also disperse decoys to confuse adversary defenses. The missile has an optical terminal-attack seeker that visually identifies and homes in on targets.
The missile has a launch mass of 4,615 kilograms (10,175 pounds), about 15% of that being the warhead; a range of 500 kilometers (310 miles); and a circular error probability of 7 meters (23 feet) or better when using the terminal attack seeker, ten times that when not using the seeker. From 2007, the Iskander system has been repurposed as the "Iskander-K" to haul and launch cruise missiles, including the 9M728 (NATO SSC-7) and 9M729 (NATO SSC-8) cruise missiles.
First combat use of the Iskander was the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Russian forces have employed Iskanders in exercises near the borders of Poland and the Baltic States, clearly as an intimidation tactic. There are rumors that Iskander missiles have been fired in the course of the Russian intervention in Syria. An export version of the Iskander-M, the "Iskander-E", has been obtained by Armenia and Algeria. The Iskander-E has less range and less sophisticated avionics.
The air-launched version 9M723 missile has a finned, truncated tailcone to reduce drag. The missile's normal control fins have been modified as well, and it is said to have a stealthy, heat-resistant coating. Imagery shows it being launched by a MiG-31, which is interesting because the MiG-31 is normally an interceptor, not a strike aircraft. A number of MiG-31s have been repurposed as Kinzhal carriers, to be redesignated "MiG-31K".
* As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Lockheed Under The Gun To Field Hypersonic Strike Missile" by Graham Warwick, 6 June 2018), Russian and Chinese work on hypersonic weapons has driven the US Air Force to accelerate work on hypersonic weapons as well.
Working on a fast track, the USAF has awarded a contract worth almost a billion dollars to Lockheed Martin to develop the air-launched "Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW)" -- with a critical design review scheduled for late 2019. Initial operational capability of the Mach 5-plus missile on Air Force strike platforms like the B-1 or F-15 is scheduled for fiscal 2022.
The documentation associated with the contract award makes veiled references to a second hypersonic weapons program, presumably the "Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW)" -- an air-launched boost-glide missile that Lockheed Martin is already developing under the DARPA-funded Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) program. TBG is a demonstration program that is intended to lead to ARRW.
HCSW is a solid-rocket-powered, GPS-guided missile, while TBG / ARRW is a rocket-boosted unpowered hypersonic glider. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works is under contract to flight-test the TBG demonstrator in 2019; the Skunk Works will also test another weapon, the DARPA scramjet-powered "Hypersonic Air-launched Weapon Concept (HAWC)" missile demonstrator in 2019.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEPROGRESS IN DNA NANOSTRUCTURES: The use of the DNA molecule to put together molecular nanostructures was discussed here in 2012. As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Scientists Shape DNA Into Doughnuts, Teddy Bears, And An Image Of The Mona Lisa" by Robert F. Service, 6 December 2017), there's been considerable technical progress in the field since then. Late in 2017, three DNA nanotech research teams -- from Germany, Massachusetts, and California -- announced that they had built DNA nanostructures 20 times bigger than any before, in a range of forms: 3D doughnuts and dodecahedrons, cubes with teddy bear-shaped cutouts, and even a tiled image of the Mona Lisa.
DNA nanotech was originally based on a scheme known as "DNA origami", introduced in 2006, in which segments of DNA were hooked together by very short DNA segments called "staples". A second approach, "DNA bricks", was introduced in 2012; it uses small DNA segments that assemble into Lego-like bricks, which are then assembled into larger structures. Researchers have also been able to coat or "decorate" their DNA objects with plastics, metals, and other materials to fashion tiny machine components, electronics, and photonic devices.
However, researchers had only been able to make DNA objects up to about 100 nanometers in size; bigger than that, and the objects were too floppy to be workable. The latest research has led to bigger DNA objects. The German DNA nanotech team -- led by Hendrik Dietz, a biophysicist at the Technical University of Munich -- took a hybrid approach, putting together modules with DNA origami, and then assembling them into larger structures. For example, in solution, DNA strands designed to fold up into 3D wedges combine with one another to form a miniature doughnut about 300 nanometers across. In addition, modules that form three-pronged vertices assemble into various objects, including dodecahedrons 440 nanometers wide.
The Massachusetts team -- led by Peng Yin, a systems biologist at Harvard University's Wyss Institute in Boston -- worked from the DNA brick approach. In the original scheme, each Lego-like brick has a DNA "linker" eight nucleotides long that locks it in place with its neighbors. The new approach uses links of 13 nucleotides each. In their paper, the Massachusetts team explained how they made a block structure of 33,000 bricks and 1.7 million DNA nucleotides. They could selectively leave out blocks to create objects shaped like everything from an hourglass to a teddy bear.
The third group -- led by Lulu Qian, a biochemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena -- used DNA origami to create flat images. Using a multistage assembly process, the researchers created origami-based "pixels" that appear in different shades when viewed with an atomic force microscope, used to observe at the molecular level. They assembled dozens of pixels into individual arrays; and then tiled together 64 separate arrays to render a grayscale image of the Mona Lisa, composed of more than 8,700 pixels, measuring 500 nanometers on a side.
The ability to build bigger DNA objects in turn gives bigger substrates for decoration with everything from nanoscale metal particles to fluorescent chemical compounds. Yin says: "We're collectively making a leap in terms of scale and usefulness of these systems."
The research teams are working towards still bigger objects, and also on getting the costs down -- synthesizing the DNA is very expensive, though clearly the process can be automated and made cheaper. So far, partly because of the cost problem, nobody's come up with real applications for DNA nanotech, but it's not for any lack of ideas -- and increasingly, not for any lack of capability. According to Yin: "Now, there are so many ways to be creative with these tools."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ROLLING THE DICE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Why Are Countries Creating Public Random Number Generators?" by Sophia Chen, 28 June 2018), the Chilean Comptroller General office audits government officials, and so the office is not well-liked by politicians, who sometimes protest that the audits are biased. In July 2018, a team under Alejandro Hevia, a computer scientist at the University of Chile in Santiago, unveiled a tool to help ensure the impartiality of the office: a public random-number generator, available online.
Public random-number generators are an idea whose time has come. Also in July, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launch its "Randomness Beacon" as a permanent service, upgrading a pilot program that began in 2013. Brazil is planning a beacon as well, to go into operation by the end of 2019. There are commercial random-number generators; the public services aim to improve on them, not only by being free, but by generating the random numbers through transparent protocols, and permanently archiving the numbers.
Rene Peralta, a computer scientist at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who leads the US effort, comments: "We want to put randomness on the internet for people to use in whatever way they can find. I think of it as digital infrastructure." Such a digital infrastructure has many applications, including cryptography, lotteries, and research. Some scientific simulation schemes rely on random numbers, while clinicians could use them in drug trials to fairly assign who gets a treatment or placebo.
A sequence of truly random numbers is completely unpredictable, showing no bias and never falling into a repetitive cycle; random numbers acquired on one day should reveal nothing about those acquired the next day. That's not so easy to do. Some online random number generators are actually "pseudo-random number (PRN)" schemes, in which values are generated algorithmically; they are in principle predictable, though it may be hard to do in practice.
Others depend on random physical phenomena. The NIST beacon, which generates a string of 512 bits every 60 seconds, gets its random numbers by taking values from two commercial random-number generators, and then merging them using a scheme that reduces the chance of bias in value range. Chile's beacon combines circuit noise with other disorderly data such as real-time earthquake measurements, online Twitter posts, radio streams, and cryptocurrency transactions. Mixing different random sources helps reduce the possibility of bias.
Governments have big use for a public random-number generator. In the USA, the government could use public random numbers to assign visas, Peralta saying: "If you're an applicant and you were not chosen, you would like to know that it was because you weren't lucky enough, and not because you are Muslim." A logged random number could also be used back up document timestamps, to ensure that the timestamp hasn't been cooked.
NIST, unfortunately, is regarded with some distrust in the expert community. In 2007, one of NIST's encryption standards was found to have a security vulnerability; there was widespread suspicion, not confirmed, that it had been intentionally inserted by the US National Security Agency. Peralta is aware of NIST's image problem, and his team is trying to address concerns. For example, the NIST beacon logs each random number with a "hash" -- a condensed derivative of a value, distinct for each original value -- for the current value, and a hash for the previous value. This creates a self-referencing chain, preventing a hacker from changing a value in the sequence, and getting away with it.
There's also some cooperation between the efforts. The US, Chilean, and Brazilian beacons all use the same format, so users can mix and match as they please. NIST is working towards a quantum-based random-number generator based on photons, which should be as random as anyone would like.
There's a lot of ongoing discussion on where to go and what to do, with the researchers getting outside feedback as well. Peralta recalls comments from a man who believed God spoke to him through the beacon. He chose Bible passages based on its output; when the scripture sequences didn't make sense, he wrote to Peralta to complain about it. Peralta says: "I get funny mail like that."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AFRICA EVOLUTION (7): The stereotype of African aviation technology is bushplanes, tending towards the elderly, and kept flying by scrounged parts and ingenuity. That's not all there is to it, however. Alongside an airport near Pretoria, South Africa's capital, a perfectly modern aircraft assembly plant has turned out two prototypes of the "Advanced High Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC)".
The AHRLAC is something of a bushplane itself, a two-seat aircraft able to operate out of rough airstrips, carrying sensors and a light attack load. It is intended to be a low-cost solution for countries who need an aircraft that can patrol borders, catch poachers, and strike at insurgents. South Africa actually has been turning out military aircraft for decades, having built up its design and production facilities during the apartheid era. However, the AHRLAC is a private venture of the AHRLAC Holdings firm, intended primarily for export. The company has sold a few so far, and is beginning to ramp up production.
The AHRLAC is not a super-sophisticated stealth fighter, but it's more high-tech than it looks. It was conceived from scratch using computer-aided design with ease of manufacturing in mind, with the aircraft quickly snapped together using an automated production system. It's not strictly a business venture for its backers -- which include Paramount Group, Africa's biggest defense firm; it was also intended to prevent a "brain drain" of young technologists, who otherwise would have had to leave South Africa to find work.
The AHRLAC plant is not the only African venture into high-tech manufacturing. In IBM's new innovation center in Johannesburg, a 3D printer turns out cases for wearable electronics that IBM is developing to track the spread of infectious diseases. BRCK used to have to order abroad to get custom parts for prototypes, with long delays and considerable expense; now that 3D printers are available in Nairobi, the company can get parts in a few days at much less cost.
African industrialists are enthusiastic about automation and robotics -- if in part because Africa's manufacturing sector is painfully small, contributing only about 5% of the continent's jobs, as compared to three to four times that elsewhere in the developing world. In 2016, the entire continent bought only about 400 industrial robots, about 0.2% of global production; while Asia bought 86%. The fact that African manufacturers are starting from close to zero is both a challenge and an opportunity. It's hard to get financing for building an automated industry, while labor costs are so low that robots aren't so cost-effective for ordinary tasks. However, robots give a chance to compete, and don't kill jobs that are not there, and there's a wide-open frontier -- not only in Africa, but in the export market as well.
