Don't drink the water

Flint, Michigan has a slight problem with its water, which is taken from the local river. Sometimes it's blue, sometimes yellow. It has abnormally high levels of e. coli, trihamlomethanes, lead, and copper. The EPA recommends keeping lead content below 15 parts per billion. the average lead content in the river was 2,000 parts per billion. A dead body and an abandoned car have been found in the river. 

Flint is not alone. Residents in Toledo were told not to drink tap water because tests showed abnormally high levels of microcystins, perhaps related to algae blooms in Lake Erie. Residents in Pennsylvania boil a lot of their water. Chicago residents are seeing more lead in their water. Nationally, the American Society for Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure gave the country a “D” in the drinking-water category.

A view of old age for the young

Kinda cute

What is happiness?

Helping the banks

For the past 100 years or so the Federal Reserve has mandated that its member banks subscribe to “stock” in an amount equal to 6 percent of their capital and surplus. The banks have to pay half that amount upon becoming a member; the other half is subject to being called upon. The Fed pays these 'stockholders' a 6% dividend every year. If the bank joined the Fed prior to March 28, 1942, the dividends are tax-free.

Now Congress has proposed that the dividend be lowered to 1.5% for banks with $1 billion or more in assets. The lowering of the dividend would be used to fix the highways.

I'm really surprised Congress would propose such a sensible plan.

Earth II

Creating barriers

Many large cities have a problem with men urinating in public areas, particularly in areas with bars or homeless people. San Francisco thinks it has found a solution, one used with success in Germany. Walls are painted with a urine-repellent paint called Ultra-Ever Dry. The paint creates a barrier of air in front of the surface that will "completely repel almost any liquid," according to its maker. 

Those with a need to urinate on a wall are warned by signs written in English, Chinese and Spanish, that say: "Hold it! ... seek relief in an appropriate place".

Outlaw Ocean

The NY Times has been running a series called "Sea Slaves" as a way to document what it calls the 'Outlaw Ocean'. It is quite disturbing. Here is one clip from it.

How many military bases do we have overseas?

Would you believe more than 700? Our former enemies in WWII have almost 300, 174 in Germany and 113 in Japan. Another country where we went to war, South Korea, has 83. The remaining 300+ are in 70 countries from Aruba to Kenya to Thailand. Is there a need for so many? 

They are costly. We pay on average $10,000 to $40,000 more for each service member stationed abroad, compared with those at home. This works out to about $85 billion a year and does not count Iraq and Afghanistan, which would bring the number to $156 billion. 

They are not needed. Studies by the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Bush administration and by the RAND Corporation show that advances in moving forces by air and sea have largely erased the advantage of forward stationing of troops; the military can generally deploy troops just as quickly from domestic bases as it can from bases abroad. 

They can generate hatred of us by the native population. Vide the bombings in Germany in the 1980s or the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen. Research shows that United States bases and troops in the Middle East correlate with Al Qaeda recruitment.

They heighten military tension. Having bases near China or Russia does not convince them of how peaceful we are.

We're closing domestic bases. Shouldn't we be close foreign bases as well?

Minimum sentence for drugs?

Threatened or endangered

The Endangered Species Act is, as its name states, an attempt to protect endangered species. Currently, African elephants are considered as “threatened.” The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) wants the act amended so that elephants would be considered “endangered.” 

Such a change would make the protection stronger. If African elephants are considered endangered, it would prevent the animals’ parts from being sold in, imported to or exported from the United States. And we are the second biggest market for ivory. It would also prevent our government from sanctioning or paying for actions that hurt the animals; it can also provide funds for research and public education.

CBD's rationale for changing the categorization of African elephants comes from the recent discovery that African elephants are really two distinct genetic species: “forest” elephants and “savanna” elephants. "Forest elephants are much smaller, weighing half what savanna elephants weigh, and evolved in Central and West Africa’s rain forests; they have rounder ears than their cousins and straighter tusks. Savanna elephants, whose ears are more triangular and whose tusks are thick and curved, roam throughout the open, bushy terrain of other parts of the vast continent, from East Africa down to the south, where they’re most abundant. The two species are about as distinct from each other, in genetic terms, as lions are from tigers."

