Lie of the Year

Politifact, the moderate to slightly right of center fact checking service, has come out with its lie of the year.  Donald Trump!  Not the person, really, although that would make sense, because everything about the man is a lie: he claims to be smart and self made.  Neither is true, although he's a pretty good salesman.  Politifact lists a large number of the near constant lies that Trump is making during his campaign.

This only the second time that Politifact has had an actual lie as their lie of a year two years in a row:

2015: Trump's lies
2014: The Ebola Scare.
2013: If you like your health care you can keep it.  (Had this been expressed "If you like your qualifying health care, you can keep it" it would have been true: the plans that were closed by ACA were fraudulent in some way.   In 2008, they had rated this same statement as true)
2012: Romney/Ryan completely false claims that Jeep was moving its factory to China
2011: Democrat's completely true statement that Republicans voted to end medicare as we know it.
2010: Republican's absurdly false claims that the ACA is a government takeover of healthcare.
2009: Republican's dangerously false claims about death panels.

Politifact has a problem.  90% of the lies told in the political sphere come out of republican mouths or pens.  Democrats and progressives lie sometimes too, but it's mostly hyperbole or simple mistakes.   If you examine the statements from left leaning sources that politifact rates as "Pants on Fire" or "False", you'll find that a lot of them are actually more like half true or figures of speech.

If politifact were to report this honestly, they would be pilloried by the right wing media.  So instead, they give the right a major pass.  They still end up showing that right lies far more than the left, but it comes out looking a lot more like balance, even though it's not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html

As an example, here are the 9 statements by Obama and his campaign that are rated pants on fire. 
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/statements/byruling/pants-fire/

1: if you like your plan, you can keep it.  slight misstatement, basically true.
2: The FISA court is transparent.  Mostly false but politically necessary
3: claims Romney plans to fire Big Bird.  hyperbole, but essentially true.
4: claims Romney backed a bill that would block all abortions, including rape and incest.  sort of true.  Romney's support was more tacit than full-throated.
5: an Obama ad claims Gingrich, Perry and Romney would eliminate aid to Israel.  the only actual Pants on Fire I found.
6: claims that asking gov't departments to examine laws and consider getting rid of them if they don't make sense is unprecedented.  The essential claim is true, the unprecedentedness is Hyperbole.
7: claims the US is one of the biggest muslim countries in the world.  Half true.  US has between 2 and 6 million muslims.  that's not big compared to Indonesia or Pakistan, but it is compared to Abu Dhabi or Quatar. 
8: claims that 100% of McCains ads have been negative.   Politifact claims the number was closer to 75%.  Hyperbole.
9: claims McCain supported Limbaugh's comments about immigration.  McCain only partly supported them.  again, hyperbole about a claim with only a slight ring of truth in it.

Conversely, a lot of the statements rated true made by Republicans are trivial things.  Cruz says there are more words in the IRS code than in the bible.  Fiorina points out that Trump has changed his mind on abortion. Santorum says that 70% of Americans don't have a college degree.  All true, but do they of any consequence to the Republican message?

Australian Crime Wave

Gun rights advocates are fond of pointing out that despite or perhaps because of the gun ban in Australia, crime rates have gone up there.

In fact, neither of these things is true.  After several mass killings, culminating with the Port Arthur Massacre of 1996, the National Firearms Agreement brought the many contradictory regional gun laws into alignment, and required that all gun owners be licensed and store their guns safely.  There is no ban, although it's distinctly harder for a criminal or crazy person to get a gun.  There was a major buyback, which removed about 1/3rd of the guns in legal circulation, but there remain millions of legal gun owners in Australia.

Crime did go up briefly, but it's now substantially lower than before the Agreement.    In fact, the spike began before the Port Arthur Massacre and had returned to previous levels by 2004.  I've transcribed Robberies (both armed and not, which are the vast majorities of violent crimes) but other violent crimes show a nearly identical spike during this period, except for sexual assault, which has showed a rise that's fairly consistent with population.  I've been trying to figure out if anybody knows what the cause was, but I haven't found it yet.

Gun deaths seem to have roughly halved according to this, but it's pretty fuzzy and I haven't found a precise numerical source yet. (the same graph shows a saving of about 12,000 lives a year due to the brady bill)

      Population   Robberies  Per 100000
1993   17494     12765           73
1994   17667     13967           79
1995   17854     14564           82
1996   18071     16372           91
1997   18310     21305          116
1998   18517     23801          129
1999   18711     22606          121
2000   18925     23336          123
2001   19153     26591          139
2002   19413     20989          108
2003   19651     19709          100
2004   19895     16513           83
2005   20127     17176           85
2006   20394     17375           85
2007   20697     17996           87
2008   21015     16508           79
2009   21262     15238           72
2010   22183     14631           66
2011   22340     13653           61
2012   22723     13155           58


Population of Australia

Victims of Violent Crime

Uncle Sam Billboard

I've always enjoyed the Uncle Sam billboard on I-5.  Alfred Hamilton erected the sign on his land between Centralia and Chelalis when the government first built I-5 through it in the 1960s, and for years he changed the comment every week or two.  He sold the land in 1995 but the billboard found a new home a few miles south of Chehalis at Rush Road, near exit 72.  He died in 2004, but his son keeps updating the billboard.

Almost everything the Hamiltons say on the billboard is wrong, often absurdly so.  He has a right to say stupid stuff, but I have a right to correct him.

A few samples:

NO NATION HAS EVER SPENT ITS WAY TO PROSPERITY

In fact, no country has ever done it any other way.  A few didn't have to do the spending themselves, lucking into someone or something else who would do it for some reason.  But the only way a nation (or a business or any other entity) can become prosperous is to invest.

THERE ARE MORE NRA MEMBERS THAN PEOPLE WITH OBAMACARE

There are about 5 million NRA members.  There are between 9 and 17 million people with Obamacare, depending on how you count.  For example, lots of people had insurance that didn't cover catastrophic illness, often by cancelling the policy because of some heretofore unnoticed preexisting condition.  Now they can't do that.  Clearly a PPACA beneficiary, but not part of over 9 million in the exchange.

20 TRILLION IN DEBT?  AIN'T YOU EMBARRASSED YET?

It was under 18T at the time and it's still under 19.  The debt was run up by the conservatives that Hamilton supports.  More importantly, the debt is a meaningless number.  The relevant number is the deficit, which Reagan and both Bushes hiked massively and Clinton and Obama reduced.


LIKE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT, RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE EVEN FURTHER

Lots of conservatives believe this, arguing that by raising the price of labor, demand for it would go down.  Reality answers: don't believe in monocausality.  Countless real world experiments have been done, and none of them show the effect he's talking about, and a few even show the opposite.  There's clearly some other effect at work.  Perhaps it's that by raising the wages low-wage workers, demand for goods is increased enough to counter the effect.  Perhaps morale is raised enough to increase productivity sufficiently to pay for the extra labor cost.  Perhaps it's something else.   What is known is that at least for moderate increases, raising the minimum wage does not raise unemployment.

ALMOST 1 TRILLION TO AFRICAN DICTATORS.  MARIA CANTWELL SPONSORED THE BILL

I'm not sure what he's talking about here (this is a frequent occurrence).  Total foreign aid to all countries is about $50B, about 1/3rd of it military assistance to countries like Egypt and Pakistan (which are indeed run by dictators).  Israel is by far the largest beneficiary.  Countries in Africa get about $5B of this.

DEMOCRAT MOTTO: VOTE EARLY VOTE OFTEN

There's no evidence of consequential voter fraud and none of it swings Democrat.  There is lots of evidence of election fraud and voter suppression and nearly all of it swings Republican

WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

Obama has arranged for the release of both the short and long forms of his birth certificate.  Both are easily found on line.

EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE: HOME OF ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISTS AND HOMOS

I can't find any evidence that Evergreen State is particularly the home of Earth Liberation Front or any other such group, or for that matter of gay folk.  It does happen to be the closest 4 year college to the sign.

