Cool website: Sustainable China

I just came across the Sustainable China website today. While the title of the site may - for people like me - evoke images of ecosystem sustainability, of industrial sustainability, or of economic sustainability and the dystopic landscape that we (in natural resource management) often hear about, this site is actually filled with issues regarding how Chinese people in different regions of mainland China and Taiwan are associating themselves with ideas of sustainability. In other words, instead of doom-and-gloom reporting about the terrible smog in Beijing (or dead pigs floating through Shanghai, algae growth choking bays, mine tailings poisoning the waters of countless villages, day-long traffic jams, drying rivers, etc., etc.), this blog talks about how local and regional culture shapes how people interact with their landscape.

The most recent story -

green spirituality and the limits to modernityhttp://www.sustainablechina.info/2012/06/26/green-spirituality-limits-modernity/

- ties the sustainability mission to the rise and return of spirituality in the country:

In China, the quest for a sustainable future is mirrored in the “back to the future” rise of religions. For sure this is a complex phenomenon: people pray to the gods for wealth and happiness, not for a lower ecological footprint. But at the same time, Chinese religions send messages about reducing desire, non-violence to living beings, harmony with nature, and the value of balance and moderation.

In another story - religious diversity and ecological sustainability - the author posts his defense of why we - outside China - need to change our view of what a modern China is and how a modern China thinks of itself:

it is necessary to resist the simplistic construction of “New China” as exclusively “secular”, “modern”, or “materialistic.” The resurgence of religious expression in contemporary China, the attention paid to minority nationalities throughout China’s diverse environmental contexts, and the resuscitation of Confucius as supreme icon of Chinese culture together compel us to pay attention to the cultural and religious diversity of contemporary China. Doing so leads us to question the binary taxonomies of tradition / modernity, sacred / secular, rural / urban, religion / science that inform the ideology of mo- dernity, and to pay particular attention to the way their attendant ideologies and narratives serve to construct and authorize particular views of nature and environment.

I have to say that this sort of website is really useful in helping non-native scholars and activists for sustainability understand how to think of the China/Taiwan region and its people. One mantra for (ecological) sustainability is, "Think globally, act locally," and one of the most important parts of being able to accomplish the second part is to divest yourself of your previous assumptions (especially in a rapidly changing part of the world) and invest strongly in information that best informs you about the root causes and motivations of the people that you are trying to reach.

I have, myself, been interested in trying to learn what the social and personal motivations are for people entering the area of natural resource conservation. We aren't all hippy tree-huggers and we aren't also all hunters and fishers (nor do we all get along). Our personal stories are all different, but I imagine that most US citizens likely share some similar themes. Getting to those themes - especially as we move further from the environmental movement of the 1970s, when the major themes of environmentalism in the US emerged - is going to be important in maintaining relevance in natural resource conservation efforts within the US; the activists of Earth Day 1970 are (if they are still alive) 43 years older now, and their university-age counterparts were born as much as 25 years after that first Earth Day. Understanding how to connect and keep relevant the message of environmentalism and (now) sustainability will require connecting it to robust existing social structures, and I believe this is already happening.

However, that is merely "acting locally" within the context of the United States. In an increasingly globalized world that is increasingly less willing to just take social policy that we foist upon them, and one that is moving ever faster toward inescapable effects of climate change, an important aspect of creating "buy-in" to the ideas of sustainability is to learn what the cultural resonances are between the goals of sustainability and already existing social institutions. Scholars like James Miller are doing this work in China and Taiwan. Similarly motivated scholars are working on this question in various parts of the world, too.

... and I think that it's a good thing that they're doing.

Happy Valentine's Day

Although many of us will be celebrating Valentine's Day with flowers, chocolates, romantic dinners, wine, etc., do we know what the origins of this festival are? Well, one Islamic cleric seems to think that it's got something to do with a bacchanalia that surrounded Lupercalia and the subsequent death of St. Valentine which occurred later as a result of preaching against it.

Ummm... no. Although it is just Wikipedia, nothing appears to be mentioned about pairing and free sex under the Lupercalia entry at Wikipedia.

Looking, instead, to the entry for Valentine's Day, we find that its associations with romantic love have more to do with Chaucer than with the Romans (or even Pope Gelasius I, who named the day in honor of St Valentine in 496 AD). It has - obviously - evolved since the Middle Ages of England. The style of celebration of today will be completely unrecognizable by Chaucer (that is, if he even deigns to notice its celebration, what with all that he might be transfixed by all the marvels of today's world).

In the end, I hope that you celebrate Valentine's Day without overthinking about it too much:

 Via xkcd

UPDATES (Valentine's Day-related research studies): Two somewhat-of-a-stretch news releases of research tangentially related to Valentine's Day - because they deal with the topic of relationships - that were framed as being related to Valentine's Day:

Cut your Valentine some slack:

A new Northwestern University study shows that the more you believe your partner is capable of change and perceive that he or she is trying to improve, the more secure and happy you will feel in your relationship. That is true even if you think your partner could still do more to be a better partner.

"Many of us tend to under appreciate our partner's efforts to improve the relationship, simply because we do not have enough faith in those attempts," said Chin Ming Hui, the lead author of the study and a fourth-year graduate student in the department of psychology at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "When we see those efforts in a positive light, we can enjoy our relationship much more."

"A secret to building a happy relationship is to embrace the idea that your partner can change, to give him or her credit for making these types of efforts and to resist blaming him or her for not trying hard enough all of the time," Molden said.

Men are not from Mars, women are not from Venus:

Professor Mari Ruti of the Department of English and Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga has written about love for both academic and mainstream audiences. Her newest book, The Summons of Love, portrays love as a much more complex, multifaceted phenomenon than we tend to appreciate—an experience that helps us encounter the depths of human existence.

The main argument is that the image of romantic love that the self-help industry tries to sell is based on a few misconceptions. The first is the idea that love is a game with winners and losers. The second is the idea that men and women are inherently different so that to make romance work, women need to learn to read the so-called male psyche.

I argue that there is no such thing as the male psyche and I also argue that the more we try to manipulate our romantic lives, the more we think of love as a game, the less authentically we are able to love. So basically, whoever came up with the idea that love is a game destroyed its soul.

As a university professor, I teach 18- to 22-year-olds. I know from experience that their understanding of gender is a lot more fluid than what these self-help books portray.

As research for my book I read 20 to 25 self-help books. Their portrait of men in particular is really strange. Book after book tells us that men are these cave men who are wired to hunt women. They’re wired to cheat on you. They don’t understand emotions. They will forget your birthday. They’re commitment phobic. The young women I teach don’t think of men in these terms and the young men I teach don’t think of women as prey to be conquered. There’s a lot more fluidity and there’s a lot more mutual respect than these authors are suggesting. When you look at younger people you see this clearly.

 In short: relationships are not formulae with deterministic solutions (let alone a single solution). It's a big, "No duh" that hopefully we can remember while we have the candle-lit dinners with our significant others tonight - as well as the other 365 days this year (and 364 days when it's not a leap year like it is this year).

One of the best YouTube videos I have seen

A number of years ago - during the height of the "let's teach creationism in school" episode - I got a little bit into the whole world of creationism/intelligent design. (I am still reading on these topics from time to time.) However, this video seemed to speak well to me, both with the simplicity of its argumentation as well as the clarity of its imagery.

Enjoy:

"Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker"

Cycling vs. driving: which makes a faster commute?

My commute is roughly 4 miles each way, and although I don't own a car, I recently wondered which would make for a faster door-to-door commute: driving or cycling. Before I decide to rent a car or ask someone to do the drive for me, I want to estimate the difference.

My average "easy-commuting" speed (door-to-door) is about 10mph in the winter and 12mph in the summer, meaning that I get from my front door to the university in 24minutes and 20minutes, respectively. This is a total time that includes waiting for signals. My average moving speed is closer to 15mph during the winter and 18mph during the summer (meaning that if I didn't tire and I didn't have to stop, I would reach the university in 16 minutes and 13 minutes 20 seconds, respectively). However, since stop lights, stop signs, pedestrian flow, etc. exist, I will use the 24minute and 20minute figures for comparison.

Now, let's presume the fastest (legally) possible trip from my house to the University (i.e., no acceleration; one is immediately moving at the speed limit; no stops):

1. Cabin to the gate (0.4mi) can be driven at 20mph (1.2mins).
2. From the gate to Scio Ridge Road (0.9mi) is at 45mph (1.2mins).
3. From Scio Ridge to Virginia (1.3mi) is at 35mph (2.2mins)
4. From Virginia to First St (0.8mi) is at 30mph (1.6mins)
5. From First St to the Church St Parking Structure (1.0mi) is at 25mph (2.4mins)
• TOTAL: 4.4mi, 8.6minutes

However, we know that this is not a reasonable answer, since acceleration (and deceleration) occur, stop lights and stop signs exist, and we often cannot drive at the speed limit in the city due to traffic. Okay, so let's start to make this more realistic by adding in stop lights. If we assume that we will wait an average of 1 minute for each stop light, and 0.2 minute (12 seconds) for each stop sign, then we get:

1. Cabin to the gate: 1.2mins
2. Gate to Scio Ridge: 2.2mins
3. Scio Ridge to Virginia: 4.2mins
4. Virginia to First St: 2.8mins
5. First St to Church Street Parking: 9.2mins
• TOTAL: 19.6minutes

Already, the amount of time spent due to stop lights and stop signs brings this a lot closer to my summer travel time of 20 minutes! And we didn't even take acceleration into account. However, what is the average acceleration of a typical car? Well, according to hypertextbook.com, it's somewhere between 3m/s/s and 4m/s/s. Let's be generous and use the example with the higher acceleration (something like the 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT). Now, we need an equation, something from elementary physics. Something like:

v = at + u

t = (v - u)/a

where t is the amount of time (in seconds), v is the final velocity (the speed limit, converted to meters/sec), u is the starting velocity (0m/s at stops, the previous speed at transitions), and a is the constant acceleration (4m/s/s). This will give us the time that it takes to reach the speed limit. Then we can find the distance it traveled over that acceleration time:

s = ((v + u)/2)t

where s is the distance traveled (in meters). The remaining distance will be traveled at the speed limit. (Stopping will be calculated in a similar fashion, and will assume 15fps (~4.6m/s/s). Now, running it through Excel (and adding all the stops), we get:

1. Cabin to the gate: 1.21min
2. Gate to Scio Ridge: 2.33min
3. Scio Ridge to Virginia: 4.25min
4. Virginia to First St: 2.73min
5. First St to Church St Parking Structure: 9.97min
• Total: 20.49minutes

Already it's on par with my average summer cycling commute time. And this is considering maximum acceleration and deceleration of a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT (i.e., stomps on the brake at each stop and floors it after each stop). If we assumed a more conservative driver, and take only 2/3 of the maximum acceleration and deceleration (still a bit of a lead foot, though), we get:

1. Cabin to the gate: 1.22min
2. Gate to Scio Ridge: 2.38min
3. Scio Ridge to Virginia: 4.30min
4. Virginia to First St: 2.79min
5. First St. to Church Street Parking Structure: 10.19min
• Total: 20.88minutes

Not much of a change in travel time (about 24seconds of difference if you don't have such a heavy foot). However, this doesn't take into account the additional time needed to find a parking spot (about 4 minutes) and to walk to the department building from the car (about 5 minutes), increasing the time to almost 30 minutes. If we add in things like waiting in traffic (the above calculations assume that you're the only car stopping at the stop lights and the only one stopping for the stop signs), and you can likely add another 2-5 minutes to the estimate.

In the end, using simple physics and reasoning, we can determine a few things:

1. It would take about 30 minutes to get from the cabin to my department using a car.
2. Driving at reckless acceleration and deceleration wouldn't really help reduce this figure.
3. Using a bike gives me 25 minutes of exercise in the morning (and about 30 minutes of exercise in the evening for my return trip), which I wouldn't get by driving, and would therefore need to spend at the gym as additional time.

Therefore, in addition to the points about cost that I mentioned earlier, riding a bike is, for me, a good way to travel for me. Still, I don't think that I'll be spending THIS much time on my bike:

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

UPDATE (4/11/2012): I took a quick drive to and from my house (via Zipcar), and on my way back, I actually clocked the driving time, which turned out to be 13 minutes (caught lots of green lights, and parked at a lot west of campus, meaning that I didn't have to drive through campus), followed by 10 minutes of walking from the parking lot back to my office. In contrast, my bike commute time that morning was 22 minutes.

Seeing is believing. However what you see isn't always what actually happens.

They say that "Seeing is believing," and it's a fundamental basis of a lot of science. Of course, "seeing" in a scientific sense doesn't always mean, "with your eyes," but can include doing statistical analysis on results, using objective measuring devices, using standard protocols, etc. Of course, we know (or ought to know) that the human eye isn't perfect, and that we can be tricked by having what we see manipulated by someone. Stage magic is a famous example of this perception manipulation.

However, according to new research from the University of Queensland (via MedicalXPpress), we learn that people's perceptions about their team's actions (see? a perfect topic for Super Bowl Sunday!) are unconsciously biased:

Lead researcher Dr Pascal Molenberghs said results showed the brain responded differently when people saw actions of their team members compared to the opposing side, but that this was not as simple as a bias in opinion.

“Our study found that people quickly identified with their group and that they consistently judged their own team's actions as being a fraction of a second faster than those of non-team members, when in reality the actions were identical,” Dr Molenberghs said.

Furthermore, this unconscious effect of biasing one's own team members' actions as better (or in this case faster) than the other team members' actions has serious repercussions on how one reacts to decisions made "against" one's own team:

“It's not simply that we decide to favour the actions of our team because we think they are the best. Rather, because we feel an affiliation with the team, our brain processes the actions of own team members more favourably.

“So next time you think an umpire has made an unfair call against your team, bear in mind that your team allegiance could be affecting the way your brain is processing what you saw.”

And this has further implications outside of sports:

“Our findings could help explain discrimination between all kinds of groups - including those of race, gender and nationality - because our study suggests that we see the actions of non-group members differently and what we see is what we believe.”

The evidence for this is known to exist: we see it every day when we point out hypocrisies that people hold about members of an "out group" compared to the actions of the "in group." Perhaps it's described as a parent being "blind" to the bad actions of the child. Research has shown, too, that many people (at least in the US) approach politics like sports: aligning with a team and having their team duke it out with the other team. This research shows that unconscious bias will play a role in the interpretation of actions of those who aren't on "your team" or aren't supporters of "your team."

Finally, remember, just because you believe that your team did something right and that the umpire's/referee's call against your team is wrong, your mind might be tricking your thoughts to see what you want to see. (Hopefully, though, the Superbowl - and other sporting events - doesn't fall to bad calls.)

What happens to winter sports if winter doesn't come?

By New Year of 2010, Vancouver had built its Olympic village. It had built its courses and tracks. However, there was one major missing ingredient for a good Winter Olympics: snow. This had been a problem in 1998, when Nagano - known in Japan for having snow - was running ever-closer to the start of the Olympics without enough powder to actually make it worthwhile. Both times, Olympic organizers were biting their nails (or perhaps had already gotten to gnawing on the skin) when - luckily - their major venture was saved by the timely arrival of the snow. In both cases, the countries were feeling the effects of El Nino (aka ENSO), when precipitation patterns shift and global temperatures rise. Indeed, the fact that it was an El Nino year was pointed out each time, not as an excuse for the weather, but as a frustrating explanation as to why snow-machines might have to be called in to do the heavy lifting (and I remember some punditry about whether this would help or hinder the various outdoor events).

