Monthly Archives: August 2016

Turns Out Dick Is Really Interesting.

Have you ever wondered how “Dick” became short for “Rick”?

Probably not. But it turns out that the reason, if the following video is accurate, is interesting.

I have two questions for the historical linguists in the room. First, is there a name for this rhymification effect? Is is common? Is it confined to certain regions or cultures? Is it linked to Cockney in some way?

OK, that was a lot of questions, but really, all the same question. My second one is simpler: Where does the phrase “Swinging dick” come in? It is a Britishism for, I think, Square Mile money managers and investors. According to something I saw on TV once.

Let me introduce you to my little friend …

The ePaper Kindle is back in my life. I started out with one (the original model), then moved on to using tablets and phones and computers and stuff to read ebooks. Then, I got a Kindle Fire (see this discussion), and that was nice.

But I wanted an ePaper reading surface for all the reasons people tend to discuss. It is more like paper, perhaps does not have the down sides of constantly staring at a light emitting screen, etc.

There is an ePaper kindle that is under $80 (with the non obtrusive special offers on the sleep screen) that has very long battery time, holds a gazillion books, etc. This link will get you to the “New Kindle 6-inch”. I’m sure that’s a great Kindle, but I opted for the somewhat more expensive “Paper White” model: Kindle Paperwhite E-reader, 6″ High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi. This comes in different colors (black vs. white) and with or without cell phone type connectivity.

The “Paper White” has mysteriously placed LEDs that light the screen from somewhere nearby the screen itself. It is like having a book light but using quantum mechanics instead of a tiny light bulb. I don’t really understand it. It is optional: can be turned off for the full effect of ePaper, or turned up and down as desired.

There are a couple of elite super duper higher end versions of this as well that have potentially important differences, and some probably very unimportant differences.

The Kindle Voyage E-reader is slightly smaller and lighter and brighter (more of the LEDs). The “Kindle Oasis” has even more LED’s, and comes with a fancy “charging cover,” and is even smaller. This is for people who are so fancy they can spend nearly 300 bucks on an eReader that is smaller than everyone else’s eReader!

To me, this is crazy. If anything, I’d like a larger one, maybe an inch taller and a quarter inch wider.

Here’s the thing. The original Kindle and several early models had buttons that you could use to turn the page. That was annoying to many people but many got used to it. The “New Kindle” and the “Kindle Paperwhite” use only touch screen capabilities (but built on to the ePaper using some sort of magic). This eliminates the accidental page turning. The touch screen, however, is not the best touch screen in the world. I’m doing fine with it, I’m happy, but some people will want their damn buttons back. The Voyage and Oasis have both touch screen and buttons. And, they are vastly more expensive. I’ve not played around with them so I have no advice on this, but I don’t really like the buttons so it was easy for me to not spend the extra money.

With this new eReader, I actually find myself reading more, and choosing the eBook option over the paper option more frequently.

Help Kiribati

Kiribati Support

Since 2005, we have worked with colleagues in the Republic of Kiribati to understand the effects of climate change and to build local research capacity.

Monitoring the coral reefs of the Gilbert Islands, the main island chain, is vital to helping the Kiribati people respond to the existential threat of climate change. It can also help us understand the fate of coral reefs around the world: thanks to periodic El Nino-driven ocean “heat waves,” Kiribati is an ideal natural laboratory for studying how coral reefs will respond to rising ocean temperatures.

They need SCUBA and snorkeling gear. They need children’s books for the library in Onotoa. They can take cash if that’s all you’ve got.

Here’s more details on the needs, and details on the process.

Mad About Science Denial? This Book Is For You and your Uncle Bob!

Michael Mann has a specialty or two. Climate simulation modeling, analysis of proxy data, the study of global teleconnections, Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures over historic time scales, etc. A while back, Mann’s research interests and activities converged, I assume by some combination of design and chance (as is often the case in Academia) with a key central question in science. This question is, “What is the pattern of surface warming caused by human effects on the atmosphere, including changes in greenhouse gas concentration and other pollutants?”

Mann and his colleagues essentially solved that problem in 1998, with the publication of a study looking at tree ring data, ice cores, and direct measurements of the atmosphere and the ocean surface, to estimate “surface temperature” of the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. NASA, NOAA, and other agencies already had a temperature record going back into the 19th century, about a century of data. But since human effects started way before that, and since there is a lot of non-human caused variation in the system, the only way the basic pattern of surface warming, and the relative role of human effects, could be ascertained was by extending that record back several more centuries. Mann and his colleagues did that.

What they did was to turn this graph:

What scientists used to think. This is not far from what is now known, but much less detailed.
What scientists used to think. This is not far from what is now known, but much less detailed.

