Trying to change habits is not easy

In India many rural residents do not have toilet facilities and so defecate outdoors. Unicef  claims that more than half of rural Indians still defecate in public, excreting nearly 65,000 tons of feces into the environment each day. Outdoor defecation is not limited to the countryside. It often happens around railway tracks or slum areas. Scientists believe that this outdoor excreting leads to diarrhea in kids 5 and under, resulting in about 188,000 deaths each year.

New Delhi is trying to change this habit. It will deploy what they call mascots that will blow a whistle they sense a possible excretion and direct the violator to a public toilet. Poverty or lack of access to toilets are not the only factors, research has shown that many Indian villagers believe public defecating is healthier, and continue the practice even after a toilet is built in their area.

Another problem for Iraq

The Mosul dam has been operating since 1984. For some strange reason it was built on a foundation of soluble rock. Which means that hundreds of employees have to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below to keep the dam stable. Ten tons of grout are pumped into the dam every day. Without this continuous maintenance, the rock beneath would wash away, causing the dam to sink and then break apart. In February, the U.S. Embassy said, “Mosul Dam faces a serious and unprecedented risk of catastrophic failure with little warning.” 

Here's what would likely happen:

A “tsunami-like wave” would rush through Mosul, carrying away everything in its path, including bodies, buildings, cars, unexploded bombs, hazardous chemicals, and human waste. The wave would almost certainly catch most of the people trying to outrun it. Residents of Mosul, scrambling on foot and by car through a citywide traffic jam, would need to travel at least three and a half miles to survive. In less than an hour, those who remained would be under as much as sixty feet of water.
Within four days, the wave would reach Baghdad, depositing as much as sixteen feet of water in many areas of the city, probably including the airport and the Green Zone, the site of government buildings and most of the embassies. The report said the majority of the city’s six million residents would face Hurricane Katrina-like conditions: people forced from their homes, with limited or no mobility and no essential services.

Flint is not alone

Last year, the city of Flint, Michigan, was in the news because of lead in its drinking water. 5 percent of the children screened there had high blood lead levels. Reuters has done a study of other areas in this country. In fact, Reuters found almost 3,000 areas with poisoning rates at least double those in Flint. More than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher.

Some examples:

In parts of Cleveland, half of children tested had elevated lead levels, a rate 10 times higher than in Flint.

In some areas of Baltimore, the rates of lead poisoning reached 40 percent.

In one census tract near Notre Dame 31.3 percent of children tested since 2005 showed lead levels above the current federal threshold. 

In Milwaukee, 11.5 percent of children tested had high levels.

Derivatives are still a problem

As of the quarter ending June 30, 2016 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) indicates that U.S. bank holding companies have a total notional amount (face amount) of derivatives of $252.6 trillion. Of that total, just five Wall Street banks hold $230 trillion. Those five banks are: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.Citigroup has $53.6 trillion in total notional amount of derivatives — and has only $1.8 trillion in assets.

How fast can you run

Can you run a half-marathon in 1:50:47?  A marathon in 2:54:49? Ed Whitlock did both. The half-marathon time was a world record for a male runner aged 85 to 89, breaking the prior record by more than 9 minutes. He ran the marathon when he was 73 and still runs them; he did 3:15:54 when he was only 80.

He seems like a straightforward guy, although he carries only 112 pounds on a 5-foot-7 body. He doesn’t pay strict attention to diet and takes no supplements. He runs with no music, no gadgets, and almost always by himself.

Try a Placenta Smoothie

National popular vote does not count

We know that Clinton got about 2,000,000 more votes than Trump. But, did you know that 13,000,000 more people voted for Democratic Senate candidates than Republican candidates?

Things Fail

Some scary thoughts

We look to the FDIC should our bank fail and feel reasonably confident that we'll be okay.  Should we? The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) as of September 30, 2016 stood at $80.7 billion, but the DIF-insured deposits amount to $6.8 trillion. That's not a healthy ratio, particularly when you realize that the Fed gave $16 trillion of secret loans to the banking system from 2007 to 2010. 

And we have to realize that the banking system is extremely concentrated. Just four banks (JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo) hold 44.6% of all insured deposits. You may recall that these four banks were loaned trillions of secret dollars in the Great Recession.

Where are the billionaires?

I know the post is huge but it can be read relatively easily. From How Much

Who can better afford a house?

Is the world getting better?

Vox thinks so.

Pay to Play

The American Kidney Fund, one of the largest charities in the country, helps pay insurance premiums for thousands of people who need dialysis. The charity has a deal with the federal government whereby it must help pay for the treatment of patient's having a financial need. However, the Fund has decided not to help patients at clinics that do not donate money to the fund. Thus, there is limited crucial help for needy patients at these clinics. 

