Books Ordered

I decided to go out and pick up some books. Since Mexico, immigration, and my semi-stupid, ahem, quixotic crusade to annex Mexico looms large in my mind, I picked up some more books on the matter. I also picked up a book on Russia's far east, US immigration policy, and the evolution of the dinosaurs. All of these were picked up used to save a little dinero. I have a good chance I'll be ordering more books very soon and those will be new.

In the Mexican category, the first one is Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Transformation. The second one is Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans. Then there is Mexico: Biography of Power. Further is also Opening Mexico : The Making of a Democracy. Don't worry, Noel, your books will come in the next round of books on Mexico. Probably not used either. Gotta make sure an author I like and respect greatly (!!!) is properly paid. Even if they're fscking expensive. :P ;)

Then in the immigration policy arena, I picked up Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882. On the little more rabid side, I also bought Illegals: The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border. Hey, it was a buck and I need to understand the arguments of those opposed to letting Mexicans in, nevermind annexing them!

WRT Russia, I picked up Russia's Far East: A Region at Risk. If you all think we have a border to be worried about...Russia has a whole country to be nervous about (demographics) and a border that makes the US ones seem...almost pathetic.

Finally, I picked up a paleo book. I wanted to get more, truthfully, but they're more expensive than the books on Mexico. Since I want to do a good write up of the KT Mass Extinction, I need to do a little more research to back up what I am going to say. Since I rather love the ole dinos, I ordered The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs. Used too. I actually got it for the 'song' of $7. Normally through amazon its around $65.

The next order of books will probably actually take place in the near future. I'm going to see if I can slip in something from Gerta Keller, even though I am completely and utterly at odds with her positions. :)

This post was inspired by Suzanne and her efforts to beat statistics. Depressing ones at that.

Real Estate: This Graph Should Worry You

While the subprimes are going to settle out next year there's a whole new wave to follow that that won't break until 2012. 2012. Ouch!

HEY! Great Captains of Industry! We need a boom to off set this in the Bay Area? Any chance...oh. NM. ;)

North Atlantic Slows CO2 Intake?

Further evidence for the decline of the oceans’ historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia.

Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions.

This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly.

A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Dr Ute Schuster and Professor Andrew Watson of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences again raises concerns that the oceans might be slowing their uptake of CO2.

Results of their decade-long study in the North Atlantic show that the uptake in this ocean, which is the most intense sink for atmospheric CO2, slowed down dramatically between the mid-nineties and the early 2000s.

A slowdown in the sink in the Southern Ocean had already been inferred, but the change in the North Atlantic is greater and more sudden, and could be responsible for a substantial proportion of the observed weakening.

The observations were made from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments for measuring carbon dioxide in the water. Much of the data has come from a container ship carrying bananas from the West Indies to the UK, making a round-trip of the Atlantic every month. The MV Santa Maria, chartered by Geest, has generated more than 90,000 measurements of CO2 in the past few years.

The results show that the uptake by the North Atlantic halved between the mid-90s, when data was first gathered, and 2002-05.

“Such large changes are a tremendous surprise. We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean’s great mass,” said Dr Schuster.

“We are cautious about attributing this exclusively to human-caused climate change because this uptake has never been measured before, so we have no baseline to compare our results to. Perhaps the ocean uptake is subject to natural ups and downs and it will recover again.”

But the direction of the change was worrying, she added, and there were some grounds for believing that a ‘saturation’ of the ocean sink would start to occur.

Interesting. Possibly worrying.

Behind Reading Papers

I promised to read several papers and make comments here (and in person) for a couple people. I am waaay behind on this. Seth, David, this is a public apology. I am going to point my readers to their work, however, as I try to cram into my puny "Tween" brain the works of people that are quite bright.

Seth is a CS professor at CMU. The papers I have been reading are about the Claytronics project. I am about 50% done, but I am still haven't touched the most recent of them, so any opinions I have so far are not chronologically up to date as far as their research goes. However, one item that keeps bouncing around my brain is that the programming model that they are going to face reminds me - though it is not a directly applicable one - to what we are starting to think we are going to face in HPC.

We are starting to look at future where the chips that are being made are going to have many cores. Well, duh, many of you say, we're going multicore already. Well, yes, but how many cores do most chips have these days? 4? 8? bah. That's nada. We're discussing in our HPC discussions about something on the order of 1024 cores per chip. 1024. Perhaps as many as 16,384. They're simplified, not as extensive as far as instructions as the current chip cores. Then if you consider we're not giving up the paradigm of massive parallel CPU's either. Now consider the complexity of trying to efficiently use all those cores of a single chip and the massively parallel nature of HPC codes (some, but not many, scaling now to 8,000 CPUs or more): that would possibly be as many as 131,072,000 cores you'd have to code for.

If you state, "well, the compiler will..." I'll start giggling, snorking, and probably repeat the grape juice out the nose incident of 4th grade right after moving to Los Alamos. During the 1990s there was a lot of the "We'll hand off responsibility for optimizing X to the compiler because we need very good coders to handle X" and this, frankly, failed more often than not. Magitech compilers are not here. There are improvements, to be fair. Compilers have truly come a long way. Yet, they still have serious issues optimizing especially on HPC platforms and we are talking 16k CPU/cores, maybe, if you have a Blue Spleen, ahem, Gene a lot more but exceedingly few codes scale to that level. I know of, honestly, only one and that was a hero effort to get it to use all of LLNL's BG. Even so, that's a "mere" 130 odd kilocores, not 131 odd megacores. Truthfully, we don't even have a functional model on how to code for such a beast, but, honestly, we have some viewgraphs and a few ideas.

So the first question after reading the above is "Why do that if its going to be such a pain?" The reason is that you can reduce the power requirements for CPUs by doing so. VASTLY. People mumble and babble about the Coming Singularity and the ever increasing amount of 'matter devoted to computing,' but they sorely neglect the problem of how you can get the energy for that. LLNL is going to put in, for their near term HPC center, more electrical power than what is used by the entire East SF Bay city utilities combined. This is supporting their near term petaflop systems. Now think about that. What happens we are talking about exaflop systems? uh huh. Dedicated powerplants? Sorry, I don't think so! So, we're looking for technologies that reduce our energy expenditures. I was just in a vendor brief this week about the amount of electricity consumed by this vendors next set of chips: it's NDA, so I can't reveal very much, but let's say even the vendor is distressed and is looking for alternate technologies for the future. Can't say more, but I think you can understand that: vendors and centers are now looking at flops/watt as VERY important measures for HPC tech. if we don't find a way around this, we're going to see a top out at most of a world HPC community tapping out at an exaflop or so, but only having a very small handful of centers to do this.

Now be warned, when I first came back to HPC in 2001 after doing my stint playing with mongo death rays the 'in thing' were PIMs: processors in memory. The idea was that you stop separating CPUs from memory in the silicon because the CPU often sits ideal because the memory subsystems are much too slow compared to the CPUs. However, very little of that research effort at here, Stanford, and elsewhere came to, well, anything other than white papers and simulations. Very little silicon was even, erm, bent? Almost nothing went into a commercial product. It was, probably still is a good idea, yet it remains only of academic interest and one that's apparently passe. Massively manycored CPUs may go the same way.

Now that I have had to digress (or wanted to too much) about manycore tech, how does it apply whatsoever to Seth's Claytronics project? Consider that each of their catoms is going to be vaguely similar to a core in that gobsmacking number in that theoretical HPC platform I outlined above. Both would need to have simple, limited instructions. Both would have the need for some very involved, and possibly similar algorithms to make them work. The language and compilers are going to have some common themes. At least from the 10k ft level. At least so far. I'll see more as I read.

Switching topics, David is someone that I met via my wife. David works for Sun. His wife met my wife at a party we went to at a mutual friend's. They came over for dinner and we all started talking. David's Russian like his wife Sasha. Lyuda and Sasha ended up talking in Russian a lot to each and David and I talked shop: he was part of Sun HPCS team. We talked politics of HPC and it shook him up a bit. I am really surprised by that, but anyhow. He pointed me to his papers, here, that he's worked on. I'm just starting with them, but I thought some of you would find them interesting. 17 patents. hrmph. Wish I could say anything like that. Ah well.

