Tuesday: In a Season of Crime

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Ride the train, I’m far from home
In a season of crime, none need atone
I kissed your face

— excerpt, Sue (or In a Season of Crime) by David Bowie

Bowie left us an amazing parting shot with his 25th and final album, Blackstar. The cut featured here is a free jazz/jazz-rock fusion work which sounds off-kilter or out of sync, the lyric melody not tracking with rhythm — until one looks at the lyrics as a story of confusion told at the same time as a driving lyric-less and inevitable story beats on at the same time.

Seems like an unintended metaphor for our general election politics.

Back to School, Fool
Guess who’s back in town? A bunch of Congressional lame ducks back from vacation — I mean — work in their districts where they glad-handed at county fairs between bites of deep-fried Twinkies and kissing babies for campaign photo ops.

Get back to work and produce funding for Zika research AND birth control, damn it. Your continued intransigence is costing lives — short, ugly, painful, deformed lives on which you are pitiless and merciless, you fundamentalist let-them-eat-cake hacks. It’s only a matter of time before somebody in your district ends up Zika-infected and pregnant after vacation trip to someplace warm like Miami — or mosquito-bitten during during their day job like lawn care or construction or mail delivery. Researchers are working incredibly hard with the limited funding they’ve had; there’s only so much they can do with inadequate funding. And birth control MUST be available to all who need it. Planned Parenthood can and does hand out condoms, you pathetic slack-handed weasels. Fund them.

STG if I was the president, I’d look at any way possible to trim funding to unusual projects in states with GOP senators and then declare an emergency, pull that trimmed funding to pay for subsidized birth control in the same damned states. With researchers now having found Zika infection may spread by bodily fluids like semen, vaginal fluid, saliva, and tears while documented cases mount, there’s ample grounds to write an executive order during a lame duck session.

Big Oil = Big Bully

The NoDAPL project is bad all around. There’s no good reason for it to proceed.

— The economics of oil supply and demand do not support it; the cost to proceed is simply not supportable.

— The environmental cost of this project and the oil it is intended to carry are untenable; investment of resources private and public should go toward non-fossil fuels.

— The project violates the rights of Native Americans in numerous ways and no good faith effort has been made to address them during planning, let alone now as construction begins. The current and future damage to the Sioux only exacerbates hundreds of years of abuses against their sovereign nation.

— The companies investing in this project including Enbridge cannot assure the safe operation of this pipeline given the history of pipeline leaks across this country. In Enbridge’s case, this foreign-owned corporation has already proven unreliable and opaque in pipeline operations.

— NoDAPL should not proceed for the same reasons Keystone XL pipeline did not proceed: it is not in our country’s best interest.

I don’t know how anyone can look at this bulldozing of land containing buried Native Americans and not see it as a direct, deliberate effort to erase their existence. This is accursed behavior which in no way addresses the needs for alternative energy outlined in the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Review or our nation’s need to secure its people by reducing carbon dioxide output.

Odd Lots

  • Disposal wells in Oklahoma including Osage Nation shut down after earthquake (Tulsa World) — Yet another case where extractive fossil fuel business on Native American tribal lands has been highly problematic. 17 wells were shut down by the EPA after Oklahoma’s M5.6 induced earthquake this weekend; these wells are in addition to 37 other disposal wells shut down this weekend near the quake’s epicenter. Haven’t seen yet whether another earthquake of this magnitude could set off an overdue 500-year magnitude earthquake along Missouri’s New Madrid fault.
  • U.S. district judge denies federal plan to open 1 million acres of central CA public lands for fracking and drilling (IndyBay.org) — Bureau of Land Management didn’t do its homework on environmental risks from fracking, focusing too heavily on drilling instead. Sounds a lot like Army Corp of Engineers’ slap-dash disregard for externalities when it analyzed the NoDAPL, doesn’t it?
  • OK’s earthquake insurance market already under review (Tulsa World) — Insurers have only paid out on 20 percent of earthquake-related claims since 2010; the market has also undergone consolidation and 300-percent rate increases. No word yet on how much damage this weekend’s M5.6 quake or subsequent aftershocks have caused. Hope the public lights a fire under Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak about his review of the market. It’s grossly unfair the public must bear the cost of risk created by extractive industries as it is.

Longread: Lawsuit against DMCA Section 1201
Johns Hopkins University professor and cryptographer Matthew Green filed suit against the federal government in late July to strike down Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The current law prevents security researchers from adequately investigating products. Worthwhile read — this has huge repercussions on our safety and security given how much of the technology around us is copyrighted but leaky as hell and prone to hacking.

Hasta pasta!

Wednesday: If I Had a Heart

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Crushed and filled with all I found
Underneath and inside
Just to come around
More, give me more, give me more

— excerpt, If I Had a Heart by Fever Ray

Today’s featured single is from Fever Ray’s eponymous debut album ‘Fever Ray’, the stage name for Swedish singer, songwriter and record producer Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson. If her work sounds familiar, it may be that she and her brother Olof Dreijer also performed as The Knife. Karin’s work is reminiscent of Lykke Li’s and Bjork’s electronic/ambient works, redolent with dark rhythms and layers of deep and high-pitched vocals — very Nordic feminine.