TOO MANY IN THE BOAT, TOO FEW ROWING

I sort of agree with this one but Hamilton's solution is probably the opposite of mine.  There really is a demographic change that has the effect he's talking about.  People are having fewer children and living longer, which means more people are collecting benefits relative to the number of people paying.  But more significant is growing inequality: more have such low income that they don't pay much in taxes, and those at the top have been effective at getting the tax laws changed to their benefit.

MEXICO DEPORTS MORE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS THAN THE US DOES

I think he's talking about Central American illegals: Mexico deported about 173,000 last year, US 110,000.   Of course, Mexico is a lot closer to Central America and catches a lot of people headed for the US en route.  The US deported over 400,000 in 2012, nearly half to Mexico.

LET'S KEEP THE CANAL AND GIVE THEM KISSINGER

Totally agree about disposing of Kissinger.  He's caused a lot of trouble, notably the pointless lengthening of the VietNam war, including over 20,000 American deaths.  I sort of agree about the Canal.  The US had bought what became the Canal Zone from Columbia in 1903 in the immediate aftermath of them gaining independence from Columbia after a long, violent struggle.  Panama understandably felt they'd been taken advantage of.  Territorial dispute continued for much of the 20th century often turning deadly, and Carter was able to make it stop by transferring ownership (after a 20 year delay) to Panama.  This is a rare case where appeasement actually worked.

UNDER SHARIA LAW, IT'S ILLEGAL TO BE AN ATHEIST.

For once, I completely agree with Hamilton, but it's not clear why this matters.  There is no risk whatever of Sharia Law being adopted in the United States or anywhere else in the western world, but there are a lot of people who would like to see its Christian version imposed here, such as the terrorists who kill abortion doctors and threaten those seeking abortion.

VOTE FOR THE AMERICAN

This was in autumn 2012.  Hamilton apparently wanted us to vote for Mitt Romney, which as illustrated here, is exactly the same amount of American as President Obama.

WHY IS OBAMA TRYING TO STOP THE MILITARY VOTE?

He did close to the opposite.  Ohio had a law that gave everybody in the state the opportunity to vote early.  The Republican-led Ohio state legislature rescinded this law for everybody but overseas military.  The Obama justice department sued to point out that this was not equal treatment and to try to restore early voting for everybody, but the Romney campaign distorted this to suggest that they were trying to eliminate early voting for the Military.

addition 26Jun2016
YOU GET TO CHOOSE: MURDERS & BEHEADINGS; OR A PROTECTED BORDER?

Since the murders and beheadings that ISIS is committing are mostly in a faraway country that doesn't border on the US, it isn't clear how toughening up the border could possibly protect against them.   Moreover, all the ISIS related killings that have been occurring in western countries so far have been committed by people that were there legitimately; most often born there.    Illegal immigrants to the US commit roughly 1/4th the number of crimes per capita as legal US residents.


 addition 17Sep2016

SILLY PROGRESSIVES, PAYCHECKS ARE FOR WORKERS
Paychecks are for workers.  We should stop giving government subsides to oil companies, giant agribusinesses, and most important of all, taxing financial profits at half the rate of actual work.

A few years back, Pew did a study that found the use of food stamps is strikingly independent of ideology:  the likelihood that any individual will use food stamps over the course of their life is nearly identical regardless of ideology: liberal, conservative or moderate.  It is, however, the case that Ds are more likely to have used them than Rs and Is:  The Ds embrace the poor, while the Rs are hostile to them.

ARE YOU READY TO PAY HILLARY'S 3 TRILLION IN NEW TAXES?
The major part of Hillary's proposal is taxing financial income at roughly the same rates as earned income, which if projections are correct, would add about $1.1T in tax payments over the next ten years and $2.1T in the subsequent 10 years.  This is predicated on the GDP more than doubling over that time, so the actual additional tax collected would be well under $100B a year at today's rates.  (if the economy were to grow at Since people outside the top 1% generally don't have much financial income, nearly all of these new taxes will be paid by the top 1%.

Fewest Superchargers

US states with the fewest Tesla Superchargers

0
Alaska
Arkansas
Hawaii
Maine (Permit issued for Augusta)
Mississippi
Nebraska
North Dakota

1
Delaware
Iowa
Rhode Island
West Virginia

2
Kentucky (permit for #3 has been issued)
Louisiana
Pennsylvania  (construction has begun for two more)
South Carolina
Vermont

3
Alabama
Idaho
Missouri
New Hampshire
South Dakota
Tennessee

4
Indiana
Massachusetts
Michigan
Oklahoma
Wyoming

5
Connecticut
Georgia
Kansas
Minnesota
North Carolina
Washington

Facts, Opinions, and Theories.

A fact is something which is objectively true.  Two plus two is four.  The earth is roughly spherical.  President Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, roughly two years after it became a state, to a mother born in Kansas.  There are also false facts: things which are objectively false.  Two plus two is seven.  The earth was created roughly 6000 years ago.  Liberalism is the same thing as communism and is also the same thing as fascism.   The founders were a pack of gun toting anti-government, anti-tax, bible thumping activists.

An opinion is an attitude or belief about something which may be difficult to validate, or about which your opinion is really of no consequence to anybody but yourself.  I think there is probably life elsewhere in the universe.  Blue is a better color than Red.  Fangio was a better driver than Schumacher.  You can have opinions about facts.  It's sad that our bodies wear out as we get older.  It's annoying to pay taxes.   An opinion is sort of a middle ground, between true and false facts.  Opinions are sometimes validated or invalidated as we learn more about things. 

Since there are a lot of things that are difficult to validate, a lot of people have opinions which may actually be facts or false facts.  For example, you may think that Obama is a Kenyan terrorist.  You are entitled to think anything you like of course, but if that's your belief, you are simply wrong, and acting on that belief in some way may be harmful.  If you think that government tightening its belt during an economic downturn is an unquestioned necessity, you are simply wrong.  It may be a little too complex for a lot of people to understand.  So was the roundness of the earth before circumnavigations or satellite photos.   But lots of people did understand that and knew the truth in the face of popular belief to the contrary.

A theory is an idea about the way some particular thing works in the universe.  Theories can be true, false or opinion.  The theory of the flat earth proved to be false.  The theory of evolution proved to be true.  The theory of universal gravitation is basically true, but it turns out to be more complicated than that.  The theory that there is life elsewhere in the solar system remains possible but is as yet unproven one way or the other, so having an opinion either way is reasonable.  The word "theory" is sometimes used to cast aspersions on a fact that the speaker is unhappy about.   Not liking a theory has no bearing on whether it's true or false, nor does misunderstanding what the word means. It may have an impact on the politics around a theory, which may affect funding for research or even lead to ostracism.  Thinking that something true is false or vice versa, is likely to lead you to make strategic errors.

Team Names

When I was growing up, the nearest division I college sports teams were the Stanford Indians.  This was a commonplace sort of team name and seemed an entirely positive reference: the athletes were purporting to have the properties of native Americans: Strength, endurance, team spirit, aggressiveness, loyalty, etc.  The college across the bay (which I later attended) were the Bears.  More independent perhaps, but strong, aggressive, etc.  The high school I went to were the "Pioneers": independent, far sighted.  Beavers, Ducks, Huskies, Vikings, Mustangs, Matadors, Chargers, Cowboys.  These were all meant to be positive references. Not really taken seriously as actually representational, just symbols to have on a flag. 

In 1972, Stanford decided to drop the indian mascot.  They struggled for a little while trying to find a replacement, temporarily using the team's primary color, Cardinal Red, and calling themselves the Stanford Cardinal.  40 years later, they've given up finding a new mascot and have stuck with the color.  This made no sense to me at the time: the Indian mascot was an entirely positive and honorable allusion. Why should real indians complain?

One trouble is, the stereotypes about a few of these have them to be marauding bandits. There's some truth to it, but like many marauding bandits, they were driven to desperate measures by economic changes not of their own making*.   Worse, there's an implied comparison to animals.  But really, that's silly--actual cowboys, vikings, matadors, etc., are not complaining--nor should they.  No insult is implied or intended.