Africa's poor infrastructure is of course a hindrance, but the growth of data connectivity provides African businesses a chance to compete on the world stage. Consider Andela, a high-tech firm in Lagos, founded on the premise that "talent is distributed evenly around the world, but opportunity is not," according Jeremy Johnson, the firm's chief executive.
Andela collects talented young African computer programmers -- many of which taught themselves to code online, using websites -- trains them intensively and gets them to work remotely with foreign tech firms, mainly in the USA. The programs act as full-fledged team members of the foreign countries they're farmed out to. What's the attraction of hiring on programmers in Lagos for the US partners? They're half the cost of an American worker, and there's a shortage of good programmers.
For example, Andela collaborates with Fathom, a company in Austin, Texas, that provides cloud-based software used by water utilities across America, so in one corner of the Lagos campus large blue banners proclaim "Fathom Team East". Fathom's office in Austin has a similar sign saying "Fathom Team West".
The search for talent has brought other big tech firms to Africa as well. Amazon, for instance, opened a large center in Cape Town in 2004, where the company developed much of the technology used in cloud computer service. Amazon has continued to expand, opening another facility in Johannesburg. To be sure, foreign firms like Amazon hire only a very small fraction of Africans, but it's a fraction that offers leverage for Africa.
Andela takes about 40 people a month into its four-year work-and-training program. Its first graduates are due to finish soon, having worked with startups across America, and now many of them want to strike out on their own -- making use not only of their skills, but of the Silicon Valley mindset they have acquired. Seni Sulyman, who runs the Nigeria operation, says: "We are hoping that the people we are training in Andela today will become the founders of the next Andela in five years' time." [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (25): As per the Territorial Clause of Article IV, Section 3, territories of the United States were under Federal jurisdiction and administration, until they were admitted to the Union as states. In practice, territorial governments would be established, including subordinate structures down to townships; but the territorial government was fully subordinate to the Federal government.
Tribal reservations would become, after legislation and judicial decisions, "domestic dependent nations" -- in principle autonomous, in practice with the Federal government exercising a degree of control over them; it's complicated. The US still retains island territories today, with 11 in the Pacific and three in the Caribbean. Some, like Midway and Wake Islands in the middle of the Pacific, do not have permanent inhabitants, but five of them do: Guam, Northern Marianas, American Samoa, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. It's another complicated thing, these territories being part of the US, but with a degree of autonomy.
Section 4 of Article IV, the "Guarantee Clause", required the Federal government to support legitimate state governments; to protect them from foreign enemies; and, if requested, help suppress internal disorder:
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The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
END QUOTE
Section 4 denied the right of the Federal government to suppress democratic governance in the states, and obligated the Federal government to back the democratic governments of states. It also, in principle, permitted Federal intervention in the affairs of a state judged to be suppressing democratic governance, though that's a tricky issue. Of course, if a state were attacked by foreign forces, the Federal government would automatically intervene; in the case of internal disturbances, the state would need to request Federal assistance.
Much ink has been spilled over the precise meaning of a "Republican Form of Government", the element of contention being the difference between a "democratic" and a "republican" form of government -- and the argument being that a republican government is necessarily representative, separating the people from the government through a layer of elected representatives.
This argument is as fuzzy as it sounds, the Constitution having specified direct election of members of the House, as well indirect popular election of the president and vice-president. Certainly, citizen activism to influence the government has been around from early on, and continues to be lively today. Among the Framers, the two terms were more or less seen as equivalent -- in either case distinct from a monarchy, dictatorship, or aristocratic oligarchy.
To be sure, the Framers were uniformly of the ruling class; and a number of them, notably Alexander Hamilton, had little sympathy with popular democracy. There are scholars who believe that the Framers were anti-democratic in their sympathies, but that's an over-generalization. In reality, there was a difference of opinion on the matter among the Framers -- Benjamin Franklin, second in influence only to Washington, notably taking the side of The People.
Of course, those who drove the creation of the Constitution were focused on the creation of a strong central government -- but they weren't going to get it unless "We, the People" were behind it. The central government served the purposes of the ruling class, but it could not exist without popular support, nor survive long without it. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for July included:
-- 09 JUL 18 / PRSS 1, PAKTES 1A -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0356 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Pakistan Remote Sensing Satellite (PRSS 1)" into orbit for SUPARCO, Pakistan's national space agency. PRSS 1 was built in China by DFH Satellite CO LTD a subsidiary of the China Academy of Space Technology, and had meter imaging resolution. Among its mission objectives was to provide remote sensing data for the establishment of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a multibillion-dollar infrastructure development project between the two nations. The PakTES 1A remote sensing satellite, developed in partnership by Pakistan and South Africa, flew as a secondary payload.
-- 09 JUL 18 / BEIDOU 3 IGSO7 -- A Chinese Long March 3A booster was launched from Xichang at 2058 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put a "Beidou 3M" navigation satellite into high-inclination geostationary orbit (IGSO). The Beidou system is being developed and deployed in three phases:
The new Phase 3 satellite had a launch mass of 1,014 kilograms (2,235 pounds). It featured with a phased array antenna for navigation signals, plus a laser retroreflector for orbital tracking.
-- 09 JUL 18 / PROGRESS 70P (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2.1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 2151 UTC (next day local time - 6) to put a Progress tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It was on a fast ascent flight plan, docking with the ISS Pirs module 4 hours after launch. It was the 70th Progress mission to the ISS.
-- 22 JUL 18 / TELSTAR 19 VANTAGE -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0555 UTC (local time - 4) to put the "Telstar 19 VANTAGE" geostationary comsat into orbit for Telesat of Canada. The satellite was built by SSL and had a launch mass of about 7,075 kilograms (15,600 pounds). It was placed in the geostationary slot at 63 degrees west longitude to provide high-throughput Ku-band and Ka-band communications services, supporting broadband applications over South America, the Caribbean, the North Atlantic and Canada.
-- 25 JUL 18 / GALILEO 23:26 -- An Ariane 5 ES booster was launched from Kourou at 1125 UTC (local time + 3) to put four "Galileo" navigation satellites into orbit, bringing the total number of operational satellites in the constellation up to 30. These were the 23rd through 26nd Galileo satellites launched, being the 23rd through 26th of the fully operational constellation (FOC) satellites.
-- 25 JUL 18 / IRIDIUM NEXT 56:65 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 1139 UTC (local time + 7) to put ten "Iridium Next" satellites low-orbit comsats into orbit. The first stage performed a soft landing on a SpaceX recovery barge; an attempt to recover the payload fairing was unsuccessful.
-- 29 JUL 18 / BEIDOU 3M x 2 -- A Chinese Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 0148 UTC (local time - 8) to put two "Beidou 3M" navigation satellites into orbit. These were medium Earth orbit satellites, using a modern bus with a phased array antenna for navigation signals, plus a laser retroreflector, and with a launch mass of 1,014 kilograms (2,235 pounds) each. This launch brought the number of Beidou satellites put into orbit up to 34, though a good number are no longer operational. The operational fleet will consist of 35 satellites, including 27 in medium Earth orbit, plus 5 in geostationary orbit, and 3 in inclined geostationary orbit.
-- 31 JUL 18 / GAOFEN 11 -- A Long March 4B booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0300 UTC (local time - 8) to put a "Gaofen (High Resolution) 11" civil Earth observation satellite into Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit. No details of the space platform were released. The Gaofen satellites are an element of the "China High-Resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS)" -- a civilian-operated program including optical and radar imaging spacecraft.
* OTHER SPACE NEWS: The giant Stratolaunch "Roc" carrier aircraft, intended to haul space-launch vehicles to high altitude to give them a boost to orbit, was mentioned here in 2015. According to an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Stratolaunch Unveils Launch Family Plan Details" by Guy Norris, 20 August 2018), Stratolaunch has now released the first details of the launch vehicles that the Roc will carry into the sky.
The launch vehicle family ranges from the previously announced Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus XL booster to a fully reusable space plane which will eventually be capable of carrying astronauts to low Earth orbit. The space plane, which is still a "design study", has the internal codename of "Black Ice". However, the core of the booster family is two modular vehicles:
Stratolaunch's decision to develop its own family of vehicles and propulsion systems follows earlier attempts to develop boosters in collaboration with other industry players, most notably SpaceX and Orbital ATK prior to its procurement by Northrop Grumman. SpaceX had thought of developing an air-launched version of the Falcon 9, but decided that would require too much rework. Orbital ATK had proposed a three-stage booster named the "Thunderbolt", which was canceled in 2015 -- though the Roc will still initially fly with the well-established Orbital-designed Pegasus XL booster.
The Black Ice spaceplane appears to have its roots in studies of a air-launched spaceplane with Sierra Nevada in 2014. Although the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser is a wingless lifting body, the Black Ice configuration features an elongated fuselage; small, sharply-swept delta wings; and canted twin tails -- along the lines of Boeing's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. Black Ice is intended as a cargo hauler initially, to be crew-rated in time. The Roc carrier aircraft is still in ground testing, with initial flight planned for 2019.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* FLICKERING QUASARS: As discussed by an article from NATURE.com ("Clues Emerge In Mystery Of Flickering Quasars" by Shannon Hall, 28 July 2017), "quasi-stellar objects" AKA "quasars" were discovered in the 1960s. They were puzzling, being extremely bright objects at the fringes of the known Universe; it took a few decades to realize they were active galaxies, each pouring out energy from the infall of material into a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.
The distance to the quasars meant they were associated with galaxies in the early days of the Universe, with quasars fading out over millions of years as the galaxies matured. However, in 2014 Stephanie LaMassa, an astronomer now at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore MD, discovered a quasar that appeared to turn off in less than a decade. By cosmic standards, that was like turning off a light switch.
How could that be? In terms of energy output, a quasar makes a star look insignificant, and shouldn't be able to shut down so quickly. Possibly, it was suggested, a massive dust cloud passed in front of the quasar's bright core and temporarily blacked it out; or a star passed too close to the black hole and was torn apart, causing a bright but transitory flare that scientists mistook for a quasar.
Following LaMassa's discovery, astronomers hunted down more such "changing look quasars (CLQ)", and found dozens of them -- some of them shutting down much faster than the first. Two studies now argue that these quasars stop shining because the amount of gas and dust falling into the black hole from its accretion disk -- the surrounding swirl of hot matter -- drops off, starving the black hole.