Fever Ray has been very popular with television programmers; the cut featured here is the theme song for History Channel’s Vikings series. It’s also been used in AMC’s Breaking Bad and WB’s The Following. Other songs by Karin as Fever Ray including Keep the Streets Empty for Me have been used by CBS’ Person of Interest and Canadian TV’s Heartbeats as well as a number of films. I’m looking forward to her next work, wondering if it will be just as popular TV and film industry.

Fossil feud

  • TransCanada approval hearing delayed due to protests (Reuters) — Not just U.S. and Native Americans protesting oil pipelines right now; Canada’s National Energy Board deferred this week’s hearings due to security concerns (they say). The board is scheduled to meet again in early October about the planned pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s east coast. There may be more than security concerns holding up these hearings, though…
  • Big projects losing favor with Big Oil (WaPo-Bloomberg) — The ROI on big projects may be negative in some cases, which doesn’t service massive debt Big Oil companies have incurred. They’re looking at faster turnaround projects like shale oil projects — except that these quick-hit projects have poorly assessed externalities which will come back and bite Big Oil over the long run, not to mention the little problem of fracking’s break-even point at $65/barrel.
  • Big Insurance wants G20 to stop funding Big Fossil Fuel (Guardian) — Deadline the biggest insurers set is 2020; by then, Big Insurance wants the G20 nations to stop subsidizing and financing fossil fuels including Big Oil because subsidies and preferential financing skew the true cost of fossil fuels (hello, externalities).
  • Standing Rock Sioux continue their protest against the North Dakota Access Pipeline (Guardian) — Video of the protest at that link. Calls to the White House supporting the Sioux against the DAPL are solicited. Wonder if anybody’s pointing out fracked shale oil is a losing proposition?

Zika-de-doo-dah

  • Adult mosquitoes can transmit Zika to their offspring (American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene) — Study looked at infected Aedes aegypti and albopictus mosquitoes and found the virus in subsequent larva. My only beef with this study is that Culex species were not also studied; they aren’t efficient carriers of Zika, but they do carry other flavivirus well and there are too many cases with unexplained transmission which could have been caused by infected Culex. Clearly need to do more about pre-hatch mosquito control regardless of species.
  • Three drugs show promise in halting Zika damage in humans (Johns Hopkins Univerity Hub) — Important to note some of the same researchers who demonstrated Zika caused damage in mice brain models earlier this year have now rapidly screened existing drugs to test against mice brain models. The drugs include an anti-liver damage medication (emricasan), an anti-parasitic (niclosamide), and an experimental antivirus drug. The limitation of this research is that it can’t tell how the drugs act across placenta to fetus and whether they will work as well and safely once through the placenta on fetuses. More research (and funding!) is needed.
  • Contraception no big deal, says stupid old white male GOP senator’s staffer (Rewire) — Right. If only McConnell and his staff could experience the panic of being poor and at risk of Zika. Not everybody in Puerto Rico has ready access to the “limited number of public health departments, hospitals, and Medicaid Managed Care clinics,” let alone other states like Texas which has such awful women’s reproductive care in terms of access and funding the maternal mortality rate has doubled in two years, up 27%. Pro-life, my ass. By the way, this lack of access to contraception affects men, too, who may unknowingly be infected with Zika and tranmit it to their sexual partners.

Longread Must-read: Super court
If you haven’t already done so, you need to read this investigative report by Chris Hamby at BuzzFeed. While it answers a lot of questions about the lack of perp walks, it spawns many more.

Hasta luego, compadres!

Bringing out the Dead: What We Know about Zika Virus Effect on Human Tissue

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[(A) Control neurosphere (B) Zika-infected neurosphere Source: Science, 13MAY2016 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6287/816.full]

[(A) Control neurosphere
(B) Zika-infected neurosphere
Source: Science, 13MAY2016
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6287/816.full]

Because unproven claims persist that chemical exposure — specifically the pyridine-based pesticide pyriproxyfen — causes the birth defects seen in children born to women exposed to Zika virus, I am bringing out the dead, laying out the bodies.

By ‘bodies’ I mean sharing here pictures of cells you see in the embedded photos from a peer-reviewed study published this May.

In these images you’ll see the damage done to human tissue in lab conditions.

No pyriproxyfen was present.

How Researchers Studied Zika
This is the methodology researchers used:

1) The researchers used human stem cells to create neurospheres — the kind of cells which turns into nerve and brain tissue in an actual embryo.

2) They set aside control samples of neurospheres which were not infected.

3) They infected test samples neurospheres with Brazilian Zika virus.

4) They observed the changes in the infected neurospheres.

5) They compared them to the uninfected control samples.

6) They wrote and published a report on their findings.

The image above is the best example from their report of the difference between Zika-infected cells and the uninfected test samples.

What Researchers Found in this Study
In short, Zika inhibits, damages, and kills infected neurospheres.

This is what we can expect to happen to a fetus’ brain or nerve tissues when infected by Zika under the right conditions during early pregnancy.

[(A) Control mock-infected organoid (B) Zika-infected organoid (damage noted at arrows; growth was also inhibited)]

[(A) Control mock-infected organoid
(B) Zika-infected organoid (damage noted at arrows)]

What Else Researchers Found in this Study
The researchers also conducted a very similar test on human brain organoids. These are not single neurospheres but neuro-tissue grown from stem cells so that they form a model like a tiny brain. Not a brain, a tissue-based model of a brain.