The difference is that native Americans are still subject to real racial prejudice.  The people who are being touchy about mascots named for them are trying to get attention for a real cause.  It's not really the team name at all.  They are trying to get better treatment for indians--on reservations, in impoverished sections of cities, and so forth.  A lot of indians are trapped in a cycle of poverty that is very difficult to break out of.  Horrible things have been done to them.  Being touchy about team names is nothing more than a way of getting attention.  A PR campaign. 

There are, of course, lots of people who have confused the PR campaign for a real issue.  That's what Stanford did when they changed their team name.  This happens all the time.  If all the teams changed their names, they would have "won", but it would deprive the native Americans of a real PR asset.

-----------------
* The Norse had a huge population boom that left a lot of people without land, so some of them went viking (it's a verb) to occupy someone elses land.  At first scary, they assimilated very well.  Angles, Saxons, Normans, Russians all have viking heritage.  Indians were on the receiving end of this.  The vikings made a colony there too, but were not as successful as they'd been in europe.  500 years later, a new set of immigrants came, but brought devastating disease with them, which made colonization much easier.

That Which Will Destroy Us

The incident last week of a ninth grader with an Arabic name disassembling a digital clock and passing it off as his own invention to try to impress his teachers is telling, in many ways.  I actually did build a digital clock--when I was in the 11th grade, out of SN7490 SSI integrated circuits.  When I saw a picture of Ahmed's clock, I knew immediately it could not possibly be a bomb and was certainly not something he'd invented.  It had a big LSI chip that handled virtually everything.  Ahmed is better at electronics than 90% of 9th graders for being able to take it out of its case without breaking it, but he's passing off the work of a team of professional engineers as his own.  Most teachers can't be expected to know enough about electronics to know how to rate a claim of invention, but a teacher that knows so little that they can't tell that there was nothing there that could explode needs to seek another way of making their living.

In a long commentary on facebook, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who was more precocious with electronics than I was, saw the same thing and mentioned how he really got his start in electronics because he had an idea for a prank.  He did it and got into trouble--one of his teachers thought he'd made a bomb--unsurprisingly, because the device was meant to sound like one.  He learned from this to keep his pranks secret.   From the sound of it, his pranks were a little scarier than mine--several of them involved shocking people, and he spent a night in juvie for the fake bomb.  Several of my stunts involved pyrotechnics, but I was always very careful to make sure lots of people understood what I was doing, especially my safety precautions.  I still have all my eyes, ears and fingers...

Woz also said that "From the most creative people I meet in high tech, I'd suggest that slight misbehavior is an essential ingredient of creative thinking".  This is exactly my experience.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say, if you don't have at least a little bit of a rebel and scofflaw in you, you have basically no chance of ever doing anything very creative.

The schools today are removing a great many of the exhilarating things from the curriculum.  Cuts in the arts and recess are only part of it.  I made lots of things that went poof or boom or flash in chemistry lab.  I learned a lot from these games.  The teacher kept an eye on me and realized that I was probably the safest kid in the class, precisely because I was always looking for ways to have fun and understood, better than most, that these things could hurt me.  He even helped offered suggestions for a few of my projects.  He was a great teacher.  Thanks, Mr. Wong.  Today, most of the chemicals I used are gone.  I'd have been stymied.  Chemistry would have been boring.

Zero tolerance has been one of the most harmful ideas ever imposed upon the school system.  Kids get major punishments for bringing toys to school.  Kids need to rebel a little.  It's what makes them feel different and creative, and in a lot of cases, actually be creative.  If you stop the little fun, their only option becomes unsupervised fun.  Big fun.  Kids doing bad things, things with consequences and that may deserve real punishment.  Little fun stays little and it can satisfy kids creative urges if they have enough of it.

Creativity requires rebellion.  Doing the same thing over and over is not creative, but it is one of the definitions of insanity.   If we stop our kids from being creative, we are over as a nation.

Trump the Troll part II

Trump is still doing far better than any serious pundit could have imagined,  polling in the 20s, by going for the lowest, most racist, most hateful positions.   It seems to me that he's capturing all the people who won't vote for any democrat because they're too nice.  Today, he has signed a pledge to the GOP that he won't run as a third party candidate and made a speech that he's all in for the GOP.  In my previous blog entry on this subject, I suggest that Trump is playing stalking horse for the Democrats.  I see nothing to change this view.

Trump's success is only in the GOP and I'm pretty sure is only among GOP voters who are dumb enough to think that bluster and belligerence is helpful when you're playing in the big leagues.  It's hard to imagine this is more than 20% of the voters under any circumstances--he'd only have to have about 10% overall support to get poll results he does.    In the unlikely event that he actually wins the nomination, he'll get about 30% in the national election from the people who are more loyal to the GOP than sensible, and win only a few small states where there are very few non-republicans: Idaho, Utah, Mississippi and a few others, and lose by one of the biggest landslides in history.  Success for the troll.

Because the support is functionally grass roots (even though Trump himself is the very opposite of that), if the more traditional GOP tries to run a third party candidate (Mitt Romney would be my best guess), it will end the GOP, and the defeat will be even more complete.   The GOP is dumb, but I don't think that dumb.

Far more likely, the GOP will find some way of kicking Trump out of the process.  Almost no matter how this happens, Trump will call foul and today's "pledge" will be torn up (and a few borderline people will turn against the GOP over this)  Trump will take nearly all of his votes to the third party, and the final tally will be something like 55% for the D, 35% for the R, and 10% for Trump.   The troll will have succeeded.

It's most likely that some other GOP candidate will get more votes than Trump in the end.  If this happens, Trump will claim the election was rigged and will cry foul and run as a third party candidate.   Given the behavior of the Republican leadership over the couple of decades, it almost certainly will be rigged, although the press may do no more about it than they did with the rigging of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Same final result, with Trump not taking quite as many votes from the GOP.  Trolling success.

In any case, I think Trump has highlighted what drives an awful lot of GOP voters, and has forced the "normal" republicans to step all over themselves trying to outflank him...  They are saying all sorts of things that would make them completely unelectable in a sane country and may even do that in America.  He's forcing the press and even the Republicans to speak truths that they have been unwilling to give voice to for 40 years.  Trump may actually achieve his slogan and "Make America Great Again", by giving an overwhelming victory to a sensible Democrat and a more progressive congress than we've had since FDR.

Cars That All Look the Same

It seems apparent that a lot of cars are converging on a very similar design.   Sorted by price:

Ford Fusion 2013-Present











Audi A7 2010-Present


Tesla Model S 2012 Present

Jaguar XJ 2007,10-Present



 Maserati Quatroporte 2013-Present 








Aston Martin Rapide S 2010-Present

I think Jaguar gets primacy here, because their first car that looked a little like this dates from 1996 and the 2 door XJR came out in 2007 with almost exactly this shape.  Much of their present line looks pretty similar. 

From a glance, the Tesla, Audi, Jaguar and Aston Martin are indistinguishable, especially from the side or rear quarter.

Except for the Fusion and the 2 door Jaguar, these are all big cars.

Aston Martin has announced a fully electric version of the Rapide, with 200 mile range.  It costs more than twice what the Tesla does.  It's not clear whether they'll adopt Tesla's Superchargers or go with the CCS Combo charger that the EU is pushing.

The Fusion is available in a Plug-In Hybrid version.

The price of the Audi, Tesla and Jaguar are pretty similar

The Republican Field

We're about to see the first culling of the absurd GOP presidential field.  Not one of these clowns has a clue about Foreign Policy, Economics or any of several other important topics, and most have presided over at least one catastrophe bad enough to bring the career of someone in a real political party to a screeching, permanent halt.  Andy Borowitz has a particularly clear-eyed view of it.

Let's see.  We have a reality TV star who was the son of a wealthy real estate mogul and has been able to leverage the extraordinary advantages he was born with into several bankruptcies.

