Duh, I'm A Journamalist

Richard Cohen win's Atrios' coveted "Wanker of the Day" with this know-nothingness:

I am haunted by Gabriela Ocampo.

Last year, she dropped out of the 12th grade at Birmingham High School in Los Angeles after failing algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it. So, according to the Los Angeles Times, she "gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School."...

I confess to be one of those people who hate math. I can do my basic arithmetic all right (although not percentages) but I flunked algebra (once), barely passed it the second time -- the only proof I've ever seen of divine intervention -- somehow passed geometry and resolved, with a grateful exhale of breath, that I would never go near math again. I let others go on to intermediate algebra and trigonometry while I busied myself learning how to type. In due course, this came to be the way I made my living. Typing: Best class I ever took.

Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra.

Now, I sympathize with Gabriela, too. Frankly, I think it's awful that a school in America's wealthiest state can't run an educational system. Because that's the problem here - not that some kids won't ever get Algebra, but that some kids need a lot of help to get algebra, and can't get it at the LA school that Gabriela went to.

It's a lot easier, and a lot less demanding for us as a society, to pretend that some kids just aren't worth the effort. But I find it difficult to believe that kids in grades 7 and 8 can understand algebra (which I've seen happen) but that a kid can't get it by the end of grade 12.

But let's move on to the real crap in Cohen's article:

Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not. The proof of this, Gabriela, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence. I can cite Shelly, whose last name will not be mentioned, who aced algebra but when called to the board in geography class, located the Sahara Desert right where the Gobi usually is. She was off by a whole continent.

Boy, that's surprising. A journalist favours linguistic skills over math. Plus, notice the smug sense of superiority to the poor girl who couldn't locate the Sahara. See, in Cohen's world, algebra is for people with too much time on their hands, but knowing the location of the Sahara is a critical life skill.

But I'd like to address Cohen's big assertion - that writing is the "highest form of reasoning." Now, I like to write, and I'd like to think I've got some game when it comes to penning a nice sentence or two. But the best written essay - with all the evidence and reason the human mind can marshal - can never surpass the elegance of 2+2=4. We who craft sentences and paragraphs like to think we can win an argument by the force of pure logic, but compared to the mathematician, we're pikers.

This is undoubtedly part of Cohen's problem, but I think there's something specifc to math that is so offensive to Cohen as a journalist: In mathematics, a statement is true or false, right or wrong. When someone says 2+2=5, they don't deserve "balance" or "an objective treatment". They deserve ridicule, and nothing else. What offends Cohen as a journalist is the presumption of someone to claim to "know" something, without any qualification.

And that says more about the problems in journalism today than anything else.

For the record, my father (himself a journalist) never demanded that I achieve excellence in math, but did say I needed to have a basic understanding of mathematical concepts. I had to be numerate, but not a mathematician. That distinction - between being good at math, and understanding math - is something Cohen wouldn't understand. It has, however, made a huge difference to me.

The NDP Leading in Ontario?

To quote Atrios, Jeebus doesn't love us this much:

The Decima Research survey of 1,010 adult Canadians, conducted between Feb. 9 and 13, suggests there has been no significant change in national support for the Tories.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents said they would vote Conservative, compared with 36 per cent who cast ballots on election day.

The poll put support for the Liberals at 25 per cent, down five percentage points from Jan. 23....

In Ontario, the poll suggests the three main parties would be in a virtual dead heat, with 31 per cent supporting the NDP, 30 per cent backing the Liberals, and 29 picking the Conservatives.

The survey suggests Bloc Québécois support has declined since the vote, with 35 per cent of Quebec respondents supporting the separatist party compared to 42 per cent who voted BQ last month.

Wow. The NDP at 31 in Ontario, with the Bloc down to 35%. So far, I'm really liking the Harper government.

Of course, he'll ruin it the moment we can find him again...

Seriously, if the Liberals think they can force an election and win, we're going to see a smoking crater where there used to be a Big Red Machine.

(Poll link via Accidental Deliberations.)

Let's Go Exploring...

...the Copyright Act! Come along, children!

(Worst. Field trip. Ever.)

28.1 Any act or omission that is contrary to any of the moral rights of the author of a work is, in the absence of consent by the author, an infringement of the moral rights.

So that's a pretty broad statement, in the heart of copyright law in Canada. But compare that to this, in sec. 80:

80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of

(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,

(b) a performer’s performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or

(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer’s performance of a musical work, is embodied

onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer’s performance or the sound recording.

So on the face of it, it doesn't look like the CRIA has a leg to stand on - thanks to Skippy for pointing this out.

Still, the CRIA has a lot of money, and the means to make this in to a federal case (literally.) I suspect they'd lose, but we're likely to see this play out in court, I'd wager.

On Winning A Majority

It's really funny to listen to Bill Graham lecture the Conservatives on not governing as if they had a majority. Apparently, when you join the Liberal Party of Canada, they give you a shame-ectomy.

Regardless of the size of their penis opposition, the Liberals have to accept that Harper did win the elction. So while I agree, Harper doesn't have the right to act as if he won a majority, you know who has even less right to act as if the won?

The Liberals.

Hilarity Abounds

In comments, Westacular points out that CBC's lawyers are overriding the explicit wishes of music artists:

They played a few songs at relevant points in the interview -- songs that the blurb says have been removed from the online release. The irony is that at one point, before playing Avril's Skater Boi, McBride said to the kids at home something to the effect of, "Go ahead and record this on your iPod. I don't mind. Avril doesn't mind. Go right ahead!"

Apparently CBC's lawyers mind.

Ah, our public broadcaster, serving us all so well. I mean, I love the CBC and all, but why are they so terrified of this?

Secondly (and this isn't really ironic, just funny) Kevin Drum is hawking titanium frying pans. This is funny to me, because I've seen these pans before, and was initially interested in them until I had a conversation with the salesman. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Wow - non-teflon, non-stick frying pans. Just titanium, huh?
Salesman: Yup. Made in Germany.
Me: Really? Who in Germany is making titanium frying pans? (Dreading answer.)
Salesman: A company called Krupp.
Me: (Dread justified.)

Now, the company Kevin points us all to is Danish, so he suggests getting a frying pan to support free speech. Whatever. If it means money goes to the Danes instead of the company that used to make artillery for the Kaiser and the Nazis, I'm all for it. Several of the Krupps were indicted at the Nuremberg Tribunal, so I say buy Denmark.

RIAA Craziness isn't News

So the RIAA is saying that CD-ripping isn't fair use - even when it's CDs you bought yourself. This is actually old news in Canada - our version of the RIAA, the CRIA, has long maintained that CD-ripping is infringement, unless explicitly permitted. That is, iPod owners may be felons, if the RIAA and the CRIA get their way.

What's funny is that we would expect them to do anything else. Of course they don't want you getting MP3s from your CDs. What the music industry wants is for you to spend $2+ for each track if it's MP3s that you want. Never mind that the costs of distribution are essentially zero, and at $2 a track the costs are about the same as a CD. To the music companies, if you want MP3s you should by MP3s, and if you want CDs you should buy CDs. But if you buy the CD and rip it to MP3s, you're stealing.

This is why the logic of "lost revenue = theft" is so pernicious. We basically bought the argument that the music companies had the right to sue to protect their business model, and now this is what it gets us.

A Second Moment for Television

What? Andreas Katsulas died? Damn. The cast of Babylon 5 is now two short, after Richard Biggs died a while back.

Is it possible someone's hunting down the cast of Babylon 5? I'm just saying, I wouldn't want to be Bruce Boxleitner right now.

Or possibly, ever.

A Moment for Television

So, aside from this blog, the main reason my assignments have been late this term has been a raft of excellent television shows. I've recently succumbed to the Battlestar Galactica plague, which cost me two days straight that could - nay, should - have been more profitably spent writing papers.

But I haven't seen a lot of other bloggers writing about the wonder that is Grey's Anatomy. So I'm going to. I stumbled upon this show at the beginning of the 2nd season, and unlike BSG that didn't leave me grasping for understanding like I'd just been released from Plato's cave.

Where to start? The cast is excellent, especially Ellen Pompeo and Sandra Oh. The writing is smart, funny, and snaps the way the West Wing used to. It's one of the few shows that I actually look forward to the next episode. I seem to be watching 24 and Lost more out of a sense of obligation than anything else these days.

The last two Sundays' worth of Grey's Anatomy were an excellent two-parter about a guy with a bomb accidentally embedded in his chest. The odd thing about the 2nd part was that it had a lot of the classic clichés of a medical drama - just short of the doctor screaming "don't you die on me, dammit!" But they pulled it off. In fact, it was one of the best hours of television I've watched this season.

