What I've Been Reading, November 2017

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• What you need to know about growth hormones in meat, by Farm Babe, Ag Daily
• US Gross National Debt Spikes by $640 billion in 8 Weeks, by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street
  But the debt-ceiling charade is back.
• After Universal Basic Income, The Flood, by Simon Sarris, Aeon
  What if we implement UBI and it makes everything worse?
• 5 Frustrating Science Myths That Need To Die, by Kris Noble, Buzzfeed
• Why do I have a hard time understanding liberal arguments on a lot of issues?, answered by 100+ people on Quora.
  The answer I like best was by Mike Rightmire, over half way down in the list. But most of the answers aren't bad.
• What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer, By Max Fisher and Josh Keller, The New York Times
• Ways of Life 3: Indigenous Anarchism, by DJ Zhao, African Identity
  "In literally every debate about communism or anarchism in the Western world, we run into the same repeated sentiment: 'It works only in theory or in small scale, but practically impossible for large societies, without becoming authoritarian nightmares'. But the existence of these indigenous egalitarian democratic syndicates with “citizens” numbering in the millions, and the fact that they have functioned very well for longer than anyone can remember, is clear evidence to the contrary."
• The Unforgiving Math That Stops Epidemics, by Tara C. Smith, Quanta Magazine
• The Doomsday Prepper’s Time Has Finally Come , by Elmo Keep, Mel Magazine
  "Eventually, a dark thought wormed its way into my mind: Not everything the preppers are saying is deranged. And not everyone who preps is fond of separatist rhetoric, though plenty of them are. Buried beneath the xenophobic fears of invasion and a nearly sociopathic dedication to the American myth of self-reliance are small kernels of truth. Believing in the healing power of colloidal silver and essential oils for the treatment of cancer, as one seminar insisted on in a rambling, fact-free diatribe, is dangerous and stupid. Figuring out how to convert your home into an energy-efficient, zero-emissions dwelling is not. Thinking that the federal government is illegitimate so you don’t have to pay taxes and that you’ll defend that “right” with armed resistance is illegal domestic terrorism. Knowing how to perform basic first aid and change a tire are sensible life skills we should all cultivate. Stockpiling 10 years’ worth of canned goods is extreme; reducing our reliance on mass-market food and disposable consumption is necessary if we don’t want to blow the carrying capacity of the planet."
• A Deep Springs College for Women, by Carrie Battan, The New Yorker
  At the Arete Project, located in the North Carolina mountains, cohorts of female students are invited to govern themselves.
• Despite Big Push From Beijing, Electric Cars Struggle in China, by Trefor Moss, Wall Street Journal
• Motor Mouth: The inconvenient truth about Tesla’s truck, by David Booth, Driving.ca
  Do the math: Elon Musk's claims of fast charging and 500-mile range just don't add up
• The Far Right Has Come For The Working Class. How Should The Left Respond?, by Elizabeth Finne, Medium, Arc Digital
  A morally purist approach that won’t budge on immigration or terrorism opens the door for the far-right to gain power
• The Top Five Cold Remedies That Do Not Work, by Steven Salzberg, Forbes
• Canada's economic growth has come at a price — its debt level is now highest in the developed world, by Geoff Zochodne, Financial Post
• World faces wave of epic debt defaults, fears central bank veteran, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph
• Free Money: The Surprising Effects of a Basic Income Supplied by Government, by Issie Lapowsky, Wired
• Forget the Nordic Diet. Try the Nordic Tax Plan, by Keith Payne, Inequality.org
  The biggest health advances of the twentieth century — antibiotics, sanitation, vaccines — were biological. The biggest public health insights of this century, in contrast, are social. Societies that allow extreme inequality to shred the social fabric pay the price in illness, unhappiness, and mortality.
• The anti-GMO movement is infested with climate change deniers, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
• Six reasons to always buy organic, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
  This is satire, in case there is any doubt, and well deserved satire.
• On Shill Accusations and Misogyny, by Dr Alison Bernstein, Dr Anastasia Bodnar, Jenny Splitter, Kavin Senapathy, Dr Layla Katiraee, and Natalie Newell, SciMoms on Medium
• The driver assistance system is to blame for the crash--Tesla driver demands extenuating circumstances, by Timothy Pfannkuchen, Blick (translated by Google.)
  Discussion on Reddit.
  As I've been saying, people are mistaking "driver assistance systems" for "self driving cars", which are as yet a long way in the future. This results in accidents and will give self driving systems a bad name before they have even been fully developed.
• Do civilisations collapse? by Guy D Middleton , Aeon
  The idea that the Maya or Easter Islanders experienced an apocalyptic end makes for good television but bad archaeology.
• Is goodness natural? by Nakul Krishna, Aeon
  
• Europe still burns witches — if they’re named Monsanto, by Mark Lynas, Cornell Alliance for Science
  The glyphosate saga is a fascinating case study in how easily politics can derail science. In watching the glyphosate issue evolve I found myself gradually becoming more and more aghast at how quickly and thoughtlessly evidence-based policymaking was thrown away in European centers of power.
• Oil production capex: is a rebound in sight? by Elif Kutsal, Jingrui Fang, Energy Insights by McKinsey
  Perhaps, but it seems not a big enough one.
• Short of capital? by John W. England, Deloitte center for Energy Solutions
  The risk of underinvestment in oil and gas is amplified by competing cash priorities. Around $3 trillion of capital expenditures are needed 2016 to 2021 to keep up with declines. We are likely to come up over $1 trillion short.
  And that's with a pretty optimistic view of the difficulty of making new discoveries.
• Global crude oil discoveries plunge to record low, and it's gonna get worse, by Tom diChristopher, CNBC

Books

Fiction

• World Without End, by Ken Follet
• The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin
  I think I read at least parts of this one in serialized form in a science fiction magazine in the early seventies, but such memories as I have of it are very vague.
• All Systems Red, by Martha Wells
  Just an action adventure really, nothing very profound.

Non-Fiction

• Mendel in the Kitchen, by Nina Federoff and Nancy Marie Brown
  A scientists view of genetically modified foods.
• 1491, by Charles C. Mann,
  New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.