Category Archives: Current Events

Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks

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ranger confidentialEver wonder what National Park rangers talk about when they swap war stories over a beer? In Ranger Confidential, Andrea Lankford offers you a chance to find out with this collection of related stories – a wonderful view into the nitty-gritty of rangers’ lives.

National parks are small, self-contained towns and must provide all the services that implies, from jails to restaurants. As one ranger noted, they are “cops, firemen, EMTs, and game wardens! All of the fun stuff in one job.”

The format allows you to dip in and out of chapters, hearing about the lives and experiences of several rangers, including the author. As you’d expect, these stories are the “most.” Most stupid, most frustrating, most unfair, most drunk.

Park visitors bring all the troubles of society with them.

  • Many of the stories are not G-rated. Early in the book one ranger arrests a man caught masturbating over a woman who was asleep on a beach.
  • There are kidnappings, fights, and nuts trying to blow rocks off Yosemite waterfalls with home made bombs.
  • Bureaucratic frustrations abound – you can’t apply for a full time (with benefits – an important point) federal job unless you have a full time federal job.
  • Climbing accidents can be horrific, and rescue or recovery dangerous.
  • Suicides are traumatic for responders, and there was a flurry of people driving their cars off the edge into the Grand Canyon after a popular movie ended with that very act.
  • “Tombstone humor” is common. Upon finding the decomposing body of a fallen climber after a long search, one ranger comments “I don’t think he’ll make it.”
  • Locals are often angry at rangers for enforcing rules so a night off “in town” can turn unpleasant. “Pine pigs” is one taunt.
  • Concession employees who live in the park can be as dangerous as visitors, with drunken fights and rapes.

Animals figure in stories, too. Continue reading →

Living on Almost Nothing in America

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$2 a dayThis book by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer says something important, though the style isn’t my favorite.

As Steven Pinker says, “if narratives without statistics are blind, statistics without narratives are empty.” My analytical mind leans to statistics while Edin and Shaefer lean to narratives.

The title comes from “one of the World Bank’s metrics of global poverty in the developing world – $2 per person per day… The official poverty line for a family of three in the United States worked out to about $16.50 per person, per day over the course of a year.” Even America’s definition of “deep poverty” is $8.30. I hadn’t expected to discover that 4% of Americans live in the poverty of $2 per day.

The book explains the history of federal government “welfare” in America, starting with States overwhelmed by Civil War widows and orphans, and continuing through the 1990s reform era to today.

Trapped
People are often trapped in $2 poverty by physical and mental health issues – their own or family members they care for. They live in areas where low-level jobs are few, but haven’t the money to move. The authors focus on heart-breaking stories of individuals who surely deserve better – like a young father who presses his shirt before going to a local store to seek a job – even while showing that the individuals deal with addicts, abusers, and craziness around them. But I can understand the difficulty of landing a job at a retail store if your teeth are rotted and your clothes are stained. Applying for government aid can require so much time, jumping through so many hoops, that it prevents individuals from seeking and holding jobs!

Failures throughout history
If you think all the deeply poor deserve their fate, read the stories here. Most $2 poor have a history of work and want to work. While some studies that establish such facts are explained in the book, in other places I wish a reference was included.

The authors say (missing those statistics and references again) that the old welfare system is not proven to create dependency, “indolence and single parenthood,” but that doesn’t really matter. Programs begun during the Great Depression that offered money, penalized mothers who had a husband in the family, and demanded nothing in exchange are “so out of sync with American values” they are “doomed to fail” in the long-term.

A majority of Americans reject “welfare” in polls, but “the number of Americans who thought we were spending too little on help for the poor actually rose” over time. The government is failing to deliver what most Americans want and what the poor need. Even the deeply poor hate “welfare” programs. Continue reading →

Happy to Be a GMO

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We’ve posted about GMO foods on this site, but some of the most interesting genetic engineering is happening in medicine. I’ve just found this story from last fall:

Gene silencing: The first Huntington’s Disease patients have been successfully dosed with gene silencing drugs targeting the HD gene. These brave volunteers are the first HD patients to ever be treated with drugs designed to attack HD at its root cause. hdbuzz

Scientists are changing genes – or, at least, gene expression – inside living human beings.

Huntington’s is caused by a mutated version of a gene that was inherited. You, I and everyone has two copies of the HD gene, one from mom and one from dad. If one of these copies has a repetitive bit of code near one it changes the way this gene does its job. Science doesn’t yet understand the details, but this fairly simple variation causes a horrible disease.

‘Gene silencing’ drugs, also known as ‘antisense’ drugs, are designed to reduce production of a chosen protein by attaching to the mRNA ‘message molecule’ that’s made whenever a gene is activated. medicalxpress

There’s a drug, pumped directly into the brain’s fluids, that targets the mutant gene and curtails production of a damaging protein. After trials on mice the technique has been used on human volunteers with early symptoms in a test of safety. There have been no complications over several months, but subjects will be evaluated in 2016. If the drug is deemed safe, trials of its effectiveness will proceed. A terrible disease could be cured.

You may ask,
What’s this got to do with Golden Rice or Arctic Apples?

