Obsidian Wings

Your automotive technology open thread

by liberal japonicus

It has been tire week (or tyre week if you are so inclined) here at the lj household. Last Saturday, I had a presentation in Fukuoka with a colleague and another teacher came along, so I decided to drive. The night before, I went to our full service gas station (one of the joys of being here is full service gas stations. The additional cost isn't too bad, and it is so nice to pull in and not have to worry about doing anything. A brief moment of Zen) and I asked the attendant to make sure the tire pressure was fine for expressway driving. She said that the right front was low and I could have the garage check it if I had 20 minutes. Sure, and I went into the waiting room, helped myself to the free coffee and read my book. The guy said that the valve on the tire was leaking, but my tires were old, so I should think about getting them replaced. Well, I was going to Costco, so I figured I'd get them replaced there. There was a 2,000 yen off per tire coupon, and they fill the tires/tyres with nitrogen. Also, the next time I go in, they top off the nitrogen and rotate the tires for free. Bargain.

As is usual for me, I asked about putting nitrogen in tires, got an explanation that I sort of understood and when I got home, googled to fill in the gaps. Not any kind of amazing technology, but interesting enough.

So, talk about your car, or talk about something else. 

The Real Life of Thrones

by Doctor Science

What many, many of us (myself included) imagine when we hear the word "royalty":

Via: Screen Rant

The reality:

Book report: Japan's Medieval Population

by Doctor Science

I'll get back to some of the topics I've kind of left dangling, but first I need to put up a review of Japan's Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, And Warfare in a Transformative Age by William Wayne Farris before Inter Library Loan wants it back.

This is what I think of Inter Library Loan, btw:


this image taken, by me, from Dürer's "Triumphal Chariot of Maximilian I". (I got distracted into putting together a better version of the whole thing, but I'll post about that later. I digress.)

Japan's Medieval Population is just the sort of history book I love. It's a broad, rapid tour through material I knew basically nothing about, but with a framework I'm very familiar with. Farris uses crucial principles from William McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, which is one of the books that's shaped my thinking, as well.

your formless weekend open thread

by liberal japonicus

Comments in last week's open thread remind me I've not put this week's up. As Miyamoto Musashi said, water take the shape of it's container without losing its essence. How about you?

Guest Post: A Couple of Thoughts on Greg Mortenson

by Benjamin Orbach

I watched the 60 Minutes piece on Greg Mortenson with disappointment. If you haven’t heard of Greg Mortenson, he is a humanitarian that has built more than 100 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea (co-written with Oliver David Relin). Three Cups of Tea is the inspirational story of Mortenson’s personal journey from a lost K2 mountain climber to the founder of the Central Asia Institute, an organization devoted to children’s education, primarily girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If you haven’t watched the 60 Minutes piece, Mortenson is accused of embellishing his personal story and of his mismanagement of the Central Asia Institute. He has offered a partial response to the accusations – none of which are criminal – and I hope that he clarifies further the points that have been raised.

In the interim, I have two thoughts on the subject. First, by the impact of his actions, Greg Mortenson remains a hero. He built mountains from sand both on an individual and organizational level. He went from sleeping in his car to building more than 100 schools, many of them for girls, in villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Without his personal efforts and investment, there are thousands of young women who never would have had the opportunity for an education. There are about double that number of parents who have been able to see their children take a path to opportunity. In the end, that impact, and the future accomplishments of those children as productive citizens are more important to Mortenson’s legacy as a person and activist than the details of his personal narrative.

Second, however this story unfolds, Greg Mortenson’s actions were an extraordinary service to the American public.  His personal narrative, even if it turns out to be flawed, introduced millions of Americans to the concept of forming people-to-people partnerships to support the human development needs of local leaders and citizens. These partnerships and their impact are unquestionably in our country’s national interest, both at home and abroad. Three Cups of Tea ruled the bestseller lists at a time of acute disinterest and despair with the war and people of Afghanistan. The story that Mortenson and Oliver David Relin introduced to the world showed Americans the complexities, humanity, and needs of a people who were stereotyped en mass for harboring terrorists and abusing women.

Whether it is in Pakistan, Palestine, or Peru, if you have worked in development in a marginalized community, you understand the human element of it all – that parents want the same things for their children around the world and that young people aspire to dreams of their own success and normalcy if given the chance. Through his story, Mortenson took American readers – from Oprah book clubbers to servicemen about to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq – to a place of understanding that we are dealing with people in our foreign policies, not just faceless security issues. And from that, he inspired people to act – to donate and to serve. In this moment of national apathy, that is admirable.

Frequently, when I’m speaking about America’s Unofficial Ambassadors, I mention Greg Mortenson, his achievements, and comment that very few of us are going to devote our lives to building people-to-people partnerships in development in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, many if not all of us are able to engage in some type of short-term volunteer service for a week or a month or even a year in the Muslim World, as an English teacher in Indonesia perhaps or as a public health volunteer in Senegal. Mortenson is still hero. His actions have made the world a better place; he has mobilized tens of thousands of people to support the dreams of strangers in need. He understands that those dreams intersect with our American aspirations, and he educated people about that connection. None of us are perfect, and I’ll continue to cite Greg Mortenson as one of America’s fine Unofficial Ambassadors.

Benjamin Orbach is the Director of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning and the author of Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey through the Middle East.

