busy

Sorry, been very busy lately. This will have to suffice for now.

Scalia dead!

I don't know about you, but when the wife and I heard the news of Antonin Scalia's passing on Saturday evening, we danced for joy, hugged, and laughed and laughed. Normally I would not cheer the passing of anyone, but Scalia ranks right up there with other really distasteful characters in history, so his passing should be cause for celebration.

I know the Republicans will block any attempt by Obama to fulfill his constitutional duty of nominating Scalia's replacement, but put the shoe on the other foot and Republicans would be demanding that a Republican President nominate a successor right away.

If history is any guide, Obama will nominate a centrist, but that person will be perceived by the GOP as far too liberal. They will probably turn up their noses at anyone to the left of Scalia, and that displays, once again, their utter disregard for their own duties and the Constitution itself. To them, it's all partisan, and it could only be "good" if it is perceived to be "good" for the GOP. Yes, the GOP are responsible for this crisis of democracy today because of their unwillingness to compromise and consider the greater good. But that is what we are stuck with today.

More than ever, we need a large wave of Democratic voters to sweep some of these obstructionists from office and replace them with Democrats.  And we can start with Bernie Sanders.

state vs federal prisons

We all have heard that the United States of America jails more people per capita than any other country in the world. We also have the largest total population in jail, in this, the "land of the free."

We also know that the War on Drugs has a lot to do with these inflated incarceration rates, and yet, ending the War on Drugs has been easier said than done. We are still suffering from puritanical attitudes about drug use. 

Looking at the statistics, it appears that most of the jailing frenzy has been taking place in the states and not at the federal level. This tells us that the War on the War on Drugs either needs to be fought at the state level, or the federal government needs to pass some sweeping laws to override the excessive state laws. Given the state of our federal government, dominated as it is by Republicans, who generally have a harsh and unforgiving view of even victimless crime, don't look for anything from the feds for the foreseeable future.

But on the contrary, you will notice that during the 1990's, during President Bill Clinton's two terms, the incarceration numbers really skyrocketed. Would Hillary Clinton replicate what happened under her husband's presidency?  

This story was produced by the Prison Policy Initiative.

Tracking State Prison Growth in 50 States

Briefing by Peter Wagner

Over the last three decades of the 20th century, the United States engaged in an unprecedented prison-building boom that has given our nation the highest incarceration rate in the world. Among people with experience in criminal justice policy matters, the “hockey stick curve” of the national incarceration rate is well known; but until now more detailed data on the incarceration rates for individual states has been harder to come by. This briefing fills the gap with a series of more than 100 graphs showing prison growth (and sometimes decline) for every state in the nation to encourage states to confront how their criminal policy choices undermine our national welfare.

Ending the U.S. experiment with mass incarceration requires us to focus on state policy because individual states are the most active incarcerating bodies in the nation:

Figure 1: Graph showing the number of people (per 100,000 national population at that time) that is confined in state, local and federal correctional facilities from 1925 to the present. State prisons are the largest part. (See as raw numbers.)

Most (57%) people incarcerated in the United States have been convicted of violating state law and are imprisoned in a state prison. Another 30% are confined in local jails — which are outside the scope of this briefing — generally either for minor violations of state law or because they are waiting to be tried for charges of violating state law. Federal-level policy directly accounts for only the 10% of people behind bars in the U.S.; they have either been convicted of violating a federal law or are being detained by the immigration authorities and are awaiting potential deportation to anther country.

In the aggregate, these state-level policy choices have been the largest driver of our unprecedented national experiment with mass incarceration, but not every state has contributed equally or consistently to this phenomenon. In the U.S.,each state is responsible for making its own policy choices about which people to lock up and how for long. We can’t end our nation’s experiment with mass incarceration without grappling with the wide variety of state-level criminal justice policies, practices and trends.

Take, for example, the below comparison in Figure 2 of the incarceration rate for the United States (in yellow) with data from five individual states (in orange). We can see that Minnesota has long been less likely to incarcerate than other states, but also, like the country as a whole, markedly increased its use of imprisonment in the late 20th century. On the other extreme, Alabama and Louisiana have consistently maintained above-average rates of incarceration, and their use of the prison continues to grow.

Figure 2: Focusing on only the national trend obscures the large and varied differences in both the pace and direction of state changes over time.

But another, contrary, trend is visible in figure 2: the recent rapid decline of imprisonment in the populous states of New York (starting in 1999) and California (beginning in 2006 and accelerating in 2009). The number of people incarcerated in those two states is so large that prison population changes within those states are, in large part, responsible for the recent drop in the national incarceration rate. So, while the United States incarceration rate has dropped for four years in a row, over that same time period 15 states have made policy choices that increased their individual incarceration rates.

Original is here with many more state-by-state graphs.

Maher: Puff Love

Bill Maher's last "New Rule" from his recent show, reminding us that we certainly should NOT take it for granted that legal weed will sweep the nation; indeed that we can even count on it staying legal in the four states where it is legal now, especially if we end up electing too many Republicans.  

Morocco solar farm

Morocco is working to complete the world's largest solar farm. It will provide 580MW of electricity for over 1 million people when complete at a cost of over $9 billion. It's good to know that other countries are not standing still with respect to renewable energy. 

Morocco to switch on first phase of world's largest solar plant

Phase one of Morocco’s vast $9bn Ouarzazate solar power plant provides 160MW of its ultimate 580MW capacity

Desert complex will provide electricity for more than 1 million people when complete, helping African country to supply most of its energy from renewables by 2030

Morocco’s king will switch on the first phase of a concentrated solar power plant on Thursday that will become the world’s largest when completed.

The power station on the edge of the Saharan desert will be the size of the country’s capital city by the time it is finished in 2018, and provide electricity for 1.1 million people.

Noor 1, the first section at the town of Ouarzazate, provides 160 megawatts (MW) of the ultimate 580MW capacity, helping Morocco to save hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions per year.

“At around 2pm, the king will press a button, the parabolic mirrors will start turning, the heat will begin to turn the turbines and the plant will come to life,” said Maha el-Kadiri, a spokeswoman for Masen, Morocco’s renewable energy agency.

Morocco poised to become a solar superpower with launch of desert mega-project

 

Read more

King Mohammed VI will then lay the foundations for Noor 2, the next stage of the solar complex. Noor 1 had been due to open in December but was delayed by unspecified “agenda concerns,” el-Kadiri said.

After it is switched on, the plant will initially provide 650,000 local people with solar electricity from dawn until three hours after sunset. 

“It is a very, very significant project in Africa,” said Mafalda Duarte, the manager of Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which provided $435m (£300m) of the $9bn project’s funding. “Morocco is showing real leadership and bringing the cost of the technology down in the process.”

The solar farm from space

The north African country plans to generate 42% of its energy from renewables by 2020, with one-third of that total coming from solar, wind and hydropower apiece.

Original.  Wiki is on it.

balloon sinus dilation

Oh boy, medical science has developed a new "treatment" for people who have a range of sinus problems. It's called "balloon sinus dilation" (BSD) and it is pretty much what it sounds like.

They use balloons to open up your sinuses. The balloons don't stay there; they are only inflated long enough to "out-fracture" a person's sinus walls, opening them up so air can flow more freely, and then they are removed or moved somewhere else that needs a little room to breathe.

That word "out-fracture" had me a little worried. They're basically going to break your face. In several places.

And all of that is done with only local anesthesia.  In the doctor's office.  I've seen face-fucks before but this was ridiculous!

So the wife has had sinus issues forever. Several years ago this same doctor performed a septoplasty, aka "turbinate reduction" on her under full anesthesia. She had some good, but not total, relief.

Over the last several years, her turbinates must have revved it up again, because this time he did the BSD AND more turbinate reduction. But he claims that this treatment should be PERMANENT. And he claimed that the surgery went very well.

I will spare you the goriest details but imagine sitting next to your spouse, holding their hand while a Mengele-wannabe Nazi fucks her face with two tools at a time up her nostrils. He's pointing up, he's pointing down, he's got those tools balls deep! And there are these weird cracking and popping sounds coming from her head! And every now and then, he turns on the buzz-saw to grind down her turbinates. It sounded like a grown-up dentist's drill.

And all the while, he's looking AWAY from her at the TV set to see what he's doing, because one of those tools has a camera and light on the end of it. So he's got these tools all the way up in her face while watching TV, and talking about movies to his aides!!  And yes, I could see what was on the TV too, but I couldn't watch.

I just wanted to punch that doctor for what he was inflicting on her. She is recovering, but slowly, with a lot of blood and mucus. I'm sure you didn't need to hear that. I only hope it really works.