…about the ‘people’s war’ in Nepal? You know, the one where villages are caught in crossfire of the conflict, where about 17 people are killed every day, where Maoist rebels conscript children, where both sides (and those caught in-between) suffer torture and gang rape?
No, me neither.
(via World Press Review: War Without Ends)
https://www.swordbilled.com/havent-you-heard/
Via Financial Times, we learn that Swiss Re, one of the leading reinsurance companies in the world, says:
“There is a danger that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic systems in time.” (emphasis added)
The FT article elaborates:
The report comes as a growing number of policy experts warn that the environment is emerging as the security threat of the 21st century, eclipsing terrorism.
But you figure, what does Swiss Re know, right? Like, where does a reinsurance company get off, you know, predicting the future and, um, whatever? What do they know about these so-called environmental ‘issues’? About the risk of climate change? Natural disasters?
Oh, right.
Our core business segments are: risk transfer, risk finance and asset management.
…
Swiss Re is a recognised expert in the field of risk and capital management.
And…
For Swiss Re, history is more than simply the number of years the company has been in existence. It is the 140-year old bedrock upon which we build and shape our future every day. We see history as an important competitive advantage both in the present and in the future. On the one hand, our history is indicative of our long-standing partnerships with our clients, many of whom have been doing business with us for decades, and, in some cases, for over a century. On the other hand, it represents the experience in which our expertise in risk management is rooted. Large risks, such as earthquakes, are characterised by long return periods of between thirty, fifty and a hundred years, or more. When it comes to this kind of hazard, it pays to have expertise that is based on real experience.
Maybe this is just my heart talking—after all, I’m not exactly up on my risk assessment and all—but I’d say that the human race leading itself into a climatic catastrophe is a pretty damn serious risk.
https://www.swordbilled.com/spiraling-out-of-control-happy-thoughts-think-happy-thoughts/
(2000) dir. David Mamet – starring Rebecca Pidgeon and Philip Seymour Hoffman, with a bunch of other people
Synopsis: Movie crew invades small-town New England. Nothing goes as planned. Townspeople, movie stars, and everybody makes fools of themselves. Hilarity ensues. In a quirky, offbeat kind of way. And there’s an unexpected love story.
Review: A very Mametty film. Which is to say that it’s clever without being too clever for its own good, and funny in a self-depracating kind of way, with a story that seems shallow but isn’t and characters that are more than they appear. This movie doesn’t have quite the level of back-and-forth conversation as some other Mamet movies, but it’s still quite good. PS Hoffman in a very interesting role that he does very well. Rebecca Pidgeon in a role that is very Rebecca Pidgeon, which is to say excellently put-together. And lots of other characters, busy providing side-stories (and some not-so-side stories) and comic moments. A fun movie that manages to end up being feel-good without being banal or trite (most times). This isn’t exactly the movie you’ll want to take with you on a trip to Jupiter if you can only take one video/DVD, but it’s good fun. Or maybe you would, I don’t know.
Rating: [•••¾] out of [•••••]
Etc.: Bunky: “Well, it takes all kinds.”
Spud: “Is that what it takes? I always wondered.”
also: imdb info
https://www.swordbilled.com/state-and-main/
People had different reactions to the whole thing. Some were surprised that anything had happened at all. Some were disgusted, angry at Essjay (inexplicably) for provoking Baruch; put off by the actual violence; made nauseous by the sight of blood and a distinctly out-of-line nose; frightened of Baruch; sympathetic of Essjay but only in a generic way, sympathetic more for his situation than for his actual person; and so on.
…
“Hello, is this Dr. Wilson?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Yes, this is Stanley Mortenson…”
“Bleeder?”
“Yes, well—how are you?”
“I haven’t heard from you in years. I’m fine, I guess. Doing pretty well yourself? How are you holding up?”
“Oh, pretty good, I’d say. Listen, I was wondering if I could call on you for a favor.”
“Shoot.”
“It has to do with— I’m running for Congress, is what it has to do with.”
“No shit?”
…
“I don’t know,” I shouted back. You had to shout to be heard over the TV, blaring, set to vol level 37 to cover our conversation, as it were. None of us was tech-savvy enough to sweep the room for bugs (surveillance devices), so we opted for background noise. Sure, there was the possibility that some sunlight-deprived maven at the NSA could break through our shoddily-constructed sonic barrier; we hoped no one cared enough to be thusly motivated.
https://www.swordbilled.com/one-of-these-fragments-is-not-like-the-others/
https://www.swordbilled.com/round-up/
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Biomimicry looks at the ways in which we can learn by studying nature. By (surprise!) biomimicry, as it’s called. This book is surprisingly well-written, thorough, and imaginative. JB’s incredible enthusiasm for the topic is infectious, and helps make the book a quick read. You’ll find yourself quite unexpectedly agreeing that, yes, mussels are fascinating. Benyus explains topics as diverse as perennials and proteins, computer microprocessors and spiderwebs. What’s more, she does it exceptionally well.
Usefully, the chapters are more or less stand-alone items, linking up with themes from other chapters but self-contained in terms of information; you could (with the exceptions of the first and last chapters) read the chapters in this book in whatever order made sense to you. While I’d heartily encourage you to read the whole thing, you wouldn’t need to—if, for instance, your interests happened to coincide with certain chapters and not others. E.g., if you were interested in biomimicry in agriculture but not, say, materials science, you could read chapter 2 and skip chapter 4. Or vice-versa. Or whatever. (Another benefit of this arrangement is that reading the book does not require intense concentration. You the reader do not need to remember a complex process from page 56 in order to understand another idea presented on page 187.)
While in some ways pessimistic (mounting ecological problems are not exactly a positive side-note to the whole endeavor), the book is for the most part upbeat and optimistic—convinced that, where human creativity alone is not enough to overcome the odds, human creativity and natural creativity together may be able to provide the basis for a feasible solution.
A wonderful, important book.
https://www.swordbilled.com/biomimicry-innovation-inspired-by-nature-by-janine-benyus-review/
“Half of all human languages will have disappeared by the end of the century.”
…
” …each language lost leaves a gap in our understanding of the variable cognitive structures of which the human brain is capable. Studies of different languages have already revealed vastly different ways of representing and interpreting the world. Some Native American languages, for example, reveal a completely different understanding of the nature of time.”
An interesting (if somewhat half-hearted) article on language via NewScientist. Is it ironic or just sad that an article on the disappearance of language mounts such a lackluster exploration of the thought?
Still, somewhat interesting.
https://www.swordbilled.com/in-other-words/
Okay. So I have a mild curiosity as to the Oscar winners. No major investment—no money riding on any of the nominees (honest!), just a mild, vaguely saprophytic curiosity.
(And yes, I realize that saprophytic almost definintely makes no sense whatosever in that context.)
Moreover, using the seemingly bottomless pool of numbers over at The Numbers, I thought it might be interesting to make some kind of list that showed the box office revenues of various Oscar winners, possibly contrasted against box office grosses of non-winners, of the movies that didn’t make it into the winners’ circle. I thought that, potentially, some interesting patterns might pop up. Like, I don’t know, a correlation between budgetary limitations (or lack thereof) and number of Oscars. Or, you know, whatever.
Actually, I still think it might be an interesting list, but it’s not going to come from me. Trying to figure out how I might go about putting this list together, I realize that it’s way too much work for something that I’m only interested in incidentally. Besides the fact that I understand virtually nothing of Academy Awards politics, a limitation that would severely limit my ability to draw any meaningful conclusions (or even interesting conclusions, never mind whether or not there was any factual basis)
So instead, what you get is the much less interesting (and much less extensive) list of the following items.
https://www.swordbilled.com/ocar-it-didnt-seem-like-a-bad-idea/
Last night I went to see a noisy staging of snow geese. It was a pretty marvelous sight. And you think to yourself—you’re maybe a little impressed at the showing of birdpower and a little amused by the showing of people parked alongside the road to watch the avifauna—but you have to ask yourself, what does 45,000 snow geese even mean? 45,000 is the number, based on previous years’ records, that I’m assuming I saw. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. A writhing sea of white and you more or less lose track of numbers. It could have been more geese; I wouldn’t know.
It’s definitely an impressive spectacle. And unlike witnessing noisy flocks of birds you know to be alien—starlings, for instance—you think: this is a good thing. You want it to be a good thing, that all these birds are existing, thriving. You want sheer numbers to be an obvious demonstration of the species’ robust health.
But of course, it’s not as clear-cut as all that.
Witness the spectacle of the greater snow goose’s more populous cousin, the lesser snow goose:
The point not necessarily being that 6 million lesser snow geese is an irrefutably bad thing, a blanket statement like that being essentially ridiculous, but that it pays to heed the specter of ‘carrying capacity’. Geese taxing their (relatively) limited resources—particular habitats in which they thrive, particular foods they need to remain healthy, particular climactic conditions on which they depend—shows a clear example of what’s happening, but in a less obvious way, to humans. “How Many” is a question that gets bandied about till those doing the bandying are blue in the face. A better question being, How Much?
The answer to the question “How much can a snow goose reasonably be expected to consume?” is fairly straightforward, depending on the total population, the density of that population, and ecosystem factors (e.g., richness of the biota).
The answer to the question “How much can a snow goose reasonably expect to consume” is similarly straightforward, but has a markedly different answer. Assuming that a snow goose can have any kind of expectation, we might imagine that each snow goose expected to consume as much as possible, more nourishment correlating (up to a certain point) to a greater chance of survival. Sure, a hideously obese snow goose isn’t going to have very bright prospects for survival, but then again, other factors are probably going to prevent that from happening. Population density (other geese trying to get food in the same area) and physical activity in all likelihood militate against such a goose from existing, would be my guess.
There is no earthly reason for us to pretend that “How much can a human reasonably expected to consume” and “How much can a human reasonably expect to consume” should (or even can) have identical answers.
But in the interests of survival, we’d better hope that the gap between the two expectations narrows, because as a matter of physics and biology the former answer will triumph. You can’t cheat carrying capacity.
Snow Goose References:
Lesser Snow Geese and the Trophic Cascade
Over Abundant [sic] Snow Goose Population – Environment Canada
Snow Geese Taking a Gander at Pennsylvania
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-snow-goose-and-the-survival-of-the-human-species-and-so-forth/
Every year, passports are stolen. No big surprise there. But many of these documents (more than you’d think) are stolen blank, i.e., ripe for planting pictures and fake names and so forth.
Also no big surprise, terrorists/criminals/corrupt officials/etc. can use these passports to cross borders.
Interpol (that nifty international crimefighting organization) keeps a database of these documents’ numbers. What numbers it obtains when countries report documents stolen. What numbers can then be used to track down and arrest criminals.
Interpol has 181 member countries.
Of those, only 34 share their data for this database of stolen passports (and other documents). Among those countries that do not share their information (though they can still access the database) are the U.S., Britain, and Germany.
Curious.
“But surely,” you protest, “it can’t be that easy to come by blank passports, can it?”
Well: “Since many countries still send passport blanks to small embassies and consulates in distant capitals, thieves need only to break in and crack what are often simple safes.”
Curious.
U.S. officials apparently cite potential ‘security gaps’ in Interpol’s handling of information as a reason for not cooperating, i.e., not supplying the numbers of stolen passports.
(Because it’s safer to not provide stolen passport numbers to law enforcement agencies to aid in the arrest of criminals?)
An interesting factoid: the first warning about bin Laden came not from the U.S. or its ‘friends,’ but from Libya. Yes, that Libya.
(via BoGlo)
https://www.swordbilled.com/gaps-in-logic-and-law/