In one study Sheng Zhenfeng, an astronomer at the University of Sciences and Technology of China in Hefei, and his colleagues investigated optical and infrared observations of ten CLQs to obtain insights into the accretion disk and its torus, the ring of dust clouds that wraps around it. The accretion disk glows in the visible-light range; the dark torus soaks up the visible light and re-emits it as infrared. If the light from the accretion disk falls off, so does the infrared emission from the torus. Sheng and his colleagues observed that when the visible emission from the accretion disk fell off, the infrared emission from the torus fell off after a delay. That clearly showed the light fall-off wasn't due to blockage by a dust cloud.
A second study by astronomer Damien Hutsemekers of the University of Liege in Belgium came to a similar conclusion. The researchers examined the light generated by a single CLQ. Some of this light is polarized as it passes through regions around the quasar that are thought to be rich in electrons, just as molecules in Earth's atmosphere scatter and polarize light from the Sun. If a dust cloud were blocking the accretion disk, and not the polarizing regions, there would be more polarized light; but the dimming CLQ did not display an increase in polarized light. Again, the dimming seemed due to changes in the accretion disk, not obstruction by a dust cloud.
That still leaves the puzzle of just why the accretion disk changes brightness so fast, and nobody clearly understands why. Astronomers are intrigued; even if CLQs are anomalies in the evolution of quasars, understanding them may provide insights into quasar evolution in general. Says Stephanie LaMassa: "There are a lot of questions still to be answered. But I think we're asking the right questions and going in the right direction."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* CO2 COMES CREEPING: As discussed by an article in SCIENCEMAG.org ("Atmospheric Carbon Last Year Reached Levels Not Seen In 800,000 Years" by Elizabeth Gamillo, 2 August 2018), according to a new report, concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 405 parts per million (PPM) last year -- a level not seen in 800,000 years.
The "State of the Climate in 2017" report, the 28th edition of an annual compilation published by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), also said it was the hottest year on record that didn't feature the global weather pattern known as El Nino, which is driven by warmer than usual ocean waters in the Pacific Ocean. Overall, 2017 ranked as the second or third warmest year -- there's some difference of opinion, but only within that range -- since researchers began keeping robust records in the mid-1800s.
The document includes data compiled by 524 scientists working in 65 countries, highlights including:
Greg Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, comments that even if humanity "stopped the greenhouse gasses at their current concentrations today, the atmosphere would still continue to warm for next couple of decades to maybe a century."
* A related article from POLITICO.com ("Fuzzy Math Could Doom Trump's Attack On Obama Climate Rule" by Alex Gullen & Emily Holden, 16 August 2018), the Trump Administration's attack on measures established by the Obama Administration to fight climate change -- auto fuel efficiency standards and the Obama Clean Power Plan -- is running into the wall of reality.
The Environmental Protection Agency can't change existing policy without justifying the change. The EPA is now trying to upend existing standards by focusing a cost-benefit analysis on direct benefits, while ignoring indirect "co-benefits", such as mitigating the effects of global climate change. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- a blatantly denialist organization, heavily funded by oil money -- who led Trump's post-election transition team at EPA, says: "The co-benefits thing has ballooned into the biggest scandal in environmental regulation."
Oh, the irony. Ebell says that Obama's emission cuts would have been followed by more drastic emission cuts -- yes, of course they would -- and proudly claims: "By cutting it off in the way that they're doing, we're avoiding immense future costs."
Ebell's cheerfulness is not well-grounded in reality. The Trump EPA's attempts to sweep climate change under the rug by cooking the books are certain to be challenged in court, and are not likely to fare well under scrutiny. To be sure, the Trump EPA is going to do nothing to promote Obama's environmental initiatives; but as long as the regulations survive, state governments and industry know the rules can, and likely will, be enforced again. Nobody is going to make long-term plans on the basis of the Trump Administration's half-baked environmental policies.
Scott Pruitt, who was recently forced to resign as head of the EPA after accusations of administrative improprieties, had been pushing for a "red team / blue team" debate on climate change. According to E&E NEWS, Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist and an Obama-era appointee to the Energy Department, had been approached by the EPA to help stage the debate. Koonin has no authority in climate science, and has not published any research on climate in credible science media -- but he did publish an essay titled "Climate Science Is Not Settled" in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL in 2014. He was clearly seen as a good candidate for leading an attack on climate science.
Nothing came of the exercise. Even before Pruitt left EPA, the push for a debate was fading out, with Koonin now saying: "My general sense is that the executive branch at this point has just decided that they're not going to poke at the science." It seems that they were at least wise enough, if sadly no wiser than that, to see they were going to lose a fight with science on its own turf -- and that they were better off, at least on a purely short-sighted basis, to just ignore it.
Koonin, however, still believes the climate question remains open. "It's something I'm thinking about a lot. Stay tuned." Sorry sir, your channel is dedicated to playing re-runs of programming that wasn't worth watching to begin with, and its ratings are in terminal decline.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AFRICA EVOLUTION (6): Technology can also do much to improve Africa's medical care system, which is woefully lacking; Africa has some of the world's highest rates of infant mortality. The continent accounts for about two-thirds of all deaths relating to pregnancy and childbirth around the globe, even though it makes up only one-sixth of the world's population. One infant in nine dies before their fifth birthday, many for lack of simple diagnostic tools.
A Nairobi innovation hub set up by Philips, a Dutch electronics firm, has developed a wind-up portable doppler ultrasound machine that provides a digital readout of a fetus's heartbeat. Another innovation from the same hub is a chest monitor that straps onto a baby, and measures its rate of breathing to help diagnose pneumonia. The company plans to package both devices into custom-made backpacks kitted out with a solar panel, a rechargeable light, and battery-powered phone charger for use by midwives and community health workers. This kind of equipment is part of a plan to reshape primary health care in Africa, using technology for cheaply diagnosing illnesses, and making better use of the limited numbers of doctors and nurses.
Babylon Health, a British startup that raised $60 million USD to provide health advice in the developed world via a smartphone app, set up an operation in Rwanda about two years ago. It now has more than 600,000 Rwandan clients, who pay less than a dollar for each telephone consultation with a doctor assisted by a computer.
AI is also tackling more difficult problems. IBM has research centers in Nairobi and Johannesburg where computers work on issues such as how drug-resistant TB spreads through communities, and understanding how genes that offer protection against malaria may lead to increased risk of certain cancers.
Robots are showing up in African health care as well. Seven million South Africans are infected with HIV, the largest number of people in any country. Trying to care for so many patients is an impossible task -- there aren't enough doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to go around, and only half of the patients are getting treatment. Automation is helping. At the Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg, which handles 750 patients a day, a robot pharmacist helps pick out drugs and wrap them up for patients. Humans still check its work and hand over the drugs, but waiting times in the clinic have come down from more than four hours to less than 20 minutes. Researchers are now working on ATM-style dispensaries that will be able to provide patients with medication even faster.
Of course, the mobile phone can play a role, too. Amref Health Africa, a not-for-profit group, is working on a mobile-phone app that can be used to train community midwives and health workers. Medecins Sans Frontieres, a medical charity, is experimenting with smartphone cameras to diagnose malaria, while researchers in Australia are working on a smartphone app that can tell whether a patient's cough indicates asthma or pneumonia.
Solomon Assefa, the head of IBM's research effort in Africa, says that Africa's shortage of medical professionals are driving technology experiments. Developed countries are not in such a bad way, but they are having troubles keeping costs down, particularly as populations age. Lessons learned in Africa may well prove useful elsewhere. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (25): The Extradition Clause of Article IV, Section 2, says that one state is obliged to hand over fugitives from justice to the state where the alleged crime took place. The fugitive has no appeal to the state from which the extradition takes place; but fugitives can beat extradition, if they are able to prove they weren't in the state demanding extradition when the crime took place.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was tied to the Extradition Clause. Those who in the modern day try to claim the Constitution wasn't wired towards slavery have to do their best to pretend the Fugitive Slave Clause doesn't exist. It was not ignored by anyone at the time, and would lead to great troubles between North and South. Notice again, the term "slave" wasn't used. Why the doubletalk? It was because of worries that Northern states might be reluctant to ratify the Constitution if its tilt towards slavery were too blatant.
The doubletalk fooled nobody; but it wasn't supposed to, it just allowed Northern states to hold their noses and sign. The only substantial negative against slavery in the Constitution was that the document did not endorse it, much less guarantee it. The legal status of slavery was left ambiguous, to be resolved by a later generation.
* Section 3 included the "Admissions Clause", defining the admission of new states to the Union; and the "Property Clause" AKA "Territorial Clause", which granted the Federal government the right to manage the territories:
BEGIN QUOTE:
1: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
END QUOTE
There had been much contention between the original states in the Union over expansion of states into the West; the smaller states feared that if the bigger states like Virginia continued to grow by acquisition of territories to the West, they would become even bigger bullies to the small states. Specifying that the territories to the west would be established as new states, under Federal direction, reduced the threat of bullying. However, states that had existing land claims were given a veto power over the formation of new states from those land claims.
The Confederation Congress had established a precedent for Federal control of the territories, by passing the "Northwest Ordinance" in 1787; the Confederation Congress was not completely useless. The Northwest Territory covered what are now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a bit of Minnesota. The Northwest Ordinance established the legal and practical foundation for the territory, with provisions including demarcation of the respected territories of the tribal nations -- the respect would prove limited in practice -- and, significantly, a ban on slavery there. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from WIRED.com ("Mercedes Will Launch Self-Driving Taxis in California Next Year" by Jack Stewart, 10 July 2018), Daimler of Germany is planning to start a robot taxi service in California in 2019.
The emerging robotaxi business is chaotic. Startup companies are likely to be aggressive, but the big auto companies are more inclined to caution -- waiting to see how things shake out, then attempting to use their mass to get into the market. Daimler has finally decided to jump in with an "automated shuttle" service -- but the company isn't thinking about plodding "people movers" of the sort discussed here in 2017. The system will start out using a fleet of S-Class luxury sedans and B-Class hatchbacks, with long-term plans for vehicles designed for autonomous driving, along the lines of the F 015 "Luxury in Motion" concept it showed off a few years back.
Daimler is quiet about most specifics of the exercise, not even saying what city it will start out in. Officials do say they will have human safety drivers on board, and that -- as a test program -- passengers will ride for free. However, the Germans have been talkative about the underlying technology and the engineering challenges.
Daimler is partnering with Bosch, one of the world's largest automotive suppliers, which has a good track record in building active safety systems and some of the semi-autonomous systems now on luxury cars. The two companies will together work on vehicle sensors and software. Computing power is a challenge; the lidars, radars, cameras, and other sensors pour out torrents of data, a single stereo camera generating 100 gigabytes of data per kilometer. Daimler and Bosch engineers estimating they'll need the equivalent computing power of six high-power workstations in each car.
That's a nonstarter from a cost and power point of view. Daimler is working with Nvidia to integrate the Nvidia "Pegasus AI" processor board -- featuring four AI processors, described without so much exaggeration as an "automotive supercomputer", providing 300 trillion operations per second. Since that kind of computing power generates heat, it will be water-cooled, integrated into an electric car's battery coolant system. Nvidia works with hundreds of automotive partners, but the Daimler-Bosch partnership is among the most significant.
