Developing the Hyperloop

Hagel Proposes Cuts To Army

Yahoo:

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel is recommending shrinking the Army to its smallest size since the buildup to U.S. involvement in World War II in an effort to balance postwar defense needs with budget realities, defense officials said Monday.
Hagel is expected to announce that and other recommendations Monday in a speech at the Pentagon outlining his priorities for next year's defense budget.
Army leaders have been saying for months that they expect their size would shrink as the nation prepares to end its combat role in Afghanistan this year.
The Army, which is the largest of the armed services, currently has 522,000 active-duty soldiers and is scheduled to shrink to 490,000 by 2015 from a wartime peak of 570,000. Hagel is expected to propose cutting it further to between 440,000 and 450,000.
Earlier this month, Gen. Ray Odierno, Army chief of staff, told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that an army of 420,000 would be too small for a world that has such an uncertain national security landscape. The minimum size, he said, would be about 450,000. He said shrinking to 420,000 would make a big difference in the capabilities of the force.

He's also recommending eliminating the A-10 (which is an awesome, but aged plane).  I'll believe it when I see it. No matter how inefficient, defense spending means jobs, and that's one thing we need.

Why Did Lightning Strike Deaths Decline So Dramatically?

Decline in rural population and mechanization of agriculture?  Maybe:

I spoke with Ronald Holle, a meteorologist who studies lightning deaths, and he agreed that modernization played a significant role. "Absolutely," he said. Better infrastructure in rural areas—not just improvements to homes and buildings, but improvements to farming equipment too has—made rural regions safer today than they were in the past. Urbanization seems to explain some of the decline, but not all of it.
"Rural activities back then were primarily agriculture, and what we call labor-intensive manual agriculture. Back then, my family—my grandfather and his father before that in Indiana—had a team of horses, and it took them all day to do a 20-acre field." Today, a similar farmer would be inside a fully-enclosed metal-topped vehicle, which offers excellent lightning protection. Agriculture has declined as a percent of total lightning-death-related activities, as the graph below shows, but unfortunately it does not show the per capita lightning-death rate of people engaged in agriculture.

 The correlation on that first graph is awesome.  I don't know if the "not working outside all day means fewer lightning strikes" explanation is accurate, but it makes sense to me.  One other thing I didn't see mentioned in the story is better weather forecasts.  It is commonplace to see forecasts call for thunderstorms arriving around noon (for example), and they are fairly accurate.  If you were in the back forty back in the day and a fast moving storm came in, you might not be able to head for cover.  There wasn't a weather forecast saying, "Nasty weather around noon."  I'd figure that might make some difference.

Ohio Catfish Species Declared Extinct

Scientific American:

Hope has been exhausted for the Scioto madtom (Noturus trautmani). Unseen since 1957, the small catfish has now been listed as “extinct” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, following decades of fruitless searches. The madtom was the only extinction out of more than 430 species updates published to the Red List last week.
Even when the species was alive, sightings of the Scioto madtom were rare, possibly due to their blink-and-you’ll-miss-them size (between 35 and 61 millimeters). Sightings of the species were recorded only 18 times; each happened within a single stretch of Big Darby Creek, a tributary of the Scioto River in central Ohio. Little was ever known about the fish’s ecology or behavior.
Its rarity, however, was enough to get the madtom protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act back in 1975. Biologists then spent years looking for signs of the fish and information on how to protect it. “No other fish has been searched for more persistently by researchers in Ohio than this species,” according to the Ohio Department of Nature Resources.
In 2009 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) published a review of the Scioto madtom’s status (pdf), writing that the species—which, like the five other madtom species in Ohio, depended on shallow, fast-moving waters with a lot of gravel and silt substrate—probably disappeared “due to modification of its habitat from siltation, suspended industrial effluents and agricultural runoff,” as well as competition from another madtom species that had moved into that region of the stream. The review concluded that the long amount of time since the Scioto madtom has been seen meant it no longer met the definition of an endangered species, “and therefore delisting the species due to extinction is recommended.” The FWS has yet to take that step, but the IUCN responded to the recommendation and has now finally declared the species to be extinct.