The first obesity epidemic

by Doctor Science

A few months ago, I read Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham. Wrangham marshals many lines of very good evidence to argue that humans are physically adapted to cooked food. One unexplored prediction of his theory is that, when proto-humans starting eating cooked food, they must have experienced a true "obesity epidemic".

I'm cutting this because discussions of weight, etc., are so fraught.

scary scary debt

by russell

As we all know, the debt load carried by the federal government is a topic of great concern.  It's currently in the historically nosebleed territory of 100% of GDP.

I thought I was kinda concerned about that until I ran across this, and in particular this graph:

Federal debt is that green series.  Yes, it's growing, and is starting to approach levels we haven't seen since WWII.

But what the hell is going on with household debt (yellow series) and non-financial business debt (blue)?

And what the hell is going on with financial sector debt (orange)?

From the article:

In 1946, the total US debt-to-GDP ratio was 150%, with two-thirds of that held by the federal government. Since 1946, the federal government's debt-to-GDP ratio has since fallen by nearly half, to 54.8% of GDP in 2009. The debt-to-GDP ratio of the financial sector, by contrast, has increased from 1.35% in 1946 to 109.5% of GDP in 2009. The ratio for households has risen nearly as much, from 15.84% of GDP to 95.4% of GDP.^[1]

On April 2011, International Monetary Fund says, "The US lacks a "credibility strategy" to stabilise its mounting public debt, posing a small but significant risk of a new global economic crisis.

Where the "new global economic crisis" would, I surmise, be due to the fact that we - we, Americans, not we, the US government - are broke.

We're not there yet - total US debt is now about 3.5 times GDP, total US net worth is 5.2 times GDP.  But we, in the aggregate, owe about two thirds of our net worth.

I'm not an economist.  In some significant ways, I'm financially innumerate.  I just try to tag along.  Perhaps there's a reason why all of this is no big deal.  But it looks like a big deal to me. 

And it also looks, to me, like freaking out about federal debt is straining a gnat and swallowing a camel.

not a good sign

by russell

From today's Globe, more doctors gravitate toward boutique practice.  The nitty gritty at a glance:

• six doctors in MA will be converting to a concierge practice this year
• "concierge practice" means unlimited access to the doctor for an $1,800 rider above your insurance coverage
• two of the doctors profile will be reducing their patient load from 3,000 to 600, each
• at 600 patients, the $1,800 rider is $1,080,000.  A third goes to a services outsourcing company that administers the practice, the docs get $720,000 each to pay salaries etc.  That's *on top of* any and all reimbursements from insurance

Two doctors - six in the whole state - is not a lot.  But it's a trend, and a growing one.

The things that stand out to me are these:

3,000 patients per doctor?  How the hell does one doctor provide good general practice care to 3,000 people?  Are there enough doctors in this country?

If the price of admission to get from 3,000 people per doctor care to 600 people per doctor care is $1,800 per year, not everyone is going to be able to play.

If enough doctors reduce their patient load from 3,000 to 600, there are going to be a hell of a lot of 2400 patient cohorts looking for a doctor.

With a $720K carrot dangling in front of them, along with an 80% decrease in patient workload and the opportunity to provide really thorough, personal care to the 600 they end up with, what incentive is there for docs to say "no"?

Hard to find a really bad guy here, but it's also hard to see how this trend isn't going to harm a lot of people.

a current-events poem

by fiddler

Sonnet of a disgruntled citizenry

(with minor apologies to Homer, Chapman, et al.)

Sing, news, of Obama's promises, made
To voters who elected him to power.
Which has he kept? Wars' ends? Taxes paid
By the rich? An economy in flower?
New jobs for all who seek them? Emptying
Guantanamo's cells, its prisoners tried
By civilian courts? Oh, reporters, sing
Of DADT's end, so none need hide!

But this you cannot do. Obama's failed
To follow through on promises he made.
He's compromised his ship of state; it's sailed
By homophobic hands, masts sold, crew unpaid.
There's no respite for voters who feel vexed
But protest, organize for what comes next.

Your beer and geography open thread

by liberal japonicus

Whoops. I've got no classes on Friday for this new school year, which means that I try to get everything I haven't done all week done, which means I forgot the Friday open thread. So here is is. 

The fact that I had a night out with some others at a place in town that serves Bass Pale Ale draft may have also contributed. The place has a bunch of imported beers, but being able to get a pint seemed like a much more efficient delivery system. Though on a less frenetic day, I'd probably try and order something new. Normally, I'd order something I'd never tried, and, if it was bad, wash it down with something that I knew was good.

I also try to bring the occasional bottle home to drink and explain where it is from to my girls, hit wikipedia with them to find out more about the place. That's right, I'm an educational drinker. As such, I was incredibly pleased to find that the new upscale market in town has a number of new beers, both new to me and ones I've had in the past, but now can bring them home. Up next is Tusker, which I think my youngest will like for the elephant motif. Of course, with Wikipedia, you are not only educating your children, you are preparing them to be the most awesomest Jeopardy players in the world. I mean, what if they remember this:

The brand was first marketed in 1923, shortly after the founder of Kenya Breweries Ltd, George Hurst, was killed by an elephant during a hunting accident. It was in this year that the elephant logo, that is synonymous with Tusker Lager, was incorporated. 

"This alcoholic beverage is advertised with the slogan "Bia Yangu, Nchi Yangu", means "My Beer, My Country" in Swahili."

What is Tusker Beer, Alec.

So, an open thread to talk about beer, geography, or your efforts to educate the youth.

So what's your vice