The Ganges and the lost plutonium cores

Indian agents and the CIA managed to lose a set of plutonium rods in the snows of the Himalayas:

Damn Interesting » Spies on the Roof of the World

...A quick survey of the scene suggested that the stone ledge had been sheared from the mountainside by an avalanche, presumably embedding the generator and its seven cigar-shaped plutonium rods deep into the ice fields below...

.... No one could be certain what would become of the core in the glacier's clutches, but there was cause for great concern. There were two equally alarming prospects: the nuclear fuel might fall into the wrong hands, leading to any number of diabolical designs; or the slab of migrating ice might slowly grind the plutonium into a paste and deposit it into the Sanctuary melt waters, shuttling the four pounds of radioactive material into the vital Ganges River...

...To the best of Dr. Schaller's knowledge, the Central Intelligence Agency never managed to reacquire their missing nuclear appliance. But a water sample from the Sanctuary in 2005 showed troubling hints of plutonium-239, an isotope which does not occur naturally. Years, decades, or centuries from now, the corpse of the rogue generator may yet rise from its icy grave and exact a radioactive revenge upon humanity. However, the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of a disaster approximating the aforementioned depiction....

I wonder if anyone has finding the plutonium in their current job description.

Asperger's and the professions

Lisa Nowak, a fallen astronaut, probably has Asperger's syndrome. There are interesting implications for how psychiatry needs to evolve to manage high functioning adults with autism-spectrum disorders who begin to decompensate ...

Be the Best You can Be: An astronaut with Asperger's

...My personal sense is that individuals with Aperger's, and with high-IQ autism (the definition of both is famously inexact, they likely overlap) can do extremely well in some settings. They do, like all of us*, retain weaknesses they must continue to compensate for. I don't know how much of a role Lisa's Aperger's played in her tragedy, but I suspect the combination of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Asperger's and depression was just the 'right' wrong mix. As psychiatry continues its sluggish and difficult transformation into a scientific trade, there will be more of an emphasis on how persons with austism, Asperger's, attention-deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder can leverage their strengths and offset their disabilities, and how decompensation can be recognized and individually managed...

Exxon's full page ads against conservation in Minnesota papes

Yesterday's twin cities' newspapers had two full page ads urging Americans to stop our government's plot to suck the gasoline out of our cars. One of the ads was "signed" by "Americans working in the energy sector", I believe the other wasn't. Exxon's history makes them the most likely source of the ads, so I'll skip the nonsense and re-sign them "Exxon".

One of the ads claims that "price controls" and "other thingamajigs" (I'm paraphrasing) will induce gasoline shortages. That's cute -- a classic conflation of a partial truth and an outright lie designed to advance a lie. Price controls, of course, would induce gasoline shortages -- but nobody is talking about price controls. The proposal that terrorizes Exxon is a gasoline tax, possibly including a preferential tax on premium gasoline. The reason the ads are running in Minnesota is that our (a smarter version of Bush, alas) republican governor has made noises about a gas tax to pay our bridge repair.

I presume Exxon's terror comes from an expected near-term reduction in their profit margins if American's were to reduce the growth of their gasoline consumption. It may even be that Exxon's competitors are better positioned to take advantage of such a transition, so that Exxon's loss may be greater than the industry average.

This is the most hopeful sign in some time. First comes denial, then comes the fight, then will come the carbon tax, starting with significant gasoline taxes. The fight will be very nasty, I'm pretty sure I know who will be making Karl Rove rich. We can expect a full Rove smear all the time.

Lefties, greens, realist-rationalists need to stop with the feel-good stuff and start funding a carbon tax PAC. Taxation first of gasoline, and then of other carbon sources, is the only way to reduce CO2 emissions, reduce the power of petroleum producing states, and drive a migration to extreme conservation and non-petroleum energy sources.

Thanks Exxon. You'd have done better to stay in the shadows, by showing your hand you're advancing the rationalist agenda.

Rove and Philip Morris

Karl Rove did deals with Philip Morris during his rise to power, and after Bush took control Rove squashed the Federal prosecution of Philip Morris...

Why did Gonzales resign? | Salon.com

...Typical of the political interference was the 2005 federal racketeering case against big tobacco companies in which government witnesses were suddenly withdrawn, suggested penalties lessened and lawyers ordered to read a weak closing statement prepared for them. Sharon Y. Eubanks, the 22-year veteran federal prosecutor in the case, revealed to the Washington Post in March 2007 that the chain of command ran directly through the attorney general's office. "The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public ... Political interference is happening at Justice across the department. When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration ... The rule of law goes out the window."