Considering the elephants as a single threatened species means that we have a species of about half a million individuals remaining, we’re likely looking at a maximum of 100,000 (and possibly as few as 50,000) forest elephants surviving in the world and an estimated 400,000 savanna elephants. So, each species is endangered.

The Mean and the Median are not the same

Charts based on the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances

Courtesy of The Big Picture

What would Hippocrates say?

Reality?

The Ogallala Aquifer is drying up

So what, you might say. But you might not know some facts about the aquifer:

• It is one of the largest underground sources of fresh water in the world.
• It is Western Kansas’ only significant water source.
• It is the source of much of the water west of the 100th Meridian and east of the Rockies.
• It supplies water for 20 percent of the corn, wheat, sorghum and cattle produced in the U.S.

Here's the thing. The rainfall is so low that the recharge rate for the Ogallala in Kansas is less than 10 percent. So for every 10 inches pumped out every year, less than one inch is replaced, even in the best conditions. Scientists think that 70% of the Ogallala Aquifer’s water will be gone in less than 50 years if nothing is done.

Robots are not yet the complete answer for surgery

A group of academics studied 10,624 cases of robotic surgery from 2000 to 2014. Their conclusion: a nonnegligible number of technical difficulties and complications are still being experienced during procedures. They found 144 deaths (1.4% of the 10,624 reports), 1,391 patient injuries (13.1%), and 8,061 device malfunctions (75.9%).  Things were better for simpler operations (gynecology and urology) than for more complex surgeries, such as cardiothoracic and head and neck.

Print your food

Time Passes

I'm not sure this video says very much new, but it is interesting

How is this explained?

It's become almost part of the scientific bible that the Arctic ice has become less of a problem due to warmer summers. But just recently ships have been stuck in the Arctic Ocean due to heavy ice, which has been called by the Canadian Coast Guard the heaviest ice in twenty years in one case and in ten years in the other. Is this just an aberration that scientists can explain?
Brought to light by our Florida correspondent

My Favorite Plane

Forest Fire in the City?

That's what's likely to happen in Washington at some point as summers here get longer and hotter. There has not been any significant rainfall in the mountains for months, and last winter saw record-low snowfall. A fire chief believes, "We're seeing significant amounts of fires in places where we've never seen fires before."

Washington has been a growth state and the forests are cluttered with subdivisions, shopping centers and golf courses. And the weather is changing.

Nuf' said

From McClatchy

Commodity prices and the market

Pam Martens is worried about falling commodity prices.

"Yesterday, domestic oil (West Texas Intermediate or WTI) dipped below $50 a barrel during intraday trading, reaching a level not seen since April. Gold closed at the lowest price in five years while sugar traded at a six year low. Wheat has lost almost 9 percent since last week. The Bloomberg Commodities Index traded at a 13-year low yesterday."  

Her worry is based on the following chart linking commodity prices to the Dow Jones during the Depression.

Build it and they will come

Although the Defense Logistics Agency had ended their mission in Kandahar and left Afghanistan six months before the warehouse shown below was completed, the Army in its wisdom continued to build it as originally designed. There was no attempt to reevaluate or downsize it. In fact, $400,000 of modifications were made to the buildings before the project was complete.

The total cost was $14.7 million. Original goals were not meant as the facility finished two years behind schedule and cost $1.2 million more than anticipated.

Even more interesting is that the warehouse complex will be turned over to the Afghan government with air conditioning and fire suppression systems that are too sophisticated for them to use. And it’s unclear whether the Afghans want or have the money to make use of it.

Fighting a shark

Was New Horizons worthwhile?

The New Horizons mission to Pluto cost $700,000,000 over a 15-year period or about $46,700,000 per year. Vox does some comparisons re cost.

