Category Archives: Newspaper “Science”

If it’s in the MSM, it may be _political_ science

How Many Millionaires?

Posted on by

“Rich politicians take care of their own,” Fred Grimm wrote in the Miami Herald yesterday. “The rich are different from you and me. Well, me anyway. And they’re damn well positioned to keep it that way.”

Here’s his proof: Florida has a fabulously wealthy governor-elect who spent $73 million of his own money to get elected and a Legislature “laden with millionaires.” 18 millionaires will be “slumming in the state Senate. That’s 18 out of 40 senators.” 34 millionaires vote in the House. Out of 120 state reps. “Rich reps are forced to mingle with the unwashed rabble,” Mr. Grimm wrote.

“The U.S. Congress wallows in even more disproportionate affluence than our elected moneybags in Tallahassee.” He used the Center for Responsive Politics to find that 261 members of Congress are millionaires, and 55 are worth more than $10 million. Median wealth in the Senate rose from $2.27 million to $2.38 million last year.

I apologize in advance. I tried to make this funny. It isn’t.

This kind of writing irks me. My neighbor Stan is a millionaire. He doesn’t feel rich. In fact, he complains about anything but rich. A Texas friend, Billy Bob, is just about on the median wealth of the Senate. He feels richer than I do, but he ain’t buying jet airplanes. Not many other millionaires are, either. So the Herald columnist who wants grimly to stick it to we fabulously wealthy types mingling with the unwashed rabble seems to have left out a fact or two.

Let’s look at some real figures, albeit from 2009 before the electoral shakeup. Only about 17% of Congress Critters are women although 51% of Americans are. 178 representatives and 58 senators are lawyers although only .3% of Americans are. 400 representatives and all but two senators have earned college degrees; many have advanced degrees although only 27% of Americans do. The average age in the House is about 56 and in the Senate, almost 62 although the average age in America is 37.

So, it looks as if our Congress critters are mostly rich, white, college-educated lawyers between 55 and 64, and the general population isn’t.

The general population is about 37 years old, and a mixed bag of ethnicities and schooling. Just .7% of them overall are millionaires. Zero point seven percent.

So what happens when we compare Congress critters to mostly white, college-educated lawyers between 55 and 64? Or even just to college-educated Americans?

The Federal Reserve Bank looks at the median value of financial assets for most folks in America, primarily so banks can sell us checking accounts. The median is the “middle number” of a sorted list of numbers so half the numbers in the list will be less and half the numbers will be greater. The smaller numbers can be a lot smaller or just a little bit smaller but, in this case can never be less than zero. The bigger numbers can be just a teeny bit greater or can be hugely larger.

The Fed reported on those median values. It turns out that households of people aged 55-64 had about $95,200 in cash and stocks in 2007 (college graduates of all ages held slightly more at $99,400). Household median “nonfinancial assets” like your house and your car was $347,000 for the Congressional age group and $435,400 for college graduates of all ages. So the mid-line for college grads of any age is to be half a millionaire.

Half the college educated households are worth more than half a million?

Mr. Grimm didn’t tell us that.

27% of Americans have a college degree. 5% of Americans are “rich” millionaires. That means that about a fifth of Americans with a college degree are probably millionaires.

Mr. Grimm didn’t tell us that either.

Perhaps Mr. Grimm spent Thanksgiving with a can of Spam so he wants us to swallow his turkey.

Perhaps we need more college educated households although that offers no guarantees. The BLS reports that more than 482,000 college-educated Americans are customer service reps. Over 100,000 college-educated Americans are maids and janitors; 5% of those have a Ph.D.

And perhaps, as Mr. Shakespear reminds us, our bigger problem with Congress is the number of lawyers rather than the number of rich lawyers.

Mr. Grimm irks me because he trotted out an abundance of ogre words and a sparse few facts to back them up. I guar-an-damn-tee you that being a millionaire ain’t what it used to be.

I searched for a biography of Mr. Grimm who says “the way [the rich] see things . . . well, they’re different from you and me.” No joy. He was a general assignment reporter at the Herald after working for other newspapers. He has been a columnist there for about 20 years. I’m going out on a limb here without giving you the data I wanted him to give us, but I’m thinking Mr. Grimm is a limousine lib. He probably has a college degree. He certainly rubs elbows with the very same kind of folks lounging around Tallahassee and Washington that he excoriated yesterday. After all, the BLS also reports that the top 10% of news analysts, reporters, and columnists (meaning senior staff at major metro dailies) earned more than $77,480 per year.

Columnists are supposed to make waves. I do.

But Miami columnists ought not complain about how cold it is in South Florida when the fact show it is 60° colder in North Puffin. We do better making waves with facts that stand up to daylight scrutiny.

Warning: Unexpected transition ahead. Follow along and be careful where you step.

I will address the question, Is Liberalism really Liberalislam another time.

The Herald column does what so many limousine liberals and fundamentalist Muslims alike want to do: drag down the rich so everyone is poor and scrabbling in the dirt.

Me? I’d rather be a millionaire so here’s my proposal. If you are so apologetic for your personal wealth, give me your fortune. I guarantee I will hire a dungeon master to help you feel really ashamed.

You libs want something worth groaning about? Mr. Grimm could have offered a couple of valid statistics:

  • In about 40 years, the average U.S. CEO pay has grown by an order of magnitude. Mine hasn’t.
  • Congress critters upped their average wealth by 16% in 2009, a year the rest of us took a hit.

Americans should celebrate that some of us can become wealthy. Want to do better? The answer is not to tear down those who have but rather to improve the odds for the have nots.

Gulf. Seawater. Explodes.

Posted on by

A friend posted a news clip on Facebook, to wit:

Recently, a News 5 investigation collected samples from multiple beaches in and around the Gulf region. Samples were taken in areas where kids were playing and swimming. The results were absolutely terrifying.

Good thing she didn’t test for arsenic. Also a good thing she didn’t read any actual scientific papers, I replied.

It sure would be refreshing to find a local news anchor who had even the remotest clue about science.

Another Facebook buddy commented on the link.

“@Dick: Did you actually watch the clip? If you had, you would know that the comment about the sample came from an analytical chemist (a “he”), and you’d also know that the sample was being tested for oil concentration, and underwent a surprisingly violent reaction that destroyed its Erlenmeyer flask because it contained an unknown component (dispersant? methane? they didn’t know).”

Pfui. He was trolling, right? Surely he must have been trolling. If he has heard the word Erlenmeyer flask somewhere, then he has enough technical knowledge to understand that (a) the reporter had no idea what she was talking about, (b) the report was full of scare stuff and devoid of much science stuff, and © Erlenmeyer flasks have flat bottoms. Jessica Taloney (the “she” I referenced) was the reporter. I don’t know if she has a flat bottom.

Robert Naman, the chemist “she” interviewed, told us that sea water typically has about 5 ppm of oil. The reporter scared us by saying “from 16 ppm to 221 ppm, our results are concerning.” Why? She didn’t tell us if 221 gallons of oil in a million gallons of sea water is fatal to humans or if it is only a problem when she needs ratings. She didn’t tell us if the oil in the marina (the highest concentration she measured) was from Deepwater Horizon or from a leak on the boat she used to dip the water. Marinas usually have higher concentration of oil in the water than beaches. SHE DIDN’T TELL US BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T KNOW. And neither did my Facebook buddy.

But the comment about the sample came from an analytical chemist.

Woo hoo. I Googled. Didn’t find anything about Robert Naman in the ACS rolls. The exploded flask did “contain an unknown component” so they speculated on how bad it was but SHE DIDN’T TELL US WHAT BLEW UP BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T KNOW. And neither did my Facebook buddy.

“News 5 will test that water for chemicals, specifically chemicals linked to the dispersant being used in the Gulf, Corexit,” Ms. Taloney reported alarmingly.

Well, isn’t that special. Mr. Naman doesn’t know what caused the explosion but Ms. Taloney will make sure they hang it on a chemical she knows nothing about.

I’m not a chemist nor do I play one on TV. I have no idea, based on the “WKRG News” report, whether the amount of oil they found is a reasonable average for the areas they sampled, is toxic in the concentrations they did find, or even if it came from Deepwater Horizon. I have no idea because the reporter did such a lousy job. SHE DIDN’T TELL US BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T KNOW. And neither did my Facebook buddy.

Unfortunately, my Facebook buddy (and WKRG “News”) want to make it into something that keeps us scared.

Gulf. Seawater. Explodes. And that, dear reader, is how the media deceives us.

What a Freaking Difference!

Posted on by

“I missed fucking Asbestos Dust?” Rufus said. He was amazed. The rest of us about died.

For those just whooshed, Asbestos Dust is the nom-de-Net of a writer from Texas or Arkansas or maybe Alaska. I met him at a party in Pennsylvania to which Rufus was invited but did not attend.

Word choice makes a difference. Even word position makes a difference. “I fucking missed Asbestos Dust?” has a very different meaning than what Rufus actually said.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be,” Mark Twain wrote. Regular readers will realize that I use little profanity in real life and even less in my writings. I will not use any of the other seven dirty words here today; younger readers need not tune to a different channel.

On the other hand, I will take issue with how the anti-science crowd uses its words.

NPR’s Science Friday focused on new nuclear technologies in the episode broadcast March 5, 2010 . Guests included Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown, Scott Burnell, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission public affairs officer, John Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation, and Professor Richard Lester who heads the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at MIT.

“What is the future of nuclear power,” Mr. Brown asked himself. “It’s cost cost cost.”

Waste could kill nuclear power, he said. “Imagine if the billion dollar price tag [the per plant cost of the Yucca Mountain project] had been on the table when they were being considered, most of them would never have gotten off the ground.”

A billion dollar “extra” cost per plant sounds excessive, doesn’t it? It is exceptionally expensive if all you know is that one partial factoid.

“The volume of waste produced is very, very small,” Professor Lester said. A nuclear plant produces a couple of ounces of waste per person per year; a coal plant produces about 10 tons of waste per person per year. “We can afford to spend a lot of money on safely storing this material. The impact on the cost of nuclear electricity is actually very small.”

“Our cost … is just under 10 cents per KW-hour,” Mr. Deal said later. That includes the waste.

“What we have in this country, and that’s not going to help with the image of nuclear power, is the discovery that there are now 27 older plants with underground pipes that are leaking tritium, and tritium is a carcinogen,” Mr. Brown said. “In Vermont, as I recall, with the most recent instance occurring at Vermont Yankee.”

Tritium leaks sound pretty dangerous, don’t they? They are excruciatingly dangerous if all you know is one partial factoid.

The hydrogen isotope tritium is a by-product of modern nuclear reactor operations. It combines easily with oxygen to form “tritiated water” which can be ingested by drinking or eating organic foods. It is a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food, water, or absorbed through the skin but, since tritium is not much of a beta emitter, it is not dangerous when simply nearby. It has a 7 to 14 day half life in the human body. That means a single-incident ingestion is not usually dangerous and it precludes accumulating tritium from the environment in your body long-term.

“There have been 27 instances … [but] they are not all ongoing,” Mr. Burnell said. “In the case of Vermont Yankee … the contamination is not reaching any drinking water sources; it’s not reaching the nearby Connecticut River. So it is not presenting any public health issue and we, at the NRC, are closely watching how Vermont Yankee is evaluating the situation to discover where the leak is coming from. We will make sure that they do identify it properly, that they fix it properly, and that in every instance they are doing what is necessary to operate the plant safely and in accordance with our regulations.”

“I’m not a geologist or an engineer,” Mr. Brown said as he evaluated the complex dance of creating and running a nuclear power plant. Ya think?

Word choice — what we actually say — makes a difference in what listeners understand. Mr. Brown certainly knows that. This is a real example of choosing words to propagandize rather than choosing to disclose the facts.

So, did we fucking miss A.D. or did we miss fucking him?

“It’s been too long since I had a taste of the Dust,” Rufus said.

There is no hope.

Village Bans

Posted on by

Not a wedding announcement.

Our Voices Exposed, a group of Enosburg Falls, Vermont, High School students met with the village Board of Trustees there a couple of weeks ago to ramp up the board about the negative impact of second hand smoke. On Tuesday night, the board passed an ordinance that bans smoking outside in the village’s two parks. The ban goes into effect on June 12, right after the Vermont Dairy Festival.

It would be bad politics — not to mention a financial disaster — to undermine Dairy Days in this state.

That vote comes on the heels of Burlington’s outdoor smoking ban enacted late last month. Burlington’s ordinance comes with hefty fines for those caught lighting up in city parks and on beaches: $50 to $200 per offense. Burlington also bans idling cars or trucks in the city.

Nannies.

My friend Rufus called them “ninnies. Imposing their stupidity on us.”

I can make all the cases against smoking. I started as a kid, filching Pall Malls from the long drawer atop my dad’s bureau. King size. Unfiltered. When I started buying my own, I switched to the smooth, mild Chesterfield. Ronald Reagan sent cartons of Chesterfields as Christmas gifts for “all my friends” in the ads he made. It is the smoke of True Romance. It wasn’t enough, though, so I eventually switched to the stronger, manlier Between the Acts. Now that little cigar was great for my cough and the smoke could clear a room faster than a dog fart.

I quit in 1976. See, I’m cheaper than I was cool and the carton price was about to hit $5. It was time.

Still, I understand why people smoke and why they want to. And I understand the dangers of second hand smoke. I don’t see much science behind a danger that says three parts per billion of tobacco tar in the atmosphere will cause global warming. Or hiccups in rats. Or something.

That’s political science.

I suspect that this Generation of Don’t wants to carry the nation to a total ban of smoking. They can’t get that passed, so they are nibbling away at it park by park. Starting with Vermont.

Maybe Rufus ain’t wrong after all.

Call for Eruption Bans

Posted on by

REYKJAVIK (Reuters-United Press-FNN) — Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajökull continued to erupt today. Its enormous ash plume is visible from space. That ash has caused airlines to cancel thousands of flights and the World Health Organization to issue a warning to Europeans to stay indoors. Scientists say the chemical makeup and shape of the ash cloud’s dust particles will raise the planet temperature exponentially.

“Eyja” is the Icelandic word for island. “Fjalla” means mountain. “Jokull” is glacier.

Nobel Laureate, chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, and former United States Vice President Al Gore visited the Atlantic coast region of Iceland about 75 miles southeast of capital Reykjavik today where he met with volcanologist Hjálmar Hjálmarsson.

“I have seen and I have learned today,” Mr. Gore said.

“This plume is a case study about how eruptions impact this Earth,” Mr. Gore added. “We’re learning more and more about anthropogenic climate change and have determined that it is time for a major change.

“This is not the only eruption. Beneath the Caribbean Sea right now, the world’s deepest volcano spews super-heated mineral-rich liquids from chimney structures deep in the Cayman Trough onto the ocean floor. This eruption will eventually move north to melt more polar ice.

“And speaking of ice, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano has melted an entire glacier and is sending it straight to the sea.

“As we have learned in our studies of the deadly chemical carbon dioxide, the average temperature on Earth is increasing daily from the pleasant 59 degrees,” Mr. Gore said. “The average temperature on Venus is 867 degrees. That has nothing to do with the fact that Venus is closer to the Sun than we are. The fault is not in our star. The fault is the carbon dioxide and the volcanic eruptions. If we allow volcanic eruptions to continue here, the average temperature on Earth could begin to look more like the average temperature on Venus.

“Depending on the continuation of this eruption a third of the human race could die in the next three years, and the survivors could be living lives of struggle and hunger and hardship that nearly doomed the world in the Dark Ages.”

With about 130 volcanic mountains, Iceland has more active volcanoes than any other land. Eleven U.S. states have volcanoes. Arizona and New Mexico have eight each, California has nine, and Oregon tops the list with 21. Hawaii’s Kilauea is the subject of a Volcano Watch Orange. A few U.S. volcanoes have produced some of the largest and most dangerous eruptions in this century including Mount St. Helens, the active stratovolcano in Skamania County, Washington.

“Once again, Americans must come together and direct our government to take on a global challenge, Mr. Gore said. “American leadership is a precondition for success.

“I have issued a challenge to the United States Congress today to pass new legislation making the dispensing of illegal in the United States. With this one action we can take the first step to making the planet cleaner and safer for our children and grandchildren.”