Energy News: Coal on the Down? Biofuels Futures?

At least 16 coal-fired power plant proposals nationwide have been scrapped in recent months and more than three dozen have been delayed as utilities face increasing pressure due to concerns over global warming and rising construction costs.

The slow pace of new plant construction reflects a dramatic change in fortune for a fuel source that just a few years ago was poised for a major resurgence. Combined, the canceled and delayed projects represent enough electricity to power approximately 20 million homes.

The U.S. Department of Energy's latest tally of pending coal plants, released last week, shows eight projects totaling 7,000 megawatts have been canceled since May. That's besides the cancellation earlier this year of eight plants in Texas totaling 6,864 megawatts. Utilities have also pushed back construction on another 32,000 megawatts worth of projects, according to the Energy Department report.

"All these reports that we were about to be inundated with coal plants, I believe this report tells a different story," said Kenneth Kern, director of analysis and planning at the department's National Energy Technology Laboratory. "What has actually happened, if you look at it closely, was much more modest than what was anticipated," he said.

Coal has been a mainstay for utilities, producing half of all electricity consumed in the United States. But it's also one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

From here.

The increasing use of biofuels to tackle global warming is having a dramatic impact on global commodity markets, the head of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said Thursday.

The recent surge in crude oil and wheat prices to record highs pointed to a transformation of commodity markets, said Craig Donohue, chief executive of the world's largest financial exchange.

"This is an entirely new market in commodities. We see a tremendous convergence now between (soft) commodities and energy with many economies becoming very ethanol based," he told reporters during a visit to Tokyo.

From here.

Interesting.

Neandertals, Humans shared FOXP2?

A new study published online on October 18th in Current Biology reveals that adaptive changes in a human gene involved in speech and language were shared by our closest extinct relatives, the Neandertals. The finding reveals that the human form of the gene arose much earlier than scientists had estimated previously. It also raises the possibility that Neandertals possessed some of the prerequisites for language.

The gene, which is called FOXP2, is the only one known to date to play a role in speech and language, according to the researchers. People who carry an abnormal copy of the FOXP2 gene have speech and language problems.

“From the point of view of this gene, there is no reason to think that Neandertals would not have had the ability for language,” said Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He noted, however, that many as-yet-unknown genes might underlie the capacity for language. Once found, those would have to be examined in Neandertals as well.

Previous analyses indicated that a very recent rise in the human FOXP2 variant had occurred as a result of strong selection, less than 200,000 years ago, added Svante Pääbo, also of the Max Planck Institute. “Because we know that Neandertal and modern human populations diverged more than 300,000 years ago, we would have guessed that these changes in FOXP2 would have happened after we separated from Neandertals,” Pääbo said, noting that the human version of FOXP2 differs from that of chimps in two places.

Keep in mind that there has been recent doubt about the Neandertal genetics research. Contamination may be a serious issue that hasn't been resolved yet.

Russian Cartoons

I've meant to post about this for some time. A friend of mine pointed us to a claymation version of Cheburashka. My wife has been going a bit bonkers showing us all the youtubed versions of the cartoons she watched when she was a kid. Some are weird. Some are jarring: the Soviet version of Winnie the Pooh, ahem, Vinnie Puh is just a bit incongruous with ours. Oh bother. Cherburashka is ... interesting. Now be careful. Some of them have been redubbed with some nasty words replaced. My wife stepped in one last night (Cheburashka Goblin is a bad, bad one not fit for kids to hear) and found it horribly offensive. Links below:

Cheburashka:















Vinnie Puh:







There's more, but those are the ones that I like. FWIW, they even had their own version of Mary Poppins. I got my wife our version and she was horrified. She likes theirs better. hrmph. I think I sense a spoonful of cultural bias. ;)

Another One Bites the Dust?

Brownback never enthused me and I'm glad to see the field narrowing. I can't say that I am very enthused with those left though either. Lesser of evils and all that. *sighs*

Note: I self identify as a moderate, but I'm not that easily labeled either.

Romney: Link college aid to occupation

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he would like to link financial aid for college students to the jobs they pursue after graduation.

Romney offered no specifics on what careers would warrant more money for a student during their undergraduate years, such as whether a future lawyer, doctor, teacher or social worker would receive more aid than a future economist or engineer.

"I like the idea of linking the level of support that we're able to provide to young people going to college to the contributions they're going to make to our society," Romney told more than 200 people at a campaign event at a Davenport hotel.

Now that's a good idea.

In truth, I have been particularly hostile to the english, art, and communications departments of various universities. Why in the world should there be free rides for such individuals that are financed through the regular financial aid pool? There are lots of people that are struggling that are engineers and scientists that are in that same pool. If the department has endowments for scholarships, but all means...otherwise, IMAAO, let the individual pay for their own way. Most of the time, I my experience at least, the english et al majors never actually work in their field.

Not endorsing the candidate here, BTW, just the idea that he espoused has merit. If you're afraid of it, don't worry: he'll change his mind.

The Terminator's Great Grand Pappy

Why Global Warming is Inevitable: Kyoto was a Pipe Dream

Canada has no chance of meeting its commitments to cut emissions of greenhouse gases laid down by the Kyoto climate change protocol, the minority Conservative government said in a policy speech on Tuesday.

Not even the goodie two shoes Canucks are going to meet the goals.

That strongly suggests that even a strong, but smallish - in terms of people - economy cannot make Kyoto work, then it was fundamentally flawed in the first place. Furthermore, it implies that those making the policies and doing a lot of the politicking related international relations are not necessarily in touch with reality.

THAT IS DAMNED DANGEROUS.

(hmm. that really needs a fscking blink tag. I'll resist that temptation.)

Making up numbers and puttering them around a conference table with no connection to what is really possible makes for something nigh-on 1984ish "we've always been at work with East Asia!"-esque: claiming that you are making progress and trumpeting that these things work when in fact they are emphatically not is Orwellian in a very frightening sort of way. A Shrubbish sort of way.

huh.

The Greens are Bush in Birkenstock's. Who'd have thunk it. ;)

A little more seriously, realism, giving straight, honest answers, and setting realistic goals are the only ways of getting this climate change mitigated. Yes, mitigated. We're not going to be able to stop it.

Welcome back to the Eocene, folks. Kinda. Sorta. Not really. It's going to be something new and very...interesting. Climate doesn't repeat.

Bye Bye, Tavia!

Yesterday, I went to the going away lunch for a coworker. Tavia and I were hired at NERSC at the same time. We were part of a batch of 4 people hired at the time. Jason, Tom, myself, and Tavia were hired for slightly different reasons. Tom was an old hand at computing and has been involved with higher end computers since the late 1960s. Jason was hired to be part of the then existing Advanced Systems Group to do short term tech exploration. I was hired for my user experience in HPC and the fact that I had been involved in sysadmin in a very heterogenous environment with very demanding up times. Tavia, Tom, and myself were all tasked to the Computational Systems Group. We were to learn how to take care of the Big Beasts we have here. Tom was thrown onto PDSF. I was tasked to the Crays. Tavia went on to the IBM systems. We all did relatively well. I took over as lead on the Crays after six or so months. Tavia was given her own smaller SP3 that she was lead for. The four of us had something of a bond, but this was so for especially Tom, Tavia, and I.

We would go get breakfast and lunch together. When we went on rotation in the beginning, we often helped each other with the systems we were less familiar with. We went out to lunch for when we past our various year anniversaries. We would tell each other some very confidential information. We were pretty close. We even used to pull pranks on each other. During Tavia's going away lunch, we did something of a roast. We all shared our stories. I shared my prank.

Here at NERSC I am noted for a few things. One is that I am a very... individualistic person. :D I am also noted for when something goes wrong I stay with it until its fixed. If there's lots of downtime during a rotation, for whatever, reason, I'll come in and do the work no matter the time without complaint as many times as needed. One of the other things that I am noted for is that I have a magic touch with one of the computers: seaborg. If I go on rotation, it DIES. We get what we call a system wide outage for seaborg almost all the time I go on rotation. I don't even have to login. It's within 48 hours of my rotation starting, sometimes within minutes, and sometimes multiple times. My worst case is when it was 4 times in one week, most of the time at the wee hours of the morning. The operators coined a term for it: "Will hugged seaborg." The funny part was that I just adopted this and would jokingly threaten other sysadmins that if they were not nice to me, I'd go hug seaborg. The nasty part of that was that for a little while it looked as though if I threatened the machine - again without logging in and as a joke, purely! - the machine would impact in a flaming, crashing outage of some bizarro kind or another. This brings us to the joke.

When this was a serious problem, and even IBM used to grumble when and stock extra parts when I went on rotation at this juncture, Tavia went on rotation. It was an early rotation: we'd been there only about a year or so. She'd just started for her week. I called down to the operators and convinced one of them to page her with the words "Will Hugged Seaborg." They did. She flipped out and logged in looked for the nature of the meltdown and disaster...and found de nada. She called Ops and raised hell until they confessed why they'd paged her with that. They fessed up that it was my lil joke. Next thing I knew, she was outside the floater office that I had in OSF - and later became my full time one when they moved us all down to Oakland from Berkeley - and glaring. She opened the door and simply said with irritation blended with amusement: "Don't. Do. That. Again." and with as much dignity as possible with me cracking up marched off to her office.

Tavia is leaving for an HPC center in Britain. She's engaged to a Brit. She comes from another exogamous family (she's a dual citizen of France and the US and of jewish, persian, english, french, and other assorted backgrounds) She claims that she will be back in a couple years dragging her fiance - then to be husband - back with her to the States. Somehow I don't think that she will be. Most likely she'll be snapped up by another HPC facility. She's quite a prize for her brilliance and creativity. She's also someone that's trustworthy and a very hard worker. The sad part is, if all goes well, I won't be here. I'll stay in touch with her, but...I don't think we'll be coworkers again.

I am going to miss her.

Discrimination in Mexico

Whether differences in the living conditions of various groups of people reflect their attributes or prejudice against them is an abiding topic of discussion. This discussion has been less frequent in Mexico than in either the United States or Brazil. Although skin color is not a unique determinant of voting patterns, it often influences daily behavior and political orientation.

The purpose of this article to is present some indicators of the differences in living conditions among white, light brown, dark brown and indigenous people in Mexico in 2006. The data come from three surveys of the same respondents of how voters intended to vote, carried out by the newspaper Reforma[i]. The respondents’ reported characteristics are almost identical in the surveys; I therefore use data from the first survey in this article.

The first survey was carried out from October 8 to October 16, 2005, when 458 white (güero/piel Blanca), 1164 light brown (Moreno claro), and 765 dark brown (Moreno oscuro) Mexicans provided information about their skin color, education and the socioeconomic status of their dwelling. Smaller categories of skin color (negro, chino, etc.) are not included in this analysis. The living conditions of white, light brown and dark brown Mexicans (Socioeconomic Status, SES) are evaluated both for their housing and for their neighborhood.

The data is interesting. A fascinating profile of a different country's biases within its society.

Ukraine: Orange Again

Parties linked to Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" that swept President Viktor Yushchenko to power initialed an agreement on Monday to form a post-election coalition in parliament and a government.

The "orange" coalition is all but certain to propose former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, head of the largest "orange" group in the assembly, be restored to the job to which the president appointed her after taking office.

Endorsement of the coalition took place after officials announced the final results from a parliamentary election giving two "orange" parties a wafer-thin majority of 228 seats -- two more than needed for a majority in the 450-member chamber.

"Let me just say that the election has led to a change in parliament. Power has changed hands in Ukraine and we have achieved the result we had hoped for," Tymoshenko said after the brief ceremony.

"The democratic team has all grounds to reform all sectors of life so that people feel tangible changes in the country."

Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, head of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party, also initialed the agreement.

Yuri Lutsenko, head of the allied People's Self-Defense group which ran in tandem with Our Ukraine, was present, though he did not put his name to the document.

Yushchenko's office had earlier announced that the coalition agreement would be endorsed only on Tuesday.

So! Some thoughts here. No coalition of national unity! Yanukovich is kicked to the curb. The article also stated that Ole Yan could only muster 202 seats. That's really interesting. It means that the 'Block of Lytvyn' didn't want to join with Ole Yan's crew. Do we have a third pole developing? Or are they hoping to get concessions from the Orangers to strengthen their coalition? Is the Party of Regions in a real world of hurt? Or...? We will see.

We'll also see how long their coalition lasts. They have a majority of 3 seats!

New Uber Sized Late Cretaceous Sauropod Found

It is supposed to be 105 ft long and comes from 88 million years ago from Argentina. Interestingly, this monster sized titanosaur was around near the end of the Cretaceous in Gondwanaland. That tells me that the GL fauna was far more conservative than even I thought: mega sauropods until the KT?

Tres Interesting.

Reading Update

Wow. I just realized it has been forever since I did a reading update. It's been a relatively light period right now: I blew threw my reading material faster than planned and I'm considering more books to order. However, there's a go-no go decision at work about aside project I have that I am awaiting judgment on. If I get the ethical green light, then it'll really shape my next book purchases with a vengeance. If I don't, that will as well. I have been promised a response by Thursday of next week. We shall see!

I finished Horns and Beaks. It was okay. There was one rather good paper on the paleobiology of chasmosaurs, a type of ceratopsian. It was the one paper I really liked in the whole of the book. If they'd done that same sort of idea with a form of 'duckbill' I would have thought the book as a whole was a very good one. However, mostly, I didn't. I'm a little disappointed, actually, because I am more interested in the dinos as organisms and their place in the Mesozoic ecology than defending whether or not one species or another should be differentiated from another based on bone morphology. Necessary that, but not my area of interest.

I also read Dr Peter Ward's latest book, Under a Green Sky. It's pretty good. There are some bits that are obnoxious (re human cultures in the tropics vs temperates). There are bits that are very good science wise. Of course, his narrative is pretty good too. His big Oy here is that he tries to make a case for vulcanism to be the Grand Unified Mass Extinction Theory (gotta write that post, damnit). He walks through some of the mass extinctions (major and minor) and makes predictions based on anoxia in the oceans that most of the time life gets mopped by the nasty side effects of major vulcanism. He does point out that the KT is unique and that the meteor did the deed. While predictions are good, the certainty that he espouses his views on vulcanism uber alles is rather annoying. I do think that vulcanism is one of the major drives of mass extinction. However, I have to say I would argue that it is one of the mechanisms that have it happen rather the Grand Unifying Theory. To say otehrwise is a wee bit annoying until the research has been done. A little more caution needs to be used here.

I also read David Raup's The Nemesis Affair. It was interesting. I have to say that periodicity is annoying to me. I do not for a second believe it to be anything other than wishful thinking. Whether it's the theory that there's a companion star, planet x, traversing the galactic plane, or whatnot, it's simply not there to be found, really. People seem to be looking for some sort of order in something that's inherently random. Anyways, it was an interesting read simply because it documented a failed scientific concept that was approached as serious hypothesis. That was interesting. It was well worth learning about.

Then there was The Emergence of Animals. It was an interesting read. I realized a bit late that it is a bit dated though: it was published in 1990. While I am sure that it has a lot of good stuff in there, I don't know enough about the transition between the Vendian/Ediacarian ecologies to Cambrian Ecology to make much in the way of pronunciations. There were a few 'hmmms', but lack of knowledge stills my typing here. When I get around to reading more on the subject I'll have more to say. For now, knotch this one in the interesting category.

I also got in my kookie immigration book, Opening the Borders by Larry Blasko (whose son works at the Heritage Foundation, boggle). I bought this as a counterpoint to my other kookie immigration book purchase Annexing Mexico. Don't worry: both books were bought used. The idea was supposed to be that these were similar but opposed central ideas and probably ones that could not be adopted truthfully. Amusingly, I found out after the fact, merely because I was not paying attention, that both books were published by the same publisher. Both books also used the same obnoxious oversized type and mini pages. Anyways, Opening the Borders was supposed to be a 'liberal' idea and Annexing Mexico the 'conservative' one. When Blasko stated that he got lots of help from the Heritage Foundation...well...that settled that. *bemused look* Anyways, editorializing aside, the central idea of OtB is that we ought to move Mexico into a Compact of Free Association. To make his case, the author goes out of his way to belittle and demean the other points of view. Indeed he also makes some statements that are patently false and contradictory (frex: all Mexicans that come here plan on going back (and do) yet they assimilate as do their children. ummm...) or somewhat distasteful (re a lot of comments about Mexican culture). I have some rebuttal posts coming up on this as part of my delayed 'Si! Mexico Yes! series, but it'll take time.

Finally, i went out and bought a copy of Eric Flint's last volume in the Belisarius series. I did this as a filler and thought that I wanted to finish the series since I had originally read it and liked it. oy. I really wish I hadn't. I didn't finish the book. I merely put it to the side after reading about half. I actually thought I'd rather reread Evolution by that humanity hater, Stephen Baxter, than continue. And I don't care for Baxter much. Dance of Time was boring, dull, and tedious. I didn't care about any of the characters and found their actions...implausible at best and down right stupid quite frequently. I stopped caring and simply put the book down. That's something that I truly, rarely do.

That's it for now. I'm going to probably order more about things paleo, Mexican history, immigration history, Russian politics, and books for the project. If it gets deemed nonissue by work. Gotta keep the job even if I want to do the fun stuff. No big announcements come Thursday though. Sorry. I want to be under the radar for a while. heh.

Real Climate has Flannery Rebuttal

Go read.

Real Climate says we're at a CO2 equivalent of 375 ppm rather than Flannery's claim we've already exceeded 450 ppm. Interesting.

Unless Flannery's opinions are backed up by the IPCC (?) report that he claimed he saw, he's going to end up in the junk bin here on tDTs.

Titan's Weather

Talk about cold, miserable weather! When dawn comes on Titan it's nearly 300 degrees below zero with a steady drizzle.

And the drizzle is methane -- an explosive gas on Earth that is chilled into a liquid on that moon of Saturn, astronomers report in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

Other than that, they say, weather there may follow processes similar to weather here.

Researchers led by Mate Adamkovics of the University of California, Berkeley, studied Titan, Saturn's largest moon, using near-infrared images from Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory and Chile's Very Large Telescope.

In most of the images methane clouds and drizzle are seen in the morning.

"Titan's topography could be causing this drizzle," said Imke de Pater, also an astronomer at U.C. Berkeley. "The rain could be caused by processes similar to those on Earth: Moisture laden clouds pushed upslope by winds condense to form a coastal rain."

Depending on conditions, the drizzle could hit the ground or turn into a ground mist, the researchers said.

They reported that the drizzle seems to dissipate after what would be about 10:30 a.m. Titan time, if the day there were divided into 24 hours. However, because Titan takes 16 Earth days to rotate once, the drizzle continues for about three Earth days after sunrise.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Technology Center for Adaptive Optics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, NASA and the Center for Integrative Planetary Science at [U.C.] Berkeley.

That's the whole article. They originally wrote U.S. Berkeley. The People's Republic of Berkeley might have objected, so I fixed it to what it ought to be. ;)

Missile Defense Talks With Russia Fail

In a tense start to talks on a range of thorny issues, President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned U.S. officials to back off a plan to install missile defenses in eastern Europe or risk harming relations with Moscow.

Addressing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Russian president appeared to mock the U.S. missile defense plan, which is at the center of a tangle of arms control and diplomatic disputes between the former Cold War adversaries.

"We may decide someday to put missile defense systems on the moon, but before we get to that we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans," Putin said in Russian, according to an Associated Press translation.

Putin also said Russia might feel compelled to pull out of a 20-year-old arms control deal unless it is expanded.

Later, at the start of a meeting with Rice and Gates, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referred to the Americans having presented "detailed proposals" in the Putin talks to address U.S.-Russian differences on missile defense and arms control. He offered no details but said the Russian government is ready to seek compromise.

[...]

The Russian government sees the U.S. missile defense plan, which Washington describes as a hedge against the threat of missile attack from Iran, as a worrisome step toward weakening Russian security. It has been a longstanding dispute, and Putin's remarks seemed to raise the level of tensions.

[...]

After keeping Rice and Gates waiting for 40 minutes, Putin began the session with a lengthy monologue in which he also said that Russia may feel compelled to abandon its obligations under a 1987 missile treaty with the United States if it is not expanded to constrain other missile-armed countries.

Referring to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty that was negotiated with the United States before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Putin said it must be applied to other countries, including those "located in our near vicinity." He did not mention any by name, but in response, Gates said Washington was interested in limiting missile proliferation in Iran.

Putin said the treaty must be made "universal in nature."

The pact eliminated the deployment of Soviet and American ballistic missiles of intermediate range and was a landmark step in arms control just two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and later the breakup of the Soviet Union.

"We need to convince other (countries) to assume the same level of obligation as assumed by the Russian Federation and the United States," Putin said. "If we are unable to obtain such a goal ... it will be difficult for us to keep within the framework of the treaty in a situation where other countries do develop such weapon systems, and among those are countries located in our near vicinity."

Putin also has threatened to suspend Russian adherence to another arms control treaty, known as the Conventional Forces in Europe pact, which limits deployments of conventional military forces. Moscow wants it to be revised in ways that thus far have been unacceptable to U.S. and European signatories.

On missile defense, Putin was particularly pointed in his remarks, in which sought to lay out his view of what Rice and Gates should be discussing later Friday with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

"We hope that in the process of such complex and multi-faceted talks you will not be forcing forward your relations with the eastern European countries," the president said. He then made his remark about the possibility of one day putting a missile defense system on the moon.

From CNN. There's also another article on Yahoo News.

This is not going to ever make a breakthrough. Russia does not want to make a compromise on this[1]. In fact, they are going to use this as a way of getting out of other obligations that they inherited from the Soviet Union. It is amazing that even with the petrorubles flooding in that they are simply must have a defense built on nuclear weapons of all sorts and the belief that nuclear weapons can be used in a tactical sense. Unfortunately, the whole world is against that. The Neocons here thought that a nuke bunker buster would be a good idea: while I don't have a personal object to them as tactical weapons, they are simply politically infeasible. It helps you NOT AT ALL if the world suddenly slams horribly strict and nasty sanctions on you. It's not even a credible threat then. gah.

1. Please read my post "Why Does Russia Object to NMD in the EU?"

Uber Sized Permian Fossil Beds Outside Las Cruces?

There's more to the Robledo Mountains than meets the eye — much, much more.

Long buried under the mountains lies a petrified forest that holds clues to the forest, swamps and critters that roamed them close to 300 million years ago.

City officials are expected to announce Friday the discovery of petrified forests near the proposed Prehistoric Trackways National Monument in the Robledos. The find, credited to amateur paleontologist Jerry MacDonald of Las Cruces, could represent one of the largest and best deposits of petrified forest from the early Permian era — roughly 300 million years ago

"This is a huge find," said Spencer Lucas, interim executive director of the Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque. "It's probably the single biggest accumulation of logs we know of. This is the most significant fossil wood find from the Permian era in New Mexico in at least a century."

[...]

The wood is likely driftwood that accumulated and was fossilized in and around the Robledos. And the logs are superior because they preserve microscopic cell structure that will allow scientists to better understand the forest that once existed in the area.

