Do Gingers Descend from Cavemen?

Another one from Dienekes' Blog, this time on the inheritance of skin color (and hair color) genes from Neanderthals. Forgive the jargon. I'll make an attempt to translate from Sciencespeak to man on the street speak to the best I can, given that my genetics is many years old.

Neandertal origin of MC1R haplotypes related to skin color

Skin color is one of the most visible and important phenotypes of modern humans. Melanocyte-stimulating hormone and its receptor played an important role in regulating skin color. In this paper, we present evidence of Neanderthal introgression encompassing the melanocyte-stimulating hormone receptor gene MC1R. The haplotypes from Neanderthal introgression diverged with the Altai Neanderthal 103.3 KYA, which postdates the anatomically modern human – Neanderthal divergence. We further discovered that all of the putative Neanderthal introgressive haplotypes carry the Val92Met variant, a loss-of-function variant in MC1R that is associated with multiple dermatological traits including skin color and photoaging. Frequency of this Neanderthal introgression is low in Europeans (~5%), moderate in continental East Asians (~30%), and high in Taiwanese aborigines (60-70%). Since the putative Neanderthal introgressive haplotypes carry a loss-of-function variant that could alter the function of MC1R and is associated with multiple traits related to skin color, we speculate that the Neanderthal introgression may have played an important role in the local adaptation of Eurasians to sunlight intensity.

Link

Reconstructed Neandertal

The gene MC1R is a gene which helps determine skin pigmentation through it's action on the production of melanin:

The MC1R gene provides instructions for making a protein called the melanocortin 1 receptor. This receptor plays an important role in normal pigmentation. The receptor is primarily located on the surface of melanocytes, which are specialized cells that produce a pigment called melanin. Melanin is the substance that gives skin, hair, and eyes their color. Melanin is also found in the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye (the retina), where it plays a role in normal vision..
. . .
The melanocortin 1 receptor controls which type of melanin is produced by melanocytes. When the receptor is activated, it triggers a series of chemical reactions inside melanocytes that stimulate these cells to make eumelanin. If the receptor is not activated or is blocked, melanocytes make pheomelanin instead of eumelanin.

Red haired Mongolian Girl

According to the article, all modern humans tested who had Neanderthal introgessions (sections of Neanderthal DNA) which contained the MC1R gene, contained the Val92Met variant of MC1R (which describes the exact base substitution or mutation if you prefer of the MC1R protein).  Of the Val92Met substitution, the research reported by the NIH seems to indicate it may not be such a good thing unless you live in a cave, and don't get much sun.

Here, we performed an association study on melanogenic phenotypes in 245 Japanese individuals. We focused on freckles and solar lentigines as melanogenic phenotypes. The 92Met allele and the 163Arg allele were positively associated with freckles and severe solar lentigines; the 163Gln allele showed a negative association. Those subjects who were homozygous for both the 92Met and 163Arg alleles had a highly elevated risk of developing freckles (OR: 7.92; 95% CI: 1.52-39.6) and severe solar lentigines (OR: 4.08; 95% CI: 1.34-13.1).

Landy Wen - Tawainese aboriginal

Solar Lentigines are brown spots caused by sun exposure, more age related than freckles, Unmentioned is the occurrence of red hair in conjunction with the variant in Japanese, who are very rarely red haired.  According to the article however, the occurrence of the Val92Met is fairly rare in Europeans (~5%) and more common in Asian, particularly Taiwanese aborigines, who are also related to other Asian-Pacific groups, like the Filipinos. It is, however, associated with red hair and poor tanning in Europeans.

Older literature (say this 2007 Science article) allege that the specific mutation responsible for red hair in Neandertal was different from the more common European red haired.  This paper suggests the Neandertal devirved variant is still present, but only in low fractions of the the European population but may be present at higher fractions in Asian populations where it may be responsible for more red hair, freckles and poor tanning. This area of human genetics is growing rapidly, and I'm sure we'll see more in the near future.

It is a rather rather attractive mutation, dressed in skins or not.

Woman Jailed Over Conservation Measures

By way of Capt. Ed's Blog: Woman in Cape Coral, Florida, was cited by the city for failure to use the city water and electric

Cape woman living “off the grid” challenged by city

CAPE CORAL, FL - A Cape Coral woman refuses to use city power and water. But now, she has a month to “plug in” or face the consequences.

We met with the woman in a legal battle with the city to protect her way of life. It’s a lifestyle some can only afford to dream of living.

“If I could figure out how to do it, I would probably do it too,” said Cape Coral resident Slyvia Lavandier.

Robin Speronis figured out how to do it more than a year and a half ago. “I’m choosing to live without being dependent on the system,” said Speronis.

Speronis is living “off the grid” as she describes it. “I never have to worry about that bill coming in,” said Speronis.  No city power or water running through her house walls. Instead, she uses solar panels and treated rain water for survival.

It’s a way of life that’s she says is being challenged by city code enforcement. “When this was brought to my attention I felt like I had to act. I felt like Cape Coral was intruding in the woman’s lifestyle,” said Todd Allen, Speronis’ Attorney. Allen took Speronis’ case on for free.

On Thursday during a special hearing, the two sides met to discuss the legality of her living arrangements. There a special magistrate ruled Speronis was not guilty of not having a proper sewer or electrical system; but was guilty of not being hooked up to an approved water supply.

“What happened here is people don’t talk to us or cooperate. We don’t communicate then we are forced to use the legal tools at our disposal,” said Frank Cassidy with Cape Coral Code Compliance.

City code officials say this isn’t a case of singling out an individual, but making sure everyone follows the rules. “In the whole scheme of things, its no different than the hundreds of cases we deal with all the time,” said Cassidy.

Speronis now has a month to comply.

Curiously, we have similar regulations here in Maryland regarding water. If you establish a dwelling adjacent to the water co-op, you must connect to it. You can drink all the rainwater that you want, use it to wash and flush, and we'd never know because we don't have water meters, but you must be connected, which means that you pay for our water whether you want it or not (I've never heard of this being an issue).

But then, a few months later, she was back in trouble with the law, this time over her pets:

A Cape Coral woman known for her off the grid lifestyle was jailed Friday, following her arrest earlier in the week on a charge of animal cruelty.

Robin Speronis has been living without city power and water for more than a year. She owns two pet dogs: a 7-year-old Chihuahua and a 14-year-old Lab, which Lee County Domestic Animal Services investigators seized last month in order to provide medical treatment to them.