We have a governor who screwed up so badly that a recall election was petitioned for, and run.  A few weeks before the recall, he was losing badly.  But through gigantic spending and one exceptionally slick and dishonest ad by the Koch brothers later, he managed to squeak by.  His policies have significantly damaged his previously fairly successful state...the state next door, with weaker fundamentals but a democratic governor, is doing far better economically.   He would be the flagbearer for extreme corruption, except:

We have the governor who presided over massive election fraud in the stealing of the presidency 15 years ago.  His term coincided with a massive real estate bubble unleashed by deregulation--much of it presided over by the president he foisted on us--and he left office just in time for the bubble to collapse into the worst recession in 70 years.  Therefore he thinks he knows something about economics.  His forays into foreign policy discussion have been equally embarrassing.  His team is essentially the same team that backed off watching for terrorists and opened the door to 9-11, caused the disaster in Iraq, and hyped the the real estate bubble.

We have a retired governor who doesn't understand the principle of separation of church and state and would like to turn us into a theocracy.  He's actually pretty honest about his principles although he doesn't understand why the the founders were so dead set against them.  He doesn't know that, or much else, either, although he plays an OK Bass.

We have the two Cubans.  One of them is doing a good job of mostly following along with his party's "leadership", which is probably the best way to the front of the pack, but he speaks to the incompetence wing of the party and as far as I can tell, has never done anything of real consequence.  His tax cuts while he was speaker of the state house have caused terrible budget problems, but that doesn't distinguish him from any other republican leader.

The other Cuban is slicker, and more openly corrupt, but plainly even less competent.  He thinks any media attention is good.  If the attention comes from a consequential screw-up or throwing sand in the gears, so much the better.

We have a retired and apparently successful surgeon who somehow managed to get into medical school without understanding one of the most basic principles of biology: evolution

We have a currently serving governor who has bullied and terrorized his state's population so badly that his approval less than a year after his reelection is in the 20s.  Several of his close allies are under indictment, several of whom are clearly stepping up to protect their leader, and it seems unlikely he'll make it all the way to next November without being under indictment himself.

We have another physician who is the son of a perennial crackpot candidate.  He disagreed with the board which certifies the competence of his class of surgeons, so he used his political connections to create a new certification board.  I have no idea if he's competent at his old job.  He managed to get elected senator, where he is proving his incompetence.  He is more honest than some of these guys, but no smarter.  He seems to believe in his dad's crackpot economic theories.

We have the current governor of an important swing state.  He seems to be the most competent of the pack, although this is an incredibly low bar.   He gives lip service to most of the bad ideas of his party.

At the kids table, we have:

A former governor who thinks the way to show his brain power is to wear glasses and challenge the front runner to a pull-up contest.  He is under indictment already.   We've had numerous regional politicians who have come back after being convicted of a crime, but this is first for a presidential candidate.

A current governor who does a great Alfred E Newman impersonation.  That really is the best thing about him.  He did a "rebuttal" to the president's state of the union a few years back and he totally embarrassed himself.  In a better party, his career would have been over before he got a chance to bankrupt his state.

A former senator who would like to turn us into a theocracy and actually understands enough about how the legal system of this country works that he might make some progress at it were he to have the chance.  He doesn't actually know much about the founding principles of his own religion, either.

A former CEO who came very close to running one of the great high tech companies into the ground, before she was deservedly fired.

And many more.  There actually are over 30 declared GOP candidates, but the media only lists 17.  Not one is really credible, although three of them have unconscionably large amounts of money to spend.

Suggested Supercharger Locations

I've made so many addenda to this I've started a new version here.


Tesla's superchargers are a DC fast car charging technology that makes their Model S and subsequent cars fully capable long range cars.  Short of malfunction, there's almost no circumstance that will result in a full charge taking much over an hour, and most of the time, well under half an hour for these cars, which can go 250 miles or so between charge.

As of this writing, Tesla has 206 functioning Supercharger stations in the United States, most of them near to interstate highways and almost all midway between cities.  They figure people who are in a city are likely to have access to home or destination charging, which can be slower and charge while you sleep.  They are in process on another 20, which from obtaining a license to breaking ground, pouring concrete, doing the wiring and so forth, seems to take a few months.

Where should the next few stations be?

Finish I-90.  There's a 244 mile gap between Sheridan WY, and Rapid City, SD.  You might be able to make it in an 85kwh car if you go slow.  This is a beautiful part of the country for a road trip, and it'd be nice to be able to take a side trip to the Black Hills on the way.  There's an obvious place in Gillette, WY.  This is the last real gap before I-90 is a transcontinental supercharger route, although it would be helpful to have one near Erie PA.

Finish I-84.   The Boise supercharger is under construction and should be turned on any day now.  Boise to Tremonton, UT (just north of Salt Lake) is 267 miles.  There's an obvious place in Twin Falls, ID, which would serve both I-84 and also US 93 for people going from Boise to Elko or Wendover.

US-1/101 along the west coast.  My favorite bits of this are #1, Big Sur, #2, the coast highway near Mendocino, #3, the coast highway near Coos Bay, #4, the redwood empire.  There's a station going in at Crescent City.  Crescent City to Petaluma is 316 very twisty miles.  At least one station is needed.  Garberville or Legget is right in the middle in the redwood empire and would serve my #2 and #4.  Monterey to Atascadero is about 150 miles along the coast.  It'd help if there was something in the middle but it's not desperate.  Eugene to Crescent City is about 180 miles...makeable, but it'd help if there was something in the middle.  Florence would be about right.   Although I've spent the night in Newport and places around there several times and I'd be happy to do it again..If I could get destination charging there, no further help would be necessary.

Olympic Peninsula.  The obvious big circle between the Kingston ferry terminal and Centralia is about 300 miles, so something in the middle would be necessary.  I'd put it in Forks or Beaver or somewhere like that.   Or maybe one in Port Angeles and one in Hoquiam.  (Much of this is 101--the same 101 that's in California.  I'd love it if they were to put a supercharger every 100 miles or so the full length of 101.)

North Cascades Highway. (US 20).  Truly spectacular.  One of the most beautiful roads anywhere, and definitely the most beautiful within 200 miles of my home.  Go as soon as the snow is clear from the road but not melting too much on the slopes yet--April, maybe.  Burlington is just a little too far from Ellensburg and a lot too far from Ritzville.  Put it somewhere like Brewster or Omak, so it can serve people doing the north cascades loop (2, 97, 20), and also people going past Grand Coulee

South Cascades: Ellensburg or The Dalles to Seattle via 410 is too long, although 12 to Centralia might work.  A small supercharger or even an 80 amp J1772 or HPWC at Naches would be perfect.

Finish I-80.  It's 439 miles between existing chargers in Salt Lake City and Cheyenne, WY, and another 499 between Cheyenne and Omaha, NB.  That calls for at least 4, better 6 new stations. There's a way around on I-70 that's already been completed but is a few hundred miles longer, so this would not be my top priority, but it should be done.

Finish Route 66.  It's now called I-40 and I-44, and all but two of the cities in the song have superchargers already or under construction.  Only Joplin, Missouri and Amarillo, Texas are missing, although Winona and San Bernardino have to rely on the town next door...  The only real gap is St Louis to Oklahoma City:  512 miles, so it needs 2 stations, better 3.  Joplin is nearly in the middle.  Amarillo is in a shorter gap--204 miles, which is a little long but it's flat and probably doable.  Texas is among those states that have tried to block Tesla's dealer model.

addenda 22 Aug 2015

Permit for an 8 berth Supercharger has been granted for Twin Falls ID.  It should open in a few months.

Permit for a Supercharger in Ukiah, CA has been granted.  Crescent City to Ukiah is too far so there must be another one coming somewhere between Garberville and Eureka.

