Best Abstract Ever

Twitterings call it the “best abstract ever“. The lead author, Michael Berry, was awarded the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics (together with Andre Geim) for using magnets to levitate a frog. This new paper is a response to the recent reported measurements of neutrinos that apparently traveled faster than the speed of light.

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Dorothy Alstrup
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Current Events: Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

by Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen — far from any battlefield and with no due process — it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager’s life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people. News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki’s son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: “anyone killed by the U.S.”), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. As The New Yorker‘s Amy Davidson wrote: “Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the the quality of the government’s evidence — or the honesty of its claims — and about our own capacity for self-deception.” The boy’s grandfather said that he and his cousin were at a barbecue and preparing to eat when the U.S. attacked them by air and ended their lives. There are two points worth making about this:

(1) It is unknown whether the U.S. targeted the teenager or whether he was merely “collateral damage.” The reason that’s unknown is because the Obama administration refuses to tell us. Said the Post: “The officials would not discuss the attack in any detail, including who the target was.” So here we have yet again one of the most consequential acts a government can take — killing one of its own citizens, in this case a teenage boy — and the government refuses even to talk about what it did, why it did it, what its justification is, what evidence it possesses, or what principles it has embraced in general for such actions. Indeed, it refuses even to admit it did this, since it refuses even to admit that it has a drone program at all and that it is engaged in military action in Yemen. It’s just all shrouded in total secrecy.  (...)

(2) Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts.

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Planet of the Retired Apes

by Charles Seibert, NY Times

This past spring, in a secluded patch of forest in northwest Louisiana's Caddo Parish, a singularly bizarre bit of evolution unfolded. There, amid the sun-dappled pines and flitting birds, a pair of 40-something chimpanzees named Rita and Teresa -- lifetime research subjects who were originally taken from Africa for use in NASA's space program -- became American pioneers of a whole other sort: the first beneficiaries of an inspired piece of retirement legislation passed by the United States government. Under the watchful eyes of animal behaviorists, veterinarians, enrichment specialists and daily caretakers, Rita and Teresa checked in on the afternoon of April 4 at the recently opened Chimp Haven, the first federally financed, taxpayer-supported retirement home for chimpanzees.

They arrived in a specially equipped trailer after an eight-hour drive from the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Tex. After receiving full physicals from Chimp Haven's in-house veterinarian, including dental checkups for possible extractions or root canals, the two chimps were shown to their spacious new sleeping quarters, complete with fresh running water and cross-ventilation, multiple windows and skylights, hammocks made of neatly crosshatched sections of used fire hose, bedding of warm blankets and hay, vanity mirrors, as well as a TV, a VCR and DVD and CD players.

Following a long nap, Rita and Teresa awoke to a couple of banana smoothies and were shown the door to their courtyard. As it was recalled to me by a staff member, they paused a moment to regard the somewhat otherworldly prospect of a wide-open, odor-free patio, a playground jungle gym and, just beyond the play yard's far walls, their own private five-acre expanse of grapevine-laced pines and sweetgums. And then, as if in some unwitting primate pantomime of the very Apollo 11 moonwalk they'd helped to make a reality, they stepped out into the sunlight and tentatively down onto an equally unfamiliar earth.  (...)

Chimp Haven is a happy consequence of the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection (or Chimp) Act, passed in the final days of the Clinton administration. The bill allotted up to $30 million, pending matching funds from private donations, for the construction of the facility, which, with future expansions, could house as many as 900 chimps and serve as a template for the nationwide ''system of sanctuaries'' mandated by Congress to accommodate the country's growing number of surplus chimpanzees. Whether or not Chimp Haven is, as its publicity brochure proclaims, ''what chimpanzees dream of,'' a fellow primate -- a human being, let's say, also living in this country in the year 2005, when the future of Social Security and old-age pensions is very much in doubt -- could be forgiven for trying to pinch himself awake upon encountering the splendors of this monkey Delray Beach.

Still, for all of its feel-good aspects and carefully considered creature comforts, Chimp Haven is also a reflection of a darker set of realities, a particularly topsy-turvy time in the already tumultuous history of our so-called compact with the wild; a moment when the number of chimpanzees in the wilderness is rapidly decreasing and the number of those in captivity continues to rise. In fact, while chimpanzees in the wilderness are now officially designated endangered, those in captivity are not. There are an estimated 2,500 captive chimps in the United States, a number that's difficult to pinpoint because of the many private breeders still turning out baby chimps, mostly for private ownership or use in entertainment. Of the 1,500 or so laboratory chimps, nearly half are no longer being used for experimentation. Lab chimps today are largely confined to behavioral studies and hepatitis and malaria research, and an even greater number may soon be rendered unnecessary for research by advances in DNA analysis and computer modeling. As for the remaining refugees of entertainment and private ownership, their ranks continue to swell even though chimps are unmanageable much past the age of 6 and despite the fact that advances in computer animation may soon obviate altogether the need for actual animal performers.

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Photo: Zachary Scott for The New York Times

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Stones Touring Party 1972

[ed.  Having just finished Keith Richard's autobiography, I'd say this provides just a hint of how insane that tour actually was...]

The Rolling Stones embarked on their 1972 American tour to support the release of Exile on Main Street– which in and of itself was a push into new territory for the band, both musically and commercially. What followed rewrote the game for The Stones and the music industry, and basically set the stage for a decade of big, balls-out tours that went from being simple promotional vehicles the pop culture events. Nothing like this had been done in Rock ‘n’ Roll prior and all subsequent tours would follow the ’72 tour blueprint for scale, attempted musicality, logistics, legal entanglements, drugs, women, hilarity, hangers-on, and general debauchery.

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Mick Jagger & Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones on the  STP tour, 1972 –Image by © Ethan Russell

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After months in France at the now legendary Villa Nellcote recording Exile, Keith Richards (after being thrown out of France for drug charges) went to L.A. and there the album was remixed and completed for release in May of 1972. At this point a tour was in order. The Stones had not toured America since their Altamont disaster in 1969 (which led to heightened security– private planes, limos, and higher stages to reduce public access to the band), and being the biggest band in Rock and needing some cash, they set out to put together a tour like no other. What followed that June and July of ’72 is the stuff of legend. You could make the argument the overused term “party like a rock star” was born here. The private plane with the famous tongue logo, the glamorous celebrity hangers-on, the traveling press corps, the massive amount of drugs, and a much publicized four day orgy at the Chicago Playboy mansion are a few of the legendary tales to come out of the tour. The tour was covered by the press of the day like a Presidential election. What is interesting for me is that at this point the innocence of the 1960s, that somehow rock could change the world, was completely gone. The Stones killed it. The Stones were now a fully formed massive enterprise with the associated money deals, merchandising, and horde of lawyers, handlers, and spiritual advisors. This tour was not about changing the world– it was about money, fame, cynicism, celebrity and pushing the limits in every way possible. The “Me Decade” had officially begun.

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Part of a print series produced for Tokyo Fixed at the Hyper Japan event. It is inspired from Japanese ukiyo-e prints using a Risograph printing process to create a similar woodblock effect. The Samurai is riding a track frame based on the legendary Japanese frame builder Nagasawa.
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Current Events: Shell Game

[ed. “If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.” -- Warren Buffett]

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

If you have any doubt that Bank of America is in trouble, this development should settle it. I’m late to this important story broken this morning by Bob Ivry of Bloomberg, but both Bill Black (who I interviewed just now) and I see this as a desperate (or at the very best, remarkably inept) move by Bank of America’s management.

The short form via Bloomberg:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation…

Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit — held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.

That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.

Now you would expect this move to be driven by adverse selection, that BofA would move its WORST derivatives, that is, the ones that were riskiest or otherwise had high collateral posting requirements, to the sub. Bill Black confirmed that even though the details were sketchy, this is precisely what took place.  (...)

This changes the picture completely. This move reflects either criminal incompetence or abject corruption by the Fed. Even though I’ve expressed my doubts as to whether Dodd Frank resolutions will work, dumping derivatives into depositaries pretty much guarantees a Dodd Frank resolution will fail. Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed collateral. It’s well nigh impossible to have an orderly wind down in this scenario. You have a derivatives counterparty land grab and an abrupt insolvency. Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.

