A Disturbing Thought

There is something disturbing going on in the State of Denmark. First let me stress that I strongly support President Obama and other Democrats. However, there are now a list of actions that I find objectionable:

- Expanding the useless and extremely wasteful war in Afghanistan.
- Keeping people in prison for years without any charges.
- Reinstating the unlawful "Military Commissions" of the dreadful Bush-Cheny years.
- Suspending Habeus Corpus.
- Continuing and even expanding (I think) warrentless wiretapping of US citizens.
- Failure to prosecute Bush and Cheny for illegal actions such as torture, rendition and warentless wiretapping.
- Failure to change the Senate rules to do away with the filibuster

I disagree with all these actions, but I will continue to support Obama because the Republican alternative is so frightening. However recently something appears to be happening that hits me close to home as a practicing scientist.  I noticed it soon after the oil spill began in the Gulf. NOAA was going along with everything BP was saying about the oil flow, the lack of underwater dispersed oil plumes, etc. And yet it has come out that BP probably knew all along that the rate of the spill was much higher than they were claiming. And at the same time, some independent scientists were providing rough estimates of the flow from the video that were much higher than that claimed by BP and NOAA. And then I realized that NOAA was not sending oceanographic research ships out in the Gulf to investigate the "plumes" and was actively downgrading the idea that these existed. And now I read in the media that a scientist from a local University had organized several research ships from places such as Woods Hole Oceanographic to begin this investigation as the oil was spilling so that they could  have a baseline. They had requested around $8 million to accomplish this but a normal grant request might take over 6 months to a year to go through normal channels. I believe that this has still not been funded on an emergency basis (but I may be wrong). And then it appears that BP (and Coast Guard people) were actively preventing reporters from photographing the spill or talking with the workers.

And now I read in the media that scientists employed by NOAA have been told not to talk with the media about the spill and not to divulge any data already obtained by NOAA research ships. This has a frightening  similarity to the previous Bush policies, such as not having let  Jim Hanson talk about climate change and having  non-scientist Agency heads actually modify his publications. This scares me more than all of the above actions since it appears that  science and reason are being replaced by political requirements. I can only guess that the administration wants to play down the effects of the spill for political reasons, but I truly  hope that this is not the case.

Please say it ain't so,  President Obama!

End the filibuster!

Here is a copy of a letter I sent VP Biden (and also Ed Shutz and Rachel Maddow):

I am a strong supporter of this administration and President Obama. I have a suggestion on how to finally end Republican obstructionism: End the Senate filibuster by changing the rules.
As you well know, the filibuster is a rule made by the Senate and is not in the Constitution. There was a Supreme Court Ruling in 1892 - United States versus Ballin - which found that changes to Senate rules could be achieved by a simple majority. Changing the rule to a simple majority would restore democracy to the US Senate and allow elections to have some meaning. This is necessary since the Republican Party plans to stop any legislation from passing the Senate.
I remind you of the rules to change the filibuster:
(from Wikipedia)
A senator makes a point of order calling for an immediate vote on the measure before the body, outlining what circumstances allow for this. The presiding officer of the Senate, usually the vice president of the United States or the president pro tempore, makes a parliamentary ruling upholding the senator's point of order. The Constitution is cited at this point, since otherwise the presiding officer is bound by precedent. A supporter of the filibuster may challenge the ruling by asking, "Is the decision of the Chair to stand as the judgment of the Senate?" This is referred to as "appealing from the Chair." An opponent of the filibuster will then move to table the appeal. As tabling is non-debatable, a vote is held immediately. A simple majority decides the issue. If the appeal is successfully tabled, then the presiding officer's ruling that the filibuster is unconstitutional is thereby upheld. Thus a simple majority is able to cut off debate, and the Senate moves to a vote on the substantive issue under consideration. The effect of the nuclear option is not limited to the single question under consideration, as it would be in a cloture vote. Rather, the nuclear option effects a change in the operational rules of the Senate, so that the filibuster or dilatory tactic would thereafter be barred by the new precedent.
It is time to change this rule and return the Senate to a real democracy. Only then can President Obama's initiatives be made into law.

What a Concept!

Soon I must decide on whether I will retire. What a concept! I never thought I would not have a lab to go to every day and play with instruments,ideas and my little Leishmania buggers. But the time comes for anyone and I do feel an obligation to young researchers not to hog limited resources for too long. What will I do, I ask myself. Well, I do enjoy taking astroimages at night with my backyard telescope, playing the violin, working with computers and programs, taking on line courses on history, science, art and music, hiking in the mountains or by the ocean, playing with my dogs, reading voraciously and traveling (although traveling these days is a chore not a pleasure anymore). And most of all I enjoy thinking and writing. But is that enough? Time will tell. And in the large view of things, this is so unmomentous. I doubt Argentina will cry for me and also not even Brazil. But last year a funny thing happened – I got really interested in a new research project and decided to try to pursue it for a little longer. Ahha, but research needs money and researchers and my 41 year old NIH grant is finally expiring in April. So I guess it comes down to whether my renewal gets funded or not. Times are tough and NIH money is really limited so I am not very optimistic. But I will try and perhaps can continue playing with instruments, ideas and my little buggers for a little longer.

December 31, 2010 - Grant update: Well my NIH grant was funded for three more years. My lab is really small now with just two postdocs and I have stopped accepting  graduate students. It's actually more cozy this way.  It will be fun to try to solve the structure of the editing complex at a high enough resolution to be able to learn something about the mechanism. 

Haiti – A Premonition of What is to Come

The earthquake in Haiti reminds us that, although we are very sophisticated and intelligent and have marvelous machines, we are essentially powerless in regard to geological events of that magnitude. All we can do is to build better buildings and wait for the movements of the plates.
        The catastrophe in Haiti is terrible but is, I believe, merely a premonition of what is to come with the climatic changes we have wrought. It is clear by now that countries today do not have the political will or foresight to accomplish the lowering of greenhouse gases required to ameliorate the coming disasters before the point of no return is reached. The consequences are horrific. Flooding of the major Eastern river deltas from the inevitable rise in ocean level will displace, if not outright kill, millions of people in the poorest countries in the world, resulting in vast migrations of refugees and putting tremendous pressure on neighboring countries if not causing open warfare. At the same time, the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas will lead to major decreases in the Indus River in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, the Mekong in Southeast Asia, the Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Yellow and Yangtze rivers of China, all of which supply water for billions of people. In the United States, severe droughts in the Southwest will result in the drying of the Colorado River and the loss of this key water supply for the major cities of Arizona and Southern California. The drought in the California Central Valley, which has already begun, will essentially cause all agriculture in that breadbasket of the country to come to a halt. People will begin to migrate away from Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas into the Northwest and Midwest. But cities in the Midwest will have their own problems and soon will begin to limit immigration. The corn and wheat fields will dry up, forcing farming to move north where there is still enough water. Inevitably Canada will also be blocking immigration from the United States leading to inevitable conflict between the United States and its northern neighbor. Major coastal cities throughout the world will be flooded by the increase in ocean levels and no system of dikes will realistically be economically or physically able to prevent this. The loss of New York will be a major blow to the entire economic system of the United States from which it will never recover. The flooding of Washington will force a migration of the American government to higher ground, and inevitably lead to increasing chaos with the result being martial law. Florida will essentially cease to exist as a functioning state. The European countries will begin to limit immigration of the refugees from the east, initially by laws and then by force. Piece by piece, what we know as civilization will begin to break down. Trains will stop running, highways and bridges will not be repaired and the entire system of supply begin to fail.
          Sadly, we will look back on the Haitian disaster with horror and sadness as the beginning of the end.