In parallel, Daimler is working on other paths to a robotaxi service. It has an Uber-like app, "My Taxi", which is already being used in 50 European cities. It has the Daimler Fleet Management to keep a robotaxi fleet running. Daimler recently also became the first global car builder to get a license to test robocars on the streets of Beijing, China, China being the world's largest car market. Daimler may be a laggard in robocars, but the company is clearly building up momentum.
* Amazon.com made a big public splash with its smart "Amazon Go" store scheme, in which shoppers can pick up goods and walk out the door with them, being automatically billed. As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Microsoft Takes Aim At Amazon With Push For Checkout-Free Retail" by Jeffrey Dastin, 13 June 2018), of course competitors are also investigating the tech.
Microsoft is reportedly now developing systems that track what shoppers add to their carts, allowing the shoppers to be automatically billed. Microsoft has shown sample technology to retailers from around the world and has had talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration. Although Amazon is working on its own stores, Microsoft is focused instead on becoming a strategic ally to retailers; in addition to developing retail technologies, it ranks second behind Amazon in selling cloud services for e-commerce sites, for instance. It has half a dozen partners, including Redmond-based AVA Retail, that are working on their own checkout-free or related services atop Microsoft's cloud system.
There having been no formal announcements from Microsoft, there's no knowing if or when their shopping tech will be introduced. Comments of insiders say that the work has been largely performed by the Microsoft Business AI team, with a group of 10 to 15 people involved in the effort. The development team is focused on cost, retailing being generally competitive and having low profit margins. Microsoft has hired on a staffer from the Amazon Go effort to work on computer vision. Amazon retains a lead in the tech, working on it in secret for four years, before introducing an employee-only pilot shop in 2016.
* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Watch This Origami Fold Itself" by Lindzi Wessel, 3 March 2017), polystyrene -- one of the most venerable plastics, often used in plastic cups or utensils -- has the property of shrinking when heated. A research team found that property useful, employing color printing and light to mobilize thin 2D sheets to fold, step-by-step, into complex 3D shapes.
Engineers covered the sheets with lines of ink, matching different colors with the colored light they absorb. When illuminated with the appropriate color of light, the plastic underneath heats up and shrinks along the printed line, creating a "hinge" that folds the sheet. By illuminating the sheet in sequence, they were able to control the folding of the sheet elements -- producing boxlike shapes, pyramids, and helices.
The researchers believe the technology might have applications in smart packaging, deploying satellites, and implanting medical devices. Right now, they find it useful as an educational toy, taking it on the road to schools and science fairs, hoping to get kids excited about materials science.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* COBALT RUSH: As discussed by an article from BBC.com ("The Precious Metal Sparking A New Gold Rush" by Natalie Sherman, 26 July 2018), the cry of: "There's gold in them there hills!" -- once drew prospectors to the American West. Now, there's an emerging rush in the region not for glittering gold, but for the silvery-blue metal known as cobalt, since it's a key component of the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles and portable electronic devices.
Little cobalt has been produced in the USA for decades, but a handful of mining companies are now staking claims at cobalt-rich sites in Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. Previously, cobalt was only extracted as a sideline to copper and nickel, which were more valuable. Now, prices are up, with consumption projected to grow by as much as 10% a year; cobalt is being seen as an end in itself.
Hundreds of companies across the world are now searching for cobalt deposits. Mining companies that already extract cobalt are scaling up their efforts; mining giant Glencore is boosting production in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where most of the world's cobalt is found.
Limited cobalt production began in the USA in 2014, after a lapse of about four decades, with production now ramping up. Canada-based First Cobalt bought a mine in Idaho in the spring of 2018, and hopes to get it developed in about three years. The fact that, in the past, cobalt mining was generally done as a sideline, and not an end in itself, in North America means that there's plenty of cobalt left to dig up. First Cobalt CEO Trent Mall says: "Miners like us have never actually gone looking for cobalt. There's a lot of cobalt in the world. As miners, we're behind."
Cobalt consumption is expected to exceed 122,000 tonnes in 2018, up from about 75,000 tonnes in 2011. The price per pound has risen above $40 USD this year, compared with about $20 USD in early 2011, though now it's about $32 USD. Although production is increasing, analysts see a shortage as early as 2022.
Cobalt is blasted out of the ground, to be refined and turned into metal, blends, or chemical concentrates for use in products such as jet engines, drones, and batteries. More than 60% of the world's cobalt is mined in the DRC, while China is the world's leading producer of refined cobalt. With demand for cobalt rising, the US government is becoming concerned about access to cobalt supplies. In February 2018, the US added cobalt to a list of 35 minerals judged critical to the economy.
Companies working to mine cobalt in the USA see government interest as a big plus, since it will speed up government approval, and possibly win some protection from foreign competition. Industry executives also point out that concerns about corruption and child labor at mines in the DRC have created pressure for buyers to find new sources of supply. Michael Hollomon, chief executive of Missouri Cobalt, comments: "There's a few places where you can get ethically mined cobalt and we want to be one of them. We would like to think that that gives us an advantage."
The company plans to start producing cobalt soon from an old lead mine in Madison County, Missouri. The mine has an estimated 16,000 tonnes of recoverable cobalt, making it the largest such reserve in North America. However, the really large, high-quality cobalt deposits are found elsewhere on the planet, so the US isn't likely to completely stop importing cobalt. Production in the DRC is expected to increase, while China will remain the top refiner -- even as refining facilities pop up elsewhere.
Nonetheless, there's plenty of market for everyone, and US companies have a competitive advantage in that they can offer a stable source of supply; the dangerous volatility of the DRC makes companies reluctant to rely on it as a sole source of cobalt. The rising price of cobalt also means that such companies are seeking substitutes. However, nobody sees batteries without cobalt as becoming commonplace any time soon.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* INSECT FARMING REVISITED: The mass production of insects as a food source was last discussed here in 2014. An article from REUTERS.com ("Insect Farms Gear Up To Feed Soaring Global Protein Demand" by Karl Plume, 13 April 2018) shows the exercise is gaining momentum.
Welcome to the production facility of Enterra Feed in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. There, swarms of black soldier fly larvae feed on rotting garbage, to become in turn protein-rich feed for fish, poultry, or pets. Once the larvae are fattened up, they are roasted, dried, and pressed to extract oils -- then ground into a brown powder that smells like roasted peanuts.
The insect farming sector is still small, but some of the major players from the $400 billion USD a year animal feed business sector -- including Cargill and Wilbur-Ellis of the US, plus Swiss-based Buhler Group -- are taking notice. Fast food giant McDonald's is similarly interested in using insects for chicken feed to reduce reliance on soy protein. Nicola Robinson, McDonald's sustainable supply chain manager, comments: "This pioneering work is currently at the proof-of-concept stage, We are encouraged by initial results and are committed to continuing to support further research."
The interest of global food giants in insects is part of their broader desired to find alternative sources of protein that are profitable and sustainable as animal feed, or additives to human food. Other possibilities include peas, canola, algae, and bacterial proteins.
Global population growth and a growing middle class have raised per capita meat consumption by 50% over the past four decades, and keeping up with demand promises to be difficult. As meat demand grows, feed production has to grow faster: it takes about two kilos of feed to produce a kilo of chicken, while a kilo of pork requires four kilos of feed.
Expanded cultivation of soybeans, the traditional basis of feed, is not environmentally sustainable, while the supply of fishmeal is erratic. Climate change, as well as concerns over the environmental impacts of row-crop farms and commercial fishing, make the challenge even greater. Benoit Anquetil -- strategy and technology lead for Cargill's animal nutrition business -- calls developing new sources of protein a "long-term opportunity. Sustainable protein is a key challenge, which is why Cargill is evaluating the viability of insects as part of the solution to nourish the world."
Nutritionists and scientists have long promoted insect consumption for humans as a sustainable and cheap source of protein, but many cultures can't, so to speak, stomach the idea of eating insects. However, there doesn't seem to be any problem with introducing insect protein further down the food chain -- except for the fact that regulators have traditionally considered insects as filth in the food system.
Cargill conducted an insect-based feed trial on poultry in 2015, but the company's efforts with insects have since focused on supporting its growing aquaculture business, where demand for alternative proteins is most acute. Beta Hatch, another insect farming startup, is focusing on the aquaculture business. The company's mealworms, larvae of the mealworm beetle, will likely end up as fish food. Fishmeal is made from wild-caught fish, but the supply is irregular; crop-based feeds aren't nutritious enough for carnivorous fish.
Insect farmers grow black soldier fly larvae and mealworms because they are docile, easy to grow, plus high in protein and digestible fat. Mealworms can be grown with little water, and studies have shown they can consume grains unfit for livestock production, without passing on toxins. Black soldier fly larvae also contain high levels of calcium and iron, and can feed on a broad range of food waste. Crickets are not favored by insect farmers; although they are a favorite for human consumption in some countries, they are picky eaters, can be painfully noisy in large numbers, and can damage crops if they escape.
Enterra plans to open a second commercial-scale plant in Calgary in 2019, and wants to open a new facility in other North American cities each year for the following five years; one of the other benefits of insect farming is that it can be done almost anywhere. In the Netherlands, Protix opened its first commercial black soldier fly larvae plant in 2017, and will break ground on a new plant there in 2018, backed by funding from Buhler. The Dutch company, working with fish farmers, has also launched a brand of "friendly salmon," fed with rations containing insect meal instead of fishmeal. Neither company gave production costs or capacity, but both say their insect feeds are on par or just above competing feeds like fishmeal.
Other startups are jumping into the market. Regulators are still nervous. Black soldier fly larvae production has gained a handful of approvals in Europe, Canada and the United States, mostly for use in fish farms -- but authorizations for use in poultry, swine, and pet food production aren't as far along. However, there doesn't seem to be much obstacle to getting authorization, Cargill's Anquetil saying: "Since fish eat insects in the wild naturally, it is easier for consumers to wrap their heads around insects as part of the feed."
The key to acceptance is thorough testing, to make sure animals aren't accumulating toxins from being fed insects. Few in the business see that as likely. Still, even if barriers are readily knocked down, those involved in insect farming don't see it as becoming a major factor in the near term; but since the feed business is so big, a component of it is still going to profitable, and the sustainability of insect farming will give it a leg up over the longer run.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AFRICA EVOLUTION (5): Africa's last-mile data-communications problem is being solved. Widespread internet access enables innovation in many areas, for example in agriculture. Consider, for example, the town of Nandi Hills in the rich soil of Kenya's highlands, note for its tea plantations. In the town's market, women traders peddle beans, mangos, and bananas. Bananas seem a straightforward crop, but Pauline -- a tea farmer of Nandi Hills, who also grows fruit and vegetables -- says she used to find it hard to know when to harvest the bananas and bring them to market.
