Gmail Custom Time

Today Google announced Gmail Custom Time. This seems like an extremely powerful (and useful) tool, especially to chonologically challenged people like me ;-).

The butterfly effect

Satellite images posted on a NASA Web site show evidence of fresh clear-cutting by illegal loggers in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in central Mexico, inside the reserve's "core zone" where logging is prohibited according to the Presidential decree that established the preserve in 2000. I saw this in a New York Times article by Andrew Revkin, who also writes about it (and why we should plant milkweed in our gardens) in this post on his Dot Earth blog.
A 2004 article gives more background, and lays out the familiar dialectic:

The illegal logging, peasant leaders say, is driven by a surging demand for wood; by the crushing poverty of the Indians who live in communal cooperatives, called ''ejidos''; and by the lingering resentment over the government's decision 18 years ago to turn the precious forests into a reserve for insects that their people refer to as ''worms.''

Indeed, the mud-smeared men of San Luis spoke with contempt for a society they say cares more about the butterflies than about their families. This land belongs to them, they said, and they would not surrender their rights to a presidential decree, much less forsake the needs of their children for bugs.

''Everyone worries about the butterflies,'' said one illegal logger, the brim of his baseball cap pulled to his nose to hide his face. ''What about us?''
...
From the day the government established the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, peasants here have lived at odds with the government, and the deforestation turned fast and turbulent.

Mexico had given this land to peasants from the spoils of the revolution. With the creation of the reserve in 1986, the peasants accused the government of taking their land away.

The people of San Cristóbal, at the southern edge of the butterfly reserve, burned down their trees, rather than cede control to the government. Fourteen years later, the Mexican government expanded the reserve to more than 132,000 acres from 45,000 acres, offering peasants who live in extreme poverty few economic incentives to save their trees. The tensions, and deforestation, spread.

Now, as the demand for wood grows in factories, construction companies and fruit packing plants, middlemen have moved into the forests offering good money for timber -- about five times the average daily wage for a 60-year-old pine -- and peasants have decided to do business.

''What was once a problem of poverty and a necessity to survive has turned into a crime of greed,'' Mr. Lichtinger said, speaking of the logging in the butterfly reserve. ''There is no way to get the mafias to submit to the law.''

Governor Lázaro Cárdenas Batel said, ''If we tell people they cannot exploit their forests, and walk away, then we condemn them to dying of hunger, or we force them to become involved in illegal logging.''

The governor said the growing tensions in the butterfly reserve were one result of a three-year-old crackdown against industries around the area that buy illegal wood. Some 100 sawmills had been closed or fined, he said, and 159 people had been arrested, most of them poor workers.

Cost of a gallon of gas, $4; cost of a war...priceless

In a 28 Feb. news conference, President Bush learned that gas prices were pushing $4/gallon.

Peter Maer of CBS News Radio asked: "What's your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing ... "

"Wait, what did you just say?" the president interrupted. "You're predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?"

Maer responded: "A number of analysts are predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline."

Bush's rejoinder: "Oh, yeah? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that."

The president, once known for his common-guy skills, sounded eerily like his father, who in 1992 seemed amazed to discover that supermarkets had bar-code scanners.

The $4-a-gallon forecasts were reported widely in newspapers and on TV in the past week. The White House press secretary took a question about $4 gas at her Wednesday media briefing. A poll last month found that nearly three-quarters of Americans expect $4-a-gallon gas.

The president, however, had difficulty grasping the possibility, even after Maer told him.

"You just said the price of gasoline may be up to $4 a gallon — or some expert told you that," Bush repeated. "That creates a lot of uncertainty."
...
At a Shell service station in San Mateo, Calif., the price of a gallon of regular had already reached $4.29, well above the California average of $3.42, as measured by AAA.

---

In other reality-based cost news, Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz has co-authored (with Linda Bilmes) a new book in which they estimate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost the U.S. more than $3 trillion -- with the final tally likely to exceed that.

"It's much more like five trillion," Stiglitz said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. "We were trying to make Americans understand how expensive this war was so we didn't want to quibble about a dime here or a dime there."
...
"This war is the first war ever that's been totally financed by borrowing, by deficits,'' said Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York. "Because we haven't raised taxes, because we've tried to pretend this war is for free, we've been skimping on our treatment of veterans."