Never heard of it, but if I come across one, readers of this blog will be the first to know. There is hope:

Another madtom species, the northern madtom (N. stigmosus) went unseen for 31 years until ichthyologist Milton Trautman, who discovered the Scioto madtom, found two of them elsewhere in Big Darby Creek.

Still, I won't hold my breath.

The Fifty Greatest Discoveries Since the Wheel

The Atlantic put together a panel of thinkers to pick them out.  Number 1? The printing press, followed by electricity.  Number 11 was nitrogen fixation for synthetic fertilizer.  I recommend checking the list out.  As they were telling how they came up with it and what to look for in the future, there was this:

Elon Musk, not officially one of our panelists, is perhaps this era’s most ambitious innovator. He simultaneously heads a company building rocket ships, SpaceX; another making a popular electric car, Tesla; and another that is a leading provider of solar power, SolarCity. When I asked him what innovation he hoped to live long enough to see but feared he might not, he said, “Sustainable human settlements on Mars.”

Maybe he meant that if we could create sustainable human settlements on Mars then we'd already have every problem on Earth solved.  Because to solve all the problems we'd have to solve to have sustainable human settlements on Mars,developing renewable energy and stopping global warning would be easy as shit.  We've evolved to live on this planet, and nowhere else.  Mars' atmosphere would be toxic to us, the temperature range would be uninhabitable.  There would be zero building supplies. Liquid water cannot exist in the Martian atmosphere except at the lowest elevations for short periods of time.  Nothing we could take there would grow.  There are no energy sources except solar and wind power.  We couldn't even start a fire if there was even something there to burn.  And there are a lot of other challenges I'm not thinking of.  Considering those issues, I would suggest we try to stick around here and solve some of the problems we've got.  That really sounds like a breeze compared to hauling ourselves and everything we would need to live to a place where we die if exposed to the atmosphere, and we'd still have to rely on supplies hauled from Earth in a trip that would take a year and a half one way.  Not that it's impossible, but, c'mon.

23 Years

October 20, 1990:

Damn, I'm old.  Damn, I hope the Reds win another one during my lifetime.

The End Is Near

In Geologic Time:

Earth will be able to host life for just another 1.75 billion years or so, according to a study published on 18 September in Astrobiology. The method used to make the calculation can also identify planets outside the Solar System with long ‘habitable periods’, which might be the best places to look for life.
The habitable zone around a star is the area in which an orbiting planet can support liquid water, the perfect solvent for the chemical reactions at the heart of life. Too far from a star and a planet’s water turns to permanent ice and its carbon dioxide condenses; too close, and the heat turns water into vapor that escapes into space.
Habitable zones are not static. The luminosity of a typical star increases as its composition and chemical reactions evolve over billions of years, pushing the habitable zone outward. Researchers reported in March that Earth is closer to the inner edge of the Sun’s habitable zone than previously thought.
The inner edge of the Sun’s habitable zone is moving outwards at a rate of about 1 meter per year. The latest model predicts a total habitable zone lifetime for Earth of 6.3 billion–7.8 billion years, suggesting that life on the planet is already about 70% of the way through its run. Other planets — especially those that form near the outer boundary of a star’s habitable zone or orbit long-lived, low-mass stars — may have habitable-zone lifetimes of 42 billion years or longer.

Stories like that used to freak me out as a kid.  I remember thinking how terrible it was that the Sun would burn out in like 3 billion years, and I wondered what would happen to our farm, and my desccendents.  Now, as I approach middle age and don't have any progeny, I'm not too concerned about anything beyond 50 years from now.  

Boston Bombing Roundup

 Like everyone else, my prayers go out to the victims of yesterday's bombs.  It was a tragic and pointless event which targeted the greatest civic festival of one of our great cities.  One which commemorates the beginning of the American Revolution.

