The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Martin Schafer:

I spent some scrolling around the map and reading up on the silk road. The site is about 700 miles NE of Urumqi the capital of modern Xinjiang province. The northern branch of the silk road runs through that area. Around 650 CE a local government center was founded near modern Urumqi.

Our site is along the northern edge of the Gokturkh empire (552-747 CE) and in the middle of the area covered by the Uyghur empire (742-848 CE). So it is in an area at a time where trade is flowing between the eastern Roman Empire and China.

Now the trade is mostly conducted by Sogdians at this point but if you really wanted Siberian Romans you could have them. Of course we have the archeologists ruining the fun telling us this was built by Chinese, but there you go.

It's an excellent article, but there is one point that I would have liked to have seen followed up on. They mention that the incidence of these deaths jumped significantly after people stopped putting their baby in the front seat because of worries about air bag deaths. The article says there are 15 to 25 hyperthermia deaths a year. A little googling says deaths in children 12 and under due to air bags dropped from 35 to 18 between 1996 and 2000 when this recommendation was taken up. There was no break down in age, but I suspect we are causing more deaths than we are saving by telling people to put the baby in the back. There must be some age, I'd guess 3 or 4, where the odds of being forgotten actually leading to death drop off enough that the child belongs in back, but younger than that I suspect they should be in front.

Kajun @ 169 The count down is to when the polls close. Prior to that point no final totals (bar the NH special case) for any precinct are available and it is illegal to report any partial results that might be available. Once the polls close some well organized precincts with no lines (if you are in line at the point the polls close you get to vote no matter how long it take) will be able to report results almost immediately. Other precincts may not have final totals for hours and in some special cases (absentee ballots mailed by election day for example) votes will be trickling in for days. Usually things aren't close enough for those late votes to matter.

niki @ 141 The networks rarely have to back track on calling a state. It's all about having a good model of how the voting in the areas that have reported relate to how the state as a whole votes, and how voting matches up with recent poll data, and they put a lot of work into that. Of course this is a year where historical models are more likely to fail. It's possible that they are making a mistake, but it's unlikely to be a stupid mistake.

At our precinct (Minneapolis 6-4) when Eileen and I, and couple other household members. went to vote at 10:30 the line was a block and a half long. We got done at 12:45, line was still a block and half long. Eileen and I went and did door knocking until my feet gave out and when we drove by the place at 4:30 the line was still a block and half long.

We broke records in total votes cast for Kerry in 2004 and it was not nearly that busy.

#70, it may not be possible to disentangle this from a liking for power, but I feel that the better sort of politician is driven more by a desire/willingness to take responsibility.

I don't recall the source, but my preferred definition for politics is the means of resolving disputes without hitting each other over the heads with clubs.

One bitter experience from many years ago that I will pass on. If you try to turn at an intersection and your car just gently keeps sliding in the direction you were going, before you hit the curb, straighten your wheels. Even at very low velocity (I was well under 5mph) stopping the car by hitting the curb with the side of the wheel bends the axle, requiring a tow and expensive repairs when you should have just been able to drive away.

There is a short talk by Carolyn Porco on the Cassinni mission recently posted to ted.com. If you haven't been to the site I'd strongly recommend it. A vast array of short smart talks on fascinating subjects.

Here is a link to the registered suppliers of Pemoline

http://www.buyersguidechem.de/AliefAus.php?pname=Pemoline&pnu=550505757755&cass=

There are 2 US, 3 German, and 3 Chinese companies. There are corporate web pages and email links.

To review possibilities: US, England, Canada, and Sweden are out. Someone in France offered to inquire there. Other EU countries should be checked (especially Germany).

While there are potentially risks of not getting what you think you're purchasing, India, China (Hong Kong especially), and Brazil seem good candidates, since they are perennially fighting with the West over production of generics. I'll talk to my father and see if he can find out anything about acquiring drugs in India.

Another arcane bit in keeping with this thread. The term widdershins, which is usually defined as counter clockwise, is actually the opposite of deosil, which means the direction the sun moves across the sky. So in the southern hemisphere widdershins should be clockwise and in the tropics it should vary based on time of year.

My personal favorite religious joke is ...

Why does a Christian cross himself?

To get to the other side.

I'm also fond of

What does the H in Jesus H Christ stand for?

Hallmark, becaus God cares enough to send the very best.

Another Xenophon factoid: The cave dwellers the ten thousand winter with in south eastern Anatolia are the Kurds.

I am still breaking down and crying every hour or so. My initial reaction was simply dispair, but I am trying to move beyond it. To see the biggest progressive movement of my lifetime, simply brushed aside is shattering.

As a member of the reality based community, I believe in the science of polling. Historically the way you detect election fraud is that the results don't match the exit polls *. Ohio and Florida have a particularly bad match between results and the exit polls. Unfortunately I don't believe that there is any way to use this data to actually overturn the election.

So, the first step is to put more energy into the electronic voting groups. I had thought that the Kerry campaign didn't make any big mistakes, one of the reasons I'm especially horrified by the loss. But, they didn't take this threat seriously enough (or maybe simply didn't see how they could combat it except by winning big enough). We need to work with the state Secretary of State's offices and the county offices to replace the fraud enabling machines. Until we can verify that we have an accurate election system this will keep happening to us.

Second (not temporally, all of these need to be worked on at the same time) we need to keep the pressure on the media to do a more honest job of reporting reality. The last year has seen real (though frustratingly slow) movement in the mainstream media towards doing a better job. The only way that we will reach the non activist center is if the news they see reflects what is actually going on. Part of this effort is to build a think tank/media outlet network similar to the one that operates for the right. Part of it is to be more proactive about sending letters to the major outlets.

Third we need to pressure our representatives to do the right thing. Even Republicans will respond to sufficient constituent pressure.

Fourth we need to take back at least one house in two years. If we can pour money and bodies into house races we will be able to unseat incumbents.

I really thought that today would be the beginning of our recovery from the current low point. But I guess we have lower to sink. Doesn't mean we won't rise again eventually.

*This is the same way casinos catch card counters, and other types of cheaters. Once the results diverge enough from the statistical expectation, you know they are doing something, even if you don't know what.

Most people already know these things, but given some of the comments I'm going to go through a few basics. First, federal budget, here's a link for far more info than you want...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf

But to summarize, for 2003 the federal government spent 21.8 percent on social security, 14.2 percent on means tested mandated payment(which includes Medicaid, food stamps, AFDC, SSI, EITC, child nutrition, and a half dozen other bits), 21.2 on other mandated payments (mostly medicare), 6.7 percent on interest, 18.8 percent on defense, and 19.5 percent on everything else.

All the corporate welfare, and agricultural subsidies, and rampant pork, that is what most people mean by waste and fraud, in buried in that 19.5 percent, along with road building, and running the federal court system, and Pell grants, and NIH, and CDC, and so on and so forth. Sure, there are a lot of loathsome tics sucking on the body politic, but what they are taking is peanuts compared to the money that is going to people to solve real problems.

Second, social security is amazingly efficient.
Here's another link ...

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10035.html

The administrative costs are less than one percent, you won't find a private pension fund that does better.

Finally, social security is not an investment, the money you get back is not the money you put in plus what the government managed to make for you, and, while it does have this effect, social security is not an income transfer program. That's why it's not means tested. Social security is a risk pooling program, like any other sort of insurance.

Risk pooling works best for society when everyone can and must to participate. If you let people decide whether to join the low risk groups opt out and the cost for everyone goes up. If you let the entity paying the benefit exclude people, it will exclude the highest risk group, those who most need the program.

Sure there is some correlation between qualities society wants to encourage, like industry, prudence and delayed gratification, and membership in the low risk group here. But there are plenty of ways that society rewards those qualities. It doesn't have to be part of every program. Perhaps it comes down to, do you not only believe in eternal torment if you screw up in this life, but do you think that was one of God's better ideas?

Sarah E -

I'm somewhat surprised that no one else has yet mentioned Donald Engel's, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. He uses the science of logistics to sort through the historical accounts of Alexander's exploits and make judgements about the reality of them. In the course of this exercise, you learn an enormous amount about what is and isn't possible for armies dependent on human and animal transport. This is also a good book for anyone writing a quest story.

Very minor glitch I've been meaning to ask about. When I click on the comments of a Making Light post, the comments will fully display for less than a second, and then end at the end of the adds on the left. Refresh doesn't fix this, but hitting the back button and clicking on the comments again does fix it. Following a link in the comments and returning via back restores the bad behavior, which is again fixed by popping up and down.

This doesn't seem to happen on Electrolite. I'm using Windows XP and Internet Explorer. Do other people see this behavior? Is there some setting I can change?

Having to use my workaround is a very minor annoyance, I'm mostly just curious.

NPR finally went into why there are audio tapes last night. These conversations were happening on a trading floor where people make deals, jot down a note about the deal and move on. If there is a later dispute about what was agreed they roll the tape and check what was said.

The FERC impounded these tapes right after Enron's collapse. The lawyers for Washington State's civil suit against Enron (they got hit as bad or worse than California) finally pried them loose.

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