Kabuki Seating

Every time I enter an airplane to go on a trip, I wonder why the passenger seats do not face towards the back. It is so very obvious that in a crash, one’s body goes forward, so that the well constructed seats with their impressive (and uncomfortable) headrests serve no purpose except to act as a hard barrier to the person behind. I am reminded of this absurdity every time the Stewardess goes through the Kabuki theater of telling passengers to bring their seats to an upright position and make sure the seats are fully in the upright position. They in fact do a walk through the cabin to see if these rules are being followed. I often feel like asking the Stewardess what is the purpose of this ritual but then remember what happens to anyone who complains on an airliner these days. The same situation occurs on a train (of course in Europe where passenger trains really exist), except that on trains some people actually have backward facing seats and will probably survive a crash.
If you do a simple Google search on “airline seats facing forward” you can easily obtain multiple articles on this problem. Turns out that I am not the first to recognize this. There is a long history. In fact, all military airplanes have seats facing towards the back. Obviously the military wants its soldiers to have the best chance of surviving a crash whereas domestic airlines clearly do not care about the safety of the passengers. It seems that one strong reason for this lack of concern is economic, in that backward facing seats would have to be greatly reinforced since most of the impact force is higher on the seat and this would involve substantial costs to the airline! Another economic reason is that the airlines think that passengers prefer facing forward. And yet another is that most passengers have never thought of this problem at all and airlines prefer to keep it a secret.Substantial research has been performed on this safety issue with the universal conclusion that survival is better in rear-facing seats. For example, Richard Snyder, a scientist studying airplane crash protection published a paper in 1983 with the title” Impact protection in Air Transport Seat Design” which had this conclusion.
Of course it is irrational to except that any profit-making company would on its own increase passenger safety when money is involved and when most people do not even know the problem exists. Just look at the history of seat belts and air bags in cars. But I am an optimist (except in the case of human-caused climatic warming!) and hope that this will happen in my lifetime.

Finally action

Way back on July 22, 2009, I posted a blog on an idea I had of where to site large solar plants without concern for damaging the environment. I suggested using already environmentally degraded sites such as the Owens Dry Lake in California's Owens Valley.

Today there was a article in the LA Times stating that the DWP Commissioners approved a 600 acre pilot project to do just that. It made my heart beat a little faster.

A Crisis in Public Education

One could not help but notice that my University has been making the headlines lately but not entirely for the right reasons. When I first came to UCLA there was no tuition for California residents and this led to a renaissance of learning without relevance to financial status and a concomitant immense benefit to the state. I would in fact trace as one example the development of the Silicon Valley innovativeness in computer and web technology directly to this far sighted altruistic mentality. But then came Governor Ronald Reagan and a newly instituted tuition underwent a inexorable increase every year. But this year the increase reached the incredible value of 32% and the students have revolted.

The students might be interested in a small fruitless battle I led recently attempting to convince the UCLA administration not to misallocate the scarce resources of the State. I copy the letter I sent to the UCLA Chancellor below:

“I am a Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics and have been at UCLA for the last 41 years. I find it hard to believe that UCLA is going forward with a $185 million renovation of Pauley Pavillon at a time when courses are being eliminated and faculty and staff salaries are being cut. The article in UCLA Today states that, out of the required $185 million, "..we have $52 million that has been committed to date toward that goal..", and that the remainder of the funding will come from "..$15 million in Student Programs, Activities and Resources Center fees and $10 million in Student Seismic fees.." and "..$60 million in external financing..". The article attempts to justify this expenditure by stating that ".. this is an important symbol of UCLA's overall reputation for excellence.." However, the symbol of excellence for a great University is the quality of its faculty in teaching and research, not athletics and public events and concerts. … This is a true misallocation of scarce resources at this time of financial crisis and should be reversed.”

About the same time, there was a Letter to the Editor of the LA Times by the ex Chair of the committee involved in the Pauley renovation project, who was fired when he complained about the proposed huge increase in costs. This letter provided additional factual information which made my letter seem a drop in the bucket.

I received in due course a response from the "Vice Chancellor for External Affairs" which attempted to justify these planned expenditures but succeeded only in strengthening my objections. At that point I saw the futility of it all and let it ride. But now it would appear that this misallocation of scare resources has come home to roost.