Malthus and Population Growth

Very interesting take on the "Malthusian mistake" in Krugman's blog earlier in the week (I'm finally getting to some of the "marked as unread" pieces I wanted to look at and think about more carefully). And here's a slightly earlier related post.

And here’s the sense in which Malthus was right: he had a fundamentally valid model of the pre-Industrial Revolution economy, which was one in which technological progress translated into more people, not higher living standards. This homeostasis only broke down when very rapid technological change finally outstripped population pressure for an extended period.

Of course, Malthus’s predictive failure wasn’t accidental. Technological takeoff was the product of a newly inquisitive, empirically-minded, scientific culture — the kind of culture that could produce people like Malthus.

So what does that say about the size of the human population as we move into a world where climate change takes an ever growing toll on agriculture? Nothing good, I'm sure.

I suppose I should link to a source on Malthus' thesis, if you're unaware of it

Partial-Term Abortion

Very cheeky, very funny...
Available at Jesus' General Store (store here and another shirt here).

Enough Already, Google!

Mr. Google, Tear Down These Ads!

Dead Man Talking

At this point in the recession, you've probably become familiar with the term "zombie bank," a financial institution that can continue operating, thanks to government support, even though its debts outweigh its assets. Now it's time to add a related descriptor to our public discourse: "zombie politician." The term describes a political figure whose electoral worth is less than zero and whose ideas are totally bankrupt, but who can continue to offer up political guidance because he's kept on life support by media-generated oxygen.

(Marc Cooper in OregonLive) Gingritch may be the poster boy of this phenomenon, but honestly, can you name any nationally prominant republicans who don't fit this description? As I've said before, I take no joy in the complete shambles the republicans have made of their party. I pointed out to a friend earlier that, contrary to her statement that the republican front line "has turned out" to be crazy, my feeling is that the party leadership has actively promoted the photogenic members who have demonstrated abilility to talk in non-sequitur soundbites, and actively avoided showcasing members who acknowledge that sometimes hard problems don't have simple answers. The fact that the photogenic soundbiters are lunatics is almost predictable.

Honestly, repubs, I most often disagree with you, and you anger me more than I'd like. But I'm rooting for you, and hope you get better soon.

One-party rule is not, and cannot be, functional.

Happy Fourth, All!

As I've noted many times, crowds and noise set me on edge, so the fireworks downtown are stressful rather than fun for me. But I just found this display at BuzzFeed that's more to my liking...

My personal July 4 tradition for the last ten years or so has been to re-read the Declaration of Independence (text); every year I end up with a little more respect for the eloquence and intelligence of our founding fathers, and a slightly different take on the document itself. It's interesting to note in particular that the stated purpose of the document is not to declare independence, though that is implicit from the outset, but rather to explain and justify the decision to other countries and people. In other words, it's a public relations ploy:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The explicit declaration itself comes only in the penultimate sentence:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

If you have been able to read and comprehend those two passages- sadly, too many residents of this country cannot- you really should take a few minutes to read, and savor the beauty of, the entire document- even if the laundry list of complaints aginst King George gets a little tedious (from our perspective) after a bit. Then take a few more minutes to really think about the context, and how important the statement is, not in terms of just our history, but to world history. Then think about the courage required for the founders to produce it and make it public, knowing that it would precipitate war with what was at the time one of the worlds great military powers.

Thanks, USA. Despite all my snarking, cynicism, gloom and doom, and disdain for your leaders even in my own party, I think the smartest decision I've ever made was choosing to be born as one of your citizens. Happy 133rd, and may you have hundreds more!

Nodong

Various sources are reporting that North Korea has launched a series of missiles during the last day, including The NYT, CNN, and WaPo. As the country has demonstrated that it has the capability and materials to assemble fission bombs (though I haven't seen any indication they can make fusion bombs... yet), and is believed to either have, or be close to having, the capability to fit those warheads into their missiles, this is seen, understandably, as seriously threatening to US and Japanese security.

I'd like to take a moment to urge calm, and suggest another interpretation. According to the Post article,

Military officials told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that they appeared to be Scud-type missiles and described them as more dangerous than the short-range weapons fired Thursday. Government sources in Japan and South Korea told reporters that the missiles may have been Nodongs.

My suspicion here is that Kim Jong Il is simply embarrassed by having a phallic weapon called "Nodong." I think he should be approached with sympathy and understanding. Let him express his anger and humiliation about the Nodong situation.

Maybe offer him some toys, or Viagra, or something.

I'll bet with a kind explanation that no one really judges him as less than a man because of his Nodong, he'd settle down.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy...

...they first make republican Governors. (Violently burglarized from Krugman's blog)

So, Google?

Can we dump these now?

I Wish It was Hotter

I wish it was hotter. Really. I wish the sun was about 20 times larger in diameter, so I could actually see bubbles of steam forming between my skin and my flesh, rather than just feeling them.Image from APOD.

Which is ironic, really, because tomorrow is the day of the year at which the earth is farthest in its orbit from the sun. Which means that, as viewed from here on earth, the sun is at its smallest apparent diameter- though the difference is only about three percent.

Sigh.

I guess I can take comfort in the fact it's supposed to cool down as the new week gets underway. And in the fact that southern hemisphere summers must be even worse, however hard that is to believe.

Palinocide

Palin is resigning from the position of Governor of Alaska, effective July 26. Huh. Weird. In a couple of clips from WaPo,

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced this afternoon she will resign from office on July 26 and return to private life, a stunning decision by last year's Republican vice presidential candidate to leave office before the end of her first term.

(...)

"We've seen a lot of nutty behavior from governors and Republican leaders in the last three months, but this one is at the top of that," said John Weaver, a longtime friend and confidant of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)...

Way to establish those poli-creds, Sarah. Or maybe your widdle feewings wuz hurt by Jonah suggesting that you were morally capable of doing anything wrong? Yah, youbetcha! I bet that was it!

Followup: From The Guardian,

Palin hastily called a news conference this morning at her home in suburban Wasilla, giving such short notice that only a few reporters actually made it to the announcement. State troopers blocked late-arriving media outside her home, and her spokesman, Dave Murrow, finally emerged to confirm that Palin will step down July 26. He refused to give details about the governor's future plans.

So not only was the announcement scheduled for a Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend, it was announced in such a way that made it very difficult for media to cover. Based on what I'm seeing so far though, this is a pretty big earthquake in terms of awareness. The best clip I've seen for illustrating the meandering, self-promoting speech, and the trademark Palin trait of repeating the same catch phrases over and over and over is the AP clip in the WaPo piece above. I'm trying to find a clip that starts from the beginning of this mind boggling speech; if I find one, I'll post it.

Followup 2: Woah. This is even loopier than I thought... two parts for a total of 19 minutes.

You should be proud of me. I just waded through 19 minutes of verbal diarrhea.
Well Goldberg was right about one thing: this woman scares the living shit out of me.

Pee Here!

Texaco, an oil company and gas station chain that I'm not sure exists anymore, had an advertising campaign back in the late 60's to early 70's that ended with a tagline, "The Texaco Star stands for (something good and commercially appealing)." Like any effective ad campaign there was enough saturation that you really couldn't escape it, and the tagline and product name were almost physically embedded in the cultural psyche. At that point in my life, our family did regular summer camping trips... which of course involve gas stations and bathrooms.

After noting a peculiar consistency in our experiences with the chain, our family's version of the tagline became "The Texaco Star stands for filthy bathrooms."

So it is with pleasure I found today an innovation that may very well encourage businesses generally, not just Texaco (if it still exists), to offer the most appealing bathroom experience possible to their customers- maybe even offer incentives for using their facilities: Producing hydrogen from urine.

Actually, No, Jonah

Jonah Goldberg (to whom some refer as "doughy pantsload") is not a pundit I've spent much time reading. In fact, I don't believe I've ever read an entire column of his before, just excerpts in other people's blogs. But I came across the headline, "Dear Sarah Palin, You're Blowing It," in OregonLive a moment ago and decided to plow into it.

Some hated you out of the fear that you might stop Barack Obama's unfolding coronation. Others because you seemed to expose the snobbery, arrogance and ideological pieties of elite feminism. Your beauty, your status as a working mom, your blue-collar husband, your bravery in taking on the political establishment in Alaska, your proud status as a pro-lifer and mother of a special-needs child: All of these things were -- and are -- deeply threatening to a secular left-wing cultural elite.

Well, actually, no, Jonah. Speaking for myself, first off, I don't hate Sarah Palin. I was ready to welcome a voice of sanity and intelligence from a prominant republican... it has been such a long, long time since I've heard one. It's just that she didn't have either of the qualities I've been longing for in an opposition party member.

Second, I think it's odd that the first characteristic you choose to note as "threatening" to "a secular left-wing cultural elite" such as myself is "beauty." I'm a big fan of beautiful women. I do try not to stare and drool too much. (hint: they really appreciate that, and it's much easier to befriend them. You should try it out sometime... just sayin') I don't view them as a "threat" so much as a "treat."

Third, since when did conservatives have a corner on working moms and blue-collar husbands? Have you read anything since, say, 1890? Just askin' here.

Fourth, I'll give you her "bravery in taking on the political establishment" simply because I don't know what you're talking about. I have no counter-argument; from my reading, she's a narcissistic temper bomb who will stop at nothing to aggrandize and enrich herself and her family on the taxpayer's dime. I would expect such a person to take on the political establishment.

Fifth, I have no problem with her "proud status as a pro-lifer." That's her choice. I just wish she could understand that other people in other circumstances have a right to their choice as well.

Sixth... yeah, I gotta give you this one too. Mothers of special-needs children just make me piss my britches, even when- no, especially when- they don't have the kid with them. It's something about the way they smell, you know. Every now and then, a complete stranger will be walking by, and I'll just spontaneously emit this window-shattering shriek of terror, wet my pants, and sprint away like a rocket. It will only be a little later when I recover from my panic that I realize, "Oh, yeah; that must have been the mother of a special needs child."

So in summary, the qualities you list have nothing to do with the reasons I see Palin as a very serious threat. Say wut? Well, yes, you did nail this one too:

Second, peddling a few platitudes and truisms about free markets and limited government is no substitute for really knowing what you're talking about. Yes, you can talk well about the stuff you know -- oil drilling, energy, etc. -- but beyond your comfort zone, you fall back on bumper-sticker language that sounds fine to the people who already agree with you but is useless in winning over skeptics.

Yeah, there's that... noting in passing that she knows nothing about oil drilling or energy, I'd really like poitical aspirants to know something about something. Anything, really. I'd also like them to understand that charging fees for access or rights to state-controlled resources, then distributing the revenues or benefits derived from those fees to citizens of the state, is, you know, socialism.

No more Goldberg columns for me... I'll settle for excerpts in other's blogs from now on. They've done just fine up to now.

Where We Are Today

(Click for exciting Full-Size!) Original graphic from Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic. (story at NYT; Actual original source linked by Sullivan's Blog) I have taken the liberty of adding another pertinant data point. By my reading of this, job losses took a steep turn for the worse in August '08, then still worse in September. I seem to remember all the concern that Bush and the wingnuts were expressing for the trickle, then torrent, of folks who were SOL... no, wait a minute... It was the banks! That's it! OMG! Banks are failing! Here's a trillion bucks; we trust you to do the right thing. Wut's that? Extend employment benefits? No can do, buddy, that'd be just like socialism.

Anyway, as you can see clearly with the added data, this whole thing is Obama's fault. He's had nearly half as long to deal with it as Bush did. If we'd just given the shrub that third term we all know he was hankering for, that line would be right off the chart now. (/snark)

This is Why We Have Problems

Arizona Geology blogger Lee Allison found a stunningly stupid comment from Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen, and accompanying video. From The Arizona Guardian,

On June 25th the senator voiced support for opening up uranium mining in Arizona and countered environmentalists by assuring them that the the Earth has been around for "6,000 years..." and has lasted that long without environmnental laws. She said it twice.

Yeah, the earth has been around for six thousand years, and it has lasted that long without mass extinctions or asteroid impacts either. How is it we keep electing buffoons to positions of power? As I pointed out in my first post today, we must have geological resources. But to allow idiots to make or shape decisions regarding how and where these resources can be extracted is not a good idea.

,

An Emotional Moment

Subtitles NSFW, but very, very funny. MJ was not my cup of tea, but you gotta feel for the guy. Hitler I mean. And yeah, MJ too.

