Corvus.corax

"If this rate of sell-off is sustained," said trader continued wryly, "oil will be free by mid-January."

The price of oil has dropped enormously since the beginning of November with great consequences for the American economy but bad consequences for oil-exporting nations.

And so far, nobody's been hit worse by the oil price slide than Russia. The price of rubles has fallen even faster than the price of oil, and it's now the worst-performing currency of 2014 — below even Ukraine's battered hryvnia. In a desperate effort to prop the currency up, Russia's central bank hiked interest rates from 10.5 percent to 17 percent to try to tempt foreign investors to buy ruble-denominated assets even at the price of a potentially devastating recession.

For any oil-dependent country, the ability to weather a price decline ends up largely coming down to how much foreign currency reserves you built up when the going was good. Russia has a big stockpile — not as big as Saudi Arabia's (they have over $700 billion) but bigger than the other Gulf states — but it's falling fast:

For context, even at the depths of the 2008 recession (which caused world oil prices to tank, among other things) Russia's reserves never fell as low as they stood at the end of November. Over the past two weeks, the price of oil has only kept tumbling so there's no reason to expect this trend to turn around.

On some level, this is what the Great Ruble Meltdown is all about. Currency traders seem to be betting that at this pace Russia will run out of reserves before oil prices get high again.

Jeb Bush posted on Facebook today that he is "actively exploring the possibility" of a 2016 presidential bid, and starting a Leadership PAC to facilitate the financing of aspirations.

The last time the Republican Party won a presidential election without a member of the Bush family on the ticket was 1972.

BarbaraHudson (3785311) writes "It's been more than 30 years, but finally the script for Blade Runner 2 is done. Original interview with Ridley Scott on MTV. Links for those who don't want to watch the interview. If you're worried that the upcoming Blade Runner sequel won't measure up to the 1982 sci-fi cult classic, rest assured. Harrison Ford apparently thinks the script is "the best thing (he's) ever read." Although Scott is debating whether or not he'll direct the sequel, it looks like Ford will most certainly be reprising his role as Rick Deckard."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Working from his studio in Alpine, Texas, artist Mark Lovejoy creates richly textured images of mixed paint, but although he’s somewhat secretive about his process, one thing is clear: they aren’t just photographs of mixed paint. The act of creating the color formations alone sounds more like an act of chemistry than art as he mixes resins, oils, diluents, waxes, and drying agents to create the gloppy textures you see here. Portions are then photographed, reworked, and reshot. In the end, we’re left staring at beautifully colorful images that exist somewhere between salt water taffy, Jackson Pollock paintings, and an alluring industrial accident. Whatever they are, Lovejoy is extremely proficient, cranking out several images each day which he shares on his website. Prints are available of every image. (via It’s Nice That)

rossgneumann writes If there's intelligent life in the cosmos, it's probably nowhere we can get to anytime soon. At least that's the finding of the astrobiologist who, for the first time in decades, has rendered a major update to the key formula scientists use to seek out interstellar life. That'd be the Drake equation, which was developed over half a century ago to determine where life might lurk in the universe. Using the new Kepler data, astrobiologist Amri Wandel did some calculations to estimate the density of life-bearing worlds in our corner of the universe.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mi writes The U.S. Navy has declared an experimental laser weapon on its Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) in the Persian Gulf an operational asset and U.S. Central Command has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon. The 30 kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed aboard USS Ponce this summer as part of a $40 million research and development effort from ONR and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to test the viability of directed energy weapons in an operational environment. No word yet on a smaller, shark-mounted version.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Photographer René Burri reflects on a career of turning evanescent moments into indelible artifacts

The post Six Photographs: René Burri appeared first on Aeon Magazine.

The United States is banking on decades of abundant natural gas to power its economic resurgence. That may be wishful thinking.

Nature 516 28 doi: 10.1038/516028a

This is a fascinating Scott Alexander take on tribalism and how political issues are framed, starting with Ebola.  As Robin Hanson would say, “politics isn’t about policy.”  Here is the segment on how climate change issues might be marketed to the Right:

Global warming has already gotten inextricably tied up in the Blue Tribe narrative: Global warming proves that unrestrained capitalism is destroying the planet. Global warming disproportionately affects poor countries and minorities. Global warming could have been prevented with multilateral action, but we were too dumb to participate because of stupid American cowboy diplomacy. Global warming is an important cause that activists and NGOs should be lauded for highlighting. Global warming shows that Republicans are science denialists and probably all creationists. Two lousy sentences on “patriotism” aren’t going to break through that.