Speronis allegedly told investigators the Lab’s worsening skin condition was caused by “elephant skin”, and had been evident for the last nine years. Authorities eventually returned the Chihuahua. Speronis also allegedly told authorities she believed steroids and antibiotics kill good bacteria.

Well, yes they do, and steroids have bad effects as well as

Investigators say they have been trying to check on the welfare of the dogs since December 2013, but were never allowed access.

So, this woman is in jail because her 14 year old Labrador Retriever has a skin condition, and they think she is not treating it right?  Color me skeptical. I think they're just using that as an excuse to jail a woman who would not "Respect the Authoritah."

Good Intentions Don't Sequester Carbon

A liberal does the math and finds out that his annual vacation more than cancels out all of his half-assed attempts to recycle and save energy.

Flying's moral dilemma: Your family or your climate?

ONE LATE-WINTER evening in 2008, I opened up Google Earth, drew a 100-mile circle around my house in western Colorado, and vowed to stay within that minihabitat for a full year.
This unusual experiment began with a plane ticket. My grandmother was turning 90, and her birthday shindig was in Kansas, 750 miles away. I could jet in for two quality days and be home within 48 hours. Or I could spend two grueling days on the road. It was a no-brainer—and probably more so for me than for the average American. As the daughter of an Air Force fighter pilot, my childhood revolved around planes; Dad's second career as an American Airlines captain made jumbo jets the equivalent of the family car. With free family passes in hand, I grew accustomed to flying wherever and whenever I liked.

But then I stumbled across some figuresthat led me to question my ways. Grandma's party left me on the hook for 1,058 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of driving myfuel-efficient car 2,600 miles—almost twice the round-trip distance to Kansas. In fact, all of my green bragging rights—the recycling, the composting, the buying local, drying laundry on a clothesline—were obliterated by flying. In 2008, I took four round-trip flights, including cross-country jaunts to New York and Washington, DC. My flight-related carbon footprint dwarfed the average Indian citizen's total annual footprint by a factor of four.

Here, a little graphical help.

And to rub some salt into the wound.

I wasn't alone in my denial. A recent study by Stewart Barr, a geographer at the UK's University of Exeter, found that people who identified as committed environmentalists actually flew more than those who didn't. Some of these "bleeding-heart jet setters" insisted they'd earned their flights through green behavior at home. "People tell themselves they can justify a flight of 5,000 miles because they've recycled all year," Barr told me.

Yep, most of the environmentalist I know think nothing of taking a cross continental trip to scientific meeting and do so several times a year; in fact most consider it one of the perks of the job. But they will put their plastic water bottle in the plastic recycling bin, and look all smug about it.

Virginia Get Tallies Whacked Over Bay Clean Up

Virginia needs to do more faster to restore the bay, analysis shows

Virginia needs to do more to restore the Chesapeake Bay and do it faster, according to a new analysis by environmental groups.

To meet cleanup deadlines, the state must accelerate reductions of polluted runoff from farms, suburbs and urban areas, the report said.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Choose Clean Water Coalition, a network of groups supporting the bay cleanup, released their analysis early today.
. . .
The analysis shows that Virginia is meeting only two of eight key “milestones” — specific cleanup goals set for every two years. The eight milestones show the progress, or lack of it, during 2012 and 2013.  . . The new analysis shows Virginia met its two-year goal for fencing cattle out of streams and restoring urban streams. But the state fell short on goals including:

• Creating forested buffers along streams to help block polluted runoff;
• Installing modern stormwater measures such as small wetlands and pavement through which rain can seep;
• Limiting fertilizer use in places like subdivisions and office parks; and
• Using no-till farming, which limits the runoff of fertilizer and soil.

I'm not sure how realistic these milestones are, or how they all relate to the "Bay Diet." My sense is that the NGOs like CBF and CCWC have similar end points in mind as the EPA, but don't necessarily share the same priorities as to how to get there.

As always, money is the big issue, and a lot of money will need to shelled out in tax money, and in enforced compliance before very much improvement is noted in the Bay's health. I have doubts that tax payers and consumers will be willing to bear the burdens long enough to see it through.

Cantor Read Out of Congress

The political news du jour is the defeat of Eric Cantor (R-Va), House Majority Leader in his primary in the 7th Congressional district.

The immediate cause of Cantor's ouster appears to have been his on and off support for "immigration reform", which has become big news in the past week or so as literally thousands of children have been storming the southern border for entry, hoping to take advantage the President's "Pen and Phone" amnesty program. While they may not be granted entry this week, next week seems open to question. More on that from Mickey Kaus.

But the main issue in the race was immigration. It’s what Brat emphasized, and what his supporters in the right wing media (Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin) emphasized. It’s the charge Cantor defended against—by conceding the issue and posing as a staunch amnesty opponent.*** But Cantor had signed onto the GOP’s pro-amnesty “principles” and endorsed a poll-tested but irresponsibly sweeping amnesty for children (a “founding principle” of the country, he said). Brat opposed all this, even as illegal immigrant children were surging across the border in search of a Cantor-style deal.

Brat won this immigration debate. Cantor lost. It’s basically that simple. If Cantor had gotten the majority of votes, certainly the MSM would have spun the outcome as a defeat for “comprehensive immigration reform” opponents.

A few months ago, when the "Reign of Pain" government shutdown was all the rage, Cantor, as Majority Leader, was portrayed in the liberal national media as a dangerous extremist. That tone changed sharply once there was some indication that he was leaning their way on immigration. Now, of course, the media is whining that the wing-nuts terrorist Tea Party have taken control of the party.

Cantor was defeated by Dr. David Brat, a professor of economics and ethics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland VA. But what good could come from a knowledge of economics and ethics in the US congress?

Brat complained that Cantor, 50, has a “crony-capitalist mentality” to take care of the corporate sector ahead of the interests of small businesses.

“On the conservative scorecard, on the free market votes, he’s doing everything wrong,” Brat said. “He’s not following what folks in his district want him to do and it’s hurting the country.”

Brat calls himself as a “free market guy,” and says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also pledged never to increase taxes and to stick to a five-year promise not to vote to increase the debt limit.

He won despite a 20:1 disadvantage in funding:

Cantor had a large money advantage heading into the election: Brat raised just $207,000 in comparison to Cantor’s $5.44 million.

Curiously, in the general election Brat will face Jack Trammel, also from the same small college.

