Maitri

Biostatistics PhD candidate Alyssa Frazee was tasked with teaching her sister, an undergraduate in sociology, how to use R. She had only one hour.

Once you load in a dataset, things start to get fun. We learned a whole bunch of stuff from this data frame, like how to do basic tabulations and calculate summary statistics, how to figure out if you have missing data, and how to fit a simple linear model. This part was pretty fun because my sister started leading the session: instead of me saying "I'm going to show you how to do this," it was her asking "Hey, could we make a scatterplot?" or "Do you think we could put the best-fit line on that plot?" I was really glad this happened — I hope it meant she was engaged and enjoying herself!

This is the nice thing about R. There are so many built-in functions and packages that you can get something useful with a few lines of code, and you don't really even have to know what a function is to get started (although you should eventually). Then you can go as far down the rabbit hole as you want.

The New Yorker's Casey N. Cep on the "allure of the map", a form of storytelling in its own right.

Writers love maps: collecting them, creating them, and describing them. Literary cartography includes not only the literal maps that authors commission or make themselves but also the geographies they describe. The visual display of quantitative information in the digital age has made charts and maps more popular than ever, though every graphic, like every story, has a point of view.

Did you know that Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea was inspired by its own map? A favorite example of mine is Titan (from the UK's Fighting Fantasy series), which would be among the more forgettable fantasy worlds were it not for the wonderfully evocative maps that came with the literature. Above, Port Blacksand, the City of Thieves.

Previously: Fantasy maps are awesome

Ben writes, "Overdrive, which is one of the main suppliers of downloadable audiobooks to public libraries, announced that it is retiring its DRM-encrusted .WMA formats and pushing everything to DRM-free .mp3s."

This is a big deal. Audiobooks are the last holdouts for DRM in audio, and one company, Audible, controls the vast majority of the market and insists upon DRM in all of its catalog (even when authors and publishers object). Itunes, Audible's major sales channel, also insists on DRM in audiobooks (even where Audible can be convinced to drop it). Audiobooks can cost a lot of money, and are very cumbersome to convert to free/open formats without using illegal circumvention tools. To stay on the right side of the law, you have to burn your audiobooks to many discs (sometimes dozens), then re-rip them, enduring breaks that come mid-word; or you have to play the audio out of your computer's analog audio outputs and redigitize them, which can take days (literally) and results in sound-quality loss.

Overdrive going DRM-free for libraries is a massive shift in this market, and marks a turning point in the relationship between the publishers/creators and the technology companies that act as conduits and retail channels for their work. It's especially great that libraries are getting a break, as they have been royally screwed on electronic books and audiobooks up until now.

This is in response to user preferences, widespread compatibility of MP3 across all listening devices and the fact that the vast majority of our extensive audiobook collection is already in MP3 format. This includes the audiobook collections from Hachette, Penguin Group, Random House (Books on Tape and Listening Library), HarperCollins, AudioGo, Blackstone, Tantor Media and dozens of others. Our publisher relations team is working closely with the very few remaining publishers who require WMA to seek permission to sell their titles in MP3 for library and school lending.

We will soon be communicating the discontinuance of WMA sales, and then at a future date, we will announce when MP3 files will be the only supported format through OverDrive platforms. For libraries and schools that currently have WMA audiobook files in their collection, we will be working with the publishers of those titles to gain permissions to update your inventory to MP3. In the event that some titles are unavailable, an alternate solution will be offered to make up for the lost titles. Be on the lookout for announcements on our blog and from your Collection Development Specialist for a timeline of this process.

OverDrive announces plan for audiobooks to be solely available in MP3 format [Heather Tunstall/Overdrive]

(Thanks, Ben!)

(Image: DRM PNG 900 2, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from listentomyvoice's photostream)

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This week's "net neutrality" ruling appeared to give Internet providers the right to punish companies like Netflix with extra fees for gobbling up all their bandwidth. Is Netflix doomed?

That's the question many people are asking, but it's really two separate questions. The first question is: Did this court decision kill net neutrality forever? The second, related, question is: If Internet providers like Verizon force Netflix to pay, is Netflix's business model doomed?

Despite the company's sharp stock hit just after this week's decision broke, there's good reason to think the answer to both questions is a hearty no.

