#but we’re learning about it in our genetic engineering unit

[ardenchambres]

As someone who knows not a lot about science, what are the implications of recent discoveries like CAS9 on gender affirming care?

[phroyd]

http://phroyd.tumblr.comU.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

The advisories being relayed by U.S. spy agencies were part of a broader collection of worrisome signals that came during a period now regarded by many public health officials and other experts as a squandered opportunity to contain the outbreak.

As of Monday, more than 55,000 people in the United States had died of covid-19.

The frequency with which the coronavirus was mentioned in the PDB has not been previously reported, and U.S. officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.

A White House spokesman disputed the characterization that Trump was slow to respond to the virus threat. “President Trump rose to fight this crisis head-on by taking early, aggressive historic action to protect the health, wealth and well-being of the American people,” said spokesman Hogan Gidley. “We will get through this difficult time and defeat this virus because of his decisive leadership.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for the PDB. In response to questions about the repeated mentions of coronavirus, a DNI official said, “The detail of this is not true.” The official declined to explain or elaborate.

U.S. officials emphasized that the PDB references to the virus included comprehensive articles on aspects of the global outbreak, but also smaller digest items meant to keep Trump and senior administration officials updated on the course of the contagion. Versions of the PDB are also shared with Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking U.S. officials.

One official said that by mid- to late January the coronavirus was being mentioned more frequently, either as one of the report’s core articles or in what is known as an “executive update,” and that it was almost certainly called to Trump’s attention orally.

The administration’s first major step to arrest the spread of the virus came in late January, when Trump restricted travel between the United States and China, where the virus is believed to have originated late last year.

But Trump spent much of February publicly playing down the threat while his administration failed to mobilize for a major outbreak by securing supplies of protective equipment, developing an effective diagnostic test and preparing plans to quarantine large portions of the population.

The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged

Trump insisted publicly on Feb. 26 that the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” and said the next day that “it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

In reality, the virus was by then moving swiftly through communities across the United States, spreading virtually unchecked in New York City and other population centers until state governors began imposing sweeping lockdowns, requiring social distancing and all but closing huge sectors of the country’s economy.

As late as March 10, Trump said: “Just stay calm. It will go away.” The next day, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

By then, officials said, the warnings in the PDB and other intelligence reports had taken on the aspect of an insistent drumbeat. The first mention of the coronavirus in the PDB came at the beginning of January, focusing on what at that point were troubling signs of a new virus spreading through the Chinese city of Wuhan, and the Chinese government’s apparent efforts to conceal details of the outbreak.

In the ensuing weeks, U.S. intelligence agencies devoted additional resources and departments to tracking the spread of the coronavirus. At the CIA, the effort involved agency centers on China, Europe and Latin America, as well as departments de­voted to transnational health threats, officials said.The preliminary intelligence on the coronavirus was fragmentary, and did not address the prospects of a severe outbreak in the United States.

U.S. intelligence officials, citing scientific evidence, have largely dismissed the notion that the virus was deliberately genetically engineered. But they are continuing to examine whether the virus somehow escaped a virology lab in Wuhan, where research on naturally occurring coronaviruses has been conducted.

“We’re looking at it very closely, but we just don’t know,” said one senior U.S. intelligence official.

The warnings conveyed in the PDB probably will be a focus of any future investigation of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in early April called for the formation of an independent commission analogous to the one created to investigate the Sept, 11, 2001, attacks.

In response to that probe, the George W. Bush administration was pressured to declassify portions of the PDB from August 2001 — a month before 9/11 — warning that al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was “determined to strike in U.S.”

Senior officials with direct knowledge of Trump’s intelligence briefings say that Trump listens and asks questions during the sessions. “We go in and he treats us with respect,” one senior official said.

But Trump has also been combative or dismissive toward U.S. intelligence agencies throughout his presidency.

In mid-February, as the pathogen was spreading, Trump fired acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire after learning that a senior analyst had briefed members of Congress that Russia was seeking to interfere in the 2020 presidential election and had “developed a preference” for Trump.

Officials have noted that Trump was also contending with the Senate impeachment trial in January and focused on other security issues, including tracking Iran’s response to a Jan. 3 U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad.

David Priess, a former CIA officer who was a PDB briefer in the George W. Bush administration, said that even if Trump is ignoring his briefing book, other officials including national security adviser Robert O’Brien are probably digesting the material and interacting with Trump daily.

O’Brien’s deputy, Matthew Pottinger, has a background in intelligence and was among a small circle of senior officials urging early action to contain the coronavirus, U.S. officials said. Pottinger pushed to close off air travel from Europe in February, officials said, but Trump did not do so until mid-March.

“The fact that [Trump] gets only two or three briefings a week from the intelligence professionals doesn’t mean that’s the only exposure to the PDB he’s getting,” Priess said. “He can get the best intelligence in the world and still not make good decisions based on it.”

Priess, author of a book on intelligence briefings for presidents, said that Trump’s predecessors have been varied in their approaches to consuming intelligence. President Barack Obama was considered an avid reader of “the book,” which was prepared for him on a specially equipped computer tablet. President George W. Bush reviewed the highlights of the PDB and often discussed its contents at length with his briefer. President Richard M. Nixon likely didn’t read the PDB, Priess said, but was extensively briefed by his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.

Trump’s top health officials and advisers were also delivering warnings on the coronavirus through January and February, though their messages at times appeared muddled and contradictory.

On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned publicly that virus was spreading so rapidly that “we need to be prepared for significant disruption in our lives.”

Trump, traveling in India at the time, was outraged by what he regarded as the alarmist tone of her remarks and their perceived impact on the U.S. stock market.

Two days later, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar testified before a Congressional committee that the risk to the public remained “low,” and that the coronavirus would “look and feel to the American people more like a severe flu season in terms of the interventions and approaches you will see.”

On March 11, with cases surging in New York and the stock market plummeting, Trump declared a national emergency and announced a ban on travel from Europe, which had become the new epicenter of the outbreak.

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Phroyd

[the-desolated-quill]

A Stronger Loving World - Watchmen blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t read this comic yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When people read Watchmen for the first time, I’d be surprised if any of them expected the story to end like this.

A Stronger Loving World opens with the aftermath of the fake alien arriving in New York and slaughtering millions. Three splash pages of harrowing artwork by Dave Gibbons. Corpses littered everywhere. Blood in the streets. Giant tentacles wrapped around various landmarks. It’s an extremely unsettling opening and lets the reader know that Gibbons and Alan Moore are not fucking around here. Doctor Manhattan and Laurie arrive to see the carnage and deduce that Adrian was behind it before heading to Antarctica to confront him. After several confrontations involving Manhattan getting disintegrated again and Laurie pulling a gun on Adrian, it’s revealed that Ozymandias’ plan has worked. The nations of the world have put aside their differences and decided to cooperate for fear of an impending alien invasion.

This then leads to the big moral dilemma. What Adrian has done is despicable, but he has succeeded in bringing about world peace, and revealing the truth behind the giant squid runs the risk of dooming the world all over again. So what would be the heroic thing to do?

Well there’s no point asking these characters because as the graphic novel has been emphasising again and again, these guys are not heroes.

This is an extremely complicated moral conundrum with no real right or wrong answer, and I very much appreciate how Alan Moore doesn’t try to shove one down our throats. I also like how each character comes to their decision. Doctor Manhattan is of course a godlike being who sees beyond our world and so shares a somewhat similar view to Adrian’s. That the deaths were justified because the end result is peace. Rorschach on the other hand cannot square what just happened with his own rigid morality, and refuses to keep the secret, vowing to tell everyone the truth, which leads to Manhattan killing him. Nite Owl meanwhile, being weak willed and pathetic as ever, decides to go along with Adrian’s plan, but it’s less to do with him agreeing with Adrian and more to do with the fact that the moral implications are so hard to comprehend that he doesn’t even want to try, instead taking the path of least resistance. Finally Silk Spectre, so shocked by everything she’s learned and witnessed, clings to the one stable thing she has. Dan. The two then have sex, serving as a dark inverse of the sex scene in A Brother To Dragons. In both instances, sex is used as a metaphor for power, but whereas the motivation in the first was Dan overcoming his own inadequacies, the second is both Dan and Laurie desperately trying to retain whatever shred of power and independence they have left after such a shocking and twisted act of mass murder.

It’s great because it demonstrates just how well Moore understands his own characters and how well we’ve come to know them. They behave exactly as we would expect them to and there’s something oddly satisfying about that despite the moral ambiguity of their decisions.

In fact lets discuss Rorschach for a bit, considering he’s the only one that refused to keep the secret. Bit surprising considering the horrid things he’s done throughout the graphic novel. What’s so different about this? Well it could be the sheer scale of it. Could be that he didn’t believe those who died truly deserved it according to his own strict moral code. Except I’m not entirely convinced. In the extra material provided in The Abyss Gazes Also, there’s a letter written by a young Walter Kovacs about his father. Or rather the person he imagines his father to be because he never actually met him. Apparently his parents split up because ‘he liked President Truman and she didn’t.’ Interesting in and of itself that Rorschach, a right wing bigot, was fathered by a Democrat. But wait, it gets more intriguing. He then goes on to write about how he believes his father was an aide to President Truman before talking about the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the US dropped atomic bombs, killing millions. Except here he expresses that he believes that Truman did the right thing because it ended the war and saved millions more lives. Curious, wouldn’t you agree? So, in Rorschach’s mind, what made the nukes in Japan morally justifiable while Adrian’s giant squid in New York wasn’t? We can only really speculate at this point. Some think it’s because Rorschach has realised that there is no place for him in Adrian’s new world order, which I guess is kind of true, but I think it runs the risk of romanticising the character again. It could be that the nukes were a last resort whereas the squid was preemptive... maybe? Personally I think it’s just good old fashioned racism. Rorschach had no issue with the millions of Japanese lives lost because they were Japanese. The enemy. This is different. This time millions of American lives have been lost. To him, this is more than just mass murder. It’s an act of treason.

We may never fully know the reasons behind Rorschach’s actions, but it’s nonetheless interesting to discuss.

I also appreciated that we do get a moment where Adrian questions whether he did the right thing, expressing his doubts to Doctor Manhattan, to which he receives a cryptic response about how ‘nothing ever ends.’ (does Manhattan know what happens in the future? We’ll never know). It’s a nice moment that helps to humanise Adrian a little bit and remind us that he’s as flawed as all the other characters. The arrogant bravado he displays when he succeeds in achieving world peace could easily have slipped into pantomime villain territory if there wasn’t just this small moment near the end, possibly as the scale of the things he’s done dawns on him. Like the pirate captain in The Tales Of The Black Freighter, Adrian means well and his intentions are noble, but his actions are either highly questionable or just downright villainous. This is basically what Watchmen has been talking about since the start. Once you start taking more frequent steps outside the bounds of what is legally and morally acceptable, it’s not long before you’ve effectively joined the criminals yourself.

There’s a lot to like about A Stronger Loving World, however I do have a few complaints here and there. Yes, lets talk about that giant squid.

If there was ever a moment where Watchmen jumped the shark, this is it. And quite frankly I have no idea what Alan Moore was thinking at the time. So Adrian wants to unite the world together using an outside force that will encourage everyone to put aside their differences and team up with each other. Okay. Makes sense so far. But the plan itself requires so many leaps of logic, it kind of loses all credibility. Take for example the idea that it was cloned from a psychic’s brain. Well that came out of nowhere, didn’t it? Yes this is a world where a giant naked blue guy can manipulate atoms, but the story explained to us how this was possible, allowing us to suspend our disbelief. Now suddenly we’re supposed to believe that human psychics exist with no build up whatsoever. It’s just dumped on us, which makes it feel more like a convenient excuse than an explanation. Yes they do kind of foreshadow it with Adrian’s pet lynx Bubastis, but it’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? It’s one thing to genetically alter an existing animal. It’s another thing entirely to create an all new creature with psychic abilities as though this was Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Not to mention, in order to explain how in God’s name someone can go from inventing electric cars to creating aliens, Alan Moore has to resort to a gigantic infodump in order to make sense of the bloody thing. The initial teleport incinerates people, then the psychic ‘death throes’ or whatever cause others to go mad and start killing each other, and then those even further away have bad dreams or something. Presumably the person furthest from ground zero probably has a moment where they forget where they put their car keys and leave the gas on. It’s just overly complicated and way too daft.

Also I can understand Adrian kidnapping scientists, but why artists and writers? And why tell them the creature is for a movie? Was no one a tiny bit suspicious of the amount of work, resources and effort being put into this supposed ‘special effect’? What about the fact that they were taken from their homes and put on a tiny island? Don’t they have families? Are any of them concerned about how ridiculously secretive this film production is? And more to the point, why let the rest of the world believe them to be kidnapped? If you’re going to go with the Hollywood movie cover story, why not just tell people that’s what they’re doing? I guess you could argue that Adrian was concerned this would draw unwanted attention to his plan, but... what?... them getting kidnapped wouldn’t have drawn attention?!

And then there’s just the sheer randomness of it. Why aliens? He doesn’t even plant the seeds for this anywhere. Maybe have some fake UFO sightings or something. He just dumps a dead alien on New York’s doorstep. Also, if genetic engineering is common knowledge, why would people assume it’s aliens? Surely government scientists testing the thing will discover it’s of terrestrial origin. Which leads to the biggest flaw. Would this plan really have worked? Killing millions of people in one city? Would that be enough to unite the world? Perhaps in the short term, but there’s no way you could possibly sustain that lie for so long. Plus, call me cynical, but considering how quickly Russia mobilised when Manhattan left the planet, surely it’s more likely they would take advantage of the situation while America was reeling from this act of carnage. If Adrian is supposed to be the smartest man in the world, I’m amazed he didn’t consider any of this. Maybe he has contingency plans in place, but I don’t know. It all seemed pretty final to me. He genuinely believes that this will fix everything. It just makes him look a bit stupid.

The whole giant squid plot has got more holes in it than a colander. Which is why (and I know I’m going to get some flak for this) I much prefer the version in Zack Snyder’s adaptation than I do the graphic novel. I don’t want to go into too much detail because I’d rather save that for when I review the movie, but I do honestly think Adrian’s plan in the movie makes more sense than the source material does.

Another side effect of having to explain the alien is that Silk Spectre’s story never gets proper closure. There’s a moment where Laurie confronts her mother over the fact that the Comedian is her father, but it all just feels a bit rushed and unsatisfactory. Especially when she starts talking about wanting to change her costume and start using guns, implying she’s going to be more like the Comedian in the future. It’s just too big of a leap in my opinion. One minute she’s distraught that her father was her mother’s rapist, the next she’s following in his footsteps. It’s such a sharp turn, it practically gave me whiplash.

That being said, I did like the little detail of Dan taking Sally Jupiter’s porn magazine, which I think implies how superficial their relationship is. They’re together because of the power and sexual rush they feel in their superhero identities, not because they actually love each other. Maybe that was what drew Sally to the Comedian despite everything he did. Who knows?

I also really like the ending. I haven’t been talking about the New Frontiersman in these reviews because it’s largely been inconsequential up until now, which is kind of the point. Seymour, a downtrodden, inconsequential man working a soul sucking job at a right wing newspaper, is suddenly given the power to change everything. Will he reveal the contents of Rorschach’s journal and thus expose Adrian’s plan or keep quiet in the name of peace? I want to believe it would be the latter, but considering his livelihood depends on his racist editor having material to rant and complain about, it would seem the world is truly doomed. 

As Doctor Manhattan said, ‘nothing ever ends.’

Hey guys! Thank you so much for reading these blogs. It took longer than I thought to write them, but honestly I think it was worth the extra time because there is just so much about Watchmen to unpack and I really enjoyed analysing this story. I’ve been wanting to review Watchmen for ages now and I’m very proud how these have turned out. I personally think it’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever written. Next I’m going to be reviewing the movie adaptation directed by Zack Snyder and then after that the HBO TV series. In the mean time, please feel free to like and reblog and share your own thoughts and feelings about Watchmen. Which character did you find most interesting? Do you think Adrian did the right thing? What would you do in Seymour’s shoes if you found Rorschach’s journal and discovered the truth about the giant alien squid? I’m genuinely curious :)

[sciencespies]

The Push for Tidal Power Faces Its Biggest Challenge Yet

https://sciencespies.com/nature/the-push-for-tidal-power-faces-its-biggest-challenge-yet/

The Push for Tidal Power Faces Its Biggest Challenge Yet

It’s a glorious autumn morning on Brier Island, Nova Scotia, with birdsong in the air and the sun glinting off the rips of Grand Passage. Weathered clapboard and shingled houses line the island’s two principal streets, and chubby workboats—built for lobstering, mostly—jam the protected harbor, where wharves loom more than 20 feet above low tide.