It reinforces my opinion that knee-jerk reactions make no sense on either side. I doubt the Frankenfolk rendered disease free (if the drug pans out) will mind becoming GMOs.

Techniques vary, risks-to-benefits must be evaluated, and you may feel differently about genetic changes that effect only one organism or can be passed on to offspring. But GMOs are a growing part of our lives and seem to be responsibly researched. I wish the Huntington’s researchers luck and am still looking forward to my first Arctic Apple.

http://en.hdbuzz.net/204
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-10-patients-dosed-gene-silencing-drug.html
and other outlets

Iranian Hostage Crisis

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A review of a book about the crisis precedes this posting, and there are some recent developments. A New York Times article describes how Americans taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 have been granted compensation. A recent spending bill gives each of the 53 hostages or their estates up to $4.4 million, although there are still apparently some legal hurdles to be overcome. Legal claims had previously been blocked in the courts, but a decision to force a Paris-based bank BNP Paribas to pay a $9 billion penalty for sanction violations suddenly made money available for the hostages and other victims of state-sponsored terrorism. “Congress was also motivated by many members anger over the Iran nuclear accord.”

There are 37 of the original 52 hostages still alive who will be eligible for full payments. “Spouses and children are authorized to receive a lump payment of as much as $600,000.” An additional $2.8 billion will aid victims of the September 11, 2001 attack and their family members.

Beyond the current information of the compensation for hostages there is information in the review of the book about the crisis that haunts me. Iran is dominated by radical mullahs with no interest in the future of the world. They believe millions who die in a holy war will be ushered into paradise. Nuclear deterrence means nothing to them, because a nuclear holocaust “merely” results in more martyrs. The good news is that Iran released the hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. They were worried about what actions he might take, with indicates they were more pragmatic than their strict religious beliefs indicated.

Electric Cars Spur Demand for Coal Power

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The Washington Post published an interesting article about Rotterdam, Netherlands needing to build three new coal-fired power plants to recharge the electric vehicles as gasoline and diesel powered vehicles are being banned. The electric cars bought with generous tax incentives “…jostle for space at charging stations.” The article mentions that one recharge takes as much electricity as used by the average refrigerator in a month and a half. Coal provided 29 percent of the country’s electricity in 2014, and forecasts are that number won’t change by 2030. Efforts to ban coal generators have fallen to the cheap price of coal.

It costs about $20 to recharge a Tesla for a 250 mile range, which is cheaper than the cost of refueling with hydrocarbons. The Union of Concerned Scientists calculated that a gasoline powered car in Colorado that gets 34 miles to the gallon or more would be better for emissions than the average electric car. In New York, where hydroelectric is a major source of electricity, the gasoline powered car would have to get 112 miles per gallon to be equal.

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a rebuttal article stating that their calculations show that driving an electric vehicle anywhere in the U.S. is a better choice. It states that over two-thirds of Americans “…live in areas where an average EV (electric vehicle) is better than the most efficient hybrid gasoline vehicle on the market. Based on today’s sales, the average EV in the U.S. has emissions equivalent to a gasoline car getting 68 MPG.”

It is interesting to see this issue being debated. It sometimes seems the people driving electric vehicles might not realize the electricity has to come from somewhere. For the people in the alternative energy conscious people of Rotterdam, about a third of that comes from coal now and into the foreseeable future.

Drop the Battle Lines and Solve Problems

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RF_alum and I often bemoan the difficulty of extracting facts from contentious debates. From the Rocky Flats Plant to GMOs, ideologues are ready to abandon facts in their battle with long-standing opponents.

I’m an engineer but that doesn’t make me an expert in anything outside my field. I can’t read and evaluate primary sources from scientific journals – where I expect facts to arise. I don’t have the background, and life is short.

Like most people, I look for sources that seem trustworthy. I try to avoid ideologues, or at least listen to all sides, and use several fact-checkers. But I despair when our national dialogue is dominated by Red Team/Blue Team talking heads who just want to count coup.

What if the rhetoric changed?
What if the people you and I look to for leadership decided to solve problems and not just score points?

I ran into two hopeful interviews recently (links are at the bottom), where proposed changes in rhetoric could allow us to actually solve problems. In both these cases, partisans on all sides would have to open their hearts and minds to new ideas.

Climate Change
Republican Bob Inglis served six terms in the House, representing the very conservative 4th district of South Carolina.

I was my first six years in Congress saying that climate change was hooey, Al Gore’s imagination… All I knew was he was for it, and therefore, I was against it.

Based on viewing some of the evidence (on trips most of us can’t take) he says to fellow conservatives, be

…climate realists and energy optimists. We should be realistic about the science. And then let’s also be energy optimists, realize the power of free enterprise to fix this problem. If we would just put the cost on the fuels, then the free enterprise system would sort this out. And also, at the same time, we should eliminate all subsidies for all fuels. Then the innovation that would come from the free enterprise system would be exciting.

Inglis appeals to me. Leftist ideologues are dour, misanthropic killjoys. I don’t want to live in their world. But I do want to deal with climate change. It’s a slow-motion problem that will eat away at quality of life – for old farts like me, but especially for future generations.

Inglis wants to break away from the current rhetoric, which has backed too many of us into a corner. Continue reading →