Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
A Fusion Breakthrough?
Lockheed's Skunk Works has announced a breakthrough in fusion research. Fusion is what powers the sun. It has the potential to generate electricity from the hydrogen in seawater.
Lockheed claims that they can have a working prototype of a fusion reactor in five years, and commercially available fusion power plants in ten years.
More incredibly, Lockheed claims that the reactor could be as small as seven by 10 feet -- small enough to fit on the back of a truck. A fusion-powered submarine could stay submerged indefinitely, getting its fuel (hydrogen) and air (oxygen) from seawater. A fusion-powered airplane could stay aloft for months.
Fission-powered subs can already stay submerged for months at a time. And practically speaking, aircraft require routine ground maintenance to avoid falling out of the sky. Where fusion is the real game-changer, though, is in generating electricity and spaceflight.
Generating Electricity
Lockheed says its fusion reactor could be plopped into existing 100 MW gas turbine power plant, replacing the methane-burning equipment with a fusion reactor and a heat exchanger.
Current nuclear reactors use fission, in which atoms of heavy elements like uranium are split to produce heat, which generates steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan used fission. The hydrogen bombs first detonated in the 1950s were fusion bombs: the intense heat and pressure required to fuse hydrogen atoms were produced by detonating fission devices.
Fission produces a lot of highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, which need to be sequestered for thousands of years. Fission also produces high-speed neutrons (which is what causes fission reactions to proceed). If there are too many neutrons, the nuclear reaction can run away and detonate like an atomic bomb.
There are two major approaches to fusion for power generation: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses inertial confinement: giant lasers blast a pellet of hydrogen isotopes from all directions to produce high pressure and temperature.
The concept of magnetic confinement gained popular currency with Star Trek's "magnetic bottle," which they said contained antimatter. With fusion, magnetic fields are used to compress hydrogen plasma to very high pressures and temperatures, causing the atoms to fuse.
The sun does this using gravity instead of magnetic fields.
Both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion have been demonstrated in labs, but they have not achieved a sustained reaction, where they generate more energy than they consume.
Depending on exactly which reaction is used, fusion may use isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and produce harmless helium, or it may produce short-lived radioactive isotopes such as tritium (hydrogen 3). It typically produces neutrons, which have to be trapped to convert their energy to heat.
Magnetic confinement has been on the cusp of a breakthrough for fifty years. This time, Lockheed thinks that by reducing the size of the hardware and increasing the strength of the magnetic field with superconductors they will finally be able to make magnetic confinement work.
Revolutionizing Spaceflight
Rockets work on Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. They burn fuel, which is ejected out the nozzle, propelling the payload forward. The acceleration you achieve depends on the mass ejected and its velocity: the faster the propellant is ejected (specific impulse), the faster you go.
When current spacecraft go to other planets they fire a quick burst from their rocket engines to put themselves in an elliptical orbit (the yellow orbit in the diagram on the right) that starts at earth (the green orbit) and ends at Mars (the red orbit), where another burst of the engines is required to enter orbit around Mars. Chemical rockets cannot fire the whole time because they can't carry enough fuel to accelerate the whole way, because the engine has a low specific impulse.
Because our spacecraft require this "Hohmann transfer orbit," we only launch when the planets are properly aligned. That imposes a launch window that lasts a short time and doesn't recur for months or years.
"Ion" engines with higher specific impulse have been in design for decades. These use electrical fields to accelerate charged particles to speeds much higher than can be obtained by chemical rockets. The high specific impulse allows the ion engine to fire constantly, producing a constant thrust with a modest amount of propellant.
A fusion engine could produce an even higher specific impulse, with the speed of light being the only limit. With such a high specific impulse, it becomes possible to accelerate constantly at high thrust without running out of propellant.
It's within the realm of possibility that a fusion-powered spacecraft could get to the moon in a day by accelerating constantly at 1 g (the acceleration of earth's gravity) to the halfway point, flipping around and decelerating the rest of the way. Getting to Mars would take two to four days, depending on where earth and Mars are in their orbits.
Will It Melt Down or Blow Up Like a Hydrogen Bomb?
Fission reactors can melt down, like Chernobyl in Russia or Fukushima in Japan. They depend on control rods, cooling or other mechanical means to prevent the fission reaction from occurring too quickly. A fission reactor contains tons of uranium. If too many neutrons are being shot through the nuclear fuel, there's a chance of a runaway reaction and an atomic detonation, or more likely, that the fuel will get too hot and melt through the containment vessel.
With fusion, the difficulty is not slowing down the reaction, the problem is sustaining it. The amount of hydrogen in a fusion reactor is quite small. That's because fusion produces so much energy: e = mc2, after all. One gram of hydrogen produces 339 gigajoules of energy, or 94 megawatt-hours. That means a 100 MW fusion reactor would use a couple of grams of hydrogen per hour: that's a couple of ounces a day. (It's also probably a hydrogen isotope -- deuterium and tritium, from heavy water.)
If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, the magnetic field collapses, and the reaction stops. All that's left is a few ounces of hot hydrogen.
To stop a fusion reaction, you turn of the power. It's like blowing out a candle. The containment vessel does, however, need to be strong enough to contain the hydrogen plasma when the magnetic field drops.
A fusion reactor is probably a lot less dangerous than a fission reactor, but more dangerous than wind and solar because reactor cores become radioactive over time.
Drawbacks
Most magnetic confinement fusion reactions under consideration produce neutrons. Something needs to absorb those neutrons, heat up and turn turbines. Over time neutrons will affect the components of the reactor and its shielding, making them brittle and slightly radioactive, just as for existing fission reactors.
Some fusion reactions under consideration produce a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (tritium, or hydrogen 3), which has a half-life of 12.3 years. Tritium and old shielding have to be disposed of, but they're far less dangerous than fission byproducts like plutonium that are radioactive for millennia.
For spaceflight, these fast neutrons are reaction mass: the faster the better.
Is It for Real?
This is hard to say. Scientists have been on the brink of a fusion breakthrough for fifty years. They've used superconducting magnets in the past. Is Lockheed's approach that different? Have they miniaturized the reactor enough to remove the instabilities in the magnetic field that have plagued traditional tokamak designs for decades?
I can't say for sure. But this has the potential to totally change everything about energy production. With cheap, portable fusion reactors coal and natural gas plants will be totally obsolete: fuel for fusion is extracted from seawater. There's no need for miners to die miles beneath the surface of the earth, or for frackers to inject toxic chemicals into the earth.
Fusion plants will probably not be cheap initially, especially compared to wind and solar which are already becoming cheaper than coal and gas. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater will probably start out to be expensive and get cheaper over time, but will probably always be more expensive than free energy from the wind and sun.
Fusion is not a panacea because there is still the problem of disposing of radioactive reactor cores. But these are minor problems compared to radioactive waste from fission plants, and the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.
That does make fusion plants good candidates to pick up the slack when wind and solar generation are slack.
And having the technology in our back pockets that allows us to go to the stars is probably the best insurance plan the human race can get.
Lockheed claims that they can have a working prototype of a fusion reactor in five years, and commercially available fusion power plants in ten years.
More incredibly, Lockheed claims that the reactor could be as small as seven by 10 feet -- small enough to fit on the back of a truck. A fusion-powered submarine could stay submerged indefinitely, getting its fuel (hydrogen) and air (oxygen) from seawater. A fusion-powered airplane could stay aloft for months.
Fission-powered subs can already stay submerged for months at a time. And practically speaking, aircraft require routine ground maintenance to avoid falling out of the sky. Where fusion is the real game-changer, though, is in generating electricity and spaceflight.
Generating Electricity
Lockheed says its fusion reactor could be plopped into existing 100 MW gas turbine power plant, replacing the methane-burning equipment with a fusion reactor and a heat exchanger.
Current nuclear reactors use fission, in which atoms of heavy elements like uranium are split to produce heat, which generates steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan used fission. The hydrogen bombs first detonated in the 1950s were fusion bombs: the intense heat and pressure required to fuse hydrogen atoms were produced by detonating fission devices.
Fission produces a lot of highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, which need to be sequestered for thousands of years. Fission also produces high-speed neutrons (which is what causes fission reactions to proceed). If there are too many neutrons, the nuclear reaction can run away and detonate like an atomic bomb.
There are two major approaches to fusion for power generation: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses inertial confinement: giant lasers blast a pellet of hydrogen isotopes from all directions to produce high pressure and temperature.
The concept of magnetic confinement gained popular currency with Star Trek's "magnetic bottle," which they said contained antimatter. With fusion, magnetic fields are used to compress hydrogen plasma to very high pressures and temperatures, causing the atoms to fuse.
The sun does this using gravity instead of magnetic fields.
Both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion have been demonstrated in labs, but they have not achieved a sustained reaction, where they generate more energy than they consume.
Depending on exactly which reaction is used, fusion may use isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and produce harmless helium, or it may produce short-lived radioactive isotopes such as tritium (hydrogen 3). It typically produces neutrons, which have to be trapped to convert their energy to heat.
Magnetic confinement has been on the cusp of a breakthrough for fifty years. This time, Lockheed thinks that by reducing the size of the hardware and increasing the strength of the magnetic field with superconductors they will finally be able to make magnetic confinement work.
Revolutionizing Spaceflight
Rockets work on Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. They burn fuel, which is ejected out the nozzle, propelling the payload forward. The acceleration you achieve depends on the mass ejected and its velocity: the faster the propellant is ejected (specific impulse), the faster you go.
 |
| Hohmann Transfer Orbit |
Because our spacecraft require this "Hohmann transfer orbit," we only launch when the planets are properly aligned. That imposes a launch window that lasts a short time and doesn't recur for months or years.
"Ion" engines with higher specific impulse have been in design for decades. These use electrical fields to accelerate charged particles to speeds much higher than can be obtained by chemical rockets. The high specific impulse allows the ion engine to fire constantly, producing a constant thrust with a modest amount of propellant.
A fusion engine could produce an even higher specific impulse, with the speed of light being the only limit. With such a high specific impulse, it becomes possible to accelerate constantly at high thrust without running out of propellant.
It's within the realm of possibility that a fusion-powered spacecraft could get to the moon in a day by accelerating constantly at 1 g (the acceleration of earth's gravity) to the halfway point, flipping around and decelerating the rest of the way. Getting to Mars would take two to four days, depending on where earth and Mars are in their orbits.
Will It Melt Down or Blow Up Like a Hydrogen Bomb?
Fission reactors can melt down, like Chernobyl in Russia or Fukushima in Japan. They depend on control rods, cooling or other mechanical means to prevent the fission reaction from occurring too quickly. A fission reactor contains tons of uranium. If too many neutrons are being shot through the nuclear fuel, there's a chance of a runaway reaction and an atomic detonation, or more likely, that the fuel will get too hot and melt through the containment vessel.
With fusion, the difficulty is not slowing down the reaction, the problem is sustaining it. The amount of hydrogen in a fusion reactor is quite small. That's because fusion produces so much energy: e = mc2, after all. One gram of hydrogen produces 339 gigajoules of energy, or 94 megawatt-hours. That means a 100 MW fusion reactor would use a couple of grams of hydrogen per hour: that's a couple of ounces a day. (It's also probably a hydrogen isotope -- deuterium and tritium, from heavy water.)
If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, the magnetic field collapses, and the reaction stops. All that's left is a few ounces of hot hydrogen.
To stop a fusion reaction, you turn of the power. It's like blowing out a candle. The containment vessel does, however, need to be strong enough to contain the hydrogen plasma when the magnetic field drops.
A fusion reactor is probably a lot less dangerous than a fission reactor, but more dangerous than wind and solar because reactor cores become radioactive over time.
Drawbacks
Most magnetic confinement fusion reactions under consideration produce neutrons. Something needs to absorb those neutrons, heat up and turn turbines. Over time neutrons will affect the components of the reactor and its shielding, making them brittle and slightly radioactive, just as for existing fission reactors.
Some fusion reactions under consideration produce a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (tritium, or hydrogen 3), which has a half-life of 12.3 years. Tritium and old shielding have to be disposed of, but they're far less dangerous than fission byproducts like plutonium that are radioactive for millennia.
For spaceflight, these fast neutrons are reaction mass: the faster the better.
Is It for Real?
This is hard to say. Scientists have been on the brink of a fusion breakthrough for fifty years. They've used superconducting magnets in the past. Is Lockheed's approach that different? Have they miniaturized the reactor enough to remove the instabilities in the magnetic field that have plagued traditional tokamak designs for decades?
I can't say for sure. But this has the potential to totally change everything about energy production. With cheap, portable fusion reactors coal and natural gas plants will be totally obsolete: fuel for fusion is extracted from seawater. There's no need for miners to die miles beneath the surface of the earth, or for frackers to inject toxic chemicals into the earth.
Fusion plants will probably not be cheap initially, especially compared to wind and solar which are already becoming cheaper than coal and gas. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater will probably start out to be expensive and get cheaper over time, but will probably always be more expensive than free energy from the wind and sun.
Fusion is not a panacea because there is still the problem of disposing of radioactive reactor cores. But these are minor problems compared to radioactive waste from fission plants, and the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.
That does make fusion plants good candidates to pick up the slack when wind and solar generation are slack.
And having the technology in our back pockets that allows us to go to the stars is probably the best insurance plan the human race can get.
Good Words
From a recent question on Quora...
The issue isn't Obama's performance. The issue is the effectiveness of conservative propaganda. Day in and day out they refuse to cooperate with him in government. I think the reason for this is that conservatives did everything they could to club Clinton in every illegitimate way. But they did their jobs as legislators. Clinton was still successful.
Then we had Bush. It may be that the conservative agenda is just so bad, so unworkable that it made Bush look like a guy attempting to put America in the dumper. Just from looking at its difficult to tell whether he was attempting to crash the economy in order to downsize it or was just completely lame. Certainly here in Kansas we're ready to call call conservative politics a failure.
Under Obama the question remains open whether its the conservative agenda to downsize government by creating economic catastrophe. They have certainly floated the idea during the debt ceiling debate.
Regardless, they needed to rehabilitate the Republican party after the Bush catastrophe. They couldn't repeat the mistake they made by cooperating with Clinton. The Republican party needed Obama to be a failure.
Their only chance at that was to refuse to cooperate with anything and mobilize the conservative propaganda machine to start criticising him. They have criticised him for their lack of cooperation. They have created issues both legislative and policy then criticised him for their lack of ability.
This continual... habitual... oppressive... Soviet like... spin and nonsense is simply taking its toll on the psychology of America. You are being co-opted by the bad guys that are corrupting our government if you pile on Obama repeating the nonsense of conservative propagandists.
Look for the reasonable answer. Its not -Obama is dumb, inept and untalented. He is smart, educated, able and talented and if you start there, look at his accomplishments and ask what the problem is... you will conclude something different.
Amen.
The issue isn't Obama's performance. The issue is the effectiveness of conservative propaganda. Day in and day out they refuse to cooperate with him in government. I think the reason for this is that conservatives did everything they could to club Clinton in every illegitimate way. But they did their jobs as legislators. Clinton was still successful.
Then we had Bush. It may be that the conservative agenda is just so bad, so unworkable that it made Bush look like a guy attempting to put America in the dumper. Just from looking at its difficult to tell whether he was attempting to crash the economy in order to downsize it or was just completely lame. Certainly here in Kansas we're ready to call call conservative politics a failure.
Under Obama the question remains open whether its the conservative agenda to downsize government by creating economic catastrophe. They have certainly floated the idea during the debt ceiling debate.
Regardless, they needed to rehabilitate the Republican party after the Bush catastrophe. They couldn't repeat the mistake they made by cooperating with Clinton. The Republican party needed Obama to be a failure.
Their only chance at that was to refuse to cooperate with anything and mobilize the conservative propaganda machine to start criticising him. They have criticised him for their lack of cooperation. They have created issues both legislative and policy then criticised him for their lack of ability.
This continual... habitual... oppressive... Soviet like... spin and nonsense is simply taking its toll on the psychology of America. You are being co-opted by the bad guys that are corrupting our government if you pile on Obama repeating the nonsense of conservative propagandists.
Look for the reasonable answer. Its not -Obama is dumb, inept and untalented. He is smart, educated, able and talented and if you start there, look at his accomplishments and ask what the problem is... you will conclude something different.
Amen.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
A Job Killing Regulation or a Baby-Saving Law?
In 2013 Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers make reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers. This is exactly the kind of law that conservatives bitch about when they yammer on and on about job-killing regulation.
But Bloomberg didn't sign the law just to irritate conservatives. He did it to protect women like Angelica Valencia, who was fired in August from her job at a potato-packing plant when she was three months pregnant.
She had a miscarriage (a spontaneous abortion) last year, and her doctor said she was at high risk for another one if she worked more than eight hours a day. At age 39 Valencia doesn't have a whole lot of time to wait to have kids. It's now or never.
Valencia made $8.70 an hour. Her husband drives a bus. They needed the income from the job just to pay the rent, and with a kid on the way they needed it that much more.
But the company didn't give a damn. Valencia was unaware of the law that should have protected her, so she let the company fire her.
Conservatives say they value family above all else, but they clearly believe that corporate profits are more important than family values, the health of employees, and the lives of the unborn. Where's the anti-abortion crowd here? They should be blasting companies that force pregnant women to work long hours under severe conditions.
How can conservatives possibly defend a company that refuses to grant women light duty during a pregnancy, knowing that it will likely cause a spontaneous abortion?
And you can't blame the woman. She wanted to keep her job and pay her own way. The article doesn't say whether Valencia was fired and eligible for unemployment compensation. Did the company say her termination was "for cause" and weasel out of paying umemployment? Did they expect her to go on welfare?
Some might argue that the company had her safety at heart, and didn't want her to work out of concern for the life of the child. But their response to the doctor's letter was:
“Unfortunately, we as a company are not able to allow you to continue work,” wrote Mr. Ferla, who warned that her high-risk pregnancy could put her “at risk” in a work environment that was fast-paced, very physical and involves machinery.No: the company clearly did not care about her or the baby. They just wanted that letter from the doctor to avoid legal responsibility should the baby die.
“Please understand we need a ‘full duty release' from the doctor,” he added, if she wanted to continue to work.
And it's not just overwork that causes miscarriage. Certain chemicals will cause spontaneous abortion, including heavy metals (such as mercury released into the air from burning coal -- this is why coal plants are shutting down), organic solvents (paint thinners, dry cleaning fluid), numerous petrochemicals, and various drugs and gases used in medicine and dentistry. Many of these chemicals cause birth defects and cancer as well. Research and regulation are required to protect pregnant women -- and everyone else -- from exposure to these dangerous substances.
Some companies treat their employees fairly and help them start families. They make accommodations for pregnant women, and help them once the children are born. But a lot of companies don't. Shouldn't the law level the playing field, and reward companies that do right by their employees and, incidentally, the taxpayers?
That's what regulations are for: to protect Americans from bad employers, polluters, incompetent doctors and lawyers, usurers and scam artists.
Sure, there are bad regulations. Some have become outdated due to technological and social changes. Some were written by companies themselves and passed by their cronies in government to make it harder for competitors. Some were enacted in ignorance or ideology. These should be revised free from political and business interference.
The government grants companies corporate charters to absolve corporate officers of personal responsibility for corporate activities. The government in turn has the responsibility to regulate those activities to provide a level playing field for all corporations and to ensure the safety and well-being of the American people. And their unborn children.
Conservatives claim to be all about responsibility. Well, companies need to take responsibility for their employees and their products. Those responsibilities need to be clearly stated.
That's all regulations are.
Bad Move, Alison
I'm perplexed by Alison Grimes' refusal to say who she voted for in 2012. It's petty, childish, and most cowardly. More importantly, it signals the end of her candidacy as a Senator in Kentucky.
What she should have done is say, "Yes, I voted for him and yes I support some of the policies for which he stands like raising the minimum wage. However, I do not support his continued attack on the coal industry and would like to go to Washington to convince him to cease and desist." Obviously, they would have tied her to Barack Obama but so what? As I have said many times, put him on the ballot and let him kick the GOP's ass a third time.
Speaking of Barack Obama, I'm pretty amused by the hysteria over his "low" approval ratings. RCP average has him at 42 percent which is 4 points above his lowest single rating (38 percent, Sept 2014). Compare this to the last 8 presidents and their lowest approval ratings.
What she should have done is say, "Yes, I voted for him and yes I support some of the policies for which he stands like raising the minimum wage. However, I do not support his continued attack on the coal industry and would like to go to Washington to convince him to cease and desist." Obviously, they would have tied her to Barack Obama but so what? As I have said many times, put him on the ballot and let him kick the GOP's ass a third time.
Speaking of Barack Obama, I'm pretty amused by the hysteria over his "low" approval ratings. RCP average has him at 42 percent which is 4 points above his lowest single rating (38 percent, Sept 2014). Compare this to the last 8 presidents and their lowest approval ratings.
• George W. Bush: 25 percent in October 2008.
• Bill Clinton: 37 percent in May 1993.
• George H.W. Bush: 29 percent in July 1992.
• Ronald Reagan: 35 percent in January 1983.
• Jimmy Carter: 28 percent in June 1979.
• Gerald Ford: 37 percent in March 1975.
• Richard Nixon: 24 percent in August 1974
• Lyndon Johnson: 35 percent in 1968.
Doesn't really look all that bad now, does it?Saturday, October 18, 2014
The Democrats Have Already Won
Even though the election is two and half weeks away, the Democrats have already won.
Consider for a moment what happens if the GOP takes back the Senate (which I think they will). They will have one of two options. They can continue to behave like 12 year old boys, be stubborn and immovable, have temper tantrums, and play to their base with Obama hating. Or they can compromise and take credit for doing things they didn't want to give the president a full win on. Either way, the Democrats win.
If Republicans take the first route, they are fucked in 2016. Higher voter turnout will erase any victories gained this year with the GOP having to defend 24 of the 34 seats up for reelection in two years. The House will see losses as well. And, with a likely Hillary Clinton candidacy, the Democrats will see even higher voter enthusiasm as we could potentially elect our first woman president.
If Republicans take the second route, the country benefits and we actually get some things done we needed to get done six years ago.
Sally Kohn echoes much of this sentiment in a recent piece over at CNN. The fact that the Senate is still a contest does not bode well for the future of the GOP. Republicans tap dancing around the ACA is fucking hilarious. Even more funny is how desperate they seem.
Wasn't this election supposed to be about Obamacare? No, that didn't work. So Republicans tried to make the midterms about Benghazi. No luck there either. Now they're just generally fear-mongering around ISIS and Ebola and hoping that would work. But the constantly shifting Republican shell game shows how little substantive traction conservatives have with average voters outside their highly gerrymandered House districts.
Every time they open their mouths, Republican candidates show that they habitually bash President Obama to distract from the impression that they have neither the intention nor ability to help solve urgent problems facing the country.
Yep.
On the point of traction with average voters...
Economic equality and reproductive freedom are basic priorities for women voters, a group that Republicans already had a tough time winning over. The GOP even commissioned its own poll that found women voters are "barely receptive" to Republican ideas and think the party is "intolerant" and "stuck in the past." By their own deeds, not to mention rhetoric, Republicans just keep reinforcing their war on women and driving voters away.
With all of this, I say the GOP picks option two after they take back the Senate.
Consider for a moment what happens if the GOP takes back the Senate (which I think they will). They will have one of two options. They can continue to behave like 12 year old boys, be stubborn and immovable, have temper tantrums, and play to their base with Obama hating. Or they can compromise and take credit for doing things they didn't want to give the president a full win on. Either way, the Democrats win.
If Republicans take the first route, they are fucked in 2016. Higher voter turnout will erase any victories gained this year with the GOP having to defend 24 of the 34 seats up for reelection in two years. The House will see losses as well. And, with a likely Hillary Clinton candidacy, the Democrats will see even higher voter enthusiasm as we could potentially elect our first woman president.
If Republicans take the second route, the country benefits and we actually get some things done we needed to get done six years ago.
Sally Kohn echoes much of this sentiment in a recent piece over at CNN. The fact that the Senate is still a contest does not bode well for the future of the GOP. Republicans tap dancing around the ACA is fucking hilarious. Even more funny is how desperate they seem.
Wasn't this election supposed to be about Obamacare? No, that didn't work. So Republicans tried to make the midterms about Benghazi. No luck there either. Now they're just generally fear-mongering around ISIS and Ebola and hoping that would work. But the constantly shifting Republican shell game shows how little substantive traction conservatives have with average voters outside their highly gerrymandered House districts.
Every time they open their mouths, Republican candidates show that they habitually bash President Obama to distract from the impression that they have neither the intention nor ability to help solve urgent problems facing the country.
Yep.
On the point of traction with average voters...
Economic equality and reproductive freedom are basic priorities for women voters, a group that Republicans already had a tough time winning over. The GOP even commissioned its own poll that found women voters are "barely receptive" to Republican ideas and think the party is "intolerant" and "stuck in the past." By their own deeds, not to mention rhetoric, Republicans just keep reinforcing their war on women and driving voters away.
With all of this, I say the GOP picks option two after they take back the Senate.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Voter ID Laws Backfire Across The Country
Take a look at this story from my local newspaper.
Less anticipated, however, was the robust and sometimes creative backlash that has followed from Democrats and their allies, who are launching a spirited counteroffensive that strategists say could end up benefiting party turnout on Election Day.
Uh oh...:)
So, where, pray tell, is this happening?
In Wisconsin, a photo ID law signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker led the mayor of liberal Madison to urge voting this November as an “act of defiance.” He wants city vans to take seniors to have their photos taken in time to vote.
