Life on Mars: Bacteria tunnels in the dirt

NASA cut open a Martian meteor and found convincing evidence that bacteria were tunnelling in the glassy dirt.  See picture.   Found in 2000 on the Yamato glacier in the Antarctic, the rock has three dateable events: Formed from lava 1.3 billion years ago, splintered off Mars 12 million years ago and landed on the glacier 50,000 years ago. The curved tunnels and micro-tunnels are consistent with traces left by earthly bacteria in basaltic glasses.    For corroboration, there are also carbon rich nodules which have been found in another Martian meteor, a meteor which was collected right after it's fall was observed.   Source: Science Daily News

A low-level tide of life came and went on Mars before we appeared. That seems to be the scenario. I think life as an outcome is the norm when conditions suit.  It's like seeing a couple kissing and not being too surprised to see babies ten years later.   The potential for DNA devices that walk around and reproduce seems to be baked into the beginnings of the cosmos.  This same week brought the NASA announcement of another 700 planets found in our galaxy.  Stand by for updates.

Tiny Tim deep sixes Global Warming

Remember him singing "The Ice Caps Are Melting" in 1968?  He got it that global warming delivers believers a high and is as much religion as science.  "All the world is drowning, oh ho ho ho ho, to wash away the sin".Then there's, "windshields wiping, nowhere left to go!"  The rising waters will heal the land, suppress technology and business while allowing the flower power kids to live off the land in harmony with Gaia mother earth.  Lyrics.


The  4 minute song's a little creepy.  That gets the Global Warming movement about right. If the evidence was there and the advocates less doctrinaire, I'd join the movement too.   Evidence I see points to climate ripples in a proximate long term return to glaciation.

Three under-reported realities in the Ukraine. UPDATE

1.  Although Russia may wish to invade the Ukraine as they did Georgia,  "the correlation of forces" isn't good.

If the Russians invaded the Ukrainian armed forces would probably resist in an organized fashion. In 2008 Russia had a hard time scrounging up enough troops to invade Georgia. But Ukraine has more ten times the population of Georgia and Russia still has a largely dysfunctional armed forces with fewer than 100,000 troops (paratroopers and special forces) that they can really rely on. Russian military staffs are quite good at calculating the “correlation of forces” for an operation and predicting the probability of success and that math does not look good when it comes to invading Ukraine.  

What gives Russians pause is the fact ... the Ukrainians are still willing to fight and this time around you cannot keep the barbaric tactics used to suppress the rebellion out of the news.

2.   Money in the pocket persuades people.  The Ukraine or most of it will be looking west.

When the Cold War ended in 1991 Ukraine and neighboring Poland (both, until then, subjects of Russia) had the same (low) per-capita GDP. Since then Ukrainian per-capita GDP has declined 22 percent while Poland, which quickly developed economic and political ties with the West after 1990, has soared to the point where Polish per capita GDP is three times that of Ukraine. Put simply, most Ukrainians see links to the West as the key to economic growth and protection from Russian domination.

3.   Fracking is changing politics.  The Ukraine is within ten years of energy independence from the blackmail of Russia. 

Ukraine began 2013 by signing a $10 billion contract with a major oil company to develop shale gas fields in Ukraine. Within a decade this could eliminate the need to import natural gas from Russia. This would free Ukraine from Russian threats to halt gas shipments if Ukraine did not do as it was told.

The West can .. impose sanctions, which will hurt the Russian economy and the popularity of the current Russian government. Such sanctions are possible largely because of the development of fracking in the United States, which has enormously increased oil and gas production in North America and made Russian oil and gas less of a necessity to the West. It comes down to how much empire can Russia afford. Not much, especially when you own general staff tells you that there are not enough reliable troops to successfully invade Ukraine.

The above is from StrategyPage's "Russia: Fracking to Free Ukraine".  You can subscribe to a cheap daily newsletter from them.  For the price, nothing compares for deep background from a Machiavellian perspective.

Footnote 1: News stories that say Yanukovych had removed himself to the cityof Kharkiv don't come into perspective until you see the map. It's as close to Russia as you can get and still be in the Ukraine.
Footnote 2: Russia has a great naval base at Sevastopol. This involves Russian property and not just prestige.  If the Ukraine handles this like Cuba did Guantanamo Bay, that will tone down aggression.  (Update Feb. 27: News stories about armed pro-russian men at the airport in the Crimea point to this being the area where Russia can gain the most benefit with the least effort.)
Footnote 3: Conrad Black's article in the National Post makes clear how complex the past of this region is.

UPDATE:  Russian troops are in the Crimea and possibly digging trenches at the neck between Crimea and the rest of the state.   My footnote 2 should have been THE LEDE.  I think the correlation of forces is still correct as to the country as a whole.  An excellent read from Michael Totten who DID predict the absorption of Crimea back into Russia is here.
UPDATE:  The Crimea depends on the rest of Ukraine for power and food.  Hmmm.

Cheer Canada's hockey team. Promote world peace.

Go Canada Go!  At Sochi our men are in the third period as I type.

Brag up Canada and make the world a safer place. A cornucopia of nations is better for world peace than One World hype for the UN and EU and everything supranational.  Canadian Cincinnatus summarizes:

 "I don’t think it is a coincidence that the people rooting for a transnational superstate are big government types of one sort or the other. And fans of small, decentralized government tend to be nationalists".

 He links to Daniel Hamman's Telegraph story:

“Nationalism (is) the drive of people of the same language-group to form independent and unitary states". Nationalism in this sense was a direct consequence of democracy. When Europe was a patchwork of dynastic territories, formed by conquest, marriage and happenstance, it never occurred to anyone to let people decide which state to belong to".

"Our sense of common identity makes us willing to accept election results when we voted for the losers, pay taxes to support strangers, and obey laws with which we disagree.”

"Those who have done most to threaten peace, far from being nationalists, are usually proponents of trans-national ideologies. The Islamists today, like the Nazis and Soviets before them, claim to answer to a higher doctrine than the established rules of territorial jurisdiction and national sovereignty. The nation-state, rooted as it is in old loyalties, tends to be the surest defence against these enthusiasms.”

In Canada, the provinces should be standing firm against Ottawa for the right to make their own mistakes.  The United States does best as a federation of states and worst as a Big Brother Votapalooza centred in Washington DC.   And the mother-knows-best types that ban your best value light bulbs should honour our view.

UPDATE: We won!  The world is a better place.
Footnote: Christianity didn't make the list but has a strong supranational side as well.

The perfect Canadian light bulb

In Canada,  a good old incandescent bulb wastes no energy at all ten months of the year.
5% brightens your life and the warm 95% cuts your heat bill.  I despise the coalition of mother-knows-best types,  bulb builders switching us to high price merchandise and politicians who love being flattered. They brought us into this mess.  The bulbs that are cheapest to buy, safest to dispose of, quickest to turn on, warmest in colour and, thanks to the accidents of life, often just as long lived as the fancy-dancy twisty-pig-tail ones,  are being forced out.  We are the poorer.


LED and CFL lights are at times the best choice and may someday replace incandescents on merit.   Meanwhile, show voters the respect they are due.  I'll decide how to shine this light of mine.

Buy a beach for Canada

Canadians are popular in those sun and beach destinations down south.  Make one of them an offer they can't resist.  Join our federation as an associate member.   It doesn't have to be a tiny island.  Think big and go for Cuba.   Cubans, given a chance to vote, wouldn't laugh in our face. They'd say, "Tell us more what you mean by 'associate member'".    There's a sound currency and a chance to get off the island and new investment.   From our end, it'll be nice boarding a beach-bound plane using a driver's licence for i.d.    The old question of "who is my neighbour" used to be answered by who lives within walking distance of where I grew up.  The internet gives the new answer:  Your neighbours are the people you can reach out to easiest.

