UnSpace

I found Kimberly Reed's "Abandoned Spaces" photography intriguing. I'm not the photographer she is, but I still wanted to see what I could do.

I know of a 20th century motel that has not been used for about a decade. Somewhere in my mind, I was hoping at least for a "Motel of the Mysteries," where the headdress of the priest says "Sanitized for your protection." Lately, I've only been getting four or five hours of sleep. My brain switched on and there was no hope of going back to sleep. I got dressed, grabbed the camera, and drove to the motel. The first light of morning is the landscape photographer's friend, and I hoped it might lend a little magic to my photo shoot. That this put me in the area around shift change and when traffic would be a concern is merely coincidental. As I drove up to it, I realized it was not utterly abandoned; someone was taking care of the lawn.

The first door summarized much of what I would find.

The office was nearby. On the desk was an old-style credit card embosser. The gum bands on the old check-in slips were brittle and cracking. Some of the rubber bands had snapped from age.

The latest of the check-in slips was from 1997. I wondered why the people had stopped. Were they on vacation, sleeping off a party, or meeting someone clandestinely? The slips didn't say. They only gave a name, a time of check-in, check out, and sometimes addresses or license plate numbers.

The back of the motel was in even worse shape than the front. The grass back here has not been cut in a while, and the poison ivy will not be fun for whoever must eventually mow this area.

One room had much of the furniture, piece piled upon piece with mildew and water damage and broken wood. Remember what I said about morning light? There wasn't enough of it in the rooms, and I had to use my speed flash to help me take photographs. If I'd brought my tripod, I might have been able to use a long exposure and ambient light, but a tripod would have slowed me down. Some part of me was thinking about the design factors that go into enhancing thermal neutron capture cross-section in nuclear reactions. If neutrons carried little sub-atomic tripods with which to take pictures, nuclear science would be a lot easier.

The photographs do not convey the smell. When I was a small child, we visited elderly relatives, and this is what their home smelled like: musty and damp.

I was only there for about 15 minutes, not taking or even moving anything. The trip back home was long; I crawled back into bed at 8:30 and managed an hour's sleep before I had to leave for my lunchtime appointment.

I'm curious as to any comments people might have on these photographs. They aren't what I pictured;

These are unaltered photos  from my phone camera. I wanted to see just what kind of pictures I could get.

The phone camera is surprisingly good.  Photos are a 640 x 480, a nice size for blogging. Close-up photographs do not work as well as longer distance shots. The honeysuckle flowers are washed out.  Still, this camera is wonderful!

Obviously, my Nikon is better. This Pocket PC phone camera fits in my pocket. With some practice I think I can improve how the imnages look.

Hat tip to Braden.

Nancy's sister received the same biopsy results as their mom.

The International Space Station computers crashed, and so far the Russian experts have been unable to successfully restart them. The leading theory is that the new solar panels are emitting a magnetic field that's messing with the computers. On the other hand, who knows what porn sites were being surfed and what computer viruses were picked up along the way? The computers control, among other things, station orientation in space and oxygen generation. If the computers are not fixed, the space station eventually might need to be abandoned.

How do you say "Blue Screen of Death" in Russian? Are they using Microsoft Windows?

I've got a million of them. I'll be here all week, try the veal.

Update: I wonder how close this is:

Синий экран смерти

Update 2: I just searched on the above Russian phrase. Apparently that's exactly it. Then again, should I be surprised Google knew exactly what it was in Russian — and probably any other language?

The International Space Station passed over Pittsburgh at 11:17 to 11:23 tonight, going from the NW to the NE at a maximum of 10º above the horizon. With the new solar panels unfurled and the space shuttle attached, the station would have been a magnificent sight.  Of course, the clouds kept me from seeing anything…

Pedro Guzman, a mentally handicapped American born in the United States was deported to Mexico by the United States Federal government. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that they did nothing wrong in deporting an American citizen to Mexico and possibly having caused his death. The U.S. Federal government has refused all requests to help find Mr. Guzman.

Pedro Guzman  made one phone call home from Tijuana in May. The phone call was cut short, and he has not been seen or heard from since.

I went out back with the camera this afternoon. The permaculture garden/ science experiment / global warming carbon footprint reduction is in full swing.

The twelve-spot dragonflies are back!