The agreement governing the relationship between the group and the companies forbids choosing patients based on their clinic. While the Fund denies this is the case, their guidelines state, “If your company cannot make fair and equitable contributions, we respectfully request that your organization not refer patients.”

Who has the fastest internet?

Republicans = Recession?

Looking at this diagram from Bloomberg, you could make that argument. While it is true that every Republican president since World War II has been in power during at least one recession, Democrats have had a good say in causing a down economy.

What is this?

A fetus' legs protruding from a womb. Is it genuine? Well, it was printed in New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday. You can't even use the word 'rare' in this case as only 26 other recorded cases existed in the history of obstetric medicine.

Here's more from the Washington Post article:

“The fetal legs did not cause the rupture,” Bouet (the doctor) said. Instead, the woman’s history of five C-sections likely led to a tear, in the obstetrician’s view. Because of scarring from the previous births, parts of the uterus remained atypically rigid instead of enlarging during the woman’s latest pregnancy. The uterine wall ruptured when it was unable to expand, causing an inch-long tear (pictured above, marked by the arrows).
The mother was unaware of the rupture and displayed no symptoms. Women with uterine ruptures usually feel pain, Bouet told The Post, brought about by internal bleeding. But the hernia “compressed the walls of the uterine rupture,” he said, “and acted as a hemostatic effect.” That is, the position of the amniocele and baby legs plugged the rupture, preventing blood loss.

One picture says it all

Aleppo before and after.

From The Atlantic

A day in China

World Leaders Speak

"We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defence systems," Mr Putin said.

We have 7100 nuclear weapons. Russia has 7300.

Where to live in Israel

In Tel Aviv four-bedroom apartments go for $850,000, while a “giant” three-bedroom home in the West Bank starts at around $210,000. Plus, in the West Bank you get a discount on purchase taxes; West Bank settlers pay lower property taxes than other homeowners and receive a disproportionate share of state benefits, including funding for education and municipal services. In one new settlement you'll find a community center, classrooms, a day care, a swimming pool, a library, multiple synagogues, and a new shopping center. With the highway system (primarily for Jews) you can get to Tel Aviv and other major cities in a little over a half-hour.

The West Bank is growing. There are now 228 settlements. In 1993, 110,066 Israelis were living in West Bank settlements. Now it's 350,010.  Since the beginning of 2009, the Jewish population in the West Bank has grown more than 23 percent—compared with 9.6 percent growth for the national population.

Strange things in the mail

The Post Office began shipping parcels on January 1, 1913. It was quite popular and trusted very much. Why else would parents mail their children?

There was an 11-pound weight limit for packages sent via Parcel Post, As you would expect, the cost was low (at least when measured by 2016 money). The typical baby cost his parents only 15 cents in postage, although the baby could be insured.

Rats in Paris

Every big city has rats. Some experts say as many as 1.75 rats per person. But, according to the experts, they are essentially unnoticed. However, when the ratio goes higher, they really are noticed. So it is with Paris. There are now about 2 rats per person in the city.  They seem to be everywhere, including the Champs Elysées. The city has taken steps, including the closing of nine city parks for a “de-ratting programme”.

Reducing Social Security Benefits

That's the government's way to have older Americans - or at least 114,000 of them - repay delinquent student loans. The government uses the benign sounding word “offset” to explain these reductions. 

Drug deaths

Not for Trump Supporters

Opening Day Foundation...

...is a Texas nonprofit set up in the past week to raise money for unspecified "conservation charities". The "Opening Day" refers to January 20, 2017, the day Mr. Trump is inaugurated. Million dollar donors will receive a “private reception and photo opportunity for 16 guests with President Donald J. Trump,” a “multi-day hunting and/or fishing excursion for 4 guests with Donald Trump, Jr. and/or Eric Trump, and team,” as well as tickets to other events and “autographed guitars by an Opening Day 2017 performer.” The foundation is headed by Trump's sons and is structured such that the donors’ identities need never be known.

Certainly seems odd to me.

A ghostly octopus

Afghanistan has many generals

In fact, on a per capita basis they have three times as many as we do. And we pay each of these generals. It's not as though these generals have the necessary background. Some are simply the sons of former warlords. Or related to somebody important. Or someone to whom pay is owed. 

Why are we still there?

He plays a fast guitar

How lucky we are

Ghost Shark

Advice to a Presidential Elector

Following his religion

Phelan Moonsong is a Pagan minister and a priest of Pan. He wears goat horns almost every day as they are part of his religious attire.

