akota

the environment is harsh

1. Humans irrigate to help improve agricultural productivity. Sounds like a good idea.
2. Irrigation is coordinated with the seasons, so those on the California coast irrigate approximately in unison.
3. Irrigation water runs to the ocean, bringing with it salts from the fertilized land.
4. Along the coasts, surface salinity rises to unprecedented levels.
5. Diatoms (aka algae, plant plankton) are drawn to the salty surface water.
6. Diatoms of genus Pseudo-nitzschia reproduce and release domoic acid.
7. Domoic acid concentrates in the fatty tissue of plankton feeders like shellfish.
8. Seals and sea lions eat lots of shellfish.
9. Domoic acid activates certain receptors in the brain causing excess calcium to build up in neurons.
10. Neurons degenerate.
11. Seals and sea lions become lethargic, have seizures and die.  According to the NY Times, "domoic acid poisoning has killed hundreds of the animals across Southern California this spring and thousands since a major outbreak in 2002."

This sucks. It isn't like we released some deadly poison into the sea and we could have known this would happen.  This required changes in salinity, a species of algae, and a deadly neurotoxin.  It is impossible to predict the third order effects of human uses of the environment.  So, we are stuck reacting to environmental damage.  We are stuck undoing the investments we made in whatever is causing the environmental damage.  At best, we can proactively manage the risks we know.  But there are always the unknown unknowns.

retail is dangerous

Reuters reports, "Surging shoppers kill New York Wal-Mart employee":

A Wal-Mart employee in New York state's Long Island died on Friday when a throng of shoppers surged into the store and physically broke down the doors, a police spokesman said.

It will be interesting to see how the consumption patterns shift this holiday season.  Which retailers will win and which will news? Wal Mart should do well. A couple of days ago, Jim Cramer suggested that Jones Apparel (JNY) might be undervalued when it was trading under $4 despite having $2.40 a share in cash.  The stock shot up to around $5, which is still cheap relative to the $19 it was trading at a year ago, and relative to the 55 cents a year it has been paying in dividends.  Jones sells mostly womens' clothes and shoes (Jones New York, Anne Klein, Nine West, Gloria Vanderbilt) through department stores and their own retail stores. Their holiday sales will be interesting, some volume lost to the lower end retailers and some volume gained from refugees from the high-end.  If they can retain volume, and keep paying those dividends the stock is a steal.

insect news

"England could run out of home-produced honey by Christmas." 2 billion bees, about 1/3 of the bees in England, have been killed off by the varroa mite. Beekeepers are marching in London, demanding that the government spend more money on research.  A New Zealand company claims to have bred in resistance to this mite into bees. This could be worth billions of dollars. One estimate says:  "the annual value of honeybee pollination to crop production is US$ 14.6 billion in the USA, US$ 1.14 billion in Canada , about US$ 3 billion in the EC, and US$ 2.3 billion in New Zealand."

In other insect news, locusts are attacking Australia.  A low density swarm about six kilometres long and 170 metres wide has been reported.  See video from the BBC.

impressive technology

Legged robots are doing quite well:

You can read more at wired.com

friedman fact check

Tom Friedman's latest book, on energy technology, is "Hot, Flat and Crowded."  His description of his plan:

I want so many people throwing crazy dollars at every idea, in every garage, that we have 100,000 people trying 100,000 things, five of which might work, and two might be the next green Google. But I don’t want a Manhattan Project of 12 people in Los Alamos.

As usual, Friedman likes to make up facts to go with his argument.  The Manhattan Project was enormous, employing well over 100,000 people. Here are some details:

cute

From 52 to 48 is cute but wrong. 53-46 is more like it.

animal welfare: rejecting utilitarianism

A talk by Christine M. Korsgaard, “Interacting with Animals: A Kantian Account” (as summarized by a student):

Peter Singer . . . has argued that . . . there is no disutility cause by painlessly killing a non-human animal. Nothing is lost. The utility that would have been created by the animal’s future pleasure can be added by breeding another animal to take its place. For Singer, this is not the case with humans because due to our ability, and tendency, to plan, etc., more is lost when one of our lives ends. When we die something (morally relevant) is taken from the world that cannot be replaced.

But [Singer's utilitarianism] gives no explanation as to why it is not morally acceptable to kill a person painlessly. Singer might reply that because a person has expectations and plans, awareness of the imminence of death causes more disutility for humans than for other animals. This cannot save his theory, however, because he can still not explain why it is wrong to kill a person quickly, painlessly and by surprise.
. . .
After rejecting Singer’s argument, Korsgaard put forth her own view. Since her approach is Kantian, or deontological, she is not focused on maximizing the good in the world, but on interactions between individuals. This is important because it allows her to get away from comparisons between the values of human goods and non-human animal goods.
. . .
One is not only obligated to those with whom she has shared laws, rational beings, but also to the source of interests that the law she is under was made to protect. . . . . The weak version [of Korsgaard's thesis] is that some of the interests of our animal nature, that are given value by our rational nature, are shared by other animals and we must protect these.

visualizing the election

Which swing states won it for Obama? Here you can see Iowa took him to 269 and Colorado took him to outright victory.  Obama could have lost Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina and still have won the election. This image is from the Iowa State Statistical Working Group:

this is big

Early voting through the roof:

• Georgia: 2 million early votes (compare to 3.2 million total votes in 2004)
• North Carolina: 2.5 million early votes (compare to 3.5 million total votes in 2004)
• Colorado: 1.5 million early votes (compare to 2.1 million total votes in 2004)

And those 2004 numbers don't represent low turnout because there was no reason to go to the polls. Each of these states had a reasonably competitive Senate race and the concomitant advertising and GOTV expenditures.

Full early voting data is available here, courtesy of Professor McDonald.

you're rich, bitch

Fortune Magazine's Shawn Tully writes about what it means to be rich in Look who pays for the bailout:

Obama and the congressional Democrats frequently refer to households earning over $250,000 as the "rich" and the "wealthiest Americans." But whether [they] are truly "rich," or ever will be, is debatable. . . .

While there's no consensus definition of how much wealth . . . makes someone rich in America, here's a reasonable proposal: . . . consider a family wealthy . . . worth today, something on the order of $3 million . . . . The $3 million figure would generate around $200,000 in income, plenty to retire on tomorrow.

Take that in.  The author is actually arguing that it takes $3 million dollars before you are "rich."  At that point you have more money than 98% of households in America, and you have 40 times the net worth of the actual median household.

But wait, that is being generous to the author.  If the author is talking about $3 million dollars in financial assets (how else would you generate the cushy retirement) then that means we are looking at 150 times more money than the actual median household with its $20,000 in financial assets.

If the author can read those numbers and stick to his definition of rich, I would be surprised.  The article includes interviews with a number of families in the high earner group, and they all seem to be convinced that they aren't rich and that it is unfair to raise their taxes.