Bumper Brains

Esperanto

The real news, as well as the 2 part web exclusive extended interview with Zephyr Teachout and next week’s guests below.

Sweden shifts to left in parliamentary election

Associated Press

September 14

The result marks the end of an eight-year era of tax cuts and pro-market policies under Reinfeldt, who said he would also resign as leader of the conservative party. Many Swedes worried that his tax cuts have undermined the country’s famed welfare system.

…

His center-right Alliance has cut income and corporate taxes, abolished a tax on wealth and trimmed welfare benefits. It has also eased labor laws and privatized state-owned companies, including the maker of Absolut vodka.

Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor has grown faster in Sweden than in most developed countries, though it remains among the world’s most egalitarian, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Sweden Looks to Exclude Far Right From Coalition

By DAVID CROUCH, The New York Times

SEPT. 16, 2014

The left-leaning Social Democrats, with 31 percent, barely exceeded their total from the previous election four years ago, a result seen as a disaster for the party and setting off a leadership fight. The Green party, the Social Democrats’ most likely coalition partner, scored less than 7 percent, and conceded its dreams of being Sweden’s third political force dashed to the far right.

Together with the Left party of former communists, the so-called red-green bloc mustered only 43.8 percent of the vote, compared with 39.3 percent for the center-right bloc – a wafer-thin margin unforeseen in opinion polls.

…

But inequality in Sweden has grown, and with it a fear that the free market is failing to deliver the standard of welfare services that Swedes expect. The left attracted voters by promising a sharp break with the Reinfeldt government’s economic austerity policies, pledging to tax banks and the well-off to fund schools and infrastructure, and to create jobs.

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“It is too early to predict if we could support a government with bourgeois ministers,” the Left party leader, Jonas Sjostedt said. “But we are not willing to be in a government with the Liberals,” a reference to a center-right party that won 5.4 percent of the vote. He also said, “we are too far away from the Center party to be in government with them.”

Mr. Lofven said later Monday that he would not have Left party members in his government, and in response, Mr. Sjostedt said that the Left would become an opposition party.

Sweden’s Election Deadlock Sets Stage for Budget Failure

By Johan Carlstrom and Niklas Magnusson, Bloomberg News

Sep 16, 2014 9:26 AM ET

Social Democratic leader Stefan Loefven said yesterday he won’t bring pre-election ally the Left Party into government, and instead opened the door to Reinfeldt’s former allies, the Center and Liberal parties. The two have already said they’re not interested in joining the Social Democrats.

“To close the door on the Left Party this quickly and in this rather brusque way will make it much harder for him to get his budget through,” Mikael Gilljam, a professor at Gothenburg University, said by phone.

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“Stefan Loefven didn’t take the hand we extended and now we will become an opposition party,” Left Party leader Jonas Sjoestedt said after meeting Loefven yesterday. “That’s bad because it will result in a weaker government.”

While the Left won’t seek to block the parliamentary approval of any government formed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party, it will only offer support to Loefven’s budget proposal if certain demands are met, Sjoestedt said.

…

Swedish law was designed to make it easy for minority-governments to pass budgets by allowing the bill that gets the most votes pass. That’s provided political stability as the Social Democrats ruled without majority backing for most of the period since World War II.

That law was circumvented last year when the opposition broke with tradition and blocked parts of Reinfeldt’s budget. His party has said it won’t hesitate to do the same.

If I may be forgiven a little meta, be careful what you wish for.

I had opined to that group of us who put these together I found it easier with a theme and suggested some including Science and Technology to which the universal response was- “What an excellent idea, why don’t you do that?”

They kind of missed my point but being a ‘follow me’ type of leader I’m prepared to show how it can be done.

As always I don’t feel constrained by any particular format other than my own so I’ll start out with your quote–

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

-Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science Oriented Video!

