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Category: Science & Nature

The 2020 Colorado ballot proposition results

I’m mostly happy about the results.

Since I talked about my Colorado ballot proposition choices before the election, it’s only fair I report on how the People voted. Colors will indicate whether I won or lost.

Amendment B: Doing away with the Gallagher Amendment on Property Taxes

I voted YES. Result was YES (57-43). Colorado’s tax laws remain a mess, but this has yanked a few wires out of the tangle.

Amendment C: Easier / more profitable to run bingo-raffle games.

I voted NO. Result was YES (52/48), but fails by not reaching the required 55%. Changes in the ballot proposition system a few elections back means that some proposals require a 55% win. This one didn’t meet it, which I’m just as happy about, as the whole thing sounded like a scam.

Amendment 76: Edit a voting requirement to “must be a United States citizen”

I voted NO. Result was YES (63-37). A solution searching  for a problem, and a sop for nativists.

Amendment 77: Allow limited gaming towns to go hog-wild with games and stakes.

I voted NO. Result was YES (60-40). Some towns and community colleges will get a little richer. Some gambling companies will get a lot richer. A bunch of Coloradans will get a lot poorer.

Proposition EE: Nicotine tax on vaping products and smoking tobacco products.

I voted YES. Result was YES (68-32). Everyone loves a sin tax.

Proposition 113: Join the National Popular Vote compact?

I voted YES. Result was YES (52-48). The Electoral College sucks. Enough Coloradans feel that way, too.

Proposition 114: Reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado?

I voted YES. Result was YES (50.3-49.7). This one barely eked its way to victory. Oh, btw, the Trump Administration just announced gray wolves were off the Endangered Species List.

Proposition 115: Ban abortion at 22 weeks?

I voted NO. Result was NO (41-59). I wish the margin had been higher. But, then, I wish folk would stop putting this on the ballot every election.

Proposition 116: Cut state income tax from 4.63% to 4.55%

I voted NO. Result was YES (57-43). Most people won’t notice the difference, but state programs will. 

Proposition 117: Require voter approval of state enterprises that charge un-TABORed fees?

I voted NO. Result was YES (52-48). This state remains compulsively anti-tax.

Proposition 118: Create a paid family and medical leave program?

I voted YES. Result was YES (57-43). But we’re also kind of progressive on what we want government to do. Yes, that’s quite a contradiction. But I’ll take it on this one (though it will be up for referendum in two years based on the win of Prop 117).

Overall, I’m pretty pleased, going 7–4 on how I wanted the vote to go — and not losing on the ones I felt most strongly about. So … I’ll take my victories where I can.

Bang! Zoom! Straight to the Moon!

Donald is a bold, inspiration leader … in whatever direction Fox is talking about today.

Oh, look. President Random-Neuron-Firing is making arbitrary and inconsistent policy statements on Twitter. Again. I offer a shiny nickel to the first person who can identify the Fox News, etc., item that triggered him. #nasa #moon #trumptantrum https://t.co/AwbZH9gt9m

After months of proudly proclaiming that NASA was going to put us back on the Moon, for long-term occupation and exploration (said statements then faithfully echoed by NASA itself, as well as by VP Pence and other administration members), all of a sudden, Trump blurted this out yesterday:

Why the sudden change of heart? As far as anyone can tell, because an hour earlier, His Closest Advisors (Fox) said that the Moon was for chumps (and a bright, shiny nickel has been delivered to Stan for spotting this).

We literally have a president whose mood and policies on any given day are influenced by Fox News and Fox Business News. No matter what he’s said, even assuming he remembers it, a critique on Fox is enough to get him to pivot in another direction.

That would be annoying enough if we were just employees of his company (yes, I’ve worked for bosses like that). But as President of the United States? Yeesh.

Fire at the Cathedral

The damage to the 800+ year old Notre Dame structure is a cultural tragedy

As an historian, watching the gutting of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is wrenching. In my life, and in my studies, I’ve come to realize that nothing material is permanent, but watching entropy take its toll is awful.

It appears that most of the external structure is still intact, and at least some of the rose windows as well. What was there can be rebuilt, though as one scholar noted, the “layers of history” — the things that were tweaked, covered over, redone, repainted, revised over the centuries, that “revision trail” has been lost. One can theoretically replace the appearance of everything that was there (in such a highly photographed and studied structure), but it will always be a replacement.

From a Christian perspective, it’s both tragic as a loss, but also darkly ironic as Lent is wrapping up — Remember, man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return. Again, nothing material is permanent, and relying on such permanence is vanity and delusion.

My thoughts go out to the people of France, and Paris, and my appreciation to the fire fighters who struggled in the face of danger to protect what they could.

Do you want to know more?

 

Heading toward the last Roundup?

Monsanto’s weed-killer is, ironically, bringing down its new corporate owner.

Monsanto (now owned by German pharma giant Bayer) took a huge hit in court last week, with a jury finding that its star product, Roundup, is a carcinogen.

On Wednesday afternoon, German chemical giant Bayer sustained another costly legal defeat related to Monsanto, the US seed and pesticide giant it subsumed last year. A US District Court jury in San Francisco awarded plaintiff Edward Hardeman $80.3 million—including $75 million in damages—after ruling that Monsanto’s blockbuster glyphosate-based Roundup herbicides had caused his case of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

[…] On Thursday, yet another glyphosate trial opened in the Superior Court of California for the County of Alameda. The plaintiffs, a married couple named Alva and Alberta Pilliod, claim long-term exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them both to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Theirs is the first of more than 250 Roundup cancer cases consolidated before Superior Court of California Judge Winifred Smith.

Roundup is highly valuable to Monsanto, not just as a remarkably effective weed-killer, but by letting it sell Roundup-resistant seed, which makes weed-free farming terrifically easy (plant your seeds, spray it all with Roundup, and just the stuff you want grows). Monsanto has earned oodles of money that way — which is why Bayer’s stock has taken such a hit.

The company’s share price has plunged nearly 25 percent since the phase-one verdict on March 18, and by more than 40 percent since mid-August 2018, when a California Superior Court jury awarded school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson $289 million in damages after ruling that Roundup exposure had caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. (The award was later reduced to $78 million—roughly equal to the damages decided in the Hardeman case.)

As a home gardner, I love Roundup as much as anyone. But increasing evidence that its got some nasty effects led me to stop using it at home. Which doesn’t mean that the replacement weed killer I’m using won’t cause me to grow a second head, but that’s a story for another lawsuit.

Do you want to know more? The Latest $80 Million Cancer Judgment Is Just the Beginning of Roundup’s Woes – Mother Jones

Puerto Rico isn’t the only place being neglected post-hurricane

Maybe the Commander-in-Chief can ship the Marines at Camp Lejeune some paper towels.

Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, home of a third of the Marine Corps’ combat power, is still unrepaired after Hurricane Florence hit last year. And the next hurricane season is only months away.

Hurricane damage at Camp Lejeune

The Marines say they need $3.6 billion to repair the damage to more than 900 buildings at Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station New River, and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point caused by the storm and catastrophic flooding in its aftermath. And while they have torn down soggy, moldy walls, put tarps on roofs and moved Marines into trailers, so far they have not received a penny from the federal government to fix the damage.

Now the Marine Corps’ top officer is warning that readiness at Camp Lejeune — home to one third of the Corps’ total combat power — is degraded and “will continue to degrade given current conditions.” In a recent memo to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller cited, among other “negative factors,” the diversion of resources to the border, where the Trump administration has sent active-duty troops to patrol and plans to use military funding to pay for a wall.

Well, as long as the money is going to something important.

Do you want to know more? Camp Lejeune is still a mess 6 months after Hurricane Florence. Where’s the money for repairs?

NASA’s space suit problem

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or read SF that thought about this particular issue.

NASA had a bit of egg on its face recently when it had to cancel a two-woman space walk because, well, they only had one space suit in their mutual size.

But the reality is actually more complex — and even less complimentary to NASA and the general state of the nation’s space planning. The existing wardrobe of space suit pieces is over 40 years old, designed for the space shuttle program. NASA doesn’t have the budget to make new ones, and, as importantly, doesn’t know what sort of space suits to make as US space priorities seem to change every 4-8 years.

