Authoritarian Followers

Dr. Bob Altemeyer, a retired professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba, devoted forty years to studying authoritarianism, and literally wrote the book on it in 2006 (highly recommended, and conveniently free). Much shorter, and directly addressing recent years, his 2016 post Donald Trump and Authoritarian Followers deserves a fresh look¹. (Those who’ve read it can skip this post; Bob’s the expert, I’m just saying his work is important, go and see and judge for yourselves.) The portion of that 2016 post I most want to point-out is the enumeration, in Trump’s context, of authoritarian followers’ pschological traits. Those traits strike this writer as essential pieces missing from the mental puzzles many people are struggling to assemble as they try to understand Trump’s coup attempt of January 6th, his insurrectionists, the enablers of both within the Republican party and right-wing echo chambers, where those people came from, and where they’ll go.

Bob Altemeyer:

We know a lot about authoritarian followers, but unfortunately most of what we know indicates it will be almost impossible to change their minds, especially in a few months. Here are some things established by experiments. See if you recognize any of these behaviors in Trump supporters. Compared with most people:

They are highly ethnocentric, highly inclined to see the world as their in-group versus everyone else. Because they are so committed to their in-group, they are very zealous in its cause. They will trust their leaders no matter what they say, and distrust whomever the leader says to distrust.

They are highly fearful of a dangerous world. Their parents taught them, more than parents usually do, that the world is dangerous. They may also be genetically predisposed to experience stronger fear than people skilled at “keeping their heads while others are losing theirs.”

They are highly self-righteous. They believe they are the “good people” and this unlocks a lot of hostile impulses against those they consider bad.

They are aggressive. Given the chance to attack someone with the approval of an authority, they will lower the boom.

They are highly prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities, non-heterosexuals, and women in general.

They will support their authorities, and even help them, persecute almost any identifiable group in the country.

Their beliefs are a mass of contradictions. They have highly compartmentalized minds, in which opposite beliefs live independent lives in separate boxes. As a result, their thinking is full of double-standards.

They reason poorly. If they like the conclusion of an argument, they don’t pay much attention to whether the evidence is valid or the argument is consistent. They especially have trouble realizing a conclusion is invalid.

They are highly dogmatic. Because they have mainly gotten their beliefs from the authorities in their lives, rather than think things out for themselves, they have no real defense when facts or events indicate they are wrong. So they just dig in their heels and refuse to change.

They are very dependent on social reinforcement of their beliefs. They think they are right because almost everyone they know and listen to tells them they are. That happens because they screen out sources that will suggest that they are wrong.

Because they severely limit their exposure to different people and ideas, they vastly overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them. And thinking they are “the moral majority” supports their attacks on the “evil minorities” they see in the country.

They believe strongly in group cohesiveness, and being loyal. They are highly energized when surrounded by a crowd of fellow-believers because it makes them feel powerful and supports their belief that “all the good people” agree with them.

They are easily duped by manipulators who pretend to espouse their causes when all the con-artists really want is personal gain.

They are largely blind to themselves. They have little self-understanding and insight into why they think and do what they do. They are heavily into denial.

I hasten to add that studies find examples of all these things in lots of others, not just authoritarian followers. But not as consistently, and not nearly as much.

Thank you, Bob.

Returning to two issues from the opening paragraph — where Trump's base came from, and where they’ll go post-Trump: Trump’s base isn’t his at all; authoritarian followers have always been a part of our society. Trump merely borrowed the current batch, and put them to work. Even if Trump were to magically vanish tomorrow, they’re not going anywhere, and won’t be changing their minds about much of anything. They’ll be waiting for the next leader who tells them they’re right and good, their desires will be fulfilled, and those they hate will be punished. No matter how many partisan divides are healed, people with their psychological traits will continue to appear in the population, find each other, form self-reinforcing groups, seek leaders to follow, and, tragically, break their children as badly as they themselves were broken.

That’s all bad, but it’s also nothing new.