Science/Tech News

Busy Days Precede a March Focusing on Climate Change

By LISA W. FODERARO, The New York Times

SEPT. 17, 2014

The run-up to what organizers say will be the largest protest about climate change in the history of the United States has transformed New York City into a beehive of planning and creativity, drawing graying local activists and young artists from as far away as Germany.

“This is the final crunch, the product of six months of work to make the People’s March a big, beautiful expression of the climate movement,” said Rachel Schragis, a Brooklyn-based artist and activist who is coordinating the production of floats, banners and signs.

The march, organized by more than a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, is planned to wend its way through Midtown Manhattan along a two-mile route approved by the city’s Police Department last month. It will start at 11:30 a.m. at Columbus Circle, then move east along 59th Street, south on Avenue of the Americas and west on 42nd Street, finishing at 11th Avenue and West 34th Street.

…

Organizers say it is impossible to predict how many people could show up. But 1,400 “partner organizations” have signed on, ranging from small groups to international coalitions. In addition, students have mobilized marchers at more than 300 college campuses, and more than 2,700 climate events in 158 countries are planned to coincide with the New York march, including rallies in Delhi, Jakarta, London, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro.

In New York, organizers are expecting 496 buses from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas to bring marchers.

“The most useful gallon of gasoline anyone will ever burn is the one that gets them to the march,” Mr. McKibben said. (By contrast, all floats will be pulled by biodeisel-powered cars and trucks or by hand, organizers said.)

• Flooding from storm surge would threaten D.C. infrastructure, report says, By Lori Montgomery, Washington Post, September 16
• Climate Report Details Flood Risk to Sites in Washington, By EMMARIE HUETTEMAN, The New York Times, SEPT. 16, 2014
• Ancient sturgeon in China’s Yangtze ‘nearly extinct’, BBC News, 15 September 2014
• The Meteor That Wiped Out the Dinosaurs Changed Earth’s Plant Life, Too, By Karla Zabludovsky, Newsweek, 9/16/14
• Europeans drawn from three ancient ‘tribes’, By Paul Rincon, BBC News, 17 September 2014
• Scientists reset human stem cells to earliest developmental state, University of Cambridge, 11 Sep 2014
• Why is Rosetta’s comet spewing jets of water? Mysterious plumes of vapour are spotted on 67P, By Jonathan O’Callaghan, Daily Mail, 17 September 2014
• ESA reveals target site for risky comet landing, BY STEPHEN CLARK, SPACEFLIGHT NOW, September 15, 2014
• Surprise! Monster Black Hole Found in Dwarf Galaxy, Charles Q. Choi, Space.com, September 17th 2014 (autoplay)
• NASA’s Maven spacecraft reaches Mars this weekend, Associated Press, September 17, 2014
• Police radar gun that shows if you’re texting?, by Chris Matyszczyk, CNet, 17 September 2014
• California Starts Issuing Self-Driving Car Permits, By Chloe Albanesius, PCMag, September 16, 2014 06:00pm EST

Science/Tech Blogs

• New York’s No. 1 VC Has An Ominous Warning For The Tech Industry, by Jay Yarow, Business Insider, Sep. 16, 2014
• DOJ Proposal Would Let FBI Hack Into Computers Overseas With Little Oversight, by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Wed, Sep 17th 2014
• Net Neutrality Is Not ‘The Government Takeover Of The Internet’ — Or Why Republicans Should Support Reclassification, by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Wed, Sep 17th 2014
• FTC Goes After Yelp Because Yelp Has The Audacity To Let Kids Use Its App, by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Wed, Sep 17th 2014
• Why Hasn’t The Obama Administration Weighed In On The FCC’s Net Neutrality Comment Period?, by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Wed, Sep 17th 2014
• Net Neutrality Is Crucial for Artists and Arts Organizations, by Ben Valentine, HyperAllergic, September 17, 2014

The Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

I’m your Pusherman

Our moderate anti-Assad Syrian allies and Arab coallition members times the square root of negative 1, raised by the power of our real Canadian girlfriend, equals 200 hours of extraordinary rendition.