• The F-35 fighter will cost 2,142 times as much as the Pluto mission
• Improper Medicare payments cost almost 1000 times as much each year as the Pluto mission
• NFL stadiums cost taxpayers more than five Pluto missions
• Destroyed weapons cost 10 times as much as the Pluto mission
• Minting pennies and nickels costs twice as much annually as the Pluto mission
• Annual payments to dead federal workers cost more than the Pluto mission

Food Waste

Now we have CLOs

CLO stands for Collateralized Loan Obligation. Does this sound like the CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) of Great Recession fame? The CLO is even worse. 

While the CLO trades like a security, no one regulates them. The information supplied by the issuer is somewhat sparse. Borrowers can limit who can access their financials, control the type of data they get, and even blacklist certain investors from ever buying the loan.

An example of how bad CLOs can be is Millennium Health, the biggest drug-testing lab in the US and biggest recipient of Medicare drug-testing payments. It issued a $1.775 billion loan in April 2014. The money was not invested in the business; $195 million was used to pay off debt and $1.297 billion was used to fund a special dividend to its owners. At the time of issuance the company quietly announced it was being investigated by Medicare. But no one paid much attention until the settlement was announced. Millennium has to pay almost $250,000,000 to Medicare. But it does not have that kind of money.

A hobby for senior citizens

Another use for LEGOs?

A Water Exchange

Counting twice

Many in California and Arizona - especially agriculture factories - don't accept the fact that groundwater in aquifers and surface water in rivers and reservoirs are not separate supplies but interconnected parts of the same system. In California, 60% of the water comes from underground, in Arizona it's 50%. So, they're really kidding themselves and are very likely to run out of water much sooner than they think. As a leading hydrologist says, “If you don’t connect the two, then you don’t understand the system. And if you don’t understand the system, I don’t know how in the hell you’re going to make any kind of judgment about how much water you’ve got to work with.”

Adopting Facebook

For those of my older generation who do not really comprehend why Facebook exists. Presently, I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the same principles. Therefore, every day I go down on the street and tell the passers-by what I have eaten, how I feel, what I have done the night before and what I will do tomorrow night. Then I give them pictures of my family, my dog and me gardening and spending time in my pool. I also listen to their conversations and I tell them I love them. And it works. I already have 3 persons following me: 2 police officers and a psychiatrist.

From our Pawling, NY corespondent

Some old people in India

Well, that's it for this year

Solar Impulse, the solar-powered plane, has cancelled the remainder of its flight around the world. The batteries have given out and it will take months to fix. It was a noble attempt. Let's see how well it does next year.

Comparisons

Pluto is the small tan circle superimposed on the earth. The smallest item is a moon of Pluto.

3d Printing and Roosters

Another futuristic flight

This time with a battery-powered plane. The plane, built by Airbus, flew across the English Channel from Kent to Calais in 36 minutes. It is capable of speeds up to 100 miles per hour.

Try, try, try again

I don't see how conditions will improve in Greece:

No debt relief

Higher sales tax

Lower pensions

A belief that Greece can raise 50 billion euro by selling 'assets'

The 'plan' is worse than that originally offered.

I find it interesting that little mention is being made of the effect of the Marshall Plan on Germany. Basically, the plan made Germany's debt null and void.

This video from The Guardian is a good summary of today's deal.

Fiscal insanity on the local level

Will Guam Tip Over

That's a concern of a Congressman

21st Century Migration

Climate Deception Dossiers

The Union of Concerned Scientists has just published a series of dossiers which, it asserts, documents a campaign of deception by major energy companies to deceive us about the realities of climate change. The Union has been able to get hold of internal company and trade association documents via leaks to the public, lawsuits or Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.

The documents reveal a number of efforts by the companies, such as forged letters to Congress, secret funding of a supposedly independent scientist, the creation of fake grassroots organizations, multiple efforts to deliberately manufacture uncertainty about climate science.

The Union's conclusions:

Fossil fuel companies have intentionally spread climate disinformation for decades.
Fossil fuel company leaders knew that their products were harmful to people and the planet but still chose to actively deceive the public and deny this harm.
The campaign of deception continues 

Pope Francis in Ecuador

Part of the Pope's sermon: 

“Some may rightly say, ‘When the pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the church.’ I say this to you with regret: Many grave sins were committed against the native people of America in the name of God.

I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”

Police laundering money

Pluto from 5 million miles away

Note the lighter area toward the bottom right. Is Pluto saying it 'hearts' us? The 'heart' is nearly 1,200 miles across.

We'll have a much closer look on the 14th.

Some of the 470 running for President of the U.S.

Negating encryption

Encryption is a way to prevent others from accessing your data. Like the rest of the programming world, it is not perfect as all encryption systems are created by fallible human beings. But it works pretty well. Now the governments of the U.S. and Britain want to negate the value of encryption.

The governments want the developers of these systems to supply them with the keys to decoding encrypted data. Apparently, the governments think that their workers are superhuman and will make it impossible for anyone else - such as a hacker - to get access to these keys.

A group of world-class cryptologists believes that, “Such access will open doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend. The costs would be substantial, the damage to innovation severe and the consequences to economic growth hard to predict. The costs to the developed countries’ soft power and to our moral authority would also be considerable.” A couple of good reasons why the government should not be so fear-ridden.

Playing the math

Let's play with some numbers. Company A earns $1,000,000 in year 1. There are 1,000 shares. So the earnings per share are $1,000. In year 2 the company buys 100 of its shares in the marketplace but still earns $1,000,000. Earnings per share climb to $1111.11. In many companies the pay of the CEO and others is based in part on earnings per share. So, in year 2 the CEO will have higher earnings although the company's results were the same. More and more companies are buying back shares. Thus because the divisor (number of shares) is lower, the CEO's pay will increase if earnings per share are part of the compensation plan.

Would you think that compensation figures into the decision to buy back a company's shares? Let's look at the compensation of IBM's CEO and see if we have any help in answering that question.

Note that $4.4 million of her pay was based on EPS. How typical is this?

Another major city with a water problem.

Bangkok may run out of water in thirty days unless it rains. But a good part of the problem seems to be the lack of effective management by the city. The price residents pay for water is too low at twenty-five cents per 1000 liters. Then, there is no way to collect rain water on a large scale; all the rain is washed into the sea. They have no way to prevent the water becoming brackish in drought conditions.

Beyond Google

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, invented the Internet. Now, they've invented a totally different search engine, MEMEX. The rationale for this in the words of the program leader is “Right now, the way people are asking and answering analysis questions is by a lot of manual search and querying… We want to enable the discovery of that content which is relevant to them and the presentation of it for analysis. We’ve started with one domain, the human trafficking domain, as one example to show how useful it is to do this strategy. In the end we want it to be useful for any domain of interest.” 

While Google and other search engines do make life easier, it takes a lot of work to analyze the results of searches. Memex provides a way to minimize that work. Listen to the following NPR interview.

Happy July Fourth, Barry

Disowning those who worked for us

I can't really say 'disowning' since we are letting Iraqis and Afghans who worked for us in the war enter the U.S. The problem is it's taking forever. Okay, we've issued almost 12,000 visas under the special immigrant program for Iraqis and Afghans employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government. But we really needed to issue about 37,000 more; we are short 25,000.

Not all worked as translators. Those Iraqi who were not translators must submit their application by Sept. 30. The visa process for all Afghans will close on December 30, although there are 13,000 applicants and we grant only 4,000 visas this year. 

As part of the visa process applicants must have medical exams and vaccinations, which are expensive and are good for only six months. Plus there are translation costs and courier fees for documents, fingerprint fees and medical exams. 

Crying Wolf

We know well the story of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf". One wonders whether the FBI is doing the same thing. Over the past fourteen years we have been warned over forty times of a terrorist attack that an attack is imminent. But none of the warnings has seen the light of reality.

A week ago Michael Morrell, former Deputy Director of the CIA, told us that there have been fifty ISIS arrests so far this year. However, when you look at these arrests, no members of ISIS were arrested; the arrestees were members of the FBI, and their 'informants', acting as such.

Studies have concluded that you’re much more likely to be killed by:

Brain-Eating Parasites, Texting While Driving, Toddlers, Lightning, Falling Out of Bed, Alcoholism, Food Poisoning, Choking On Food, a Financial Crash, Obesity, Medical Errors or “Autoerotic Asphyxiation” than by Terrorists.

Solar Impulse lands in Hawaii

And he's only 15!

How many Catholics are there in Norway

Norway is the only European country where subsidies granted to the church are dependent on its membership numbers. The numbers are made up of registered Catholics. The Church does the registration. It admits that it used improper methods to calculate the number registered. For example, it registered some church employees as Catholic people with Polish names found in the phone book. Norway may charge the leading bishop with a crime. The country is also seeking the return of approximately $6.3 million.

The government is asleep once more

The Center for Public Integrity is publishing a series of articles on work-related disease in America. Here is a summary of their initial findings: 

• America’s system for preventing worker illnesses and deaths from chemicals, fumes and dust is so broken that OSHA warns companies not to rely on its legal exposure limits to protect employees.
• One example of the U.S. government’s failure to properly regulate toxic substances in American workplaces: The effort to tighten rules for lung-damaging silica is 40 years old and still hasn’t crossed the finish line.
• U.S. workers face high cancer risks if exposed over their careers to certain chemicals at the legal limit, according to analyses by OSHA and a separate analysis by the Center for Public Integrity and a former OSHA official.
• The vast majority of the tens of thousands of chemicals made or used in the U.S., including some very common and toxic substances, have no workplace exposure limits.
• Even though OSHA’s workforce exposure limits are too loose, companies don’t always comply with them. OSHA samples testing positive for lead, for instance, frequently topped legal levels.

By and large it is not the fault of the companies. They are complying with the rules. The problem is that the vast majority of tens of thousands of chemicals used in workplaces fall under no rules at all.

Ho Hum

The F-35 keeps coming up short. Now, we find out that it would probably lose an air battle to the F-16 which it is meant to replace. The turning rate of the F-35 was simply too slow to catch up with the nimbler F-16. Consequently, the F-35 also was incapable of adequately maneuvering out of the way of an F-16 attack.

Life under ISIS

Der Spiegel has a devastating article on what it is to ive in a city controlled by ISIS. Here are excerpts:

• Smoking is prohibited. Drinking alcohol is prohibited. Wearing hair gel is prohibited. Portraits on T-shirts and other articles of clothing are prohibited, whether they are of the Prophet Mohammed, Kurt Cobain or Donald Duck. Men are not allowed to be clean-shaven, while women are required to wear the niqab, the black face veil that covers everything but the eyes. Now secular music is also prohibited. Being in favor of democracy and free elections is prohibited. Treating Shiites as orthodox Muslims and Yazidis as human beings is prohibited. The fewer Shiites and Yazidis that exist, the better it is for the world of the Islamic State. The same applies to Christians and Jews, who must either convert or pay protection money. Anyone who refuses to comply is killed. It is a civic duty to advocate multiple genocide in the new Islamic State, which aims to be a country of Sunni Muslims.
• Executions in Mosul happen suddenly on public squares, in parks and in the streets. The routine manner in which they are performed is calculated, an expression of the contempt the Islamic State has for political enemies and religious sinners. In fact, executions conducted by IS are not meant to be a spectacle but rather a daily performance, something entirely banal, like a car accident during morning rush hour.
• A document from Aleppo Province in Syria lists crimes and the corresponding punishments that will apply in the future. Blasphemy: death. Blaspheming against the Prophet Mohammed: death, even if the offender repents. Blaspheming against Islam: death. Homosexuality: Death, for both men. Stealing: amputation of one hand. Drinking alcohol: 80 lashes. Slander: 80 lashes. Spying in the service of infidels: death. Renunciation of Islam: death. Robbery: If robbery and murder are committed, death by crucifixion. If only robbery is committed, amputation of the right hand and the left foot.