Sunday Photo, Kinda

You might wonder, if I find cats to be so cute, why I don't live with any. One of Yves Smith's readers provided the answer to that question this morning. When I come home to a scene like this:

Image credit: Furzy Mouse/Naked Capitalism

I inevitably have to fight the urge to strangle the little buggers.

Cats are a lot cuter when they're someone else's problem.

Have a good Sunday.

You Weren't Going To Eat That, Were You?

For some reason, I'm not much interested in posting anything right now. Actually, there are tons of reasons, mostly having to do with how bored I am with human beings who do the same stupid things over and over again.

So here's something cute, weapons grade cute, as the person who made me aware of it would say:



The cat looks a lot like one of the cats I used to live with. I remember that poke on the arm. One thing about living with cats - you can always count on having dinner with a friend.

What Geology Can Teach Us: The Work Endures

Over at one of those geo-blogger sites, they're having another Accretionary Wedge, a collection of geology articles with a theme. This month's theme is "My Favorite Geological Illustration". Not being either a geologist or someone who discusses the subject all that much, you'd probably wonder why I'd even have an opinion on the subject. If one merely went by the things I publish here, of course, one would probably assume my favorite illustration would be some big old explosion or another, but that wouldn't be the case.

You see, as someone who doesn't know all that much about geology, I haven't seen all that many fascinating geology illustrations. When I have, quite often I didn't understand them, at least not enough to appreciate them.

Another form of illustration has always fascinated me. Here is an example, courtesy of the early 19th Century surveyor turned geologist William Smith:

Image credit: LiveScience Image Gallery/Wikimedia version modified by Cujo359

I removed the large seams from the image of the map on Wikimedia, to better show what the map might look like hanging on a wall.

As the University of New Hampshire notes:

The map itself displayed in whole is an extraordinary sight. Its size alone - about 6 feet across by 9 feet high - is dramatic. The territory mapped in detail encompasses thousands of square miles. It is well over 500 miles from Lands End to the Firth of Tay. Smith had begun his efforts to publish such a grand map about 1802 and he was early encouraged by the enthusiastic support of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society of London, who headed the subscription list with 50 pounds - a considerable sum at the time. It was equal to half of the Royal pension that was later awarded to Smith for his accomplishment.

William Smith’s Geological Map of England and Wales and Part of Scotland, 1815-1817: Explanatory Notes

Even in the faded form I've posted here, it's a beautiful piece of work, showing both the precise application of applied mathematics, and the artistic choice of subtle, but contrasting colors to show the extent of the various geological formations that were known or suspected in England at the time. UNH has a more colorful version online than the one on Wikimedia, but in some ways the Wikimedia one is more appropriate. Faded as it is, it evokes the passage of nearly two centuries since the completion of that map.

Maps are a form of art. Map making, like engineering, is an example of applied science, the use of scientific knowledge and principles to create something. In the 19th Century, the British were among the world's premiere map makers. They needed maps so they could navigate, defend, and build on a world wide empire. Not too long after this map was created, a British surveying team would map out the Himalayas, calculating the height of some of that range's major peaks to within a few feet. To accomplish that monumental feat, they used nothing more sophisticated than a transit. Given that, and the leadership Britain and the rest of Europe maintained in science at the time, it's none too surprising that they were the first to publish a geological map.

In the case of William Smith's map, the first of its kind anywhere, the motivation was to advance scientific knowledge - applied science used in the name of science. Smith's creation of the map, the subject of Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed The World, was especially remarkable:

To emphasize what Smith considered his greatest achievement--he was the first to discover that the strata of England were in a definite order and the first to show that their fossil contents were in the same order--he published an ordered column of colored tablets that he referred to as a geological column of organic (organized) fossils in 1816 while copies of the map were still printing. (see Contents, Part III). For all its complexity the map itself was incomplete without the concomitant ordering of the fossils. Smith was probably the first to understand that both the strata and their fossil contents were in such a natural order and that it was an order of indefinitely wide extension, i.e. from local quarries to the whole of England and beyond.