The currants are almost ready to eat:

A cardinal flew through the vegetable garden:

The tadpoles are getting bigger and seem to like the algae:

The wasps like the algae in the pond, too:

The Columbine is in bloom:

The salsafied has gone to seed:

The purple milkweed is about to bloom:

And song sparrows are bathing in the pond:

Notice the water droplets!

The statistics are clear. Every time someone is executed, an average of 3 to 18 fewer murderers occur. The quicker someone is executed after trial, the more lives are saved. The quicker someone is executed after the murder, the more lives are saved. It doesn't matter if the person deserved the death penalty, or if they were even guilty of the crime. The perception of "Take a life, lose your life" is what makes this work.

Every time someone is freed from death row because of DNA evidence or the discovery that the wrong person was convicted of murder, people die — innocent people. Every time the police fail to announce that they don't know who committed a murder, people die — innocent people.

The effect is strong enough that, were the police to simply pick out someone at random, the prosecutors convict that innocent person using trumped-up evidence, and then the convicted innocent person immediately executed, many more people would live. Wouldn't you kill one innocent person so that 18 or more people might live?

One might be tempted to do away with the trials. One would think that executing the purported murderer immediately would save lives, but that's not the case. Executing murderers only works if the case is advertised and if the people believe the correct person has been executed. So you have to keep the trials. But remember, every time someone is found innocent, more people die.

Now, some might object to innocent people being executed as murderers. To object, you'd have to ignore how many lives are being saved, though. A good compromise would be to select known undesirables if a murderer can't easily be found. Not only is someone like that more believable as a murderer, but society benefits from their elimination as well. Drug dealers, pimps, mob bosses, and those the government finds "inconvenient" will, for once, benefit society by dying. If usable organs are removed, even more people will be saved. And since these people are far from "innocent," any moral qualms about executing an innocent person are removed.If the actual murderer is later discovered, that person can be executed as an accomplice or for some other unsolved murder.

Finally, it's worth noting that this study supports the idea of televised executions. If the mode of execution were made more exciting, the protective effect of executions would be even stronger, and executions might become more popular than NASCAR. Government sponsored wagering on the death — how long it takes the person to die, do they defecate when they die, etc. — might even be used to reduce taxes. I bet a game show format would be popular, giving new meaning to the titles of such shows as "Jeopardy" and "Survivor." Of course, anyone "winning" such a game would not be allowed free, but could simply be allowed to come back for the "next round."

There's no question about it. The statistics are clear, it's right there in the cold equations.

Executing the innocent saves lives.

Alli will become the first anti-obesity drug available over the counter.

Supposedly, Alli  (the over-the-counter version of  Xenical (Orlistat)) works by inhibiting the breakdown of triglycerides in the gut. You don't absorb the triglycerides, you don't absorb Alli. I can't help but wonder if the real mechanism of action is because this drug enforces a 15 g maximum of fat per meal  by causing — how do I wish to say this? — gastrointestinal distress. All that fat remains in your gut, causing flatulence and diarrhea.

They use disulfiram (Antabuse) for alcoholics; Alli is for people addicted to food. I'd almost forgotten about the folks who'd take their Antabuse, go out binge drinking, and then call 911. We're talking super unhappy major Godzilla hangover (which might be a great name for a Japanese game show).

That said, I'm seriously thinking of it.

Note: Talk with your doctor before you start this. Vitamin supplements are needed, and I have to wonder if this drug messes with birth control pills. I'm definitely curious, but that's not something I have to worry about!

I attempted to respond to Braden's post on his blog "More Evidence of Global Warming" but the post seemed to cause problems with his server, giving me an "Error 500." Gee, I wonder if that was because I was too wordy?

Anyway, here's my reply to his post, exactly as I would have posted it to his entry. It was written in one of those little comment boxes, so I wouldn't be surprised to find out there's some writing errors somewhere. On the other hand, Firefox does a wonderful job of correcting my spelling, and it's just one more reason to drop Microsoft's Internet Explorer. A quick look makes me realize this wasn't written for a general audience. If you haven't had any significant mathematics above basic high school calculus, there are parts that might be a bit hard to follow. Sorry about that. And the name of the pair of satellites is "GRACE."

My reply to Braden:

Braden,

"How can we accept global warming when meteorologists cannot even accurately predict the weather five days in advance?"

How can we accept chemistry when chemists cannot even accurately predict the motions of the individual atoms? Simple: the small patterns, whether weather or atomic motions, are too noisy. But in large groups, the noise averages out statistically, enabling the scientists to say something about chemical reactions or the future average temperature for the world.

Interestingly, in the theory of control of chaotic systems, an addition of energy is known to drive, at least initially, wider swings of the system. In the case of weather, adding energy results in more unusual weather — you might get snows at odd times, at least when the temperature is low enough to permit it.

Also, remember that Pittsburgh is at the nexus of three weather systems in a hilly region. It's amazing they can predict the weather one day in advance. A lot of places aren't as bad; at the North Face of the Grand Canyon, when we were there on our honeymoon, there was a rainstorm every day at almost exactly the same time. As Pittsburghers, it freaked us out.

In your partial differential equations class, they must have exposed you to this problem: some partial differential equations cannot be solved explicitly — they can only be tackled by numerical methods. The best example of this is the "Three Body Problem" from physics. You can't solve the PDQ for an equation that exactly describes the orbits. Even though you can't solve the equations, you can still do astronomy and spaceflight by using numerical methods — computer models. And there are some things you can say about the system, like the stability of the five Lagrange points.

As far as global warming, let's start off at the basics. Carbon dioxide causes the Earth to hold energy from the sun in, just like glass in a greenhouse. Same for methane, water vapor, etc. Given an increase in CO2 and methane, to the first term or two in the Taylor series, the temperature will go up. The question thus is not "Would we have global warming?" but rather "Can anything stop global warming?" There are competing effects: water vapor, which is in itself a greenhouse gas, also in large aggregates (clouds) reflects sunlight before it enters the atmosphere and becomes trapped. The increased temperature can cause some plants to sequester carbon by improved growth. Then again, increased temperatures cause ice to melt, which reduces the albedo of the Earth, increasing the temperature again.

Scientists have been totaling up these PDQ pluses and minuses, finding out how powerful they are, and seeing what happens when you run the simulations. Weather, like most unsolvable PDQs, is extremely sensitive to initial conditions; there's no way you can measure all the variables sufficiently to make any long-term predictions: hence the "butterfly wings causes a Hurricane" amplification analogy for weather and chaotic systems.

You would expect temperature to wander all over the place, and yet, every simulation, no matter the assumptions or the strengths used of the various effects within their possible range of strengths, the temperature invariably goes up. It's a robust trend; according to theory, the question isn't "Will the temperature go up or down?" but rather "How much will it go up?" That's frightening, because it means there's no hope that a bunch of piddling effects might line up in the opposite direction and save us.

The simulations do a decent job of predicting past behaviors helping to validate the models. Scientists thought the Maunder minimum resulted in the Little Ice age, even though a basic analysis will show you the temperature wouldn't change that much. But in the process of looking into global warming, researchers discovered that the Little Ice Age wasn't an ice age, but rather a localized weather phenomenon involving Europe and the more eastern portions of North America, caused by ocean current changes. The more western North America suffered a drought, which explains a bunch of Native American Indian civilization collapses. The temperature went up in the southern part of the globe, and overall there wasn't a drop in temperature in the Maunder Minimum. What we thought we knew was wrong, and we're learning it. By the way, a mathematical analysis of the Maunder Minimum, with data covering the entire planet and not just Europe and the Eastern United States blows out of the water the theory that global warming is real but due to solar variation and not changes caused by humanity.

Closer to our time, scientists had a problem: satellite temperatures from the 1960s and early 1970s showed temperatures that contradicted global warming theory. An analysis of these satellite's measurement hardware showed a systematic bias in the early construction, a bias that was eliminated unintentionally as new hardware used different methods of getting the answer.

And that brings us to the biggest reason for accepting global warming. Forget theory; the actual temperature data for the planet shows a consistent warming trend. It's not just one source of data, either. Look at temperatures and temperature analogs for the last 1000 years — there's a dramatic warming, more rapid than anything ever seen on the planet as far back as we can measure — and that's back to before dinosaurs were top of the food chain. There's two satellites orbiting the Earth, one following the other. They measure the distance between them, and the changes in that distance are due to inhomogenaities in the mass distribution of the Earth. They show dramatic loss of ice in Antarctica and Greenland — merely in the time they've been in orbit! And man, I hate to think about the numerical analysis required for those satellites. Sorry, I'm blanking on their name, but a Google search ought to turn it up. More straightforward analysis of the Arctic ice shows there's loss of ice. Alaska's permafrost is being damaged; it's increasing the cost of road and building maintenance. Even under the best case analysis, global warming will cost Alaska an additional $10 billion in maintenance.

Hey, just measure the average temperature of the Earth, and it goes up. Look at the list of the yearly temperatures for the last 100 years: Do you notice anything strange about the distribution of years? The closer to our time it is, the more likely the temperature will be high. It's not a random distribution.

Finally, and most disturbingly, the computer models are wrong, terribly wrong. The loss of ice from both the Arctic and Antarctic, from glaciers and Greenland, all around the world, is far worse than predicted by the models.

The computer models are wrong, but they're not wrong in a good way. Global warming is worse than predicted. Melt Siberia, and you're going to have a nasty release of methane that may devastate civilization as it adds far more than humans cause — or can logically remove — to the greenhouse gas level. That's a tipping point, and we're close to it.

Braden, it's not Kool Aid. It's basic science. The rejection of global warming as fact is the result of an anti-science bias in this country that says if we squeeze our eyes tight enough, evolution will be wrong, laetrile (or whatever the latest medical scam is) works, and Star Wars will work (and dang it, until recently, I've been one of the ones to close my eyes real hard on that one, even though a physicist friend who was working on Star Wars in 1985 told me differently).

Braden, global warming is going to put our country at risk economically and militarily. The Bush administration has been unwilling to deal with it, even to the point that they are putting us in military danger from the social changes that increased sea levels, drought, and weather changes will cause.

Years from now, I hope "There is no global warming" is not remembered in the same way Chamberlain's "peace in our time" is remembered.

Kessie preens Clint's beak

Clint's stroke happened several years ago. He recovered, but a peculiar head tilt was an outward sign that damage remained. More than once, Clint will fall while climbing on the underside of the roof of his cage, dropping fifteen times his height to the ground. The result is always the same. Immediately, Clint looks around, daring anyone to notice his mistake. As he rights himself, Kessie his mate comes over and screams at him. Most of their communication is in body language, and Kessie is quite clear she wishes Clint would quit taking such risks.

The metal rings on their legs are open; those rings are called "open bands." Birds born in captivity have a closed band ring up over the feet and loosely on the leg. As the birds grow, the feet become so large that the band can no longer be removed without cutting. Clint and Kessie were both mitered conures were taken from the wild and brought to America. Capturing parrots that way for the pet bird trade has been illegal for decades; the best guess is that Clint and Kessie are in their thirties.

According to the avian medicine literature, mitered conures live to about thirty years of age.

There are small signs that Clint's neurological damage might be getting worse. He's started wandering far from the cage the two birds share. Clint's wandering upsets Kessie greatly. She follows him around, attempting to herd him back to where she can keep an eye on him.

Recently, she started screaming at him when he wouldn't go where she wanted him to. Clint was standing there, shaking a bit, trying to move his one leg, but his brain was having trouble starting that motion. Kessie shoved his leg with her beak, and he toddled back to the cage. Between that and his slight tremors, Clint would get a diagnosis of Parkinson-like syndrome, if not full Parkinson's. There are no good avian medicines for Parkinsons, so the vet sees no need for a more exact diagnosis.

Back on top of the cage, Clint and Kessie stand touching. Clint's head is down, still turned slightly, his eyes closed and his breathing slowed as he naps. Kessie turns her head so that one eye focuses on him. As she watches him sleep, there's a change. Birds aren't alpha predators, and so they rarely display weakness. The front of superiority is to convince predators someone else is easier prey and flock mates that their place in the literal pecking order is, if anything, too low. But ask Kessie watches Clint, her wings drop, her facial feathers aren't puffed out, and she loses the threat stance. Gently, she preens some of Clint's facial feathers for him, and he responds by grinding his beak in pleasure, not quite waking.

Slowly, Kessie turned and brought one eye to focus on me. Her posture didn't change, there was none of the "You humans are our servants, and we will bite you to keep you in your place." Her stance, her tail position, the way gravity tugs on her wings, the closed beak lowered, and the steady pupils that didn't pulse with excitement, all these things brought only one phrase to my mind, clear and unshakable.

"I'm going to lose him, aren't I?"