Once mature, they will remain fresh on the tree, but they ripen quickly after being harvested. If all the farmers in the area harvested at the same time and brought their crop to market, there would be a ruinous glut, making it impossible to sell their bananas at a reasonable price, or at all. After the glut, the bananas would then disappear until the next harvest. It was an information problem -- and as such, easily solved by 21st-century information technology. Win with data; lose without it.
2KUZE, a simple e-commerce system devised by MasterCard with funding from the Gates Foundation, is now linking up thousands of farmers and traders in a virtual marketplace, using text messages on basic mobile phones. A trader might send out a request for honey that goes out to all the beekeepers in the area. Those with honey to sell will respond. A middleman who aggregates many such orders will then collect the honey, paying the farmers on the spot using mobile money, before delivering it to the market.
From the point of view of developed countries, where commerce runs on extensive digitized supply chains, little systems 2KUZE seems like child's play, but they provide great leverage -- raising the incomes of farmers, while cutting prices for consumers. They can have a huge impact on farm productivity and crop yields, which in Africa have been largely stagnant for decades even as they have soared elsewhere.
As discussed here in 2015, farming is the economic backbone of Africa, but it's not working up to potential. Farming accounts for about a third of sub-Saharan Africa's economy and employs more than half its adults. Most farms are tiny and methods are much the same as they have always been -- one big reason being the difficulty of teaching so many farmers about modern farming practices. However, even a little knowledge goes a long way, with a few simple practices easily increasing crop yields.
Of course, mobile phones and computers can be used to distribute that information. Several large agricultural firms such as Olam -- one of the world's biggest buyers of cocoa beans -- are experimenting with the use of mobile phones and text messages to hook up with tens of thousands of small farmers. Olam has mapped the location of each of its smallholder cocoa suppliers, using smartphones, which enables the company to share information on market prices and farming techniques. Wefarm, a UK-based firm, has established a social network for farmers that lets them trade information via text message. It already has more than a quarter of a million members in Kenya and Uganda.
As simple as such measures are, they can make a big difference. A study in Kenya by researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities found that farmers who were sent text messages with simple advice such as "remember to weed this week" increased their yields of sugar cane by 11%. As sensors become cheaper and internet connectivity spreads, smallholder peasants in many parts of Africa will be able to gather data on soil and weather conditions, to obtain tailored farming advice from intelligent computer systems. They can also upload pictures of pests from their mobile phones for identification.
Internet-connected sensors are already making their mark in combination with mobile financial services. Acre Africa, based in east Africa, offers smallholders insurance for their crops and animals. If its automatic weather monitors in the field detect a drought, farmers receive a payout through their phones without having to put in a claim. The latest agritech seeds are a big deal, too. Ethiopia's government, for instance, has doubled the yield of crops such as chickpeas and lentils by funding crop research.
Nonetheless, one of the most significant recent innovations is entirely low-tech. Trials conducted by Britain's aid department and the Gates Foundation have determined that rugged triple-layer plastic bags for storing harvested crops are remarkably effective in reducing losses from pests, which often eat as much as a quarter of what has been gathered. Use of the airtight bags, which cost around $2 USD each and hold about 100 kilograms (220 pounds), boosted farmers' incomes by as much as 50%. Multiply that by 51 million -- the number of farms in Africa -- and it comes to a goodly sum. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (24): Article IV of the US Constitution defined, in four sections, relations between states and what the central government owed the states. In forming a United States, it wasn't just an issue of forming a central government, with each state operating with complete independence under the umbrella of that central government; the Union also implied a benign normalization of relations between the states.
Section 1, the "Full Faith and Credit" clause, guaranteed that each state would respect the legal enactments and processes of the states, with Congress defining a framework for having it done:
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Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
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One state, in other words, could not address cases that had been decided by the courts of another state. That did not, of course, mean that all states had to maintain common notions of law. A similar clause guaranteeing that the legal decisions of a state were respected by another state had been part of the Articles of Confederation -- the major enhancement in the Constitution being the ability of the central government to regulate such interactions between states.
* Section 2 included the "Comity Clause" AKA "Privileges and Immunities Clause", which guaranteed that the rights of citizens in one state were to be honored when they were in another; the "Extradition Clause", which established "extradition on demand" between the states, ensuring that anyone fleeing the law in one state couldn't seek refuge in another; and the infamous "Fugitive Slave Clause", which guaranteed that runaway slaves that went to a free state had to be returned to their masters:
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1: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
2: A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
3: No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
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The Privileges & Immunities Clause is open to interpretation; the courts have decided that it means that a state may not discriminate against the citizens of another state. That doesn't mean that citizens of one state who go to another state have all the perks of citizens of the second state -- and certainly not all political rights, like the right to vote. An 1823 SCOTUS decision clarified:
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... protection by the Government; the enjoyment of life and liberty ... the right of a citizen of one State to pass through, or to reside in any other State, for purposes of trade, agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise; to claim the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus; to institute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of the State; to take, hold and dispose of property, either real or personal; and an exemption from higher taxes or impositions than are paid by the other citizens of the State.
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Citizens of one state could, however, have privileges not extended to non-citizens. Note that the Articles of Confederation also had a clause guaranteeing the rights of citizens in one state that went into another -- but made an exception for "paupers" and "vagabonds". Under the Constitution, even a poor citizen of one state could go to another state, and not be refused entry.
There's a subtlety in the Privileges & Immunities Clause in that it doesn't actually define "Citizens". In practice, the term didn't just mean white males; it also meant women and free blacks. There was some discussion in the Philadelphia Convention over the rights of free blacks -- but it was pointed out to those who wanted to deny them rights that free blacks had distinguished themselves in the Revolution; since they already had voting rights in some Northern states, attempts in the Philadelphia Convention to specifically restrict their rights were nonstarters. However, the Constitution's ambiguity about the term "Citizens" would eventually lead to trouble. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed by an article from THECONVERSATION.com ("Why Are Some E. Coli Strains Deadly While Others Live Peacefully in Our Bodies?" by Erika A. Taylor, 24 April 2018), the Escherichia coli bacterium is a normal resident of our lower GI tract, living peacefully with its host. Indeed, one strain of E. coli produces vitamin K, which is critical for human health. Why, then, does E. coli turn bad every now and then, sickening or even killing people?
Researchers generally characterize E. coli strains by the sugar coat they display on the cell surface. A molecule called a "lipopolysaccharide" is the anchor that displays a collection of sugars to their environment. These sugars help the bacteria stick to surfaces, with the host immune system using them as recognition markers. This also happens with human cells; blood type is defined by sugars displayed on human blood cells, for example.
The sugars E. coli display vary from strain to strain. Some sugar coats are associated with strains living symbiotically in the stomach; E. coli HS, UTI89, and CFT073 are among those commonly found to be helpful. Others are associated with illness -- like E. coli O104:H4 AKA "enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC)", which caused a major outbreak in Europe in 2011. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the USA, since 2006 at least one at least one food-borne outbreak a year has been caused by E. coli O157:H7.
The codes like "0157:H7" attached to the strains designate the sugars characteristic of the strains. The sugars don't make us sick, they're just recognition factors, helping to distinguish strains that are good actors from those that are bad actors, that generate toxins.
Bacteria rely on what are called "virulence factors": molecules that aid their survival in various ways, one of which is to undermine the host immune system. Both the EHEC and O157:H7 strains of E. coli can synthesize a virulence factor called a "Shiga toxin". Shiga toxins were first discovered in Shigella dysenteriae, the bacterium that causes dysentery. Later research discovered that the EHEC and O157:H7 strains of E. coli had gained the gene for Shiga toxins from the dysentery bacterium through "horizontal gene transfer" -- the process by which very different bacteria pass genes on to each other.
When bacteria reach a critical mass in victims that have eaten a contaminated food, they secrete these toxins as part of their strategy for finding a new host. The toxins enter the cells of intestines, causing symptoms including low-grade fever, stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody), and vomiting. It's the virulence factors that make trouble -- and we're fortunate that E. coli usually behaves itself.
* As discussed by an article from NATURE.com ("Need To Make A Molecule? Ask This AI For Instructions" by Holly Else 28 March 2018), chemical researchers have developed a "deep learning" system that generates flowcharts for the sequences of reactions needed to create small organic molecules, such as drug compounds. The output is of professional quality, with chemists saying it promises to speed up drug discovery and make organic chemistry more efficient.
Chemists have traditionally leveraged off lists of reactions recorded by others, and drawn on their own intuition to work out the step-by-step recipe to synthesize a particular compound. They usually work backwards -- starting with the molecule they want to create, then determining how to use readily available reagents and sequences of reactions to produce that molecule. This process, known as "retrosynthesis", can take hours or even days of planning.
The new AI tool was developed by a team led by Marwin Segler, an organic chemist and artificial-intelligence researcher at the University of Muenster in Germany. The deep-learning neural network was "trained" with a huge library of single-step organic-chemistry reactions -- about 12.4 million of them -- allowing it to pick the appropriate reaction to achieve a desired result. The system works in sequence, deconstructing the target molecule until it ends up with starting reagents.
To test the system, the researchers conducted a double-blind trial. They showed 45 organic chemists from two institutes in China and Germany possible synthesis routes for nine molecules: one pathway suggested by the AI system, and another devised by humans. The chemists saw no particular distinction between them.
There's nothing new about using computers to plan organic chemical synthesis, with work on such systems going back to the 1960s. However, having to code every possible step in synthesis was very laborious and limited. An AI system, in contrast, is trained with all the available possibilities, and figures out the rules on its own. Ola Engkvist, a computational chemist at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Gothenburg, Sweden, was impressed by the work, saying: "Increasing the success rate in synthetic chemistry would have a huge benefit in terms of speed and efficiency on drug-discovery projects, as well as cost reduction."
Segler says that a number of pharmaceutical companies have expressed interest in the tool. He doesn't see it as a replacement for a chemist, so much as aid: "It will be an assistant for the chemist who wants to make molecules and get from A to B as quickly as possible. The GPS navigation device may render paper maps redundant -- but not the driver of the car."
* As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Jaw Fossil From English Beach Belongs To Monstrous Marine Reptile" by Will Dunham, 9 April 2018), the "ichthyosaur", a marine reptilian resembling a dolphin, was a common creature through the Mesozoic Era, the great "Age of Reptiles". A jawbone fossil found on an English beach suggests the largest ichthyosaur, indeed the largest marine reptile, ever found, approaching the size of the biggest modern whales.
Fossil collector Paul de la Salle found the bone in 2016 at Lilstock on England's Somerset coast. The bone, called a surangular, was part of the ichthyosaur's lower jaw. Matching it to the largest ichthyosaur skeleton previously known -- a species named Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia that was 21 meters (69 feet) long -- suggested the new find was about 25% bigger. The researchers estimated the new ichthyosaur at 20 to 26 meters (66 to 85 feet) in length. It appears to have belonged to an ichthyosaur group known as "shastasaurids".
