Later On

From MakeUseOf.com:

From the “useful knowledge” page, here are some back-to-school links:

Resources for students — links to software, sites, advice, etc.
The Cornell note-taking system — excellent way to take lecture notes
For the autodidact — resources for the self-directed learner
Free electronic flashcards — many sets already created, or create your own
R. Graves on writing well — how to write well, with a collection of exercises
Writing with verbs — vigorous writing makes reading easy
50 writing tips — a collection of tips, some of which might help you
4-sentence outline — how to write solid papers
Collaborative writing tip — useful info for when you must collaborate
Italic handwriting — how to have beautiful handwriting
College journal — keeping a journal of your college years: outline and ideas

I was going to blog only that last one, but the others looked possibly useful as ell.

Daniel Elkan in the New Scientist:

Imagine you are an experienced martial arts referee. You are asked to score a number of taekwondo bouts, shown to you on video. In each bout, one combatant is wearing red, the other blue. Would clothing colour make any difference to your impartial, expert judgement? Of course it wouldn’t.

Yet research shows it almost certainly would. Last year, sports psychologists at the University of Münster, Germany, showed video clips of bouts to 42 experienced referees. They then played the same clips again, digitally manipulated so that the clothing colours were swapped round. The result? In close matches, the scoring swapped round too, with red competitors awarded an average of 13 per cent more points than when they were dressed in blue (Psychological Science, vol 19, p 769). "If one competitor is strong and the other weak, it won’t change the outcome of the fight," says Norbert Hagemann, who led the study. "But the closer the levels, the easier it is for the colour to tip the scale."

This is just the latest piece of research suggesting that exposure to certain colours can have a significant effect on how people think and act. Up to now most of the research has focused on red clothing in sport, but other colours and settings are being investigated too. It is becoming clear that colours can have an important, unappreciated effect on the way your mind works – one that you really ought to know about.

The powerful influence of colour on sporting success was first discovered …

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The Wife added up all the medical bills (including the part paid by our health insurance) attendant upon getting bitten by Miss Megs: between $17,000 and $18,000 dollars.

One standard line that climate-change denialists use is to say that, even if CO2 is building up and the weather’s getting hotter, that will be good for crop yields. Shanta Barley in New Scientist:

WHILE news reports and disaster movies remind us about tipping points for Arctic melt and sea level rise, some things closer to home get less attention. Take food supply: new modelling studies show that there are climate tipping points here too, beyond which crop yields will collapse.

Wolfram Schlenker at Columbia University, New York, and Michael Roberts at North Carolina State University in Raleigh used a high-resolution dataset of weather patterns from 1950 to 2005 to discover how yields of three key US crops respond to increasing temperatures.

"The single best predictor of a year’s yield is the amount of time temperatures exceed about 29 °C and the extent to which they do so," they say. "Below this, warmer temperatures are beneficial for yields, but the damaging effects above 29 °C are staggeringly large."

Overall, the results suggest that yields of maize, cotton and soybean drop by roughly 0.6 per cent for each degree-day spent above 29 °C. A degree-day is a measure devised by the team indicating by how much 29 °C is exceeded and the time spent above that threshold. At present, agricultural regions across the US spend an average of 57 degree-days above 29 °C during the growing season.

That’s likely to rise as the world warms. Using a model of future climate change the researchers found that the number of degree-days above 29 °C in a growing season could rise to 413 by the end of the century if we do not cut greenhouse gas emissions. This would cause maize yields to fall by 82 per cent. Even if we reduce emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 relative to 1991 levels – a target which governments are struggling to agree on – yields could still fall by between 30 and 46 per cent…

Continue reading. Once again we see how ignorance is essential for denialists.

Sobering.

Good column:

Bill Moyers was on Bill Maher’s show last night and spoke about the core failures of Democratic Party in the context of both the health care debate and the ongoing escalation in Afghanistan.  The whole discussion is really worth watching (at least until HBO intervenes, the entire 30-minute interview can be seen in 3 parts:  here, here and here; HBO is re-running the show throughout the weekend on this schedule), but I want to excerpt several key parts, including his very complimentary featuring of this post I wrote on Thursday regarding Democrats: …

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Good column at Climate Progress:

The L.A. Times has brought to prominence (and fallen for) what I call the “adaptation trap”:

The adaptation trap is the belief that 1) “it would be easier and cheaper to adapt than fight climate change” [as the Times puts it in the sub-head] and/or 2) “adaptation” to climate change is possible in any meaningful sense of the word absent an intense mitigation effort starting now to keep carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 ppm.

G. Gordon Liddy’s daughter repeated that standard denier/delayer line in our debate: Humans are very adaptable — we’ve adapted to climate changes in the past and will do so in the future.

We know that fighting climate change — stabilizing below 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide — has a low cost, according to IEA, IPCC, McKinsey and every major independent economic analysis (see “Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar“).

What is the cost of “adaptation”?  It is almost incalculable.  The word is a virtually meaningless euphemism in the context of catastrophic global warming.  That is what the deniers and delayers simply don’t understand. On our current emissions path, the country and the world faces faces multiple catastrophes, including:

• Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States
• Sea level rise of 5 feet, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter
• Permanent Dust Bowls over the U.S. SW and many other heavily populated regions around the globe
• Massive species loss on land and sea — 50% or more of all life
• Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”
• More severe hurricanes — especially in the Gulf

I think Hurricane Katrina gives the lie to the adaptation myth. No, I’m not saying humans are not adaptable. Nor am I saying global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, although warming probably did make it a more intense. But on the four-year anniversary of Katrina — and the three year anniversary of Climate Progress’s initial launch — I’m saying Katrina showed the limitations of adaptation as a response to climate change, for several reasons.

First, the citizens of New Orleans “adapted” to Hurricane Katrina, but I’m certain that every last one of them wishes we had prevented the disaster with stronger levees. The multiple catastrophes — extreme drought, extreme flooding, extreme weather, extreme temperatures — that global warming will bring can be suffered through, but I wouldn’t call it adaptation.

Second, a classic adaptation strategy to deal with rising sea levels is …

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Very interesting post at Obama Foodorama:

Senator Kennedy was a shining light in one of the ugliest civil rights battles in American agricultural history–which is ongoing even as this is being written. Over the last decade, Senator Kennedy became one of the most vocal Senators on the Hill in search of civil and social justice for America’s black farmers, at a time when many people didn’t even realize how large a population of black farmers still exists in this country. But Senator Kennedy recognized their vital importance to rural communities, and to the Ag economy, and he also recognized the importance of preserving a historic way of life that was rapidly vanishing. Perhaps most importantly, he recognized the dire need for making corrections in discriminatory policies that are still left over, somewhat incredibly, from the time of the creation of the USDA during President Lincoln’s administration.

Senator Kennedy was one of the first legislators to attempt to redress the decades of racially biased lending and credit practices and a pandemic of discriminatory USDA policies against black farmers and other non-white farmers. For decades, it was unwritten USDA policy to not give black and other minority farmers–and women farmers–the same kind of educational, credit, and financial resources (through subsidies) that were offered to white farmers. The long and now legendary USDA lawsuit, Pigford Vs. Glickman, which became a huge class action lawsuit that dragged on for years, attempted to redress these inequities, with financial payments to farmers who could prove they had been denied equal access to USDA resources; the suit was settled in 1999. But almost immediately, it was deemed inadequate. An estimated 80,000 black farmers had been locked out of Pigford, because they were unaware that the suit even existed. And there was an equivalent problem, that’s a singular example of the kinds of practices state and local USDA officials had been engaged in: Black farmers were asked …

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Interesting article in Science News by Bruce Bower:

A 10-year-old Chinese boy listens intently as a visiting researcher tells him a story. It begins pleasantly enough: A boy named Xiaoming goes to a park and meets a child playing with a new ball. But after joining in the fun, Xiaoming decides that he wants to play with the ball alone. So he hits the other child, knocks him down and lunges for the ball. The victim hangs on to the ball and runs home crying.

Meanwhile, Xiaoming’s mother witnesses the whole encounter.

Not surprisingly, she is horrified. The researcher describes four possible actions taken by Xiaoming’s mother. In one, she reasons with the boy, telling him to remember how it felt to be hit by another child and to imagine how his playmate in the park now feels. In another, she says it’s shameful to hit other children and asks why Xiaoming can’t behave as well as his friends do. In a third, the mother says that Xiaoming’s behavior embarrassed her and makes their family look bad.

For her final go-round, Xiaoming’s mother says that she loves him less when he misbehaves. She’s so upset about the park incident that she tells the boy to “just go away.”

Some of these tactics hit close to home for the real-life Chinese boy. He lives in a mountain village with no computers and few televisions. Adults there teach traditional Chinese values of maintaining harmonious relationships and fulfilling duties to family members. Village parents often talk of the shame that children bring to their families by acting disruptively and of the difficulty in loving a bad son or daughter. Many urban Chinese have gravitated away from these traditional principles over the past 20 years, but not most rural folk.

So it comes as a surprise that the village boy ranks reasoning as the mother’s best tactic for setting Xiaoming straight. His explanation: Someone who knocks down other children needs prodding from Mom to realize how it feels to be bullied. That insight will make Xiaoming a better person.

A parent who appeals to family shame, makes unfavorable comparisons with others or threatens to deny love can emotionally burden her child, the boy asserts. In the boy’s opinion, Xiaoming “will weep painfully in a corner” after hearing that his mother loves him less for pushing another child. He’ll suspect that his mother doesn’t really care about him and will be sadder in the future even if he is better behaved.

Other rural Chinese kids, as well as city children in China and Canada, …

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Another shave with Riana. Like all the olive-oil-based shaving soaps I’ve tried, the lather tends to deflate on the face. I was careful to charge the Simpsons Persian Jar 2 Super with plenty of soap, so for each pass I could work up a very good lather on my face, but by the end of the pass, the remaining lather was hard to see. Still, it gives a very nice shave, assisted by the Mühle procelain-handled razor with an Astra Keramik blade. And the Proraso aftershave was a pleasant finish.

From Climate Progress:

Given the silly sniping at this small, wildly successful program, I feel obliged to update my last post.

BusinessWeek’s Auto Beat whines, “They say the program was effective in selling cars, but the boost won’t last long enough to really help the car industry for very long.”  Ya think?  It’s a friggin’ stimulus, and a tiny one at that — $3 billion.

And then we have the academics — UC Davis’s Christopher R. Knittel actually did a study on “The Implied Cost of Carbon Dioxide under the Cash for Clunkers Program,” which got lots of media attention like “Cash for Clunkers Pays Ten Times Market Rate for Greenhouse Gas Reduction.”  I could have saved them a lot of trouble had they bothered to read my May post, which noted “As a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this “cash for clunkers” deal is probably among the least cost-effective uses of federal dollars one could imagine.”

Memo to media:  It ain’t “Cash for carbon.”

I was not a big fan of the final version of “Cash for Clunkers” because its mileage improvement requirements were so inadequate, as Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) explained here.

But in the real world, the public has mostly turned in gas-guzzlers in exchange for fuel-efficient cars — which perhaps should not have been a total surprise since oil prices are rising, gas guzzlers remain a tough resell in the used car market, and most fuel-efficient cars are much cheaper than SUVs.  So as a stimulus that saves oil while cutting CO2 for free — it has turned out to be a slam dunk, far better than I had expected.

You can read the government’s final report on Cash for Clunkers aka Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) here.  The economic bottom line, “According to a preliminary analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the CARS program” will:

• Boost economic growth in the third quarter of 2009 by 0.3-0.4 percentage points at an annual rate thanks to increased auto sales in July and August.
• Will sustain the increase in GDP in the fourth quarter because of increased auto production to replace depleted inventories.
• Will create or save 42,000 jobs in the second half of 2009. Those jobs are expected to remain well after the program’s close.

I should note that Detroit sold 39% of new vehicles in the program.  Further, as AP reported yesterday, …

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This is fascinating. Amanda Terkel reports in ThinkProgress:

Many town hall protesters enjoy boasting to federal lawmakers about how knowledgeable they are about public policy. For example, at a town hall meeting with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) yesterday, an attendee stood up and declared, “I have taken the time to look at certain provisions of a bill on the Internet and I can quote…the sections and the page.” But the Omaha City Weekly went to a recent town hall hosted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and found that the health care protesters actually aren’t all that informed about public policy. They asked 40 pro-reform and 40 anti-reform attendees to locate Iraq on a map. The results:

A full 75%, 30 of 40 pro-reform attendees, could identify Iraq in its rather eye-catching, dead center position on the map. Only 52.5 %, 21 of 40 anti-reformers could do so. [...]

More telling was the startling reactions I got while conducting the test. Pro-reform people, even those geographically challenged few who laughed out loud at the futility of the task before them, portrayed a uniformly agreeable front. Most gave a knowing, touch_-like nod and smile. I received no negative comments, none at all, from that group.

The same could not be said of the other camp. Far from it.

