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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-09
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> “Both overall enemy-initiated attacks and effective enemy-initiated attacks during the fourth quarter of 2019 exceeded same-period levels in every year since recording began in 2010,” the report said. <
Other issues:
Libruls:
How the US empire stole the left's ideas – Joseph Massad /MEE
> [T]alk of the “agency” of the oppressed began to be deployed in defence of those who espouse imperial and racist ideas against their own people – and whom the US chooses as spokespeople for them. <
Speaking power to truth – The Critic
Patrick Porter reviews The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
> Even by the genre’s standards, the author is boringly self-obsessed. Mundane everyday life over-intrudes. She even commends herself for reproaching herself for her self-absorption. “I would catch myself feeling satisfied by a powerful speech I had made at the UN, or a compelling argument I had put before the President. I would then excoriate myself for measuring the wrong thing. “It’s not inputs that matter,” I would hear in my head. “It’s outcomes.”’ Aren’t you glad you didn’t write this? <
Assange:
Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer on the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
"A murderous system is being created before our very eyes" – Republik.ch
Russiagate:
Rosie memos @almostjingo – 1:40 UTC · Jan 30, 2020
Well geez this is awkward. Despite being told for years that "Internet Research Agency" was working for Putin the DOJ admits it's not going to offer any evidence in the case "that the Russian Government sponsored the alleged conspiracy" MUH RUSSIA. @TheJusticeDept
bigger
Fun:
Creating traffic jams in Google Maps by pulling a cart with 99 second hand smartphones – Simon Weckert
Use as open thread …
.C > ” You’re reassuring us, don’t worry, have patience, Nero will destroy the Empire one day, but in fact, he’s de..”
Wally does not do reverse psych. He repudiates cunning and tries to be blunt, and true, it’s in his character, genetic, I imagine…runs in the family. He has been known to stand up in church and contradict a preachers bs sermon (and get asked to leave). As did his dad…
I didn’t say that “don’t worry…”. It was a general. and Marxist, opinion. Ethics is circumstantial. You don’t make railroads until the steel is cheap. When it is, they can’t be stopped. Worry all you like. It doesn’t make steel.
Be ready. Times Change.
Russ, yes, I agree. Tight control exists, but it’s shaky…one rare event, a big one, would create Revolution, but it would have to overwhelm the apparatus of control. Most people would probably die right at the start. Perhaps a really Jolly CME, perhaps a big rock…maybe a lost war (gee yatink?) whatever, when it’s Time, it’s on. A matter of metastatic triggering. Empire and industrial civilization are highly metastatic, but cannot stop Change or Time.
I don’t see any harm in voting. But neither do I see much potential there. Like I said, vote, then they’ll call you to a jury, where the vote count is honest.
I note that Trident now has a nifty and ever so attractive 5 kt “weapon” that “they” say is usable. These are “deployed” (man I hate this wartalk lingo). If they fire a rocket from a US submarine nobody will know whether it’s a little bomb or a massive one… What will Comrade VVP do about the incoming? (he’s already promised this)
It’s obvious that they always double, that empire is in zuswang, and war is all they are able to see. That’s the “plan”…
If that goes forth, look for defeat, and revolution.
If/when, it’ll probably kill me. Nothing to ardently hope for.
……………
Russ | Feb 3 2020 15:38 utc | 133
Interesting, the steam engines (Watt et sec) gained from the understanding of concepts of heat as the equations were discovered, latent heats of materials, phase conservation, the Scottish distillers sent their boys to university and the investments paid off, sort of.
Then there’s Jevons…who described that improvements in efficiency increased the demand for resources, and did not reduce them. A sort of Malthusian engineering concept. This seems, in part, to suggest that the Re-emergence of Russian, Indian, and Chinese Empires, based on industrial growth, are headed for big trouble…
Not ’till later, of course. It’s a question of Time. And Change.
Posted by: Walter | Feb 3 2020 16:34 utc | 141
@krollchem #104
You said:
(1) My understanding is that the cost benefit ratio is improved when several horizontal lines “flared” from the same bore hole and that longer lines also improve reduce costs.
Very possible; as I noted, I have not done a deep dive in shale fracking. I would only add that there are certainly structural considerations when drilling from a single location – and that displacement probably is intended to address those. Or in other words: even if you could drill 100 bores from one spot in theory, in reality you might not want to due to structural integrity of the underlying base. Like poking 100 steel pins into the same piece of cloth.
(2) “the way fracking operates makes me think that parent/child is less of an issue – because the fracking itself is creating its own “catch basins”.” Good point, however in some cases it would result in more fracking fluids being used. The main downside (legal) is if there are two or more fracking horizontals close enough that fluid and condensate leaks from one to another and there are two operators sucking on the same straw.
Agreed, but that would be a function of cost, no? There may also be environmental impact difference – both positive and negative.
(4) I agree that there are technological improvements being brought on line such a pulse plasma technology (PPT) as a way to “blast” clogged horizontal fracking lines in the case of sandstone formations. I hesitate to overstate technology after reading several hundred comments at the oilprice.com website as I was the only one who could name a new technology (PPT) that would save the day.
No doubt – the prospect of money does provide incentive to innovate. Personally, it is my experience that major and rapid changes are extremely rarely due to a single innovation, but time will tell.
I still accept the arguments that EROEI still applies to hydrocarbon recovery as described at the Our Finite World website. However, if you consider other energy producing technologies there is great promise in other technologies such as the NuScale nuclear reactor that has been operating at Oregon State University for over 10 years. The Idaho DOE site will be installing several soon. The success of this approach is leading several other groups to design their own version of this type of safe reactor.
https://advantage.oregonstate.edu/feature-story/oregon-state-nuscale-partnership-powers-future-nuclear-energy
There is also the potential for using a local small NuScale nuclear reactor to produce heat to boil water and thus warm up the fracking lines to increase recovery.
Another technology already in operation for oil shale operations is heel to toe burning with injected oxygen to convert heavy Kerogens to a lighter hydrocarbon that can be pumped to the surface.
My EROEI views are based on economics – the Finite World arguments are based on ideology. Even the notion of EROEI under 1 is unsustainable is false – if the input energy is of a different form and desirability than the output energy.
As for nuclear: I would note that the notion that nuclear energy is going to replace fossil fuels in our lifetimes is extremely unclear. The ideological opposition by the “greens”, expressed through lawfare, is extreme.
Thanks for the kind and thoughtful response – it made me think outside the box!
No worries, I always appreciate other people’s insight, views and pointers to data.
Thank you for the considered discussion!
Posted by: c1ue | Feb 3 2020 17:30 utc | 154
Vk@114
With all respect to Darwin science has come a long way since his time. Evolution was a religious concept he applied to biology, and at least as applied to evolution of a species, had some degree of usefulness.
The doctrine of randomness has been projected as a matter of pre-existing philosophical belief. What the priests of evolutionary randomness would have us overlook is the fact that organisms are participants in, and revisers of, their own genomes. We must overlook the way the organism responds intelligently, and in accord with its own purposes, to whatever it encounters in its environment, including the environment of its own body, and including what we may prefer to view as “accidents.”
Overlooking all this, we are supposed to see blind, mindless, random, purposeless automatisms at the root of all genetic variation leading to evolutionary change.
Randomness in science is every bit as wishful as miracle is to religion. Simply a weak explanation for what is not known, requiring an extraordinary blind leap of faith.
In her 1983 Nobel address, geneticist Barbara McClintock cited various ways an organism responds to stress by, among other things, altering its own genome. “Some sensing mechanism must be present in these instances to alert the cell to imminent danger,” she said, adding that “a goal for the future would be to determine the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself, and how it utilizes this knowledge in a ‘thoughtful’ manner when challenged.”
By means of endlessly complex and interweaving processes, the organism sees to the replication of chromosomes in dividing cells, maintains surveillance for all sorts of damage, and repairs or alters damage when it occurs.