The estimate drew criticism: Senator Sam Brownback (R, TX) said the number ignores the price the U.S. would pay if Iraq became a terrorist state. [I would argue that, in fact, this is the price the U.S. has paid to create a terrorist state in Iraq.] And a White House spokesman criticized Stiglitz, saying the war on terrorism is, well, priceless:

"People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can't even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9-11," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto, conceding that the costs of the war on terrorism are high while questioning the premise of Stiglitz's research.

"It is also an investment in the future safety and security of Americans and our vital national interests. $3 trillion? What price does Joe Stiglitz put on attacks on the homeland that have already been prevented? Or doesn't his slide rule work that way?"

Now, maybe the book makes the political/moral judgment that $3 trillion spent on Iraq is wrong, but so far, the criticisms seem to be that there has been a cost accounting done at all -- and for saying that this is the first time we've waged a war without any effort at financing it. Again, I would argue that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq -- which had no WMDs and no link to Al Qaeda -- has had little, if anything, to do with preventing "attacks on the homeland."

---

And (I am not making this up) Karl Rove claims that

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don’t you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy.

Er, isn't the fact that we've effectively turned Iraq over to the control of Iran one of the few uncontested facts of the American-sponsored "regime change" in Iraq?

It depends on what your "capable" PC is capable of?

In the case of "Windows Vista Capable" it's apparently a little murky...and, according to a U.S. District Judge, open to a class-action suit. It's unclear whether the Microsoft executives who criticized Vista will be joining the suit.

Boys seek girls for...companionship(!?)

Apparently, loneliness can drive boys to seek companionship with girls, as well as with the robotic reptiles mentioned in my earlier post. An article reporting on work of psychology researchers at SUNY Oswego asks if the stereotype of teenage boys, driven by testosterone to the single-minded pursuit of sex, may be "telling us less about teenage males and more about a culture that seems to have consistently low expectations of its boys?" The researchers collected data from 105 10th-grade boys (average age 16). When asked to note their reasons for pursuing a relationship (with girls -- most of the boys self-identified as heterosexual) the top answer (marked by 80%) was "I really liked the person." The next-most-popular answers (tied) were physical attraction and getting to know someone better.
Perhaps needless to say, some people are dubious, particularly "former teenage boys."

Such skepticism about boys in their teens isn’t surprising, say researchers, but it reveals more about what’s going on in the minds of adults, than of teenagers.

“Grown men often deny how dependent they are on women,” said Michael G. Thompson, a psychologist specializing in children and families and co-author of the book “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys.” “The idea that you could pine for a girl, and be devastated by a girl makes an adult man uncomfortable. It reminds them of how profoundly attached they get to women.”

None of this is to say that teen boys aren’t interested in sex. Of course they are. But adolescence can often be a lonely time, and for many boys, girls represent needed companionship, Dr. Thompson said.

“Many boys are yearning to talk to somebody, but they can’t talk to their boy friends because it’s all teasing and a lot of competitiveness,” he said. “For many boys who have been a little bit lonely in the boy group, finally meeting a girl and talking to her is a huge relief.”

But the widespread skepticism about teenage boys is worrisome, some psychologists say, because it may mean that boys ultimately will fulfill our low expectations of them.

You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out

Warren Buffet's annual Shareholder Letter (PDF format) was issued last Monday. This year's letter begins with a two-paragraph summary of Berkshire Hathaway's performance, and then Buffet immediately remarks on the housing bubble:

Some major financial institutions have, however, experienced staggering problems because they engaged in the “weakened lending practices” I described in last year’s letter. John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: “It is interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.”

You may recall a 2003 Silicon Valley bumper sticker that implored, “Please, God, Just One More Bubble.” Unfortunately, this wish was promptly granted, as just about all Americans came to believe that house prices would forever rise. That conviction made a borrower’s income and cash equity seem unimportant to lenders, who shoveled out money, confident that HPA – house price appreciation – would cure all problems. Today, our country is experiencing widespread pain because of that erroneous belief. As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight.

The following are other topics Buffet addresses in this year's letter:

On the weakening dollar

When the dollar falls, it both makes our products cheaper for foreigners to buy and their products more expensive for U.S. citizens. That’s why a falling currency is supposed to cure a trade deficit. Indeed, the U.S. deficit has undoubtedly been tempered by the large drop in the dollar. But ponder this: In 2002 when the Euro averaged 94.6¢, our trade deficit with Germany (the fifth largest of our trading partners) was $36 billion, whereas in 2007, with the Euro averaging $1.37, our deficit with Germany was up to $45 billion. Similarly, the Canadian dollar averaged 64¢ in 2002 and 93¢ in 2007. Yet our trade deficit with Canada rose as well, from $50 billion in 2002 to $64 billion in 2007. So far, at least, a plunging dollar has not done much to bring our trade activity into balance.

There’s been much talk recently of sovereign wealth funds and how they are buying large pieces of American businesses. This is our doing, not some nefarious plot by foreign governments. Our trade equation guarantees massive foreign investment in the U.S. When we force-feed $2 billion daily to the rest of the world, they must invest in something here. Why should we complain when they choose stocks over bonds?

Our country’s weakening currency is not the fault of OPEC, China, etc. Other developed countries rely on imported oil and compete against Chinese imports just as we do. In developing a sensible trade policy, the U.S. should not single out countries to punish or industries to protect. Nor should we take actions likely to evoke retaliatory behavior that will reduce America’s exports, true trade that benefits both our country and the rest of the world.

Our legislators should recognize, however, that the current imbalances are unsustainable and should therefore adopt policies that will materially reduce them sooner rather than later. Otherwise our $2 billion daily of force-fed dollars to the rest of the world may produce global indigestion of an unpleasant sort. (For other comments about the unsustainability of our trade deficits, see Alan Greenspan’s comments on November 19, 2004, the Federal Open Market Committee’s minutes of June 29, 2004, and Ben Bernanke’s statement on September 11, 2007.)

On corporate accounting ethics (Or, the lack thereof)
Buffet doesn't believe America's CEOs have offered much evidence that they're willing and able to resist on their own the temptation to "juice earnings":

Former Senator Alan Simpson famously said: “Those who travel the high road in Washington need not fear heavy traffic.” If he had sought truly deserted streets, however, the Senator should have looked to Corporate America’s accounting.

An important referendum on which road businesses prefer occurred in 1994. America’s CEOs had just strong-armed the U.S. Senate into ordering the Financial Accounting Standards Board to shut up, by a vote that was 88-9. Before that rebuke the FASB had shown the audacity – by unanimous agreement, no less – to tell corporate chieftains that the stock options they were being awarded represented a form of compensation and that their value should be recorded as an expense.

After the senators voted, the FASB – now educated on accounting principles by the Senate’s 88 closet CPAs – decreed that companies could choose between two methods of reporting on options. The preferred treatment would be to expense their value, but it would also be allowable for companies to ignore the expense as long as their options were issued at market value.

A moment of truth had now arrived for America’s CEOs, and their reaction was not a pretty sight. During the next six years, exactly two of the 500 companies in the S&P chose the preferred route. CEOs of the rest opted for the low road, thereby ignoring a large and obvious expense in order to report higher “earnings.” I’m sure some of them also felt that if they opted for expensing, their directors might in future years think twice before approving the mega-grants the managers longed for.

On Dow 2,000,000 (Not!)
Another accounting choice Buffet highlights is the investment-return assumption a company uses in calculating pension expense.

It will come as no surprise that many companies continue to choose an assumption that allows them to report less-than-solid “earnings.” For the 363 companies in the S&P that have pension plans, this assumption in 2006 averaged 8%. Let’s look at the chances of that being achieved.

The average holdings of bonds and cash for all pension funds is about 28%, and on these assets returns can be expected to be no more than 5%. Higher yields, of course, are obtainable but they carry with them a risk of commensurate (or greater) loss.

This means that the remaining 72% of assets – which are mostly in equities, either held directly or through vehicles such as hedge funds or private-equity investments – must earn 9.2% in order for the fund overall to achieve the postulated 8%. And that return must be delivered after all fees, which are now far higher than they have ever been.

How realistic is this expectation? Let’s revisit some data I mentioned two years ago: During the 20th Century, the Dow advanced from 66 to 11,497. This gain, though it appears huge, shrinks to 5.3% when compounded annually. An investor who owned the Dow throughout the century would also have received generous dividends for much of the period, but only about 2% or so in the final years. It was a wonderful century.

Think now about this century. For investors to merely match that 5.3% market-value gain, the Dow – recently below 13,000 – would need to close at about 2,000,000 on December 31, 2099. We are now eight years into this century, and we have racked up less than 2,000 of the 1,988,000 Dow points the market needed to travel in this hundred years to equal the 5.3% of the last.

It’s amusing that commentators regularly hyperventilate at the prospect of the Dow crossing an even number of thousands, such as 14,000 or 15,000. If they keep reacting that way, a 5.3% annual gain for the century will mean they experience at least 1,986 seizures during the next 92 years. While anything is possible, does anyone really believe this is the most likely outcome?

Dividends continue to run about 2%. Even if stocks were to average the 5.3% annual appreciation of the 1900s, the equity portion of plan assets – allowing for expenses of .5% – would produce no more
than 7% or so. And .5% may well understate costs, given the presence of layers of consultants and high- priced managers (“helpers”).

And this leads to Buffet's comments concerning what has been called the Lake Wobegon Effect as it applies to investors, or...

On why investors overall must be average (minus costs); passive (index) investors must be average (minus low costs); and active investors must be average (minus high costs).

Naturally, everyone expects to be above average. And those helpers – bless their hearts – will certainly encourage their clients in this belief. But, as a class, the helper-aided group must be below average. The reason is simple: 1) Investors, overall, will necessarily earn an average return, minus costs they incur; 2) Passive and index investors, through their very inactivity, will earn that average minus costs that are very low; 3) With that group earning average returns, so must the remaining group – the active investors. But this group will incur high transaction, management, and advisory costs. Therefore, the active investors will have their returns diminished by a far greater percentage than will their inactive brethren. That means that the passive group – the “know-nothings” – must win.

On Dow 24,000,000 (Not!) Or, Financial Advisers in Wonderland

I should mention that people who expect to earn 10% annually from equities during this century – envisioning that 2% of that will come from dividends and 8% from price appreciation – are implicitly forecasting a level of about 24,000,000 on the Dow by 2100. If your adviser talks to you about double- digit returns from equities, explain this math to him – not that it will faze him. Many helpers are apparently direct descendants of the queen in Alice in Wonderland, who said: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Beware the glib helper who fills your head with fantasies while he fills his pockets with fees.

Some companies have pension plans in Europe as well as in the U.S. and, in their accounting, almost all assume that the U.S. plans will earn more than the non-U.S. plans. This discrepancy is puzzling: Why should these companies not put their U.S. managers in charge of the non-U.S. pension assets and let them work their magic on these assets as well? I’ve never seen this puzzle explained. But the auditors and actuaries who are charged with vetting the return assumptions seem to have no problem with it.

Note: All of Buffet's shareholder letters (PDF format) may be found here.

eReptile can cure loneliness

And speaking of reptiles, there's Pleo, the robotic pet that won't soil your carpet as described in this San Francisco Chronicle article.

Carnegie Mellon University robotics Professor Illah Nourbakhsh has thought about why humans form attachments to what they clearly understand to be artificial constructs. It happens all the time, not just to people who buy Pleos, he said. It's the same impulse that drives some children to choose a favorite blanket or makes grown-ups unwilling to get rid of objects that hold special memories - like the dune buggy that may be sitting up on blocks in the backyard today but which once kicked up its share of sand.

Nourbakhsh said such objects, by their mere existence, evoke feelings of comfort or memories of fun. The human-Pleo connection is different, he said. The Pleo can perform certain actions - it rolls its eyes and makes cooing sounds - which allows it to trigger associations in the mind of sympathetic observers. Pet or baby lovers may link the Pleo to memories or emotions important to them, he said, creating a new bond in the heart of the beholder.

Funny thing is, the person may know exactly what sort of mind trick they're playing on themselves and yet still feel satisfied with the quid pro quo between human and machine. That is certainly the case with Robert Oschler, a self-employed computer programmer from Florida who said he spends too much time alone, would love the companionship of a woman, pet or plant but admits being too absent-minded to care for real living things.

"I killed a cactus," said Oschler, who believes that Pleo's simple behaviors - it squirms and moans if he ignores it for too long - trick his subconscious into thinking that he isn't really alone.

The birds and the bees, but not always the lizards and fish

Playing off ideas from two previous posts (genomics and rat courtship), this offering is a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece discussing how Kimodo dragons at the Wichita Zoo have recently hatched eggs, despite the absence of a male of the species for more than 10 years. Parthenogenesis (actual virgin birth, producing genetic clones) has been observed in other species of lizards, and fish. And the point of the piece is that reproductive strategies in nature run along a wide continuum -- there is no single "natural" way to do it. Indeed, "almost anything goes."

Cloning is one of many mechanisms species use to survive in a dangerous world. Indeed, the diversity of reproductive strategies seen in animals staggers the imagination. Some reptiles do not determine sexes genetically, but rely on different incubation temperatures to determine the development of males and females. Other creatures can actually switch sexes during their lifetimes, being born male and developing as females. Still others can switch sexes based on behavioral cues in the social group. There is no one way that creatures start development, grow and form sexes — there are many varied ways.

Unfortunately, humans seem to forget this fact when we find ourselves turning to nature to guide us through difficult choices, such as arguments about whether life begins at conception, or over the proper structure of the family. Or, more recently, regarding the morality of cloning. Whether we’re talking about raising bigger cattle or growing life-saving organs or trying to “live forever,” both sides like to stress their abilities to judge what is “natural.” Judging from Komodo dragons, lizards and sharks, the answer seems to be that for reproduction, almost anything goes.

And that is the point. Biology is about variation. Without variation, the world would be static and unchangeable, and species would gradually disappear as they failed to meet challenges like changing climates and environments. So as we continue our very necessary debates over ethical issues, let’s bear in mind that morality is a concept limited to our species. The natural world is a fuzzy place that doesn’t always accommodate our decidedly human need to find cut-and-dried categories.

Neil Shubin, an associate dean at the University of Chicago and the provost of the Field Museum, is the author of “Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.”

Oil prices, incarcerations at all-time high; Dollar at all-time low

Oil futures set an all-time record of $103.95/bbl this morning on the New York Mercantile Exchange, topping the inflation-adjusted price of $103.76/bbl set in April 1980 (at what was then $39.50/bbl).

Meanwhile, the dollar fell to a record low of $1.5274 against the Euro.

But on another high, the U.S. now has more than 1 in 100 adults behind bars. Kentucky (+12%), New Hampshire (+6.6%), and Iowa (+6.1%) led the nation in growing prison populations during 2007.

Year of the Rat

While in San Francisco, I had the chance to watch the Chinese New Year parade as it passed along Geary St. (From my hotel window, since it was raining, and a bit chilly.)

Read more in this San Francisco Chronicle story, along with a photo gallery.

Another Chronicle story contained several little-known rat facts. For example, male rats make better lap pets, since they're content to just sit and have their ears scratched. (Females are more curious, and like to play and explore.) And, be wary of letting your male and female rats play together, since "rats can complete the courting ritual and the whole romantic relationship in about two seconds."

The Chinese Year of the Rat actually began on 7 February.

SALT: Craig Venter

Last Monday evening I was in San Francisco to hear J. Craig Venter talk on "Joining 3.5 Billion Years of Microbial Invention." (The talk was sponsored by The Long Now Foundation as part of their Seminars About Long Term Thinking, or SALT series). Here are my notes (with a minor amount of editing, including tracking down some links):

• Venter sees our knowledge of DNA as being both

1. Gathering (Reading)
2. Using (Writing)

• We humans differ from one other in our DNA by 1% - 3%, which is more than had been previous thought. (We differ from chimps by 4% - 5%.)
• The first human diploid (i.e., both chromosome pairs) genome sequence (called "HuRef") was published by researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in the open access journal PLoS Biology (Public Library of Science).
  
• Microbes make up about one-half(!) of the Earth's biomass.

• In 2003, the JCVI did "shotgun sequencing" of microbes in the Sargasso Sea (published in Science).
• According to Venter, biologists had told him they would find no life, since there are no nutrients available. However, it turns out that these microbes contain proteorhodopsin, which allows them to convert sunlight into energy! (Note: this is not photosynthesis.)
• Interestingly, these are essentially the same sort of photoreceptor cells found in the human retina, but performing a different function.
  
• Even more interesting, different microbes have adapted to their environments by evolving sensitivity to different wavelengths: blue, in the Sargasso Sea; green in coastal areas.
  

• In 2004, JCVI launched the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) Expedition.
• For every 200 miles, the team found that 85% of the organisms sampled are unique!

• Each of us humans is a "microbiome" teeming with bacteria and viruses.
  
• During a single hour indoors, each of us comes in contact with 10,000 bacteria, and 100K viruses!
  

• As to the writing of genetic information, two Qs:
1. Can the chemistry permit synthesizing?
   
2. Can we boot it up?

• In January, JVCI announced the creation of the first synthetic bacterial genome, Mycoplasma genitalium JVCI-1.0. (See my earlier post.) The genome has more than a half-million base pairs, and was created by assembling a series of overlapping segments of increasing length: starting at 50 base pairs (bp); then 5-7kbp; then 24kbp; then 72kbp; then 144kbp; and finally, the entire 582,970 base pair genome.