William Smith’s Geological Map of England and Wales and Part of Scotland, 1815-1817: Explanatory Notes

To anyone who is in the least familiar with the idea of biological evolution or plate tectonics, there is obvious significance here. Smith's map helped lead science down the road to both, if for no other reason than that it visually illustrated an important fact about where geological deposits are and when they arrived there.

Smith's work took more than a decade. As the UNH article notes, he began it in 1802, and didn't publish the map until 1815. Even then, it wasn't complete, of course. One could say that it's still being refined to this day.

As Winchester's book makes abundantly clear, Smith paid for his obsession with maps and rocks. His work was plagiarized by people with less talent but better connections, and he ended up spending years in debtors' prison. (Ironically, a copy of his map recently sold for more than $21,000.) It was only late in his life that he was recognized by his peers for his extraordinary accomplishments. Even then, it was only the intervention of better-connected scientists and officials who took it upon themselves to right a wrong that saved him from lifelong obscurity.

As I've noted over the years, geology has many things to teach us. Here, it's taught us that in science, often times the work itself must be its own reward. It's also taught us that sometimes, that work can be appreciated for centuries afterward, long after the people who profited from it are forgotten.

More On Captchas

What follows is a slight rewrite of an article I posted two months ago on captchas. I value comments from readers. It's part of what makes doing this worthwhile. Unfortunately, doing without captchas in comments means there will be spam comments to clean out, which is something I will not deal with, as I explained in that article. Unfortunately, Google has since found a way to make the comments captchas even more unreadable. I am reposting this article to remind readers of some ways of making the blasted things easier to deal with.

Because this subject came up on another blog, I thought I'd add a point about how I manage comments here.

The first thing I should say is that, thanks to the way I have things set up, I don't have to manage them all that much. I like it that way. I don't have to spend a lot of time, as I do for another blog I associate with in a different persona, cleaning out spam comments that people from around the world feel obliged to leave there.

I've written before about how I have comment moderation set up, and none of that has changed. What I have not done is noted that I also use captchas, which is that annoying graphic that looks vaguely like Roman alphabet letters that you have to type in so that you can comment here. Compared to that link in the last sentence, I think that the Blogspot captchas used to be easier to read. Sadly, they no longer are. They are deliberately made more difficult to read than standard print. That is supposed to make them more difficult to interpret using software, which in turn makes them more difficult to fool to put spam into blog comments and online forums.

Still, if someone has a bit of difficulty reading anyway, captchas can be an obstacle to posting. I suspect that people who are dyslexic, for instance, would have more trouble. People who have trouble reading the screen to begin with, of course, are also going to find it harder to interpret captchas.

I don't intend to change this policy. I'm sorry that it's harder to comment because of them, but the only alternative I see is either to put every comment into moderation, which can take time and (at least theoretically) limits commenters' ability to interact with each other, or to spend a lot more time watching comments. I don't want to do either.

So, what I will do is offer some advice on how to make them a little less irritating.

Most modern browsers, Firefox being the one I'm most familiar with, have had a way of enlarging whatever is on the web page the user is looking at for several years now. That feature, normally referred to as "zoom", enlarges both graphics and text. Using Firefox, a page can be zoomed larger by using the Ctrl-+ key, which means holding down that key in the lower corner of the keyboard marked Ctrl, and then hitting the plus (+) key (of course, you'll have to hold down the Shift key at the same time, if you're using a standard U.S. keyboard). The Ctrl-- key (the minus key with Ctrl) will zoom the page smaller. If you can't remember how many times you enlarged or reduced the screen, then just hit Ctrl-0 to reset it to what it would be normally.

It looks as though Google's Chrome works this way, as does Internet Explorer.

Go ahead and try it by scrolling to the top of this page and using those keys. Note that both the image of the Stooges and the type get larger or smaller. That's what will happen to captcha images as well.

To sum up:

• Zoom in (enlarge): Ctrl-+
• Zoom out (reduce): Ctrl--
• Reset to normal size: Ctrl-0

That should be true for just about any modern web browser on just about any operating system that doesn't include the syllable "Mac". For those afflicted with that particular OS, substitute the Command key (that key to the lower left of the keyboard that looks like a splat) anywhere you see Ctrl, and things should work the same.

Give it a try. It's possible that this won't be enough. In that case, please let me know, but it's something to try. It's also possible to comment via e-mail. I promise I'll read your comments, provided they aren't caught in the spam filter of my e-mail account.

Afterword: In a comment on that earlier post, James Ala explains how things work on Macs:

In OSX the Command key works almost like the control key in Windows. Thus command +/- to zoom in or out. Works in Firefox and in Chrome, plus in Opera. I won't test Safari because I can not stand that browser.

So, to sum up, substitute the Command key anywhere you see Ctrl in the article, and it should work on Macs, too, with the possible exception of Safari.

Thanks, James.

Progressive Idiocy: Did You Know That Mitt Romney's Really Rich?

Caption: Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. You may not have been aware of this, but he's way richer than I am.

Image credit: Jessica Rinaldi/Wikimedia

Can we talk? I mean, really. Put down that glass of whatever, and try to find something to lean on, because I don't want you to lose your equilibrium. There, that's better.

I don't give a crap how rich Mitt Romney is.

There, I said it. Pretty shocking, isn't it? But there it is. I don't care. Well, OK, I care a little. There are days when I think it would be just wonderful if the person in the White House had some earthly idea what most of us go through in our lives. Unfortunately, I don't think that's been the case for a long, long time. I think the last time there was a President who actually had some idea what it was like to be a working stiff was when Ulysses Grant was in office.

Presidents are rich people. If for no other reason, we know that because they can afford to take off two years or more from whatever they are supposedly doing to run for office. They have to know a lot of rich folks so they can start advertising and setting up a campaign. Every President of modern times has done this, including the current one.

So I don't care how rich Romney is. Every President is way richer than I am. They're all way richer than you are. Do you think it really matters that Romney is richer than Barack Obama? Until they moved to DC, the Obamas lived in a house that almost none of us could afford.

Being rich doesn't have to mean that you aren't concerned about how everyone else lives. Teddy Roosevelt was rich; so was his cousin Franklin. Jack Kennedy was rich. Somehow, they all acquired some idea what it was like for everyday people, at least enough to implement policies that made our lives better. Being rich, or even talking about it a lot, doesn't make you unable to put yourself in someone else's shoes.

It's just more difficult.

Once you're rich enough that you don't have to work ever again, there's really not much more that can separate you from the common man, except maybe being so rich that you can buy absolutely anything you want. I suppose Romney's that rich, but it really doesn't matter. His opponents, no matter if it's Mister "I'm From A Steel Town" or Mister "I'm From A Big City With A Corrupt Government", don't have any idea what it's like to have to worry about bills or whether the kids get those braces they need. They certainly have no idea what it's like to wonder what happens when you get sick and can't afford medical care.

Even Mister "Man From Hope" had to learn most of that from someone else.

So, I don't care how rich Mitt Romney is. I don't care how many times he talks about how many NASCAR team owners he knows, or why the Missuz needs two Cadillac SUVs, or why he can't seem to stop reminding us how rich he is. Because, folks, they're all rich. Most of them have absolutely no idea what it's like to be you or me. That's why they're where they are. At least there's one thing we can honestly tell ourselves that Mitt Romney has never lied about.

What I care about is that Romney's economic policies look an awful lot like President Obama's, as do his health care policies, his foreign policies, and his policies about just about anything else worth mentioning. That, and that they all suck at least as much as Obama's policies.

Now you know the dark secret of my soul. I hope you can forgive me someday, even if you'll never be able to respect me.

Quote Of The Day

Ian Welsh wrote this late last week, reminding me why I don't visit his site all that often:

I have nothing but contempt for most of the current generation of intellectuals, thinkers, and members of any elite. They have demonstrably failed their job, if their job is conceived as serving the truth and looking after the common weal: of telling people what they need to hear and finding a way to make them understand. Some have fought the yeoman’s good fight, and lost and there is honor in that, but most did not even fight. Instead the spewed lies and reaped the rewards. They were complicit with the political and economic elites, they took their share of the loot, a petty pence, and wrote what would please their masters. They will be exorciated by history, but in the current day, they have their silver gripped firmly in their hands, as they lope behind and before their masters, making the world safe for oligarchy, poverty and the new despotism of the modern security state.

Justified Pessimism

It would be one thing if I thought he was wrong. The only misgivings I'd have in that case would be for Ian's well-being, as in he needs a more positive outlook on life. What makes this article (all of it is worth a read, by the way) hard to read is that it is absolutely true. We have gotten here, as much as anything, because entirely too many of the people who should be explaining what has been happening these last few years are instead excusing it, or pretending it's not happening.


Image credit: I Has A Hotdog

Glenn Greenwald recently provided an example:

Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not.

Repulsive Progressive Hypocrisy

Beyond a few liberal blogs, and the very occasional progressive commentator on Current, it's really hard to find any progressives who criticize the Obama Administration's appalling record on human rights (appalling, at least, by any American government standard). Nor do most criticize his equally absurd protection of the very people who caused this economic crisis by refusing to prosecute the obvious control fraud they committed.

It's rare to find anyone, among public progressive intellectuals, who will note the irony that Bradley Manning is being kept in jail indefinitely without trial, while the war crimes he helped expose are not being prosecuted.

Of course, they seem to have no compunctions about reminding us how awful The Other Guys (tm) are.

So, yes, reading Ian's blog has been something of a downer lately. On the upside, he's one of those rare progressives willing to see things for what they are.

Saturday Entertainment: Where's The Work?

This week the Guardian ran a preview of Bruce Springsteen's upcoming album, Wrecking Ball, including an interview. What is Wrecking Ball about?

[I]t is as angry a cry from the belly of a wounded America as has been heard since the dustbowl and Woody Guthrie, a thundering blow of New Jersey pig iron down on the heads of Wall Street and all who have sold his country down the swanny. Springsteen has gone to the great American canon for ammunition, borrowing from folk, civil war anthems, Irish rebel songs and gospel. The result is a howl of pain and disbelief as visceral as anything he has ever produced, that segues into a search for redemption: "Hold tight to your anger/ And don't fall to your fears … Bring on your wrecking ball."

Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'

One of the songs the Guardian article featured was "We Take Care Of Our Own", in which Springsteen talks about the abandonment of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the Rust Belt after the steel industry evaporated, and rest of us generally as America slowly slides into decay, using an old motto of how people pull together to show how little that phrase means in America anymore:



In the middle stanza, he asks:

Where's the love that has not forsaken me?
Where's the work that will set my hands, my soul free?

If you're familiar with his music, Springsteen's career serves as a chronicle of the decline of the American economy. From the urgent plea to "get out while we're young" in "Born To Run" to the plaintive lament of "Gypsy Biker", his songs have told the story of how good jobs have left town, followed closely by the will to look after each other. For those who still don't understand the difference between the mean and the median in the American economy, Springsteen's stories of bitter decline are the perfect soundtrack for those graphs and charts.

Caption: The rusting steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the minor league baseball stadium authorities brought in for "economic renewal". From making pig iron to watching Iron Pigs, the Lehigh Valley's transformation is a microcosm of America's.

Image credit: Composite image by Cujo359 (See Note)

Maybe it was my own proximity to Springsteen's home town when I was growing up that gave me the ability to see things as he does. I grew up in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, which is about an hour's drive down I-78 from where Springsteen grew up. When I was a boy, we made things there. We made steel, trucks, and semiconductors. We mined limestone and turned it into cement. Perhaps I should point out that by "we", I mean my parents' and grandparents' generation did that. By the time I graduated from college in the late 1970s, most of that industry was already gone. Nowadays, the Lehigh Valley mostly profits from its location near the cities of New York and Philadelphia as an inexpensive place to live while working in those cities. Nowadays, they make the trucks down south somewhere, where the labor is cheap. They make the steel and semiconductors in Asia. Most of the cement plants are closed, too.

As a young engineering graduate, I realized there wasn't much work for me there. I moved to the Pacific Northwest, partly because there were still jobs out here. There was still a steel plant and a truck plant out here, and there were lots of aircraft factories and sawmills. Over the years, though, the same thing I'd seen in the Lehigh Valley has happened out here, too. The aircraft factory (NOTE 1) I worked in is mostly gone, replaced by shopping centers and apartments, the jobs either overtaken by automation, or moved to places where the labor is cheap. Someday soon, the rest of the plant will probably be moved. The steel plant and the sawmills are mostly gone, too. The truck plant is somewhere else.

We stopped being people who build things in America. We've become poorer as a result, both economically and spiritually. If you don't know that by now, I suggest you get caught up on your Springsteen.

Have a good Saturday.

NOTE 1: This is was a copyrighted image from the Renton History Museum. I've requested permission to use it, and feel fairly sure that this will be granted, since it's a small version of a print they're selling. Still, it may have to be taken down later.

UPDATE: Since then, I have heard from the Renton History Museum, and they do, in fact, charge for their pictures, even the small fuzzy ones like the one I had up here. I've taken it down, since I can't afford to spend $15 a picture. I've left the link, though. This was the original caption I had posted along with the link:

A photo of the Boeing Renton plant from the 1970s. Today, just about everything below the curving road in the middle of the photos is either apartment buildings or shopping centers.

Maybe when I'm making thousands of dollars a week from this blogging thing I'll be able to afford that kind of money and the time or money it would take to manage the copyright issues, but right now I can't.

In contrast to the case of WMG, I don't think of the Renton History Museum's policy as greedy. They're a nonprofit organization, not a government agency. Maintaining photos, and allowing even limited access to them for research purposes, costs money. This is how they make part of their money. I do some work with a nonprofit organization, so I understand this. Unfortunately, though, by charging even for images that are barely web-quality, they restrict the potential benefit of their photos to those who can pay the freight. Which, in the blogging world at least, is just about none of us.

Quote Of The Day

Image credit: Occupy Together

Rose Aguilar writes in a column at Al Jazeera, on the U.S. Catholic Bishops' determination to battle the recent decision by the Obama Administration to require health insurance policies to cover contraceptives with no co-pay charge:

Catholic bishops in the US want every single act of sexual intercourse to result in the birth of a child, but once that child is born, they are on their own, especially if their priest abuses them.

The birth control bishops

She also wrote something else in that column that I found impossible to believe - none of the witnesses called have any medical background. All were clergy of some sort. Of course, all were men.

Of course.

There was no one there to discuss the relative merits of contraception versus abortion, other than some people who have little or no personal experience with these things. There were no witnesses with a secular point of view, of any sort, like for instance, the cost and disadvantages of unwanted childbirth. Even in a hearing ostensibly about religious freedom in America, there's reason to ask the people who are most affected by those freedoms what their opinions might be. For instance, they might ask them if it's freedom of religion when it's not religious institutions that are affected, but, rather, the businesses those churches own.

At least, there would be in a democracy.

This is how things are decided, apparently. It's why there are Occupy movements. The people most profoundly affected by the decisions government makes are almost never the ones whose opinions matter.

Afterword: Why did I choose that particular Occupy poster to lead this article? Simply, it's because this is really about power. The Catholic church has the power to swing elections. If they were some little splinter sect out in the middle of nowhere and they held these views, there would be no one paying attention. The religions represented at that hearing have lots of money, and in the new post-Citizens United world, they can spend as much as they want making the faithful believe anyone who supports contraception is the anti-Christ.