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.