It's cheaper to fly from Toronto to Cuba than to Innuvik.  Innuvik for one is a $2500 round trip and for that money there's not even a hamburger or a bench to sleep on when you get there.  The same money gets a two week trip for two with hotel, drinks and food on a Cuban beach. The economics tell you that Cuba is closer to Toronto than Innuvik.  The price proves propinquity.

Just back from Los Cabos, Mexico, I've got sunny beaches on my mind.  Canadians seem to be the most popular tourists there.  As I unpacked Thursday night, the middle clothes were still warm from the perpetually perfect temperatures on the south Baja coast, even though the suitcase had been in an unheated hold on the jet.

Cuba: Associate member of the Canadian Federation.
That this will piss of the USA should not be a factor in the negotiation.

Policy explains thousands of cancelled flights.

Snow is the obvious culprit but policy makes weather havoc worse. From AP you learn there is a $25000 fine per passenger if a US plane sits loaded on the tarmac for more than three hours! Instead of just cancelling one weather-delayed flight, airlines will cancel blocks of flights rather than take a chance on a $4 million dollar fine for a loaded 737 that waits too long.  This also means they get to keep their planes out of the blizzard area, saving de-icing fees and making it easier to get back on schedule when the weather clears.   Avgas is the biggest cost, almost triple what it was ten years ago. To fill more seats each trip, airlines have cut back on the number of flights which means there are few alternate spaces to offer after they've cancelled your flight.  Cancelled flights save a lot of fuel money.  To top it off, US rules have become stricter about how much rest pilots must have.  Every time weather goes wonky, schedules go wonky and there are fewer pilots who pass the policy test to fly those planes in and out of the storm zone. (Information excerpted from the link which emphasizes weather but has the policies buried further down in the article.)

Rule of thumb:  Whenever you find a cluster fuck, there is policy helping create, sustain and exacerbate it.

Justin Trudeau and Sandra Fluke - separated at birth?

Two liberal darlings with the beautiful-me look and matching hair.

Divorce most likely between rich men and richer women

From priceonomics.com a chart of Swedish divorce data.
When the wife makes substantially more than the husband, the chance of divorce doubles.
When the husband is rich and the wife even richer, the rate of divorce triples.
Their summary: Money buys you options.

Cheap home-made mobility aid for getting in and out of a car

Make your own set of styrofoam steps to help with disability transfers into an automobile.
Buy a 2 ft x 8 ft. rigid blue styrofoam panel with a thickness of about 2- 3/8".
Cut it into two panels 1' x 8'.
Split one panel into two 4' lengths.

Click to enlarge.

Split the second panel in two lengths at 32" and two lengths at 16".
Using a caulking gun, apply a few beads of panel caulk to bond them in pairs (hiding the printed faces).
Then bond the pair of 16" to one end of the pair of 32".
Then bond that assembly to one end of the pair of 48".
Wrap it up to protect from dirt, oil and water.
I used a roll of the plastic stretch film they sell for wrapping loose things together when you move.

The result is a light-weight three-step pathway for someone to get aboard your car or truck. No step

Six pounds, easy to pick up one-handed, easy to store.

is higher than five inches.  It sits steady on the ground and isn't slippery.  Our 95 year old step mother needs a walker and can barely step up onto a curb.  She says it's slick and climbs in and out of a VW van with it. Best of all, she climbs and seats herself unaided.

I think I paid about $35 for the styrofoam, $6 for wrap from U-Haul, and $6 for the caulking,  We had a caulking gun in the shed.  I used a hand-saw to cut the panel which produced some clingy blue bits to clean up afterwards.

Polite pols still possible in civil society

Look who's sitting at the table en route to Mandela's funeral. Jean Chretien (turned 80 this week), Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper.  Dress is casual with smiles all round.  As the National Post adds,  our PM Harper sent a sincere video statement of appreciation to Jean for his birthday.

Don't be distracted by your surprise that they are about to dine well on a jet.  Remember instead that they can talk to one another civilly, even with friendship.  Much more is needed.   Partisanship works in a bipolar world but most matters are multi-lateral calling for discrimination and judgement, not knee-jerk politics.

The twenty first century will be Canada's

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and two tiny city states (Singapore and Hong Kong) are the easiest places on earth to start a new business.  The once great United States has fallen to 20th place in this World Bank survey, behind such stalwarts as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Malaysia.   Starting a business means getting prodded, delayed and taxed by bureaucrats before you can turn on the lights.  (The same applies at the other end when you have to downsize or shut a business.  It can take years and bankrupt you in some countries.)

The chart means Canada should network with the other top four.  They are tucked by the edge of up-and-coming but badly-run China and Canada is cozied up against the other somewhat badly-run super power. Canada, a former British dominion, has location-location-location.   Network with the city states and Britain's former dominions in the south seas.   A trading empire doesn't have to be a military one.  Remember a few centuries ago when Amsterdam, London , tiny Portugal and Spain were the heartbeat of world commerce?

Telling lies and getting away with it: Wendy Davis

After listening in recent years to liars saying, "I misspoke", I take my hat off to Texan Wendy Davis's inventive circumlocution.    Caught in biographical lies, she says, "My language should be tighter". What a breath of fresh mendacity.  Only Bill Clinton can claim a match to its audacity with, ""It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is".  Here is her invention in full:

"My language should be tighter. I’m learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the detail.”

Applying this system, if I say I have a hundred dollars but really have just one, my error s not a lie.  I have cast the net a bit wide and hooked the other 99 by mistake. If challenged, I thank my critics for new insight into the English language. We are all in favour of learning stuff.

Related: She made the news today with a gaffe for the ages.  She said of her wheel-chair-bound opponent for the Governor's position in Texas that he "hasn't walked a day in my shoes".

That's how it has been reported.  The original text is kind of empty, literally saying no one can prove she isn't proud of herself. I will buy that.

("I am proud of where I came from and I am proud of what I've been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn't walked a day in my shoes.”)

What we eat and what we are told to eat: Some surprising differences

This chart linked by barrelstrength compares what Americans actually eat (the blue) with what the USDA says they should be chowing down (the yellow).   We seem to get only potatoes right. Are you surprised we drink more fruit juice and eat more cheese than counselled?  And as barrelstrength points out, most veggies don't make the grade.  Are hundreds of millions of free-choice citizens wrong while some thousands of USDA employees are all in the right?  I doubt it.
  (Original story at Mother Jones.)

Living happily ever after both a bug and a feature

A year from now, your life expectancy will be more than it is today. DNA upgrades to your genome, skin and heart muscle rejuvenated by your own stem cells and medical cleverness will do this.   There will be no birthday congratulations from Canada's monarch until you hit the big 120.  This is a feature and a bug.

It's a feature to live long and well.  Just as 60 is the new 50, we'll be saying 100 is the new 80.   I've a half dozen friends and relations in the 95-100 range already.

It's a bug to pay for those extra 20 or 30 years from savings and pensions which were designed with the idea you'd drop dead long before.   Something has got to give.  Will the cost of living drop? Will high-tech do-it-yourself health care be cheap?  Will our work life stretch for decades more?  Will it be easier to accumulate riches?  Will we fade away in grey and wrinkled poverty?  I'm optimistic and maybe ahead of the curve.  Public policy will begin dealing with this soon.

How will we sort that out?

Image of King George V and centenarian from The Daily Mail.

Small is still beautiful: Richest nations are among the smallest.

Facts aren't with the pessimists who say the world is run by the US, the EU, China, OPEC and giant corporations.  Little Iceland recovered because it broke with the EU and the ten richest nations on earth are some of the smallest as Daniel Hannan points out in the Telegraph:

"The wealthiest states on Earth, measured by per capita GDP, are Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Qatar, Switzerland, Macau, Australia, the UAE, Kuwait, Sweden, San Marino and Jersey".

If you use a different set of data for 2013, Canada is at #11 and the US at #7 but there's another half dozen tiny countries in the first twenty.   It's fair to say Canada is among the smallest by population.