We still don't have any explanation of who was behind the Boston Marathon bombing.  If I was a betting man (which I am), I would lay money on a loner, but I'd probably split my bet between anti-government nut and just plain lunatic.  The Patriots' Day and Tax Day connection gives anti-government nut a slight edge, but it goes without saying that the person was mentally unstable.  Lone Muslim or other non-Christian extremist is a possibility, but I just don't think it was the work of any group, be it Al-Qaeda or some crazy militia group. 

Here is Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen describing the mood in Boston (well worth listening to.  I wish they had a transcript posted).

Charles Pierce on the mixture of the horrible and the mundane, and the impact of the bombing on the Marathon, "the old, drunk uncle of Boston sports, the last of the true festival events":

I do not know what happens now. I know the event will never be the same. It is marked now, and it will be marked in the future, by what happened on the afternoon of April 15, 2013. Some of it will be locked down. Some of it will be tightened up. I walked back down to the Public Garden again, because Copley Square was growing dark and exhausted as the night began to fall. Back by the stone fountain, a woman in a silver blanket told a Providence TV station that she'd been unable to find a ladies' room after the race because all the restaurants and hotels had been locked down and she had to come all the way down to Park Square to find facilities that would deign to accommodate her. She was not happy at all, and she was telling greater Providence about it. "And I needed TO PEE!," she told some undoubtedly astounded Rhode Islanders.
There was something comfortingly mundane in how truly angry she was. The best example of this came from my friend, Steve Brown, a reporter for WBUR, one of the local Boston NPR stations. Brown swore he heard one person say, "Damn it, this is the first time I ever got DNF'd." Goddamn runners. I swear, one day, I promise, I'll laugh about them again. The Marathon will be worth mocking again. But that will not be today. It will not be anytime soon.

The bombing did terrible damage to the victims and their families.  Luckily, the physical damage wasn't any worse than it was.  But for the rest of us, it was some lunatic's attempt to take one more bit of civil society away from us.  We can't allow the vile acts of some demented coward (or cowards) to undermine our ability to enjoy our time on this earth without fear and rigid security measures bearing down on us.  These types of attacks are way less dangerous than what Mother Nature throws at us monthly.  Lets' not forget that.

Tom Levinson photo of MIT building 54 on the evening of April 15.

The Supreme Court and Gay Marriage

I'm just shooting off my mouth right now, but my prediction is that the Supreme Court will strike down DOMA 5-4 or, I think more likely, 6-3, while running for cover and dismissing the Prop 8 case, allowing the lower court ruling to stand.  I know, that isn't a really bold prediction, but I just don't see the court getting out ahead of the curve and getting where they'll have to take us in 10, or more likely 15 years.  However, the discussion at the beginning of the week highlighted a very interesting set of graphs.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find them.  One showed the gradual acceptance of interracial marriage that took decades, while the other showed the dramatic acceptance of gay marriage.  I think the long, slow acceptance of interracial marriage, and the realization of how odd it was that it took that long to accept, has played at least a small part in the much more rapid change in opinion on gay marriage.  If I find those graphs, I'll post them.

Update:  This is interesting.

A Brief History of the Antichrist

Daniel Burke, via the Dish:

Revelation, which never actually uses the word "Antichrist," is one of the first Christian texts to cast its rivals as Satan's spawn. Many scholars say phrases like "the mark of the beast" and "666" are coded references to the Emperor Nero, who persecuted Christians.

For many early Christians, however, the Antichrist was not a particular person. It was spiritual figure who lurked in the hearts of all believers, luring them toward sin and heresy, said Shuck.

By the 12th century, the Antichrist – often seen as a human inhabited by Satan – had become a tool for identifying an enemy, fomenting fear and assembling an army.

