* 22 entries including: US Constitution (series), global decarbonization (series), theory of queues (series), bacteria for medical treatment, low-budget KaiOS, collecting fecal samples for microbiome studies, easy-to-use AI tools, Russian Spektr RG x-ray observatory, variability of ancient climate, Smithsonian climate chart, and galaxies with no dark matter.
* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR AUGUST 2019: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Eastern Summer", 8 August 2019), this year Europe celebrated 30 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The celebrations are muted by the fact that the hopes for emergence of democratic states in the East have been dampened by the emergence of Right-leaning regimes, inclined to authoritarianism, in such countries as Poland and Hungary. The former Soviet states seem even more bogged down in retrograde governance. In the gloom, there are glimmers of hope, and they seem to be picking up pace:
Putin managed to fire up Russian nationalism with actions such as the annexation of Crimea, but such grandstanding has little staying power. There was another big demonstration on 3 August, even though the authorities were threatening to deal harshly with the protests -- and are believed.
Women have been taking a leadership role in the protest. One of the leaders of the Moscow opposition is Lyubov Sobol, an anti-corruption campaigner, who was arrested. Other woman leaders include Canan Kaftancioglu, prominent in the Turkish opposition; Laura Kovesi, a Romanian graft-buster who will become the EU's first public prosecutor; and Barbara Nowacka, who led women's protests against reactionary social "reforms" in Poland.
Eastern Europe is not yet ablaze; the protests and elections have been about local issues -- though they do have common elements, including large numbers of young people, and a slant towards the EU. They do not present any of the regimes with a substantial threat to their rule. Nonetheless, the rulers are facing challenges, and it seems unlikely the challenges will diminish. The EU, currently under pressure from nationalists, has yet to reach out to liberals in the East -- but if the European Union really stands for the best values of the democratic West, it can hardly avoid doing so.
* As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Amid Crises, Frayed US Ties Give China's Xi Political Cover At Home" by Michael Martina and Kevin Yao, 16 August 2019), US President Donald Trump's trade war with China has put the country under severe economic pressure. However, Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn't seem to be under any particular political stress for the moment, since all the troubles Trump makes for China can, of course, be blamed on Trump. Indeed, Xi can blame Trump for troubles the US has little to do with.
One Chinese government advisor, speaking anonymously, said that there was internal discussion when the trade war began, but that has ended, the perception being that the USA "is trying to contain China no matter what we do." Trump has imposed tariffs, to back off of them to an extent, while then accusing China of currency manipulation -- even though the International Monetary Fund says there's no reason to believe so. According to the advisor, the Chinese see Trump as insincere and incoherent: "Many people will feel it is worthless to negotiate with Trump."
Trump has unified Chinese society against him. Jude Blanchette -- the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington DC -- says: "Xi Jinping is lucky insofar as he has a mercurial United States president who is making the case for him that the reason US-China relations have turned in such a dire direction is because there is an unpredictable US leader."
Indeed, Xi has found it convenient to blame the US for the actions of "violent radicals" in Hong Kong, America being labeled as the "black hand" behind the agitation. Still, the use of Trump as a bogeyman goes only so far, since Xi has no good options to deal with the Hong Kong protests, and is stuck with the economic damage Trump is doing China. Xi needs to make social and economic changes, and at present, Trump has effectively removed the pressure to do so. Another government advisor said: "Reforms are not moving forward and not going backward. The problem for the economy will not be big this year. We need to watch next year. It will definitely be troublesome."
For the time being, reform in China is stalled. To an extent, however, US presidential elections next year give Xi some hope. He can't trust a deal with Donald Trump -- and if Xi gave Trump a deal, it might help Trump get re-elected. On the other side of that same coin, if China makes as much trouble for Trump as possible in October 2020, it will work against him in the November election. The Chinese can threaten to raise tariffs sky-high, but say it won't happen until after the election.
Once a new US administration is in office, the two countries can work towards a deal, presumably under the relatively impartial judgement of the World Trade Organization. If Trump wins re-election, they'll just have to bear with him for four more years.
* As discussed by an article from BLOOMBERG.com ("Vietnam Won the US-China Trade War, But Is Now in Trouble Itself" by Xuan Quynh Nguyen and Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen, 5 August 2019), Vietnam has been a beneficiary of US-China trade slugfest, with foreign companies scrambling to set up production there. Vietnam has a young and relatively cheap labor force, a stable government, and business-friendly policies. Intel and Samsung were among the first big foreign companies to find Vietnam attractive: now they cumulatively employ more than 182,000 Vietnamese.
Makers of athletic shoes and video games are now moving in as well. In the first six months of 2019, the Vietnamese government granted investment licenses to 1,720 projects, 26% more than the same period last year. However, the Vietnamese trade surplus with the US grew by 39% as well, attracting the attention of the Trump Administration. Trump's people suspect that Vietnam is simply acting as an intermediary by other countries to evade tariffs, a scam known as "trans-shipment". In July 2019, the Trump Administration slapped 400% tariffs on Vietnamese steel that, so it is claimed, actually came from South Korea and Taiwan. Not surprisingly, the Trump Administration is also accusing Vietnam of being a currency manipulator.
The Vietnamese have responded to American concerns, promising to buy more US products, such as Boeing jetliners. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Zuan Phuc has ordered a crackdown on Chinese firms attempting to trans-ship product through Vietnam. Vietnam does have some leverage with the Trump Administration, in that Vietnam doesn't very much like China either, and is pushing back on China's ambitions in the South China Sea. Nonetheless, the Vietnamese clearly would like to see the back of Trump and his capricious, haphazard approach to international commerce. For now, business is booming in Vietnam, but a further change in the winds from the White House could well bring the boom to a whimper.
* As discussed by another article from BLOOMBERG.com ("There Are Better Ways to Do Democracy" by Peter Coy, 10 April 2019), the 2016 Brexit vote was a British experiment in direct democracy. It didn't go well: the Leave campaign went into high gear, presenting Britain's citizens with a long list of grievances against the European Union -- many of which were greatly exaggerated, when they weren't outright fabrications -- and a long list of benefits from leaving the EU -- which tended towards the fantastical as well.
Leave won, but only barely, ensuring continued social antagonism. To add to the difficulties, there was no working plan in place for carrying out Brexit, so Theresa May's government had to devise one. Remainers weren't happy with any Brexit plan, Leavers weren't happy with any realistic Brexit plan, and the result was a loud, angry gridlock that persists with no end in sight.
Brexit is a manifestation of a global problem: citizens want elected officials to be responsible, but the citizens don't necessarily want to be responsible themselves. Poorly-conducted referendums like Brexit then become gang fights between extremists that generate impossible problems, instead of solving them. Maybe there are better ways?
One possibility is "guided deliberation" AKA "deliberative democracy". Ireland, with a tradition of severe restrictions on abortion, chose that route when pressure for change became inescapable. In 2016 and 2017, a 99-person Citizens' Assembly -- selected to mirror the Irish population, and guided by a chairperson from Ireland's supreme court -- evaluated inputs from lawyers and obstetricians, pro-life and pro-choice groups, plus more than 13,000 written submissions from the public. The assembly recommended a major relaxation of Ireland's laws on abortion, with the recommendations presented to the voters in a 2018 referendum. The vote was YES, and abortion became legal in Ireland in January 2019.
A recent article on SCIENCEMAG.org commented that "evidence from places such as Colombia, Belgium, Northern Ireland, and Bosnia shows that properly structured deliberation can promote recognition, understanding, and learning." In response to the recent "yellow vest" protests, French President Emmanuel Macron conducted a three-month "great debate" to solicit the public's views on some of the issues raised by the sometimes-rowdy Yellow Vest movement. One key finding was that French citizens have "zero tolerance" for new taxes -- suggesting that citizens still don't quite get contradiction between demanding responsible government, while evading responsibility themselves.
Another scheme to improve democracy is to change how people vote. There's growing interest in "ranked-choice voting (RCV)", in which voters can select secondary preferences to their primary vote. If nobody wins a majority, the candidate with the least votes is winnowed out, with the secondary votes for that candidate added to the votes for the survivors. The process is repeated until there's a majority and a winner.
The idea is to avoid a winner who doesn't have a mandate from the majority of the voters. Possibly more significantly, it discourages politicians from taking an US versus THEM stand in electioneering. RCV is not new, and experience shows it to be perfectly workable: Australia has used RCV in national elections for a century. In 2018, Maine became the first US state to use it for Federal offices; San Francisco and Minneapolis, among others, use it for municipal elections.
As the US Constitution was originally devised, it had no strong spirit of direct democracy; senators were chosen by state legislatures, the president by the electoral college. In the early 20th century, the Progressive movement pushed direct democracy, introducing women's suffrage, direct election of senators, and a wave of state laws providing for referendums, ballot initiatives, and the like.
Direct democracy hasn't worked out perfectly, most notably reducing California to referendum chaos, as discussed here in 2012. Journalist Nathan Gardels and investor Nicolas Berggruen, in their book RENOVATING DEMOCRACY, offer a blueprint for revising American democracy. They've been working to put their ideas into practice; in 2010, they set up the Think Long Committee, a bipartisan group working toward improving governance in California. In 2014, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed a Think Long-backed measure requiring public hearings on ballot initiatives. The new process led to the first American digital privacy act last year. There's something to be said for thinking long.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("MBDA Offers SPIMM For 'Bolt-On' Ship Self-Protection" by Richard Scott, 21 February 2019), European defense giant MBDA has now revealed a short-range maritime defense system. The system, named the "Self-Protection Integrated Mistral Module (SPIMM)", is based on the MBDA Mistral light missile.
Mistral is a heat-seeking "fire & forget" weapon. The SPIMM module is based on a standard ISO 3-meter (10-foot) container that is fitted with a SIMBAD-RC turret loaded with two ready-to-fire Mistral missiles, plus a 360-degree infrared panoramic system to detect and engage air or surface threats -- such as anti-ship missiles, aircraft, drones, helicopters, or fast small attack craft.
SPIMM was unveiled in February 2019 at the IDEX 2019 exhibition in Abu Dhabi. MBDA sees the Middle East as a key target market for the system, given attacks on vessels off the coast of Yemen. SPIMM is intended for temporary installation on support ships, logistics vessels, and chartered commercial vessels that operate in high-risk areas.
* As last mentioned here in 2014, Boeing has been working a "truss-braced airliner" concept -- along the lines of a Boeing 737 with very long wings, each supported by a diagonal truss. Initial concepts were developed in 2010 under the Boeing and NASA "Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR)" program to propose ultra-efficient airliners for service in the 2035 time frame.
As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Boeing Unveils Refined Truss-Braced-Wing Airliner Concept" by Graham Warwick, 8 January 2019), Boeing is still tweaking the concept. The current notion of the "Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW)" jetliner has a 737-like fuselage, a wingspan of 52 meters (170 feet), and cruises at Mach 0.8 -- faster than earlier schemes, and the same as current 737s, but with 8% better fuel efficiency.
The high-aspect-ratio wing of the TTBW design minimizes induced drag. The truss-braced wings, similar to those of the Hurel-Dubois designs of the 1950s, minimize the weight penalty of the longer span. The TTBW design also has a tee tail. The design for the SUGAR study cruised at Mach 0.75, but Boeing tweaked the wing arrangement and made other aerodynamic refinements to get the cruise speed up.
The long-span wing folds outboard of the truss junctions to allow the TTBW to use the same airport gates as a 737, which has a wing span of about 36 meters (118 feet). Current TTBW concepts use conventional turbofans, but NASA is studying a variation with hybrid-electric propulsion -- electric fans, driven by a turbogenerator. One interesting feature of the TTBW is an electric-powered ducted thruster on the tail that ingests fuselage boundary layer air and re-energizes the aircraft wake, reducing drag and energy consumption.