This winter (2011/2012) is taking place during a La Nina (when global temperatures drop), although you wouldn't know it if you were experiencing winter in much of the United States in 2012, especially in the northeast. While the normal trend of La Nina is to have temperatures that are slightly cooler than the surrounding years (save for 1999 and 2000, which witnessed back-to-back La Nina years), this part of the world has seen record warm-spells. To look at the current condition of the US winter of 2012:

For the Lower 48, January was the third-least snowy on record, according to the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. Records for the amount of ground covered by snow go back to 1967.

Forget snow, for much of the country there's not even a nip in the air. On Tuesday, the last day in January, all but a handful of states had temperatures in the 50s or higher. In Washington, DC, where temperatures flirted with the 70s, some cherry trees are already budding -weeks early.

However, this condition of no snow is only within the "Lower 48":

Valdez, Alaska, has had 328 inches of snow this season - 10 feet above average - and the state is frigid, with Yukon hitting a record 66 below zero over the weekend.

Nearly 80 people have died from a vicious cold snap in Europe, and much of Asia has been blanketed with snow. This January has been the ninth snowiest since 1966 for Europe and Asia, though for the entire northern hemisphere, it's been about average for snow this season.

The weather is so cold that some areas of the Black Sea have frozen near the Romanian coastline, and rare snowfalls have occurred on islands in the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. Ukraine alone has reported 43 fatalities, many of the victims homeless people found dead on streets.

Why is this the case? Because of the unexpected interaction between two north-latitude oscillations:

The reason is changes in Arctic winds that are redirecting snow and cold. Instead of dipping down low, the jet stream winds that normally bring cold and snow south got trapped up north. It's called the Arctic Oscillation. Think of it as a cousin to the famous El Nino.

When the Arctic Oscillation is in a positive phase, the winds spin fast in the Arctic keeping the cold north. But in the past few days, the Arctic Oscillation turned negative, though not in its normal way, Halpert said. The cold jet stream dipped in Europe and Asia, but is still bottled up over North America.

That's because another weather phenomena, called the North Atlantic Oscillation is playing oddball by staying positive and keeping the cold away from the rest of North America. About 90 percent of the time, the North Atlantic and Arctic oscillations are in synch, Halpert said. But not this time, so much of the United States is escaping the winter's worst.

In other words, this warm weather is only really being felt in the "lower 48" states of the US, whereas Europe and Asia are far colder than normal. Furthermore, although the explanation for these causes of a lack of winter in much of the populated areas of North America can be made, it cannot be predicted, especially not when the decision of hosting city is made years in advance.

What if - for example - this were a Winter Olympic year, and the Olympics were scheduled to be in Morristown, Vermont (a state where skiing is normally a major part of winter tourism)? What would that town be doing to take care of not just a lack of snow but also temperatures ~10F (~5C) above freezing? Snow-making machines won't cut it (at least it was below freezing in the snow-less weeks leading up to the Nagano and Vancouver games). Would the games be cancelled - save for the indoor events? Postponed? Who would pay for the incurred costs? What about refunding the ticket sales? It will be far more disappointing to a far greater audience if something like what happened to the Red Bull Linecatcher event in France that was supposed to happen on January 11-18, 2012:

Just four days before the Red Bull Linecatcher was scheduled to begin in France, the event has been canceled due to unfavorable weather in France's Vars region. The event, which had a strong lineup of international athletes scheduled to arrive, was due to be held from Jan. 11-18.

"I feel ashamed to have to give you this news, but we are having really unfavorable weather in Vars right now," said Red Bull organizer Jean-Robert Bellanger. Rushed meetings had been held with the Vars safety guides and tourism office and with a heavy heart, Bellanger was forced to cancel the competition at this late date. "In Vars right now there is just not enough snow that has settled on the Eyssina Face. With sunshine and high temperatures ready to set in this week the decision was made that it would be too dangerous for the skiers."

There was a rumor of a potential change of location, but that was quickly put to rest by Bellanger. "There's just too much that has gone into this location, it's just not possible to change the resort at such a late date," he said.

This news comes as an additional blow to the ski industry, at a time where many American resorts are struggling to get their seasons underway. Europe's winter is off to a slightly better start, with much of eastern Switzerland and Austria getting snow, and resorts like St. Anton currently on hold due to too much snow.

This sort of question made me wonder what the major winter sports organizations are doing to talk about the problems that variable climatic conditions and (by extension) climate change will have on the pursuit (and investment in) their sports. Does the IOC have a position about climate change? Well, there is this report, put out in the lead-up to Vancouver, which seems to focus mostly on the Vancouver games and not on strategies for the IOC in general. Most of the search results for "climate change" and "global warming" on the www.olympics.org page are written for or before the Vancouver Olympic games. Worrying.

What about the Winter X-Games? Luckily, Aspen, CO had enough snow to permit the go-ahead of the 2012 X-Games, but if they had been - like in the example above - held in the Appalachians, a greater spotlight would likely have been put on how a combination of a lack of snow and high temperatures will kill international winter sporting competitions.

Who knows, though? Perhaps winter sports will all follow the lead that was taken by skating sports (and curling) and move indoors. Perhaps, then Dubai - with its indoor ski facilities - will be able to host a Winter Olympics... Dubai 2100 anyone?

Answering a religious birther's mad spoutings

I was reminded that Birthers still exist, and they occasionally spout silly statements about the eligibility of President Obama to actually be POTUS. I was reminded of this when reading an entry from Dispatches from the Culture Wars. I'm going to use the same blockquote of the interview transcript from Titus that was used there (important parts in bolded by me):

Titus: What’s important is to realize that being a natural born citizen is based upon the law of nature. Any natural law is based on a law of nature which is revealed by God. And the notion is that no one is accidentally born in any particular nation to any particular parent. You’re not born by accident, you’re born by design. And who’s the designer? Well, God’s the designer. So if you’re born of two parents, that is a mother and father, who are of the same citizenship, then you have been ordained by God to be a citizen of the nation of your parents. That’s why he’s a natural born citizen. So, there’s a design in this that goes all the way back to scriptural principles.


Schneider: Dr. Titus, when this issue has come up time and time again to either the president or his press secretary, they are now referring to the long-form birth certificate that they released in 2011. In your opinion, does the presentation of this long-form certificate, as they have given it and said, ‘See, there’s the evidence,’ in your opinion does this satisfy the matter?


Titus: Well, I think it does if your definition of natural born citizen is that the parents have to be citizens of the United States. Because the form that was produced by the Obama administration indicates that his father was not an American citizen. Where people said, where race usually you put ‘black’ but it has ‘African.’ Well, it shows that he had a national citizenship that was not the United States. So, you don’t need anything more than the evidence that’s already been furnished by the Obama administration themselves. You don’t have to go behind it, you don’t have to determine whether it’s a fraudulent certificate. It says it on its face.


…


Titus: The people have a responsibility here to make sure that the Constitution is followed as it is written. I mean, if people don’t like the natural born citizen requirement, then they can amend the Constitution. I think in this particular case, it demonstrates why the natural born citizen requirement is so important, because I think this president does have a divided loyalty. I think he is more loyal to his African father than he is to the American nation, and I think that’s been well-documented.

Ed - and the commentators there - did a good job of debunking (and mocking) these claims. However, no commentator actually pointed to the US Code that says what accounts for being a citizen at birth. The US Code is "a compilation and codification of the general and permanent laws of the United States." Titus (and all Americans who want to know about what the law actually is) should go to United States Code TITLE 8 > CHAPTER 12 > SUBCHAPTER III > Part I > § 1401, which deals with: “NATIONALS AND CITIZENS OF UNITED STATES AT BIRTH”

Obama fits the requirements for “Citizen of the US at birth” under category (A): “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” He was born in Hawaii, which meets the requirement.

If you don’t believe (for whatever silly reason) that he was born in the United States or a US outlying possession (hello Titus and other birthers!), then he is still Citizen of the US at birth under category (G): “(g) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years” His mother was a citizen of the US. She was living in the US for a continuous period of MORE than two years – all of which were after attaining the age of 14 – before she would have gone to Kenya or somewhere else to give birth to her son. (NOTE: According to commentator "slc1", the US Code changed after Obama was born. It was previously a 5-year requirement, and this got changed to the 2-year requirement that I quote above. However, I can't find a version of the US Code that was in force in 1961 - when Obama was born - and the Office of the Law Revision Council's website on "Prior U.S. Code" only goes back to 1988.)

The only way that President Obama couldn’t be Citizen of the US at birth is if he wasn’t born in Hawaii (which he was) AND his mother wasn’t actually Ann Dunham (which she was) OR that Ann Dunham didn’t live for a total of two years in the United States after reaching 14 years of age and before she gave birth to Barack Obama (which would have been a trick for her to have all the US university education that she finished when Barack was born). In other words, the argument against President Obama being a Citizen of the United States at birth are logically warrantless.

Yes, yes, I know that “Citizen of the United States at birth” is not the same thing as “natural born citizen,” but it’s the closest thing that matches and it’s the thing that was used to justify George Romney’s citizenship requirement as well as John McCain’s citizenship requirement. (Both of these white Republican presidential candidates were born outside of the United States – Romney in Mexico and McCain in the Panama Canal Zone.) [UPDATE: An anonymous commentator below pointed me to an entry at Tan Horizons that shows the Wong v Ark case as an example "that the majority opinion in Wong did in fact bring up Article II section 1, and that 19th century judges tended to use “natural-born” and “native-born” interchangeably."]

Furthermore, since the US Code is the codification of the general and permanent federal laws of the United States, it is the closest legal definition for "natural born citizen" that we have. For people who argue against this point (saying, for example that it's not the Constitution), I would just say that - following their logic - most (if not all) of the US Code isn't in the Constitution, and therefore, arguments they might make about federal regulation over things like drugs (under Title 21), labor (under Title 29), phones (under Title 47), and other things that the founding fathers didn't conceive of are similarly invalid under their argumentation.

Additionally, contrary to Titus' argument that "natural law" requires that both parents need to be of the same citizenship, we have had presidents whose one parent wasn’t an American citizen: Thomas Jefferson (English mother), James Buchanan (Irish father), Chester Arthur (Irish father), Woodrow Wilson (English mother) and Herbert Hoover (Canadian mother). Therefore, Titus’ argument of “if you’re born of two parents, that is a mother and father, who are of the same citizenship, then you have been ordained by God to be a citizen of the nation of your parents” is historically unfounded. Maybe, though, Titus is really annoyed that Jefferson, Buchanan, Arthur, Wilson, and Hoover were allowed to be president, after all, he is saying that his definition of "natural born citizen" means that both parents need to be American.

We’ve even had a president with two immigrant parents: Andrew Jackson (which also goes against Titus' position that both parents need to be American).

Of course, Titus is using a Christian definition of "natural law"; which is something that I don't understand, since it deals mostly with metaphysical (i.e., NOT natural) things, and actually has changed a lot over time. However, someone should point out to him that Christianist natural law and the natural law of American jurisprudence aren't the same thing! With that in mind, the Christianist natural law definition has as much justifiable use in this argumentation as claiming that "natural born citizen" means a citizen that was parturated using natural childbirth, which would mean that the founding fathers actually didn't want anyone born via c-section.

Obviously, this meaning of "natural born citizen" is not what the founding fathers meant, but if Titus is going to misappropriate the term "natural" to fit his biases, then why not put forward something that holds just as well (i.e., only to a strained reading of the definition). What the founding fathers arguably argued for under "natural law" and a "Nature's God" that is akin to Spinoza's god, since Jefferson's writings do seem to align with Spinoza's. As written in "Negri on Spinoza":

Before starting to discuss Negri on Spinoza's political and legal philosophy, I would like, in passing to draw your attention to an aspect of the influence of Spinoza's political philosophy which has not yet found the interest it deserves: the influence he had during the founding period of the Constitution of the United States. As Guiseppa Saccaro Battisti has shown, there were three books of Spinoza's in Thomas Jefferson's library - the Opera Posthuma, the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, which Jefferson himself "ordered from Paris in 1792 (Saccaro Battisti, p. 1), and the English translation of that same work dating from 1789. Besides the reflections on the different forms of government or constitution in the Tractatus Politicus, especially on a federalist form of the state ... special attention has to be given to Spinoza's theory of civil religion ... as the secular complement of positive religion. While positive religion, because of its inherent particularism, divides people, civil religion is, according to Spinoza in the TTP, the necessary medium of political integration on the level of imagination - imagination being the level on which collective political thought is effective. The religious pluralism of the founding period of the United States demanded such a unifying religiously founded common belief, and as far as I can see, it is Spinoza's theory of civil religion that inspired the Founding Fathers, especially Jefferson, to push forward this concept.

Ergo (working back through the argumentation presented above): The founding fathers (at least Jefferson, who was heavily influential in the writing of the founding documents) believed in a "natural law" that was quite divorced from that of Titus. Therefore, Titus' definition of "natural" is very likely not that of the founding fathers. Therefore, Titus' extrapolations from his definition are likely wrong.

Next, Titus' argument that - under his definition of natural law - both parents must be US citizens for the children to be "natural born citizens" is proven incorrect, since we have had six presidents with at least one non-US parent. Therefore, Titus' arguments for the definition of "natural law" are not historically founded.

Next, the US Code is the codification of the federal laws of the United States. As such, it provides the closest thing to getting to the definition of "natural born citizen", at least until SCOTUS rules on it or a constitutional amendment is written on it. Therefore, ignoring the US Code is not very rational.

Next, looking at the pertinent US Code, we find that President Obama would be a Citizen of the United States at Birth under requirement G of the appropriate code even if he had been born outside of the United States. Therefore, birthers' standard argument that Obama wasn't born in the US, and is therefore ineligible to be POTUS, doesn't comport with the US code. In fact, the only way that Obama wouldn't be a Citizen of the United States at Birth would be if a foreign woman - not Ann Dunham - was his mother OR if Ann Dunham didn't live for a total of 2 years between 1956 (when she turned 14) and 1961 (when Obama was born). In other words, birthers' arguments don't hold any legal water. (NOTE: If slc1's point about it being a 5-year requirement in 1961 is accurate, then this would provide a means to challenge his Citizen of the United States at Birth status, only if it can be proven that the State of Hawaii as well as local newspapers lied about Obama's being born in Hawaii.)

Next, looking at the same US Code we find that President Obama - who was born in the state of Hawaii - is a Citizen of the United States at Birth under requirement A of the appropriate code. Therefore, Titus' argument that both parents need to be US citizens is legally incorrect.

Bottom line: Obama is a Citizen of the United States at Birth according to the US Code, and Titus' Christianist mumbo-jumbo is an invalid metric.

Groundhog Day explained

For those of you for whom "Groundhog Day" only means a rather humorous Bill Murray film.

Via CGPGrey:

Captcha! Story

A short story that makes rather fun use of the random Captcha words that we often see online.

Captcha from Gabrielle de Vietri on Vimeo.

Via The Dish.

Listening to the story and watching the Captcha images (to confirm the nonsense word is actually a nonsense Captcha-generated word), it's interesting to cogitate upon the "flavor" of the word - how the author uses these words to so perfectly color and enliven the text of the story. Just like Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," this one makes good synaesthetic use of the words to convey the feeling of what things are:

The redlemutes shuffled along silently. The mouthless creatures had no language, but desmodowe could tell they were sending vibes to each other in conspeali. He knew that if they conspealed too loud, they would awake the terrible manackboar, who would be sent into a frenzy by the rustiant scrape of the acithidoid's frequency, but that was the least of their worries..."

Lines like this - although lacking the tradition that time imparts to resilient works of art - are so much like those found in Carroll's poem:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Linking this to Synaesthesia
All this reminds me of the lessons that I learned waaay back in undergrad basic psychology about the fact that we all share some basic level of synaesthesia (yes, I'm using the British spelling, since that's how I learned it in the first place, and my fingers prefer to spell it that way on the keyboard).

We find it easy to read a colored word when the word and the color match:

RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE

but difficult when it's colored a different color than the word

PURPLE, BLUE, YELLOW, GREEN, RED, ORANGE

We also share the "Bouba/Kiki Effect" in which people are given the nonsense names "Bouba" and "Kiki" (apologies to anyone names Bouba and Kiki) and told to assign the names to two blobs, one of which is angular and one that is rounded:

Even cross-culturally (based on a 2001 study between American and Tamil college students), almost all assigned "Kiki" to the angular blob and "Bouba" to the rounded blog.

While I don't know what a manackboar looks like, the fact that it's colored blue makes me think of a manackboar that has not yet become frenzied (since I associate blue with calm). Analogously, the term conspeali, being written in bold red makes me think that it's somehow dangerous (since I also associate red with danger). In short, watching the story play out with the colors and nonsense words in context makes this story (and this is only the first chapter) an interesting one for the senses.

The problem with intelligence in science fiction

As a closing question in an interview with Tim Maudlin, there was this question (and response):

I recently came across a paper about Fermi's Paradox and Self-Replicating Probes, and while it had kind of a science fiction tone to it, it occurred to me as I was reading it that philosophers might be uniquely suited to speculating about, or at least evaluating the probabilistic arguments for the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. Do you expect philosophers of cosmology to enter into those debates, or will the discipline confine itself to issues that emerge directly from physics?

Maudlin: This is really a physical question. If you think of life, of intelligent life, it is, among other things, a physical phenomenon -- it occurs when the physical conditions are right. And so the question of how likely it is that life will emerge, and how frequently it will emerge, does connect up to physics, and does connect up to cosmology, because when you're asking how likely it is thatsomewhere there's life, you're talking about the broad scope of the physical universe. And philosophers do tend to be pretty well schooled in certain kinds of probabilistic analysis, and so it may come up. I wouldn't rule it in or rule it out.

I will make one comment about these kinds of arguments which seems to me to somehow have eluded everyone. When people make these probabilistic equations, like the Drake Equation, which you're familiar with -- they introduce variables for the frequency of earth-like planets, for the evolution of life on those planets, and so on. The question remains as to how often, after life evolves, you'll have intelligent life capable of making technology. What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don't know.

Cultural calendars and global warming

From PhysOrg comes a news blurb about mapping climatic changes to the Chinese "cultural calendar" of the 24 solar terms. According to Wikipedia's entry (because the description on the PhysOrg blurb wasn't too enlightening) on solar terms:

A solar term is any of 24 points in traditional East Asian lunisolar calendars that matches a particular astronomical event or signifies some natural phenomenon. The points are spaced 15° apart along the ecliptic and are used by lunisolar calendars to stay synchronized with the seasons....

Because the Sun's speed along the ecliptic varies depending on the Earth-Sun distance, the number of days that it takes the Sun to travel between each pair of solar terms varies slightly throughout the year. Each solar term is divided into three pentads (候 hou). Each pentad consists of five days (rarely six), so there are 72 pentads in a year.

These solar terms have been given names of what is expected to occur during that period (e.g.,"awakening of insects", usually beginning around March 5 or "major heat", usually beginning around July 23). As such, these names serve a social use as well - mainly to provide agricultural cues. Provided that the climate remains stable, these cues - barring annual variations - provide a useful "farmer's almanac." Indeed, given the assumptions of the use over 2000 years in China, the 24 solar terms likely became divorced from the actual position of the sun and became more of a description of the expected climatic conditions at certain periods throughout the year.

However, the climate has not remained stable, and in an interesting combination of combining a cultural calendar with climatic measurements, a new paper has been published that shows how - in China - the 24 solar terms have changed in character. First, though, the researchers had to convert solar periods into correlative temperature ranges (in order to make the climate change comparisons). That done, this is what they found:

According to these results, the timings of the climatic Solar Terms during the warming phase (around spring) of the seasonal cycle have significantly advanced (by 6-15 days) from the 1960s to the present.

Across China, timings during the cooling phase (around autumn) have delayed by 5-6 days on average. This is mainly because of a warming shift of the entire seasonal temperature cycle, as illustrated in the figure. Four particular phenology-related climatic Solar Terms, namely the Waking of Insects, Pure Brightness, Grain Full, and Grain in Ear, have advanced almost everywhere in the country (as much as 20 days in North China). This has important implications for agricultural planning. The numbers of extremely cold (Great Cold) days decreased by 56.8% over the last 10 years as compared with the 1960s, whereas those of extremely hot (Great Heat) days increased by 81.4%.

Graph from Qian et al (2012). Caption from the paper reads: "Climatological mean ALCs (seasonal cycles) of the China mean temperature for the earliest 10 years (blue line) and for the latest 10 years (red line). Dashed lines indicate the temperature thresholds for the 24 Solar Terms"

One reason why I find this so interesting is that this is the sort of thing that represents an important step in disseminating information about climate change to the public, using cultural vehicles that they know, understand, and are familiar with. Too often, a lot of the cutting-edge science and its critical findings are written in a way that requires a mess of cultural decoding. Often, too, it takes the implicit assumption of the Western world: marking (in this case) the calendar into the 12 months (which - themselves - were rather arbitrarily set way back when) that are commonly used in the West, but may rarely be used so intuitively outside of cities in the rest of the world. Although this article refers to China, the 24 solar terms are used throughout East Asia, and they still mark major celebration points in the Japanese calendar. In other words, this paper's findings speaks in the calendar language that is understood by upwards of 1.6 billion people (i.e., the combined population of China, Taiwan, North and South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam).

The paper, "Climatic changes in the Twenty-four Solar Terms during 1960–2008", can be found here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/g0264r7102x18844/

Hostess on the Nutrition Grade: An exercise in linguistic obfuscation?

I was curious about the amount of calories in a Hostess Twinkie. Turns out that it's 150 calories per Twinkie - which is a lot of calories, but how does it break down?

• Calories: 150
• Calories from fat: 41
• Total Fat: 4.5g (7%)
• Saturated Fat: 2.5g (13%)
• Trans Fat: 0.0g 
• Cholesterol: 20mg (7%)
• Sodium: 220mg (9%)
• Total Carbohydrate: 27.0g (9%)
• Sugars: 18.0g
• Protein: 1.0g
• Vitamin A: 0%
• Vitamin C: 0%
• Calcium: 0%
• Iron: 2%

Woah... And that's all based on a 2000 calorie diet. A 2000 calorie diet - according to this calorie calculator - shows that - for a 34-year-old, 5'4", 164lb. female (the average American female's height and weight) is maintenance weight for those who engage in exercise 3 times per week. (Well... the maintenance caloric intake is actually 1967 calories, and not 2000 calories.) For this woman to be be in the "fat loss" category with ~2000 calories/day, she would need to do intense exercise every day or (not-intense) exercise twice per day (1974 calories/day). This is a lot of physical activity to engage in for one Twinkie to be relatively insignificant.

For a 34-year-old, 5'9", 191lb. male (the average American male), his maintenance caloric intake with little or no exercise is 1959 calories (41 calories less than the 2000 calorie diet); at 3 exercise times/week means a maintenance caloric intake of 2245 calories per day. In order for this male to be in the "fat loss" category with ~2000 calories/day, he would need to do intense exercise five times per week (2024 calories/day). Although not as much as for the average female, it is still a significant amount of activity to engage in for that Twinkie to be relatively insignificant.

In other words, it's not surprising that the Twinkie is given a Nutrition Grade of "F". I had never heard of a "Nutrition Grade", but here is what Hostess says on its page:

The Nutrition Grade was developed with the goal of helping people improve the nutritional quality of their diets. This tool is fully automated and does not feature any manual corrections - hence all items are evaluated objectively and following the same set of rules.

As you may know, not all nutrients are equally good for you. Some of them, like cholesterol, sodium, and saturated fats should be avoided as much as possible. Some other ones, however, such as minerals and vitamins, are essential for your health. Thankfully, the USDA devised the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) figures for each one of these nutrients, which were used as the foundation of the Nutrition Grade's algorithm.

Obviously, foods rich in minerals and vitamins are graded highly, and their good points are all listed right next to their grade. Undesirable nutrients contribute to the bad points. Even though the USDA does provide RDA values for these nutrients, these values must be understood differently from those for the desirable nutrients; the undesirable RDAs should be viewed as the very last limit, whereas the desirable RDAs mark a target to shoot for.

The Good and the Bad Points provide a summary of what the Nutrition Grade identifies as the food items' special strengths and weaknesses. Those points are then converted to a numerical format, and then finally turned into the well-known letter format (A-best; F-worst).

Wow, look at that language: it scores a lot of the big points in terms of power words: "fully automated", "objective", "same set of rules", and "algorithm". These terms make everything sound really fair and scientific and wonderful for those ways - in that SCIENCE is a thing to help you out.

However, look at how the description of nutrition grade continues:

No automated tool is perfect, and the same is true for this one. Please understand that Nutrition Grade only checks how close or far away a certain food is in respect to your RDAs. There are many more aspects that need to be considered for Health, and this is only one of them.

Wow, after saying all of those good things about how "objective" it is calculated, how "fully automated" it is, using the "same set of rules" in its "algorithm", Hostess' page is now pointing out that all of these points - which were (arguably) given in a good light in the opening paragraphs, are now described with their negative qualities. It's interesting to see how the language is now changing into the, "Yes, but..." framing. But it gets better in the final paragraph:

Finally, Nutrition Grade will not necessarily help you lose weight. It will, hopefully, help you get it done as healthy as possible, but you could, for example, eat only perfectly graded food items and still end up gaining weight. Weight loss is all about counting calories and it is not necessarily related to health - but health and weight loss are also not mutually exclusive. In other words, you should keep an eye on your calories, and at the same time, also try to get as good a grade as you can.

Wow, talk about equivocation! Let's interpret the words here:

Finally, Nutrition Grade will not necessarily help you lose weight. It will, hopefully, help you get it done as healthily as possible, but - as a company that produces cheap sweet snacks that aren't going to help you lose weight we are going to tell you that - you could still end up gaining weight - especially if you eat grade-A foods to excess. Weight loss is all about counting calories and it is not necessarily related to health - even though we just tried to put a sliver of doubt into your mind my pointing out that it is possible to eat healthy foods and still not lose weight - but health and weight loss are also not mutually exclusive. (Hopefully, that was overly obfuscatory.) In other words, you should keep an eye on your calories, and at the same time, also try to get as good a grade as you can (so: eat our products, but also eat some fruit).

Talk about an interesting use of language to try and put a shine on the low-nutritional quality products that this company produces without actually saying anything untrue nor saying things in such an abstruse manner that it's incomprehensible.

On the one hand, they are saying that, yes, you could eat only foods with a nutrition grade of A and still gain weight, and (probably since - as a mass producer of cheap sweets - Hostess' products aren't likely to get the A-grade) weight loss is effectively about calorie counting, but that weight loss isn't all about health. But then... if you're eating lots of Twinkies, then you're probably in a bad way anyway.

Censorship on Wikipedia and Google

Today, if you go to the main page on Google.com, you will see this:

At the same time, if you go to any page on the English Wikipedia pages, you will see this:

Why the censorship Google banner and (English) Wikipedia black-out? Well, according to (English) Wikipedia's only working page (at least for today):

Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia. Instead, you will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, encouraging you to share your views with your representatives, and with each other on social media.

And just what are SOPA and PIPA? (Other than innocuous-sounding pseudonyms?)

SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA is short for the "Stop Online Piracy Act," and PIPA is an acronym for the "Protect IP Act." ("IP" stands for "intellectual property.") In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet. Detailed information about these bills can be found in the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act articles on Wikipedia, which are available during the blackout. GovTrack lets you follow both bills through the legislative process: SOPA on this page, and PIPA on this one. The EFF has summarized why these bills are simply unacceptable in a world that values an open, secure, and free Internet.

So, why the blackout?

Why? SOPA and PIPA are badly drafted legislation that won't be effective at their stated goal (to stop copyright infringement), and will cause serious damage to the free and open Internet. They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn't being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines. And, SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

You can still access (English) Wikipedia (check out the technical FAQ page), you can still do so. Otherwise, log in to Wikipedia in any other language that you can speak, because these pages aren't blacked out today. For example, the (Spanish) Wikipedia page looks like this:

Unlike Google, which offers search engines for most countries (and isn't sporting the censored Google logo there), Wikipedia has their content organized by language. Therefore, a lot of people in other English-speaking countries, will get to be exposed to a bit (more) of what's happening in the American political landscape. To the rest of the English-Wikipedia-by-default-using world, I hope you agree that SOPA and PIPA are not things that will help you continue to enjoy (and use, even if you don't enjoy them) the content of sites like Wikipedia that we have all come to accept as an expected part of the Interwebs landscape. If SOPA and PIPA do go into effect, it might well have an effect in your neck of the woods; another example (perhaps to you) of American-style imperialism hitting home. (Of course, some - like in India - might say that unfettered Interwebs use is itself a form of American-style imperialism hitting home, but any major change that happens with content use and access online that comes from the US will - presently - have major direct impacts throughout the English-using world as well as much of the non-English-using world.)

The world will END in 2012 (or at least a calendar will end)

No doubt that many people in the world (at least in the West) are going to get hyped up over the end of the world that is - according to some people - going to happen in 2012. Already there was the blockbuster (and hilariously crazy) 2012, and there is the film The Darkest Hour (which is also another end-of-the-world story). Way back in 2004, there was The Day after Tomorrow (a climate-change-will-end-the-world story), but that wasn't so much tied into the 2012 fanaticism that has more recently come about.

The Mayans seem to be taking most of the brunt of this frenzy, with many people pointing to them as prophesying the end of the world in 2012. However, what is this based on? Apparently it's a bunch of half-truths and poor understandings that are rooted in (what appears to me) a rock-hard belief in the power of numbers and that great social construction (originally meant to predict celestial events): the calendar.

So what, then, should we know about the Mayan long count calendar that makes 2012 so worrisome (or not so worrisome)? Well, (if we can trust Wikipedia as a source on the facts about what the calendar is):

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) and base-18 calendar used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar.[n 1] The Long Count calendar was widely used on monuments.

The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from a starting date that is generally calculated to be August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6 in the Julian calendar (or −3113 in astronomical year numbering). There has been much debate over the precise correlation between the Western calendars and the Long Count calendars. The August 11 date is based on the GMT correlation (see Correlations between Western calendars and the Long Count calendar section elsewhere in this article for details on correlations).

The completion of 13 b'ak'tuns (August 11, 3114 BCE) marks the Creation of the world of human beings according to the Maya. On this day, Raised-up-Sky-Lord caused three stones to be set by associated gods at Lying-Down-Sky, First-Three-Stone-Place. Because the sky still lay on the primordial sea, it was black. The setting of the three stones centered the cosmos which allowed the sky to be raised, revealing the sun.[1]

Rather than using a base-10 scheme, like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a base-20 and base-18 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. The Long Count is not consistently base-20, however, since the second digit from the right rolls over to zero when it reaches 18. Thus 0.0.1.0.0 does not represent 400 days, but rather only 360 days.

Okay, so what, though? Well, a b'ak'tun is equivalent to 144,000 days, roughly 394.3 solar years, and (according to the Mayans) it took 13 b'ak'tuns to create the world (way back on August 11, 3114 BCE), and thus started the beginning of the current human period. December 20, 2012 is the completion of 13 b'ak'tuns since the beginning of the current period, which means...

... about as much as it does when you took down your 2011 calendar and put up your 2012 calendar. (Or, if you are like me, you realized that you still had a 2008 wall calendar and you replaced that one with a new 2012 calendar.) Or, if you believe in the writings of the Popol Vuh, this date holds some level of significance (but only in that it is the start of the 14th b'ak'tun in 2012, and it took as many b'ak'tuns for the gods to get it right in the first case):

According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.[33] The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous creation ended at the start of a 14th b'ak'tun.