What's on TV, by Location

From Abstruse Goose. (click over for full, readable size). This is at once charming, nostalgic, funny and scary. That has to be really tricky to pull off. So my TV memories go out to somewhere in the neighborhood of Beta Aquilae to Mu Arae... probably closer to the latter. The first show I distinctly remember is "Days of Our Lives." My babysitter watched it. I seriously hope that when we discover other intelligent life forms out there, they're not sitting around in LazyBoys, watching our reruns.

Will This End the "What About China?" Whining?

I seriously doubt it. But this article from the NYT points out that China has been far more proactive in developing non-carbon, renewable energy sources than has the US.

While the House of Representatives approved a requirement last week that American utilities generate more of their power from renewable sources of energy, and the Senate will consider similar proposals over the summer, China imposed such a requirement almost two years ago.

This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up all over the country.

(...)

And now, just 15 months later, with construction of coal-fired plants having slowed to one a week and still falling, it appears that China will have 30,000 megawatts of wind energy by the end of next year — which was previously the target for 2020, Mr. Li said.

Now in fairness, there are some doubts as to the effectiveness about many of the projects, and as things sit now, AltEn constitutes only a small proportion of the total. But this enormous push has created enough of an energy base that instead of completing two coal-fired plants per week (just think about that number for a moment), China is now only completing one per week.

And that's not trivial.

Meanwhile back home, conservatives continue to whimper, whine and throw tantrums over the fact that any binding legislation we pass with respect to our own carbon emissions will destroy the economy, and turn us all in into socioislamacommunofacsits.

I figured it'd be a cold day in hell before it started to look like China was "the good guys" and we were "the bad guys."

I was wrong. It's going to be a hot day on Earth.

Freshly Paved and Painted

Ever so sharp, neat and tidy!
But is something missing?
Yes, there is...
Heeeere's Jebus!
Now in Green!
Red!
And Orange! Still looking for blue...
Across the street from the (fairly) new Kelly Engineering Building on the ever-lovely OSU campus. Thanks to Todd (another Interzone Person I haven't posted yet) for telling me about this new appearance!

Skeptical RE. Research

Yesterday I posted on a piece from The Guardian, describing how Exxon-Mobil was still granting hundreds of thousands of dollars to (as the Guardian put it) "lobby groups that have published 'misleading and inaccurate information' about climate change." This is an accurate description of the groups named in the article, including National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. These examples are two of many well-funded conservative "think-tanks." From what I've seen over the last 15 to 20 years, "think-tank" is not a good description of these groups. Their mission is to not come up with new or improved ideas, it is to come up with justifications- any justifications- for why sticking to their old, broken and disproved ideas is the best solution, and to make as much media noise with those "justifications" (rationalizations) as they possibly can.

They have been extremely effective and successful

So today, when I saw this headline from The Telegraph, "ExxonMobil funds climate-change sceptics," I clicked over to see if there was any new information. And confronted this top-of-the-article summary:

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, is continuing to fund researchers who cast doubt on global warming, despite public promises to cut support for climate-change sceptics.

Do you see the problem here?

Somehow the recipients have gone from being conservative lobbyists and media manipulators to "researchers."

They are not researchers. They are vultures who are paid to protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful. If Exxon-Mobil were actually funding real, peer-reviewed research that might contradict the findings of the vast majority of climate scientists, I would have no problems- in fact, I would be overjoyed if they could establish that climate change was not going to have an enormous impact over the next century and longer. But to fund noisemakers so we as a culture can't hear the fire alarm is unconscionable

Thanks, media, for continuing to clarify and fact-check on these trivial little issues. Kudos for a job well done.

We Dohn' Need No Steenkin' Rocks

Au contraire, mon frere...
(click to enlargify) Interesting set of mineral statistics reduced to a fairly mind-blowing graphic: the total lifetime mineral consumption of an "average" person born in the US. I have some nits I could pick with the above picture (e.g. sometimes reporting as "ores," generally oxides, and sometimes as refined products), but however you cut it, the numbers are stunning. From this report (300 Kb PDF), found at the Minerals Information Institute. MII is apparently a group dedicated to disseminating educational materials on the topic of geologic resources, a mission I strongly support. (with some caveats that I won't fuss over too much)