* It is not unusual for large jetliners to have a lower deck that can accommodate standard aircraft cargo containers, allowing them to haul both passengers and cargo. As discussed by an article from AIR INTERNATIONAL magazine ("Sleeping Below Deck" by Mark Broadbent, June 2018), European aerospace giant Airbus is working with Zodiac Aerospace -- a French aircraft systems supplier -- to develop passenger sleeper modules that can be "plugged into" the cargo hold.
Airbus wants to have the sleeper modules available by 2020, first for the A330, then the A350 jetliners. The scheme builds on efforts by the same collaboration to develop lower-deck crew rest spaces.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* MEDICAL BACTERIA? As discussed by an article from NATURE.com ("Genetically Modified Bacteria Enlisted In Fight Against Disease" by Sara Reardon, 21 June 2018), we are inclined to think of bacteria as a health threat -- but now, researchers are working on genetically-modified (GM) bacteria as medicines.
A number of firms are investigating whether GM bacteria can treat conditions that affect the brain, liver and other organs -- or even attack other, harmful microbes. US regulators have approved trials of several types of GM bacteria as a form of gene therapy, but there are questions about the safety of the approach, since bacteria can trade DNA with each other.
The idea of using bacteria to deliver gene therapies first emerged in the 1990s, but early clinical trials met with mixed results. Interest in the approach has increased in recent years, thanks to growing evidence that the human bacterial "microbiome" has strong influence on the health of a host. Researchers are looking to treat disease by modifying benign microbes that are normally found in people or foods they consume.
Matthew Chang, a synthetic biologist at the National University of Singapore, says that GM bacteria could be used to treat many diseases. His group is engineering the gut bacteria Escherichia coli and Lactobacillus to recognize and destroy harmful microbes. Chang says: "It's a rapidly growing area." -- and adds that he is in talks with regulators in Singapore about starting clinical trials.
One strain of research is aimed at treating the genetic disorder known as "phenylketonuria". People with the condition are deficient in an enzyme that breaks down the amino acid phenylalanine, which causes neurological damage if it builds up in the body. Researchers from the biotechnology firm Synlogic in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have modified E. coli to produce an enzyme that degrades phenylalanine, and a protein that moves it from blood to cells.
Trials showed that treatment with the bacteria reduced levels of phenylalanine in monkeys' blood by more than half compared with animals in a control group. The company has started safety trials with humans, as a first step towards tests with people afflicted with phenylketonuria. The company is also working on GM E. coli that generate enzymes to clear the toxic build-up of ammonia in the blood of people with metabolic liver diseases.
Another firm, Intrexon of Germantown, Maryland, has altered Lactococcus lactis, a bacterium used in cheese production, to synthesize a protein that protects the outer layers of the skin. One ongoing clinical trial that has enrolled about 200 people with cancer is testing whether an L. lactis mouthwash can prevent oral sores that are a side effect of chemotherapy. The company has now begun trials with diabetics, treating them with a different modified L. lactis that produces both the precursor to human insulin and an immune protein that enhances cells' ability to respond to insulin.
Both Intrexon and Synlogic have engineered their bacteria to make sure they won't thrive in the host body, meaning patients would have to take regular doses of the bacteria. However, other firms are investigating treatments that would create long-term colonies of GM bacteria in the body. The biotechnology firm Osel in Mountain View, California, is after US government approval for a strain of Lactobacillus that has been engineered to prevent HIV transmission. Studies have shown that naturally high levels of Lactobacillus in the vagina can help to protect women against HIV. Osel wants to enhance the bacteria's protective properties by modifying it to carry a human protein that prevents HIV from infecting immune cells.
Although these treatments are promising, they also raise troublesome questions. Even if they work as designed, it's hard to identify the side effects they might have, since the interactions of benign bacteria with the human body are not well understood. There's also the threat of the GM bacteria exchanging the snippets of human DNA they carry with other bacteria, with completely unpredictable effects. Some of the researchers have made their modifications to the central chromosome of the bacteria, not the "plasmids" -- little bits of DNA that are swapped in genetic exchanges. They have also incorporated genetic "kill switches" to prevent the bacteria from being transferred from one host to another, killing them if they leave the body.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be that easy. A group led by immunologist Simon Carding of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, engineered Bacteroides ovatus to treat colitis, an inflammation of the intestine, by modulating the immune system. As a fail-safe, they made the bacteria dependent on molecule, thymidine, produced by naturally-occurring gut bacteria; and also only modified the bacterium's chromosome, not its plasmids.
However, only 72 hours after feeding the bacteria to mice, they found that B. ovatus had passed its modified gene to other microbes in the animals' guts, and acquired genes that allowed it to get along without thymidine. Carding gave up on GM bacteria therapies, saying: "It's potentially harmful if it's not properly controlled. If you've got no control over other bacteria acquiring this foreign gene, others could be producing the protein as well."
Synlogic, Osel and other companies say they have never seen this sort of thing, but agree it is possible, Chang saying: "The microbes are extremely smart, and they know how to survive." Trials should see whether the obstacles can be overcome, or not.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* LOW-BUDGET KAIOS: While the contemporary smartphone world is dominated by iOS and Android operating systems -- as of late, there's been something of a buzz over a new smartphone operating system, "KaiOS", optimized for running on low-cost hardware, targeted primarily at users in the developing world.
The "Kai" in KaiOS is from the Chinese word for "open", suggesting accessibility to the world and its leverage off open standards. KaiOS has its roots in the "Firefox OS", a lightweight OS that, at least conceptually, emerged out of the Mozilla Firefox browser. The idea was to build an OS that only ran an HTML browser, which would run applications written as HTML apps in turn -- using Jscript for code, HTML5 for tools, and CSS for formatting.
Mozilla introduced FireFox OS in 2012. It included three components:
The Firefox OS project was originally named "Boot To Gecko (B2G)". While Firefox OS was used on some smartphones and the like, for whatever reasons, Mozilla decided to get out of the OS game, giving up on the project in 2016.
Not to worry; KaiOS Technologies, with headquarters in San Diego CA, introduced KaiOS in 2017, picking up where Firefox OS left off. However, although KaiOS is conceptually much like FireFox OS and has its roots in B2G -- the company hired on some Mozilla staff -- KaiOS officials insist that KaiOS is a different beast, "more robust and expanded" than Firefox OS. We can take them at their word.
KaiOS is, as mentioned, focused on low-cost hardware, the baseline being a smartphone -- or "feature phone", if one wishes to be nitpicky -- with as little as 256 MB of RAM; a non-touchscreen interface, for example the flip-phone configuration; and low power consumption. It has support for 4G telephony, GPS, bluetooth, and wi-fi.
Applications, as mentioned, are implemented in JScript / HTML5 / CSS, and currently include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Assistant. More apps can be obtained from the KaiOS store online. Tens of millions of KaiOS smartphones have been sold, with the "JioPhone" being a hot item in India.
One Hadlee Simmons wrote an article for ANDROIDAUTHORITY.com titled: "I Spent A Week With A $17 KaiOS Phone", dated 30 April 2019 -- in which he got to play with an MTN Smart S, pushed by Nigerian phone service provider MTN, and recently introduced into a number of African markets.
The Smart S is a very minimal phone, having a little (6-centimeter / 2.4-inch) non-touch display on the top half of the phone, with a keypad on the bottom half of the phone; a dual-core 1.3-GHz CPU; 256 MB of RAM; 512 MB of expandable flash storage; dual SIM slots; a 1.2-megapixel camera on both sides of the phone; plus wi-fi, bluetooth, and GPS. Not bad for $17 USD.
The app selection is surprisingly good -- though they tend to be minimalist implementations, not surprising given the tiny display. Google Assistant is particularly useful; it appears Google is working on voice input. There are limitations, the most obvious being that only one app can be run at a time -- okay, it's possible to play music in the background, but that's about it. There doesn't seem to be much ability to suspend an app and have it pick up where it left off when it's reloaded, nor is there good cut-&-paste between apps.
The weak hardware shows in the slowness of typing -- voice input will be welcome -- and 256 MB of RAM isn't really enough, generating continuous low-memory alerts. The question is whether KaiOS really has a future. If hardware keeps getting cheaper, even if KaiOS is optimized and the rough edges smoothed off, it's not going to amount to anything if Android smartphones are available for the same price. However, the idea of a phone running apps written with Jscript / HTML5 / CSS certainly has its attractions, since such apps could then run on any platform that can run a web browser. The idea is reminiscent of the days, not long past, when flash games were common -- though the apps wouldn't stop at games.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (3): Henrik Poulsen, boss of Orsted -- a Danish wind developer, formerly known as Dong Energy -- sees the future of wind power as open-ended. He believes that it is practical to install 600,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity in relatively shallow waters off Europe's Atlantic, Baltic and North Sea coasts. That array of wind turbines would be able to supply 80% of Europe's electricity. Poulsen says: "You could turn the northern seas into one large power factory over the next ten to fifteen years."
At present, only 16 GW of offshore wind has been installed in Europe, and already people are complaining about congestion. Partly in response, Norway's Equinor, an energy company, is using its deepwater-oil technology to build floating wind turbines anchored to the ocean floor, which could be installed far from land in the North Sea, off the west coast of America, and in East Asia. To date, Equinor has built one 30-megawatt (MW) project off the coast of Scotland, and is considering another to power North Sea oilfields. However, Poulsen believes that floating turbines may be too expensive; they can cost up to four times as much as fixed turbines.
According to Poulsen, the price of offshore wind power generated by Orsted's turbines fell by 60% in 2013 to 2017, as they doubled in size to 8 to 9MW each without demanding large increases in their foundations, cabling and installation time. By the mid-2020s, he expects each of turbine to have a capacity of 15MW. Unfortunately, as ambitious as this is, it's still not enough to meet Europe's climate goals. Nobody else has schemes that can do it, either.
It is generally agreed that massively expanded renewable energy will be the backbone of the drive toward decarbonization. According to the Energy Transitions Commission, electricity's share of total global energy demand, currently about 20%, could grow to 60% by mid-late century, with bio-energy and hydrogen providing most of the rest. That is assuming that demand for electricity quadruples to about 100,000 terawatt-hours to power vehicles, provide heating, and support other users of energy. A quarter of that electricity would be needed just to make hydrogen.
Figures from BP, an oil company, show that in 2018, less than 35% of the world's electricity was generated from non-carbon sources, including nuclear and hydro, and only 8.4% from non-hydro renewables. The ETC estimates that in order to produce all electricity by renewables in 2050, the annual deployment rate of solar and wind power would have to rise tenfold. Nestor Sepulveda at MIT and others argue in a recent paper that 100% renewable energy may not be a reasonable goal, even assuming the goal of decarbonization. They claim it is much more cost-effective to mix intermittent renewables with not-intermittent -- "firm" -- low-carbon resources such as nuclear, natural gas with carbon capture, and bio-energy. Without firm power generation, costs rise rapidly as the system gets closer to full decarbonization, even with storage and a "smart grid".
Of course, energy conservation -- "negawatts" -- simplifies decarbonization. If we don't use as much power, we don't need as much power-generation capacity. Energy intensity -- GDP per unit of energy -- declined at an average rate of 2% a year in 2010 through 2016, leading to a reduction in emissions during that timeframe. Nonetheless, the demand for electricity is growing around the world.
New "breakthrough" technologies may change the equation as well. There's a lot of revived interest in nuclear fission, though nuclear's bad past history doesn't inspire confidence. Some hold out for nuclear fusion, but it remains mocked as the eternal "technology of the future". More realistically, as the price of renewables falls, hydrogen is looking more attractive as a way to store electricity than batteries. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (70): TR was notably assertive in foreign policy, building up the US Navy -- sending 16 battleships making up the "Great White Fleet" around the world in 1907 through 1909 to show the flag -- establishing close relations with Britain, and in particular, driving through the construction of the Panama Canal. From 1903, the USA controlled the strip of Panama through which the canal was built, with the "Canal Zone" being a territory of the United States. The land was purchased from its owners, with the government of Panama ceding control of the land to America "in perpetuity".
