March 1 is the end of the comment period where signing the petition will do the most good. If there are multiple people in your house hold, have each one sign the petition individually.

I think that the strongest line of defense for the moratorium may be that incinerators will never be a good solution no matter how much research is done. However, if research does eventually find a solution, that would be the time to spend money to build such a system outside the lab, not now.

If right now, 4 tons of waste go in, and 1 ton of ash comes out. This gives the impression that we have just gotten rid of three tons of waste. True, we have gotten it out of the landfill site, but then three tons of pollution went into the air.

If we can barely contain the solid waste pollution runoff in the landfill, why would releasing three tons into the air be better? Other than it gets it out of our sight, and gives it to some place else where the three tons that went into the air settles.

To make an incinerator viable we will have to make the ash and captured residue be a very high percentage by weight of the solid waste that went in. This may save space in the landfill, but the full amount of pollutants will still be in the landfill. The particles will just be much smaller, more solvent, and more easily washed away with rainfall runoff.

Until someone can show that all of these incinerator life cycle problems can be solved in the lab, then there is every reason to keep the moratorium in place and no reason to even go to a model sized system, let alone a full sized system.

Whatever money would be wasted in building a life sized system would be better spent in research in a laboratory. If this research never pans out, think of how much wasteful and useless spending this will have saved us.

The American Prospect has the article Wonder Warren. The article describes actions that Elizabeth Warren is taking on some reviews that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) ordered “to help settle a probe into illegal mortgage practices that shortchanged homeowners and, in some cases, improperly kicked people out of their homes.”  The OCC decided to give up on these reviews and spend their efforts elsewhere.  Here is some of what The American Prospect article had to say:

Enter Senator Warren. She and Representative Cummings have asked OCC and the Federal Reserve for all performance reviews the two agencies conducted during the program before nixing it; the amount of money the banks paid their third-party reviewers; and the total number of reviews, along with the percentages of those in which errors were found. “Public confidence in the banking system has been badly undermined by a widespread concern that large financial institutions are not held fully to account when they break the rules—and that consumers are not sufficiently compensated,” Warren and Cummings wrote in their letter to the OCC and the Fed last week. “It is critical that the OCC and the Federal Reserve disclose additional information about the scope of the harms found to establish confidence in the sufficiency and integrity of the settlement.” Warren’s belief in the power of transparency—which in this case means releasing public data whose collection the government mandated—to improve public policy has been a driving force even before she reached the Senate. For example, the CFPB Consumer Response Center—an initiative Warren championed when standing up the agency—makes available data from the organization’s complaint hotline about consumer-credit abuses and is an integral part of the supervision process.

While the information in the Independent Foreclosure Reviews may be flawed, it’s critical to know what was gathered. Too often in post-financial-crisis settlements with Wall Street banks, regulators settle on a remedy without determining or taking into account the level of harm. What’s more, without an accounting of the mortgage-servicer industry’s previous practices, it will be nearly impossible to fix the broken mortgage-servicer industry.

Yay, Elizabeth Warren.

Motley Fool has the article The Father of Value Investing in Action.

Last Friday at the Columbia Student Investment Management Association conference, Columbia business school released a 15-minute video called “The Legacy of Ben Graham,” which shows rare footage of Graham teaching, as well as interviews with some of his former students who went on to become great investors. It’s well worth watching.

The most insightful comment comes at 14 minutes and 46 second at the end of the video. Benjamin Graham is answering a student’s question as to why Wall Street experts are not more reliable in their predictions.

Your question as to why they are not more dependable is a very good one and an interesting one. My own explanation for that is this, that everybody in Wall Street is so smart, see, that their brilliance offsets each other, and that whatever they know is already reflected in the level of stock prices pretty much, and consequently what happens in the future represents what they don’t know.

The Daily Kos has started a petition which you can sign by following the link  here. Here is the gist of their explanation:

Just weeks after Democrats and Republicans reached agreement on a watered down version of filibuster reform, Senate Republicans are up to their old obstructionist tricks. More than 40 Republican senators have stated they will filibuster any nominee to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless Democrats agree to gut the CFPB’s power to actually protect consumers.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated that if Republicans continued to abuse the filibuster, he might re-open the process to change Senate rules. Given this latest Republican move, Reid may need to re-open that process sooner rather than later.

Please sign our petition urging Harry Reid to re-open the process of filibuster reform in the Senate. We must remain vigilant and build the case for filibuster reform every time Republican obstructionism prevents the Senate from functioning as it should.

Perhaps The Daily Kos read my blog post of four days ago, Senate Republicans will oppose Cordray again for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Here is your chance to do something about the blockage in the Senate. Read this email that I received from MoveOn.

Dear MoveOn member,

Mitch McConnell is the biggest obstructionist in the U.S. government—a human roadblock stopping any progress in Washington.

McConnell’s the reason the terrible idea to cut folks’ Social Security won’t go away. And when, just last week, his backroom deals killed reform to make the Senate more productive, he bragged about it. McConnell’s a prime example of what can happen when a politician puts his donors and his party before the well-being of his constituents and his country.

But get this: Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in the Senate, is vulnerable right now. For the first time in 28 years, he could actually lose his next election. He’s the most unpopular senator in the country.¹ And in a recent poll, only 17% of Kentucky voters said they plan to vote for him next year!² If we buckle down right now and commit to this race, we can put McConnell out of office in just two short years.

That’s why, before this election is fully engaged and the airwaves are flooded with Super PAC cash, we’re launching a Ditch Mitch campaign to go after McConnell early. We need to lock in McConnell’s unpopularity among Kentucky voters starting now and signal to other progressives that this race is winnable. It’s the same strategy Obama used to beat Romney.

Then, when McConnell finishes his primary race, weakened and demoralized, he’ll be looking at 70,000 MoveOn members in Kentucky ready to take him on—backed by the strength of 7 million more across the country.

If we can raise $300,000 in the next 24 hours, we can roll out our early offensive to take McConnell’s Senate seat.

Can you chip in $10 to help voters Ditch Mitch?

To make this a reality, we need to begin building an infrastructure and campaign team now, because McConnell’s starting with $7 million in the bank, and he’s already spent the past week attacking MoveOn to fire up his base.³

But MoveOn members are up to the fight, because we know that getting rid of McConnell means an immediate opportunity for more progressive wins, and the biggest setback Senate Republicans have faced in a decade.

Here’s a glimpse of what we’ve got in store:

• We’ll help individual MoveOn members across Kentucky launch and run a network of independent, super-local, creative mini-campaigns that can do serious damage to McConnell’s reputation in their communities.
• We’ll crowdsource ad ideas from our 7 million members and bring back the same team who produced some of the best political ads of 2012.
• Every time he’s in Kentucky, we’ll be following McConnell at speaking events and fundraisers.
• The entire time McConnell is fighting off his primary challenger, we’ll be using methods we honed in this past election to systematically speak with every Democrat and progressive in Kentucky—and there are 500,000 more Democrats than Republicans.

There’s a lot more we can do to end McConnell’s Senate run. But it has to start right here, with $300,000 to kick-start this two-year campaign. Can you contribute today?

Yes, I can chip in $10 to Ditch Mitch!

Thanks for all you do.

–Ilya, Steven, Stefanie, Wes, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. “Poll: The most unpopular senator,” Politico, December 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=286782&id=61837-7776955-w3psqOx&t=7

2. “Mitch McConnell support weak in poll,” Politico, January 28, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=286780&id=61837-7776955-w3psqOx&t=8

3. “Mitch McConnell starts with big war chest,” Politico, January 31, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=286787&id=61837-7776955-w3psqOx&t=9

Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 7 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

The New York Times is a convenient source of this story Birth Control Rule Altered to Allay Religious Objections.

The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, but the change did not end the political furor or legal fight over the issue.

Some of us have been wondering for a long time why Obama even tries to compromise.  He sets a very bad precedent.

At what point should you be allowed to shirk your responsibility that 90% of the society believes you should fulfill?  When the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”, is it OK to write laws specifically relieving some members of religious institutions from their responsibilities?

If you have a religious objection to something, shouldn’t you reimburse the government to compensate them for exempting you from your responsibilities to society.

War conscientious objectors either served in non-combat roles or alternative service or were sent to jail or fled to Canada.

Yes, I know.  These are all weak arguments.  There is no settling this disagreement by logic.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has the story Senate Republicans will oppose Cordray again for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and 42 other GOP senators sent a letter Friday to Obama saying the consumer office has little accountability to Congress and wields too much regulatory authority. They said they will oppose any nominee, regardless of his or her party affiliation.

Well, it didn’t take long for the Republicans to prove that Harry Reid was a fool for going bipartisan with the Republicans over filibuster reform.  We may have to suffer through another two years of this foolishness before we get another chance to fix the filibuster.  Anybody want to place any bets as to whether Lucy  (The Republicans) will pull the football away again as Charlie Brown (Harry Reid) approaches to kick it?

Has Harry Reid never heard the fable You knew I was a rattlesnake when you picked me up.

    A young girl was trudging along a mountain path, trying to reach her grandmother’s house. It was bitter cold, and the wind cut like a knife. When she was within sight of her destination, she heard a rustle at her feet.

Looking down, she saw a snake. Before she could move, the snake spoke to her. He said, “I am about to die. It is too cold for me up here, and I am freezing. There is no food in these mountains, and I am starving. Please put me under your coat and take me with you.”

“No,” replied the girl. “I know your kind. You are a rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you will bite me, and your bite is poisonous.”

“No, no,” said the snake. “If you help me, you will be my best friend. I will treat you differently.”

The little girl sat down on a rock for a moment to rest and think things over. She looked at the beautiful markings on the snake and had to admit that it was the most beautiful snake she had ever seen.

Suddenly, she said, “I believe you. I will save you. All living things deserve to be treated with kindness.”

The little girl reached over, put the snake gently under her coat and proceeded toward her grandmother’s house.

Within a moment, she felt a sharp pain in her side. The snake had bitten her.

“How could you do this to me?” she cried. “You promised that you would not bite me, and I trusted you!”

“You knew what I was when you picked me up,” hissed the snake as he slithered away.

Leaonard Pitts Jr. has written the piece Commentary: Beyonce, lip-synching and a sign of the times which almost comes close to my own opinion on this matter.

As in Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, the pop chanteuse who, it was revealed last week, lip-synced her show-stopping performance of the national anthem at the inauguration, thereby causing earthquakes in diverse places, cats to mate with dogs, blood to rain from the sky and the earth to begin a slow spiral into the sun.

My own reaction is more along the line of my comment on the above post.

It is called entertainment.  So the real question is, “Were you entertained?”  If so, then you got what you came for.

I know this may be shocking to some, but magicians don’t really saw women in half.  Do you want your money back because you wanted to see a woman sawed in half and then put back together?

Would the singing performance be more real if Beyonce’ had just depended on real electronic amplification and transmission across the world by real television?

I suppose we ought to ask if her beauty is real or if she were wearing make-up.  Of course there is no surgical enhancement to any star’s beauty.  Dolly Parton is really built that way.

I do understand the issue, though.  I was a little disappointed to find out that a camera obscura was used to create the realistic paintings of the old and revered masters.  I think I have gotten over those initial feelings of disappointment.   At least they traced things with their own hands.  Or did they?  Could have been done by an apprentice.  Now I am really ruining your day.

Let me know if you like or are thoroughly disappointed in the video, Huge Bear Surprises Crew on EcoBubble Photo Shoot in BC . Thanks to RogerG for posting this link on his facebook page.

The New Yorker has an interesting book review, What Nate Silver Gets Wrong.

Can Nate Silver do no wrong? Between elections and baseball statistics, Silver has become America’s secular god of predictions. And now he has a best-seller, “The Signal and the Noise,” in which he discusses the challenges and science of prediction in a wide range of domains, covering politics, sports, earthquakes, epidemics, economics, and climate change. How does a predictor go about making accurate predictions? Why are certain types of predictions, like when earthquakes will hit, so difficult? For any lay reader wanting to know more about the statistics and the art of prediction, the book should be essential reading. Just about the only thing seriously wrong with the book lies in its core technical claim.

The review authors start to explain Bayesian statistics as follows:

A Bayesian approach is particularly useful when predicting outcome probabilities in cases where one has strong prior knowledge of a situation.

The review is interesting reading.  I could probably stand to read it again and pay careful attention to the examples.  Probability was never my strong suit.

The comments on the article also prove to be very interesting.  I chose to add my 2 cents worth in response to one comment.

“Unfortunately, the same guys got it all wrong in 2007 (The Financial Collapse)”

There is a much simpler explanation of why they got it wrong in 2007. The predictions about mortgage backed securities were based on historical data of traditional mortgages based on sound banking principles. When the demand for MBSs became too strong, the idea of mortgages based on sound banking principals was abandoned. The probability of failure for sound mortgages was used to predict the failure of unsound mortgages.

On top of that, the leverage was so high, that a small decline in real estate prices could wipe out the whole industry. In the historical data collected, leverage was never this high.

So the failure was to build a model based on a history that did not apply to the current situation and then think that model could cover the current situation.

I spent my career making software to simulate numerical models of integrated circuits.  Mine were not intended to be sophisticated in the statistical (probability) domain.  The sophistication, such as it was, was in the physics.  This experience has made me sensitive to trying to extend models into domains in which the model may no longer be appropriate.  As the technology in the semiconductor industry advanced over the 40 year lifetime of my career, effects that used to be negligible started to become dominant.  As a result, the physical effects include in the  models was constantly under revision.

January 30, 2013

I finally went back to look more deeply into the calculation that the woman getting a positive result on her breast cancer test had a 90% chance of the result being a false positive.

I put words into the equations for the factors that were being calculated to get a better understanding of the meaning of the factors in the equations.

( fraction of women who have breast cancer *
fraction of women who have cancer and get a positive result )
= number of women who get a positive result and actually have breast cancer
if all women who have breast cancer were tested.

( fraction of women who do not have breast cancer *
fraction of women who get a false positive )
= fraction of women who would get a false positive if all women who did
not have cancer were tested.

The flaw in the argument is that almost all women who have breast cancer get tested, and not all women who do not have breast cancer are tested. I bet a larger fraction of women who do have breast cancer get tested than those who don’t have breast cancer get tested. You don’t get tested unless there is some other indication that you might have breast cancer. The results of the calculation cannot be taken as correct until you get actual numbers to correct the flaw. The numbers may turn out to be right, but this explanation is no proof that they are.

Which goes back to my old maxim, if the results of a calculation are in wide variance from what your intuition tells you, then you had better double check to see which one is right. This is one reason why all good scientific programmers try to have an intuitive idea of what the result ought to be before they write a program to make the calculation. Either they do it by intuition (manual calculations) or some alternative mechanical way to make the calculation. How else can you test to see if you have made any mistakes in your program?

Email I received from Friends of Bernie Sanders

January 24, 2013
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

This country faces major crises in terms of the economy and unemployment, the deficit, global warming, health care, campaign finance reform, education and a crumbling infrastructure – to name a few. In my view, none of these problems will be effectively addressed so long as one senator can demand 60 votes to pass legislation. The rule changes adopted today are a step forward in making the operations of the Senate more efficient and expeditious. They are not enough.

Most Americans grew up believing that in America the majority rules. That is not the case in the Senate. For many years now, especially since President Obama has been in office, it has taken 60 votes to pass any significant piece of legislation. When Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the 1950s, he filed cloture to end a filibuster only once. Majority Leader Reid has filed cloture 390 times.

The Senate is not the House and the minority party must be treated with respect and given the opportunity to offer amendments and make their case in opposition. A minority must not, however, be allowed to permanently obstruct the wishes of the majority. That is not democracy. That is a perversion of democracy.

In my view, if a senator or a group of senators are strenuously opposed to legislation they have the right and duty to come to the floor and, for as long as they want, engage in a talking filibuster by explaining to the American people the reasons for their objection. They should not, however, continue to have the right to abuse arcane Senate rules to block a majority of senators from acting on behalf of the American people.