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You'll Never Believe This

It got cold in Portland last night, and temperatures remain around freezing at this moment. So the spiffy, spendy light rail "trains" aren't moving very well; delays of at least 20 minutes are expected to last until at least 8:30 p.m. on all lines, so rush-hour commuters who ride the silly things are once again screwed. They might not be moving, but they sure look cool.

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Trump To Erdogan: Build A fence, Close Your Border!

Oh. Excuse the mistake; that was Obama's message to the Turkish government. Because if there's one thing Obama knows all about, it's the importance of border security. No word as to whether or not Turkey has reminded Barry of Mexico.

Frankensteinian

Sergio Canavero has moved beyond "Young Frankenstein's" search for the perfect rostrum; he plans to head to China in order to perform the first full-head transplant.

Earlier this year, Canavero became famous around the world when he enlarged on plans, long cherished, to remove the heads of two people. One would be alive, with an ailing body (a paraplegic, say), the other newly dead or doomed (perhaps the brain-dead victim of an accident). As Canavero explained in academic papers and speeches, he planned to surgically attach the first head to the second body, fusing the spinal cords so that the owner of the first head might enjoy the functional use of the second body. It might be best understood as a "body transplant," but the wider world has tended to settle on the more sensational phrase.

It seems a bit ghoulish, but he's planned out the whole approach to removal of the heads and the ultimate reattachment of the "good" head to the "donor" body (as the procedure will occur in China, one can make an educated guess as to where and how that "donor" will be provided, and it won't involve an accident). Nonetheless, once the heads are severed, the first order of business will be connection of blood supplies to keep the brain oxygenated.

Canavero will then fuse the spinal cords and reconnect nerves - that's his specialty as a neurosurgeon. Other surgical specialists will step in to connect things like the windpipe and gullet. Even in the early 1900s, a woman whose spine was severed by a gunshot regained limited movement after her spine was fused. Things have come a long way since then.

Canavero likes to talk about medical pioneers who were outcasts and fringe-dwellers in their day. Louis Pasteur, he says, was called crazy for suggesting illnesses could be caused by microbes. "The history of mankind is trial and error. But we have to be dreamers. If you don't dream, you're not going anywhere."

And if successful, there would be other implications as well: consider reproduction; the head that's attached to the body will not pass on its genes, as those would come from the donor body (although if a clone is used, it would be possible to continue the genetic lineage  of the head's former body). There would likely be immune system issues as well, although those are generally well-addressed today through tissue matching and the development of antirejection drugs.

Then there are the overall ethical issues involved - although Canavero doesn't worry about those; in his view from a scientific perspective, what can be done, will be done.

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Retention Issues

According to a number of measures, their ranks are beginning to thin amid defections that have had the result - among other things - of forcing them to understaff their formerly robust checkpoints.

Near Kirkuk in the last week, 90 Islamic State fighters laid down their arms and turned themselves over to Kurdish peshmerga forces, Warren said. The former fighters were local men who had been coerced into joining the jihadists and have grown disillusioned with the cause or simply saw a way to quit the fight by turning themselves in.

To date, an estimated 23,000 brave Da'esh fighters have gone to meet Allah; not counting those who've managed to blow themselves up. They still have as many as 30,000 on hand, however, and  they're continuing to successfully recruit.

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Fighting Against Global Warming In Paris

Several hundred "protesters" apparently decided that French police are responsible for Climate Change and sensibly fought back by chucking rocks and bottles at the gendarmes, leading to tear gas deployment and the arrest of a hundred or so of the unruly hooligans. They do know how to have a good time.

But despite the dire predictions of AlGore and various other global warming enthusiasts, Florida has posted its tenth year in a row without a hurricane landing there. And while protesters in Hong Kong displayed posters of "starving" polar bears, the bears themselves remain stubbornly defiant; as sea ice continues to thicken at both poles, the furry residents of the north not only refuse to starve, there are thousands more of them today than at any time in recorded history. 

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Three Dog Night

Well, it's pretty cold here, so if we didn't have a furnace working, it might well be a three dog night.

The official commentary included in the CD set Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1964–1975 states that vocalist Danny Hutton's girlfriend, actress June Fairchild (best known as the "Ajax Lady" from the Cheech and Chong movie Up In Smoke) suggested the name after reading a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground while embracing a dingo (feral dog). On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and, if the night was freezing, it was a "three dog night".

Bragdon May Be A jerk, But He's Correct

He used to head Metro, and has thankfully left for New York. But he wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the Statesman Journal yesterday, and it's actually pretty spot-on. If you ignore his obligatory blather about transit and look just at the take on overall transportation, even he recognizes that the problem in Oregon isn't funding, but incompetent management.

Oregon’s transportation problem is not lack of money. What Oregon really has is a transportation governance and management problem. That problem needs to be fixed before Oregon’s streets, highways, bridges and transit can get fixed.

In response to concerns about ODOT mismanagement, Gov. Kate Brown asked the agency’s own board to review its performance. But asking an agency to review itself rarely provides fresh critical thinking. And ostensibly “independent” consultants who are supervised by the agency itself and dependent on the agency’s future contracts are part of the familiar cronyism of consultancy, telling agencies what they want to hear.

As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Cone Of Depression

1200 square miles of California's Central Valley is sinking at a rate of two inches per month. That's because they're draining the underlying aquifers in a desperate effort to "fight climate change". Most of central California is desert, and it's reverting to its natural state. Farmers and towns are simply accelerating the desertification process by pumping aquifers dry - and those aquifers can never be refilled.

The farmers began a literal race to the bottom, going underground, drilling new and deeper wells, and pumping so much water from the layers of sediment, sand and clay that it is causing the ground to collapse.

The sinking is worse in this part of the valley because it is rich in clay. Pumping pulls the water out of the clay pores, causing the clay layer to collapse. “The issue is the amount of deepwater pumping below the clay. That is what is causing the subsidence,” Hurley said. “The land is sinking as they extract the water below the clay; there is a pressure differential. It is pulling the water out of the clay layer, and when it does, the clay collapses. And as it collapses, it brings everything with it.”

And there goes the infrastructure. Not really a problem, though - Californians can subsist on software, so they don't really need stuff like food or water.

Don't Fear The Reaper

The Air Force has hired civilian defense contractors to fly MQ-9 Reaper drones to help track suspected militants and other targets in global hot spots, a previously undisclosed expansion in the privatization of once-exclusively military functions.

For the first time, civilian pilots and crews now operate what the Air Force calls "combat air patrols," daily round-the-clock flights above areas of military operations to provide video and collect other sensitive intelligence.

It's okay, though, because the contractors aren't allowed to shoot anything. Heh. They operate combat air patrols, but they aren't combatants. All righty then.

The only two contractors involved are General Atomics, which is the only supplier of armed drones (Predator and Reaper) and Aviation Unmanned, which is run by a former Reaper pilot and instructor. Neither company will talk about their activities. Undeniably, however, they are deeply involved in what is referred to as the kill chain, in which drones locate a target, map the location, track any movements, light it up with a laser, shoot it, and quantify the result. Air Force commanders claim that the contractors can do everything except laser a target and shoot it (these tasks fall strictly to military personnel) and therefore, the contractors are not technically "combatants".

That's a pretty thin line. I find it of particular interest because I have relatives who do programming for GA, near San Diego, for - yep - drones.

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38% Of Americans Will Not Get A Flu Vaccine

That's not because of a shortage, but because many people believe that the vaccine will give them the flu - just like their polio vaccine left them paralyzed. Others think it's just ineffective. And of course, autism.

We have some of the most highly-vegetated people on the planet in this country. Flu kills 25,000 people a year in America, and on average, 200,000 are hospitalized due to complications from influenza.

And the politicians yammer on about "sensible gun control".