If I were in charge of convincing the Red Tribe to line up behind fighting global warming, here’s what I’d say:

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

The piece is interesting throughout, hat tip goes to MR commentator Macrojams.

For years, dog and cat owners have been bickering over the relative merits of each type of pet.

But in recent years, scientific researchers have started to weigh in — and most of their findings so far come down firmly on the side of dogs.

cats don't have the same sort of emotional attachment to their owners

Compared to dogs, scientists have found, cats don't seem to have the same sort of emotional attachment to their owners, and show genuine affection far less often than you might think. Further, they're an environmental disaster, killing literally billions of birds in the US every year — many of them from endangered species.

Most alarmingly (and as explained in this 2012 Atlantic article), there's compelling evidence that a parasite often found in cat feces can subtly change people's personalities over time, increasing rates of neuroticism, schizophrenia, and perhaps even suicide.

In other words, research is telling us that cats are selfish, unfeeling, environmentally devastating creatures. If you need to convince someone not to get a cat, here's the research you need to show them.

Your cat probably doesn't love you

(opethpainter)

Daniel Mills, a veterinary researcher at the UK's University of Lincoln, is a cat lover. You can see his cat in the photo on his faculty page on the university's website. But experiments he and colleagues have conducted at the university's Animal Behaviour Clinic suggest that cats, as a whole, do not love their owners back — at least not in the same way that dogs do.

The researchers adapted a classic child psychology experiment called "the strange situation," in which a parent slips out of a room while a baby or young child is playing and then later returns. The child's behavior upon being abandoned and reunited with the parent is observed and analyzed. This sort of thing has been also done with dogs several times (including by Mills), and the experiments have found that dogs demonstrate an attachment with their owner — compared to a stranger, the dogs become more disturbed when their owners leave, and interact with them more when they return.

By contrast, Mills' cat experiments — which are still ongoing and haven't yet been published, but were featured in a BBC special last year — haven't come to the same conclusion. On the whole, the cats seem disinterested both when their owners depart and return. "Owners invest a lot emotionally in the cat relationship," Mills told the BBC. "That doesn’t mean that the cat’s investing in the same sort of emotional relationship." At the time, he said the results were inconclusive, but at the very least, it's safe to say that they haven't yielded the same obvious results that the dog studies have.

Cats, aloof as ever. (Tom Wicker)

Meanwhile, other experiments carried out by a pair of Japanese researchers have provided evidence for a fact already known to most cat owners: they can hear you calling their name, but just don't really care. As detailed in a study published last year, the researchers gathered 20 cats (one at a time) and played them recordings of three different people calling their name — two strangers, plus their owners.

Regardless of the order, the cats consistently reacted differently upon hearing their owner's voice (in terms of ear and head movement, as graded by independent raters who didn't know which voice belonged to the owner). However, none of them meowed or actually approached the speaker, as though they'd be interested in seeing the person.

Why are cats so different from dogs in this way? The researchers speculate that the difference can be explained by evolutionary history: dogs were domesticated an estimated 15,000 years ago, compared to just 9,500 years for cats. Additionally, it's believed that dogs were actively selected by humans (to guard and herd animals), whereas cats likely selected themselves, spending time near people simply to eat the rats consuming grain stores. This difference — along with the extra evolutionary time — could explain why dogs are so much more interested in responding to the human voice.

Your cat isn't really showing you affection

A cat feigns affection to mark its territory. (Erik Tjallinks)

Cat lovers will probably respond here that their pets do show affection, purring and rubbing up against their legs. But there's good reason to believe that, much of the time, these sorts of behaviors that look like affection are conducted with entirely different goals in mind.

Many cats, for instance, will rub up against the leg of their owner (or another human) when the person enters a room. It's easy to construe this as a sign of affection. But many researchers interpret this as an attempt, by the cat, to spread his or her scent — as a way to mark territory. Observations of semi-feral cats show that they commonly rub up against trees or other objects in the exact same way, which allows them to deposit pheromone-containing secretions that naturally come out of their skin.

semi-feral cats commonly rub up against trees and other objects to mark territory

Purring, in some cases, also seems to mean something different than what you imagine. As part of 2009 study, researchers at the University of Sussex recorded the purring sounds made by 10 different cats in two types of situations: when they wanted food, and when they didn't.

As it turned out, the food-related purrs were noticeably different: the otherwise low-toned noises had a spike in the 220 to 520-hertz frequency, which is similar to a baby's cry. Human study participants also rated these purrs as more urgent and less pleasant.

What may be going on, the researchers concluded, is that cats have figured out how to purr in a way that triggers humans' parenting instincts. They don't always purr this way, but they do so when they want food, because they know it'll get results.

Finally, there's some evidence, turned up by Mills, that many cats don't actually like being petted by humans at all. In a 2013 study, he and other researchers measured levels of stress hormones in cats, with the intention of figuring out whether having multiple cats in the same household is a bad idea. That didn't turn out to be true, but they did find that the cats who allowed themselves to be petted had higher stress levels afterward than the cats who disliked it so much that they simply ran away.

Cats are an environmental disaster

An invasive cat destroys its local environment. (Etienne Valois)

In the US, domestic cats are an invasive species — they originated in Asia. And research shows that, whenever they're let outside, cats' carnivorous activity has a devastating effect on wild bird and small mammal populations, even if the cats are well-fed.

Of course, dogs are likely a net negative for the environment too. There isn't as much data available, but researchers note that dogs spread diseases (such as rabies) and also prey on various species, including many types of birds, as well.

cats kill somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds annually in the us

But in terms of raw numbers, it seems unlikely they can match the impact of cats. A study published last year found that cats kill far higher numbers of songbirds and mammals than previously thought: somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds, and 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals annually. Many of the mammals might be mice and rats (species that have no problem sustaining their numbers), but the prey also includes many endangered bird species.

This isn't just a symbolic problem — it's a truly significant one. The best data we have on birds killed by other sorts of threats, from the Fish and Wildlife Service, isn't great (it's a little old, and the estimates are rough), but a comparison indicates that cats kill as many birds as collisions with buildings, and kill more birds than collisions with cell phone towers, power lines, cars, and wind turbines combined.

Cat owners can do a few simple things to easily cut down on this threat. Research indicates that leaving cats inside at night, or tying a bell around their neck (so prey hear them coming) means they kill significantly fewer birds and mammals. But right now, few cat owners do this, whether because they want their pets to get the pleasure of killing, or out of sheer laziness.

Your cat might be driving you crazy

A cyst filled with Toxoplasma gondii parasites, as seen in a mouse brain. (Jitinder P. Dubey)

Finally, there's the weird, unsettling connection between cats, a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, and litter boxes.

This parasite can infect pretty much any sort of animal — including humans — but it can only sexually reproduce when inside the intestines of cats. In order to get there, it's been found to alter the behavior of infected rodents, making them less fearful of predators. In other words, when T. gondii gets picked up by a mouse, it increases the chance that the mouse will get eaten by a cat, so the parasite can reproduce once again.

This may seem bizarre enough, but over the past few years, some scientists have begun to suspect that the parasites alter human behavior in a similar way. Humans often pick up T. gondii from handling cats' litter boxes (because the parasites can be found in their feces), and there's an increasing amount of evidence that the resulting long-term, latent infection can subtly change a person's personality over time.

When parasites found in cat litter infect humans, they seem to subtly change personality over time

Of course, we're not rodents, so the parasites aren't successful in getting us eaten by cats. But the actual consequences are just as troubling. People who have been infected have greater rates of neuroticism and schizophrenia, and have slower reflex times in lab experiments. As a result, it seems, they get into traffic accidents more often. There's evidence that they have higher rates of suicide. All this, it seems, are unintended results of the parasite's ability to alter a mouse's brain to increase the chance of predation.

Now, everyone who owns a cat doesn't get infected by T. gondii, and there are other ways of getting the parasite (like eating undercooked meat). And the infection itself doesn't seem to cause these behavioral changes in everyone — they just occur at slightly higher rates among the millions of people worldwide who are infected.

Still, if you needed one more reason not to house an animal that doesn't love you, manipulates your emotions to get food, and helps to eradicate endangered species, it's a pretty damn good one.