Do you want to know more? NASA Space Suits Were Never Designed to Fit Everyone – The Atlantic

We can solve climate change (if it exists) with MOAR AMERICAN BABIEZ!

“The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places: fall in love, get married and have some kids.”

Yes, in the “debate” in the GOP-dominated US Senate over the Green New Deal and how to respond to climate change, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) opined that all we need is America birthin’ more babies.

“Climate change . . . is a challenge of creativity, ingenuity and technological invention,” Lee said. “And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans. More people mean bigger markets for innovation. More babies mean more forward-looking adults — the sort we need to tackle long-term, large-scale problems.”

But — of course — not just any babies.

“American babies, in particular, are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing regions,” Lee said.

I suppose it’s possible Sen. Lee, rather than promoting overpopulation as a solution to global ills was merely poking fun at the principle of being a responsible shepherd or steward of the planet. In either case, it’s … kind of bizarre.

Do you want to know more? Sen. Mike Lee says we can solve climate change with more babies. Science says otherwise. – The Washington Post

All American citizens are equal, but some are more equal than others

Trump thinks the amount of food-stamp money going to Puerto Rico is “ridiculous”

Remember, these are American citizens.

The Casa Ismael clinic is short on funds in part because of cuts in food stamps that hit about 1.3 million residents of Puerto Rico this month — a new crisis for an island still struggling from the effects of Hurricane Maria in September 2017. “We just don’t have the money right now,” Izquierdo, 56, said in an interview in the clinic’s sparse first-floor office, where a chunk of ceiling tiles remains missing since the hurricane. Izquierdo pulled out a chart with each patient’s name, annotated with the cost of his adult diapers for the month. “It’s very hard. It is so unfair. That cut is going to kill us.”

The result is that “HIV-positive men with severe health complications” in the clinic get to sit in dirty diapers for hours because the clinic can’t afford to change them when soiled.

The federal government provided additional food-stamp aid to Puerto Rico after the hurricane, but Congress missed the deadline for reauthorization in March as it focused on other issues before leaving for a week-long recess. Federal lawmakers have also been stalled by the Trump administration, which has derided the extra aid as unnecessary. Now, about 43 percent of Puerto Rico’s residents are grappling with a sudden cut to a benefit they rely on for groceries and other essentials.

[…] The island would not need Congress to step in to fund its food-stamp and Medicaid programs if it were a state. For states, the federal government has committed to funding those programs’ needs, whatever the cost and without needing to take a vote. But Puerto Rico instead funds its programs through a block grant from the federal government, which needs to be regularly renewed, and also gives food-stamp benefits about 40 percent smaller than those of states.

Puerto Rico faces food-stamp crisis as Trump privately vents about federal aid to Hurricane Maria-battered island – The Washington Post

While Puerto Rico is dealing with people deciding whether they can afford rice and beans for the week, their president is pitching fits over giving them even the money they are getting.

The impasse comes amid a hardening opposition by the president against extending additional aid to Puerto Rico. Trump sees the island as fundamentally broken and has told advisers that no amount of money will ever fix its systemic problems.

He describes in meetings that large swaths of the island never had power to begin with and that it is “ridiculous” how much money is going to Puerto Rico in food-stamp aid, according to the senior official. He has occasionally groused about how ungrateful political officials in Puerto Rico were for the administration’s help, the official said.

[…] Since then, aides have described a president who regularly brings up the island to make sure it is not getting too much money.

Yeah, Donald — I’m pretty sure they’re not getting too much money. Not while their clinic patients have to sit in dirty diapers and citizens are cutting back on buying milk because of cuts to their food stamps.

Is Puerto Rico broken?  Well, it’s a US commonwealth. It’s people are US citizens. We took that island after the Spanish-American War. It’s our now. And, by the universal Law of Commercial Responsibility: You break it, you buy it.

I know that’s difficult for a guy who has a long record of stiffing subcontractors and walking away from deals while leaving others holding the bag … but we have a responsibility to Puerto Rico and its populace — American citizens all — if not just from a matter of humanity, then as a matter of the US Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Which most definitely includes our fellow People in Puerto Rico.

Pallas Cat

This put a huge smile on my face. https://t.co/Gd2mLFFyKv

OMG TEH CUTEZ!

