Heat in the Southwest

The past week has been scorchingly hot in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and other cities in the West. This morning I read an article in the Times about people who have to work outside in the heat, along with the continuing growth in the population of Phoenix. Housing prices and increased rent are causing some poor people to lose their homes.

Stories about the effects of climate change are becoming more and more common. It's difficult to imagine how this plays out in the next couple of decades. 

Will places like Phoenix eventually become less popular, if the temperature consistently reaches 115 degrees during the summer months? Surely the growth of the Southwest can't continue forever, if the situation continues to worsen.

What policies will various levels of government establish to mitigate the effects of changes in the climate?

What does this level of heat do to plant life? The article mentions that areas surrounding Phoenix are already desert. Are there trees and flowering plants in the irrigated and watered areas that have survived so far but will not last through sustained temperature changes?

National Geographic's Article About Wildlife Tourism

Yesterday morning I read a National Geographic article (by Natasha Daly, here) about wildlife tourism. The article is well written and very, very sad.

Instagram and selfie culture have led to a huge increase in the phenomenon of people wanting to pose for photos with wild animals. An industry of elephant, tiger, and dolphin "parks" has arisen (there are places for other animals as well, but these are especially popular), in which tourists pay to interact with the animals.

At most of these places, the animals are treated poorly, including by the tourists. The images accompanying the article provide a window into humans' egos -- and our blindness to the unthinking (at times cruel) ways in which we often treat God's creation.

I appreciated that Daly's article is pointed in its critique (National Geographic's writing continues to be strong on both emotional and intellectual levels). It made me wonder about the ways in which I could do better.

Ambient Privacy

Last night I came across an essay by Maciej Cegłowski (here) about the dangerous decline of privacy.

Cegłowski argues that we need a new conceptual framework for thinking about privacy. Too often, he says, "privacy still means what it did in the eighteenth century—protecting specific categories of personal data, or communications between individuals, from unauthorized disclosure."

This definition is too limited, given the current reality of the Internet. 

For the most part, we don't need to worry about our private conversations being disclosed to others. In fact, Google and the other tech behemoths spend considerable money making sure that doesn't happen.

Cegłowski writes that we should worry, however, about a more pervasive intrusion into our personal lives. He coins the phrase "ambient privacy" to describe the (large) part of our lives that we used to rightly consider our own. I love his explanation:

Ambient privacy is the understanding that there is value in having our everyday interactions with one another remain outside the reach of monitoring, and that the small details of our daily lives should pass by unremembered.  

What we do at home, work, church, school, or in our leisure time does not belong in a permanent record. Not every conversation needs to be a deposition. 

Until recently, ambient privacy was a simple fact of life. 

Recording something for posterity required making special arrangements, and most of our shared experience of the past was filtered through the attenuating haze of human memory. Even police states like East Germany, where one in seven citizens was an informer, were not able to keep tabs on their entire population. Today computers have given us that power.

This is a great insight. One of the massive changes wrought by the Internet is the way in which our lives have "gone public" -- if not for others to actually read and review, then at least to be stored and potentially retrieved for commercial purposes (ie, our browsing history).

Cegłowski continues by arguing that tech companies claim that people are ok with the new reality. In fact, individuals are powerless to make a decision one way or the other:

Because our laws frame privacy as an individual right, we don’t have a mechanism for deciding whether we want to live in a surveillance society. Congress has remained silent on the matter, with both parties content to watch Silicon Valley make up its own rules. The large tech companies point to our willing use of their services as proof that people don’t really care about their privacy. But this is like arguing that inmates are happy to be in jail because they use the prison library. Confronted with the reality of a monitored world, people make the rational decision to make the best of it. 

That is not consent.

Cegłowski compares privacy law to environmental law, which has taken decades to slowly but inevitably evolve. I wonder whether politicians will, at some point, begin advocating for a new legal (and conceptual) framework to restore a sense of "ambient privacy." At this point in the digital revolution, I am pessimistic.

The Bikini Islands and Nuclear Waste

This is a photo from one of the nuclear tests.