Further reading: Kathleen McAuliffe's eye-opening article in the Atlantic: How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

schwit1 writes Google is looking to exert more pressure on device OEMs that wish to continue using the Android mobile operating system. Among the new requirements for many partners: increasing the number of Google apps that must be pre-installed on the device to as many as 20, placing more Google apps on the home screen or in a prominent icon folder and making Google Search more prominent. Earlier this year, Google laid its vision to reduce fragmentation by forcing OEMs to ship new devices with more recent version of Android. Those OEMs that choose not to comply lose access to Google Mobile Services (GMS) apps like Gmail, Google Play, and YouTube.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

News broke Thursday morning that Amazon has settled its long-running dispute with the book publisher Hachette. This brings months of sniping to an end, but the structural conflict between publishers and the retail giant isn't going away. And here's a little real talk about the book publishing industry — it adds almost no value, it is going to be wiped off the face of the earth soon, and writers and readers will be better off for it.

The fundamental uselessness of book publishers is why I thought it was dumb of the Department of Justice to even bother prosecuting them for their flagrantly illegal cartel behavior a couple of years back, and it's why I'm deaf to the argument that Amazon's ongoing efforts to crush Hachette are evidence of a public policy problem that needs remedy. Franklin Foer's recent efforts to label Amazon a monopolist are unconvincing, and Paul Krugman's narrower argument that they have some form of monopsony power in the book industry is equally wrongheaded.

What is indisputably true is that Amazon is on track to destroy the businesses of incumbent book publishers. But the many authors and intellectuals who've been convinced that their interests — or the interests of literary culture writ large — are identical with those of the publishers are simply mistaken.

Books are published by giant conglomerates

Wisdom on this subject begins with the observation that the book publishing industry is not a cuddly craft affair. It's dominated by a Big Four of publishers, who are themselves subsidiaries of much larger conglomerates. Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS, HarperCollins is owned by NewsCorp, Penguin and RandomHouse are jointly owned by Pearson and Bertelsmann, and Hachette is part of an enormous French company called Lagadère.

These are not tiny, helpless enterprises. Were their owners interested in the future of books and publishing, they could invest the money necessary to make their own e-reading apps and e-book store and render Amazon entirely superfluous. But the managers of these conglomerates don't really care. If they can get famous authors to lobby the government to stop Amazon from killing them for free, then they're happy to take the free labor.

But they don't want to invest actual money and energy in competing with Amazon, they'd rather wring whatever remaining profit there is out of book publishing and dedicate the money to dividends or other industries they're also involved in.

Amazon faces lots of competition

It is undeniably true that Amazon has a very large share of the market for e-books. What is not true is that Amazon faces a lack of competition in the digital book market. Barnes & Noble — a company that knows something about books — sells e-books, and does so in partnership with a small outfit called Microsoft. Apple sells e-books and so does Google.

These are not obscure companies. It is not inconvenient for customers to access their products. And since these are companies that are actually much bigger and more profitable than Amazon, there is absolutely no way Jeff Bezos can drive them out of business with predatory pricing.

Amazon's e-book product is much more popular than its rivals because Amazon got there first, and the competition has not succeeded in producing anything better. But consumers who prefer to buy a digital book from a non-Amazon outlet have several easy options available, and thus a book publisher who chooses to eschew Amazon will not actually be unable to reach customers.

Publishers are superfluous

In the traditional book purchasing paradigm, when a reader bought a book at the store there were two separate layers of middlemen taking a cut of the cash before money reached the author: a retailer and a publisher. The publisher, in this paradigm, was doing very real work as part of the value-chain. A typed and printed book manuscript looks nothing like a book. Transforming the manuscript into a book and then arranging for it to be shipped in appropriate quantities to physical stores around the country is a non-trivial task. What's more, neither bookstore owners nor authors have any expertise in this field.

Digital publishing is not like that. Transforming a writer's words into a readable e-book product can be done with a combination of software and a minimal amount of training. Book publishers do not have any substantial expertise in software development, but Amazon and its key competitors (Apple, Google, and the B&N/Microsoft partnership) do.

Publishers would like writers to believe that the pressure they are feeling from Amazon will trickle down and hurt authors as well. But there is a big difference. Even in the brave new world of e-publishing, authors are still making a crucial contribution to the industry by writing the books. Publishers are getting squeezed out because they don't contribute anything of value.

Book publishers are terrible at marketing

Who will get you to read these things? (Shutterstock)

When I was a kid, my father was a novelist as were both of my grandparents. So I heard a lot of stories about how useless publishers are at marketing books. Then I got to know other people who wrote books and they had the same complaints. Then I wrote a book, and their complaints became my complaints. But it's easy to whine that other people aren't marketing your product effectively. It took the Amazon/Hachette dispute to conclusively prove that the whiners are correct.

After all, imagine a world in which publishers were good at marketing books. Then it would be almost trivial for Hachette to get what it wants out of Amazon. It could just not sell its books on Amazon! Unlike in the old days when it might have been inconvenient for someone who lived in a town with a Borders but no Barnes & Noble to go get a book that Borders didn't sell, it's trivially easy to click on some non-Amazon website to order a book. But you do need a customer who actually wants to buy the book.

In his column, Krugman compares Amazon's large market share to Standard Oil's. But books aren't undifferentiated commodities the way oil is. If you want to buy Paul Krugman's new book, then you can't just substitute some other book. Hachette, however, seems (appropriately) to have almost no confidence in its own ability to market books.

The real risk for publishers is that major authors might discover that they do have the ability to market books. When George RR Martin's next iteration of the Game of Thrones series is released, I will buy it. If I can buy it as an Amazon Kindle book, I will buy it that way. If he decides that the only way people should be able to read the book is to get Powell's to mail them a copy, then I will buy it that way. And I am not alone. Nor is Martin the only author with the clout to not worry about the terms of distribution.

But for a publisher to team up with a celebrity author in this way to bypass Amazon would merely reveal how easy it would be for a celebrity author to bypass the incumbent publishers. In the old days, even the most famous author would need a publishing partner to actually make the physical books. Today that's not the case. Martin needs a software platform to sell books, but publishers don't have one. He could easily hire one or more editors to work with him on the copy if he wants to.

Advances aren't charitable contributions

The final role of the modern book publisher is as a payer of advances. The way the money end of books work is that the person who wrote a book gets paid a royalty on each copy sold — a sum that is generally much less than half the retail price of the book, and dramatically lower than the 70% that Amazon is willing to pay to authors who bypass the publishing incumbents. In addition to royalties, a publisher will typically pay you an advance. The advance is a special kind of loan. When your book first starts selling copies, the royalties you would be owed are kept by the publisher to repay the advance. If you sell a lot of books, you'll fully repay your advance and start seeing money. If you sell very few books, you'll never repay your advance and are under no obligation to do so.

To Foer, ultimately, the case against Amazon comes down to advances, which he sees as "the economic pillar on which quality books rest, the great bulwark against dilettantism." At the same time, he believes that "no bank or investor in its right mind would extend that kind of credit to an author, save perhaps Stephen King." Thus "it won't take much for this anomalous ecosystem to collapse" if publishers are pushed too hard by Amazon.

My best guess is that this is too pessimistic about the financial logic behind giving advances. It is not, after all, just a loan that you may or may not pay back. An advance is bundled with a royalty agreement in which a majority of the sales revenue is allocated to someone other than the author of the book. In its role as venture capitalist, the publisher is effectively issuing what's called convertible debt in corporate finance circles — a risky loan that becomes an ownership stake in the project if it succeeds.

But what really matters here is that book publishers are not charities. They are for-profit business enterprises. If advances don't make financial sense, then they will die off regardless of what happens to Amazon. If they do make financial sense, then they will live on as financial products even as the rest of the industry restructures.

A bounty of affordable reading

It's fundamental (Shutterstock)

When all is said and done, the argument between Amazon and book publishers is over the rather banal question of price. Amazon's view is that since "printing" an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should be really cheap. Publishers' view is that since "printing" an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should offer enormous profit margins to book publishers. If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one. The publishing incumbents have managed to get some intellectuals sufficiently tangled-up to believe that it is. But ask yourself this — do you regret the invention of the printing press? Of the paperback? Do you think public libraries devalue books and reading? The idea is absurd.

Of course a world where more people can get more books more conveniently is a better world. It is true that some individual authors may earn less in the new era, while others authors may earn more. But there is no reason to believe that authors as a whole will get less money. Indeed, as Amazon and other digital distributors gobble up some of the publishers' slice of the revenue, it's likely that authors will also get a share and see their total income rise. Beyond money, no book worth writing is undertaken for purely pecuniary motives. In the new regime it will be easier for writers to find readers and reach larger audiences. They just won't find them through the exact same set of middlemen who currently sit astride the pipeline. Tough on them.

1. C.J. Werleman, a writer for Salon and Alternet, has made a habit of publicly misrepresenting my views.

2. When I first noticed this behavior, I contacted him, initiating a brief and unpleasant email exchange.

3. After that exchange, Werleman went on to misrepresent my views with even greater fervor.

4. Werleman was subsequently discovered to be a serial plagiarist.

5. His response to this public humiliation was to accuse me of being a plagiarist too. Specifically, I am alleged to have plagiarized the work of Mark Steyn.

6. Evidence for this charge has been presented on a blog that seems to have been created yesterday for this purpose by “Stephanie Cranson” (who also joined Twitter only yesterday). Note that this is two days after Werleman claimed to have knowledge of my stealing Steyn’s work. I shall let readers make of this timeline what they will.

7. This newborn blogger has noticed that a passage in Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) seems suspiciously similar to one in Steyn’s book America Alone (2006)—which, we are told, was published six months earlier.

8. However, the suspicious passage also appears in my first book, The End of Faith, published two years earlier still (2004). It can be found on page 26 of both the hardcover and paperback editions.

9. Another passage I am alleged to have plagiarized from Steyn also appears in The End of Faith (p. 133). For that, I cited the following source in an endnote: “From the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report 2002, cited in Lewis, Crisis of Islam, 115–17.”

10. “Stephanie Cranson” makes other allegations on “her” blog that are equally unfounded.  For instance, she claims that I plagiarized from my friend Richard Dawkins, on the basis of similarity between the following passages:

Dawkins: “Although Martin Luther King was a Christian, he derived his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience directly from Gandhi, who was not.”

Harris: “While King undoubtedly considered himself a devout Christian, he acquired his commitment to non-violence primarily from the writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi.”

The Dawkins quote appears on page 307 of The God Delusion. Mine can be found on page 12 of Letter to a Christian Nation.  As readers can learn on Amazon, these books were published a day apart in September of 2006. And, needless to say, this observation about King’s debt to Gandhi has been made many, many times before.

11. This will be the last thing I ever write about C.J. Werleman.

 

Nigerian officials claim that the terrorist group Boko Haram has come to an agreement to release of over 200 kidnapped school girls. The news comes almost six months to the day since the schoolgirls were abducted from Chibok, Nigeria, leading to international outcry and the #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign.

Alex Badeh, the military chief of defense, told BBC News that the agreement comes as part of a larger truce. Nigeria's military has been battling with Boko Haram since 2009 and the group was declared a terrorist organization by the United States in 2013.

It is believed the the hostages are being held on the border of Nigeria and Cameroon in the Sambisa forest. Officials from the bordering nations held a security meeting over the course of three days and revealed the truce on the final day, however, the truce took about a month to fully negotiate. Government officials met with Boko Haram members twice during that time before they were able to reach a "unilateral ceasefire" and receive the approval of Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram's leader.

A third meeting is scheduled between the terrorists and government officials in Ndjamena, Chad, to discuss details of the hostage release. Boko Haram has not confirmed the ceasefire agreement, but Nigerian presidential aide Hassan Tukur has said he is "cautiously optimistic."

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/nigeria-says-boko-haram-to-release-kidnapped-girls/381621/

wired_parrot writes After being criticized for being slow to respond to Marvel's string of blockbuster superhero movies, Warner Brothers finally announced their plan for DC comic universe movie franchise. Yesterday at their annual shareholder meeting, WB announced 10 DC comics movies. The studio has unveiled an ambitious schedule that features two Justice League films, plus standalone titles for Wonder Woman, Flash, Shazam (Captain Marvel), Green Lantern, Cyborg and even Aquaman. Also announced were plans for 3 Lego movies and a three-part Harry Potter spinoff.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MarkWhittington writes Tom Kalil, the Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Senior Advisor for Science, Technology and Innovation for the National Economic Council, has an intriguing Tuesday post on the OSTP blog. Kalil is soliciting ideas for "bootstrapping a solar system civilization." Anyone interested in offering ideas along those lines to the Obama administration can contact a special email address that has been set up for that purpose. The ideas that Kalil muses about in his post are not new for people who have studied the question of how to settle space at length. The ideas consist of sending autonomous robots to various locations in space to create infrastructure using local resources with advanced manufacturing technology, such as 3D printing. The new aspect is that someone in the White House is publicly discussing these concepts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MTorrice writes: Many drugs that treat bacterial and fungal infections were found in microbes growing in the dirt. These organisms synthesize the compounds to fend off other bacteria and fungi around them. To find possible new drugs, chemists try to coax newly discovered microbial species to start making their arsenal of antimicrobial chemicals in the lab. But fungi can be stubborn, producing just a small set of already-known compounds. Now, one team of chemists has hit upon a curiously effective and consistent trick to prod the organisms to start synthesizing novel molecules: Cheerios inside bags. Scientists grew a soil fungus for four weeks in a bag full of Cheerios and discovered a new compound that can block biofilm formation by an infectious yeast. The chemists claim that Cheerios are by far the best in the cereal aisle at growing chemically productive fungi.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What would you do with an extra 90 minutes each day? Read? Write? Sleep? Watch TV? All you have to do is stop spending time on food… more»