In certain human immune-system cells, portions of DNA are repeatedly cut and then stitched together in new patterns, yielding the huge variety of proteins required for recognizing an equally huge variety of foreign substances that need to be rendered harmless. The complexity of the immune response to a simple cold virus is mind boggling. Many types of cells, signaling proteins, various innate system molecules and adhesion molecules , etc working collectively and interactively to mount a offensive and defensive response, and not mindless cells each doing their own individual thing. Its a coordinated effort that puts the military to shame and could not possibly have evolved in a random manner
The human genome yields some 250 different cell types (and thousands of subtypes) , derived from a single cell type HSC, making cells for the brain and muscle, liver and skin, blood and retina. The genes in your stomach lining and the genes in the cornea of your eye are the “same” genes, and yet the immediate context makes very different things out of them.
Organisms generate new genetic material by duplicating entire genes, modifying them, and supplying them with regulatory elements. This can occur through direct duplication of genes or even larger chromosomal segments, and also through reverse transcription, whereby messenger RNA molecules, produced from DNA, are transcribed back into new DNA, which can then be modified.
For example, two duplicated genes can, via a number of different pathways, fuse into a single chimeric gene. And not only protein-coding RNAs, but also small regulatory RNAs can be reverse-transcribed into DNA and their functions diversified. And again, various repetitive and mobile elements called “transposons” can move around in the genome, often being duplicated in the process and then co-opted either as new protein-coding genes or new regulatory genes.
It has now been shown that transposons move around in the developing mammalian brain, altering the genome from cell to cell. They provide enough diversity among neurons so that we can optimize our response to a variety of environments . And now it is being found that transposons also “jump” in other cell types much more readily than was previously thought.
Recent findings support the existence of transposon-mediated gene regulatory innovation at the network level, a mechanism of gene regulation first suggested more than forty years ago by McClintock.
Southern Illinois University neuroscientist David G. King wrote that “the dictum, ‘Mutations are accidents,’ has grown obsolete,” adding that protocols for “the spontaneous, non-accidental production of genetic variation are deeply embedded in genomic architecture.”
With transposons, the organism reshapes its genome through elaborately organized and synchronized processes often affecting considerable stretches of DNA. A recent discovery is of protein-coding genes being composed “from scratch” — that is, from non-protein-coding genomic sequences altogether unrelated to pre-existing genes or transposable sequences.
According to the 1977 paper by the preeminent French biologist François Jacob the probability for creation of new protein-coding genes de novo (from scratch) by random processes “is practically zero.” And yet, recent work has uncovered a number of new protein-coding genes that apparently arose from previously noncoding (and nonrepetitive) DNA sequences.
If we take seriously Jacob’s “practically zero” probability for random, de novo assembly of functional, protein-coding genes from noncoding DNA sequences, then, given that such assembly does in fact somehow occur, the obvious thing to suspect is that the process is not random. Nor does the scale of the problem, as it is now emerging, look trivial.
Italian geneticist Vittorio Sgaramella, after noting the various alterations of the sequence throughout the cells of our bodies : “The human genome seems more complex but less autonomous than originally believed.”
Less autonomous because so many concerted activities of the organism are brought to bear on it.
And then there is the rapidly rising interest in neo-Lamarckian, epigenetically mediated inheritance of acquired characteristics. By one means or another, the organism pursues its own genomic alterations with remarkable insistence and subtlety.
All these revelations about coherent genomic change have prompted University of Chicago geneticist James A. Shapiro to speak of “natural genetic engineering.” “We have progressed from the Constant Genome, subject only to random, localized changes at a more or less constant mutation rate, to the Fluid Genome, subject to episodic, massive and non-random reorganizations capable of producing new functional architectures.”
Two geneticists from the University of Michigan Medical School, writing in Nature Reviews Genetics, remember how “it was previously thought that most genomic rearrangements formed randomly.” Now, however, “emerging data suggest that many are nonrandom, cell type-, cell stage- and locus-specific events. Recent studies have revealed novel cellular mechanisms and environmental cues that influence genomic rearrangements.”
Certainly from the organism’s side I see nothing to suggest any fundamental role for randomness.
Posted by: Pft | Feb 4 2020 0:22 utc | 182
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