The good news? A healthy society is likely to reduce the toxicity of authoritarian followers from one generation to the next¹, while a dysfunctional society will increase it. So, this writer’s master plan for America remains unchanged (and short on details): A United States government devoted to maximizing the quality of life of every American, at no harm to the rest of the world. Also, short-term, let’s finally take terrorism by white people seriously, and find some more checks and balances to protect the nation from authoritarians in its government, so we all arrive at the long-term in one piece.

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1. See also Bob Altemeyer’s 2018 post Why Do Trump’s Supporters Stand by Him, No Matter What?. It ends on a hopeful note, but should be read in context.

The Silent (Unthinking, Well-Educated) Majority

“Both the allegiance and socialization processes cause the educated to believe that what America does is right. Public opinion polls show the nonthinking results. In late spring 1966, just before the United States began bombing Hanoi and Haiphong in North Vietnam, Americans split 50-50 as to whether we should bomb these targets. After the bombing began, 85 percent favored the bombing while only 15 percent opposed. The sudden shift was the result, not the cause, of the government’s decision to bomb. The same allegiance and socialization processes operated again when policy changed in the opposite direction. In 1968, war sentiment was waning; but 51 percent of Americans opposed a bombing halt, partly because the United States was still bombing North Vietnam. A month later, after President Johnson announced a bombing halt, 71 percent favored the halt. Thus, 23 percent of our citizens changed their minds within a month, mirroring the shift in government policy. This swaying of thought by policy affects attitudes on issues ranging from our space program to environmental policy and shows the so-called “silent majority” to be an unthinking majority as well. Educated people are overrepresented among these straws in the wind.” [Emphasis added. —CWJ]

Excerpt from: James W. Loewen. “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” 2nd. edition. Perseus, 2010-09-16. iBooks.

Human Face Recognition, a Presentation by Dr. Shalini Gupta

The Austin Forum, on the evening of January 4, 2011, hosted an interesting presentation by Dr. Shalini Gupta entitled “Digital Human Face Recognition,” which I attended because I find digital face recognition a fascinating technical challenge, an increasingly important social issue, and because I have an interest in a lesser, related problem: automatic face isolation (without regard to identity).

Regrettably, it does not appear to be the practice of the Forum to record video of these presentations, so you'll have to settle for her slides (PDF, 25.4 MB), and various points that seemed important at the time and therefore stuck in my head. Her results were significant, interesting, and some of them were even germane to my face isolation interests.

• Ironically, for me at least, Dr. Gupta’s presentation did not cover one of the first problems any real-world face recognition system has to solve, and the one in which I was most immediately interested: face isolation.
• Much of Gupta’s extremely successful “3D AnthroFace” work was performed against the “Texas 3D Face Recognition Database,” which pre-isolated the faces, consistently positioned them within every image, and used significantly higher resolution images than those I have experimented with. Also, since the photos in the recognition database are stereo and/or 3D, they provide significantly more data than 2D images. Their single deficiency, relative to photos I've worked with, is their apparent lack of color. The choice of monochromatic imagery was presumably rooted in a desire to ensure that their algorithm would work in the absence of color information, thus making it compatible with output from monochromatic cameras, like most security cameras.
• The “Eigenfaces” algorithm, published by Turk and Pentland in 1991, made face recognition truly practical for the first time by allowing a face to be characterized by as few as five numbers, quantifying key differences between the metrics of the observed face, and a prototypical “Eigenface.” Gupta sites it as having achieved a 21% verification rate with a false acceptance rate (FAR) error of 1 in 1,000, although it is not clear what size of database was involved in the test that produced that figure. Presumably, 20 years ago, the database would have been quite limited. Nonetheless, Eigenfaces has apparently been the basis for all subsequent face recognition work, and has been dramatically advanced over the years. It has also become the basis for many other types of automated visual recognition systems; as Gupta put it, there are now Eigenbolts and Eigenscrews, etc. For a great many classes of objects that require visual recognition Eigen images can be produced which allow the Eigenfaces algorithm (and its improved descendants) to be applied essentially unchanged.
• In the most recent standard industry test of face recognition (“Multi Biometric Evaluation” in 2009/10), which used a database of 3.6 million people and required the fully automated analysis of 8.7 million photos and videos shot in a variety of conditions, ranging from studio shots only marginally more complex than those in the “Texas 3D Face Recognition Database” (though not 3D), to real world video of moving subjects in widely varying photographic conditions, “3D AnthroFace” was not only better than any other technology, but had a recognition rate equal to, or better than, that of humans. However, the means by which the humans were tested was not specified, so it’s hard to know what to make of that claim. (It seems unlikely that any human was asked to review photos of 3.6 million people, and then search for them in 8.7 million photos and videos.)
• With regard to human face recognition capabilities, Gupta pointed-out that in a study of prison inmates exonerated by DNA tests, 84% had been incorrectly visually identified by human witnesses. So, at least under the conditions in which crimes are committed, investigated and prosecuted, human face recognition can be so poor as to be actively misleading. This isn’t news to many of us, but given its real-world importance, it probably can’t be repeated too often.
• Face recognition systems depend, as you’d expect, on a database of the faces they’re meant to recognize. The error rates (composed of the false rejection rate, FRR, and the false acceptance rate, FAR) of all extant, and predicted, face recognition systems increase with the number of faces in the database. This problem is regarded as intrinsic to the task, but it is widely believed that the growth in error rates can be reduced by using separate databases for storing the characteristics of faces that can be differentiated by readily identifiable gross characteristics. Race and, I believe, sex were mentioned as candidates for such characteristics. In such a system, the first step in face recognition would be to make that gross identification, and then to select the appropriate database based on it. After that, the existing face recognition approaches would be used within the selected database with significantly reduced error rates. Of course, the error rates continue to scale with database size, so the use of multiple databases only delays the point at which error rates become unacceptable, as face databases (presumably) will only grow in size for most any purpose for the foreseeable future.
• Despite the huge strides made in digital human face recognition, it is still bedeviled by a number of quite ordinary issues including unconstrained observing environments, human aging, the poses of subjects, variations in illumination, varied facial expressions, and the poor quality of images available from video systems. The latter issue was of particular interest to me, because many of the photos I have dealt with are comparable to images that might be obtained from video in their poor resolution and quality, suggesting that even the best face recognition systems would have had difficulty with some of the same images that have been a challenge to me.
• Dr. Gupta repeatedly refused to comment on the social implications of face recognition technology, stating that she was concerned only with the technology; what people did with it was not up to her. One wonders what the uniformed police officers, and anyone else in the audience who might have been considering operating a real-world face recognition system, took away from the presentation. While the results of Gupta’s work were truly impressive, as demonstrated in the Multi Biometric Evaluation of 2009/10, the real-world capabilities of all face recognition systems were called into question by her closing acknowledgement that a host of common issues posed major problems (see item above). Her discussion of the problem of error rates increasing as face databases grow only raised more questions. The industry’s anticipated method of mitigating the latter issue, as previously discussed, is to make an initial gross categorization of faces based on a characteristic like race, and then to search within category-specific databases. While this is a sensible technical strategy (if such gross categorization can be performed quickly and reliably), will its eventual developers and users realize that their technology is engaging in automatic racial profiling? Will they also realize that it is doing so because the more one relies on facial recognition technology, the less reliable it becomes? Either issue is significant independently, but, when considered together, they mean that being a member of one of the races that compose the largest of the category-specific databases brings a higher chance of being falsely identified (bad if the database is looking for criminals), and falsely rejected (bad if the database is supposed to grant someone access to their bank account, or confirm to border officials that they are who their passport says they are).

That’s everything I can think of to report. I hope some of it was of interest, and that I’ve done justice to Dr. Gupta’s impressive work.

Jay Lake Provides One Moment of Shining Clarity

A moment of shining clarity, thanks to Jay Lake.

RWA Scale Test Fixed

My thanks to R.C.H. who has pointed-out to me two bugs in my implementation of Bob Altemeyer’s RWA Scale. As always, I find bugs in my code embarrassing, and I’m grateful to R.C.H. for not only finding the bugs, but reporting them. Consequently, the code has now been fixed. So, for those who’ve answered “strongly disagree” (-3) to questions 7 or 8 in the past, if you retake the test, your answers will now be correctly scored. Until now, they’d been accidentally scored as “very strongly disagree” (-4).

Chalk up another victory for open source, and thanks again to R.C.H.

The Authoritarians

Ever since I finished reading it a few weeks ago, I've been meaning to recommend the book The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba. So, consider it recommended. It’s available online for free at the page linked-to above. The book’s been out since 2006, so it’ll already be familiar to a lot of people, but it was news to me when I learned of it a few months back, and I know I’m not the only one. So, like I said: recommended.

There are more things of interest in that book than I can shake a stick at, so I’ll just touch on one: Altemeyer reproduces a quote from President Carter (see page 181) in which he was “describing the fundamentalist movements that have taken control of the Republican Party”, as Altemeyer characterized it. The quote is this:

“Almost invariably, fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.”

According to the footnotes, that’s from Carter’s book Our endangered values: America’s moral crisis, pg. 34.

Altemeyer’s research suggests that those authoritarians are even worse than Carter described. But what interested me most about that quote is its relationship to something I heard President Carter say in an interview more than a decade ago, on PBS’ News Hour, in which he said something to the effect that the politicians and other movers and shakers he encountered in Washington during his presidency were unusually apt to state, at least privately, that they had attained their privilege, power and wealth due to being God’s chosen ones. The rest of us, by extension, were some lower order of being that was meant to be ruled by, and serve the interests of, them, the chosen ones. (I don’t remember him indicating that that viewpoint was specific to members of any one political party, by the way.) Carter, of course, was appalled by such assertions.

The existence of that attitude struck me as being of the utmost importance, both to explain a lot of things that happen in the halls of power, and as a warning of what more could happen, and so I set off to read almost everything President Carter had written, both before, and after, his presidency, hoping to find him expanding on that statement. Unfortunatley, while I found many interesting things in his books, I never found that statement, or anything like it.

Nonetheless, that statement, at least as I remember it, fits in very well with Altemeyer’s research, especially on what he calls the “Double Highs.” (See chapter 5.) And Altemeyer was good enough to specifically study the attitudes of the members of America’s state legislatures. (Regrettably, his survey was performed before the test for “double highs” existed, but the results are relevant, nonetheless.) He describes the results as follows:

I sent the thirty-item RWA scale I was using in my research then to fifty legislative chambers, and in every single one except the Louisiana House, the Republicans scored higher overall than the Democrats. Although the “right-wing” in right-wing authoritarianism refers to a psychological trait that endorses submission to established authority (see chapter 1), not a political ideology, the RWA scale finds different levels of this trait in politicians from the two parties. The Republicans scored almost 40 points higher than the Democrats on the average, on the 30-item scale.

The graph he provides showing where the Democrats and Republicans of the various state legislatures scored on the RWA scale (see figure 5.1 on page 201) shows Republicans scoring in a very tight grouping at the high end of the scale, and Democrats scattered all over the scale, though mostly scoring lower than Republicans. That probably explains the high cohesion within the Republican party, and what I perceive to be the low cohesion within the Democratic party. Offhand, I can’t find an indication of exactly when Altemeyer conducted those surveys, but he indicates that they were all done before 1994. So, if President Carter wasn’t noticing any more of the “I’m God’s chosen one” attitude in one party or the other during his administration (and that’s a big “if”, because he simply might not have mentioned it, or I may not have remembered him mentioning it, or it might have been edited out of the interview), Altemeyer’s data would indicate that holders of that attitude disproportionately and rapidly migrated to the Republican party.

That such a profoundly undemocratic attitude exists anywhere within our society is inevitably destructive. When it finds a place where it is welcome and can congregate it becomes lethal. And so to the “chosen ones” I say this: You are not superior to the rest of us, and your conceit that you are has soaked your hands in blood that will not wash off.

The RF Scale

I’ve automated another one of the surveys from Bob Altemeyer’s book The Authoritarians. (My first effort, the “RWA Scale” is discussed in a previous entry on this blog.) This time, it's the “RF Scale.” What it’s measuring will be pretty obvious, pretty quickly. Just in case there’s any doubt, I’ve included Altemeyer’s description of the purpose of the survey at the end of the page.

Because this survey works in the same way as the previous one, I’ll quote myself to save time:

Note that your score is computed entirely on your own computer – none of the data is transmitted or recorded anywhere, so nobody will ever see it but you. On the one hand, this seems like a bit of a shortcoming, because it’d be interesting to know how other people score, but, on the other hand, surveys whose participants are self-selecting are meaningless. Add to that the fact that an anonymous Internet survey has no reliable way of excluding trolls, or preventing people from submitting their preferred answers repeatedly to try to shift the results in whatever direction they like, and Internet surveys go past “meaningless” to end-up somewhere around “outright misleading.” So, let’s not even play that damn fool game.

If you’re curious, I score a 12 on this survey.

Once again, it’s food for thought. Happy thinking.

This survey, like the last one I created, is fully standards-compliant and therefore works correctly in modern web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. It might work with the latest versions of Internet Explorer (if not version 8, then 9), but as to other versions, previous experience says: probably not. The old joke about the phone company applies to Microsoft’s stance on standards compliance: “We don’t care. We don’t have to.” Microsoft’s stance has improved very recently, but having ignored web standards for around ten years, they have a lot of catching-up to do.

The RWA Scale – Investigating “public opinion concerning a variety of social issues”

A friend (thanks D.C.) brought an interesting book to my attention the other day, the cornerstone of which is a survey known as the “RWA Scale” developed by Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba. The survey describes itself as “an investigation of general public opinion concerning a variety of social issues,” and saying anything more would probably be a mistake. Anyway, because the book and survey looked interesting, computing one’s survey score struck me as a bit tedious, and it gave me an opportunity to use Javascript (ugh) in a way that I hadn't used it before, I decided to automate the survey. Some quick googling turned-up one pre-existing online version of the survey, but only available to Facebook users, among whom I am not counted. However, given that the book from which the survey was taken was published in 2006, and the survey was in use for quite some time before then, there must be other online versions (perhaps you've already encountered lots of them), but I wanted to try my hand at automating it, and so I have.

I’d go into more detail about the book and the survey here, but it’s probably best to take the survey knowing as little as possible about it. So, if you’re still curious, take the survey.

Note that your score is computed entirely on your own computer – none of the data is transmitted or recorded anywhere, so nobody will ever see it but you. On the one hand, this seems like a bit of a shortcoming, because it’d be interesting to know how other people score, but, on the other hand, surveys whose participants are self-selecting are meaningless. Add to that the fact that an anonymous Internet survey has no reliable way of excluding trolls, or preventing people from submitting their preferred answers repeatedly to try to shift the results in whatever direction they like, and Internet surveys go past “meaningless” to end-up somewhere around “outright misleading.” So, let’s not even play that damn fool game.

I’ll just tell you that my score ranges from 27 to 33 depending on how I interpret some of the questions, while the author’s introductory psychology students average around 75, and their parents around 90. A 2005 survey of 1,000 Americans reportedly also showed an average score of 90. That’s all discussed after the survey, where you will also find a link to the entire book (available free online) from which the survey and associated text were taken. Admittedly, including that information on the same page as the survey might introduce some bias into the results, but I thought that anyone who’d just gone to the trouble to take the survey deserved some explanation and context.

It’s all just food for thought. Happy thinking.

Weekend Links

From a book I happen to be reading at the moment:

[....] McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. [.... Including] “anti-foaming agents” like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food. According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to “help preserve freshness.” According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause “nausea, vomitting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.” Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.

—The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, pp. 113-114.

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And Now, The Links

• Nathan Bedford Forrest Has Beautiful Eyes – “[...] pre-War Jefferson Davis is arguing that the fight is over slavery and white Supremacy. Post-war he's claiming it was about the sovereignty of states. To this day, 150 years later, you find people parroting this lie.”
• Secret Ops, Domestic Spying OK – “This isn't business; this is spying. But that doesn't mean letting those agencies do whatever they want.”
• Memes strike back: Gerbils, gay blood elves, and Glenn Beck
• Dark Matter Hunters Construct a New Weapon
• Galaxy study hints at cracks in dark matter theories
• Superheavy Element 114 Finally Re-created
• NASA probe set for close encounter with Mercury
• Apollo 11: Second look – So that’s where I left my EASEP!
• New impact site for LCROSS water-hunting mission
• Ares I-X processing for rollout: HLV alternative continuing to make progress
• Stabilizing the electric grid with megawatt-scale storage
• Carbon nanotubes may power ultracapacitor car
• Could a microchip help to diagnose cancer in minutes?
• Treemometers: A new scientific scandal
• Oldest Living Things in The World
• Weird, Rare Clouds and the Physics Behind Them
• Flavor and Aroma Rise in Champagne Bubbles – Thanks to William.
• Champagne’s flavor is right under your nose – Thanks to William.
• Virtual composer makes beautiful music—and stirs controversy – Reminds me of WolframTones, some of which were surprisingly good.

Weekend Links

• Ares I-X Puzzle Pieces Coming Together
• Ares I-X slips to September 18 as processing edges towards stacking
• Ares I: Dual-Plane Isolators Emerge as Most Promising Thrust Oscillation Fix – Or how to fit your rocket with shock absorbers.
• Article says Air Force doubts Orion can escape an Ares I disaster
• A Closer Look at the Max Launch Abort System – The other Orion escape system moves quietly toward testing.
• Orion Crew Modules from Coast to Coast – With all of the testing going on, there's getting to be quite a collection of full-size mockups around the country. (But none in my neighborhood, darnit.)
• New cleaning protocol for future 'search for life' missions – No point in searching for life (or organic molecules), if you might have brought it with you. Which has always looked to me like a complete show-stopper for human exploration of Mars.
• One fifth of humanity deprived of Milky Way – The stars at night are not big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, no matter what lies we Texans like to tell ourselves. And the rest of the developed world is about the same.
• Military Hush-Up: Incoming Space Rocks Now Classified – Oh, good. We certainly wouldn't want to utilize all of that taxpayer investment to learn anything.
• German lad hit by 30,000 mph meteorite – Of course, it wasn't going 30,000 mph when it hit him.
• A smashing end for Japanese lunar orbiter mission
• Seven things that don't make sense about gravity
• Getting a theory of everything by ditching tenet of physics – Lorentz Invariance? We don't go in for that sort of thing around here.
• First new element for five years makes periodic table – Welcome, element 112.
• ITER fusion project faces more delays – So much for "first plasma" in 2016. I'll say it again: all of our eggs should not be in one basket where a game-changing technology like fusion is concerned. We know it's possible. We know it'll completely transform our global energy situation if we can harness it. Having multiple teams pursuing multiple approaches would be worth every penny.
• NASA working on 'open rotor' green (but loud) jets – Trading one kind of pollution for another: Decreasing carbon dioxide pollution by increasing sound pollution.
• Ekranoplan Showcase Part 2 – (From Jay Lake's blog.) Like Jay, I have a soft spot in my heart for the wonderfully weird Soviet technology that is the Ekranoplan.
• Human subjects have human rights – As Daniel Everett asks: “Did Jared Diamond libel Papua New Guineans in a high-profile article? I don't know. And, most likely, neither do you.” – An interesting issue. Also, I can't recommend reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, or Daniel Everett's Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes too highly. And while you're at it, Mark Plotkin's Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice is a "must read." In fact, read it before you read Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes.
• Does Military Sonar Kill Marine Wildlife? – In short: yes.
• Snow Leopard Pictures: Rare Snow Cats Caught by Camera Traps
• Rare Amazon Animal Photos: Giant Armadillo, Bush Dog, More
• Amazon deforestation leads to economic boom and bust – No good comes of it. But lots that's bad does.
• Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life
• At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers) – I went to one junior high school, and three high schools. Two of those schools were in rich white people areas of Houston, Texas. Two were in the poorest black communities of Houston's inner city. At one of the latter two schools I was the victim of a coordinated attack that left my jaw broken in three places, and subsequently wired shut for seven weeks. That was a picnic compared to life in the rich white people schools. (From Jay Lake's blog.)
• 72 Years of Happiness – Or not.
• Searching for Afghanistan's Third Giant Buddha – This may take a while....
• Carfree Times, June, 2009 – Always worth a read.
• US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive – Because sprawl costs.
• Once-Parched Ranch Is Conservation Model – A good article about David Bamberger's work. (Thanks to Brendan Boerner for finding this.)