When he applied for his driving lesson in Maine, he was rejected because of the horns. But he appealed the ruling and was able to convince the authorities that his horns were required by his religion.

A Career Criminal at 86

Doris Payne was arrested for attempting to steal a $2,000 necklace in an Atlanta store. Ms Payne has made a career of stealing jewelry. In fact, there was a documentary, “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne”, of her made in 2013,when she was 80. She's been stealing since she was young, perhaps as young as 16. Her first of many arrests was in 1952 when she was 22. Her biggest success was in the 1970s in Monte Carlo where she stole a 10-carat diamond ring, valued at $500,000.

Gingerbread House at Duncaster

Declining Growth

from Wall Street on Parade

Some Quotes

from a counter-terrorism conference sponsored by the Jamestown Foundation. 

"We can't kill our way out of this. If we do nothing except get tougher, we'll have to get tougher multiple times in the future." 

"the Arab world: today, it is in chaos. It is descending into an abyss of hell that we are only beginning to see the outlines of."

"As bad as Aleppo is, as bad as Mosul is, I think it's almost certainly going to get much worse."

"The depressing thing is that none of the reasons that produced the Arab Spring -- bad governance, bad economic performance, high unemployment, lack of accountability in government, police behavior, lack of openness for citizens to express their views -- not a single one of those has been addressed to any significant degree."

Sunday in the Park with George

This is one of my most loved plays, particularly the song "Move On". The video below is from an October 2016 performance starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. It pales in comparison to the original with Mandy Patimkin and Bernadette Peters.

Irishman Dies from Stubbornness, Whiskey

From Seacoastonline.com:

Chris Connors died, at age 67, after trying to box his bikini-clad hospice nurse just moments earlier. Ladies man, game slayer, and outlaw Connors told his last inappropriate joke on Friday, December 9, 2016, that which cannot be printed here. Anyone else fighting ALS and stage 4 pancreatic cancer would have gone quietly into the night, but Connors was stark naked drinking Veuve in a house full of friends and family as Al Green played from the speakers. The way he died is just like he lived: he wrote his own rules, he fought authority and he paved his own way. And if you said he couldn't do it, he would make sure he could.

Most people thought he was crazy for swimming in the ocean in January; for being a skinny Irish Golden Gloves boxer from Quincy, Massachusetts; for dressing up as a priest and then proceeding to get into a fight at a Jewish deli. Many gawked at his start of a career on Wall Street without a financial background - but instead with an intelligent, impish smile, love for the spoken word, irreverent sense of humor, and stunning blue eyes that could make anyone fall in love with him.

As much as people knew hanging out with him would end in a night in jail or a killer screwdriver hangover, he was the type of man that people would drive 16 hours at the drop of a dime to come see. He lived 1000 years in the 67 calendar years we had with him because he attacked life; he grabbed it by the lapels, kissed it, and swung it back onto the dance floor. At the age of 26 he planned to circumnavigate the world - instead, he ended up spending 40 hours on a life raft off the coast of Panama. In 1974, he founded the Quincy Rugby Club. In his thirties, he sustained a knife wound after saving a woman from being mugged in New York City. He didn't slow down: at age 64, he climbed to the base camp of Mount Everest. Throughout his life, he was an accomplished hunter and birth control device tester (with some failures, notably Caitlin Connors, 33; Chris Connors, 11; and Liam Connors, 8).

He was a rare combination of someone who had a love of life and a firm understanding of what was important - the simplicity of living a life with those you love. Although he threw some of the most memorable parties during the greater half of a century, he would trade it all for a night in front of the fire with his family in Maine. His acute awareness of the importance of a life lived with the ones you love over any material possession was only handicapped by his territorial attachment to the remote control of his Sonos music.

Chris enjoyed cross dressing, a well-made fire, and mashed potatoes with lots of butter. His regrets were few, but include eating a rotisserie hot dog from an unmemorable convenience store in the summer of 1986.

Of all the people he touched, both willing and unwilling, his most proud achievement in life was marrying his wife Emily Ayer Connors who supported him in all his glory during his heyday, and lovingly supported him physically during their last days together.

Absolut vodka and Simply Orange companies are devastated by the loss of Connors. A "Celebration of Life" will be held during Happy Hour (4 p.m.) at York Harbor Inn on Monday, December 19.
In lieu of flowers, please pay open bar tab or donate to Connors' water safety fund at www.thechrisconnorsfund.com.

CEOs Ranked by Performance and Pay

From The Big Picture

Will he follow through?

So, Trump says we should kill the F-35 and prevent Defense officials from 'retiring' to military corporations. Will this happen post January 20?

Where the money is spent

When it comes to colleges, a heck of a lot is spent on football. One recent study found that 48 large football programs in 2014 spent a combined $772 million on football facilities -- a nearly 90 percent increase from 2004. Another study reported that only 24 Division I schools are making money on sports. That means over 300 schools are losing money -- a combined $2 billion a year. It is estimated that $100 billion has been spent on college sports in the past 11 years.

What is the money spent on? Infrastructure, such as stadium renovations with new press boxes, additional seating, giant jumbotrons, luxury suites, private jets, five-star hotels and large staffs. State-of-the-art training facilities are built with locker rooms, sports medicine centers, meeting rooms, weight rooms, nutrition centers and indoor practice fields. Clemson even offers a barber shop, bowling alley and laser-tag equipment for football players.

Then,of course, there's the coaching. The highest-paid public employees in 39 states are college football or basketball coaches. The highest-paid football coach in 2016 is Jim Harbaugh from the University of Michigan, who collects a $9 million salary. Nick Saban from Alabama will take home nearly $7 million, and Urban Meyer from Ohio State will collect $6 million. It is also not uncommon for schools to pay former coaches millions of dollars after they have been fired. A combined total of $50 million in "dead money" was paid to coaches for doing nothing last year.

Shouldn't some of this money not be spent on basic human necessities, such as education, health care and affordable housing?

I'm not a Trump fan

But that doesn't mean that I think everything he says or does is bad. The CIA has been wrong before, particularly during the Cold War. And their current statement says only that the leaks were “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.” Plus, the United States was “not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government.”  So, he has some direct basis to be skeptical.

Could the CIA essentially be following the military's lead relative to the power of Russia? We have been extremely profligate in our military spending largely to defend against Russia. Andrew Cockburn points out that "The Navy has therefore been promised a fleet of twelve ballistic-missile-launching nuclear submarines, loaded with newly developed missiles, at an estimated price of $100 billion. The Air Force will acquire 642 new ICBMs at a supposed cost of $85 billion (a price tag that will, like that of the naval program, inevitably increase). In addition, the Air Force is getting a long-range nuclear bomber, the cost of which it has brazenly classified with the excuse that such details would reveal technical secrets to the enemy. The shopping list also includes several nuclear warheads that are essentially new designs. Meanwhile, command-and-control systems are being developed for an array of satellites (costing up to $1 billion each), whose purpose is to make the business of fighting a nuclear war more manageable."

Stuttering into her 50s

Crossing the street in New Orleans

Interesting

From The Big Picture

200 more boots on the ground.

We're sending 200 troops to Syria to join the 300 that are already there to fight ISIS. 

Navy Football is the same as any Division 1 Team

And maybe worse. It has its own prep school, the Naval Academy Prep School (NAPS). It is tuition-free and students are paid $1,000 a month by us; the school costs us $14,000,000 a year. It is used as a feeder for the Academy for the children of alumni or politicians who don’t have the grades or SAT scores to be admitted into the Naval Academy directly from high school as well as other students.  Students are essentially guaranteed a spot in the Naval Academy the next year.

Recruited athletes make up only 35 percent of the current NAPS class. But seventy-five percent of the current football team got into the Naval Academy through NAPS. More than half the men’s basketball team went to NAPS, and 60 percent of the women’s basketball team. There have been years when 80 percent of the lacrosse team’s players were NAPS graduates.

And then there is the Naval Academy Foundation,which was founded in 1944 to support Navy athletics. It pays for scholarships to send athletes to a private prep school, usually one with a heavy emphasis on sports. In return, the athletes are expected to go to the Naval Academy the next year. 

Tumors in Turtles

One view of Sandy Hook

Male and Female Butterfly

The bright wing is male, the duller one female. This is not that uncommon in the butterfly world.

Treating Parkinson's

A Neighbor's Amaryllis

It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's.......

From our Cape Cod correspondent

Dying Sooner

The National Center for Health Statistics says that life expectancy in the United States has declined for the first time in more than two decades, men from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 in 2015, and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women. This is the first drop in twenty years. Death rates have risen for eight out of 10 of the leading causes of death: heart disease (0.9% rise), chronic lower respiratory diseases (2.7% rise), unintentional injuries (6.7% rise), stroke (3% rise), Alzheimer's disease (15.7% rise), diabetes (1.9% rise), kidney disease (1.5% rise) and suicide (2.3% rise).

The US ranks 28th out of 43 OECD countries. It is just behind the Czech Republic, Chile and Costa Rica, and just above Turkey, Poland and Estonia. The world's highest life expectancy is in Japan at 83.7 years, which is followed by Switzerland and Spain at 83.3. The world's lowest life expectancy is in Sierra Leone, at 50.1 years.

Follow the turtle

An odd Oxonian

A graduate of the University of Oxford is suing his alma mater for “negligent” teaching which allegedly resulted in him failing to graduate with a first class degree. This has affected his income and career prospects. Plus, he suffers from insomnia and depression as a result. There must be some other problems he has as he graduated sixteen years ago.

Free Hugs are Bad...

...in Montreal’s Metro stations. Tommy Boucher has been giving hugs to Metro riders for a year-and-a-half. This week he was fined for doing so because he did not have a permit. I guess there was a stink about the fine as the authorities killed it.

I think this is the first time this has happened since the Free Hugs Movement began years ago. We have been giving them at some of our dinners for years.

A different country

I think we were very different during WWII than we are today, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. While we still had a segregated military and there were conscientious objectors, we were one nation from kids to seniors. We all contributed to our war efforts and the war was in the news every day. I don't like most overtly patriotic songs, but this one moved this country in WWII.

Administration can be expensive

At least as practiced by the Pentagon. It has 1.3 million troops on active duty but needs almost a million desk jockeys, including about 300,000 contractors. A study by the Defense Business Board, an advisory panel of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey concluded that we could save $125 billion over five years by streamlining the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailing the use of contractors and making better use of information technology. But this conclusion was not accepted by management. Why is unknown as the department imposed secrecy restrictions on the data and removed a 77-page summary report from its website .

Trees can communicate

So says Peter Wohlleben, a professional forester in Germany. He is reporting on his own experience and that of scientists. Their theory is that there is a vast underground network, called a mycorrhiza, in which fungi connect trees of different species by passing chemical and electrical signals among the trees’ roots. It was an arboreal Internet—christened the “wood wide web.” Trees could actually communicate by exchanging carbon through their roots. The exchange offered mutual support. Carbon is the food of trees, created by photosynthesis, using the leaves as solar panels. Sometimes one tree would act as mother to its neighbors, giving them more carbon than it received in return. Later the debt would be repaid as the roles were reversed.

Continued studies told the scientists that trees exchanged vital information, warning their neighbors (and children) of threats and advising them of opportunities to seize. For example, if a tree’s leaves are bitten by a caterpillar, it will send a message though the mycorrhiza, prompting other trees in the network to release chemicals that repel caterpillars. 

Wohlleben believes trees have feelings, they knew how to communicate with one another, and that the strong assist the weak. 

Some bacteria are winning

Costs and Benefits

We don't do too much analysis of costs and benefits when it comes to prescription drugs. Other countries do. They first see whether the new drugs really have solid benefits that the proposed price justifies. Then, they'll haggle over the price. We don't regulate or negotiate the prices of new prescription drugs when they come onto market.  The drug companies charge what they want. As a result, we pay more than other countries do.

There is one exception. The VA does negotiate drug prices. It gets drugs that are usually 40 percent cheaper than what Medicare pays. But it also covers fewer products.

Harvesting Fog?

And now, Ms Senior America

The Military on Climate Change

Some generals are really worried. "Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,” said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change and a former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh. Brig Gen Stephen Cheney, a member of the US Department of State’s foreign affairs policy board and CEO of the American Security Project, said: “Climate change could lead to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We’re already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal. 

The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency.They are now warning that immediate action is required.

One Hell in America

That's what solitary confinement is. Between 80,000 and 120,000 men and women are held in solitary confinement every day in this country. Most of them are African-American or Hispanic, and make up 80 percent of the country’s prison population and 95 percent of the inmates confined in solitary cells. Things are getting worse: in the five-year period from 1995 to 2000, the most recent years for which data are available, the number of prisoners held in solitary confinement increased by 40 percent. Here's what a solitary cell in Rikers looks like:

Note that the light is always on. Usually there aren’t any windows. The toilet has no toilet seat or paper and there is no shower. In a book containing essays by former residents of solitary, Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, residents describe being shackled to their bunks by their feet and hands, and moved from place to place like animals. They report being fed slop and also left without food in a state of extreme hunger. They write that hooded guards, armed with tasers and bats, in body armor and riot gear, extract prisoners from their cells and leave them lying on the floor, beaten, bruised, and unexamined by doctors. And the place truly stinks.

Prisoners are subject to the whims of prison officials, they have no legal recourse. They can be placed in solitary for minor infractions such as walking too slowly, or too fast, or talking too much. Prison guards are prosecutors, witnesses, and judges.

A Wall Street Journal View of Trump