"The Antichrist moves a long way from Augustine's view of something that we all face inside us," Shuck said, "to being very much an external battle with concrete figures."

Popes used the Antichrist to rally Crusaders. Reformers used the Antichrist to battle popes. Northerners saw the Antichrist in the slave-holding South, and Southerners saw the same specter in the abolitionists.

In the modern era, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, U.S. presidents, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, England's Prince Charles, and even megachurch pastor Rick Warren have all made the Antichrist list.

Apocalyptic Christianity always needs an enemy, scholars say, and the Antichrist is nothing if not adaptable.

So it went from something within each of us to whatever Democrat becomes President?  Or just about anybody else some rural folks find scary, or brown? People make me laugh.

The Citadel

The folks at Balloon Juice are busy poking holes in the wingnut fantasy town slated for Idaho called the Citadel:

 As I’d just opened the picture above, my son happened to come into my study.  He asked what I was looking at — it seemed to him a sketch from one of the medieval combat games he likes and knows I don’t, and he wondered what would possess me to bother with such a thing.
I told him that, no, this wasn’t history or fantasy,* but rather somebody’s actual idea of someplace that would serve to protect them from an overweening federal government.  He just looked at it pityingly, wondering, and he asked me, “have these folks never heard of cannon?”
And damn if that hadn’t been literally my first thought on reading the caption “Interior Defensive Walls & Towers.”  I mean, artillery much?

More on the rules for living there:

Two: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older governed by this Agreement shall annually demonstrate proficiency with the rifle of his/her choice by hitting a man-sized steel target at 100 yards with open sights at the Citadel range. Each Resident shall have 10 shots and must hit the target at least 7 times.
Three: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older governed by this Agreement shall annually demonstrate proficiency with a handgun of choice by hitting a man-sized steel target at 25 yards with open sights at the Citadel range. Each Resident shall have 10 shots and must hit the target at least 7 times.
Four: Every able-bodied Patriot of age within the Citadel will maintain one AR15 variant in 5.56mm NATO, at least 5 magazines and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The responsibility for maintaining functional arms and ammunition levels for every member of the household shall fall to the head of household. Every able-bodied Patriot will be responsible for maintaining a Tactical Go Bag or Muster Kit to satisfy the Minuteman concept. Details TBD and posted elsewhere.

And there’s this:

Eight: All Patriots, who are of age and are not legally restricted from bearing firearms, shall agree to remain armed with a loaded sidearm whenever visiting the Citadel Town Center. Firearm shall be on-the-person and under the control of the Resident, not merely stored in a vehicle.

It’s not enough to live in a walled community that has locked gates–everyone still has to carry a loaded gun in the public areas. That’s how you know you’re really free.

And the folks who are planning on building all those Goddamned useless walls think that the infrastructure spending in the stimulus bill was wasted spending?  Shit, even if things go to Hell in a hand basket, I bet somebody is going to be able to keep some planes flying, and as Tom Levenson's son pointed out up above, 18th century technology can fire projectiles over those walls.

We Will Forget

A video following one of the true believers in the May 21, 2011 apocalypse, who spent $100,000 on subway ads warning people:

We Will Forget from Garret Harkawik on Vimeo.

I kind of feel sorry for the guy, but the video would have been a lot cooler if he disappeared at the appointed time.

The Giant Comet of 2013?

The Independent, via Ritholtz:

Ison's surface is very dark – darker than asphalt – pockmarked and dusty with ice beneath the surface. It's a small body, a few tens of miles across, with a tiny pull of gravity. If you stood upon it you could leap 20 miles into space taking over a week to come down again, watching as the comet rotated beneath you. You could walk to the equator, kneel down and gather up handfuls of comet material to make snowballs, throw them in a direction against the comet's spin and watch them hang motionless in front of you. But it will not remain quiet on Comet Ison for the Sun's heat will bring it to life.
By the end of summer it will become visible in small telescopes and binoculars. By October it will pass close to Mars and things will begin to stir. The surface will shift as the ice responds to the thermal shock, cracks will appear in the crust, tiny puffs of gas will rise from it as it is warmed. The comet's tail is forming.
Slowly at first but with increasing vigour, as it passes the orbit of Earth, the gas and dust geysers will gather force. The space around the comet becomes brilliant as the ice below the surface turns into gas and erupts, reflecting the light of the Sun. Now Ison is surrounded by a cloud of gas called the coma, hundreds of thousands of miles from side to side. The comet's rotation curves these jets into space as they trail into spirals behind it. As they move out the gas trails are stopped and blown backwards by the Solar Wind.
By late November it will be visible to the unaided eye just after dark in the same direction as the setting Sun. Its tail could stretch like a searchlight into the sky above the horizon. Then it will swing rapidly around the Sun, passing within two million miles of it, far closer than any planet ever does, to emerge visible in the evening sky heading northward towards the pole star. It could be an "unaided eye" object for months. When it is close in its approach to the Sun it could become intensely brilliant but at that stage it would be difficult and dangerous to see without special instrumentation as it would be only a degree from the sun.
Remarkably Ison might not be the only spectacular comet visible next year. Another comet, called 2014 L4 (PanSTARRS), was discovered last year and in March and April it could also be a magnificent object in the evening sky. 2013 could be the year of the great comets.

Hopefully, no cults commit suicide when these comets get close.  That mass suicide (with castrations) was pretty weird.

I Think We're Going To Make It

Is The End Near?

Hopefully the world doesn't look like this tomorrow:

More Gold Standard Debunking

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

As Paul Krugman says, Europe has replicated the worst features of interwar Gold with monetary union. EMU is a D-mark peg instead of a dollar peg. No matter. The mechanism of debt-deflation torture for entire societies is much the same.
You could say that human folly and wickedness debauched the beautiful Gold Standard in the interwar years, but to concede that is to concede the argument. It is to admit that gold does not in fact prevent politicians running amok. It is just another monetary Maginot Line.
Ah yes, but what about 19th century gold, the heyday of the global trade boom that ended in 1914?
It certainly worked better. Governments were smaller. The welfare expectations of democracy were lower, and a number of key countries were not democratic at all. It is was easier for the Bank of England to run a pure global system in concert with a handful of like-minded central banks.
But it did not lead to better growth or even to stable prices. The peak to trough oscillations in prices (inflation to deflation) were arguably greater.

Just like supply-side economics, the gold standard doesn't work.  History proves the case in each, but the true believers continue to believe.  At times, it would be nice if there was a rapture to remove the true believers from this flying rock.

What Is Wrong With These Lunatics?

Houston Press:

 Lubbock County judge Tom Head. On Monday night, flanked by Lubbock County Commissioner Mark Heinrich, Head went on Lubbock's FOX TV affiliate and warned the flatlanders of the dire consequences of their possibly turning down a proposed 1.7 cent boost of the tax rate next year. County law enforcement really needs that money, he said; otherwise neighboring counties will come swooping in waving dollar bills around and poaching assistant DAs, and the sheriff claims to need to hire seven more deputies.
But that's humdrum, stuff you hear all the time from conventional politicians in sane parts of the country. Head just had to open up a can of paranoid Panhandle whoop-ass on the Lubbock electorate. (Watch Head's video here.)
Why, Head continued, just think of what could happen should Barack Obama win reelection:
"He's going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens?," Head asked, before quickly answering his own question. "I'm thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we're not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we're talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy."
If that calamity should unfold, Obama will have no choice but to send in vast hordes of UN troops to every corner of this unruly land, most especially to that hotbed of Red State patriotism, Lubbock, Texas.
"I don't want 'em in Lubbock County," Head fumed, as an interviewer nodded in seeming agreement. "Okay. So I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say 'you're not coming in here'."