I'd like to see US 395 made to be a practical route.  My favorite part of this road is between Yosemite and Death Valley.  There's already one at Lone Pine, Neatly between Mt Whitney and Death Valley.  Lee Vining (the closest point on 395 to Yosemite) is the next obvious place north.  Lee Vining to Susanville is too far, so about midway between Reno and Susanville is necessary (I love the mountains just west of Susanville).    Next north would be Alturas, then Riley, where 395 comes together with OR 20.   (adding Riley would make the mysterious Detroit Lakes charger make more sense) These are mostly obscure little towns in a beautifully desolate area.  They can probably all be 2 or 4 berth stations.   Tesla's intentionally vague future map seems to put new ones in Reno, Lee Vining, and Bend, OR.

addenda 30 Aug 2015

Construction has begun on a 6 stall Supercharger in Gillette, WY.  It should open in a few months.

addenda 26 Sep 2015

Gillette is now open, and a permit has been applied for in Amarillo.  Still waiting on Erie to finish I-90, and Joplin and neighbors to finish Route 66/I-44.  They may choose instead to head straight east to Nashville, which would include the first supercharger in Arkansas.

addenda 6 Nov 2015

Amarillo is now open and a permit has been granted for Catoosa, OK, which is a suburb of Tulsa, and on I-44.  Look for a new ones near Joplin and Buckhorn, MO, which would make the modern version of the old route 66 completely supercharger-enabled from Chicago to L.A. and make Tesla-driving Nat King Cole fans very happy.

Twin Falls, ID, is now open, making Seattle or Portland  to Salt Lake City via  I-84 completely viable.

Gardnerville, CA is now open and Mammoth Lakes has a permit.  Once this is complete, access to the south eastern part of the Sierras along US-395, from Reno to L.A., will be complete.  Next comes the north eastern Sierras through Susanville and Alturas.  This is a much lower traffic area than the southern part of 395, so I don't expect it to be completed for a while.

addenda 6 Dec 2015

Permit for Eureka, CA has been issued.   I'd have guessed it'd be a little farther south.  Ukiah to Eureka is 155 fairly hilly miles.  Makeable, but just barely, so I'm guessing there'll be another in the long term.   I'd have used it last weekend, had any of it been available...Instead I went to Vacaville and I-5.  Longer, and much less fun.  (I was visiting friends near Santa Rosa).

I found the Springfield to Grant's Pass route to be a little Range-Anxiety inducing.  I'm hoping the next station in Oregon is near Roseburg.

Mount Shasta is plainly too small: I stopped there twice: there were between 3 and 6 Teslas at this 4 berth supercharger every time I looked.  It's a lovely place though...hard to imagine a better place to wait, if you must.

I also visited Sandy, OR.  This location is a pain to get to, and it's hard to imagine doing it unless you're really going to Mount Hood, Sandy, or the town next door, Boring.  (this sounds like a joke but it's not)   It's far enough as to not be useful at all for Portlanders.

Another route I'd like to see completed is I-15, from LA through Idaho and Montana, right up to the Trans-Canada highway.    LA to Salt Lake is complete already, and Butte has a station.   I think 5 or 6 more would do it.  One complication is that one of the most important sites on that route, Yellowstone NP, is a little far from it.   I'd like to see a station at West Yellowstone.

addenda 2 Jan 2016

One logical place for a supercharger would be US-95 between Winemucca, NV and Boise.    It's 253 miles, mountainous and often cold--way too far--and there's precious little charging available at all--NEMA 14-50 at RV parks near either end.  It's a desolate route but it would be useful for those traveling between western Nevada and eastern Oregon or Washington.  To get, for example, between Spokane and Reno, you either have to go 400 miles out of your way to I-5 or 300 miles out of your way through Salt Lake City, relative to this route.  Because it's so desolate, it could be a tiny station. Supercharging would be best, of course, but even an 80 amp HPWC near the middle would save most of a day for such travelers.   There's a gas station and a tiny motel at a place called Burns Junction, near the middle at the intersection of US-95 and OR-78 that would be perfect.

addenda 16 Feb 2016

Progress on Route 66 is nearing completion: Permits have been issued for Catoosa, OK (near Tulsa) and Rolla, MO.  Joplin is midway between these two.  Once all three have been issued, it'll be a fairly easy link.

Permit has been issued for Erie, PA.  No construction yet.

Ukiah is now open.  No visible progress on Eureka or  Crescent City.  Ukiah-Eureka and Eureka-Grants Pass are just barely doable, so once Eureka is open, the redwood empire will be.

Another song, Willin' by Little Feat, contains the line "I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah"   Tuscon is 64 miles from the nearest Supercharger, near Phoenix.  There's already a supercharger at Tucumcari, NM.  The route is a little circuitous, but doable.   Work on I-10 and I-25 will make this better.  Tehachapi is near Bakersfield on CA-58.  There's a supercharger near there at Mojave.  A permit has been issued for Tonapah, NV, and once it's completed, it will be an easy route by supercharger.  Tonapah, AZ is just outside of Phoenix and getting there from Tehachapi is already easy.

Burns, OR came into the national news since my last comment here, where I mentioned nearby Burns Junction.  There are several RV plugs in the Burns/Malheur area, but getting there in a Tesla will be slow and take a lot of planning.   I'd put it low down in my list of priorities though.  For the time being, Malheur bird watchers will need an internal combustion engine.

addenda 11 Sep 2016

Since my last update, Eureka and Crescent City, CA have opened as well as Seaside and Lincoln City, OR.  Permits have been issued for Bandon, OR and Aberdeen, WA, and once they are complete, it will be possible to use 101 by supercharging all the way from San Diego to Forks.  But once you get there, you're constrained to slow chargers.  Something needs to be built between Port Angeles and Forks.

Bend, OR is mystifying to me.  There must be a squeaky wheel somewhere near there.  Not that I object, but I think there are a bunch of places that should be higher priority.

395 is complete, Reno to LA.  No signs of progress north of Reno.  There's still no good Reno-Spokane route.

US-95 is complete Yuma, AZ on the Mexican border, through Las Vegas, to near Reno and Winnemucca, in northern NV.  Two more stations on the part between Winnemucca and Boise would make it a viable connection to Spokane and points north.

I-15, LA to Butte, MT is almost complete with several stations near Yellowstone.

Route 66 will be complete once the stations at Springfield and Rollo, MO are up and running.  I'm only slightly disappointed they skipped Joplin.

There are 4 new stations going in along I80 in Iowa and Nebraska.  The rest of Nebraska and all of Whyoming remain before I-80 is finished.

No signs of progress  on either I-10 or I-94.

I-35 is complete, San Antonio to Duluth.

Centralia, WA, has started having waits.  This would be reduced by adding a station somewhere near Longview.  It's an easy130 miles from Seattle, and 150 miles from Longview to Springfield, converting two stops into one.

Trump the Troll

Donald Trump has leapt to the top of the Republican polls.  His central issue, like his central issue last time, is a wedge issue¹ that gives him fervent traction among a few crazies but his position is strongly against the position of most Americans and will totally alienate an important voting bloc.  In order to get the 17% support from Republican voters that he has, you only need about 5% of the population:   In a recent study², 35% identify as Ds, 28% identify as Rs and 33% identify as independents.  5% is a huge number of people, something like 6.5M of the 129M that voted for president in 2012, but it's far from enough people to win a national election.  What it is, is enough people to get a lot of people to watch you speak, get excited, and buy products from your sponsors.  The people who are enthusiastic about Trump are almost exactly the people who are enthusiastic about Rush Limbaugh: Naive, older white people with a little money, poor critical thinking skills and knowledge of history, and a strong belief in their own patriotism and loyalty.  Rush's show is about selling them various small scams: gold, reverse mortgages, cheap life insurance, etc., while getting them to vote the way he wants them to.  Everybody is angry about something.  Rush is good at kindling that anger into profits.  Trump is doing the same thing.

But many of Trumps sources of income are appalled at his behavior and have pulled their backing.  Trump doesn't seem to be phased by this at all.  At the same time, Republican leadership has been doing everything they can to get Trump out of the race.  He is forcing the "regular" republicans³ to move even farther to the right to try to keep up with him.   No such candidate  is even close to electable.  Such a nominee is guaranteed only the 28% of voters that are so partisan that they will never vote for a Democrat, no matter how awful the Republican is.  Republican leaders are running scared.  There are 33 Republicans who have declared and 16 of them are seen as credible by leadership and the media, far too many to fit on a debate stage (even the 8 of last time was absurd.) and Trump's ability to attract media is giving him extra visibility.  The guys they'd really like to see (Bush, Walker, and maybe Rubio), already competing for the rightmost edge of the political spectrum, have felt forced to say even crazier things than would be their wont.

