Pink seesaws at US-Mexico

The elegance with which a symbol of division and incipient racism is shattered by a favorite children’s playground toy is truly staggering. The design award is well earned.

The installation allowed children to play together from both sides of the US-Mexico border.

Source: Pink seesaws at US-Mexico wall win design award – BBC News

Will American Politics Ever Be Civil Again?

The juxtaposition could not be starker. The Dutch government quit over a scandal comprised of the government accused poor people of theft over welfare funds they had legitimately received. It is hard to imagine any politician in the United States facing any consequences for stiffing poor people for welfare. It is even harder to imagine any member of Congress riding his or her bicycle (see picture below) in public in order to deliver an urgent message to the White House (since we don’t have a king).

Mark Rutte’s cabinet resigns after families were wrongly accused and many faced financial problems.

After the insurrection of January 6, 2020, it is impossible to imagine that any American politician will ever hold a public forum long enough to be shamed for not doing her or his job. This juxtaposition of Dutch civil life with American civil life begs so many depressing questions. Is American civil life doomed to become extinct? How do we regain civility and equanimity in the general American populace? Does any will exist to effect this change? This is one of the toughest times ever to be optimistic.

Source: Dutch Rutte government resigns over child welfare fraud scandal

Another Historical Survey of Earth’s Atmosphere Rings Alarm Bells

The total lack of attention and imagination with which climate “skeptics”–contrarians, in truth–greet monumental scientific studies that repeatedly demonstrate that grave danger lies ahead must be remedied. The AIP (American Institute of Physics) provides a fairly comprehensive historical review of the discovery of the greenhouse effect, linked in the sidebar to the right. The findings of over a century and a half of scientific research continue to be corroborated by new advanced methods and by re-evaluation of the fossil record, such as the one reported in the article linked below.

Once again, the historical record unambiguously points to a catastrophe on the horizon. In this instance, the reevaluation of the Smithsonian’s fossil record shows that we are hurtling toward another geologic period without polar ice caps. A true skeptic would advocate contingency planning for a catastrophe that has a high probability of occurring, regardless of cause. Unfortunately, our world is impeded by contrarians whose lack of scientific literacy is coupled not with goodwill toward mankind but with short term political ambition. This outcome runs contrary to the political exigency of making long-term solutions for evolving problems. Whether the private sector can sufficiently insure itself against the predictions of global warming is an open question.

Historically, the only reason government exists is that the private sector lacks the resources and the discipline to insure itself against such large-scale catastrophes. Do we want to risk our existence to test the hypothesis that government is no longer needed?

Smithsonian’s revamped fossil hall prompts a look into Earth’s hot past

Source: A 500-million-year survey of Earth’s climate reveals dire warning for humanity | Science | AAAS

Scientists Calling Bullshit on Misleading Energy Stats

The author of this piece may have been well advised to refrain from making dubious claims in the magazine of the one of the most venerated engineering societies on the planet. Although Vaclav Smil’s bona fides in the area of energy are impressive, his publication of highly dubious statistics remain elusive. He is a researcher firmly entrenched in the petroleum industry. Consequently, he should not have been surprised that the brilliant members of the IEEE would call him out on his veiled and specious defense of the fossil fuel industry.

The best part of the story, however, is the simple fact that academic and professional societies remain great bastions of open and brutally honest discourse. Science and engineering are not for the faint of heart. If you can’t stand having your bullshit called out, then get out of the field. As professor emeritus, Smil may have elected an unceremonious exit. At least, that’s what he seems to indicate in his response to the long list of complaints about his post: out of 10s of comments that point out errors in his analysis, he acknowledges the only one that defends his dubious claims with a bogus link.

Source: Germany’s Energiewende, 20 Years Later – IEEE Spectrum

iPhone 12 Pro is Apple’s Autonomous Vehicle Computing Platform

One impressive task that Apple showed off in its iPhone 12 announcement was the iPhone 12 Pro’s ability to shoot and edit 4K, HDR video at 60 frames per second (fps). As many tech reviewers have noted, this makes the iPhone 12 Pro faster at this particular task than most top of the line Intel computers, regardless of operating system. This is a fantastic feature to have on a phone, but what percentage of iPhone users will ever want to shoot or edit 4K HDR videos on their iPhone? A very small percentage, one very, very close to zero. The question arises, then, as to why Apple was so insistent on emphasizing two things in this presentation: 1) the astonishing computing power of this device and 2) it’s support for all variants of 5G communication. Apple did this because the iPhone platform is destined for much bigger, bigger tasks than simply performing the mundane tasks that 99.9% of its user base performs. The iPhone is destined to be the mobile computing platform of future devices like autonomous vehicles.

Continue reading “iPhone 12 Pro is Apple’s Autonomous Vehicle Computing Platform”

CoViD-19 Recurrences Temper Hopes for Vaccine Efficacy

Reinfections give scientists clues about how long protection lasts—and how well vaccines might perform

It has been only one year since CoViD-19 was identified as a new, deadly disease. Despite the vast troves of information learned since, the landscape of molecular biology, epidemiology and especially physiology of this disease largely remains terra incognita: large, isolated areas of the landscape have been charted, and the research now focuses on elucidating how they articulate.

Recurrence of COVID-19 in the same patient is one such conundrum. It seems to be a case of incomplete or ephemeral immune response in some patients, and the obvious question arises as to whether immunization will provide a universally strong and persistent enough response to eradicate the disease. Irrational exuberance doesn’t permeate the stock market alone, but, alas, it does serve politicians well.

Source: More people are getting COVID-19 twice, suggesting immunity wanes quickly in some

On the Value of Immigration

In these dismal times, immigration has become a deplorable political wedge issue exploited by politicians with grand dreams of becoming dictators in order to cow the meekest and most naive in their constituency to total subservience. Toward that end, the demagogues go so far as to identify the immigrants who would “most valuable” or “most compatible” with the fictional native culture they extoll. In this article, there is proof positive that immigration will never be an issue provided the state invests in its people. By investing in its people, every country improves its chances of success in the global marketplace. The success of BioNTech is proof that investing in immigrants and giving them equal opportunity is far more important than choosing the immigrants. Countries that denounce immigration do so quite literally at their own peril.

Source: The Husband-and-Wife Team Behind the Leading Vaccine to Solve Covid-19 – The New York Times

FAANG Wars Officially Commence

It was back in January when I described the battle lines that are being drawn between Microsoft and Apple on one side and Facebook, Google and Amazon on the other. In the past week, Apple has taken two major actions precisely along the lines I described: to prevent Google and Facebook from collecting data on Apple device users.

The first action was acknowledged by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, stating that the next iteration of Apple’s iOS will obviate a substantial portion of Facebook’s data collection scheme.

The second action is Apple’s deployment of a search engine to replace Google on iPhones, possibly on iPads and Macs as well. Apple famously collects billions of dollars from Google in exchange for making Google the default search engine on Apple devices, but Apple’s displeasure with Google’s using that privilege to objectify Apple’s customers in order to reap billions upon billions more from Apple’s customers clearly outweighs this significant, but increasingly negligible, contribution to Apple’s bottom line.

For the record, I am bullish on AAPL and MSFT, both which I own, but it is critical to vote with one’s dollars in this era of unfettered, unlimited, unregulated and unrelenting surveillance perpetrated by unscrupulous companies operated by naïve or ruthless (or both) executives. Apple’s and Microsoft’s executive teams have shown a concern privacy. To be sure, this concern grows largely out of the threat that Google and Facebook present to Apple’s and Microsoft’s bottom lines, but these companies deserve credit for electing to take the high road instead of throwing in the towel and joining the data trawling industry. Apple and Microsoft deserve a lot of credit for choosing to be traditional companies that sell the customer a product. Google and Facebook are companies that sell the customers as a product!

Apple’s first stab at Google’s revenue stream came from the deployment of Apple Maps, and Siri in general gathers results from a number of search engines–especially Wolfram Alpha and Bing–to the exclusion of Google. Apple went after Facebook initially by eliminating all Facebook sharing buttons from system menus. The deployment of security measures that explicitly limit the data gathering capabilities of Google and Facebook opens a major battle in the privacy wars.

Anyone who whines that Apple’s actions constitute an abuse of platform to limit competition is clearly missing the point. Apple is staking a claim that the Google and Facebook models are not legitimate forms of business, and Apple is correct! (Tim Cook famously said that such a business “should not exist”.) It is not right to take the cynical economic route. It is much deeper than a matter of profits. Privacy and the misinformation campaigns that have come to dominate Facebook represent the greatest ethical challenge to the conduct of business in history. Facebook and Google do not comply with any moral or ethical standards of business. This lack of morals and ethics is the heart of the matter. Whom the customer patronizes, really matters. No on should patronize Facebook or Twitter. Google is a highly suspect actor, at best.

If you want to know how to kill your Facebook account, here is a guide.

Good Intentions + Technology = Road to Hell?

Source: IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News “Cops Tap Smart Streetlights Sparking Controversy and Legislation”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” goes the old saw, and in the modern era, well-intentioned technology testifies to the veracity of the adage over and over again. In the particular instance, the city of San Diego installed public surveillance cameras expressly for the purpose of quantifying resources usage, but enabled the use of the video thus gathered to be used by law enforcement to investigate major crimes only. However, now that footage has been used against protestors and others who have not committed any major crimes, the city is risking losing the confidence of its voters.

City officials concede that they needed to consider the definition of a major crime more seriously, and now they are in a horrible position where they are doubted by their two most important constituents: the voters and law enforcement. On can only hope that a quasi-police state is not the outcome they elect to implement.

The Long Term Costs of CoViD-19 Keep Rising

At 8 months, we are still in the early stages of the pandemic. As such, the data are still equivocal. Nevertheless, the preponderance of evidence indicating a high incidence of persistent and debilitating symptoms for months after infection is growing. The effects on the heat and nervous system are particularly alarming.

This threat is casually growing like a hidden malignancy under the cover of the spreading pandemic itself. The responsibility for everyone to act to slow this pandemic has never been greater or graver.

— Read on www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists

From ‘brain fog’ to heart damage, COVID-19’s lingering problems alarm scientists | Science | AAAS