Some Random Quick Takes

We are busy packing up my home office and the dining room in preparation for some major home repairs and we have to get it done before we head to New England for a week. So I want to just pass on some posts I found interesting

Ta-Nehsi Coates at The Atlantic has been tearing apart the meme that the Civil War was avoidable tragedy that could've been avoided by compromise and the buyout of slave-holders:

Gradual compensated emancipation would, presumably, have been the better option. It would have saved the lives of soldiers, while leaving my grandmother's grandmother as property. This would, presumably, have been "untragic" or "less tragic." At any rate, Delaware -- a state where there were more free blacks than slaves -- rejected this option, preferring to grapple to the last. Compensated emancipation isn't a hypothetical. It was attempted. It failed for actual reasons.

I decline all offers to mourn the second American Revolution. No one mourns the first.

Have to agree with much of what Nashville Fan at Daily Kos recently wrote:

The problem is not WHAT you believe, the problem is the arrogant, dismissive, and hateful way in which you express those beliefs.

 I take what he calls white progressives are what working class Dems in Mass for many years simply called stuck-up assholes from Cambridge, in other words the people who lost Kennedy's seat through sheer arrogance.

Now onto the weather, here is the GISTEMP temperature map for July, click for the larger image.

In sports, I simply can't watch ESPN's morning shows anymore. It has become basically a celebrity channel, everything is about coaches, free-agents,  LeBron and Tiger Woods. How about some actual sports?

Finally:
"The Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up."
"YES, that's what we wanted you to think!"

College Athletics: the Most Rotten Thing in Higher Ed

Right now on ESPN Mike Greenberg is trying to argue that the only solution to the boosters paying student athletes and programs is just to let it happen and do away with the rule, totally missing the point that colleges do not exist (or aren't suppose to) as sports-entertainment programs.
Can't be too harsh on sports talk show hosts though, many running academia do think that is the purpose.  Bloomburg reports athletic spending at Rutgers University is higher than any other public university, and 40 percent of the funds coming from student fees and the university's general fund.  At the same time deep budget cuts have been made to academic programs, witha salary freeze for professors. Each year the football coach, Greg Schiano, stays on, the university forgives $100,000 of a no-interest home loan it made to him. Schiano is paid $2.03 million a year. The average associate professor earns less than the amount his home loan is reduced each year.

The faculty do have leverage, they can all walk. It's extreme and those who make up tenured faculty in general are the type of people who demand action from others while never taking any themselves. It's a shame.

"Libertarian" Islands?

Now yesterday I was talking up the link between risk-taking and innovation.  But when use an ideological rather than technical motivation you stop pushing the envelope and instead claim the envelope doesn't exist because it conflicts with your ideology. Which leads to the Whack-a-loon idea of the day: Pay Pal founder Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute to create floating libertarian countries in international waters. Is Somalia full or something?

I hate to tell them, but international waters are not lawless regions. If they were to be anchored, they would likely be on the continental shelf and in some nations EEZ.  If free-floating they would be essentially vessels and subject to search from any nation, particularly if they become centers of smuggling.  They would actually only be sovereign if other nations recognized their sovereignty.  The whole scheme sounds like a juvenile Randian inspired fantasy by some people lucky to be in the right place and time to make gobs of money. Never will happen anyway, and it will take more than $1.25 million investments. These people would have to pour their whole fortune into it.

Finally there is the sea itself, which do not treat arrogant people favorably. Methinks none of these folks lived on the New England coast in the winter, let alone sailed through the NW Atlantic in the same season. They wouldn't be so sure about their engineering plans then.

Innovation and Risk in Government Research

They may not have Hubert J. Farnsworth on the payroll, but DARPA engineers and scientists are allowed to do things that have a high-level of both innovation and risk of failure, exemplified by the recent failed test of a hypersonic vehicle.  That is the main thrust of a piece by Michael Belfiore today, who also points out:

Then as now, it was a nimble, quick-moving organization with a minimal bureaucracy and no laboratories of its own. Instead, its 100 or so program managers cook up ideas to farm out to universities, private companies and other organizations to do the work of bending metal and writing code to make them work (or not). (emphasis mine)

I personally know six people with recent masters of Ph.Ds in either geology, marine geology or geophysics who are employed by the federal government  Five of the six do absolutely no science, but are instead employed a bureaucrats. There main function is dealing with grants to universities as well, but instead of pushing the envelope, their agencies just ensure that limited funding is channeled to those academic scientists who are working on the latest fashionable topic that has high cost and a good rate of overhead return for academic administrators.  Basic research in all aspects of geology has in the past been the mission of agencies such as the USGS, but alas this is no longer done.