According to articles posted on the Randolph-Macon web site, Trammell joined the college’s faculty in 2000 after doing graduate work at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. He has directed the school’s disability support services department and its honors program and serves as an associate professor of sociology, specializing in disability issues in higher education.

Trammell is also a frequently published author, having most recently published “The Richmond Slave Trade: The Economic Backbone of The Old Dominion” in 2012. He has also served as president of the Blue Ridge Virginia Writer’s Club.

That will certainly be a race to watch come November,

A Shot of Japanese Weirdness

From a band I never heard of "Tokyo Ghetto Pussy", which, astonishingly enough, is German.



If that inspires you, you can listen to a whole album of it here (I don't suggest it). A belated acknowledgement of the Wombat-socho's giant Rule 5 manifesto: "Rule 5 Sunday: Floating."

This Woman Has a Future

Anybody remember how Rich Little made a career out of Richard Nixon?



Found at HotAir. Also check out her video of Hillary practicing hand gestures.

EPA Wants Another Month to Torpedo Gas Docks

EPA Wants Additional 30 Days to Review Cove Point LNG

Less than three weeks after FERC staff determined that Dominion's proposal to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a facility in Maryland posed no major threat to the environment -- and two days before a powerful member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources urged regulators to issue Dominion an export license -- the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asked the Commission for a 30-day extension to complete its review of the Cove Point Liquefaction project.

"EPA requests that this additional time be granted due to the nature and complexity of this project," the agency said in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) dated June 3 and released on FERC's website Monday. "The additional time will allow the agency to compile comments from its regional associate internal reviewers (our standard practices) and the required need for EPA headquarters' review."

And if they can't find enough negative reviewers in the first 30 days, they can always ask for another extension. Who's going to stop them and insist they do their job on time and within budget, Gina McCarthy? President Obama?  I doubt it.

Just coincidentally, (or not, Tom Steyer has a lot of anti-fracking money to spread around), the Washington Post has an anti-natural gas export article at the back of the A-section today, which was, they admit, abstracted from this Wonkblog blog post: Exporting U.S. natural gas isn’t as “clean” as you think

One of the rallying cries in favor of liquefying and exporting U.S. natural gas has been to help reduce greenhouse gases in other countries, by crowding out coal in Asia and Europe.
Yet tucked into an Energy Department report on LNG exports is a different view: That U.S. exports of LNG to China could end up being worse from a greenhouse gas perspective than if China simply built a new power plant and burned its own coal supplies. The report also says that the climate benefits of exporting LNG to other countries are modest.

Modest benefits are still benefits.

The report is titled “Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Perspective on Exporting Liquefied Natural Gas from the United States.” It says the benefits of cleaner, more efficient combustion of natural gas are largely offset by methane leakage in U.S. production and pipelines and by methane leaks and energy used in the process of liquefying and transporting the LNG. In the case of shipping LNG from the U.S. gulf coast to Shanghai, the greenhouse gas benefits could in some cases be completely offset by those factors when measured over a 20-year period, the report says.

Of course, it's very unlikely that natural gas from Cove Point would be shipped to China, so we have do something to attack other exports.

James McGarry, who works with Tidwell at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, says that the Energy Department report also underestimates leakage in importing countries by assuming delivery to a power plant near LNG import facilities. He notes that India, a customer of the Cove Point terminal, uses only 44 percent of its natural gas for power generation and uses 25 percent for its fertilizer industry, creating new chances for leakage.

Do you have a clue now?  India is using imported natural gas to produce nitrogen fertilizer for growing crops, crops necessary for the survival of a billion Indians Native Asians.

It isn't that they love the environment so much, it's just that they hate people.

Obama Finds the Republican to Blame for Bergdahl Brouhaha

Chuck Hagel

Old Obama: "I Got 'im Out",  New Obama: "Chuck Hagel Did It" — Ace

I've gotten tired of stealing from Hot Air so I'm going to steal from the next post down. Nah, I'll steal from Hot Air. Obama is trying out his fourth story on why he didn't inform Congress. His third story -- "The Taliban told us to not tell Dianne Feinstein!" -- didn't go over so well.

So here's take four: See, we only made this decision hours before we executed it so there was no time to inform Congress, according to Senator "Dick" Durban.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2-ranked Democrat, presented the timeline as an explanation for why President Barack Obama didn't inform Congress 30 days before the deal. Republicans and some Democrats have sharply criticized the president for failing to notify them and claim he broke the law. Obama says he acted legally.
"They knew a day ahead of time the transfer was going to take place," Durbin told reporters in the Capitol, where military officials briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors. "They knew an hour ahead of time where it was going to take place."

In political terms, this is what you call "A Big Fat Lie." I might not "finalize" the exact flight I'm taking until days before I get on it, and sometimes I even change a flight day-of, but I sort of let people know I'll be traveling that day.

See, I know in advance that I'll be on a flight, even if I'm not exactly sure when it will be landing.

Durbin seems to be claiming that Obama has the right to withhold the swap from Congress because the exact time and place of the exchange are TBD.

Why Lois Lerner Plead the 5th

IRS under Lois Lerner turned over 1.1 million pages of taxpayer information to the FBI

The Internal Revenue Service may have been caught violating federal tax law: In October 2010, the agency sent a database on 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups containing confidential taxpayer information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to documents obtained by a House panel.

The information was transmitted in advance of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s meeting the same month with Justice Department officials about the possibility of using campaign-finance laws to prosecute certain nonprofit groups. E-mails between Lerner and Richard Pilger, the director of the Justice Department’s election-crimes branch, obtained through a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder, show Lerner asking about the format in which the FBI preferred the data to be sent.

“This revelation that the IRS sent 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax-return data — including confidential taxpayer information — to the FBI confirms suspicions that the IRS worked with the Justice Department to facilitate the potential investigation of nonprofit groups engaged in lawful political speech,” Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to IRS commissioner John Koskinen. The two lawmakers also raise questions about the timing of the meeting, just weeks before the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans recaptured a majority in the House of Representatives.

The Justice Department never prosecuted social-welfare groups, and e-mails from IRS officials show their awareness that, as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited amounts of money from nonprofit groups and labor unions to flow into the political process, the law did not favor a crackdown on anonymous donations to politically orientated nonprofits, which sprouted up on all sides in the wake of the ruling. “We don’t have the law to do something,” an IRS official responsible for tax-exempt organizations said in a September 2010 e-mail.

Of course, by law the IRS is prevented from sharing tax payer information with any other governmental agency (I suppose there are exceptions for subpoenas, but there's no indication that the FBI actually officially sought these data).  They were fishing for possible violations of campaign finance laws, at the request of a large number of Democrat Senators and Congressmen, who were in no mood to allow the Supreme Court to free a flood of money that might be used to oppose them, as the Citizens United ruling threatened to do.

At this point, Republicans should consider the IRS to be enemy held territory, and begin a campaign to blockade its funding and starve it into submission. It's called the "power of the purse" and the founders expressly considered it when setting up the Constitution..

Or, there's always my "Modest Proposal" for political affirmative action in federal hiring. Since we clearly can't trust federal bureaucrats not to play partisan games, we have to make sure that all parties are fairly represented in the federal work place, even (especially) if we have to fire half of the current occupants of the positions, and expressly replace them with republicans. Then let the right half watch and snitch of the left and vice versa.

Midnite Music - "Ooh, Las Vegas"

For Wombat-socho, who is currently investigating housing in Las Vegas. And a belated acknowledgement of the Wombat-socho's giant Rule 5 manifesto: "Rule 5 Sunday: Floating."

Diamond Jim Roams the Chesapeake (Again)

$10,000 rockfish now roaming the Chesapeake

The Diamond Jim component of the 2014 Maryland Fishing Challenge kicked off this month when DNR biologists and members of the Maryland Youth Fishing Club caught, tagged and released striped bass into the Chesapeake Bay. One of the tagged fish is the official Diamond Jim, worth $10,000 to any angler who catches it before midnight on June 30. The other tagged “imposter” rockfish are worth at least $500 each if caught and registered before midnight on Labor Day, Sept. 1.

Over the summer, hundreds of imposters and Diamond Jim will be pursued by anglers. Each month that Diamond Jim goes uncaught, the reward increases, from $10,000 in June, to $20,000 in July and $25,000 in August. With a $25,000 guaranteed payout, if Diamond Jim is not caught by midnight Labor Day, the cash will be split equally among those who catch imposters.

Last year was the first time in the contest’s nine-year history that the official Diamond Jim was caught. The lucky angler, Blair Wheeler, 25 of Herndon, Va., walked away with the $25,000 and other great prizes. A novice angler, Wheeler caught the winning striper while fishing aboard a charter boat.

I wouldn't mind getting $500 for catching a striper, or $10,000 or $25,000 for that matter, but I'm not holding my breath.

Australia: Here There Be Monsters

Unknown Predator Attacks and Eats 9 ft Great White Shark

A great white shark measuring nine foot (2.7m) that was "savagely devoured" by a mystery creature off Australia's coast has become the topic of a documentary, with filmmaker David Riggs looking to find out what mystery creature was responsible for the attack.

The film, Hunt for the Super Predator, which is due to air on the Smithsonian Channel, sees Riggs hunting down the creature that attacked and killed the shark in the Southern Ocean 11 years ago.

Yeah, right there; that's the spot! Don't you dare stop.

Riggs, a cinematographer, has worked tirelessly since to find out what could have killed one of the ocean's top predators.

In the film, Australian scientists explain that the great white shark had been tagged with a tracking device. They said the shark was eaten by a mystery creature in the depths of the ocean four months later, with the tag washing up on shore about 4km from where it was initially tagged.

Look Out ! It's right behind me!

In a clip from the film, Riggs says: "When I was first told about the data that came back from the tag that was on the shark, I was absolutely blown away."

The shark had been swimming at a depth of 1,900ft when there was a huge temperature change – going from 7C to 25C in just seconds.

Scientists say this could only have happened by the shark being eaten by another creature – the latter temperature indicates that the tag was inside the stomach of another animal.

"The question that not only came to my mind but everyone's mind who was involved was, 'what did that?'" Riggs said. "It was obviously eaten. What's gonna eat a shark that big? What could kill a 9ft great white?"

Whatever it is is big enough to be functionally warm blooded if not fully warm blooded. I suppose it's not warm enough to be a Killer whale, at least one pod of which is known to kill and eat Great Whites. Another, really large Great White would fill the bill, I suppose, as would a number of other large and less well known sharks. BenK at Ace's, suggests Megalodon, probably tongue in cheek, but if Megalodon was still around we'd find a lot of non-fossil teeth, and more chewed up whales.

A Little Obamacare Schadenfreude

One of the major goals of  Obamacare was to decrease the reliance of the huddled masses on emergency rooms. There were warning all along that it might not, for example the Oregon study, which showed that an increase in Medicaid spending increased ER visits without improving overall health care outcomes (although, people felt better about it).  Now, how is it working in real life?

Obamacare Increases ER Crowding

It wasn't supposed to work this way, but since the Affordable Care Act took effect in January, Norton Hospital has seen its packed emergency room become even more crowded, with about 100 more patients a month. That 12 percent spike in the number of patients — many of whom aren't actually facing true emergencies — is spurring the Louisville hospital to convert a waiting room into more exam rooms.

"We're seeing patients who probably should be seen at our (immediate-care centers)," said Lewis Perkins, the hospital's vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer. "And we're seeing this across the system."

That's just the opposite of what many people expected under Obamacare, particularly because one of the goals of health reform was to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by expanding Medicaid and giving poor people better access to primary care.Instead, many hospitals in Kentucky and across the nation are seeing a surge of those newly insured Medicaid patients walking into emergency rooms.

Nationally, nearly half of ER doctors responding to a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians said they've seen more visits since Jan. 1, and nearly nine in 10 expect those visits to rise in the next three years. Mike Rust, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, said members statewide describe the same trend.

Experts cite many reasons: A long-standing shortage of primary-care doctors leaves too few to handle all the newly insured patients. Some doctors won't accept Medicaid. And poor people often can't take time from work when most primary care offices are open, while ERs operate round-the-clock and by law must at least stabilize patients.Plus, some patients who have been uninsured for years don't have regular doctors and are accustomed to using ERs, even though it is much more expensive.

"It's a perfect storm here," said Dr. Ryan Stanton of Lexington, president of the Kentucky chapter of the ER physician group."We've given people an ATM card in a town with no ATMs." . . .

Yep, it's actually making the problem worse.  It's almost like that was the point, breaking the system so that they could remake the way they really wanted it, single-payer socialized medicine.

Junior Skynet Passed the Turing Test

Computer becomes first to pass Turing Test in artificial intelligence milestone

A programme that convinced humans that it was a 13-year-old boy has become the first computer ever to pass the Turing Test. The test — which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime.

Computing pioneer Alan Turing said that a computer could be understood to be thinking if it passed the test, which requires that a computer dupes 30 per cent of human interrogators in five-minute text conversations.

Fools one third of scientists in five minutes? That seems like a pretty low bar. Scientists fool each other and themselves all the time.

On the other hand,  know a lot of people who probably wouldn't pass that.

Eugene Goostman, a computer programme made by a team based in Russia, succeeded in a test conducted at the Royal Society in London. It convinced 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, said academics at the University of Reading, which organised the test.

It is thought to be the first computer to pass the iconic test. Though other programmes have claimed successes, those included set topics or questions in advance.

A version of the computer programme, which was created in 2001, is hosted online for anyone talk to. (“I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way. Nothing original,” said Goostman, when asked how he felt after his success.)

See, I'm not sure he'd pass. . .

The computer programme claims to be a 13-year-old boy from Odessa in Ukraine.

"Our main idea was that he can claim that he knows anything, but his age also makes it perfectly reasonable that he doesn't know everything," said Vladimir Veselov, one of the creators of the programme. "We spent a lot of time developing a character with a believable personality."

If they gave it the personality of a Marilyn Monroe, and the voice of Scarlet Johannson, I can virtually guarantee they'd fool most of the male judges, but almost none of the women. How much do you expect from a blond

Of course, she could really be one of Skynet's children. . .



Sorry, the dialog is in Russian, but the dialog was never the point, anyway. And a belated acknowledgement of the Wombat-socho's giant Rule 5 manifesto: "Rule 5 Sunday: Floating."

Little girl empties a swamped canoe in second. Talk about being at home in the water.



According to the YouTube comments, she's Bajau Laut, often called "The Children of the Sea":

For centuries, the community of Malay has lived solely off of what the ocean provides within The Coral Triangle. Several indigenous communities live off the coasts of islands in this area but the Bajau Laut are some of the last true marine nomads, having lived almost entirely at sea their whole lives. Photojournalist James Morgan spent eight months on assignment for WWF exploring their traditional habits, their travels, and their role in adapting to modern culture. Although many have been forced to migrate to land or choose to live in stilt villages over the ocean, some continue to live on long boats referred to as lepa lepa. From a young age, the Bajau become acquainted with the ocean, even rupturing their ear drums early on so it becomes easier to dive deeper into the ocean.

People of the Coral Triangle // James Morgan // 1080p from James Morgan on Vimeo.

No, No! Tell Me it Ain't So!

From Stacy McCain: Demi Lovato Is Gay?

Probably not. The ex-Disney starlet’s announcement of her appearance at the Los Angeles Gay Pride parade was deliberately ambiguous.

The last time I noticed Demi Lovato was in 2010, when she was in “starlet meltdown” mode — reports of drug abuse, rumors of a sex video, a trip to rehab — all of which was reportedly a consequence of being dumped by her one-time boyfriend Joe Jonas of the then-popular singing group the Jonas Brothers. Demi was only 18 at the time, but she has managed to recover and establish something like an actual career, appearing as a judge on a talent show (The X Factor) and doing an acting appearance onGlee, where she played somebody’s lesbian girlfriend.

Being a little slow on the uptake of popular media, I didn't even know Demi's name until 2012, when she briefly made the news by taking on rappers who were glamorizing "bath salts", a stance for which I both applauded her, and honored her with a formal "Rule 5" post.

However, a careful reading of Lovato’s press release shows that she describes herself as “an active advocate of the LGBT community” and, while there was at least one vague rumor of a lesbian affair last year, Lovato did not confirm that rumor and has never described herself as gay. More than likely, she’s just using “the LGBT community” as a marketing base, knowing how influential gays are in the music and entertainment industry.

It's probably better that she's not; straight people are a wider market in the long run, although, good knows Elton John and Joan Jett made it work in their favor.

And good for her, y’know? I mean, whatever’s good for her career is good for her career, and certainly it’s better that Demi is working than for her to be sitting around in a depressed stupor, getting coked up and contemplating suicide. She has escaped the kind of downward spiral effect that has destroyed others — e.g., Lindsay Lohan’s career is over, although she continues desperately clinging to a pathetic “famous for being famous” celebrity.

Anyway, on the canonical scale of Lesbian Hotness (Rosie O'Donnell scores "0", and Angelina Jolie scores "10"), Demi would only score a 7 or 8.

Anyway, Demi Lovato has recovered from her Troubled Starlet phase, and is now going through her Maybe I’m Gay phase, so it’s possible she may eventually confront her basic problem — the damaged human being she sees in the mirror every day — and become a reasonably well-adjusted adult some day. Or not.

But what comes around, goes around, and a few weeks ago a woman in the band I play with decided that she wanted to sing Demi's cover of the song "Let It Go" from the Disney Movie "Frozen", and I been playing guitar to the YouTube version it several times a day a day for the past couple of weeks. Say what you want, she has a set of pipes (even if she does use autotune to straighten them out a little):



178 million hits, and gaining about a million a day. I've never seen anything like that. And only 40 or so of them from me. . .

A belated acknowledgement of the Wombat-socho's giant Rule 5 manifesto: "Rule 5 Sunday: Floating."

Sunday Beach Report, 6/8/14

 Another fine day at the beach.  While the distant front approaches with some high clouds, the temperatures were a fine 75, with a strong southerly breeze.

A serious fisherman comes home.  I counted 8 fishing rods.

The beach was crammed, with waders,

 paddlers etc.

Georgia is off looking for the Surf Scoter, who was not around today.  Is Spring Break over; did he head off for the tundra?

So what is that stuff she's walking through?  I don't know, but it makes a pretty carpet while it's flowering.

Obamacare Schadenfreude Keeps on Keepin' On

Warmer here today, 75 pushing 85, but still mostly sunny, and the humidity is creeping up.  A slight chance of boomers (thunder, not baby) later.

400 Connecticut Health-Exchange Enrollees’ Information May Be Compromised

The personal information of around 400 health-exchange enrollees may be compromised, according to a statement issued today by Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan.

The statement notes that a backpack was recovered in Hartford that held “four notepads with personal information for approximately 400 individuals. The backpack also contained Access Health CT paperwork and it appears as though some of that personal information may be associated with Access Health CT accounts. It is still unclear where the backpack came from, and we are working [with] the Hartford Police Department to investigate, and contact the individuals whose information may be compromised. … Let me be clear: we are sorry this happened. This is a very serious situation and we will hold the person or persons who are responsible to account.” . . .

But it's only Connecticut, right?  Maryland, having almost utterly failed at creating a website, is reported to be on the verge of "buying" Connecticut's "successful" system from their contractor.  Will we get this bug too?

From Powerline: Abstract of the week

Everyone who is awake knows that the labor force participation rate is at a 35-year low, making the real unemployment rate much higher than the “official” number of 6.3 percent reported this morning. Now see this from Science magazine‘s roundup of notable journal articles this week, posted without comment, as none is necessary:

Public health insurance costs jobs?

Gilbert Chin

What is the relationship between employment rates and access to public health insurance? Garthwaite et al. analyzed what happened in 2005, when the state of Tennessee discontinued Medicare health insurance coverage for about 4% of its non-elderly adult population, many of them nondisabled low-income adults without children at home. With a new need for private health insurance, which is often provided by employers, many of these people found new jobs. State employment rose by 6 percentage points from 2004 to 2006. This change mirrors the Congressional Budget Office projections of the decline in employment due to the expansion of public health insurance mandated in the U.S. Affordable Care Act.

Q. J. Econ. 129, 653 (2014).

When you've lost Science...

Ramesh Ponnuru takes on Oregon's Republican Senate contender in her "fix it, don't end it" stance on Obamacare: Why Obamacare can't be fixed

. . .On her campaign website, Wehby, a surgeon, runs through a list of changes she wants made to the president's health-care overhaul. She would, among other things, get rid of the individual mandate to buy health insurance, offer more catastrophic insurance options on the exchanges and make it easier for people to buy insurance across state lines.

But she also wants to keep several Affordable Care Act provisions, including the one that bans insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing health conditions.

You can see why Wehby would find this mix of policies attractive: Polls find that people dislike Obamacare, but they like the idea of "fixing" it and they like the discrimination ban. (They like it less when pollsters mention the costs of that ban.) In the effort to take the popular side of every health-care question, though, Wehby has come up with a plan that doesn't hang together. . . 

A general feature of plans designed by politicians and not actuaries.

Yep, the ban on the use of pre-existing conditions determine the price of insurance is one of the most popular features of Obamacare.  It is also one of the more expensive provisions, and I'm sure that many people don't appreciate that fact.

Rather than attempt to critique a Republican with the possibility of winning a Left Coast Senate seat for a minor heresy, I think, with all due respect, that Ramesh should focus on what continues to happen if the left continues in control of the country.

Excuse Found for Blondes

From Dieneke's: A molecular basis for classic blond hair

A molecular basis for classic blond hair color in Europeans

Catherine A Guenther et al.

Hair color differences are among the most obvious examples of phenotypic variation in humans. Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have implicated multiple loci in human pigment variation, the causative base-pair changes are still largely unknown1. Here we dissect a regulatory region of the KITLG gene (encoding KIT ligand) that is significantly associated with common blond hair color in northern Europeans2. Functional tests demonstrate that the region contains a regulatory enhancer that drives expression in developing hair follicles. This enhancer contains a common SNP (rs12821256) that alters a binding site for the lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 (LEF1) transcription factor, reducing LEF1 responsiveness and enhancer activity in cultured human keratinocytes. Mice carrying ancestral or derived variants of the human KITLG enhancer exhibit significant differences in hair pigmentation, confirming that altered regulation of an essential growth factor contributes to the classic blond hair phenotype found in northern Europeans.

The original article is illustrated with this:

 Where I might have chosen:

But then, there may be some bleach involved.  Additional examples of the mutation below if you need more. . .

State Dept: Sorry, Keystone Pipeline Even Safer Than We First Said

U.S. corrects Keystone study estimate of rail deaths, other errors

The State Department on Friday corrected several errors it made in a key study evaluating the impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, including a understatement of how many people could be killed on railroad tracks if the project were rejected and oil traffic by rail increased.

The department said, however, these corrections had "no impact" on the integrity of the conclusions of the January report, which played down potential environmental consequences of TransCanada Corp's Canada-to-Texas project.

The January report determined that blocking the controversial pipeline could increase oil train traffic and lead to an additional 49 injuries and six deaths per year, mostly by using historical injury and fatality statistics for railways.

That finding was a small element of a broader examination of how building the pipeline could impact climate change, endangered species, quality of life and other issues.
But the report mistakenly used a forecast for three months of expected accidents rather than full-year figures, officials said. The correct estimate of deaths should be roughly four times as large - between 18 and 30 fatalities per year.

That's a pretty serious error, and a fairly stupid one as well. You wonder what kind of review process the State Department has to check it's publications for factual errors.

Officials also revised a footnoted reference to how much electricity would be needed to power pumping stations along the route of the pipeline that would link Canada's oil sands region to Texas refineries.

Running at something less than full capacity, the pumping stations would not require as much electricity - and so tax power plants less - than originally reported.

That should really end the discussion.  Do we build the pipeline or kill 18-30 more people each year? Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me.

But opposition to the pipeline is not for the sake of safety, it's simply unreasoning antagonism to fossil fuels, development of any sort, and a desire to push their Utopian schemes onto the rest of us.  Remember, they don't really care about the environment, they just hate people.

The Changing of the Guard

Obamacare Schadenfreude on the Run

Another nice day here. I don't know what we did to deserve it, but we'll take it.

From the Department of "If It Works, Don't Fix It" Healthcare.gov is working so good it needs another redesign:

When the Affordable Care Act passed in March 2010, HHS had three and a half years and $400 million to produce a web portal for individual-market consumers that would … pretty much do what the existing portal did for the Medicare Advantage program that ObamaCare raided to pay for its own operation. HHS rolled it out on time last October, whereupon it crashed repeatedly and had to be overhauled. A few months later, the Obama administration bragged about the system when it hit eight million signups, even though the back end couldn’t actually determine how many actually paid for their insurance.

Last week, we found out that the part of the system that actually manages the government-run coverage may have screwed up two million or more of those signups.
The next open enrollment date is in mid-November, so now HHS will overhaul Healthcare.gov again with five months to get it functioning properly. What could go wrong? Er …

The Obama administration is revamping HealthCare.gov and scrapping significant parts of the federal health-insurance marketplace in an effort to avoid the problems that plagued the site’s launch last fall, according to presentations to health insurers and interviews with government officials and contractors.
But the makeover—and the tight timeline to accomplish it—are raising concerns that consumers could face another rocky rollout this fall when they return to the site to choose health plans. Some key back-end functions, including a system to automate payments to insurers, are running behind schedule, according to a presentation federal officials made to health insurers.
Adding to the pressure, HealthCare.gov is still in the midst of transitioning to new government contractors to manage basic functions.
Among the changes in the new version of HealthCare.gov: a revamp of the site’s consumer-facing portion including the application for coverage most people will use, as well as the comparison tool that lets them shop for plans, according to slides from a May 20 meeting for insurers held by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees HealthCare.gov.

Of course, HHS has a new boss in Sylvia Burwell, who sailed to confirmation this week on a 78-17 Senate vote. The former OMB official has no particular expertise in web-portal project management, but then again, neither did her predecessor … and look how well that went.

After all, it's only money. And speaking of money: In a Single Year, Basic Hospital Prices Soar and Experts Aren't Sure Why

Over the course of a single year, hospitals charged noticeably more for a range of standard procedures, the New York Times finds. Medicare data show that for 91 of 98 common ailments, hospitals' 2012 prices increased more than the rate of inflation from a year earlier: Chest pain charges jumped 10%, while digestive procedures jumped 8.5%. At the same time, Medicare boosted payment rates by 1%, and inflation was 2%, theTimes reports. Meanwhile, amid a push for hospitals to focus on cheaper outpatient care, the number of Medicare patients hospitalized for these 98 ailments fell from 7.5 million to 7.2 million.

Charges for the procedures swung widely from hospital to hospital, and the rise in price at some hospitals was particularly notable: one Florida facility, for instance, more than doubled its price for irregular heartbeat treatment, to a cost of almost $54,000. Why the price hikes? One explanation is hospital mergers following ObamaCare; another cost driver is the expense of shifting to electronic medical records. Still, more broadly, "it just isn’t clear what has gone into the increase in hospital charges for the past decade," says an expert. Click for the entire piece.

Hint to "experts". When suppliers of a good or service expect their costs to rise, or the business to get more difficult due to onerous regulations, they tend to raise prices to compensate. For example:

CareFirst seeks price hikes for individual health plans

Maryland’s dominant insurance company, CareFirst, is proposing hefty premium increases of 23 to 30 percent for consumers buying individual plans next year under the federal health-care law, according to filings released Friday.

The rate proposals by CareFirst and several other carriers were posted on the Web site of the Maryland Insurance Administration and paint a mixed picture. Two other insurers, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Evergreen Health Cooperative, are proposing to lower rates for next year, by 12 percent and about 10­­ percent, respectively. And two new carriers — Cigna and United Healthcare — are offering plans for the first time in the state’s individual market, which serves about 200,000 of Maryland’s nearly 6 million residents.

The proposals do not affect health insurance plans that provide coverage for most Marylanders, such as those offered by large employers or employers who self-insure. Nor do they apply to “grandfathered” plans that were bought before March 2010 or federal plans such as Medicare, Tricare and federal employee plans.

The Maryland Insurance Administration will review the plans and can ask insurers to lower them before approving final rates. Last year, CareFirst proposed a 25 percent rate increase but regulators cut the final rates by 10 percent. Maryland’s rates in 2014 were among the lowest in the country, analysts have said.

Can't have that. All pigs must be equal. Except the boss pigs, of course. It's almost enough to drive people out of the system.

Opponents of health-care law turn to faith-based nonprofits to cover medical expenses

“When all this came up with the ACA, I just realized I don’t want to be a part of any of this,” said Tucker, who views the Affordable Care Act as the government meddling in her personal health care. The Christian Healthcare program is not as comprehensive as insurance — she has to pay for her preventive care, for example — but the monthly payment of $150 can’t be beat, she said.

Tucker is part of a small but growing group of Americans whose opposition to the Affordable Care Act is spurring them to seek out alternatives, choosing once-fringe methods to pay for their medical care in an effort to skirt the many requirements the law imposes on the private health insurance market.

The result is a burgeoning business among brokers, clinics and insurers that are advertising themselves as a way to avoid the sweeping federal program. The options range from Christian co-ops such as Tucker’s to membership-based primary-care clinics to insurance policies that cover specific diseases, such as cancer.

In some cases, such as Tucker’s, the options are permitted by the health law; the people who sign up don’t have to pay the penalty for not carrying adequate coverage. In other cases, the options are not sanctioned by the law, leaving people on the hook to pay the fine. But some critics of the law say that even with the penalty, the alternatives are worth it.

Those damned fundies must be brought to heel.

Obama Caught Chewing His Cud at D-Day Observance

From the Weasel-zippers:

The zippers are calling it gum, but given the shoots, grass and leaves that Michelle has him eating, it has to be his cud.  Either that, or Nicorette. I can see that the prospect of meeting Putin might make his jones for a cigarette.

Le frogs are not pleased:

There's more there.

Rule 5 Saturday - The Best of Wayne's World - Tia Carrere

This weekend's Rule 5 special goes to Tia Carrere, actress and model, and the hero of Wayne's World.  At least that's how I remember it. Born in Hawaii, her ancestry includes Philippine, Chinese, Hawaiian, and Spanish. She is a walking advertisement for hybrid vigor.

Her acting career includes, of course, Waynes World's I and II, True Lies, My Teacher Wife, Kull the Conqueror and many more. If I made a movie, I'd want to cast her for something.

University of British Columbia Scientist Proposes Ocean Fishing Ban

Gotta save all that Carbon for Global Warming Climate Change, don't you know

Fish and aquatic life living in the high seas are more valuable as a carbon sink than as food and should be better protected, according to research from the University of British Columbia.

The study found fish and aquatic life remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, a service valued at about $148 billion US. This dwarfs the $16 billion US paid for 10 million tonnes of fish caught on the high seas annually.

“Countries around the world are struggling to find cost effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions,” says Rashid Sumaila, director of the UBC Fisheries Economics Research Unit. “We’ve found that the high seas are a natural system that is doing a good job of it for free.”

Sumaila helped calculate the economic value of the carbon stored by life in the high seas by applying prices—which include the benefits of mitigating the costs of climate change–to the annual quantity of carbon absorbed.

The report argues that the high seas—defined as an area more than 200 nautical miles from any coast and outside of national jurisdiction–should be closed to all fishing as only one per cent of fish caught annually are exclusively found there.

“Keeping fish in the high seas gives us more value than catching them,” says Sumaila. “If we lose the life in the high seas, we’ll have to find another way to reduce emissions at a much higher cost.”

I'm going to bet he's vegan.

Fish, of course, pull absolutely zero CO2 from the ocean, that function is reserved to plants that use CO2 to make biomass.  Animals, like fish, eat that biomass, first-, second- or even more hand, and recycle most of that biomass back to CO2 by respiration while sequestering carbon in their biomass, until they too are eaten or die, and their bodies decay back into CO2.  I see no net sequestration in the long run, unless the biomass is buried to prevent its recycling. Some carbon (phytoplankton, feces and dead animals) does sink to sediment and becomes sequestered, but it is difficult to see how stopping fishing will significantly increase this small fraction:

If you're really want to increase carbon sequestration in the ocean, the solution is simple and tested. Add soluble iron, a necessary micronutrient in low concentrations in the ocean, which will encourage algae blooms, and biomass production a million times the mass of the iron added.  As an old (and now departed) colleague, John H. Martin once noted:

"Give me half a tanker of iron, and I'll give you the next ice age."

Of course, it turned out to be not so simple, because, as noted above, animals recycle most of it back to the water. But some will end up being sequestered.  And you can eat some of the extra tuna produced, too.

So eat the fish, and preserve the resulting shit, and you're still doing more for the atmosphere.

Yes, The Brand of Kitty Litter Does Matter

Radioactive kitty litter may have ruined our best hope to store nuclear waste

Some of the most dangerous nuclear waste in the US is currently scattered between 77 locations all over the country, awaiting permanent storage. Until February, many experts suggested that the best place to put it was a facility about 40 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). For 15 years, WIPP has operated as the first and only permanent, deep geologic nuclear waste storage facility in the country, holding "low level" radioactive materials — mostly clothing and tools exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons production — in steel barrels more than 2,150 feet below the Earth’s surface.

But earlier this year two emergencies brought that suggestion — and WIPP’s future — into question. And now it seems kitty litter may be to blame.

WIPP is in a salt desert, and much of the work there involves burrowing through the salt and using huge elevators to deposit the stuff at surface level. The resulting underground caverns are then filled with radioactive waste and eventually closed shut, sealed forever.

...on Valentine’s Day, an alarm sounded, indicating that radioactivity was present in the air underground. No one was below ground at the time, but employees on the surface activated massive fans designed to ventilate the underground air. The next day, another monitor went off — this one on the surface — indicating airborne radiation. Employees who worked outside on the surface were told to take shelter inside buildings completely separated from storage operations. Valves allowing air to flow underground were sealed with high-density expanding foam. Everything came to a standstill, indefinitely.
. . .
Last month, DOE investigators went into the cavern. Pictures showed that the latter hypothesis was true; a waste container’s lid was unsealed, and dust around the lid had turned yellow from the unusual heat emanating from inside. Each barrel is labeled to track where it came from. The punctured barrel originated from Los Alamos National Labs.

Jim Conca, PhD, a geologist who worked for years at WIPP who now blogs at Forbesabout energy issues, believes he knows what blew the lid off at least one of WIPP’s radioactive barrels. The culprit, he wrote, was kitty litter.

As Conca explains it, inorganic cat litter has properties that make it ideal for stabilizing nitrates in radioactive material — for ensuring that it doesn’t dry out and become dangerously hot. So kitty litter is often mixed in barrels with the low-level waste that’s eventually sent to WIPP. What happened at WIPP, he believes, is that one of the radioactive shipments was mixed with organic instead of inorganic material. "‘Green’ cat litter," he writes, is "made with materials like wheat or corn. These organic litters do not have the silicate properties needed to chemically stabilize nitrate the correct way." The result: "solutions can ignite when they dry out."

Mixing organics with nitrates is one of the big no nos of  chemistry, unless you are deliberately trying to make something highly flammable, and possibly explosive. To think that this rooky error has shut down a multimillion dollar waste disposal site essential to national security verges on tragic, with highlights of comedy. But it shouldn't "ruin" our best hope to store nuclear waste.  Nothing can ever be absolutely fool proof, and we'll never run out of fools.

Maryland Proposes to Ease Restrictions on Moving Seed Oysters

Zones would streamline certification of seed oysters being moved across state lines.

Currently, oyster growers in Maryland need a shellfish transport permit to import seed or oyster larvae across state lines — even if that line is just a few miles away in Virginia. Maryland law requires the hatcheries supplying the seed to test each batch to make sure they’re free of the pathogens that cause MSX and Dermo, the two oyster diseases that have devastated populations in the last 50 years. The testing can take several weeks, and the “health certificate” is good for 30 days. That means if oyster growers need more seeds a couple of months later, they will have to endure the process again.
. . .
In May, the Aquaculture Coordinating Council threw its support behind a proposal from Ryan Carnegie, a research associate professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who specializes in shellfish pathology. Carnegie is proposing to assemble a group of leading pathologists to create a new system for certifying the shellfish that would both minimize disease and lessen regulatory burdens on growers. The new system could work several different ways, Carnegie said, but one idea is to divide the Chesapeake into zones, test oysters raised there, and allow any other grower in the zone to import that seed without a permit.

The diseases are a big problem for Maryland oysters, but that cat is pretty far out of the bag.  In a bad summer, (warm, high salinity usually) the diseases Dermo and MSX attack oyster bars all over the state, sparing only the ones in the freshest possible water that oysters can tolerate.  Still, it's a good idea not to move them around unnecessarily while doing aquaculture or "oyster restoration", which as we have seen is largely a euphemism for "lining our pockets with government fund while accomplishing almost nothing."

A Good Deed at the Beach

Georgia and I made it down to the beach for a longish walk before lunch. When we arrived, a woman with a young daughter was in the parking lot with the alarm going off, and trying to get it to shut off so she could leave. After several minutes of fiddling around we figured out it was a loose battery terminal.  Not having tools for a permanent fix, we cobbled it together, and got her on the way to the shop for a real fix.

As I said in the Schadenfreude post, it's a flawless day here, sunny, 75 F, just a little breezy, and best of all, not humid.  Not a great day for shark's teeth or butterflies.  Just 10 kind of ordinary teeth (5 and 5 if you must know), and this Cabbage White, the most ordinary butterfly imaginable. Something more exciting flew by, across the beach and over the bay, but too quickly to figure out what it was.

 The Emma Dawn setting crab pots.

By the time we were on our way back, the beach was starting to look busy

The Surf Scoter is still hanging around, and getting more approachable as time goes on.