Brad DeLong

Neil Sinhababu: VoteSeeing: Who foresaw the election results? Who did not?

http://www.voteseeing.com/

Drew Linzer: Pollsters May Be Herding

http://votamatic.org/pollsters-may-be-herding/

In the Email: State Polls: Where's the Mystery?

In the email:

If you took (for simplicity of explication) fifty state polls, each with a 3% MOE, and constructed the weighted average, the MOE of the result is smaller than 3% by a factor of: [ (\sum n_i^2)/( \sum n_i )^2 ]^{1/2} , where n_i is the number of likely voters in the i'th state. If you compare that with a national poll with a 3% MOE, you obviously win…. [A] typical collection of 50 state polls INVARIABLY surveys more people (and hence, ceterus paribus, has a lower combined MOE) than a typical national poll. Back in the day, you probably couldn't put in the "ceterus paribus" phrase. But now you can.

Where's the mystery?

My reply:

The fear--and the reason Nate still has Romney at 15%--is that a lot of these state polls are unprofessionally and hastily done, and there is something in their methodology that creates a systematic bias one way or another.

It looks as though in fact there is. http://votamatic.org/another-look-at-survey-bias/ presents evidence that 1/3 of the state polls--those by Gravis, ARG, and Rasmussen--have a 2% pro-Romney bias, and that the actual state poll average suggests not a 2.7% Obama lead but rather a 3.4% Obama lead.

We will know someday...

Brad DeLong

Professor of Economics J. Bradford DeLong
U.C. Berkeley
delong@econ.berkeley.edu
925 708 0467

An Address to the People of Missouri: Todd Akin Is What We Left Europe to Free Ourselves From Weblogging

Please do not vote for Todd Akin for Senate.

When our ancestors--the overwhelming bulk of our ancestors--left Europe to come to the Great Valley of America that was the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio, it was in large part to escape the poverty, the cruelty, and the ignorance of Europe's Middle Ages and reach a place where we could breathe freely.

Todd Akin's long- and strongly-held belief that there is no such thing as a child in a "legitimate rape" is the cruelty and ignorance of Medieval Europe. It has no place here in the Missouri Valley.

My spouse brings home her copy of James Mohr (1993), Doctors and the Law: Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 0801853982):

p. 71ff: [Doctors'] approach appeared to be straightforward: enlightened science should triumph over both ancient legal precedents and entrenched folk perceptions…. Champions of improved medical jurisprudence [in America] battled… the widespread and legally-accepted popular belief that conception could not take place without "a certain degree of enjoyment" on the part of the woman, and the conditions for female pleasure would be unlikely to exist unless the woman had acquiesced. Physicians could finally demonstrate by the second quarter of the nineteenth century tha pregnancy was not a matter of volition. Women had conceived while under the effect of narcotics and anesthetics; they could also have a pregnancy forced upon them by a rapist. All of the leading authorities in the field of [American] medical jurisprudence agreed on this point by mid-[nineteenth] century. Yet the old notion did not die easily…. By maintaining a constant and nearly unanimous drumfire of testimony in rape cases to the effect that pregnancy could follow a rape, American physicians were self-consciously crusading in behalf o science and rationalism against what they considered barbaric anachronisms inappropriate to an enlightened republic. Only in the late nineteenth-century, however, were they able to all but eliminate that long-standing British excuse for acquittal…

Don't vote for a guy who wants to bring it back. 13th century medicine and law has no place here and now.

Dylan Byers of the Politico Is Back! And Tweeting! And Meat's Back on the Menu, Boys!: Nate Silver Really Is a National Treasure Weblogging

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

On Twitter:

Dylan Byers ‏@DylanByers: Honest Q: People are aware that RCP poll aggregate also predicted 49 of 50 states in 2008 & also missed Indiana, right? http://bit.ly/

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight: .@DylanByers: We have a lot of readers because we use data to cut through the drivel that you obsess over. Not because we make predictions.

BGrueskin ‏@BGrueskin: It's hardly a fair fight when @fivethirtyeight takes on @DylanByers

J. Bradford DeLong ‏@delong: @DylanByers Honest Q: Are you really unaware that RCP's Obama up by 2.4% in Ohio right now is the same reality as Silver's 75% Obama chance?

Dylan Byers ‏@DylanByers: @delong that was exactly my point, brad

J. Bradford DeLong ‏@delong: @DylanByers that not your point. Your point was coffee-drinking NPR types would be shocked to learn that many think Silver highly overrated

Dylan Byers ‏@DylanByers: @delong if he and RCP (poll aggregation) say the exact same thing, then why is Nate Silver so special?

Jamison Foser ‏@jamisonfoser: @DylanByers @delong Maybe you should ask the people (conservatives only, of course) you quoted attacking him?

michael de la madera ‏@actongriscom: @jamisonfoser Every time @DylanByers touches his keyboard @fivethirtyeight goes up in my estimation as journalist AND human being. @delong

michael de la madera ‏@actongriscom: @jamisonfoser @DylanByers Oh, so that´s the issue: why is Nate so special. Gotcha. Hilarious. #HowToMakeFriendsAndInfluencePeople @delong

Jamison Foser ‏@jamisonfoser: .@DylanByers Ooh! My turn! Why do you quote only 2 people, both conservatives, but suggest the critique of Silver is broad consensus?

Jamelle Bouie ‏@jbouie: If @DylanByers has a problem with Obama’s high odds in Silver’s estimation (or in Linzer’s or Wang’s), he has a problem with the polls.

Christopher Hayes ‏@chrislhayes: @mckaycoppins @DylanByers this is parody, yes?

Brad Plumer: Yes, Hurricane Sandy is a good reason to worry about climate change

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/29/yes-hurricane-sandy-is-a-good-reason-to-worry-about-climate-change/

Meanwhile, as Sandy Makes Landfall...