Was she really thinking that? I think so. I don't know that the parrots think of time as humans do, but they have a sense of future. "I'll get you a sunflower seed after the next commercial" produces screams if the commercial comes and goes without treats. "Rob will be back after two Barneys" results in excitement two days later when Barney disappears from the TV screen. I don't know if parrots understand death, but the budgies act surprised when a formerly sick bird returns from quarantine in the incubator. Is their concept closer to "flew away forever" than death. Do they think the other bird flew to that place all the other birds flew off to, someplace better, with plenty of food, water, and paper to tear to shreds (and no humans to throw all that work)? Or do they think in terms of a predator's eventual victory?

Perhaps I'm projecting onto Kessie. Her behavior reminds me of an elderly couple I know, where after the wife gives her husband his medicine for Parkinson's, she steps back and watches him. Her posture changes just like Kessie's did, and only the hardest of neurophysiologists would claim that I'm projecting thoughts of loss onto the woman.

Whatever Kessie is actually thinking and feeling, the moment is soon over. Clint wakes up and climbs up onto the underside of the cage top and walks upside down over that "times fifteen" drop. Kessie screams at him for doing this. Clint turns to look at her and almost loses his footing. A flurry of wings and beak and feet lets him grab back on. Her screams get even louder and more insistent. Her pupils turn first to pinpoints and then expand as far as possible, and she takes on a posture of authority, which Clint ignores.

Kessie hates it when Clint ignores her orders.

Based on advanced X-ray exams, scientists now know the arrow that is still imbedded in Ötzi nicked an artery, causing Ötzi to bleed internally to death almost immediately after he was shot. Scientists suspect another hunter, but no one is currently listed as a "Iceperson of Interest."One clue to the murderer: in his stomach, Ötzi had venison and ibex. Speculation is that Ötzi got someone's goat, and they got Ötzi in revenge.

By pardoning Libby, Bush will come closer to reaching one of his administration's chief goals: placing the President and his people above the law.

Just in time for President Hillary Clinton.

I've never really understood the stories where someone sells their soul to Satan. Whether Faust, the Devil and Daniel Webster, or any of a number of bad TV shows, the person selling their soul never asks enough. The bargains are universally bad, but at least they get something. Not the Republican presidential candidates (excepting McCain), though. They'd give their souls to the devil for nothing. I thought Republicans were supposed to be the ones who were good at business?

During one of the debates, the moderator asked about a scenario everyone describes as "24″-esque. Leave it to Fox to do "product placement" in a national presidential debate. To save American lives, how far would the candidates go to get information? In other words, would they resort to torture? With the exception of McCain, they all abandoned their moral principles for the situational ethics of torture. They would sell their souls — abandon their moral principles — for American lives.

They sold their souls for nothing. Torture doesn't work.

I've known this for years, strangely based on what I was taught at church. At church camps and youth groups, there's a common game that's played. The group forms a circle, with the exception of one person. The person is on the outside, and their goal is to either join the group or get inside the circle. The first couple of people try using force and fail miserably. Anyone trying to break into the circle is almost always rejected, even if they're the strongest person in the group working on the weakest. Force begets resistance. Invariably, though, someone will try bribery. Usually, it's shoulder massage. Stand behind a couple people for a few minutes rubbing their neck and shoulders, and they will eagerly let you in.

It's basic game theory, folks! And it applies to torture as well.

Think about it. Let's say you need to get information out of some terrorists. What does the terrorist think of you? Remember, they don't think they're evil, they think you are. They hate you, or at least the government or organization you represent. Torture them, and you confirm their world view. You prove to them that they are right. They become very passive-aggressive. For religious-minded terrorists of any faith, whatever you do that harms them makes them believe you've purchased them a first-class ticket to Paradise. Sure, they're going to want to end the pain, but they aren't going to want to give you anything for it. Maybe what they tell you is a complete fabrication, maybe it's the truth, with just enough twisted to make you waste resources and time. Maybe they're weak and give up the information, but you don't know if they're telling the truth.

In other words, in the "ticking bomb scenario," if you torture the captured terrorists, you're ensuring the death of the very people you're trying to protect. You're not going to get the information in time.

What does the military think of the "Jack Bauer" torture answer?

In November, Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24."

Accompanied by three experienced military and FBI interrogators, he described how the show actually was undermining the academy's classroom lessons with the false message that torture is a jim-dandy idea in the real world.

Ain't that a kicker?

There are a host of techniques that work; some of them are covered in the article I linked to.

In my opinion, the ethical question of torture never arises. Torture doesn't work, so find something that does.