Anyway, season 1 was just released on DVD, so I'll be getting that for myself soon.

What Freedom of Speech Looks Like

Ezra Levant is a coward and an asshole. Canadian Muslims have not responded to the offensive Danish cartoons with any kind of violence or threats, outside of a reasonable case that Levant might be comitting a hate crime under Canadian law.

People need to understand there's a difference between the exercise of free speech, and the moral high ground that free speech sometimes gives you. Levant has the right to publish this giant "Fuck You" to Canadian muslims (which is all this is) but he can't expect us to congratulate him for essentially laying a turd in the middle of the living room.

Want to see what a real exercise of free speech looks like?

Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves!

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

The contest has been announced today on the www.boomka.org website, and the initiator accept submissions of cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips from people all over the world. The deadline is Sunday March 5, and the best works will be displayed in an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

This is such a beautiful response to all of this insanity. I'm overjoyed to see that a sense of humour remains the best response to this kind of idiocy.

The contest is open to all Jewish cartoonists. So if there are any in my audience, knock yourselves out!

Welcome, Conservatives

Seriously, enjoy the beer. I sincerely welcome new readers.

Allow me to re-state my arguments against Mr. Currie: He alleges that western culture is endangered by low birthrates in the western world. I read that (not unreasonably, I thought) to mean that he is concerned that the European nations where birthrate are lowest - which are also all generally defined as "white" nations. They are also all Christian nations. Worrying about birthrates in the west is therefore usually a shorthand for white Christians worrying about being out-bred by the "lesser developed countries", a label usually applied to more fields than just economics when racially minded conservatives use it.

Further, there is no reason to link the concept of "culture" to any particular "racial" group. Cultures can cross "races" either by immigration or by cultural export, something the west (and North American in particular) has excelled at.

So, when Mr. Currie argued that western culture was endangered by low birthrates, I saw three assumptions behind that argument:

1) That western culture was primarily white culture.
2) That this culture was being actively maintained by white people, and would falter or be diminished if there were fewer of us.
3) The only way Currie sees to "save" white/western culture is by increased breeding.

These are the assumptions behind Currie's argument (whether he likes it or not) absent a clear restatement of his principles.

I'm far more optimistic about western culture - the power of cultural exports, the already powerful "westernized" non-white nations, all seem to me to be very powerful signs that the most important parts of western culture - democracy, science, liberty, the whole package - are winning the war against anti-modernism. Ironically, the one place where modernism is losing the war is in America itself. Will it look exactly like ours? No. But it probably shouldn't, if there's any fairness in the world.

I'd welcome a clarification or restatement by Jay on his argument. Specifically, why are birthrates a concern if this isn't a racial argument? Also, why is cultural export of so little importance? Would it really be that bad to have a world without whitey?

I should also say that this argument is far less important point (to me at least) then the wider point in Jay's post - the freedom of women to choose their own role in society. So when Jay says (in comments) that he hopes Vicki and I have lots of kids, I appreciate the sentiment but Vicki probably doesn't. I honestly don't know if we'll ever have kids. But check it out - it's her choice, not mine.

Oh, and Jay: Yes, I've "bought into the medicalized view" of pregancy. That's us lefties for ya. Always getting uppity with our science and our book larnin. When doctors tell me that pregancy is a major strain on a woman's health (to the point that as recently as 60 years ago death in childbirth was not uncommon) I tend to bellieve them.

Why Are Conservatives Racist?

Jay Currie, at the end of a post against the NDP vision for childcare:

In many ways creating a child friendly, family friendly society is the challenge Western governments face in the next few decades. Somehow, as societies, we have to get out birthrates back up to replacement rate or our culture will simply die out. The daycare driven, one and two child families which are stand issue for many in the West are not getting that job done. Thinking seriously about how to raise the birthrate, starting with giving stay at home mums support through three or four children, would be a start.

I'd like you to focus on one sentence in particular there:

Somehow, as societies, we have to get out birthrates back up to replacement rate or our culture will simply die out.

(Does Currie even know what kind of punishment pregnancy is for the female body? Would he volunteer for the "three or four" pregnancies that he advocates, if it were medically possible? I don't think I even need to ask.)

This kind of hysteria is standard, Buchanan-esque racial paranoia, and it's incredibly offensive. My girlfriend is Chinese, albeit born in Canada. Does she count as part of "our culture"? Why or why not? If you say she does, then you have to admit that culture is separate from the totally fictional concept of race. In Vicki's case, she's at least as Canadian as I am, as a white male.

But that's not what Currie believes. He explicitly conflates "culture" with "race" and therefore says that we need women to stay pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, or else the darkies will outnumber us all. This is the only reasonable interpretation of worrying about birthrates. If society is a collection of ideas, norms, and beliefs, then the complexion and demographics of society are irrelevant. If Currie is worrying about "birthrates", what he's worrying about is making sure there are enough white people in the future.

Meanwhile, the democratic, liberal, increasingly-wealthy country of India is rapidly outgrowing even China. Somehow, I doubt that this comforts Currie any.

But by far the saddest thing about statements like Currie's is the fear behind them. The culture of western, liberal democracies basically spans the planet. It has a wonderfully corrosive effect on socially repressive states, and at its best it acts as a beacon to the world. At its worst, it's pretty bad, no doubt. But American, Canadian, and European movies, music, and books are by far a net positive for spreading a message of tolerance and freedom. This is true today, and it is going to stay true in the future, whether or not the proponents of freedom are white. Would the world be worse off if we lost Stephen Lewis, but gained two Nelson Mandelas? I don't think so.

What scares Currie is that the future might not belong to white people the way the past has. What's pitiful is that the only solution he can think of is to shackle half the population to the kitchen and bedroom.

Past Peak Already?

So Kenneth Deffeyes, whose book "Hubbert's Peak" was one of the earliest attempts to ring the alarm on Peak Oil, is saying we're already past peak production. Specifically, the magic day was December 16th, 2005.

Given that I'm reading in some places that the USGS is revising 2005's numbers down to the point where 2004-5 production was essentially flat (despite a runup in prices) I'm inclined to believe it, cautiously. But that might be because it was a Salon review of Deffeyes' book that was my first introduction of Peak Oil.

So what to do? Well, Japan's solar power market is growing at 40%+ per year, leading to predictions that by 2008 Japanese companies will produce 2,350MW worth of power each and every year. Meanwhile, Denmark, Spain, and Germany are already making gigawatts of wind electricity every year.

We also know (know, not guess, suspect, or surmise) that Canada and the US could begin to save roughly 1/3-1/2 of their electrical bills by refits and efficiency. I keep advocating the abolition of the incandescent lightbulb, for starters.

How about a subsidy for flat-screen computer monitors? They save a lot on energy, and they're nicer to look at. Dell would love it, I'm sure.

I keep bringing up the potential savings, because conversations around Peak Oil too easily become conversations about how OMFG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! For a good example of this, read some of the comments at The Oil Drum discussing Deffeyes' announcement.

Calm down, people. The Black Death didn't cause any kingdoms to collapse, and Peak Oil won't be as bad as that. People who think Peak Oil will cause the collapse of global capitalism/western civilization/multicellular life are all dramatically underestimating the power a modern state has at its disposal. Even if it takes a return to the command economies of WWII, the state is always able to protect itself.

Lib-NDP Fratricide

So Jason Cherniak is slamming the NDP for doing what the Liberals could not - win seats two elections running:

I know a lot of people who vote or consider voting for the NDP. They are mostly good, idealistic people who are trying to improve the world. The problem is that they have been siphonned off from the rest of politics.

See, in Mr. Cherniak's world there are only two parties who qualify as real politics, and really only one party you should vote for. Which makes this statement kind of funny:

The NDP response to this last election has finally put me over the top. The joyous reacting to less than 10% of the seats was embarrassing. The positive reaction to a Conservative government was unprincipled. Now, the Stalinistic removal of a life-long member of the party for advocating strategic voting has proven that the extremists really are in charge.

See, Jason, when you're arguing that only one party should ever be in charge of government, it's not us who are Stalinist.

I do not want the NDP to merge with the Liberals because the NDP has too many extremists who I would rather not work with.

So why should we want to work with you, Jason? You mock us, call us worthless, and assume that our votes are yours by divine right, and you wonder why some of us might be turned off by your arrogance?

I do, however, think it is time for reasonable NDP supporters to reconsider what their political goal is. There are certainly enough of them to help us Liberals mend some of our worst ways.

See, and I think it's time for actual progressives (read: Not Jason Cherniak) to look around with open eyes for once. The Liberals have never done anything progressive without an NDP knife to their throats. So cut out the middle man and put the NDP in charge.