University of Manchester paleontologist Dean Lomax calls the creature a "giant", saying: "The entire carcass was probably very similar to a whale fall, in which a dead whale drops to the bottom of the sea floor, where an entire ecosystem of animals feeds on the carcass for a very long time. After that, bones become separated, and we suspect that's what happened to our isolated bone."
Ichthyosaurs swam the world's oceans from 250 million years ago to 90 million years ago, preying on squid and fish. The biggest were larger than other huge marine reptiles of the dinosaur age like pliosaurs and mosasaurs. The new find is from 205 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic Period.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PEAS PLEASE: As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Big Ag Turns To Peas To Meet Soaring Global Protein Demand" Rod Nickel & P.J. Huffstutter, 18 May 2018), agricultural giant Cargill has seen the future, and it's peas. As with the other big agrobusiness firms, Cargill is eager to find alternative plant-based sources of protein to feed to people and livestock.
The humble pea is a prime candidate. At a Wisconsin plant in which Cargill has an interest, flour is milled from Iowa yellow peas, to be mixed with water, then spun at high speed in stainless steel drums to separate the protein from starch and fiber. The protein is dried into a powder that ends up in waffle mixes, sports drinks, nutrition bars, and protein shakes. David Henstrom, Cargill's vice-president of starches, sweeteners, and texturizers, says: "When we looked at where is the future going, the pea is the up-and-coming thing."
Peas are attractive because they are protein-rich, plant-based, and gluten-free. The market for pea powder and other "emerging protein sources" remains small, but it is booming, thanks to consumers ranging from the middle classes in China and the health-conscious in California, to livestock producers and fish farmers who need to fatten animals while keeping costs in line.
Global pea protein sales amounted to $73.4 million USD in 2016, and are forecast to quadruple by 2025. Global demand for protein -- from meat, aquaculture, or plant sources -- is booming in part due to rising incomes in emerging markets in Asia and Africa. In North America, consumers are shifting their diet to include more protein; in 2017, 35% of US households said they follow a specific protein-focused diet. Sales of plant-based food and beverages in the US increased almost 15% from 2016, with sales of meat alternatives growing rapidly.
The Wisconsin plant is a joint venture with PURIS, a family-run company that began in Iowa as a seed company, and now owns the Wisconsin pea-powder plant. Cargill and PURIS are also collaborating to boost the protein content in peas through cross-breeding. Standard peas contain 18% to 22% protein, but PURIS will start selling peas this year that are packed with 28% protein, for planting by farmers in the northern Plains and Midwest, according to PURIS president Tyler Lorenzen. Once processed, pea powders can contain about 80% protein. Cross-breeding can take years, however; genetic modification would be faster and more effective, but it could generate consumer resistance.
Other firms are interested in pea protein, while also investigating canola, oats, and other emerging proteins; Cargill has explored insect-based feed for fish and poultry. Cargill rival Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is building its own pea processing plant in North Dakota, with company researchers studying another 30 types of protein options, including nuts and seeds.
Seed and chemical firm DowDuPont says it will launch a canola seed supercharged with protein through traditional cross-breeding as soon as 2019. Richardson International started construction in April of a laboratory in Winnipeg to study proteins and other food ingredients.
In Canada, one of the world's biggest pea exporters, at least three pea protein plants are planned or increasing production. The increased interest in pea protein gives farmers an incentive to vary plantings that are now dominated by wheat and canola.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* REVOLUTIONARY NETFLIX: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.COM ("The Television Will Be Revolutionised", 28 June 2018), Netflix is familiar to all, and generally taken for granted. It is not so easy to appreciate just how revolutionary Netflix is.
Netflix was a mail-order DVD-rental firm when Ted Sarandos joined up in 2000, two years after the company was established. In 2011, when Netflix was first getting into streaming video, he bought "House of Cards" -- a television drama starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright and produced by, among others, the film director David Fincher -- for $100 million USD. The move was widely derided in the entertainment industry as naive. How could a DVD rental service take on networks and studios that had decades to build, and were notoriously hard to run?
Fast-forward to the present. In 2018 Sarandos -- the "chief content officer" of Netflix -- will help lay out over $12 billion USD on video. Netflix viewers will get 82 feature films in a year when Warner Brothers, the Hollywood studio with the biggest slate, will turn out only 23. Disney, the most profitable studio, will only turn out 10.
Netflix is producing or procuring 700 new or exclusively licensed TV shows -- including more than 100 scripted dramas and comedies, dozens of documentaries and children's shows, stand-up comedy specials, plus unscripted reality and talk shows. And its ambitions go far beyond Hollywood. The company has a global footprint, making programs in 21 countries, including Brazil, Germany, India, and South Korea.
Nor is Netflix trading quality for quantity. Sarandos has hired big-name movie directors, such as Spike Lee, the Wachowski siblings, and the Coen brothers, with the company similarly hauling in TV talent. David Letterman has come out of retirement to do a talk show, while Barack and Michelle Obama have signed a production deal as well.
In the first quarter of 2018, Netflix added 7.4 million net new subscribers worldwide -- giving a total of 125 million, 57 million of them in America. With each customer giving Netflix an average of about $10 USD a month, that means $14 billion USD a year. The company's valuation is $170 billion USD, more than Disney, in spite of the fact that Netflix has a hefty debt and has never turned a profit: revenues are pumped into expanding the machine.
It was the arrival of download technology that made Netflix. Cable TV had not really changed the equation for television, in which programs were scheduled on channels and run in fixed time slots. Download meant that viewers could watch what they wanted, when they wanted, and only pay for what they wanted, with no ads. Netflix offered totally personalized TV -- and on top of that, decided to generate its own content to keep customers hooked, using thorough market research to determine what to offer.
Once a program is released, Netflix can then find out how it is received. If it's a dud, the company dumps it, and uses the experience to figure out how to do better. Having variety and a service customers want also shuts out the competition: if viewers have Netflix, they had little reason to pay attention to rival services. Netflix has accordingly changed the model for the programming it acquires, buying up global exclusive rights, instead of a license. Producers don't have the option of also peddling their product to secondary markets, since effectively there are none.
On top of that, by generating so much programming at a high level of quality, Netflix both undercuts the competition and raises the ante for them to keep up, forcing them to generate more original programming. Broadcast TV, already in decline before Netflix arrived, is fading out, with TV advertising fading along with it. Pay TV is also in decline. Americans aged 12 to 24 are watching less than half as much pay TV as in 2010, those aged 25-34 are watching 40% less. Cinemas are also going down slow, ticket sales in America and Canada having declined by more than 20% between 2002 and 2017. Movie studios are focusing on blockbusters to bring in crowds, or low-budget offerings best enjoyed with a crowd, like horror.
The changing TV landscape has led to big acquisitions, most notably with AT&T buying Time Warner for $109 billion USD. The big attraction in the buy was HBO, which is shifting from pay TV to streaming. Comcast and Disney have been competing to buy 20th Century Fox from the Murdoch family. More intriguingly, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are all developing programming efforts of their own. Amazon is the best-placed of the lot, since it already has a streaming service, and has no shortage of money. The company will spend $4 billion USD in 2018 to generate programming, with upcoming offerings including a LORD OF THE RINGS series.
To Amazon, of course, TV will always be a component of a larger business, while it's be-all and end-all to Netflix -- which is determined to keep ahead. Accordingly, the company has been investing in non-English-language shows, with the number of international subscribers growing rapidly. Netflix could stumble, of course; the firm has been singed in the social upheaval following the 2016 election, with stars being dismissed for sexual misconduct, while profits aren't expected until after 2022. Were Netflix to falter Amazon, with deeper pockets, might eat its lunch. Netflix has conquered the world, having become the first global TV giant. Now the company has to show it can stay on the leading edge.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AFRICA EVOLUTION (4): Data connectivity is a big buzz in Africa -- most notably in Nairobi, East Africa's technology center, with its technology hubs and corps of young programmers. It is here in Kenya that mobile money took off on the continent, and where off-grid solar power is growing most rapidly.
Nairobi is a somewhat misleading example. On the average, not one in two people in Africa has a mobile phone, and many who do have to walk for kilometers to get a signal. The poor connectivity is a drag on economic development: every 10% increase in mobile-phone penetration in poor countries speeds up GDP growth per person by 0.8% to 1.2% a year. When people get mobile internet, the rate of growth bumps up again.
Mobile phones are useful on the face of it, but as discussed here in 2011, they enable a suite of other innovations, such as mobile money, that amplify their effect. A study in Kenya by Tavneet Suri of MIT and Billy Jack of Georgetown University found that M-Pesa, the mobile-payments system, by itself brought almost 200,000 families -- about 2% of Kenyan households -- out of poverty between 2008 and 2014.
Broadband internet has an even greater impact. Jonas Hjort, of Columbia University and the International Growth Center in London, and Jonas Poulsen, of Uppsala University, looked over African economies before and after they got connected, between 2006 and 2014, to the big undersea internet cables that now overlay the continent. They found that connection resulted in a huge jump in employment in areas that were able to access fast internet as companies set up websites, or used e-mail to sell their product abroad.
Not only were people much more likely to have jobs, those jobs were more likely to be good ones. The study also found that once countries got fast internet connections, the number of new startups grew and companies increased their exports. One example of how this also works for entrepreneurs is found in Nairobi's slums, where the arrival of fast internet connections led to the emergence of a cottage industry selling video-editing services abroad.
However, the reach of the internet in Africa is still painfully limited. In poorer countries like Niger, Burundi, and South Sudan, less than 5% of people have access to mobile internet; only a quarter of Africans can connect to the internet via their phones. Only about a percent of Africans have cable broadband connections, with those people living in big cities like Johannesburg, Lagos, or Nairobi. Even there, it's expensive, partly because of the bandwidth bottleneck of the undersea cables connecting Africa with the rest of the world. Costs per megabit are like twenty times those of London, and ten times as much as Los Angeles.
Mobile internet isn't so affordable either, with the cheapest packages running to about a seventh of the average income per African. As a result, users are highly selective about internet access, jumping in only when necessary. Andy Halsall, chief executive of poa!, a Kenyan startup offering cheap internet access, comments: "People use the internet in ways that we would not recognize in the West. Here you wouldn't click on an advert or update an app, because it will use up your day's allowance of data."
Things are looking up, however, for three reasons. First, new cables are being laid to Africa, leading to a doubling and redoubling of bandwidth. Costs of getting data from London or Paris to Africa have dropped by two orders of magnitude in the last few years.
That doesn't really help with the "last mile" problem, of getting the data to end users. Except in the big cities, most Africans who have internet access get it through mobile-phone networks -- but since the data rates of 3G and 4G phones are limited and mobile-phone users pay for data instead of bandwidth, their access to the internet is highly constrained.
Startups are moving into the vacuum, setting up wi-fi hubs with enough channel bandwidth to handle low-resolution video, and ranges of up to 50 kilometers (30 miles). The hubs are cheap, only about a thousand USD, much cheaper than cellphone relays. Firms such as poa! sell internet packages with unlimited downloads in Kenya's slums for as little as 50 cents per day. Other firms, such as BRCK, which also builds its own rugged wireless networking equipment, hope to drive costs low enough to provide connections without even charging the consumer, relying on advertising alone. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (23): The Federal judiciary, in sum, was empowered to review the constitutionality of acts of the Federal government, including those that involved specific states; and to judge on controversies between states, at least those seen as significant. The measure of significance was effectively left up to the court, with occasional controversies arising over jurisdiction. Discussion of the fine points of jurisdiction needs to be left to legal scholars.
The Federal court could only judge on actual cases and controversies; judgements on hypotheticals were just not on. At the outset, the court's ability to judge on the internal affairs of states was very limited; and there was, continues to be, a subtle tug-of-war over the relative jurisdictions of the Article I and Article III courts. Notice the Constitution refers to "original" and "appellate" jurisdictions of the Federal courts. The meaning of "original jurisdiction" is that the Federal courts can try cases directly; in the case of "appellate jurisdiction", they can only handle appeals.
There's a common belief in modern times, sometimes encouraged by justices, that SCOTUS is the final arbiter of the Constitution. That's not really true, the flaw in that claim being that SCOTUS has little enforcement power over the other two branches of government. It is significant that the Constitution defined the judiciary in Article III, after having defined Congress in Article I and the executive in Article II, with the order of priority strongly implied.
To be sure, if SCOTUS strikes down a law it is null and void, not on the books; but if Congress and the president collaborate to defy the Supreme Court, they'll figure out a way to do so, and there's little SCOTUS can do about it. Congress, on its part, has substantial power over the Federal judiciary, defining its organization and approving appointments to the judiciary, screening candidates selected by the executive -- with the selection generally performed with an eye towards candidates satisfactory to Congress.
Congress also has the ability to impeach unsatisfactory justices and judges. Impeachment, of course, is a high bar to jump, and no SCOTUS justice has been successfully impeached -- though Justice Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 under threat of impeachment. However, eight judges of the lower courts have been removed from office under impeachment.
Congress, over time, has been inclined to enhance the independence and authority of the Federal judiciary through successive judiciary acts. The Supreme Court tends to become more powerful in times of political partisanship, in which political factions fight over Congress and the presidency; SCOTUS ends up having to sort things out. The longer the partisanship continues, the more powerful the Supreme Court becomes -- and of course, the partisanship will also infect SCOTUS as partisan justices and judges are appointed.
Of course, if the Federal judiciary becomes, in the judgement of Congress, too powerful, Congress can carefully trim back its authority with new judiciary acts -- and the Constitution gives SCOTUS little ability to fight back. Within the framework of the Constitution, Congress can make or unmake laws for the judiciary at will.
It is of course true that, in legal terms, the authority of SCOTUS is absolute. There is no appealing a SCOTUS decision; it can only be overridden by a later SCOTUS decision, and so it can be regarded as final. Whether it actually settles a controversy is another matter.
The 3rd clause of Section 2 specified trial by jury, if only for Federal criminal cases -- other cases were decided by the bench. Criminal trials were to be conducted in the state in which the crime had taken place; particularly in those days, when transport was slow and uncomfortable, it was simply impractical to conduct trials in a location remote from the place the crime had been committed.
No constraints were specified on the jury; while today, judges may admonish a jury to deliver a verdict on the basis of the evidence, the jurors are under no compulsion to do so. If jurors have a gut feel that contradicts the evidence, they can follow the gut feel. They may declare defendants innocent even when they are obviously guilty, if the law in violation seems unjust or the punishment too severe. Just as the Constitution granted the president the ability to pardon to override the machinery of law for the sake of perceived justice, and granted the jury a similar right, in a more oblique fashion. The Framers took great stock in juries, seeing them as involvement of "We the People" in the checks and balances of government.
* Section 3 is brief, almost a footnote, simply defining treason in the "Treason Clause", granting the power of its punishment to Congress, and placing limits on such punishment:
BEGIN QUOTE:
1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
2: The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
END QUOTE
Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution -- as making war on the Federal government, or working in support of hostile powers. The reason for being specific on treason was to prevent the Federal government from coming up with a broader definition to suppress dissent. Notice that the Constitution even specified the standard of evidence for conviction: "The Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt act."
Treason was to be dealt with in an "open court" separate from Congress, but with Congress having the ability to specify punishment. This was done as a check against abuses by military tribunals. Two restrictions were placed on punishments of treason by Congress:
[TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SMELLS RIGHT: As discussed by an article from CNN.com ("Scents On A Plane" by Howard Slutsken, 4th September 2017, synthesizing scents is a big business, scents for example being used in bulk in the production of air fresheners. Less obviously, the airlines are becoming more enthusiastic about scents, using them as a cheap way to improve the passenger experience. Airlines now leveraging off such odorants include Singapore Airlines, All Nippon Airways, and Turkish Airlines.
Of course, there is an industry serving this market. Zodiac Aerospace, headquartered in France, is a major supplier of lavatories, galleys, seats, and other interior components to aircraft manufacturers and airlines; through its California-based Pacific Precision Products organization, it also sells odorants to the airlines. Zodiac is now offering an "active cabin fragrance" system named FIVE -- the cryptic name merely implying smell as the fifth sense.
According to Brian Jorgensen, a Zodiac sales director, FIVE is intended to provide a "luxurious fragrance experience" for the VIP aviation and business-jet market. A FIVE fragrance unit can hold up to four different scent cartridges. The unit can be programmed to activate each cartridge during different phases of the flight.
The fragrances themselves are based on a "dry scent" chemical technology created by a partner company named ScentAir -- originally founded by a former Disney Imagineer in the early 1990s, with the intent of adding a dimension of smell to entertainment and amusement experience. With the continual turnover of the cabin air, the fragrance dissipates quickly when the unit turns off; unlike liquid or spray fragrances, the FIVE dry-scent diffuser leaves no residue on seats or clothing.
Jorgensen says: "The experience has been designed to be very subtle, almost just felt in a subliminal way, below conscious level." He adds that aircraft lavatories might receive special attention, "turning a bad smell experience into a positive one."
The 50 fragrances initially available in the FIVE catalog make up eight different fragrance families, including "Luxe & Sophisticated", "Relaxing & Soothing", and "Voyage & Escape". "White Tea & Fig" is the most popular fragrance, but preferences tend to vary by culture and region. The FIVE "Warm Bread" fragrance ("fresh baked bread with a hint of warm butter") is a favorite in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. "Black Orchid", described as a "sophisticated lush green floral fragrance", is liked in Asia-Pacific markets, while "Lemongrass" and "Vanilla Bean" is popular in Latin America.
Zodiac is focused on airlines, and has little interest in selling fragrance solutions to other markets. The Scentair company provides fragrances and dispersal systems to a range of customers, primarily in the hospitality, gaming, medical, and real estate industries. Clients include hotel brands Hilton, Marriott, Starwood, and IHG. The company even provides scents to the US military for training purposes; exactly what scents is not clear, but they're likely not necessarily pleasant.
Ed Burke, a Scentair vice-president, says that the firm works closely with customers to determine their needs. Fragrances can be developed a few weeks, but typically it takes some months to do the job right. According to Burke: "Traditionally, both vanilla and chocolate are universally popular fragrance notes that perfumers have used commonly. In scent marketing, citrus- and tea-based notes are becoming more and more universal. Generally known for their subtlety and clean feeling, most regions would find notes in these families pleasant and resonant."
Burke adds: "When I smell fresh-cut grass, I'm instantly a kid again ready to run out onto the baseball field. My favorite fragrance, though, is the smell of lilies. Lilies are my wife's favorite flower, and were featured prominently at the hotel we stayed at during our honeymoon. No matter where I am in the world, the smell of lilies always takes me home."
ED: This last is true. My original hometown of Spokane is labeled the "Lilac City" -- and if I smell lilacs, I am little again, hiding out in the lilac bushes with the honeybees buzzing around.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ANOTHER MONTH: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Milk Sheikhs", 17 May 2018), the Gulf state of Qatar is noted for business enterprise. Over the past year, Qatar has diversified into a notably surprising line of business: dairy farming.
It all started when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates closed their borders to punish Qatar for supporting Islamist groups and Al Jazeera -- a state-owned broadcaster that criticizes all the Gulf monarchies, except Qatar's. This cut off most of Qatar's food supplies, including milk, with the country then looking for alternate sources.
Initially, dairy products were obtained from Turkey and Iran, but now they're obtained from the Qatari Baladna Farm. The farm, founded in 2013 to rear sheep, airlifted 3,400 Holsteins to Doha, the capital of Qatar, in 2017. Thousands more arrived by boat in February 2018. The target number of head is 14,000, and is within reach. Baladna dairy products cost about the same as those previously obtained from Saudi Arabia. The modern dairy production facility is something of an attraction for Qatari citizens and foreigners in the country.
How long the embargo will last, nobody knows. American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on his first visit to the region, bluntly told the Saudis to knock it off. An American diplomat in the region commented: "We're fed up with it. The Qataris aren't perfect, but none of our [Gulf] allies is."
The Americans are not going to press the Saudis hard on the issue, while the Qataris have learned to live with the embargo. It took about $40 billion USD to cope, but the Qataris are enterprising, and have the money; it's just been a question of finding the alternate sources. In the end, the Saudis cannot bend Qatar to their will, and so it seems all that has been accomplished is to spite Saudi Arabia's own businesses, depriving them of a profitable market -- that they won't get back even if the embargo is lifted.
* I took a road trip from Loveland, Colorado, to Spokane, Washington in July. It was nothing much to talk about in itself, but it did underline that every time I go on a trip, I refine my procedures. One trick I learned was that, at a night stop, I'd take a rag out of the bag of them I kept the car, soak it down using a bottle of water I also kept in the car, and wipe the bugs off the car. A related trick was that, when I unpacked the car for the night, I would make sure everything remaining in the car was orderly for hitting the road the next day.
The most significant advance on the trip, however, was that I had got an Exxon-Mobil loyalty card in the mail. I activated it before I hit the road, and used it when I drove into Exxon fuel stations. Exxon-Mobil had previously issued a "Plenti" card that covered a number of different retailers, but it was hard to see it amounted anything. Not so for the Exxon-Mobil card: not only did I get discounts on gas, I would get perks in the associated convenience store, like free or nearly-free candy bars. I saved at least five and more like ten bucks on the trip.
What was amusing was the effectiveness of loyalty cards: now Exxon owns me. I make sure I have my stops at Exxon stations. That's not a problem, gas prices are generally the same in any one locality, and I found out when I got back home, loyalty cards can have a big advantage. I like Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers as a snack; I got a message on my voicemail that the carton I had bought may have been contaminated with salmonella, and it should be returned.
I did so without hesitation. I had food poisoning back in the early 1980s; it was an all-night session in agony, leaving me with the thought that it might have killed me had I been older. OK, now I'm older -- and that leaves me with the thought that my loyalty card maybe, possibly, have saved my life.
* The real fake news for July got off with a bit of a surprise with the fall of EPA director Scott Pruitt on 5 July. He had been thoroughly raked over the coals in the media for milking his job as a supposed public servant for all it was worth. President Trump seemed very reluctant to give Pruitt up, however, since he was so in tune with the Trump agenda -- indeed, Trump enjoys provoking the "mainstream media (MSM)", and so Pruitt was doing a good job on that score. Nonetheless, although Trump expresses contempt for the MSM, he still pays close attention to it, and so finally had to let Pruitt go.
Pruitt, as a parting shot, demonstrated just how much he was in tune with the Trump agenda by refusing to acknowledge any fault, instead petulantly blaming his dismissal on an MSM smear campaign. Of course, EPA staff might also have had something to do with it -- since it's obvious, as a blatant enemy of the agency, and a pest on top of that, absolutely every false move he made was going to be leaked to the media.
Pruitt is being replaced by Andrew Wheeler, a coal-industry lobbyist. What else might have been expected? And one can equally expect that Wheeler, although a much smoother operator, is walking right into the same target range that Pruitt has vacated. Yes, the EPA has been more or less immobilized for the time being, but the underlying message to industry is: "This is just temporary; don't get used to it."
Another surprise was that the Trump Administration named Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, replacing outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy. The surprise was that Kavanaugh is a moderate, not a zealot as might have been expected. The sorehead Right in Congress found him too far to the Left for their taste. To no surprise, the hothead Left judged him a hard-liner anyway.
The most realistic assessment is that Kavanaugh is about in line with Chief Justice John Roberts -- caring more about the law than his (conservative) ideology, and realistic. It was indeed a surprise that another hard-liner wasn't picked, suggesting that Justice Kennedy hinted to Trump that his willingness to leave before the fall election was predicated on selecting a satisfactory replacement.
In any case, the complaints of the hothead Left had a perfunctory sound to them: Kavanaugh's not that bad, and it's nothing unusual for SCOTUS justices to drift to the Left in the course of their tenure. Besides, as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the early days of the Republic, the judiciary is the weakest of the three branches of government. If Congress and the White House can gang up on the judiciary, SCOTUS is rendered almost powerless.
Indeed, Congress can pass a new judiciary act at any time to change the structure of SCOTUS -- with one recent proposal being that, instead of nine justices, there should be 27, or some other relatively large number. SCOTUS ends up with a lot on its plate, and so having more warm bodies to handle cases has its attractions. More significantly, with a larger number of justices, there would be regular turnover, and so appointing a new justice would not have the same long-term impact as it does with nine justices. A SCOTUS appointment would no longer be such a big and controversial deal.
What really hogged the headlines was a Trump visit to a NATO meeting in Brussels on 12 July, in which he dumped all over American's European allies ... to then travel on to Helsinki to talk with Vladmir Putin on 16 July, and publicly announce that he was entirely satisfied with Putin's reassurances that Russia hadn't interfered with the US election of 2016. That, coming on the heels of the Robert Mueller investigation indicting a dozen Russian officers on 13 July for meddling in the 2016 US election.
The public outcry over Trump's performance in Helsinki was very loud and outraged -- which was also a bit of a surprise, since the performance was exactly what might have been expected of Trump. Nonetheless, it was clear he had gone too far in accepting Putin's reassurances at face value, and began to backtrack when he returned to the USA, engaging in a series of excited flip-flops. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel observed:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The president was not on the golf course today. He was on Twitter today. He had a special gem this morning. This is an all-timer. He's got a lot of great tweets, but today he wrote: "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming election."
Hmm. You don't say. Go on. "Based on the fact that no president has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don't want Trump."
At this point, he's just screwing with us, right?
END QUOTE
The flip-flops included one on trade. On 25 July, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke with Trump at the White House, with the two announcing a resolution in the trade war with the European Union. Trump of course played it up as a victory: "This was a very big day for free and fair trade. A very big day indeed."
Juncker agreeably played along, announcing: "When I was invited by the president to the White House, I had one intention: I had the intention to make a deal today. And we made a deal today." Being politically astute, he kept a straight face: there was no deal, it was just a cease-fire. That's Trump's modus operandi: he makes a big fuss, then proclaims victory, and doesn't care that nothing much has really happened -- or maybe not any more than would have happened using a low-key approach.
That suggests NAFTA negotiations will finally wind up with a similar fatuous declaration of victory. As for the Chinese, however, Trump appears willing to carry on the game at least a bit farther -- but he won't, once quarreling with the Chinese becomes an obvious liability.
Oh yes, to close off this stream, Trump engaged in an obligatory war of words with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Trump tweeting back in ALL-CAPS against bellicose talk by Rouhani with:
BEGIN QUOTE;
NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!
END QUOTE
Stephen Colbert observed:
BEGIN QUOTE;
Yes, be cautious! You cross Donald Trump, and you're gonna get what the other dictators got: a friendly summit, a handshake, and, if you're not careful, an invitation to the White House.
END QUOTE
* As a noisy sideshow to Trump's antics this last month, on 12 July FBI Agent Peter Strzok (pronounced "Struck") found himself being grilled by the House judiciary committee. Republicans on the committee believed that Strzok had been part of an FBI effort to derail the Trump campaign, citing as proof text messages Strzok had sent, including:
God. Hillary should win 100,000,000:0. Trump is a fucking idiot. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY?!?
Strzok insisted his personal dislike of Trump didn't affect his professional conduct; he also pointed out that he had made unflattering remarks about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as well. Of course, such comments were in general circulation at the time, and few with no axe to grind would worry too much about them. In addition, while the Republicans zeroed in on Stzok's messages as evidence of an FBI conspiracy against Trump, Democrats responded with citations of messages from Republicans, some in attendance at the session, also unkindly to Trump.
It was a raucous performance in Congress, with comedian Stephen Colbert summing it up as: "Point of order! FUCK YOU! Point of order! FUCK YOU, too!" Colbert also noted:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Republicans see these texts [of Agent Strzok] as proof of a vast conspiracy within the FBI to stop Donald Trump from being elected president. And here's how devious and how deep they went: In order to keep it a secret, they let him get elected president!
END QUOTE
The high point was when Strzok said he didn't appreciate South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy misrepresenting the facts. Gowdy was contemptuous: "I don't give a damn what you appreciate, Mr. Strzok! I don't appreciate having an FBI agent with an unprecedented level of animus working on two major investigations in 2016!"
Strzok held his tongue for the moment -- but when he had an opportunity, he let Gowdy have it:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, at no time, in any of these texts, did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took. Furthermore, this isn't just me sitting here telling you you don't have to take my word for it. At every step, at every investigative decision, there are multiple layers of people above me, the assistant director, executive assistant director, deputy director, and director of the FBI, and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, supervisors, unit chiefs, case agents and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions. They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them.
That is who we are as the FBI. And the suggestion that I in some dark chamber somewhere in the FBI would somehow cast aside all of these procedures, all of these safeguards, and somehow be able to do this is astounding to me. It simply couldn't happen. And the proposition that that is going on, that it might occur anywhere in the FBI, deeply corrodes what the FBI is in American society, the effectiveness of their mission, and it is deeply destructive.
I understand we are living in a political era in which insults and insinuation often drown out honesty and integrity. I have the utmost respect for Congress's oversight role, but I truly believe that today's hearing is just another victory notch in Putin's belt, and another milestone in our enemies' campaign to tear America apart.
END QUOTE
Strzok was not grandstanding, and indeed was clearly a bit uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric of the Democrats in his defense. Nonetheless, it was a masterful performance. Colbert said: "I was wondering why Gowdy was slumped so far down in his chair. Turns out it's because he had his ass handed to him." Alas, Strzok soon found himself looking for a new job.
* Nobody on either side of the fence in the Trump Wars was going to be swayed by the exercise one way or the other -- but the sense that the Republicans are in for a good spanking in November was very strong.
Lexington, THE ECONOMIST's America columnist, ran an essay titled "A Blot Against America", looking forward to the election. The essay started with a reference to THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, a 2005 novel by the late Philip Roth, which envisioned Charles Lindbergh becoming president in 1940, to set up a pro-Axis, white supremacist administration. The nine-year-old narrator described his reaction to his Jewish aunt's excitement over a brief encounter with the anti-Semitic Lindbergh:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Never in my life had I so harshly judged any adult. Nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others.
END QUOTE
Donald Trump rode to the presidency on a magic carpet of bigotry that had been set into flight by desegregation in the 1960s. He tapped into white anxieties, focusing primarily on Latin American immigrants and Muslims, leaving other nonwhites to be tarred by "dog whistles" that fooled nobody. They weren't supposed to, they wouldn't have worked if nobody knew what they meant, they were just for deniability. The family separations of illegal immigrants are the inevitable result. The controversy that has followed has been demarcated along rigidly partisan lines; Trump shrugged it off by blaming Obama for the situation, while gleefully pointing out how inflamed liberals were.
Trump did have to backtrack, but he did so indifferently; after all, none of his fans were unhappy, indeed being perfectly happy to see Trump outrage liberals. The fiasco left him no worse off -- while leaving the Democrats with the awkward question of: "So what are YOU going to do about border security?" It's a situation in which there is no good answer, simply the least-bad answer. Indeed, Trump supporters played up the fact that Barack Obama had been no softy on illegal immigration and border security, oblivious to the way that Trump had campaigned saying he was.
The bigger problem, however, is for the Republicans; although the wind in the sails of American bigotry is strong, the wind in the opposite direction is, over the long run, stronger. The "utter fools" are not going to be the winners in the end. As Lexington put it:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The history of America's moral corrections suggests that what they lack in spontaneity, they make up for with momentum. Democrats' opposition to the civil war cost them the presidency for over two decades. Republicans' opposition to civil rights cost them most of their non-white support, leading them to the white-identity politics from which Mr. Trump is now wringing the last drop of juice.
It would be a short-term strategy, in an increasingly non-white America, even if he were a more ruthless demagogue than he is. Asked to compare Mr. Trump with his fictional villain, Roth said Lindbergh was imposing, a heroic aviator, and Mr. Trump "just a con artist". His dog-whistle on immigration may sustain his presidency; it will not interrupt how America is changing. That combination spells a long-term disaster for his party.
END QUOTE
What will happen in November? Nobody can say for sure, but I can say that I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited. "Bring it on."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE