Deadly cantaloupe kills 16 so far

That is seriously messed up. AP:

Health officials say as many as 16 people have died from possible listeria illnesses traced to Colorado cantaloupes, the deadliest food outbreak in more than a decade.

The CDC said Tuesday that they have confirmed two deaths in Texas and one death each in in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Last week the CDC reported two deaths in Colorado, four deaths in New Mexico, one in Oklahoma and one in Maryland.

Read the rest of this post...

About those 'faster than light neutrinos'

Over the past week there has been much frenzied speculation about the CERN experiment that appeared to demonstrate neutrinos traveling faster than light.

Its been twenty years since I worked in the field, but some of the speculation seems to be running ahead of the facts at this point. Many people have a lot of doubt about the results, including the people working on the experiment. The story broke when they circulated a draft of the paper asking people to look real hard for a mistake. The draft was leaked and made the headlines.

Experimentation is God's way of reminding physicists that physics is not an exact science. Errors can creep in in the most peculiar and unlikely of places. When I was at Oxford another group in the lab were replicating an experiment that appeared to show a very, very heavy neutrino, a particle that could not possibly exist according the standard model.

At first the replicated experiment appeared to show the same results as the first, confirming the discovery. Then after over a year of work they discovered that even though the counter in the second experiment was a different make from the first, it had the same parts inside. Eventually the anomalous observation was found to be an artifact introduced by the counter malfunctioning at a very specific temperature.

There are two possible sources of error in the experiment: The time of flight measurement may be wrong and the distance measurement may be wrong. Getting those measurements right to a few feet or nanoseconds is non-trivial when the source and detector are hundreds of miles apart. Furthermore the earth rotates on its axis and orbits the sun and so the detector is moving towards the source while the neutrinos are in flight.

There are plans to replicate the experiment at Fermilab. A lot of people will be very interested in their results. Even if the experimental result turns out to be correct it does not necessarily mean that we can look forward to having warp core technology in the near future.

Incidentally, while the Tevatron is closing down at Fermilab next week, this does not mean the "end of high energy physics in the US" as some of the scare stories would have it. CERN is a physics lab that happens to be in Europe, not a physics lab for Europeans. The US has been a major contributor to science at CERN for decades. There are 40 US institutions involved in the LHC ATLAS experiment alone. Read the rest of this post...

Bachmann warns 'Hezbollah plans Cuba Missiles'

Now if a Democrat said something this nutty the establishment media would laugh them off the public stage.

“And the question was asked, should we normalize trading with Cuba? Why would you normalize trading with a country that sponsors terror?” Bachmann said. “Cuba — there’s reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is potentially looking at wanting to be part of missile sites in Iran.

Eric Kleefeld makes a heroic effort to explain the origins of this conspiracy theory which appears to be based on an unsourced blog post and Bachmann's fevered imagination.

But what really caught my eye was Bachmann's claim that Obama is being soft on Cuba. The US trade embargo is now over forty years old and shows no sign of having any effect on the regime.

Trade sanctions can be a very powerful form of moral persuasion. The South African apartheid regime used to consider itself as a misunderstood but respected part of the Western world. European and US sanctions made clear that this was not true. Cuba does not see itself as being in the US orbit. On the contrary, the fact that little Cuba has managed to resist the pressure of the world's last super power is surely their biggest source of national pride.

One of the pivotal events in the Arab Spring was Obama's declaration in his Cairo speech that his administration's engagement in the Middle East would be based on mutual interests and mutual respect. The Cuban people are not going to revolt against their government for the sake of US interests and a bunch of elderly ex-pats living in Florida.

The best way for the US to put real pressure on the Cuban regime would be to drop the embargo completely and encourage as much US-Cuba trade as possible. The more tourists visit Cuba, the harder it is for the regime to control the local population. One of the main reasons that the Egyptian government resisted Mubarak's demand for a blood bath was that it would obviously kill the tourist trade.

Fidel Castro is 85 and his brother Raul is 80. Neither is immortal, a change in government in is inevitable in the next ten years. The US needs to get on the right side of history before that happens. That means standing for the interests of the Cuban people, not pandering to the voters of Florida. Read the rest of this post...

Housing prices are finally moving back up (albeit slowly)

Prices in January 2000 represent 100 in the graphic below (the graphic shows relatives prices today). So the higher the number attached to the city, the higher its home prices as compared to January of 2000. More on PBS's site. Interestingly, DC has the highest prices as compared to its prices in 2000, which goes along with recent reports that home prices were increasing in DC but nowhere else.

Read the rest of this post...

Tea Party wants to end dollar bill, replace with coin

I remember back in the day when the old pound note was replaced by a coin that was immediately dubbed a 'Thatcher' because it was hard, brassy and pretending to be a sovereign.

A bunch of Tea Partying GOP types are looking to do the same with the dollar bill, a move that they say would save $184 million a year. The proposal has met with bipartisan opposition from Massachusetts Senators Kerry and Brown. Could that be because dollar bill paper maker Crane and Co is in their state?

Perhaps the dollar coin would be more popular if shopkeepers had a space for it in their till. As of 2010 the US penny cost 1.79 cents to make. Eliminating the penny would make space for the dollar coin in tills and pockets alike and save another $30-50 million a year.

What do you think? Is this the Tea Party idea that might make sense or their stupidest notion yet?

NOTE FROM JOHN: We already tried this stupid idea once, and I don't know about you, but I got kind of tired of giving people a dollar coin when I thought I was giving them a quarter. I get the idea, it's like the euro, which seems to work in coins I guess - though get ready to have a sack of coins in your pocket every freaking day - but truly hated the damn thing last time around. You? Read the rest of this post...

Global warming "denialism" is becoming a tribal marker for Republicanism

You read that right. And tribal markers are always signs that the mind is being switch off, all over the right so to speak.

From the Associated Press (my emphases):

Tucked between treatises on algae and prehistoric turquoise beads, the study on page 460 of a long-ago issue of the U.S. journal Science drew little attention. ... But the headline on the 1975 report was bold: "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of "global warming" didn't set off an instant outcry of angry denial.

In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.

What's going on? The writer explains:

[Economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton] and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democratic gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign. ... Broecker has observed this deepening of the desire to disbelieve.

Did you catch that? America is Eco-Stupid's last fortress.

The author correctly identifies the cause of this change, and it's not just psychological:

[W]hen [NASA climatologist James] Hansen was called back to testify [before a U.S. Senate committee] in 1989, the White House of President George H.W. Bush edited this government scientist's remarks to water down his conclusions, and Hansen declined to appear.

That was the year U.S. oil and coal interests formed the Global Climate Coalition to combat efforts to shift economies away from their products. Britain's Royal Society and other researchers later determined that oil giant Exxon disbursed millions of dollars annually to think tanks and a handful of supposed experts to sow doubt about the facts.

The writer makes it clear the physics is incontrovertible. (Space and the U.S. Congress do not allow me to quote that section, but please do read for yourself.)

We're clearly living amidst a deadly combination — looming death of our species; a billionaire-financed ad and PR campaign to let the damage continue; and a tribal group of angry Teabags, led by their anti-environmental noses. Said the paper's author, Clive Hamilton in an interview:

"Climate denial has been incorporated in the broader movement of right-wing populism," he said, a movement that has "a visceral loathing of environmentalism."

It's like that recent Georgia execution of Troy Davis, a kind of childish in-your-face, "hippies can't stop me" defiance by Southern whites.

In this case it's "hippies can't stop us" from Wile E. Coyote Teabags, as they angrily saw at the planetary tree limb supporting their grand kids' lives.

Way to go, gramps.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Chris Christie trying really hard not to run in 2012

Well maybe I was wrong about last week's GOP Presidential debate. Maybe it made a difference after all. After watching him in the debates, My Republican friends tell me that they now think Perry is an idiot. Well better now than later I guess, did they really need to watch the debates to work that out?

This morning it seems like everyone wants Chris Christie to jump into the race.

I can't blame them. The Perry boomlet was fueled by the knowledge that Romney is an empty suit who will say anything to become President. The other candidates start to make Sarah Palin look like a better choice.

Too bad for the GOP inner clique: Christie just turned them down yet again through a spokesperson.

This should be no surprise. Christie has been a governor only a little over a year. If he runs in 2012 he would be up against an incumbent President in the general election. And before he got there he would have to pander to the same Tea Party base that have reduced the rest of the field to unelectable lunatic status.

With many states moving their primaries earlier in an attempt to be relevant, time for candidates to file is running out. Read the rest of this post...

NYPD says it was "appropriate" to pepper-spray women at Wall Street protest

James Fallows of the Atlantic disagrees:

According to the NYT, the chief police spokesman, Paul Browne, said that the policeman used pepper spray "appropriately." Great. On the video we can't hear what either side is saying. But at face value, the casualness of the officer who saunters over, sprays right in the women's eyes, and then slinks away without a backward glance, as if he'd just put down an animal, does not match my sense of "appropriate" behavior by officers of the law in a free society.

Think about it: If this were part of some concerted, "appropriate" crowd-control plan, then presumably the pepper-spray officer would have talked with the other policemen trying to control the women. He would have stayed on the scene; he had done something dramatic to affect a situation, so -- again, if this were "appropriate" -- presumably he would have talked with the other officers about what to do next. But look at that video and see what seems "appropriate" to you.

Police officers make countless hard decisions every day, often at the risk of their own safety or lives. It's a harder job than I have. But everything about this scene suggests an officer who has forgotten about some of these hard choices. He just zaps 'em and walks away as they scream.

If you haven't seen the video of the cop pepper-spraying the women, it's here. And pretty horrific. Read the rest of this post...

Loss of Olbermann hurting MSNBC’s ratings

NYT:

How badly has MSNBC been hurt by the loss of Keith Olbermann? Enough, apparently, to be on the verge of falling back into third place among the cable news networks.

The ratings results for the month of September show that CNN, long relegated to third place in the prime-time cable news competition, is edging its way back up, while MSNBC is moving in the other direction.

On MSNBC, meanwhile, Lawrence O’Donnell has lost 100,000 viewers from the numbers Mr. Olbermann posted last September, with 185,000 viewers in the 25-to-54 age group, a drop of 35 percent. (Bill O’Reilly on Fox, as always, dwarfs his competitors with about three times as many viewers, 611,000.)

More ominously, the falloff for Mr. O’Donnell seems to be affecting MSNBC’s biggest name, Rachel Maddow. Her audience dropped 15 percent this year, to 245,000 from 289,000. She still beats Piers Morgan on CNN in the 9 p.m. hour, but his show has improved 18 percent over Larry King’s ratings last year, with 193,000 viewers to Mr. King’s 164,000.

Read the rest of this post...

Horrific video of anti- Wall Street protesters being pepper-sprayed by NY cops

Watch this video to the end. The screams at the end are just horrific. I admit, I was one of those who kind of shrugged when I heard there was a sit in at Wall Street. Then I watched this video.



Will Bunch has more. Read the rest of this post...

Video: London trader dreams of market crash, another recession

BBC: Can you pin down exactly what would keep investors happy, make them feel more confident?

TRADER: That's a tough one.  Personally, it doesn't matter. I'm a trader.  I dont' care about that stuff... We don't really care how they're gonna fix the economy, how they're gonna fix the situation.  Our job is to make money from it.  And personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years.  I have a confession, which is, I go to bed every night, I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this.

BBC: Why?

TRADER: Because, people don't seem to maybe remember, the 30s Depression, the Depression in the 30s, wasn't just about a market crash.  There were some people who were prepared to make money from that crash.  And I think anybody can do that.  It isn't just for some people in the elite.  Anybody can make money, it's an opportunity.

BBC: If you could see the people around me, jaws have collectively dropped at what you just said.

So the industry that was rescued from the brink of collapse is gearing up (hoping) for the next market collapse. Interesting. On the one hand, sure, times like this are when fortunes are made and lost, but during the last collapse, this industry barely missed a beat. They came back stronger than ever because the political class believed that they needed to be saved, outrageous bonuses and all. Nobody wanted to trim the excessive payouts and so we're left with people like this trader who is drooling at the thought of impending doom for millions.  (It really gets good about a minute and a half into the video -- the BBC hosts are taken aback at how brazen this guy is.)

When the next bailout or TARP-like plan is rolled out, let's remember who we're saving and who is going to be left behind. Read the rest of this post...

Why can Intel figure out what the Republicans (and some Dems) can’t?

From "The Grey Matter":

Let me understand, Intel is smart enough to realize that with interest rates this low, it pays for them to float debt and use the proceeds to repurchase their stock. In other words, issue debt at an average of say 3% interest and buyback stock which will net 4+% in gains. A no-brainer for the corporate world.

Then why is it in a near-zero interest rate environment (real rates are actually negative) for the nation that we're not likewise taking advantage of cheap (free?) borrowing rates to increase debt in order to stimulate the economy, increase employment and frankly invest in our country literally via infrastructure projects? Studies show we need to invest trillions of dollars in bridge repair, etc., and these projects only get more expensive with delay. Best to take them on now while borrowing is very cheap, and it would serve to meaningfully boost employment.

It all just makes too much sense -- what's the catch? Oh right, Republicans don't want Democrats to do well next year. Party first, f*ck the country.

Joe Stiglitz made this very point, about it being a perfect time for a stimulus, to Chris and me during our interview last month:

"The only thing that can be done is fiscal stimulus, spending more money. And, the United States is in a sense a good position, because we can borrow at very low interest rates. We've underinvested in education, technology, infrastructure for a couple of decades, particularly in the Bush years The result of that is we have many high return investments, those investments pay far more than the cost of capital, and that means if we make those investments, the national debt in the intermediate term will actually be lower and debt sustainability will better, i.e., that is to say that the debt to GDP ratio will be lower."

Read the rest of this post...

The Angry Mob

Karen Finney, writing in The Hill:

Then, the unthinkable happened when the mob booed Stephen Hill, an American soldier currently serving in Iraq who happens to be gay. Not only did no one on the stage have the courage to stand up for Hill, none of the three debate moderators recognized the significance of that moment and asked the candidates about it. It brought back memories of another American hero, John Lewis, being called a racial slur that begins with “n,” by an angry mob during the healthcare debate. Simply shocking.

There have been some post-debate expressions of regret, but not much outrage. No one has apologized to Stephen Hill. At one point in time booing a service member — particularly one serving in a time of war — would have been quickly condemned, as Democratic leaders did in response to “General Betray-us,” which also crossed a line.

The question is whether anyone within the Republican Tea Party will have the courage to lead rather than feed the angry mob.

Over 9000 people have signed our open letter to the GOP candidates demanding they apologize for this affront to our troops.  Please sign it and send it around. Read the rest of this post...

What queer activists can teach progressives

Kerry Eleveld has an interesting piece in the Atlantic examining what lessons progressive activists can learn from gay rights activists. I've excerpted part of it over at AMERICAblog Gay. In a nutshell, who got at least one huge piece of legislation that they wanted?  The gays.  Who else?

And how did we get it?  By being a royal pain in the butt. Read the rest of this post...

New DNC video about gay soldier being booed by GOP debate crowd

Over 8700 people have signed our open letter to the GOP candidates demanding they apologize for this affront to our troops.  Please sign it and send it around. Read the rest of this post...