I assure you TMC gets that one because she doesn’t have the problem with trig identities I do and I watched all 6 seasons of Northern Exposure even the sucky ones without Dr. Joel.

The real news, as well as this week’s guests below.

The proper way to drink it (single malt of course) is a sip as distilled to celebrate the raw spirit and then mixed with clear water or chips of ice to dilute it so the perfumes are released.

Or you can eat some haggis.

While not as Scots as Dane (full quarter Viking and don’t forget it!) I must admit the urge to get naked and tint myself with woad is strong.

Where’s my sheep’s lung pudding?

Really?  All of us?

But they will never take our freedom to calculate pension benefits based on inflation, or earnings, whichever is higher.

The real news, as well as this week’s guests and Ken Burns 2 part web exclusive extended interview below.

Scientists Find ‘Direct Link’ Between Earthquakes And Process Used For Oil And Gas Drilling

by Emily Atkin, Think Progress

September 16, 2014 at 2:59 pm

A team of scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have found evidence “directly linking” the uptick in Colorado and New Mexico earthquakes since 2001 to wastewater injection, a process widely used in the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and conventional drilling.

In a study (.PDF) to be published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America on Tuesday, the scientists presented “several lines of evidence (that) suggest the earthquakes in the area are directly related to the disposal of wastewater” deep underground, according to a BSSA press release. Fracking and conventional natural gas companies routinely dispose of large amounts of wastewater underground after drilling. During fracking, the water is mixed with chemicals and sand, to “fracture” underground shale rock formations and make gas easier to extract.

The USGS research is just the latest in a string of studies that have suggested the disposed water is migrating along dormant fault lines, changing their state of stress, and causing them to fail.

For their research, the four California-based USGS scientists monitored the 2,200 square mile Raton Basin, which goes from southern Colorado into New Mexico. They pointed out that the Basin had been “seismically quiet” until 1999, when companies began “major fluid injection” deep into the ground. Earthquakes began in 2001 when Colorado wastewater injection rates were under 600,000 barrels per month, and and since then there have been 16 earthquakes that could be considered large (above a magnitude of 3.8, including two over a 5.0 magnitude), compared with only one – a 4.0 magnitude quake – in the 30 years prior.

“These earthquakes are limited to the area of fluid injection, they occur shortly after major fluid injection activities began, and the earthquake rates track the fluid injection rates in the Raton Basin,” the paper said, noting the scientists’ comparisons of the timing and location of earthquakes with the timing and location of injected wastewater. By the mid-2000s, Colorado’s wastewater injection rates were up to 1.9 million barrels per month.

Taking that and the unexpected frequency of the earthquakes into consideration, the paper noted that it was “highly unlikely” that the quakes could have been due to any random fluctuations underground.

“Detailed investigations of two seismic sequences places them in proximity to high-volume, high-injection-rate wells, and both sequences occurred after a nearby increase in the rate of injection,” the study’s accompanying press release said. “A comparison between seismicity and wastewater injection in Colorado and New Mexico reveals similar patterns, suggesting seismicity is initiated shortly after an increase in injection rates.”

It’s so Christiany

It’s War!  War I tell you!

The real news, as well as this week’s guests and Tavis Smiley’s 2 part web exclusive extended interview below.

Hey, it’s the highest functioning level of mental disability.  You can work under supervision.

All these effing geniuses: Ezra Klein, expert-driven journalism, and the phony Washington consensus

Thomas Frank, Salon

Sunday, Sep 14, 2014 07:00 AM EST

In a recent article on Vox, Ezra Klein declared that his generation of Washington journalists had discovered political science, and it is like the hottest thing on wheels. In the old days, he writes, journalists “dealt with political science episodically and condescendingly.” But now, Klein declares, “Washington is listening to political scientists, in large part because it’s stopped trusting itself.” Klein finds that political scientists give better answers to his questions than politicians themselves, because politicians are evasive but scientists are scientists, you know, they deal in “structural explanations” for political events. So the “young political journalists” who are roaring around town in their white lab coats frightening the local bourgeoisie “know a lot more about political science and how to use it” than their elders did.