"Before these logs were found, we knew about the footprints," he said. "Now what you're getting is a more complete picture of that ecosystem."

Will Picknor, director of museums for the City of Las Cruces, said the discovery of a petrified forest could "dwarf" Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

(0.o)!!!

damjit. I lived right next to this and never went fossil hunting the area. I was too absorbed in other stuff at the time. Geez. Dumbdumbdumb. Don't ever put the things ya love on the backburner. Sheesh.

Let's see what they announce later today. Maybe.

Republican Debate: Economics?!

I am at home working while Avrora is sleeping. I am listening to the Republican Debate that was run by MSNBC. First off, let me say that MSNBC stated that the debate was supposed to be focused on the economy. My Dear Lord, they have no control over this debate whatsoever. Why are they asking questions on Iraq and Iran? gah.

Secondly, I just can. not. understand. what the frack these candidates are thinking. Rarely has anyone on that stage answering in anything like a coherent fashion. It's like there's some sort of a mental disconnect between the candidates hear and what they spew out. It has so little to do with a reasonable answer that it ius just, frankly, amazing. Romney's anwer about lawyers?! Guiliani and Romney singing, "Whatever you can do, I can do better!" Then the crappy answers that anyone says. oy. I have to choose between the twits on the stage come primary time. oy. oh oy.

Finally, the questions that MSNBC's questions, even those that are on the economy are simply inept and lack any depth. I guess, if the questions are not any good, the answers are going to suck just as much. Gah. Be specific and dig for a good answer instead of nonanswers these bimbos are piddling out on the floor in front of us.

Venus' Oceans Lasted a Billion Years

The cloud-shrouded planet most likely started with oceans much like Earth's, which evaporated as Venus heated up, according to new research.

The oceans didn't disappear overnight, said David Grinspoon of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Speaking yesterday at a meeting of planetary scientists in Orlando, Florida, Grinspoon said that preliminary results of new computer models indicate Venus may have retained its oceans for a billion years after it formed, possibly longer.

Prior models had indicated that rising Venusian temperatures had turned the oceans to steam within the planet's first 600 million years.

The extra 400 million years are even more significant than they sound, Grinspoon added, because early Venus was constantly bombarded by asteroids, reducing the likelihood of life.

The new finding suggests that the oceans existed for much longer after the asteroid bombardment tapered off.

The article goes on to say that there might have been a significant period of time where Venus was inhabitable. That would be stretching it I think. It's unlikely that Venus had complex, multicelluar organisms. The big bang of that didn't happen on Earth for some time after the oxygen crisis. Indeed, it took life billions of years to even hit the point where there was an oxygen crisis where O2 was prevalent enough that it poisoned some of the older kinds of life and allowed the innovations that led up to the multicelluar lifeforms that we find in our fossil record. It's highly doubtful that the Venusian life even made it to the complexity of the Ediacarian/Vendian lifeforms.

No matter what, even if there was some oxygen in the atmosphere, no human could have lived there in shirt sleeves.

SPS Techies Sniff Around the US Military...again

Collecting solar power in space and beaming it back to Earth is a relatively near-term possibility that could solve strategic and tactical security problems for the U.S. and its deployed forces, the Pentagon's National Security Space Office (NSSO) says in a report issued Oct. 10.

As a clean source of energy that would be independent of foreign supplies in the strife-torn Middle East and elsewhere, space solar power (SSP) could ease America's longstanding strategic energy vulnerability, according to the "interim assessment" released at a press conference and on the Web site spacesolarpower.wordpress.com.

And the U.S. military could meet tactical energy needs for forward-deployed forces with a demonstration system, eliminating the need for a long logistical tail to deliver fuel for terrestrial generators while reducing risk for eventual large-scale commercial development of the technology, the report says.

"The business case still doesn't close, but it's closer than ever," said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul E. Damphousse of the NSSO, in presenting his office's report.

That could change if the Pentagon were to act as an anchor tenant for a demonstration SSP system, paying above-market rates for power generated with a collection plant in geostationary orbit beaming power to U.S. forces abroad or in the continental U.S., according to Charles Miller, CEO of Constellation Services International and director of the Space Frontier Foundation.

By buying down the risk with a demonstration at the tactical level, the U.S. government could spark a new industry able to meet not just U.S. energy needs, but those of its allies and the developing world as well. The technology essentially exists, and needs only to be matured. A risk buy-down by government could make that happen, according to the NSSO report.

"This is not a 50-year solution," said John Mankins, an expert in the field and president of the Space Power Association. "The kinds of things that are possible today say a truly transformational demonstration at a large scale is achievable within this decade."

I've seen a lot of people push the SPS model over the years. In the abstract I kinda like it. However, economically, it doesn't hold water. Alas. Until you are able to manufacture and assemble the whole kit and kaboodle in orbit at a price cheaper than building the arrays on earth with the cost of land etc added. Until that time, it's silly.

I am a bit wary of the military buying into the SPS model: SPS are really, really, really big targets. If the military were to become dependent on them, you can be damned sure that China, Russia, and anyone else that might have a beef with the US would invest in tons of antisatellite weaponry.

It ought to be noted that this is not the first time that the SPS advocates have courted the military. They did so ten years ago too when I was working for defense contractors. I read about it in the defense rags at the time that I had access to that I cannot afford now (Janes? monetary ouchie and then some!)

Avrora's "Lab" Badges

Every time my daughter comes to work they issue her a one day only name tag and make her sign in. She's here often enough that a friend of mine at work decided to make fake badges for her. They are patterned after our badges at work, but are emphatically and utterly NOT official. Right now, as we speak my daughter has one of these badges on (the top one). Since my coworker is learning Russian, enjoying it immensely, and knows that Avrora speaks some Russian, he made another one in Russian of her name and 'specialty.'

Pompe's Post

Go read it. It's an interesting commentary on Americans from his European POV. It's well worth the time and the read.

The New Moller?

"Going into this, we knew our two biggest design challenges to make it practical would be the wings and the power train," she said.

"By validating the durability of the wing's construction and engineering, we've checked one major design challenge off of the list, and now our focus is on the second."

One might also suspect that there will also be major challenges in getting the Transition certified as road-legal. This is traditionally a big stumbling block for flying-car inventors, who are often FAA-savvy but less well acquainted with the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

"We've made inroads with both [regulators], especially the FAA," says Dietrich.

The company expects to begin flight testing next year, and deliveries from "late 2009". The business plan calls for production of between 50 and 200 Transitions annually, selling for $148,000 a pop. Terrafugia says that all its anticipated production through Q2 of 2010 has been reserved already (the refundable reservation deposit is $7,400, held in escrow) though it won't say exactly how many that is. However, the investor sheet (pdf) quotes customer number 29, so presumably at least that many orders have been placed.

For your $148k you get two seats, cruising speed of 115mph in the air (or normal motorway performance on the ground), 25 miles per gallon flying on super unleaded, and 460 miles flight range.

One of the weaker stats on the spec sheet (pdf) is the useful load - just 550lb. Up to 120lb of that will be taken up by fuel, so the Transition won't get airborne freshly topped up with two heavyish people. It certainly won't carry much baggage, unless flown solo or with very little fuel.

Budding secret agents or master criminals should also note that you can't just pop the wings out during a high-speed chase and take-off: the button will only work with the vehicle stationary. There's no air-con, either.

Moller? Is that your Scott Evil?

A bit more fairly, here is their website.

Quick Avrora Pic

We went to dinner with the Whitneys, a coworker (Cary), his wife (Qun), and their daughter (Jennah) on friday to a Chinese restaurant (Great China Restaurant) that Qun loves in Berkeley. It was pretty good. Avrora had fun playing Jennah. We couldn't get her to eat much though other than the spring rolls.

Let's get STICKY!

The world isn't just getting hotter from man-made global warming, it's getting stickier. It really is the humidity. The amount of moisture in the air near the surface — the stuff that makes hot weather unbearable — increased 2.2 percent in just under three decades. And computer models show that the only explanation is man-made global warming, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

[...]

Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University. However, a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.

The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn't match reality.

He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn't match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity.

[...]

It will only feel worse in the future, Gillett said. Moisture in the air increases by about 6 percent with every degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. Using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections for temperature increases, that would mean a 12 to 24 percent increase in humidity by the year 2100.

Sticky and hot. Wow. We are REALLY headed back to the Eocene. Increased humidity ought to make it interesting for storm and wind conditions. The fact that the Western US is getting drier is...interesting. It must be a combination of the wind circulation patterns and the lack of large sources of inland water other than snowpack.

Interesting. Very interesting. And disturbing.

Ukraine's Election Results a Little Less Orange

Opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s hopes to become prime minister may be dashed. President Viktor Yushchenko wants to invite the Party of Regions (PRU), led by her archrival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, to join a new Cabinet of Ministers. If the PRU, which will have more seats in parliament than the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) as a result of the September 30 parliamentary election, joins the cabinet, it may elbow out Tymoshenko.

Yushchenko explains that he wants unity in Ukraine, which is impossible without cooperation with the most popular party. However, a weakened Tymoshenko may be his real goal, as she is expected to be his rival in the next presidential election.

On October 3 Yushchenko called on the PRU, the BYuT, and his Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense Bloc (NUNS) to launch talks to form a majority in parliament and the next cabinet. Yanukovych, who has never objected to a grand coalition, hailed Yushchenko’s statement. Tymoshenko suggested that Yushchenko did not mean coalition talks, but consultations with the PRU about its role as a party that should become the major opposition force. Yuriy Lutsenko, who topped NUNS’s list for the election, said that NUNS would not join a coalition with the PRU.

*sighs*

Russian Spy Chief: West Wants to Destroy Russia

Russia's security chief said that Western spies were working to weaken and break up the country and singled out British agents as the most intrusive, according to an interview published Wednesday.

Nikolai Patrushev, who heads the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, also claimed that foreign spies were working to foment discontent in Russia in the run-up to December's parliamentary elections and the presidential vote next spring.

[...]

"Politicians thinking in the categories of the Cold War still retain their influence in a number of Western nations," Patrushev told the weekly Argumenty i Fakty. "They have claimed credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they are hatching plans aimed at dismembering Russia. They are viewing special services and their organizations as an efficient instrument for their implementation."

Patrushev said that foreign spies were focusing their efforts on gathering information related to Russia's elections. "They are trying to influence protest feelings and demonstrations in Russia."

He singled out Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, saying its agents "aren't only gathering intelligence in all areas, but they are also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country."

[...]

Patrushev said that his agency had learned how to counter British intelligence.

"We know both its strong and weak points," he said. "Since the times of Elizabeth I, (MI6) agents have been guided by the principle of the ways justifying the means. Money, bribery, blackmail, exemption from punishment for crimes committed are their main recruitment methods."

uh huh. "Politicians thinking in the categories of the Cold War still retain their influence in Russia" might be a more accurate thing to say. From my point of view the West, especially after 9/11 approached Russia as a peer and ally. Since then, Putin has turned out to be a viper and then some, not the West.

Flannery: GreenHouse Gases Higher than Expected

Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a U.N. international climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached a dangerous level.

Flannery said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will show that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere in mid-2005 had reached about 455 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent -- a level not expected for another 10 years.

"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."

[...]

He said the measurement of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere included not just carbon dioxide, but also nitrous oxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). All these gases were measured and then equated into potentially one gas to reach a general level.

"They're all having an impact. Probably 75 percent is carbon dioxide but the rest is that mixed bag of other gases," he said.

[...]

Flannery said global economic expansion, particularly in China and India, was a major factor behind the unexpected acceleration in greenhouse gas levels.

I will have to talk to my locals to see what they have to say about Flannery and the above when I get a moment. However, let me point my readers back to an old post: Why Global Warming in Inevitable.

Japan to Build Lunar Lander-Rover

Japan's first lunar orbiter is currently circling the moon, and the country is racing with China and India to land a craft on the lunar surface -- a feat so far achieved only by the former Soviet Union and the United States.

"We are aiming to carry out the project in the middle of the 2010s. It will examine geological features of the moon as well as natural resources available there," said an official from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

[...]

China plans to launch a moon orbiter this year and land a craft on the surface in 2010. India plans an orbiter next year and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

Japan's first explorer to land on the moon will consist of an unmanned lander, a lunar rover equipped with robotic arms and a data-relay satellite, Japanese space agency officials said.

Race to the moon! Race to the moon! I hope this is serious and not another boon!(doggle)

Robert W. Bussard (1928-2007)

Robert Bussard of fusion and the 'Bussard Ramjet' fame has passed away.

noted via James.

Poll Numbers from Iowa

Democrats:

Clinton     29%
Edwards     23%
Obama       22%
Richardson   8%
Biden        5%
Kucinich     1%
Dodd         1%

Republicans:

Romney      29%
Thompson    18%
Huckabee    12%
Guiliani    11%
McCain       7%
Tancredo     5%
Paul         4%
Keyes        2%
Hunter       1%

Hunter ought to consider dropping out now. He's polling worse than Keyes.

Embedded Linux Tutorial Books?

I did some RT coding about six years ago and before. However, I assume that all of this has moved on in that time period and whatever I know is ... history. So! Is there anyone out there that would have some good recommendations about RT/embedded Linux? I can't afford the WindRiver stuff, but linux...;)

Thanx.

Soooo Close to Plasteel!

By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that's as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.

It's made of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer that shares chemistry with white glue.

Engineering professor Nicholas Kotov almost dubbed it "plastic steel," but the new material isn't quite stretchy enough to earn that name. Nevertheless, he says its further development could lead to lighter, stronger armor for soldiers or police and their vehicles. It could also be used in microelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, biomedical sensors and valves and unmanned aircraft.

What happens we can make a real pasteel (ie plastic as strong in all ways as steel) as cheaply as any other plastic?

BIG RUSSIAN GAS SURPRISE!

On October 2 Gazprom warned Ukraine via mass media that it would reduce gas deliveries from November onwfard, unless Ukraine pays $1.3 billion dollar worth of arrears to Gazprom. According to company spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov, these arrears accumulated for gas supplied during the nine-month period since January 1, 2007.

Characteristically, Gazprom resorted to the media weapon before informing the Ukrainian government or presidency. Kyiv had not yet been officially notified by October 3, when Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych dispatched Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko to Moscow for emergency talks with Gazprom. They agreed that Ukraine would pay those arrears until November 1 to avoid a cut in supplies.

[...]

The political link is also apparent between Gazprom’s sudden announcement and the outcome of Ukraine’s September 30 parliamentary elections. Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine -- and former Gazprom chief -- Viktor Chernomyrdin warned during a Kyiv conference on September 27 that talks were ongoing on the gas price and “everything will depend on who will come into the Ukrainian government” after the elections.” Alluding to debt settlement, he served notice that joint control of Ukraine’s gas transit system is more in Ukraine’s than in Russia’s interest; that it is “first of all a matter of state interest”; and that, should Ukraine decline to settle the debts by sharing control of transit pipelines, Russia would switch its gas export routes to seabed pipelines [i.e., Baltic and Black Sea], leaving Ukraine “with scrap metal: there will be the pipeline, but what will it carry?” (Channel Five TV [Kyiv], UCIPP Ukraine Monitoring, Interfax-Ukraine, September 27).

While this latter part of the warning involves an element of bluff, the state-driven policy approach can hardly be clearer. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin also unveiled a Kremlin-driven approach when discussing gas deliveries to Gazprom by Turkmenistan on October 3 in Ashgabat. Naryshkin “drew attention to the order given by the Presidents of both countries, to Russian companies first of all, to carry out active work” on that issue (Interfax, October 3).

In light of Chernomyrdin’s warning, it seems that Gazprom’s sudden debt-collection demand represents an instant response to the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc’s electoral success and the prospect of her playing a leading role in the Ukrainian government. During her two years in the opposition, Tymoshenko has vowed to clean up the gas business in Ukraine. She is seen as a threat to Gazprom’s and RosUkrEnergo’s interests, and she is also as a major obstacle to any handover of control over Ukraine’s gas transit system to Russia. Earlier this year Tymoshenko shepherded through parliament legislation that bars such handovers (see EDM, February 7); but elements in the government such as Boyko make no secret of their search for ways to circumvent that legislation.

Oh gosh. The Orangers seem to win and the Russians start sabre rattling. Big surprise.

Final Ukrainian Election Update

With 99.97% of the vote counted, it's highly unlikely that any shakes ups are going to happen. Indeed anything other than a .01 or .02 percent change for ANY of the parties would be crazy suspicious and pretty blatant at this point. The standings are as follows:

Party of Regions (Yanukovich)                          34.36%
Block of Yulia Tymoshenko (duh)                        30.72%
Our Ukraine - People's Self Defense Block (Yushchenko) 14.16%
Communist Party                                         5.39%
Block of Lytvyn                                         3.96%

The Socialists have definitely and unrecoverably fallen below the 3% requirement, so....byebye Moroz you PITA! HA!

So what happens now? My bet is, unless Yushchenko blows it - and there are hints he might - that Tymoshenko is going to form the government and become Prime Minister again. If she does not, then next go 'round for the elections will deliver the Rada to her on a platter: she'll probably get over 50% the next time - an outright majority - and the other parties be damned.

New Early Cretaceous Chinese Therizinosaur

Say hi to Suzhousaurus megatherioides. Y'know, I have to wonder if there wasn't a major revolution, ahem, ecological turnover and evolutionary innovation underway at the end of the Cretaceous. The ceratopsians were taking over in western NorAm. The therizinosaurs were having way too much fun. The sauropods were in 'retreat' in NorAm as well. Had the rock that wiped out the dinos not shown up, we might have seen an ecology by the end of the 'Paleocene-Eocene' that was radically different than anything before it.

Domenici Retiring

Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico intends to retire at the end of his term next year, closing out a 36-year career in Congress, Republican officials said Wednesday.

These officials said the 75-year-old Domenici intends to make a formal announcement on Thursday in his home state. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the six-term lawmaker.

Wow...he's been a fixture in NM politics for so long...wow.

Hold on tight, NM! Life's going to get exciting, politically.

Gryposaurus Rendering

What is Putin Up to?

Over the last few weeks, President Vladimir Putin’s has elevated long-time associate Viktor Zubkov as prime minister, “accepted” the pro-Kremlin United Russia party’s “invitation” to head its list of candidates for the upcoming State Duma elections, and strongly hinted he may become prime minister (Putin said becoming prime minister was “entirely realistic” but that it was still “too early to think about it”). In the wake of these moves, a consensus seems to be emerging that Putin will remain “in power” after his second and final constitutionally authorized presidential term ends next March. Exactly how he will hold on to power remains an open question.

[...]

It could happen as follows: in the aftermath of United Russia’s victory in December’s State Duma elections (its margin of victory made all the larger by Putin’s name at the top of their ticket), Putin resigns as president and is named United Russia’s presidential candidate for the next presidential elections -- which, according to Russia’s constitution, are to be held “no later than three months after the early termination of the President’s powers.” Zubkov would then become acting president, but would serve in that capacity for no longer than three months – hardly enough time for him to consolidate power (were he inclined to do so). Putin then runs for president and wins by a landslide – and does so without violating the constitutional prohibition on a president serving two terms “in succession.”

Not only would Putin be “clean” in terms of not having violated the letter of Russia’s constitution, but he would be the first Russian head of state to have been elected as the candidate of a political party – something that the Kremlin’s spin doctors would no doubt point to as yet another stage in the maturation of Russia’s “sovereign democracy.”

Now let's contrast this with the 'maturation' of Ukrainian democracy: the Ukrainians might not have all the corruption out of their system as yet, but if the vote count finishes with no surprises in the last .13% they will have a third time that through elections a government has changed hands peacefully. I'd have to say that the Russians are not showing their best here. I don't want to stereotype here, but, erm, uh yeah.

Immigration Enforcement Crippled

Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for Northern California (where else?) is blocking efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to crack down on those who hire illegal immigrants.

There are an estimated 10 million to 20 million illegal immigrants in this country. Many of them come here to work.

Here's how the DHS program would work: If an employer finds out an employee's information doesn't match Social Security records and the employee can't clarify the issue within 90 days, the employer would have to fire that person or risk being prosecuted. In other words, if the employee obtained his job under false pretenses and was working for the company illegally, he would be fired. Seems simple enough, except when you have an activist judge intent on subverting the law.

[...]

Judge Breyer has delayed the start of enforcement for 10 more days while he examines the legality of the issue. Huh? This law has been on the books for a long time without challenge. What exactly is the problem here? It's against the law to hire illegal immigrants, period.

Judge Breyer has also blocked the Social Security Administration from sending out 140,000 so-called "no-match" letters to employers hiring people whose names and Social Security numbers don't match.

Judge Breyer said compliance with the law could put a "potentially enormous burden on the employer." Yeah, just like complying with OSHA regulations costs money.

The judge raised other issues, too, including the language and legality of those "no-match" letters. Either the number matches or it doesn't, another mountain out of a mole hill. And the judge says he's worried about potential discrimination in firing illegal Hispanic workers but not other illegal workers. Come on, your honor. If you are discriminated against at your place of employment, you have recourse on your own regardless of nationality.

The bigger question is, if it's against the law to hire illegal immigrants, why is this even before a judge? Because there is an agenda at work here to leave the illegal immigrant problem alone. Too many special interest groups benefit from the cheap labor, etc. That's why you didn't see anything resembling real immigration reform coming out of Congress and why you still haven's seen our borders secured six years after 9/11.

We have a hotel here in Emeryville by the name of the Woodfin. They found a number of employees with the nonmatching social security numbers (ie they were using someone else's or made them up period). The hotel asked for those people to clear things up. Some did. Many didn't. They then fired the people Immediately, an 'activist' group moved in and started raising a ruckus. They have been marching outside the hotel regularly, blaring air horns, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Residents of Emeryville are now complaining even if they do have some sort of sympathy for the workers (I only have a little, being someone that's pretty high up on the letter of the law and rule of law thingie). They have a restaurant that my wife and I are talking about starting to patronize regularly as a show of support.

I really don't understand this. If it is illegal to hire these people, why are the activists targeting the businesses? Why not Congress? After all they are the ones that pass the law. Maybe...maybe...maybe it's because you know that the vast majority of us are, y'know, in agreement that this is a law that needs to be enforced? So you have to do an end run around the the rest of us and try to either bully to get what you want or convincing a judge to be sympathetic. oy.

MEME

Julia tagged me with a meme. Since she did it while I was down for the count I am only now getting around to it.

1. An interesting animal I had


That would be the male-female pair of collared lizards my dad got me when I was about six. I found them fascinating, but they didn't last super long. I could sit and watch for hours even though they didn't necessarily even move. They died pretty fast due to an error on our part: we left a heat lamp inside for them on and they crawled too close and burned.

2. An interesting animal I ate

This probably ostrich. Then again I've had frog legs multiple times too. I've also eaten buffalo. IIRC, we ate some South African sausage made from gnu.

3. An interesting animal in a museum

There's a very fascinating bits of Seismosaurus (I think, it might have been another sauropod) that were on display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science when I was a teenager. THAT has to be most interesting animal I've seen in a museum.

4. An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

Played fetch with a cat I used to have. I discovered my cat whose name was Skunk loved to play fetch by accident. It was my senior year of high school. He was a runt and adorable with a black "cap" and a black back with a white stripe down his back. I was working on Mrs Strong's huge number of integrals for our calculus class (70?) which required multipage proofs. I got frustrated with some and threw the crumpled piece of paper over my shoulder. Skunk immediately attacked the first few. When I got on a roll again about how to do the integrals and stopped chucking them over my shoulder, he leapt up on the bed and then to my desk carrying the mildly shredded and wadded up piece of paper with him. He dropped it on my work and purred. I semi-annoyed chucked it again and off he went to return once more with the even more mangled piece of paper. We played like that for a while that night and I even called my dad in to see. He was as amazed as I was.

5. An interesting animal in its natural habitat

Raptors. I now, I know...soooo generic. However, living in Los Alamos, we used to see several kinds when I was younger just flying around: golden eagles, peregrine falcons, and assorted hawks. They were endlessly fascinating to me and birds I generally find dull.


I am going to see if I can tag James since his stories are going to be hair raising and then some...and Randy. Vicki too.

Titan's Climate Mimics Terran Tropics

If space travelers ever visit Saturn's largest moon, they will find a tropical world where temperatures plunge to minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit, methane rains from the sky and dunes of ice or tar cover the planet's most arid regions. These conditions reflect a cold mirror image of Earth's tropical climate, according to scientists at the University of Chicago.

[...]

"The ironic thing on Titan is that although it's much colder than Earth, it actually acts like a super-hot Earth rather than a snowball Earth, because at Titan temperatures, methane is more volatile than water vapor is at Earth temperatures," Pierrehumbert said.

Pierrehumbert and Mitchell even go so far as to call Titan's climate tropical, even though it sounds odd for a moon that orbits Saturn more than nine times farther from the sun than Earth. Along with the behavior of methane, Titan's slow rotation rate also contributes to its tropical nature. Earth's tropical weather systems extend only to plus or minus 30 degrees of latitude from the equator. But on Titan, which rotates only once every 16 days, "the tropical weather system extends to the entire planet," Pierrehumbert said.

Titan's tropical nature means that scientists can observe the behavior of its clouds using theories they've relied upon to understand Earth's tropics, Mitchell noted.Titan's atmosphere produces an updraft where surface winds converge. This updraft lifts evaporated methane up to cooler temperatures and lower pressures, where much of it condenses and forms clouds.

"This is a well-known feature on Earth called an ITCZ, the inter-tropical convergence zone," Mitchell said. Earth's oceans help confine the ITCZ to the lowest latitudes. But in some scenarios for oceanless Titan, the ITCZ in Mitchell's computer simulations wanders in latitude almost from one pole to the other. Titan's clouds should also follow the ITCZ.

[...]

Mitchell and Pierrehumbert's next paper will describe how oscillations in Titan's atmospheric circulation dry out the moon's midsection. Over the course of a year, Mitchell explained, "this oscillation in the atmosphere tends to transport moisture, or evaporated methane, out of the low latitudes and then deposit it at mid and high latitude in the form of rainfall. This is interesting, because recent Cassini observations of the surface suggest that the low latitudes are very dry."

Cassini images show dunes of ice or tar covering these low-latitude regions that correspond to the tropics on Earth. When ultraviolet light from the sun interacts with methane high in Titan's atmosphere, it creates byproducts such as ethane and hydrogen.

These byproducts become linked to chains of hydrocarbon molecules that create Titan's orange haze. When these molecules coalesce into large particles, they settle out as a tar-like rain.

Arrakis. Desert Planet. ahem. I mean Titan...

Ukrainain Election Update

With 96.98% of the vote counted we have an interesting situation. There is no clear 'winner.' Wait! you say. Didn't the media come out and say that Tymoshenko won? Yes, they did. No, she didn't. She didn't even win the largest fraction of the total counted votes: Yanukovich's Party of Regions does. The interesting twist is that the Socialists, as some had predicted, fell below the required 3% of the vote to have any representation in the parliament. Bye, bye Moroz, you backstabbing PITA. Only five parties made the cut. Let's look at the totals.

Party of Regions                    34.14% of total vote
Block of Yulia Tymoshenko           30.86% of total vote
Our Ukraine- People's Self Defense  14.29% of total vote
Communist Party of Ukraine           5.36% of total vote
Block of Lytvyn                      3.95% of total vote

That means of the seats in the parliament, 38% will go to Yanukovich, 35% will go to Tymoshenko, 16% will go to Yushchenko, 6% will go to the Communists (Yanukovich allies), and 4 to 5 % will go to Lytvyn's crew. This is if the seats are allocated proportionately. Tymoshenko could if she is able to dance the dance of forming a government with Yushchenko's party to become prime minister again. If she can prevent defections after the fact. Last time, Yushchenko's group had a serious problem of bribes getting paid to them to cross the aisle and join Yanukovich's cronies. We'll see if they can form their government and if they can keep their people loyal.

The question is what is the future for Ukraine? T&Y state they want to get Ukraine into the EU and NATO. Personally, I think that getting Ukraine in the EU is in both Ukraine's and the EU's interest. Even though Edward Hugh raises some questions on whether or not people ought to be counting on Ukraine's population as a source of labour, but if Ukraine is a apart of the EU, what is there would quickly channel into the EU. Furthermore, it would keep Ukraine an independent state and not one that is at Russia's beck and call. It would be good for Ukraine for the opportunities that the EU would bring and the rights and positive regulation. The EU would also have open access to the great Ukrainian granary, industrial plant, and all those Black Sea/Crimean resorts.

Often times people cry out when a larger state makes an overture to a smaller one. Cries of 'imperialism' are quite common. Alas. There seems to be a belief that this is a one way street, that the larger state is the only one benefiting. This is almost never true. We don't live in the age of true colonialism. That died on the bonfire of the great World Wars. Now it is more about mutual benefit and in this case, the EU-Ukraine marriage, I'd say both would benefit greatly.

All Time Arctic Sea Ice Minimum

Two minimums compared. Scary stuff here.

Mexico's "Safety Valve" Not Working

For the last fifty years, the so-called "safety valve" has not alleviated Mexico's growing pains as it transitions into a first world economy; it has merely delayed the development of the institutions that must address the lack of opportunities for the lower classes and the social disparities between ethnic Hispanics and indigenous Indians and dark-skinned mestizos. Moreover, just as the American city workman of the 19th century lacked the skills to succeed in the frontier, the poor of Mexico lack the skills to successfully compete in the information-age economy.

To achieve a realistic economic solution for the undocumented population in the United States, the pro-immigration side ought to consider a compromise whereby a moratorium period on immigration should be enacted. With proper education and time for assimilation, immigrants will be able to compete and prosper in an information-based economy, not merely put food on the table.

Furthermore, the intelligentsia on both sides of the border should foster the proper climate for economic development in the Americas, even if this means embracing some form of globalization. Globalization is as inevitable today as industrialization was in the 19th century, but likewise requires new institutions to protect human rights.

It is an interesting read especially since she was a beneficiary of the 'safety valve.' She is right. Something will have to be done and it will have to be something that 'weakens' the border in some way, shape or form allowing freeflow of peoples. The question is which one we will pick. Will it be a North American Union? Open borders? Or something else?

Oh? That Ukrainian Election!

I have been following the Ukrainian election a bit. It looks as though, with 92% of the vote counted, that Yanukovich will end up with the single largest faction. Following with Tymoshenko about 3 or 4% behind. That's a big leap for her. With Yuschenko's alliance it ought to be enough to build a coalition that will have a majority. Or not. If the Socialists hold their 3% or better then I have a sinking feeling that the Blue forces are going to be the ones forming the government. The real wild card though is the "People's Block of Lytvyn" I haven't been able to ferret out his "loyalty" tendencies.

FWIW, this election was racked with fraud. People we know voted multiple times for people there were not there and not planning on voting. Rather sad.

Additionally, our friend, Anatoly, aka the Fixer, has been coopted into the Party of Regions. Lyuda and I are rather depressed with that. He's been a good man and to see him go down this path...well...*sighs*

There and Back Again

I'm back at work. Alive and only with a small cough. I'll skip all the nasty details here. Let's just say that was one Evil Little Bug.