Tweetizen Trump – 2019-03-17 – Weekend Edition

Apparently the President had a lot of time on his hands this weekend.

On Friday, March 15th, Donald Trump tweeted …

… A message of “warmest sympathy and best wishes” to the people of New Zealand after a white nationalist lunatic, who cited him as an inspiration, killed 49 people at a Christchurch mosque. Tweet

… A three-part tweet about how the Special Council should never have been appointed because of the “Fake Dossier” and “Crooked Hillary”. Tweet Tweet Tweet

… A Fox-inspired suggestion that Jewish people should leave the “Democrat” party. Tweet

… Thanking those GOP Senators who didn’t vote down his “national emergency” wall declaration, and how the voters back home will love them. Tweet

… Another two-part message sympathizing with New Zealand. Tweet Tweet

… A video of his signing a veto of the “extremely dangerous” bipartisan bill that passed the both houses, revoking his “national emergency” declaration. Tweet

… A message about severe weather in the Nebraska. Tweet

On Saturday, March 16th, Donald Trump tweeted …

… Two videos of Lou Dobbs on Fox News, nattering with people (including those foreign and domestic policy experts, “Diamond and Silk”) about the veto. Tweet Tweet

… Taking credit for the 420-0 House vote for the Mueller Report to be issued publicly (but not credit or blame for Lindsey Graham blocking it in the Senate). Tweet

… Some Fox News talking heads talking about Hillary and Her E-Mails. Still. Tweet

… A video of his vetoing the “national emergency override.” Again. Tweet

… A video of some Fox News talking heads talking about the Mueller Probe being biased and “Did the Clintons escape ‘Justice’?” Tweet

… Thanking a former Border Patrol Chief who went on Fox & Friends. Tweet

… The new Attorney General talking on video at the veto signing. Tweet

… Sheriff Andy Louderback of Texas talking on video at the veto signing. Tweet

… Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Massachusetts talking on video at the veto signing. Tweet

… A slick White House video purporting to show 247 people sneaking over an existing border fence. Tweet

… An attack on John McCain, who died last August, for his role in the Mueller investigation and in voting down the ACA repeal. Tweet

… Encouraging GM to re-open a plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Tweet

… Bashing Google for “helping China and their military” and for having supported Hillary Clinton. Tweet

… Bashing France for the Paris Environmental Accord and the Yellow Vest protests. “In the meantime, the United has gone to the top of all lists on the Environment.” Tweet

… Quoting a Fox and OANN report that the FBI, DOJ, and CIA were conspiring to spy and take him out back in 2015. Tweet

Today, March 17th, Donald Trump tweeted (so far) …

… A double-tweet complaint about SNL and Late Night Shows bash him alone, and how the FEC and FCC maybe should look into that, and probably it’s collusion with the Democrats and Russia and Fake News. Tweet Tweet

… How CNN was working with Christopher Steele on his “Fake Dossier”. Tweet

… An attack on John McCain (who died last August) regarding the “Fake Dossier”. Again. Tweet

… Happy St Patrick’s Day (with pictures). Tweet

… A three-Tweet round of support for Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson against the forces of Fake News and political correctness. “Be strong & prosper, be weak & die!” Tweet Tweet Tweet

… A video of Sheriff Thomas Hodgson being interviews on Fox News about how cool it was to be there when Trump signed his veto. Tweet

… Urging GM and the UAW to get that Lordstown auto plant back open, what with all the other car companies moving to the US “in droves”. Tweet

… Complaining about Fox News’ weekend anchors and suggesting they and Shepard Smith should be at CNN. Tweet

… Thanking those GOP Senators who didn’t vote down his “national emergency” wall declaration, and how the voters back home will love them. Again. Tweet

… Retweeting a supporter who attacked Meghan McCain for her criticism of Trump’s attacks on Joh McCain. Tweet

… Retweeting a supporter who says NPR admitted that border walls are effective. Tweet

… Retweeting a supporter who blogged about Trump defending Jeanine Pirro. Tweet

… Retweeting that same supporter about how Christopher Steele “admitted” he used information from CNN’s website. Tweet

… Retweeting that same supporter about how “Minnesota Democrats” are planning to “REMOVE” Ilhan Omar from Congress. Tweet

… Retweeting that same supporter about how a “Foreign Government Official Offered Hillary Clinton Campaign Dirt On Trump”. Tweet

… Retweeting a different supporter about Trump defending Jeanine Pirro. Tweet

… Retweeting another supporter with some memes about how the American People Support Trump. Tweet

… Retweeting his 2020 Campaign Manager about how Trump’s popularity is growing in Pennsylvania. Tweet

… Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Again. Tweet

… Retweeting a Fox News “contributor” about how “the chief thug on Mueller’s abusive goon squad” is leaving. Tweet

… Retweeting a supporter who agrees with him about those Fox News anchors he doesn’t like. Tweet

… Retweeting an OANN host about an MS-13 murder. Tweet

… Retweeting the same OANN host about CNN cutting off (though they don’t) someone being interviewed who says that the US government isn’t Islamaphobic and that Trump is beloved in the Muslim world. Tweet

… Retweeting a supporter who says “Russiagate” is actually a plot by the UK. Tweet

… Saying he doesn’t care what happens with that Lordstown auto plant, but someone better re-open it, because he’s not happy. Tweet

The Leader of the Free World, everyone! Please be sure to tip your waitstaff!

* * *

And, no this is still not normal. Except, perhaps, for Donald Trump. I mean — messages of sympathy to countries suffering a tragedy, wishes around a holiday, a statement or two about a policy action … those sorts of things one might expect a president to be tweeting.

Repeated attacks on political opponents (past and present, living and dead), attacks on investigations on him, shout-outs of support to media figures who support him and criticisms of those who don’t, firehose retweeting of supporters (from media figures to random joes who use way too many emojis in their handles) with all manner of fawning complements and vicious defenses … that sort of thing’s not normal. Nor should it be.

It’s like sometimes they don’t even bother to pretend they aren’t comic book villains

With gleeful commentary about what a fine distraction the President is

A top US official told a group of fossil fuel industry leaders that the Trump administration will soon issue a proposal making large portions of the Atlantic available for oil and gas development, and said that it is easier to work on such priorities because Donald Trump is skilled at sowing “absolutely thrilling” distractions, according to records of a meeting obtained by the Guardian.

Joe Balash, the assistant secretary for land and minerals management, was speaking to companies in the oil exploration business at a meeting of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors, or IAGC, last month.

Why, yes, let’s absolutely “drill, baby, drill” all along the Atlantic seaboard (except Florida, through special concession to its politically sensitive barely-tilting-GOP population). What could possibly go wrong?

A reminder of what could go wrong, courtesy of the Deepwater Horizon disaster

Just as interesting was this bit, which I guess was the sort of thing one says behind not-quite-closed doors:

“One of the things that I have found absolutely thrilling in working for this administration,” said Balash,“is the president has a knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else while we do all the work that needs to be done on behalf of the American people.”

Which raises the question of whether Trump does outrageous stuff and folk who want to operate without the “attention of the public” take advantage of it to scurry out under his cover? Or is Trump intentionally playing the media and public to allow these folk to do their own thing without that “attention.”?

In either case, it’s clear the Trump Administration focus is on cranking up American oil production as much as possible, which should make some large oil firms quite happy indeed.

Do you want to know more? US official reveals Atlantic drilling plan while hailing Trump’s ability to distract public | Environment | The Guardian

Beware the Bomb Cyclone!

It’s not enough to have just plain old blizzards any more

The phrase “bomb cyclone” (also known as ” explosive cyclogenesis” or by the possibly-even-creepier “bombogenesis”) actually means something, it seems — a “24-hour, 24-millibar drop in the pressure of a midlatitude storm.”

via Dago Cordova

Which we’ve apparently had in Denver, so the snow storm blowing in today — a heavy but not insane several inches — is also accompanied by major winds, which have already caused damage around the metro area, and is making it a Major Weather Event.

The combo was already severe enough to warrant schools to close for today proactively (James is gnashing his teeth in California that his old high school got a pre-announced snow day), and a lot of businesses are closing as well.

I chose to work from home, even though my commute is pretty short — there was no official announcement made, but apparently most folk at the office chose likewise.

We have power and heat, and plentiful food and wine, and absolutely no need to go anywhere today* (or possibly tomorrow). As long as our Internet holds out, we’re in good shape. Indeed, the biggest problem we have at the moment is the wind blowing wet snow across the windows so that we can’t see out. Which is not a bad problem to have.

Do you want to know more? Bomb cyclone officially takes place over Colorado

*unlike my boss, who was supposed to be flying back to Denver today from Lithuania. I suspect that trip is not going to go well, given the 1000+ flights canceled at DEN.

Animal Crackers no longer behind bars

PETA is a problematic organization, but kudos to Nabisco for updating their animal cracker box design, at PETA’s lobbying, to something other than animals being transported around behind bars.

Do you want to know more?  Animal Crackers Unveil New ‘Cage Free’ Design After PETA Protest | Rare

Bad Science Climate

If at first you fail to quash the science… create some counter-science. https://t.co/hqKRVTe180

Politics has become the new tribalism

An interesting look at how politics has become an increasingly powerful source of identity, not just an outcome of it.

People sometimes decry identity politics — “I’m an X, so I vote for That Party” or “I’m a Z, so I only vote for other Zs or Z supporters,” with religion, race, gender, class, etc., taking the part of the variables.

But there’s evidence that political party or political identity along one or another spectrum is beginning to trump the others. Looking at long-term surveys (where the subject was given the same questions across multiple years), researchers are seeing those other identities changing based on political identification. E.g.,

Liberal Democrats were much more likely than conservative Republicans to start identifying as Latino or saying that their ancestry was African, Asian or Hispanic.

Conservative Republicans were more likely than liberal Democrats to stop describing themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual; liberal-leaning Democrats were more likely to start identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Again, it’s not that these people were “actually” changing — their genetics weren’t switching around — but that how they perceived or identified themselves was realigning based on their (unchanged in labels) politics, or how those other labels were seen as part and parcel of those political ideologies, rather than separate factors.

That change in the last decade or so may also go along with other observations as to the rise of Big Ideas and the decline of compromise within politics; when political ideology becomes not just an outcome of your identity, but your identity itself, emotionality and an unforgiveness for backing down become more natural reactions.




Americans Are Shifting The Rest Of Their Identity To Match Their Politics
Welcome to Secret Identity, our regular column on identity and its role in politics and policy. We generally think of a person’s race or religion as being fixed…

Original Post

It’s not too late for Planet Pluto!

A new paper says the IAU’s claims around its definition for what a planet should be are flawed, and that Pluto fits the important aspects of planethood.

Stay tuned!




Pluto should be reclassified as a planet, experts say
The reason Pluto lost its planet status is not valid, according to new research.

Original Post

Welcome to California!

We arrived in SoCal this afternoon, delivering the boy to college. Whilst having dinner with my brother, we got a nice little "someone ran a truck into the building" kind of jolt (probably about 3 miles from the epicenter), with a small follow-up "ha-ha" a minute later.

No panic, no damage — heck the light over our table didn't even get to swinging (though another one in the restaurant did). But it was a good welcome to earthquake country for +James Hill.




Earthquake east of Los Angeles hits magnitude 4.4, USGS says
A 4.4-magnitude earthquake shook Southern California about 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Original Post

Letters and Alphabets

We take writing and language for granted, but there's remarkable history and variability in how it's all constructed across time and space with humanity, and even large variation today — not just in language, but in how we convey it in writing.

Originally shared by +Yonatan Zunger:

This is a great family tree of alphabets — and isn't very conjectural at all, since we actually know how writing spread. The color codes are by kinds of writing.

The oldest forms of writing are true pictograms, not shown here; these are scripts like the earliest forms of Egyptian, Sumerian, and Chinese writing, which are basically pictures (slightly stylized) of physical objects. These aren't full writing systems, in that they can generally only code things like "three sheep, four barrels of wine…"

These quickly evolved into logograms, a few of which are shown here in blue — not only the bulk of ancient Egyptian, but also modern Chinese and part of modern Japanese writing as well. In logograms, a small group of symbols represents a word, not phonetically but conceptually. (This is why the different Chinese languages, which sound almost nothing alike, can nonetheless share a single writing system! The writing codes ideas, not sounds.)

A common extension of logograms is to add sound representations, typically starting with using words to represent homonyms, and then adding logographic marks to indicate "the word symbolized by <X> which sounds like <Y>" to clarify synonyms, and so on. Nearly all logographic writing systems adopted this.

Ancient Egyptian did in particular, and an entire subbranch of its writing system started to adopt this more seriously, starting to use purely phonetic representations — that is, symbols that described sounds instead of concepts. This is one of the earliest forms of alphabetic writing.

This kind of "phonetic writing" then has a history which you can see here.

Abjads are scripts like Hebrew and Arabic, where each letter represents a syllable, but only uniquely describes the consonants; you're supposed to know the vowels from context. These work well in languages where the vowels vary following predictable rules and primarily indicate parts of speech, and so are still used in such languages to this day. (The name "abjad" comes from the first four letters of the old Arabic alphabet, a, b, j, and d.)

Abugidas (green) and alphabets (red) take this further, adding accent marks (in abugidas) or separate letter-signs (alphabets) for the vowels, as well. As Barry Powell argued in Homer and the Origins of the Greek Alphabet, this likely emerged as a pattern whenever abjads reached areas where the local language didn't have the same kinds of rules for vowels as Semitic languages, and the ability to explicitly code vowels was important for telling words apart — and, critically, for recording poetry and verse.

Finally, featural alphabets take the march towards phonetic clarity even further. The classic example of this is Hangul, the script invented for Korean in the 15th century. In these writing systems, symbols go beyond coding for sounds — they code for individual features, like "plosive sounds" (you stop the air and then suddenly release it, like t or p), "aspirated sounds" (with a breath), and so on. So for example, ㅌ can be immediately recognized as a voiceless, aspirated, alveolar plosive, or tʰ.

English is in many ways a strange case in this family. The Latin alphabet that it uses is a true alphabet: someone reading Latin immediately knows how to pronounce any word they see, just like someone reading Spanish or Polish would. But English both assembled its lexicon from a bunch of languages, and standardized its spelling system much earlier than most other modern languages — and unfortunately, did so not too long before a major change in how words were pronounced, which gives it all sorts of oddities like "silent e," how tough it is to cough through a rough slough, and so on. (There are not many languages where "being able to spell things correctly" is a televised sport!) In fact, despite its use of an alphabet, English is in many ways moving back towards being a logographic language, where you have to know what a word is (and which language it comes from) to know how to pronounce it.

Via +John Hardy

 

Original Post

Protecting the Administrator, not the Environment

Meanwhile, back in Scott Pruitt Land, we're building a private army, complete with "tactical polos," holsters, and bullet-proof vehicles and breaching kits. The security spending is approaching $5M.

I thought the Environmental Protection Agency was set up to, you know, protect the environment, not the business-friendly administrator.




Scott Pruitt Has Spent a Total of $4.6 Million on Security, New Disclosures Show — Including $1,500 on “Tactical Pants”
A Freedom of Information Act document shows the EPA administrator’s expenses jumped $1.1 million from the last disclosure a month ago.

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Judge tells EPA to put up or shut up on climate change “evidence”

Scott Pruitt walked into the EPA and, suddenly, CO2 was playing no substantive role in climate change, and climate change was a deeply controversial, disagreed-upon phenomenon.

Some people thought that Pruitt, in making a radical change of EPA stated scientific conclusions, might have some actual scientific justification for doing so, and submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request for what science went into that policy change. Pruitt and the EPA kind of shrugged, saying, “So much science, so much is unknown and unknowable, it’s all subjective anyway, this would be too much work.”

A Federal Judge has now called bullshit, and informed the EPA that they must comply with the FoIA request by 2 July, or explain why a bit more convincingly.

When the head of an agency makes a public statement that appears to contradict ‘the published research and conclusions of’ that agency, the FOIA provides a valuable tool for citizens… Compliance with such a request would help ‘ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.’




Judge orders EPA to disclose any science backing up Pruitt’s climate claims
EPA will have to comply with an information request by July.

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