What the fuck is this nitwit talking about?  What is it about a Democratic president that makes Republicans strap on their tinfoil hats and talk like mental patients?  How on earth can half of the population think this way?  I just don't get it.

Romney's Palestinian Problem

John Cassidy:

Speaking at a breakfast fundraiser attended by the likes of the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the hedge-fund tycoon Paul Singer, and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, the G.O.P. candidate appeared to blame the failure of the occupied Palestinian territories to match Israel’s economic performance not on a lack of capital, the economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, or the presence in the West Bank of Israeli settlers and military forces but on the differing cultures of the two peoples. Citing the “dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” and G.D.P. per capita between Israel and its troublesome occupied zones, Romney said he had been studying the work of David Landes, the octogenarian Harvard historian, whose 1999 tome “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” argued that the political and economic culture of Europe played a key role in its rapid development. “Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said at the fundraiser, which took place at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, where he and his entourage were staying. “Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.” Since Romney didn’t specify what these “few other things were,” his audience, and Palestinian politicians, were left to dwell on his references to cultural factors. (There was apparently a mention of divine providence.) “All I can say is that this man needs a lot of education,” Saeb Erekat, an aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Washington Post. “He doesn’t know the region, he doesn’t know Israelis, he doesn’t know Palestinians, and to talk about the Palestinians as an inferior culture is really a racist statement…. He should know that the Palestinians will never reach their economic potential under Israeli occupation, and if he doesn’t know this fact, this man has a lot to learn.”

Seriously?  I would think trade and travel restrictions imposed by an occupying army might have some effect on a nation's economic development.  Or maybe the annexation of the nation's potentially productive agricultural land by it's neighbor might also hurt it.  I am stunned that one political party in the United States can be so crazily biased in a dispute as large as this one.  And the fact that most of it has to do with loony apocalyptic beliefs of religious fundamentalists who are looking forward to the end of the world really creeps me out.  I am stunned that anyone would support the Republican Party when it backs so many ideas which make absolutely no sense whatsoever.  And the fact that Mitt Romney believes that advancing this foreign policy is a good idea is enough to prevent me from ever considering voting for him.

Large Asteroid Explodes Above California

Discovery News, via nc links:

The source of loud "booms" accompanied by a bright object traveling through the skies of Nevada and California on Sunday morning has been confirmed: It was a meteor. A big one.
It is thought to have been a small asteroid that slammed into the atmosphere at a speed of 15 kilometers per second (33,500 mph), turning into a fireball, and delivering an energy of 3.8 kilotons of TNT as it broke up over California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, classified it as a "big event."
"I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California," Cooke told Spaceweather.com. "I am saying that the meteor possessed this amount of energy before it broke apart in the atmosphere. (The map) shows the location of the atmospheric breakup, not impact with the ground."
Cooke went on to say that the meteor likely penetrated very deep into the atmosphere, producing the powerful sonic booms that rattled homes across the region. According to Reuters, car alarms in Carson City, Nev., were even triggered.
After some rough calculations, Cooke has been able to estimate the mass of the incoming object -- around 70 metric tons. This was a fairly hefty piece of space rock. From this estimate he was also able to arrive at an approximate size of the meteor: "Hazarding a further guess at the density of 3 grams per cubic centimeter (solid rock), I calculate a size of about 3-4 meters, or about the size of a minivan."

According to these guys, there might be a large amount of platinum lying around somewhere in California.

Fed Up, Obama Gets Drunk, Makes Biden President For A Day

This morning, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Joe Biden appeared at an impromptu press conference to announce that Biden will serve as President for the day:

"Last night, the President told Mrs. Obama he'd had enough of this shit, and he was just going to get shitface drunk.  So he proceeded to do so.  At midnight, he called Vice-President Biden to the White House, and explained that Biden was in charge while he took today to sleep off his hangover.  President Biden has decided to take the opportunity to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey and to throw out the first pitch at Nationals Park," announced Carney.

President for the day Biden came forward to explain: