Jun 11 2015

The Breakfast Club (A Nobel Doesn’t Cure Stupid)

You realize of course that we could never be friends.

Why not?

What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.

No you don’t.

Yes I do.

No you don’t.

Yes I do.

You only think you do.

You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?

No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.

They do not.

Do too.

They do not.

Do too.

How do you know?

Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.

So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?

No. You pretty much want to nail ’em too.

What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?

Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.

Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.

I guess not.

That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgUmm… what about this is so hard to understand?  Women are people (said in his best Chuck Heston impersonation)!  I don’t get this delusion of a great divide.  The differences between the sexes are 99% cultural and to all you all who claim that this or that bit of psychological mumbo-jumbo points to any other conclusion I say you have not adequately controlled for bias, which is pervasive from birth to death.

And, just as women are not controlled by their stereotypes, men also.  We’re not all slaves to our sexual desires.  Doesn’t mean we don’t have them, only that it’s perfectly possible to have a professional relationship, even a friendship, with a person with whom you wish you were more intimate.  Indeed the body of anecdotal evidence of men wanting to get out of the “friend zone” is vast.

But what about unattractive people?  Don’t you want to “nail ’em too”?  No.  Doesn’t mean I can’t work with them or develop a friendship (unless, of course, the reason they’re unattractive is that they’re a jerk).

How… Vulcan.  I have my moments.  Every decade or so I get besotted with someone who is completely unsuitable if not borderline psychopathic.  I confide this to protest my normality on the spectrum of fictional humanity.

I met her today in the maze. Her name is Billie. She’s of simple folk, fair and true.

You mean she’s stupid?

Do not mock a love-smitten mouse.

For the most part though I keep my eyes up (actually I rarely look at people directly because my eyesight is so bad) and I don’t care what you are provided you fit into my secret hidden agenda.

Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world!

Nobel Laureate Resigns Post After Derogatory Comments About Female Scientists

By DAN BILEFSKY, The New York Times

JUNE 11, 2015

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt told an audience at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea on Monday. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

…

“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he told the BBC. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”

He elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when confronted with criticism. “It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,” he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”

…

Mr. Hunt’s comments reflected the larger debate about the challenges facing women in science, with research suggesting they are forced to grapple with widespread sexism and gender bias. Referring to Mr. Hunt’s remarks, an article in The Independent newspaper in Britain noted: “With lab rats like him, is it any wonder there’s a shortage of women in science?”

A Yale study published in 2012 showed that science professors at American universities widely regarded female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same skills and accomplishments.

The result, the report found, was that professors were less prone to mentor female students, or to offer them a job. Presented with two imaginary applicants with identical accomplishments and qualifications, they were more likely to choose the man, and if the woman was chosen, she was offered a salary that, on average, was $4,000 lower than her male counterpart. The study concluded that rather than being the product of willful discrimination, the bias was probably an outgrowth of subconscious cultural influences.

Mr. Hunt is not the first high-profile figure to face criticism over comments about women in science. In 2006, Lawrence H. Summers resigned as president of Harvard University following a difficult tenure and some poorly received remarks, including his suggestion in a speech that “intrinsic aptitude” could explain the relative dearth of women excelling in science and mathematics.

Other Nobel winners have faced a backlash for ill-judged comments about women, including the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who explained in 2011 that he regarded female writers as inferior. “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian, adding that he thought the work is “unequal to me.”

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Obligatories

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD.  And I am highly organized.

This Day in History

News

Trainers Intended as Lift, but Quick Iraq Turnaround Is Unlikely

By MICHAEL R. GORDON, The New York Times

JUNE 10, 2015

The first anniversary of the Islamic State’s capture of Mosul in northern Iraq was this week. With the fall of Ramadi, the Islamic State now controls two of Iraq’s provincial capitals. Falluja, another city in Anbar some 40 miles west of Baghdad, has been controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, for nearly 18 months.

Antony J. Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, asserted recently that more than 10,000 Islamic State fighters had been killed since the start of the campaign. But the use of such metrics, which harkens back to the body counts of the Vietnam War, is not generally regarded by military officials as a major measure of success, especially since the ranks of the Islamic State are rapidly being replenished by thousands of volunteers.

…

On Wednesday, the White House was reluctant to say when it thought Ramadi might be retaken, or even if it expected that to occur before the end of the year. “I wouldn’t put any sort of timeline on it,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.

Kurds Have Bigger Prize in Mind After Political Gains in Turkey

By TIM ARANGO, The New York Times

JUNE 10, 2015

The election, in which the Kurdish party surpassed a threshold for the first time to enter Parliament, was the latest milestone in a broader trend: As the Middle East unravels, at great human cost, from wars and sectarian strife, the Kurds have moved doggedly through the chaos to secure more rights and autonomy for themselves.

Their electoral victory in Turkey was a historic watershed, a moment of political empowerment for the long-suppressed Kurdish minority, which fought a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

The victory was celebrated in Kurdish areas across the Middle East, reverberating in the mountains of northern Iraq, where Kurdish militants fighting the Turkish state have long hidden; in the halls of power in the Iraqi Kurdish capital, Erbil; and in enclaves in northern Syria where Kurdish fighters from around the region have flocked to battle the Islamic State and where Kurds are beginning to establish the infrastructure of their own government.

‘It’s a political failure’: how Sweden’s celebrated schools system fell into crisis

Sally Weale, The Guardian

Wednesday 10 June 2015 08.21 EDT

Observers in the UK may well be vexed upon reading about Sweden’s problems, since its friskolor policy – privately run schools funded by public money – was one of the key inspirations behind the introduction of free (charter) schools in England under the coalition government.

Prior to the 2010 election, Tory politicians including Michael Gove, who went on to become education secretary, visited Sweden to see the free-school revolution in action.

“If we had Swedish-style reforms there is every reason to believe that we would have up to 3,000 new schools, all of them high quality and with an independent ethos,” Gove enthused in 2008. “The example of Sweden shows that it is not a distant utopia, it is a deliverable reform.”

…

In the most recent Pisa assessment, in 2012, Sweden’s 15-year-olds ranked 28th out of 34 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in maths, and 27th in both reading and science, significantly below their Nordic neighbours.

Morale among teachers is low, there are concerns about unqualified teaching staff, discipline in some schools is poor and according to a damning report published by the OECD last month, the system is in need of “urgent change”.

Fridolin, who has a degree in teaching, says not only have scores in international tests gone down, inequality in the Swedish system has gone up. “This used to be the great success story of the Swedish system,” he said. “We could offer every child, regardless of their background, a really good education. The parents’ educational background is showing more and more in their grades.

“Instead of breaking up social differences and class differences in the education system, we have a system today that’s creating a wider gap between the ones that have and the ones that have not.”

UK intelligence agencies should keep mass surveillance powers, report says

by Ewen MacAskill, Nicholas Watt and Rowena Mason, The Guardian

Thursday 11 June 2015 08.58 EDT

However, Downing Street hinted that David Cameron was unlikely to accept one of his key recommendations: shifting the power to agree to warrants from home and foreign secretaries to a proposed new judicial commissioner.

…

There would be some new curbs on warrants, including “a tighter definition of the purposes for which it is sought, defined by operations or mission purposes”.

Anderson also proposed safeguards against snooping on journalists, lawyers and other groups. The report says that when communication data is sought from people handling privileged or confidential information, including doctors, lawyers, journalists, MPs or ministers, “special consideration and arrangements should be in place”.

…

But the removal of the power to approve warrants from ministers may never fly. Ministers will argue that democratically elected politicians are better placed to make these decisions rather than judges who do not have access to up-to-date information on terrorist threats.

The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries

by Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, The Guardian

Wednesday 10 June 2015 01.00 EDT

Every year on 15 September, thousands of Salvadorans celebrate the date when much of Central America gained independence from Spain. Fireworks are set off and marching bands parade through villages across the country. But, last year, in the town of San Isidro, in Cabañas, the festivities had a markedly different tone. Hundreds had gathered to protest against the mine. Gold mines often use cyanide to separate gold from ore, and widespread concern over already severe water contamination in El Salvador has helped fuel a powerful movement determined to keep the country’s minerals in the ground. In the central square, colourful banners were strung up, calling on OceanaGold to drop its case against the country and leave the area. Many were adorned with the slogan, “No a la mineria, Si a la vida” (No to mining, Yes to life).

On the same day, in Washington DC, Parada gathered his notes and shuffled into a suite of nondescript meeting rooms in the World Bank’s J building, across the street from its main headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. This is the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID): the primary institution for handling the cases that companies file against sovereign states. (The ICSID is not the sole venue for such cases; there are similar forums in London, Paris, Hong Kong and the Hague, among others.) The date of the hearing was not a coincidence, Parada said. The case has been framed in El Salvador as a test of the country’s sovereignty in the 21st century, and he suggested that it should be heard on Independence Day. “The ultimate question in this case,” he said, “is whether a foreign investor can force a government to change its laws to please the investor as opposed to the investor complying with the laws they find in the country.”

Most international investment treaties and free-trade deals grant foreign investors the right to activate this system, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), if they want to challenge government decisions affecting their investments. In Europe, this system has become a sticking point in negotiations over the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal proposed between the European Union and the US, which would massively extend its scope and power and make it harder to challenge in the future. Both France and Germany have said that they want access to investor-state dispute settlement removed from the TTIP treaty currently under discussion.

Investors have used this system not only to sue for compensation for alleged expropriation of land and factories, but also over a huge range of government measures, including environmental and social regulations, which they say infringe on their rights. Multinationals have sued to recover money they have already invested, but also for alleged lost profits and “expected future profits”. The number of suits filed against countries at the ICSID is now around 500 – and that figure is growing at an average rate of one case a week. The sums awarded in damages are so vast that investment funds have taken notice: corporations’ claims against states are now seen as assets that can be invested in or used as leverage to secure multimillion-dollar loans. Increasingly, companies are using the threat of a lawsuit at the ICSID to exert pressure on governments not to challenge investors’ actions.

USDA says egg prices to hit record high due to bird flu

Reuters

June 11, 2015 8:16AM ET

The impact of the losses is expected to stretch into next year, with USDA raising its estimate for average egg prices in 2016 to $1.36 to $1.47 per dozen from its May estimate of $1.28 to $1.39.

Consumers are already feeling the pinch. At a Mariano’s grocery store north of Chicago, signs affixed to refrigerated cases said the company had to raise egg prices because of the outbreak. They featured charts illustrating a 112 percent jump in egg costs since May.

“Prices for all egg sizes in all regions across the country are up due to the avian flu and a reduction of the national flock size, which has led to a shortage of eggs,” said James Hyland, a spokesman for Mariano’s owner Roundy’s Inc.

U.S. lawmakers vote to scrap meat labeling laws

By Krista Hughes, Reuters

Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:26pm EDT

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to repeal meat labeling laws, which were widely backed by U.S. consumer groups, after Canada and Mexico threatened $3 billion in trade sanctions.

The House voted 300-131 to repeal country-of-origin labeling (COOL) rules on beef, pork and poultry, after the World Trade Organization ruled they discriminated against imported meat.

The Senate must still approve the repeal. If the laws are not reversed, the U.S. faces costly retaliation from its closest trading partners. Canada wants to impose just over C$3 billion ($2.4 billion) in sanctions on U.S. imports while Mexico is looking for $653 million worth of punitive measures.

North American scientists call for end to tar sands mining

by Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

Wednesday 10 June 2015 13.14 EDT

More than 100 leading US and Canadian scientists called for a halt on future mining of the tar sands, saying extraction of the carbon-heavy fuel was incompatible with fighting climate change.

In a letter published on Wednesday, the researchers said tar sands crude should be relegated to a fuel of last resort, because it causes so much more carbon pollution than conventional oil.

…

“No new oil sands or related infrastructure projects should proceed unless consistent with an implemented plan to rapidly reduce carbon pollution, safeguard biodiversity, protect human health, and respect treaty rights.”

…

“The oil sands should be one of the first fuels we decide not to develop because of its carbon intensity,” said Thomas Sisk, professor of environmental science at Northern Arizona University, and one of the organisers of the letter.

“It is among the highest emitting fuels in terms of greenhouse gas emissions … If we are trying to address the climate crisis this high carbon intensive fuel should be among the first we forego as we move to an economy based around cleaner fuels.”

Dems threaten to sink Obama trade agenda

By Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Lauren French, Politico

11:19 AM EDT

Speaker John Boehner’s plan to bring a package of trade bills to the House floor Friday is proving to be a big gamble, as both senior Republicans and Democrats are privately wondering whether they have the votes to pass several key portions.

The most pressing concern is over Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program to retrain workers who lose their jobs to free trade. The initiative is not very popular with Republicans, and aides in both parties estimate that only 50 to 100 GOP lawmakers will vote for it. And with unions actively lobbying against the bill, a senior House Democratic aide said it will be “a major problem” to wrangle “significant House Democratic support” for the measure.

That jobs assistance bill needs 218 votes to pass. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a close ally of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has been vocal against TAA, and raising other objections about the package.

This is a serious problem for Obama. If TAA fails, the House will not take up Trade Promotion Authority, the key legislation that would give Obama fast-track authority to negotiate the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Under that scenario both sides would have to regroup and figure out a way forward – or else the 12-nation trade deal could fall apart.

Anti-Climate Provision Gives Democrats Fresh Reason To Oppose Obama On Trade

by Laura Barron-Lopez, Huffington Post

06/10/2015 9:01 pm EDT

The House is poised to vote on a package of trade bills, including fast-track authority for Obama, as early as Friday. Three additional trade bills will be considered, including a customs enforcement bill. Within the customs bill is the anti-climate language added by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has acted as the administration’s go-to person in the House on trade. Unless that language is first changed by the Rules Committee, it will stay in the bill.

…

Ryan offered the climate amendment to appeal to Republican concerns that Obama might use his trade powers to act on climate change. The measure would “ensure that trade agreements do not require changes to U.S. law or obligate the United States with respect to global warming or climate change.”

Ryan explained the language during a Rules Committee meeting Wednesday evening.

“It’s just making sure that if the administration wants to go down a path of seeking legislative changes in climate or immigration, they can’t do it through trade agreements,” Ryan said.

But Ryan’s gambit is failing to win over the right-wing groups, such as Americans for Limited Government , whose president, Rick Manning, slammed Ryan for cynical deal-making that didn’t do enough to shield the United States from addressing climate change. Manning also hammered other deals Ryan offered, such as a measure to curb Chinese steel dumping that aims to appeal to Democrats, and a provision to prevent immigration law changes that is meant to soothe Republicans.

“Paul Ryan is treating the customs bill as his own personal fast-track favor factory,” Manning said in a statement. “This is a desperate attempt to attract votes to the flawed [fast-track] bill. Even if the customs bill were to pass and be signed by the President, none of the provisions would compel President Obama to comply with them in any treaty that he should submit to Congress.” He added: “Voting to give Obama fast-track trade authority based on the slim hope he will follow a non-binding suggestion — when he doesn’t even follow the law as written — is both irresponsible and foolish.”

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