Later On

Unfortunately, it’s now evident that about half the citizenry lack the knowledge and background to understand this news story by Justin Gillis in the NY Times. They base their scientific judgments on what someone said on talk radio. So I expect we shall continue down the same path until we fall off the cliff. The story begins:

An increase in heavy precipitation that has afflicted many countries is at least partly a consequence of human influence on the atmosphere, climate scientists reported in a new study.

In the first major paper of its kind, the researchers used elaborate computer programs that simulate the climate to analyze whether the rise in severe rainstorms, heavy snowfalls and similar events could be explained by natural variability in the atmosphere. They found that it could not, and that the increase made sense only when the computers factored in the effects of greenhouse gases released by human activities like the burning of fossil fuels.

As reflected in previous studies, the likelihood of extreme precipitation on any given day increased by about 7 percent over the last half of the 20th century, at least for the land areas of the Northern Hemisphere for which sufficient figures are available to do an analysis.

The principal finding of the new study is “that this 7 percent is well outside the bounds of natural variability,” said Francis W. Zwiers, a Canadian climate scientist who took part in the research. The paper is being published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

The paper covers climate trends from 1951 to 1999 and therefore does not include any analysis of last year’s extreme precipitation, including catastrophic floods in Pakistan, China and Australia as well as several parts of the United States, including Tennessee, Arkansas and California. However, the paper is likely to bolster a growing sense among climate scientists that events like the 2010 floods will become more common in a warming world.

Indeed, an increase of weather extremes has been a fundamental prediction of climate science for decades. Basic physics suggests that as the earth warms, precipitation extremes will become more intense, winter and summer, for the simple reason that warmer air can carry more water vapor. Weather statistics confirm that this has begun to happen.

Scientists have long been reluctant to attribute any specific weather event to global warming, but a handful of papers that do so are beginning to appear in the scientific literature. One such installment is being published on Thursday in Nature as a companion piece to the broader paper. It finds that severe rains that flooded England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, the wettest autumn since record-keeping began there in 1766, . . .

Continue reading.

And the GOP contributed to the success of an important step to start realigning our country’s priorities. Report in the NY Times by Christopher Drew:

In a sign that some freshman Republicans were willing to cut military spending, the House voted 233-198 on Wednesday to cancel an alternate fighter jet engine that the Bush and Obama administrations had tried to kill for the last five years.

The vote marked another instance in which some of the new legislators, including members of the Tea Party, broke ranks with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, where the engine provided more than 1,000 jobs.

Many of the 87 freshman Republicans in the House had initially been hesitant to trim military spending as part of their drive to reduce the budget deficit.

But after forcing Mr. Boehner and other Republican leaders to propose greater cuts in domestic programs, the freshman agreed last week to include $16 billion in military cuts in this year’s spending bill.

Wednesday’s vote to cancel the alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would cut an additional $450 million and save up to $3 billion over the next several years.

The vote was a victory for President Obama and the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who had called the engine wasteful at a time when the Pentagon budget was flattening out. Yet it also could signal trouble for Mr. Gates, who has complained that the Pentagon could face a short-term crisis if the Republicans go ahead with the $16 billion in additional military cuts this year.

In voting to cancel the engine, some of the Republican freshman formed an unusual alliance with liberal Democrats, who have opposed many of the Republican proposals for cuts in domestic programs.

The Joint Strike Fighter is the military’s most . . .

Continue reading. It does show that the most serious problems in Washington are not so much in the Executive Branch as in the Legislative. I suppose I had given up all hope of Congress doing its job, voting for the public weal rather than for private profit.

UPDATE: Emphasis added to story to help in comprehension.

Pretty clever: motion-triggered video, possibly using infrared light. Take a look.

The Simple Dollar is generally a useful blog on saving money while living well (in terms of your values, dreams, and direction). Here, for example, is an excellent post that explains how what young adults face today is enormously different from what they faced 40 years ago. It begins:

Over the past weekend, I had a long conversation with a man in our community who was nearing retirement age. He felt comfortable about his own coming retirement, but he seemed very pessimistic that his children would ever be ready to retire. “They just don’t know how to save money,” he told me.

I told him that, although I agreed with him that young people should save more, there is also a strong case that it is much more difficult today for a young person to establish themselves financially as he did when he was a young adult.

He looked at me strangely. “What do you mean?” he asked.

So, I laid it out for him, piece by piece. Afterward, it occurred to me that the entire discussion might make for a good post here, particularly with some specific research to back it up.

Real wages Let’s start with income. In 1970, the average wage earner took home $312 per week (in 1982 dollars). In 2004, the average wage earner brought home $277 per week (in 1982 dollars) – and it’s still falling. That means that, once you factor out inflation, the average wage earner in 1970 brought home about 18% more than the average wage earner today.

Home prices . . .

Continue reading. It’s worth the click.

He has published a book summarizing what he learned when he changed his lifestyle to become more in tune with his values and dreams, which included being more frugal: The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams. It sounds excellent. If you scroll down in this post, you get some reader responses to the book.

People have asked me to more or less go easy on Obama because he has in fact done some very good things. But I continue to be taken aback by his streak of authoritarianism when it is revealed, as it has been in a number of cases. What is the proper response when one sees that? Simple acceptance? “That’s okay because he did this other stuff that’s good”? He gets to kill Americans with no due process or court review because he delivered healthcare? That sort of trade-off seems false to me: I am glad to have healthcare, but I still don’t want Obama and future presidents to have the authority to order the deaths of Americans with no judicial oversight and no due process. Those who lack the ability to see where this leads must not know much history.

One sees quite a few instances of Obama’s attitude toward civil rights, enough to become sensitized (and alarmed) when they recur. One hates to be a party pooper and spoil the fun, but this story (for example) raises my hackles—just as it would emanating from a Republican president. Marisa Taylor writes in the Sacramento Bee:

The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the United States without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.That assertion was revealed by the department – perhaps inadvertently – in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.

Critics say the legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that were supposed to have been stopped in 2006.

The controversy is a legacy of the Bush administration’s war on terror. Critics say the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.

For years after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI sought and obtained thousands of telephone records for international calls in an attempt to thwart potential terrorists. The bureau devised an informal system of requesting the records from three telecommunications firms to create what one agent called a “phone database on steroids” that included names, addresses, length of service and billing information.

A federal watchdog later said a “casual” environment developed in which FBI agents and employees of the telecom companies treated Americans’ telephone records so cavalierly that one senior FBI counterterrorism official said getting access to them was as easy as “having an ATM in your living room.”

In January 2010, McClatchy asked for a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel memo under open-records laws after a reference to it appeared in a heavily excised section of a report on how the FBI abused its powers when seeking telephone records.

In the report, the Justice Department’s inspector general said “the OLC agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency.”

In its cover letter to McClatchy, the OLC disclosed more detail about its legal position, specifying a section of a 1978 federal wiretapping law that the Justice Department believes gives the FBI the authority. That section of the law appears to be what was redacted from the inspector general’s report and reveals the type of records the FBI would be seeking, experts said.

“This is the answer to a mystery that has puzzled us for more than a year now,” said Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney and expert on electronic surveillance and national security laws for the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“Now, 30 years later, the FBI has looked at this provision again and decided that it is an enormous loophole that allows them to ask for, and the phone companies to hand over, records related to international or foreign communications,” he said.

That interpretation could be stretched to apply to e-mails, as well, he said.

However, Bankston said, even if the law allows the FBI to ask for the records – an assertion he disagrees with – it would prohibit the telecommunication companies from handing them over.

I’m curious to know the appropriate response. Is it “Oh, I’m sure they know what they’re doing and will sort it out privately.”? or “I bet they have special reasons that they don’t want to tell us that completely justifies what they are doing. After all, in this sort of democracy the government should hide things from citizens.”?

I don’t get it. I think this is awful, I see it happening, and the guy I voted for is doing it. I think a little protest is quite in order.

And, BTW, the FBI’s bona fides are often in question. Read this excellent summary of what is coming out about their “case” against Bruce Ivins in the Anthrax poisonings.

Extremely nice shave, and writing the name of the razor in the order shown (instead of Eclipse Red Ring) made me think that the name refers to a partial eclipse: the red ring of the sun showing around the moon.

Wonderful lather again from D.R. Harris, this time thanks to the Simpson Emperor 2 Super. I used the shave stick as a shave stick, as I always do—I really don’t understand why some buy shave sticks and then try to avoid using them as shave sticks.

Three smooth passes with the much-used Swedish Gillette blade, then a splash of Penhaligon Blenheim Bouquet.

Last night I was desperately trying to stay awake until a reasonable hour—I tend to awaken way too early on class days, probably from a combination of anxiety and excitement—so I decided to put together the one-pot meal for today’s lunch and dinner. I put it in the fridge when it was finished, and will cook it at noon. The layers:

1/2 onion, chopped
1 c teeny little whole potatoes of all colors: purple, brown, tan, etc., each about the size of a marble
2 Tbs chicken stock
4 cloves garlic, minced
9-oz fillet of King salmon
juice of 1/2 lime
salt, pepper, crushed red pepper
4 sliced mushrooms
4 red Fresno peppers, chopped (not hot)
1 small Italian eggplant (banana-shaped), sliced
1 Tbsp olive oil, brushed onto the eggplant
6-8 Kalamata pitted olives, coarsely chopped
several teaspoons of white miso, placed here and there
thick part of fresh fennel fronds, chopped
1/2 bulb fresh fennel, quarter and cored, sliced
1 large heritage tomato, sliced

Mix together and pour over:

2 Tbsp Amontillado sherry
1 Tbsp homemade Worcestershire sauce

That’s what I can recall: all of my GOPMs are quite ad hoc: I look around to see what might be good and continue to add until I run out of room—in this case before I could add some spinach or red chard. I do generally start with a basic idea or theme: this time it was to use potatoes and salmon.

Because potatoes won’t absorb excess liquid the way rice and pasta do, I think this may be a little liquidy in the bottom, but I didn’t want to run the risk of having it go dry in a 450º F/232º C oven.

UPDATE: There was extra liquid in the bottom of the pot, but not a lot (1/4 – 1/2 c) and it was an extremely tasty liquid. In fact, this was a raving success. I wish I had had some parsley: in this method of cooking, a little parsley adds a very nice flavor. But no complaints at all, and now I have a terrific dinner already made.

I think that sucking on zinc lozenges to reduce the severity and duration of colds, if started immediately at the first sign of symptoms, was well known 35 years ago, when people told me to do that. And it was not at all difficult to find zinc lozenges, either. So how is this (reported in the NY Times) news?

Scientists still haven’t discovered a cure for the common cold, but researchers now say zinc may be the next best thing.

A sweeping new review of the medical research on zinc shows that sniffing, sneezing, coughing and stuffy-headed cold sufferers finally have a better option than just tissue and chicken soup. When taken within 24 hours of the first runny nose or sore throat, zinc lozenges, tablets or syrups can cut colds short by an average of a day or more and sharply reduce the severity of symptoms, according to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, a respected medical clearinghouse.

In some of the cited studies, the benefits of zinc were significant. A March 2008 report in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, for example, found that zinc lozenges cut the duration of colds to four days from seven days, and reduced coughing to two days from five. . .

Continue reading. The article suggests that these are the most reliable zinc lozenges to use.

Here’s why.

The plot is rapidly thickening. Greenwald summarizes the newest findings, including this recent update (but you really should read Greenwald’s entire column and all the updates, of which there are currently four):

UPDATE II:  Writing in Wired, Nate Anderson of Ars Technica has a truly superb account of what happened here, with a focus on the responsibility and knowledge of the executives at the implicated firms.  The whole article should be read, but here’s a sample:

By October 2010, Barr was under considerable stress. His CEO job was under threat, and the e-mails show that the specter of divorce loomed over his personal life.

On Oct. 19, a note arrived. HBGary Federal might be able to provide part of “a complete intelligence solution to a law firm that approached us.” That law firm was DC-based powerhouse Hunton & Williams, which boasted 1,000 attorneys and terrific contacts. . . .

The three firms [HBGary, Berico and Palantir] needed a name for their joint operation. One early suggestion: a “Corporate Threat Analysis Cell.” Eventually, a sexier name was chosen: Team Themis.. . .

Team Themis decided to ask for $2 million per month, for six months, for the first phase of the project, putting $500,000 to $700,000 per month in HBGary Federal’s pocket.

But the three companies disagreed about how to split the pie. In the end, Palantir agreed to take less money, but that decision had to go “way up the chain (as you can imagine),” wrote the Palantir contact for Team Themis. “The short of it is that we got approval from Dr. Karp and the Board to go ahead with the modified 40/30/30 breakdown proposed. These were not fun conversations, but we are committed to this team and we can optimize the cost structure in the long term (let’s demonstrate success and then take over this market ).”

The leaders at the very top of Palantir were aware of the Team Themis work, though the details of what was being proposed by Barr may well have escaped their notice. Palantir wasn’t kidding around with this contract; if selected by H&W and the Chamber, Palantir planned to staff the project with an experienced intelligence operative, a man who “ran the foreign fighter campaign on the Syrian border in 2005 to stop the flow of suicide bombers into Baghdad and helped to ensure a successful Iraqi election. As a commander, [he] ran the entire intelligence cycle: identified high-level terrorists, planned missions to kill or capture them, led the missions personally, then exploited the intelligence and evidence gathered on target to defeat broader enemy networks” . . . .

But before H&W made a decision on Chamber of Commerce plan, it had another urgent request for Team Themis: a major U.S. bank had come to H&W seeking help against WikiLeaks (the bank has been widely assumed to be Bank of America, which has long been rumored to be a future WikiLeaks target.)

“We want to sell this team as part of what we are talking about,” said the team’s H&W contact. “I need a favor. I need five to six slides on Wikileaks — who they are, how they operate and how this group may help this bank. . . .”

After the Anonymous attacks and the release of Barr’s e-mails, his partners furiously distanced themselves from Barr’s work. Palantir CEO Dr. Alex Karp wrote, “We do not provide — nor do we have any plans to develop — offensive cyber capabilities . . . .” Berico said (PDF) that it “does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations or individuals. We find such actions reprehensible and are deeply committed to partnering with the best companies in our industry that share our core values. Therefore, we have discontinued all ties with HBGary Federal.”

But both of the Team Themis leads at these companies knew exactly what was being proposed (such knowledge may not have run to the top). They saw Barr’s e-mails, and they used his work. His ideas on attacking WikiLeaks made it almost verbatim into a Palantir slide about “proactive tactics.”

Anderson has written the definitive account thus far about the facts showing the involvement of each of these companies, and I encourage everyone to read his whole article.

Sardines are back in Monterey Bay, but the canneries are not going to open: tourism struck. Still, the local stores now have fresh sardines available, and I bought 3 large ones that, after I cut off the heads and gutted and filleted them weighed a total of 9 oz (3 oz each). They’re easy to fillet once you’ve decapitated and gutted them: you just run your finger first along one side of the spine and then along the other, and you can lift the spine out. The layers:

onion
1/2 c rice
2 Tbsp chicken stock
sardine fillets
juice of a lime
chopped veggies from Whole Foods
1 Meyer lemon cut into chunks

Whisk together and then pour over the top:

2 Tbsp vinaigrette
2 Tbsp sherry
1 Tbsp homemade Worcestershire
several generous dashes Chipotle Tabasco

The chopped veggies I got in a package, already chopped. They seemed to be onion, mushrooms, and asparagus.

Quite nice. Half for dinner last night, the other half for dinner tonight. The sardines did fine in this dish, and I have a sockeye salmon fillet for the next one-pot meal.

It’s overcast and rain predicted, so I used the Sweet Gale soap, and I must apologize to Megs: I found the Grosvenor Badger/Boar bristle combination and used that (after soaking it while I showered). I got a better shave from the second use of the Rapira blade, just as Zach predicted.

The photo I took is not showing up in some programs, but does show up in others. I think I have a virus on this computer.

UPDATE: Files had been corrupted, so I had to run CHKDSK, followed by a virus scan. Everything seems to be working, and I did find the missing photo:

One major contributing factor to the situation in which the country finds itself is the almost total abandonment by journalism of their investigative and reporting mission. Partly this is due to the takeover of major news outlets by large corporations, whose focus is always on increasing profits—and stirring up trouble with the government is not the pathway to greater profits, when those corporations make more money from doing business with the government (and getting government approval for things they want to do) than they ever could from exposing governmental wrong-doing and missteps (i.e., deliberate wrong-doing on the one hand, incompetence on the other). So instead of news those corporations deliver news-like entertainment.

Pointing out specific instances of the problem can seem quite negative, but OTOH simply bemoaning the trend without specific instances is simply hot air. Specific examples are required to ground discussions in reality.

With that introduction, take a look at this column:

In late 2008, former federal prosecutor Neil Barofsky was appointed to oversee the Treasury Department’s administration of the $700 billion Wall Street/TARP bailout, and in that position, he has easily been one of the most impressive and courageous political officials in Washington.  A life-long Democrat who donated money to the Obama campaign, he vigilantly fought for his independence as TARP watchdog and has been relentless in his criticism of Treasury officials and especially Tim Geithner.  The Washington Post reports today that Barofsky is resigning from his position, and the otherwise routine article by reporter Bradley Dennis contains this passage:

[Barofsky] quickly emerged as an aggressive overseer, viewed as a much-needed cop monitoring for waste and fraud within TARP by some lawmakers and watchdog groups, and, by Treasury officials and financial-industry representatives, as a self-promoter whose overreaching investigations scared some needy banks away from participating in the federal aid program. . . .

In his sometimes scathing reports to Congress, Barofsky showed little reluctance in criticizing administration officials on everything from how their lack of transparency was fueling “anger, cynicism and distrust” to how their foreclosure prevention efforts had fallen well below expectations.  Barofsky was particularly hard on the government’s bailout of insurance giant American International Group, saying that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which was led at the time by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner — “refused to use its considerable leverage” and instead paid AIG’s trading partners in full on the firm’s debts.

Such criticisms did not sit well with Treasury officials, many of whom believed Barofsky’s conclusions were overstated and aimed primarily at drawing media attention.

“We’re fine with critics,” said one Treasury official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more candidly. “[But] he’s been consistently wrong about a lot of big things.”

Just ponder the utter cowardice and lack of professionalism needed to produce this passage.  First, some aide to Timothy Geithner wanted to publicly slam Barofsky on his way out the door, but lacked the courage to attach his name to the criticism.  So he told this Post reporter that he’d be willing to provide a derogatory quote about Barofsky, but only if he could hide behind anonymity when doing so.  Barofsky has stood behind his public criticisms by putting his name on his reports and appearing unmasked in interviews, but this Geithner lackey is too afraid to do that.  So he demands that the Treasury Department be allowed to malign him while hiding behind the Post‘s protective shield.

Then, the Post reporter, so desperate to include criticism of Barofsky for the sake of “balance” and in order to curry favor with the administration, agrees to channel the insults about Barofsky while concealing the identity of this Treasury critic — for absolutely no good journalistic reason.  Remember, this isn’t some powerless whistle-blower granted anonymity to expose wrongdoing by someone in power.  It’s the opposite:  Barofsky is on his way out, and this official is still at Treasury, undoubtedly doing the Secretary’s bidding.  Worse, the criticism is completely uninformative; it’s just an unspecific insult claiming that Barofsky has “been consistently wrong about a lot of big things” without identifying a single alleged error.  So anonymity is granted to allow a powerful government official to publicly malign someone in the most unaccountable manner possible. . .

Continue reading.

Astonishing how overtly companies discuss breaking the law and plans for unethical behavior.  Ed Brayton notes:

The whole situation is appalling but hardly surprising. And as Greenwald notes, much of it is illegal. But don’t expect anyone to be charged with those crimes any time soon. It was the DOJ that recommended HB Gary to Bank of America. And their actions fit the DOJ’s agenda to destroy WikiLeaks. The DOJ will conveniently look the other way.

Obviously, Ed Brayton doesn’t know the DOJ plans. Who knows? Maybe the DOJ is horrified by what HB Gary proposed and will take quick legal action against them. We can only wait and see. I suggest not holding one’s breath, though.

Justin Elliott of Salon provides some recent updates on the story:

Here’s an update on the unfolding story of the trio of technology firms that hatched a plan to attack WikiLeaks and their supporters in the press — including Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. The plan was apparently prepared at the behest of Hunton and Williams, a large law firm working for Bank of America, which is worried because it is reportedly the subject of a future WikiLeaks document release.

The plan (.pdf) was outlined in a slideshow prepared by the three security firms; it was obtained and released online by the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers known as Anonymous. One of the three firms, Palantir Technologies, just announced that it has put an engineer who was involved in the project on leave “pending a thorough review of his actions.”

When this story broke last week, Palantir was quick to deny any involvement in the anti-WikiLeaks plan and to sever ties with one of the partner firms, HBGary, that had masterminded the plan. One of several provocative items in the plan said that Greenwald’s public support for WikiLeaks needed “to be disrupted.”

Here’s where a new wrinkle in the story comes into play. Anonymous has now published a new batch of thousands emails hacked from executives at HBGary. And the emails appear to contradict Palantir’s claim that it had nothing to do with developing the anti-WikiLeaks plan.

Here’s what Palantir, which also apologized personally to Greenwald, said in a statement sent to reporters over the weekend:

Palantir did not participate in the development of the recommendations that Palantir and others find offensive.

Palantir was NOT retained by any party to develop such recommendations and indeed it would be contrary to Palantir ethics, culture and policies to do so.

That’s a pretty airtight denial. But now let’s look at an email exchange between HBGary executive Aaron Barr and Matthew Steckman, an engineer at Palantir (who has now been put on leave). On the morning of Dec. 3, Barr wrote Steckman: . . .

Continue reading.

I know that I have readers who are not discomfited by this sort of thing, and indeed accept it as a normal course of action these days. My own feeling is that such things are not only wrong but extremely corrosive and, if not exposed and fought, contribute to a slide into the sort of society in which most of us would not like to live.

The Wife is a great Gary Burton fan:

I regularly eat some foods I consider therapeutic: 1/2 tsp turmeric daily (anti-inflammatory), 1/2 tsp cinnamon daily (helps type 2 diabetics reduce insulin resistance), 1/2 c pomegranate juice (promoties arterial health), and at least a quart of (iced) white tea (anti-cancer properties). So this article at Fitday caught my eye:

Inflammation is the normal and natural response to body injury; however, unnecessary and chronic inflammation can wreak havoc on the body and promote illness.   Many times chronic inflammation goes unnoticed for years but eventually may lead to serious illness including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, sleep and mood disorders, arthritis and Alzheimer’s.   Due to the increase in chronic disease, the anti-inflammatory diet has gained popularity and media attention.   In general, the anti-inflammatory diet is similar to the Mediterranean style of eating and is designed to reduce risk of age-related disease and improve overall health.

Dietary Factors Contributing to Inflammation
One of the largest players in the fight against chronic inflammation is excess body weight.  The inflammatory state is a vicious cycle starting with infection or illness that produces inflammation, then insulin resistance followed by weight gain and more inflammation.  When an individual starts to gain weight, it can become difficult to get the body out of this constant inflammatory pathway.  Typically drastic nutrition and exercise changes are needed.  The modern diet contributes to inflammation through a variety of body mechanisms that are not completely understood.  Eating too many fried foods, processed foods, omega-6 fats, saturated fat, refined sugar and trans fats have all been linked to increased pro-inflammatory chemicals and hormones that cause cell damage.

Foods to Eat
The anti-inflammatory diet promotes well-balanced eating, but for true success it must be a lifestyle change and not a temporary fix.  Due to the anti-inflammatory effects, omega-3 fatty acids such as fresh oily fish, walnuts, flaxseed and fortified eggs are the staples.  The primary source of fat is extra virgin olive oil.  Only lean meats and vegetable proteins (soybeans, tofu, and soy milk) are allowed.  With high levels of antioxidants, a colorful variety of fresh fruits and vegetables are strongly encouraged along with a variety of nuts, 100% whole grains, beans and legumes.  Herbs and spices such as garlic, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, red pepper, cayenne, basil, oregano, paprika and chili peppers play a key role in flavoring foods.  An emphasis is placed on organic produce if feasible.  As far as beverages, 2-4 servings of green, white and/or oolong tea are recommended and red wine is allowed in moderate amounts (1-2 glasses daily).

Foods to Avoid . . .

Continue reading.

In the past, Supreme Court Justices have not been on the market. That seems to be changing, though apparently protocol dictates that normally the money should be funneled to the Justice’s wife (cf. Mrs. Clarence Thomas). But check out this.

Interesting story from NPR:

As enrollment rates in colleges have continued to increase, a new book questions whether the historic number of young people attending college will actually learn all that much once they get to campus. In Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, two authors present a study that followed 2,300 students at 24 universities over the course of four years. The study measured both the amount that students improved in terms of critical thinking and writing skills, in addition to how much they studied and how many papers they wrote for their courses.

Richard Arum, a co-author of the book and a professor of sociology at New York University, tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that the fact that more than a third of students showed no improvement in critical thinking skills after four years at a university was cause for concern.

“Our country today is part of a global economic system, where we no longer have the luxury to put large numbers of kids through college and university and not demand of them that they are developing these higher order skills that are necessary not just for them, but for our society as a whole,” Arum says.

There’s a huge incentive set up in the system [for] asking students very little, grading them easily, entertaining them, and your course evaluations will be high. – Richard Arum

Part of the reason for a decline in critical thinking skills could be a decrease in academic rigor; 35 percent of students reported studying five hours per week or less, and 50 percent said they didn’t have a single course that required 20 pages of writing in their previous semester.

According to the study, one possible reason for a decline in academic rigor and, consequentially, in writing and reasoning skills, is that . . .

Continue reading.

The ability of computers to perform tasks now reserved for humans will cause major social dislocations: if people cannot work, they cannot earn money, so that basing our civilization on money may encounter some problems. John Markoff’s article in the NY Times is worth reading:

At the dawn of the modern computer era, two Pentagon-financed laboratories bracketed Stanford University. At one laboratory, a small group of scientists and engineers worked to replace the human mind, while at the other, a similar group worked to augment it.In 1963 the mathematician-turned-computer scientist John McCarthy started the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The researchers believed that it would take only a decade to create a thinking machine.

Also that year the computer scientist Douglas Engelbart formed what would become the Augmentation Research Center to pursue a radically different goal — designing a computing system that would instead “bootstrap” the human intelligence of small groups of scientists and engineers.

For the past four decades that basic tension between artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation — A.I. versus I.A. — has been at the heart of progress in computing science as the field has produced a series of ever more powerful technologies that are transforming the world.

Now, as the pace of technological change continues to accelerate, it has become increasingly possible to design computing systems that enhance the human experience, or now — in a growing number of cases — completely dispense with it.

The implications of progress in A.I. are being brought into sharp relief now by the broadcasting of a recorded competition pitting the I.B.M. computing system named Watson against the two best human Jeopardy players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

Watson is an effort by I.B.M. researchers to advance a set of techniques used to process human language. It provides striking evidence that computing systems will no longer be limited to responding to simple commands. Machines will increasingly be able to pick apart jargon, nuance and even riddles. In attacking the problem of the ambiguity of human language, computer science is now closing in on what researchers refer to as the “Paris Hilton problem” — the ability, for example, to determine whether a query is being made by someone who is trying to reserve a hotel in France, or simply to pass time surfing the Internet.

If, as many predict, Watson defeats its human opponents on Wednesday, much will be made of the philosophical consequences of the machine’s achievement. Moreover, the I.B.M. demonstration also foretells profound sociological and economic changes.

Traditionally, economists have argued that while new forms of automation may displace jobs in the short run, over longer periods of time economic growth and job creation have continued to outpace any job-killing technologies. For example, over the past century and a half the shift from being a largely agrarian society to one in which less than 1 percent of the United States labor force is in agriculture is frequently cited as evidence of the economy’s ability to reinvent itself.

That, however, was before machines began to “understand” human language. . .

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Using up 50 cubic kilometers of irreplaceable groundwater in 12 years to raise lettuce: Is no one thinking ahead? From New Scientist:

It may be a land of milk and honey, but California’s Central valley – the most productive farmland in the US – is being sucked dry. The culprits? Lettuce and other green vegetables.

James Famiglietti at the University of California, Irvine, used the twin GRACE satellites to find that 20 cubic kilometres of groundwater had disappeared from beneath the valley between October 2003 and March 2010. Between 1998 and 2003, 28.5 km³ were lost, according to the US Geological Survey, meaning that about 50 km³ of groundwater had disappeared in 12 years (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL046442).

That’s unsustainable, says Famiglietti, and bad news for local farmers. “There is a foreseeable end to groundwater availability in California,” he says. Estimates of the total reserves are rough, so the end is difficult to predict, but Famiglietti says the valley could run dry by 2100.

Growing green vegetables is profitable, but they need copious water. The problem is that water use is not regulated. “Anyone who wants to can drill a well and pump it up,” says Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute, a think tank based in Oakland, California.