First, a definition: "Net neutrality" is the idea that Internet providers like Verizon can't discriminate against certain types of data. They can't make Netflix stream slower than TheAtlantic.com (or Quartz), and they can't make Netflix (or TheAtlantic.com) pay extra to get the same treatment.

Although this week's ruling killed the FCC's current net neutrality rule, it didn't kill net neutrality. In fact, it ruled FCC still has sweeping powers to protect an equal and open Internet, by reaffirming the FCC's broad regulatory authority over broadband providers. In an angry dissenting opinion, DC Circuit Judge Silbermann wrote that the ruling gave "the FCC virtually unlimited power to regulate the Internet" in the future.

There is an even easier solution for net-neutrality fans. The FCC could decide it has the political cover and popular support to declare broadband providers utilities, like landline phones or roads. This would make Internet providers subject to so-called "common carrier" rules, which would keep them from discriminating against certain services, such as Netflix.

For now, however, the ruling seems to give providers like Verizon the right to charge certain content providers based on how much bandwidth their using. And since video companies are the behemoths of bandwidth (Netflix, alone, takes up about a third of US bandwidth at peak hours), Netflix seems to be first in line for fees. But we're a long way from Internet providers actually threatening to charge Netflix, and even further from those charges actually destroying a service beloved by a consumer population larger than Ohio and New York, combined.

First, providers could ask Netflix to pay extra, and Netflix could say no. What happens then? Maybe Netflix streaming would slow for 30+ million American viewers. But is that worse for Netflix or the carriers? If the company refuses to pay extra for high-quality streaming and their video service declines, millions of people will notice—and blame their Internet providers (who have horrible customers service reputations,) rather than Netflix (whose consumer reputation is sterling). The fact that Time Warner Cable just lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers over a retransmission fee battle with CBS is a looming lesson, here.

But let's say net neutrality is doomed, and the Internet providers are never classified as utilities subject to common carrier laws, and Netflix loses its public-relations war over new charges. What then? If Netflix raises its monthly fee from $8 to $9, it stands to make an extra $330 million—and that's even assuming that 10 percent of its users abandon the streaming service over the price hike. That should be enough to offset even an aggressive new fee. (In fact, some analysts even suggested the ruling was an opportunity for Netflix if the company decided to pay for preferential treatment—i.e.: buy a "fast lane" on the Internet.)

Investors dumped Netflix after the ruling, because overreacting to news is what investors do. But everybody else should chill, for now. Netflix is a cheap, popular, and growing product with enormous good will, and Internet providers are still in line for a knock-down-drag-out fight with the FCC (and, potentially, consumers) over net neutrality.

The National Security Operations Center at NSA, photographed in 2012—the nerve center of the NSA's "signals intelligence" monitoring.

National Security Agency

On Tuesday afternoon, the New York Times reported that the National Security Agency has placed malware on nearly 100,000 computers around the world for offensive and defensive purposes.

Based on information found in NSA documents and gathered from “computer experts and American officials,” the Times confirmed information that came to light toward the end of December regarding several of the technologies that were available to the NSA as of 2008. The NSA's arsenal, the Times wrote, includes technology that “relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.”

The German Publication Der Spiegel published an interactive graphic two weeks ago detailing many of the ways that the NSA uses hardware to spy on its targets, including a “range of USB plug bugging devices,” which can be concealed in a common keyboard USB plug, for example. As with any hardware, though, many of these spying tools “must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer, or an unwitting user.” Der Spiegel writes that the NSA refers to this physical implant as “interdiction,” and it “involves installing hardware units on a targeted computer by, for example, intercepting the device when it’s first being delivered to its intended recipient.”

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M3Li55@

The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality rules were partially struck down today by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which said the Commission did not properly justify its anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules.

Those rules in the Open Internet Order, adopted in 2010, forbid ISPs from blocking services or charging content providers for access to the network. Verizon challenged the entire order and got a big victory in today's ruling. While it could still be appealed to the Supreme Court, the order today would allow pay-for-prioritization deals that could let Verizon or other ISPs charge companies like Netflix for a faster path to consumers.

The court left part of the Open Internet Order intact, however, saying that the FCC still has "general authority" to regulate how broadband providers treat traffic.