They used the same six steps above using a mock-infected model, a Zika-infected model, and a dengue virus-infected model. (Dengue fever is caused by a flavivirus — the same family of viruses to which Zika and yellow fever belong.) Researchers found Zika virus caused similar destructive damage on these larger models while limiting their growth; they did not find the same damage or destruction in the dengue-infected models and none in the mock-infected control models. Zika alone damaged neurological tissue models.

Researchers also studied neural stem cells (NSCs) — the simplest neuro tissue model — and found similar results in which the Zika virus killed off NSCs. Studying NSCs, neurospheres, and organoids, the researchers observed Zika’s actions on different stages of neuro tissue maturity. In each of these models, from the simplest (NSCs) to the most complex (organoids), Zika was destructive.

[ZIKV (Zika virus) induces death in human neurospheres. These micrographs show the ultrastructure of mock- and ZIKV-infected neurospheres after 6 days in vitro. (A) Mock-infected neurosphere showing cell processes and organelles. (B) ZIKV-infected neurosphere showing a pyknotic nucleus, swollen mitochondria, smooth membrane structures, and viral envelopes (arrow). (C) Viral envelopes on the cell surface (arrows). (D) Swollen mitochondria. (E) Viral envelopes inside the endoplasmic reticulum (arrows). (F) Viral envelopes close to smooth membrane structures (arrows).]

[ZIKV (Zika virus) induces death in human neurospheres. These micrographs show the ultrastructure of mock- and ZIKV-infected neurospheres after 6 days in vitro.
(A) Mock-infected neurosphere showing cell processes and organelles.
(B) ZIKV-infected neurosphere showing a pyknotic nucleus, swollen mitochondria, smooth membrane structures, and viral envelopes (arrow).
(C) Viral envelopes on the cell surface (arrows).
(D) Swollen mitochondria.
(E) Viral envelopes inside the endoplasmic reticulum (arrows).
(F) Viral envelopes close to smooth membrane structures (arrows).]

Other Research on Zika Using Mouse Tissue
Three other studies published in May this year using mice or mouse tissues likewise showed evidences of neurological tissue and brain damage or growth suppression when infected by Zika virus. The studies came from research facilities in Brazil, China, and the U.S. — and in each study, pyriproxyfen was not included. The Zika-infected specimens showed damage and the control specimens did not.

The study from Brazil at the University of São Paulo also included research using human stem cells, comparing a Brazilian strain of Zika against an African strain:

Beltrão-Braga, Muotri, and their colleagues also grew brain organoids from human stem cells and infected these in vitro models with the Brazilian and African strains of the virus. In the human mini brains, both strains of the virus caused cell death, but the Brazilian strain appeared to also interfere with the formation of cortical layers. The virus didn’t replicate in the brain organoids grown from chimpanzee stem cells, suggesting it may have adapted to human tissue, the researchers noted in their paper.

Emphasis mine. Research published earlier showed Zika has already mutated rapidly after arriving in Brazil, with at least nine variants found inside the last two years.

What’s Next in Zika Research
What researchers don’t yet know, for starters: How Zika works — how does it damage or kill cells? When exactly does the virus do the most damage? What mechanisms interfere with Zika’s operations and can they be used in vaccines or drug therapy? What makes Zika different from dengue or other flavivirus? What does Zika do to adult neuro tissue to cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome? Which adults are most at risk? Will the different mutations in Brazil respond differently to vaccines? How long can humans carry live Zika virus? Has the virus mutated and become transmissible by bodily fluids or aerosol? These are just a few of the questions we still have about Zika.

There are some good guesses about Zika’s mechanisms — like this hypothesis focusing on vitamin A storage in the liver, which also suggests Zika may negatively affect liver cells (yet another avenue of research needed). But will a vaccine targeting this activity work for other flavivirus, too? What if this guess is wrong; are there other approaches we’ve yet to hear about?

We won’t have any of these answers in a reasonable period of time if we don’t have adequate funding.

It’s not just birth defects we are talking about here, either. Look at the damage in those images again; this virus not only damages fetal nerve and brain tissue, it kills fetuses. Infants born with Zika-related defects may be blind and may lead short, painful lives. And it may kill and maim adults, too, if they develop a serious case of Zika-related Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Let’s not bring out any more Zika dead.

(Note: Forgive me for the simplistic terms used in this post if you have a background in science. I had to make this as brief and succinct as possible for those who don’t have that background.)
___________

Source:
Zika virus impairs growth in human neurospheres and brain organoids
BY PATRICIA P. GARCEZ, ERICK CORREIA LOIOLA, RODRIGO MADEIRO DA COSTA, LUIZA M. HIGA, PABLO TRINDADE, RODRIGO DELVECCHIO, JULIANA MINARDI NASCIMENTO, RODRIGO BRINDEIRO, AMILCAR TANURI, STEVENS K. REHEN
SCIENCE13 MAY 2016 : 816-818
Zika virus infection in cell culture models damages human neural stem cells to limit growth and cause cell death.
URL: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6287/816.full

Zika Studies Using Mice:
F. Cugola et al., “The Brazilian Zika virus strain causes birth defects in experimental models,” Nature, doi:10.1038/nature18296, 2016.

C. Li et al., “Zika virus disrupts neural progenitor development and leads to microcephaly in mice,” Cell Stem Cell, doi:10.1016/j.stem.2016.04.017, 2016.

J. Miner et al., “Zika virus infection during pregnancy in mice causes placental damage and fetal demise,” Cell, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2016.05.008, 2016.

Wednesday Morning: Woe, Nelly, Woe

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I meant woe, not whoa. I do know the difference.

It’s woe I was thinking of when I wrote this next bit.

What would you do if you were told you wouldn’t be paid for last 2 months of a 9-month job?
Let’s say you have kids to feed, a mortgage/car payment/college loan payments to make, childcare to pay, out-of-pocket healthcare costs — you know, all the expenses the average working person has.

In spite of one or more obligatory college degrees, continuing education requirements and mandatory background checks, your job requires you to work in facilities where ‘mushrooms, black mold, fecal matter, dead rodents, no heat‘ are common. It’s a workplace functioning like Flint’s water crisis, and it’s been this way for more than a decade. Fellow employees have had to bring in paper towels and light bulbs from home or solicit them as donations to the workplace.

Because of your employer’s money woes, you may even have made a concession agreeing to collect your pay over 3-4 months instead of the next six to eight weeks you are actually scheduled to work.

And then your employer’s employer says they aren’t going to pay, and you might have to work without pay for the next six weeks. Unpaid, as in violation of labor laws unpaid.

And your employer’s employer has a history of acting both in bad faith and with prejudice. Your workplace hasn’t improved for years; children were permanently poisoned and adults died as a result of their awful handiwork on this and other projects.

What would you do? Quietly stay at your desk working and hope for the best, or walk out in protest to demand action?

The employer’s employer accuses you of all manner of bad things, and is actively undermining your rights to organize, by the way.

Welcome to Detroit Public School system, and welcome to more of Michigan’s obnoxious and toxic GOP-led legislating. Pretty sure the jerks who are causing this latest crisis by grandstanding on teachers’ backs don’t care if the president arrives here in Michigan today.

Dude caught on video sprinkling substance on food arrested by FBI
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about in Michigan, some whackjob has been sprinkling a mixture of hand sanitizer and rodent poison on food in stores, including salad buffets. He was caught on security camera in Ann Arbor, but he is alleged to have sprinkled this mix in multiple stores in Ypsilanti, Saline, Birch Run, and Midland. The mixture is not supposed to be toxic, but who wants to eat remnants of isopropyl alcohol and an anticoagulant? What the hell was this all about anyhow?

Canadian city of 80,000 forced to evacuate overnight due to massive wildfire
Mind-boggling to think of an urban center this size forced to flee on such short notice, but Fort McMurray did just that beginning late afternoon yesterday. Even the local hospital was emptied as fire leaped from undeveloped to developed areas, consuming neighborhoods. 80% of homes in the Beacon Hill neighborhood are ash. Conditions have been unusually warm and dry in the region; the local temperature was 83F degrees before the evacuation notice was issued. Weather conditions today are expected to be hotter (32C/90F) and WSW winds stronger ahead of a cold front, likely spreading the fire even farther to the northeast.

The area around Fort McMurray has only been in moderate drought conditions, yet the fire was explosive, doubling in size in a matter of hours. Can’t begin to imagine what might happen in areas where conditions are drier while this climate-enhanced super El Nino continues.

Volkswagen’s former head of engine and transmission development exits company
Wolfgang Hatz, suspended by VW for his role in Dieselgate, chose voluntarily to leave the company. This bit in NYT’s article is choice:

In 2007, shortly after being named head of engine and transmission development at Volkswagen, Mr. Hatz complained at an event in San Francisco that new rules on tailpipe emissions in California were unrealistic.

“I see it as nearly impossible for us,” Mr. Hatz said of a proposed regulation during the event, which was filmed by an auto website.

In other words, Hatz didn’t see the purpose of the regulation, didn’t perceive a challenge to design truly clean diesel — he saw an obstruction he needed to bypass. Auf wiedersehn, Herr Hatz.

Odds and sods

  • Middle Eastern drought worst in 900 years (NASA) — Drought map of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey looks awful, but Egypt — wow.
  • Wars might be caused by lack of water (Scientific American) — I sense a theme developing…hey, guess when the Crusades were? 900 years ago.
  • Study shows stocks overvalued often, too long (Phys.org) — Huh. Interleaves with economic social theory of reflexivity, that.
  • Third leading cause of death in U.S.: medical errors (Science Daily) — Grok this: 250,000 deaths a year. You’d think insurance companies and policy makers would look into this, considering annual death toll is like ten times that on 9/11. Imagine if we spend tax dollars on fixing this and improving health care instead of militarizing against the rare-to-non-existent domestic terror attack.
  • Tesla’s residential battery, Powerwall, now for sale (Bloomberg) — Residential solar may now explode with growth. We can only hope.

It’s supposedly downhill from the top of this hump. Race you to the bottom!

Tuesday Morning: Monitor

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Y me lamento por no estar alla
Y hoy te miento para estar solos tu y yo
Y la distancia le gano al amor
Solo te veo en el monitor

— excerpt, Monitor by Volovan

Sweet little tune, easy to enjoy even if you don’t speak Spanish.

Speaking of monitor…

Flint Water Crisis: Michigan State Police monitoring social media
Creeptastic. MSP is following social media communications related to Flint water crisis, which means they’re watching this blog and contributors’ tweets for any remarks made about Flint. Whatever did they do in the day before social media when the public was unhappy about government malfeasance?

MDEQ personnel told Flint city water employee to omit tests with high lead readings
The charges filed last week against two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and a Flint city employee were related to the manipulation and falsification of lead level tests. From out here it looks like Mike Glasgow did what the MDEQ told him to do; with the city under the control of the state, it’s not clear how Glasgow could have done anything else but do what the state ordered him to do. Which governmental body had higher authority under emergency management — the city’s water department, or the MDEQ? And what happens when personnel at the MDEQ aren’t on the same page about testing methodology?

MDHHS too worried about Ebola to note Legionnaire’s deaths in 2014-2015?
Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services director Nick Lyons maintains a “breakdown in internal communication” kept information about the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak from reaching him. He also said MDHHS was focused on Ebola because of its high mortality rate overseas. There were a total of 11 cases of Ebola in the U.S. between 2014 and 2015, none of which were diagnosed or treated in Michigan. Meanwhile, 10 people died of Legionnaire’s due to exposure to contaminated Flint water in that same time frame. Not certain how MDHHS will respond to an imported biological crisis when it can’t respond appropriately to a local one created by the state.

Other miscellaneous monitoring

  • Charter Communications and Time Warner tie-up approved, with caveat (Reuters) — Charter can’t tell content providers like HBO they can’t sell their content over the internet – that’s one of a few exceptions FCC placed on the deal. I think this is just insane; the public isn’t seeing cheaper broadband or cable content in spite of allowing ISPs to optimize economies of scale. Between Charter/TWC and Comcast, they’ll have 70% of all broadband connections in the U.S.
  • Mitsubishi Motors fudged its fuel economy numbers for last 25 years (AP) — This investigation is exactly what should happen across EU, because EU-based manufacturers have done this for just as long or longer. And the EU knows this, turns a blind eye to the tricks automakers use to inflate fuel economy ratings.
  • Goldman Sachs has a brand new gig: internet-based banking (Fortune) — This is the fruit of GS’ acquisition of General Electric’s former financial arm. Hmm.
  • BAE Systems has a nice graphic outlining the SWIFT hack via Bangladesh’s central bank (BAE) — Makes it easy to explain to Grampa how somebody carted off nearly a billion dollars.

Toodledy-doo, Tuesday. See you tomorrow morning!

Wednesday Morning: Water, Water, Everywhere [UPDATE]

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Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

— excerpt, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Felony and misdemeanor charges are expected today in the Flint water crisis. State Attorney General Bill Schuette will put on a media dog-and-pony show, when it is expected that three persons — two engineers with the Michigan Department of Environmental quality and a Flint water department employee — will be charged for Flint’s lead water levels after the cut-over to Flint River water.

Mind you, the descriptions of these persons do not match that of higher level persons who were responsible for

1) making the final decision to cut Flint off from Detroit’s water system and switching to the Flint river;
2) evaluating work performed by consulting firms about the viability of Flint River as a water source, or about reporting on lead levels after the cut-over;
3) ensuring the public knew on a timely basis the water was contaminated once it was already known to government officials;
4) lack of urgency in responding to a dramatic uptick in Legionnaire’s disease, or the blood lead levels in children.

Just for starters. Reading the Flint water crisis timeline (and yes, it needs updating), it’s obvious negligence goes all the way to the top of state government, and into the halls of Congress.

Michigan’s Governor Snyder has elected to perform some weird self-flagellating mea culpa or performance art, by insisting he and his wife will drink filtered Flint city water for a month. It’s a pointless gesture since the toxic lead levels, experienced during the two years immediately after the city’s cut-over to the Flint River, have already fallen after doing permanent damage to roughly eight thousand children in and around Flint.

Flint’s Mayor Karen Weaver said about the governor’s stunt, “[H]e needs to come and stay here for 30 days and live with us and see what it’s like to use bottled or filtered water when you want to cook and when you want to brush your teeth.”

Or get a new mortgage, I would add. The gesture also does nothing for Flint’s property values. Imagine living in Flint, trying to refinance your home to a lower interest rate, telling the bank, “Oh, but the water’s safe enough for the governor!” and the bank telling you, “Nah. Too risky.”

UPDATE — 10:45 AM EDT —
Charges have been filed against City of Flint’s Laboratory & Water Quality Supervisor Mike Glasgow and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Office of Drinking Water and Management Assistance district director Steven Busch and MI-ODWMA District Engineer Michael Prysby. Mlive.com-Flint reports,

Glasgow is accused of tampering with evidence when he allegedly changed testing results to show there was less lead in city water than there actually was. He is also charged with willful neglect of office.

Prysby and Busch are charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence, a treatment violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act and a monitoring violation of the Safe Drinking Water.

None of the individuals charged in the case have been arraigned.

Sure would like to see the evidence on Glasgow, given the email he wrote 14-APR-2014 (see the timeline).

House hearing on encryption yesterday

  • Worth the time if you have it to listen to the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee’s hearing, ‘Deciphering the Debate Over Encryption: Industry and Law Enforcement Perspectives‘ to catch Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell and UPenn’s CIS asst. prof. Matt Blaze. Not so much for Indiana State Police Captain Charles Cohen, who was caught up in misinfo/disinfo about Apple’s alleged non-cooperation with the U.S. government. Wish there was a transcript, especially for the part where Sewell was quizzed as to whether Apple would encrypt their cloud.
  • Speaking of Cohen and misinfo/disinfo, Apple said it hasn’t released source code to Chinese (Reuters) — This is the spin IN’s Cohen got caught up in. Nope.

Another Congressional hearing of interest: Fed Cybersecurity
In case you missed it, catch the video of today’s House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology hearing on Federal Cybersecurity Detecion, Response, and Mitigation. You may have seen Marcy’s tweets on this hearing, at which Juniper Networks was a no-show, and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) was kind of pissed off. Catch Bruce Schneier’s post about Juniper’s vulnerability.

Volkswagen has company: Mitsubishi’s mileage data tweaked to cheat
The Japanese automaker may have to pay back tax rebates offered on vehicles meeting certain fuel efficiency standards. Data from mileage tests on hundreds of thousands of cars was fudged to make the cars look 5-10 percent more efficient.

Speaking of cheating: Volkswagen’s use of code words masked references to emissions controls cheats
The amount of data under review along with the use of code words and phrases like “acoustic software” may delay the completion of the probe’s report. Don’t forget: tomorrow is the second 30-day deadline set for VW to provide a technical solution for owners of its passenger diesel vehicles.

That’s enough. Michigan state AG newser underway now as I update this again at 1:15 p.m. EDT; I may not update here since I addressed known charges above. Catch you on the other side of the hump.

Tuesday Morning: Trash Day

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It’s trash day in my neighborhood. Time to take the garbage to the curb. I aim for as little trash as possible, which means buying and consuming less processed/more fresh foods. I use paper/glass/ceramic/stainless steel for storage, avoiding plastics as much as possible. Every lick of plastic means oil — either the plastic has been created wholly from oil, or fossil fuels have been used in its manufacture. Can say the same about the manufacturing of paper/glass/ceramic/stainless steel, but paper can be composted/recycled/renewed, and the rest can be used for lifetimes if cared for. I use ceramic bowls that belonged to my great-grandmother, and stainless pots and bowls once belonging to my mother, and I expect to hand them down some day.

Which makes me all judgy when I’m walking through the neighborhood, side-eyeing the garbage cans at the curb. Can’t believe how much waste is created every week, and how willing we are to pay tax dollars to stick it in the ground as landfill. How can Family X not bother to recycle at all? How can Family Y live on so much processed, chemical-laden garbage? It’s all right there at the end of their driveway, their addiction to fossil fuel consumption spelled out in trash.

What small change can you make in your lifestyle so Judgy McJudgyPants here doesn’t side-eye your trash cans?

Speaking of trash…

Piling on the wonks, Part 3: United Healthcare exiting Obamacare in Michigan
Disclosure: UHC is my health insurer, which I am fortunate enough to afford. But I couldn’t stay with them if I had to go on Obamacare. UHC says it’s losing too much money in Michigan to remain in the program — not certain how given the double-digit underwriting increase it posted for this past year. UHC will leave other states which may not fare as well as Michigan, and even Michigan will suffer from decreasing competition. Do tell us, though, wonks, how great Obamacare is. I’m sure I will feel better should I ever have to shop Obamacare plans for pricey coverage with a dwindling number of providers. And if you missed the previous discussions on inept Obamacare wonkery, see Part 1 by Marcy and Part 2 by Ed Walker.

Tech Tiews

  • Don’t let anybody say Apple isn’t cooperating with law enforcement (Phys.org) — Apple has, to the tune of 30,000 times from Jul-Dec 2015 alone, according to a report released late Monday.
  • BlackBerry CEO says telecom companies should ‘comply with reasonable lawful access requests‘ to assist law enforcement (Reuters) — Nice bit of footwork from a company which passed their encryption key to Canadian law enforcement as far back as 2010.
  • If you missed the 60 Minutes segment about the security threat posted by Signalling System Number 7 protocol (SS7), you should read up. (The Guardian) — Also wouldn’t hurt to look into end-to-end encryption for your communications. Wonder what role SS7 played in NSA’s and GHCQ’s ‘treasure mapping’ Germany’s Telekom and other global networks, and if this explains why SS7 is still not secure?
  • [Presence of drugs in car] plus [pics of cash on phone] = suspicious (Ars Technica) — Wait, isn’t the presence of illegal drugs in one’s car enough to make one a suspect?
  • New technology for chip-embedded smart cards will speed checkout times, says VISA (Phys.org) — What the hell are we being forced to switch to so-called smart cards for if they don’t actually improve checkout process already? We’ll piss away any savings from increased security standing in line waiting.

Time to fetch the emptied trash can. See you tomorrow!

Friday Morning: Dark Water Jazz

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It’s Friday and that means jazz here at emptywheel. But no genre exploration today, just this lovely, evocative downtempo jazz/trip hop fusion work.

It’s dark water jazz indeed this week…

Congress oublies the Flint water crisis
I can’t find anything in C-SPAN about the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing which was to address the crisis. Convenient for Republicans running for office right now to keep themselves at arm’s length from a Republican scandal. We’re lucky the hearing was captured at all; it can be found at the committee’s website. (Video 3:44:08)

It must be difficult to kowtow to traditional GOP underwriters while trying to appear like you’re doing a credible job of representing Americans most in need. But it’s a lot easier to bury and forget the inconvenient.

The latest scuttlebutt is that the bipartisan Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 (S.2012) will proceed without additional funding to remedy Flint’s damaged water system, still replete with lead piping. Senate Republicans led by Senator Mike Lee of Utah protested the inclusion of funding for Flint in this bill, threatening to reject it altogether.

Wait — you know who’s up for reelection this season? Senator Mike Lee! Amazing coincidence! Or not. You know, Senator Lee, when your fellow senators leak about your obstruction, you should catch a clue. Sometimes actually helping Americans is more important than sucking up to your anti-tax overlords.

You know who else is up for reelection this season? Senator Lisa Murkowski, the chair of the counterpart Senate Energy Committee and the sponsor of S.2012. You’d think she’d want to look effective as a leader and at governance.

Roughly 8,000 children will continue to live as if they are in a third world country, with a patchwork of assistance for their health and education, but no relief from the lead pipes which continue to run from the water department to their homes. Imagine them drinking water out bottles for the rest of their childhoods, their families having to take additional time and effort to lug bottles upon bottles for their daily essential needs.

Don’t even suggest these families leave. They are stuck, STUCK in Flint, because their property values have been gutted by the failure of a GOP-led state administration, and the continued avoidance by a GOP-led Congress. Who wants to buy a home with lead pipes in Flint now? Which banks want to finance new mortgages to those homes? Which insurers want to write coverage on them?

Some government aid has been offered to Flint — which the ever-ineffectual Rep. Fred Upton recited like a litany during the hearing (see 0:13:30 in the video) — but none of it addresses the lead piping.

Donald Trump won the Republican primary in Flint’s home county of Genessee, by the way. Can’t understand why…

Cleaning off the desk
Stuff worth perusing, but I’m not going to elaborate on before I chuck it in the bin for the week.

  • Microsoft suing U.S. government for gagging the software company about government requests for users’ information. (Microsoft) — MSFT president Brad Smith wrote in a blog post about the suit; note the complaint here (pdf) in which MSFT shared these details:

    Between September 2014 and March 2016, Microsoft received 5,624 federal demands for customer information or data. Of those, nearly half—2,576—were accompanied by secrecy orders, forbidding Microsoft from telling the affected customers that the government was looking at their information. The vast majority of these secrecy orders related to consumer accounts and prevent Microsoft from telling affected individuals about the government’s intrusion into their personal affairs; others prevent Microsoft from telling business customers that the government has searched and seized the emails of individual employees of the customer. Further, 1,752 of these secrecy orders contained no time limit, meaning that Microsoft could forever be barred from telling the affected customer about the government’s intrusion. The government has used this tactic in this District. Since September 2014, Microsoft received 25 secrecy orders issued in this District, none of which contained any time limit. These secrecy orders prohibit Microsoft from speaking about the government’s specific demands to anyone and forbid Microsoft from ever telling its customers whose documents and communications the government has obtained. The secrecy orders thus prevent Microsoft’s customers and the public at large from ever learning the full extent of government access to private, online information

    Emphasis Microsoft’s. Therein the one way to release a limited amount of information: file suit against the government.

  • Claims after March attack that Brussels airport security was lax impels Belgium’s transport minister to quit (euronews) — Bombs were detonated before security clearance area; not certain how minister could have prevented bombing except to move clearance all the way to the edge of the airport’s perimeter instead of after check-in.
  • UC-Davis sanitized the internet to prop its image (SacBee) — School paid $175K to excise references to a 2011 attack on student protesters by police using teargas. Should keep in mind UC-Davis is part of the University of California, of which former Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano is president, who authorized spying-by-malware on UC-Berkeley.
  • Hey, did you know there’s a tiny sovereign country inside U.S. borders? (Atlas Obscura) — Welcome to Molossia, have a nice day! Surprised no uber-wealthy hit on this as a potential money-laundering. tax-avoidance strategy: make your own country inside the U.S.

And with that we’re off, headed for a nice spring weekend ahead. Have a good one!

CDC: Zika Virus Confirmed as a Cause of Microcephaly

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CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden confirmed Wednesday that the flavivirus known as Zika is a cause of microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects.

The confirmation is based on an evaluation of available data for potential teratogenic effects. Using both Shepard criteria and Bradford Hill criteria, researchers proved prenatal Zika virus infection has a causal relationship with microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies.

The first set of seven criteria used in the assessment were developed by Dr. Thomas Shepard to assess an agent’s teratogenicity — the ability to cause birth defects. The criteria of proof are:

1. Proven exposure to agent at critical time(s) in prenatal development

2. Consistent findings by two or more epidemiologic studies of high quality

a. control of confounding factors
b. sufficient numbers
c. exclusion of positive and negative bias factors
d. prospective studies, if possible, and
e. relative risk of six or more

3. Careful delineation of the clinical cases. A specific defect or syndrome, if present, is very helpful.

4. Rare environmental exposure associated with rare defect. Probably three or more cases.

5. Teratogenicity in experimental animals important but not essential.

6. The association should make biological sense.

7. Proof in an experimental system that the agent acts in an unaltered state. Important for prevention.

______
Note:
Items 1~3 or 1, 3, and 4 are essential criteria.
Items 5~7 are helpful but not essential.

Shepard criteria summary:

1. The microcephaly and other brain defects observed in infants and fetuses were consistent with maternal Zika infection during first and second trimester of pregnancy. Mothers exhibited symptoms, and/or had infections confirmed by labs, and/or had traveled to areas where Zika was endemic. This criterion was met.

2. Data documenting the location of Zika virus infections and the subsequent incidence of microcephaly in those areas was supported by two epidemiologic studies. But as sample sizes were too small and controls were lacking, this criterion has not yet been met.

3. Cases manifesting with a very specific defect (an atypical microcephaly) or syndrome (a narrow range of neurological defects in tandem with microcephaly) satisfied this third criterion. With Zika infection, microcephalic cases displayed adequate bone tissue and scalp skin production, but ‘collapsed’ due to the disrupted development of fetal brain tissue. This is not common in other microcephalies.

4. An adequate number of cases fulfilled the criteria of rare exposure and rare defect — one example cited was that of a pregnant woman who traveled for a week to areas where Zika was not endemic. She tested positive for Zika during her second trimester, and the fetus displayed brain defects associated with Zika after the infection.

5. Studies for this criteria — teratogenicity in animal models — are still under way. This criterion is not yet satisfied.

6. This criterion is met as the causal relationship makes biologic sense.

7. This criterion does not apply to infectious agents.

The essential Shepard criteria have been met for proof of teratogenicity.

Bradford Hill criteria summary

Of the nine criterion — the strength of association, consistency, specificity, temporality, biologic gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment (on animal models), and analogy — only two criterion are not applicable or not available. The remaining seven criterion were met in much the same manner as the Shepard criteria 1, 3, 4 were met.

What’s next

A spectrum of additional fetal abnormalities has not yet been fully identified in association with Zika infection. This will become clear once some pregnancies being monitored reach term.

We don’t yet know if Zika virus affects adult neurological tissues; some cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) have been reported in areas where Zika is endemic. GBS has occurred in patients after viral infections where neurological tissues have been affected; it would make biologic sense for there to be a causal relationship between Zika and GBS. However, GBS has occurred in patients long after an initial infection, making it difficult to see obvious relationships without further screening and testing.

A Zika vaccine may be some time off; of the flavivirus family, only yellow fever and a couple of encephalitis viruses have vaccines while others like West Nile and dengue do not.

Mosquito control varies widely from state to state, let alone by county or municipality. We do not know if it is adequate to ensure Zika’s spread via Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquito species is limited. U.S. experience with the spread of West Nile Virus may be informative.

Funding for additional research, education, training, vaccine development and mosquito control, as well as funding increases for birth control are much needed, But the GOP-led Congress will likely avoid this issue during the remaining days it is in session this election year.

In the meantime, if you’re around mosquitoes in warmer areas of the U.S., are pregnant, plan to be pregnant, or might get someone pregnant, check the CDC’s guidelines on Zika.

#FlintWaterCrisis: I Don’t Think That Report Said What You Think It Said, Gov

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Today’s House Oversight Committee hearing into the Flint Water Crisis was a joke. It was partisan — more so than the previous two hearings — because Republicans finally clued in that a Republican state governor’s crisis doesn’t make them look good if they don’t kick up a stink and draw fire away from their role in the mess.

And yes, Congress’ GOP members are directly responsible for what happened in Flint, because they are also responsible for neutering the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress is the one entity which failed to take any responsibility for what happened in Flint — and what happened in Flint had already happened in Washington DC. Congress ensured that the EPA would be subordinate to the states, relying on states to act with inadequate recourse to step in and intervene. See Primacy Enforcement Responsibility for Public Water Systems (pdf) and note the obligations the states have to ensure safe drinking water under these laws:

  • Safe Drinking Water Act, 1974, as amended in 1986 and 1996
  • Primacy Regulations 40 CFR Part 142, Subpart B, 1976, as amended in 1986
  • Revisions to Primacy Requirements (1998), 63 FR 23362 codified at 40 CFR Part 142

These are Congress’ purview; as part of the Executive Branch, the EPA does not make law. Only Congress does.

Equally annoying today is the tendency by the Republican representatives to go easy on Michigan’s Governor Snyder, who tried to make it sound like he was doing everything he could to fix Flint and be open and transparent. You know this is bull hockey if you’ve looked at batches of emails released to date.

You know it’s also nonsense if you look at documents produced by the Snyder administration, intended to assist the public with understanding what happened.

One example is a timeline of the Flint water crisis laid out in a two-page presentation, with bubbles containing descriptions of events. A bubble marking March 12, 2015, appears in the upper right of the first page, denoting the submission of a report by Veolia Water. The firm had been hired by Flint’s emergency manager as water quality consultant to review and evaluate the water treatment process and distribution system.

Veolia completed and submitted their report to the city on March 12, but the report does not actually say what the state’s timeline document says. Veolia wrote,

“Although a review of water quality records for the time period under our study indicates compliance with State and Federal water quality regulations, Veolia, as an operator and manager of comparable utilities, recommends a variety of actions to address improvements in water quality and related aesthetics including: operational changes and improvements; changes in water treatment processes, procedures and chemical dosing; adjustments in how current technologies are being used; increased maintenance and capital program activities; increased training; and, an enhanced customer communications program.”

Veolia relied on what previous water quality records said; they did not actually conduct tests themselves, or audit how the previous records and reports were prepared.

But the timeline published by the governor’s office reads,

“Flint water consultant Veolia, issues report that water meets state and federal standards. Does not report specifically on lead.”

The second sentence is correct, the first a misrepresentation. That’s not what Veolia’s report said.

The second sentence may be factually correct, but the company was not hired by Flint’s emergency manager to evaluate lead levels specifically, based on the supporting documentation accompanying the resolution authorizing the contract with Veolia.

If one entry on the timeline prepared by the state is this iffy, what about the rest of the timeline?

If this timeline is this iffy, what about everything else generated by officials from the governor’s office on down?