To respond to Cherniak's anecdotes with some of my own, let me just say that while I was willing to consider strategic voting at the beginning of the election campaign, the insane arrogance of every single Liberal I spoke to when I told them I usually voted NDP made it impossible for me to stomach a Liberal vote. From Paul Martin on down, every single Liberal I saw on television or spoke with personally acted as if my vote for Paul Dewar was an act of theft.

My vote doesn't belong to the Liberal Party, Paul Martin, any of his successors, or Jason Cherniak. My vote is mine, and I used it to get an actual progressive elected. If Mr. Cherniak is upset that NDP voters were trying to do that all across the country, then he needs to reconsider his politics.

How Is This Necessary?

Awful. Simply awful.

The treatment of a pregnant Chinese woman who miscarried twins last week after federal immigration officers in Philadelphia forcibly tried to deport her from New York has become a flash point for planned protest in the Chinese-American communities of both cities, lawyers and immigrant advocates said yesterday....

By the time they reached the airport, Ms. Jiang was suffering severe abdominal cramps and begging for help in a public waiting area, said John C. Liu, a New York city council member, who called the woman's treatment un-American. Someone called an ambulance, Mr. Liu said, and she was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where Mr. Liu visited her after doctors found that the two fetuses she was carrying had died....

Ms. Jiang had been allowed to report routinely for years to an immigration office in Philadelphia until last Tuesday, he added.

Ms. Jiang and many of the family's Chinese supporters say the authorities decided to deport her when they learned she was pregnant, to prevent her from giving birth to another United States citizen.

Totally Understandable

Ezra Klein:

I know a fair number of folks who went to school with her [Natalie Portman] (like a good 45 percent of DC, Portman went to Harvard) and there's near unanimity that she doesn't stand out in a crowd. I know a number of guys who began hitting on "this girl" at a party, thought it going quite well, and then fell apart when names were exchanged and they realized they were about to ask Princess Padme on a date.

That'll throw off your game.

Damn, I've got to figure out which hot celebrities go to Carleton...

Bob Harris Clears it Up

Just to review, in the wake of Tricky Dick's 18-Hour Gap:

* There is no reason a hunter should be expected to know what he is shooting.
* If you are shot by the vice president, it is your own fault for not first shouting, "Mister vice president, sir! Please do not shoot me in the face, neck, and torso!"
* Being wounded in the face, neck, and torso by a shotgun is something that happens to hunters all the time.
* Shotgun wounds are inherently minor.
* People also go into intensive care with minor wounds all the time.
* There is no reason to worry about a 78-year old man who has been shot in the face, neck, and torso and has been in intensive care for days.
* A 78-year-old man who has been shot in the face, neck, and torso is obviously healthy if his eyes are open and he is able to speak.
* It is perfectly respectable to kill animals not because you need to put food on the table, but for fun. It is good that our leaders take pleasure in killing.

There's more. Check it out.

Neat Find

Matthew Simmons - the guy who believes Saudi Arabia is nearing peak production - defends the much-maligned yet wholly accurate "Limits To Growth."

Read the article. Too many authors (economists, especially) try to pan L2G as a hopelessly inaccurate book that was disproven by events. In fact, nothing of the sort is true. As Simmons notes, much of the book was not only right, but eerily so.

Via The Oil Drum, I think. Am I the only blogger who loses track of where I find things?

Ugly, Ugly Irony

An interesting post on why California was so astonishingly verdant when early European settlers arrived:

When explorers and pioneers visited California in the 1700s and early 1800s, they were astonished by the abundance of birds, elk, deer, marine mammals, and other wildlife they encountered. Since then, people assumed such faunal wealth represented California's natural condition – a product of Native Americans' living in harmony with the wildlife and the land and used it as the baseline for measuring modern environmental damage.

That assumption now is collapsing because University of Utah archaeologist Jack M. Broughton spent seven years – from 1997 to 2004 – painstakingly picking through 5,736 bird bones found in an ancient Native American garbage dump on the shores of San Francisco Bay. He determined the species of every bone, or, when that wasn't possible, at least the family, and used the bones to reconstruct a portrait of human bird-hunting behavior spanning 1,900 years....

Broughton concluded that California wasn't always a lush Eden before settlers arrived. Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to local extinction...

Wow. So what, you ask, caused the wildlife of California to explode? Well, it turns out it was mankind's favourite invasive species - itself:

...wildlife returned to "fabulous abundances" only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s.

Eeew. I feel dirty.

I Want One

Ooooohhh... pretty.

On Expulsions

Some thoughts regarding the whole Buzz Hargrove affair:

Buzz had to go, like it or not. Not because I have some cultish love of Jack Layton or the NDP, and therefore his voice needed to be silenced. It's ridiculous to think that Buzz will somehow not be able to continue to speak his mind because of this. He'll say nutty things, and the media will continue to pretend they're not nutty, just as they continue to pretend that Buzz is somehow a respected voice in the NDP.

But... Buzz's loyalties were divided. That much is obvious. There should be a vigorous debate within political parties, of course. But that debate should not include advocating voting for the other side. Otherwise, why have a party at all?

Rob may be right that Buzz was doing what was best for his union. Fine. That's Hargrove's right and his obligation. I think Hargrove in fact hurt the NDP and his union, but I'm not Buzz Hargrove. His duties as a union leader and as an NDP member have come in to conflict. This shouldn't have happened, but it did. The choice is simple - either keep doing his job as union leader, or give up his hobby as occasional voice of (and constant irritant to) the NDP. This has nothing to do with "blind obedience" to the NDP or anything like that. You can't be a member of a political party - any party - and advocate voting for the other side.

I respect that Hargrove wants to do what's best for his union, and for labour generally. But the interests of labour are not always going to be the same as the NDP, and I'm fine with that.

If you want a real example of cultish following, take a look at the reaction to Andrew Sullivan:

I support almost all of Bush's tax cuts (I support the estate tax) but also believe in balanced budgets and spending restraint (heretic!); I oppose affirmative action; I oppose hate crime laws; I respect John Kerry's military service; I believe all abortion is morally wrong and that Roe vs Wade was dreadful constitutional law (but I do favor legal first trimester abortions); I support states' rights, especially in social policy, such as marriage; I oppose the expansion of the welfare state, as in the Medicare prescription drug plan; I supported John Roberts' nomination and Sam Alito's; I believe in a firm separation of religion and politics, but I certainly take faith seriously and wrestle with my own. As regular readers know, I'm no fan of the far left. At some point, I have endorsed every single Republican president in my adult life.

All of that makes me a "liberal." Imagine what it now takes to be a "conservative" in Brent Bozell's eyes.

Quote from Glenn Greenwald. In fact, follow that link - it's an excellent discussion of the sickness that is modern Republicanism.

Smug Conversations You Can Have When You're Canadian

Me, to my Brother: Hey, you should check your health card - mine expired on our birthday, yours might have too.

My Brother: Crap! You're right. Now I don't have health care. Now I know what an American feels like.

Me: Well, to be fair, at least the guy who got the most votes actually wins in our elections.

Who Gave Cheney A Gun?

Seriously, who in their right mind gives a pallid, fragile, 5-time heart attack victim a gun? Even if he wasn't the incarnation of evil, he'd still have no business holding a firearm.

(Leaving aside for the moment my conviction that almost nobody has any business holding a gun...)

Reasonable people can disagree on the morality of hunting for sport, but canned hunting (where the animals are raised in cages, tame, and basically shot just to give rich guys a moving target) are far more widely detested, even (especially?) among actual, you know, hunters. This wasn't a hunting party. This was a "let's splatter us some birds, cuz it's soooo kewl" party.

Is it funny that someone got shot on one of these canned hunts? Not really. Is it poetic justice? You betcha.

Roundhouse Kick vs. 9mm

Chuck Norris vs. Jack Bauer of "24":

Chuck is sidestepping his way across the floor of the warehouse, attention drawn straight ahead. As he is making slow deliberate steps, he mistakenly kicks a loose metal pipe that is lying on the floor. It echoes throughout the warehouse and exposes his presence. Jack trains his cameras on Chuck and triangulates his exact location.

Using a small shaped charge, Jack blows a hole in the duct he is hiding in and drops through the ceiling suspended by a single rope.

Chuck dives for cover.

The two both start shooting at each other. Chuck is using a revolver and somehow manages to get 35 rounds off. Jack returns fire, and after running out of rounds throws his weapon away and pulls out a back up and continues to shoot.

After some time both come the realization that bullets have no affect on either of them.

8 Years? 8 Years??!!

Lots of bad news in the energy world this week. First off, when a Republican former US Secretary of Commerce basically says oil production has peaked, the argument should be winding down. From Hardball:

EVANS: The world is producing oil, the Middle East, every country at its full capacity and it's very unlikely that we're going to be able to see supply in the world grow from the levels where we are right now. There's a debate about that. I'm one that falls in the camp that says it's going to be very, very hard to do that. But what I do know is China needs to continue to grow, India needs to continue to grow, America needs to continue to grow. So what that simply says is we've got to develop new forms of energy for the United States and the world.

Second, the Wall Street Journal (not usually prone to hysterical paranoia) is saying that Cantarell (one of the biggest fields in the world) is not only in decline, but "precipitous" decline. Ouch:

LONDON (AFX) - Mexico's huge state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, may be facing a steep decline in output that would further tighten global oil supply and add to global woes over high oil prices, the online edition of the Wall Street Journal reported.

The potential decline faced by Pemex, also could undermine US efforts to reduce dependence on Middle East oil, and complicate Mexican politics and financial stability...

Currently, Cantarell produces 2 mln barrels of oil a day, or six of every 10 barrels produced by Mexico, and is the world's second-biggest-producing field after Saudi Arabia's Ghawar

And, as if that weren't enough, the problems with natural gas supply in North America are getting worse, not better:

For natural gas, North America is now on what Hughes calls an "exploration treadmill," meaning that the number of wells drilled must be continually increased in order to hold production steady.

The published numbers from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) concerning Natural Gas production in Canada confirms his statement. Look at the number of wells drilled by year, followed by production for that year:

1997: 4,842-15.7 Bcf/d
1998: 4,991-16.1
1999: 7,018-16.6
2000: 9,078-17.1
2001: 10,757-17.4
2002: 9,061-17.4
2003: 12,951-16.9
2004: 15,126-17.0

North America peaked in terms of conventional natural gas production in 2001–2002. Notable examples of the effects of this peak are the dramatic increase in prices for natural gas and natural gas-dependent products, such as fertilizers and plastics, leaving North America’s largest natural gas producer, Encana, publicly stating that the company focus is now on “unconventional” resource plays....

Consumption trends and patterns were also explored. In every case, the phenomenal growth rates in our economy show a complete disconnect with the reality of the resources currently supporting them. Canada, for example, has 8.1 years left in natural gas reserves.

Want an explanation for why the US is rapdily becoming a net food importer? Because places where NG is still cheap can make cheap fertilizer, while the US has to import it from elsewhere.

To get an idea of the trouble we're in, consider for a moment what the next 4 years will look like. Farm incomes are plummeting due to low prices for food but spiralling costs for fuel and fertilizer. Commuters and homeowners are going to keep suffering from high heating and gasoline costs. Summers are going to be ruinously expensive for either a) electric ratepayers, or b) the government which subsidize them. And this is just if we manage to keep the status quo. If things actually keep getting worse, my bet is we'll see even anti-government Conservatives start endorsing some pretty harsh measures to keep a lid on things. Price controls, anyone?

Imagine Sanity

via Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

SYDNEY, Australia, Feb. 9 — The continuing debate here over the so-called abortion pill RU-486 — the Senate voted Thursday to make it more easily available — has revealed many of the same fierce emotions as abortion debates do in the United States.

But it has also produced some moments unfathomable in the United States.

"I bring to this debate personal experience," said Senator Nick Minchin, who opposed the legislation. "A former girlfriend of mine had an abortion," he said Wednesday on the floor of Parliament. Mr. Minchin, 52, is also the country's finance minister, from the conservative governing Liberal Party, but there is no suggestion that he will lose his post, or even his next election.

What was perhaps more stunningly personal was the statement on the Senate floor by Senator Lynette Allison, a sponsor of the legislation.

"An estimated one in three women have had an abortion," she said. "And I am one of them."

She was 18, and abortion was illegal then, in the 1960's, she said in an interview. She came from a conservative family, "which would have been ashamed of their daughter having an illegitimate child," added Ms. Allison, 59, who was a secondary school teacher before she got into politics. It was not difficult to make the public statement, and she did so out of solidarity with other women, she said.

Boy, I really can't imagine Canada's right-wing, governing Finance Minister making a similar statement.

Huh?

How can this be possible?

A little over a year ago The Wall Street Journal (31 Jan 2005) reported that the U.S. would become a net food importer on a more or less permanent basis by the end of 2005. To me, this is an immense challenge to our food security, but also marks a great opportunity for the U.S. to rebuild its food markets. I'm interested in how others see it.

Trade data for December have not been released yet. When they are, we'll know if the Journal's prediction is true. Still, one look at USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) numbers shows the trend is upon us.

The U.S. enjoyed an agricultural trade balance of $12 billion four years ago. By November 2005, we barely had a surplus, after a slide of $5 billion in one year. It seems to be a matter of when, not if.

So - energy, food, water. Three basic necessities, and the US is an importer of all three. How long can this last?

For Those Who Have Asked

Yes, I have a twin brother. We are fraternal twins - the kind that don't look alike. REALLY don't look alike.

As for the question of which one of us is evil, I'll have to leave that up to my close friends and family to decide...

Candles

So.... 25 years ago today, my brother and I were born six minutes apart.

Thus far, I've celebrated by.... going to class, coming home, and watching some of the 1st season of Battlestar Galactica, given to me by the best girlfriend ever (two years running!)

Anyway, I do have to go back to class later, so light blogging today.

God, I'm 5².

The Slaughter of the Innocents, II

When the Space Shuttle was first being developed, the budgetary stresses killed a number of important science programs. The Voyager probes barely escaped the axe, and went on to become one of the most successful science projects of all time.

Sadly, it looks like Bush's alleged Mars program is already having the same effect:

NASA wants to divert money from its science programme to help pay for billions of dollars of projected space shuttle cost overruns, says the agency's chief, Mike Griffin. The cuts mean several key science missions will be delayed indefinitely and have sparked criticism from space enthusiasts and law makers....

Such slow growth is down to NASA removing $2 billion from the science budget over the next five years to help cover projected cost overruns of $3 billion to $5 billion to fly the shuttles safely until they are retired in 2010.

Redistributing NASA's budget this way represents a turnaround for Griffin, who in September 2005 specifically vowed not to take "one thin dime" from the science budget to pay for human spaceflight.

When asked about his earlier statement, Griffin stunned reporters by admitting he had to go back on his word. "I wish we hadn't had to do it; I didn't want to. But that's what we needed to do," he said. "One plain fact is NASA can simply not afford to do everything our many constituencies would like us to do."

A problem the entire US government is having, lately.

On Threats

A lot of the liberal commentary on the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review has coalesced around the opinion that the Pentagon is hyping the "China Threat" while ignoring the "more important" issue of terrorism. Bizarrely, this is seen to be a bad thing. Frankly, if we've learned anything from the Bush administration, it's that the military is not particularly well-suited to fight terrorism. Afghanistan and Iraq are both becoming textbook examples of how large militaries can be totally ineffective against motivated cells of attackers. I think it's probably a positive sign that the military is backing away from being the sole force to fight terrorism.

More broadly, the Pentagon should absolutely be concentrating on defending the US from conventional threats, because they have the potential to cause the most damage. If you accept that part of the Pentagon's role is not just to fight wars, but to deter them, then we can see that even small wars can have far bigger effects than even the most effective terror attacks. For example, the net cost to the US economy from the Iraq war is estimated at somewhere between $1-2 trillion dollars. The proportional cost on Iraq is of course much higher, and may in fact be incalculable. Bin Laden, on his best day, couldn't hurt the US the way the Iraq War has.

(Here I'm just using Iraq as an example of the cost of war. Obviously, I don't think the Pentagon did a great job deterring this conflict. If anything, it incurred it.)

The costs of a major-power war with any other nation would be much, much higher. I certainly agree that there is, as yet, no real Yellow Peril. But most liberal Americans accept the notion that the Pentagon isn't just there to fight wars, it's there to prevent them. If you believe this, then it follows naturally that China needs to be deterred now, before a ruinously costly war (whether Hot or Cold) breaks out.

Borrowing a notion from Gwynne Dyer, complaining that the Pentagon is focusing on major-power threats while ignoring "the larger threat" of terrorism is like saying that your doctor is focusing on your impending heart attack while ignoring the "larger threat" of severe acne.

More Important Than Bill Murray

Geez, I need to brush up on my military dates. February 2nd is not just Groundhog Day, but also the day that the Battle of Stalingrad ended. Over 90,000 German soldiers surrendered to the Red Army a few days after the last airfields had been captured, leaving the Germans no chance of escape or reinforcement.

The larger significance, of course, is that this began the long Soviet push back across Europe that eventually led - more than two brutal years later - to Berlin. Something like 2 million people died on all sides at Stalingrad, making it one of the bloodiest battles ever recorded - on average, something like 12,500 people died every day.

Brad DeLong has taken to saying "We in the west have still done far too little to repay our debt to the soldiers of the Red Army and to the workers of Magnitogorsk for what they did and suffered in those years." Needless to say, I agree. As offensive as western European arrogance is when it comes to how "we" won World War II, it's not even close to true. In Europe, the Soviets are owed most of the credit to defeating the Nazis. In the Pacific, most Japanese soldiers never saw an American: they were busy garrisoning (read: brutalizing) China. The Americans at least have a decent claim in the Pacific, what with the whole aerial incineration of Japan. Europe, on the other hand, owes both the freedom of France and England, as well as the oppression of the Warsaw Pact, to the Soviets.

I think I need to watch Fog of War again.

Gee, You'd Almost Think Rape Were A Crime

Via Lawyers, Guns and Money:

A man's life has been sacrificed, and three children have been denied their father by malicious feminists who have lobbied for laws that punish spousal rape just like stranger rape and deny a man the right to cross-examine his accuser. They have created a judicial system where the woman must always be believed even though she has no evidence, one in which the man is always guilty.

Schlafly is entirely right. After all, we all know that murder is punished less severely when the husband murders his wife. Ergo, it is impossible for husbands to rape their wives. Or something.

Seriously, it took years for the courts and legislatures in the west even to acknowledge that spousal rape was illegal. Why would we try to roll that back?

I recently read an extremely frustrating book called Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism Has Betrayed the Fight. I normally wouldn't have picked up the book, except that the author (Neil Boyd) wrote a fascinating book previously called The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent. The Beast Within was really excellent, exploring the number of biological, anatomical, and neurological factors that help explain why men are so much more violent than women - especially when you get to the level of criminal violence, where 90-95% of all violent crime is committed by men. This number is pretty constant across history and different countries, making social explanations tenuous.

Basically, Boyd argues that men are built for violence in ways that women aren't. This doesn't mean that women can't be violent, or even extremely violent in certain circumstances. Just that they don't have the predisposition towards violence that men - especially young men - do. The book really screwed with my head in a number of ways, most importantly the realization that, as a man under the age of 30, I'm in the single most important demographic for violent crime. My gender and age are a better statistical determinant of potential violence than almost anything else. It's pretty weird - I don't see myself as a violent person, but if statistics have any predictive value at all (ask the polling firm SES about that) then I have to face the fact that I'm a potentially dangerous person.

None of this means that I think I'm going to kill someone, or even get in to a fight. Certainly, Boyd doesn't argue a biologically-determinist view. All this is just by way of explaining why I picked up Big Sister, which was not nearly as good as his first book. While he raises some interesting points, there's a large, suppurating sore in the middle of his book. Throughout the book, he spends numerous pages defending young and not so young men who were accused of sexual harrasment, assault or rape. Most of these men were not charged in a criminal setting, but in administrative one. So they weren't given what we would normally consider the full benefit of law. I find this troubling, for sure.

But what do they all have in common? None of them - not one - asked for and received a clear statement of consent. Indeed, Boyd unfortunately hitches his wagon to the Ewanchuk case that went before the Supreme Court a few years back. In Ewanchuk, the accused man was found guilty of sexual assault for repeatedly forcing himself on a woman during a job interview, despite her three separate protests. The way this was spun by anti-feminists was that he "stopped after she said no". Which is only true if you ignore the first two times she said no. That's two counts of assault, not zero.

Leaving aside the specifics of any one case, how do you not ask for consent in this day and age? I mean, this is the smallest, least meaningful barrier to put between a man and sex, and some men seem to think it's a padlock and a snarling dog. It takes a second to ask the question. I haven't found it breaks the mood. And there's a more fundamental question - if you can't bother to ask, why should anyone believe you care what the answer is in the first place?

On the age of Consent

So the Tories want to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16:

A key Conservative priority is to raise the age of protection from 14 to 16, with a "close in age" exemption, said Toews, adding: "We don't want to criminalize conduct between youths."

The change would mean criminal charges for adults who have sex with girls or boys aged 14 or 15. At the moment, having sex with a 14-year-old is legal in Canada, in contrast with jurisdictions such as Texas, where the age of consent is 17.

Okay: Any day where Canada is becoming more like Texas is a bad one. Ew.

Secondly: I wish I'd had another person to consent to sex with when I was 14. How are all these kids finding sexual partners this early in life? And more importantly, have young women started finding nerds sexy yet? I need hope for the next generation of bookish nerdy guys, after all.

(This is, of course, assuming that there actually is a lot of sex happening among young teens, and not just an example of media hysteria.)

But here's a serious question: If a 14 year old can consent to sex with a 15 year old - as they would be able to, with the "close in age" exception - what's the argument for raising the age of consent anyway? I mean, if I were 14 and could consent to sex with a 15 year old, wouldn't I be just as mentally competent to consent to sex with a 20-year old?

If we're saying that a 14 year old is competent to consent to sex at all, what's the argument on restricting what form that consent takes?

Looks to me like the Conservatives don't actually think this is about protecting 14 year olds. This is just one of many examples we'll see of the Conservatives using the law as a form of moral scolding.

Welcome to the Conservative government, Canada - anything you want to do, the government wants to know about it, and tell you why it's wrong.

(Bring on the trolls to tell me why I'm a pedophile.)

Strange Coincidence

My space-nerdery and energy-nerdery combine as Bob Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars and Entering Space writes a piece advocating ethanol, but especially methanol - via Kevin Drum:

To liberate ourselves from the threat of foreign economic domination, undercut the financiers of terror, and give ourselves the free hand necessary to deal with Middle Eastern extremists, we must devalue their resources and increase the value of our own. We can do this by taking the world off the petroleum standard and putting it on an alcohol standard.

This may sound like a huge and impossible task, but with gasoline prices well over $2 per gallon, the means to accomplish it are now at hand. Congress could make an enormous step toward American energy independence within a decade or so if it would simply pass a law stating that all new cars sold in the U.S.A. must be flexible-fuel vehicles capable of burning any combination of gasoline and alcohol. The alcohols so employed could be either methanol or ethanol....

Methanol is cheaper than ethanol. It can also be made from a broader variety of biomass material, as well as from coal and natural gas. And methanol is the safest motor fuel, because it is much less flammable than gasoline (a fact that has led to its adoption by car racing leagues).

On the other hand, ethanol is less chemically toxic than methanol, and it carries more energy per gallon. Ethanol contains about 75 percent of the energy of gasoline per gallon, compared to 67 percent for methanol. Both thus achieve fewer miles per gallon than gasoline, but about as many miles per dollar at current prices, and probably many more miles per dollar at future prices....

Ethanol is actually edible, whereas methanol is toxic when drunk. This difference, though, should not be overdrawn, since in an FFV economy, both would be mixed with gasoline.

Zubrin later argues for Methanol, basically because we can't make enough ethanol to fuel everyone. This is true. However, we totally ignores the potential for plug-in hybrids to displace the majority of our gasoline use. He's right that this is inevitably going to be a slow process, but will it be any slower than replacing our gasoline-fired cars with ethanol/methanol ones?

Oh, and Zubrin's probably dead wrong when he says the alcohol economy would benefit the third world. In theory it could, of course, but it's already possible to import cheap ethanol from Brazil and other third-world countries. What stops it in the US? Massive sugar and ethanol tariffs.

Thanks, Florida. For so much.

Gmail Invites, Anyone?

So I've got 19 gmail invites left to give away. Anyone desperate for a Gmail account who doesn't yet have one?

Email me, address on the left, below the blogroll.

I Am Underwhelmed

So President Bush last week announced that America is addicted to oil. Some are hopeful that this will be Bush's Nixon-to-China moment. Except that here's the thing - Bush didn't actually suggest that we break our addiction.

Cut oil imports from the mideast? Even if he was serious (he wasn't) all that means is the US is finding a nicer pusher. Maybe a guy who won't spray gunfire in to your house when you owe him money. Maybe a Canadian.

Switchgrass? Ethanol? Okay, so we're kicking smack and on methadone. Great for us, I suppose, but we're still not talking about actually breaking the addiction - we're talking about harm reduction.

This isn't to say that harm reduction isn't valid. I'm a big believer of harm reduction and mental health approaches to addiction. But if we're using metaphors, let's make sure we're using the right ones.

Meanwhile, this may be the only time that a Republican has proposed sensible solutions to addiction.

One Other Thing

I'm over-joyed to see the number of Blogging Tories who have reacted double-plus ungoodly to Harper's choices yesterday. Unlike their American cousins, they recognize that agreement and obedience are not the same thing, and one does not require the other.