How do I think this will play out?
1) Perhaps Trump thought this would be good for business and was surprised how his message so alienated his traditional sponsors while attracting the crazies.   Having wrecked a large part of one of his businesses, he's decided to play the hand out.  He may be as delusional as he seems and thinks he actually has a shot, but more likely he's enjoying himself and knows that when he crashes and burns he can live out the rest of his life (he's 69, an age when most people have already retired) in luxury, living off his real estate and casino fortune.

2) Perhaps he really believes in what he's doing and saying.  I am very skeptical of this.

3) A Troll, in internet parlance, is someone who says things contrived to disrupt and swing the conversation the way they want it to go, strongly against the wishes of everybody else, and takes pleasure from the anger this generates.  I'm not the only person to have had this idea.   Nate Silver's data-driven political prognostications have been amazingly accurate.

4) He's a stalking horse/manchurian candidate.  He's a pretty smart guy.  Not quite as smart as he pretends to be, but smart enough to be terrified that any of the republican candidates might have a real chance to become president.  He saw what Nader succeeded in doing, by accident, in 2000, what conservatives wrongly think Perot did in 1992, and what Anderson seemed to intentionally be doing in 1980.  Only in 2000 did it really matter⁴, but it did matter, disastrously.  He has said he will run as a third party candidate if he doesn't get the nomination--this would be exactly the right move if he actually is a manchurian candidate.  He will draw votes...perhaps only 5%, but that's very likely enough to swing the election, since they will all be from the Republican.  Moreover, when he does leave, he will leave a Republican field that remains much less electable than they would have been without him.  He is known to have been supportive of Hillary in the past (he gave money to her 2007 campaign, and a lot of money to the Clinton initiative), to have been in favor of universal, single payer health care, to have been pro-choice.  If this is still secretly his view, he is definitely playing a long game: he ran as a wack-job in 2012.

I'm usually a skeptic of conspiracy theories, but this one holds together unusually well.  It will probably cost him less than what the Kochs are spending, and might be more effective.  And he may actually be having fun.

(spoiler alert) In the Harry Potter books, it turns out that the biggest hero of all is Snape.  He spent his life as a mole in the darkest of possible places, doing what he could to undermine Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and protect Voldemort's enemies where he could, while scrupulously not blowing his cover and seeming horrible and evil and drawing the hatred of everybody except the very people he was trying to destroy.  He died thinking it all may have been for naught.  I doubt the Voldemorts of the Republican party will have Trump killed, but I imagine it's crossed their mind. Severus Trump?<sup>5

1</sup> Immigration is not really a problem.  Immigration rates are low, crime rates among immigrants are exceptionally low (although not zero).  Their presence is depressing wages a little at the low end, which generates anger among low wage workers, but not enough to actually do something about it--Like raise the minimum wage for everybody, including farm workers, to something livable.
² http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-parties-in-2012/ 
³It would be a mistake to call any of the present Republican candidates "mainstream". Kasich, Christie and Pataki are well to the right of 75% of Americans, even though they are far to the left of the rest of the Republican field. The others are to the right of 95% or more.  http://mr-entropy.blogspot.com/2014/05/overwhelming-majorities.html
⁴ http://mr-entropy.blogspot.com/2014/01/third-party-candidates.html 
⁵ I'm not the only person to make this connection: https://asecondmouse.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/is-trump-pulling-a-colbert-on-the-republican-party/

The Lost Cause

Many southerners see the Confederate defeat of 150 years ago as a defeat for a form of civilization that they admire--chivalry, graciousness, hospitality, independence and self sufficiency.  These are laudable traits, but that's not what the Civil War was about.  The wealthy southern landowners portrayed their cause as being that, as part of the pro-war propaganda.  It was indeed about a way of life--the wealthy landowners could not see a way of maintaining themselves in the style to which they had become accustomed without slavery and the repression of the black race.  When the ugly truth about what the war was really about was brought to the fore, they of course did their best to revise history, change the subject, and find new ways of getting extremely cheap labor, many of which continue to involve repressing poor blacks, and other poor people. 

50 years ago at the height of the civil rights movement and the centenary of the Civil War, many of these repressions were blocked by federal action.  The confederate battle flag, of which there had been only a handful during the war itself and had been called "the southern cross", had become a symbol for the Ku Klux Klan, and was re-purposed to represent resistance to the civil rights movement.  And of course the good things about the southern way of life.  Most southerners believed the happy lie, but southern blacks and educated others knew exactly what it really meant, and cringed when they saw it.  Most of the ex-confederate capitols flew some version of it for a time, and a few incorporated it into their state flag.

There are some good southern values and history worthy of preservation.  But the flag does not represent them.  Revisionism and denial of the horrors of history is not a cause worthy of defense.   That is what the confederate battle flag represents, and since Appomattox, always has.   Those that died serving the confederacy were victims of an evil regime, just as slaves were.  All deserve to be mourned, even if they were deluded during their lifetime.

There are lots of causes that seem lost but are worth fighting for.  Until last week, getting the flag off of government properties seemed hopeless, but today it seems inevitable.  (I worry though, that pro-gun advocates are using it as a stalking horse to stop the conversation we should be having about gun control)    Theodore Roosevelt tried to get universal public health insurance for Americans, more than a century ago.  It took more than a century.  We don't quite have it yet, but we're a lot closer than we were 7 years ago.    There are lost causes worth continuing to fight for.  There are others that need to go to the ash heap of history.

I hope that someone does come up with a symbol that represents the good parts of southern values and heritage, without the burden of slavery and oppression.   It's even possible it might be one of the other confederate battle flags, one that was not used by the Ku Klux Klan to incite repression of blacks.

As for the flag itself, I think we need to treat it as free speech and not be banned, but deprecated as offensive.   I think we have a good prototype in religious speech: representatives of government must not display it, including public school teachers, elected officials and other public employees, and it should be kept off of state or federal property, except for museums.  But several stores and flagmakers have announced that they will no longer make or sell it.  I think this is a violation of free speech.  I want it to go away because nobody wants to express what it says, not because the expression itself has been banned.

Gerrymandering and Undrerrepresentation

A lot of people have come to recognize that Gerrymandering (the chopping up of political districts such that a favored party has a dominant majority) is a big problem in a lot of states.  A few states have tried to address this with nonpartisan or bipartisan districting commissions, with rules about irregular border and a few other things, but nothing really works.

A separate but related problem is that the present two party system strongly protects those two parties and does not allow third parties.  The libertarian and green party both have several percent of the voters, but do not hold a single seat of the 435 in congress.

My idea is that the delegation that each state sends to the congress must contain a partisan mix corresponding to the actual party vote in that state's US congress elections.   So, for example, a state has 10 districts, and the statewide vote is 40% Democrat, 40% Republican, 10% Libertarian, 10% Green, the states delegation must be 4Ds, 4Rs, 1L, 1G.  How the state chooses to implement this is up to the state.  Fixing Gerrymandering would be a start, but it does nothing for the parties that have significant votership, but no clear plurality anywhere.   My thinking would be to reduce the number of districts to 8 and have two "at large" candidates for the two smaller parties. 

Perhaps a better option would be to have even fewer districts--say, 5--and have the other 5 selected at large based on getting fair representation.  If some of those districts are severely gerrymandered, one of the two majorities may be getting severely underrepresented, and at-large representatives could be used to fix the balance.

The way voting would work would be you'd have your district elections as always, and there would also be an at-large election.  Candidates for the districts would also be allowed to run in the at large.  You specify (vote for) your party, and then you vote for a district candidate, and some number of at-large candidates according to the number at large seats available.   If a party needs at-large representatives, the at-large votes from voters matching that party would be tallied to select the candidate--the top vote getter from voters of that party would get the seat.  This would allow voters to cross party lines.

What's Next for Tesla?

Tesla has 3 cars in the product pipe, a new battery for home use and a gigafactory under construction.  They plan to be a BIG car company and do some other things too.