Rove's interest in tobacco cases was hardly new. From 1991 through 1996, while guiding the ascent of Bush to the Texas governorship and during his early years in that office, Rove worked as a $3,000-a-month consultant to Philip Morris. In 1996, when Texas Attorney General Dan Morales filed a suit against tobacco companies seeking compensation for state Medicaid funds spent on workers who fell ill because of smoking, Rove conducted a dirty trick against him -- a push poll spreading smears about him....

I assume he also squashed the antitrust case against Microsoft, but I don't know what the deal there was. I'm puzzled the Rove/Philip Morris connection didn't come up more often.

Zelikow and the overthrow of Maliki: How Washington works

Glenn Greenwald, in a series of iterative updates, describes how our government works -- by giving us the details on the emerging overthrow of (the very nasty) Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. In the old days this type of story only emerged in books written decades after the event, but now we get to see 'em in real time. I love these blogging journalists, but full credit to CNN as well.

It's a long story, and so familiar to what we've read over the past six years that it's hard to stay awake all the way through. The most important outcome of this expose is probably yet more shame heaped on The Washington Post, which presumably traded OpEd space for future privileges (jobs? news? leaks?) -- a bad move on national security matters.

I look forward to reading about what's going on behind the corruption story. Is this really all about deposing Maliki, or is it about providing political coverage for abandoning Iraq, or is it some messy mixture of both?

As to our culture of corruption -- how do you beat these things back? It's up to the voters. If American voters decide they care, they can change who they vote for. I've yet to see much sign of caring American voters, but one can always hope ...

You can't fly with your eyes closed - at all

I thought I new most everything, but I didn't know this ...

James Fallows (August 21, 2007) - Aerodynamics 101 (following JFK Jr crash discussion)

...No one who has received an instrument rating in an airplane doubts any of the above, because as part of the training everyone has been through this exercise: When the plane is safely several thousand feet in the air, the instructor will tell the trainee pilot to close his eyes and keep flying the plane. He is supposed to keep it level just by feel.

Within sixty seconds or so, the instructor crisply says "my airplane" and takes control again. The trainee pilot opens his eyes and is startled to see the ground coming up toward him, since the plane is spiraling* down. This always happens when the plane is flown blind, it usually happens very quickly, and generally the eyes-closed pilot had no physical sense that anything was wrong. This process is what tragically kills most pilots without instrument training when they unexpectedly enter a cloud; having no visual cue to what is up and down is the same as wearing a blindfold. It is also what is assumed to have happened to poor John Kennedy Jr and his passengers, in the dark and fog over the water.

It's the same reason you can pour tea more or less correctly in a plane flying upside down -- they're designed to keep the "floor" in place (meaning, of course, that you're losing altitude pretty fast ...)

Bane of the net: who maintains those pretty web sites?

You're a local official and you need a web site. You scrape up a budget, find someone who can put one together, and you're done.

Except things change. Thinks like, you know, schedules. Then you rediscover what everyone who's ever built anything learns.

Maintenance is a drag. It's not funded. It can be expensive. Pretty things may be much more expensive to maintain. That hand-crafted web site can't be updated without ... yes ... the original developer.

Not to pick on anyone, but this is typical:

Lake Wobegon Trails - Hiking, Biking, Walking, Blading, Skiing, Snowmobiling

We are working on an updated listing for 2007. Dates shown as 2006 dates will probably be very near the same dates for 2007....

It's August 2007 now. They're a bit behind.

Small businesses, schools and non-profits ought to choose for ease of maintenance, not for the initial product. The ideal solution should manageable by any high school graduate, but there's nothing like that on the market.

For MN Special Hockey I cobbled together a combination of Google Apps, Google Custom Domain, Google's Page Creator, Google Docs and Google/Blogger. It was very hard to setup, it's quarter-baked, and only a true geek is going to be able to tweak the overall configuration -- but I hope non-specialists will be able to post news (blogger), and even edit the main pages (Page Creator, note it requires admin access to do any page edits). If Google Apps ever get sorted out they could turn into a pretty good solution.

Content management systems try do something similar. They require experts to configure initially, but basic updates may require less expertise. In practice, however, these seem to run into considerable maintenance issues.

Another approach is to leverage "web 2.0" solutions. This is still emerging, but one way for the Lake Wobegon trail team to cost-effectively update their feeble map would be to replicate it in Google Maps and send out four bicyclists with cameras. Create the map as free custom content in Google Maps, upload photos to a free Picasa album, comment on the photos as needed, and lay them out on the trail map. Now link to the Google map and expect other users to add to it.

Lastly there's the combination of Apple's iWeb and Apple's dotMac (.mac) services (now support custom domains). Apple's can be an unreliable partner, but this might hit the usability requirement. The catch, other than Apple pulling an 'iMovie' (replacing a high end product with dumbed-down solution under the same brand), is that this requires OS X. On the other hand, if you can't afford website maintenance you definitely can't afford to maintain XP (bad) or Vista (worse). There are a few like solutions in the OS X world, I'm not aware of any in the XP world. (FrontPage once owned that space, but Microsoft abandoned it years ago.)

Google Maps: sort of display Picasa photos

Ooops. This was posted here by accident. The real one is here (Gordon's Tech).

Sorry!

Physicist bloggers getting cranky

I read a few physics blogs, and lately I think I'm seeing a bit of irritability. CV (Sean)'s post today hints at the trend ...

Ask a String Theorist! Or an Atomic Physicist. | Cosmic Variance.

..Aaron has begun to talk a little about the multiverse — here, here. He has thereby earned grumpy mutterings, rolled eyes, and “help” from some sensible physicists, some crackpots, some curmudgeons, his guest co-blogger, and even himself. I don’t quite understand what all the angst is about...

Bio-blogger crankiness is usually related to creationists. Creationists seem to leave physics alone (an interesting phenomena); the "crank" and the "crackpot" are the bane of physics bloggers. I think biologists have a legitimate complaint, but physicists protest too much. In the case of physics, the cranks have a case.

It's not that cranks are a good guide to physics, it's rather that physics is so weird that to an outsider the cranks are hardly less plausible than the science. Entanglement across the multiverse? Seems almost plausible.

It doesn't help that by nature and practice physicists are driven to contemplate the forbidden. Tests for "life in a simulation"? Answers to the Fermi Paradox? Rules for the least harmful use of the Bayesian anthropic principle (ok, so maybe the creationists do show up)? Physicists can't stay away -- but the very questions make even them irritable. Cranks like me only darken their mood.

Relax gang. Ignore your cranks and embrace your fundamental weirdness. It's a weird universe, and the crackpots are at home ...

A carbon tax PAC: the most effective form of greenery

I added this comment to Kristof's blog following his "conservation is good" NYT OpEd:

Energy Conservation - Nicholas D. Kristof - Opinion - TimesSelect

Conservation = Carbon Tax.

It's a fairly simple equation. I'm disappointed that you chose not to mention it. I understand it's probably wise to let people slowly draw their own conclusions, but it is a bit dishonest.

You know perfectly well that the only way to accelerate conservation is by an overt carbon tax or by a hidden tax (regulatory mandates).

To that end, I'd like to see a "carbon tax PAC" that we could all contribute to. It makes far more sense to send $25 to a "carbon tax PAC" than to spend $25 on a low energy light bulb.

Perhaps you're constitutionally opposed to taxation. That's where we can negotiate. I'm ok with shifting funds, so the revenue raised through a carbon tax is offset by cuts on capital gains, increasing personal exemptions, increasing EITCs, etc.

Suddenly Vista has no friends

First Coding Horror was down on Vista. Then James Fallows ripped it off his laptop. Then the editor of PC Magazine declared Vista a disaster -- even as he left his job.

The harshest blow, however, comes from Joel on Software: "I've been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system -- it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled)."

Joel remembers his Microsoft days fondly, so his words sting. Vista is, apparently, a mess. We can expect others to pile on now. Given the current mess it may be another year before Vista is ready for use.

I share Joel's opinion on Office 2007, with the caveat that Word is probably better and Excel wasn't hurt too much. I've figured out the UI now but it was a pain to learn it.

Great news for OS X. BTW, I don't expect 10.5 to ship until next summer. With Vista tanking the pressure is off Apple, and 10.5 is not looking very solid yet. They'll quietly slip it from this October into next spring, and maybe roll some 10.5 features back into 10.4.

Easy primary care research project: good for fellowship, residency etc

I don't do clinical research any more, but occasionally I come across questions that might produce a cheap, interesting and publishable study.

Here's one.

What percentage of parents run out of their child's liquid antibiotic medication prior 24 hours early? My guess is that the percentage is over 70% due to normal loss, spillage, and over accurate dispensing.

Simple study, publishable unit.

For extra credit, what are the financial incentives for "precise" dispensation of liquid antibiotics?

Giuliani - time to go away. Please.

Really. It's time to quit. Actually, it's time to have never started.

Rudy Giuliani's loopy foreign-policy statement. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

Rudy Giuliani's essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, laying out his ideas for a new U.S. foreign policy, is one of the shallowest articles of its kind I've ever read. Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible). That it was written by a man who wants to be president—and who recently said that he understands the terrorist threat "better than anyone else running"—is either the stuff of high satire or cause to consider moving to, or out of, the country...

...Two months ago, when Giuliani issued some of his first pronouncements on foreign policy, I wrote that he is "that most dangerous would-be world leader: a man who doesn't seem to know how much he doesn't know." Judging from his Foreign Affairs article, the breadth and depth of his cluelessness are vaster than even I had imagined.

Kaplan, in other words, is shrill. The GOP candidates are having that effect on a lot of people.

Gwynne Dyer - 9 essays - July through Aug 16 2007

Dyer has 9 new ones.

1. Bangladesh: When Democracy Goes Bad
2. The Turkish Election
3. Libya, Bulgarians and Lockerbie
4. Oil: $100 a Barrel -- or $200?
5. Zimbabwe Meltdown
6. Pakistan: Forecasts of Disaster
7. Arctic Scramble
8. Slow Forward
9. "Boys Go To Baghdad..."

I'm convinced now he'll never add a syndication feed or otherwise update the web site. I think his may be the last site in the world serving "pages" as .txt files. I assume that's not a clever technique to prevent blogging/quoting, but you never know -- he may be curmudgeonly, but he's a very good writer.

Anyway, I've added a Dyer tag to Gordon's Notes -- if Blogger adds tag-specific RSS it will become a de facto Dyer feed.

The Apple iMovie debacle: Pogue smacks 'em

Pogue is a longtime Apple user, author, and informed fan. So this smackdown might get noticed in Cupertino (emphases mine) ...

Apple Takes a Step Back With iMovie ’08 - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog

... To rephrase (and sanitize) the wailing on the discussion boards: What the [bleep]! What was Apple thinking?

Apple says that it was thinking: “It’s 1.0. We’ll bring it up to par with free software updates, like we always do.” Internally, I’m guessing that it was also thinking, “iMovie had gotten pretty old, and it was haunted by some intractable bugs.” And also, perhaps, “iMovie was getting so powerful, it was taking sales away from Final Cut.”

But it must also have been thinking, “Then again, it is a little embarrassing to take so many steps backward.”

That’s why, with what I imagine is a certain degree of sheepishness, the company is offering a free download of the previous iMovie version to anyone who has iMovie ‘08. In that regard, all the wailing is a bit overblown; Apple is not actually taking away the older version. The only real raw part of the deal is that people who pay $80 for a new software rev expect an enhanced version—not another copy of the old one.

I can’t remember any software company pulling a stunt like this before: throwing away a fully developed, mature, popular program and substituting a bare-bones, differently focused program under the same name.

I’ve used the real iMovie to edit my Times videos for three years now. The results are perfectly convincing as professional video blog work. But the new version is totally unusable for that purpose. It’s unusable, in fact, for anyone doing professional work that requires any degree of precision...

Apple's historic danger is getting drunk with arrogance. That's why we Apple customers love them to feel the blistering heat of competition -- it keeps 'em sober. The iMovie story tells me they've fallen off the wagon again -- but the rapid release of the 'free version' (I've read anyone can get it) suggests they might be back in rehab. Maybe.

I don't buy the 'continual free upgrades' to iMovie_II 1.0 though -- Apple's been saying they can't do free function upgrades any more without charging for 'em (accounting rules).

My money is on the 'protect Final Cut' answer. I think that's the same reason Apple won't provide Library management (import/export Libraries) for iPhoto.

Thanks Pogue. Please kick Apple again for us. Harder.

Alas, what's really needed is more competition for iLife, and I'm afraid there's nobody likely to do that. Apple has pulled far enough ahead that they can do things like this and still have the best solutions for any platform.