Enthusiasm Gap

Despite long odds I still stand by the predictions I made earlier in the month despite the fact that some of the final and most reliable polls have Boxer and some other Democrats winning their tight races.

The reason why is voter turnout.  It is always difficult to model who is going to turn out on any given election but it is this modeling on which all reliable polls are based.  I am thinking that the enthusiasm gap will give Republicans 3-5 percentage points over what most of the current polls suggest.  Who am I to doubt the professional pollsters?

Just a guy on the Internet which means that I do not have to conform my expectations to the industry in order to protect my backside and keep my job come November third.  ;)

Have a good Sunday!

Science Saturday

Science should teach children to detect BS

The reason we do science in the first place is so that “our own atomized experiences and prejudices” don’t mislead us, as Ben Goldacre of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine puts it in his new book, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks. Understanding what counts as evidence should therefore trump memorizing the structural formulas for alkanes.

Feds Reverse: Genes should not be Eligible for Patent Protection

Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.

The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

“We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,” the brief said.

It is not clear if the position in the legal brief, which appears to have been the result of discussions among various government agencies, will be put into effect by the Patent Office.

Attempt to eradicate Malaria might backfire

Efforts to eradicate malaria in some countries may be counter-productive, an international team of researchers suggest.

In the Lancet, they suggest some countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, may be better pursuing a policy of controlling the disease.
They also criticise the World Health Organization (WHO) for not providing adequate direction.

The Rare Earth Trainwreck

Rare earths are important because they have special features at the quantum mechanics level that allow them to have unique magnetic interactions with other elements. A myriad of “green” technologies --  from electric and hybrid-electric cars to wind turbines and compact fluorescent light bulbs – depend on rare earths. And there are no cost-effective substitutes for them.

 The Upside of a Weak Immune System

A weak immune system makes an animal vulnerable to disease and parasites, but strangely, natural selection does not always weed out creatures that have what appear to be severe disadvantages, according to a new study.

That may be because the weaknesses confer some advantages. The study, in the journal Science, reports that while a strong immune system helps female sheep live longer, it is also associated with reduced reproductive success.

Out of Asia?

a new study in the journal Nature reports.

There has long been debate about the matter, but a recent discovery of anthropoid fossils including two previously unidentified species and one known species provides new clues.
The fossils are about 38 million years old and were uncovered in a rock formation in southern Libya. The anthropoids were small, rodent-size creatures that looked similar to larger, modern-day primates, but weighed just 4 to 17 ounces.

Friday Reading

Lots of good stuff caught in the net this morning:

Gold is not just for bugs anymore as the chorus grows of those who see a monetary crisis on our hands.

Bloomberg Opinion:

The prospects for an orderly unwinding of the extreme posture of global monetary policy are zero. Bernanke, Jean- Claude Trichet and Mervyn King, his counterparts in Europe and the U.K. respectively, are huddling en masse upon the most precarious perch in the history of monetary affairs. These alleged guardians of monetary stability, in their attempts to shore up the system, have simply created the incinerator for paper money. We are past the point of no return. Quantitative easing may well become a way of life.

 Washington Post:

Trichet offered this startling but seemingly well-founded estimate: Bailouts for the world's banks, corporate entities and bankrupted governments mounted by the U.S. Treasury, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and other institutions since 2008 amount to 25 percent of the global production of all goods and services. One dollar in every four earned by all the world's workers and businesses this year has been committed, if not already paid out, essentially to keep the world from spiraling into a depression.

"I emphasize to every banker I meet that this will not be done twice," Trichet said. When I asked him if he had evidence that the bankers understand this, he quickly responded that what they thought was beside the point: "I am saying democratic governments cannot do this again." They lack the resources as well as the will.

 In defense of marriage (and the poor) from the reductionist heights this author helps us understand the uncriticized assumptions of those who think they know better.

His interpretation of the “facts” assumes an impoverished anthropology that treats man as little more than a self-interested animal who vigilantly performs a cost/benefit analysis for every decision in life, including when and whom he should marry. In his view, the only reason for marriage is economic. His reductionist anthropology cannot imagine marriage as a genuine gift of self that is oriented toward the procreation of new life.

And for that reason, he fails to imagine children.

Science has finally gotten around to affirming what has been observable for some time now but is going to be met with shock by our youth oriented culture: getting older ain't all that bad.  At least not when it is met with a level of acceptance.

The concerns are valid, but a new Stanford study shows there's a silver lining to the graying of our nation. As we grow older, we tend to become more emotionally stable. And that translates into longer, more productive lives that offer more benefits than problems, said Laura Carstensen, the study's lead author.

 Finally, it is always fun to see the sword of deconstruction turned in new and interesting ways, like at John Stewart. 

This is the essential communication form for Jon Stewart.  He sends messages that contain both authentic and artificial interpretations.  He then plays against the receiver's selection to create tension and humor.  Since he always controls the floor in all interactions, Stewart is free to commit Double Binds to his advantage, comedic or persuasive.

He employs the strongest double bind communication against receivers who will not cooperate with the process (i.e. deny the double bind as a norm of conduct and try to be authentic) or the content (i.e. defend an unattractive position and try to be persuasive).  Since Stewart's work appears within an entertainment context any attempts to call him on the game indict the receiver as overly serious, dogmatic, or foolish while permitting Stewart to appear merely doing his job.

Of course the double-bind is, as advertising has become, a key propaganda technique.

Such a double bind is frequently found in contemporary advertising, advertising which this essay argues is more accurately defined as propaganda than as classical rhetoric, for it exhibits many of the characteristics of propaganda; chief among these characteristics is a speaker’s reliance on self-interest (rather than the good of the audience), anonymity (or the suppression of ethos), the use of saturation or repetition of messages (rather than the delivery of formal speeches), and the employment of emotional appeals (rather than logical ones). Advertising meets these criteria insofar as it is, in the words of Twitchell, “ubiquitous, anonymous, syncretic, symbiotic, profane, and, especially, magical”

With minor tweaking, I can see no difference between this description of advertising and the left-of-center ethos Stewart represents.  Glenn Beck (to pick on the other side of the political spectrum) is different only in that one is acceptable in polite society and the other is not, thus indicating which side of the spectrum is involved in propaganda and which is engaged in counter-propaganda, to what ever extent such a distinction matters..

Looking to November 2nd and 3rd: Elections and QE2

Through early next week I will mostly just be following those two stories as they develop.  I have a number of essays in mind for later in the month of November and December.  

The Fed's Impending Blunder:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard expresses a view that I share but expresses it so much better than I ever could.

Now, I put my hand up and confess to having supported QE when the financial system was imploding in late 2008 and early 2009, and I continued to do so as the M3 money supply collapsed at 1930s rates earlier this year. I persist stubbornly in thinking that it was the right thing to do, AT THAT TIME.

But we are no longer in a systemic financial crisis, and the Fed’s motives have become subtly corrupted. Having argued during the boom that it was not the business of central banks to stop asset bubbles – and specifically that any fall-out could “safely” be cleaned up later – Bernanke now seems to determined to validate this absurd doctrine, bending all the sinews of the US economic and financial system to this end. One error leads to the next.

 Nouriel Roubini is a little more positive but sees a fiscal train wreck on the horizon:

What has been the fiscal performance of President Barack Obama? He inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, as well as a budget deficit that – after much needed bail-outs and a series of reckless tax cuts – was already close to $1,000bn. His stimulus package, together with a backstop of the financial system, low rates and quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, prevented another depression. Mr Obama also deserves credit that the US, alone among advanced economies, currently supports a “growth now”, rather than an “austerity now” path.

But this is but one half of the picture; we must also judge his first two years on his ability to anticipate what the economy will need tomorrow.

I continue to watch a number of races that should not be competitive but are.  As I mentioned a few days ago, even Barney Frank (Chairman of House Financial Services Committee) seems to be in trouble.

Challenging the Massachusetts liberal is Republican Sean Bielat, an Iraq war veteran, and opinion polls suggest Frank has an uncomfortably narrow lead over a political unknown. 

In the run-up to Tuesday's congressional elections, Frank has faced a torrent of negative ads and mailings, much of it from groups outside the state who support candidates from the conservative Tea Party movement.

And to cleanse the palate, something lighter:

Sometimes oil reserves go down

Alaska's Untapped Reserves lowered by 90%.

The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate.
The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.

The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said.

OPEC reserves were revised upwards through out the 1980's not because more oil was found but because the allotment system which dictates how much each member can pump is based on official reserves.  If you increase your reserves, you can pump more.  Once one member country starts increasing their stated reserves, then so must everyone else if they are to continue to pump just as much oil as before.

Each OPEC nation is on its honor regarding their reserve number, they do not have to show the science to anyone, and they didn't.

The net effect is that those of us who attempt to follow the news but can not be an expert on everything became accustomed to hearing about the reserve numbers going up, and always going up.  We hear about a new find in Brazil or Canada and the number sounds large so we assume that it is a significant find.  The talking heads are not very good at giving us context and we are acculturated to trusting them.  They would not report it, we intuit, unless it were important.

But when science is used, sometimes reserve numbers go down.  And, since the 1970's those "large finds" are a pittance when we consider the rate at which those large finds will ever produce compared to a) the rate of (growing) world consumption and b) the impact of a 5% depletion rate on most of the world's largest and longest producing oil fields.

Yes, I tell my optimistic friends, we do not know the future and maybe human ingenuity will pull our collective dairy airs out of the fire, but only the most desperate of people depend upon such magical thinking when there is no sign of it yet.  We must also be prepared, I add, for being surprised to the down side.  Mother Nature is a capricious old woman and she is just as likely to throw gas on the fire as try to pull us out.

Cornbread Jukebox

I am trying to make some hay while the (proverbial) sun is shining.  Perhaps I will file a brief news update later but for now I am turning on some tunes and focusing the mind on a thing or two.

A taste, sure I'll share:

The Cultural Phenomonon: In Food and Finance

A great comparison of our food system and our finance system from James over at Baseline Scenario. 

I just read Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, and what struck me was the parallels between the evolution of food and the evolution of finance since the 1970s. This will only confirm my critics’ belief that I see the same thing everywhere, but bear with me for a minute.

Pollan’s account, grossly simplified, goes something like this. The dominant ideology of food in the United States is nutritionism: the idea that food should be thought of in terms of its component nutrients. Food science is devoted to identifying the nutrients in food that make us healthy or unhealthy, and encouraging us to consume more of the former and less of the latter. This is good for nutritional “science,” since you can write papers about omega-3 fatty acids, while it’s very hard to write papers about broccoli.

 The only thing I might add is that I think you can protect yourself from BOTH systems if you have the appropriate wealth, skill and desire.  Of course, it is a lot easier to change even a lifetime of food habits than it is a lifetime of financial habits since the latter is tied up in any debt and career decisions that you have made (and are difficult to change mid-course.  It is possible, of course, but as one who is trying to change his relationship to both systems, I would rather coach someone in changing their food milieu than their financial relationships.