Excellent Point

I'll try and make this my last word on the whole Emerson-Fortier thing. I'll just say that I agree entirely with BCer in TO:

How many seats would the Conservatives have won if Canadians knew the following about Stephen Harper:

1) He dodged questioning by the ethics commissioner.
2) He would lure a Liberal across the floor with a cabinet post.
3) He would appoint his campaign co-chair to the Senate and give him an important cabinet post.
4) He would ignore the spirit of his lobbying reform package by appointing a former defence industry lobbyist as his Minister of National Defence.

The CPC perpetrated a fraud upon the people of Canada. I suspect if all this was known before e-day we may have seen the swearing-in of another minority Liberal cabinet today under Paul Martin. You know, when I think of it that way thanks for being so dishonest Stephen, we needed a time-out. And with the way you’re going so far, it won’t last too long.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps Harper may have shot himself in the foot with this Senate appointment. Or rather, the appointment of a Senator to the cabinet. Aside from the horrible (HORRIBLE!) optics, there's also that fact that this makes the Senate relevant again.

Fortier won't be able to answer questions in the Commons, so it will fall to the Liberals and NDP in the Senate to question him. This will necessarily bring media attention to the Senate for the first time since... 1988?

So far, I haven't heard of any Tory talking about a by-election, so we've got however long this government lasts of journalists having to pay attention to the proceedings of the Senate. This is obviously going to affect how the Senate conducts its business. If the media is actually watching, I imagine the Senate Liberals will actually make a fight of things.

Harper would have been much, much smarter to simply appoint Fortier but find an actual MP to take Public Works. The optics would still be bad - given Harper's stated views on the Senate - but not as bad.

As it stands now, Harper may very well have done the one thing that could cut his government short - woken the Senate.

Open question for the crowd: Is this possible? If possible, is it deliberate?

Worst. Senator. Ever.

Memo to John Ibbitson: Having Senator Mike Harris "represent" Toronto for the Tories would be like having Pierre Trudeau "represent" Alberta.

He's not from Toronto, he spend most of his time in government fucking Toronto as violently as he could, and he left office just in time to not face a humiliating defeat to the basically robotic Dalton McGuinty. The GTA has thankfully swept the Tories away and replaced them with Liberals and NDP MPPs.

I'm sure there are sensible Tories who actually could represent Toronto, but Mike Harris would be a calculated insult to Toronto.

Ibbitson would know this, if he had the sense God gave a gnat. But apparently, the cult of Saint Mike lives on.

Bush: Not So Big on the Separation of Powers

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.

The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Via Steve Gilliard.

You see, if Congress did its job and actually provided a "check" or "balance" to the White House, then Bush could be impeached. Instead, the Senate needs to be broken to the will of the Executive.

Um... anyone else smell the putrid bouquet of late-Republican Rome?

Notes

The attentive among you may have noticed I've added The Reaction to the blogroll. A fellow Canadian blogger who's also been nominated for the Koufax awards.

In general, I'm happy to link to people if you email me. I can't guarantee I'll do it, and I generally want to check out the blog first, but I'm more than willing.

Oh, and it might take me a few days, even if I intend to.

A Great Morning For Conservative Principles

First, David Emerson crosses the floor, then Stephen Harper appoints a Senator without an election.

Now, I personally don't think either of these are especially big deals. I've always thought the whole hullabaloo over floor-crossing was irrelevant. The Senate appointment is a bit more important (or less unimportant, if you will) simply because it's hard to argue that this was at all urgent - we could have held a sham election in a few months, and the Parliament would really have kept on ticking.

I don't personally think either the Minister of International Trade or the new Senator from Montreal need to stand for election, but if the Conservatives want to hold elections anyway, I say go for it.

Gag Me With A Fucking Spoon

Oh my God! Harper took a minivan to his swearing-in! It can only mean one thing - this Prime Minister will be closer to Canadian families and children. Because as we all know, Paul Martin hated kids.

God, CTV is bugging me.

The NDP Is Relevant Again

Emerson's floor-crossing is confirmed. This means that the NDP, with the BQ and the Liberals, now have the ability to give the Conservative 154 votes in the Commons. That's enough for the NDP to play a real role in this Parliament, much like they did in the last one.

I wonder if Harper will have better luck building coalitions in the Commons than Martin did.

Interesting

Liberal David Emerson has apparently walked in to Rideau Hall. The people on CTV are rather excited about this, as it might mean another floor crosser.

Certainly interesting. But can we please stop the media practice of using countdown timers for every single event?

Blogratulations

Because I get to make up words if I want to. Congratulations to Angelica and Gene, who are now Mrs. and Mr. Battlepanda.

Of course, now I'll inevitably get commenters wondering when I'll make Vicki an honest woman...

Good News for Solar

A bunch of good news pieces for solar energy. From the Energy Blog:

Daystar Technologies announced plans to establish a profitable manufacturing platform, expandable to Gigawatt scale (1,000 MW), by 2008. They said that they are positioned to become the premier low-cost, high-volume producer of solar-electric photovoltaic (PV) cells in the world. The announcement states that the company will accomplish this by being the first to successfully implement a proprietary, high-throughput, manufacturing methodology for the production of Si-free, Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS)-based solar cells, thus enabling PV to compete with traditional power generation in the growing global electricity marketplace. They claimed that their products are lighter, more robust, and have comparable performance to the current industry standard, crystalline Silicon (Si) solar cells.

The benefit for CIGS cells is that they don't require the increasingly-expensive polysilicon that conventional cells do. They also don't rely on toxic cadmium, like some competing technologies do. 1Gw per year is a hell of an output - if we had that here in Ontario, our summer electricity problems would be a thing of the past.

If that weren't good enough news, a different company is preparing to introduce PV cells based on quantum dots, a technology that has the potential for remarkable efficiency - 65%, potentially:

Innovalight solution-processes the quantum dots in a so-called silicon "ink" that lends itself to proven manufacturing technology using roll-to-roll printing technology used for printing on paper or film. Being able to deposit ink on flexible substrates allows Innovalight to apply its technology to applications such as clothing and portable chargers for both consumer and military customers.

By controlling the sizes of the dots from 2 to 10 nm the company can tailor either the absorption or emission spectra of the resulting film. This allows capture of everything from infrared to ultraviolet and the visible spectrum in between which is not possible with conventional technology.

Between Inovalight, Nanosolar, Daystar, and any number of other firms it looks like we can expect rapid decreases in price for solar energy. More importantly, we're also seeing the beginnings of high-volume production. 1Gw per year would be huge.

Seriously?

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

So first we go after evolution, now we're going after the Big Bang?

I guess they won't be happy until we're all taught the Earth was created in 6,000 years.

What's Your Favourite Futurama Quote?

Because it's my blog, and screw the naysayers. My three:

1) Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, it's a QUANTUM FINISH!
Professor: No fair! You changed the outcome by observing it!

2) Morbo: Introducing - Puny human #1, puny human #2, and Morbo's close personal friend, Richard Nixon.
Nixon: Hello Morbo, how's the family?
Morbo: Numerous and belligerent.

3) Professor: "Oooh… A lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-my-own-grandpa! Let's get the hell out of here already. Screw history!"

I Continue To Nerd Out

An interesting question, from comments:

I'm a little confused. How can earth be running short of some metals if the smallest metal-rich near earth asteroid holds more platnium gold and nickel than has been mined in human history? For surely these asteroids have been smacking into earth for billions of years? Wouldn't it be easier to find some that have smacked into the earth and mine them?

One problem is that the Earth is distressingly uncooperative when it comes to preserving asteroid impacts. Erosion, continental drift, subduction, etc. all conspire to a) do away with asteroid impact zones, and b) hide the ones that survive. Still, there are still some well-known mineral deposits that are probably asteroid-derived. For example, the South African gold strike was asteroid-desposited, as was the Sudbury nickel deposit (probably.) The more important question, though, is this:

And although metal meteorites found on earth do contain some gold and platinum and other expensive metals, it's a tiny amount per kilo and isn't concentrated in one spot as can be the case with metal deposits on earth, so it would be a very difficult process to get say the gold out of a metal rich asteroid.

So how do we get useful amounts of metal out of an metal-rich asteroid?

It turns out, it's not that hard. An average metal-rich asteroid is composed mostly of Iron and Nickel. Usually, these two elements make up more than 90% of the rock. The rest is often platinum-class metals. Fortunately, separating this stuff out is actually very easy using carbonyl chemistry. Essentially, exposing certain metals (iron, nickel, platinum, chromium, gold, some others) to carbon monoxide at high pressures gives you a carbonyl form of the metal - iron carbonyl, nickel carbonyl, etc. (These all have proper names, but I forget them at the moment.) With carbonyls, it is possible to a) separate out metals, and b) refine them to very, very high levels - 99.9% on the first pass is not unheard of. Carbonyl chemistry is used here on Earth to separate and refine nickel. Inco in Sudbury uses carbonyl chemistry all the time. It requires relatively little energy or equipment. Bring a small supply of carbon monoxide, and you're set.