Grand Passage appears almost empty on this day, except for the car ferry yo-yoing back and forth between Brier Island and Long Island, its two 400-horsepower engines roaring. But as I come around a bend, I spy a sleek yellow-and-white vessel, not half a mile from shore, pinned smack in the middle of the notoriously swift current. Though the craft has three narrow hulls, and what look like four giant propellers, it’s not a boat. It is a power plant capable of producing nearly 280 kilowatts of carbon-free electricity.

I hurry down to the harbor to meet Jason Hayman and Jason Clarkson, who work for Sustainable Marine Energy (SME), the Scotland-based company that developed this nifty device. We board their workboat, SMEagol, named after the deranged Hobbit, and head out into the current. I ask Hayman about the trimaran’s name—Plat-I, or “plat-eye.”

The view off Cape Split, Scots Bay, in the heart of the Bay of Fundy.

(Greta Rybus)

“We’re engineers,” he says, laughing. “‘Plat’ stands for platform, and ‘I’ is for inshore, meaning the device will be moored in sheltered island sites or coastal passages.” (The Plat-I’s predecessor was the Plat-0, for “offshore,” but the development team preferred to pronounce it like the Greek philosopher.)

We tie up to the Plat, then pick our way, clinging to a skinny lifeline, across its 88-foot-long crossbeam—a metal catwalk. “When there’s a little bit of a swell it can really mess with your head,” Hayman says.

Along the craft’s stern are four rotors, two barely visible in the water and two pivoted, for inspection purposes, toward the sky. At the Plat-I’s slender bow, stout cables tether the craft, through a mooring turret, to the seabed, allowing it to pivot on the tide, generating energy on both ebb and flow. “We survived the 140-kilometer winds of Hurricane Dorian,” Hayman says, in a tone suggesting that outcome wasn’t guaranteed.

The ebb and flow of the sea in the Bay of Fundy shapes the landscape, leaving mud flats on the shores of the Minas Basin at low tide.

(Greta Rybus)

Crowded into a shipping container perched on the Plat’s center hull, we gaze at video monitors that show the underwater rotors, and Hayman opens three steel cabinets to reveal inverters, transformers and other electronics gear that, using a computer program the team calls its “secret sauce,” processes the water-generated electrical current to match the 60-hertz heartbeat of the local power grid. Apparently, any fool can produce electricity; making it usable is another matter entirely.

Sometime this summer, Hayman plans to flip a switch that will send juice generated by the device into the Digby Neck grid, displacing a chunk of the coal that provides about half of Nova Scotia’s energy. At that moment this unprepossessing rig, which from a distance looks like a dismasted trimaran awaiting restoration, will become the only operational floating tidal energy plant in North America.

Tidal energy is one of the greatest untapped renewable sources on the planet. In the United States, with thousands of miles of coastline, developing just 5 percent of tidal energy’s “identified technical resource potential,” says the Department of Energy, would generate 12.5 terawatts per year. That’s enough to power slightly more than 1.1 million typical U.S. homes. But if tidal power evolves the way wind has, that number will likely rise. Over the decades, better designs have allowed wind turbines to generate, economically, in ever less-windy places. Tidal turbines, too, could eventually be placed in ever less-speedy currents. The market, says Levi Kilcher, of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “will end up being much larger than we’ve identified so far.”

Renewable. Nonpolluting. It works in the dark, unlike solar power. And in a calm, unlike wind power. SME’s floating tidal power station is gearing up to go online in Nova Scotia.

The Plat-I may seem like a tiny part of this energy revolution, an obscure project in a remote spot, but it may be just what the future requires: a simple and replicable energy source, tailored to the local environment, with batteries or other energy-storage systems to keep the power flowing during slack tides. After all, around 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in counties along the coast, and tidal devices could also be used in rivers.

Before Hayman’s company can start churning out Plat replicants, though, he must first overcome a monstrous challenge: operating his technology 140 miles to the northeast, in the funnel-shaped Bay of Fundy, which has the world’s largest tidal range—54 feet. Through the bay passes, twice daily, more than four times the estimated combined flow of every river on earth. That huge mass of water can move at more than ten miles an hour and has the potential to generate 50,000 megawatts, which is by some estimates enough to power 15 million homes. The Bay of Fundy is the ultimate test for any ocean-energy entrepreneur, and for a century inventors have been experimenting in its treacherous waters. But the bay is littered with disasters.

* * *

Hayman, 43, came to tidal power in the roundabout way of a sailor. Born in New Zealand to a mother who owned a travel agency and a father who researched dairy cow genetics, Hayman started messing around with boats early: In the summertime, his parents parked him at a local sailing club. He left college as a freshman when his uncle asked him to deliver a sailboat partway up the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. “After that I was hooked,” Hayman says.

A bold approach to generating clean electricity faces the ultimate test –the greatest tide on earth.

(Greta Rybus)

He worked on boats all over the world, including Antarctica. He developed and built racing boats in the Bahamas, where he also converted America’s Cup yachts to racing charters and operated a ferry business. But he realized that if he didn’t want to spend his entire life sanding fiberglass and humping sails up and down decks, he needed a college degree. At age 25, Hayman went ashore in England to study naval architecture at Newcastle University, then earned a master’s in engineering for sustainable development at the University of Cambridge. Soon he was working on floating production tankers, designing heavy-lifting equipment for the oil and gas industry, and doing marine salvage.

“Things that float need a naval architect,” Hayman says. One calls in a naval architect to safely lower large objects to the seabed, and to lift foundered vessels without breaking them up, he explains. In 2011, Hayman found himself in a helicopter speeding over the Borneo rainforest. He’d been dispatched to the region to extract a cargo ship grounded off Samarinda. A horrifying glimpse out the helicopter window changed the course of his life. “I saw thousands of acres of bulldozed tropical rainforest, and I asked the pilot what was going on,” Hayman recalls. “He said they’d been extracting coal from the area for five years. And I thought, Wow, that’s so much destruction in such a short amount of time.” Coal filled the hold of the ship he was about to rescue.

Wouldn’t it be better, he thought, to generate carbon-free energy from the movement of the sea than to dig it from the earth? One could avoid both the dangerous transport of fossil fuels and the outsize environmental impacts of extracting as well as burning them. “People are fixated on greenhouse gas emissions,” Hayman says, referring to the back end of a linear process. “But they are unaware of what it takes to generate energy up front.” After resurrecting the ship in Borneo, Hayman devoted himself to generating power from tides.

In the tidal flats between Greenwich and Port Williams, Nova Scotia, the tides have 40-foot ranges.

(Greta Rybus)

Most of us understand, on a basic level, that tides rise and fall in response to the Moon and the Sun’s gravitational pull on the oceans. But the nuances of tides are fantastically complex, and they remain slightly mysterious even to the learned. Tidal idiosyncrasies abound: Some places, like the Gulf of Mexico, see one high tide a day, instead of the more usual two, while others see four. As Jonathan White notes in his excellent Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, astronomers know exactly how celestial bodies affect tides, but what actually happens to water down here on earth “is unimaginably messy. Scientists are still working it out.”

All told, some 400 different variables are involved in creating the tides, but you don’t have to account for each and every one to appreciate that harnessing energy from this perpetual motion machine is an extremely good idea. The resource is clean, inexhaustible and, to an extent that even solar and wind are not, highly predictable.

Humans have derived power from the ocean for more than a millennium, trapping high tides in mill ponds behind dams, then releasing the flow at low tide through sluiceways directed at the paddles of waterwheels. The motion generated enough force to turn grinding stones or other mechanical devices. The first tidal mill in North America was built in 1607, in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, some 60 miles from Grand Passage. Tidal mills were common throughout the province and the eastern U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it was in the 20th century that the Bay of Fundy became tidal engineering’s crucible of experimentation.

* * *

In 1915, Ralph Clarkson, an engineering professor at Nova Scotia’s Acadia University, prototyped a tidal-power generator with four pumps, powered by a horizontal waterwheel, that lifted water 335 feet into two tanks atop the Cape Split headland. The stored water ran down a tube to a conventional hydroelectric turbine at the base of the cliffs. The scheme attracted investors, but in 1920 a fire destroyed all of Clarkson’s equipment. The project never recovered.

Not long after that, Dexter Cooper, a hydraulic engineer in Maine, drew up plans for three dams, spanning a total of more than 7,000 feet, that would trap high tides in Passamaquoddy Bay, creating an upper pool that spread over 100 square miles. Upon release into the lower pool of Cobscook Bay, which covered another 41 square miles, the water would generate 345,000 kilowatts of power. With the encouragement of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cooper’s summertime neighbor on Campobello Island, and over the objections of fishermen, who feared that turbines would turn the bay to bouillabaisse, the Public Works Administration in 1935 began building two dams, plus worker housing, near Eastport, Maine. But further studies revealed there wasn’t enough local demand for the power after all, and steam and conventional hydropower plants could generate electricity far more cheaply. By 1936 the project ground to a halt. It revived, zombielike, for another look under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and again under John F. Kennedy. Every study reached the same conclusion: DOA.

In 1980, Nova Scotia Power began to convert a causeway spanning the tidal Annapolis River into North America’s first grid-connected tidal dam, or barrage. A hybrid of ancient tidal mill and modern hydroelectric plant, the barrage featured a four-bladed turbine 25 feet in diameter. On an outgoing tide, the device generated up to 20 megawatts. It operated for 35 years—but not without controversy. The barrage blocked fish migration and killed some salmon and mackerel, trapped marine mammals, interfered with nutrient and sediment flows, and contributed to erosion. In January 2019, a mechanical problem shuttered the Annapolis tidal barrage, succeeding where decades of environmental opposition had failed.

* * *

When Sustainable Marine Energy first formed, in Scotland in 2012, it focused on providing power at utility scale, often defined as delivering at least a megawatt into the existing grid. “That was the big prize,” Hayman says. But when Britain decreased its subsidies for tidal power, SME began looking for other markets. “Our ‘aha’ moment was realizing that no one had done a simple thing well,” Hayman continues. “There were hundreds of island communities running on imported diesel” that were blessed with sheltered coastal sites, high tides and fast currents. Appropriately scaled tidal power, he figured, could help them kick their expensive fossil fuel habit, reduce the environmental risk of fuel spills and make them more resilient in the face of extreme events, like tsunamis or hurricanes.

Researchers conduct studies on the ocean’s tidal power at the Aquatron Laboratory at Dalhousie University.

(Greta Rybus)

The on-land energy transfer station at the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) lab in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.

(Greta Rybus)

SME first tested the Plat-I in western Scotland’s Connel Sound, then eventually shipped the parts to Nova Scotia, which supported tidal energy projects. The company chose Grand Passage for its New World debut because the channel’s bathymetry is known, the water runs fast and clear, and the site is easily accessed. But Brier Island, population 168, also aligns with Hayman’s broader aim of servicing remote islands and other coastal areas. “The Faroe Islands are a prime candidate for floating tidal,” Hayman says aboard SMEagol. “The Philippines have great currents, British Columbia’s Discovery Passage, the Channel Islands, villages in Indonesia and Korea…” Hayman’s mental globe-spinning may seem grandiose. But wind and solar power also seemed fringy and, to many, a little absurd just two generations ago. Now those technologies are downright mainstream, providing almost a tenth of U.S. power, at competitive prices, and growing fast.

In Grand Passage, SME has demonstrated that a floating platform has major advantages over tidal power’s other main design option—a turbine anchored to the seafloor. Platforms are far cheaper to build and install than bottom-mounted devices (and remove, should things go wrong). And a technician can perform routine maintenance on a platform-mounted turbine during slack tide. “A visit from a lobster boat will do,” Hayman says. Attending to devices on the sea bottom, in comparison, may require a submersible vehicle or a heavy barge with a lifting rig.

With my eye on the yellow fairings that smooth the flow rushing past the Plat-I’s tri-bladed rotors, I ask Hayman if his multimillion-dollar equipment might be in harm’s way. No, he says: Dangerously high currents, ice chunks and debris kick the turbines up and out of the water. And because SME designed the rotors to swing up independently, maintenance can be performed without taking the whole device offline, so it continues to generate revenue.

(Guilbert Gates)

Proponents of in-stream tidal—that is, with turbines located in the water column, not embedded in dams—claim marine mammals and fin fish can easily avoid the blades because nothing impedes the animals’ passage. During a 2017 pilot study that introduced striped bass to a spinning turbine in a circular tank at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, fish appeared to avoid the blades, even with the current moving at 3.9 knots. These results “will inform real-world scenarios,” says Sue Molloy, who conducted the study, “and some tests that are done with wild-caught fish will translate very well.”

A study of SeaGen, the world’s first large-scale tidal-stream generator, which operated commercially between 2008 and 2016 in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough, suggested that seals avoid moving rotors. In a multiyear pilot study of three riverbed-mounted tidal turbines in New York City’s East River—a demonstration project run by Verdant Power—researchers found no evidence of harm to fish.

Environmental monitoring in Grand Passage, Hayman says, has yielded no evidence that marine animals, save jellyfish, touched Plat’s turbines. Still, as one so often hears when discussing potential environmental impacts, absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.

The Plat-I generator, with one turbine lifted out of the water, floats in Grand Passage, a channel with a swift tide stream.

(Greta Rybus)

Monitoring the environment around turbines is difficult and expensive. “It’s a highly dynamic environment with lots of turbulence and sediment in the water that hinders visibility,” Anna Redden, a marine ecologist at Acadia University’s Tidal Energy Institute, told me when we met in her office. Air bubbles interfere with acoustic signal detection, as do the engines of seafaring vessels and the whir and blip of other monitoring equipment. Because lights could attract or repel marine life, cameras can record only in daylight hours. Tidal platforms are designed to work in strong currents, but sensors are not. “We’re using off-the-shelf technology that isn’t designed for washing machines.”

I asked Redden what science did know about marine life and turbines. “Nothing for sure,” she said. “And we won’t know if these turbines kill fish until the device is in the water” for a significant amount of time. She paused, then said with a note of tristesse, “There is never zero impact. But what level of impact will we find acceptable?”

* * *

There are tides in tidal power development. Flows correspond with spikes in the price of oil, investor interest and government subsidies that help tidal power compete with wind and solar, which are cheaper. The recent burst of activity in Nova Scotia was sparked by the global climate emergency and Canada’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. (Nova Scotia has already reduced emissions 31 percent, thanks in part to its own wind turbines and to renewable energy imported from Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Quebec.)

But interest in tidal power also ebbs, such as when heralded projects fail. In 2009, Nova Scotia Power partnered with the Dublin-based company OpenHydro to lower a six-story-high, 400-ton circular turbine into Minas Passage. Within days, the current ripped the device apart. In glass-half-full mode, engineers acknowledged they’d underestimated the tide’s force. The company tried again seven years later, with an 1,100-ton model. It generated two megawatts until the company extracted the device for repair and upgrades, seven months into the experiment. In 2018, another turbine was lowered into the passage. But within days, OpenHydro’s investors pulled out, and the company filed for bankruptcy. The turbine rests on the seafloor to this day.

The Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE), an international test site for tidal-energy development in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, occupies a glassy building overlooking Minas Passage. Researchers estimate that the waterway’s fast-moving tidal currents could generate 2,500 megawatts—enough to power all of Nova Scotia, home to nearly a million people—and displace up to nine million tons of greenhouse gases. One of the great advantages of tidal power is the density of the kinetic energy itself; a solar-energy project in Morocco that produces 580 megawatts covers as much ground as roughly 3,500 football fields.

Established in 2008 and mostly government-funded, FORCE is the manifestation of Nova Scotia’s tidal dreams; it’s a generator of tidal-energy research and an operations center for companies testing gear and monitoring sea life. But arguably its most important asset lies underwater, where five so-called berths, each just shy of eight acres, await tidal-turbine tenants. Among those expected to plug into FORCE’s submarine cables, which connect to a nearby electrical substation, is SME.

