Thought for the Day: 29 October 2014
Paul Waldman on getting the government we deserve:
… ultimate responsibility lies with the voters themselves. It is within their power to say to candidates, “Look, I’m upset about Congress’ inability to solve problems too, but the fact that you put on a flannel shirt and told me a story about the wisdom of your grandpappy does nothing to convince me you’ll actually be able to solve those problems.” They could do that. But they don’t.
Weekly Digest – October 26, 2014
Must Read
- Nancy Carlsson-Paige, How Ed Policy is Hurting Early Childhood Education
- Atul Gawande, Modern Medicine Changed the Way We Die, and Not Always for the Better
- , Exploding wealth inequality in the United States
- Dean Baker, David Brooks’ Great Adventures in Fantasy Land
Should Read/Listen
- Radio Open Source, Is Capitalism Working?
- Bruce Bartlett, Obama Is a Republican
- Doug Henwood, Stop Hillary!
- “Today Is The 10th Anniversary Of Jon Stewart’s Epic Rant On CNN. He Hasn’t Been Back Since.”
Economics Continue reading
NOAA Water Vapor Loops
I saw the animation below on California Weather Blog. It’s produced by NOAA from GOES West imagery to illustrate atmospheric circulation of water vapor. What caught my eye about this particular loop is the continental-scale evolution of the circulation.
NOAA’s description of the color scale:
[Water vapor images are] taken using a wavelength sensitive to the content of water vapor in the atmosphere. Bright and colored areas indicate high water vapor (moisture) content (colored and white areas indicate the presence of both high moisture content and/or ice crystals). Black and brown areas indicate little or no moisture present. Water vapor imagery is useful for both determining locations of moisture and atmospheric circulations.
GOES West loops available here.
“The primary tenet of nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare defense is contamination avoidance.”
UPDATE: 10/26/2014:
This post was originally titled, “Ahhh!!! The stupid, it burns! (Ebola edition)”. I decided to retitle it to better reflect what motivates my thinking. As I noted in an earlier post, I worked for about 15 years on chemical and biological warfare defense-related projects. I wrote a number proposals for R&D funding which started off “The primary tenet of nuclear, chemical, and biological defense is contamination avoidance.” (The other two are force protection and decontamination.) Anyhow, “The primary tenet of nuclear, chemical, and biological defense is contamination avoidance.” is where I’m coming from. Spread of highly contagious and lethal diseases like Ebola don’t follow from malicious intent like a bio-warfare attack but, from a public health standpoint, there’s no difference in what constitutes an appropriate response.
MY ORIGINAL POST:
From the NY Times, Doctor in New York City Tests Positive for Ebola:
A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the Ebola virus Thursday, becoming the city’s first diagnosed case… Dr. Spencer had been working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, treating Ebola patients, before returning to New York City on Oct. 14, according to a city official.
Please explain to me why the @#$% Dr. Spencer was not put immediately into quarantine when he showed up at U.S. Customs? He was treating individuals with a highly contagious and lethal disease for chrissakes. Checking his temperature is all well and good but people infected can be asymptomatic for up to three weeks. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. And, yes, I support denying entry to persons who have been to CDC Level 3 countries within the past 21 days. Have Customs check passports. If you’ve been in a CDC Level 3 country with the past 21 days then straight to quarantine. No discussion. No debate. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Another thought: Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Continue reading
Thought for the Day: 23 October 2014
Profit’s great if it’s a score that tells you how well you did; it’s terrible if you’re pursuing it as a goal.
– Graydon
Thought for the Day: 21 October 2014
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
Doug Henwood, “Stop Hillary!”
From Doug Henwood, “Stop Hillary!“, in the October 2014 issue of Harper’s:
What is the case for Hillary (whose quasi-official website identifies her, in bold blue letters, by her first name only, as do millions upon millions of voters)? It boils down to this: She has experience, she’s a woman, and it’s her turn. It’s hard to find any substantive political argument in her favor. She has, in the past, been associated with women’s issues, with children’s issues — but she also encouraged her husband to sign the 1996 bill that put an end to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), which had been in effect since 1935. Indeed, longtime Clinton adviser Dick Morris, who has now morphed into a right-wing pundit, credits Hillary for backing both of Bill’s most important moves to the center: the balanced budget and welfare reform. And during her subsequent career as New York’s junior senator and as secretary of state, she has scarcely budged from the centrist sweet spot, and has become increasingly hawkish on foreign policy.
Thought for the Day: 20 October 2014
“Extremism in the defense of substantive argument is no vice, and moderation in the avoidance of derptitude is no virtue.”
Weekly Digest – October 19, 2014
Must Read
- C. J. Chivers, The Secret U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons
- Thomas Frank, Zephyr Teachout’s ‘Corruption in America’
Should Read
- Andrew Gelman, 10th anniversary of “Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science” [Ed.: It’s a great blog. I probably spend more time there than at any other.]
- Coral Davenport, Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change
- Luke Brinker, The progressives are coming!: Why the latest attempt to “save” Democrats from populism is so pathetic
- Paul Krugman, The Civility Whine