Pushing the Myth of Divided Americans

A :"News Analysis" from the NYT relies promotes the idea of some political writers that reason Washington is unable to compromise is because the electorate is polarized,

“Americans are self-segregating,” said Bill Bishop, author of “The Big Sort,” a 2008 book that examined, in the words of its subtitle, “why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart.”

I call bullshit because the article and sources studiously ignore the fact that there are more registered independents than ever. The whole article reeks of cherry-picked data. Since we see from political scientists on cable news that they generally act as propagandists for one institutional party or another this is no surprise.

Oh yeah, there was also this gem:

Political clustering is reflected in religious participation and even shopping choices. David Wasserman, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, recently calculated that 89 percent of the Whole Foods stores in the United States were in counties carried by Barack Obama in 2008, while 62 percent of Cracker Barrel restaurants were in counties carried by John McCain.

What? I've never been to either and never lived in any place with either one.Most places in America are neither Cambridge,MA or Midland, TX. The concept of a linear left-right political spectrum is a gross simplification at best and the concept of a simple binary spectrum is a fiction. Furthermore, although a system like ours tends to produce two dominant parties, the persistence of modern Republicans and Democrats is due more to gerrymandering and control of ballot access than any hardcore loyalty among the majority of the electorate.

Connectivity Improved

A new modem has vastly improved the connection here at the old schoolhouse and I plan to post more frequently and get back to regular Marcellus updates.  However, there is still noise on Verizon's line that is probably the root cause of the problem.  Verizon adamantly tries to avoid having to send someone out to fix problems in the best of times, with their unappreciated technical staff on strike I don;t expect to get the issue resolved any time soon.

Sunday's Strange, Stupid and Surreal, Aug 7

Well I guess the Apocalypse is here, in Texas at least, which seems appropriate  Pray harder Rick.

Lithuania may not have liked being occupied by the Soviet Union, but I think they kept up Stalin's parking enforcement methods.

Gives a new meaning to dunkin’ donuts.

Shh, don't let the Teabaggers here about this DIY health care plan.

Landshark?! Too dated?

THEY say it's a dead badger, but we know it's CHUPACABRA.

Saturday Santorum: It's all about the Gays

The Rickster definitely has gay on the brain, methinks he protests a bit too much.  He along with the GOPers are running against the tide on gay marriage, in fact doubling down on it.

Turns out rejected-Sen. Santorum wants to be the nation's minister (odd for a so-called Catholic):

After listening to Santorum’s governing philosophy for an hour, it is clear that his goal is to thoroughly dismantle the federal government, at least as it has come to be since the Great Depression, and turn over most everything (except marriage choice) to the states or to business leaders in the free markets.

That means virtually no role for the federal government in education, health care, business or environmental regulation or public welfare. With less for the government to do, apparently the president would then be free to lead the nation by his own example of moral rectitude toward a “Leave it to Beaver” style nuclear family not seen since the 1950s, with Mom home with the kids. 

Basically Rick is a dick.

Harsh Realities Set in

Wall St. tanked today, with the Dow falling more than 500 points, in what is called a "correction".  Some believe, in short, Kudlow's wonderful investing class realized that nothing was worth as much as they thought.

Fareed Zakaria thinks that the Democrats will now mirror the obstinacy of the Teabaggers and the so-called super committee will deadlock and accomplish nothing.  So we have unbridgeable divide in Congress, thae aggravating part about that is that is the partisan claim that it represents the electorate.  In truth, the partisans make up less than half the voters in many states and their Archie and Meathead bases are an even smaller slice of the population.  Yet due to a rigged electoral system the minorities and their war control the government. I think Obama honestly tried to be post-partisan , but the system is fixed to prevent it from happening.

Texans were told to conserve electricity or run the risk of power outages. Now they are occurring sporadically and rolling blackouts may begins as electricity use skyrockets in the face of unprecedented heat:

"I can't remember any year with the magnitude and length of this heat wave," Jack Hayes, director of the National Weather Service, told msnbc.com on Thursday.

And it's not just Dallas, or even Texas, for that matter. On Thursday, 14 states from Texas to Virginia were under heat alerts. Several dozen deaths have been tied to the heat since early July.

Burnt to a crisp

Record temperatures were recorded in July in all fifty states, including Alaska:

The temperature at the Northway weather station in Southeast Fairbanks County hit a record 97 F (36.1 C) on July 11.

Hawaii is not influenced by North American continental weather and is usually remarkably constant, but even there record highs were recorded.

Furthermore, almost half the states are drier than normal and record drought continues int the South-central region:

Officials at the National Drought Mitigation Center said the July percentage is the highest recorded level of drought since the monitor began documenting conditions 12 years ago.

So not a long record, but still indicates the severity of the situation.