Later On

I actually got up fairly early, but I’ve been sitting at the computer, working on various software problems and anomalies:

1. A program launched on startup that I no longer wanted launched then. The advice (for us Windows users) is to delete the shortcut from the Startup Folder, but this program (along with quite a few other little programs launched on startup) was not to be found in the Startup Folder. But I have CCleaner and discovered under Tools, Startup a lengthy list of programs launched at startup along with the ability to change "launch at startup" from "yes" to "no." And that worked.

2. Video Accelerator, a free program, seemed as though it might be interfering with other things, so I uninstalled it (which is when I discovered the above).

3. Google Chrome is still acting crazy, so I’ve switched back to Firefox for now. I did install Memory Fox, and I’m hoping that takes care of some of Firefox’s problems.

4. I did a lot of browsing and reading—maybe because I start today with both Nordic and the Nelson weights and I was procrastinating.

One project I have on my list today is to make 1/2 gallon (well, 2 liters: about the same thing) of dashi so I can continue to enjoy my miso soup.

The Art of Shaving shaving soap provided only a so-so lather today. It certainly isn’t the brush at fault, and I was carefully to fully load the brush with soap. I’ll have to try it again sometime with a different brush.

Despite the lather, I did get a fine shave, thanks to the Gillette Toggle and the still-sharp Iridium blade it carries. And of course Paul Sebastian aftershave is a favorite.

Heated up my liter of dashi and added 1/2 block of silken tofu cut into small cubes and about a Tbsp of instant wakame flakes from Eden Organics. I brought to the boil and then let it simmer for a few minutes. Then I added:

2 white mushrooms, sliced thinly
4 scallions, white and green parts, sliced thinly on the diagonal.

I added those to the soup and took it off the heat.

Finally, I added about 1/4 cup mellow brown-rice miso, whisked with some of the soup stock. Definitely no more boiling after miso is added: it’s a probiotic and you don’t want to kill it.

I would say that when making dashi, it makes sense to go ahead and make 2 liters.

It was a compromise from the start, and even today it is barely functional and mostly unprofessional. No wonder Congress has such low approval ratings.

Dan Colman at Open Culture:

Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford biologist, is currently one of the most publicly accessible science writers in the country, perhaps best known for his book on stress, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. In the lecture above, Sapolsky takes a hard look at depression. The topic is a little heavy. I’ll grant that. But, it’s also important. As Sapolsky is quick to point out, depression is pervasive and getting worse. Currently, it’s the 4th greatest cause of disability worldwide, and it will soon become the 2nd. For Sapolsky, depression is deeply biological; it is rooted in biology, just like, say, diabetes. Here, you will see how depression changes the body. When depressed, our brains function differently while sleeping, our stress response goes way up 24/7, our biochemistry levels change, etc. Given the pervasiveness of depression, this video is well worth a watch.

At least in one guy’s opinion.

Very useful video via Houseboat Eats. Be sure to click that link and read the entire post (including another video that shows clearly the non-stick properties of an optimally heated stainless pan).

You see it all the time: the GOP outraged by the Democrats doing something that the GOP itself did only a short while back. For a long time I thought it was hypocrisy, but it may be that their memories reflect the quality of their minds—i.e., incredibly weak. An example reported by Faiz Shakir in ThinkProgress:

Yesterday, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), acting on the orders of the Senate leadership, refused to grant Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) “an additional moment” to continue speaking on the Senate floor after his 10 minutes expired. Franken’s objection caused Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to groan about how Franken’s move was unprofessional, unprecedented, and disrespectful:

McCAIN: I’ve been around here 20-some years. First time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks. … I just haven’t seen it before myself. And I don’t like it. And I think it harms the comity of the Senate not to allow one of our members at least a minute. I’m sure that time is urgent here, but I doubt that it would be that urgent.

Unfortunately, McCain’s memory is suffering. In fact, McCain has engaged in the very same behavior that he was criticizing Franken for yesterday.

On October 10, 2002 — just ahead of the looming mid-term elections — the Senate rushed a debate on a war authorization giving President Bush the power to use force against Iraq. The resolution ultimately passed the Senate after midnight on an early Friday morning by a vote of 77-23.

During the course of the frenzied floor debate, then-Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN) spoke in favor of an amendment offered by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) that would have restricted Bush’s constitutional powers to wage war against Iraq. After a minute and a half, Dayton ran out of time, prompting this exchange:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator’s time has expired.

Mr. DAYTON. I ask for unanimous consent that I have 30 seconds more to finish my remarks.

Mr. McCAIN. I object.

Byrd stepped in to grant Dayton time to finish his remarks. But just moments later, Byrd asked for more time to speak for himself. Again, McCain objected, prompting Byrd to chide him for doing so. “This shows the patience of a Senator,” Byrd said. “This clearly demonstrates that the train is coming down on us like a Mack truck, and we are not even going to consider a few extra minutes for this Senator.”

After being publicly shamed, McCain acquiesced to Byrd’s request. But moments later, McCain added this disclaimer: “I wish to say very briefly that I understand people have a desire to speak. We have a number of Senators who have not spoken on this issue. It is already looking as if we may be here well into this evening. From now on, I will be adhering strictly to the rules.” In other words, he acted just like Franken did yesterday.

McCain, of course, might be showing signs of senile dementia, but I doubt that the same can be said of, say, Eric Kantor and John Boehner. Weak-minded seems the most likely explanation.

Morning progress: Went to Whole Foods and back. I was delighted to see that they had fresh water chestnuts—much sweeter and tastier than canned. I bought some because I so seldom see them in the store. I’ll probably eat some raw and have others in stir-fry.

I got some fresh ricotta to have on a baked potato. And for the holiday dinner, we’ll have roast beef and roast potatoes with it, which means we can’t use the low-temp method this time. But all in a good cause.

First, I’ll do the Nordic Track, which I missed yesterday. And then I want to get early to Whole Foods before the shopping center where it’s located becomes filled with holiday shoppers. I made a good list last night—a few potatoes, and then shrimp and fish and vegetables for stir-fry.

Familiar picture, eh? Yesterday I used it just as a placemark, but today I actually did the shave. Great lather from the Coconut Oil Shaving Soap, thanks to the Plisson HMW 12 with bone handle. And the English open-comb Gillette Aristocrat with a previously used Astra Keramik blade did a great job, smoothing the two-day stubble to nothingness. The Extract of West Indian Limes aftershave was a delight, and now I’m good to go.

The result is heavenly. Well worth trying. I’m making miso soup with this tomorrow. Note that the “pint” in the video is the UK pint = 20 fl. oz. (US pint = 16 fl. oz.) So when she adds 0.1 pint of cold water, she’s adding 2 fl. oz., or (in US measure) 1/4 cup.

We always knew that life on earth would not last indefinitely—if nothing else, the sun will eventually expand and swallow up the earth. And despite that, we go on with our lives and our projects and our great works with the idea that our proper course is to live our lives as fully as possible and in accordance with our values. We strive to be the person we want to be, without a second’s thought that in the long run not only will we ourselves, but also all life on earth will die.

I wonder whether that will change. People alive today will be the first generation to have a clear view of how (and when) life on earth will end. That is assuming, as I do, that the efforts to fight global warming and climate change will be undercut and resisted until it’s too late. Once we are past the tipping point, where nothing we can do will change the outcome, will people still strive to live their lives well, value the great works humanity created during its time, and die peacefully, knowing that it will all end in a few hundred years (or possibly less)?

I’m taking this dark view after looking at the stimulus package: it was too small, it was known to be too small, and yet much of Congress resisted the package altogether (the GOP) or worked to cut it back (the Blue Dog Democrats). The result: millions needlessly lost their jobs.

And it will be worse with climate change. As I wrote in an earlier post today: One major problem is that most politicians have little or no education in science and math, and a great number seem, not to put too fine a point on it, venal and stupid, a bad combination. (James Inhofe and Joe Barton, I’m looking at you as two prime examples.)

It strikes me that Tiger Woods is thoroughly and abjectly ashamed for what he has done—especially now that much is public and he is, in effect, seeing his actions through other eyes. And, like most who are greatly ashamed, the shame is fully deserved. But I think it’s a good sign that he feels ashamed, which seems very different than most celebrity wrongdoers who were caught in their wrongdoing—I don’t believe Bernie Madoff or Max Baucus or David Vitter or any of the others you can think ever felt a second of shame. Whether they are sociopaths or simply in deep denial, the shame effect seems totally absent.

Take a look.

Interesting:

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America

by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas

A review by Sarah L. Courteau

A sign on the outskirts of Jewell, Iowa, greets visitors with the homey slogan, "A Gem in a Friendly Setting." By the railroad tracks that bisect Main Street, a grain silo stands as a totem of the soybean and corn fields that tickle the yards at the town limits. The population recorded by the census of 1990 — the year after my family moved to Jewell when I was 13 — was 1,106. South Hamilton High School, housed in a low building at the edge of town, launched me into the world every way it could, even hiring me as an office assistant to give me a little spending money. My calculus teacher tutored me during her free period. My English teacher directed me on independent study projects. The guidance counselor coached me through the college application process and, at one point, put me up in his home while my family was out of town. The summer after I graduated, my family moved away, and I left for an East Coast college. I’ve been back once.