I think by the time we're able to get to the asteroids, there won't be any difficulty in actually using them.

The real problem is getting the metals back to Earth. For that, we need a much more reliable and cheap access to space than we have so far.

Whiny Ass Babies

So... it's good to know that the Muslims of Europe have decided not to overreact to a freakin' cartoon:



(Via The Talent Show.)

"Your 9/11 is on it's way!!" Classy. Congratulations for getting "your" right, even if you put an apostrophe in "its".

Now, I understand that religion is a touchy subject, but if Christianity can endure the living, breathing mockery of its values that is Pat Robertson, Islam can survive an editorial cartoon. And by the by, somehow this really sums up that whole "Clash of Civlizations" thing:



Seriously. You respond to a cartoon implying your religion is unusually violent... by holding signs in the street calling for another 9/11, "butcher" and "slay"ing those who defile Islam.

I wonder what the Arabic word for Irony is?

None of this makes the cartoon itself any less noxious, by the way. It takes serious mental damage to insult someone, then wonder why they're so upset.

It reminds of guys I used to know, who thought they could get away with saying anything, so long as the suffix "no offense" was used. As in "you're a total asshole, no offense." Guess what, Danish cartoonist, wherever you are: Images have meaning, like words do. In fact, I seem to remember a saying about the relative value of pictures vs. words...

I understand that these are, as far as I can tell, isolated signs. For all I know, all of the other protesters were peaceful, and excellent representatives of their religion. But when you've got some douchebag slamming muslims and wondering why they're all cranky, and another guy saying "Freedom go to hell" I just gotta wonder what's wrong with some people.

We're Whalers On The Moon

In a shocking turn of events, I have to learn about space nerdy goodness from another blogger. I must be getting old. Via Angelica:

MOSCOW (AP) – The head of a leading Russian space company said it was considering plans to set up a permanent moon base by 2015, a statement that appeared to be an effort to win government funds rather than a specific action plan, news reports said Thursday.

Nikolai Sevastyanov, the head of the state-controlled RKK Energiya company that built Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, said that mining helium-3, a potential rich source of energy, and harnessing it back to Earth would be a key priority in the moon exploration program, the Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru Web sites reported.

Helium-3 fusion is a real thing, alright. The problem with mining it from the lunar soil is that you're literally talking about trying to collect He3 from dirt, when the concentrations we're talking about are roughly 4 parts per billion. The task is so massive that it makes collecting gold from seawater look easy.

Yes, a space shuttle could bring back to Earth 30-35 tons of He3, which would be enough to power the entire planet for a few months. But how much of the moon would we need to mine in order to get those 35 tons? Roughly 8.75 million tons of lunar dirt. That's a 1-250,000 ratio. Now, a few years ago I would have said that was madness, but the positively giddy way that the US, China, and India have invested in the tar sands (which are oddly similar) makes me more optimistic about He3 mining.

There are, of course, some problems. The biggest is the same one as always with lunar projects - the moon's gravitational pull. Getting anything out of the moon will be much more difficult than from a smaller body. On top of that, He3 refining will require a huge amount of energy itself. Then of course there's the problem that, even if we had abundant He3 here on Earth, we still don't have a working fusion reactor.

All of these problems are solvable. But if we're really going to talk about massive space infrastructure to bring electricity to Earth, my preferred pipe-dream is the Solar Power Satellite. Essentially, we would build acres of solar panels in geosynchronous orbit, where the Sun shines 99% of the time, and beam the electricity down via microwaves. The cost of electricity would be about the same as with the optimistic numbers for fusion, but it wouldn't be "nuclear" so it avoids the bad branding, and the satellites could be built out of asteroids instead of lunar dirt, meaning that getting the stuff to build them with would be much cheaper.

All of this is nice dreaming - and don't get me wrong, I wish RKK Energiya luck - but if we're looking for anneutronic fusion possibiilties (i.e., fusion power sans radiation) hydrogen-boron fusion still sounds like a better bet, especially if the boys at Focus Fusion are right. p-B fusion is even less radioactive than He3 fusion, though it is more difficult to "ignite" than He3, which is itself harder to ignite than the traditional Deuterium-Tritium reaction. The other benefit is that p-B fusion doesn't require anything exotic like He3, Tritium, or even Deuterium. All you need is regular hydrogen and regular boron - and a sufficiently dense plasma to initate fusion. There's the rub.

Another option for collecting He3 that might actually be more successful would be collecting it from the gas giants. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have literally billions of years worth of He3 free-floating in their atmospheres. The problem with Jupiter is that it's gravity well makes collection impossible at this point. Saturn would be more difficult, but possible. But the far more likely candidates are the outlying gas giants Uranus and Neptune. Their smaller gravity wells makes collection much easier. One problem - they're a minimum of 6 years away.

Which leads us to the biggest chicken-and-egg problem of space exploration: The solar system has plenty of resources for us to get at - energy and mineral wealth beyond counting. The problem is that we can't get at it. Once we can get at He3, for example, a fusion rocket could cut the travel time to Neptune to something like weeks instead of years. But we can't make a working fusion rocket until we get a decent fuel. Which we can't get until we send someone to Neptune to get it... etc.

But we will have to go out there some time. We're rapidly running down our stocks of critical metals here on Earth - there's serious questions about how much longer our supplies of platinum, or even copper will last. Meanwhile, the smallest metal-rich, near-Earth asteroid holds more platinum, gold, and nickel than have ever been mined in the history of human industry - something on the order of $20 trillion, according to mid-1990s prices.

The idea of energy or mineral shortages is an illusion caused by our perspective - from down here, it looks like a real problem. Out there, with free solar energy and more minerals, water, and organic chemicals than exist on Earth, the idea that we're lacking in anything but imagination and courage is laughable.

Woo-hoo

Victory is mine! I hereby accept Matthew's grovelling apology.

What, no grovelling? No apology? All I get is the smug satisfaction of being right, leavened only by my being a bit of a tool?

That'll do... for now.

In all seriousness, while I was making a rather limited technical point about the benefits of EVs, Angelica makes a far more important political point:

I think it is fair to say that most of us who are concerned about our use of oil thinks that springing a few sheikels for research into alternative fuels should be a priority. Instead, it's being cut.

Matt said: "These problems, though related, are different. If you want to think about improving energy policy, you need to be clear about what it is you're trying to accomplish." Perhaps. But that can really be said about any coalition. I think the three groups Matt sets up as disparate camps are really more like overlapping circles of concern forming a venn diagram. The big difference now is between those of us who get it, for whatever reason, and those who still want to stick their head in the sand.

I think the whole idea of "oil independence" is a mistake, but I can work with James Woolsey when he's for plug-in hybrids. When he's for torturing muslims, not so much.

How's that for inherent tension?

I am Snarky

Andrew Coyne:

And when they were not attacking each other, they were ganging up on a perfectly decent group of Canadians: social conservatives. Again, the Liberals led the charge, but the Tories seemed as content to deflect the demonization campaign onto someone other than themselves. To listen to the rhetoric, you would never believe that anyone who had any questions about abortion or gay marriage should be allowed out in public, let alone to vote.

And the problem is?

A Non-Issue

Howard Stern is back in Canada. Fine. Who cares? I didn't care when he was introduced the first time, I didn't care when he got canned from Toronto radio, and I don't care that he's back again, this time on Sirius Canada.

One thing, though - Stern was never censored by the Canadian government. Rather, both Q107 and CHOM in Toronto and Montreal received massive amounts of listener complaints from his show, and both stations - independent of any government action - dropped him.

The one argument for a "censorship" angle would be that both stations had to monitor Stern's show to make sure it complied with Canadian broadcast standards, but so does every word uttered on Canadian radio and television, so Stern wasn't being singled out or anything.

Anyway, continue to love or hate him, as you were before this came back up again.

Don't Believe Anything From His Mouth

Okay, this was funny:

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

But this is just tragic:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

See, not only did he not mean it literally, he didn't actually mean it at all. The good news, such as it is, is that Ethanol and Wind have probably progressed to the point that they can survive more or less without subsidy. But there's a huge difference between surviving and flourishing.

Coal Confusion

In a post about the problems with oil, Matthew Yglesias writes:

I think nobody's all that surprised to learn that the president's oil addiction talk is largely bogus. I think it's worth saying, however, that the debate over this on all sides tends to get very confused. There are three kinds of problems that people tend to have about oil. The most politically salient of them is that people are concerned that gasoline costs too much. The most longstanding of them is that gasoline is bad for the environment. The chic high-minded one is that gasoline is bad geopolitics.