The dramatic tidal range of the Bay of Fundy is plain in Hall’s Harbour, from the high tide mark on the seawall to the fishing boat resting aground at low tide.

(Greta Rybus)

The village of Westport, on Brier Island, Nova Scotia, has a population of fewer than 200 residents. It is reached by boat or the ferry from Long Island.

(Greta Rybus)

Jason Clarkson had likened the Plat-I to a small turboprop plane. The project that SME hopes to launch in Minas Passage later this year will be more like an Airbus: three platforms, each hosting six turbines. Combined, they will generate 1.26 megawatts. The new venture, a partnership between SME and a Canadian company called Minas Tidal, will be called the “Pempa’q In-Stream Tidal Energy Project.” The word pempa’q means “rising tide” in the local Mi’kmaq language.

From FORCE’s backyard, I scan the silt-rich waters of the passage and focus my binoculars on Cape Split, rising sharply to the southwest. I recall that Nova Scotia had, in an age of ecological innocence (the 1980s), actively considered spanning this waterway with an five-mile-long barrage stuffed with 128 turbines. In comparison, three floating platforms wouldn’t be terribly intrusive. But what about more?

Local fishermen “aren’t worried about one turbine. They are worried about arrays of 300,” Anna Redden, who sits on the board of FORCE, had told me. SME wasn’t the only company prospecting in these currents: FORCE had other tenants moving in, and successful projects always hanker to scale up. “With every doubling of cumulative capacity,” Hayman had told me, “cost to consumers drops by 15 to 20 percent. Pricewise, tidal is where offshore wind was 15 years ago, and solar 10.” If all went well with his three-platform array, he aimed to increase it to 21 and produce almost nine megawatts.

Unlike wind turbines, which have converged on a nearly universal design, tidal turbines still come in many shapes and sizes. Axes of tidal turbines can be vertical or horizontal; the devices resemble tabletop fans, Archimedean screws, the helical blades of push lawn mowers and even wind turbines. (But because water is “approximately 838 times” denser than air, a naval architect can and will tell you, tidal blades can be much smaller than wind blades.) Some turbines operate near the seafloor, others in the middle of the water column or just below the surface. As with any immature technology, projects seem to dip their toes in the water, then retreat for tweaks, a major overhaul, a fresh infusion of cash, or a final journey to the scrap heap.

Down at Brier, the nimble little Plat-I was inching toward the finish line, having avoided so many of those pitfalls. “SME is a success story because they proved they can coexist with fishers, recreational boaters and the ecosystem,” says Terry Thibodeau, the coordinator for renewable energy and climate change at the Municipality of the District of Digby. “They figured out how to moor and pivot their device, and they’ve tested for years.”

If SME’s next generation power plant succeeds in the maw of Minas, one could imagine the company towing parti-colored trimarans to islands and remote coastal sites around the world, fulfilling a particularly satisfying vision of energy independence—one that is hyperlocal, low impact and renewable so long as the Moon continues to circle the Earth.

We won’t know for some time if Hayman will triumph in the Bay of Fundy, but I found myself rooting for this plucky company and its pragmatic leader, who were helping push the world toward a historic moment. In Industrial Age Britain, coal power put water wheels out of business. Now water wheels might help do the same to coal.

#Nature

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 21 -- The Dossier

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

“So, before we start, what did we end up doing with the, uh,” Ariadne asked as the crew filed into the briefing room, “gift from our new friend?”

“The what?” Sweettalk asked.

“The head,” Sasha replied.

“Ah,” Sweettalk said, “don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, boss.”

“Noted,” Ariadne conceded, “Spacebreather, would you care to catch the crew up on what we learned from Prescott’s dossier?”

Spacebreather nodded. “Our target is The Zealot, and we now know his true name to be Dr. C. Alexander Simon. Archival photos of him match up with the photo we received from La Pesadilla, and our friend ViLaz.” Spacebreather jerked her head in the general direction of a visibly distraught ViLaz. “Much of this information concerns ViLaz directly, so for the sake of her privacy, we will only be sharing details which she has agreed to disclose publicly. Everything else will be kept absolutely need-to-know.”

ViLaz seemed barely able to hold herself together. Tears were welling up in her eyes, which would have come as a surprise to anyone who was paying close attention to her eyes, since one of them was synthetic and no longer should have had the ability to produce tears.

Spacebreather continued, “ViLaz has been raised to believe that Dr. Simon is her biological father. Technically this is true, but not in the sense you’d expect. He is, in fact, her sole biological donor. According to Prescott’s dossier, ViLaz is one of three genetic identicals produced from Dr. Simon’s DNA.”

“So, she’s a clone?” Taryn called out.

Spacebreather wiggled her hand noncommittally. “See, that’s what I said too, I don’t really understand it, but… Ariadne?”

“Well, yes and no,” Ariadne explained. “For lack of a better term, the process used to create them could be described as ‘cloning,’ but it’s important to note that she while her DNA was taken from Dr. Simon, she does not seem to be genetically identical to Dr. Simon himself.”

ViLaz flinched at this.

Ariadne continued, “Prescott’s intel tells us that Dr. Simon’s area of expertise before his theories were discredited and the controversy surrounding his experiment forced him to retire in disgrace was the search for a way to induce biological immortality in humans or, failing that, maintain continuity of consciousness.”

Spacebreather restrained herself from smiling. “And when you finally get her to translate that from nerd, what you basically get is that he wanted to either find a way to make you live forever, or to put your brain in a new body.”

Sweettalk’s hand shot up.

Spacebreather pointed at her. “Not a classroom, ask your question.”

“That doesn’t sound all that controversial, I mean,” she said, “That just sounds like basic medical stuff. Sasha’s whole shtick is cheating death, right?”

“The concept is not what was controversial. The methods, on the other hand…” Ariadne began, glancing over to ViLaz, who was silently crying and hoped no one would notice. Everyone collectively decided to pretend they didn’t, and Ariadne continued, “he was spearheading a project that would allow a dying person to save their consciousness and memories to computer, and then, using the indoctrination tech we learned about from La Pesadilla, eventually download that mind into a new body. In order for the transplant to take, the body would have to be a close blood relative, and it wouldn’t do any good to have the new body die from the same thing as the old one, so the goal of the experiment was to create a genetically engineered clone designed to withstand whatever killed them the last time.”

“Rumor has it, Dr. Simon is not well,” Spacebreather said flatly, “some kind of terminal genetic condition that killed his father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, and all of his relatives born with a Y-chromosome, in their 40s. Based on ViLaz’s recollection, that’s about how old our Zealot would be right around now. Our belief is that he continued his experiments after he was forced to retire, hoping to create a new host body that wouldn’t fall ill like his original body.”

“Hoping to create, as our Dossier calls it,” Ariadne paused, “a Viable Lazarus.”

The crowd murmured in shock and, again, collectively pretended to not notice ViLaz crying.

“Dear lord,” Sasha whispered, “ViLaz, I’m so—”

“Don’t call me that!” She spat back.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said quietly, and backed off.

“My visions of the Red God always told me that I was to be his vessel in the material world,” ViLaz explained, wiping her tears off on her sleeve, “he said that my father’s body was too weak and infirm, and that he needed a strong healthy vessel to carry his word to the people.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ariadne said, “the whole time you knew you were being used as an… an organ farm?!”

“The Red God told me I was to be his prophet,” ViLaz replied. “It just all seems a little too coincidental, if the Red God spent all those years telling me to give up control of my body, and now I find out my father created me as a host for himself. It’s… blasphemous that he would use an ancient and beautiful religion just to manipulate people like this.”

There was a fairly stunned silence through the entire hall, which is more or less to be expected whenever someone’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof, suddenly become a central fixture in a conversation where they were not expected. Of course, in most situations, it would simply be a matter of opinion, and most people would simply let it slide rather than get into a theological debate that no one could ever possibly definitively win.

Ariadne had two reasons for not letting this particular statement slide. The first was that she was a very passionate Atheist, and unfortunately had a rather nasty habit of being somewhat condescending when discussing it, especially towards those who still subscribed to the religion she practiced as a young girl. The second, and the much more important reason was that ViLaz’ statement about her religious beliefs was objectively, factually incorrect.

“V— Sugar …” Ariadne caught herself before using the name that would remind ViLaz of her father’s machinations, and knelt down to meet her gaze, “first of all, people have been using religion to manipulate people since the first caveman found a rock to worship. Second, I hate to break this to you, but the Red God cul— church— is not an ancient religion.”

ViLaz looked confused and upset. “What?”

“The earliest written references to it are in the last few years,” Ariadne said, “most of the scripture we’ve gathered just seems like watered down Christian Dogma, we think that’s why he had all those Church documents and artifacts. He was studying the growth of an effective religion so that he could pervert it to his own ends. His servants just told you it was an ancient religion to put the pressure on to do what he wants.”

Something dropped within ViLaz, as though she’d just looked at her entire world from a distance only to realize it was nothing more than a rubber balloon floating five feet in front of her face.

“The Red God really was just him all along, wasn’t he?”

Ariadne sensed that she had perhaps been too blunt, and quickly tried to turn the conversation around. “Come on, let’s get you to the library. Fastwing?”

“Yeah boss?” Alicia asked from somewhere near the end of the crowd.

“Take… our young friend to the library, find her a really good book, read it with her, and help her pick out a new name. I think there’s a lot more to her than just a Viable Lazarus, and I think she deserves a name that captures that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alicia said, and walked up to ViLaz. “Come on, babe, let’s get you a nice cocoa too.”

“Cocoa?” She asked as she was ushered out the door.

“Oh man,” Alicia said, “your day is about to get so much better.”

Once they were out of the room, Spacebreather continued the briefing. “The cult, the whole religious aspect, was just a front to get more test subjects. From what ViLaz has been telling us, right now he can only permanently take over one of the clones’ bodies if they consent to the transfer. But, there’s a reason why everybody who goes into the Life Centers seems to come out a suddenly devout missionary.”

Ariadne picked up here, sensing that Pilar didn’t like describing the more technical aspects of the dossier. “With the data Prescott gave us, our best guess is that the Suffering Test they administer at their life center uses the same tech from the Immersion Pods. It overwrites people’s personalities entirely and turns them into mindless zombies who live only to serve the cult. He shows them some horrible vision of the hell they’re going to, and they’re so scared they sign up for the conditioning. I’m assuming that’s how he got the Acolytes to raise ViLaz the way they did, so during our assault on their compound, let’s try to remember that it’s generally unethical to kill the mind-controlled.”

“We think he probably appropriated the name Ariadne for his prophet character in order to capitalize on our legend,” Spacebreather explained, “he probably figured there was no real Ariadne and that it was just some name punk kids gave when they were arrested, and decided that claiming to have the Real Ariadne would bring in lots of new curious people that he could subject to his brainwashing.”

Sweettalk, having taken her earlier admonishment to heart for the first time ever, spoke without raising her hand. “This is all really nice to know, but Prescott promised a Silver Bullet. How does any of this help us take him down?”

“The implants in the clones’ heads are linked to a master unit directly controlled by Dr. Simon. It’s how he was able to make ViLaz see the Red God and—” Ariadne paused for a moment and considered the ramifications of telling a partial truth, then decided to give only the information her crew absolutely needed to know, “It’s how we’re going to find him. All we have to do is reactivate the implant and with a little clever hacking thanks to yours truly, we should be able to pinpoint the other implants it’s linked to and reveal the true location of their compound. We’re going to need time to prepare, and a much larger strike force than we had at the casino. Deathsbane, I’d feel safer if you picked out an apprentice and started showing her the ropes, we’re going to need a medic on the ground and another on call in the ship with Fastwing.”

“Sasha will remain in the ship, her apprentice can join us in the assault.” Pilar said flatly.

“I thought we were past this,” Ariadne sighed, “we got kidnapped and she got arrested last time you—”

“And last time we let her go planetside with us, someone died.”

Sasha turned bright red, which Sweettalk noticed and felt a near-compulsive urge to defend her. “Nobody that mattered! And besides, you can’t possibly blame her for—”

“Do me a favor and shut your goddamn mouth, Sweettalk,” Spacebreather said.

Sweettalk was taken aback, but stood up and tried to stretch to Pilar’s height. “What did you just say to me?”

Sasha was somewhat stressed. Her sister was wrong, but she still didn’t want to see her get punched, especially not when she already held such a grudge against Sweettalk as it was.

Ariadne desperately wanted to keep the peace, so she attempted reason again. “Remember what Beam said—”

Pilar swung around to face Ariadne and held up her index finger to cut her off. “I… Said… No… End of discussion.”

Spacebreather then stormed out of the room, leaving everyone too stunned to respond.

Sasha stood up. “Thank you for standing up for me,” she said to Sweettalk and started walking toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Sweettalk asked.

“I’m finally standing up for myself.”

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi steph. Do you have a fic rec list of novel- long fics? Ta

AHHHH Nonny you’re in luck! As I’ve been sorting, I’ve been separating them into word length too, LOL. And seeing as it’s National Novel Writing Month, I think this is a great time to give our fandom writers love and appreciation for their novel-length works!

So I Googled how long a basic novel is, and according to this site, it’s between 40k and 90k. Hmm, well, I have them sorted in 25K chunks, so I’ll start at 50K to 100K, since it works seeing as NaNo’s writing goal is 50K :D). 

I really hope you enjoy! :D Love all you authors so very much, and I look forward to this year’s submissions!

NOVEL LENGTH FICS (50 - 100 K WORDS)

Triage by scullyseviltwin (E, 51,612 w. || Character Injury, Introspection) – Sherlock’s mind goes exceedingly, devastatingly quiet and gray-blank. When he speaks it’s through a thick haze, it’s through molasses, he’s so disconnected from the words that it may as well be the unconscious shooter speaking.

In the Dark Hours by hubblegleeflower (E, 51,639 w. || Friends to Lovers, Unreliable Narrator, Closeted Bi John, Angst, Miscommunications, Slow Burn, First Time, John’s Blog / Epistolary) – John, wounded and silent, drifts back to Baker Street for healing...and then goes home again. He visits, gets more upbeat, chattier, smiles, jokes... and still goes home again. Sherlock wants him to move back in - it just makes sense - but John shows no signs of doing so. This is the story of how John and Sherlock learn to say what needs to be said when they're both so very, very rubbish at talking.

The Homecoming Series by sussexbound (M, 51,744 w. across 12 stories, WIP || Domestics, PTSD, Love Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling, Jealousy, Family Issues, Cuddling) – Sometimes home is all you need. After three years of horror, betrayals, and crushing loss, John and Sherlock find their way back home to one another, and together find new footing in a world that has changed forever.

Spare Change by Ermerness (E, 51,966 w. || Rich Holmeses AU || First Kiss / Time, Holmes Family, Virgin Sherlock, Anal, First Meetings) – The Holmes family is one of the richest and most powerful in England. Sherlock spends his time flying around the world on the family's private jet drinking a lot and shopping at expensive boutiques as a way of trying to alleviate his endless boredom. His mother decides it's time he settles down with someone powerful, wealthy and well connected. John Watson happens to be none of those things.

Coventry by standbygo (E, 52,020 w. || Dollhouse AU, First Time/Kiss, BAMF John, Slow Burn, Falling in Love, Case Fic) – “Let me get this straight,” John said, wondering when his life had become a science fiction film. “Some guy orders up a personality, a person, to his specifications, and they program this into a real live person, who has consented to do this, and she goes to this person and acts as his wife, or lawyer, or Royal Marine, or Navy Seal or what have you, and she has all the skills, all the knowledge, everything? Then you say the magic words, and she follows you back to The House, and they erase it all until her next appointment?”

Lost Without My Blogger by starrysummernights (E, 52,155 w. || Rev. Reich, PTSD, Hurt / Comfort, Fluff / Angst, Psychological Torture, Reunion Fic, Friends to Lovers) – John is abducted and declared dead. How will Sherlock cope without his blogger? How will he react when John comes back from the "dead?" Drama and angst with a healthy dose of romance. Part 1 of I'd Be Lost Without My Blogger

John Watson's Twelve Days of Christmas by earlgreytea68 (M, 53,464 w. || Christmas, Holmes Family, Fake Relationship, Alternate First Meeting, Falling in Love, Fluff and Angst, Hardcore Pining) – It's the holiday season. John Watson needs money. Sherlock Holmes needs something else.