Into this graph:

The results of several scholars' work, including and mainly Mann and Hughes, summarized in a key IPCC report.  This science clarified our position in the natural system we are so dramatically changing, and won the teams who did this work a Nobel Prize.
The results of several scholars’ work, including and mainly Mann and Hughes, summarized in a key IPCC report. This science clarified our position in the natural system we are so dramatically changing, and won the teams who did this work a Nobel Prize.

Ironically, that first graph is from the oil industry, a report by ExxonMobil to be exact. Scientists generally knew that greenhouse warming was a thing, but these ExxonMobil scientists hid their research in order to … well, you can guess their motivation. (And you thought they were just about oil!)

So, that should have been about it. A major question was clarified and science marches on.

But there were two other things that happened after that. One makes total sense, and is a good thing. The other is mad. Mad as in madhouse.

The first thing was clarifying the science even more. Mann and colleagues worked mainly on the Northern Hemisphere because that is where much of the data lived. They were not using all the proxy data that would eventually become available. The record had to be pushed even farther back in time. The direct surface measurements needed to be reanalyzed a few times by different people, using different approaches, in order to understand it better. And so on.

Also, climate needed to march along a bit, as it turns out. The years since 1998 or so have seen dramatic changes in surface temperature, and dramatic effects of warming.

So that all happened, and our understanding of climate change is much refined and pretty darn good, with a few interesting and important questions remaining. But we know enough to confirm several times over the existential nature of the problem.

But something else happened at the same time.

Your curmudgeonly old Uncle Bob got mad at the climate data because, well, it seemed like it was Environmentalism which is all Hippie and Communist and stuff. Your cousin the developer and your other cousin who works at the power plant got mad because it became clear that modern civilization’s present day technologies for making and using buildings, making and using vehicles, and making and using energy, were the cause of an existential crisis. So they got mad about being blamed, even though they weren’t really being singled out. And all the energy producing corporations, stock holders, and their … well, their wholly owned souls such as members of Congress, Republicans, talk show hosts, and, to bring it full circle, your curmudgeonly old Uncle Bob, all got mad because addressing climate change would ruin the American Dream.

The American Dream, by the way, is this: You are a poor slob living in dirt. Them something happens and the dirt is gone but somehow you are still filthy. Filthy rich! Every American would become filthy rich if only … if only Mike Mann would shut up and go away.

So, this second thing that happened involved intense harassment, often bought and paid for, of climate scientists, active opposition to truthful and honest science, and the organic development of what Mann and his coauthor Toles refer to as a “Madhouse.”

Screen Shot 2016-08-24 at 3.57.34 PMMann has been in the middle of the conversation about climate science, the needed energy transition, and the denial of climate science, for years now. (See his first hand historical account of the first half of that journey.) He’s also a great communicator of science. So, he’s one of the best people to tell the story of climate change.

Mann has done this before a couple of times (notably, see this DK publication authored by Mann that summarizes the IPCC report). And now he’s done it again.

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, by Michael Mann and cartoonist Tom Toles, consists of Mann’s account of climate change, the denailism industry, the fight between science and anti-science, the energy transition, and all the important nuances of the problem. Well written and easily understood, an excellent and very current expose of the whole thing. And, along side all this, the cartoonish stylings of cartoonist Tom Toles.

One of the topics Mann deals with in this new book, that has not been dealt with enough, is the Breakthrough concept, especially as related to geoengineering. To quote from the text:

Many of those who advocate against taking action when it comes to dealing with the underlying problem—our ongoing burning of fossil fuels— have instead turned to possible technosolutions for counteracting climate change that involve other massive interventions in the Earth system: geoengineering. In some ways, for the free-market fundamentalist, geoengineering is a logical way out because it reflects an extension of faith that the free market and technological innovation can solve any problem we create, without the need for regulation.

Unsurprisingly, even many rather level-headed captains of industry, such as Bill Gates, have embraced the concept along with techno-Pollyannas, such as Bjorn Lomborg and the Breakthrough Institute. Price on carbon? Nah, the market doesn’t need it. Renewable energy? It’s a pipe dream. Massively interfering with the Earth system in the hope that we might get lucky and offset global warming? Yeah, that’s the ticket!

One of the important Stages of Science Denial (and there is a whole chapter on the stages in The Madhouse Effect) is to assume that this problem will be solved with one great technological advance.

We might have some helpful technological advances, but most of the key advances have already happened and now need some fine tuning. The laws of physics can’t be broken just because we want them to be. It takes energy to separate Carbon from Oxygen, and we get energy by combining the two (if we start with the right molecules). We can’t suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere and make it solid without either spending more energy, or violating the laws of physics. And at the scale we are talking about here, we can’t store the gas in some safe place. The bottom line: We have to keep the fossil fuel in the ground, and use the widely available, abundant, clean, inexpensive, and by the way, very cool alternative sources of energy that already exist but that don’t happened to be owned by the Koch Brothers.

Check out The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. It is available for pre-order as of this writing, but will be available for actual reading around Labor Day on line, and in print, ready to ship by mid September.

Captain. We’ve found an M-Class Planet

The star that is nearest our own has a planet that could be habitable by Earthlings.

This is very important news.

The news comes to us from this research paper in Nature: A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Pedro J. Amado, John Barnes, Zaira M. Berdiñas, R. Paul Butler, Gavin A. L. Coleman, Ignacio de la Cueva, Stefan Dreizler, Michael Endl, Benjamin Giesers, Sandra V. Jeffers, James S. Jenkins, Hugh R. A. Jones, Marcin Kiraga, Martin Kürster, Mar?a J. López-González, Christopher J. Marvin, Nicolás Morales, Julien Morin, Richard P. Nelson, José L. Ortiz, Aviv Ofir, Sijme-Jan Paardekooper, Ansgar Reiners, Eloy Rodríguez, Cristina Rodr?guez-López, Luis F. Sarmiento, John P. Strachan, Yiannis Tsapras, Mikko Tuomi & Mathias Zechmeister.

Abstract:

At a distance of 1.295 parsecs, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri (? Centauri C, GL 551, HIP 70890 or simply Proxima) is the Sun’s closest stellar neighbour and one of the best-studied low-mass stars. It has an effective temperature of only around 3,050 kelvin, a luminosity of 0.15 per cent of that of the Sun, a measured radius of 14 per cent of the radius of the Sun and a mass of about 12 per cent of the mass of the Sun. Although Proxima is considered a moderately active star, its rotation period is about 83 days and its quiescent activity levels and X-ray luminosity are comparable to those of the Sun. Here we report observations that reveal the presence of a small planet with a minimum mass of about 1.3 Earth masses orbiting Proxima with a period of approximately 11.2 days at a semi-major-axis distance of around 0.05 astronomical units. Its equilibrium temperature is within the range where water could be liquid on its surface.

Here’s why this is important. We knew that some stars that are like ours had Earth-like planets. How did we know that? Because we live on one. But how many Sun-like stars have Earth-like planets?

Trivially, we knew that all the known Sun-like stars had Earth-like planets. But that was with a sample size of one. We needed a larger sample size to estimate the actual percentage of Sun-like stars that had Earth-like planets.

Given that, consider the following question. We have a second Sun-like star. If it has no Earth-like planets, what do you think of the overall proportion of stars that have such planets? Perhaps you would guess 50-50, but the sample size is too small. Safer to simply guess, “maybe not many, because the first time we got to increment our sample size, we got nada.” Now, if it does have an Earth-like planet, what do you think of the overall proportion of stars that have such planets? Perhaps you would guess 100%, but again, the sample size is too small. But, you would safely say something like, “Well, hell, maybe a lot of them, because of the two where we have enough information to say … both have them!”

There really is no reasonable statistical way to treat this problem, but this sort of seat of the pants conjecture isn’t bad for now. But, if we were to have, say, five or six Sun-like stars to look at, we could start making real guesses.

There is a second reason. Now that we have an Earth like planet in our sights, perhaps there will be impetus for both funding and effort to squint really really hard at it and see if any life is there. Using fancy science, not actual squinting, of course.

Let us be clear. This planet is not Earth-like in that it has an atmosphere, water, or any sign of life. The planet might be locked in its orbit around its star in such a way that one side always faces that star. That would be bad for an atmosphere and for life. We don’t know if it has an atmosphere, or water. What we do know is that if water is on the surface, it might be liquid, and if an atmosphere ever formed there, maybe (though this is highly debatable) it did not necessarily get blown away into space or otherwise destroyed.

Nature made a video about the discovery:

For more information, check out these posts:

Phil Plait: Astronomers Discover a New Planet Orbiting the Closest Star to the Sun!

Mike Wall: Found! Potentially Earth-Like Planet at Proxima Centauri Is Closest Ever

Nature Podcast, an interview with the chief author:

First Known Climate Change Extinction

When the sea levels rose following the last major glaciation, most rapidly between around 18,000 and 10,000 years ago, somewhat less rapidly until about 6,000 years ago, a lot of interesting things happened.

I used to live, and do archaeology in, New England (the one in the US). It was always fun to contemplate George’s Bank. George’s Bank is a high place out in the ocean, not far from Boston. If you’ve ever been whale watching off P-town, you were probably out on George’s Bank, where the baleen whales forage and frolic, and are easily found during the right season. This is also a great fishing ground.

But prior to the melting of the glaciers and the rising of the seas, George’s Bank was an island, and initially, a rather large one. It is almost certainly true that at the time Clovis Period native Americans were in the area, George’s bank was readily accessible by modest water craft, and very likely colonized by them. But, over time, the island would have become smaller and smaller, and eventually, inundated. Anyone who lived there would have to move. A similar story happened all along the East Coast of the US. In m view, this is one of the most under-studied and under-appreciated “events” in North American prehistory, and likely relates to numerous observations in coastal prehistoric archaeology. But, perhaps owing to the deeply seated (seemingly hard wired and primordial) belief that the sea does not change even when we know it does change, this has not been developed sufficiently as an academic topic. Someone please do so.

George's Bank. The entire continental shelf, shown here, was exposed during lowest sea level (excepting areas to the north where the land was depressed by vast quantities of glacial ice).
George’s Bank. The entire continental shelf, shown here, was exposed during lowest sea level (excepting areas to the north where the land was depressed by vast quantities of glacial ice).

Anyway, that’s an interesting story, and versions of this happened all over world for thousands of years at the close of the last glacial. And, starting about now (geologically speaking), some version or another of this story will be happening for the next several centuries or so, as sea levels begin once again to rise rapidly, because we are polluting the earth.

Entire island nations will disappear, and entire ecological systems will vanish. But first, the canaries have to die.

And the first canary, that we know of, is Melomys rubicola, aka the Braqmble Cay Melomys. Bramble Cay is a very tiny atoll that is part of the Great Barrier Reef, and it has been inundated by human caused sea level rise. The Brable Cay Melomys is a rodent that lived only there. Lived.

Michelle Innis, writing in the New York Times, quotes the local expert:

“The key factor responsible for the death of the Bramble Cay melomys is almost certainly high tides and surging seawater, which has traveled inland across the island,” Luke Leung, a scientist from the University of Queensland who was an author of a report on the species’ apparent disappearance, said by telephone. “The seawater has destroyed the animal’s habitat and food source.”

“This is the first documented extinction of a mammal because of climate change,” he said.

Go read Michelle’s report, HERE, it is quite unsettling. Then imagine similar scenarios of permanent disappearance. Times a thousand. No, times a million. You won’t be able to keep track.

A Call For A Presidential Debate On Science!

Several dozen nonpartisan organizations have joined together to ask for a Science Debate in the current campaign. The debate would address major issues in science, engineering, health and the environment

This is part of an effort that has been going on for several election cycles, with a certain degree of success.

More than 10 million scientists and engineers are represented by the organizations that have joined in this effort. They have provided a list of twenty major issues, and are encouraging journalists and voters to press the candidates on them during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election season.

“Taken collectively, these twenty issues have at least as profound an impact on voters’ lives as those more frequently covered by journalists, including candidates’ views on economic policy, foreign policy, and faith and values,” said Shawn Otto, who has been a principle organizer of this project. (Shawn is also the author of this recent book, and he speaks with Mike Haubrich and me about science in politics in this interview.)

ScienceDebate.org recently commissioned a poll, in cooperation with Research!America, which showed that nearly 90% of Americans want the presidential and congressional candidates to have at least a basic understanding of policy-relevant science.

But what questions should be asked in a science debate? One of the counter arguments to such a debate, and this perception is a concern of the organizers, is that people will confuse “science debate” with “science quiz.” This is not about science, but how science and policy relate. So, the question, “what is the mechanism, at the atomic or molecular level, that makes some gasses greenhouse gasses, as opposed to others, which seem inert in this respect?” would NOT be good question. A more appropriate question might be, “What your best guess as to the most likely warming scenario, caused by human greenhouse gas pollution, over the next several decades; based on the best science, how much more global warming is going to happen during your administration, and what can we do about it?”

The ScienceDebate group has been asking for suggestions, from the general public, as to what issues and questions might form the core of a public discussion and organized debate. They then submitted the 20 most pressing questions to the Presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein, “along with an invitation to the candidates to answer them in writing and to discuss them on television,” said Otto. The results of this effort would then be widely distributed to guide journalists in their coverage, the general public in their voting, and perhaps even scientists in, well, adjusting their level of alarm!

Here’s a video Sciencedebate.org produced a while back with a slightly different spin on the question process. Personally, I think these kids should run the debate!

“Sometimes politicians think science issues are limited to simply things like the budget for NASA or NIH, and they fail to realize that a President’s attitude toward and decisions about science and research affect the public wellbeing, from the growth of our economy, to education, to public health. Voters should have a chance to know where the Presidential candidates stand,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “We want journalists and voters to ask these questions insistently of the candidates and their campaign staff.”

“By engaging the candidates in a debate focusing on topics in science, engineering, technology, and innovation,” said Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences. “it would be an opportunity for all voters to gauge how the candidates would use sound technical information in their future decision making."

“Informing citizens about the health of the nation and discussing pivotal science and policy issues such as mental health, chronic and emerging diseases and other public health threats, and vaccine research, are important to not only advance the national dialogue but also improve the country’s overall well-being,” said Victor J. Dzau, President of the National Academy of Medicine.

“Ahead lie many Grand Challenges for Engineering whose solution in this century have been posited as necessary for simply maintaining our quality of life,” said C. D. Mote, Jr., President of the National Academy of Engineering. “Unfortunately, these challenges stand unrecognized in the US Presidential debates."

Here are the questions

The candidate have been asked to provide responses by September 6.

Nonpartisan organizations participating in the effort include:

**ScienceDebate.org
*American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Geographers
*American Chemical Society
American Fisheries Society
American Geophysical Union
*American Geosciences Institute
American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
*American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Institute of Professional Geologists
American Rock Mechanics Association
American Society for Engineering Education
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
American Society of Mammalogists
Association for Women in Geosciences
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
Automation Federation
*Biophysical Society
Botanical Society of America
Carnegie Institution for Science
Conservation Lands Foundation
Crop Science Society of America
Duke University
Ecological Society of America
Geological Society of America
*IEEE-USA
International Committee Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Materials Research Society
NACE International, The Worldwide Corrosion Authority
*National Academy of Engineering
*National Academy of Medicine
*National Academy of Sciences
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
*National Center for Science Education
National Ground Water Association
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Northeastern University
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Paleontological Society
*Research!America
Scientific American magazine
Seismological Society of America
*Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
Society of Fire Protection Engineers
Society of Wetland Scientists
Society of Women Engineers
Soil Science Society of America
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Tufts University
*Union of Concerned Scientists
University City Science Center
*U.S. Council on Competitiveness
The Wildlife Society
World Endometriosis Research Foundation America

*Codeveloper of the questions
**Lead partner organization

Buying or Selling a Home in the Twin Cities, Minnesota?

If so, I have a recommendation for you.

We recently sold our old house and bought a new one, and moved.

The main reason we did this: to get closer to Amanda’s place of work. We managed to turn a commute that ran from 35 minutes to 1.5 hours (on really bad winter days) each way to one short enough that Amanda will usually bike, with about a five or six minute drive on non-biking days. Probably a ten minute drive on the worst winter days.

The main reason we did this now rather than a couple of years ago: our house was under water thanks to the GB Economic Crisis. In fact, we weren’t sure if we could sell the house at anything but a loss now. And, since we were trying to move into what is at present the best school district in the state (where Amanda happens to teach), the chances of finding a place to move to were somewhere between slim and none. And slim just left town after killing none.

But, we had excellent real estate agents working with us, and that made a huge difference. This blog post is, in fact, part of my thanks for and endorsement of Erik and Toby Nordin. They generally work as a team, and Erik was at the time the licensed agent (though Toby just became one as well), while Toby was the marketing guru. The Nordins work for Engle & Völkers, an international company that has recently moved into the Twin Cities area, and for which Amanda’s sister, Alyssa, works.

Erik and Toby gave us advice on what to do to get our house ready for sale. We followed their advice carefully, and rather than having to lose money on the sale, we walked away with a nice bit of cash. We sold the house in just over 24 hours after putting on the market, though it is a bit unfair to say that; the eventual buyers actually saw the house just a few hours into the process, but there was a bidding thing among the six or so offers we got.

Erik took us out to look at houses a few days after we sold ours. Twice. We found the house we wanted to buy with two bouts of searching. We know a few other people in our area that have moved recently, and most took weeks or months. One could argue that we are not picky, but see above: we were looking for an affordable place a bike ride from the top high school in the state, in a very fancy suburb.

(It turns out that Plymouth Minnesota has a sort of workers neighborhood right by the City Center. Erik knew about it, and showed us a couple of places here.)

Erik and Toby provided or organized all the necessary services and held our hands through every step. Their management of MLS data was excellent. They had great advice on anything you can imagine an agent can provide advice on. You need to know that I’m a person who normally does not like, trust, or have a whole hell of a lot of respect for most real estate agents. I was, after all, raised by one, and I’ve seen the sausage being made. Erik and Toby (and S-I-L Alyssa, and I suspect Engel & Völkers generally) are real professionals. If all agents and brokers were held to their standards a lot of people in the business would have to be looking for work elsewhere.

I’ve told our story to a handful of people who either just did the same thing, or who were in the process, and nobody has had an experience that went as smoothly, as successfully, and as quickly as ours. I attribute this to three things. A bit of random luck (maybe 10% of the outcome accounted for by this), a lot of hard work on our part, getting our place ready to sell (though it was fundamentally in great shape), and a huge amount of excellent work by Toby and Erik

So, thank you Toby and Erik.