I am what husband-and-wife sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, authors of Hollowing Out the Middle, term an "Achiever," and I’m part of a big American problem: a rural brain drain that siphons educated young people from "flyover country" into the urban centers they’ve seen on television sitcoms. In 1940, the authors note, only one in 20 Americans possessed a college degree, and professionals such as doctors and lawyers were scattered around the country fairly evenly. In 1970, five years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation that created a federal financial aid system, five percentage points separated the most — and least — educated regions of the country. By 2000 the "regional education gap" had more than doubled, to 13 percentage points, reinforcing "a level of uneven development not seen since the Civil War." Carr and Kefalas moved to a small town in northeastern Iowa, which they dub "Ellis" to preserve its anonymity, and interviewed hundreds of young Iowa natives to try to pin down the factors that influence a person to stay, leave, or return.

Increased educational opportunities are only a part of the story. As journalist Nick Reding documents in his brilliant and hard-won book Methland, a new economy has fundamentally altered the rural landscape, even as many of us continue to harbor Mayberry images of Main Streets populated by salt-of-the-earth types, the kind of people who represent "America’s backbone" in political commercials. Over the course of four years, Reding spent countless hours with the residents of Oelwein, a town of less than 7,000 that, like Ellis, is located in northeastern Iowa, to document the methamphetamine epidemic that is devastating rural working-class communities. The problem has tentacles in immigration patterns (meth is moving along the same invisible conduits as illegal immigrant workers, as Mexican cartels take over the trade from homegrown meth mixologists); the consolidation of agribusiness that rendered small farmers nearly extinct; the powerful lobbying efforts of pharmaceutical giants that don’t want restrictions on the sales of cold medicine, a primary meth ingredient; and the forces of globalization that send manufacturing jobs out of the country or simply shrink wages — say, from $18 an hour to $6.20, as happened at Oelwein’s meat processing plant when it was bought by Gillette in 1992.

Meth helps people work harder and longer at demanding jobs — on slaughterhouse floors and in long-haul truck cabs — and thus escapes the stigma of being a "recreational" drug in the minds of many users. It also fills the void of low morale in places where good work — and the good life that results — is in short supply. As local storefronts darken and sheriffs learn to dismantle hazardous meth labs, rural populations are withering. In the mince-no-words view of Clay Hallberg, Oelwein’s general practitioner, "How ’bout the first people to leave are of course the smart ones, and the people with enough money to get out. What you’re left with — and I’m sorry, okay? — doesn’t qualify Oelwein High as a feeder school for Harvard, okay?" …

Continue reading.

John Gibbons in The Irish Times (and thanks to Jack for the pointer):

As world leaders arrive in Copenhagen for the crunch phase of the climate conference, the focus turns to what kind of deal is likely to emerge. Pre-eminent climate scientist Prof James Hansen of the Nasa Goddard Institute has already given the entire process the kiss of death. Any political deal cobbled together is, he believes, likely to be so profoundly flawed as to lock humanity on to “a disaster track”, writes JOHN GIBBONS

Hansen voiced publicly what environmental scientists and campaigners have murmured all year. A political fudge that ducks science is the likeliest outcome at Copenhagen. Earlier this week, for instance, EU fisheries ministers agreed a deal that pleased our Government and our fishermen. However, it does little to arrest the progressive annihilation of a common resource that, like our atmosphere, is owned by no one – and so exploited by all.

The world faces a dangerous convergence of environmental and resource crises, not all directly climate related. All, however, are increasingly difficult to resolve in a rapidly warming world. Taken together, they are not amenable to a business-as-usual political response. Here, in no particular order, are six:

1. Biodiversity: “The world is currently undergoing a very rapid loss of biodiversity comparable with the great mass extinction events that have previously occurred only five or six times in the Earth’s history,” says the World Wildlife Fund. It has tracked an astonishing 30 per cent decline in the Earth’s biodiversity between 1970-2003. Hunting, habitat destruction, deforestation, pollution and the spread of agriculture are leading to as many as 1,000 entire species going extinct every week – that’s a species every 10 minutes. The economic cost of destroying biodiversity is also immense. A 2008 EU study estimated the cost of forest loss alone is running at $2-$5 trillion (€1.3-€3.4 trillion) annually.

2. Ocean acidification: The evidence of the effects of increased CO2 levels on the world’s oceans is unequivocal. Surface ocean acidity has increased by 30 per cent since 1800, with half this increase occurring in just the last three decades. The rate of change in oceanic pH levels is around 100 times faster than any observed natural rate. Increasing acidity is impeding the ability of plankton called foraminifera to produce shells. These creatures form the base of the entire marine food system. The world’s vital reef systems are also in peril from acidification.

3. Population pressure: Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has witnessed how the natural world is being crushed by humanity. “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder – and ultimately impossible – with more,” he says. The Earth must provide for around 80 million more people than this time last year. It took us almost 10,000 years to reach a billion people. We now add that many every 12 years.

4. Peak oil: This month, the International Energy Agency formally predicted global peak oil by 2020. Today, the world burns the equivalent of 82 million barrels of oil every day. Projected growth in energy demand will see this rise to almost 100 million barrels within a decade, but by then, output from the oilfields currently in production will have plummeted to barely a third of that. A massive energy gap is looming, and with discoveries having peaked in the mid-1960s, we are approaching the bottom of the cheap oil barrel. Non-conventional oil, renewables and nuclear will be nowhere near capable of bridging this energy gap in time. The oil shocks of the coming decade will be intense.

5. Peak food: the global food system is predicated on lashings of cheap oil, fresh water, soil and natural gas. All four are in decline. The food riots of 2008 were an early warning of a global system in crisis. In the US, it is estimated every calorie of food energy requires 10 calories of fossil fuel energy. More food production is now being channelled into fattening animals. Meat is a tasty but entirely inefficient way to use finite food resources. Meanwhile, the UN predicts the collapse of all global commercial marine fisheries by 2048, depriving up to two billion people of food.

6. Peak water: During the 20th century, human water usage increased nine-fold, with irrigation (for agriculture) alone using two-thirds of this total. With almost all major glaciers retreating, many river systems are at risk. Groundwater in aquifers is another key fresh water source. Over-extraction, mostly for agriculture, has caused their levels worldwide to plummet. Pollution, especially from fertiliser overuse, adds to the loss of fresh water. The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday reported only 17 per cent of Ireland’s rivers are of “high ecological status”.

The 19th century naturalist John Muir famously wrote that “when one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world”. As the Copenhagen conference draws to a close, the words of a contemporary of Muir, politician and orator Robert Ingersoll, have never seemed more apt: “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences.”

One major problem is that most politicians have little or no education in science and math, and a great number seem, not to put too fine a point on it, venal and stupid, a bad combination.

Iain Scobbie, the Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law at the University of London, is coauthor of "The Israel-Palestine Conflict in International Law: Territorial Issues," which is available for downloading here, and wrote this op-ed for the LA Times:

Eric Rozenman’s Dec. 11 Op-Ed article, "Israeli settlements are more than legitimate," is legal nonsense that disregards history. He is correct in his observation that Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine permitted "close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes," but the conclusions he then draws are flatly wrong.

Rozenman fails to acknowledge that since its inception, Israel has never claimed legal title to all of the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine. On the contrary, it has repeatedly denied such a claim in official statements and acts. On May 22, 1948, soon after Israel’s declaration of independence, the country’s representative to the U.N. Security Council stated that its territory was "the area outlined in the map appended to the resolution of 29 November 1947, as constituting the area assigned to the Jewish state" — namely that area accorded to the nascent Israel by the U.N. Partition Plan contained in General Assembly Resolution 181. This did not include the West Bank. The same view was consistently expressed by Israeli courts. In 1950, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled, "The territory of the state of Israel does not coincide with all the territory under the former mandate." Israel thus refused to be seen as the successor state to the Palestinian mandate. Accordingly, it refused to accede to treaties that bound the mandate and refused to pay the public debt that Palestine owed to Britain. How then can there be a right of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, territory to which Israel itself has never made legal claim?

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Abby Goodnough in the NY Times:

When Massachusetts began offering virtually free treatments to help poor residents of the state stop smoking in 2006, proponents hoped the new Medicaid program would someday reap benefits.

But state officials never expected it would happen so soon.

New state data show a steep drop in the smoking rate among poor people. When the program started, about 38 percent of poor Massachusetts residents smoked. By 2008, the smoking rate for poor residents had dropped to about 28 percent, a decrease of about 30,000 people in two and a half years, or one in six smokers, said Lois Keithly, director of the state’s Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program.

There are also indications that the drop has lowered rates of hospitalization for heart attacks and emergency room visits for asthma attacks, she said.

The data has not yet been peer-reviewed. But the numbers have already grabbed national attention, with several United States senators and antismoking advocates using the data to push for similar new Medicaid coverage for tobacco addiction in the national health care legislation.

Senators Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, have introduced an amendment that would do so, and the Senate could vote on it by the weekend.

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