The Panamanian government's agreeableness to their country being cut in half by a US territory was not so surprising, since the government had effectively been created by the Americans. Panama had been part of Colombia; TR supported the separatist movement, sending forces to back up the rebels and intimidate the Colombian government. The canal would be operational in 1914.
TR had few scruples about military intervention in Latin American states, and often conducted them. In his State of the Union Address for 1904, as a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, he stated that if foreign powers had disputes with Latin American states that demanded intervention, the US would not look kindly on them doing so -- but would do agreeably do it for them.
Such interventions -- in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua -- would persist on a near-continuous basis into the 1930s, the actions being collectively labeled the "Banana Wars". The interventions were portrayed to the public as policing actions to restore order in nations where law and order had broken down, and there was some truth to that. However, American firms, notably fruit growers, often had their claws into local politics, and the interventions were often convenient to their interests.
Back home, under TR's watch, the old militia structure was finally reorganized. That effort was a consequence of the Spanish-American War, when militia units organized as volunteers in the US Army left much to be desired in field service. Elihu Root, McKinley's war secretary, led an effort to reform the Army and the militia system, one of his main allies being Charles Dick, Congressman, later Senator, from Ohio and chairman of the House Militia Affairs Committee.
The result was the "Militia Act of 1903", also known as the "Dick Act", which placed the "National Guard" -- a title long used by a number of militias, but now formalized -- under effective US military control, with the National Guard to operate as a reserve force that could be called up by the Federal government. This is a simplistic description of the Dick Act, with following acts through mid-century refining the system. Incidentally, purely "State Guards" linger even, but they are marginal as military organizations, and not always regarded with much esteem. The Dick Act was the effective end of the militia as the Framers had understood it.
TR, an energetic outdoorsman, was particularly known for his efforts in conservation. His administration established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments. In 1905, he established the US Forest Service, under the direction of the Department of Agriculture, to maintain America's forest lands. That function had earlier been performed by the Interior Department. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for July included:
-- 05 JUL 19 / METEOR M2-2 -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Vostochny at 0541 UTC (local time - 9) to put the "Meteor M2-2" polar-orbiting weather satellite into orbit for the Russian government.
The earliest Meteor satellites were launched in the 1960s: the first was the experimental "Kosmos 40", lofted in August 1964. Early satellites were given the general Kosmos designation; Meteor #12L, launched in March 1969, was the first satellite to be publicly named "Meteor".
A total of 36 first-generation Meteor satellites were launched between 1964 and 1977, with 6 additional satellites launched between 1974 and 1981 under the "Meteor-Priroda" program for remote sensing. The replacement "Meteor 2" series consisted of 21 satellites launched from 1975 until 1993. Seven third-generation "Meteor 3" satellites were launched between 1984 and 1994. The Meteor 2 and Meteor 3 were upgrades to the original Meteor design, not new-design systems.
The Russians had planned to merge their civilian weather forecasting and remote sensing missions into a single type of spacecraft, the "Meteor 3M" -- but only one was launched, on 10 December 2001, before the project was abandoned. Meteor launches went into hiatus until September 2009, when the first "Meteor M" (modernized) satellite was launched. The second Meteor M was launched in 2014, with the next launch, "Meteor M2-1", being a failure.
The Meteor M2-2 satellite was the replacement, identical to its lost predecessor. Meteor M2-2 was built by the VNIIEM Corporation, had a launch mass of 2,750 kilograms (6,065 pounds) satellite, and a design life of five years. Payloads included:
The launch also included 32 smallsats:
-- 10 JUL 19 / COSMOS 2535 TO 2538 -- A Soyuz 2.1v booster was launched from Plesetsk at 1714 UTC (local time - 4) to put four secret military satellites into orbit. They were assigned the designations of "Cosmos 2535" through "Cosmos 2538".
-- 11 JUL 19 / FALCON EYE 1 (FAILURE) -- A Vega booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 0153 UTC (previous day local time + 3) to put the "Falcon Eye 1" high-resolution Earth-imaging satellite for the United Arab Emirates. The satellite was built by Airbus Defense & Space and carried an optical imaging payload from Thales Alenia Space. Falcon Eye 1 was to be the first of two surveillance satellites ordered by the UAE's military. The booster failed when it attempted to ignite its second stage, and the payload was lost.
-- 13 JUL 19 / SPEKTR RG -- A Proton M Breeze M booster was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 1230 UTC (local time - 6) to put the "Spektr Roentgen Gamma RG" X-ray observatory. Spektr RG was a joint project between Roscosmos and DLR, the Russian and German space agencies. It had a launch mass of 2,712 kilograms (5,980 pounds), and was placed at the outer Sun-Earth libration point, beyond the Earth's moon. It was intended to conduct an all-sky X-ray survey, observing galaxies and large-scale galactic clusters to help astronomers examine the role of dark energy and dark matter in the evolution of the universe.
-- 20 JUL 19 / SOYUZ ISS 59S (ISS) -- A Soyuz Fregate booster was launched from Baikonur at 1628 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 59S" AKA "MS-13" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) support mission. The crew included commander Aleksandr Skvortsov of Roscosmos (3rd space flight), Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (2nd space flight), and Dr. Andrew R. Morgan of NASA (1st space flight). The Soyuz capsule docked with the ISS six hours after launch, with the Soyuz crew joining the "Expedition 60" crew of commander Alexey Ovchinin, plus NASA flight engineers Nick Hague and Christina Koch.
-- 22 JUL 19 / CHANDRAYAAN 2 -- An ISRO Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 3 booster was launched from Sriharikota at 0913 UTC (local time - 5:30) to send the "Chandrayaan 2" lunar probe to the Moon. This was India's second Moon mission, the probe consisting of an orbiter, lander, and rover:
After launch, Chandrayaan 2 used a slow outward spiral trajectory to get the Moon, performing a series of burns to progressively raise its apogee, to finally get there a month after launch.
The mission was originally targeted to launch in 2011 as a joint Indo-Russian venture, with the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, providing the lunar Lander while the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) provided the Orbiter and the Rover. The Russians, confronted with difficulties, finally bailed out on the program in 2015, with ISRO continue to work on its own.
-- 25 JUL 19 / SMALLSATS -- A commercial Hyperbola 1 light booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0500 UTC (local time - 8) on its first flight, to put a set of small payloads into orbit. The booster was built by Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology LTD, better known as "i-Space". This was the first orbital launch attempt of the Hyperbola 1.
The launch payload included the "CAS 7B" CubeSat, an amateur radio mission developed by the Beijing Institute of Technology. There were five other payloads that weren't described in detail, and may have remained attached to the upper stage. They included a payload for Watermelon Maker, a Chinese online education platform; a technology verification unit for China's CCTV state-run television network, and a third payload named "Star Age 6", whose owner and purpose were not disclosed. The launch also delivered unspecified payloads to orbit for two Chinese wine and automobile companies, which sponsored the mission.
The Hyperbola 1 booster is about 20.8 meters (68 feet) tall, with a maximum diameter of about 1.4 meters (4.6 feet), and a take-off weight of about 31 tonnes (68,000 pounds). It has three solid-fuel stages and a liquid-fueled upper kick stage. It can place up to 260 kilograms (570 pounds) of payload into low Earth orbit. The i-Space company is now working on a "Hyperbola 2 booster, which will be able to place 1,100 kilograms (2,400 pounds) into LEO, and a still bigger "Hyperbola 3" booster.
-- 25 JUL 19 / SPACEX DRAGON CRS 18 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2201 UTC (local time + 4), carrying the 18th operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS). It docked with the ISS Harmony module the next day.
-- 26 JUL 19 / YAOGAN 30 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Xichang at 0357 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 30" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites; their orbit matched that of four previous triplets of Yaogan 30 satellites flown in late 2017 and early 2018, which were also launched by Long March 2C boosters from Xichang.
Some analysts believe the 12 Yaogan 30-01, 30-02, 30-03 and 30-04 satellites launched in 2017 and 2018 could be testing new electronic eavesdropping equipment or helping the Chinese military track US and other foreign naval deployments. They may be a "flying triangle" signals intelligence system, intended to track Western naval forces.
The upper stage of the Long March 2C booster featured new control fins. The control fins were intended to direct the fall of the booster. The first stage of launches from Xichang will fall to earth in China, presenting a threat to villages and towns -- not merely because of the impact danger, but because the Long March boosters have been traditionally fueled by highly toxic storable propellants.
-- 30 JUL 19 / MERIDIAN 8 -- A Soyuz 2.1a booster was launched from Plesetsk at 0556 UTC (local time - 4) to put the eighth "Meridian" military comsat into highly elliptical orbit.
-- 31 JUL 19 / PROGRESS 73P (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 1210 UTC (local time + 6) to put a Progress tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It docked with the ISS Pirs module 3 hours 19 minutes after launch, a record. It was the 73rd Progress mission to the ISS.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SUPER POOP TROOPERS: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("'Poop Vault' Of Human Feces Could Preserve Gut's Microbial Biodiversity -- And Help Treat Disease" by Tania Rabesandratana, 1 November 2018), the human microbiome has become a target of intensive research. That implies libraries of samples to study; since feces are the sample of choice for investigation of the human gut microbiome, the consequence is teams of researchers canvassing the world for more samples.
Mathieu Groussin -- a microbiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, working for the Global Microbiome Conservancy (GMC) -- has trekked to villages on the coast of Ghana or in the mountains of Rwanda, asking people for fecal samples. Groussin says: "Everybody laughs -- especially when we stress that we need the whole fecal sample, and show them the big bowl."
The GMC's objective is to identify and preserve gut bacteria from different peoples around the world. Most microbiome research has focused on Western, urban populations, which generally eat processed foods and use antibiotics. There hasn't been so much work on the microbiomes of peoples in the undeveloped world. Such studies of these folk, however, have revealed a much more diverse gut microbiome that appears to be linked to the fact that they don't get certain diseases.
According to Eric Alm -- an MIT microbiologist who co-founded GMC in 2016 with Groussin and two other MIT postdocs -- development is putting that biodiversity at risk. "Strains that co-evolved with humans are currently disappearing," Alm believes that obtaining and preserving the microbiomes could lead to new treatments not just for gut ailments, but for other disorders linked to the microbiome -- such as asthma, allergy, obesity, and diabetes. He says: "I'm 100% confident that there are relevant medical applications for hundreds of strains we've screened and characterized."
On collecting trips, Groussin retrieves the filled plastic bowls the morning after distributing them -- or, in places with high fiber diets, within the hour. He then processes the samples using lab kit stored in the back of a car. Portions of the stool are fixed and dried for DNA sequencing and lipid content measurement. The rest is divided into small tubes, preserved in glycerol, and shipped back to Cambridge in containers at cryogenic temperatures.
There, bacterial strains are isolated, using growth media that mimic the conditions of the gut, and preserved in large freezers. GMC's biobank now stores about 11,000 strains, from about 40 people in seven countries. Its budget will support visits until 2021 to about 34 countries in total all over the world. The GMC hopes to expand its operations after 2021, if funding can be had.
The team is already finding novel strains. The 7,000 strains in GMC's library that came from North American peoples include only five previously unknown genera -- but the 4000 strains from Africa and the Arctic have already yielded 55 unknown genera. The researchers have also found suggestive evidence of "horizontal gene transfers" between the strains living within one person being frequent enough to change the gut microbiome's function during a lifetime. These gene transfers are more frequent in industrialized populations, they found -- possibly as a result of higher environmental pressures, such as antibiotic use.
Developing nations that have a history of exploitation can be wary of the effort. It took the GMC several months to get approval to take samples out of Rwanda, for example. Each country keeps backup samples, with GMC providing training to techs to extract DNA. Getting local talent up to speed on the program really isn't a problem for the GMC, however, since it provides that much more distributed support for the exercise.