North Carolina’s new voting laws, approved last year by the first GOP-led state Legislature since Reconstruction, spurred the NAACP to stage large-scale voter registration rallies that may explain why new Democratic registrations in some key counties are growing faster than new Republican registrations.
And in Georgia, Democrats turned the court’s decision into an unexpected opportunity. After justices set aside the provision that required the state to obtain federal approval before changing voting rules, Democratic-led counties realized they had the authority to expand early voting in their districts. So polls will be open around Atlanta for the first time on Sundays.
I wonder if conservatives really knew what they were doing by supporting Voter ID laws. A couple of key losses in swing states because of this backlash would be exactly what they deserve.
Less anticipated, however, was the robust and sometimes creative backlash that has followed from Democrats and their allies, who are launching a spirited counteroffensive that strategists say could end up benefiting party turnout on Election Day.
Uh oh...:)
So, where, pray tell, is this happening?
In Wisconsin, a photo ID law signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker led the mayor of liberal Madison to urge voting this November as an “act of defiance.” He wants city vans to take seniors to have their photos taken in time to vote.
North Carolina’s new voting laws, approved last year by the first GOP-led state Legislature since Reconstruction, spurred the NAACP to stage large-scale voter registration rallies that may explain why new Democratic registrations in some key counties are growing faster than new Republican registrations.
And in Georgia, Democrats turned the court’s decision into an unexpected opportunity. After justices set aside the provision that required the state to obtain federal approval before changing voting rules, Democratic-led counties realized they had the authority to expand early voting in their districts. So polls will be open around Atlanta for the first time on Sundays.
I wonder if conservatives really knew what they were doing by supporting Voter ID laws. A couple of key losses in swing states because of this backlash would be exactly what they deserve.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Jose, Can You See?
This redubbed video of a Scott Walker campaign ad is hilarious. Even more hilarious, it makes more sense than the original.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Second Amendment Trumps the First in Utah
Anita Sarkeesian, a critic of the way women are portrayed in video games, was forced to cancel a speech at Utah State University after the university could not guarantee her safety:
Homeland Security would be all over it. They would spare no expense to track down the author of the email. If no suspects were apprehended, and Coulter had the guts to proceed with the speech this is how things would go down.
There would be a large police and FBI presence. Coulter would wear Kevlar and stand behind a bulletproof screen. If some "Muslim-looking" people showed up the FBI would arrest them on the spot, especially if they had weapons. But if by some miracle the FBI didn't arrest them, and let them into the auditorium with their weapons, they would certainly segregate them from the rest of the audience, perhaps even isolating them in a bullet-proof glass enclosure so they couldn't shoot anyone.
And if they didn't isolate suspected Muslims with weapons and allowed them to freely mingle with the crowd, and they suddenly started firing on the crowd during the speech, a small group of gunmen could easily kill dozens or hundreds of people. The cops couldn't even fire on them for fear of hitting human shields. Sure, a bunch of right-wing gun nuts would also show up and "guard" each armed Muslim, but since bad guys shoot first they're sitting ducks. And as as soon as one shot was fired, everyone would start shooting, and you'd have hundreds of friendly fire deaths.
I therefore submit that a Utah university president would never allow misogynist Muslims the opportunity to assassinate Ann Coulter. They wouldn't cite Utah law, they would say that they would do anything to protect their students. And we would all applaud them for saving society from the scourge of Islamic terrorism.
Yet Utah State University is perfectly willing to give misogynist gamers the opportunity to assassinate Anita Sarkeesian and anyone who would listen to her.
Conservatives seem to think there's some intrinsic difference between a Muslim terrorist who blows himself up at a marketplace, and a gun-loving American narcissist who murders twenty school children and then commits suicide. They're both terrorists, they're both criminals, and they're both alienated from society and want to strike out and hurt people in a blaze of delusional glory.
The petty details of what motivates them are irrelevant: the underlying psychopathy is the same. Islamic terrorism is no more heinous than school shootings.
Dead is dead.
Tim Vitale, the spokesman, said that the school police told Ms. Sarkeesian that, under Utah law, they could not prevent attendees from bringing concealed weapons to the event.In Utah the rights of video game addicts to commit a massacre outweigh the rights of a woman to speak in public without fear of being killed like some sex object in a video game.
On Monday evening, members of the administration at Utah State University received an e-mail warning that a massacre would be carried out against attendees of the event.Now, to see how ridiculously idiotic this situation is, imagine what the reaction of school officials would be if Ann Coulter were the woman speaking, and a misogynist Muslim calling himself Osama bin Laden sent an email threatening to commit a massacre during the speech to "silence that harridan."
“This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history and I’m giving you a chance to stop it,” said the e-mail, which bore the name Marc Lepine, who killed 14 women in a mass shooting in Montreal in 1989 before taking his own life.
Homeland Security would be all over it. They would spare no expense to track down the author of the email. If no suspects were apprehended, and Coulter had the guts to proceed with the speech this is how things would go down.
There would be a large police and FBI presence. Coulter would wear Kevlar and stand behind a bulletproof screen. If some "Muslim-looking" people showed up the FBI would arrest them on the spot, especially if they had weapons. But if by some miracle the FBI didn't arrest them, and let them into the auditorium with their weapons, they would certainly segregate them from the rest of the audience, perhaps even isolating them in a bullet-proof glass enclosure so they couldn't shoot anyone.
