tingilinde

a backgrounder on R0

The media is doing a poor job of conveying what it is and isn't ..  here's a nice backgrounder.

 

and a piece from nearly two years ago showing how Trump and his gang damaged American preparedness ... (it's even worse now)

 

 

 

after english and spanish..

The most commonly spoken language in each state.  A few surprises (at least for me)

 

 

 

big rocks

Finding and processing massive diamonds - an absorbing read. (via The New Yorker) .. 

 

game for the birds

A serious gamer who happens to be a bird watcher gave a strong recommendation to this one.

snip

...

You’re not, however, just attracting birds to get points. You are also effectively building a biodiversity engine. It’s a challenge, a biology lesson and nail-biting fun. There are numerous routes to victory, from specializing in certain types of bird to amassing eggs. This is a thoughtful and strategic game with many interlocking parts.

It’s also visually gorgeous — an obvious labour of love. Food is represented on the sides of chunky wooden dice that roll out of a bird box. There are dainty, pastel-hued egg tokens, and the game boards fold up like field notebooks. Each of the 170 unique cards shows a different North American species, so superbly drawn that it wouldn’t look out of place in a field guide. And the cards feature key details, from what the species eats to how many eggs it lays, and a distinguishing fact — say, that the common nighthawk (Chordeiles minor) is crepuscular, hunting insects at dawn and dusk.

...

 

 

 

the last time democracy nearly died in america

Jill Lapore writing in The New Yorker.

snip

...

American democracy,” as a matter of history, is democracy with an asterisk, the symbol A-Rod’s name would need if he were ever inducted into the Hall of Fame. Not until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act can the United States be said to have met the basic conditions for political equality requisite in a democracy. All the same, measured not against its past but against its contemporaries, American democracy in the twenty-first century is withering. The Democracy Index rates a hundred and sixty-seven countries, every year, on a scale that ranges from “full democracy” to “authoritarian regime.” In 2006, the U.S. was a “full democracy,” the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world. In 2016, the index for the first time rated the United States a “flawed democracy,” and since then American democracy has gotten only more flawed. True, the United States still doesn’t have a Rome or a Berlin to march on. That hasn’t saved the nation from misinformation, tribalization, domestic terrorism, human-rights abuses, political intolerance, social-media mob rule, white nationalism, a criminal President, the nobbling of Congress, a corrupt Presidential Administration, assaults on the press, crippling polarization, the undermining of elections, and an epistemological chaos that is the only air that totalitarianism can breathe.

Nothing so sharpens one’s appreciation for democracy as bearing witness to its demolition. Mussolini called Italy and Germany “the greatest and soundest democracies which exist in the world today,” and Hitler liked to say that, with Nazi Germany, he had achieved a “beautiful democracy,” prompting the American political columnist Dorothy Thompson to remark of the Fascist state, “If it is going to call itself democratic we had better find another word for what we have and what we want.” In the nineteen-thirties, Americans didn’t find another word. But they did work to decide what they wanted, and to imagine and to build it. Thompson, who had been a foreign correspondent in Germany and Austria and had interviewed the Führer, said, in a column that reached eight million readers, “Be sure you know what you prepare to defend.”

...

 

 

x17

Ed Copland with a nice discussion of the X17 (an unusual thread in particle physics over the last four or so years).  no deep physics required.. about the level of Nova or the NY Times Science section.

some stories from scotland

Animal photo stories..  excellent photography and interesting text.

 

 

 

 

 

a look back to what might be now

Lionel Trilling's 1949 book review of George Orwell's 1984.  (in The New Yorker .. hopefully outside their paywall)

 

 

the journey to perihelion 4

The Parker Space Probe is nearing it's forth perihelion .. this one is 11.6 million miles out and the closest approach to the Sun yet.  It will also become the fastest  human made object at about 4:30am EST on the 29th of January.  Follow the progress here.

 

What an amazing mission.

 

 

 

consumption based carbon emission accounting

An important and often neglected way of looking at the problem. 

(I think it's outside the PNAS paywall)

 

Consumption-based accounting of CO₂ emissions

 

Steven J. Davis and Ken Caldeira

 

Abstract

CO₂ emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the primary cause of global warming. Much attention has been focused on the CO₂ directly emitted by each country, but relatively little attention has been paid to the amount of emissions associated with the consumption of goods and services in each country. Consumption-based accounting of CO₂ emissions differs from traditional, production-based inventories because of imports and exports of goods and services that, either directly or indirectly, involve CO₂ emissions. Here, using the latest available data, we present a global consumption-based CO₂ emissions inventory and calculations of associated consumption-based energy and carbon intensities. We find that, in 2004, 23% of global CO₂ emissions, or 6.2 gigatonnes CO₂, were traded internationally, primarily as exports from China and other emerging markets to consumers in developed countries. In some wealthy countries, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom, and France, >30% of consumption-based emissions were imported, with net imports to many Europeans of >4 tons CO₂ per person in 2004. Net import of emissions to the United States in the same year was somewhat less: 10.8% of total consumption-based emissions and 2.4 tons CO₂ per person. In contrast, 22.5% of the emissions produced in China in 2004 were exported, on net, to consumers elsewhere. Consumption-based accounting of CO₂ emissions demonstrates the potential for international carbon leakage. Sharing responsibility for emissions among producers and consumers could facilitate international agreement on global climate policy that is now hindered by concerns over the regional and historical inequity of emissions.

 

 

the ocean option

People have used the oceans for a long time..  demand for ocean resources is increasing dramatically.

a tip of the hat to Greg

pizza

a surprising list of varieties by country.  Oddly Norway is the largest consumer and Hawaiian pizza is a Canadian invention.

 

in a better world this would be how military aggression would be done

a tip of the hat to Bjarne

the pluto platter

A Wham-O hit that changed names. 

back when kids played outdoors

 

 

a dive into a coronoavirus genome

A good piece on studying the Wuhan coronavirus.

a tip of the hat to Jim