The effort could gain further support by storing samples in a territory perceived as "neutral, stable, safe, where their rights will be respected," says Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Dominguez-Bello is leading an initiative to build an international storage facility modeled after the Svalbard Global Seed Vault -- an underground cold storage building on a remote Norwegian island that safeguards plant diversity for future generations.
Just as in the seed vault, researchers, institutions, or governments could make deposits in the microbiota vault, retrieve samples, and grant others access to them. Right now, it's just an idea, being pushed by a handful of researchers, with Dominguez-Bello seeking funds to get the project rolling.
There's also a tricky legal question of who has rights to the samples, and claims on research advances obtained from them. Microorganisms do fall under the Convention on Biological Diversity, a 1992 international treaty ratified by all United Nations member states, except the USA -- but it isn't clear if the convention applies to microbes that come from the human body.
The treaty intends to ensure that any R&D results or benefits arising from genetic resources are shared with the government or community that originally provided them in the first place. GMC is trying to live by the agreement: In each country visited, it has drawn up agreements stipulating that the stool samples and cultured bacteria strains remain the property of individual donors, and can only be used for noncommercial purposes.
That's trickier than it sounds, and will get worse if the microbiome bank is established. Given a microbiome bank crammed with samples and maintained indefinitely, there ends up being a confusing trade-off between what researchers can plan on doing with it, and what kind of feedback there needs to be with the original donors -- or their heirs. Possibly there may be a need to establish a copyright limit? Such problems remain to be solved.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* EASY AI FOR SCIENCE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("No Coding Required" by Matthew Hutson, 31 July 2019), scientists have been finding artificial intelligence (AI) technology a powerful boost to research. They are now finding it even more so, as AI tools emerge that don't require much expertise to use.
He Yang-Hui, a mathematical physicist at the University of London, specializes in string theory, a notoriously arcane field. However, when it came to AI and machine learning, he barely had a clue, thinking: "What is this thing everyone is talking about?"
Fortunately, He was familiar with Mathematica, a popular math tool package. When Mathematica added machine learning tools, he found them very easy to use. On tinkering with them, he realized AI might help him choose among the plausible geometries for the countless multidimensional models of the Universe that string theory proposes. In a 2017 paper, He showed that, thanks to AI tools in Mathematica, just a few extra lines of code would greatly speed up calculations. He became a machine-learning believer, and gives about 20 talks a year to spread the word.
AI used to be in the domain of specialists, but companies like Wolfram Research -- which makes Mathematica -- are trying to democratize the field, designing tools that any researcher can use. In some cases, researchers don't have to code; they can just click, drag, and drop. Juliana Freire -- a computer scientist at New York University in New York City, who is developing a ready-to-use AI tool with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) -- says that there's plenty of computing power available for scientists these days, if they just knew how to use it: "To a large extent, the bottleneck to scientific discoveries now lies with people."
One of the latest systems is a software package named "Ludwig", made open-source by Uber in early 2019. Uber used Ludwig for internal projects, such as predicting food delivery times, before releasing it publicly. Ludwig can train itself using two files:
Once Ludwig learns to recognize associations, the software can then process new data in the same domain to label images, answer questions, or make numerical estimates. At least a dozen startups are using it, along with big companies such as Apple, IBM, and Nvidia. Scientists are using it to analyze images from telescopes and microscopes. Biologist Tobias Boothe -- of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology & Genetics in Dresden, Germany -- uses it to visually distinguish the thousands of species of flatworms, a difficult task even for experts. To train Ludwig, he just uploads images and labels. It was a snap: "Just to get something started and get a result was superstraightforward."
Such tools are not mere toys for non-programmers, says Tim Kraska -- a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Kraska leads the "Northstar" project, which is developing a machine learning tool, supported by DARPA, under a program designated "Data-Driven Discovery of Models". In a demo for SCIENCEMAG.org, Kraska showed how easy it was to use Northstar. He loaded a publicly-available database of 60,000 critical care patients that includes details on their demographics, lab tests, and medications. It only took a few clicks to create several heart failure prediction models, which immediately zeroed in on risk factors for the condition. He could remove obvious risk factors, to reveal those that are less obvious.
The Wolfram computer language, which powers Mathematica, does require some coding to make use of its machine learning tools, but it's not hard to write Wolfram programs, and the AI toolkit is very powerful. In a demo for SCIENCEMAG.org, Jon McLoone -- of Wolfram in Oxford UK -- easily trained his computer's camera to recognize when he was forming a rock, paper, or scissors with his hand, without specifying how the camera was to do it.
Marco Thiel -- an applied mathematician at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom -- similarly used the tools to distinguish cats from toddlers, and connected the software to a camera and a garden sprinkler. When the camera spots a cat, it turns on the sprinkler, but won't turn on when it spots his daughter. More practically, Thiel works with drug companies that are sifting through patient data in search of early signs of dementia, or the triggers of epileptic seizures. He obtains patient input data from home cameras, appliances, and wearable devices like Fitbits, coupling the inputs to patient histories.
There is the difficulty that machine learning algorithms tend to be "black boxes", their internal workings being opaque, with a corresponding tendency for them to go off the rails. This problem is even worse with naive users, who may not realize they have generated biased or flatly bogus results. Kraska, however, says that Northstar takes that into account, featuring an AI component that checks for and counteracts rookie mistakes, such as assuming any pattern an algorithm finds is statistically significant. Kraska adds: "In the end, it actually tries to mimic what a data scientist would do."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (2): Steven Davis of the University of California in Irvine has led a team of researchers in determining what a net-zero-emissions energy system would look like, using available technologies that he describes as "fairly simple and finite". Along with electricity and batteries, they include hydrogen and ammonia, biofuels, synthetic fuels, "carbon capture & storage (CCS)", and removal of carbon from the atmosphere. They can have many end uses. Hydrogen could have a role in light and heavy transport, heating, steelmaking, and synthetic fuels for jet aircraft. CCS could be used in heating and cement-making.
Each has its pluses and minuses. There are obstacles to making, moving and using hydrogen on a large scale. Biofuels such as ethanol are already being blended with conventional hydrocarbon fuels in places such as Brazil and America, but energy crops compete with the food industry for land, and their cultivation also produces greenhouse gases. Emission-free synthetic fuels heavily rely on hydrogen and carbon monoxide to produce surrogate hydrocarbons, so their development hinges on low-cost supplies of those two gases. CCS, as Davis puts it, elicits a "collective groan" from environmentalists, who see it as life support for the fossil-fuel industry -- but it is hard to imagine decarbonization of industries like cement without capturing the CO2 emitted in flue gases.
Some of the technologies are closer to commercialization than others. Those working on decarbonizing the energy system have been able to sketch out a timetable for how it could happen:
What actually happens will hinge not merely on the availability of technology, but on what government mandates and tax incentives are in place to encourage the shift. Nonetheless, the obstacles are not insurmountable -- and the economics are not quite as troublesome as they look.
The IPCC estimates that, between 2016 and 2035, the annual cost of keeping the rise in temperature to 1.5C would be about $2.4 trillion USD, or about 2.5% of world GDP. In 2018, the world's investment in energy production was $1.6 trillion USD -- mostly in coal, oil and gas. On global terms, the sums are not so outrageous. In addition, we already have technologies that can do the job. They are, by and large, not mature technologies, but that means they can be expected to become cheaper and more capable over time.
Renewables also have the big bonus of having no fuel costs; build up the infrastructure, from then on, it merely needs to be maintained. Hydrogen is not mature at all, but it is particularly promising, since it is an excellent complement to a renewable electricity system that could be used in heavy transport, heating, and industry.
A report from the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), a global think-tank, concludes that to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions, global hydrogen production needs to rise from about 60 million tonnes a year today, to about ten times that by mid-century. That's an ambitious target, but interest in hydrogen is growing fast: membership of the Hydrogen Council, a forum made up of global chemical, car and oil companies started in 2017, quadrupled in 18 months.
To make the hydrogen cleanly, most of it will have to come from electrolysis of water using renewable energy. Electrolysis currently accounts for only 5% of hydrogen production -- the rest comes from "steam reforming" of fossil fuels -- and the electricity for that small quantity, for the most part, doesn't come from renewable energy. A hydrogen economy will demand a vast investment in low-cost renewable energy. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (69): The Republicans took back the presidency in 1896, with William McKinley as POTUS 25. Cleveland's lackluster presidency was at least marked by the admission of the 46th state, Utah, in early 1896, during his lame-duck period.
The economic depression had ended, and McKinley enjoyed a booming economy. Leveraging off a military buildup under his two predecessors, he adopted an assertive foreign policy. Cuba was engaged in a rebellion against Spanish control at the time; to help establish order, McKinley ordered the battleship USS MAINE to Havana, where it mysteriously exploded on the evening of 15 February 1898. A board of inquiry judged that it had been destroyed by a mine -- though modern studies suggest it was likely it was due to a coal fire that went out of control -- and Congress then declared war on Spain. This was America's third declaration of war.
The "Spanish-American War" lasted a mere ten weeks, and ended in a resounding defeat for Spain. In the peace treaty, the United States acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines as territories, with the US compensating Spain with $20 million to cover Spanish infrastructure in the islands. Cuba was occupied by the US until 1902, when it won independence -- though the USA retained influence, notably obtaining a permanent military presence at Guantanamo Bay. The war against Spain was generally popular with the American public, and helped to reinforce unity between North and South. As a bit of a snack, America annexed the Hawaiian Islands later in 1898, followed in 1899 by the annexation of uninhabited Wake Island in the central Pacific, and in 1900 the islands of American Samoa in the South Pacific.
In 1900, a Congressional charter was granted to the American Red Cross (ARC), a relief organization, an arm of the International Red Cross. The International Red Cross had been devised as a consequence of the first Geneva Convention, the original objective being war relief. The ARC had actually been founded in 1881; it was granted a charter as a consequence of the Hague Convention of 1899.
This demonstrated the flexibility of the congressional charter mechanism, by providing government recognition of a nonprofit organization -- with the government having no formal authority over the organization, but capable of providing assistance if circumstances required. In the same way, other nonprofit civic organizations -- from the Boy & Girl Scouts, to the National Park Foundation and the US Olympic Committee.
William McKinley was re-elected in 1900, but was shot by an anarchist on 6 September 1901, dying of gangrene from an abdominal wound eight days later. McKinley had been notably unconcerned with personal security; in consequence of the assassination, the Secret Service was assigned the mission of protecting the president. That has since come to be regarded, by the public at least, as the primary duty of the Secret Service.
* McKinley was succeeded by his vice president, Teddy Roosevelt, who became POTUS 26. McKinley was so overshadowed by TR, as he was known, that he would only be remembered for the Spanish-American War, and for being assassinated. TR took a highly energetic view of the presidency, famously calling it a "bully pulpit", and bringing in what would become known as the "Progressive Era", a period of social and political reform, driven by both Republicans and Democrats.
Progressivism not only meant a crackdown on political corruption -- that had been going on, to a degree, from after the Grant Administration -- it meant an expansion of the mission of government to include:
Roosevelt offered the public a "Square Deal", emphasizing that the government was for "We, the People", and not for big business interests. This sort of populism was nothing entirely new, but TR took it to a new level of earnestness and comprehensiveness. In 1903, he signed the "Department of Commerce & Labor" into existence, which was focused on encouragement of commerce, regulation of business, and the rights of labor. It was split into the "Department of Commerce" and the "Department of Labor" ten years later.
The 1906 Pure Food & Drug Act established standards to prevent the interstate transport of adulterated food or drugs, with monitoring by the USDA. Eventually, in 1927, the USDA's monitoring organization would become the "Food, Drug, & Insecticide" organization, with the name changed to "Food & Drug Administration" in 1930. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from THEVERGE.com ("Fiat's Newest Concept Is A Modular Electric Car You Can Almost Endlessly Customize" by Sean O'Kane, 6 March 2019), the 2019 Geneva Motor Show revealed a number of new concepts from European auto-makers -- one of the more interesting being the Fiat "Centoventi", which is a customizable, modular electric car.