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[ed.  Everybody get those throw away lines?  $75 trillion in derivatives at BoA, $79 trillion at JPMorgan?]

by Mark Fredrickson
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The 99 Percent Declaration

[ed.  Since the Occupy movement has been somewhat of an organic process, which now includes other groups throughout the world, it's hard to know whether this is a legitimate representation of the movement in general or some faction trying to exert control.  Who delegated this group to speak for everyone and how did that happen?  Still, it's interesting to consider the full plate of grievances represented here.]

WHEREAS THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION PROVIDES:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.  (...)

At the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the 870 Delegates shall set forth, consider and vote upon a PETITION OF GRIEVANCES to be submitted to all members of Congress, The Supreme Court and President and each of the political candidates running in the nationwide Congressional and Presidential election in November 2012.  The Delegates of the National General Assembly shall vote upon and implement their own agenda, propagate their own rules and elect or appoint committee members as the Delegates see fit to accomplish their goal of presenting a PETITION OF GRIEVANCES from the 99% of Americans before the 2012 elections.

III. Proposed Petition for the Redress of Grievances:

The PETITION OF GRIEVANCES shall be non-partisan and address the critical issues now confronting the People of the United States. The Delegates shall deliberate and vote upon proposals for the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES in consultation with the People as the delegates to the first two Continental Congresses did. Below is a suggested list of grievances respectfully submitted by the OWS Working Group on the 99% Declaration. The final version of the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES voted upon by the Delegates of the National General Assembly MAY or MAY NOT include the following suggested issues: 

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Airlines Battle Back to Profit

[ed.  Bad news flight fans, seating is getting tighter and those additional fees everyone loves to hate?  They're not going anywhere.]

by Jad Mouawad, NY Times

The same things making many air travelers grumble these days — rising fares with more and more fees, fewer flights, planes filled to the brim — are the things giving airline executives a reason to smile.

After a decade of losing money because of cutthroat competition, slumping traveler demand and volatile fuel prices, the industry has found a way to regain control of its fortunes — and make money — by shelving its 1990s strategy of aggressive growth. Despite the weak economy, most domestic airlines will have their second consecutive profitable year in 2011, after losing $55 billion since 2001.  (...)

In 1990, tickets accounted for 88 percent of the airlines’ passenger revenue. In 2010, that share dropped to 71 percent. The new revenue accounted for most of the difference. Bag fees alone brought in revenue of more than $784 million in the first quarter — out of total revenue for the industry of $43 billion.

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photo: Brian Kersey/Associated Press

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Is Turbulence Dangerous?

by Patrick Smith, Salon

“As we cruised toward Portland, a thousand or so feet above the cottony peaks, the slamming came on with a vengeance. We requested a climb, but not soon enough. When the worst of the pummeling hit, it was like being stuck in an upside-down avalanche. Even with a shoulder harness pulled snug, I remember holding up one hand to brace myself, afraid my head might hit the ceiling.”

Turbulence: spiller of coffee, jostler of luggage, filler of barf bags, rattler of nerves. But is it a crasher of planes?

Judging by the reactions of many airline passengers, one would assume so. I’d been a commercial pilot for the better part of 10 years, a job that requires its share of impromptu coaching sessions with white-knucklers, and figured I had a pretty good grasp of the fearful flier mind-set. I didn’t. Not until I began writing for this magazine, and fielding questions from the public, did I realize how upsetting, if you’ll grant the pun, turbulence is for tens of thousands of travelers.

“Turbulence is the issue,” says Tom Bunn, a retired captain and licensed therapist. Bunn founded the nation’s most popular fearful flier program, SOAR. “It is far and away the No. 1 concern among my clients.”

Intuitively this makes sense. Everybody who steps on a plane is on some level uneasy, and there’s not a more poignant reminder of flying’s innate precariousness, and all its potential complications, than a good walloping at 37,000 feet. It’s easy to picture the airplane as a helpless dinghy caught unawares in a stormy sea. Boats are occasionally swamped, capsized or dashed into reefs by swells, are they not? Everything about it seems dangerous.

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Bob Dylan

[ed.  No video, but this is the best audio I could find.  A good song for the times.  And maybe a good slogan for the OWS movement. addendum: hmmm...seems like this video has has been deleted. Here's R.L Burnside's cover instead.]

Everything is Broken
by Bob Dylan

Broken lines, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds
Aint no use jivin, aint no use jokin
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts, streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Seems like every time you stop and turn around
Someone else has just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws, broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones, broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like youre chokin
Everything is broken

Every time you leave and go off some place
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken plows, broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools, people bending broken rules
Hound dog howlin, bullfrog croakin
Everything is broken

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Frank Lloyd Wright, 1946 | Source
A sheet of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal stationery; a much larger version of which is here.
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The Difference Between Bird Watching and Birding

by Jonathan Rosen, The New Yorker

Birding is the opposite of being at the movies—you’re outside, not sitting in a windowless box; you’re stalking wild animals, not looking at pictures of them. You’re dependent on weather, geography, time of day—if you miss the prothonotary warbler, there isn’t a midnight showing. On the other hand, birding, like moviegoing, is at heart voyeuristic, and you can’t do it without technology—to bring birds closer you must interpose binoculars between yourself and the wild world. To find them in the wild, you need planes, trains, automobiles, and motorboats. Birds are natural; birders aren’t.

And some birders are less natural than others, like the three characters at the heart of “The Big Year,” who are driven to see as many North American species as possible. They are genial caricatures of normal people, partly because they’re in a Hollywood movie, but mostly because they are birders. As a birder myself, I recognize the symptoms: I’ve travelled great distances to see birds; I’ve totted up the names of birds on lists and felt weirdly comforted, as if they guarded me against oblivion; I’ve listened, like Jack Black’s character, to birdcalls on my iPod. But I have to admit that at bottom I’m an indifferent birder, despite having written a book called “The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of the Nature.” At the end of the day I am a bird-watcher, not a birder.

This may seem like a pedantic distinction in an already marginal world, but it matters—though the two terms bleed into each other. Crudely put, bird-watchers look at birds; birders look for them. Ahab wasn’t fishing, and the guys in “The Big Year” aren’t watching birds, they’re scouring North America in a ruthless bid to tick off more species than anyone else. They don’t even have to see them—hearing their call is enough.

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Joni Mitchell

Urge for Going
by Joni Mitchell

I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row

I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

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The Great Tech War Of 2012

by Farhad Manjoo, Fast Company

To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more. This competition will be intense. Each of the four has shown competitive excellence, strategic genius, and superb execution that have left the rest of the world in the dust. HP, for example, tried to take a run at Apple head-on, with its TouchPad, the product of its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. HP bailed out after an embarrassingly short 49-day run, and it cost CEO Léo Apotheker his job. Microsoft's every move must be viewed as a reaction to the initiatives of these smarter, nimbler, and now, in the case of Apple, richer companies. When a company like Hulu goes on the block, these four companies are immediately seen as possible acquirers, and why not? They have the best weapons--weapons that will now be turned on one another as they seek more room to grow.

There was a time, not long ago, when you could sum up each company quite neatly: Apple made consumer electronics, Google ran a search engine, Amazon was a web store, and Facebook was a social network. How quaint that assessment seems today.  (...)

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google don't recognize any borders; they feel no qualms about marching beyond the walls of tech into retailing, advertising, publishing, movies, TV, communications, and even finance. Across the economy, these four companies are increasingly setting the agenda. Bezos, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Page look at the business world and justifiably imagine all of it funneling through their servers. Why not go for everything? And in their competition, each combatant is getting stronger, separating the quartet further from the rest of the pack.

Everyone reading this article is a customer of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google, and most probably count on all four. This passion for the Fab Four of business is reflected in the blogosphere's panting coverage of their every move. ExxonMobil may sometimes be the world's most valuable company, but can you name its CEO? Do you scour the Internet for rumors about its next product? As the four companies encroach further and further into one another's space, consumers look forward to cooler and cooler products. The coming years will be fascinating to watch because this is a competition that might reinvent our daily lives even more than the four have changed our habits in the past decade. And that, dear reader, is why you need a program guide to the battle ahead.

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Image: From left: The late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Larry Page, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. | Photos courtesy of David Paul Morris/Getty Images (Jobs); Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Zuckerberg); Chip East/Reuters (Page); Mario Tama/Getty Images (Bezos).