• The JCVI team has demonstrated that it is possible to take the genome from one species and (via use of restriction enzymes which cut apart the host DNA) have it take over and reproduce itself in another -- literally changing one species into another. "True identity theft," Venter remarked. "The software makes its own hardware."
  
• Then there's D. radiodurans, an organism that, after absorbing 1.75 million rads of radiation -- and having its DNA blown to pieces -- is able to reassemble its genome in about 24 hours and live on.
  

• Venter said that solutions to issues such as fuels and climate are more likely to come from disruptive technologies.
• We are heading toward a future of combinatorial genomics, with the ability to construct thousands, or millions of genomes a day.

Q-A Session

• About 200 kg of material are exchanged between Earth and Mars each year.
• The space station used to vent waste into space; now, it is packed in an (aluminum?) tube and launched back into orbit (to burn up in the atmosphere). "Good shit from space!"
• Venter said that there are two common long term views of human survival:

1. Move to a new planet
2. Alter our genome to exist in a higher CO2 environment
3. Venter would add: Genetically alter the environment

• In commenting on the resistance to GMOs, Venter pointed out that agriculture has always been about mixing genes -- albeit blindly. He recalled a conversation with the leader of the German Green party, where Venter said told him, "If you ask me if I'm for or against [GMOs] I'll always come down on the "for." But, if you want to have an intelligent discussion about it, then I'll say that there were many things that should have been done differently.
  

• Near the conclusion, Venter remarked, "Eventually, science trumps ignorance."
  

Sidebar

• Stewart Brand's notes on this seminar may be found in this post at the The Long Now Foundation blog.
• The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is "a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource."
• Somewhere in the middle of all this, I remembered a classic Science Fiction short story (pub. 1941), The Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon.
• See the Ethical Considerations section of the JCVI's Synthetic Bacterial Genome press release for information on how the JCVI is dealing with societal issues surrounding the synthetic genome.
  

Asteroid Tagging

The Planetary Society yesterday held a press conference and issued a press release announcing the winners of its $50,000 asteroid tagging competition. From the press release:

The Apophis Mission Design Competition invited participants to compete for $50,000 in prizes by designing a mission to rendezvous with and "tag" a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid. Tagging would allow scientists to track an asteroid accurately enough to determine whether it will impact Earth, thus helping governments decide whether to mount a deflection mission to alter its orbit.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) co-sponsored The Planetary Society’s competition and will review the best mission designs offered. The winning designs will also be presented by The Planetary Society to other world space agencies.

The near-Earth asteroid, Apophis, was used as the target for the mission design because it will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of our geostationary satellites. (That’s close enough to be visible to the naked eye.) If it passes through a small “keyhole” as it travels by Earth, its trajectory could be diverted so that it will impact Earth in 2036. Current estimates do rate the probability of such an impact as very low.

The first place prize of $25,000 went to a U.S. team led by Spaceworks Engineering (Atlanta, GA) for their mission, named Foresight. European teams took the second and third place prizes ($10,000 and $5,000, respectively). Another $10,000 was distributed to the winners of the student competition.

The BBC News covered the announcement in this article.
[Thanks to georgef for the heads up on this one.]

The Biology that dare not speak its name

Evolution, the unifying principle of modern biology, can now be mentioned in Florida public schools! According to the AP story

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Florida's public school science standards for the first time will use the word ''evolution,'' although the biological concept already was being taught under code words such as ''change over time.''

The new standards, part of a set of overall science changes adopted by the State Board of Education Tuesday on a 4-3 vote, require schools to spend more class time on evolution and teach it in more detail.
. . .
Opponents of evolution denied they had a religious motive, arguing that there are flaws in the scientific theory of evolution and that students should be allowed to explore them.

As a compromise, the standards refer to evolution as a scientific theory, explaining that a theory is a well-supported and accepted explanation of nature, not simply a claim.
. . .
John Sullivan, executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention, objected to calling evolution the only fundamental concept underlying biology. He wrote in an e-mail to Education Commissioner Eric Smith that Baptists firmly believe there's evidence of a ''Creator-initiated origin of life'' but did not object to teaching evolution. He argued, though, its scientific weaknesses should be taught as well as its strengths.

Among the standard tactics used by evolution opponents is to ensure evolution is labeled as (only a) "theory" -- which they recognize in common usage to mean, your guess is as good as mine. It's encouraging that the Florida standards "compromise" explains that evolution is a theory in the scientific sense -- which is to say, it is an explanation of nature that is well supported by known facts, and makes testable predictions. That this is a social, not a scientific, issue is quite apparent from the fact that evolution opponents spend no time lobbying against the germ theory of disease, quantum theory, or relativity theory to ensure that their scientific weaknesses be taught and that the competing claim that, simply, "God does it" be presented. After all, we know that the acceleration of gravity on earth is 9.8 m/s² (32.2 ft/s²), but beyond that, any explanation is "just a theory" and, if one allows supernatural explanations, it is just as plausible that God makes apples fall.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories

The 9/11 "Truthers" have apparently been harassing Michael Shermer on his book tour, due to Skeptic magazine's cover story (volume 12, number 4) investigating 9/11 conspiracy theories. (Here's a clip of Bill Maher's television show being disrupted by a "Truther.") James Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, was interviewed on the Berkeley Groks radio show and the podcast is, I think, a good summary of the investigation by Popular Mechanics into claims that 9/11 was an inside job of the Bush administration. Even Noam Chomsky finds this too much to swallow! Skeptoid offers this more succinct analysis. I'm confident that the debate will continue long after I've shuffled off this mortal coil.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad (Bobby Fischer, Part 2)

[This is an addendum to an earlier post, Bobby Fischer.]

I just ran across this post, "Was It Only a Game?" on Dick Cavett's blog. I think Cavett's essay is just a beautiful piece of writing, and together with the clip of his first interview with Fischer (sumer of 1971, prior to the Spassky match) give a more nuanced and complex (and sympathetic) impression of an earlier, quite different intellect from the later raving paranoid Fischer became.
For those who choose not to read Cavett's post, I have to at least say that Cavett closes his essay by discussing those who did not have "a good death," and includes the closing lines from an E.E.Cummings poem, with no title but referred to by its first three words: “Buffalo Bill’s / defunct”:

Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

**********
Incidentally, the title of this post is, according to Wikiquote, an "Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides."

Synthetic Bacterial Genome

I'm a little late with this, but here's the lead from the J. Craig Venter Institute press release:

ROCKVILLE, MD—January 24, 2008—A team of 17 researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) has created the largest man-made DNA structure by synthesizing and assembling the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0. This work, published online today in the journal Science by Dan Gibson, Ph.D., et al, is the second of three key steps toward the team’s goal of creating a fully synthetic organism. In the next step, which is ongoing at the JCVI, the team will attempt to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on the synthetically made genome.

Here's the Science article.

* * * * *
Craig Venter was a participant in the 2007 Edge annual summer event: Life: What A concept. A transcript of the event has been published by Edge as a downloadable PDF. Here's the introduction to his discussion:

I have come to think of life in much more a gene-centric view than
even a genome-centric view, although it kind of oscillates. And
when we talk about the transplant work, genome-centric becomes
more important than gene-centric. From the first third of the
Sorcerer II expedition we discovered roughly 6 million new genes
that has doubled the number in the public databases when we put
them in a few months ago, and in 2008 we are likely to double that
entire number again. We're just at the tip of the iceberg of what the
divergence is on this planet. We are in a linear phase of gene
discovery maybe in a linear phase of unique biological entities if
you call those species, discovery, and I think eventually we can
have databases that represent the gene repertoire of our planet.
One question is, can we extrapolate back from this data set to
describe the most recent common ancestor. I don't necessarily buy
that there is a single ancestor. It’s counterintuitive to me. I think we
may have thousands of recent common ancestors and they are not
necessarily so common.

[Here's a video of Craig Venter giving the Richard Dimbleby lecture, A DNA-driven world.]

"[T]he natural world around us does not care what we believe."

The intersection of two earlier posts (What have you changed your mind about? and Climate 'clearly out of balance' ) leaves us with these thoughts about climate change, from two very interesting minds:
In The Irrelevance of "Probability" Nicholas Nassim Taleb (author of The Black Swan) writes

As I said, consider that belief (i.e., epistemology) and action (i.e., decision-making), the way they are practiced, are largely not consistent with one another.

Let us apply the point to the current debate on carbon emissions and climate change. Correspondents keep asking me if it the climate worriers are basing their claims on shoddy science, and whether, owing to nonlinearities, their forecasts are marred with such a possible error that we should ignore them. Now, even if I agreed that it were shoddy science; even if I agreed with the statement that the climate folks were most probably wrong, I would still opt for the most ecologically conservative stance — leave planet earth the way we found it. Consider the consequences of the very remote possibility that they may be right, or, worse, the even more remote possibility that they may be extremely right.