The Centoventi -- which was named in honor of the Italian automaker's 120th anniversary -- is, at the core, a very plain vehicle that owners can dress up as they like. Customers would buy a metal gray car, loosely based on the company's Panda lineup, and then choose from four different roofs, four bumpers, four wheel covers, and four paint schemes. The roof choices, for example, include a soft top option or a solar panel to help power the in-car electronics, which include a digital display on the rear bumper.
Once the configuration has been established, the customer would then choose from a menu of 114 different accessories from sibling Fiat Chrysler company Mopar: seat cushions, head restraints, bottle holders, sound system, and so on. Fiat envisions that some parts could be 3D printed on demand by the dealer. Mounting holes in the dashboard allow the owner to plug different accessories in next to the digital instrument cluster, such as holders for a smartphone or smart speaker.
The modularity extends to the battery array. The standard fit for the car gives it battery power for about 100 kilometers (62 miles), but the battery packs attach to a sliding rail system that allows fit of enough batteries to get about 500 kilometers (311 miles) of range. Another fun features of the Centoventi is that it has a display system on the tailgate.
The main difficulty with the Centoventi is that the extensive range of options is likely to lead to customer confusion. That implies the need for a "smart" configuration tool that accepts general customer desires, offers a configuration to meet them, with the customer then tweaking the configuration as desired. The configuration is then used to set up the car for the customer. Without automation, the Centoventi would be impractical.
* As discussed by an article from GIZMODO.com ("The New Monopoly Has a Voice-Controlled AI Banker That Will Never Cheat" by Andrew Liszewski, 19 June 2019), toymaker Hasbro has introduced an updated version of the classic MONOPOLY board game. Traditionally, one of the players in MONOPOLY is the banker, handling distribution of MONOPOLY money, with the banker occasionally getting into disputes.
The new MONOPOLY has a voice-driven electronic banker, based on AI algorithms, that is highly reliable, and doesn't lead to as many disputes. A few board games already leverage off of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant have become more common and more capable, using them as quiz masters, scorekeepers, or impartial timers. However, that raises privacy issues. In addition, board games are most often played by kids, and they don't usually have smartphones or smart speakers.
The new MONOPOLY game includes its own smart speaker, in the shape of a top hat, with the voice of Rich Uncle Pennybags -- or informally "Mister MONOPOLY". It's not a very smart assistant; it can't distinguish voices, so there are four buttons on top of the hat to allow the four players to identify themselves, to then make requests like: "Buy BOARDWALK!" -- or: "Build a hotel!"
All financial transactions are handled by Mister MONOPOLY. Alas, the grand tradition of MONOPOLY money is gone, since Mister MONOPOLY keeps accounts. No doubt, players can ask for status on their accounts. The AI-enabled MONOPOLY costs about $30 USD, as compared to $20 US for the old-style game.
* As discussed by an article from THEVERGE.com ("Debit Card With Built-In Fingerprint Reader Begins Trial In The UK" by Jon Porter, 11 March 2019), the British bank NatWest is now conducting trials of a new "near-field communications (NFC)" debit card that features a built-in fingerprint reader. The card will allow users to make NFC payments -- called "contactless" in the UK -- without use of a PIN or a signature. The normal 30-GBP limit for a contactless payment will not apply to payments made with the reader card.
Fingerprint data is stored locally on the card, meaning the Black Hats can't get at it by cracking a bank's datasystems. As those who push biometric systems continually emphasize, it's not foolproof; sufficiently determined thieves can fake fingerprints. However, fingerprints make much more work for thieves; they're much more secure than a PIN that anyone can steal just by being observant.
Gemalto, the company behind the card's biometric tech, ran a trial in South Africa in 2017, and a pilot with Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo in 2018. The difficulty was that people had to visit a bank to get the cards, while mobile payment services like Apple Pay or Google Pay allow users to "do it themselves". NatWest's trial also required users to get the card at a bank. However, is that really a problem? Nobody who has a smartphone needs the fingerprint card, and people who do need it, will find it cheaper to visit a bank than to get a smartphone.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SPEKTR RG IN SPACE: On 13 July 2019, a Russian Proton M booster was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan to put the "Spektr Roentgen Gamma" x-ray observatory into space. As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Telescope Designed To Study Mysterious Dark Energy Keeps Russia's Space Science Hopes Alive" by Daniel Clery, 10 June 2019), Spektr RG represents a major advance for Russian space science.
Spektr RG's mission is to map all of the estimated 100,000 galaxy clusters that can be observed across the universe. Containing as many as 1,000 galaxies each, the clusters are the largest structures bound by gravity in the Universe. Surveying them should provide clues to the evolution of the Universe, and the nature of the mysterious "dark energy" that is accelerating its expansion.
Spektr RG was originally conceived over three decades ago, as part of a Soviet plan for a series of "great observatories", to complement US work on ambitious space observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Rashid Sunyaev of Moscow's Space Research Institute (IKI) proposed a space x-ray observatory -- a six-tonne platform that would have telescopes, and would involve 20 institutes in 12 countries, including the USA. With the collapse of the USSR, the program didn't happen; the resources weren't there. Sunyaev, now at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, says: "They told us the spacecraft was too large for Russia, too ambitious. It just died."
It rose from the dead in 2003, with a plan for a less ambitious mission. The idea was to fly a UK-built all-sky monitor and an x-ray survey telescope from the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching name ROSITA -- which had been slated to fly to the International Space Station, but was grounded when space shuttle Challenger was lost on re-entry.
The scope of the revived project expanded: instead of simply observing interesting x-ray sources, such as supermassive black holes swallowing up infalling matter, the space observatory was to conduct a sky survey, mapping galaxy clusters in the x-ray spectrum to understand the overall structure of our Universe. Studies of distant supernovas in the 1990s had revealed that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, which was attributed to a factor known simply as "dark energy".
Nothing was really known about dark energy other than that it accelerated the expansion of the Universe; to find out more meant getting a better grasp of that expansion. Galaxy clusters were the best markers for expansion, since they more closely tracked it than galaxies, which had their own peculiar motions that threw off measurements. Galaxy clusters are best observed in the x-ray spectrum, since the gaps between galaxies in a cluster are filled with gas heated to millions of degrees as the galaxies compress into the cluster.
ROSITA didn't have the capability of doing the job, so it was enhanced into the "extended ROSITA" or "eROSITA", paid for by MPE and the German Aerospace Center, DLR. It was to be an array of seven identical telescopes with five times the effective collecting area of the original ROSITA. Russia and Germany signed an agreement in 2007, with launch slated for 2012.
The schedule proved too optimistic. The UK instrument failed to win funding; it was replaced with a Russian telescope, named "ART-XC", which was to complement eROSITA by detecting rarer high-energy x-rays. Such high-energy x-rays are particularly useful for observing the supermassive black holes at galactic centers, since the radiation cuts through the clouds of gas and dust that shroud them. Peter Predehl, leader the Spektr RG team at MPE, says things did not then go smoothly: "There have been many ups and downs. Whenever we thought we were out of the woods, a new one came along."
Making the mirrors for eROSITA proved much harder than expected. A conventional telescope mirror, no matter what material it's made of, can't reflect x-rays; they just penetrate the material. X-ray telescopes have to use a "grazing incidence" configuration, with nested drums of reflector surfaces with a shallow curvature. X-ray photons hit the surface of a drum at a shallow angle, and are reflected, much like a flat stone skips across water. Each of eROSITA's seven scopes contains 54 gold-plated cylindrical mirrors with precision surfaces; they were so tough to make that MPE team had to fire its main contractor part way through.
Another complication was the need to place the observatory at the Sun-Earth libration -- gravitational balance -- point, beyond the orbit of the Moon, on the axis running from the Sun through the Earth. There, it would have an unobstructed view of the cosmos; if it were placed in orbit around the Earth, it would be blocked every time it made an orbit around the planet. That meant a bigger launch vehicle, but more significantly, the space platform wouldn't be protected from solar radiation by Earth's magnetic field. That meant the electronics had to be hardened against radiation. Further problems included system integration of the German and Russian elements, as well as bugs in the communications system.
Now that Spektr RG is in space, much is expected of it. Russian space scientists are particularly excited, because it is effectively the first Russian great space observatory. A radio-astronomy mission, Spektr R, was flown in 2011, but it fell well short of expectations. There are plans for further great observatories, including an ultraviolet telescope named "Spektr UV", and a millimeter-wave radio telescope named "Spektr M". However, Spektr UV won't fly until 2025 at earliest, and the program is not going smoothly, partly because of actions by the Russian government that have antagonized international partners. Spektr M is not yet fully funded.
Mikhail Pavlinsky of IKI, in overall charge of Spekr RG, says: "Russia is doing as much as possible with the budget available." IKI is working on a range of programs, some with international partners, and there's not enough money to go around. For Russia's astrophysicists, Pavlinksy says: "It means slow progress."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* INCONSISTENT ANCIENT CLIMATE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Ancient Global Climate Events Rippled Unevenly Across The Globe" by Sid Perkins, 24 July 2019), it is a trivial observation that climate is always changing. The important question is: in what way?
Over the past two millennia, the Earth has gone through extended periods of warmer- and cooler-than-normal climate, including the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" and the "Little Ice Age". Until recently, researchers believed these periods indicated climate shifts around the world. Now it is becoming apparent that the Earth warmed and cooled unevenly, with different regions reaching peak high and low temperatures at different times. It is also apparent that the warming trend since the mid-19th century is different, covering 98% of the planet.
Widespread networks of weather stations that could record temperatures didn't exist until the last half of the 19th century, so formal records of temperatures are sketchy before that time. However, researchers can estimate past temperatures using a toolkit of natural proxies. These "paleothermometers" include the widths of tree rings, and the proportions of atomic isotopes in glacial ice, corals, clam shells, cave deposits, and lake sediments.
Raphael Neukom, a climate scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, says such paleothermometers can probe climate back hundreds or thousands of years. Neukom and his colleagues used seven statistical techniques to analyze almost 700 sets of natural climate records from 1 CE to 2000 CE. The data was based on tree rings, ice cores, and cave formations, among other sources; some of the analytical methods used simple correlations, while others used more sophisticated techniques.
All the methods yielded global average temperature trends that rose and fell in parallel throughout the two millennia. In the pre-industrial era, volcanic activity -- such as the 1815 eruption of Indonesia's Mount Tambora -- seemed to be a major cause of cooling events. Throughout that time, however, changes in the output of the Sun's radiation didn't seem to influence global temperatures very much.
Those conclusions were not surprising. However, when Neukom and another group of colleagues looked at temperature trends over regions, they found them inconsistent. For example, the Little Ice Age -- which is generally believed to have begun between 1350 and 1450 before it was ended by warming in the 1800s -- was undoubtedly the longest and deepest cool spell of the past two millennia. Nonetheless, Neukom's study found the cold was not globally consistent:
The researchers found the same pattern of inconsistency when they looked at lesser-known events, such as:
As with the Little Ice Age, the warmest and coolest decades within those intervals didn't occur everywhere in the world at the same time. According to Neukom, less than half the globe experienced the most extreme temperatures at the same times. For example, at the height of the Medieval Warm Period, only 40% of Earth's surface reached peak temperatures simultaneously.
He adds that is not what has been happening since the 1850s. For more than 98% of the globe, the warmest decades in the 2000-year-long interval the team studied occurred during the late 20th century. He concludes that "natural causes are not sufficient to explain current warming." Scott Saint George -- a paleoclimatologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who was not involved in the work -- comments: "No matter where you go, you can't avoid the dramatic march toward warmer temperatures."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (1): As discussed by a survey from ECONOMIST.com ("Conquering Carbon Dioxide" by Henry Tricks, 29 November 2018), a visit to Norway seems, in some respects, like a trip to the future. Tesla electric vehicles (EV) are common there, with the vehicles charged by plentiful Norwegian hydropower. Fast-charging stations are common as well, allowing Norwegians to drive their Teslas anywhere, without concern for being stranded.
Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are also starting to show up on Norway's streets. A Hyundai Nexo, owned by Nel, a Norwegian hydrogen company, carries a message on its rear window:
THANKS FOR THE RIDE, DINOSAURS! WE'LL TAKE IT FROM HERE.
That might be a motto for the age of decarbonization; or maybe it's just hype. Along with China, Norway has charged forward, so to speak, on EVs -- but ironically, Norway could afford to finance the tax breaks and other incentives because of the immense wealth it derives from oil and gas. Hydrocarbons produced by Equinor, the state energy company, produced 310 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2017. That was almost as much as the total carbon dioxide (CO2 ) belched out by Britain, a country with 12 times Norway's population.
The rest of the world is at least, or more, as conflicted between the need to address climate change, and reluctance to end addiction to fossil fuels. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate committed the signatories to reducing emissions to keep the world's temperature from rising 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100; but the steps taken will be hard-pressed to keep the increase under 3C.
Renewables are gaining ground, with investment double that for power generation with coal, gas, oil and nuclear combined in 2017. Sales of EVs are also growing rapidly, the total number of EVs growing from 3 to 4 million in a mere six-month interval in 2018. However, in 2017, the world still got 85% of its energy from fossil fuels, and CO2 emissions hit an all-time yearly high in 2018.
To get ahead of the learning curve will require a massive investment in renewables and energy storage, all the more so because power needs are growing rapidly around the world. Compounding the trouble is that there are some sectors -- heavy transport, heating, and industry -- where decarbonization is technically difficult. In 2014, these "hard-to-abate" sectors produced about 1 billion tonnes of CO2, or 41% of the total, compared with 13.6 billion tonnes for the entire power sector. The biggest industrial emitters are cement, steel, and chemicals.
In order to limit global warming to less than 2C, total emissions from global energy use across industry alone will have to be 50% to 80% lower by 2050 than they are now, and as much as 75% to 90% lower if the rise in temperatures is to be capped at 1.5C -- according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-backed body of experts. Even then, over the course of the century, hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 will need to be extracted from the atmosphere, in what are called "negative emissions".
To assess how hard this will be, consider that in the 200 years from the start of the coal age to 1970, the burning of fossil fuels, flaring, and cement-making produced 420 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, mostly CO2, or about 1,200 times the weight of every human on the planet today. Between 1970 and 2011, the amount tripled to 1.3 trillion tonnes.
The steel and cement industries each produce more CO2 than any country except China and the United States. For every tonne of cement produced, almost three-quarters of a tonne of CO2 ends up in the atmosphere. Cars and trucks are an even bigger burden on the climate; and knowing how much you produce when you fly can ruin the pleasure of flying off in a jetliner. This survey focuses on emissions from energy production and industry -- not emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use, which account for about a quarter of total emissions. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (68): In his second term, Grover Cleveland continued to be soft on civil rights, with his presidency seeing the final solidification of Jim Crow. In 1890, the state of Louisiana had passed a law requiring segregation on trains. Ironically, the railroad companies were not happy about the law, since it meant pulling more passenger cars. In 1892, one Homer Plessy -- an "octaroon", only 1/8th black -- challenged the law, with the support of the railroad companies, by sitting in a whites-only car. Plessy was arrested and convicted by Judge John Howard Ferguson, with Plessy paying a $25 fine.
Plessy filed a suit, PLESSY V. FERGUSON, on the basis of violation of his rights under the 14th Amendment, which made its way up to the Federal Supreme Court in 1896. The high court ruled against Plessy on a 7:1 vote. The basis of the decision was the assertion that separation did not necessarily imply inequality. What harm did it do black people to have their own facilities, separate from those of whites? The problem was that facilities for blacks were consistently inferior to those of whites. The sole dissenter was, again, Justice Harlan, who eloquently commented:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty.
But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.
It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race. In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.
END QUOTE
With judicial blessing, the Jim Crow society of the South crystallized, black folk being assigned second-class status in segregated transportation; public facilities; and government services, notably schools. Disenfranchisement of black people by tricks such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and arcane regulations whittled the black voter base down to nothing. SCOTUS was not out of step with the rest of the country, either; most Americans simply did not care about Jim Crow, and those who didn't like it could do nothing about it. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Zebra Stripes Confuse Biting Flies" by Virginia Morell, 20 February 2019), the zebra's stripes have been traditionally been interpreted as a form of "disruptive camouflage", helping to confuse predators. There have been other suggestions as to why the zebra has stripes, for example that they help cool the animal. In reality, nobody's ever produced much solid evidence to show why the zebra has stripes -- until now.
In 2014, researchers found that the ranges of the horsefly and tsetse fly species and the three most distinctively striped equid species -- Equus burchelli, E. zebra, and E. grevyi -- have a clear overlap. The scientists argued that zebras acquired their stripes because they confounded these insects, which are often vectors for disease. To investigate, they observed three captive plains zebras and nine monochromatically-colored horses in adjacent fields in the United Kingdom where European tabanids (horseflies) are present. They also covered the horses with three different coats -- one black, one white, and one striped like a zebra.
The stripes did nothing to drive flies away; both zebras and uncovered domestic horses experienced the same rate of circling flies. However, when the flies tried to land on zebras, they misjudged their approach, and either missed or crashed. The flies landed on zebras at about one-fourth of the rate they landed on the horses.
During five hours of observation, the researchers also didn't see a single horsefly bite a zebra, while they bit the horses 239 times during eleven hours of observation. Only five flies landed on the horses dressed in zebra coats during a 30-minute period, while more than 60 touched down on those in the solid black and solid white coats in the same time period. The flies attacked all the horses' uncovered heads at the same rate. The stripes, then protect zebras against flies.
It is somewhat puzzling, then, that the rapidly-evolving flies haven't acquired the ability to defeat the stripes. Presumably, whatever visual mechanism that forces them to miss is too useful to the flies to go away.
* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Ultraviolet Light Could Provide A Powerful New Source Of Green Fuel" by Robert F. Service, 19 February 2019), there's long been interest in using methanol -- wood alcohol -- as an alternative fuel. The good news about methanol is that it can be derived from plant waste; the bad news is that a volume of methanol has only about half the energy of the same volume of gasoline. Now researchers say they've developed a cheap way to convert methanol to ethanol, which has a (somewhat) higher energy density, and more importantly isn't toxic.
Efforts to convert methanol to ethanol, there being at least three existing chemical processes that can do the job. However, these processes require heat, pressure, and toxic additives such as carbon monoxide. Li Chao-Jun, a chemist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, thought there might be an easier way. In 2014, Li and his colleagues showed a tiny forest of nanowires made from the semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) could catalyze methane gas into benzene, a commodity feedstock chemical. Working from there, the researchers wondered if the same approach could catalyze methanol into ethanol.
The researchers created and tested a number of different nanowire schemes. They found a forest of long, thin GaN nanowires spiked with magnesium worked best to absorb ultraviolet (UV) light, using that energy to convert methanol to ethanol. The absorbed UV light caused the nanowires' surfaces to become more negatively charged than their cores -- with the result that a nanowire can tear a water molecule from an individual methanol molecule sitting on a nanowire surface, leaving behind a reactive compound called methyl carbene. The water molecule floats off, while the methyl carbene reacts with a neighboring methanol molecule to make ethanol.
This is just a proof of concept, nowhere near commercialization. Not so much solar UV reaches the ground, so to be practical, the nanowires need to work with visible light. In addition to producing ethanol, the nanowire catalyst can also generate other valuable hydrocarbons such as 1-propanol, an alcohol used in pharmaceutical manufacturing, The nanowires could, in principle, be the basis of an entire "green" chemical industry to convert low-value commodity chemicals into a range of more valuable ones.
* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("To Seal Off Dangerous Lead Pipes, Just Add Electricity" by Robert F. Service, 03 April 2019), lead pipes have long been out of fashion -- but they're still in widespread use. Lead contamination can cause neurological problems in adults, and stunt brain development of children.
To prevent lead from leaching into the water flowing through lead pipes, many cities add "phosphate" compounds to the water that produce negatively-charges phosphate, or "---PO4". When the phosphates encounter positively-charge lead ions, they form lead phosphate, or "Pb3(PO4)2", which is inert and insoluble, building up a crust on the inside of the pipe that cuts of leaching of lead ions.
However, building up the crust can take years. Now researchers in California have figured out how to accelerate this process 500-fold, by the simple procedure of threading a wire down a pipe, and applying an electric current for a few hours. The current does draw more lead ions into the water, but that only means faster formation of lead phosphate. Once the lead phosphate barrier is in place, lead levels in the water drop 99%.
The scheme promises to be relatively easy to apply, cheap, and effective. It's only been tested in the lab, but the researchers plan to test in a school in Oakland, California.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SMITHSONIAN CLIMATE CHART: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("A 500-Million-Year Survey Of Earth's Climate Reveals Dire Warning For Humanity" by Paul Voosen, 22 May 2019) the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has recently re-opened its updated fossil gallery. There's more in it besides dinosaur bones, with one display showing how the Earth's climate has shifted over geological time, driving radical changes in life, and how, in the modern age, humans have transformed the climate.
The display is the work of Scott Wing and Brian Huber -- a paleobotanist and paleontologist, respectively, at the museum. Their goal at the outset of the effort was to chart swings in Earth's average surface temperature over the past half-billion years. They also wanted to debunk the many "alternative facts" spread by climate-change deniers to create the impression that climate change is nothing to worry about. Wing and Huber wanted to show that ancient temperature swings are linked to mass extinctions. According to Wing, abrupt climate changes "have catastrophic side effects that are really hard to adapt to."
However, making the chart turned out to be unexpectedly challenging, leading to a major research effort to reconstruct the record. That's still a work in progress, but it's already showing that some ancient climates were even more extreme than was thought.
It's not too difficult to trace ancient glaciations, nor hothouse periods when palms grew near the poles. Beyond those extremes, things aren't so certain over the past half-billion years, the Phanaerozoic Era. Paleoclimate studies have tended to be balkanized, with different groups of researchers investigating their own slices of time, and using their own methodologies to determine temperatures -- for example leaf shape, or growth bands in fossilized corals that may not play well with each other. Dana Royer, a paleoclimatologist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, is honest about it: "We don't talk to each other all that much."
That wasn't satisfactory; at a meeting in 2019, Wing and Huber assembled a loose-knit collaboration, named "Phantastic", to put together a rigorous record. It wasn't easy, since ancient global temperatures varied with location and season, and because the gauges drop out with deeper time: tree rings go back only thousands of years, and ice cores only a million years or so.
Fortunately, oxygen isotopes in tiny fossilized shells on the ocean floor give a fairly reliable longer-term record. Since water molecules with lighter oxygen isotopes evaporate faster and end up locked in ice sheets, the ratio of light to heavy isotopes in the fossils indicates the volume of global ice, which provides a rough guide to temperatures. The problem with this approach is that plate tectonics means the seafloor is always, on the geological timescale, on the move, being generated at oceanic ridges, to then be swallowed up in deep ocean trenches. It's hard to find ocean floors older than 100 million years.
To go deeper in time, Ethan Grossman, a geochemist at Texas A&M University in College Station, hunts for marine fossils found on land -- primarily teeth, and extinct bivalves known as "brachiopods". They tend to be from the shallow, isolated seas that formed inside ancient supercontinents. To obtain temperatures from those fossils, scientists have to assume those seas had a balance of oxygen isotopes similar to the ocean today, and there was uncertainty about the validity of that assumption.
Researchers working in Phantastic came up with a second thermometer, using a new technique called "clumped isotopes". Using mass spectrometers, they analyze the fossil shells for carbonate molecules that contain a heavy isotope of oxygen bound to a heavy carbon, with this occurring more frequently at lower temperatures. The results will be misleading if the fossil was exposed to heat and pressure during its burial, but researchers have learned how to identify such altered specimens.