Fan Mail by scullyseviltwin (E, 53,942 w. || Stalking, Obsessive Fans, Angst) – “WatsonChick143 has been rather maniacal in her commenting as of late... she’s left comments on everything you’ve posted John, something so obvious can’t have escaped even your attention."

Albion and the Woodsman by Glenmore (E, 54,437 w. || Post S3 || Parentlock, Pining Sherlock, Angst, Family, Drug Use, Depression, Sherlock POV) – Sherlock and John are devastated after Mary Morstan makes her final moves. Sherlock relapses at the crack house, John walks around the world ... and a lot happens in between. Parentlock, in the good way.

Guilty Secrets by Ellipsical (E, 55,086 w. || Drumsticks, First Time, Love Confession, Self-Sexual-Discovery) – John has a prostate exam and discovers something surprising about himself. Experimentation follows. Sherlock wants to help. They're in love. You know the drill.

Wars We Fought, Things We're Not by blueink3 (M, 55,204 w. || Parentlock, Fluff & Angst, Kidnapping, Whump, Post-TAB, UST, Slow Burn, Couple for a Case) –  Five months after John's world has fallen apart, Mycroft sends the consulting detective and his doctor on a case that neither is prepared for.

The Great Sex Olympics of 221B by XistentialAngst (E, 58,611 w. || First Time/Kiss, Experiments / Sexual Experimentations, Multi Pairings) – John Watson thinks Sherlock Holmes should admit that he, Watson, is more of an expert on sex than Sherlock is. But Sherlock refuses to concede the point. He comes up with an experiment plan that will resolve the issue. The results will determine who wins the prize. But sometimes even the best thought-out scientific study has unexpected consequences.

Bridging the Ravine by SilentAuror (E, 58,887 w. || Post S4, Couple For a Case, Bed-Sharing, First Times, Confessions, Awkwardness, Sex Trafficking) – Sherlock and John go undercover at Ravine Valley, a therapy centre for same-sex male couples in an investigation into a possible human trafficking ring. As they pose as a couple and fake their way through the therapy sessions for the sake of the case, it quickly becomes difficult to avoid discussing their very real issues. Set roughly six nine months after series 4.

The Book of Silence by SilentAuror (E, 60,056 w. || S4 Fix It / Post S4, Virgin Sherlock, Rosie / Parentlock, Domesticity, Fluff, Praise Kink, Sex Toys, First Person POV) – As spring blooms in London, John and Sherlock begin to take new cases and cautiously negotiate this new phase of life with John living at Baker Street again. Despite how well it's all going, John struggles to forgive himself for the way he treated Sherlock following Mary’s death as well as trying to figure out how to finally put his long-time feelings for Sherlock into words. Part 1 of The Book of Silence/Rosa Felicia

Scars by SilentAuror (E, 60,493 w. || Rape / Non-Con / Abuse, Gaslighting, Manipulation, Dub Con Elements, Homophobia, Angst With Happy Ending, Mary is Not Nice) – S3 rewrite, showing Mary’s manipulation of John as he realizes his love for Sherlock. Mary is not having it.

The Progress of Sherlock Holmes by ivyblossom (E, 62,006 w || Sherlock POV, Pining, Angst, Slow Burn, Infidelity, Sherlock Learns About Himself, Happy Ending) – Sherlock struggles with his feelings for John, makes a mistake, and learns just how important he and John are to each other. Non-BBC Mary / John, but it’s a *complicated* relationship.

An Experiment in Empathy by belovedmuerto (T, 62,397 w. across 13 stories || Empath AU || Psychic John, Psychic-by-Proxy Sherlock, Empathy, Psychic Bond, Romance / Bromance) – In which John is an empath, Sherlock is Sherlock, and an epic bromance happens. In the aftermath of The Great Game, John creates an unexpected bond between himself and Sherlock. Now they have to learn how to deal with it. John is better at this than Sherlock is.

Perdition’s Flames by i_ship_an_armada (E, 63,435 w. || Treklock AU, Est. Rel, Genetic Engineering, Angst & Fluff, BAMF!John) – Sherlock would do anything to save him. Risk anything. Give anything. His money, his life. His soul. What he does, though, is change both of their destinies forever. Genetic re-engineering is the only option left. It turns out researchers underestimated the life expectancy and potential abilities of genetically re-engineered subjects. The British government and what would eventually become the United Federation of Planets, however, had not. Part 1 of PF Universe

Bedtime Universe by Liketheriver (M, 65,173 w. across 2 stories || Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Angst, Humour, Case Fic) – John's POV during Season 2 and beyond when Sherlock takes up semi-permanent residence in his bed. A collection of codas and missing scenes wrapped up into one long fic and topped with a bow that takes the story beyond Reichenbach and into happy territory once more.

Watches 'Verse by bendingsignpost (E, 66,905 w. across 2 works || Magical Realism, Reality Distortion, Angst, Partial MCD, BAMF John) – First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU) Part 1 of Watches 'Verse

You Have Drawn Red From My Hands by J_Baillier (T, 67,085 w. || Three Garridebs, Heavy John Whump, Hurt / Comfort, Pining, Heavy Angst, Case Fic/Adventure, Slow Burn, Sick Fic, Injury, Guilt & Depression, Just Talk Already Please, Medical Realism, PTSD) –  John getting injured leads Sherlock on a path of guilt and revelations.

Electric Pink Hand Grenade by BeautifulFiction (E, 67,718 w. || First Time / Kiss, Seizures, Headaches) – "If Sherlock's brain is a hard drive, then these attacks are an electro-magnetic pulse." Sherlock Holmes does not do anything by half, not even a migraine. It falls to John to witness one of the greatest minds he has ever known tear itself apart, and he must do his best to help Sherlock pick up the pieces.

The Green Blade by verityburns (T, 72,929 w. || Casefic, Bromance) – As a serial killer hits the headlines, the police are out of their depth and the next victim is out of time. With faith in Sherlock Holmes at an all time low, this is a case which will push loyalties to the limit...

Darkling, I Listen by You_Light_The_Sky (T, 73,254 w. || Fairy Tale AU || Loosely Based on Beauty and the Beast, Magical Realism, Suicidal Themes, Romance, Creepiness, Adventure) – No one who enters old London ever comes out. They say that the beast devours them. When his sister disappears, John ventures into the dead zone beyond the wall, and finds a brilliant madman under a terrible curse... Part 1 of Darkling I Listen + Extras, Deleted Scenes

The Moonlight and the Frost by CaitlinFairchild (E, 77,289 w. || Case Fic, Post-HLV, Self Harm, Virgin Sherlock, First Time, Oral/Anal/Rimming, Romance, Angst, Mary is Not Nice) – John has to somehow rebuild his life in the wake of Mary's betrayal and Sherlock's deceptions.

A Cure For Boredom by emmagrant01 (E, 81,665 w. || Dirty Talk, Threesomes, Light Dom/Sub, Sex Club, Experiments, Anal, Mildly Dubious Consent) – They'd never talked about sex in the year they'd known each other. Well, that wasn't quite correct: Sherlock had never said a word about sex; John had bemoaned his personal dearth of it on many occasions.

Secrets and Revelations by Hisstah (E, 83,535 w. || Sentinel / Guides AU, Omegaverse, Aventure, Violence, Anal / Oral, Omega!John / Alpha!Sherlock, Case Fic, Politics, Mild DubCon) – Dr John Watson has some major secrets that he's kept from his flatmate, Alpha Sentinel Sherlock Holmes. Now the Sentinel Tower is after him. Can John stay out of their hands until he can reveal his secrets to Sherlock? Part 1 of Secrets and Revelations

Uphill by scullyseviltwin (E, 84,945 w. || Olympics AU || Sherlock POV, Skier!Sherlock / Medic!John, Rivalry, 2014 Olympics, Happy Ending) – Sherlock Holmes is striving for gold in this, his fourth and final Olympics as a downhill Alpine racer.

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w. || Pining, Love Confessions, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock POV, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

Bleed Me Out by antietamfalls (E, 87,987 w. || Vampire AU || Bonding, Vampire Sherlock, Fluff & Angst, H/C, John Whump, Magical Realism) – John isn’t exactly surprised to discover that Sherlock isn't human. His vampirism doesn't pose a problem, even when their relationship gradually grows into something more. That is, until a deadly revelation about John’s blood sends their lives spinning dangerously out of control.

A Case of Identity by jkay1980 (T, 91,009 w. || Fake Relationship, Post-TRF, Case Fic) – John and Sherlock have succeeded in rebuilding their friendship after Sherlock’s fake suicide, but an unusual case puts their relationship to the test. They pretend to be engaged and attend a marriage counseling workshop. Under the pretext of the case, Sherlock turns out to be a master of seduction, and John finally learns he might like Sherlock more than he thought. Slowly, John discovers that he loves Sherlock not only in a friendly, brotherly way, but both men have to fight their own demons before they can think of taking their relationship to a new level… [[I love this fic. It’s a really great long-fic!]]

The Stars Move Still by BeautifulFiction (E, 96,022 w. || Magical Realism, Demons, Slash to Pre-Slash, AU, Happy Ending) – "What could I want so desperately that would make me sell my soul? What could possibly compel me to surrender the part of myself that makes me who I am: the source of my magic, my self-control, everything?"

[leiascully]

Fic:  Between A Rock And A Hard Place (Part 5/5)

Timeline: Season 10 (replaces My Struggle in the All The Choices We’ve Made ‘verse - Visitor + Resident + etc.) Rating: PG Characters:  Mulder, Scully, Tad O’Malley, Sveta (established MSR) Content warning:  canon-typical body horror (mentions of abduction, forced pregnancy, etc.) A/N:  I’m collecting all the related stories that go with Visitor/Resident under the title “All The Choices We’ve Made”, because it felt right at the time.  This story is an alternate My Struggle that reflects M&S’ growth/change in the ATCWM ‘verse. I’m weaving canon dialogue into the stories in an attempt to keep the reframing plausibly in line with canon.  

Part One  |  Part Two  |  Part Three  |  Part Four  |   AO3

It's not a surprise the next day when they emerge from the Hoover Building, where they've been supervising the setup of all of the new computers, to see Tad O'Malley's gleaming black limo.  The door opens.  They get in.  

"Glad we caught you, agents," O'Malley says with a grin.  

"We're not hard to track down," Mulder says.  

"It's the chip in my neck," Scully says dryly, and Mulder isn't sure he's ever heard her joke about it before.  But maybe she's spitting into the wind too, reminded of how whoever is behind all this has tampered with her at a molecular level.  He admits it is easy to direct (or misdirect) that frustration at Tad O'Malley.  

"Hi," Sveta says, waving at them from across the car.  O'Malley hasn't brought out the champagne this time, but she's clutching a bottle of Perrier.  

Mulder leans back against the leather seat.  The car certainly is plush.  The perks of selling out, he imagines.  

"I didn't think you'd come, Agent Scully," O'Malley says.  "After all, your work is so important.  So I took the liberty of coming to you."  He opens a small fridge concealed under the seat.  "Perrier?"

"Thank you," Scully says, accepting a bottle.  "What are you doing here, Mr. O'Malley?"

"Exposing a global conspiracy that's crushing the soul of America," O'Malley declares.  "Agent Mulder knows what I'm talking about."

"You're ready to make a move?" Mulder asks.

"The Truth Squad with Tad O'Malley with a world exclusive," O'Malley tells him.  "The story to end all stories."  

"Why don't you give us a preview?" Scully says, settling into her seat.  

O'Malley leaned forward.  "We begin with a war.  The Civil War.  The United States splits in two.  A new government forms.  They mint their own currency.  They make their own laws."

"They perpetuate the enslavement and genocide of millions of people," Scully murmurs.  

"That enslavement creates the haves and the have-nots.  And the halves begin to believe, to truly believe, that they are above the law.  That they can meddle with the fates and lives of people they start to consider subhuman: black, white, Native American, and everyone else.  An experimental program to create a better person through a variety of methods, including surgical intervention and selective breeding."

Sveta shivers.  Scully looks at her compassionately.  She reaches for Sveta's hand.  

O'Malley doesn't seem to notice their discomfort.  "The shadow government continues to exist after the war.  The genetic engineering of a superior human continues in the shadows of the shadow.  And they have other secrets."

"It all sounds like a ghost story," Scully says in that even voice that immediately sends Mulder into full alert.  "Designed to scare children."

"Children should be afraid," O'Malley tells her.  

"Everyone should," Mulder says, and he sees the shiver in her eyelid that means she's trying not to roll her eyes at him.  "It's a conspiracy bigger and more secret than the Manhattan Project, with tentacles reaching back into the very roots of America."

"The metaphor is mixed," Scully says.

"All the more apt," Mulder tells her.  "The Civil War set the stage and World War I gave us access to new technologies, but it wasn't until victories in Europe and Japan that the drama really ratcheted up for the rest of the world."

"Political and economic conditions became perfect for execution of the larger plan," O'Malley declared.  "The success of the program in the former Confederate states had spread to the re-United States.  Agents of the conspiracy, swearing their allegiance to President Grant, had infiltrated the highest levels of government.  World War I and World War II had weakened the European powers that might have held the US in check.  As it was, they were delighted to accept the offer of help from the United States, and if it came with a price, they were happy to pay it.  Their scientists began working with our scientists.  The project stretched those insidious tentacles to grasp the entire globe."

Mulder grins.  This is his wheelhouse.  Even as much as he's been jerked around and lost his faith, it's still exhilarating to put together the pieces of the puzzle he worked at for half his life.  "Paper Clip.  Experiments in the aftermath of the atomic bombings.  The crash at Roswell leading to cannibalized alien technology and cannibalized alien corpses, all resources that furthered the project."

O'Malley breaks in.  "The bomb was the latest threat of extinction, but not the first.  The energy of the explosions acted as transducers, creating wormholes that drew in alien ships just like the one that crashed at Roswell, ships that ran using electro-gravitic propulsion.  Sacrificing those alien lives with their extraterrestrial biology and their advanced technology delayed our self-immolation on the altar of democracy."

"World leaders signed secret memos directing scientific stuff of alien technology and biochemistry," Mulder puts in.  "All in the name of furthering the project, creating a new species that could survive alien invasion or whatever else might wipe us out.  Classified studies were done at military installations, extracting alien tissue.  S4, Groom Lake, Wright Patterson, and Dulce: all part of a network of black sites where tests were conducted using advanced alien technology recovered from the ships."  He glances at Sveta.  She has one hand over her mouth.  "Tests including human hybridization through gene editing and forced implantation of the resulting embryos in unsuspecting human subjects."  He swallows and tries not to look at Scully, but can't help meeting her eyes.  "Embryos with extraterrestrial DNA."  

Sveta gasps.  "Why do such a thing and lie about it?  Our own government?"

"Aliens aside," Scully says, "the American government has conducted experiments on unsuspecting populations as a matter of policy.  The Tuskegee Syphilis Study lasted for years beyond the point where they could have cured the patients.  The scientists in charge chose not to inform their subjects because they were African-American.  They let them die horrible, preventable deaths, claiming it was all in the name of science.  Genetic material was extracted from a sample of a tumor taken from a black woman named Henrietta Lacks and used without her consent or her family's.  Other people have been sterilized against their will, or stolen from their families.  I doubt we'll ever understand the full extent of the violence done to the indigenous peoples of the Americas."  She exhales loudly.  "While I cannot substantiate all of Agent Mulder's claims, I have found evidence of anomalous genetic material being implanted or otherwise introduced into the DNA of numerous subjects, including myself.  And you."

"What are they trying to do?" Sveta asks.

"That's the missing piece," Mulder tells her.  "We've learned so much, but some part of this eludes us."

"But it's not hard to imagine," O'Malley breaks in.  "A government hiding, no, hoarding alien technology for seventy years, at the potential expense of all human life and the future of the planet.  A government inside the government, secretly preparing for more than a hundred years for the long-awaited event."

"The takeover of America," Mulder says, feeling sick to his stomach.

"And then the world itself," O'Malley says with an almost religious fervor.  "By any means necessary, however violent or cruel.  Severe drought brought on by weather wars conducted secretly using aerial contaminants distributed via chemtrails and high-altitude electromagnetic waves.  Perpetual war waged overseas, a drain on our resources and our energy engineered by politicians to create problem-reaction-solution scenarios to distract, enrage, and enslave American citizens at home with tools like the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and pure old-fashioned jingoism, abridging the Constitution and its promised freedoms in the name of national security.  Every dissident, every minority: a terrorist in situ.  Vietnam, but this time they're doing it right."

"Militarize the police forces," Mulder says slowly.  "Martial law.  FEMA building prison camps.  Mercenaries fighting under our flag, but not under our orders."

"The corporate takeover of food and agriculture," O'Malley says smugly.  "It's already begun.  Monsanto.  Dicamba.  They've got pharmaceuticals and healthcare in their pocket too.  An insurrection of men and women with clandestine agendas to dull, sicken, terrify, and control a populace already consumed by consumerism."

Mulder leans over to Scully.  "I didn't really like Wall-E," he whispers.  She shakes her head at him.

"A government that taps your phone, collects your data, and monitors your whereabouts with impunity," O'Malley says with a flourish.  "A government preparing to use that data against you when it strikes and the final takeover begins."

Mulder nods slowly.  There is a seed of truth in O'Malley's conspiracy-addled rant.  He's been seeking it long enough to know it when he sees it.  The nation is poised on a precipice.  All the rest of it is lies, smoke and mirrors, a way to turn the paranoid and the credulous into easy money.  But somewhere, under eighty mattress-thick layers of right-wing garbage, is a pea-sized truth, and he's the princess shifting uncomfortably.  

"The takeover of America?" Scully asks.

O'Malley leans forward.  "By a well-oiled and well-armed multinational group of elites that will cull, kill, and subjugate."

"Happening as we sit here in this car," Scully says.

"It's happening all around us," O'Malley tells her.

"It's been happening for years," Mulder murmurs.  "The other shoe waiting to drop."

"It'll probably start on a Friday," O'Malley says.  "The banks will announce a security action necessitating that their computers go offline all weekend."

"Digital money will disappear," he says.

Sveta looks startled.  "They can just steal your money?"  Scully squeezes her hand.

"While the banks are vulnerable,  they'll detonate strategic electromagnetic pulse bombs to knock out major grids.  Traffic lights, security systems, everything: gone.  Hospitals will be on backup generators indefinitely.  It will seem like an attack on America by terrorists or Russia."

"Or a simulated alien invasion featuring alien replica vehicles already in use," Mulder murmurs.  

"An alien invasion of the U.S.?" Scully says.

"The Russians tried it in '47," Mulder reminds her.  "Or they took credit for it, anyway."

"They'll take more than credit this time," O'Malley says.  "This goes worldwide.  Everything that has happened for the past seventy years has been engineered by this global conspiracy, these shadow players.  The structures they've built are designed to crumble, tearing America apart at the seams.  They'll build a new world on the ruins of our current one.  It will happen soon, and it will happen fast."  

Scully shakes her head.  "You can't say these things," she tells O'Malley.

"I'm gonna say them tomorrow," O'Malley says with an almost religious fervor in his voice.  

Scully frowns.  "It's fearmongering, isolationist techno-paranoia so bogus and dangerous and stupid that it borders on treason.  Saying these things would be incredibly irresponsible."  

"I hate to say this, Scully, but if this is true, it would be irresponsible not to say it," Mulder says reluctantly.  

"If it's the truth," Sveta says, "you have to say it."  

"It's not the truth," Scully says.

O'Malley grins that smarmy grin.  "Agent Scully, with all due respect, I don't think you know what the truth is."

"The only thing I don't know is where you're taking us," Scully says, ice in her voice.  "Except on a wild goose chase."

"It's lunchtime," O'Malley says.  "I thought you might want something to eat."  

It's clear from the look Scully gives him that there is a long, long list of people she would rather have lunch with before she deigned to have lunch with Tad O'Malley.  In fact, it might be approaching seven billion people long.  

"I think what Agent Scully is trying to convey is that we've got to decline your invitation," Mulder says.

"You believe me," O'Malley says to Mulder with certainty.

Mulder looks at Scully.  She looks back at him, her eyes tight just at the corners.  "I might have, back in the day.  My doctor says paranoia is bad for me."  

O'Malley sits back, disappointed.  Scully's shoulders loosen.  She glances at him and there's something between approval and gratitude in her eyes.  He smiles at her.  

There's a pinging noise.  Scully checks her email on her phone.  Her brow creases.  She scrolls through something, then flicks back to the top and reads through it again.  "This is strange."

"What?"  Mulder leans over.  

"Sveta, the lab retested your samples.  A new tech was running the machines, and a number of test results were compromised.  In fact, they retested your samples twice to be sure.  Your DNA shows no anomalies."  Scully looks up.  "Whatever's been done to you, it had nothing to do with this project."

"Nothing?" Sveta and O'Malley ask at the same time.

"That can't be right," O'Malley says.  "Retest her."  

"I don't want to be tested again," Sveta says.  

"You're my evidence," O'Malley tells her angrily.  "You have to."

"She doesn't have to do anything," Scully tells him.  "She's under our protection now."

"We'll see about that," O'Malley says.  He presses a button.  The driver pulls over.  He opens the door.  "Goodbye, agents.  Goodbye, Sveta."

"What will you do?" Sveta asks him as she climbs out of the car.  

"I'll do what I do," O'Malley says.  "I'll tell the truth."

The car door slams shut.

Truth Squad with Tad O'Malley the next day is a runaway hit: high ratings, viral content, memes, gifs, and a media uproar.  "I promised you the truth today, but that truth has come under assault," O'Malley says, looking into the camera, and they roll footage of Sveta confessing to reporters, accusing him of telling lies.

"I am so sorry if I misled anyone," she says tearfully, wringing her hands in front of her.

"They get her?" Mulder asks.

"She should be safe," Scully tells him.  "They'll work on relocating her."

"Material witness?" Mulder asks.  "That's a bit of a stretch."

"It won't be by the time all of this is over," Scully says grimly.  "I went to the hospital to collect the samples and had our labs run them again."

"And?" Mulder says.

"Sveta and I share a lot," Scully says.  "Including anomalous genetic material."

"O'Malley must be furious," Mulder says, propping his hands on his hips as he thinks.

"Rumor is they're going to pull the plug," Scully says.  "No more truth, no more Squad."

"To his followers, that'll feel like a sign," Mulder says.  "A shot fired across their bows."

Scully shrugs.  "Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  Either we embolden a liar, or we enrage his base."    

"Politics have never been our strong suit," Mulder says.  "You know, there's something called the Venus Syndrome."

"The plant, the planet, or something else I'm afraid to ask about?" Scully asks.

"The planet," Mulder says.  "It's a runaway global warming scenario that leads us to the brink of the Sixth Extinction.  Those with the means will prepare to move off the planet into space, which will have already been weaponized against the poor, huddled masses of humanity that haven't been exterminated by the über-violent fascist elites.  If you believe in that kind of thing."

"Honestly, these days it sounds almost plausible," Scully tells him, leaning on one of the desks.  Whoever has funded the untimely revival of the X-Files has been generous: they have two normal desks and four standing desks scattered around the office.  It's much too flexible a workspace for two people.  

Their phones go off almost in unison.  They both reach for them.

"Skinner," Scully says.

"Skinner," Mulder confirms.  He reads the message:  Situation critical.  Need to see you both ASAP.  

They look at each other.  

"Scully, are you ready for this?" Mulder asks.

"I don't know there's a choice," she says, but she sounds fierce and proud.

There are wheels turning somewhere.  He can almost hear the gears of the world grinding.  They won't get caught in the teeth this time, won't get torn apart.  Whoever is behind everything they've been through will be exposed, finally and totally, brought to light.  They'll have to open the wound to clean it out, but that's all right.  They've finally learned how to heal.  He opens the door for her and they stride toward the elevator together.

[nb-in-sf]

"Transit" by Stephen Dedman

Short story set in a future where the majority of human beings are hermaphrodites (“mafs”) rather than women and men (“monosexes”). The first mafs were created through genetic engineering shortly after humanity was contacted by aliens and learned that at least some intelligent species (such as the Chuh'hom) are hermaphroditic. What little we hear of the various alien species sounds interesting, but the story is mostly about humans.

Monos were extremely rare away from Earth, except in some religious enclaves where no one had maf chromosomes: otherwise, it required major surgery, which almost no one bothered with. The first human mafs were born a few years post-contact, but the chromosomes were discovered by humans, not Stigrosc: Stigs don't believe in genetic engineering. Mafs remained a minority on Earth for more than a century, but many of them -- us -- traveled to habitable solstice worlds, where there was unrestricted birthright. Others became crew on the Stigrosc ships, or emigrated to the neutral worlds; Stigs can't tell one human from another, and the Nerifar say we all taste the same, but Chuh'hom and Tatsu find it much easier and safer to communicate with mafs. Meanwhile, on Earth, as gene surgery became easier and cheaper and more countries adopted "one couple -- one child" laws, mafs were seen by many governments as a way of avoiding serious gender imbalances in the population, and various incentives were offered to prospective parents [...]"

Even on Earth, monosexes are a minority these days: Mafs make up about 68% of the population. It's also mentioned that a maf and a monosex cannot reproduce together without "gene surgery", which the protagonist does not see as a big deal.

Mafs have a penis and vulva but no external testes. We're told that a girl with large breasts looks "pregnant" to the members of the protagonist's all-maf community, and mafs look male to said girl. The mafs of this community are fairly casual about sex, given that they all have the same bits; but they seem to mostly form two-parent family units in adulthood. You call your parents Mum and Dad according to the role they played in your conception: Alex's "Dad" is er sibling Kris' "Mum", and (presumably) vice versa. Apparently the mother has greater authority over a child than the father. Mafs use e/er pronouns, and the main maf characters are mostly given names that are gender-neutral by 21st century standards: Alex, Pat, Morgan, etc. The protagonist Alex mentions that "we call our sports teams girls and boys -- no one wants to wear uniforms, so the ones with the shirts are girls. I don't know why; it's probably something that used to mean something once". This seems like a slightly odd custom to evolve given that -- at least in the current era -- girls and boys aren't usually pitted against each other in sports, even pre-puberty.

The story focuses on a kind of romance between the maf protagonist and a girl from a conservative Muslim planet where mafs don’t exist (this isn't the most positive portrayal of Islam: it's still super sexist and not a great culture for women to live in). I enjoyed reading a story told from the POV of a person from a hermaphroditic society, who doesn't initially know much about binary-gendered people and has to practice using gendered pronouns, etc.

[lookatthedawn]

Hong Kong

Finally, we leave Hanoi and quickly land in Hong Kong.  I have decided to leave the airport and visit the city.  In order to do that, I have to go through immigration and require a visa.  However, the huge line is moving rather slowly, it's past 11:30 pm and I've been told that the last bus to Hong Kong leaves at midnight.  I speak to an attendant at the airport who urges me to get in line as soon as possible and try my luck.  I get to the immigration desk with only a couple minutes to spare, and the attendant quickly gives me a visa -- a little piece of paper, really -- allowing me to stay up to 90 days in Hong Kong.  Did you hear that, China?   Hong Kong Internation airport is large and it can be confusing if you, like me, don't know it well.  It takes me a while to pass through customs, as there's another line, and finally, I'm out and looking for ground transportation.  I see signs for buses leaving for the mainland and run to buy a ticket.  It's fortunate that I have exchanged VND into HKD in advance, for I have seconds to make a decision where to go.  I have no idea where I'm going, to be quite frank.  The lady behind the counter explains to me that this bus, leaving now, will go to Port-whatever, is that the one I want?  I have no idea, and what do you say when you have no idea?  "Yes!" She hands me the ticket and charges me 100 HKD.  The information I had was that it would cost me 40 HKD, but I have no time to discuss pricing.  I get the ticket and run in the direction she indicates, where a limovan is waiting with the engine running.  I was expecting a bus, not a limovan, but the driver takes my ticket and rushes me in, as I'm the last passenger of the night.  There are seven more passengers in the van, and as soon as we are seated, the driver asks for our passports.  I have said it before, I do not like to give out my passport since it's my only form of identification in these parts.  Perhaps I have seen one too many movies of people crossing the frontier into the United States, who give their passport to the coyotes, and won't see their document back unless they give them all their current possessions and anything they will ever earn, plus their children's heart and their own. But, in the name of expediency, everyone turns their passport to the driver, and we start to move.  I realize too late that I should have kept the visa -- the little paper -- from inside my passport. Oh, well!   We're moving.  For a long time, I can't see much more than highway and some lights in the distance.  I'm expecting to see more of Hong Kong but about an hour later we arrive at some security post, where our passports are presented, reviewed and thankfully, returned to us.  We ride for about five more minutes and we've arrived.  But where?  I see a plain official-looking building where a lot of people are rushing in, even though this is past one a.m..  I get in too, and only there realize my mistake; this is a port to mainland China, not Hong Kong Island. I approach a friendly guard and ask for help, which consists of 'how do I get to Hong Kong?'  Since he doesn't speak much English, he kindly directs me to an attendant who is busy doing about a hundred things.  At the risk of blunt generalization, I shall say that I have observed in the West that women are better at multitasking than men.  It must be something to do with childrearing and the demand that running a household while taking care of little ones impose on a mother.  What about women who are not mothers?  My theory is that they develop these skills in preparation and imitation, and it's probably genetic too.  This is a long-held view, but now I see that there are actually studies confirming my opinion, as reported by BBC in 2013.  Check it out!

However, while waiting for this agent to help me, I'm amazed at his ability to multitask.  He answers the phone, works on his computer, notices colleagues across the room and informs them or gives them a key or a paper, and he does all that with the grace of a loving and energetic mother.  He turns to me and asks for my passport.  He takes it to the computer and studies it, raising his eyes often to greet someone or solve another problem.  Finally, he comes back to me, shows me my passport open on the page with the Chinese visa and states the obvious.  "This visa only allows one visit to China, and you've already used it." "Yes, I know, I don't want to go to China, I want to go to Hong Kong." "But this is the border to the mainland." "Yes, I understand that. I came here by mistake.  All I want to know is how to get to Hong Kong." "Oh, okay," he says, with the same smile and grace as before.  I wonder what kind of Zen practice he has learned that allows him to be this genuinely polite and cheerful person.  Very different from the attendants on the border with Vietnam and different also from other people behind a counter in, let's say, New York City, with murdering eyes and a plastic smile.   He calls a tall and elegant female officer and asks her to guide me.  She takes me to a bus stop outside, where a small bus is parked.  "How much is the fare?" I ask, to which she replies, "it's free."  As she signals to the driver I think I either misheard or her English is limited.  But it turns out the bus is only taking me across security, to another station, where a handful of buses are parked.   The problem is that there are a couple of booths selling tickets for different parts of Hong Kong, and I have no idea where I want to go.  I talk to one guy working at a liquor store, the only store open at this time.  He doesn't speak English, but we use his cell phone to communicate.  I ask him for suggestions and he asks me if I want a place that's more fun.  I tell him I'm hoping for sights, not exactly fun since I have no idea what kind of fun he has in mind.  He clarifies that he means clubs and dancing.  I repeat I want to see stuff, not really do anything.  He thinks this over.  He tells me that Hong Kong is beautiful and I'll see great sights anywhere I go, but ends up writing a number on a paper.  I buy a ticket for the bus he suggested (for 44 Hong Kong Dollars), which is about to leave.  During all that it dawns on me that I am in mainland China, not Hong Kong, and I have to show my passport a couple of times until I'm on my way to the island.   The bus is fairly full, and I wonder where all these people are going at this hour.  They're talking in a bunch of languages, mostly Asian, but sometimes I hear French, German or English as well.  