And if they didn't isolate suspected Muslims with weapons and allowed them to freely mingle with the crowd, and they suddenly started firing on the crowd during the speech, a small group of gunmen could easily kill dozens or hundreds of people. The cops couldn't even fire on them for fear of hitting human shields. Sure, a bunch of right-wing gun nuts would also show up and "guard" each armed Muslim, but since bad guys shoot first they're sitting ducks. And as as soon as one shot was fired, everyone would start shooting, and you'd have hundreds of friendly fire deaths.
I therefore submit that a Utah university president would never allow misogynist Muslims the opportunity to assassinate Ann Coulter. They wouldn't cite Utah law, they would say that they would do anything to protect their students. And we would all applaud them for saving society from the scourge of Islamic terrorism.
Yet Utah State University is perfectly willing to give misogynist gamers the opportunity to assassinate Anita Sarkeesian and anyone who would listen to her.
Conservatives seem to think there's some intrinsic difference between a Muslim terrorist who blows himself up at a marketplace, and a gun-loving American narcissist who murders twenty school children and then commits suicide. They're both terrorists, they're both criminals, and they're both alienated from society and want to strike out and hurt people in a blaze of delusional glory.
The petty details of what motivates them are irrelevant: the underlying psychopathy is the same. Islamic terrorism is no more heinous than school shootings.
Dead is dead.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
Is The World Becoming More Peaceful?
Yes, it is.
Pinker points out that during World War II, the human population lost 300 of every 100,000 people each year. During the Korean War it was in the 20s, before dropping into the teens during the Vietnam era. In the 1980s and 1990s, it fell into the single digits. For most of the 21st century it’s been below one war death per 100,000 people per year.
There has been an uptick globally as a result of the civil war in Syria, doubling from 0.5 per 100,000 to 1. But Pinker says “you can’t compare 1 with 15 or 25 or 300.” Everywhere else in the world, the stats are still trending downward. The same is true for homicides.
Pretty fucking cool.
Pinker points out that during World War II, the human population lost 300 of every 100,000 people each year. During the Korean War it was in the 20s, before dropping into the teens during the Vietnam era. In the 1980s and 1990s, it fell into the single digits. For most of the 21st century it’s been below one war death per 100,000 people per year.
There has been an uptick globally as a result of the civil war in Syria, doubling from 0.5 per 100,000 to 1. But Pinker says “you can’t compare 1 with 15 or 25 or 300.” Everywhere else in the world, the stats are still trending downward. The same is true for homicides.
Pretty fucking cool.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Suddenly, South Dakota
It looks like the race for the Senate seat in South Dakota isn't as much of a slam dunk for the Republicans originally thought.
According to the Survey USA/KOTA/KSFY/Aberdeen American News poll taken between Oct. 1 and Oct. 6, Rounds is only leading independent Larry Pressler 35-32 percent among likely voters. (Pressler is a former GOP senator who has not said how he would caucus if elected.) Not far behind is Democrat Rick Weiland, with 28 percent.
Add in the fact that the Democrats are now going to spend $1 million dollars in the cheap advertising market there and suddenly the GOP is playing defense. This story could also have an impact on Rounds.
No doubt, this year's elections are going to be interesting. A common theme that I have noticed among the Democrats is a fear based strategy with the express intent of getting people out to vote. When the media speaks of Republican waves based on certain polls, the Democrats send out emails and voter registration goes up in the battleground states.
Take, for example, the Quinnipiac poll from mid September that showed Republican challenger Bob Beauprez 10 points ahead of John Hickenlooper in the Colorado governor's race. The Democrats made a lot of hay out of that one and now take a look at the polls. Hickenlooper has led in every one except the Fox poll in which they are tied. Of course, no one really took the Quinnipiac poll seriously anyway so this could be just a normal readjustment.
It's also important to note the number of likely voters when looking at these polls. RCP shows how many LVs there are with each poll. The CBS poll, for example, has nearly 1700 likely voters while the Fox poll has only 700. Obviously, the CBS poll is more accurate with a greater number of LVs.
We are only three weeks out, folks, and things are likely to get more exciting. I'm still at 51-49, GOP favor, for the Senate...the House staying more or less the same...and somewhere between 3-5 GOP governors getting the boot.
According to the Survey USA/KOTA/KSFY/Aberdeen American News poll taken between Oct. 1 and Oct. 6, Rounds is only leading independent Larry Pressler 35-32 percent among likely voters. (Pressler is a former GOP senator who has not said how he would caucus if elected.) Not far behind is Democrat Rick Weiland, with 28 percent.
Add in the fact that the Democrats are now going to spend $1 million dollars in the cheap advertising market there and suddenly the GOP is playing defense. This story could also have an impact on Rounds.
No doubt, this year's elections are going to be interesting. A common theme that I have noticed among the Democrats is a fear based strategy with the express intent of getting people out to vote. When the media speaks of Republican waves based on certain polls, the Democrats send out emails and voter registration goes up in the battleground states.