Bigger doesn't mean better

Politics should be dirty if if can't be civil.

The market in favours and earmarks is essential to getting policy in place in a contrary world. Without predictable signals based on self-interest, there's no rule book to get obstinate people signing off on legislation. Saints, or even reasonable and civil people, can work things out, but in their absence, a little corruption is the right lubricant.  As the editor of Slate writes:

David Plotz, Slate.

"Excessive hygiene is rampant in Washington. ... If politics is the art of compromise, we have a huge number of elected officials who are not politicians at all but rather zealots animated by ideology".    And referring to the US: "Some political systems, such as the incorruptible and efficient Scandinavian ones, can thrive without “dirty hands.” But ours can’t."

I hate corruption but, David Plotz may be right. "Bullying, retaliation, back-scratching --Chris Christie was on to something".   And again, "Having renounced Satan and all his works, Christie has given up his ability to kneecap and to bribe".

Creative bribery is a little stymied in Canada because the head of the ruling party and the prime minister and the person who can veto your run for parliament are the same person.   There's less negotiation and more party line voting than in the US.  (Think of Michael Chong's bill.).  I'd rather more negotiation.

I've commented before that politicians should be able to get rich and famous for doing the right thing. Instead of a hidden and corrupt rule book, have an open and appealing rule book that advances good policy while making pols rich.  Double pay for MPs every year the budget is balanced.  (Your idea here).

The Singularity is here for Us, but not for You and Me

The New Yorker proposes a Turing test.  Picture a black box with you holding a smartphone inside.  A time traveler from a hundred years ago gets to ask questions to figure who is in the box.  He will conclude you are a new kind  of super human.  You can tell him the square root of pi, supply an Arabic translation of the Declaration of Independence, tell him when to watch for a comet, recite any passage from Shakespeare, and supply the name of the three best restaurants in walking distance of the Tour Eiffel.   In other words, Neumann's singularity will have been reached and breached.

Link to New Yorker story

The New Yorker goes on:  "How you answer the question of whether we are getting smarter depends on how you classify “we.”    As a teaser, they suggest that individually, a human one hundred years ago may have been more intelligent in some ways with better reading skills, a knowledge of Latin, better at doing arithmetic and with a longer attention span.   When you add internet and the smartphone link, collectively we are amazing and new.

The best decision you will make in 2014 is probably one you could have made in 2013

Those global warming publicists who were helicoptered from a tight spot in antarctic ice are still down by the south polar ice shelf on a naval vessel.  Meanwhile, the Akademic Shokalskiy from which they were saved, has reached New Zealand after the ice cleared away again as forecast. It makes me laugh but the lesson isn't about schadenfreude.   Good decisions are rarely rushed decisions.  If the south polar luminaries had taken a little longer view of things, they'd already be home.

As a kid growing up in the Ottawa Valley, I beavered away every March to force free icy slabs that buried our drive.  Two weeks later, the neighbour, who didn't share my compulsion, had a clear drive too.  The sun did a fine job and only my impatience created the work.

Unhurried and profound decisions come up quietly in life.  There is no fanfare or swelling of the fiddles in the background music.  The opportunity to move to a community with better job opportunities can be there for a decade.   The chance to marry well and prosper while also happy can sit under your nose for months and even years.  The gumption to change diet and lose twenty five pounds may save your life and there is no economic barrier to start.  There was no deadline to become a father but I found treasure with my arms about my baby daughter and her brothers before her.

The best decision you will make in 2014 is probably one you could have made in 2013,
but didn't.

The first white man

DNA shows the first white man is a modern individual scarcely dead ten thousand years.  The Out-of-Africa movements that brought Our Kind Of People were basic black.  A single mutation in gene SLC24A5 explains a third of the colour change. A second gene right next to it (A111T) is co-inherited and this one has been tracked back to a single individual from near the Middle East and India.  Modern man expanded into Europe and Asia about 40,000 years ago and it was much later that whiteness showed up, perhaps favouring people who could easily make vitamin D from the reduced sunlight available further north.