Mark J. Heinicke – Page 9 – Forecast: partly sunny with a chance of cataclysms

Robots Get D+ at Tesla : Automation Gone too Far?

Elon Musk: “Humans are underrated.” Future of human workers looking up for now

In Quartz (May 1st), Helen and Dave Edwards report on the downside of automation on the production ramp of Tesla’s Model 3. “Over-automation” is the culprit in weekly production approximating 2,000 vehicles per week in contrast with the target of 5,000 per week. Such was the conclusion of a report written by Toni Sacconaghi and Max Warburton. Telsa’s robotic underperformance echoes results from automation at Fiat, Volkswagen, and GM.

Tesla owner, founder, and prime mover Elon Musk tweeted that “humans are underrated.” Musk is taking time off from planning an invasion of Mars to get the factory back on track (presumably with the help of humans).

Check it out at Robots underperform at Tesla, and why

and Musk admits complacency to CBS News

How robots screw up . . . but won’t continue to do so

Sacconaghi and Warburton observed that “In final assembly, robots can apply torque consistently—but they don’t detect and account for threads that aren’t straight, bolts that don’t quite fit. . . .” (See more in the block quote in the Quartz article, where the authors get in a jibe at Tesla’s quality deficiencies.)

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Vladimir Putin Sitting Pretty

The gift that keeps on giving: Trump presidency

Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee* over any and all of the events precipitated by, or connected with, the United States, since January 2017.

For starters, his man in the White House continues to keep the U.S. domestic political scene in turmoil, with each day’s opening tweets sowing discord and confusion among lawmakers, media, foreign governments, entertainers, and the public. Trump has done much to thwart the effort by intelligence services and the Department of Justice to investigate and counter Russian influence on our elections, by portraying it as a Deep State plot to undermine his presidency.

For seconds, Trump has refused to implement the strict sanctions on Russia passed by Congress in summer 2017. (Regardless, he continues to claim that “no one has been tougher on Russia than I have.”)

For thirds, Trump continues to dismay foreign allies on four fronts:
(1) pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords;
(2) pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal;
(3) imposing trade sanctions such as tariffs on aluminum and steel imported from Canada, Mexico, and Europe as well as such traditional trade foes as China.
(4) leaving it to other nations to deal with massive refugee crises in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America, while the Trump administration strengthens barriers against refugees from anywhere trying to find asylum in the U.S.

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Watch out for the other GAO! Another Weapon of Science Denial

Surprise! More sneaky public relations by Big Fossil.

When you hear “GAO,” don’t you think the Government Accountability Office—the federal watchdog group that is tasked with keeping government officials honest?

I do. Or at least I did, until I read about The Other GAO—the “Government Accountability and Oversight” non-governmental organization. The IRS has given public charity status to this group that is “promising to publish documents about the people and groups behind ongoing court cases against the energy industry and its impact on the global climate.”

Thanks to DeSmog Blog, we hear that part-founder of “GAO,” and Competitive Enterprise Institute lawyer, Chris Horner, announced that the bogus GAO isn’t “going to get into the science debate and other arguments. . . . ” Instead, they are going to lift the veil off those treacherous, subversive environmental groups, lawyers, and climate scientists who are suing the fossil fuel industry.

See: DeSmog Blog exposes the “GAO”

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Expecting Iran to Break Is a Risky Bet: Lessons from the Iran-Iraq War

Can bullying succeed against fanatics?

President Trump has bet that pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran will force Iran to come to accept major changes in the deal or go under economically. Furthermore, he has gone beyond invoking crippling sanctions to make an implied threat of military action if Iran continues its outlaw ways in the Middle East. Does Trump think Iran is trembling in fear of a U.S. attack?

I wonder. I just took a backward look at the Iran-Iraq War, that lasted from 1980-1988 and cost Iran more than 150,000 lives.* The minimum age for military service in Iran is 15; estimates put the fraction of fatalities aged 15-19 at one third (50 thousand). Iran also sent even younger children into battle. Although Iraq attacked first, Iran pushed the offensive for most of that time. As a fraction of the 1980 population of Iran (38.67 million), it is about 1 out of every 258 Iranians. A proportional loss inflicted on the U.S. today would cost 1,163,000 lives—more than twice the number of U.S. military killed in WWII (405,400), and close to twice the number killed in our Civil War (618,000). Given such past sacrifices, I expect that Iran is ready to let its people starve rather than yield to the U.S. After all, the North Koreans have been doing so for a long time, and Iran has far greater resources, and more friends, than North Korea.

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Swaggering Swamp Creatures?

AMERICA FIRST. AMERICA FIRST. AMERICA ÜBER ALLES

Nominee for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he intends to “put the swagger back into the State Department.” But just who swaggers? Bullies and braggarts, for two, plus others who want you to believe there’s more to them than meets the eye when usually there’s less. Look up “swagger” in any dictionary and you’re hard put to find anything positive about swaggering. Here’s definition #1 from Webster’s 11th: “To conduct oneself in an arrogant and superciliously pompous manner; esp: to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence.”

That having a tone-deaf person take over the State Department actually looks like an improvement over the do-nothing leadership of Rex Tillerson, shows us the depths to which we’ve sunk in the Trump administration.

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The Best of Elijah Bossenbroek, Continued

“A Song of Simplicity” : A four-minute delight

Those of you who got turned on to Elijah Bossenbroek by my previous post, “Pianistic Thunder [etc.]”* may have already come across this sweet little piece on your own. In case you missed it, here is, as played by Roberta lovepiano69 . . .

If Bossenbroek’s “I Give Up” is a Niagara of epic strain, this tune is more a clear, slender brook cascading down gentle waterfalls in a sun-dappled forest.

(OK, OK, I’m so badly smitten I am impelled to gush.)

If Bossenbroek had composed no more than these two pieces, he’s already deserved worldwide applause. IMHO.

For those of you have not tired of versions of “I Give Up,” here’s an interesting take by a pianist who is not as skilled as the rest, but perhaps because of it often puts the melody in the foreground, whereas in other performances it tends to blur with the signature motif. An awful lot of pedal with the big bass chords, and drastic shifts in tempo make it a bit heavy-handed, but you might like it. Try Christian Starup at Christian Starup plays “I Give Up”

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* For “Pianistic Thunder,” check out Pianistic Thunder: Bossenbroek, Thomas, Beethoven

Robots Coming for Our Jobs? – Not So Fast

Reassuring News on Automation and Employment?

A recent study led by Melanie Arntz, acting head of the labor markets research department at the Center for European Economic Research,* addressed the specter of massive unemployment due to automation. It concluded that the risks of robots taking our jobs has been exaggerated. Looking forward 10-20 years, it revises downward the estimates of job losses in the U.S. from 38% to 9%. As we know, doomsayers (such as I) have forecast job losses more like 50% by 2040.

Here’s a link to the study, where you can download a free .pdf: Revisiting the Risk of Automation

The paper, released in July 2017, is chock-full of jargon and hairy statistical equations, but the thrust of it is commonsensical: scary scenarios of massive job losses** fail to take into account what the authors call “the substantial heterogeneity of tasks within occupations” [emphasis mine] “as well as the adaptability of jobs in the digital transformation.” (I take this language from the abstract, which nicely encapsulates the study and findings in the nine pages that follow.)

These findings stem from an approach that distinguishes between occupation-level work and job-level work.

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Some “Good” Environmental News: Tigers Again

All Is Not Lost

To seek good environmental news nowadays feels like seeking fragments of Earth-friendly flotsam bobbing on toxic seas of human depredation of our living world. But at times glimmers of hope help ward off despair.

Herewith three glimmers from the world of tigers:

First, a survey, announced in 2016, found wild tiger numbers up worldwide for the first time in a century. See Survey finds tiger numbers up 2010-2016

(It’s sad indeed that we have to consider tiger numbers in the three-to-four thousands as a success, when at the beginning of the last century the number the tiger population was estimated at 100,000.)

Note there are six existing subspecies of tiger (according to National Geographic), of which there are stunning pix and capsule descriptions to be found here.

“Subspecies” are populations of tigers that are separated by geographic range and/or morphology; all can viably interbreed, but they do not cross paths. Bengal tigers—the ones you’re most likely to see in a zoo—make up about 70% of the aggregate number of wild tigers. With the other 30% split up among the remainder, the risk that any single subspecies could get wiped out is great. Indochinese and South China tigers are especially imperiled.

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Electrical Energy Generation: More Inconvenient Truth

It is with great trepidation that I am coming out of the closet on energy generation policy, because my position rubs a lot of greens the wrong way. One ex-friend stopped talking with me on account of it. But this has to be said, because the CO2 emissions problem is becoming increasingly dire. Unfortunately, one belief strongly held by many greens is simply, and dangerously, mistaken.

I advocate nuclear power. 65% of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science support nuclear power. See:Pew poll of AAAS members

That’s quite a switch from my anti-nuclear position five years ago. Then, browsing through the new release science section at Barnes & Noble, I happened to pick up a book by Michael H. Fox, Why We Need Nuclear Power. Michael H. Fox is professor emeritus of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University. Given his area of study—principally, the effect of radiation on biological tissue—I figured this guy might have something significant to say about radiation, nuclear energy, human health, and climate change. He did. His explanations of what ionizing radiation does and does not do to the body, and how the body repairs itself, were eye-openers. I recommend his book for those seeking scientific facts, rather than gross exaggerations, concerning the health hazards of radiation.

What Fox said turned me around 180 degrees in my thinking about nuclear energy. Once you start questioning anti-nuclear dogma, you soon find out that there are many people with strong environmental credentials who support nuclear power—not that they (most of them, anyway) love it, but they see it as a practical necessity in the fight against CO2 pollution. For a taste of their view, check out this piece in the Washington Post (if you are barred by a paywall, let me know in the comments and I’ll write you a summary): environmentalists, nuclear energy, and climate change

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Pianistic Thunder: Bossenbroek, Thomas, Beethoven

21st Century Classical Music Thrives, Thunderously

Elijah Bossenbroek

When Elijah Bossenbroek’s “I Give Up” obtruded on one of my usually tranquil Pandora background music stations, I was jolted, amazed, thrilled, thunderstruck . . . and secondarily subjected to a wave of nostalgia for classical piano music.

(My apologies to readers who do not usually warm to classical music, but I do urge you to give a listen to Bossenbroek and maybe the others if you like him. They are all short—the Beethoven is the longest at 6:47. They are best played loud; I advise donning headphones. )

Without further adieu, I recommend three YouTube videos of Bossenbroek’s “I Give Up” (The title is a bit cryptic, but apparently has something to do with giving up the mundane and petty concerns that distract and clutter the soul.) Comments follow the videos.

(Addendum June 30: After listening to “I Give Up” about 70 times (literally!) I highly prefer OPTION THREE below (VikaKim), not just because of the visuals of her keyboard wizardry, which are great. VikaKim’s interpretation, especially near the end, emphasizes the most brilliant elements in a way that Bossenbroek’s himself does not. (IMHO)

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