Take, for example, the Quinnipiac poll from mid September that showed Republican challenger Bob Beauprez 10 points ahead of John Hickenlooper in the Colorado governor's race. The Democrats made a lot of hay out of that one and now take a look at the polls. Hickenlooper has led in every one except the Fox poll in which they are tied. Of course, no one really took the Quinnipiac poll seriously anyway so this could be just a normal readjustment.
It's also important to note the number of likely voters when looking at these polls. RCP shows how many LVs there are with each poll. The CBS poll, for example, has nearly 1700 likely voters while the Fox poll has only 700. Obviously, the CBS poll is more accurate with a greater number of LVs.
We are only three weeks out, folks, and things are likely to get more exciting. I'm still at 51-49, GOP favor, for the Senate...the House staying more or less the same...and somewhere between 3-5 GOP governors getting the boot.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
100% Renewable
Burlington Vermont is now running on 100% renewable energy and I think that's pretty fucking cool. It's especially wonderful when you consider that the state of Vermont is planning on becoming the first state to be 100% renewable.
I wonder how many more states will follow suit...
I wonder how many more states will follow suit...
Thursday, October 09, 2014
A Cure for Diabetes on the Horizon?
A group of scientists at Harvard announced that they have found a way to make embryonic stem cells produce insulin:
The long-sought advance could eventually lead to new ways to help millions of people with diabetes.If this result holds up under further study, it could be a real cure for diabetes. The implications for the nation's health and the cost of health care is huge. Diabetes cost an estimated $245 billion in 2012, including direct medical costs associated with diabetes and indirect costs such as lost productivity.
Right now, many people with diabetes have to regularly check the level of sugar in their blood and inject themselves with insulin to keep the sugar in their blood in check. It's an imperfect treatment.
"This is kind of a life-support for diabetics," says Doug Melton, a stem-cell researcher at Harvard Medical School. "It doesn't cure the disease and leads to devastating complications of the disease."
People with poorly controlled diabetes can suffer complications such as blindness, amputations and heart attacks.
But the cost in human misery is incalculable. I have a sister-in-law whose son developed type I diabetes in elementary school. For the next several years her entire life revolved around measuring his blood sugar, planning out everything that that he would eat, and fretting every time he was late coming home from school that he had lapsed into a diabetic coma and lay dying alone.
But, incredibly, there are people who oppose this research:
"If, like me, someone considers the human embryo to be imbued with the same sorts of dignity that the rest of us have, then in fact this is morally problematic," says Daniel Sulmasy, a doctor and bioethicist at the University of Chicago. "It's the destruction of an individual unique human life for the sole purpose of helping other persons."Embryos are alive, and they contain human DNA, but they are not people: once they have been prepared for in vitro fertilization and frozen, they are just a cluster of cells. Using embryonic cells from these sources to cure diabetes is no less ethical than transplanting the heart from a brain-dead victim of a car accident, or using cadaver ligaments to fix a torn ACL, or cadaver corneas to restore vision in the blind.
If the sentiment that unique human lives should not be destroyed for helping other persons were consistently employed, opponents of embryonic stem cell research might have some moral integrity. But most of the detractors also favor the death penalty, in which a unique human life is destroyed for petty revenge, and want anyone to be free to buy a handgun on demand and to shoot anyone they think might hurt them, and if they mistakenly kill an innocent person believe the shooter should suffer no consequences.
In any case, this will not be the final step in researching a cure for diabetes:
Melton thinks he can also make insulin cells using another kind of stem cell known as an induced pluripotent stem cell, which doesn't destroy any embryos. He's trying to figure out if it works as well, and hopes to start testing his insulin cells in people with diabetes within three years.The goal for scientists is to figure out how switch a patient's own cells into such a pluripotent stem cell, which means no embryos would be involved. But scientists first have to figure out how stem cells differentiate into insulin cells naturally before they can coax adult cells back into stem cells.
Where do the stem cells whose dignity people like Sulmasy want to protect come from? Embryos that are left over after in vitro fertilization procedures. Embryos that would otherwise have to be destroyed are this very moment piling up by the hundreds of thousands in liquid nitrogen vats at in vitro fertilization clinics.
Does it really make more sense to incinerate those leftover cells, or to use a few of them to find a cure that save millions of people from debilitating and deadly diseases?
Could These Three Governors Be Going Bye Bye In A Month?
Take a look at these three governors...
They are Sam Brownback (Kansas), Rick Scott (Florida) and Scott Walker (Wisconsin). While everyone is hyper focused on the Senate and Republican "waves," I think that these three guys are all going to lose their jobs in a month. All of them have employed conservative policies in in their states and they haven't really gone over very well. Their opponents are ahead of them in most of the polls and their constituents are not happy at all.
So, if there is a wave of conservatism sweeping the nation, why are there guys in such trouble?
They are Sam Brownback (Kansas), Rick Scott (Florida) and Scott Walker (Wisconsin). While everyone is hyper focused on the Senate and Republican "waves," I think that these three guys are all going to lose their jobs in a month. All of them have employed conservative policies in in their states and they haven't really gone over very well. Their opponents are ahead of them in most of the polls and their constituents are not happy at all.
So, if there is a wave of conservatism sweeping the nation, why are there guys in such trouble?
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Obama's Numbers
From FactCheck.org.
The accompanying article really shows how looking at just one of these numbers isn't a barometer for measuring his success. So, what does it say when looking at all of the data?
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