Of course, all this requires that you also believe that the Mayan gods (or the gods that the Mayans came to worship) are somehow going to come back and re-make the world at the end of 2012. If you believe in another set of gods, believing that the end of the world will occur on December 20, 2012 seems to me to make you at least somewhat accepting of gods that don't belong in your theism. (Whether this is equivalent to apostasy is up to you or your religion, though.) If you don't believe in any set of gods, then this is just a bunch of bunkum. And if you do believe in the Mayan gods, then this is problematic... or is it?

After all, there isn't any actual written prophesy that the Mayan gods will wipe away what took them 14 b'ak'tuns to create in the first place, just that it took them 14 b'ak'tuns to get to man, and that we are approaching the 14th since then.

... so enjoy the year and all the movies that are likely to be released this year about the end of the world. Also, if you feel something that isn't quite right - an earthquake, a tornado, a late snowfall, an early snowfall, a hotter-than-usual summer, etc - then just remember that randomness exists in the universe, and also that we tend to exaggerate and remember events that our minds have been primed to think of as important.

ERRATA: The Mayan calendar's date for the creation of humanity is at odds with Bishop Ussher's calculation of Sunday (had to be a Sunday), October 23, 4004 BC (according to the proleptic Julian calendar). The fact that the two estimates are 890 years apart (give or take some months) probably won't make a difference to YACs who also are using the Mayan calendar to date the end of the world.

UPDATE (2012-02-16): C.G.P. Grey made a video on this topic:

Vehicular fuel consumption: it's significantly affected by friction losses

I didn't know this, but apparently up to 1/3 of vehicular fuel consumption is wasted on friction. Yep, based on estimates of European drivers in a story over at PhysOrg:

There are 612 million cars in the world today. The average car clocks up about 13,000 km per year, and in the meantime burns 340 litres of fuel just to overcome friction, costing the driver EUR 510 per year.

What's more, here's the tally for where all the fuel is being consumed in an average internal combustion engine (ICE) setting:

• 33%: exhaust
• 29%: cooling
• 38%: mechanical energy (33% friction + 5% air resistance)

Woah. To put that in terms in context:

Annual friction loss in an average car worldwide amounts to 11,860 MJ: of this, 35% is spent in overcoming rolling resistance in the wheels, 35% in the engine itself, 15% in the gearbox and 15% in braking. With current technology, only 21.5% of the energy output of the fuel is used to actually move the car; the rest is wasted.

What? Out of the $4/gallon that people are spending to fill up their cars, they are squandering $3/gallon to just get their ICE car to a point where it is capable of movement? But technology is (potentially) on the way to help!

Friction can be reduced by 10% to 50% using new surface technologies such as diamond-like carbon materials and nanocomposites. Laser texturing can be employed to etch a microtopography on the surface of the material to guide the lubricant flow and internal pressures so as to reduce friction by 25% to 50% and fuel consumption by 4%. Ionic liquids are made up of electrically charged molecules that repel one another, enabling a further 25% to 50% reduction in friction.

Well, so... improvements in friction reduction can help reduce fuel consumption by 4% through laser texturing and an additional 4% through using ionic liquids. So technology helps with reducing fuel consumption by up to 8%!

Of course, drivers can drive slower, and thus reduce fuel consumption even further than what is proposed through friction-reduction technology alone:

A reduction of 10% in driving speed, e.g. from 110 km/h to 100 km/h, translates into a 16% saving in fuel consumption.

And that's dropping from 68mph to 62mph, which is far below most states' highway speed limits. Dropping one's speed from 80mph to 55mph (what many people drive at on MI highways vs. the speed at which cars are rated for their fuel economy) will translate into a 28% saving in fuel consumption.

The killer line (at least for the greenie in me) is actually toward the beginning of the article:

By comparison, an electric car has only half the friction loss of that of a car with a conventional internal combustion engine.

Why? Because an electric car doesn't have all those moving parts in its engine that an ICE has. Every moving part creates friction losses, which add up. In addition, the vibrations of the engine itself creates friction losses. Furthermore, every moving part in an ICE has the potential of having crud build up in it, thus diminishing its smooth running. In comparison, an electric engine has ... no moving parts.

But I don't own a car, and I don't drive very often, so what do I care? Well, friction is also an important thing to consider when riding a bike and purchasing components. I've been lucky to be able to afford good components that allow for really low friction at the pedal and the wheel, and I (usually) keep my chain well-oiled to ensure that I don't lose too much power in overcoming the friction there.

Global study shows: a sedentary lifestyle is correlated with higher incidence of heart disease

As if it weren't too terribly obvious from that much-maligned common sense, a new global study of 29,000 people from 52 countries in Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia and the Middle East has shown:

mild to moderate physical activity at work, and any level of physical activity during leisure time reduces the risk of heart attack, independent of other traditional risk factors in men and women of all ages, in most regions of the world and in countries with low, middle or high income levels. Interestingly, heavy physical labour at work did not protect against heart attacks.... Furthermore, ownership of a car and TV, which promotes sedentary behaviour, was found to be independently associated with the risk of heart attacks.

And the authors were able to run the numbers of how much help light and moderate physical activity helps with reductions in heart attacks:

...they found that people whose work involved either light or moderate physical activity had a fifth (22%) or a tenth (11%) lower risk of having a heart attack when compared to people whose occupation was mainly sedentary. However, heavy physical labour did not reduce the risk at all. During leisure time, the risk of a heart attack was lower for any level of exercise when compared with being mainly sedentary, reducing by 13% for mild activity and 24% for moderate or strenuous activity.

Of course, physical exercise isn't the only thing that these people looked at. After all, it would be a waste of an opportunity to look at a panel of conditions for so many people. And some of the additional things that they asked questions about - in order to control for confounding in the population:

After adjusting for various confounding factors such as age, sex, country, income, smoking, alcohol, education, health, diet etc...

... and they found that:

People who owned both a car and a TV, both indicators of a sedentary lifestyle, had a 27% increased risk of a heart attack, compared to those who owned neither a car nor a TV.

So what is the take-home from this study?

The authors conclude that daily moderate physical exercise should be encouraged in everyone to prevent heart disease. Prof Held added: "The data have some real-life implications. One suggestion may be for the lower income countries to be more involved in promoting physical activity as their societies starts to use more labour-saving devices, so as to counter-act the inactivity that this can lead to; however, it also important to promote physical activity in all parts of the world."

To me, the basic lesson is a good one. However, I think that Prof Held seems to forget one of the greatest "labour-saving devices" that tends to get implemented once income levels rise: motorized personal vehicles (mopeds, motorcycles, cars, trucks). In so many places that have undergone "development", there has been a concomitant increase in personal motor vehicle use, a shift away from public transportation options (such as buses, bus-taxis, etc), which increases road congestion and increases public health problems caused by exhaust inhalation (exacerbated due to lax/nonexistent car exhaust laws/enforcement of such laws). Furthermore, increased personal motor vehicle use is also coupled with increased road fatalities and serious injury than predominantly public transport, bike, and walking transportation options. Furthermore, in the authors' study, easy walking was listed as "light exercise" (something that drastically diminishes with car and TV ownership) and walking and cycling were listed as "moderate exercise" (something that also drastically diminishes with car and TV ownership).

To me, it makes sense that doing more physical activity than effectively nil produces a more physically healthy body. Removing options for that will lead to costs that will need to be paid down the road (unless you happen to have good genetics or are really lucky). To that end, I'm kind of glad that I decided to purchase a good, study bike instead of a reliable used car; my 8-10 mile daily commute on that personal pedal-powered vehicle has helped me lose a decent amount of weight, lowered my resting heart rate, and likely helped in other ways that are less apparent.

(And when I was 10 years old, the idea of a personal robot that would do everything for me was soooo appealing. I suppose that if I did ever get a personal robot, it would have to also act as a physical fitness trainer; forcing me to do physical labor so that its help with alleviating my physical labors wouldn't be offset by the negative outcomes of a sedentary lifestyle that a personal robot would be designed to create.)

Re-using water

If you ever learned anything about water in the natural world, you've probably learned about the water cycle. You know, water evaporates from the oceans (or lakes, or rivers, or anywhere, really, but it's usually depicted as the oceans, since this is where most evaporation occurs in the world), condensates to form clouds, and then precipitates (either as rain or snow) to fall upon the land, where it is either intercepted by plants or finds its way to the ground, and then into rivers or the groundwater, to eventually flow back (ultimately) to the oceans. True, there are parts of this that are complicated by the presence of other things that use the water - like animals drinking it and excreting it as sweat or waste - but the water that ends up in the oceans is the water that started in the ocean, and so it continues...

But let's focus on that little interruption: the "like animals drinking it and exreting it" part. We humans do a great job of collecting, concentrating, and treating (to a degree) water we use for drinking. We humans also do a great job of collecting, concentrating, and treating (to a degree) water we have urinated or defecated into. Such treated waste water invariably ends up in a water body, and if we are not next to the ocean, that waterbody tends to be the nearest one around (usually a river or a lake), and after a stretch of several tens of miles, there is a place where water is withdrawn (usually from a river or a lake, but also often from groundwater) for use as drinking water without people having an *ick* reaction.

If you were one of the people who remembers the bru-ha-ha that happened in June 2011, when Portland emptied an 8-million gallon reservoir after a man urinated in it, then you will likely think that what more scientists and planners propose in the future is going to be gawdawful: reuse municipal wastewater to augment drinking water supplies. If you're gagging in your coffee right now, then let me first say a few things about the Portland incident:

• the human bladder can contain between 200-800 mL of urine (0.05-0.21 gallon).
• rounding 0.25 gallon of urine (let's assume the Portland guy had a really big bladder that was completely full), the concentration of urine was 0.25 gallons urine/7800000 water = 0.000000032 gallons urine/gallon water (and that's assuming that the water in the reservoir was pure water, and the urine was pure urine).

In other words, as Dave Zetland said at the time (which is also relevant here):

They are basically implying that the reservoirs are full of Evian when they are full of water that's going to be treated anyway. They claimed that people in the area "may" have thrown objects in the water, but those people were questioned. Seems like they were more interested in finding an excuse to drain the water.

The pity is that people are NOW going to think their reservoirs are super clean (not!) and that water recycling is way too gross (not!).

And water recycling (if done correctly) is not gross. It is - after all - what astronauts have done for a long time, and what the city of Singapore has been doing for over a decade now. Further (to use points from the post at PhysOrg):

Potable water reuse projects account for only a small fraction of the volume of water currently being reused. However, many drinking water treatment plants draw water from a source that contains wastewater discharged by a community located upstream; this practice is not officially acknowledged as potable reuse.

The concentrations of chemicals and microbial contaminants in reuse projects designed to augment drinking water supplies can be comparable to or lower than those commonly present in many drinking water supplies.

Water reuse projects tend to be more expensive than most water conservation options and less expensive than seawater desalination and other new supply alternatives. Although the costs of reclaimed water are often higher than current water sources, the report urges water authorities to consider other costs and benefits in addition to monetary expenditures when assessing reuse projects. For example, water reuse systems used in conjunction with a water conservation program could be effective in reducing seasonal peak demands on the drinking water system. Depending on the specific designs and pumping requirements, reuse projects could also have a larger or smaller carbon footprint than existing supply alternatives or reduce water flows to downstream users and ecosystems.

If you are still gagging a little to think about these sorts of things, then the next point might not give you too much peace of mind about the current state of affairs with regard to governance:

Water reuse regulations differ by state and are not based on risk-assessment methods, the report says. Adjustments to the federal regulatory framework could help ensure a high level of public health protection, provide a consistent minimum level of protection across the nation, and increase public confidence in potable and non-potable water reuse.

Passively losing weight: two methods

In my news feeds (Facebook and Google Reader) come two stories that point out some ways that you could passively lose some weight (i.e., lose weight without exercising). Now, whether this is good for you is a different question, but let me list them and then discuss them briefly:

• Make better decisions when eating out.
• Keep the temperature at 60F.

The first comes from MedicalXpress. In a study published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, the authors put 35 healthy adult, premenopausal women who regularly ate out on a 6-week program "that helps develop the skills needed to reduce caloric and fat intake when eating out" with the intention of weight maintenance, and not necessarily weight loss. The results of the study found that people who were part of the program ended up eating about 300 fewer calories each day overall with a reduction of about 125 calories from restaurants (remember, these were women who regularly ate out). However, a reduction of 300 calories between home, work, and restaurants -- due solely to a nutrition program is pretty good for passive calorie reduction.

The second comes from fitbie.MSN. It estimates that roughly 100 - 200 calories per day can be burned by keeping the temperature in one's home at about 60F. This is because the body will convert fat into "brown fat" (which it uses for heat generation) and not as "white fat" (which it uses for energy storage). (Fitbie in fact has 14 other "lazy tips" to lose weight, but the temperature one was what showed up on my FB newsfeed.)

So what's so important with diminishing 225-500 calories each day? I mean, one venti Caramel Brulee Frappuccino with whole milk from Starbucks is 520 calories (even making it a tall with skim milk and no whipped cream still makes it 210 calories), which busts through the high end (and almost kills the low end) of the passive weight loss figure. Of course, that's not the point of such a tally. The main thing is to recognize that calorie intake is one of the most important indicators of (most people's) weight change (the other is metabolism), and burning up to an extra 500 calories per day really can add up over weeks and months. For example, for the average 35-year-old female (5'4", 164 lbs) 500 calories means not eating a day's worth of calories every 3.4 days, and for the average 35-year-old male (5'9", 191lbs) is equivalent to not eating a day's worth of calories every 3.9 days (based on maintenance intake, as calculated here). A loss of 500 calories each day means that both the average female and average male would be in the "fast weight loss" zone, which is equivalent to up to 1-2 pounds per week, and that's significant.

So there you have it: through a combination of staying a bit chilly (and 60F ain't that bad, really) and making better food choices, a person can (through calorie burning and missed intake) diminish their daily calorie count by up to 500 calories each day, which could - could being the operative word here - result in significant weight loss results... all without doing any additional exercise.

FOXNews badly (as well as subtly) misrepresents the data

This has been going around the Internets for a while. However, I haven't seen (although I haven't looked hard) a site that commented on the placement of the points that come prior to the obviously misplaced 8.6% point.

So I did it by making a graph in Excel and laying it over the FOXNews graph

As you can see, there are a few points that are lying above where they ought to be, and FOXNews was a little generous with their 8.9% and 8.8%, putting them a little lower than what their actual positions should have been. Specifically (and possibly deviously), the visual location of FOXNews' 9.2% is significantly closer to 9.5% than is actually warranted, given their y-axis. This gives the March-June rise in unemployment a steeper visual slope than what is warranted by the actual data.

You could have said that I made the scale wrong, but I'm actually using the scale of the FOXNews graph: see how the grey and black lines overlap at 8.0% the points overlap at 9.0%. If the y-axis is actually linear (and there's no reason to think that it isn't), then there ought not to be any vertical shift between the values as displayed by Excel graphing and their own graph.


Furthermore, you cannot have Excel give you a different data value than the one for the point, unless you do it manually. Excel will also not plot points higher or lower than they ought to be, based on the given y-axis.

Does FOXNews pay their interns enough? Or are they even hiring interns that know how to use Excel? Or is it something else?

In short, while the obviously fallacious positioning of the November value of 8.6% is an obvious misrepresentation of the data, the fallacious positioning of the 9.2% and the 8.8% is a more subtle misrepresentation of the data by showing a steeper rise in unemployment than the axes ought to depict.