I should also mention that Engel & Völklers, in the tradition of many European countries, is both a great place to work (so I hear) and does a lot to “give back” to the community. For example, they are a major supporter of the Special Olympics.

Hit list targeting climate scientists?

Just passing this along. Let me know if you see or hear anything suspicious.

In Prominent global warming doubter says there was a “hit list” apparently targeting climate scientists, Tom Yulsman writes:

In a comment on an August 3rd post at the Wattsupwiththat website, Patrick J. Michaels of the conservative Cato Institute said that there has been a “hit list” apparently targeting climate scientists, and that he had influence over who was on it.

At this point, it is unclear exactly what this list was about. But from what Michaels said, it looks like it consisted of scientists being targeted for termination from their jobs….

Read the rest here.

The West Wing and #TWWW Podcast

I had been utterly unengaged with with TV about the time that I met this particular cute girl, and she told me that she love the West Wing and watched it every week. There was, if I recall correctly, one more episode showing in the penultimate season, and we watched it together. I liked it.

We then watched, mainly via Netflix DVD rental, but also, borrowing her parent’s Season Five DVD’s, the entire rest of the show prior to the beginning of the final season, Season 7. Then we watched Season 7 together. It was great.

Eventually, two things were to happen. One is that I re-watched the entire series from beginning to the end. The other is that I married that girl. Not necessarily in that order.

I know that if you are reading this, and you are not a Turkish hacker, or a science denier come to harass me, you also love the West Wing.

My daughter Julia and I typically quasi-binge-watch (it takes us months) a particular TV show. We had finished off The Walking Dead, and Bones, and old favorite, had gone stale on us. (No deeply disturbing psychotic killers on the horizon, as far as we could tell.) So I tried out the West Wing on her, and she liked it. We plowed pretty quickly through the first couple of seasons, but there has been very little TV watching lately.

Then, I heard about The Wet Wing Weekly. This is a podcast by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway. Josh Malina played Will Bailey on the West Wing, and has done a number of other famous roles in productions such as Sports Night and Scandal. Jrishikesh Hirway is a super fan of The West Wing, who is a musical artist and expert podcaster.

So, here’s what you do. You watch one episode of the West Wing. Start with the Pilot. Then you listen to the Podcast.

Warning: So far, at least two of the Podcasts have not been about a specific episode. These were great podcasts, but if this is your first time watching the West Wing, avoid them for now because they are full of spoilers. The main episodes of #TWWW do not include spoilers. They are very careful about that.

Malina and Hirway analyze and discuss the episode you just watched. Malina has worked extensively and intensively with West Wing creator Alan Sorkin, and Hirway carefully researches each podcast, so their commentary is penetrating, interesting, and apt. Also, the podcast is expertly edited so it is very smooth.

The West Wing Weekly Podcast often, nearly weekly, has a guest, often a star of the show, or someone else involved. Sorkin may someday be a guest on the podcast.

The conversation on #TWWW is cumulative. Ideas and concepts are developed over time, and terminology evolves. You could jump in any time, but to get the full effect, start at the beginning. And always watch the episode, then the podcast.

There is a web site, here, and comments are allowed on each podcast. Interesting information (AND SPOILERS SO BE ALERT) pops up in the discussion section, including corrections or expansions on what was discussed. You’ll see some of these comments coming. For example, in one episode of The West Wing, The President notes that “The era of big government is over.” The moment I heard that on the show, I was reminded of President Clinton saying the same thing, and also, that this was a reference to President Reagan, almost a bit of pandering to his supporters in Congress, and yet another demonstration of Democrat’s fruitless efforts to pretend like the two parties can talk to each other. Malina and Hirway noted the phrase, seemed perplexed by it, and clearly did not remember Clinton’s words. But the commenters fixed that!

One of the things Malina notes that I should pass on now, is that he watches the West Wing episodes with closed captions turned on. He does this for various reasons, but the result is that sometimes you pick up on dialog that one might otherwise miss, like in the case shown in the image above. If you are listening only, the words shown here in the CC are overtalked by another actor, and easy to miss. In other cases, the words that come out of the actor’s mouth and the words on the screen are simply different, in a way that really does look like a change in the dialog has happened, some last minute editing of the script.

Hey, if you are going to rewatch, or re-rewatch, or even re-re-rewatch, a TV show then listen to a podcast about each episode, then you are operating at a level where these details matter.

I watch the West Wing on Netflix, but you can also get the entire show on DVD.

And, if you are interested in what your grandmother was up to when she was little, pick up a copy of When My Grandmother Was a Child: 9. If you can find it.

How We Die: Drowning Edition

It is the time of year that we talk about drowning. I’m focusing here on the US, and for the most part, recreational drowning, as opposed to being drowned in a flood. Also, I’m using mainly information from Minnesota as an exemplar. It turns out that analyzing drowning data, and social behavior related to drowning, at the state level (as a proxy for the media market level) is important, because, I contend, the likelihood of a child drowning in a given media market is roughly inversly proportinate to the number of children who have drown or nearly drown in that same media market over the previous two years.

Note that the statistics keepers distinguish between accidental drowning related to boats and accidental drowning not related to boats, so keep that in mind.

Last month, we had one of those deadly weekends in Minnesota, where a bunch of people died or were injured because they were playing with boats. That happens every few years, and suddenly, people start getting more careful with boats, and then there are fewer accidents for a few years. I imagine that this is happening separately in every news market. A bunch of boat accidents happen, everyone who listens to that local news finds out, people get careful in that news market for a few years. Meanwhile, elsewhere, nobody gets the cue so nobody gets a clue.

Around that time, by the way, we had a near-death experience out in front of the cabin, but everything turned out OK because of the quick and effective action of one of the boaters. But it was a close call.

Then, over the last several days, a whole bunch of people died or nearly died from drowning around here. One was a homicide, so that does not count as accidental recreational drowning. One person died at the beach but apparently of non drowning related causes, but since it was at the beach people will associate beaches with danger (in this case, it was being about 90 years old, outside, during a heat wave, that did her in, most likely). But one adult and several children were pulled from under the water, non-responsive, and a few of them lived but most of them did not live.

So, like I said, it is time to talk about drowning a bit.

The most important things you need to know about drowning is this: People who are drowning don’t look like they are drowning. They don’t say “help help” and they don’t stick their fingers up in the air, indicating how many times they’ve gone down, like in the cartoons.

If you are lucky, they simply slip away into the water and die. I say lucky because maybe, since you see them slip under water, you can figure out that they are not just rinsing their hair, but are in trouble, and you can react. But you probably won’t because you won’t think they are drowning.

If you are unlucky, the drowning is simply not visible to anyone and you find the non-responsive probably deceased person at a later time.

The second thing you need to know about drowning is that nine out of ten adults present during the drowning of a child claim to have been carefully watching the children at the time one of the carefully supervised children died from drowning. While being carefully supervised.

Put together, this means that people generally think they know what they are doing to prevent drowning, but don’t. (Or to some extent, one simply can’t prevent a drowning in many cases, an idea that 100% of people will not likely accept even if it is true.)

As is the case with so many areas of life, people have a higher opinion of their own abilities than they should. They firmly believe that they won’t let something happen, but this Strong Sense of Won’tness (SSW) does not in fact give them knowledge or ability, or change the plain reality that certain accidents will happen.

This is why public pools empty out every hour or so. Everybody out of the pool. Check for bodies. If there are no bodies, you can all go back into the pool. Even professional life guards who generally do, probably, know what they are doing, don’t trust themselves.

I have no advice to offer you about this, other than STAY AWAY FROM ALL WATER ALL THE TIME!!!11!!

I know, that is not helpful advice. My role here is not to teach you what to do about water safety. It is to scare you into realizing that whatever you are doing now is insufficient, and you need to do more. Seek expertise.

There is a third thing you need to know which may actually be the first thing. I don’t care what you do, but any kids you have with you on or near the water need to be wearing a life vest. Wearing. Not just having one nearby. Not only wearing it when they are in the water, but when they are on the boat or on the dock, etc. At least one recent drowning or near drowning this year in Minnesota, and several over the last several years, involved a kid falling into the water, not being in the water to play.

Also, the life vest should fit properly. If you can pick the kid up by the life vest, that’s a good sign. If you try to pick the kid up by the life vest and the kid slips through, check your SSW because you’re doing it wrong.

The overall rate of death generally and in Minnesota in particular has gone down over time. See the chart:

Minnesota_Boating_Drowning_Deaths

This is attributed to a number of factors, including safer equipment and advanced rescue and trauma care. But if you look at the chart, you’ll see two other patterns. One is the effect of a series of state wide and national boating and water safety regulations and laws, mainly beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but with important events as recently as 2005.

This is why Libertarians suck, by the way.

Second, notice the up and down wiggle in the data. That is what we expect for random data, or in this case, data that has a steady long term trend, but within that trend, internal variation that isn’t of any special interest.

But it is of interest, potentially. At least two, I suspect more, of the more recent peaks followed by lows are likely related to the process I mentioned above. In 2005 or thereabouts, there was an alarming number of drownings in the state, and this lead to new legislation, and I assume, general awareness that water can kill you and yours. In 2011 and 2012 there were some dramatic and horrific events involving boats and human bodies, drunk people acting like idiots and killing innocent bystanders in a most gruesome manner, etc. One of the 2011 events re-entered the regional consciousness in 2012 because it was written up again in time for summer, to remind people. I’m pretty sure people started being more careful again just because of the overall horror of high speed multiple death boat accidents.

Notice the uptick in 2015.

That uptick is due, in part, to a larger number of individuals (though just a few, these numbers are all generally pretty small on an annual basis) going through the ice. It is possible that an increase in death or injury from falling through ice in recent years will keep the line, much reduced from the middle of the 20th century, steady. The thin ice is, of course, a result of global warming, but death on the ice is not. That is just stupidity. All the ice is measured and often marked. It is impossible to die on the ice in Minnesota without being an idiot, or being a child being driven around by an idiot.

Check this out:

Screen Shot 2016-08-04 at 12.29.21 PM

Most people who drown in Minnesota drown in lakes, with rivers being second. But, if you know Minnesota, look at this graphic until the strange fact it demonstrates becomes apparent.

There are very few rivers in Minnesota. Most of the water is lakes, most of the recreation is on lakes. And, when you recreate on a river, like the Mississippi river, it is almost always in what is locally known as a “basin,” a part of the river that is exactly like a lake, owing to a dam downstream.

The apparent and interesting fact is that when Minnesotans go near a River, they die!

Well, not exactly, but… I think most Minnesotans have very little direct exposure to rivers, and know little about river safety. Rivers are, in fact, extremely dangerous. They are way more dangerous than lakes. I suspect that if the right data could be obtained, it would be possible to demonstrate that Minnesota rivers take a disproportionate share of Minnesotans to watery graves, adjusting for how much time is spent on or in them, compared to regions of the country where there are lots of rivers and relatively few lakes.

Swimming and drowning is a racial justice issue, it turns out. African American kids, and Latino kids, but to a somewhat lesser extent, have on average relatively little experience or training in swimming. And, also, have dramatically higher risks of drowning. Way higher. Swimming while black is probably double or triple the risk, for death, as swimming while white. There has been recent effort to address this problem, which is mostly one of access to swimming places and swimming lessons, two things that are matters of privilege. Putting this another way, the “white – black – latino” data show up so starkly because that is how morbidity and mortality data are collected, but really, this is matter of socio-economic status.

When out it the water, keep an eye on each other, and obey the safety rules. If you don’t know what the safety rules are, step away from the water!

Helpful and interesting resources:

<li><a href="https://www.minnpost.com/health/2016/06/how-often-do-people-drown-minnesota">How often do people drown in Minnesota?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html">Unintentional Drowning: Get the Facts</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2014/02/few-pools-little-swim-teaching-minneapolis-issue-equity-and-safety">Few pools, little swim teaching: In Minneapolis, an issue of equity and safety</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/boatwater/statistics.html">MN DNR Drowning Stats</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6319a2.htm">Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Fatal Unintentional Drowning Among Persons Aged ?29 Years — United States, 1999–2010</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/25/12948839-olympic-swimmer-on-mission-to-reduce-drowning-deaths-among-african-americans">Olympic swimmer on mission to reduce drowning deaths among African-Americans</a></li>
<li><a href="http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/07/15/dnr-pushes-life-jacket-safety-after-increased-drownings/">DNR Pushes Life Jacket Safety After Increased Drownings</a></li>

Best vacuum cleaner, best place to buy one

This is a blog rant. But first, a bit of blog appreciation to the select number of individuals who suggested to us that the Shark was the best vacuum cleaner for us, in a recent Facebook Discussion.

I have to say, that when I saw S.H. suggest the Shark, I figured that the chances were pretty high that we would end up with a Shark, S.H. has always given me the very best advice on everything.

Anyway, the main point of comparison for us was between various models of the Dyson and various models of the Shark. Side by side they ended up being pretty similar but the Shark actually has some better specs, and is way way cheaper. I’d rank the following vacuum cleaners in order as specified:

Shark Rotator Powered Lift-Away TruePet (NV752) for about $350 (Click HERE to see it at Target)

Shark Rotator Pro Lift-Away Vacuum (NV501) for about $180

Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional (NV356E) for about $145

Dyson DC50 Ball Compact Animal Upright Vacuum Cleaner, Iron/Purple – Corded for about $350

I should add that we had ruled out a canister, but the Shark that we got actually can be a canister if you want it to be.

Now, where to buy it? On line would be smart, and the links above actually go to Amazon. But we decided to get the machine at a nearby store for various reasons. So we went first to Sears, then to Macy’s, and here is how they compared:

Macys_Vs_Sears_For_Buying_Vacuum_Cleaner