On Sunday, I was surprised about Gregory Jaczko's op ed focusing on the cost of nuclear power and not mentioning the issue of nuclear waste. Today, however, the Post (here) has a fascinating article about nuclear waste in the Marshall Islands.

I learned that the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean, from 1946 to 1958 -- but we didn't focus on cleaning up the nuclear waste until 1977.

Some of the tests were conducted in the Enewetak Atoll, which is part of the Marshall Islands. Here are the Post's details about disposal/ storage of the waste:

"Beginning in 1977, 4,000 U.S. service members began collecting an estimated 73,000 cubic meters of tainted surface soil across the islands ... The material was then transported to Runit Island, where a 328-foot crater remained from a May 1958 test explosion. For three years, the American military dumped the material into the crater.  

In 1980, a massive concrete dome — 18 inches thick and shaped like a flying saucer — was placed over the fallout debris, sealing off the material on Runit. But the $218 million project was only supposed to be temporary until a more permanent site was developed ... However, no further plans were ever hatched."

Now, as climate change causes the sea levels around Enewetak Atoll to rise, there is concern that the dome could leak or be breached.

621. This is precisely the issue that Sunday's op ed brought to my mind (but didn't examine): what is the current state of affairs regarding the disposal of nuclear waste? Have we come up with a better, safer system? How much attention is this topic receiving among scientists -- and is the attention waning because people are focusing more attention on wind and solar, and less attention on nuclear power?

Nuclear Energy

Gregory Jaczko served as the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2009 to 2012. In a fascinating op ed in today's Post (here), he argues that nuclear power is not safe enough to use a reliable source of energy in the United States. Instead, he advocates for wind and other renewables.

I first became aware of the potential of nuclear energy, as an alternative to fossil fuels, during my Fate of the Earth class at Dartmouth. Even then, Professor Oreskes emphasized the uncertainties about whether it could/should became a primary source of power.

However, she talked less about the safety of production and more about the question of where the nuclear waste could be stored. I recall that we were asked to assess the site at Yucca Mountain.

Jaczko does not even mention the issue of nuclear waste. Rather, he focuses on the Fukushima disaster and his gradual realization that similar potential accidents (especially those triggered by natural events like hurricanes and earthquakes), and their effect on nuclear reactors, cannot be adequately addressed.

Nuclear energy accounts for 19% of the United States supply, but there are only two new reactors being built (both in Georgia), and they are beset by delays and cost overruns. Two other projects in South Carolina were cancelled by the company building them (Toshiba (!), through its Westinghouse subsidiary).

620. I am surprised by this article. I did not realized that nuclear energy was on its way "out". Is Jaczko correct, or is he somewhat biased because of his current connection to the wind power industry?

Mind Uploading: Kenneth Hayworth and the Study of Connectomes

Sometimes I think I should spend more time imagining the future. 

By the future, I don't just mean 1 or 5 years from now, but 100 or 500 years from now.  What will be completely different, completely unpredicted, for our children's grandchildren's grandchildren?

------

I have not read very much science fiction, but I thought about the genre when Ray Bradbury died earlier this year. I don't think I've read anything by Bradbury (not even Fahrenheit 451, which I somehow missed in high school), but I liked the way that he was praised for his imagination. 

I want to make sure that my imagination stays healthy. I am confident that having kids will help, but I wonder what else I can do to nurture imagination.

------

Evan Goldstein has an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (here) about Kenneth Hayworth, a person whose imagination is definitely strong.

Hayworth and other people in the field of connectomics are studying ways in which human consciousness can eventually be preserved and transferred:

Hayworth has spent much of the past few years in a windowless room carving brains into very thin slices. He is by all accounts a curious man, known for casually saying things like, "The human race is on a beeline to mind uploading: We will preserve a brain, slice it up, simulate it on a computer, and hook it up to a robot body." He wants that brain to be his brain. He wants his 100 billion neurons and more than 100 trillion synapses to be encased in a block of transparent, amber-colored resin—before he dies of natural causes. 

Why? Ken Hayworth believes that he can live forever. 

But first he has to die. 

"If your body stops functioning, it starts to eat itself," he explains to me one drab morning this spring, "so you have to shut down the enzymes that destroy the tissue." If all goes according to plan, he says cheerfully, "I'll be a perfect fossil." Then one day, not too long from now, his consciousness will be revived on a computer. By 2110, Hayworth predicts, mind uploading—the transfer of a biological brain to a silicon-based operating system—will be as common as laser eye surgery is today. 

To understand why Hayworth wants to plastinate his own brain you have to understand his field—connectomics, a new branch of neuroscience. A connectome is a complete map of a brain's neural circuitry. Some scientists believe that human connectomes will one day explain consciousness, memory, emotion, even diseases like autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's—the cures for which might be akin to repairing a wiring error. In 2010 the National Institutes of Health established the Human Connectome Project, a $40-million, multi-institution effort to study the field's medical potential.

I love that NIH is involved in this research! It sounds so far-fetched, crazy, kooky. 

But it also seems like an example of the kind of imagination that is part of what makes us human.  Thinking over the horizon, thinking about things that don't seem real.

---------

The idea of preserving one's brain brings to mind James Taylor's song Frozen Man (not one of his more famous songs), which was a pretty convincing argument for me as to why we shouldn't strive for physical/mental immortality. Spiritual immortality, on the other hand, sounds great.

That said, I like Hayworth's work the same way that I like people who devote tons of energy to searching for extraterrestrial life.  It's big, and crazy, and inspiring.

Wind Energy in West Virginia: Coal River Mountain

Tom Zeller, Jr. has an article in this morning's Times ("A Battle in West Virginia Mining Country Pits Coal Against Wind," here) about efforts to prevent mountaintop removal coal mining on Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County, West Virginia.

Environmental activitists and wind energy supporters argue that certain mountains in southwestern West Virginia (where the state's coal industry is concentrated) would actually be good spots for wind energy farms.  Don Blankenship of Massey Energy (about whom I also wrote on April 10, here), which leases the mountain, is having none of it: he argues that coal opponents are effectively driving American companies to set up shop in Asia, where energy is considerably cheaper.

According to Zeller, approximately 50% of the United States energy supply comes from coal.

462.  Over the course of the next 50 years, how much will this percentage change?  Will it drop down to 40%, or will the change be more substantial than that?  I guess it somewhat depends on the country's evolving attitudes towards nuclear energy, which I gather could become a more significant source than either wind or solar.

463.  Does Don Blankenship specifically like controversy?  He seems to be so outspoken and anti-environmentalist, versus so many corporate leaders who will attempt to "talk the enviro talk" even if they don't actually "walk the walk."

464.  What percentage of China's energy supply comes from coal?  How about Russia's?

West Virginia is the second-leading American state in terms of coal production (158 million tons annually) behind Wyoming (468 million tons). Surprisingly, though, only 20,000 jobs in West Virginia are "coal-industry related" (I'd have thought the number would be considerably higher).

The owner of Coal River Mountain, Rowland Land Company, is blunt in admitting that coal is considerably more profitable than wind:

David Pollitt, owner of the Rowland Land Company, the largest of the property owners on Coal River Mountain, says he has nothing against wind farms in principle, but adds that he believes the technology is too expensive, too undeveloped and too rife with its own environmental objections to be viable. In any case, until mountaintop removal is banned, he says leasing his land to coal developers is simply too profitable not to do.

“Certainly if it came to a point in time where the companies we have it leased to say they don’t need the surface, then we can look at alternatives,” Mr. Pollitt says. “And if there ever comes a point in time where they completely outlaw surface mining, we’d certainly look at alternatives. We’d look at anything that would generate income for us.”

For now, though, that’s likely to remain coal, and Massey Energy has already begun blasting on one corner of Coal River Mountain.

According to Zeller, there's been a multi-year controversy about a potential wind energy project in Greenbrier County, West Virginia (I think that's where The Greenbrier is located), and the majority of the locals are against it. A US District Court decision earlier this year will let a portion of the Greenbrier wind project proceed.

One thing I had not realized about wind energy is that a major point of opposition is that the windmills cause a strobe-light effect (from the sun shining through) that is, according to Zeller, very unpleasant if you live nearby.  I'm familiar with the aesthetic and noise arguments against windmills, but I had not heard about the strobe-light issue before.

Adrian Higgins and Robert Harrison on Technology's Domination

Adrian Higgins has a terrific piece in today's Post (here) ruminating on the degree to which humans are getting lost in their electronic devices and losing touch with the physical world.

This is right. There is something changing in the way that people relate to each other (and to their physical surroundings) that is rooted in computers, cell phones, etc. I know it's not all bad, but it's not all good either (and the irony of me writing about Higgins's article on a blog, which I would never have envisioned even two years ago, is not lost on me).

Higgins captures in a short article (you could write a long book on this topic) the problematic aspect of the increasing domination of electronics. For me, this trend is the biggest cultural change / evolution of the past couple of decades.

Here's an excerpt:

Technology has drawn us into our interconnected webs, in the office, on the street, on the park bench, to the point that we exist virtually everywhere except in the physical world.

Robert Harrison, a professor of Italian literature at Stanford University, laments that when students pass through the school's visually stimulating campus, iPhones, BlackBerrys and all the evolving devices and apps draw them into their blinkered personal realms.

"Most of the groves, courtyards, gardens, fountains, artworks, open spaces and architectural complexes have disappeared behind a cloaking device, it would seem," he writes in his book "Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition."

The ubiquity of the computer is changing the very essence of the human animal. We are in the midst of a historical change in "our mode of vision," Harrison says, "which is bound up with our mode of being."

Surrogacy

Stephanie Saul has a long piece in today's Times (here) about surrogacy. The article focuses on the uncertain legal landscape as to the biological and birth parents' rights.

Saul reports that there are about 750 surrogate births per year in the US. I would have guessed there'd be a significantly higher number - I guess it is still a relatively uncommon phenomena. Saul says that most surrogate births go without a hitch but there are several high profile cases in which one or the other of the parents is arguing for custody of the child.

State law governs the custody issues, and the American Bar Association is working on a uniform law provision to help out the many (majority of) states that are silent on the issue of surrogacy.

This is a picture by Fabrizio Constantini from the Times article. It shows surrogate parents Laschell and Paul Baker with the babies for whom they are arguing for custody.

-------

This article brought to mind an article I read earlier this year about kidney donations (my post about it is here). In both cases, the law is struggling to keep pace with technological change: legislators and judges are trying to think about issues that can be really confusing. One such issue is the role that money/commerce can or should play in medicine.

The first time I remember really grappling with questions of biotechnology and medicine was during a roundtable discussion at the fall 1990 Jefferson Scholars candidates' weekend. The candidates were asked to read several articles, and then we were watched and critiqued while we discussed them. It was a challenging exercise for me, and I cannot recall what I said (I don't think I said much!). Notwithstanding how much the world has changed in the twenty years since, the big ethical questions remain very much painted in shades of grey.

Margaret Talbot on Dreams

This is a picture by Salvador Dali, the artist that I most associate with dreams.

Margaret Talbot has an article in this week's New Yorker (here) in which she examines the current state of dream and nightmare research. While reading it I was completely reminded of a paper that I wrote -- I think in high school (which class would this have been for?) -- about lucid dreaming, which refers to the ability that some people have to recognize that they are dreaming and then control the content/plotline of their dreams. Talbot says that about 20% of people have lucid dreams and that there's some evidence that you can be trained to have them.

The first part of Talbot's article is, indeed, about "dream training": a technique used with people who have recurring nightmares where they practice visualizing soothing images. Talbot says that some sleep researchers are convinced this "imagery-rehearsal therapy" works, but others are skeptical.

355. How many nights in a typical month do I remember my dreams? If I had to ballpark it, I'd say maybe 20-25% of nights.

356. Talbot talks about dreams (and nightmares) being the source of artistic inspiration ... what are some of the famous books and movies that are based on dreams? When I was a kid I remember someone telling me that George Lucas had dreamed the entire Star Wars saga (all nine episodes?!).

357. Do I dream in color? Talbot says that more and more people are claiming they dream in color, but a researcher named Schwitzgebel says that "dreams may be neither colored nor black and white, leaving the colors of most of their objects unspecified, as novels do."

358. Talbot actually mentions the "teeth falling out" dream is very widespread!! I have this one about once or twice a year ... what the heck does it mean? It's not exactly a nightmare but I definitely don't like having it.

Insect Bites

It's mosquito season, and it seems like they've been pretty bad this year. The backs of my legs are taking the worst of it. I'm currently reading a lengthy two-part article in The New Yorker about Siberia, and the author points out that parts of Siberia have some of the worst mosquito infestation in the world.

This morning, an author named Richard Conniff wrote about insect and bug bites on -- of all places -- the Times's "happiness blog" (here) which is "a discussion about the search for contentment in its many forms — economic, emotional, physical, spiritual — and the stories of those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead."

Conniff wrotes about a guy named Justin O. Schmidt who keeps meticulous track of all the bites and stings that he gets -- and channels the experiences into something approaching happiness. Conniff says the key is that Schmidt allows himself to feel the "flow" of the being-stung-or-bitten experience:

Positive psychology types like to say that savoring the moment is a “crucial happiness skill,” and that’s what Schmidt does next: “So I pay a little attention to the type of pain it is, how long it lasts, how intense it gets.” A harvester ant, for instance, “felt like somebody was putting a knife in and twisting it.” A wasp known in the American Southwest as the “tarantula hawk” made him lie down and scream: “The good news is that by three minutes, it’s gone. If you really use your imagination you can get it to last five.”

This is great stuff!! I can barely wait to get bitten next time and experiment with Schmidt's approach. I'm definitely skeptical but it's also fun to think about things in completely different ways.

Larissa MacFarquhar on Kidney Donations

Larissa MacFarquhar has an extremely interesting article in the July 27 New Yorker about the private kidney donation industry.

MacFarquhar personalizes the issue with the story of Paul Wagner ("he believed that if his needs were met and he found himself in possession of a surplus - of money or time or wherewithal - he was obliged to share it") donating one of his kidneys to Gail Tomas (a "vivacious, chatty, candidly emotional" retired opera singer who had been unable to find a donor through regular channels and then signed up on MatchingDonors.com.)

MacFarquhar raises all sorts of fascinating questions about how we conceive of "giving" of ourselves and why most people are instinctively confounded by the idea of freely donating an organ to a stranger:

"Most people find it uncomplicatedly admirable when a person risks his life to rescue a stranger from fire or drowning. What, then, is it about saving a stranger by giving a kidney, a far lesser risk, that people find so odd?

Do they feel there is something aggressive about the act, as though the donor were implicitly rebuking them for not doing it, too? Or perhaps it's that organ donation, like rescue, is conceived in cold blood, and cold-blooded altruism seems nearly as sinister as cold-blooded malevolence."

The article reports that 7,000 donors have signed up on MatchingDonors.com, and about 600 have actually gone through with the surgery.

One of the most interesting issues is the push-back from the "kidney donor establishment" against the private donations that are facilitated by MatchingDonors.

Bob Hickey, the first donee patient to list himself on the website, suspects that "the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit company to which the government contracts out the management of the cadaver-organ waiting list, intimidates transplant centers into rejecting Internet donors ... indeed, UNOS takes the position that MatchingDonors.com 'exploits vulnerable populations and undermines public trust in the equitable allocation of organs.'"

This piece is so interesting. I don't think I've ever read anything in-depth about organ donation. There are so many complex moral questions involved. Reading articles like this reinforces in me the tremendous power of the written word to expand one's worldview by introducing otherwise completely unknown/un-thought-of issues and challenges.