One gentleman practically knocked the clipboard out of my hand in jabbing – angrily and correctly – at the country that (John Kerry was right) represented the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Many sneered. Most at least glowered. Four accused the test itself of being somehow biased.

One anti-reform Vietnam veteran also responded, “Why the hell should I care where Iraq is?”

The difference in geographical knowledge is less interesting to me than the difference in attitude. What’s up with these angry people? Do they know they’re wrong and that makes them angry? Are they frustrated by modern life? What has made them lose common civility?

All the lies come from the Right—I guess in addition to Party of No, we can start calling it Party of Misinformation. The FactCheck article begins:

Our inbox has been overrun with messages asking us to weigh in on a mammoth list of claims about the House health care bill. The chain e-mail purports to give "a few highlights" from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate. A few of our "highlights":

• The e-mail claims that page 30 of the bill says that "a government committee will decide what treatments … you get," but that page refers to a "private-public advisory committee" that would "recommend" what minimum benefits would be included in basic, enhanced and premium insurance plans.
• The e-mail says that "non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services" but points to a provision that prohibits discrimination in health care based on "personal characteristics." Another provision explicity forbids "federal payment for undocumented aliens."
• It says "[g]overnment will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals." This provision isn’t about children with learning disabilities; instead, it pertains to restricted enrollment in "special needs" plans, a category of Medicare Advantage plans. Enrollment is already restricted. The bill extends the ability to do that.
• It claims that a section about "Community-based Home Medical Services" means "more payoffs for ACORN." ACORN does not provide medical home services. The e-mail interprets any reference to the word "community" to be some kind of payoff for ACORN. That’s nonsense.

Analysis

This chain e-mail claims to give a run-down of what’s in the House health care bill, H.R. 3200. Instead, it shows evidence of a reading comprehension problem on the part of the author. Some of our more enterprising readers have even taken it upon themselves to debunk a few of the assertions, sending us their notes and encouraging us to write about it. We applaud your fact-checking skills and your skepticism. And skepticism is warranted. [Interesting that the only way the Right can gain support for its position is to lie – LG]

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Take a look at this review on Lifehacker.com. Software is available both for the Mac and Windows machines.

Vicki Robin is the co-author (with Joe Dominguez) of Your Money or Your Life, a life-changing book on personal finances. Today, she is a guest blogger at The Simple Dollar, and her post is well worth reading. It begins:

Financial independence – ahhh, what a dream! Doing as you please, not as you must. Having all the money you need without needing a job. Travel. Adventure. Relaxation. Time to write that book you’ve been thinking about for years.

Well, I’ve been there and done that since I was 25 years old. I’ve had an adventuresome life. I’ve worked for love, not money. I’ve slept late when my body needed it and worked late into the night when the juices were flowing. And I’ve written a book (actually two, one published) which lays out how anyone can have what I have – without risky business ventures or shady deals or being born into the right family. The book, of course, is Your Money or Your Life, which presents a step by step approach to the process of earning, spending, saving, giving and investing with a focus on having enough for life, not “it all” or “more and more.”

We just updated it and, thanks to The Simple Dollar among other frugality sites, we were able to focus on the core strategy and let go of being the go-to people for how to save money on specific purchases.

I’d like to unpack this notion of “financial independence,” though, so we can see it not simply as being filthy rich with a mega portfolio but rather as having a diversity of ways to assure your needs will be met with minimal if any paid employment. It’s a combination of passive income, occasional income, frugality (increasing your unnecessary income) and reciprocity (freely sharing stuff, services and skills with others).

First, you need to understand Financial Independence as …

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Interesting article Michaels Ettlinger and Linden, which includes this chart:

Read the entire thing.

Pamela Hess and Devlin Barrett reporting for Associated Press:

A year after the Bush administration abandoned its harshest interrogation methods, CIA operatives used severe sleep deprivation tactics against a terror detainee in late 2007, keeping him awake for six straight days with permission from government lawyers.

Interrogators kept the unidentified detainee awake by chaining him to the walls and floor of a cell, according to government officials and memos issued with an internal CIA report. The Obama administration released the internal report this week.

Though the detainee’s name and critical details are blacked out in the memos, there is only one detainee known to have been in CIA custody at that time: Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, an alleged al-Qaida operator and translator for Osama bin Laden.

The documents show that even as the Bush administration was scaling back its use of severe interrogation techniques, the CIA was still pushing the boundaries of what the administration’s own legal counsel considered acceptable treatment.

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