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Physical Oceanographer Erik van Sebille recounts his experience aboard the recently rescued Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

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My wife and I had 12 children over the course of 15 and a half years. Today, our oldest is 37 and our youngest is 22.  I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything. But my wife and I decided not to.

I will share with you the things that we did, but first let me tell you the results: All 12 of my children have college degrees (or are in school), and we as parents did not pay for it. Most have graduate degrees. Those who are married have wonderful spouses with the same ethics and college degrees, too. We have 18 grandchildren who are learning the same things that our kids learned—self respect, gratitude, and a desire to give back to society.

Here’s what we did right (we got plenty wrong, too, but that’s another list):

Chores

• Kids had to perform chores from age 3. A 3-year-old does not clean toilets very well but by the time he is 4, it’s a reasonably good job.
• They got allowances based on how they did the chores for the week.
• We had the children wash their own clothes by the time they turned 8. We assigned them a wash day.
• When they started reading, they had to make dinner by reading a recipe. They also had to learn to double a recipe.
• The boys and girls had to learn to sew.

Study Time

Education was very important in our family.

• We had study time from 6 pm to 8 pm every week day. No television, computer, games, or other activities until the two hours were up. If they had no homework, then they read books. For those too young to be in school, we had someone read books to them. After the two hours, they could do whatever they wanted as long as they were in by curfew.
• All the kids were required to take every Advanced Placement class there was. We did not let entrance scores be an impediment. We went to the school and demanded our kids be let in. Then we, as parents, spent the time to ensure they had the understanding to pass the class. After the first child, the school learned that we kept our promise that the kids could handle the AP classes.
• If children would come home and say that a teacher hated them or was not fair, our response was that you need to find a way to get along. You need find a way to learn the material because in real life, you may have a boss that does not like you. We would not enable children to “blame” the teacher for not learning, but place the responsibility for learning the material back on the child. Of course, we were alongside them for two hours of study a day, for them to ask for help anytime.

Picky Eaters Not Allowed

• We all ate dinner and breakfast together. Breakfast was at 5:15 am and then the children had to do chores before school. Dinner was at 5:30 pm.
• More broadly, food was interesting. We wanted a balanced diet, but hated it when we were young and parents made us eat all our food. Sometimes we were full and just did not want to eat anymore. Our rule was to give the kids the food they hated most first (usually vegetables) and then they got the next type of food. They did not have to eat it and could leave the table. If later they complained they were hungry, we would get out that food they did not want to eat, warm it up in the microwave, and provide it to them. Again, they did not have to eat it. But they got no other food until the next meal unless they ate it.

Extracurriculars

• All kids had to play some kind of sport. They got to choose, but choosing none was not an option. We started them in grade school. We did not care if it was swimming, football, baseball, fencing, tennis, etc. and did not care if they chose to change sports. But they had to play something.
• All kids had to be in some kind of club: Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, history, drama, etc.
• They were required to provide community service. We would volunteer within our community and at church. For Eagle Scout projects, we would have the entire family help. Once we collected old clothes and took them to Mexico and passed them out. The kids saw what life was like for many families and how their collections made them so happy and made a difference.

Independence

• When the kids turned 16, we bought each a car. The first one learned what that meant. As the tow truck pulled a once “new” car into the driveway, my oldest proclaimed: “Dad, it is a wreck!” I said, “Yes, but a 1965 Mustang fastback wreck. Here are the repair manuals. Tools are in the garage. I will pay for every part, but will not pay for LABOR.” Eleven months later, the car had a rebuilt engine, rebuilt transmission, newly upholstered interior, a new suspension system, and a new coat of paint. My daughter (yes, it was my daughter) had one of the hottest cars at high school. And her pride that she built it was beyond imaginable. (As a side note, none of my kids ever got a ticket for speeding, even though no car had less than 450 horsepower.)
• We as parents allowed kids to make mistakes. Five years before the 16th birthday and their “new” car gift, they had to help out with our family cars. Once I asked my son, Samuel, to change the oil and asked if he needed help or instruction. “No, Dad, I can do it.” An hour later, he came in and said, “Dad, does it take 18 quarts of oil to change the oil?”  I asked where did he put 18 quarts of oil when normally only five were needed. His response: “That big screw on top at the front of the engine.”  I said “You mean the radiator?” Well, he did not get into trouble for filling the radiator with oil. He had to drain it, we bought a radiator flush, put in new radiator fluid, and then he had to change the real oil. We did not ground him or give him any punishment for doing it “wrong.” We let the lesson be the teaching tool. Our children are not afraid to try something new.  They were trained that if they do something wrong they will get not get punished. It often cost us more money, but we were raising kids, not saving money.
• The kids each got their own computer, but had to build it. I bought the processor, memory, power supply, case, keyboard, hard drive, motherboard, and mouse. They had to put it together and load the software on. This started when they were 12.
• We let the children make their own choices, but limited. For example, do you want to go to bed now or clean your room? Rarely, did we give directives that were one way, unless it dealt with living the agreed-upon family rules. This let the child feel that she had some control over life.

