Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

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Pakistan: Backlash Rises against Bill on Sexual Harassment

Monday, March 15th, 2010

– Can you imagine?   A country with nuclear weapons and an ally of the U.S. and they still want to keep their women in the back of the bus.  What a world.

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As a bill against sexual harassment of women inches closer to becoming a law in Pakistan, it is drawing fire from male politicians and conservative groups that have called it anywhere from un-Islamic to one that would lead women astray.

These groups are having last-minute jitters given that the first part of these legal measures to counter sexual harassment — Criminal Law Amendment Act 2010 — was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari on Jan. 29. This amendment, the result of two years of unswerving struggle by civil society, especially women activists, is aimed at protecting both men and women against harassment at workplace.

But the backlash from critics is rising now that the second part of the amendment — a specific law on the protection against harassment of women at the workplace — has been approved by the lower House of Parliament and is awaiting passage in the Senate.

‘It is against shariah (Islamic law)’ is how Sen. Gul Naseeb Khan of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rehman Group) views this second part of the bill. He was also the sole voice of dissent in the Senate when the first part of the sexual harassment bill was being debated.

In a television talk show, he said the bill protecting women from sexual harassment would only lead to the spread of vulgarity. ‘There is no need for women to seek employment because the responsibility for their upkeep lies on the shoulder of men,’ he said.

The only two professions women can take up, he argued, are teaching and medicine — and those are only if it is absolutely necessary.

Jamshed Dasti, a parliamentarian belonging to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party that tabled the twin bill, went against his party’s line to oppose their passage and vowed to put forward a bill that would protect men’s rights. He also termed the sexual harassment bills an insult to Islamic society.

– More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Religion - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Women's Rights | 1 Comment »

The Fix Is In

Monday, March 15th, 2010

– Want to know why American health care costs are so high?   Read this:

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The hidden public-private cartel that sets health care prices.

Living in Massachusetts should, by all indicators, mean having access to good health care. Following the landmark passage of a health insurance mandate in 2006, the state today enjoys the nation’s lowest percentage of uninsured citizens. Major cities like Boston have the nation’s highest numbers of doctors per capita and anchor some of the world’s largest and most prestigious medical centers. And Massachusetts isn’t stingy—it spends more on health care per person than any other state. Yet, as a remarkable NPR documentary reported last year, patients calling Massachusetts General Hospital—ranked the fifth best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report—were informed that Harvard’s massive academic hospital was no longer accepting new patients needing primary care. And that problem isn’t limited to Massachusetts General—it’s occurring throughout the state. Despite near-universal insurance, oodles of doctors, reams of cash, and no dearth of bright minds, the average person in Massachusetts can’t find a new primary care doctor.

The nation soon may face the same fate. To have any hope of meaningful national health reform, therefore, we must address the perverse financial incentives that created and continue to inflame this problem.

The root of the shortage can be traced to 1985, when a Harvard economist named William Hsiao developed a scale to measure the relative value of every single one of the thousands of services provided by doctors, a job later compared to measuring “the exact amount of anger in the world.” For example, Hsiao’s team deemed that a hysterectomy required 3.8 times more mental effort and 4.47 times more technical skill than a psychotherapy session. In 1992, Medicare formally adopted Hsiao’s concept; private insurers followed suit. Today, this relative value-based system sets the prices—and therefore drives the priorities of American medicine.

Here’s how it works. Doctors do a job—like placing a coronary artery stent, reading an EKG, or spending an hour examining and diagnosing a patient with a complex problem like insomnia—and earn something called “relative value units.” In 2009, according to Medicare, the stent guy scores about 24 units for his relatively quick procedure, the EKG person gets 0.5 units for the 10 seconds his job requires, and the poor internist gets only 2.5 units for his hour of time. Figuring a doctor’s total take per task is straightforward: Medicare adds up a doctor’s total RVUs, multiplies the total by a fixed amount (roughly $40 right now), and writes the check.

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to Hans D.

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Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Dunning–Kruger effect

Monday, March 15th, 2010

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”[1]

– More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, Science | No Comments »

Govt must get serious about peak oil

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

– It’s the same everywhere.  This is from a New Zealand newspaper.

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John de Bueger looks at the implications of “peak oil” and suggests New Zealand should be getting serious about it.

A predictable howl erupted when it was announced that some parts of the conservation estate might be opened-up to small-scale mineral extraction.

This contrasted markedly with the barely audible mutterings from the same quarter when Gerry Brownlee announced late last year that offshore oil exploitation from our continental shelf held the key to future prosperity, with likely annual exports of tens of billions of dollars.

Given that the Zealandia plate on which these islands float is about one-third the size of Australia, it follows that the potential of offshore oil and minerals dwarfs any onshore prospects, even if it was Otago placer gold that kick-started this country’s economic development.

My initial suspicion was that thoughts of mining in national parks was a just a decoy tactic to redirect eyes onshore while the foreshore and seabed issue was being thrashed out, but perhaps this is being a little too Machiavellian.

It is more likely that our Minister of Energy has little or no idea of the real worth of untapped oil reserves (anywhere), given the coming realities of peak oil.

When he was asked some questions on this matter at an energy conference late last year, he gave the impression that even if he had heard of the concept, he certainly hadn’t mastered its implications.

In this respect Gerry is exhibiting the archetypal behavioural response of the caveman – a condition I hasten to add that he shares with 95% of the human race, and 100% of politicians.

That is a total inability to rationally weigh the seriousness of future risks against pressing short-term expediency.

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to Tony H.

Posted in CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, New Zealand, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

South Dakota legislators tell schools to teach ‘astrological’ explanation for global warming

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

– Mmmmmmm.  Walk tall, Americans, and be proud of yourselves intellectually.   I know I sure am.

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Last week, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a resolution to “urge” public schools to teach astrology.  Brad Johnson has the amazing story in this Think Progress repost.

By a 36-30 vote, the legislators passed House Concurrent Resolution 1009, “Calling for balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota.” After repeating long–debunked denier myths and calling carbon dioxide “the gas of life,” the resolution concludes that public schools should teach that “global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact”:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:

(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;
(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect [sic] world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and
(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Legislature urges that all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Mental Irrationality, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Shrimp’s Dirty Secrets: Why America’s Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

– Not my first post on this subject.  See: ➡ also.

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The environmental impact of shrimp can be horrific. But most Americans don’t know where their shrimp comes from or what’s in it.

Americans love their shrimp. It’s the most popular seafood in the country, but unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a cocktail of chemicals, harvested at the expense of one of the world’s productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines for finding some kind of “sustainable shrimp” are so far nonexistent.

In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda.

Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics. And yet, as of 2008, Americans are eating 4.1 pounds of shrimp apiece each year — significantly more than the 2.8 pounds per year we each ate of the second most popular seafood, canned tuna. But what are we actually eating without knowing it? And is it worth the price — both to our health and the environment?

More… ➡

– Research thanks to Michael M.

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Pollution, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Nature’s hot green quantum computers revealed

Monday, February 15th, 2010

– I’ve been watching this story for a year or more since I saw the first reference to this new work.

– Fascinating stuff.  If something as simple as Chlorophyll can employ quantum computing to search multiple paths at simultaneously, then is it so far out to imagine that the mechanisms employed by an thinking brain may do the same?

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WHILE physicists struggle to get quantum computers to function at cryogenic temperatures, other researchers are saying that humble algae and bacteria may have been performing quantum calculations at life-friendly temperatures for billions of years.

The evidence comes from a study of how energy travels across the light-harvesting molecules involved in photosynthesis. The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss. Physicists had previously ruled out quantum processes, arguing that they could not persist for long enough at such temperatures to achieve anything useful.

Photosynthesis starts when large light-harvesting structures called antennas capture photons. In the alga called Chroomonas CCMP270, these antennas have eight pigment molecules woven into a larger protein structure, with different pigments absorbing light from different parts of the spectrum. The energy of the photons then travels across the antenna to a part of the cell where it is used to make chemical fuel.

The route the energy takes as it jumps across these large molecules is important because longer journeys could lead to losses. In classical physics, the energy can only work its way across the molecules randomly. “Normal energy transfer theory tells us that energy hops from molecule to molecule in a random walk, like the path taken home from the bar by a drunken sailor,” says Gregory Scholes at the University of Toronto, Canada, one of the co-authors of the paper published in Nature this week (DOI: 10.1038/nature08811).

But Scholes and his colleagues have found that the energy-routeing mechanism may actually be highly efficient. The evidence comes from the behaviour of pigment molecules at the centre of the Chroomonas antenna. The team first excited two of these molecules with a brief laser pulse, causing electrons in the pigment molecules to jump into a quantum superposition of excited states. When this superposition collapses, it emits photons of slightly different wavelengths which combine to form an interference pattern. By studying this pattern in the emitted light, the team can work out the details of the quantum superposition that created it.

More… ➡

Posted in Science | No Comments »

Turkish girl ‘buried alive for talking to boys’

Friday, February 12th, 2010

– Turkey wants into the European Union, Right?  Yeah, sure.

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A 16-year-old Turkish girl was buried alive by relatives as a punishment for talking to boys, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday.