Grossman and his colleagues went through their samples using clumped isotopes, to find that the results generally matched those obtained with oxygen-isotope probes. The results were startling, as the team reported in a 2018 paper. About 450 million years ago, ocean waters averaged 35 to 40 degrees Celsius (95 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit) -- about 20C (36F) warmer than today, warm as bathwater. Marine life thrived in the warm waters. Grossman says: "It's unsettling for the biologists, these warm temperatures we're proposing. These are extreme for modern organisms."
Obtaining data has been one big challenge for Phantastic; another has been to create global temperature curves from the data. One Phantastic collaborator, Christopher Scotese -- a geologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois -- came up with a simple way to come up with a global picture, by using the presence of polar ice caps to indicate whether the world had a steep temperature differential between the equator and its poles. Other collaborators are using the sparse data to calibrate computer simulations of the ancient climate, the way weather models use satellite data as a reality check.
Wing and Huber are pleased with the work done by Phantastic, but say the temperature curve presented at the museum is a beta, Wing says: "It's sort of jamming together different kinds of observations, different kinds of models, different kinds of procedures, and probably different assumptions." Once Phantastic converges on a solution, the display will be updated.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* MISSING DARK MATTER: As discussed by a press release from Yale University ("Astronomers Confirm The Existence of Galaxies With No Dark Matter" by Jim Shelton, 31 March 2019), observations point to the existence of galaxies that don't appear to have any "dark matter" -- the unseen mass that restrains the expansion of the Universe.
In 2018, a Yale-led team of researchers published a study on galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, or just "DF2", that concluded it had little or no dark matter. This was significant, because it suggested that dark matter is not necessarily associated with traditional matter on a galactic scale. It also contradicts theories that said dark matter is not really matter, but a subtle variation in the laws of gravity on a cosmic scale. If that were the case, such anomalies would be hard to explain.
Not surprisingly, the finding was controversial, which the research team clearly understood. Pieter van Dokkum -- a Yale professor of astronomy and team leader -- says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
If there's only one object, you always have a little voice in the back of your mind saying: BUT WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG? Even though we did all the checks we could think of, we were worried that nature had thrown us for a loop and had conspired to make something look really special, whereas it was really something more mundane.
END QUOTE
Two new studies suggest they're not wrong. Research performed by a team under Shany Danieli, a Yale graduate student, confirmed the finding, using the Cosmic Web Imager, a component of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. The observations showed that the stars inside the galaxy are moving at a speed consistent with the mass of the galaxy's visible matter. If there were dark matter in DF2, the stars would be moving much faster.
Van Dokkum is lead author of the other new study, which describes a second galaxy, named "DF4", lacking dark matter. Both DF2 and DF4 are part of a relatively newly-discovered class of galaxies known as "ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDG)". They are as big as the Milky Way in dimensions, but have from 100 to 1,000 times fewer stars. This makes them appear fuzzy and translucent, as well as hard to observe.
Danieli is leading a wide area survey with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array -- a telescope designed by van Dokkum, with 48 40-centimeter telephoto lenses in two clusters, sited in New Mexico -- to look for more examples in a systematic way, then give candidates a close-up using the Keck telescopes. Danieli says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We hope to next find out how common these galaxies are and whether they exist in other areas of the universe. We want to find more evidence that will help us understand how the properties of these galaxies work with our current theories. Our hope is that this will take us one step further in understanding one of the biggest mysteries in our universe -- the nature of dark matter.
END QUOTE
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GET IN LINE (3): Theme parks are indeed the gold standard for line design and management. Disney has a command center in each of its parks that keeps track of waiting times and queues, and accordingly adjusts the system to compensate when crowds get thick. Disney uses well-established tricks to make waiting in line more tolerable, or even fun.
One trick is "queue chunking", making the line snake around walls so people don't see how long it is. Another is deliberately high-balling the wait times announced to people in line, so it seems like the line is moving faster. Walt Disney Imagineering -- the company's team of designers and engineers -- builds a waiting line as part of the attraction, adding games, interactive features, and performances. Go to the STAR TOURS attraction, the waiting line runs past, say, the robots R2D2 and C3PO having an argument.
Richard Ledbetter, a lecturer at Indiana University Bloomington, has established guidelines for queue design at attractions, including: facilitating personal interaction -- which is why the line is never a single file, unless unavoidable -- and promoting engagement, which is the ultimate distraction. Ledbetter says: "That's why Disney, Universal Studios, and other major parks are creating very engaging and themed wait time experiences. They almost become part of the attraction itself, so guests don't feel as though they're waiting in line for the attraction, but they're actually involved in it."
Indeed, Larson says Disney lines are so entertaining that on rainy days, when attendance is low, rides in the parks may fill up too slowly because families linger in the queue for too long. Theme parks have another challenge in dealing with express lane tickets, in which visitors pay more to get to the head of the queue. Others may find that unfair, so the express line is kept out of direct view, merging with the main line at the front. Disney has an ingenious scheme for express lanes called "Fastpass", in which people don't pay for an express lane, they instead get a scheduled ticket for one. They can only have one Fastpass ticket at a time. The scheme is transparent and brilliantly effective.
Airports tend to have good waiting line design. Check-in and baggage drop desks are now generally serpentine lines, and security checks are slowly following suit. However, airlines struggle with boarding. It's complicated to begin with, since boarding has to be prioritized according to families with young children, passengers with special needs, and of course people with upper-class tickets. What makes things worse is that passengers don't always cooperate, particularly if the boarding scheme is confusing.
The traditional method is to board by rows, from the back of the airliner. Studies show that the most effective scheme is to board alternate rows, window seats first, starting from the back of the plane -- a plan devised by Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist. It works because it avoids congestion in the aisle, which slows things down. A less complicated second best is the "Wilma method," or letting people board according to their seat type: window first, then middle, then aisle. European budget carrier Ryanair, up until 2014, simply let everyone in, and allowed them to pick their own seats. It was actually quicker than row boarding, if more chaotic.
Some cultures are meticulous about queues. In Japan, they are meticulously signposted, with colored patterns on train platforms to tell people where to queue. The British have such a stereotypical affinity for queues that it is said that when Britons stand still, they form a queue of one. Others cultures are much less so; Chinese, for example, simply tend to crowd up towards a service point. That represents a challenge for doing business in an orderly fashion. McDonald's is credited with introducing orderly lines in Hong Kong in the 1970s through the aid of "queue monitors" -- employees who were tasked with channeling customers into a line.
The ultimate affront to line etiquette is, of course, cutting in. In some places and circumstances, it can lead to violence -- all the more so because people in pushy crowds tend to be paranoid to begin with. It's uncommon, at least in most cultures, and places like Disney that have good line management strongly discourage it. Places where it's commonplace are best avoided.
ED: Last time I was Disney, they had a single-rider scheme, in which singletons could go to the head of the queue, to be placed in empty seats along with groups on a "space-available" basis. It was nice but somewhat troublesome, however, because it generally meant going into an exit, which is something that Disney normally strongly discourages. I suspect it was workable only because singletons are unusual at Disney. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (67): Benjamin Harrison's big-government policy did not endear him to the voters, and he served only one term, to become one of the most obscure presidents. Ironically, he was replaced by Grover Cleveland in 1892, who became the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. He is regarded as both POTUS 22 and POTUS 24, confusing the numbering slightly. Harrison's administration was not memorable, but his term in office was marked by the admission of six states: North and South Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 1889, then Idaho and Wyoming in 1890 -- bringing the total number of states to 45.
Cleveland's second term in office was hobbled immediately by a financial panic in 1893, leading to an economic depression. He compounded his unpopularity in 1894, by sending troops to suppress a national railroad strike, and was also wrong-footed by the "Revenue Act of 1894" AKA the "Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act" -- which was supposed to reduce tariffs, with an income tax added to make up the shortfall.
This was the first peacetime income tax imposed in American history. It specified that, for a five-year period, any "gains, profits, and incomes" over $4,000 would be taxed at a rate of 2%. The act was a fiasco, ending up being so riddled with loopholes that it was a humiliation to Garfield. He didn't veto it, but it went into law without his signature. The result was a landslide victory for the Republicans in the 1894 mid-term elections.
To add to the humiliation, the Supreme Court then judged the income tax unconstitutional, in the case of POLLOCK V. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST COMPANY. The Farmer's Loan & Trust Company had informed its shareholders that it would pay the income tax, and would also inform the government about the company's shareholders, so they could be taxed under the act.
One Charles Pollock of Massachusetts, who owned ten shares in Farmer's, didn't like that idea much, and took it to court. The court decided in favor of Pollock, on the basis of the fourth clause of Section 9 of the Constitution:
BEGIN QUOTE:
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
END QUOTE
Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote for the court:
BEGIN QUOTE:
First: We adhere to the opinion ... that taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally direct taxes.
Second: We are of opinion that taxes on personal property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.
Third: The tax imposed by [income tax provisions] of the act of 1894 [with regards to] the income of real estate, and of personal property, being a direct tax [and so a capitation tax], and therefore unconstitutional and void, because not apportioned according to representation ...
END QUOTE
This is not entirely easy to follow, the Constitution tending towards the particularly obscure when it comes to taxes, but the bottom line was that the constitutional requirement for apportionment of direct taxes by capitation -- headcount -- complicated the income taxes specified in the Revenue Act of 1894. While the court allowed, somehow, that a tax on wages wasn't a direct tax, it declared that a tax on rents or dividends was a direct tax. That meant such income taxes, according to the court, couldn't be levied on the states in a uniform way, they had to figured for each state, rendering the taxes impractical.
The decision also confounded, it appears by intent, the notion of progressive taxation -- the idea that the rich should pay a greater share in taxes. If a state had fewer but richer people, on the average they would pay less tax than the rich of a state that had more but poorer people. Not everyone on SCOTUS liked the judgement, with Justice Henry Billings Brown dissenting:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The decision involves nothing less than the surrender of the taxing power to the moneyed class. By resuscitating an argument that was exploded in the Hylton Case, and has lain practically dormant for a hundred years, it is made to do duty in nullifying, not this law alone, but every similar law that is not based upon an impossible theory of apportionment. Even the specter of socialism is conjured up to frighten Congress from laying taxes upon the people in proportion to their ability to pay them.
END QUOTE
The decision was even more perverse, because the income tax instituted during the Civil War was upheld, in principle, by an 1881 decision in the case of SPRINGER V. UNITED STATES.
The decision in POLLOCK V. FARMER'S LOAN was by no means final, the pressure for income taxes continuing. The solution, however, was not immediately at hand. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ANOTHER MONTH: A Facebook posting early in July proposed that readers should: "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us". Area 51 is, of course, the secret military test facility in Nevada, supposedly concealing aliens. The assault date was set for 20 September 2019.
It was obviously a gag, but the proposal got millions of LIKEs, and the assault became an internet meme. The military issued stern warnings about invading the top-secret site -- which seemed a bit humorless, but there are people who are clueless enough to do ridiculous and crazy things. Hotels in the area are now booked up. The assault may well become a yearly festival of sorts; small towns in the region are likely to encourage it, though anyone organizing the event will need to establish rapport with the authorities.
* As discussed by an article from CNN.com ("Emojis Are Increasingly Coming Up In Court Cases" by Samantha Murphy Kelly, 8 July 2019), whenever a new technology comes along, the courts have to play "catch-up" and figure out how to deal with it.
As a case in point, consider the humble "emojis", the little icons that we use to decorate our emails and Twitter posts. They started more or less from the "happy face", but they have acquired a much wider range of expression from that time, with a correspondingly wider range of interpretation. For example: Does a knife emoji establish a threat of murder? Is a heart emoji sexual harassment? Lawyer Jason Levine, who has worked on cases involving emojis, told CNN:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Many courts haven't had to deal with the emoji much, but the numbers are up, and it will likely increase. Judges aren't prepared for the influx, especially ones who are older and may not be familiar with newer vernacular.