It just took 150% of the predicted time for a panful of shortbread to brown. It's like high-altitude baking. #sandy #brooklyn

— tnielsenhayden (@tnielsenhayden) October 29, 2012

Matt Kaplan: How to eat a Triceratops

http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-eat-a-triceratops-1.11650

Joe Romm: Seminal Study Finds 'Climate-Change Footprint’ In North America, ‘Continent With The Largest Increases in Disasters’

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/21/1054571/seminal-study-climate-change-footprint-in-north-america-the-continent-with-the-largest-increases-in-disasters/

September 2012 Tied For The Warmest Ever Recorded

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/15/1015511/september-2012-ties-for-the-warmest-ever-recorded-globally/

Miniquake South **Just East** of Tokyo

Maple Trees in New Mexico

Walter Jon Williams:

There is exactly one canyon in New Mexico where you can find maple trees, trapped here by changing climate after the last Ice Age. This is clearly the time of year to go see them…. The canyon?  It’s tucked away in the Manzano Mountains… named after the Fourth of July.

Tom Simonite: Google Puts Its Virtual Brain Technology to Work

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google-puts-its-virtual-brain-technology-to-work/

Kudos to Modeled Behavior for Weighing in at Forbes on the Desirability of Carbon Taxes…

Kudos to Adam Ozimek for writing:

I will take Brad’s new advice and try to convince the readers of Forbes that a carbon tax is a good idea…. I am a proponent of carbon taxes…. [S]urely higher gas taxes are a good idea. In his Pigou Tax paper Mankiw cites on study that shows of the $2.10 optimal tax on gasoline, only 6 cents was due to global warming. The rest came from other externalities like congestion and accidents. Gas taxes also show us that international “coordination” is possible…. Noah [Smith] is correct that efficiently taxing a globally traded externality producing commodity does require global cooperation. But… many developed nations… [set] high gas taxes, and it’s time we got on board. This will be many times more efficient than CAFE standards…. I am also on board with Noah’s larger suggestion though that we should be heavily subsidizing basic research for clean energy….

[W]hile Noah is correct that carbon taxes and gas taxes are unpopular, so are the taxes that would be needed to raise the money for the research he wants. As Matt Yglesias points out, this money needs to come from somewhere. Better to be tax an activity that generates an externality to raise this money than to tax income or capital gains.

A final important reason conservatives should support taxes and research is because it will help the government get out of the energy regulation business in the long-run. If innovation drives solar and battery prices low enough, the energy sector may become no different than any other industry in producing limited externalities. Thus the special regulatory consideration it merits will no longer exist. That and of course it will help reduce the risk that we destroy the planet. Conservatives should care about that too.

For the Next Five Years or so, Until the Next Local Minimum, Steve Levitt and Steve Dubner Will Say: "Did You Know That There Is More Ice in the Arctic Ocean than in 2012?"

Yes. The Future Is Here. Why Do You Ask?

Derek Lowe:

Chemistry in the Quantum Vacuum. No, Really… In the Pipeline:: If we end up being able to make [chemical] reactions go the way we want them to by coupling our starting materials to actual fabric of space, I will officially decide that I am, in fact, living in someone's science fiction novel, and I will be very happy about that…

The Arctic Icecap Melt

The Xuelong Sails the Northwest Passage!

Panama Canal better cut its rates!

This Year's Arctic Icecap

Surely That Is Not What the Ethical Werewolf Intended to Say...

The Ethical Werewolf says:

Defending Intentionalism: Ever since a wonderful graduate seminar with Al Martinich five years ago, I've been an intentionalist about interpretation. According to intentionalism, the meaning of an utterance or a text is whatever the author intended to communicate by it. This means that the correct way to interpret texts is to figure out what the author was trying to communicate. Martinich and I hold that this view is correct of utterances and texts of all kinds -- from what you say when ordering at a restaurant, to instruction manuals, to works of literature.

Surely TEW could not have intended to say this?

For, after all, it implies that you can never intelligibly say "He did not intend to say what he said".

Yet I just did.

Quiche of the Day: The Ginsburg

Ingredients:

• 1 whole-wheat (9 inch) pie crust
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 minced onion
• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh broccoli
• 1 1/2 cups shredded swiss cheese
• 4 eggs, well beaten
• 1 1/2 cups lowfat milk
• 1/1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 1/2 more cups chopped fresh broccoli

This Is an Actual Statement by Ryan Lizza: "Who Is Worse: Flat-Earthers or Round-Earthers Who Refuse to Speak Up?"

https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/221641633756753921

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

---

Oh. And the round-earthers not only are not silent--not only speak out--but also do stuff:

Nancy Pelosi:

American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009: [L]aunch a new clean energy economy—to create 1.7 million American jobs (with the Recovery Act); help reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil by 5 million barrels per day; keep energy costs low for Americans, protects consumers from price increases with lower income families seeing no cost; with no increase to the deficit.  Requires a reduction in the carbon pollution causing climate change from major U.S. sources of 17 percent by 2020 (the basis for America’s proposal going into the Copenhagen Climate Summit) and 80 percent by 2050, compared to 2005 levels.  Invests in new clean energy and efficiency technologies. Passed House June 26, 2009.

Harry Reid:

Climate Change: Global warming is one of the greatest challenges of our time.  The United States accounts for approximately 4 percent of the world’s population, yet it is responsible for about 25 percent of the world’s global warming pollution.  Our government must provide domestic and global leadership on this issue because we have a moral responsibility to leave future generations with a safe and habitable world.

Climate change will have enormous consequences for Nevada, the Great Basin, and all of the Southwest – average temperatures are currently rising, and it is widely predicted that climate change will decrease precipitation.  Drought will make farming and ranching tougher, increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, and could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.  Some invasive plants, such as cheatgrass, are better suited to hotter climates, and are already replacing native vegetation.  These effects create serious challenges and could become catastrophic in the future if we fail to take action.

Climate change’s impact on our water supply could be the most devastating near-term impact on the desert southwest, which is why I have introduced legislation like the Drinking Water Adaptation, Technology, Education and Research (WATER) Act, the Water Efficiency, Conservation, and Adaptation Act, and the Water Infrastructure Resiliency and Sustainability Act.  These bills would help address the urgent need for more research and investment to improve the ability of America’s water systems to meet our nation’s escalating water supply needs, in light of reduced water supplies caused by longer droughts from hotter temperatures.

Barack Obama:

Climate Change: In December 2009, President Obama and other world leaders came together to negotiate the Copenhagen Accord, an important milestone in which, for the first time, all major developed and developing economies agreed to implement measures to limit their greenhouse gas emissions and to do so in an internationally transparent manner. In 2010, the Cancun Agreement confirmed and substantially extended the core elements of the Copenhagen Accord…. In December 2011 at Durban, the United States and the international community took important steps to make operational all of the key elements of the Cancun agreement, including a transparency regime to monitor and review mitigation efforts….

President Obama is pursuing a wide range of initiatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions through clean energy technologies and policies. The Administration has made the largest clean energy investment in American history and these investments have allowed us to nearly double America’s renewable power generation since 2008….

For the first time, the United States is comprehensively cataloguing greenhouse gas emissions from the largest sources – an important initial step toward measurable and transparent reductions in carbon emissions, which will reduce air pollution and protect the health and welfare of the American people. In January 2012, the Administration launched an online tool that makes comprehensive greenhouse gas emission data publicly available for 29 different industrial categories and other large sources of greenhouse gas pollution.

President Obama has also directed the Federal Government – the largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy – to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from direct sources such as building energy use and fuel consumption by 28 percent by 2020.  He also directed Federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from indirect sources, such as those from employee commuting, by 13 percent by 2020. By meeting these goals, Federal agencies can save up to $11 billion dollars in energy costs and eliminate the equivalent of cumulative 235 million barrels of oil over the next decade. In 2011, the Administration released the first-ever comprehensive Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory for the U.S. Government, allowing agencies to leverage data to gauge the effectiveness of their renewable energy investments and their energy and fuel efficiency efforts….

Federal agencies are drafting their first-ever climate change adaptation plans to help ensure smart decisions that protect our investments and safeguard the health and security of our communities, economies and infrastructure from the impacts of severe weather, rising sea levels and other changing climate conditions….

Through the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), U.S. government scientists are conducting world-class research on global climate change. The USGCRP is a collaborative effort involving 13 Federal agencies to evaluate the current and future impacts of climate change, inform policy-makers and the public about scientific findings, and investigate effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deploy cost-effective clean energy technology.

Yes, the Global Warming Climate-Change Signal Is Emerging from the Weather Noise. Why Do You Ask?

Climate Central:

Ongoing Heat Wave in U.S. Rivals Events of Dust Bowl Era: During the past 30 days, a stunning 6,439 warm temperature records were set or tied in the Lower 48 states, including 240 all-time warm temperature records. For the year-to-date, warm temperature records have been outpacing cold temperature records by a lopsided 7-to-1 margin.

In a long-term trend that demonstrates the effects of a warming climate, daily record-high temperatures have recently been outpacing daily record lows by an average of 2-to-1, and this imbalance is expected to grow as the climate continues to warm. According to a 2009 study, if the climate were not warming, this ratio would be expected to be even. Other studies have shown that global warming increases the odds of extreme heat events and may make them warmer and longer lasting.

The individual records set during the ongoing heat wave tell the story of how unusual this event has been so far…

Best Photos of Yesterday's Anular Eclipse

Becoming Tasty as a Growth Strategy

Twitter / @cstross:

Charles Stross: Pub chat today centres on evolutionary optimal survival strategies in a human world: go edible, cute, or parasitic?

Becoming tasty. Definitely tasty…

Most Berkeley Students Do Not Know That 2^5=32 and 2^10≈1000

How can they expect to survive in the modern world without knowing these things?

And why haven't they learned them?

Transit of Venus at the Lawrence Hall of Science

Transit of Venus at the Lawrence Hall of Science:

Tuesday, June 5 2:30-8:30 p.m. Plaza observation: Free Indoor activities after 4:30 p.m.: $5 ($4 members)

Transit of Venus

Transit of Venus:

On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Yes, Global Warming Is a Real Threat. Why Do You Ask?

Kevin Drum:

Clouds Are the Last Hope of the Climate Deniers: The New York Times reports today that climate skeptics have pretty much run out of plausible pseudo-science to support their claim that global warming is a myth. Sunspots are a joke. Weather station innacuracy isn't an issue. Paleoclimate reconstructions seem to be fine. Urban heat islands aren't a distorting measurements. And no, it hasn't been getting cooler since 1998.

Quote of the Day: April 27, 2012

"I shall argue that there was a point in human pre-history when big-brained, cultural, learning people for the first time began to exchange things with each other, and that once they started doing so, culture suddenly became cumulative, and the great headlong experiment of human economic ‘progress’ began. Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution."

--Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist

Quote of the Day: April 20, 2012

"Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."

--David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Ask the Moustache of Understanding Tom Friedman Appears Not to Have Informed Himself About the Physics of Cell-Phone Connections Edition

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Duncan Black acquires hives after reading Tom Friedman:

Eschaton: Someone Please Ask: Next time one of you bumps into the moustache of understanding, maybe when one of his calls drops on the Amtrak, ask him how much a typical Social Security beneficiary receives every month. Bonus points if he can tell you how many Acela tickets that would buy.

As does Matthew Yglesias:

Amtrak dropped calls.: So Tom Friedman wants Michael Bloomberg to run for president in part because:

I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, our sorry excuse for a fast train, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you’d have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City.

I've also been annoyed by this, but it's very unclear to me what the political system can do to remedy it…. [T]he basic problem is that, to avoid dropping calls along the route, the network has to be able to handle peak-load traffic of a whole train full of prosperous business travels at all points along the route even though any given place only rarely has that many customers in it since the train moves fast. Why don't AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile invest the kind of funds that would be necessary to deliver that level of service? Well it would cost money. And how many customers could AT&T really poach from Verizon by making this investment? The calculation they've made is that it's a small number, and that calculation seems correct to me. Fundamentally, this is a weird edge case that professional political writers are unusually likely to encounter, and it doesn't make much economic sense for the carriers to address it. I'm not sure what, if anything, a Bloomberg administration could do about it short of a politically implausible plan to tax the heartland in order to subsidize Northeast Corridor mobile phone service…

A Reminder: Why You Should Not Trust Anything James Glassman and Kevin Hassett Might Ever Say...

Glassman is running, and Hassett is speaking, at a George W. Bush institute conference tomorrow. It is thus worth reminding everyone of their 1999 book Dow 36000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. Let me turn the mike over to Barry Ritholtz:

Lessons to Be Learned From Dow 36,000 | The Big Picture:

This book will convince you of the single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap….If you are worried about missing the market’s big move upward, you will discover that it is not too late. Stocks are now in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average.

Glassman and Hassett, introduction, Dow 36000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market

Call it the audacity of cluelessness: Let us congratulate James K. Glassman and Kevin Hassett, the authors of the incredibly money losing advice in their book Dow 36,000, on their 10 year anniversary. The book forecast that lofty number would be obtained in 3 to 5 years; it was published precisely 10 years ago today. In the ensuing decade since this book (and I use the term lightly) was published, the Dow is still below where it was 10 years ago, rather than tripling in price. The Nasdaq remains more than 60% below its highs of one decade ago.

Summer in March

Michael LePage:

Has global warming brought an early summer to the US?: North America has been experiencing unusual weather of late. After a mild winter over much of the continent, last week it experienced record-breaking summer-like conditions. In Canada, for instance, the thermometer in St John's, New Brunswick, hit 25.4 °C on 21 March, smashing the previous record high for March of 17.5 °C.

Quote of the Day: April 9, 2012

"[You] will learn from these pages that their refutations of false conservative claims don’t work and should not be expected to work—and that [you] should not irrationally cling to the idea that somehow they should."

--Chris Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality

Quote of the Day: March 28, 1942

"Once people commit to a belief, the smarter they are the better they are at rationalizing those beliefs. Thus: smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons."

--Michael Shermer, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

Didn't Archimedes Have a Solution for This?

Felix Salmon:

Felix Salmon: The problem of fake gold bars: You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to find this worrying: a 1kg gold bar, certified as 99.98% pure by XRF (X-ray fluorescence) tests, turns out to have been drilled out and largely replaced with tungsten. This bar was discovered only because it was 2 grams lighter than it ought to have been: the forgers failed to add quite enough gold to the outside of the bar to make up for the weight lost when they replaced gold with tungsten. But if they’d gotten the weight right, it would probably still be circulating today.

Of course, there are means of testing gold bars beyond just weight and XRF. If you can weigh the bar accurately, then you can test for purity by essentially dropping it in a bucket of water and seeing how much the water level rises: a gold-covered tungsten bar will displace more water than a pure gold bar. Alternatively, for $3,000 or so you can buy a micro ohm meter, which is easily sensitive enough to tell the difference in conductivity between a pure gold bar and one which is largely tungsten.

But as far as I know, these tests are not particularly commonplace among gold dealers, and in any case only a minuscule fraction of the gold bars in the world are physically traded… the obvious point at which tests like these would be conducted…. [E]ven if you’re just a Ron Paul or Glenn Beck type with your own personal stash — then there’s no realistic chance at all that you’re going to go bar by bar through your own holdings, testing each one. In the case of gold, then, what JK Galbraith famously called “the bezzle” — the amount of wealth that people think they have, which in fact they don’t have — could be truly enormous….

On the other hand, it’s also possible that the number of salted 400 oz bars is zero, that the 1 kg bar recently discovered was an amateurish aberration, and that there’s nothing to worry about at all. But the economic incentives here are so enormous, for people looking to make a fortune in the fake-gold-bar industry, that I very much doubt no one has tried. And statistically speaking, if a bunch of people have tried, then some subset of those people will have succeeded.

So what to make of the fact that no salted 400 oz bars have yet been found? On the one hand, it can be viewed as very worrying — as being an indication that the gold markets are very bad at uncovering such things. On the other hand, you’d think they’d be good enough at it that they would have uncovered at least a small percentage of the salted bars outstanding — and if they’ve uncovered no such bars at all, then that can be taken as an indication there aren’t any salted bars outstanding.

In any case, there’s clearly now serious tail risk for anybody in the physical-gold market. And like most tail risks, measuring and/or insuring against it is extremely difficult…

Of course, Archimedes faces the problem that gold has a specific gravity of 19.32, tungsten has one of 19.25, and both osmium and iridium have ones of about 20.5. All you need to do is dope your tungsten with about 6% osmium/iridium and Archimedes is hapless and helpless.

How expensive are osmium and iridium anyway?

John Quiggin Finds the Voltaire of Caffeine

John Quiggin:

Mrs Beeton, the Voltaire of caffeine — Crooked Timber: Sighted at Port Arthur, Tasmania, this quote from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, by Isabella Beeton (emphasis added):

It is true, says Liebig, that thousands have lived without a knowledge of tea and coffee; and daily experience teaches us that, under certain circumstances, they may be dispensed with without disadvantage to the merely animal functions; but it is an error, certainly, to conclude from this that they may be altogether dispensed with in reference to their effects; and it is a question whether, if we had no tea and no coffee, the popular instinct would not seek for and discover the means of replacing them.

Science, which accuses us of so much in these respects, will have, in the first place, to ascertain whether it depends on sensual and sinful inclinations merely, that every people of the globe have appropriated some such means of acting on the nervous life, from the shore of the Pacific, where the Indian retires from life for days in order to enjoy the bliss of intoxication with koko, to the Arctic regions, where Kamtschatdales and Koriakes prepare an intoxicating beverage from a poisonous mushroom.

We think it, on the contrary, highly probable, not to say certain, that the instinct of man, feeling certain blanks, certain wants of the intensified life of our times, which cannot be satisfied or filled up by mere quantity, has discovered, in these products of vegetable life the true means of giving to his food the desired and necessary quality.

Quote of the Day: February 13, 2012

"A lesion in one spot leaves you unable to tell a Jack Russell from a badger (not that there is much difference), and with damage in another spot, the toaster is unrecognizable. There are even people with certain brain lesions who specifically cannot recognize fruit. Harvard researchers Alfonso Caramazza and Jennifer Shelton claim that the brain has specific knowledge systems (modules) for animate and inanimate categories that have distinct neural mechanisms. These domain-specific knowledge systems aren’t actually the knowledge itself, but systems that make you pay attention to particular aspects of situations, and by doing so, increase your survival chances. For example, there may be quite specific detectors for certain classes of predatory animals such as snakes and big cats. A stable set of visual clues may be encoded in the brain that make you pay attention to certain aspects of biological motion, such as slithering…"

--Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Quote of the Day; February 6, 2012

"When we compare the genomes of Archaea, bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals, we find about 500 genes that exist in all domains of life…"

--Sean B. Carroll, The Making of the Fittest:

Quote of the Day: January 30, 2012

"In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species…"

--Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection

Quotation of the Day: January 18, 2012

"Magicians understand at a deeply intuitive level that you alone create your experience of reality, and, like Johnny, they exploit the fact that your brain does a staggering amount of outright confabulation in order to construct the mental simulation of reality known as 'consciousness'.”

--Stephen L. Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, and Sandra Blakeslee, Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Consciousness

The Next-to-Last Scene of the Iliad

Or, is there any relationship that humans do not think ought to be turned into a reciprocal gift-exchange relationship? "Natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange" indeed!

Book XXIV:

Iris, fleet as the wind, sped forth…. "Take heart," she said….

The lord of Olympus bids you go and ransom noble Hektor, and take with you such gifts as shall give satisfaction to Akhilleus…. Akhilleus will not kill you nor let another do so, for he will take heed to his ways and sin not, and he will entreat a suppliant with all honourable courtesy.…

[H]e lifted the lids of his chests, and took out twelve goodly vestments. He took also twelve cloaks of single fold, twelve rugs, twelve fair mantles, and an equal number of shirts. He weighed out ten talents of gold, and brought moreover two burnished tripods, four cauldrons, and a very beautiful cup which the Thracians had given him… to ransom the body of his son….

Priam and Idaeus as they showed out upon the plain did not escape the ken of all-seeing Jove, who looked down upon the old man and pitied him; then he spoke to his son Mercury and said, "Mercury, for it is you who are the most disposed to escort men on their way, and to hear those whom you will hear, go, and so conduct Priam to the ships of the Akhaeans that no other of the Danaans shall see him nor take note of him until he reach the son of Peleus." Thus he spoke and Mercury, guide and guardian, slayer of Argus, did as he was told….

[…]

Then answered Priam, "If you are indeed the squire of Akhilleus son of Peleus, tell me now the Whole truth. Is my son still at the ships, or has Akhilleus hewn him limb from limb, and given him to his hounds?"

"Sir," replied the slayer of Argus, guide and guardian, "neither hounds nor vultures have yet devoured him; he is still just lying at the tents by the ship of Achilles, and though it is now twelve days that he has lain there, his flesh is not wasted nor have the worms eaten him although they feed on warriors….

Ere long they came to the lofty dwelling of the son of Peleus for which the Myrmidons had cut pine and which they had built for their king; when they had built it they thatched it with coarse tussock-grass which they had mown out on the plain, and all round it they made a large courtyard, which was fenced with stakes set close together…. Mercury opened the gate for the old man, and brought in the treasure that he was taking with him for the son of Peleus…. Mercury went back to high Olympus. Priam… went straight into the house where Akhilleus, loved of the gods, was sitting. There he found him with his men seated at a distance from him: only two, the hero Automedon, and Alkimus of the race of Mars, were busy in attendance about his person, for he had but just done eating and drinking….

Priam besought Akhilleus saying:

Think of your father, O Akhilleus like unto the gods, who is such even as I am, on the sad threshold of old age. It may be that those who dwell near him harass him, and there is none to keep war and ruin from him. Yet when he hears of you being still alive, he is glad, and his days are full of hope that he shall see his dear son come home to him from Troy; but I, wretched man that I am, had the bravest in all Troy for my sons, and there is not one of them left. I had fifty sons when the Akhaeans came here; nineteen of them were from a single womb, and the others were borne to me by the women of my household. The greater part of them has fierce Mars laid low, and Hektor, him who was alone left, him who was the guardian of the city and ourselves, him have you lately slain; therefore I am now come to the ships of the Akhaeans to ransom his body from you with a great ransom. Fear, O Akhilleus, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son."

Thus spoke Priam, and the heart of Akhilleus yearned as he bethought him of his father. He took the old man's hand and moved him gently away. The two wept bitterly- Priam, as he lay at Achilles' feet, weeping for Hektor, and Achilles now for his father and now for Patroklus, till the house was filled with their lamentation. But when Akhilleus was now sated with grief and had unburthened the bitterness of his sorrow, he left his seat and raised the old man by the hand, in pity for his white hair and beard; then he said:

Unhappy man, you have indeed been greatly daring; how could you venture to come alone to the ships of the Achaeans, and enter the presence of him who has slain so many of your brave sons? You must have iron courage: sit now upon this seat, and for all our grief we will hide our sorrows in our hearts, for weeping will not avail us. The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Jove's palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Jove the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Jove sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men. Even so did it befall Peleus; the gods endowed him with all good things from his birth upwards, for he reigned over the Myrmidons excelling all men in prosperity and wealth, and mortal though he was they gave him a goddess for his bride. But even on him too did heaven send misfortune, for there is no race of royal children born to him in his house, save one son who is doomed to die all untimely; nor may I take care of him now that he is growing old, for I must stay here at Troy to be the bane of you and your children. And you too, O Priam, I have heard that you were aforetime happy. They say that in wealth and plenitude of offspring you surpassed all that is in Lesbos, the realm of Makar to the northward, Phrygia that is more inland, and those that dwell upon the great Hellespont; but from the day when the dwellers in heaven sent this evil upon you, war and slaughter have been about your city continually. Bear up against it, and let there be some intervals in your sorrow. Mourn as you may for your brave son, you will take nothing by it. You cannot raise him from the dead, ere you do so yet another sorrow shall befall you.

And Priam answered:

O king, bid me not be seated, while Hector is still lying uncared for in your tents, but accept the great ransom which I have brought you, and give him to me at once that I may look upon him. May you prosper with the ransom and reach your own land in safety, seeing that you have suffered me to live and to look upon the light of the sun."

Akhilleus looked at him sternly and said:

Vex me, sir, no longer; I am of myself minded to give up the body of Hector. My mother, daughter of the old man of the sea, came to me from Jove to bid me deliver it to you. Moreover I know well, O Priam, and you cannot hide it, that some god has brought you to the ships of the Achaeans, for else, no man however strong and in his prime would dare to come to our host; he could neither pass our guard unseen, nor draw the bolt of my gates thus easily; therefore, provoke me no further, lest I sin against the word of Jove, and suffer you not, suppliant though you are, within my tents….

They lifted the ransom for Hector's body from the waggon. but they left two mantles and a goodly shirt, that Akhilleus might wrap the body in them when he gave it to be taken home…. Akhilleus himself lifted it on to a bier, and he and his men then laid it on the wagon. He cried aloud as he did so and called on the name of his dear comrade:

Be not angry with me, Patroklus," he said, "if you hear even in the house of Hades that I have given Hektor to his father for a ransom. It has been no unworthy one, and I will share it equitably with you.

Akhilleus then went back into the tent and took his place on the richly inlaid seat from which he had risen, by the wall that was at right angles to the one against which Priam was sitting. "Sir," he said:

your son is now laid upon his bier and is ransomed according to desire; you shall look upon him when you him away at daybreak; for the present let us prepare our supper. Even lovely Niobe had to think about eating, though her twelve children- six daughters and six lusty sons- had been all slain in her house. Apollo killed the sons with arrows from his silver bow, to punish Niobe, and Diana slew the daughters, because Niobe had vaunted herself against Leto; she said Leto had borne two children only, whereas she had herself borne many- whereon the two killed the many. Nine days did they lie weltering, and there was none to bury them, for the son of Saturn turned the people into stone; but on the tenth day the gods in heaven themselves buried them, and Niobe then took food, being worn out with weeping. They say that somewhere among the rocks on the mountain pastures of Sipylus, where the nymphs live that haunt the river Akhelous, there, they say, she lives in stone and still nurses the sorrows sent upon her by the hand of heaven. Therefore, noble sir, let us two now take food; you can weep for your dear son hereafter as you are bearing him back to Ilius- and many a tear will he cost you.

With this Akhilleus sprang from his seat and killed a sheep of silvery whiteness, which his followers skinned and made ready all in due order. They cut the meat carefully up into smaller pieces, spitted them, and drew them off again when they were well roasted. Automedon brought bread in fair baskets and served it round the table, while Achilles dealt out the meat, and they laid their hands on the good things that were before them. As soon as they had had enough to eat and drink, Priam, descendant of Dardanus, marvelled at the strength and beauty of Akhilleus for he was as a god to see, and Akhilleus marvelled at Priam as he listened to him and looked upon his noble presence. When they had gazed their fill Priam spoke first. "And now, O king," he said:

take me to my couch that we may lie down and enjoy the blessed boon of sleep. Never once have my eyes been closed from the day your hands took the life of my son; I have grovelled without ceasing in the mire of my stable-yard, making moan and brooding over my countless sorrows. Now, moreover, I have eaten bread and drunk wine; hitherto I have tasted nothing.

As he spoke Achilles told his men and the women-servants to set beds in the room that was in the gatehouse, and make them with good red rugs, and spread coverlets on the top of them…. Then Achilles said laughingly to Priam:

Dear sir, you shall lie outside, lest some counsellor of those who in due course keep coming to advise with me should see you here in the darkness of the flying night, and tell it to Agamemnon. This might cause delay in the delivery of the body. And now tell me and tell me true, for how many days would you celebrate the funeral rites of noble Hector? Tell me, that I may hold aloof from war and restrain the host.

And Priam answered:

Since, then, you suffer me to bury my noble son with all due rites, do thus, Achilles, and I shall be grateful. You know how we are pent up within our city; it is far for us to fetch wood from the mountain, and the people live in fear. Nine days, therefore, will we mourn Hector in my house; on the tenth day we will bury him and there shall be a public feast in his honour; on the eleventh we will build a mound over his ashes, and on the twelfth, if there be need, we will fight.

And Achilles answered, "All, King Priam, shall be as you have said. I will stay our fighting for as long a time as you have named."

As he spoke he laid his hand on the old man's right wrist, in token that he should have no fear; thus then did Priam and his attendant sleep there in the forecourt, full of thought, while Achilles lay in an inner room of the house, with fair Briseis by his side…

Coyote Crossing on Bad-Faith Evo-Devo

Coyote Crossing:

Dear Jesse: I Want To Eat My Stepchildren. Is This Normal? - Coyote Crossing:

Q: Dear Jesse: I am a woman of childbearing years with a gratifying sex life and a loving family, but I find myself fighting the urge to enslave thousands of adult females in some sort of celibate warrior caste that exists only to bring me sweet, sweet plant materials, while finding a like number of males who wish only to serve and impregnate me. I think most men do. Is this wrong?

• Deep-Packed Chirpra

A: You are, of course, describing the social structure of quite a number of species of ants, and our even closer relatives, the bees. Some psychologists have challenged the popular notion that being enslaved into armies of drones to serve a single absolute despotic ruler is uniformly negative for all in such relationships.

Quote of the Day: January 5, 2012

"Why do we feel so unified? We have discovered something in the left brain,another module that takes all the input into the brain and builds the narrative. We call this the interpreter module…. When we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing. Not only that, our left brain fudges things a bit to fit into a makes-sense story. It is only when the stories stray too far from the facts that the right brain pulls the reins in. These explanations are all based on what makes it into our consciousness, but the reality is the actions and the feelings happen before we are consciously aware of them—and most of them are the results of nonconscious processes, which will never make it into the explanations. The reality is, listening to people’s explanations of their actions is interesting—and in the case of politicians, entertaining—but often a waste of time.

"We showed a split-brain patient two pictures: A chicken claw was shown to his right visual field, so the left hemisphere only saw the claw picture, and a snow scene was shown to the left visual field, so the right hemisphere only saw that. He was then asked to choose a picture from an array of pictures placed in full view in front of him, which both hemispheres could see. The left hand pointed to a shovel (which was the most appropriate answer for the snow scene) and the right hand pointed to a chicken (the most appropriate answer for the chicken claw). Then we asked why he chose those items. His left-hemisphere speech center replied, “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken,” easily explaining what it knew. It had seen the chicken claw. Then, looking down at his left hand pointing to the shovel, without missing a beat, he said, “And you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” Immediately, the left brain, observing the left hand’s response without the knowledge of why it had picked that item, put it into a context that would explain it. It interpreted the response in a context consistent with what it knew, and all it knew was: chicken claw. It knew nothing about the snow scene, but it had to explain the shovel.

"Once we understand that the left-brain interpreter process is driven to seek explanations or causes for events, we can see it at work in all sorts of situations. In fact, it can explain the observations of many past experiments…. The left-brain interpreter creates order out of the chaos presented to it by all the other processes spewing out information. We tried again with another emotion and another patient. We flashed a picture of a pinup girl to her right hemisphere, and she snickered. Once again she said that she saw nothing, but when we asked her why she was laughing, she told us we had a funny machine. This is what our brain does all day long. It takes input from other areas of our brain and from the environment and synthesizes it into a story….

"This post hoc interpreting process has implications for and an impact on the big questions of free will and determinism, personal responsibility and our moral compass, which we will look at in the next chapter. When thinking about these big questions, one must always remember, remember, REMEMBER that all these modules are mental systems selected for over the course of evolution. The individuals who possessed them made choices that resulted in survival and reproduction. They became our ancestors…"

--Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Quote of the Day: January 4, 2011

"A lesion in one spot leaves you unable to tell a Jack Russell from a badger (not that there is much difference), and with damage in another spot, the toaster is unrecognizable. There are even people with certain brain lesions who specifically cannot recognize fruit. Harvard researchers Alfonso Caramazza and Jennifer Shelton claim that the brain has specific knowledge systems (modules) for animate and inanimate categories that have distinct neural mechanisms. These domain-specific knowledge systems aren’t actually the knowledge itself, but systems that make you pay attention to particular aspects of situations, and by doing so, increase your survival chances. For example, there may be quite specific detectors for certain classes of predatory animals such as snakes and big cats..."

--Michael S. Gazzaniga: "Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain*

Quote of the Day: December 29, 2011

"We often consider dilemmas that have to do with fairness to be moral dilemmas. A fascinating, well-known finding involves what is known as the ultimatum game. Two people are involved in this game and they are only allowed one round. One person is given twenty dollars, and he has to split it with the other player, but he determines the percent split. Both players get to keep whatever amount of money is first offered. However, if the player who is offered the money refuses the offer, then neither gets any.

"In a rational world, the player who gets offered the money should take any offer because that is the only way he will come out ahead. That, however, is not how people react. They will accept the money only if they think it is a fair offer, ranging from at least six to eight dollars. Ernst Fehr and his colleagues used transcranial electric stimulation to disrupt brain functioning in the prefrontal cortex and found that when the function of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was disrupted, people would accept lower offers while still judging them to be unfair.

"Since suppression of this area increased selfish responses to unfair offers, it suggests that this area normally inhibits self-interest (taking any offer) and reduces the impact of the selfish urges on the decision-making processes, and thus plays a key role in implementing behaviors that are fair. More evidence for this region’s inhibiting selfish responses is from Damasio’s group, which has given moral tests to adults who have had injuries to this area since childhood. Their answers were excessively egocentric, as was their behavior. They exhibited a lack of self-centered inhibition and did not take another’s perspective. people who acquire these types of lesions as adults, such as the patients Damasio tested with the moral dilemma problems, can compensate better, which suggests the neural systems that had been impaired at an early age were critical for the acquisition of social knowledge. Many examples of moral circuits have been identified, and they seem to be distributed all over the brain…"

--Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Quote of the Day: December 28, 2011

"What an incredible coincidence it is that our moon fits exactly over our sun. Talk to astronomers and they’ll tell you that Earth’s moon is relatively much bigger than any other moon round any other planet. Most planets, like Jupiter and Saturn and so on, have moons that are tiny in comparison to themselves. Earth’s moon is enormous, and very close to us. If it was smaller or further away you’d only ever get partial eclipses; bigger or closer and it hide the sun completely and there’d be no halo of light round the moon at totality. This is an astounding coincidence, an incredible piece of luck. And for all we know, eclipses like this are unique. This could be a phenomenon that happens on Earth and nowhere else.