Police discovered the body of the girl, identified only as M.M., in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-meter-deep hole dug under a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta in the southeastern province of Adiyaman, the Turkish daily reported on its website.

The body was found in December, around 40 days after M.M. went missing. Police have arrested and charged the girl’s father and grandfather over the murder. The father reportedly said in his testimony that the family was unhappy his daughter had male friends. Her mother was also arrested but later released.

A postmortem examination revealed a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she was buried alive and conscious, forensic experts told the Anatolia news agency.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, The Perfect Storm, Women's Rights | No Comments »

Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

– Our hubris will be the ruin of us yet.   And we wonder why the SETI folks haven’t picked up any signals from other civilizations out among the stars.

– I think it is because in almost all cases, when animals evolve to the point where we are, with generalized intelligence, they  shoot themselves in the head by messing with stuff they shouldn’t have.  Stuff that then gets away from them and kills them.

– A year or two ago, I Blogged about Craig Venter’s attempts to create a bacteria from scratch.

– Then, more recently, I’ve posted several times about the risks of nanotechnology.  See these: ➡ ➡ ➡ ➡ ➡ and ➡

– Now today, I see that the U.S.’s Pentagon is going to breed immortal lifeforms but that no one should worry – because they’re going to put a ‘kill switch’ in also.

– Has no one read Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and his prescient story about Ice-9?

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The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.

– More… ➡

– Hat tip to Cryptogon for this story.

Posted in CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, Nanotechnology, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

We’re having the wrong conversations

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

– I’m not the only one who’s on about Corporations and their power over American politics.  This is from over on The Automatic Earth Blog.

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I’ve said it before and I know I’ll have to say it a million more times, and you still won’t get it, because you just don’t want it to be true. But it’s time.

We’re having the wrong conversations.

We speak the language of the world of finance, a language that doesn’t contain any words or expressions to describe the final stages of the world of finance itself. And I’m not saying that world is about to end, just that it lacks the terms to tell of its own demise. Modeled after other holy writings.

And it’s not all that farfetched either. If we, the taxpayer, hadn’t bought off their debts, none or close to none of the major financial institutions in America would still be alive. That includes Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and all the rest too busy with paying bonuses to answer our phone calls. Still, despicable as all that may seem to you, they’re not really the masterminds or main culprits, are they, the bankers?

They operate in an environment allowed and legislated for them by the very same people that you all voted for, from the President to your local Congressman. Anger directed at bankers is anger misdirected and misunderstood. How about you? Bankers can only act within the law. And who makes the laws?

Obama could have come in on January 21, 2009 with a proposal to kill any and all bankers’ influence in American politics. He did not do that. He did a 180 and chose to invite Wall Street to run American finance policy.

That’s a choice, it’s not some sort of accident, as some prefer to believe. Thinking anything else equals selling Obama short as some sort of douche. And then the president has left all these people in place one year later.So here we are. And that’s no accident either.

Tall tales keep on emerging on Obama’s confidantes, and even if every single one were a lie, he couldn’t keep all of them at a safe distance from the presidency, neither the stories nor the people. Geithner, Summers, Rubin, Romer, Goolsbee and Volcker, by now they’re all entangled in the same web, as is the nation. And there’s no way out using the same kind of thinking, nor the same people. Some may be helpful in defining new laws, new measures, new ways to limit Wall Street influence in Washington. But those limits will necessarily be limited. That’s how Washington works. Got a newborn? Lemme break its shinbones, just in case.

If the US ever wishes to get out of its present predicament, it needs to force its representatives to do two things. Which they will never do, because having that as a platform will be so sure of a losing bet that no bookie will take your spread. Here goes, and no, I can’t believe either I’m posting this for free:

First thing that has to happen on Capitol Hill if we want to prevent the US as a country, a society, and an idea for that matter, to live on and G-d help us prosper, is this:

  1. Get business out of politics
    Joe Blow you and me will never have any say, or regain it, as long as Goldman, Cargill and GE can buy theirs. That is really all that needs to be said. The Supreme Court decision to increase corporate influence just was the icing on the cake that makes one think, in the words of Bugs: “Each people gets what they desoive”. It’s a death blow to anyone not in the inner circle having even a faint and remote say in where we’re heading, though, and that’s not what the Constitution meant to convey. But then again , once you get away with re-interpreting both Darwin and the Bible, what does the Constitution have on you?

    Humbug! Politics! Let’s get to number 2, something strangely missing from all Obama, his elves and his reindeer have said so far.

  2. Come up with a plan B
    It’s not just us having the wrong conversations either, it’s all over the planet, where people who have nice jobs, especially the government ones, refuse to take a pay cut and insist they have a right to what’s theirs even if that means others will lose their jobs. Smart. Not.

More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

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