In It Together

• We required the children to help each other. When a fifth grader is required to read 30 minutes a day, and a first grader is required to be read to 30 minutes a day, have one sit next to the other and read. Those in high school calculus tutored those in algebra or grade-school math.
• We assigned an older child to a younger child to teach them and help them accomplish their weekly chores.
• We let the children be a part of making the family rules. For example, the kids wanted the rule that no toys were allowed in the family room. The toys had to stay either in the bedroom or playroom. In addition to their chores, they had to all clean their bedroom every day (or just keep it clean in the first place). These were rules that the children wanted. We gave them a chance each month to amend or create new rules. Mom and Dad had veto power of course.
• We tried to be always consistent. If they had to study two hours every night, we did not make an exception to it. Curfew was 10 pm during school nights and midnight on non-school nights. There were no exceptions to the rules.

Vacation Policy

• We would take family vacations every summer for two or three weeks. We could afford a hotel, or cruise, but did not choose those options. We went camping and backpacking. If it rained, then we would figure out how to backpack in the rain and survive. We would set up a base camp at a site with five or six tents, and I would take all kids age 6 or older on a three- to five-day backpack trip. My wife would stay with the little ones. Remember, for 15 years, she was either pregnant or just had a baby. My kids and I hiked across the Grand Canyon, to the top of Mount Whitney, across the Continental Divide, across Yosemite.
• We would send kids via airplane to relatives in Europe or across the US for two or three weeks at a time. We started this when they were in kindergarten. It would take special treatment for the airlines to take a 5-year-old alone on the plane and required people on the other end to have special documentation. We only sent the kids if they wanted to go. However, with the younger ones seeing the older ones travel, they wanted to go. The kids learned from an early age that we, as parents, were always there for them, but would let them grow their own wings and fly.

Money and Materialism

• Even though we have sufficient money, we have not helped the children buy homes, pay for education, pay for weddings (yes, we do not pay for weddings either). We have provided extensive information on how to do it or how to buy rental units and use equity to grow wealth. We do not “give” things to our children but we give them information and teach them “how” to do things. We have helped them with contacts in corporations, but they have to do the interviews and “earn” the jobs.
• We give birthday and Christmas presents to the kids. We would play Santa Claus but as they got older, and would ask about it, we would not lie.  We would say it is a game we play and it is fun. We did and do have lists for items that each child would like for presents. Then everyone can see what they want. With the internet, it is easy to send such lists around to the children and grandchildren. Still, homemade gifts are often the favorite of all.

The Real World

• We loved the children regardless of what they did. But would not prevent consequences of any of their actions. We let them suffer consequences and would not try to mitigate the consequences because we saw them suffering. We would cry and be sad, but would not do anything to reduce the consequences of their actions.

We were and are not our kids’ best friends.  We were their parents.

This post originally appeared on Quartz, an Atlantic sister site.

We are well into 2014 now, but it is not too late to look back at 2013 and pick some of the best moments (which means photos in my case) of the year that just passed.

We started out the year with a trip to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. Although it was fairly cold (especially at Bryce Canyon NP — this park has a much higher elevation overall than Zion NP), we had lots of sunshine and did several day hikes. Visiting these parks in the winter is a great idea — they are a lot less crowded than in the summer, and obviously the landscapes and sights are quite different when they are covered with snow.

Looking into Zion Canyon from above

Zion National Park is paradise for a sedimentologist: there are endless, top-quality exposures of the Navajo Sandstone, showing all kinds of sedimentary structures characteristic of deposits of wind-blown sand. I have included two examples here; you can find more on my Smugmug site.

Grain flows or avalanches (darker color) interfingering with wind-ripple deposits (lighter color)

Ancient dunes of sand, sprinkled with fresh snow

Sedimentologically, Bryce Canyon National Park is a bit less exciting than Zion, but this is counterbalanced by the fantastic geomorphology of this place. I haven’t seen Bryce Canyon in the summer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more beautiful when it’s covered with snow.

Bryce Canyon National Park in winter

In February, I went on a ‘business’ trip to Torres del Paine National Park in Southern Chile: I attended a field consortium meeting organized by Steve Hubbard’s group at the University of Calgary. I have been to this area several times before, as it has some of the best outcrops of turbidites (= deep-water sediments) in the world, but I was once again shocked how uniquely beautiful Chilean Patagonia can be.

A recent fire destroyed much of the vegetation in Torres del Paine National Park, but the burned areas are now busy with new life

Some of the mountains don’t seem very big from the distance, but their true scale is revealed when you climb them

At the end of the official trip, Zane Jobe (who is blogging at Off the Shelf Edge) and I did a bit of geo-turism: we went to see Glacier Grey and Lago Grey, and then did a day hike in the park to check out the actual Torres del Paine. The rest of the photos are here.

Glacier Grey on a cloudy but quiet day

Torres del Paine on a picture-perfect day

In July, my wife and I took a few days to do some hiking and running in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was struggling with a running injury at that time, but the mountains and the trails acted as efficient tranquilizers. More photos at Smugmug.

Rocky Mountain NP was also affected by fires in recent years. Not a bad thing for photography

The views from Flattop Mountain are stunning

In September I attended a research conference on turbidity currents in Italy and Peter Talling showed us some of the classic outcrops of the Marnoso-Arenacea Formation. These rocks are very unique because they were deposited by huge submarine flows that covered the entire basin floor. Always wanted to see them and it was enlightening to get up close to them.

Turbidites of the Marnoso-Arenacea Formation, Italian Apennines. David Piper and Bill Arnott for scale

In October we spent a long weekend in Moab, Utah, to participate in our first trail races, but we also did some hiking. Running the Moab Trail Marathon was an amazing experience (I think I will have to do it again this year); unfortunately I didn’t take a camera with me, as I was trying to focus on running (and surviving the race).

Typical view in Canyonlands National Park

To continue with the theme of ‘national parks in winter’, some friends from California and the two of us wrapped up the year with a Christmas trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. More photos, of course, at Smugmug.

Steam and frosted trees in Yellowstone

Coyote — shot with the super-zoom lens of our guide (thanks, John!)

Ice crystals on Taggart Lake, Gran Teton NP

One year ago today
RIP, Aaron Swartz: My friend Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday, Jan 11. He was 26.

I am on record, both in this magazine and in my local newspaper, as an enthusiastic defacer of books. Recently I had a new kind of marginal experience that I would like to share: the pleasure of joint, or (as they say in grad seminars) “dialogic” marginalia.

The book was Dan Brown’s Inferno. Like most writerers [sic], I am crazy about Dan Brown. Why does he write the way he does? Is he a sneaky genius? How is it possible that he was once in a writing seminar with David Foster Wallace? (One of my dreams is to write a hit Broadway musical about that seminar, in which Dan Brown strides around the stage wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches singing bombastic anthems about the great masterpieces of Europe while DFW sings introverted atonal fugues with mumbling sotto voce footnotes.)

I purchased and read Inferno, which was inscrutable and interminable, and as I read I scribbled in its margins. When I finished, my friend David Rees, the artisanal pencil sharpener, asked if he could borrow it. He added his thoughts.

It was fun to see someone else’s words next to mine. I wrote in black pen, in cursive. David wrote in red pencil, in block letters. I was semi-serious. David swore and told a lot of jokes. Usually we agreed, but occasionally we disagreed. Here are some of the highlights.

WARNING: There are probably Dan Brown spoilers here, but come on, seriously.

Very early in Inferno, I realized that Dan Brown’s career-long fetish for ellipses had reached a whole new level. Basically, ellipses are the hero of the book. They make their first appearance on the dedication page.

After a while I started trying to circle all of them, which became a meditative exercise.

Sometimes I would miss one and David would catch it for me.

We spent most of our time in the margins making fun of Dan Brown.

We mocked his pacing,

his dialogue,

his dialect,

his artless exposition,

his anti-powers of description,

his careless repetitions,

his weak grasp of human behavior,

his lust for fame,

his characters’ gender stereotypes,

his implausible plot points,

and probably the worst “academic” lecture in the history of fiction.

Along the way, we managed to isolate the keywords of the Dan Brown lexicon.

Sometimes David added illustrations.

Usually, David and I agreed.

But sometimes we didn’t.

Recently I passed the book to another friend, who will add her marginal notes, and then I will pass it to someone else, and then someone else, and on and on until eventually we have written more words in Dan Brown’s book than Dan Brown himself. This seems like the only way to tame the monster at the heart of the Inferno.

Millennial workers are becoming accustomed to communal workspaces, even as they stress us out by eroding privacy and productivity.

Open offices are everywhere, and yet no one seems to like them. Ostensibly they create a "collaborative" atmosphere that would boost creativity (and cut down on rent). But that theory might be bull--so why do we still use them?

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Now that many environmentalists are coming around to the idea that GMOs don't have to be evil, we need a more nuanced view of how we want to use GMOs in agriculture. When is it a good idea to use GMOs, and when is it overkill?

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On the left, Chris Foss's "Nemo's Castle", cover for Isaac Asimov's Stars Like Dust. On the right, Glenn Brown's "Ornamental Despair", sold at auction for $5.7m. What's up? Charlie Jane Anders explains at iO9, and quotes the artist himself:

The Foss paintings never look like my versions of them. Mine are always played around with. The colors are altered, the cities were redrawn and I was always inventing things to increase their intensity right from the start. ... I never want to lose that notion of appropriation—people say to me, sooner or later you'll stop copying other artists and you'll make work of your own, but it's never been my point to try to do that, because I never thought you ever could. The work is always going to be based on something, and I wanted to make the relationship with art history as obvious as possible.

The argument is that increasing the size and saturation of someone else's work, with some literary and artistic recontextualization, generates a transformative new work—even if the new context amounts to an explicit repetition of the themes already implicit in the original.

There's evidence of at least one lawsuit, but it hasn't reached the courtroom and it's not clear how it settled.

If you're ever frustrated when someone looks at modern art and dismisses it out of hand, or assumes that the artist and the business are a conspiracy of pretentious idiots and fraudsters, just remember that people like Brown are why.

After years running on the fumes of hype, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are beginning to hit the road.

Toyota made a big splash when it announced at the annual Consumer Electronics Show that it would market such a car beginning in the 2015 model year. Hyundai has also committed to roll out a fuel-cell vehicle next year. And Honda has already begun leasing its hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity to customers in California.

Each of the vehicles can travel roughly 300 miles without a refill — three times what the Chevy Volt can do — and reaches a top speed of about 100 miles per hour. A refill takes just a few minutes to achieve, and because the hydrogen is used to produce electricity, the cars drive without the familiar roar of an internal combustion engine.

“This is just the beginning of a long process,” Nick Nigro, senior manager for transportation initiatives at Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, or C2ES, told Singularity Hub.

So what’s driving the changes? The same two factors that spur the adoption of many cutting-edge technologies: falling costs and growing government incentives.

Costs have fallen since hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles were first promised at the turn of the 21^st century. Toyota said it has shaved 95 percent of the cost of producing the powertrain and fuel tanks compared to what it cost the company to build its original hydrogen prototype in 2002. Even so, the fuel-cell cars cost roughly twice as much as their gas-powered cousins, leading the automakers to offer them only for lease, not for sale.

More cost-efficient electric powertrains have flowed from the experience automakers gained building the current generation of plug-in electric vehicles, according to Nigro.

Hyundai Tucson

The cost of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles is expected to continue to fall, matching that of conventional cars by 2023, according to an influential 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s already possible to make the hydrogen gas that powers the vehicles for a price competitive with that of gasoline. But it’s dirtier hydrogen than the form produced from nothing but water so often touted. Hydrogen gas, which doesn’t occur naturally, can be produced in a number of ways, but it’s currently most economically obtained from hydrocarbons such as methane and ethanol. As a result, although today’s hydrogen-powered cars emit only water vapor, their use nevertheless results in carbon dioxide and other emissions upstream.

The real trouble is there’s no system for producing and dispensing the hydrogen gas directly to automobile storage tanks.

“There is a legitimate chicken-and-egg issue with fuel-cell vehicles because you can’t go out as an individual and buy hydrogen at this point,” said Nigro, of C2ES.

That’s where government incentives come in.

Yellow pins represent planned hydrogen fueling stations.

Zero-emissions vehicles incentives, put in place in several U.S. states to make electric vehicles more appealing to consumers and automakers alike, have helped fuel-cell vehicles a little bit. But without “gas” stations nearby, not many consumers would be likely to buy the cars at any price. In September, California stepped in with funds to help build refueling infrastructure — and, voilà, just a few months later, three automakers are announcing they will debut hydrogen vehicles in the Golden State.

“There’s no doubt that the success of this technology will depend less on the genius of the car than on the ownership experience. Cost is one thing, but convenience is another,” acknowledged Bob Carter, senior vice president of automotive operations of Toyota U.S.A.

“Stay tuned, because this infrastructure thing is going to happen,” Carter added.

To help ensure its cars sell, Toyota will help the University of California Irvine’s Advanced Power and Energy Program map out potential locations for additional hydrogen fueling stations in California.

So will fuel-cell vehicles trump battery-powered electric vehicles in coming years? Nigro says no. The vehicles have different advantages and weaknesses, he said. For instance, a hydrogen fuel cell is much likelier to power a big truck than an enormous electric battery.

“It’s quite possible that they both will win,” he said. “It seems likely there will be a healthy mix of fuels in transportation in next few decades.”

Lead photo: Toyota FCV courtesy Toyota Motors

Did mysterious bureaucrats authorize the destruction of historical documents in North Carolina in order to cover up “a paper trail associated with one or more now-prominent, politically connected NC families that found its wealth and success through theft, intimidation, and outrageous corruption?” That’s Constance Hall Jones’s suspicion. Bonus: Part two, which includes a timeline. (h/t Lydia Kiesling)

To the disappointment of everyone who wants to learn to code so they can get rich or powerful, developer Dave Winer tells us that's probably not going to happen. He lists good reasons why you might want to learn to code, but recommends you learn to run a server first.

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Tiger Mother Amy Chua is at it again, unfortunately.

The Yale Law professor first gained widespread notoriety with her 2012 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Among other things, Chua was criticized for her extremely harsh parenting techniques, such as calling her seven year old daughter “garbage”, in order to motivate her, and forcing her young children to endure marathon six-hour practice sessions on the piano and violin.

If you’ve been on social media in the last couple of days, you’ve probably seen Maureen Callahan’s New York Post article “Tiger Mom: Some cultural groups are superior” which previews Chua’s and her husband Jed Rubenfeld’s upcoming book The Triple Package: Why Groups Rise and Fall in America. In what’s sure to be another bestseller, the pair make the highly controversial claim that certain communities are simply better at achieving success than others, and that this success has to do with certain inherent characteristics belonging to these cultural groups. The book is sure to garner just as much (if not more) controversy as her first book did.

The Triple Package doesn’t come out until next month, so it’s too early to pass serious judgment on its contents. Given that the source for this news is the New York Post, and given the incendiary title and tone of the article, it’s probably safe to assume that the reporter, Callahan, was aiming more for page views than for accuracy. However, there is ample cause for alarm in the few details that Callahan lets slip about the book. Chua and Rubenfeld single out eight cultural groups that they claim are “exceptional” (leading us to wonder what is so wrong with other groups in America), including Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, and Nigerians. These and other cultural groups, they claim, have been able to do so well in America not because of the unique social and economic conditions they have existed in, but because of qualities that other groups simply do not have. These virtues are; 1) the presence of a superiority complex, 2) the simultaneous existence of an inferiority complex, and 3) a marked capacity for impulse control.