…

The powerful in Powertown love to take refuge in bewildering professional jargon. They routinely ignore or suppress challenging ideas, just as academics often ignore ideas that come from outside their professional in-group. Worst of all, Washingtonians seem to know nothing about the lives of people who aren’t part of the professional-managerial class.

How well-known is this problem? It is extremely well known. One of the greatest books of them all on American political dysfunction, David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest” (1972), is the story of how a handful of poli-sci geniuses got us into the Vietnam War. How political science conquered Hanoi, you might say, except that it didn’t exactly work out like that.

You can see this dysfunction for yourself in the headlines of recent years. Ever wonder why the foreign policy authorities never seem to change, keep coming back, despite racking up shattering failures like the Iraq War? It’s because of the way Washington worships expertise, and the way these authorities have perched themselves atop a professional structure that basically does not acknowledge criticism from the outside.

Ever wonder why the economic experts never seem to change, keep coming back, despite racking up such shattering failures as the housing bubble and the financial crisis and the bank bailouts? Ever wonder why a guy like Larry Summers gets to be chief economist at the World Bank, then gets to deregulate Wall Street, then gets to bail Wall Street out, then almost gets to become chairman of the Fed, and then gets to make sage pronouncements on the subject of-yes- inequality? It’s for the same bad reasons: Because D.C. worships expertise and because Summers, along with a handful of other geniuses, are leading figures in a professional discipline dominated by what a well-informed observer once called a “politburo for correct economic thinking.”

…

“Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People – powerful people – listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”

…

Allow me to drop a single, disturbing data point on this march of science. You might recall that Democrats controlled the House of Representatives from the early 1930s until 1994 with only two brief Republican interludes. What ended all that was not an ill-advised swerve to the left, but the opposite: A long succession of moves toward what is called the “center,” culminating in the administration of New Democrat Bill Clinton, who (among other things) signed the Republicans’ NAFTA treaty into law. Taking economic matters off the table was thought to be the path of wisdom among expert-worshipping Washingtonians, but it had the unforeseen consequence of making culture that much more important for a large part of the population. Democrats were eventually swamped by all the crazy grievance campaigns of the right, which has splashed back and forth in the mud of the culture wars ever since.

In 2010, the two parties repeated the act, with D’s embracing the extremely unpopular Republican bailout strategy (and a more modestly unpopular Republican healthcare program) and R’s pretending to be some kind of ’30s-style protest movement waving signs in the street.

Not getting this is standard in the comfortable and well-educated precincts of Washington, D.C. All political contests are battles over the center, everyone here knows that, and so Democrats who wish to win must always move to the center, meaning to the right. That the noble pursuit of the median voter might somehow bring defeat is beyond comprehension.

So a data-minded commentator like Nate Cohn is able to look out over the blasted moonscape of Appalachia and conclude that a party of the left has nothing it might conceivably offer the people there. If Democrats wish to win back the seats that Republicans have taken away from them in such stricken areas, the Dems must either become more conservative themselves or sit audaciously on their butts for a couple of decades while some new generation is born and grows up to populate the boarded-up towns and collapsing houses of the deindustrialized hinterland. Those are the only choices.

The fatalism here may be science-driven, but still it boggles the mind. Today, the right is out there organizing and proselytizing and signing people up for yet another grievance-hyping mass movement. Over the last 40 years they have completely remade the world, and at no point did they play by the centrist rules.

But the Democrats chase nobly on after grand Washington bargains and sign more free-trade deals and make endless compromises with Wall Street-and then can’t figure out why such achievements don’t win them the adoration of the people in the hard-bitten countryside. No matter. They’ll simply wait for a new generation to come along, a new public that is more enlightened, better able to appreciate the fine distinctions between the parties, that is capable, at long last, of making the rational choice.