The three cars that are already in production:

The roadster: two seater, two door, convertable Wheelbase = 93", Length = 155", Width =  73", Track = 59", Curb Weight 2723 lbs. No longer manufactured.
The Model S: 5 seat 4 door sports sedan, Wheelbase 116.5", Length 196", Width 86", Track 67", Curb Weight 4647 lbs.
The Model X:  7 seat 5 door station wagon/sports utility vehicle. First delivery in 2016.  It looks like a taller version of the model S.  I bet it uses the same chassis.  the BMW X5 that it will compete with has slightly smaller chassis dimensions than the model S.
The Model 3: Smaller and half the price of the model S, but it's promised to have similar range and will be "less adventurous".  My guess it will closer to the market niche of the Camry or Leaf.  No real announcements will be made until at least 2016 but tesla employees seem to be very excited.

Tesla has also suggested that there may be a revival of the roadster.  My guess is that this will use the same chassis as the model 3 with body styling reminiscent of the roadster.  there's lots of precedent for this sort of thing: think Honda Civic and CRX.

So what else can be built on these two chassis?
A van: ford's E series van is 217x80" with a 138x70" wheelbase.  less than 2 feet longer, and about the same width than the model S.   There's no engine in a tesla so the cab could be quite a bit farther forward.  This would be very practical as a delivery van, a work van for an electrician or plumber, etc, a family hauler,  a class B motorhome
A truck: The ford ranger is 189-206 inches long by 70 inches wide: narrower and about the same length as a model S.  the ford 150 is about as wide and 2-4 feet longer, so I'm thinking somewhere between.   The major changes required would be an elevated, long travel suspension for rougher terrain, and towing.  they already have the beginnings of the truck suspension with the air suspension, although it needs to be higher than that.
A family sedan/taxicab: the model X still has a very "fastback" roofline.  by extending the high roofline even farther back, this would make it more suitable for carrying grownups in the back.

Insane Discoveries

I usually enjoy the website  www.iflscience.com, but this time they've blown it.  On a post labeled Top 10 Insane Unexplained Discoveries, I can find only 3 real mysteries of the 11 things listed.   5 of the others are worth pursuing but are not really mysterious and I don't think anybody deserves to be a considered a crank for the other three, just wasting time on something unlikely to be fruitful.  The video is pointlessly long and conveys its largely incorrect message painfully slowly, exacerbated by especially irritating music.


Here they are:

10: Hastatic Order:  There seems to be a mysterious force that occurs in certain Uranium compounds while cooled to superconductivity.  This is a real mystery, worth pursuing.

9: Variable Constants:  The speed light in a vacuum is a constant.  Under poorly understood circumstances, the speed of light in certain far away galaxies can be observed to be changing.  There are several completely plausible explanations: gravitational lensing, for one.   What's not known is which it is.  Definitely worthy of scientific pursuit.

8: Disappearing Europeans.  They found a substantially colony of dark skinned, blue eyed paleolithic europeans that have died out.  Lots of colonies have died out.  Not really a mystery at all.

7: Tetra Neutrons.  Irreproducible.

6: Ultra energetic cosmic rays.  There are several mechanisms that might cause it.  The leading candidate, a supernova, was incorrect.  But there are others.  Certainly a phenomenon worth pursuing. But it's unlikely to generate a new principle of physics or biology or something.

5:  Placebo Effect:  many people have shown substantial cures when given placebos.  Clearly the mind can make you sick, and clearly it can quit doing it.  No mystery at all.  It's worth study--maybe it can be used in presently unanticipated ways.

4: Kuiper Cliff.  There's a region of the Kuiper belt which has apparently been swept clear of the usual asteroids, etc.  This would take a substantial planet, but no such thing is evident.  This is not a mystery at all.  Something happened to make the planet go away too recently for the asteroids to fill the space, but not recently enough to still be apparent.  It might be another large object bulls-eying the planet such that the fragments spread far (probably from outside the solar system) or more likely, it might have been captured by another planet on the way through.  Maybe it'll be discovered, probably not.

3: c-value enigma.  the complexity of organisms was thought to be related to the complexity of the DNA that produced them.  But it turns out that there's a lot of "junk" DNA in a lot of organisms and complexity of DNA doesn't correlate well with the complexity of the organism.  If you understand what junk DNA is, this is not a mystery at all.  There's a small mystery in why some simple organisms have simple DNA. My guess is that larger organisms (and their immune systems) tend to protect junk DNA, while single celled ones are much more susceptible to the junk causing problems and evolutionary pressure eliminates them.  There might be a new understanding of DNA in there, so it's worth figuring it out.

2: Cold Fusion.  This is an engineering problem, not really a scientific mystery.  Some people think that nuclear fusion can be done in a context contained enough that we can get useful energy out and there have been suggestive experiments that it might be, although so far they've all been a bust or worse.   But it remains an unsolved engineering problem, and it may for a long time.   It sure would be great if somebody figured it out though.

1a:  Dark Matter:  Galaxies hold together in a way that suggests they have at least 20 times the mass that can be observed.  Something that is presently unobservable is in there.  It might be black holes, or it may be something else.  Definitely a big mystery, but not as big a mystery as dark energy, which is unrelated, apart from having also been discovered by astronomers and given the term "dark"

1b: Dark Energy:  The universe can be seen to be expanding in a way which contradicts inertia.  Something is pushing.  What it is is the biggest mystery of physics.  There are several attempted explanations, none of which fit the "standard" model, which would require a substantial rewriting to fit it.   (the last time we had such a rewriting of the laws of physics (by Einstein and others), the atomic bomb, the transistor and a lot more came out of it.  the time before (by Faraday and Maxwell), most of what we know about electricity came out of it, including electric motors, radio, and more.)

Death Penalty

Nebraska has voted to ban the death penalty.  This makes a lot of sense.  The death penalty is cruel and unusual, it is irreversible, it is much more expensive than life in prison, and there is no particular evidence it deters crime.

Blackstone suggested that it is better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be punished, and several of the founders expressed the same opinion.  It turns out that that's pretty close to the rate of erroneous convictions.  The Illinois Innocence Project exonerated 11% of death row inmates when DNA evidence became available.  Other similar studies have found different numbers--few lower than 6%.  Through incompetent defense, irresponsible prosecution, misuse and misinterpretation of evidence, and more, the criminal justice system is imperfect.  It's the best we've figured out, but it makes enough mistakes that we should not resort to irreversible punishments.

Justice Blackman, when he was retiring, stated that he was opposed to the death penalty as a violation of the 8th amendment.  It cannot, he said, be applied fairly in this society with various forms of discrimination.

Over the years, the method used has changed.   During my lifetime, it switched from the electric chair, then to the gas chamber, and then finally lethal injection. Before that, hanging, decapitation and firing squads were used, among others.  Each switch was made because previous methods were deemed to be cruel and painful.  Lethal injection uses a sequence of drugs--one to render the subject unconscious, and then further drugs to kill them.  The doctors of the world have decided that they are firmly against the death penalty and have banned doctors from administering lethal injections...and have pressed the pharmaceutical companies of the world to stop providing the required drugs to anyone who might use them this way.  The botched lethal injections we've seen recently have been the result of medical amateurs using drugs that were not designed for the purpose they were being used.

Many people argue that capital punishment is more economical than life in prison.  Not True!  Because of all the necessary legal processing, capital punishment is as much as ten times as expensive as life in prison.

There is no particular evidence that the death penalty deters crimes.  The deterrence effect only works if you're thinking rationally and suspect you might be caught.  Killers either aren't thinking rationally or they are being very careful and don't think they will be caught--think of a mob hit man.

The one real thing that the ultimate penalty does is give some finality and retribution to the victim and their families. That's small consolation for the thousands who have been wrongly executed.  The urge to vengeance is very destructive.  Jesus himself spoke to this subject.  Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord.  Not you or me and not the courts.  Only god.

The goals of our penal system should be: #1: to get dangerous people out of society.  #2: to deter crime.  #3: to rehabilitate those who can be.  Life in prison does this without the irreversibility of the death penalty.

I think there's one situation in which capital punishment is acceptable: When the criminal themselves want it.  This is uncommon, but not at all unheard of.  Gary Gilmore, Ted Bundy, and several others have concluded that their lives were not worth living.  I am opposed to suicide for someone who is simply depressed, but if a person is objectively in a situation where their life is irretrievably no longer worth living, euthanasia is the most humane solution.  This is appropriate for people with terminal diseases that kill slowly and painfully.  And this is appropriate where the convict agrees that they did the deed and there is no possibility of them living a life outside of prison.  Of course we should do it in the most humane way practical--unless the convict, as did Gary Gilmore, wants something more dramatic.

addenda 10 June 2015
Scalia's perfect capital punishment case-falls apart

The Problem Isn't Immigration, It's Carrying Capacity

There are immigration crises happening in North Africa with people trying to get away from the catastrophe that Libya has become, from West Asia, trying to escape the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, from South East Asia with people trying to get away from Myanmar and more.  There's an imaginary crisis of people coming from Latin America into the US and the very real one of cruel deportations back.  These all reflect real problems in the regions these people are trying to escape.  No one nation can hope to accommodate all the refugees, nor should they.  Much of the hostility toward immigrants, in both our country and in others, is racist or xenophobic.   

in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were massive immigrations to the United States from nearly every part of the world.  In hindsight, nearly all of these groups have been widely accepted, although there was certainly a large amount of intolerance when they were first coming over.  Small amounts of this remains, especially towards groups who can't pass for Anglo-Saxon.   These groups enthusiastically embraced American culture and added their distinctiveness.

It all went well, because America had wide open spaces.  It had small cities wanting to become big ones.  It had seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, including water, oil, coal, aluminum, iron and lots more.  Perhaps most importantly, it had lots of places to dump the stuff you couldn't figure out what to do with.  That included setting off atomic bombs in secret when you weren't quite sure what would happen and wanted to make sure nobody was watching.

Today, this is gone.   There's basically nowhere that isn't feeling some pressure from overcrowding.  Even the great barren places of the southwestern desert and the almost uninhabitable hinterlands of Alaska are seen to be somebody's back yard.  There is really nowhere left, anywhere on the planet, if you truly want to be left alone.

I think this is all a symptom of an ecological phenomenon called Carrying Capacity.  The carrying capacity of an ecosystem for any particular species is that which is stable, consuming only the resources that the rest of the ecosystem can produce. If it exceeds it, the population will crash, and won't recover until the resources are replenished.  These crashes are very traumatic, and many ecosystems never recover.

There are ways to fool this: a small, well tended aquarium can support lots more fish than a much larger, poorly maintained one.  The same is true for people.  Sophisticated farming and transportation can provide food well beyond what a foraging culture could achieve.  Well managed countries have much higher carrying capacities than corrupt or incompetently managed ones.   If something bad is happening in your community, you will do what you can to get away from the problem.

I think the carrying capacity of the planet is somewhere between 1 and 2 billion people.  We crossed 1 billion shortly after 1800, and 2 billion in 1929.  Today we are over 7.  Several countries have recognized that their excessive population is a problem and have acted with various levels of aggressiveness to deal with it.  In many cases, this has left them open to the consequences of immigration from countries that have not done this.   Immigrant populations always struggle to fit in, but if the whole society is struggling with the limits to the carrying capacity, the stress of this seems inordinately worse.

I think America's share of world carrying capacity should be about 10%: 100-200M people.  (we arrived a little late, crossing 100M in 1915 and 200M in 1968).  The infrastructure we have, which was mostly built in the 1940s through 60s, could handle this.  Instead, we have about 320M, and we quit building and repairing infrastructure in the 1970s.  We need to understand what we are doing to ourselves.  I think we need to look at various incentives and barriers to get our population back to this sustainable level.    And other countries must do the same.  A lot of our problems--many of the civil wars, pollution, climate change, etc., can be greatly reduced if we do this.

Recharging While Driving

Electric cars are here, and are already having a significant impact on the roads.  But they still have a problem with range.  The small ones: the Leaf, the BMW i3, etc., have a range which is fine for the typical daily commute, and even for a lot of delivery services.  But recharging in most cases can only be done at 20 miles of range per hour.  But for occasional longer trips, they remain a problem, and you have to spend several hours on the charger for every hour you drive.  Not adequate if you're taking a trip that's substantially longer than the range of the battery.   So far, Tesla has the most complete solution: 1) a much bigger battery than the others, giving 250+ miles of range.  2) faster "destination" charging, as much as 60 miles of range per hour, so you can put those 250 miles of range on in only 4 or so hours, allowing two or three cars to use the same charger over the course of a night, and finally, the Tesla "supercharger", which can put 150  miles of range on 20 minutes.  Presently, these are located about 150 miles apart on most of the big cross country routes in the US, but there are still a lot of gaps.   Tesla has promised to get around to them, but it'll be a while.

The second best solution is to make some sort of fuel-electric hybrid.  there are a number of plug-in hybrids available, but all have a very short range.  If your commute is very short and you're careful to plug in every night, it may work for you, but for long range travel, you're just a relatively efficient internal combustion engine car.

My idea is to put power rails along the roadway.   Whether these have inductive pickup or are actual physical rollers that run on rails is an engineering decision.  I'd put these on the interstates--the same routes where Tesla is putting its superchargers--and reserve a lane for them.   The new Teslas come with the ability hold lane, speed and following distance on their own (although lane following is still in alpha), and this is all it would take to have the car drive itself on an accurately delineated charger lane.   Many other carmakers have similar features available.  There is no particular reason that following distances couldn't be short and speeds high, as long as the computer is doing the driving.   The car will arrive at its destination city fully charged, and the driver rested.

The Tesla Model S charging at 19.2KW, charges at 60 miles of rated range per hour, so this is what it would need to maintain steady charge state at 60 mph at the rated characteristics.  This is probably all that's necessary.  The car draws less than that while going straight and level, but more accelerating or going uphill.  The battery can handle surges--the power rail is just for topping up.  It needs to be arranged so that all the cars needing to be charged can have their own charger.  Simplest would be for each car to tap into the same (say) 600VDC rail pair simultaneously and regulate itself so it never draws enough power to cause the voltage to drop more than a small amount.  If more power is needed, it reduces its charge rate and draws from its own battery.

Issues:
The power rails would probably need their own substation few miles or so.  Highly loaded, this would be 50 cars per mile or so. 19.2*50=960... a megawatt.   Those big, 200+ foot wind turbines put out 1.5 to 3 MW at their peak, so having one every  mile or so would work nicely when the wind is blowing.   A strip of solar panels along the road 6 meters wide (20 ft) would do the same thing when the sun is shining.  (there's a company that's trying to sell solar panels that work AS road surface...I think you could make this work by paving the special lane with such things)

If the power available is exceeded, the cars can run on their batteries, but they should probably be aware of what's happening.  If it's a traffic jam, they'd probably need to slow down and this will automatically reduce the power drawn.

600VDC with the availability to deliver 1600 amps would cause major badness to occur to any conductor that happened to fall across it, including a person or animal.  the conductors either need to be protected somehow, or buried with inductive pickup.

there should probably be some mechanism to keep non-robodriven cars out of the special lane.   I think the double white lines and reflective bumps as used on toll lanes, are not quite enough.  There is no real safety problem with illegal use of a toll lane.  There is with power rails and high-speed robocars,

billing should be straightforward.  the car would have a tamper-resistant meter which monitors the number, location and timing of watt/hr picked up and communicate it with substation, which would bill appropriately, and prevent incorrectly equipped cars from driving on the road.  If it becomes a problem, substation can monitor load and correlate it with the traffic data to detect tampering.  I suspect it won't be...once the roadside infrastructure is built, it'll last for decades and cost very little to maintain.   It'll pay itself off in a few years.

heavy trucks should be able to use this.  they'll obviously draw more power.  the road design can handle this straightforwardly.  more megawatts per mile.

because all the cars are robodriven, including the heavy trucks, all the vehicles will run down exactly the same part of the road, and rutting will be a worse problem than it will be on roads with human drivers.   Since there's a parallel road and all the vehicles have batteries, repairing it will be pretty much the same as with present roads.