Where do you stop when you have no idea where you're going?  Since I'm seeing so much from the bus, I have no hurry to get out.  However, there are some neighborhoods with open restaurants and clubs while other neighborhoods are deserted.  I don't want to stop on those. I end up going to the final station where I try to find out which bus I should take to the airport, even though I still have hours to explore the city. I'm told I must take the bus A21.  Where does it stop?  The gentleman gives me directions, which I hope to remember.  Leaving the station I see two kids, probably in their late teens, hanging out.  I ask if they speak English and both say yes, so I ask them a bunch of questions about Hong Kong, especially in what, if anything, it differs from China.  Just like night and day, they're quick to tell me.  Hong Kong has a different language, currency, and policies.  Hong Kong is extremely open to western business, culture, and values, while mainland China is not.  Also, there are many English-speakers in Hong Kong.  In fact, most signs have an English translation, which makes being here easy and comfortable.  And of course, in their visa processing, mainland China and Hong Kong are completely different.  Two things about these kids strike me as remarkable; how friendly and respectful they are and the fact that they're talking on the street, hanging out as though it's the middle of the afternoon, when in fact is about 2 in the morning.   I quickly find the street where bus A21 stops at several points, and, keeping it in the back of my mind, explore the neighborhood.  Although many shops are closed, there are many people on the streets.  Restaurants, cafes, and clubs are open.  I find a nice park, but that's also closed for the night.  I don't remember ever seeing a closed urban park and I wonder the reason for having gates at all.  I buy a banana at a produce shop, but what I'm really looking for is a place where I can sit with a cup of tea and my laptop.  Not finding anywhere else, I enter the funkiest McDonald's I have ever seen.  However, this McDonald's is divided into two distinct ambiances, one for breakfast, and the other for... liquor?  They do have things like muffins and coffee but that counter won't be open for another five hours.  I look for another place.  There are a lot of street vendors, some of them in the process of closing shop for the night.  I check their merchandise, hoping to find a Hong Kong magnet, but what I see is a great assortment of bongs, lighters and other stuff which I don't know the name or the function.  Stand after stand, they all sell the same products, and not one of them is selling souvenirs.   What I don't understand is that Hong Kong has a zero tolerance policy toward illegal drug use, and still, these vendors are openly selling drug paraphernalia and, considering their number, I'd say business is blooming. However, I don't see any indication of people under the effects of drugs. The Hong Kongers around me are low-key, friendly and cheerful.  Most are walking alone or with a friend, they take the time to greet me with a smile and, if I ask them a question, they're courteous and helpful.  This is the night crowd.  I wonder whether day-timers are any different.  But I won't find that out, not this time.

Soon it's time for me to head to the airport.  I stop at one of the many bus stops along a busy street and in a few minutes, the A21 comes.  It's a nice double-decker equipped with wi-fi.  The fare is 33 HKD.  Compare this amount to the 144 HKD I paid on my way to the mainland and then back to the island.  The old Brazilian adage "in order to avoid taking one step, Brazilians take two" strikes again.  However, blaming my Brazilian heritage doesn't make me feel any better about the 111 HKD I've wasted.  I shall file this experience under "expensive lessons", with a note: check transportation before landing.  

At daybreak, I'm back at the Hong Kong airport, which is pretty empty at this time, with most stories still closed.  Outside daylight is soft, with tones of pink, orange, and grey, and the weather is quite pleasant.  HKIA is well organized and well equipped.  At a charging station, I do some work in my laptop and recharge all my batteries.  After I'm done I look around and realize that the airport is full and every store is open.  I finally buy a Hong Kong magnet and have breakfast at one of the food courts.  Then I call my sister who keeps me company until the time of departure.  I haven't slept in over twenty-four hours and I'm looking for a solid sixteen-hour flight.  Perhaps I can finish Engleby... As we board the plane I see a Buddhist monk.  His haughty demeanor catches my attention.  He is barefoot and carrying absolutely nothing, which is something unusual in an airport.  Traveling with him is a man in regular Western clothes, carrying all the luggage. I wonder about the purpose of that.  What's the spiritual goal of owing nothing, traveling light, if someone else will carry your stuff for you? But maybe my assumptions are all wrong and the guy in regular clothes is actually the big shot, carrying the other's heavy suitcase and documents in other to practice humility.   It could be.  

As we wait for take-off I see in the distance a car going up a cable toward a mountain far away.  It reminds me of Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro and I'm filled with the desire to get to know Hong Kong better.   But not now.  Now I'm homebound.

[teshknowledgenotes]

A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business - Charlie Munger Notes

Charlie Munger’s famous talk at USC Business School in 1994 entitled A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom.

The carrot part of this talk is about the general subject of worldly wisdom which is a pretty good way to start. After all, the theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent before you’re going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.

What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang em back. If the fact don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.

You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.

What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality to that if fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who of course is great in medicine.

It’s like the old saying, “To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” And of course that’s the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that’s a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you’ve got to have multiple models.

And the models have to come from multiple disciplines because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.

You may say “My God, this is already getting way too tough” But, fortunately it isn’t that tough because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And of those only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.

So let’s briefly review what kind of models and techniques constitute this basic knowledge that everybody has to have before they proceed to being really good at a narrow art like stock picking.

First there’s mathematics. Obviously you’ve got to be able to handle numbers and quantities, basic arithmetic. And the great useful model, after compound interest, is the elementary math of permutations and combinations. And that was taught in my day in the sophomore year in high school. I supposed by now in great private school, it’s probably down to the eight grade or so.

Many educational institutions although not nearly enough have realized this. At Harvard Business School, the great quantitative thing that bonds the first year class together is what they call decision tree theory. All they do is take high school algebra and apply it to real life problems. And the students love it. They’re amazed to find that high school algebra works in real life.

By and large, as it works out, people can’t naturally and automatically do this. If you understand elementary psychology, the reason they can’t is really quite simple: The basic neural network of the brain is there through broad genetic and cultural evolution. So you have to learn in a very usable way this very elementary math and routinely in life just the way if you want to become a golfer, you can’t use the natural swing that broad evolution gave you. You have to learn to have a certain grip and swing in a different way to realize your full potential as a golfer.

If you don’t get this elementary but mildly unnatural mathematics of elementary probability in to your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. You’re giving a huge advantage to everybody else.

One of the advantages of a fellow like Buffett whom I’ve worked with all these years is that he automatically thinks in terms of decision trees and the elementary math of permutations and combinations.

Obviously you have to know accounting. It’s the language of practice business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I’ve heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.

You have to know enough about it to understand its limitations because although account is the starting place, it’s only a crude approximation. And it’s not very hard to understand its limitations. For example everyone can see that you have to  do more or less just guess at the useful life of a jet airplane or anything like that just because you express the depreciation rate in neat numbers doesn’t make it anything you really know.

Which models are the most reliable? Well, obviously the models that come from hard science and engineering are the most reliable models on this Earth. And engineering quality control at least the guts of it that matters to you and me and people who are not professional engineers is very much based on the elementary mathematics of Fermat and Pascal.

I suppose the next most reliable models are from biology and physiology because after all, all of us are programmed by our genetic makeup to be much the same.

And when you get into psychology, of course it gets very much more complicated. But it’s an ungodly important subject if you’re going to have any worldly wisdom.

The elementary part of psychology the psychology of misjudgment as I call it is a terribly important thing to learn. There are about 20 little principles. And they interact, so it gets slightly complicated. But the guts of it is unbelievably important.

Terribly smart people make totally bonkers mistakes by failing to pay heed to it. In fact, I’ve done it several times during the last two or three years in a very important way. You never get totally over making silly mistakes.

There’s another saying that comes from Pascal which I’ve always considered one of the really accurate observations in the history of thought. Pascal said in essence “The mind of man at one and the same time is both the glory and the shame of the universe.”

And that’s exactly right. It has this enormous power. However it also has these standard misfunctions that often cause it to reach wrong conclusions. It also makes man extraordinarily subject to manipulation by others. For example, roughly half of the army of Adolf Hitler was composed to believing Catholics. Given enough clever psychological manipulation, what human beings will do is quite interesting.

Personally I’ve gotten so that I now use a kind of two track analysis. First, what are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered? And second, what are the subconscious influences where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically doing these things – which by and large are useful, but which often is misfunction.

One approach is rationality they way you’d work out a bridge problem by evaluation the real interests, the real probabilities and so forth. And the other is to evaluate the psychological factors that cause subconscious conclusions many of which are wrong.

Now we come to another somewhat less reliable form of human wisdom microeconomics. And here, I find it quite useful to think of a free market economy or partly free market economy as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem.

This is a very unfashionable way of thinking because early in the days after Darwin came along, people like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power you know “I’m the richest. Therefore I’m the best. God’s in his heaven, etc.”

And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results.

Just as in an ecosystem, people who narrowly specialize can get terribly good at occupying some little niche. Just as animals flourish in niches, similarly, people who specialize in the business world and get very good because they specialize, frequently find good economics that they wouldn’t get any other way.

And once we get into microeconomics, we get into the concept of advantages of scale. Now we’re getting closer to investment analysis because in terms of which businesses succeed and which businesses fail, advantages of scale are ungodly important.

For example, one great advantage of scale taught in all of the business school of the world is cost reductions along the so called experience curve. Just doing something complicated in more and more volume enables human beings, who are trying to improve and are motivated by incentives of capitalism to do it more efficiently.

The very nature of things is that if you get a whole lot of volume through your joint, you get better at processing that volume. That’s an enormous advantage. And it has a lot do with which businesses succeed and fail.

Let’s go through a of possible advantages of scale. Some come from simple geometry. If you’re building a great spherical tank, obviously as you build it bigger, the amount of steel you use in the surface goes up with the square and the cubic volume goes up with the cube. So as you increase the dimensions you can hold a lot more volume per unit are of steel.

And there are all kinds of things like that where the simple geometry the simple reality gives you an advantage of scale.

For example you can get advantages of scale from TV advertising. When TV advertising first arrived when talking colour pictures first came into our living rooms it was an unbelievably powerful thing. And in the early days, we had three networks that had whatever it was say 90% of the audience.

Well, if you were Procter & Gamble you could afford to use this new method of advertising. You could afford the very expensive cost of network television because you were selling so many cans and bottle. Some little guy couldn’t. And there was no way of buying it in part. Therefore, he couldn’t use it. In effect, if you didn’t have a big volume, you couldn’t use network TV advertising which was the most effective technique.

So when TV came in, the branded companies that were already big got a huge tailwind. Indeed they prospered and prospered and prospered until some of them got fat and foolish, which happens with prosperity, at least to some people.

And your advantage of scale can be an informational advantage. If I got to some remote place, I may see Wrigley chewing gum alongside Glotz’s chewing gum. Well, I know that Wrigley is a satisfactory product, whereas I don’t know anything about Glotz’s. So if one is 40 cents and the other is 30 cents, am I going to take something I don’t know and put it in my mouth, which is a pretty personal place after all, for a lousy dime?

So, in effect, Wrigley simply by being so well known, has advantages of scale what you might call an informational advantage.

Another advantage of scale comes from psychology. The psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced subconsciously and to some extent consciously by what we see others do and approve. Therefore, if everybody’s buying something, we think it’s better. We don’t like to be the one guy who’s out of step.

Again some of this is at a subconscious level and some of it isn’t. Sometimes, we consciously and rationally think “Gee, I don’t know much about this. They know more than I do. Therefore why shouldn’t I follow them?”

The social proof phenomenon which comes right out of psychology gives huge advantages to scale for example, with very wide distribution, which of course is hard to get. One advantage of Coca-Cola is that it’s available almost everywhere in the world.

Well, suppose you have a little soft drink. Exactly how do you make it available all over the Earth? The worldwide distribution setup which is slowly won by a big enterprise gets to be a huge advantage, and if you think about it, once you get enough advantages of that type, it can become very hard for anybody to dislodge you.

There’s another kind of advantage to scale. In some businesses, the very nature of things is to sort of cascade toward the overwhelming dominance of one firm.

The most obvious one is the daily newspapers. There’s practically no city left in the U.S. aside from a few very big ones, where there’s more than one daily newspaper.

The great defect of scale, of course which makes the game interesting so that the big people don’t always win, is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy. And with the bureaucracy comes the territoriality which is again grounded in human nature.

They also tend to become somewhat corrupt. In other words, if I’ve got a department and you’ve got a department and we kind of share power running this thing, there’s sort of an unwritten rule: “If you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you and we’re both happy” So you get layers of management and associated costs that nobody needs. Then while people are justifying all these layers, it takes forever to get anything done. They’re too slow to make decisions and nimbler people run circles around them.

The constant curse of scale is that it leads to big, dumb bureaucracy which of course, reaches its highest and worst form in government where the incentives are really awful. That doesn’t mean we don’t need governments because we do. But it’s a terrible problem to get big bureaucracies to behave.

But bureaucracy is terrible, and as things get very powerful and very big, you can get some really dysfunctional behaviour. Look at Westinghouse. They blue billions of dollars on a bunch of dumb loans to real estate developers. They put some guy who’d come up by some career path, I don’t know exactly what it was, but it could have been refrigerators or something and all of a sudden he’s loaning money to real estate developers building hotels. It’s a very unequal contest. And in due time, they lost all those billions of dollars.

However, Berkshire Hathaway, by and large does not invest in the people that are “surfing” on complicated technology. After all we’re cranky and idiosyncratic as you may have notice.

And Warren and I don’t feel like we have any great advantage in the high tech sector. In fact, we feel like we’re at a big disadvantage in trying to understand the nature of technical developments in software, computer chips or what have you. So we tend to avoid that stuff, based on our personal inadequacies.

Again that is a very, very powerful idea. Every person is going to have a circle of competence. And it’s going to be very hard to advance that circle. If I had to make my living as a musician, I can’t even think of a level low enough to describe where I would be sorted out to if music were the measuring standard of civilization.

So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where the other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

If you want to be the best tennis player in the world, you may start out trying and soon find out that it’s hopeless, that other people blow right by you. However, if you want to become the best plumbing contractor in Bemidji, that is probable doable by two-thirds of you. It takes will, It takes intelligence. But after a while, you’d gradually know all about the plumbing business in Bemidji and master the art. That is an attainable objective, given enough discipline. And people who could never win a chess tournament or stand in centre court in a respectable tennis tournament can rise quite high in life by slowly developing a circle of competence which results partly from what they were born with and partly from what they slowly develop through work.

And yet, in investment management, practically nobody operates that way. We operate that way, I’m talking about Buffett and Munger. And we’re not alone in the world. But a huge majority of people have some other crazy construct in their heads. And instead of waiting for a near cinch and loading up, they apparently ascribe to the theory that if they work a little harder or hire more business school students, they’ll come to know everything about everything all the time.

To me that’s totally insane. The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights.

How many insights do you need? Well I’d argue: that you don’t need many in a lifetime. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway and all of it’s accumulated billions, the top ten insights account for most of it. And that’s with a very brilliant man, Warren’s a lot more able than I am and very disciplined devoting his lifetime to it. I don’t mean to say that he’s only had ten insights. I’m just saying that most of the money came from ten insights.

So you can get very remarkable investment results if you think more like a winning pari-mutuel player. Just think if it as heavy odds against game full of craziness with an occasional mispriced something or other. And you’re probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It’s just that simple.

We’ve really made the money out of high-quality businesses. In some cases we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in high-quality businesses. And most of the other people who’ve made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.

Over the long term, it’s hard for a stock to earn a much better return than the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns 6% on capital over 40 years and you hold it for that 40 years, you’re not going to make much different than a 6% return, even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earn 18% on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you’ll end up with a fine result.

So the trick is getting into better businesses. And that involves all of these advantages of scale that you could consider momentum effects.

How do you get into these great companies? One method is what I’d call the method of finding them small get em when they’re little. For example, buy Walmart when Sam Walton first goes public and so forth. And a lot of people try to do just that. And it’s a very beguiling idea. If I were a young man, I might actually go into it.

But it doesn’t work for Berkshire Hathaway anymore because we’ve got too much money. We can’t find anything that fits our size parameter that way. Besides, we’re set in our way. But I regard finding them small as a perfectly intelligent approach for somebody to try with discipline. It’s just not something that I’ve done.

Finding em big obviously is very hard because of the competition. So far, Berkshire’s managed to do it. But can we continue to do it? What’s the next Coca-Cola investment for us? Well the answer to that is I don’t know. I think it gets harder for us all the time.

And ideally and we’ve done a lot of this, you get in to a great business which also has a great manager because management matters. For example, it’s made a great difference to General Electric that Jack Welch can in instead of the guy who took over Westinghouse a very great difference. So management matters, too.

And some of it is predictable. I do not think it takes a genius to understand that Jack Welch was a more insightful person and a better manager than his peers in other companies. Nor do I think it took tremendous genius to understand that Disney had basic momentum in place which are very powerful and that Eisner and Wells were very unusual managers.

So you do get an occasional opportunity to get in to a wonderful business that’s being run by a wonderful manager. And of course that’s hog heaven day. If you don’t load up when you those opportunities, it’s a big mistake.

Occasionally, you’ll find a human being who’s so talented that he can do things that ordinary skilled mortals can’t. I would argue that Simon Marks who was second generation in Marks & Spencer of England was such a man. Patterson was such a man at National Cash Register. And Sam Walton was such a man.

These people do come along and in many cases, they’re not all that hard to identify. If they’ve got a reasonable hand with the fanaticism and intelligence and so on that these people generally bring to the part, then management can matter much.

However, averaged out, betting on the quality of a business is better betting on the quality of management. In other words, if you have to choose one, bet on the business momentum, not the brilliance of the manager.

But, very rarely, you find a manager who’s so good that you’re wise to follow him into what looks like a mediocre business.

[willthoughtout-blog]

I don’t know anything & Viva la Revolution

This was going to be a review for Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. I finished reading it a week or so ago, and thought it was utterly fascinating and completely changed my perspective on a load of different things.

But I’ve been thinking about it some more, and now I’m not sure that the most noteworthy thing is the book itself. Instead, I’m alarmed at how new the perspectives in the book were to me. Why hadn’t I been introduced to them before?

Sapiens is a history of the human race, from pre-historic humans evolving through different ways, then through the Cognitive Revolution, then the Agricultural Revolution, and then modern history. At the end, Harari discusses the future of the human race, and how we might change with gene-editing and so on.

What Harari does brilliantly is tie all of this enormous history together, and put it all in context. This storytelling and contextualisation alone makes this worth reading.

Reading a history where humans were once middling in the food chain. Reading a history that stresses how little we’ve changed since then. Reading a history that relates our current behaviours to evolutionary instincts (for example, the survival instincts that validate binge-eating). These are perspectives that I’d never been forced to seriously consider before. But why?

In my university studies, no one ever presented these arguments. Politics teaches all about recent, local histories - the customs and institutions that shape contemporary decision-making and discourse. Economics, by contrast, focuses on modern market economies, with supposedly natural laws of supply and demand deriving from self interest, featuring ‘rational’ and well-informed consumers. 

Neither discipline apparently saw it necessary to delve into a history that starts more than 2 or 3 decades back, or consider the activities of hunter-gatherer humans that existed for millennia, dwarfing the time period of modern political history. 

In my mind, this is a failing. Both disciplines would be enormously improved if they considered a longer view of history, with more sociological understandings of how humans work.

For example, as Sapiens outlines, racism is basically wholly socially constructed in each society. Depending on the culture and power dynamics of any given society, any one group might be racially targeted. But sexism? Virtually every known society since the Agricultural Revolution has involved patriarchal power relations. Why is this? Basically, no one knows. But in modern political teaching, it feels like sexism and racism are taught as broadly similar traits. How many politics professors stop to ask if they are? Perhaps it’s worth asking if humans are naturally disposed to patriarchal societies, in the same ways that elephants are to matriarchal ones. This doesn’t mean that we should accept unequal power. But surely we need to understand its root causes as much as possible, and I haven’t heard any feminist scholars talking about built-in patriarchy in the human psyche.

And for economists who model humans as broadly self-interested, how is this supported by sociological evidence about communal tribes? I don’t think human genetics radically changed in the 19th century. I think the dominant theories of humans did.

So, the subjects I studied might be a bit narrow. Big news.

But the thing is, it’s really hard to appreciate that what you’re being taught is just a certain set of perspectives when you aren’t taught anything else.

The reason Sapiens was so transformative to my way of thinking was because I’ve never been taught any anthropology. I’m sure it isn’t actually a bunch of whole new stuff - the guy didn’t do the research himself, he just collated it well. If I’d been able to do Anthropology 101 at uni, I’m sure one lecture would have opened my eyes as much as the first few chapters did.

This is what I hate so much about our uni system. It’s built around the idea that you’re being trained in a certain subject. If you study maths, you’re going there to do maths. Why would you learn sociology?

But is uni a glorified vocational training course? Or should it be? I don’t think so. Maybe it is for vets and doctors. But for the rest of us, only a small amount of the things we learn (if any) will be useful in a job. I much prefer the vision of a university that involves broadening our horizons, teaching us about the world and becoming better informed citizens. I’m sure this would make us better at our jobs, too.

The correlation between what people study and what they do later on is already low. This is something we can make the most of - we’re free to make our university system broader. If all the history undergraduates are just going to go into finance anyway, why not teach them about genetic engineering too?

I know we have ‘open units’, but these are just tinkering around the edges. (Also, I didn’t get any, so I’m bitter). 

I think it’s time for a (vomit) American-style system, where you learn about all different subjects, and then towards the end pick a specialist subject (perhaps).

It will teach economics graduates to be better policymakers, if they know that market ideologies aren’t the only way to view the world. It will make finance graduates better traders if they understand the environmental impacts of their trading. It will make genetic engineers better ethicists if they study philosophy. It will make students overall better citizens and democrats if they understand the different oppressive forces that have affected groups over the years, including their own country’s empire.

So, this book taught me a lot of things. But most of all, it taught me about my ignorance. And I think it’s time we changed the educational system that caused that ignorance.

[nasa]

10 “Spinoffs of Tomorrow” You Can License for Your Business

The job of the our Technology Transfer Program is pretty straight-forward – bring NASA technology down to Earth. But, what does that actually mean? We’re glad you asked! We transfer the cool inventions NASA scientists develop for missions and license them to American businesses and entrepreneurs. And that is where the magic happens: those business-savvy licensees then create goods and products using our NASA tech. Once it hits the market, it becomes a “NASA Spinoff.”

If you’re imagining that sounds like a nightmare of paperwork and bureaucracy, think again. Our new automated “ATLAS” system helps you license your tech in no time — online and without any confusing forms or jargon.

So, sit back and browse this list of NASA tech ripe for the picking (well, licensing.) When you find something you like, follow the links below to apply for a license today! You can also browse the rest of our patent portfolio - full of hundreds of available technologies – by visiting technology.nasa.gov.

1. Soil Remediation with Plant-Fungal Combinations

Ahh, fungus. It’s fun to say and fun to eat—if you are a mushroom fan. But, did you know it can play a crucial role in helping trees grow in contaminated soil? Scientists at our Ames Research Center discovered that a special type of the fungus among us called “Ectomycorrhizal” (or EM for short) can help enhance the growth of trees in areas that have been damaged, such as those from oil spills.

2. Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag

When it comes to aircraft, drag can be, well…a drag. Luckily, innovators at our Armstrong Flight Research Center are experimenting with a new wing design that removes adverse yaw (or unwanted twisting) and dramatically increases aircraft efficiency by reducing drag. Known as the “Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag (PRANDTL-D)” wing, this design addresses integrated bending moments and lift to achieve drag reduction.

3. Advancements in Nanomaterials

What do aircraft, batteries, and furniture have in common? They can ALL be improved with our nanomaterials.  Nanomaterials are very tiny materials that often have unique optical, electrical and mechanical properties. Innovators at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have developed a suite of materials and methods to optimize the performance of nanomaterials by making them tougher and easier to process. This useful stuff can also help electronics, fuel cells and textiles.

4. Green Precision Cleaning

Industrial cleaning is hard work. It can also be expensive when you have to bring in chemicals to get things squeaky. Enter “Green Precision Cleaning,” which uses the nitrogen bubbles in water instead. The bubbles act as a scrubbing agent to clean equipment. Goddard Space Flight Center scientists developed this system for cleaning tubing and piping that significantly reduces cost and carbon consumption. Deionized water (or water that has been treated to remove most of its mineral ions) takes the place of costlier isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and also leaves no waste, which cuts out the pricey process of disposal. The cleaning system quickly and precisely removes all foreign matter from tubing and piping.

5. Self-Contained Device to Isolate Biological Samples

When it comes to working in space, smaller is always better. Innovators at our Johnson Space Center have developed a self-contained device for isolating microscopic materials like DNA, RNA, proteins, and cells without using pipettes or centrifuges. Think of this technology like a small briefcase full of what you need to isolate genetic material from organisms and microorganisms for analysis away from the lab. The device is also leak-proof, so users are protected from chemical hazards—which is good news for astronauts and Earth-bound scientists alike.

6. Portable, Rapid, Quiet Drill

When it comes to “bringing the boom,” NASA does it better than anyone. But sometimes, we know it’s better to keep the decibels low. That’s why innovators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed a new handheld drilling device, suitable for a variety of operations, that is portable, rapid and quiet. Noise from drilling operations often becomes problematic because of the location or time of operations. Nighttime drilling can be particularly bothersome and the use of hearing protection in the high-noise areas may be difficult in some instances due to space restrictions or local hazards. This drill also weighs less than five pounds – talk about portable power.  

7. Damage Detection System for Flat Surfaces

The ability to detect damage to surfaces can be crucial, especially on a sealed environment that sustains human life or critical equipment. Enter Kennedy Space Center’s damage detection system for flat composite surfaces. The system is made up of layered composite material, with some of those layers containing the detection system imbedded right in. Besides one day potentially keeping humans safe on Mars, this tech can also be used on aircrafts, military shelters, inflatable structures and more.

8. Sucrose-Treated Carbon Nanotube and Graphene Yarns and Sheets

We all know what a spoonful of sugar is capable of. But, who knew it could help make some materials stronger? Innovators at NASA’s Langley Research Center did! They use dehydrated sucrose to create yarns and woven sheets of carbon nanotubes and graphene.

The resulting materials are lightweight and strong. Sucrose is inexpensive and readily available, making the process cost-effective. Makes you look at the sweet substance a little differently, doesn’t it?

9. Ultrasonic Stir Welding

NASA scientists needed to find a way to friction weld that would be gentler on their welding equipment. Meet our next tech, ultrasonic stir welding.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center engineers developed ultrasonic stir welding to join large pieces of very high-strength, high-melting-temperature metals such as titanium and Inconel. The addition of ultrasonic energy reduces damaging forces to the stir rod (or the piece of the unit that vibrates so fast, it joins the welding material together), extending its life. The technology also leaves behind a smoother, higher-quality weld.

10. A Field Deployable PiezoElectric Gravimeter (PEG)

It’s important to know that the fuel pumping into rockets has remained fully liquid or if a harmful chemical is leaking out of its container. But each of those things, and the many other places sensors are routinely used, tends to require a specially designed, one-use device.

That can result in time-consuming and costly cycles of design, test and build, since there is no real standardized sensor that can be adapted and used more widely.

To meet this need, the PiezoElectric Gravimeter (PEG) was developed to provide a sensing system and method that can serve as the foundation for a wide variety of sensing applications.

See anything your business could use? Did anything inspire you to start your own company? If so, head to our website at technology.nasa.gov to check them out.

When you’ve found what you need, click, “Apply Now!” Our licensing system, ATLAS, will guide you through the rest.

If the items on this round-up didn’t grab you, that’s ok, too. We have hundreds of other technologies available and ready to license on our website.

And if you want to learn more about the technologies already being used all around you, visit spinoff.nasa.gov.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

[workfromhomeyoutuber]

Doximity: Python Automation Engineer, Data Pipelines

Headquarters: San Francisco, CA URL: http://www.doximity.com

Doximity is transforming the healthcare industry. Our mission is to help doctors be more productive, informed, and connected. As a software engineer, you'll work within cross-functional delivery teams alongside other engineers, designers, and product managers in building software to help improve healthcare.  

Our team brings a diverse set of technical and cultural backgrounds and we like to think pragmatically in choosing the tools most appropriate for the job at hand. 

This position is for an experienced Python software engineer, with a passion for writing tests, to join our 5 person Test Automation team. We’re looking for someone with a strong track record of putting Python to work in data-oriented products. 

About Us 

Here are some of the ways we bring value to doctors

Our web applications are built primarily using Ruby, Rails, Javascript (Vue.js), and a bit of Golang

Our data engineering stack run on Python, MySQL, Spark, and Airflow

Our production application stack is hosted on AWS and we deploy to production on average 50 times per day

We have over 350 private repositories in Github containing our applications, forks of gems, our own internal gems, and open-source projects

We have worked as a distributed team for a long time; we're currently about 65% distributed

Find out more information on the Doximity engineering blog

Our company core values

Our recruiting process

Our product development cycle

Our on-boarding & mentorship process

Here's How You Will Make an Impact 

Design and build a CI pipeline for the Data Engineering Python codebase.

Spearhead the process of establishing a modern CI/CD suite for data pipelines.

Deploy and maintain CI servers within AWS, CircleCI, and other partners. 

Write documentation and guides, be an advocate and mentor to the Data team with regards to Test Automation.

About you 

Minimum 2-4 years of professional experience developing software using Python.

Experience writing unit and integration tests in Pytest.

Experience with shell scripting (bash, zsh).

Experience with SQL.

Able to troubleshoot test failures and build consistency issues.

Able to investigate intermittent CI server failures due to infrastructure shortcomings.

Able to communicate effectively.

Able to effectively manage time; balance failure investigation with completing sprint tasks.

Experience building and maintaining Docker images.

CircleCI experience is a plus.

Work remotely provided you have 5 hours of overlap with the team in the U.S. Our core hours are 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM PST.

Benefits & Perks 

Generous time off policy

Comprehensive benefits including medical, vision, dental, Life/ADD, 401k, flex spending accounts, commuter benefits, equipment budget, and continuous education budget

Pre-IPO stock incentives

.. and much more! For a full list, see our career page

More info on Doximity 

We’re thrilled to be named the Fastest Growing Company in the Bay Area, and one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Joining Doximity means being part of an incredibly talented and humble team. We work on amazing products that over 70% of US doctors (and over one million healthcare professionals) use to make their busy lives a little easier. We’re driven by the goal of improving inefficiencies in our $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system and love creating technology that has a real, meaningful impact on people’s lives. To learn more about our team, culture, and users, check out our careers page, company blog, and engineering blog. We’re growing steadily, and there’s plenty of opportunity for you to make an impact. 

Doximity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

To apply: https://grnh.se/3s8r06hm1

from We Work Remotely: Remote jobs in design, programming, marketing and more https://ift.tt/2uF2NHA from Work From Home YouTuber Job Board Blog https://ift.tt/2v9X1hC

[remotecareers]

Technical Staff Software Engineer-Data Analytics/Data Science Team (Remote-United States)

Technical Staff Software Engineer-Data Analytics/Data Science Team (Remote-United States) Be a part of a team that’s ensuring Dell Technologies’ product integrity and customer satisfaction.

Our IT Software Engineer team turns business requirements into technology solutions by designing, coding and testing/debugging applications, as well as documenting procedures for use and constantly seeking quality improvements.Join us to do the best work of your career and make a profound social impact as a Technical Staff Software Engineer on our AI products team within our Dell Digital organization.What you’ll achieveAs a Technical Staff Software Engineer, you will build and enhance high traffic next-generation applications.

This group works at the cutting edge to design and develop AI-driven software for platforms, peripherals, applications and diagnostics all with the most advanced technologies, tools and software engineering methodologies.You will:Work with solution architects to review proposed solutions, assess feasibility and create detailed Technology Reference Architecture and detail Reference Architecture to Sprint’s/POD’sPlan and design the structure of a technology solution for proposalsEvaluate and select appropriate software or hardware and suggest integration methodsProvide technical SME support in reviewing large transformational and complex technical solutions/data models in terms of compliance to requirements, efficiency of solution or implementationCollaborate with the technology community to bring best practices on various technologies and tollsLead and mentor the development teams on newer technology stacks, DevSecOps best practices and perform code reviews Implement Technology and Architecture Governance with the development teams to ensure architecture and quality standards alignment and coding best practicesPerform proof of concepts demonstrating the gains in cost reduction, productivity improvements and turnaround timeTake the first step towards your dream careerEvery Dell Technologies team member brings something unique to the table.

Here’s what we are looking for with this role:Essential Requirements15+ years industry experience or equivalent skill; must include experience working on application architecture, design, development and deliveryProficiency in Machine Learning to include state-of-art knowledge across Deep learning, NLP, Classification, Regression etc.

on large datasetsExtensive experience in ML model deployment and API buildingStrong technical skills with: Angular, C#, .NET Core, .NET Framework; Data-SQL Server, ElasticSearch/MongoDB, Teradata; Platforms/Services-ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web, Web API, Web Services, Entity Framework, Microservices, REST; Messaging/Streaming-Kafka, RabiitMQ, Redis Streams; Cloud-AWS, Azure, PCF, Docker, Kubernates Graduate degree in Computer Science or related fieldExperience building cloud native applicationsHere’s our story; now tell us yoursDell Technologies helps organizations and individuals build a brighter digital tomorrow.

Our company is made up of more than 150,000 people, located in over 180 locations around the world.

We’re proud to be a diverse and inclusive team and have an endless passion for our mission to drive human progress.

What’s most important to us is that you are respected, feel like you can be yourself and have the opportunity to do the best work of your life – – while still having a life.

We offer excellent benefits, bonus programs, flexible work arrangements, a variety of career development opportunities, employee resource groups, and much more.

We started with computers, but we didn’t stop there.

We are helping customers move into the future with multi-cloud, AI and machine learning through the most innovative technology and services portfolio for the data era.

Join us and become a part of what’s next in technology, starting today.

You can also learn more about us by reading our latest Diversity and Inclusion Report and our plan to make the world a better place by 2030 here.Dell is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment.

All employment decisions at Dell are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

Dell will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.

Dell encourages applicants of all ages.

Read the full Employment Opportunity Policy here.”LIPriority”#LI-Remote

The post Technical Staff Software Engineer-Data Analytics/Data Science Team (Remote-United States) first appeared on Remote Careers.

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[jam2289]

On the Subjects of Education

The subject of education is large. It technically covers all of the information ever known, or at least currently known. It's hard to face something that enormous and determine which direction to go. Nevertheless, we must wrest some semblance of order from the clutches of this giant known as education and determine a path forward.

I was recently teaching a young actress who is focused on her career to the exclusion of most other things. She's currently in a play, and because they have had intensive rehearsals for the last few weeks she has missed school.

This is a normal cycle for her. She has a job that consumes most of her time and energy for a few months. Her mother and father work with her during that time on some subjects. And obviously she still has private English lessons with me. Then, after the job is done, she goes back to school. But, as her career grows that's becoming harder to do, and it seems like a normal high school experience may not be the path for her.

That's all fine. You can learn just as well, or better, at home. I skipped quite a lot of school. My mother would ask me why I was skipping school and I would tell her I could learn more by staying home and reading. Which is true. But, she assured me that I still had to go to school.

Learning is almost impossible without inner motivation. With some people, usually certain kids, that's a huge part of my real work. It's finding out what they want to learn so that they will be motivated and engage in the material. This actress and I have been working on this exact problem. She's very specific about what she doesn't think she needs to know, so she doesn't want to study certain things.

I decided to start over, to have a discussion about what she thought would be valuable to her.

There are many ways to think about the structure of education. It was in medieval universities where subjects were divided up in the way that we recognize today. (Yes, I'm going to ignore ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the rest of the world for now.)

First, there was the trivium, which consisted of: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Next, there was the quadrivium, which consisted of: music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. That's a total of seven subjects, which seems like a decent number to me.

One of the problems with education now is that there are too many directions to go. Just look at the lists of majors at universities. There are hundreds of them. Do you need to study hundreds of subjects to have an idea of how the world fits together? Yes, you do. That's a problem.

One reaction to this problem is to overreact. To decide that there is so much to learn that it doesn't matter. That you just have to choose. I think that might be a natural tendency for someone that is as career focused as this young woman, and it was the direction she was headed in.

The first thing I wanted to do was find a base, to establish common ground. It's hard to beat the concept of the 3 Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. She agreed that all of those were important, and she's already doing pretty well at all of those in both English and Russian.

It's hard to beat the 3 Rs, but I can, with what I have termed the 4 Rs: reading, writing, arithmetic, and rhetoric. In this case, by rhetoric I mean the various forms of public speaking. It's a skill that can be learned with steady practice. I did it primarily through Toastmasters. And it's immensely valuable in so many ways. Luckily, as an actress, my student is already doing a lot of training in that direction.

After that we run into the same problem, there are too many directions to go. Here's a way to solve that. Study a subject that covers all of the rest. There is one subject that covers every other subject, and I'm not talking about philosophy, although that's a good guess. I'm talking about history.

Everything that has ever happened is a part of history. Every subject is a part of history. Here's the problem with history, it's boring. But that's because of the normal way in which it is taught in schools. "Here's a date and a place, and here's some stuff that happened then and there. Remember it for the test." Completely boring! There is a better way.

Because everything in history is connected you can pick up a thread almost anywhere and it will lead you to places that are astounding.

If the student just happens to be interested in the American Civil War, as a for instance, that's going to connect with why there was a cultural division, how it came about, how it resolved, the history of slavery, religions impact on all of this, the history of laws in both the United States and Europe, international trade and politics, military operations, different economic systems, technology improvements in arms, spying and codes, shipping, land transportation, and so much more. More than you could study in a lifetime, or two.

So, just start with something or someone your interested in. And the someone is important. People are interested in people, and people are what make history. Read the original sources if you can, instead of what someone says about what someone says. Commentaries and interpretations can be great, but you'll often find that the truth is different from what's in the textbook. Read the speeches, read the letters, read the official reports, the diaries, the journals, etc. You'll be amazed how much history continually changes, and it will be interesting the entire time.

You'll need to zoom in and zoom out continually to understand what you're learning. In our example, to understand the American Civil War you need to know what the Corwin Amendment is, and what the Minie Ball is. Those are specific things from that specific time. You also need to know the debates about states rights that the American Founding Fathers were having a century before the Civil War when they made the Articles of Confederation, and then replaced them with the American Constitution. To understand those, you need to understand English political history for the 700 years before 1800, Roman law, the Viking political system, Athenian democracy, and more. And none of that even touches on the Minie Ball.

I think I made my point. I convinced my student too, history is a great subject that is an inexhaustible source of valuable and useful knowledge.

The other most important subject for understanding how the world fits together is literature. Humans think in stories. And they are more than that, much more than that. Stories communicate things that we can't communicate in any other way. They transmit culture, worldviews, morals, and unconscious insights. They help show us more than what has been, they help to show us what can be, and what should be. They allow us to work out behavioral patterns in a separate reality and come to conclusions about right and wrong, good and evil. Without stories, we would not be human.

Of course, as an actress she was already sold on the importance of stories and literature.

With these six things as a foundation you are equipped to explore and decide on other areas of exploration. There are so many. I like the rest of the humanities, especially things like psychology, anthropology, politics, economics, religion, and philosophy.

The major criticism that I probably deserve up to this point is that I haven't mentioned science. It's good to have a general overview, but for all of the focus on science in our society, most people don't know that much, and don't need to know that much about it. Touching on biology, chemistry, and physics often seems to let kids know when and if they're interested in these things. Learn some of the history. Then, you can explore as much and as deep as you want, just like all of the subjects in the humanities that I mentioned.

I have a student right now that's highly interested in biology. She's eleven. That's great. We're specifically working on writing because her and her mother want her to improve in that area, but I still think it's useful to incorporate other subjects that she's interested in. I do that in an odd way. For instance, we talked about how Michael Crichton had an M.D. from Harvard University, and now we're writing some science fiction while also talking about genetic modification. In this case biology becomes literature.

There are so many other choices that have to be made. What about music, languages, sports, trades, fine arts, performance arts, law, medicine, business, finance, accounting, theology, engineering, electronics, and programming? Yeah, I say do them all, or do all of the ones you're interested in, or all of the ones that you're interested in that you can also manage as far as your time, energy, money, and attention are concerned. These are choices that have to be made based on interest and context.

These are often the areas where people will do a little bit of something and then switch. Do one thing for a couple of years, and then move on. I think it's perfectly fine, and even good, to explore like this. At least get some exposure so that you know what you don't like. And it's probably good advice to then dive deep somewhere and really drill into something. Parents can have a major influence over that, but in the end the student will ultimately decide if they are going to engage and give something their attention and dedication.

If you focus on the first two layers of education that I propose you will have laid a solid foundation that is a benefit to everyone. Start with the 4 Rs: reading, writing, arithmetic, and rhetoric. Expand on that by reading, writing, and talking about literature and history. The rest we can never be as sure about, for life in the end is always an exploration, and education is no different.

________________________________________________

Read more of Jeff's thoughts at: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/

[wildlyhardphilosopher-blog]

Dog Training Northumberland | Effective Solutions

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Dog Training Northumberland | Effective Solutions

Behavioural Modification A Pet’s Breakfast Jump to Navigation When will you be able to trust your puppy to wander loose throughout the home? Scott, John P.; and John L. Fuller (1965). Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marlo, Shelby (1999). New Art of Dog Training, Chicago: Contemporary Books, ISBN 0-8092-3170-0 HOW WE CAN HELP AS A DOG BEHAVIOURIST Horticulture · 30 April 2018 Cart Be the Pack Leader Vet Visit Program Rescue and Rehabilitate Make a lifesaving difference to animals by becoming a foster carer, donating, fundraising, joining an event, volunteering and more. Email a Friend PEDIGREE® Dry Dog Food Adult Roasted Chicken, Rice & Vegetable Flavor Locations Whether you train your new puppy or dog yourself, take classes, or hire a private trainer, some basic training tips should be tackled right out of the gate. These top 10 tips from professional dog trainers at the top of their game will help get you going. Puppy Training ⟶ The proper training of your dog will build a lasting foundation for a rewarding, lifelong friendship. Urban Dog Training can help you acquire the knowledge and skills to train your dog to become a confident, happy and well behaved companion. Home What we do Care for Animals Dog Care Dog Training Tips and Videos Blue Mountains Shelter Urns and Keepsakes A further follow-up session will allow you to fine tune the training under expert guidance. Firstly a canine health profile is required to exclude physical reasons for the dog’s behaviour. This is available through Redgum Vets. On payment of the behavioural training package, Redgum’s Amichien Bonding consultant will make contact with you to arrange a time when she can view your dog in its everyday environment. Chicken Show all Phone: (08) 8642 3308 CONTACT US Contact SitDropStay Dog Behaviour Australia on Messenger Bedding Older Puppy Training Doggy Bootcamp Place a treat in both hands. Adoptions · 30 April 2018 Animal Care amp Information Meet The Team Enforcement Rates PPGA Construction Motivating Miracles Workshop Council business, news and information Jump up ^ Slabbert, J. M.; O. A. E. Rasa (1997). “Observational learning of an acquired maternal behaviour pattern by working dog pup: an alternative training method?”. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 53 (4): 309–316. doi:10.1016/S0168-1591(96)01163-X. Charities we’re proud to donate to FAQ – The costs of veterinary care 11 References Training Advice Leashes for Active Dogs 32 Greenaway St, Bulleen – Harry Hampson Innovation and research Rally’O Training Leave it Jump up ^ Burch, Mary R; Duane Pickel (1990). “A toast to Most: Konrad Most, a 1910 pioneer in animal training”. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 23 (2): 263–4. doi:10.1901/jaba.1990.23-263. PMC 1286234 . PMID 16795731. Weekend: Which Level do I start in? Classical conditioning[edit] Goodog dog and puppy training Northern Beaches Our Infomercial 571 Montague Rd Dog training and puppy training Waiting at gate/door Turramurra Recreation Centre Location Anxiety Training Certificate III In Engineering – Maintenance – Fitting and/or Turning Our drop-in playgroups are a perfect complement to your vet’s puppy preschool class, particularly for owners looking forward to an adult dog who is comfortable, relaxed, and on her best manners around people and other dogs. Plus we guarantee puppy playgroup will be the best 30 minutes of your week – what could be better than a room full of puppies playing? Guided by a professional dog trainer, your pup learns her social P’s and Q’s while burning off excess energy in play – which means a better night’s sleep for you. Level 1 Basic Dog Manners 7 week course – Upgrade $295.00 Standard $235.00 At the request of our many dog-loving friends owners and partners across the nation, we’d like to share the following information, addressing a wide variety of dog care, training tips, and much more! Here you will find full color public information handouts ready for printing. Engineering Jump up ^ Wogan, Lisa (November 2010). “The Mirror Method”. The Bark. Retrieved 3 December 2012. Related Articles Community and education Urban Dog Training Ground Rules Report a Cruelty Case Location: AWL Wingfield, 1-19 Cormack Rd Wingfield 5013 Food & Treats Dog registration Outdoor classes will only be cancelled in the following situations: Good Leadership and Communication

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fbq('track', 'ViewContent', content_ids: 'dogtraining.dknol', ); I love dogs they are so cute AND Contact us now for a FREE 10min phone consultation You are here: Home Enrol or Call Us Now on 07 3342 0568 Book Orientation Session Phone: Access to the password protected section of our website with the following benefits: Our crazy vizsla is now happy and calm – cannot recommend George highly enough. Pricing & member benefits Our Approach 1 Hour Personal Training Session Pet information videos Domestic animal businesses Animal First Aid Dog Grooming Frequently Asked Questions Puppy training classes, private training training, dog training classes, and private dog training in Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills, covering the Adelaide Hills Council (including Balhannah, Lobethal, and Stirling), the Mt. Baker Council (including Burnside, Kensington, and Rose Park), the City of Mitcham (including Belair, Colonel Light Gardens, and Mitcham), the City of Unley (including Fullarton and Unley), the Campbelltown City Council (including Magill and Rostrevor), and the City of Tea Tree Gully (including Modbury and Tea Tree Gully). Location & Training Times ABC TV Education Policies and Class Information Course Resources Where To Go For Class Dogs and animals Loading… Home / 5 essential commands you can teach your dog The 1980 television series Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way made Barbara Woodhouse a household name in the UK, and the first international celebrity dog trainer.[25] Known for her “no bad dogs” philosophy, Woodhouse was highly critical of “bad owners”, particularly those she saw as “overly sentimental”.[26] She described the “psychoanalyzing of dogs” as “a lot of rubbish”.[27] Her no-nonsense style made her a pop-culture icon, with her emphatic “sit” and catch cry of “walkies” becoming part of the popular vernacular.[28] 25 Sep 2017 3:32:27am Featured Scott, John P.; and John L. Fuller (1965). Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Click here to book a class Privacy, Terms and Conditions SA 5700 Typical positive reinforcement events will satisfy some physiological or psychological need, so it can be food, a game, or a demonstration of affection. Different dogs will find different things reinforcing. Negative reinforcement occurs when a dog discovers that a particular response ends the presentation of an aversive stimulus. An aversive is anything that the dog does not like, such as verbal admonishment, or a tightened choke chain.[39] our services Treats All classes are held at Hays Paddock with a car park in Lister St, Kew East. No events Lots of work to do still but an overwhelming and uncertain future for our fur babies has turned in an afternoon of learning, to an exciting adventure we feel capable of tackling and coming out on top. General Information Course Content: QBCC Approved Managerial Course for Trade Contractors Blue Dog Training User Login News about Cesar FREE STANDARD SHIPPING will automatically be calculated on your cart upon reaching a value of $25 or more in eligible products that are collectively under 45kg in weight, after all other discounts are applied. Training Information Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian scientist who is regarded as developing the foundations of ethological research,[14] further popularised animal behaviorism with his books, Man Meets Dog and King Solomon’s Ring.[15] Lorenz stated that there were three essential commands to teach a dog: “lie down” (stay where you are), “basket” (go over there) and “heel” (come with me).[16] Sydney Shelter and Veterinary Hospital Maths Courses All Ages (Part 2) United Kingdom FAQ – Transporting a bird to the vet Dog to dog interaction Tell people what you think Online Course -Basic Dog Manners – Level 1 Pet Boarding Best Dog Obedience Training | More Details Here Best Dog Obedience Training | More Information Here Best Dog Obedience Training | More Info Available Here Legal | Sitemap