"So, hold that thought, okay?

"Now, supposing there are aliens. Not E.T. aliens – not that cute or alone. Not Independence Day aliens – not that crazily aggressive – but, well, regular aliens. Yeah? Regular aliens. It’s perfectly possible, when you think of it. We’re here, after all, and Earth is just one small planet circling one regular-size sun in one galaxy. There are a quarter of a billion suns in this one galaxy and quarter of a billion galaxies in the universe; maybe more. We already know of hundreds of other planets around other suns, and we’ve only just started looking for them. Scientists tell us that almost every star might have planets. How many of those might harbour life? The Earth is ancient, but the universe is even more ancient. Who knows how many civilisations were around before Earth came into existence, or existed while we were growing up, or exist now?

"So, if there are civilised aliens, you’d guess they can travel between stars. You’d guess their power sources and technology would be as far beyond ours as supersonic jets, nuclear submarines and space shuttles are beyond some tribe in the Amazon still making dugout canoes. And if they’re curious enough to do the science and invent the technology, they’ll be curious enough to use it to go exploring. “Now, most jet travel on Earth is for tourism. Not business; tourism. Would our smart, curious aliens really be that different from us? I don’t think so. Most of them would be tourists. Like us, they’d go on cruise ships. And would they want to actually come to a place like Earth, set foot – or tentacle, or whatever – here? Rather than visit via some sort of virtual reality set-up? Well, some would settle for second-best, yes. Maybe the majority of people would.

"But the high rollers, the super-wealthy, the elite, they’d want the real thing. They’d want the bragging rights, they’d want to be able to say they’d really been to whatever exotic destinations would be on a Galactic Grand Tour. And who knows what splendours they’d want to fit in; their equivalent of the Grand Canyon, or Venice, Italy, or the Great Wall of China or Yosemite or the Pyramids?

"But what I want to propose to you is that, as well as all those other wonders, they would definitely want to see that one precious thing that we have and probably nobody else does. They’d want to see our eclipse. They’d want to look through the Earth’s atmosphere with their own eyes and see the moon fit over the sun, watch the light fade down to almost nothing, listen to the animals nearby fall silent and feel with their own skins the sudden chill in the air that comes with totality. Even if they can’t survive in our atmosphere, even if they need a spacesuit to keep them alive, they’d still want to get as close as they possibly could to seeing it in the raw, in as close to natural conditions as it’s possible to arrange. They’d want to be here, amongst us, when the shadow passes. “So that’s where you look for aliens. In the course of an eclipse totality track. When everybody else is looking awestruck at the sky, you need to be looking round for anybody who looks weird or overdressed, or who isn’t coming out of their RV or their moored yacht with the heavily smoked glass.

"If they’re anywhere, they’re there, and as distracted – and so as vulnerable – as anybody else staring up in wonder at this astonishing, breathtaking sight.

"The film I want to make is based on that idea. It’s thrilling, it’s funny, it’s sad and profound and finally it’s uplifting, it’s got a couple of great lead roles, one for a dad, one for a kid, a boy, and another exceptional supporting female role, plus opportunities for some strong character roles and lesser parts too…"

--Iain M. Bank, Transition

And Now, a Word from Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes

Calvin:

Since September it’s just gotten colder and colder. There’s less daylight now, I’ve noticed too. This can only mean one thing - the sun is going out. In a few more months the Earth will be a dark and lifeless ball of ice.

Dad says the sun isn’t going out. He says its colder because the earth’s orbit is taking us farther from the sun. He says winter will be here soon.

Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth.

Quote of the Day: December 17, 2011

"Why do we feel so unified? We have discovered something in the left brain, another module that takes all the input into the brain and builds the narrative. We call this the interpreter module…. When we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing. Not only that, our left brain fudges things a bit to fit into a makes-sense story. It is only when the stories stray too far from the facts that the right brain pulls the reins in…. [T]he actions and the feelings happen before we are consciously aware of them—and most of them are the results of nonconscious processes, which will never make it into the explanations. The reality is, listening to people’s explanations of their actions is interesting—and in the case of politicians, entertaining—but often a waste of time.

"We showed a split-brain patient two pictures: A chicken claw was shown to his right visual field, so the left hemisphere only saw the claw picture, and a snow scene was shown to the left visual field, so the right hemisphere only saw that. He was then asked to choose a picture from an array of pictures placed in full view in front of him, which both hemispheres could see. The left hand pointed to a shovel (which was the most appropriate answer for the snow scene) and the right hand pointed to a chicken (the most appropriate answer for the chicken claw). Then we asked why he chose those items. His left-hemisphere speech center replied, “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken,” easily explaining what it knew. It had seen the chicken claw. Then, looking down at his left hand pointing to the shovel, without missing a beat, he said, “And you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” Immediately, the left brain, observing the left hand’s response without the knowledge of why it had picked that item, put it into a context that would explain it. It interpreted the response in a context consistent with what it knew, and all it knew was: chicken claw. It knew nothing about the snow scene, but it had to explain the shovel.

"Once we understand that the left-brain interpreter process is driven to seek explanations or causes for events, we can see it at work in all sorts of situations…. The left-brain interpreter creates order out of the chaos presented to it by all the other processes spewing out information…. This post hoc interpreting process has implications for and an impact on the big questions of free will and determinism, personal responsibility and our moral compass, which we will look at in the next chapter. When thinking about these big questions, one must always remember, remember, REMEMBER that all these modules are mental systems selected for over the course of evolution. The individuals who possessed them made choices that resulted in survival and reproduction. They became our ancestors…"

--Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain