Carl Sagan on the gift of Apollo

Today, we are celebrating one of the greatest days in human history: The day we stepped foot on the surface of the Moon. To celebrate with you, I wanted to share some wise words from my old Astronomy professor, Carl Sagan. He contributed the following article in 1994 while serving as President of The Planetary Society. It's a great reflection on the past, with a new perspective to take with us into the future:

—Bill

"The gates of Heaven are open wide; off I ride..."
Ch'u Tz'u (China, ca. 3rd century B.C.E.)

It's a sultry night in July. You've fallen asleep in the armchair. Abruptly, you startle awake, disoriented. The television set is on, but not the sound. You strain to understand what you're seeing. Two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are softly dancing under a pitch-black sky. They make strange little skipping motions, which propel them upward amid barely perceptible clouds of dust. But something is wrong. They take too long to come down. Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying—a little. You rub your eyes, but the dreamlike tableau persists.

Of all the events surrounding Apollo 11's landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, my most vivid recollection is its unreal quality. Yes, it was an astonishing technological achievement and a triumph for the United States. Yes, the astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, the last keeping solitary vigil in lunar orbit—displayed death-defying courage. Yes, as Armstrong said as he first alighted, this was a historic step for the human species. But if you turned off the byplay between Mission Control and the Sea of Tranquility, with its deliberately mundane and routine chatter, and stared into that black-and-white television monitor, you could glimpse that we humans had entered the realm of myth and legend.

We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs, when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture and built cities and set out to subdue the Earth. Folklore and popular songs celebrate a mysterious connection between the Moon and love. Especially when we lived out-of-doors, it was a major—if oddly intangible—presence in our lives.

The Moon was a metaphor for the unattainable: "You might as well ask for the Moon," they used to say. For most of our history, we had no idea what it was. A spirit? A god? A thing? It didn't look like something big far away, but more like something small nearby—something the size of a plate, maybe, hanging in the sky a little above our heads. Walking on the Moon would have seemed a screwball idea; it made more sense to imagine somehow climbing up into the sky on a ladder or on the back of a giant bird, grabbing the Moon and bringing it down to Earth. Nobody ever succeeded, although there were myths aplenty about heroes who had tried.

Not until a few centuries ago did the idea of the Moon as a place, a quarter million miles away, gain wide currency. And in that brief flicker of time, we've gone from the earliest steps in understanding the Moon's nature to walking and joyriding on its surface. We calculated how objects move in space; liquefied oxygen from the air; invented big rockets, telemetry, reliable electronics, inertial guidance and much else. Then we sailed out into the sky.

The Moon is no longer unattainable. A dozen humans, all Americans, have made those odd bounding motions they called "moonwalks" on the crunchy, cratered, ancient gray lava- beginning on that July day in 1969. But since 1972, no one from any nation has ventured back. Indeed, none of us has gone anywhere since the glory days of Apollo except into low Earth orbit—like a toddler who takes a few tentative steps outward and then, breathless, retreats to the safety of his mother's skirts.

Once upon a time, we soared into the solar system. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was Apollo really about?

The scope and audacity of John Kennedy's May 25, 1961, message to a joint session of Congress on "Urgent National Needs"—the speech that launched the Apollo program—dazzled me. We would use rockets not yet designed and alloys not yet conceived, navigation and docking schemes not yet devised, in order to send a man to an unknown world—

a world not yet explored, not even in a preliminary way, not even by robots—and we would bring him safely back, and we would do it before the decade was over. This confident pronouncement was made before any American had even achieved Earth orbit.

As a newly minted PhD, I actually thought all this had something centrally to do with science. But President Kennedy did not talk about discovering the origin of the Moon, or even about bringing samples of it back for study. All he seemed to be interested in was sending someone there and bringing him home. It was a kind of gesture. Kennedy's science advisor, Jerome Wiesner, later told me he had made a deal with the president: if Kennedy would not claim that Apollo was about science, then he, Wiesner, would support it. So if not science, what?

The Apollo program is really about politics, others told me. This sounded more promising. Nonaligned nations would be tempted to drift toward the Soviet Union if it was ahead in space exploration, if the U.S. showed insufficient "national vigor." I didn't follow. Here was the United States, ahead of the Soviet Union in virtually every area of technology—the world's economic, military and, on occasion, even moral leader—and Indonesia would go Communist because Yuri Gagarin beat John Glenn to Earth orbit? What's so special about space technology? Suddenly I understood.

Sending people to orbit the Earth or robots to orbit the Sun requires rockets-big, reliable, powerful rockets. Those same rockets can be used for nuclear war. The same technology that transports a man to the Moon can carry nuclear warheads halfway around the world. The same technology that puts an astronomer and a telescope in Earth orbit can also put up a laser "battle station."

Even back then, there was fanciful talk in military circles, East and West, about space as the new "high ground," about the nation that "controlled" space "controlling" the Earth. Of course strategic rockets were already being tested on Earth. But heaving a ballistic missile with a dummy warhead into a target zone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean doesn't buy much glory. Sending people into space captures the attention and imagination of the world. You wouldn't spend the money to launch astronauts for this reason alone, but of all the ways of demonstrating rocket potency, this one works best. It was a rite of national manhood; the shape of the boosters made this point readily understood without anyone actually having to explain it. The communication seemed to be transmitted from unconscious mind to unconscious mind without the higher mental faculties catching a whiff of what was going on.

When President Kennedy formulated the Apollo program, the Defense Department had a slew of space projects under development—ways of carrying military personnel up into space, ways of conveying them around the Earth, robot weapons on orbiting platforms intended to shoot down satellites and ballistic missiles of other nations. Apollo supplanted these programs. They never reached operational status. A case can be made then that Apollo served another purpose—to move the US-Soviet space competition from a military to a civilian arena. There are some who believe that Kennedy intended Apollo as a substitute for an arms race in space. Maybe.

Six more missions followed Apollo 11, all but one of which successfully landed on the lunar surface. Apollo 17 was the first to carry a scientist. As soon as he got there, the program was canceled. The first scientist and the last human to land on the Moon were the same person. The program had already served its purpose that July night in 1969. The half-dozen subsequent missions were just momentum.

Apollo was not mainly about science. It was not even mainly about space. Apollo was about ideological confrontation and nuclear war—often described by such euphemisms as world "leadership" and national "prestige." Nevertheless, good space science was done. We now know much more about the composition, age and history of the Moon and the origin of the lunar landforms. We have made progress in understanding where the Moon came from. Some of us have used lunar cratering statistics to better understand the Earth at the time of the origin of life. But more important than any of this, Apollo provided an aegis, an umbrella under which brilliantly engineered robot spacecraft were dispatched throughout the solar system, making that preliminary reconnaissance of dozens of new worlds. The offspring of Apollo have now reached the planetary frontiers.

If not for Apollo—and, therefore, if not for the political purpose it served—I doubt whether the historic American expeditions of exploration and discovery throughout the solar system would have occurred. The Mariners, Vikings, Voyagers, Magellan, Galileo and Cassini are among the gifts of Apollo. Something similar is true for the pioneering Soviet efforts in solar system exploration, including the first soft landings of robot spacecraft—Luna 9, Mars 3, Venera 8—on other worlds.

Apollo conveyed a confidence, energy and breadth of vision that did capture the imagination of the world. That too was part of its purpose. It inspired an optimism about technology, an enthusiasm for the future. If we could go to the Moon, what else was now possible? Even those who were not admirers of the United States readily acknowledged that—whatever the underlying reason for the program—the nation had, with Apollo, achieved greatness.

When you pack your bags for a big trip, you never know what's in store for you. The Apollo astronauts on their way to and from the Moon photographed their home planet. It was a natural thing to do, but it had consequences that few foresaw. For the first time, the inhabitants of Earth could see their world from above—the whole Earth, Earth in color, Earth as an exquisite spinning white and blue ball set against the vast darkness of space. Those images helped awaken our slumbering planetary consciousness. They provide incontestable evidence that we all share the same vulnerable planet. They remind us of what is important and what is not.

We may have found that perspective just in time, just as our technology threatens the habitability of our world. Whatever the reason we first mustered the Apollo program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of Apollo. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival.

Travel is broadening.

It's time to hit the road again.

- Carl Sagan
Founder and First President for The Planetary Society

This article was adapted from a chapter Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It was originally featured in the May/June 1994 issue of the Planetary Society member magazine, The Planetary Report.

Quote of the Day...

Will McAvoy (WillMcAvoyACN): "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." -- Thomas Paine http://twitter.com/WillMcAvoyACN/status/353322962377637888 (Sent via Seesmic http://www.seesmic.com)

Big Box Implosion

Knustler holds forth on the coming collapse of the "big box" marketing model, albeit using some shaky assumptions along the way. Bottom line: chain stores go away and the local economy returns.

Scale Implosion - Clusterfuck Nation

Climate Change Set to Make America Hotter, Drier and More Disaster-prone | Alternet

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > New Report Outlines Our Future: Climate Change Set to Make America Hotter, Drier and More Disaster-prone
The Guardian [1] / By Suzanne Goldenberg [2]

New Report Outlines Our Future: Climate Change Set to Make America Hotter, Drier and More Disaster-prone

January 14, 2013  |  
Future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100F (38C), with climate change [3] on course to turn the country into a hotter, drier, and more disaster-prone place.

The National Climate Assessment, released in draft form on Friday [4] , provided the fullest picture to date of the real-time effects of climate change on US life, and the most likely consequences for the future.

The 1,000-page report, the work of the more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, was unequivocal on the human causes of climate change, and on the links between climate change and extreme weather.

Climate change is already affecting the American people, the draft report said. Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense including heat waves, heavy downpours and in some regions floods and drought [5]. Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and Arctic sea ice are melting.

The report, which is not due for adoption until 2014, was produced to guide federal, state and city governments in America in making long-term plans.

By the end of the 21st century, climate change is expected to result in increased risk of asthma and other public health emergencies, widespread power blackouts, and mass transit shutdowns, and possibly shortages of food.

Proactively preparing for climate change can reduce impacts, while also facilitating a more rapid and efficient response to changes as they happen, said Katharine Jacobs, the director of the National Climate Assessment.

The report will be open for public comment on Monday.

Environmental groups said they hoped the report would provide Barack Obama with the scientific evidence to push for measures that would slow or halt the rate of climate change – sparing the country some of the worst effects.

The report states clearly that the steps taken by Obama so far to reduce emissions are not close to sufficient to prevent the most severe consequences of climate change.

As climate change and its impacts are becoming more prevalent, Americans face choices, the report said. Beyond the next few decades, the amount of climate change will still largely be determined by the choices society makes about emissions. Lower emissions mean less future warming and less severe impacts. Higher emissions would mean more warming and more severe impacts.

As the report made clear: no place in America had gone untouched by climate change. Nowhere would be entirely immune from the effects of future climate change.

A heatwave swept across the US in 2011, with temperatures reaching over 110F (43C). Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP

Some of those changes are already evident: 2012 was by far the hottest year on record, fully a degree hotter than the last such record – an off-the-charts rate of increase.

Those high temperatures were on course to continue for the rest of the century, the draft report said. It noted that average US temperatures had increased by about 1.5F since 1895, with more than 80% of this increase since 1980.

The rise will be even steeper in future, with the next few decades projected for temperatures 2 to 4 degrees warmer in most areas. By 2100, if climate change continues on its present course, the country can expect to see 25 days a year with temperatures above 100F.

Night-time temperatures will also stay high, providing little respite from the heat.

Certain regions are projected to heat up even sooner. West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware can expect a doubling of days hotter than 95 degrees by the 2050s. In Texas and Oklahoma, the draft report doubled the probability of extreme heat events.

Those extreme temperatures would also exact a toll on public health, with worsening air pollution, and on infrastructure increasing the load for ageing power plants.

This 8 November 2011 image shows a storm bearing down on Alaska. Photograph: Ho/AFP/Getty Images

But nowhere will see changes as extreme as Alaska, the report said.

The most dramatic evidence is in Alaska, where average temperatures have increased more than twice as fast as the rest of the country, the draft report said. Of all the climate-related changes in the US, the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice cover in the last decade may be the most striking of all.

Other regions will face different extreme weather scenarios. The north-east, in particular, is at risk of coastal flooding because of sea-level rise and storm surges, as well as river flooding, because of an increase in heavy downpours.

A flooded farm along the Mississippi River is seen in Cairo, Illinois. Photograph: Stephen Lance Dennee/AP

The north-east has experienced a greater increase in extreme precipitation over the past few decades than any other region in the US, the report said. Between 1958 and 2010, the north-east saw a 74% increase in heavy downpours.

The midwest was projected to enjoy a longer growing season – but also an increased risk of extreme events like last year's drought. By mid-century, the combination of temperature increases and heavy rainfall or drought were expected to pull down yields of major US food crops, the report warned, threatening both American and global food security.

The report is the most ambitious scientific exercise ever undertaken to catalogue the real-time effects of climate change, and predict possible outcomes in the future.

It involved more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, compared to around 30 during the last such effort when George W Bush was president. Its findings were also much broader in scope, Jacobs said.

There were still unknowns though, the report conceded, especially about how the loss of sea ice in Greenland and Antarctica will affect future sea-level rise.

Campaign groups said they hoped the report would spur Obama to act on climate change in his second term. The draft assessment offers a perfect opportunity for President Obama at the outset of his second term, said Lou Leonard, director of the climate change programme for the World Wildlife Fund. When a similar report was released in 2009, the Administration largely swept it under the rug. This time, the President should use it to kick-start a national conversation on climate change.

However, the White House was exceedingly cautious on the draft release, noting in a blogpost [6]: The draft NCA is a scientific document—not a policy document—and does not make recommendations regarding actions that might be taken in response to climate change.

See more stories tagged with:
climate change [7],
water [8],
drought [9],
heat [10]
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/new-report-outlines-our-future-climate-ch...
Links:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/suzanne-goldenberg
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change
[4] http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/
[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/drought
[6] http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/11/expanding-climate-change-conversation
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/climate-change
[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/water-0
[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/drought-0
[10] http://www.alternet.org/tags/heat-0
[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Alzheimer's: Diabetes of the Brain? l Suzanne DeLaMonte doctoroz.com

By Dr. Suzanne DeLaMonte
Alpert Medical School, Brown University
Neuropathologist, Rhode Island Hospital

Although we’ve always known that Alzheimer’s disease is typically associated with numerous tangles and plaque in the brain, the exact cause of these abnormalities has been hard to pin down. Now, we may be closer to an answer.

 

In many respects, Alzheimer’s is a brain form of diabetes. Even in the earliest stages of disease, the brain’s ability to metabolize sugar is reduced. Normally, insulin plays a big role in helping the brain take up sugar from the blood. But, in Alzheimer’s, insulin is not very effective in the brain. Consequently, the brain cells practically starve to death.

 

How is that like diabetes?

These days, most people with diabetes have Type 2 diabetes mellitus. Basically, cells throughout the body become resistant to insulin signals. In an effort to encourage cells to take up more sugar from the blood, the pancreas increases the output of insulin. Imagine having to knock louder on a door to make the person inside open up and answer. The high levels of insulin could damage small blood vessels in the brain, and eventually lead to poor brain circulation. This problem could partly explain why Type 2 diabetes harms the brain. In Alzheimer’s, the brain, especially parts that deal with memory and personality, become resistant to insulin.

 

Why does the brain need insulin?

As in most organs, insulin stimulates brain cells to take up glucose or sugar, and metabolize it to make energy. Insulin also is very important for making chemicals known as neurotransmitters, which are needed for neurons to communicate with each other. Insulin also stimulates many functions that are needed to form new memories and conquer tasks that require learning and memory.

 

Where does the insulin come from in the brain?

Very sensitive tests showed that insulin is made in the brain. It’s made in neurons, and the hormone made in the brain is the same as that produced in the pancreas. This point may seem surprising, but if you consider the fact that every other gut hormone is also made in the brain, it only makes sense that insulin would be among them. Insulin that’s made by the pancreas and present in blood does gets into the brain as well.

Are people with diabetes more likely to get Alzheimer’s?

Absolutely. Their risk is doubled, at least. Obesity also increases the risk of cognitive impairment, or mental decline. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has diabetes will develop Alzheimer’s or that all people with Alzheimer’s have diabetes.  The important thing to recognize is that there is considerable overlap between Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

I’ve never heard that. Is this idea new?

In reality, before about 1980, there was very little overlap between Alzheimer’s and diabetes.  In fact, up until about 1980, deaths from diabetes were declining in the United States. That’s probably because of the improvements in medical treatment. But, between 1980 and now, the deaths from Alzheimer’s and diabetes have skyrocketed at alarming rates. The diabetes story is especially frightening because, everyone agrees that today we have much better medical treatments for diabetes than we did in the 1960s and 1970s – so, why should the death rates be so high now?

 

Maybe people are just living longer. Isn’t that the case?

People are living longer, but more important, they are surviving with various diseases that used to be fatal. On the surface, this argument might explain the increasing death rate trends for diabetes and Alzheimer’s. But, closer examination of the data demonstrated something entirely different and, in fact, surprising.

 

We compared the Alzheimer’s death rates in 1980, to those in 2005, but instead of looking at the entire population as a single group, we examined the death rates according to age group.  We looked at Alzheimer’s death rates in people between 45 and 54 years old, 55 and 64, 65 and 74, and so on. We found that within every single age group, the Alzheimer death rate was much higher in 2005 than it was in 1980.  In other words, deaths from Alzheimer’s were considerably higher for 60 year olds in 2005 than they were in 1980. Worse yet, over that time period and until these days, the Alzheimer’s death rates continued to climb, year by year. Diabetes death rates increased sharply within each age group, just as they did for Alzheimer’s.

 

Most people think Alzheimer’s is caused by a gene problem.

Alzheimer’s disease occurrences are not strictly genetic. In fact, the vast majority of Alzheimer’s occurs sporadically.

If it’s not genetic, what else could be the cause of Alzheimer’s?

Truly genetic diseases do not change over a 30-year period. That interval is too short to affect rates of genetic diseases that arise only in middle-aged or elderly people. The human breeding, growth, development and aging cycle is much longer than 30 years. In contrast, disease like HIV/AIDS and lung cancer are clearly exposure-related, so their mortality rates can be modified within a short period if the exposure to the disease-causing agents are reduced.

 

Could diabetes and Alzheimer’s be caused by some types of exposures?

We have reasonable evidence that human exposure to nitrosamines is at the root cause of not only Alzheimer’s, but several other insulin-resistance diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, also known as NASH, and visceral obesity. 

 

The elimination of local farms in favor of mega-farms requires transport of food for long distances. To prolong shelf-life, preservatives are added. The problem is worsened with transport of “fresh” foods from across the Pacific Ocean. Nitrites are added to meats and processed foods for flavor and coloring. High levels of nitrates added to fertilizers can be incorporated into produce and then converted to nitrites and finally nitrosamines in the body.

 

Nitrosamines contaminate many processed foods, including fish, cheeses, hotdogs, ground beef, smoked meats like bacon, smoked turkey and ham, and beer. Originally, nitrites were added to food as preservatives to prevent salmonella infection from contaminated meet. The policy remains in place. Although efforts have been made to reduce the levels, nitrites are still added as preservatives. Over time, Western societies, particularly in the US, have been chronically exposed to increasing amounts of nitrosamines due to continuous consumption of processed foods.

 

Nitrosamines are well-recognized cancer-causing agents. In high doses, they cause cancers in many organs. One of the main toxins in tobacco is a nitrosamine. However, low chronic exposures have cumulative effects. 

 

Years ago, a few scientists suggested that nitrosamines might cause diabetes. The concept was not pursued until now. We performed experiments in the laboratory and showed that very low, limited exposures to nitrosamines (the type found in food) cause Alzheimer’s-type brain degeneration, dementia, diabetes, fatty liver disease and obesity. Adding high fat to the diet made the disease-causing effects of nitrosamines much worse.

How were these findings reached?

We were working on the idea that insulin resistance in the brain was an important cause of disease and injected another drug into the brain to see what would happen. Instead of getting what we were looking for, we found Alzheimer’s. Very soon after that, I realized that the drug I used was a nitrosamine. A bell went off in my head and suddenly I understood the problem.  All of the major diseases related to insulin resistance, which are now epidemic in the United States, could be caused by exposure to low doses of nitrosamines over a period of years.

 

How can I reduce my risk?

For now, the main message is to stop getting exposed. There are small steps and larger ones. Protect yourself by looking for sodium nitrite on food labels. Avoid processed foods. Eat organically grown foods. Push policies to return farming back to local environments to gain control over how food is produced and eliminate requirements for toxic preservatives. Educate children and provide only healthful food choices. Learn to cook and teach cooking in public schools. Pack a healthful lunch the night before for easy grab-and-go in the morning.

 

 

Thomas Jefferson, science enthusiast | Guardian News

Whatever flawed versions of Thomas Jefferson are peddled by the American right, we know he loved his science.

If you want to enter an alternative reality, all you need to do is type words like Jefferson , religion and history into Google. The American right wing's attitude to some aspects of science is deeply troublesome, but so too is their rewriting of their national history. The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, by David Barton, is a case in point. It is endorsed by Glenn Beck despite enormous criticism from historians and publishers.

In July, readers of History News Network voted it the Least Credible History Book in Print for its distortion of history and of Jefferson's views. The particular issues are identified around religion, slavery and the relationship between church and state, which Barton presents among seven lies told about the third president of the United States.

Barton has little to say about Jefferson's intense interest in science. He would have done if Jefferson had lived a couple of generations later, as the statesman then might have accepted the geological evidence of the Earth's age (which he was not inclined to do in the first decade of the century, when there was much dispute among geologists) and Darwin's theory of evolution, and Barton might have had an eighth lie to deal with.

But there is little in established 18th and early 19th century science that the Tea Party would feel the need to reject. This is a reminder of the fact that in Jefferson's time there was no perception of a war between science and religion and, indeed, that the American right do not necessarily have a blanket anti-science approach, but theological, political and ideological issues with particular fields.

However, where Barton does bring up science, he goes rather wrong. The main passage focuses on this Jefferson quote:

Bacon, Locke and Newton, I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral Sciences.

Quite rightly, of course, Barton can point to the religiosity of these heroes of science, but he glosses over Newton's unorthodoxy, denies Locke's and presents this quote as part of his argument against the lie that Jefferson promoted secular education. This is quite bizarre, turning a blind eye to Locke's advocacy of religious tolerance and the separation of church and state. A quick read of Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration would put him right.

An interest in science and advocacy of secularism in public life were, and are, by no means necessary bedfellows. Likewise, the interest of leaders and politicians of all stripes in many or most aspects of science and technology, which underpin national and military success in so many areas, goes without saying. Yet Jefferson's interest in science was part of his personal identity in a way that it is hard to imagine the likes of Glenn Beck celebrating.

This summer I visited the American Philosophical Society (APS) in Philadelphia, of which Jefferson was a key early member, to do some research into the Lewis and Clark Expedition across the American continent in 1804-06, a scientific and imperialistic venture that was Jefferson's pet project.

What I found fascinating in reading about this expedition was not just Jefferson's support for a prestige national project, but his close involvement in the scientific training of Merriweather Lewis, his secretary, in preparation, and ready input to discussions about instrumentation. Jefferson was, according to an article on the instruments of the expedition, inordinately fond of an equatorial theodolite he owned, made by London instrument-maker Jesse Ramsden, and thought they should take something similar.

At the APS I dipped into some of Jefferson's correspondence with Robert Patterson, the professor of mathematics at Philadelphia. More than once he wrote to thank Patterson for copies of the Nautical Almanac (the small books of astronomical tables for navigation published by the British Board of Longitude), as well as other scientific tracts, and for advice on buying and repairing instruments.

On 21 March 1811 he added:

before I entered on the business of the world I was much attached to Astronomy & had laid a sufficient foundation at College to have pursued it with satisfaction and advantage. but after 40 years of abstraction from it, and my mathematical acquirement coated over with rust, I find myself equal only to such simpler operations & practices in it as serve to amuse me. but they give me great amusement, and the more as I have some excellent instruments...

I don't suppose that there is anything here that would particularly challenge the Tea Partyers. It is not climate science or evolution, but an enthusiasm for tracking Jupiter's satellites. In any case, Barton's claims have already been thoroughly taken down by historians. And yet, throwing up an image of a Founding Father who enjoyed tinkering with precision instruments, perusing astronomical tables and corresponding with university professors seems as good a response as any to some of the painfully bad history being produced.

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
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Reconsidering the Citizens United Decision | Lawrence Lessig The Atlantic Reuters

Lawrence Lessig | Aug 4, 2012

The (Almost) Brilliance of Representative Dingell and His Friends

Can the longest-sitting member of Congress force the Supreme Court to reconsider its Citizens United decision?

Representative John Dingell (D-MI), the longest-sitting member of Congress, introduced a bill Thursday designed to force the Supreme Court to reconsider its Citizens United decision. Along with at least ten co-sponsors, Dingell's Restoring Confidence in Our Democracy Act, would ban corporations and unions from making independent political expenditures. It would also subject Super PACs to the same contribution limits that exist with other PACs. Dingell intends the bill to provide the factual record which details the negative effects of increased spending in our elections. That factual record, he hopes, will get the Court to reverse itself, and restore Congress' power to limit a form of spending that Dingell (rightly) believes has eroded even further America's confidence in our democracy.

Dingell's bill, however, is effectively two bills-- one that would require the Court to reverse itself, if indeed the new law were upheld, and the other that would not require the Court to reverse itself but would instead give the Court a chance to address a kind of corruption that so far the Supreme Court has ignored. It is unlikely (in the extreme) that the Court is going to reverse itself. But if framed properly, Dingell's bill could well map a way for Congress to staunch the corrupting influence of Super PAC spending without forcing the Court to eat its Citizens United words.

Despite all the ruckus, the holding in Citizens United is actually quite narrow. All the Court decided was that an (effectively) absolute ban on independent political expenditures by corporations could not survive First Amendment review, because nobody could believe that the speech that was being abridged was speech that betrayed quid pro quo corruption. Citizens United is a non-profit corporation. Its desire was to fund the distribution of a film about Hillary Clinton. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act seemed to forbid such funding, at least from the corporation's treasury. The Supreme Court had to decide whether such an absolute ban should be permitted.

In the past, the Court had upheld limitations on political speech when they were necessary to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. So the question for the Court in Citizens United was whether every dollar spent by a corporation (independently of a campaign) to promote one political candidate over another was an instance of corruption.

The Court held -- and was right to hold -- that it wasn't. Not every independent political expenditure is evidence of a bribe or quid pro quo influence peddling. Sometimes, believe it or not, an independent expenditure is just an independent expenditure. So if the only basis the Court has for upholding a restriction on political speech is quid pro quo corruption, or the appearance of quid pro quo corruption, that ground is not solid enough to bear the weight of a complete ban on independent expenditures by corporations or by anyone.

The first part of Dingell's bill is inconsistent with this principle. But interestingly, the second part is not -- or at least, is not necessarily. And if effectively insulated from the constitutional taint of the first part, could provide a critical vehicle for reestablishing a power that Congress certainly should have.

The second part of Dingell's bill simply limits contributions to so called Super PACs, by requiring that they be subject to the same contribution caps that any other PAC must obey. Crucially, the justification for this limit need have nothing to do with quid pro quo corruption.

As I've explained on these pages again and again, the Framers of our Constitution gave us a Republic. By a Republic, they meant a representative democracy. And by a representative democracy, they meant a government that in the legislative branch at least was to be, as Federalist 52 describes it, dependent upon the People alone.

In the 225 years since, Congress has evolved a different dependence -- a dependence not upon the People alone but increasingly, a dependence upon the funders of campaigns as well.

But here's the obvious problem: the Funders are not the People. As I've written again and again, .26 percent of America gives more than $200 to any congressional candidate; .05 percent of America gives the maximum amount to any congressional campaign; .01 percent gives more than $10,000 in an election cycle; through February, .000063 percent of America -- 196 citizens -- gave close to 80 percent of Super PAC contributions. And according to U.S. PIRG and Demos, 1,000 citizens of the United States (or so we assume) have given more than 94 percent of Super PAC contributions so far.

No one could deny that politicians are dependent upon their funders. Nor could anyone believe these funders are a fair representation of the People. And thus, no one should doubt that we have allowed the system our Framers intended to be -- in a word -- corrupted. Ours is not a government with a legislature dependent upon the People alone. It is a government with a legislature dependent upon the People and upon a different and conflicting group -- the Funders.

That gap between the Funders and the People was large enough before Citizens United. It has only grown worse since. And it is this gap that constitutes the corruption of our political system. Not quid pro quo corruption but dependence corruption -- a type of corruption that was if anything more important to the Framers than the corruptions of Rod Blagojevich or Randy Duke Cunningham.

The way to attack this corruption is not to ban all speech by corporations, or unions, or individuals. It is instead to limit contributions that any individual or corporation can make, so that no one could reasonably believe that such contributions created a dependence that conflicted with a dependence upon the People alone. In my view, even that wouldn't be enough: We will end dependence corruption only when Congress enacts a system of citizen-funded campaigns. But Congress should be free to start somewhere, and beginning with the explosion of large and dominating independent contributions is a reasonable first step.

This is precisely what the second part of Representative Dingell's bill does: It doesn't purport to limit the spending of Super PACs; it instead limits the contributions made to Super PACs. And the justification for that limit, at least from the perspective of the Framers, could not be clearer: Congress is fully justified in limiting the role that contributors to Super PACs play, so that Members do not become dependent upon those contributors to Super PACs, and thereby less dependent upon the People.

Not because anyone need believe that Congress is being bought. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's not the point. The point is dependence: to assure our political system is not dependent on an influence that conflicts with a dependence upon the People alone. The conflict is a corruption. The First Amendment should permit Congress to remedy that corruption.

Dingell deserves real credit here. Among Democrats especially, all the action is either with the Disclose Act, or in the amend the Constitution crowd. But disclosure alone won't solve anything. And there's a better chance that I'd win a gold medal at the Olympics than that the United States Senate is going to muster 67 votes for any constitutional amendment. It takes insight and wisdom to see where reform might be possible -- something I missed in my recent testimony to the Senate. Let's hope it is a point more in the House, and at least 50 in the Senate, come to see.

Copyright 2012 The Atlantic Monthly Group

The Abuse of Overparenting | Dr. Lisa Firestone psychalive.org

By Dr. Lisa Firestone
I recently watched my 11-year-old nephew play basketball in his local league. As I took in the scene of the freshly polished court, the paid referees, illuminated scoreboard, and live buzzers, I couldn’t help but think how grown up my nephew and his team had become. There they were independently taking coach instructions, chatting with the refs, and playing with skill and technique. That is until something out-of-sync occurred. One of the kids was accidentally elbowed, as several kids had been throughout the game. Seemingly hurt, the boy paused the game and covered his face with his hands, perhaps in tears, perhaps not. All at once, a frantic mother rapidly emerged from the bleachers rushing the court, armed with sweaters and Gatorade. She turned reassuringly to the crowd of stunned parents and in a grand gesture, swept her son into her arms. At this, the young boy shook away in surprise.  He immediately pulled himself together, and his face quickly went from grimacing in pain to flushing in humiliation.

As parents, we all have that innate desire to protect and provide for our kids. Yet, at some point we must ask ourselves, are we doing too much for them? When do our actions cross the line from offering security and support to embarrassing them in front of their entire basketball team? The mis-attunement in this particular mother’s actions was clear in everything from her lack of pause to the odd choice of items she brought to soothe her son, whose minor injury doubtfully rendered him either thirsty or cold. However, we are all guilty of mild and extreme acts of over-protectiveness and over-parenting that can be very damaging to a developing child.

When we assume our children need more than they do, we are undermining their abilities and hurting their confidence. I first noticed this when I took my 4-year-old daughter to a dance class. When we got there, she happily changed into her outfit and removed her shoes, then asked me to put her hair in a ponytail before she trotted off to class. Moments later a classmate of hers arrived in a stroller, hugging a blanket, and sucking a pacifier. Her father helped her out of her seat, removed her shoes, assured her that her very own personal bag of snacks would be there if she got hungry, and she trotted off to class. That day, my daughter stumbled through the new steps taught in her class, while the other girl spun through the class with the grace and skill of a pro. When she returned to her father, she cried and complained for her pacifier and her snacks.

The scene reminded me that, as parents, we often fail to recognize how capable our children are. Little acts like pushing them in a stroller instead of letting them walk or giving them a snack before they even feel hunger teaches them to believe they need more looking after than they actually do. Society’s recent pro-parenting shift has its positives. Children are people, and they deserve to have a voice within their home. Parents should always aim to treat their kids with respect, interest, and consideration. However, the trend of helicopter parenting has been taken to extremes and, in that, we are also witnessing pro-parenting’s negative effects.

A 2011 PEW Research survey further found that “40% of 18- to 24-year-olds currently live with their parents, and the vast majority of them say they did not move back home because of economic conditions.” Young adults who move out then back in with their parents, whether for financial reasons or not, have led people to refer to them as the Boomerang Generation. Though reasons for this are in part economical and societal, I personally believe there is value in investigating how the raising of our children might play some part in their lack of independence in adulthood.

Many parents are willing to overextend themselves in catering to their children and excessively meeting their needs. They then feel surprised or resentful when their children grow up feeling unable to care for themselves. Doing too much for our kids teaches them to be dependent. Growing up, by its very nature, is a series of weaning experiences for children. From the moment a child is born, they are weaned from the comfort and safety of their mother’s womb. Learning the lessons of how to get their needs met then transitioning to meeting their own needs is not only essential to a person’s survival but to their psychological well-being.

Similarly, many parents tend to offer kids praise as a means of boosting their confidence. While acknowledging our children’s positive traits is healthy and beneficial to their development, offering them empty praise can be just the opposite. A study showed that kids who were rewarded or complimented for menial or unfitting attributes saw no benefit from the praise. Conversely, acclaim offered to kids for real characteristics did have a positive effect on their self-esteem.

Unsubstantiated appraisals only leave kids feeling the pressure that they need to be great all the time to live up to the buildup instead of feeling like they are okay just being who they actually are. We can help our children get a real feeling for themselves by offering them real love and affection, while equipping them with skills that help them feel competent.

A helpful way to look at this is to imagine taking your kids to the park. How much do you let them explore and play independently from you? How much do you interfere and direct their behavior? Are you overly cautious about their safety? Do you discourage them from venturing out on their own? Are you over-attentive to their fears or encouraging of their resilience?

The park example provides a good metaphor for how we raise our children. A parent should be a secure base from which a child can explore the world. At the park, we can let them be independent while always letting them know that we are there to help, support, and guide them in their own unique adventure. We can be standing by when they need us, and we can step aside when they do not. In doing so, we should allow our children to experience the world for themselves.

Often, the reasons it is difficult for us to let our kids explore and develop their autonomy has more to do with us than with our children. As parents, it is invaluable to be aware of when we are using our children to fulfill our own needs. How much does our desire to protect them come from them? And how much does it come from our own need to act a protector? How often are the hugs we give them to provide affection, and how often are they to take affection from them?

So much of parenting involves how we feel about ourselves. As psychologist and author Pat Love has said, the best thing adults can do as parents is to have their needs met by other adults and not by their children. Our kids need us to be the best, most developed, and most fulfilled versions of ourselves in all areas of our lives in order to feel independent and secure in theirs. That way, they can emulate and learn from us without feeling they must fill the voids we experience in our own lives.

When we give our kids too much power, we start to act like victims to our children instead of the teachers, caregivers, and role models we should be. Overindulging, over-rewarding, or babying our children actually serves as a sort of pressure for greatness and a set up for disappointment. The empty acts we mistake for nurturance are at best substitutes for real love and at worst forms of actual abuse. It’s no great coincidence that many of the children we see being spoiled or indulged also appear unhappy and dissatisfied. The most honest proof of good parenting is seeing our child doing well, showing interest, learning skills, finding contentment, and finding him/herself. What we can offer as parents is love, safety, support, and guidance, a strong security from which our children can confidently venture out and independently experience the world.

An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism | NYT Opinion MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF

OPINION

By MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF
Published: August 25, 2012

IN recent years, scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding the causes of autism, now estimated to afflict 1 in 88 children. But remarkably little of this understanding has percolated into popular awareness, which often remains fixated on vaccines.

Eleanor Davis
So here’s the short of it: At least a subset of autism — perhaps one-third, and very likely more — looks like a type of inflammatory disease. And it begins in the womb.

It starts with what scientists call immune dysregulation. Ideally, your immune system should operate like an enlightened action hero, meting out inflammation precisely, accurately and with deadly force when necessary, but then quickly returning to a Zen-like calm. Doing so requires an optimal balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory muscle.

In autistic individuals, the immune system fails at this balancing act. Inflammatory signals dominate. Anti-inflammatory ones are inadequate. A state of chronic activation prevails. And the more skewed toward inflammation, the more acute the autistic symptoms.

Nowhere are the consequences of this dysregulation more evident than in the autistic brain. Spidery cells that help maintain neurons — called astroglia and microglia — are enlarged from chronic activation. Pro-inflammatory signaling molecules abound. Genes involved in inflammation are switched on.

These findings are important for many reasons, but perhaps the most noteworthy is that they provide evidence of an abnormal, continuing biological process. That means that there is finally a therapeutic target for a disorder defined by behavioral criteria like social impairments, difficulty communicating and repetitive behaviors.

But how to address it, and where to begin? That question has led scientists to the womb. A population-wide study from Denmark spanning two decades of births indicates that infection during pregnancy increases the risk of autism in the child. Hospitalization for a viral infection, like the flu, during the first trimester of pregnancy triples the odds. Bacterial infection, including of the urinary tract, during the second trimester increases chances by 40 percent.

The lesson here isn’t necessarily that viruses and bacteria directly damage the fetus. Rather, the mother’s attempt to repel invaders — her inflammatory response — seems at fault. Research by Paul Patterson, an expert in neuroimmunity at Caltech, demonstrates this important principle. Inflaming pregnant mice artificially — without a living infective agent — prompts behavioral problems in the young. In this model, autism results from collateral damage. It’s an unintended consequence of self-defense during pregnancy.

Yet to blame infections for the autism epidemic is folly. First, in the broadest sense, the epidemiology doesn’t jibe. Leo Kanner first described infantile autism in 1943. Diagnoses have increased tenfold, although a careful assessment suggests that the true increase in incidences is less than half that. But in that same period, viral and bacterial infections have generally declined. By many measures, we’re more infection-free than ever before in human history.

Better clues to the causes of the autism phenomenon come from parallel “epidemics.” The prevalence of inflammatory diseases in general has increased significantly in the past 60 years. As a group, they include asthma, now estimated to affect 1 in 10 children — at least double the prevalence of 1980 — and autoimmune disorders, which afflict 1 in 20.

Both are linked to autism, especially in the mother. One large Danish study, which included nearly 700,000 births over a decade, found that a mother’s rheumatoid arthritis, a degenerative disease of the joints, elevated a child’s risk of autism by 80 percent. Her celiac disease, an inflammatory disease prompted by proteins in wheat and other grains, increased it 350 percent. Genetic studies tell a similar tale. Gene variants associated with autoimmune disease — genes of the immune system — also increase the risk of autism, especially when they occur in the mother.

In some cases, scientists even see a misguided immune response in action. Mothers of autistic children often have unique antibodies that bind to fetal brain proteins. A few years back, scientists at the MIND Institute, a research center for neurodevelopmental disorders at the University of California, Davis, injected these antibodies into pregnant macaques. (Control animals got antibodies from mothers of typical children.) Animals whose mothers received “autistic” antibodies displayed repetitive behavior. They had trouble socializing with others in the troop. In this model, autism results from an attack on the developing fetus.

But there are still other paths to the disorder. A mother’s diagnosis of asthma or allergies during the second trimester of pregnancy increases her child’s risk of autism.

So does metabolic syndrome, a disorder associated with insulin resistance, obesity and, crucially, low-grade inflammation. The theme here is maternal immune dysregulation. Earlier this year, scientists presented direct evidence of this prenatal imbalance. Amniotic fluid collected from Danish newborns who later developed autism looked mildly inflamed.

Debate swirls around the reality of the autism phenomenon, and rightly so. Diagnostic criteria have changed repeatedly, and awareness has increased. How much — if any — of the “autism epidemic” is real, how much artifact?

YET when you consider that, as a whole, diseases of immune dysregulation have increased in the past 60 years — and that these disorders are linked to autism — the question seems a little moot. The better question is: Why are we so prone to inflammatory disorders? What has happened to the modern immune system?

There’s a good evolutionary answer to that query, it turns out. Scientists have repeatedly observed that people living in environments that resemble our evolutionary past, full of microbes and parasites, don’t suffer from inflammatory diseases as frequently as we do.

Generally speaking, autism also follows this pattern. It seems to be less prevalent in the developing world. Usually, epidemiologists fault lack of diagnosis for the apparent absence. A dearth of expertise in the disorder, the argument goes, gives a false impression of scarcity. Yet at least one Western doctor who specializes in autism has explicitly noted that, in a Cambodian population rife with parasites and acute infections, autism was nearly nonexistent.

For autoimmune and allergic diseases linked to autism, meanwhile, the evidence is compelling. In environments that resemble the world of yore, the immune system is much less prone to diseases of dysregulation.

Generally, the scientists working on autism and inflammation aren’t aware of this — or if they are, they don’t let on. But Kevin Becker, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health, has pointed out that asthma and autism follow similar epidemiological patterns. They’re both more common in urban areas than rural; firstborns seem to be at greater risk; they disproportionately afflict young boys.

In the context of allergic disease, the hygiene hypothesis — that we suffer from microbial deprivation — has long been invoked to explain these patterns. Dr. Becker argues that it should apply to autism as well. (Why the male bias? Male fetuses, it turns out, are more sensitive to Mom’s inflammation than females.)

More recently, William Parker at Duke University has chimed in. He’s not, by training, an autism expert. But his work focuses on the immune system and its role in biology and disease, so he’s particularly qualified to point out the following: the immune system we consider normal is actually an evolutionary aberration.

Some years back, he began comparing wild sewer rats with clean lab rats. They were, in his words, “completely different organisms.” Wild rats tightly controlled inflammation. Not so the lab rats. Why? The wild rodents were rife with parasites. Parasites are famous for limiting inflammation.

Humans also evolved with plenty of parasites. Dr. Parker and many others think that we’re biologically dependent on the immune suppression provided by these hangers-on and that their removal has left us prone to inflammation. “We were willing to put up with hay fever, even some autoimmune disease,” he told me recently. “But autism? That’s it! You’ve got to stop this insanity.”

What does stopping the insanity entail? Fix the maternal dysregulation, and you’ve most likely prevented autism. That’s the lesson from rodent experiments. In one, Swiss scientists created a lineage of mice with a genetically reinforced anti-inflammatory signal. Then the scientists inflamed the pregnant mice. The babies emerged fine — no behavioral problems. The take-away: Control inflammation during pregnancy, and it won’t interfere with fetal brain development.

For people, a drug that’s safe for use during pregnancy may help. A probiotic, many of which have anti-inflammatory properties, may also be of benefit. Not coincidentally, asthma researchers are arriving at similar conclusions; prevention of the lung disease will begin with the pregnant woman. Dr. Parker has more radical ideas: pre-emptive restoration of “domesticated” parasites in everybody — worms developed solely for the purpose of correcting the wayward, postmodern immune system.

Practically speaking, this seems beyond improbable. And yet, a trial is under way at the Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine testing a medicalized parasite called Trichuris suis in autistic adults.

First used medically to treat inflammatory bowel disease, the whipworm, which is native to pigs, has anecdotally shown benefit in autistic children.

And really, if you spend enough time wading through the science, Dr. Parker’s idea — an ecosystem restoration project, essentially — not only fails to seem outrageous, but also seems inevitable.

Since time immemorial, a very specific community of organisms — microbes, parasites, some viruses — has aggregated to form the human superorganism. Mounds of evidence suggest that our immune system anticipates these inputs and that, when they go missing, the organism comes unhinged.

Future doctors will need to correct the postmodern tendency toward immune dysregulation. Evolution has provided us with a road map: the original accretion pattern of the superorganism. Preventive medicine will need, by strange necessity, to emulate the patterns from deep in our past.

Moises Velasquez-Manoff is the author of “An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases.”

Popular Basis of Political Authority | The Founders' Constitution

[Volume 1, Page 68]

CHAPTER 2 | Document 23

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison

6 Sept. 1789 Papers 15:392--97

I sit down to write to you without knowing by what occasion I shall send my letter. I do it because a subject comes into my head which I would wish to develope a little more than is practicable in the hurry of the moment of making up general dispatches.

The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof.--I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living : that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of it's lands in severality, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to his creditor. But the child, the legatee, or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject. Then no man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might, during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be the reverse of our principle.

What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.--To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of 21. years, and their period of life 34. years more, that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons who have already attained 21. years of age. Each successive generation would, in this way, come on, and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. the 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it's own existence. At 21. years of age they may bind themselves and their lands for 34. years to come: at 22. for 33: at 23. for 32. and at 54. for one year only; because these are the terms of life which remain to them at those respective epochs.--But a material difference must be noted between the succession of an individual, and that of a whole generation. Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the laws of the whole. These laws may appropriate the portion of land occupied by a decedent to his creditor rather than to any other, or to his child on condition he satisfies the creditor. But when a whole generation, that is, the whole society dies, as in the case we have supposed, and another generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there is no superior who can give their territory to a third society, who may have lent money to their predecessors beyond their faculties of paying.

What is true of a generation all arriving to self-government on the same day, and dying all on the same day, is true of those in a constant course of decay and renewal, with this only difference. A generation coming in and going out entire, as in the first case, would have a right in the 1st. year of their self-dominion to contract a debt for 33. years, in the 10th. for 24. in the 20th. for 14. in the 30th. for 4. whereas generations, changing daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant term, beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality, corrected by the circumstances of climate, occupation &c. peculiar to the country of the contractors. Take, for instance, the table of M. de Buffon wherein he states 23,994 deaths, and the ages at which they happened. Suppose a society in which 23,994 persons are born every year, and live to the ages stated in this table. The conditions of that society will be as follows. 1st. It will consist constantly of 617,703. persons of all ages. 21y. Of those living at any one [Volume 1, Page 69] instant of time, one half will be dead in 24. years 8. months. 3dly. 1[8],675 will arrive every year at the age of 21. years complete. 41y. It will constantly have 348,417 persons of all ages above 21. years. 5ly. And the half of those of 21. years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18. years 8. months, or say 19. years as the nearest integral number. Then 19. years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt.

To render this conclusion palpable by example, suppose that Louis XIV. and XV. had contracted debts in the name of the French nation to the amount of 10,000 milliards of livres, and that the whole had been contracted in Genoa. The interest of this sum would be 500. milliards, which is said to be the whole rent roll or nett proceeds of the territory of France. Must the present generation of men have retired from the territory in which nature produced them, and ceded it to the Genoese creditors? No. They have the same rights over the soil on which they were produced, as the preceding generations had. They derive these rights not from their predecessors, but from nature. They then and their soil are by nature clear of the debts of their predecessors.

Again suppose Louis XV. and his cotemporary generation had said to the money-lenders of Genoa, give us money that we may eat, drink, and be merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no interest till the end of 19. years you shall then for ever after receive an annual interest of 125/8 per cent. The money is lent on these conditions, is divided among the living, eaten, drank, and squandered. Would the present generation be obliged to apply the produce of the earth and of their labour to replace their dissipations? Not at all.

I suppose that the recieved opinion, that the public debts of one generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by our seeing habitually in private life that he who succeeds to lands is required to pay the debts of his ancestor or testator: without considering that this requisition is municipal only, not moral; flowing from the will of the society, which has found it convenient to appropriate lands, become vacant by the death of their occupant, on the condition of a paiment of his debts: but that between society and society, or generation and generation, there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have percieved that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another.

The interest of the national debt of France being in fact but a two thousandth part of it's rent roll, the paiment of it is practicable enough: and so becomes a question merely of honor, or of expediency. But with respect to future debts, would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare, in the constitution they are forming, that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself, can validly contract more debt than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19. years? And that all future contracts will be deemed void as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 19. years from their date? This would put the lenders, and the borrowers also, on their guard. By reducing too the faculty of borrowing within it's natural limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free a course has been procured by the inattention of money-lenders to this law of nature, that succeeding generations are not responsible for the preceding.

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.--It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law has been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.

This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application and consequences, in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given antiently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity? Whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? It goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations; to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts and sciences; with a long train of et ceteras: and it renders the question of reimbursement a question of generosity and not of right. In all these cases, the legislature of the day could authorize such appropriations and establishments for their own time, but no longer; and the present holders, even where they, or their ancestors, have purchased, are in the case of bonâ fide purchasers of what the seller had no right to convey.

Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir, and particularly as to the power of contracting debts; and develope it with that perspicuity and cogent logic so peculiarly yours. Your station in the councils of our country gives [Volume 1, Page 70] you an opportunity of producing it to public consideration, of forcing it into discussion. At first blush it may be rallied, as a theoretical speculation: but examination will prove it to be solid and salutary. It would furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first law for appropriating the public revenue; and it will exclude at the threshold of our new government the contagious and ruinous errors of this quarter of the globe, which have armed despots with means, not sanctioned by nature, for binding in chains their fellow men. We have already given in example one effectual check to the Dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay. I should be pleased to see this second obstacle held out by us also in the first instance. No nation can make a declaration against the validity of long-contracted debts so disinterestedly as we, since we do not owe a shilling which may not be paid with ease, principal and interest, within the time of our own lives.--Establish the principle also in the new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19. instead of 14. years. Besides familiarising us to this term, it will be an instance the more of our taking reason for our guide, instead of English precedent, the habit of which fetters us with all the political heresies of a nation equally remarkeable for it's early excitement from some errors, and long slumbering under others.

The Founders' Constitution Volume 1, Chapter 2, Document 23 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch2s23.html The University of Chicago Press

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Julian P. Boyd et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950--.

© 1987 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2000 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/

To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It | Philip K. Howard| theatlantic.com

Successful schools don't have a formula, other than that teachers and principals are free to follow their instincts.

America's schools are being crushed under decades of legislative and union mandates. They can never succeed until we cast off the bureaucracy and unleash individual inspiration and willpower.

Schools are human institutions. Their effectiveness depends upon engaging the interest and focus of each student. A good teacher, studies show, can dramatically improve the learning of students. What do great teachers have in common? Nothing, according to studies -- nothing, that is, except a commitment to teaching and a knack for keeping the students engaged (see especially The Moral Life of Schools). Good teachers don't emerge spontaneously, and training and mentoring are indispensable. But ultimately, effective teaching seems to hinge on, more than any other factor, the personality of the teacher. Skilled teachers have a power to engage their students -- with spontaneity, authority, and wit.

Good teachers typically are found in schools with good cultures. Experts say you can tell if a school is effective within five minutes of walking in. Students are orderly and respectful when changing classes; there's a steady hum of activity. Good school culture typically grows out of good leadership. Here as well, there are many variations of success. KIPP schools have a formula that includes, for students, longer hours and strict accountability to core values, and, for teachers, a cooperative role in developing school activities and pedagogy. David Brooks recently described a highly successful school in Brooklyn that abandons the teacher-in-front-of-class model in favor of collaborative learning. Students sit around larger tables trying to solve problems or discuss the task at hand. In every successful school, whatever its theory of education, a good culture sweeps everyone along, as if by a strong tide, towards common goals of discovery and learning.

Successful teaching and good school cultures don't have a formula, but they have a necessary condition: teachers and principals must feel free to act on their best instincts. Minute by minute, as they respond to students and each other, their focus must be on doing what's right. Humans can only focus on one thing at a time, sociologist Robert Merton observed. That's why it's vital for teachers to be thinking only about how to communicate the lesson to the students in front of them. Any diversion of this focus is apt to be seen as indifference or boredom, and will break the magic.

This is why we must bulldoze school bureaucracy. It is a giant diversion, focused on compliance to please some administrator far away. Every minute spent filling out a form or worrying about compliance interferes with the human interaction that is the essence of effective teaching.

Law is everywhere in schools. It permeates every nook and cranny. Teachers spend hours every week filling out forms that no one ever reads -- because the laws and regulations that have piled up over the years require them. Hardly any interaction is free of legal implications. Teachers are instructed never -- never ever -- to put an arm around a crying child: the school might get sued. Misbehavior and disrespect are met with weakness and resignation; teachers are trained to be stoics, tolerating disorder rather than running the risk of a due process hearing in which the teacher, not the student, must justify her decision. Principals suffer a similar inversion of authority with teachers, who are armed with hundreds of pages of work rules that prescribe exactly what teachers can be asked to do. Managing a school -- say, setting the hours, deciding how to spend the budget, and deciding which teachers are doing the job --is an oxymoron. Public schools today are, by law, basically unmanageable.

Throw onto the legal pile a mono-minded compulsion -- complete with legal penalties -- to satisfy minimum standardized test scores. Recess has been canceled, arts and humanities courses scrapped, and creative interaction replaced by rote drills -- largely because of one law, known as No Child Left Behind. Another unintended effect of focusing only on the lowest performers is that all the all the other students get left behind. Teachers are treated like machine tools, their personalities and passions extruded through rigid drilling protocols. Demoralization has never been considered a good management strategy, but that's what NCLB has accomplished. One teacher in Florida put it this way: I love teaching, I love kids, but it's become harder and harder when you're teaching to the test. Can you hear the discouragement in my voice?

America's schools face many external challenges, particularly the breakdown of the nuclear family and an imbedded underclass. But numerous public, charter, and parochial schools succeed notwithstanding these challenges. What all these successful schools have in common is that somehow, usually with strong leadership, they figure out how to repress the bureaucracy and unleash the human spirit. We have a great deal of freedom here, observed a teacher at a successful school studied by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, because the principal protects his faculty from 'the arbitrary regulations of the central authority.'

The organizational flaw in America's schools is that they are too organized. Bureaucracy can't teach. American schools have been organized on the totally erroneous assumption, management expert Peter Drucker observed, that there is one right way to learn and it is the same for everyone. We must give educators freedom to be themselves. This doesn't mean they should be unaccountable. But they should be accountable for overall success, including, especially, success at socialization of students through a healthy school culture, not just objective test scores. This requires scrapping the current system -- all of it, federal, state, and local, as well as union contracts. We must start over and rebuild an open framework in which real people can find inspiration in doing things their own way.

This article available online at:

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/to-fix-americas-education-b...

Copyright © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

Climate mythology: The Gulf Stream, European climate and Abrupt Change

Climate mythology: The Gulf Stream, European climate and Abrupt Change Richard Seager Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University

A few times a year the British media of all stripes goes into a tizzy of panic when one climate scientist or another states that there is a possibility that the North Atlantic ocean circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is a major part, will slow down in coming years or even stop. Whether the scientists statements are measured or inflammatory the media invariably warns that this will plunge Britain and Europe into a new ice age, pictures of the icy shores of Labrador are shown, created film of English Channel ferries making their way through sea ice are broadcast... And so the circus continues year after year. Here is one example.

The Gulf Stream-European climate myth The panic is based on a long held belief of the British, other Europeans, Americans and, indeed, much of the world's population that the northward heat transport by the Gulf Stream is the reason why western Europe enjoys a mild climate, much milder than, say, that of eastern North America. This idea was actually originated by an American military man, Matthew Fontaine Maury, in the mid nineteenth century and has stuck since despite the absence of proof.

We now know this is a myth, the climatological equivalent of an urban legend. In a detailed study published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in 2002, we demonstrated the limited role that ocean heat transport plays in determining regional climates around the Atlantic Ocean. Popular versions of this story can be found here, here and, in French, here.

The determinants of North Atlantic regional climates We showed that there are three processes that need to be evaluated:

1. The ocean absorbs heat in summer and releases it in winter. Regions that are downwind of oceans in winter will have mild climates. This process does not require ocean currents or ocean heat transport. 2. The atmosphere moves heat poleward and warm climates where the heat converges. In additions, the waviness in the atmospheric flow creates warm climates where the air flows poleward and cold climates where it flows equatorward. 3. The ocean moves heat poleward and will warm climates where it releases heat and the atmosphere picks it up and moves it onto land.

Using observations and climate models we found that, at the latitudes of Europe, the atmospheric heat transport exceeds that of the ocean by several fold. In winter it may even by an order of magnitude greater. Thus it is the atmosphere, not the ocean, that does the lion's share of the work ameliorating winter climates in the extratropics. We also found that the seasonal absorption and release of heat by the ocean has a much larger impact on regional climates than does the movement of heat by ocean currents.

Seasonal storage and release accounts for half the winter temperature difference across the North Atlantic Ocean. But the 500 pound gorilla in how regional climates are determined around the Atlantic turned out to be the Rocky Mountains. Because of the need to conserve angular momentum, as air flows from the west across the mountains it is forced to first turn south and then to turn north further downstream. As such the mountains force cold air south into eastern North America and warm air north into western Europe. This waviness in the flow is responsible for the other half of the temperature difference across the North Atlantic Ocean.

Hence:

1. Fifty percent of the winter temperature difference across the North Atlantic is caused by the eastward atmospheric transport of heat released by the ocean that was absorbed and stored in the summer. 2. Fifty percent is caused by the stationary waves of the atmospheric flow. 3. The ocean heat transport contributes a small warming across the basin.

The seasonal ocean heat storage and pattern of atmospheric heat transport add up to make winters in western Europe 15 to 20 degrees C warmer than those in eastern North America. A very similar process occurs across the Pacific Ocean. The ocean heat transport warms the North Atlantic Ocean and the land on both sides by a modest few degrees C. The only place where the ocean heat transport fundamentally alters climate is along the coast of northern Norway which would be sea ice-covered were it not for the warm northward flowing Norwegian Current.

The Gulf Stream and future climate change A slowdown of the Gulf Stream and ocean circulation in the future, induced by freshening of the waters caused by anthropogenic climate change (via melting glaciers and increased water vapor transport into high latitudes) or simply by warming, would thus introduce a modest cooling tendency. This would leave the temperature contrast across the Atlantic unchanged and not plunge Europe back into the ice age or anything like it. In fact the cooling tendency would probably be overwhelmed by the direct radiatively-driven warming by rising greenhouse gases.

North Atlantic Ocean circulation and abrupt climate change The conflation of the Gulf Stream, ocean heat transport and Europe's climate has led to changes in ocean circulation being the reigning theory of the cause of glacial era abrupt climate change. These abrupt changes - the Dansgaard-Oeschger events of the last ice age and the Younger Dryas cold reversal of the last deglaciation - are well recorded in the Greenland ice core and Europe and involved changes in winter temperature of as much as thirty degrees C! For the Younger Dryas it has been proposed that the sudden release of glacial meltwater from ice dammed Lake Agassiz freshened the North Atlantic and shut down the overturning circulation causing dramatic regional coooling.

Only through an inflated view of the impact of ocean circulation could it be thought that the enormous glacial era abrupt changes were caused by changes in ocean circulation. Instead, as we have argued, changes in atmospheric circulation regimes had to be the driver, see (Seager and Battisti,2007). Determining how this could happen has become more of a priority now that the geological evidence for the Lake Agassiz flood has not been found, see (Broecker,2006).

Moving beyond the myth It is long time that the Gulf Stream-European climate myth was resigned to the graveyard of defunct misconceptions along with the Earth being flat and the sun going around the Earth. In its place we need serious assessments of how changes in ocean circulation will impact climate change and a new look at the problem of abrupt climate change that gives the tropical climate system and the atmosphere their due as the primary drivers of regional climates around the world.

Publications

Seager, R., D. S. Battisti, J. Yin, N. Gordon, N. H. Naik, A. C. Clement and M. A. Cane, 2002: Is the Gulf Stream responsible for Europe's mild winters? Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 128(586): 2563-2586. PDF Seager, R. and D. S. Battisti, 2007: Challenges to our understanding of the general circulation: abrupt climate change. In: T. Schneider and A.S. Sobel (Editors), The Global Circulation of the Atmosphere: Phenomena, Theory, Challenges. Princeton University Press, pp. 331-371. PDF. Seager, R., 2006: The source of Europe's mild climate. American Scientist, 94(4): 334-341. PDF. Seager, R., 2008: Setting the record straight on Europe's mild winters. The Plantsman, Royal Horticultural Society,7, Part 1 March, p.22-27. PDF. Seager, R., 2003: Gulf Stream la fin d'un mythe. La Recherche(361): 40-46.PDF

The American Heat Wave and Global Warming | scietopia Blog

Global warming is a big issue. If we're honest and we look carefully at the data, it's beyond question that the atmosphere of our planet is warming. It's also beyond any honest question that the preponderance of the evidence is that human behavior is the primary cause. It's not impossible that we're wrong - but when we look at the real evidence, it's overwhelming.

Of course, this doesn't stop people from being idiots.

But what I'm going to focus on here isn't exactly the usual idiots. See, here in the US, we're in the middle of a dramatic heat wave. All over the country, we've been breaking heat daily temperature records. As I write this, it's 98 degrees outside here in NY, and we're expecting another couple of degrees. Out in the west, there are gigantic wildfires, cause by poor snowfall last winter, poor rainfall this spring, and record heat to dry everything out. So: is this global warming?

We're seeing lots and lots of people saying yes. Or worse, saying that it is, because of the heat wave, while pretending that they're not really saying that it is. For one, among all-too-many examples, you can look at Bad Astronomy here. Not to rag too much on Phil though, because hes just one among about two dozen different example of this that I've seen in the last 3 days.

Weather 10 or twenty degree above normal isn't global warming. A heat wave, even a massive epic heat wave, isn't proof that global warming is real, any more than an epic cold wave or blizzard is evidence that global warming is fake.

I'm sure you've heard many people say weather is not climate. But for human beings, it's really hard to understand just what that really means. Climate is a world-wide long-term average; weather is instantaneous and local. This isn't just a nitpick: it's a huge distinction. When we talk about global warming, what we're talking about is the year-round average temperature changing by one or two degrees. A ten degree variation in local weather doesn't tell us anything about the worldwide trend.

Global warming is about climate. And part of what that means is that in some places, global warming will probably make the weather colder. Cold weather isn't evidence against global warming. Most people realize that - which is why we all laugh when gasbags like Rush Limbaugh talk about how a snowstorm proves that global warming is a fraud. But at the same time, we look at weather like what we have in the US, and conclude that Yes, global warming is real . But we're making the same mistake.

Global warming is about a surprisingly small change. Over the last hundred years, global warming is a change of about 1 degree Celsius in the global average temperature. That's about 1 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit, for us Americans. It seems miniscule, and it's a tiny fraction of the temperature difference that we're seeing this summer in the US.

But that tiny difference in climate can cause huge differences in weather. As I mentioned before, it can make local weather either warmer or colder - not just by directly warming the air, but by altering wind and water currents in ways that create dramatic changes.

For example, global warming could, likely, make Europe significantly colder. How? The weather in western Europe is greatly affected by an ocean water current called the atlantic conveyor. The conveyor is a cyclic ocean current, where (driven in part by the jet stream), warm water flows north from the equator in a surface current, cooling as it goes, until it finally sinks and starts to cycle back south in a deep underwater current. This acts as a heat pump, moving energy from the equator north and east to western Europe. This is why Western Europe is significantly warmer than places at the same latitude in Eastern North America.

Global warming could alter the flow of the Atlantic conveyor. (We don't know if it will - but it's one possibility, which makes a good example of something counter-intuitive.) If the conveyor is slowed, so that it transfers less energy, Europe will get colder. How could the conveyor be slowed? By ice-melt. The conveyor works as a cycle because of the differences in density between warm and cold water: cold water is denser than warm water, so the cold water sinks as it cools. It warms in the tropics, gets pushed north by the jet stream, cools along the way and gradually sinks.

But global warming is melting a lot of Arctic and glacier ice, which produces freshwater. Freshwater is less dense than saltwater. So the freshwater, when it dilutes the cold water at the northern end of the conveyor, it reduces its density relative to the pure salt-water - and that reduces the tendency of the cold water to sink, which could slow the conveyor.

There are numerous similar phenomena that involve changes in ocean currents and wind due to relatively small temperature variations. El Nino and La Nina, conveyor changes, changes in the moisture-carrying capacity of wind currents to carry - they're all caused by relatively small changes - changes well with the couple of degrees of variation that we see occurring.

But we need to be honest and careful. This summer may be incredibly hot, and we had an unusually warm winter before it - but we really shouldn't try to use that as evidence of global warming. Because if you do, when some colder-than-normal weather occurs somewhere, the cranks and liars that want to convince people that global warming is an elaborate fraud will use that the muddle things - and when they do, it'll be our fault when people fall for it, because we'll be the ones who primed them for that argument. As nice, as convenient, as convincing as it might seem to draw a correlation between a specific instance of extreme weather and global warming, we really need to stop doing it.

What Really Makes Us Fat By GARY TAUBES | New York Times

June 30, 2012

A CALORIE is a calorie. This truism has been the foundation of nutritional wisdom and our beliefs about obesity since the 1960s.

What it means is that a calorie of protein will generate the same energy when metabolized in a living organism as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. When talking about obesity or why we get fat, evoking the phrase “a calorie is a calorie” is almost invariably used to imply that what we eat is relatively unimportant. We get fat because we take in more calories than we expend; we get lean if we do the opposite. Anyone who tells you otherwise, by this logic, is trying to sell you something.

But not everyone buys this calorie argument, and the dispute erupted in full force again last week. The Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a clinical trial by Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital and his collaborators. While the media tended to treat the study as another diet trial — what should we eat to maintain weight loss? — it spoke to a far more fundamental issue: What actually causes obesity? Why do we get fat in the first place? Too many calories? Or something else?

The calorie-is-a-calorie notion dates to 1878, when the great German nutritionist Max Rubner established what he called the isodynamic law.

It was applied to obesity in the early 1900s by another German — Carl Von Noorden, who was of two minds on the subject. One of his theories suggested that common obesity was all about calories in minus calories out; another, that it was about how the body partitions those calories, either for energy or into storage.

This has been the core of the controversy ever since, and it’s never gone away. If obesity is a fuel-partitioning problem — a fat-storage defect — then the trigger becomes not the quantity of food available but the quality. Now carbohydrates in the diet become the prime suspects, especially refined and easily digestible carbohydrates (foods that have what’s called a high glycemic index) and sugars.

UNTIL the 1960s, carbohydrates were indeed considered a likely suspect in obesity: “Every woman knows that carbohydrate is fattening,” as two British dietitians began a 1963 British Journal of Nutrition article.

The obvious mechanism: carbohydrates stimulate secretion of the hormone insulin, which works, among other things, to store fat in our fat cells. At the time, though, the conventional wisdom was beginning its shift: obesity was becoming an energy issue.

Carbohydrates, with less than half the calories per gram as fat, were beginning their official transformation into heart-healthy diet foods. One reason we’ve been told since to eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets is this expectation that they’ll keep us thin.

What was done by Dr. Ludwig’s team has never been done before. First they took obese subjects and effectively semi-starved them until they’d lost 10 to 15 percent of their weight. Such weight-reduced subjects are particularly susceptible to gaining the weight back. Their energy expenditure drops precipitously and they burn fewer calories than people who naturally weigh the same. This means they have to continually fight their hunger just to maintain their weight loss. The belief is that weight loss causes “metabolic adaptations,” which make it almost inevitable that the weight will return. Dr. Ludwig’s team then measured how many calories these weight-reduced subjects expended daily, and that’s how many they fed them. But now the subjects were rotated through three very different diets, one month for each. They ate the same amount of calories on all three, equal to what they were expending after their weight loss, but the nutrient composition of the diets was very different.

One diet was low-fat and thus high in carbohydrates. This was the diet we’re all advised to eat: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean sources of protein. One diet had a low glycemic index: fewer carbohydrates in total, and those that were included were slow to be digested — from beans, non-starchy vegetables and other minimally processed sources. The third diet was Atkins, which is very low in carbohydrates and high in fat and protein.

The results were remarkable. Put most simply, the fewer carbohydrates consumed, the more energy these weight-reduced people expended. On the very low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, there was virtually no metabolic adaptation to the weight loss. These subjects expended, on average, only 100 fewer calories a day than they did at their full weights. Eight of the 21 subjects expended more than they did at their full weights — the opposite of the predicted metabolic compensation.

On the very low-carbohydrate diet, Dr. Ludwig’s subjects expended 300 more calories a day than they did on the low-fat diet and 150 calories more than on the low-glycemic-index diet. As Dr. Ludwig explained, when the subjects were eating low-fat diets, they’d have to add an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity each day to expend as much energy as they would effortlessly on the very-low-carb diet. And this while consuming the same amount of calories. If the physical activity made them hungrier — a likely assumption — maintaining weight on the low-fat, high-carb diet would be even harder. Why does this speak to the very cause of obesity? One way to think about this is to consider weight-reduced subjects as “pre-obese.” They’re almost assuredly going to get fatter, and so they can be research stand-ins — perhaps the best we have — for those of us who are merely predisposed to get fat but haven’t done so yet and might take a few years or decades longer to do it.

If we think of Dr. Ludwig’s subjects as pre-obese, then the study tells us that the nutrient composition of the diet can trigger the predisposition to get fat, independent of the calories consumed. The fewer carbohydrates we eat, the more easily we remain lean. The more carbohydrates, the more difficult. In other words, carbohydrates are fattening, and obesity is a fat-storage defect. What matters, then, is the quantity and quality of carbohydrates we consume and their effect on insulin.

From this perspective, the trial suggests that among the bad decisions we can make to maintain our weight is exactly what the government and medical organizations like the American Heart Association have been telling us to do: eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets, even if those diets include whole grains and fruits and vegetables.

A controversial conclusion? Absolutely, and Dr. Ludwig’s results are by no means ironclad. The diets should be fed for far longer than one month, something he hopes to do in a follow-up study. As in any science, these experiments should be replicated by independent investigators. We’ve been arguing about this for over a century. Let’s put it to rest with more good science. The public health implications are enormous.

Gary Taubes is The author of “Why We Get Fat.”