WheezyJoe (1168567) writes The E-Cat (or "Energy Catalyzer") is an alleged cold fusion device that produces heat from a low-energy nuclear reaction where nickel and hydrogen fuse into copper. Previous reports have tended to suggest the technology is a hoax, and the inventor Andrea Rossi's reluctance to share details of the device haven't helped the situation. ExtremeTech now reports that "six (reputable) researchers from Italy and Sweden" have "observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, "far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume."... "The researchers, analyzing the fuel before and after the 32-day burn, note that there is an isotope shift from a "natural" mix of Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to almost entirely Nickel-62 — a reaction that, the researchers say, cannot occur without nuclear reactions (i.e. fusion)." The paper (PDF) linked in the article concludes that the E-cat is "a device giving heat energy compatible with nuclear transformations, but it operates at low energy and gives neither nuclear radioactive waste nor emits radiation. From basic general knowledge in nuclear physics this should not be possible. Nevertheless we have to relate to the fact that the experimental results from our test show heat production beyond chemical burning, and that the E-Cat fuel undergoes nuclear transformations. It is certainly most unsatisfying that these results so far have no convincing theoretical explanation, but the experimental results cannot be dismissed or ignored just because of lack of theoretical understanding. Moreover, the E-Cat results are too conspicuous not to be followed up in detail. In addition, if proven sustainable in further tests the E-Cat invention has a large potential to become an important energy source." The observers understandably hedge a bit, though: The researchers are very careful about not actually saying that cold fusion/LENR is the source of the E-Cat’s energy, instead merely saying that an “unknown reaction” is at work. In serious scientific circles, LENR is still a bit of a joke/taboo topic. The paper is actually somewhat comical in this regard: The researchers really try to work out how the E-Cat produces so much darn energy — and they conclude that fusion is the only answer — but then they reel it all back in by adding: “The reaction speculation above should only be considered as an example of reasoning and not a serious conjecture.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mars One, an organization based in the Netherlands, has been recruiting amateur astronauts to send on a one-way, televised trip to Mars, with the hopes of building a colony there. The organization says that the technology to do this exists, or will be ready by the time of its expected 2022 launch date.

Not so fast, says a group of strategic engineering graduate students at MIT. A simulation of the Mars One plan shared with the public at the recent International Astronautical Congress reveals the colonization project will likely end in disaster unless expensive changes are made.

Mars One plans on sending crews of four every two years to the Red Planet, where they will live inside space capsules and inflatable habitats, wringing water from the Martian soil and growing much of their own food. The researchers took into account the various factors necessary for survival—maintaining a breathable atmosphere, avoiding starvation and dehydration, preventing fire and depressurization—to see what the colony would need.

It takes 68 days for the first crew member to die.*

That projected fatality is the result of suffocation, space-style: The researchers found that growing plants would increase the amount of oxygen in the air to the point where it would need to be vented outside of the habitat to avoid increasing the pressure within the life support unit.

---

---

But there isn’t technology yet to vent oxygen separately from nitrogen, and indiscriminate venting would quickly cause the colonists to run out of the nitrogen used to maintain pressure, creating a situation where there will not be enough air pressure for crew members to breathe, but enough oxygen in the habitat to create serious fire danger.

And did I mention that humidity in the capsule will hover around 100 percent, thanks to the agricultural efforts?

These failures sent the researchers back to the drawing board, considering options that would avoid this problem by bringing all of the food needed for the colonists or growing it in a completely separate habitat. Both of these options are more feasible, but require far larger shipments of supplies than Mars One’s organizers have planned.

Ironically, it’s more efficient to simply bring food to Mars than attempt to grow it, since the additional infrastructure for the plants will require far more replacement parts. Ultimately, supporting the first crew of four on Mars will require about 15 launches of a heavy rocket like SpaceX’s forthcoming Falcon Heavy, costing about $4.5 billion on their own.

Given that Mars One’s projected budget for the first crew—including launches, years of training, supplies, specially built spacecraft and habitats, ground control, communications technology, and a Martian rover—is $6 billion, they’d better start thinking up new fundraising tactics, or hope the costs of space access drop dramatically in the next eight years.

---

* Bas Lansdorp, CEO and co-founder of Mars One, disputes this analysis, writing to say that “lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions.” Lansdorp believes that adapting medical oxygen concentrators will address atmosphere control issues and that the MIT researchers over-estimate the weight of their components, but was unable to share any other details about his Mars plan.

This article was originally published at http://qz.com/278312/yes-the-people-going-to-mars-on-a-dutch-reality-tv-show-will-die/

People Having Fun With Statues (Part 2)

Previously: Part One

There are many skills fathers should pass on to their children: how to ride a bike, how to skip a stone, and of course, how to make a paper airplane. When it’s time to show your kids how to fold a humble piece of paper into a soaring jet, don’t stumble around and hastily construct one from the poor memory of your youth — one that takes a disappointing nosedive as soon as it leaves your fingertips. Instead, teach them the art of making a plane that can truly go the distance.

The three designs below are tried and true (you wouldn’t believe some of the science behind paper airplanes) and are perfect beginner, moderate, and expert level models to play with. They go in order from easiest to hardest, so there’s something for every age level — including adult; don’t act like you’re not going to try these out in the break room.

The Bulldog Dart

This paper airplane is a warm-up of sorts. It’s simple, requires few folds, and flies well. It’s just not going to win you any contests or style points. If it’s your kid’s first time making a real paper airplane, this is a good place to start.

The Harrier

This is a slightly more advanced paper airplane. There are a few more folds, and it flies a bit better than the above Bulldog Dart. This is the perfect middle ground between simple and complex recreational paper aircraft.

The Hammer

While there are far more advanced paper airplanes, this one, in my opinion, is the perfect balance of complexity and accessibility for the Average Paper Airplane Joe. It has far more folds than the previous two models, and also flies the best and farthest. Pay attention with this one, folks, and the payoff is well worth it.

An anonymous reader points out this story about new regulations for media who wish to take pictures or video in federally designated wilderness areas. "The U.S. Forest Service has tightened restrictions on media coverage in vast swaths of the country's wild lands, requiring reporters to pay for a permit and get permission before shooting a photo or video in federally designated wilderness areas. Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in 36 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone. Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don't get a permit could face fines up to $1,000. First Amendment advocates say the rules ignore press freedoms and are so vague they'd allow the Forest Service to grant permits only to favored reporters shooting videos for positive stories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First: put on your headphones or turn up the volume, otherwise the beauty of this clip might be lost. Sounds of Paragliding is a new video from director Shams (previously), and sound engineer Thibaut Darscotte who took special equipment into the skies above France to record the sounds of Théo de Blic’s aerobatic paragliding. Instead of amping up the music and intensity like so many high-speed stunt/wingsuit/skydiving videos these days, Shams instead slows everything down to focus on only the sounds created by Blic’s parasail whipping through the air at incredible speed. It doesn’t really get going until after 2:00, but is completely worth it.

As reported by Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, and other outlets, the Liberian patient whose diagnosis of Ebola infection marks him as the first such case to have been first diagnosed within the United States may have had contact with more people than previously estimated, and 80 people in the Dallas area are now believed to have come into contact with him. While Bloomberg reports that this larger group of potential contacts is "being monitored for symptoms," the Washington Post's slightly later story says that, in keeping with the best current knowledge about Ebola's spread, "Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said that these [newly identified contacts] are not being watched or monitored and are not showing any symptoms of the illness. Only the immediate family members of the victim are being regularly monitored for Ebola symptoms; they've been ordered to stay at home and avoid contact with others."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.