END QUOTE
Courts do not have guidelines on emojis; there are some judges who don't regard them as admissible evidence. About 50 cases in the USA involving emojis surfaced in the first half of 2019, mostly related to sexual harassment and criminal cases. They've been building up over the past few years. Emojis are increasingly showing up in workplace lawsuits, as well. For example, in an employee termination case related to a possible violation of family medical leave, a manager sent a series of smiley face emojis. The plaintiff's lawyers claimed it was evidence the company was happy to let her go. Lawyer Karen S. Elliott, who has also worked on emoji-related cases, says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Someone may use threatening symbols, a gun, a pointed finger, and then behind it put a symbol for JUST JOKING, There is a lot that could get lost in the translation. Was it a joke? Or was it serious? Or was the person just using the emoji to hedge so that they could later argue it was not serious?
END QUOTE
The meaning of emojis can be ambiguous, and worse, a code for an emoji can have different appearances on different platforms. Nonetheless, Elliot says that courts are becoming increasingly skeptical of the old and weary: "I was just joking!" -- defense for emojis:
BEGIN QUOTE:
As long as the threat is conveyed, it remains a threat, For example, you can't yell FIRE in a crowded theater and then say: JUST JOKING.
END QUOTE
Law professor Eric Goldman -- of Santa Clara University in California, who tracks the emoji issue -- says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
With the proliferation of any new technology, there is an adjustment period for everyone, including judges. As judges become more familiar and comfortable with emojis, they will figure out the best ways to adapt existing legal principles to [them].
END QUOTE
* The Real Fake News for July effectively began with the 4th of July, with President Donald Trump as master of an Independence Day parade in Washington DC. There was considerable sniping at Trump over the matter, which tended towards the overwrought; after all, we have had military parades and such on the 4th of July on occasion. There certainly was a basis for complaint in the way Trump used the event as self-promotion, though for once he generally stayed on script.
The script, however, got a bit jumbled, with Trump announcing:
BEGIN QUOTE:
In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified Army out of the Revolutionary Forces encamped around Boston and New York, and named after the great George Washington, commander in chief. The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.
Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rocket's red glare it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.
END QUOTE
"Huh? Who? What? Where? How?" Trump later said his teleprompter was acting up. Whatever; this matter being done with, we then moved on to other things.
For example, on 11 June, Trump conducted a "social media summit" at the White House, which was a very peculiar exercise. Big-name social media operations like Facebook and Twitter were not invited; it was instead populated by figures from Right-wing "alternative media" -- the focus of the event being to complain about the way social media has, allegedly, discriminated against conservatives. As Trump put it in a tweet:
BEGIN QUOTE:
A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies. We will not let them get away with it much longer.
END QUOTE
Trump claims that Twitter has deleted his followers, and is making it hard for people to follow his account. True, Twitter has cracked down and deleted accounts that appear to be fakes, but other public figures like Barack Obama were given the same treatment; and as far as people following Trump's account go, he doesn't seem to realize that, eventually, everyone who is interested in him will follow him, and then follows will dry up.
Trump also complained about "shadow banning", meaning conservative outlets being suppressed in web search engines. This was over-reacting, attempting to see patterns in search engines that are simply not all that easy to second-guess. Anyone experienced user who frequents the online world knows that systems do puzzling things on occasion, and it's nothing personal. Naive users think it's something personal.
In addition, the Right seems to have real problems understanding that social media has community standards, which vary from one outlet to another. The standards are sometimes whimsical, but in other cases only too justified; is it acceptable, for example, that people can spread bizarre and slanderous conspiracy theories? What's particularly ironic is that Twitter's standards are notably loose: I can get away with snark that would get me kicked off of some forums. To be sure, I don't use harsh or explicitly insulting language, preferring mockery instead.
One of the (multiple) little ironies of the "summit" was that nobody was invited who had actually been banned by Twitter or Facebook. It appears, from inquiries by journalists, that the Trump Administration was reluctant to spell out an association with well-known nutcases like conspiracy maniac Alex Jones.
Incidentally, after complaining about Facebook and the like, that very same day, the Federal Trade Commission hit Facebook with a $5 billion USD fine for user privacy violations. That's the biggest fine the FTC has ever imposed. The result? Facebook's stock value went up. The vote on the fine was 3 to 2, Republicans for, Democrats against; the Democrats were unhappy because the fine was seen as so lenient, a month or three of Facebook revenue, the Democrats wanting to add another zero to it. So ... Trump threatens Facebook in tweets, while the FTC lets the company off easy.
Actually, the fine seems appropriate: it was enough to get Facebook's attention; what sense did it then make to seriously injure the company? Again, it was the biggest fine the FTC had ever imposed. Facebook does seem to be contrite -- to no surprise, after the flogging the company has suffered -- and besides, as noted here before, the problems afflicting Facebook are not unique to it. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pointed out, the US government has still not articulated coherent policies on how online businesses should be run. It's hard to step on Facebook for breaking the rules, when the rules are unclear, and a lot of the politicians are clearly befuddled on the issue.
As another incidental, while Scott Pruitt was mismanaging the Environmental Protection Agency, he pushed for a debate on climate change. That didn't go anywhere; climate change denial is in flat-Earth territory, and the White House would have simply looked dishonest and ridiculous. Over the past few months, the notion of a debate started up again, this time under the direction of Bill Happer -- an elderly and dotty climate-change denying physicist who has the ear of the White House. At about the same time as the social-media summit, the word went out that the debate had been quietly called off again. It was a bit disappointing that it was: Happer would have been shot full of holes, and might well have been targeted by US science groups for professional misconduct.
* These little flotches were followed by a noisier, but equally absurd one, beginning in mid-July, when the House of Representatives voted to pass an emergency funding measure to address the current difficulties in handling illegal immigrants on the US southern border. The bill, which originated in the Senate, wasn't what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted, lacking protections for the immigrants -- but there was no way to get the votes for anything better, and something had to be done.
The bill led to bitter recriminations from "the Squad" -- four Hot-Left freshman Democrats in the House, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Irritated by comments by Pelosi that were dismissive of the Squad, and only lightly restrained, AOC hit back, saying: "... the persistent singling out ... it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful ... the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color."
This was an only lightly restrained way of calling Pelosi a racist, and there was predictable bickering among the Democrats in the House. It didn't last long. In mid-month, Trump tweeted:
BEGIN QUOTE:
So interesting to see 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.
Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came? Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can't leave fast enough. I'm sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
END QUOTE
All four of the Squad are US citizens; Omar is the only one who wasn't born in the USA. The bickering among the Democrats in the House abruptly stopped, with a unified response that such a bigoted remark was entirely inappropriate for the White House. Trump backtracked a little, but then just doubled down again; the backtracking was just the usual gaslighting.
The furor was a little baffling, since Trump's comments were exactly what we've come to expect from him, they were no surprise. It does appear that Trump is now singling out the Squad, using them to paint the Democrats as "radical socialists", whatever that really means, to energize his voter base for 2020. Well OK, good luck with that: his voter base is loyal to him, no matter what, while everything he does to inspire them antagonizes everyone else. It's monkey business as usual; it's not a winning re-election strategy.
* Anyway, this bumbling exercise led directly to another one. The House passed a measure of censure for the president's remarks, with all Democrats voting for it, and four Republicans joining in. Representative Al Green, a Texas Democrat, then tried to push a motion of impeachment against the president through the House; it was voted down resoundingly, 332 to 95, with 137 Democrats voting against it.
Green says he's going to try again. One would wish this futile talk of impeachment would just fade out, but that may be too much to ask. That was underlined on 24 July, when Robert Mueller testified to Congress concerning his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was something of a strange exercise; Mueller had made it clear ahead of time that he didn't want to testify, people should just read the report, and that he wouldn't go beyond the report.
He didn't. In other words, the testimony didn't change the status quo in the slightest. Somehow, even though Mueller said absolutely nothing new to encourage impeachment proceedings, many Democrats thought he had given them a green light, with an uptick in support towards that end. Even at that, however, the majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives weren't in favor of impeachment, and there was no chance of getting a motion of impeachment through the House, much less confirmed by the Senate.
Advocates say they only want an "impeachment investigation" -- but that sounds like either a meaningless gesture, or a back-door approach towards an impeachment vote. Either way, it still seems futile. One can only hope that, come New Year's 2020, the urge to get rid of Trump in the increasingly short time before the election will fade. There is, of course, the possibility that Trump could win another term; it's not likely, but if it were to happen, it would simply underline the futility of impeachment, demonstrating its lack of public support. In any case, there was no reason to think impeachment would, one way or another, ever amount to much.
The Republicans were in worse shape after the Mueller hearings, since Mueller repeated his statement that he could offer "no exoneration" for the White House concerning obstruction of justice; that his investigation could not pursue the matter further, because Department of Justice rules didn't allow him to do so; and that Donald Trump would be perfectly open to charges after he left office.
The Republicans tried to undermine the credibility of the investigation, but nothing they said made any headway -- while they also chained themselves more strongly to Trump, failing to acknowledge he's a slowly sinking ship. It was observed early on in the investigations against Trump that there was no cause to think they would uncover any smoking guns; but Trump would never be able to get them to stop, either. He hasn't, and there's no prospect he's going to. He's finding out what it's like to be pecked to death by ducks.
The strain is showing on him. By the end of the month, the "send them back" nonsense against the Squad had been displaced, when Trump lashed out at Representative Elijah Cummings, a black Congressman from Maryland and a persistent Trump critic, describing Baltimore, parts of which lie in Cummings' district, as "disgusting" and a "rat and rodent infested mess". The BALTIMORE SUN replied with a flaming editorial, with Trump of course doubling down in turn, telling reporters:
BEGIN QUOTE:
What I've done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done. Now, I'll say this: they are so happy, because I get the calls. They are so happy at what I've been able to do in Baltimore and other Democratic-run, corrupt cities.
END QUOTE
This was laughable, since Trump's approval ratings among black Americans are pathetic -- but again, it was all perfectly predictable, exactly what we've seen many times before from Trump. Everyone knows what he's like.
Much more ominously, the Iranians were continuing to ramp up the pushback on Trump's sanctions against Iran -- seizing a British-flagged oil tanker, arresting a group of people as CIA spies. It appears they are trying to ramp up provocations in a very slow and methodical fashion, not repeating any of them if they can help it. The message is simple: "America will honor its agreements with Iran, the US will drop sanctions, or you'll get a war."
The Iranians do seem to understand that Trump is essentially theatrical, and have offered "concessions" -- that don't amount to any change in the status quo. They know that doesn't matter; if Trump can claim a win, he doesn't worry whether it amounts to anything or not. For now, however, he's continuing to bluster. He hasn't got the message yet, and so the Iranians will keep on turning up the volume.
It seems in response to Iranian agitation, Trump briefly made comments about nuking Afghanistan, with the Afghan government asking for clarification. The answer, of course, was: "Pay it no mind -- it's just Trump talking wild nonsense to distract people from Iran." The Iranians, however, are not going to allow themselves to be ignored.
* As a postscript, in late-breaking news, US Attorney General William Barr has now come out to push tech companies to build encryption "back doors" into their products, so the authorities can crack them. This controversy has been going on for a long time; the case of the authorities sounds convincing -- but the problem is, if the government can break a user's encryption, then so can the Black Hats.
US companies will also find it difficult to sell product outside the USA if foreign users know the US government can crack into them. Hasn't the Trump Administration made a huge fuss about the potential security threats from Huawei products? Besides, users will still be able to get encryption tools from off the internet -- but they will be badly corrupted by the Black Hats.
In other words, the request for a government "back door" into encrypted systems is about as backwards, naive, and unrealistic as the government demanding keys to everyone's houses. Apple, long a booster of user security, will reply with a loud NO, and get a lot of support from other tech industries. There will be a legal tangle that, assuming Trump isn't re-elected next year, won't be resolved before he leaves office. In the meantime, however, the matter is going to be a complete nuisance.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE