Topic Tuesday #64 2013/10/08 - "Rose Colored Glasses & BS Detector Goggles"

Topic Tuesday #64 2013/10/08 - "Rose Colored Glasses & BS Detector Goggles"

I am, by nature, an inquisitive person. I do not take anything at face value. Everything needs to be respected enough to first give it some thought before drawing any conclusion. There are always shades of grey and multiple points of view. What these POVs have in common are facts. It's been said you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts, and I adhere to that in my daily life. It is important to not get lulled into a false sense of reality, as many of the opinions you have were manipulated without your knowledge a long time ago (maybe generations in the past). This, at its core, is skepticism. Doubt.
We have many built in tools for detecting fraudulent things. The ability to recognize deception is something we have honed over millennia. At the heart of the matter is a misinformation maelstrom; an arms race of lies. Better detection, better lies. Many concepts are so susceptible to deception that we think they are true, time and time again. The rose colored glasses of what we wish to be true, regardless of facts. And then...  Conspiracy theories! Delicious tabloid lies!
I love a good conspiracy theory, as much as the next guy, and can certainly buy into them from time to time. It takes patient research to ferret the facts out of a "conspiracy" for one simple reason, most of the information is factual. The conspiracy just strings multiple facts together with leaps of logic that are just outlandish enough to be both interesting and possible, even if unlikely. The more grand and secret they are, the more they play on our psyche.
We have to bust out the BS Detector Goggles and put away the rose colored specs that make life just a beautiful and heart warming paradise. What we need are tools. Here is a list inspired and expanded from Carl Sagan's own "Baloney Detection Kit" born from "The Demon Haunted World".
* First, we have to have data. As much hard data as possible. Quantifiable facts are all you should be interested in until it is time to reason beyond them.
* Whenever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts. Verification is important.
* Now, quickly you can apply Occam's Razor, and then Hitchen's Razor in turn.
  Occam's Razor: "The simplest answer is often correct." (Very powerful tool.)
  Hitchen's Razor: "What which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
  With the one/two punch of these epistemological razors, you can quickly cut to the heart of an issue.

* Brainstorm. Don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy; spin more than one hypothesis.
* Tear it apart by yourself. Try to defeat the hypothesis. Can you falsify the argument? Is it testable? Can/have others duplicated the experiment and the result?
* In testing the arguments hypothesis, did it rely on shaky information? You've heard it before (and with good reason), a chain (argument) is only as strong as its weakest link.

**When dealing with people, I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with "Logical Fallacies". We use them all the time in our speech and politicians pop them out every few words. I suggest taking a look at https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/home and http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html but here are a few of the very popular:
* Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
* Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
* Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack.
* Argument from "authority".
* Loaded Question - a question that couldn't be answered without appearing "guilty".
* Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
* Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
* Confusion of correlation and causation.
* Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
* Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
* Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
* Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
* Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
* Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
* Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
* Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
* Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
* Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
* Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
* Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
* Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"

Now hopefully you have prepared your own kit and can interrogate the world for facts.
Don't let the skeptics of the skeptics get you down either. Just because you traded your rose colored lenses in for a magnifying glass and ask a lot of questions and seem rather contrary, doesn't mean that the reality we share has changed, or that something tastes different because you know more about it. What they will be unhappy with is not being able to get a fast one over on you any more.
I'm all out of gum, watch out for the weasel words!

Topic Tuesday #63 2013/10/01 - "Government Zombies: Shutdown Victims"

Topic Tuesday #63 2013/10/01 - "Government Zombies: Shutdown Aftermath"

The men and women on capitol hill have had a tiff, and can't agree on a budget. The consequence is not just a sequester, but a full stop. A shutdown of government for the first time in 17 years.
I'm not going to get into the politics of WHY, but what there is to deal with now.
There are a few websites that have put things very well, and I must refer you to them, as I am going to borrow heavily from them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/absolutely-everything-you-need-to-know-about-how-the-government-shutdown-will-work/?tid=pm_business_pop
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4789162/shutdown-us-2013-nasa-epa-hhs

So what has happened? 

"Short answer: There are wide swaths of the federal government that need to be funded each year in order to operate. If Congress can't agree on how to fund them, they have to close down. And, right now, Congress can't agree on how to fund them." - Wonkblog

No budget was passed. The House adjourned at 12:20 AM and will reconvene at 9:30 AM.

Monday a resolution was signed to allow our service men and women to continue to get a paycheck http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/house-gop-moves-to-protect-military-pay-in-a-shutdown-97508.html.

As of midnight the White House Office of Management and Budget issued this memo, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/?p=63520&preview=true shutting down government agencies and sending non-exempt (non essential) personnel home after a half day of getting things wrapped up to the best of their ability. The essential workers continue working, without pay. Civilian essential employees may not get a paycheck during the shutdown. They will, however, receive retroactive pay if and when Congress decides to fund the government again. Non-Exempt, may not get retroactive pay, that is up to the House.

Which parts of government stay open?

• There are a whole bunch of key government functions that carry on during a shutdown, including anything related to national security, public safety, or programs written into permanent law (like Social Security). Here's a partial list:
• - Any employee or office that "provides for the national security, including the conduct of foreign relations essential to the national security or the safety of life and property." That means the U.S. military will keep operating, for one. So will embassies abroad.
• - Any employee who conducts "essential activities to the extent that they protect life and property." So, for example: Air traffic control stays open. So does all emergency medical care, food-safety inspections, border patrol, federal prisons, most law enforcement, emergency and disaster assistance, overseeing the banking system, operating the power grid, and guarding federal property.
• - Agencies have to keep sending out benefits and operating programs that are written into permanent law or get multi-year funding. That means sending out Social Security checks and providing certain types of veterans' benefits.
• - All agencies with independent sources of funding remain open, including the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Reserve.
• - Members of Congress can also stick around, since their pay is written into permanent law. However, many congressional staffers may not get paid without specific appropriations. Many White House employees may also have to go without pay.

So which parts of government actually shut down?

• "Everything else, basically. It's a fairly long list, and you can check out in detail which activities the agencies are planning to halt in these contingency plans posted by each agency. Here are a few select examples:
• Health: The National Institutes of Health will stop accepting new patients for clinical research and stop answering hotline calls about medial questions. The Centers for Disease Control will have a "significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations."
• Housing: The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be able to provide local housing authorities with additional money for housing vouchers. The nation's 3,300 public housing authorities will not receive payments, although most of these agencies, however, have funds to provide rental assistance through October.
• Immigration: The Department of Homeland Security will no longer operate its E-Verify program, which means that businesses will not be able to check on the legal immigration status of prospective employees during the shutdown.
• Law enforcement: Although agencies like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency will continue their operations, the Justice Department will suspend many civil cases.
• Parks and museums: The National Park Service will close more than 350 national parks and museums, including Yosemite National Park in California, Alcatraz in San Francisco, and the Statue of Liberty in New York. Last time this happened in 1995-1996, some 7 million visitors were turned away. (One big exception was the south rim of the Grand Canyon, which stayed open only because Arizona agreed to pick up the tab.)
• Regulatory agencies: The Environmental Protection Agency will close down almost entirely during a shutdown, save for operations around Superfund cites. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will also shut down. A few financial regulators, however, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, will remain open.
• (Small parts of) Social Security: The Social Security Administration will keep on enough employees to make sure the checks keep going out. But the agency won't have enough staff to do things like help recipients replace their benefit cards or schedule new hearings for disability cases.
• Visas and passports: The State Department says it will keep most consulates and embassies open this time around, although some passport and visa processing could be interrupted. (For instance, "if a passport agency is located in a government building affected by a lapse in appropriations, the facility may become unsupported.")
• During the previous shutdown in 1995-1996, around 20,000 to 30,000 applications from foreigners for visas went unprocessed each day. It's unclear how many might be affected this time around.*
• Veterans: Some key benefits will continue and the VA hospitals will remained open. But many services will be disrupted. The Veterans Benefits Administration will be unable to process education and rehabilitation benefits. The Board of Veterans' Appeals will be unable to hold hearings.
• Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has a list of other possible effects of a shutdown. Funds to help states administer unemployment benefits could get disrupted, IRS tax-refund processing for certain returns would be suspended, new home-loan guarantees could cease, farm loans and payments would stop, and Small Business Administration approval of business loan guarantees and direct loans would likely cease.
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will see over 90 percent of its civilian workforce be immediately furloughed, 17,701 out of 18,250 total employees, according to the shutdown plan the agency filed last week. As President Obama put it in an emergency address last night, "NASA will shut down almost entirely, but Mission Control will remain open to support the astronauts serving on the Space Station."

AND SO MUCH MORE....

Here's the thing that will stick in the craw of many. Obamacare lives. 

"As Sarah Kliff has explained, the key parts of Obamacare rely on mandatory spending that isn't affected by a shutdown. "That includes the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, where uninsured people will be able to shop for coverage. The Medicaid expansion is funded with mandatory funding, as are the billions in federal tax credits to help with purchasing coverage."
That means uninsured Americans will be able to start shopping for plans when the exchanges launch Oct. 1, although there are likely to be some glitches."

This is not the Debt Ceiling Crisis, that happens later, between 10/18/13 and 11/05/13
The longest shutdown was 21 days. Hopefully the folks in the clean pressed suits can get their heads out of... and get them together to make good choices. 
Congress needs to pass a bill (or bills) to fund the government, and the White House has to sign them. They can do this at any time. Or they can sit at home and keep the government closed. Nothing requires them to do anything. It depends what sort of political pressure they're facing.

Topic Tuesday #62 2013/09/24 - "Sequester or Default? Wait, what does that mean?"

Topic Tuesday #62 2013/09/24 - "Sequester or Default because of the "Debt Ceiling"? Wait, what does that mean?"

What have we gotten ourselves into?

What is a "Sequester"? What is a Debt Ceiling and why does it need to be raised or we will default?

se·ques·ter  (səˈkwestər) verb

1. isolate or hide away (someone or something).

   "Tiberius was sequestered on an island"
2. take legal possession of (assets) until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met.

   "the power of courts to sequester the assets of unions"

   • take forcible possession of (something); confiscate.

     "rebel property was sequestered and a military government installed"
   • legally place (the property of a bankrupt) in the hands of a trustee for division among the creditors.

     "a trustee in a sequestered estate"

So as you can see from the dictionary definition, it involves withholding assets (or money) until such time as a criteria has been met for it to be released. The criteria here was spelled out in legalese in the Budget Control Act of 2011. In brief, it raised the debt ceiling and sought to apply pressure on Congress to come up with a longer term plan for deficit reduction.

From a Huffpo article: The $1.2 trillion in budget cuts would be spread over nine years and are equally divided between domestic and defense-related spending. During the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year, $85 billion worth of cuts are set to go into effect. The budget cuts would end in 2021.  [Summarized from their article] The Sequester was to answer a Republican demand after raising the Debt Ceiling (more on that in a moment). The Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction ultimately proved unable to reach an agreement. This ended  up forcing the sequester to go though and shut down government (because Congress couldn't agree to a 1.2 trillion reduced budget the allotted time).

The sequester stipulated certain areas of government spending will see no cuts. No money will be drawn from spending on wars and military personnel. Funding allocated for Medicaid, Social Security, Pell grants, veterans' benefits and some low-income programs will not be affected, either.

The POTUS says this about the "Sequester":

“The whole design of these arbitrary cuts was to make them so unattractive and unappealing that Democrats and Republicans would actually get together and find a good compromise of sensible cuts as well as closing tax loopholes and so forth. And so this was all designed to say we can't do these bad cuts; let’s do something smarter. That was the whole point of this so-called sequestration." —President Obama

That was the Sequester... what about the debt ceiling? 

In a line; "A legislative restriction on the amount of national debt that can be issued by the Treasury."
Here's where it gets complicated.
Just because there is a limit of the debt that can be issued (in the form of bonds typically) it doesn't actually stop spending, it just stops the treasury from paying on the debt. It halts the liquidity that goes out in interest payments on the debt to the other nations of the world who have purchased the debt. There are consequences to not paying your debts. You lose points on your credit rating (the measure of being a safe investment that judges how much interest you are charged on the credit extended to you. If you are a risk, you pay more. Like buying a car or house.). The US Credit rating was downgraded in 2011, causing drops in the stock market and raising interest rates, the last time we had this mess. We had to raise the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting. Currently the "Debt Ceiling" is $16.699 trillion and will be exhausted and need to be raised again in October 2013.

What happens if we default because we can't pay on the debt by borrowing more?

In 2011, House Republicans threatened to shut down the government and breach the debt ceiling unless the Obama administration made substantial concessions. The two sides ultimately came to an agreement. There was no shutdown. There was no default. But we did have our rating reduced making borrowing money more expensive.
From "The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases"

"The Government Accountability Office has also concluded that delays in debt limit increases could lead to “serious negative consequences for the Treasury market and increase borrowing costs.” A delay in interest payments on Treasury securities would trigger a default and risk serious negative repercussions for economies and financial markets around the world. Default might be avoided in such situations by delaying other types of federal payments and transfers. A government that delays payment of an obligation, in effect, borrows from vendors, contractors, beneficiaries, state and local governments, or employees who are not paid on time. In some cases, delaying payments incurs interest penalties under some statutes such as the Prompt Payment Act, which directs the government to pay interest penalties to contractors if it does not pay them by the required payment date, and the Internal Revenue Code, which requires the government to pay interest penalties if tax refunds are delayed beyond a certain date."

Drawn conclusions?

Now if I can expound upon the former: The stability of other countries finances are interwoven with the United States due to their reliance on held American and America paying dutifully on the interest. Should America stop paying foreign held debt, then those reliant nations will have hardships paying their own debts. The amount of impact will vary and is largely unpredictable, but if we take it to the next logical progression, we can expect drops in global markets and economic downturns that could spiral to collapse because America missed some payments - or stops paying entirely and writes it all off, bankrupting other countries. This could lead to conflict; war is a fantastic economic stimulus.
That's the geopolitical landscape, locally here at home, we have another fine mess.
And that will be for next week.

Thanks to http://drawnopinions.blogspot.com/2011/07/debt-crisis.html for the image.

Topic Tuesday #61 2013/09/17 - "Babies Birthday - Or - An Excuse To Eat Sweets"

Topic Tuesday #61 2013/09/17 - "Babies Birthday - Or - An Excuse To Eat Sweets"

Tomorrow is a special occasion. Well it is for my family, and since I'm writing I get to say what's important!
Anyway, tomorrow is my eldest daughters 6th birthday! It's not a big deal but I do get to be a supportive parent and provide sugar to her kindergarten class in the form of cupcakes. Birthdays are only as special as we make them. Inviting friend and family to celebrate with you makes the moment memorable (sometimes in unique and embarrassing ways). As we get older, some birthdays pass by without any notice, save the license and registration renewals (you remembered right?). I know that on more than one occasion I have had to do the math to even remember how old I was turning that year. Some years we are surrounded with only family; other years only friends. On off years you may find a birthday with no one but yourself remembering, or only your electronically prompted Facebook friends (I honestly don't care what reminds you, if you say something, you remember, and that is what matters). Whatever the birthday brings, be it yours or someone else, live it up! Light the candles, sing happy birthday in the loudest most obnoxious way possible, drink, eat, be merry and be the joy of the moment! Don't look for gifts, but look for the memory; the faces, the smells, the lights, the hugs, the kisses, the rainbows, the rain, the cries, the emptiness and the fullness. It all matters and makes the day special.
And eat cake.
Lots. Of. Cake.
Maybe some ice cream too.

So this year for my daughters birthday, I'm going to fill some balloons, inhale some helium, sing happy birthday like a chipmunk and generally live vicariously thought her, making her day awesome.
If today is your birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Love, puffy hearts, googly eyes, and kisses to all.

Topic Tuesday #60 2013/09/10 - "Red Pill Blue Pill or Suicide is Painless"

Topic Tuesday #60 2013/09/10 - "Red Pill Blue Pill or Suicide is Painless"

An idea has crept into my mind. Freedom. We have an interesting culture. We value life almost universally as a species, our own species. Let me cut to the chase or I will dawdle for a while waxing poetic on this deep thought.
When someone is on death row or serving enough multiple life sentences that they will die in prison, why not offer them the Blue Pill, and let them choose to drift off to la la land and pass away peacefully?
Harsh? I don't think so. Analytically it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement. The inmate would not have to languish wasting their potential. The state and the taxpayer would not have to spend the nearly $50,000 a year to keep an inmate "safe" and healthy. The taxpayer and the inmate continue to benefit as an aging prison population starts to rack up the medical bills. The prisoner suffers. The tax payer pays, sometimes over $100,000 a year per aging inmate.
There is a question that has always rattled around in my head. Why does a prisoner, sentenced to death, must be deemed healthy before being executed?
Anyone sentenced to death, automatically (almost always) sits in a special cell block for about 20 years before being executed. The current financials on this have it as an average of almost $90,000 a year MORE to house and litigate these inmates. That's $140,000 a year, for 20 years. $2,800,000 for an average death sentence.

Average "lifer" let's say they made it to 30 (roughly median age of the average prison population across the United States) before having the book thrown at them and tossed away to rot.
Based on demographics, major medical problems begin to escalate around the age of 55. It has been estimated this can triple the cost of care for an inmate until they pass away. If they live to the average North American lifespan of 79 years (both men and women averaged) and they were good girls and boys and were put in medium security AND they were of average health throughout their life. carry the 2....
49 years in prison. 49 * $50,000=$2,450,000 Plus the extended health care cost for the ages over 55. 24
years * $100,000=$2,400,000 + the healthy baseline = $4,850,000 We can go ahead and average this down to $4.5 mil based on the following health factors lowing the life expectancy of any inmate:
     Prison populations exhibit an elevated prevalence of communicable disease. High levels of violence, including sexual violence, have been reported among imprisoned populations. Consensual sex without condoms as well as drug injection and tattooing without sterile equipment are reported to occur at dangerous levels and to result in transmission of diseases, such as HIV.

For a well cared for lifer, $4,500,000 to support them to death do they part. nearly 5 decades behind razor wire.
For the average death row candidate;  $2,800,000 to support them until we execute them after about 20 years.


So. What do you think?
Red Pill, face the grime reality of being put to death or dying in prison, possibly old and enfeebled.
OR...
Blue Pill. Die on your own terms, without pain or decades of suffering.

I think we should offer it as a choice. What do you think?

Topic Tuesday #59 2013/09/03 - "Labor Day"

Topic Tuesday #59 2013/09/03 - "Labor Day" 

Ah, Labor Day: a paid day off from the general malaise that is a work week. But, what is Labor Day, and why do we get to shirk our responsibilities on this day?
Labor Day is the first Monday in September. It is set aside to celebrate the social and economic achievements of the working class. It allows us all to step back for a moment, usually with a hamburger or hotdogs and a libation, and take pride in all that we have accomplished.
President Grover Cleveland set the holiday in September nationally in 1894 (Oregon started celebrating in 1887). There was of course a bit of drama surrounding the originally proposed May 1st. A couple events known as the "Pullman Strike" & the "Haymarket Affair / Massacre", further pushed the issue to both ratify and relocate the celebrated day. The American Federation of Labor had proposed to have it celebrated in May, along side all the other international Labour Festivals which were essentially copied. The CLU (Central Labor Union) proposed to celebrate in September, and Cleveland went with that to avoid the "Communist, Syndicalist and Anarchist" movements associated with "International Workers Day".
Tradition dictates that there be a parade and a festival. Personally I was always fond of attending regattas with my father.
In many parts of the United States, Labor Day also marks the end of summer break and the return to school, to the chagrin of students and the joy of parents everywhere. Oh, and if you feel like being part of the well-to-do set, remember to put your "summer whites" away for the season.

Topic Tuesday #58 2013/08/27 - "Water Clock Running Dry"

Topic Tuesday #58 2013/08/27 - "Water Clock Running Dry"

To return to the core of the 'Can We Fix It?' mission, we have a problem and we need a solution (no pun intended since it's about water). In the United States there is a vast water reserve that is being depleted at an unsustainable rate. The High Plains Aquifer lies beneath eight states from South Dakota to Texas and supplies 30 percent of the nations irrigated groundwater (it is also a key source of potable drinking water in the region). A new study, out of Kansas State University and published online Monday in the journal 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences', has concluded that it will be depleted within 50 years at the current usage rate. David Steward (professor of civil engineering at KSU) said, "It would take an average of 500 to 1,300 years to completely refill the High Plains Aquifer."
This is a complex problem with implications that are stupefying. Bridget Scanlon (Sr. research scientist and lead of 'the Sustainable Water Resources Program' at the University of Texas - Austin) had a few comments about the study.

"We know the aquifer is being depleted, but trying to project long-term is very difficult, because there are climate issues and social aspects that have to be included. Projections are so difficult because I think we're clueless about a lot of things, like extreme weather events. Farmers are trying to make a living, and they're responding to economics," she explained. "Asking them to drastically reduce water might be like asking me to retire now because there are so many unemployed people. This is a very nice study, but we really need to address droughts and socioeconomic issues, and other approaches to figure out the problem, beyond the technical. If we don't know what we're doing, are we just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?"

It's a valid response. It is not dismissive, but urging more inclusion of other factors for strategy, which is a secondary target diverting from the crux of the matter. We are going to run out of water. It's not a matter of 'if'; it's a matter of 'when'.
What can we do? We can continue rationing water supplies. We can improve irrigation methodologies and technologies. At some point, we will need to harvest water from other resources. Desalination and pipelining it to the nation's breadbasket to keep food production going.
What happens when a town runs out of water? The people leave. It's just that simple. If you can't feed the livestock and crops with enough water, they wither and die. Then the farmers leave, and there is a food shortage and then costs rise as demand is shifted. Economies are drastically affected in our global community by a little thing like a drought. It is a fragile situation and deserves attention while there is still a resource to utilize. And... I haven't touched on "Fracking" yet.
Any ideas? Can We Fix It?

Topic Tuesday #57 2013/08/20 - "Running for POTUS"

Topic Tuesday #57 2013/08/20 - "Running for POTUS"

In the news: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is gearing up to take a 2016 run at the big chair. He has been mired in some interesting controversy that I found amusing, and then infuriating. It's all down to the interpretation of "Natural Born Citizen".
Requirements to be eligible to be the President of the Untied States of America (POTUS):

 35 Years or Older.
Have been a permanent resident of the United States of America for at least 14 years
Must not have served more than one previous term as president.
Must not have been impeached by the Senate.
Must not have participated in a rebellion against the United States
Must be a natural-born citizen of the United States.

This is usually interpreted to mean you have to have been born in the USA, which is not what it legally takes to be a "natural born" citizen.

* The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that "the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens". This act was superseded by:
* The Naturalization Act of 1795, which did not mention the phrase natural born citizen. The Act of 1795 was superseded by:
* The Naturalization Act of 1798. This act was repealed in 1802 by:
* The Naturalization Law of 1802. A number of minor revisions were introduced, but these merely altered or clarified details of evidence and certification without changing the basic nature of the admission procedure. The most important of these revisions occurred in 1855, when citizenship was automatically granted to alien wives of U.S. citizens (10 Stat. 604), and in 1870, when the naturalization process was opened to persons of African descent (16 Stat. 256).

To the nature of Texas Senator Cruz, who was born outside the United States to a Canadian father and American mother, Section 4 is pertinent.
 
*SEC 4 And be it further enacted that the children of persons duly naturalized under any of the laws of the United States or who previous to the passing of any law on that subject by the government of the United States may have become citizens of any one of the said states under the laws thereof being under the age of twenty one years at the time of their parents being so naturalized or admitted to the rights of citizenship shall if dwelling in the United States be considered as citizens of the United States and the children of persons who now are or have been citizens of the United States shall though born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States be considered as citizens of the United States provided That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never resided within the United States Provided also that no person heretofore proscribed by any state or who has been legally convicted of having joined the army of Great Britain during the late war shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid without the consent of the legislature of the state in which such person was proscribe.

So yeah... That's muddy. Now we have to check with what has really already been decided.

"Qualifications for President and the 'Natural Born' Citizenship Eligibility Requirement". Congressional Research Service report. Federation of American Scientists. November 14, 2011. p. 2. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
"In addition to historical and textual analysis, numerous holdings and references in federal (and state) cases for more than a century have clearly indicated that those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction (i.e., not born to foreign diplomats or occupying military forces), even to alien parents, are citizens 'at birth' or 'by birth,' and are 'natural born,' as opposed to 'naturalized,' U.S. citizens. There is no provision in the Constitution and no controlling American case law to support a contention that the citizenship of one's parents governs the eligibility of a native born U.S. citizen to be President."
"Although the eligibility of native born U.S. citizens has been settled law for more than a century,
there have been legitimate legal issues raised concerning those born outside of the country to U.S. citizens. From historical material and case law, it appears that the common understanding of the term “natural born” in England and in the American colonies in the 1700s may have included both the strict common law meaning as born in the territory (jus soli), as well as the statutory laws adopted in England since at least 1350, which included children born abroad to British fathers (jus sanguinis, the law of descent).
The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term "natural born" citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship "by birth" or "at birth", either by being born "in" the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship "at birth". Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an "alien" required to go through the legal process of "naturalization" to become a U.S. citizen."

And there it is. "by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents." In Ted Cruz's case, there are two reasons that he can be harassed. He was one of the very vocal "birthers" during the Obama campaigns making him a little hypocritical. And by not knowing this in the first place and getting it figured out ahead of time. Letting the media run your campaign is a bad idea. They asked for his birth certificate as a joke, poking at him for the "birther" connection. He has been caught with a Canadian maple leaf on his under-roos with this one and is now being forced to renounce his Canadian dual citizenship, but is unfamiliar with the paperwork, and stumbling around blind in a room full of cameras. There is only one other little detail that could keep this ball in the air. There is a misogynistic bend to this act, that should be summarily ignored. The jus sanguinis, law of decent, is traditionally on the male side, and his father was the Canadian. So if you don't pay attention to his mother being a U.S. Citizen, then yes... you still have an argument to make, albeit a horrible one for someone in the 21st century. But given that he has dual citizenship, that argument should be stuffed.

In short, Yes, he can run. Yes he can hold the office if he wins. Will he be able to win? Well, we shall see in 2016.

Topic Tuesday #56 2013/08/13 - "Knowing Your Audience"

Topic Tuesday #56 2013/08/13 - "Knowing Your Audience"

I have been, recently, coerced into thinking about entrepreneurial ventures. I have had owned businesses before and found I lacked some of the ability to sell the product, especially when it was a more esoteric property; myself. I just realized what it was that I was having trouble with, and it isn't going to make me any happier moving forward. I was playing to the wrong audience.

When there is a product, it has an intrinsic and esoteric value. We can equate it down to very substantial terms. Replacement value. That term can also bend into the realm of the vague and emotional too as it is human nature to displace emotions onto objects and sometimes personify them. Boats are always women. Cars are feminine, while trucks are masculine.  Once you name something... Well I am getting ahead of myself.
Replacement Value: How much did the item cost; to make, to assemble, to deliver, to paint, to store, etc. These are direct monetary measures.
Emotional Value: How much do you have invested into the object, as measured by; age, sentimentality, sweat equity, heirloom, quality, the general perceived worth.

Let's take a piece of furniture as an example. A Chippendale Chair. Thomas Chippendale original was

manufactured out of a particular three species of mahogany from Cuba, Honduras, and Dominican Republic, that is now extinct; it allowed for the finest details to be carved into the work. An original in excellent condition would sell today at auction for several thousand dollars, but only if authentic. Today, an imitation done in the style popularized by Chippendale has all the same form and function, but not the same wood, nor by the same hands, if hands even touched them, would go for a few hundred. The audience separation is clear. The tier that can appreciate the form and function of the chair, but cannot afford the original, buys the knock off, or worse, only looks at museum pieces. The poorest tier, will sit on a box, which serves its purpose equally as well as a Chippendale, I might add.

That was a product, but what of a service? Something with very little tangibleness.
Fixing a computer. Your laptop got a virus.
You take it to the big box store while a technician in unflattering clothes runs some diagnostics for a modest fee of $75 bucks, and then tries to sell you a warranty, and a new machine and a new hard drive, more ram, a laptop bag and an extra mouse, a USB hub, a Router and somehow... a new cell phone? But yes, the laptop is repaired, and you avoided the upsells.
OR:
You take your laptop to a buddy and for a case of beer or other such exchanged good or service they remove the offending software and have the decency to not look at your browser history. (That's worth an extra beer by the way).
Both have given the same level of service, in removing the virus, because your buddy does know what they're doing.
Here is where things get a little odd. Your buddy doesn't want a good or service, they want some cash because they have bills to pay.  Would you give them the same $75 bucks that you would have to the folks at the big box upsell-o-rama? In my experience, the answer is a flabbergasted no. Not only that but in my experience, I had someone cancel a check on me.  What I am pointing at here is that for some reason the value of the service suffers dramatically when it hits the wrong audience. As an example a former client of mine hear my price and gave me more because it was worth it to them. A buddy of mine made me feel bad for asking for gas money.

An individual cannot compete on the price that a mega conglomerate big box can get away with. An individual (read: entrepreneur) also should not try to. If your customer only wants to know how much it costs, then perhaps you are wasting your energy.

Know your audience and do not cow-tow to the ones that do not appreciate quality service and product.

Have you seen this disparity in goods and service prices? Have you ever tried to sell a craft and someone offered you $2 for nearly 4 days worth of your work? How do we get them to understand, or do we just say, "No, you can't buy it from me, but you can get something like it at the thrift store."

This can also be expanded to Science. Do laymen know the real value of the Large Hadron Collider? Do laymen understand that for every dollar that NASA spends it generates roughly 3 in return to various other sectors? (This is a conservative ROI as the real ROI figures are nearly impossible to accurately be determined.) Simply, no. They are the wrong audience for big science. Don't get me wrong here; that doesn't mean that they are uninterested. It means we must make them understand.

Topic Tuesday #55 2013/08/06 - "STEM or STEAM?"

Topic Tuesday #55 2013/08/06 - "STEM or STEAM?"

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. 

You may also hear the use of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, ARTS, and Mathematics).

The National Science Foundation (NSF) uses a broader category to define STEM subjects which includes subjects in the fields of Chemistry, Computer and Information Technology Science, Engineering, Geosciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Social Sciences (Anthropology, Economics, Psychology and Sociology), and STEM Education and Learning Research.
Lately STEM programs have been in the news and in politics while talking about the competitive ability of the United States with a modern industrial and technology complex like China. Job creation (always a hot topic) drew focus on STEM education as a platform for 21st century job growth.  The Department of Commerce calls careers in STEM fields are some of the best paying and have the greatest potential for job growth. 

STEM is not just a US centric program topic. The UK has also been engaged in building interest and fostering early education in STEM fields. 

Feb 4th 2013 saw House Resolution 51 for the 113th 1st session of Congress. It's short, so I will include it here. If you do not want to read it, in summary, it was to encourage STEM and STEAM program growth. It was referred to two committees (H. Education and the Workforce, and H. Science, Space, and Technology committees) and nothing further has been accomplished at the time of this post.

http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-resolution/51

HOUSE RESOLUTION 51 113th Congress

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that adding art and design into Federal programs that target the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields encourages innovation and economic growth in the United States. 

Whereas the innovative practices of art and design play an essential role in improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and advancing STEM research; Whereas art and design provide real solutions for our everyday lives, distinguish United States products in a global 

marketplace, and create opportunity for economic growth; 

Whereas artists and designers can effectively communicate complex data and scientific information to multiple stakeholders and broad audiences; Whereas the tools and methods of design offer new models 

for creative problem-solving and interdisciplinary partnerships in a changing world; 

Whereas artists and designers are playing an integral role in the development of modern technology; 

Whereas artists and designers are playing a key role in manufacturing; and Whereas May would be an appropriate month to designate as ‘‘STEM-to-STEAM Month’’: Now, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 

(1) recognizes the importance of art and design in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields; 

(2) supports the designation of ‘‘STEM-to-STEAM Month’’; 

(3) encourages the inclusion of art and design in the STEM fields during reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; 

(4) encourages the inclusion of art and design in the STEM fields during reauthorization of the Higher Education Act; and 

(5) encourages the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of the Department of Education, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Director of the National Science Foundation to develop a STEM to STEAM Council representative of artists, designers, education and business leaders, and Federal agencies in order to facilitate a comprehensive approach to incorporate art and design into the Federal STEM programs.

Some sentiments from youths about STEM from http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/28/students-speak-power-stem

"STEM holds the key to changing the world for the better" - Kensen Shi, 17, A&M Consolidated High School, TX

"STEM provides a link between learning and doing, tying knowledge to experimentation and real-world problems" - Adam Bowman, 17, Montgomery Bell Academy, TN

"Pursuing STEM at any age allows you to discover and answer fundamental questions about the universe, from creating frisbee shooting robots to studying the causes behind cancer" - Lillian Chin, 18, The Westminster Schools, GA

"STEM is cool because it provides opportunities to develop new technologies to improve the quality of life" - Kelly Zhang, 17, College Preparatory School, CA

What benefits can you think of that could emerge from heightened STEM programs? Are you seeing STEM programs in schools near you?

Topic Tuesday #54 2013/07/30 - "Cruel Calculus"

Topic Tuesday #54 2013/07/30 - "Cruel Calculus"

"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic." - Joseph Stalin 

Researchers were curious about generosity in the way of donations to charitable causes. 

There would seem to be a correlation to the level of generosity when it has a face; a face reflecting the suffering. You may have heard that sometimes you "have to put a face to name" to make it matter. It turns out to be very true. John and Jane Doe see a plea for a donation to save needy children. The plea wants money to help save children by providing general life saving things: medicine, food, clean water, shelter, maybe even education, if there is enough left over. Save more with a higher donation. It's simple math really, and we have seen it in the big box stores when we stock up on items. Buy bulk, pay less per item.  It works that way with helping people too. The more money is donated, the more people are saved. So it would figure, by that reasoning, that if you are told your generous donation of x will save 1,000 children, you would be inclined to save that number. But that is not how our brains work. That 1,000 is a statistic. The numbers somehow make our brains just say "Nope". 

Do you want to save kids? Of course you do. Do you want to save lots of kids? Sure you do. Do you want to save this particular kid that has a picture and a life story and will write you a gratifying letter saying thank you? OH HELL YEAH!

Face recognition. You put their picture next to a pledge amount. If you leave the donation amount up to the common man (or woman of course) you get this approximate distribution.

The breakdown of average voluntary donations results in a counterintuitive way. Sometimes like a tip at a restaurant...

Example:
Save 1,000 children ≈ $20 donation
Save 100 ≈ $20
Save 10 ≈ $25
Save 1 ≈ $50

Save 1 very specific child  ≈ $75

It's the way we are wired, or so the numbers bear out. 

It's cruel calculus. But given that we can easily be manipulated by pictures and possibly made up tales of strife, some organizations may be inclined to use this against you to benefit the other 999 hungry mouths to feed. In this case, I think that is a good idea. What do you think?

Topic Tuesday #53 2013/07/23 - "Climate Cycles"

Topic Tuesday #53 2013/07/23 - "Climate Cycles"

If we are to be skeptical and honest with ourselves about the world we live in, we need facts. LOTS of facts.
I am going to highlight some facts that are not often brought to the table when discussing climate change. I am only going to present the items. In general this is all from the field of applied mathematics and earth sciences known as Geodesy.

Earth's Path

The earth's orbit is not circular. It is elliptical, an oval.
We are closest to the Sun around January at a distance of 147,098,290 kilometres (91,402,640 mi) [0.98329134 AU] and farthest from the Sun around July at 152,098,232 kilometres (94,509,460 mi) [1.01671388 AU] Nearly 3 million miles difference.

The reason we have seasons is due to the Earth's axial tilt. The Earth wobbles a little. Over 41,000 years, the tilt fluctuates from 22 to 24.4. The average tilt today is about 23.5 degrees, roughly in the middle of a diminishing tilt trend. The more perpendicular the planet to the Sun, the more uniform the heating, and the higher the average temperatures. Based on the current figures, the Earth will be at 22.6 degrees tilt in 8,800 years.

Rotation (green), precession (blue) and nutation in obliquity (red)

The tilt undergoes an irregular motion known as nutation with a period of 18.6 years.
The orientation (rather than the angle)of the axis changes over time following a circle with a cycle of 25,800 years. This is the determining factor between sidereal and tropical years.
These changes are known as Axial precession.

The poles also migrate (Polar Motion).  The collective term for all the factors in its movement is "quasiperiodic motion". There are several periodic affects. A circular motion occurs annually while others have longer periods, one of which is the Chandler wobble with a 14 year cycle but a period of 435 days.
The rotational velocity along the axis is variable. The phenomenon is known as the length-of-day variation. Think of an ice skater, spinning with their arms in tight and then to stop they put their arms out. As the earth bulges out in the middle more, be it from continental drift or from glacier melt raising the sea level, the planet will spin slower, increasing the day.

Temporal Changes - Surface changes, and things over time.

• Plate Tectonics
• Episodic fault-line events.
• Tidal shifts
• Postglacial land uplift
• Temperature cycles: Ice age

Human interaction

• Material extraction
• Material relocation
• Teraforming
• Directed phase change of material. Fuel consumption

There are thousands, if not millions, of data points that go into climate science, and I don't want to blowup a single thread with all of them. Some of them, nay, most of them are deserving of a day in the sun and I will revisit them in time. Knowledge of your current situation is not enough to determine any kind of model for the future. We must study the rich past.
I hope that this has opened your eyes a little to the nature of our home planet. It is ever changing. Dynamic. Chaotic. Fragile- but only for us. It will go on spinning.  The thing to remember is perspective.

"Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves." - Ian Malcom - Jurassic Park

Topic Tuesday #52 2013/07/16 - "Comfort Food"

Topic Tuesday #52 2013/07/16 - "Comfort Food"

Today was a hectic kind of day. Lots of travel with lots of complicated things to do. Pretty stressful. Then I get a phone call, the type of call you do not want to get. My significant other is on the way to the ER.
So that's lovely right? OK, now what? Well I don't want to tell you another tragedy (especially since they're home and all is well), rather I want to talk about something to take our minds off of such hardships. Comfort Food.
We all have them. For me, delicious fried chicken, is just about unbeatable. However a big smoked turkey leg, can turn the worst outing at a theme park into... a walk in the park!
Tonight to take our minds off the malaise of impending batteries of tests to fully grasp the situation, I went old school. Thanksgiving dinner.  Green Bean Cassarole (just how mom made it, from the can), cranberry jelly sauce substance (the kids favorite), stuffing, steamed veggies, and reheated leftover grilled chicken. (Totally didn't have time to roast a bird, or thaw one out...)
It was good, and everyone is feeling a little less stressed out.

I would say more, but... I have to take a nap. I'm sure you understand.

What are your favorite comfort foods? Something that just makes the world a happier place.

Topic Tuesday #51 2013/07/09 - "And why is that?"

Topic Tuesday #51 2013/07/09 - "And, why is that?"

I would wager that most of you that wind up reading this are a bit like me. You want to know. What exactly you want to know changes from moment to moment, though the driving insatiably curiosity never wanes. 
Currently my little compulsion has been directed to absorb as much as I can about the connections between the things in our everyday lives. I suppose I could blame my young daughters as the inspiration to ask "why" and "how" as much as I do, but that would be false; I just want to know.

As an example of what I mean, let's go out to eat. We sit down at a typical table in a typical restaurant. Before we are served, we'll inquisitively examine the common table accoutrements.
With exceptions approaching zero, we will be faced with Salt and Pepper. Even if the meal is "to go" and has a knife and fork wrapped in a napkin or you are on the front lines in a foreign land with an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat), there will be salt and pepper. Why? Why have these two condiments graced our tables with such ubiquity?
It turns out to be a long story, that I would have to dedicate a lengthy post to. (Which I may.) We shouldn't end there though... There are so many things in the world that have long and sorted tales behind them.

Oh good the meal has arrived.
Say the place we went to eat was Indian, and we had the typically famous Pad Thai. It's delicious and notable for the peanut sauce. Wait a second... Why peanuts? Peanuts were found half a world away and are not native to Asia. A signature dish, that can only have its signature flavor because of global colonization.

There are countless such rich histories around you. All you have to do is open your eyes and inquire.

One more before I leave you to explore your world: You have heard of lavatories being known as a WC (water closet), right? Why is it called that?

Because that is the room where the royal personage received their enemas of course! Actual flushing toilets wouldn't come about for many decades after.

Have you discovered any history about common items?

Topic Tuesday #50 2013/07/02 - "CHARGE!!!"

Topic Tuesday #50 2013/07/02 - "CHARGE!!!"

CHARGing you batteries is not the easiest thing to do some days. It gets especially difficult when you do something unusual. For instance you may have seen the MIT/Wilson Solar Grill.

This implementation is unique in the way is stores energy, which is certainly different from the way a cell phone or laptop stores power. This configuration (which has not actually been constructed to my knowledge) uses a fresnel lens to magnify and focus the rays of the sun to melt a lithium nitrate substrate. The melted lithium nitrate, due to its phase change reaction, is able to release its thermal energy for longer periods of time and at higher temperatures than other methods up to now. Heat is then redistributed through convection, which allows for outdoor cooking and heating homes. This method is referred to as "latent heat storage".

Obviously this is a unique application that requires a specific set of criteria. This could also be used to provide electric power or boil water for steam applications. 

Peltier element

Remember any time you have a change of temperature you can utilize that to create power as the heat is exchanged and returns to a neutral state. Peltier coolers use power to create heat, which in turn creates a cold side. With an application such as this, derivatives of that technology can turn a heat source, into power. If done creatively, a refrigerator too. 

Batteries, and power sources in general, are complicated things. The design may be simplistic, but usually a power supply is designed to fit an application.  Some things to consider:

Capacity (Amp Hours)

Weight 

Size (Physical Dimensions)

Discharge Rate (Time to Empty at designed load)

Charge Rate (Time to Charge, when under load and not under load)

Charge Cycles (number of charge/discharge cycles before needing to replace)

Operating temperature range (Affects charge and discharge rates. Batteries can catch fire and explode under the "right" circumstances, like being embedded in a cooking appliance like the solar grill)

Architecture of storage media: Lead-acid? NiCd? NiMH? NiZn? AgZN? NaS? Lithium ion? - and so forth.

Longevity and recyclability:

Obviously what the battery is made of has far reaching implications for the ability to recycle them. Lithium is rare, expensive, and in high demand. Lead Acid (car, marine, UPS batteries) are low cost, high weight, and readily recycled into new batteries given the proper facilities.

So, thank your local engineers for building all this stuff we take for granted all the time, and keep the innovation alive by encouraging our youngsters to... play with electricity, fire, water, light... and anything that interests them. Who knows what problem they might solve.

Topic Tuesday #49 2013/06/25 - "The Middle Mind"

Topic Tuesday #49 2013/06/25 - "The Middle Mind"

I was chatting with an older Hungarian immigrant about cosmology, and he started to get visibly uncomfortable. I recognized this, and it redirected the conversation. We were outside of his comfort zone. This is a reasonable thing to have happen. Thinking about very big things, and very small things, can make your head hurt. These are realms that do not make sense to us, as we are of the middle. To our middle oriented mind, things appear smooth, water appears as a fluid, the sky appears blue, and pin points of light in the night sky appear as single stars. 

If we venture to the level of insects the surface tension of a drop of water is as solid, and likely very bizarre, in comparison to soil or plant material. Further into the microscopic, we find that nothing is very smooth, not even our beloved nonstick pan coatings. If we go further still, the very components of what we are made of appear and behave in ways that are completely counter intuitive to our observable reality. The fundamental building blocks of even atoms has yet more structure.

   Everything, everywhere, is made up of 12 building blocks (6 quarks and 6 leptons) and 4 force carriers that hold them together and 'guide' their interaction with each other. This may  change as the standard model adjusts for new discoveries, but right now, it's the best we have, and it works (albeit in not quite as elegant a way as would be preferred).

Now, up to bigger things. It is hard for us to comprehend the immense nature of the world around us. We may stare at a desk globe and see all the geopolitical dividing lines and vast expanses of blue, but that is only a pale resemblance of what this planet is. With the circumference of the earth, at the equator, being 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers) [more or less...] the farthest away you can be from anyone of your fellow human beings is around 12,450 miles, 8,000 or so if you could go through the rock beneath you.
While talking about going through things, let's consider the atmosphere. Easy for us to move through, yet it has a density. There are just as many molecules in a since centimeter of air as there are in a centimeter cube of titanium.  Everything around you has something in it. We breath air to consume the nutrients it provides. It is colorless. Or is it? The sky is blue, but the air in the room around us is clear, what gives? Perspective. A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the Sun, more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight. From space, we see our oceans reflecting blue light, giving our world its pale blue appearance.

The structure of the world is amazingly large compared to ourselves. However, Earth isn't that big, all things considered. When we examine our bright neighbor, the Sun, is roughly 109 times the size of the Earth; 865,374 mi (1,392,684 km) in diameter. It is so massive that it makes up 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System.

The Sun is also a relatively small main sequence star. There are others in the sky that are much much larger and could swallow up our star like the Sun could gobble up any of our neighbor planets.
If we keep looking outward with a modest telescope we find that the pin holes of light in our sky is almost never a single star but a cluster of hundreds. Get curious enough and we up the magnification, and we find that those may well be more galaxies. When you look up, you see trillions of stars, you just can't tell. You are also time traveling... sort of. These points of light are so far away, that in the time it has taken for that glimmer of light to reach you, the source may no longer be there. Distances are the trickiest part of cosmology. Just consider the fastest thing in the universe, light, still takes 8 minutes to make the trip from the Sun to the Earth.

These are just numbers... They are unnervingly difficult to relate in your head, since we are of the middle realm of reality. (Maybe not even the middle, but that is my artistic license.) All we have is the math to even try and comprehend the vastness of the universe and the infinitesimally small nature of the things that it is made of. As Richard Feynman said, "If anyone tell you they understand quantum mechanics, they don't understand quantum mechanics." It's easy to say, "Don't be afraid of the vast unknown. Don't let it make you terribly uncomfortable." The truth is we are not built to interact with these scales. We can only do so with tools and not everyone swings a hammer with the same skill. If you feel dizzied by the world around you, be it large or small, take heart. You are not alone. For all those of the middle mind, water is wet, glass is smooth, and the sky - a wonder.

Topic Tuesday #48 2013/06/18 - "The Advocate"

Topic Tuesday #48 2013/06/18 - "The Advocate"

In this world there are uncountable things to be concerned with. Everything from how your laces are tied to what was served at the last White House dinner, that you weren't invited to, could flow across your mind. There are people out there that get really passionate about a few things. These folks raise money, awareness, and a ruckus in the name of their "cause". Sometimes the cause is relatively small, but nonetheless daunting. Other times, the cause is massive. Something so enormous in complexity and nuance you just have to be a little in awe of it. It takes a special person to devote themselves to a cause and rally for its support. Among other things, we call these individuals, Advocates. And we need their voices. When the message is clear and the personality is strong enough, one person can make a difference in anything. They often have stalwart opponents and detractors. Lies and slander are often the tools of the trade. Mudslinging as often as not is used as part and parlance to fundraising and handshaking. Sounds a little like politics doesn't it? It's because it is a lot like politics, and has to be since politicians are just the kinds of people that advocates are up against. Fighting fire with fire and so on.
You know all this already, or at least I hope you do. My point is to raise your awareness to the advocates around the world. take a second look at what they are doing, and why. These people are running full tilt with a plan. Some want to save a small nesting bird, and others want to save the planet. Some want to educate everyone, others just want to make sure no one goes to bed hungry or sick.
Almost universally Advocates for a cause are trying to change something. They see a problem and want to fix it. They advocate to have anyone who will listen help them in their cause.

So, my dear readers; What are you an advocate for? This is where you get to plug your cause and get just a little more exposure. 
Can we fix it?
We can try!

Topic Tuesday #47 2013/06/11 - "Big Brother / Big Data"

Topic Tuesday #47 2013/06/11 - "Big Brother / Big Data"

Orwell would be pointing a malnourished finger at all of us and chanting, "I told you so".
I don't go into the dystopian conspiracy theories, but as they are part of our culture, they still must be examined. Today the magnifying glass is on "Big Data". You may have heard the term, and if you haven't, you will.
Wikipedia summarized it thusly:
Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis, and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to "spot business trends, determine the quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions.