You don’t have to read the book to see the problems with this kind of argument. First of all, this kind of analysis smacks of cultural essentialism. Chua and Rubenfeld show little inclination to recognize the incredible diversity that composes various cultural groups in America, and they show little indication that they understand that culture is not a monolith. Their conclusions seem to be based on stale and empty stereotypes about ethnic groups, and I am left wondering how they will manage to empirically back up their claims about the traits they claim are universally present in their chosen eight groups. (According to Callahan’s analysis of the text, the data used to back up their conclusions is “specious” and “anecdotal.” I am inclined to believe her.)

More damningly, the argument that Chua and Rubenfeld are making is not new, nor are the authors brave for posing it. They are simply reaffirming the mainstream opinion about certain minority groups. Their thesis is a manifestation of what is known as the model minority myth: the belief that certain ethnic and cultural minority communities in America have managed to lift themselves out of poverty and misery solely by the virtue of their own hard work. According to this misguided belief, these minorities didn’t request handouts from the government, or civil rights reforms from society — they instead invested their energy into making better lives for themselves.

There are two major problems with such an argument. The first is that this myth is often used as a weapon against racial and ethnic minorities that haven’t “made it” yet, despite having been in the country longer than the more successful newer arrivals. African Americans bear the brunt of this type of criticism, and the model minority myth is responsible for much of the tension that exists between Black and Asian American communities. The second major problem with this argument is that the myth is simply not true; it is not true that every community has managed to lift itself out of poverty so easily. The myth obscures the reality of Asian American poverty and the struggles of immigrant life –it renders racial discrimination against these groups invisible, and contributes to stereotypes.

However, the biggest problem with Chua and Rubenfeld’s argument is that they seem to be ignoring the real reason why most of these groups are so successful in America: they are immigrant communities. There’s nothing special about Nigerians that Irish Americans (for example) don’t have — the difference is, Nigerians are recent immigrants, and the Irish are not. Intergenerational mobility is often quite stark for immigrants, as the second generation tends to benefit from the hard work done by the first. The argument also obscures the fact that immigrant populations are often self-selected, and come to this country with certain advantages that native populations might not have. The vast majority of the Indian-American population, for example, came to this country with high rates of educational attainment, which meant that they had cultural and economic advantages that other Americans did not have. Ignoring these other factors, which are not unknown to researchers who study immigration in America, is tantamount to intellectual dishonesty.

Perhaps Chua and Rubenfeld will address these concerns in their book; perhaps they’ll provide a more persuasive argument than Callahan and I believe to be possible. It is entirely possible that the Post article has completely misconstrued what they have been trying to say. This certainly isn’t the first time Amy Chua has been given media exposure that she felt painted her in an unfair light. Chua argued that the Wall Street Journal excerpt of her first book had been taken out of context, and that they had made her sound like she was writing a parenting manual, instead of a memoir. After reading Tiger Mother, I have to conclude that Chua was right to be frustrated. In the book, we learn that Chua eventually learned from her experience with authoritarian parenting, and learned how to moderate her approach — a fact that was never mentioned by the media in its coverage of the book.

However, despite the lessons she claims to have learned by the end of the book, the overwhelming impression I received after reading Tiger Mother was that Amy Chua is a singularly joyless, narrow-minded individual. She displays little to no intellectual curiosity, she sees no merit in teaching her children emotional intelligence (David Brooks went so far as to call Chua a “wimp” for not letting her kids hold sleepovers), and not once in her book does she address the potential mental health consequences for survivors of “Chinese parenting.”

I fear that given her limitations, Chua is vastly out of her league in trying to tackle a question as laden with complexity as why certain groups do better than other groups in America. It is yet to be seen whether Chua and Rubenfeld will succeed in their analysis, but given what we know of their project so far, I doubt that they will.

Jaya Sundaresh lives in Hartford, Connecticut. She grew up in various parts of the Northeast before deciding to study political science at McGill University. Follow her on Twitter at @anedumacation and read her thoughts on her personal blog.

The post Tiger Mother Amy Chua is Back and Worse Than Ever appeared first on The Aerogram.

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