People keep wanting to get on the right side of all three of these concerns, but it's worth appreciating that they're somewhat in tension. Somebody might invent a really awesome electric car tomorrow that let us stop relying on gasoline to power our automobiles. Rapidly switching over to such cars would address the alleged geopolitical issues.

So far, so good. But then Matt commits a major error that needs correction:

If the car was genuinely awesome it might address the cost concern as well -- we have pretty cheap ways of making electricity. But the prime cheap way we have of making electricity is to burn coal to do it. But coal is dirtier than oil, so this would make the environmental problem worse.

Actually, it wouldn't. If all of our cars were electric vehicles, and all of them were powered by coal-fired plants (even older models) we'd still come out ahead.

We'd immediately lose all of the pollution currently emitted from car tailpipes, but we'd gain from increased power generation. The neat thing about EVs, though, is that they're roughly 4-5 times as efficient as internal combustion engines, so even if they're charged by coal, they emit much less pollution. The Union of Concerned Scientists says that an average electric car would be responsible for 99% fewer emissions.

There's some additional bonuses: The problem of controlling emissions is shifted from 200 million cars to a few thousand generating stations, most of whom can quickly be retrofitted to much higher standards.

And from a human health perspective, the emissions have shifted away from the dense city streets to wherever the generating station is, meaning that commuters don't poison pedestrians and cyclists everyday.

From an Ontarian perspective, most of our electricity is generated by Nuclear or Hydroelectric, so EVs would be a no-brainer.

I've harped on and on about electric cars for about as long as I've had this blog, and there's a really good reason - if we can crack the problems of a) range, and b) charging times, then the problems of global warming, pollution, and preserving human mobility in the 21st century are all a lot less intractable than many believe.

Connect the Dots

Atrios on abortion, today:

I've never really understood that expressing the view that the "abortion is icky but it should be legal" is the right politics. I don't know why our side always needs to run from the abortion issue even thought it's one of our most popular issues.

Most people think abortion should be legal. There are people who think that to be true and but who else think that abortion is icky. So, if you give them any kind of out by asking questions such as "should abortion be legal in this circumstance? in this circumstance?" they'll tend to answer no on at least some of them.

Katha Politt, in the Nation:

The trouble with thinking in terms of zero abortions is that you make abortion so hateful you do the antichoicers' work for them. You accept that the zygote/embryo/fetus has some kind of claim to be born. You start making madonna-whore distinctions. In the New York Times Magazine Eyal Press, a contributing writer to this magazine, writes of his father, a heroically brave and dedicated abortion doctor: "Had the women...been free-love advocates for whom the procedure seemed a mere matter of convenience, he would not have been so angry" at the antichoice protesters who hounded him and his patients. Why not? Because a sexy single woman should suffer for not suffering?

An abortion provider, in the United States, in the modern day (via Angelica):

“Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills, with castor oil...we try to get them to the ER before their cardiac rhythm is interrupted...Sometimes they douche with very caustic products like bleach. We had a patient, a teen, who burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn’t even examine her, her vaginal tissue was so painful....”

“Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don’t. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families...”

...Indeed, in another eerie echo from the pre-Roe era, the increase in illegal abortion in Jen’s area is so significant that a doctor from the hospital mentioned above contacted her. He asked for her help in setting up a special ward for the treatment of illegal abortions when Roe is overturned, because he knows the caseload will mushroom then. “He didn’t say ‘if’—he said ‘when,’” Jen said. “Chills ran down my spine.”

Why is all this happening when abortion is still legal? Though the cost of abortion has remained remarkably flat since Roe —the cost of a first-trimester abortion at Jen’s clinic is $380, actually less than it was 20 years ago, adjusting for inflation—it's still too much for a woman who, as she puts it, “is on assistance, has two or three kids already and has no money whatsoever.” Teenagers in the state where Jen works also need parental consent before they can have an abortion. And for many teens and adult women alike, the overwhelming culture of shame that hovers around abortion prevents many from going to a clinic.

Just in case any of you thought I was overreacting to Frank McKenna's being pro-life, this is why being pro-choice is the only liberal, progressive position. Saying you support a woman's right to choose, but then create an entire culture where the only possible choice is to keep the child, is no better than overturning Roe in the first place. Telling young women from day 1 that abortion = murder, sin, death, but maintaining the fig leaf of legal "choice" is, if anything, more cruel and unusual than simply banning it outright.

All You Need To Know About American Justice

Gwynne Dyer on Saddam's Trial:

It would have been possible to try Saddam and his companions before an international court, too. In fact, it would have been a lot easier than it was in 1945, since there are now many precedents for such a court. But an international court would need to have tried Saddam on charges of waging aggressive war (against Iran and Kuwait) and pursuing a policy of genocide (against the Kurds), which would have brought up all sorts of awkward history from the days when the US and Saddam were effectively allies.

Patient Princes

The most interesting part about this article on Princess Masako (what, you don't read about the Japanese royalty?) comes near the end:

No males have been born into the imperial family since 1965, and to avert a succession crisis, advisers to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi recommended in November that women and their children be given equal rights to inherit the throne.

But while a majority of ordinary citizens back the change, conservative lawmakers and others are vowing to block it.

Instead, they want to revive princely houses abolished after World War Two to find a male heir, or even bring back the custom of imperial concubines.

At the end of the war, all of the non-imperial aristocratic families were stripped of their titles and privileges. Most, of course, were very wealthy anyway and to this day many still are. It would be hillarious in a "you've got to be kidding" kind of way if, 60 years after they got stripped of their powers, the princely houses were reconstituted.

Everywhere else in the world aristocracy is a dirty word. But not in Japan. Conservatives want to bring back the same class of people who were plundering, raping, pillaging, and profiteering from the Pacific War just so a girl doesn't get the throne.

After all, Japan was founded on these kinds of traditional family values.

Pluto is No Longer a Planet

There's been an ongoing debate in planetary circles as to whether or not Pluto qualifies as a "planet" - despite the fact that everyone calls it a planet, some spoilsports insist that, no, Pluto does not deserve the title.

(Only the uber-est of uber-nerds care about these things, of course. What?)

Anyway, the one thing that the pro-planet crowd had on their side until today was that Pluto was one of the biggest "trans-neptunian objects". Until today, apparently.

The chilly world dubbed Xena on the outskirts of the solar system has as at least as much claim to be a planet as Pluto, according to a new study confirming that the "tenth planet" is by far the larger of the two.

Astronomers first spotted Xena, known more formally as UB 313, in 2003, but the discovery was not made public until July 2005. By then they realised it was amazingly distant – at times, about three times as far from the Sun as Pluto is.

Xena is about the size of the Earth's moon, accompanied by it's own moon - named Gabrielle.

Astronomers are apparently cute as bunnies.

The Problem of Oil Independence

Aside from Bush's cravenness before the House of Saud, there's a good reason not to use rhetoric about cutting oil imports from the Middle East - cutting imports from the Middle East is probably a bad idea. The effect (and aim) would be similar to an embargo, essentially, and that faces the same problems that embargoes like Cuba do and South Africa did. Namely, the effect is limited to how complete the embargo is, and it's questionable whether an embargo would even help anyway. How effective were sanctions against South Africa? How effective have they been against Cuba? How ineffective were they against China post-Tiananmen?

Nevermind the obvious problem of our near-perfect hypocrisy when it comes to the Saudis (ask Bill Sampson about that) we should really ask if the object of our foreign policy should be to impoverish countries because we dislike what they do with their money. I think it's a waste of time, frankly, especially when China and India will pick up any slack in oil demand.

None of this invalidates a real effort to get off of oil consumption, but we're idiots if we pretend that there's a difference between "good" and "bad" oil.

Bush In Action

Somehow, this says everything you ever needed to know about the Bush administration:

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

via DailyKos.

Holy Sweet Hilarity

First, watch some fella named Olbermann take the piss out of Bill O'Reilly.

Then, watch Jon Stewart's bit about Google, Bush, and James Frey.

Enjoy and laugh.

(Update - apparently, I misspell words. Even in the title. Thanks, LeoPetr.)

Mac People Are Weird

Over the last 40 years, display technology for computer terminals has gone through many changes. We've gone through

- Paper printers for teletypes.

-Glass screens for same teletype machines.

-Monochrome CRT screens.

-4-color screens capable of pretty lousy resolution, still CRT.

-Color monitors of increasing capability and resolution.

To today, flatscreen monitors capable of millions of pixels of resolution. Which we then use to display a terminal screen that looks like a glass teletype screen.

Really? Is this what we need?



(Lest anyone accuse me otherwise, I am in fact jealous.)