Happy Halloween

Earthworks in Kazakhstan

Those who read this blog regularly know I am, by no means, a scientist. But it seems to me that a truly major discovery has been made. Scientists are calling it an earthworks, the largest ever seen. These earthworks, which were found in Kazakhstan, are geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields; they can only be seen from the sky. Thus far, 260 earthworks have been discovered; they are mounds, trenches and ramparts — arrayed in five basic shapes. 

The fellow who discovered them thinks they were built as “horizontal observatories to track the movements of the rising sun.” The question is how sophisticated the works are; maybe we need to rethink some of our ideas as to when civilization began. 

Boots on the ground in Syria

We are sending "less than 50 Special Operations advisers" to Syria. The emphasis is on 'advisers' as supposedly the troops will not be engaged in combat. They will be based in Kurdish territory and will assist in the battle against ISIS.

One earthquake every hour

RE-LAX

A summary of a Ted-Ed talk by Sharon Horesh Bergquist

Dogs and Guns

A young lady from Indiana was hunting on Saturday. Her dog accompanied her. She put down her gun. The dog stepped on it. The gun went off. She was shot in the foot. Her injuries were not serious. The dog's name? Trigger!

Not for lightweights

Today's F-35 news: a series of recent tests revealed serious problems with the jet fighter’s escape system, creating potentially hazardous circumstances, especially for lighter-weight pilots. A 'lighter-weight' pilot weighs less than 136 pounds; the pilots face “potentially fatal whiplash” if they use the ejection seat. Now, pilots must weigh more than 136 pounds. Interestingly, in 2011 the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester said he was concerned that training flights would proceed even though the ejection seat system had not been fully tested. 

Will the problems with this plane ever cease?

The Civil War and some college kids

From our Plymouth correspondent

True Love

From our Brooklyn correspondent

These are kids?

From our Plymouth correspondent

America, a fearful nation

I've never heard of Chapman University, but these charts are interesting and, I think, quite speculative. The charts are based on a random sample of 1,541 adults from across the United States.

Seeing is better than just talking

A recent study of more than 11,000 people age 50 and older found that actually meeting very often (three or more times per week) lowered the likelihood of depression in these people. Those who met in person with family and friends once every few months or less were nearly twice as likely to be depressed two years later than those who met up very often. This was true even when others phoned or e-mailed frequently. The lead author of the study said, “the special result we get from this study is there’s a specific effect of meeting up with people that’s not explained by other factors. We looked at other forms of contact and other variables that could alternatively explain depression, but still found that in-person interaction has a potent benefit.”

People who met with family or friends three or more times a week had a 6.5 percent chance of reporting depressive symptoms two years later, while those who met up once every few months or less had an 11.5 percent risk. Those who fell in between had an intermediate risk: Seeing friends and family once or twice a week was linked to a 7.3 percent chance of subsequent depression, while in-person contact once or twice a month was linked to an 8.1 percent risk.

God moves in mysterious ways

Bees and caffeine

Want some advice?

Jackpot?

Gun owners and the NRA

Quoting for gain

Help wanted - counterterrorism analyst

Would you believe that such a job is available at Disney's? And it looks like they already have some such analysts as they are looking for interns.

A hole in the sun

Is this magic?

From our Plymouth correspondent

Progress by the Taliban

The red areas are controlled by the Taliban according to The Long War Journal, which tracks Taliban control. The yellow areas are 'contested', i.e., districts where the Afghan government controls the district center but the Taliban control large areas outside of the district center.

Restoring Touch

The Spiny Robber

The Spiny Robber has a scientific name - Spinolestes xenarthrosus. It is a fossil whose remains are estimated to be 125 million years old. That is 60 million years older than any other mammal found with soft tissues preserved. Its fur, skin and organs are still visible today. It looks like and is about the same size as a rat.

Children in India don't fare very well

39 percent of Indian children are stunted from poor nutrition. And I'm not talking simply about being short. Stunting also - and more importantly - affects the brain; thus, retardation is the real issue. While India can be considered a powerful nation, stunting is worse in India than in Burkina Faso or Haiti, worse than in Bangladesh or North Korea. 

No one really knows why child nutrition is such a problem here. Some think the low status of women is a cause as 42 percent of Indian women are underweight before pregnancy. Then during pregnancy, Indian women gain only half the recommended weight. Others point to poor sanitation, particularly open defecation. About half of Indians defecate outside without using toilets.

More valuable than ivory

That's the helmeted hornbill. It goes for about $6,150 per kilogram - three times more than elephant ivory. Part of its head (its helmet) has been used for centuries by Chinese and Japanese craftsmen to create artifacts for the rich and powerful. Many were bought by the Victorians as part of their netsuke collection.

Thousands of these birds are killed each year. Plus, their habitat in Asia's rainforests is being destroyed; researchers estimate that the habitat is shrinking 3% a year. The birds are now considered Near Threatened.

Arming the subs

Andrew Bacevich elaborates on my recent post relative to our lack of military success since WWII.  He talks about our efforts to arm the soldiers of the nation we couldn't really help militarily. Some questions:

Given a weak state with dubious legitimacy, how feasible is it to expect outsiders to invest indigenous forces with genuine fighting power?

How do differences in culture or history or religion affect the prospects for doing so?

Can skill ever make up for a deficit of will?

Can hardware replace cohesion?

Above all, if tasked with giving some version of Vietnamization another go, what did U.S. forces need to do differently to ensure a different result?

A surprise to me

I found out yesterday that the Speaker of the House of Representatives need not be a member of the House. Of course, this has never happened, but there is talk of appointing The Donald to that position.

You gotta wonder

If our military had won a war since WWII, would we and the world be in such tough shape today? Despite this inability we have spent trillions of dollars on what we call defense. Would we not be in much better shape had we spent a relatively small portion of the defense dollars on such trivial matters as education or infrastructure?

North Dakota and the oil boom

Thoughts on the love of your life

Let's go to Iceland

University non grata

The University of Phoenix will have to look outside the military for new students. The Department of Defense has ruled that service members can no longer use their funds to attend the school. Furthermore, the university is also no longer allowed to host recruitment events on military installations. This is a big loss for the university as over the six years we paid it $1.2 billion to educate military.

This is our country?

From William Rivers Pitt

Some 87,000 people in the US have been shot dead since the unimaginable Sandy Hook massacre. There have been 142 school shootings over that span of time, and more mass shootings than days on the current calendar. If international terrorists came to the US, killed 87,000 people and attacked 142 schools, the US Air Force would be unleashed with napalm, bombs, bullets and rage to turn the rest of the planet into smoking glass in an act of blind vengeance. Since we've done it to ourselves, however, it's just politics. The NRA is powerful, you know. Exceptional.

Keeping it secret

A few of Obama's decisions to protect us:

• Of the 10 cases of people charged under the 1917 Espionage Act in U.S. history, the Obama administration is responsible for seven of them.
• Under Obama, whistleblowers face a total of 751 months behind bars — compared to 24 months for all other whistleblowers combined since the American Revolution.
• 76.7 million documents were classified in 2010, compared with 8.6 million in 2001 and 23.4 million in 2008, the first and last years of George W. Bush’s administration.
• The budget for non-military intelligence agencies has gone from $50.4 billion in 2015 to a proposed $53.9 billion for 2016.

Academic research

More and more studies are being done as to how accurate the typical academic study is. One measure of accuracy is whether the results could be replicated. One study of 100 published pieces in top psychology journals found that only 36% of the 100 were replicable. A current study of 67 papers in 13 reputable academic journals by Fed economists found that only a third of the results could be independently replicated by the researchers. So, they asked for help from the authors of the study. Guess what? Even with the help of the authors, only about half, or 49%, could be replicated.

Is the "publish or perish" syndrome dominating academic research?

Head reunited to spine

Animals and humans

There was a very interesting review of two books - Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina and The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell - in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books. Interesting because of the approach to some animals; an approach that pointed out some of the commonalities between some animals and we human beings. The books were written by people who have spent their lives studying these animals - elephants, killer whales, bottlenosed dolphins, and wolves.

Before we talk about these animals, did you know that a great number of species, including earthworms - have emotions? Darwin said that earthworms “deserve to be called intelligent.  When evaluating materials for plugging their burrows, they act in nearly in the same manner as a man under similar circumstances.” And, of course, you now that emotions are the foundation blocks of relationships and personalities. 

But worms and most other species have small brains. It's the animals with bug brains that are the subjects of these books. Elephants are “intelligent, social, emotional, personable, imitative, respectful of ancestors, playful, self-aware, compassionate.” They have excellent memories, and are able to recognize up to one thousand individuals. So strong is elephant empathy that they sometimes bury their dead, and will return repeatedly to the skeleton of a deceased matriarch to fondle her tusks and bones. Elephants have been known to extract spears from wounded friends, and to stay with infants born with disabilities.

The connection between humans and animals seems to be strongest with wolves. Tough, flexible in social structure, capable of forming pair bonds and fitting into ever-shifting hierarchies, we were made for each other. 

Sperm whales have a number of human qualities. Whale females and young often live in “clans” of up to thirty individuals, while adult males, except when mating, live separate lives. And clans identify themselves by distinctive “dialects” of sonar clicks, which are passed on by learning, and act as markers of clan identity. They are an important part of the whale’s communication system, which enables the creatures to synchronize their diving, feeding, and other activities. So social are sperm whales that females share the care of the young of their clan, for example by staying at the surface with a young whale while its mother dives for food. Clan members are so closely bonded that they spend extended periods at the surface, nuzzling one another or staying in close body contact.

Male killer whales have a mother fixation. They never leave their mother’s clan, and despite their enormous size (growing to twice the weight of females), their fates remain deeply intertwined with those of their mothers. If their mothers should die, even fully adult males over thirty years old (they can live to over sixty) face an eight-fold increase in their risk of death. And then there's the thing about food. One clan of killer whales eats only a single species of salmon. Another kills only one species of seal.

A hundred or so years ago, at Twofold Bay south of Sydney, Australia, killer whales and humans set up a mutually profitable whaling enterprise. The killer whales would notify the whalers of the presence of humpback whales by performing a ritual in the waters of the bay fronting the whaler’s cottagers. The men would harpoon the humpbacks, and the killer whales would hold on to the harpoon ropes to tire the prey.

Pentagon budget in constant dollars

Obama FY2010-15 $663.4 billion per year 
Bush Jr FY2002-09* $634.9 " " " 
Clinton FY1994-2001 $418.0 " " " 
Bush Sr FY1990-93 $513.4 " " " 
Reagan FY1982-89 $565.0 " " " 
Carter FY1978-81 $428.1 " " " 
Ford FY1976-77 $406.7 " " " 
Nixon FY1970-75 $441.7 " " " 
Johnson FY1965-69 $527.3 " " " 
Kennedy FY1962-64 $457.2 " " " 
Eisenhower FY1954-61 $416.3 " " " 
Truman FY1948-53 $375.7 " " " 

*Excludes $80 billion supplemental added to FY2009 under Obama.

From Truthout

Why Congress should not approve the TPP

Treating the mentally ill in America

The biggest killer

Abortion and gun control

From our Suffield correspondent

Scary

Will these steps reduce gun violence?

The Guardian thinks they will. What do you think?

• Close loopholes that allow felons, perpetrators of domestic abuse, or people with a history of dangerous mental illness to purchase weapons.
• Let government agencies such as the CDC research gun violence by repealing the 1996 budget amendment that says: “None of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.”
• Make interstate gun trafficking a federal crime, and increase penalties for so-called “straw-man” sales in which someone buys a gun to deliver to a third party.
• Expand the ban on the sale of firearms to those convicted of domestic violence, including abuse and stalking.
• Convince institutions to introduce firearm bans in the public places that they own, such as college campuses, stores and restaurants.
• Revive the 1994 ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004.
• Ban certain types of ammunition, such as hollow-point bullets , which tend to be more lethal, and limit the number of rounds allowed per magazine – as the 1994 ban limited magazines to a maximum of 10 bullets, for instance.
• Require waiting periods for gun purchases so that background checks can be finished and to encourage buyers to “ cool off ” from any violent impulses that might be motivating them to buy a weapon, require training for those wanting to be issued a gun license, and introduce a registry of weapons.

Stiglitz and Hersh on the TPP

Some excerpts from a paper at Project Syndicate: 

• You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for “free trade.” The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about “free” trade.
• provisions in the TPP would restrain open competition and raise prices for consumers in the US and around the world
• Under these investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) systems, foreign investors gain new rights to sue national governments in binding private arbitration for regulations they see as diminishing the expected profitability of their investments.

An appropriate cover page

We're in 4th place

A towering ship

That tower pictured above is, in fact, a ship. It is a new destroyer called the Zumwalt. Work began on it in 1994 and it is expected to be ready by 2018. Total anticipated cost is $22 billion, which is 50 percent higher than projected a decade ago and it does not count another $9.1 billion spent in research and development on the overall project.