In his essay The importance of doing something now about the environment Craig Venter (Human Genome Decoder; Director, The J. Craig Venter Institute) writes

Like many or perhaps most I wanted to believe that our oceans and atmosphere were basically unlimited sinks with an endless capacity to absorb the waste products of human existence. I wanted to believe that solving the carbon fuel problem was for future generations and that the big concern was the limited supply of oil not the rate of adding carbon to the atmosphere. The data is irrefutable--carbon dioxide concentrations have been steadily increasing in our atmosphere as a result of human activity since the earliest measurements began. We know that on the order of 4.1 billion tons of carbon are being added to and staying in our atmosphere each year. We know that burning fossil fuels and deforestation are the principal contributors to the increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere. Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the warmest years since 1850. While no one knows for certain the consequences of this continuing unchecked warming, some have argued it could result in catastrophic changes, such as the disruption of the Gulf Steam which keeps the UK out of the ice age or even the possibility of the Greenland ice sheet sliding into the Atlantic Ocean. Whether or not these devastating changes occur, we are conducting a dangerous experiment with our planet. One we need to stop.
. . .
Our planet is in crisis, and we need to mobilize all of our intellectual forces to save it. One solution could lie in building a scientifically literate society in order to survive. There are those who like to believe that the future of life on Earth will continue as it has in the past, but unfortunately for humanity, the natural world around us does not care what we believe. But believing that we can do something to change our situation using our knowledge can very much affect the environment in which we live.
[Emphasis mine]

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

The feature article in the current (2008-01-30) eSkeptic email newsletter is Michael Shermer's Response to the Annual Edge.org Question “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?” Shermer's response concludes:

I have thus changed my mind about this theory of human nature in its extreme form. Human nature is more evolutionarily determined, more cognitively irrational, and more morally complex than I thought.

See the Edge Annual Question - 2008 to see read what 164 other contributers have changed their minds about, including:

• J. Craig Venter: The importance of doing something now about the environment.

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Irrelevance of "Probablility"

• Ray Kurtzweil: SETI

• W. Daniel Hillis: Try the Experiment Yourself
  

The most recent Annual Questions have been: What are you optimistic about? (2007); What is your dangerous idea? (2006); What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? (2005). All of the annual questions and responses (back t0 1998) may be found at the Edge World Question Center.

"A Charge to Keep" or, "The Slipper Tongue"

A friend who heard the president's State of the Union address has drawn my attention to the 2d paragraph: "All of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people's business. That is the purpose of this body. It is the meaning of our oath. It remains our charge to keep." The emphasis is mine, and of course leads us back to this previous post about George W. Bush and his favorite painting -- which for the President depicts a Methodist circuit-rider with A Charge to Keep, but in the reality-based world apparently depicts a horse thief fleeing his captors who, "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."

[A discussion of the painting and its significance may be found on pp. 89-90 of The Bush Tragedy, by Jacob Weisberg (2008, Random House).]
* * * * *
Taxes, Terrorists, and Iraq
And speaking of the State of the Union address, The New York Times published a very interesting graphic showing frequency of the words that were used in this and each of President Bush's previous State of the Union addresses. This year's winning words were: Iraq/Iraqi(s); Terror/Terrorist(s); Tax(es), with the 2d tier finding Al Qaeda and Freedom(s). Popular words from previous addresses that were missing or out of favor this year include: Health Care; (Health) insurance; Medicare; Retirement(s); Social Security.
Other notables:

• Weapons of mass destruction/murder disappeared after 2006.
• Bin Laden, not mentioned until 2006, was mentioned once this year (the same as 2007).
• Surpluses was mentioned once this year, after being absent since being mentioned more than a half-dozen times in 2001.
  

Profits

Nothing really surprising here, but I was caught simply the juxtaposition of these two stories today:

Profit Declines 31% at Gannett
"Gannett, the country's largest newspaper publisher, said on Friday that its fourth-quarter profit dropped 31 percent because of a decline in broadcasting revenue and weak newspaper ad sales."

Exxon Sets Profit Record: $40.6 Billion Last Year
"By any measure, Exxon Mobil's performance last year was a blowout."

The company's sales, more than $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries.
Exxon Mobil earned more than $1,287 of profit for every second of 2007.
Like most oil companies, Exxon benefited from a near doubling of oil prices, as well as higher demand for gasoline last year. Crude oil prices rose from a low of around $50 a barrel in early 2007 to almost $100 by the end of the year -- the biggest jump in oil prices in any one year.