Big Data is just that, BIG. Veritable truckloads of data available on demand and manipulatable to yield a variety of correlations. It's enough to give you the heebie-jeebies, but honestly, it is unavoidable.
Big Data is a side effect of our increasingly technological society. We have devices that generate information that can be captured and logged. Most of it is innocuous. Like temperatures, wind speed, and rainfall.  
We take weather measurements every few seconds (this would be a data set, like a spreadsheet) in thousands of weather stations all over the world (a larger data group, a collection of spreadsheets). Now imagine that you have all this information collected from all the weather stations all over, and now you can see patterns. With patterns you can make predictions. Voila, you have a rudimentary weather model and can start to predict storm patterns.
Now extrapolate that out further. Do you have a credit card? Congratulations you have your own data set of purchasing patterns! This information is stored and used to determine fraud patterns. If suddenly you are outside your normal spending patterns or regions, you may be flagged with a fraud alert, keeping you safe. The dark side of the credit card industry is they have a tendency to sell/share that information with marketers and even law enforcement. In this way your habits become a recognizable pattern. Patterns can be identified, and some are as unique as a finger print.
It is safe to assume that if your have a device that generates a loggable data set, you can be sure someone somewhere is collecting it, and someone else wants it for some reason. Some will want to make life easier for you, others for themselves. Some will profit from it, and others will suffer. And I haven't even got into facial recognition! 

Topic Tuesday #46 2013/06/04 - "Book'em Dano"

Topic Tuesday #46 2013/06/04 - "Book'em Dano"

...And make sure you swab his mouth for a DNA sample.

Sounds a little more ominous now doesn't it? But why is that? First, the news: 

Supreme Court: DNA Samples Can Be Taken From Arrestees Without Warrant  http://goo.gl/Dc88p

Says all I really need to know in that sentence. It passed the high seat by a slim 5:4 margin with a strong dissenting opinion by Judge Scalia. As always, I encourage you to take a look and think about the issue for yourselves.

What I want to look at is what our normal baseline is right now for the "booking process" and the Fourth Amendment.

According to http://thecriminaldefensegroup.com/understanding_booking_process.htm:

While going through the booking process, the following should be expected:

• Mug Shots
• Fingerprints
• A search
• Routine questions on background information (name, address, etc.)

If your case begins with a court appearance and not an arrest, you may still be required to appear at the police station for a book-and-release procedure. 

Most jails will give out booking information (arrest date, bail, visiting information, the location, the court date, charges and booking number). Generally, you'll be asked for the defendant's full name and birth date. Keep the booking number for future reference. 

As you can see, once you are in police custody, very little is sacred. You can plead the Fifth Amendment and maintain your Miranda Rights, however, you are still subject to a physical search, up to cavity search...  

A note on Miranda rights, since they are thrown about so readily: 1966 Miranda v. Arizona. The ruling states:

...The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he/she has the right to remain silent, and that anything the person says will be used against that person in court; the person must be clearly informed that he/she has the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning, and that, if he/she is indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to represent him/her.

Further: On June 1, 2010, in deciding the Berghuis v. Thompkins case, the United States Supreme Court declared that criminal defendants who have been read the Miranda rights (and who have indicated they understand them and have not already waived them), must explicitly state during or before an interrogation begins that they wish to be silent and not speak to police for that protection against self-incrimination to apply. If they speak to police about the incident before invoking the Miranda right to remain silent, or afterwards at any point during the interrogation or detention, the words they speak may be used against them if they have not stated they do not want to speak to police.

The lesson here is say as little as possible until you see legal council, even if you are innocent. Don't be a jerk about it, but better safe than sorry.

OK enough about that, now on to the Constitution. For completeness:

Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I imagine that the issue that is primarily irritating is "the right of the people to be secure in their persons". It's a fine line. You would already have your finger prints put on file, your picture taken (without make up in most cases), and... there is that search...

So what's the big deal about having another piece of data, that identifies you, even better than finger prints and mug shots, go into the database? Oh... there it is. The Database. Big brother is watching you and Hoover is keeping Tabs on you. Well yes. They are. This is a surprise? You get targeted advertisements all the time. Data is being harvested all the time, and the government happily buys it up. They might not know what to do with it, but they have it when they do figure something out. DNA, will just be another field in a growing database.

Lately, there has been an increasing stigma over "big data". Specifically how it is being used. The primary problem is a lack of understanding. I will save big data for another Tuesday. For now, be aware that more rapists, more criminals, more bodies, will be identified and thus be another step closer to justice - whatever that means today.

Think I'm off base? Good, tell me about your thoughts on the matter. Just remember, 'cavity search'. before thinking a DNA swab is illegal.

Topic Tuesday #45 2013/05/28 - "Family Matters"

Topic Tuesday #45 2013/05/28 - "Family Matters"

"...And then the roof collapsed..."
Things you don't want to hear, or say, usually start with issues involving parts of your home caving in around you. Of course our friends out in Oklahoma and the rest of the midwest have this trumped, and rightly so, but when a family member calls you up to tell you of a disaster that has befallen them, you do what you can. At least, that is what we have done. Currently my happy home has swelled with my displaced in-laws, their 2 pugs, and a cat. So far so good. The worst is just their stress over their living situation.  This post is about family, and keeping your family ties strong and being able to rely on the safety net that is afforded by them. I am proud that I am in a position that I can return the favor, and take care of our elders for once.  So often, in our interesting times, children are being forced to return to base, failing to launch. The safety net is critical for all of us.
I am writing this on Memorial Day here in the US. It is fitting to be focused on our families and the freedoms that we do enjoy that, despite whatever politics you follow, are paid for in the blood of our families and friends. Frankly, anyone that is willing to go out on the job and get shot at, they have my heartfelt appreciation.
That said, those that are not concerned with matters of that roof collapsing, can move on.
Still with me?
OK, the roof.
The in-laws live in a 4 unit townhome condo arrangement, that was built popularly in the 1980's. They have had some difficulty with leaks and had recently put a new roof on their unit. Here is where it gets complicated. That is only 1/4 of the area that keeps the building secure. One of the units next to them had what can only be called a series of unfortunate events befall its inhabitant and in turn the structure.
The veteran that lived there, had fallen on hard times. The economy had seen fit to remove him from gainful employment, and this in turn caused a relapse of some mental baggage he carried home with him from his service. He went a little nuts. He did what he could, but it seems more than 3 years ago, his own roof collapsed, and he did not have any money to repair the damage. He had been living in squaller by the time the bank decided that they were going to foreclose on him and kick him out, in spite of his trying to get payments arranged to be put on the end of the mortgage and get current. The bank in an effort to unload the property, had the audacity to request of a roofer to "tarp it and seal it over", which is illegal and unethical by any measure. So as they are repairing that unit, the long term damage that has been seeping through the shared beams and insulation, caused the ceiling above their stairwell, to collapse. This has revealed the nature and only pointed to the extent of the damage. Mold. Lots of mold. Enough mold that, myself as an asthmatic, I could not spend more than 15 minutes in the building BEFORE it was out of the walls. It is bad. So now, I have house guests while the insurance companies duke it out (which is days late due to the holiday weekend).
Family to the rescue! It's always good to know you have options in a situation like this. I hope all of you do.