Absent More

A government worker is 38 percent more likely to be absent from work for personal reasons or illnesses than a private-sector worker, and government workers miss 50 percent more of their usual work hours as a result of such absences than do private sector workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Each month, the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey collects information from 60,000 households, including information on employment status.  BLS uses this data to publish employment statistics.

The survey is conducted during the week that includes the 19th day of the month and the questions it asks that reference a particular week apply to the week that includes the 12th day of the month.

“When an employed wage and salary worker who usually works 35 hours per week is reported as having worked fewer than 35 hours during the survey reference week (including those with jobs who worked zero hours), a question is asked as to why he or she worked fewer than 35 hours,” explains the BLS. 

“Workers whose reasons for missing work include their own illness or other personal reasons (such as family responsibilities or transportation problems) are counted as having had an absence. Those who are reported as having worked fewer than 35 hours because of vacation, holiday, labor-management dispute, or bad weather which results in an employer temporarily curtailing business activities are not counted as having an absence.”

In 2012, according to BLS, 4.0 percent of government workers reported being absent from work in the typical reference week compared to 2.9 percent of private-sector workers. Thus, a government worker was 38 percent more likely to be absent than a private-sector worker.

Government workers also missed more of their usual work hours as a result of such absences than did private-sector workers. In 2012, according to BLS, private sector workers missed 1.4 percent of their usual work hours as a result of absences and government workers missed 2.1 percent of their usual work hours because of absences. 

Thus, government workers missed 50 percent more of their usual work hours as a result of absences than private-sector workers did.

Middle East Hackers

When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country might face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyberattack could one day bring the nation to a standstill.

Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was not speaking empty words. Exactly one month before his address, a major artery in Israel's national road network in the northern city of Haifa was shut down because of a cyberattack, cybersecurity experts tell The Associated Press, knocking key operations out of commission two days in a row and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

One expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because the breach of security was a classified matter, said a Trojan horse attack targeted the security camera system in the Carmel Tunnels toll road on Sept. 8. A Trojan horse is a malicious computer program that users unknowingly install that can give hackers complete control over their systems.

The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.

The expert said investigators believe the attack was the work of unknown, sophisticated hackers, similar to the Anonymous hacking group that led attacks on Israeli websites in April. He said investigators determined it was not sophisticated enough to be the work of an enemy government like Iran.

The expert said Israel's National Cyber Bureau, a two-year-old classified body that reports to the prime minister, was aware of the incident. The bureau declined comment, while Carmelton, the company that oversees the toll road, blamed a "communication glitch" for the mishap.

While Israel is a frequent target of hackers, the tunnel is the most high-profile landmark known to have been attacked. It is a major thoroughfare for Israel's third-largest city, and the city is looking to turn the tunnel into a public shelter in case of emergency, highlighting its importance.

To read more, click here…

Interacting with Alien Life

We should start thinking about how to interact with alien species long before coming into contact with extraterrestrial life, experts say.

Coming up with a strict set of guidelines that govern the way people on future interstellar space missions study and interact with aliens is imperative before anyone blasts off to a distant world, according to attendees at Starship Congress in August.

While a "prime directive" — the rule that prevented Star Fleet officers from interfering with the business of alien life-forms on TV's "Star Trek" — might be a little extreme, such a rule could help govern interactions between aliens and humans. [13 Ways to Contact Intelligent Alien Life]

"In the event that we discover evidence of intelligent life on another world, that will be a social, cultural and technologically influential event to human affairs which will need to be managed with great care and to ensure our culture and their culture remains intact and not disrupted by this new knowledge," Kelvin Long, the founder of Project Icarus, said during a panel on Aug. 16.

People traveling to distant stars will be carrying tangible and intangible aspects of human culture with them, so it should be curated responsibly before being sent to an alien planet, one expert said.

"I think it comes down to how we're going," Armen Papazian, the CEO of the International Space Development Hub, said. "Do we trust that this is a beautiful universe, an incredible cosmos? Do we really believe that it's an amazing landscape, it's a bed of stars?

What do we think we're going out there to find and are we going to embrace it or are we going to utilize? Are we trying to export our scarcity economics or are we trying to enjoy the abundant cosmos? … Whatever we are here, we're going to export wherever we go."

It's possible that humans in the future will have no desire to land on exoplanets after free-roaming in space for years at a time, Icarus Interstellar President Richard Obousy said.

"I'm not convinced that when we have the capabilities to build starships … that we'll want to go from one gravitational abyss to another gravitational abyss," Obousy said. "I'm not convinced that settling on planets or even moons is going to be necessary."

Humans can't help but explore and interact with the world around them, Icarus Interstellar's James Benford said during the panel.

"We won't leave them alone," Benford said. "We would like to explore alien ecology extensively to understand if there are any interactions leading to incompatibilities. 

We would need to establish human research stations to do that because it's a complex problem. It seems unlikely that there would be interference between separately evolved ecologies, especially if we minimize contamination and wear the appropriate suits."

Hump Day Art

Rise of The Tea Party

Ronald Reagan

SUNDAY, OCT 27, 2013 09:30 AM EDT

Reagan’s Southern strategy gave rise to the Tea Party

By leveraging race and religion — especially in the South — he set an example for today's bitter politics

BY LAWRENCE FREEDMAN

Late in the 1960s the practice of political campaigning in the United States began to be transformed. New techniques meant that it was increasingly possible to disseminate messages to extraordinary numbers of potential voters, tailored to the interests and views of particular constituencies. At the same time attitudes were in flux, a consequence of the past decade’s social upheavals, and the old party machines were declining in influence. All these factors combined to accentuate the established tendency in political strategy to accentuate the negative.

When journalist James Perry wrote about The New Politics in 1968 his focus was on technique and not about how protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and community organizations might be shaking up the old elite. He explained how polling and marketing were becoming more sophisticated, and even drew attention to the potential uses of computers. Perry described how the moderate George Romney was taking advantage of these techniques in the race for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. By the time the book was published, however, Romney’s campaign had collapsed, having failed to connect with voters. The new techniques could only take you so far.

The importance of a media image had been underlined in different ways in the previous two elections. John Kennedy had famously gained an advantage over Richard Nixon in the televised presidential debate in 1960, and then the possibilities of negative advertising had been underlined by one used by the Democrats against Barry Goldwater in 1964. This showed a small girl counting daisies as a missile countdown began leading toward a nuclear explosion, with President Johnson in the background urging peace. This became identified as a turning point in technique. It played on an established image of Goldwater’s recklessness. The appeal of the ad was emotional. It contained no facts and Goldwater’s name was not mentioned.

The limitations of technique when combined with an uncertain message were illustrated by Nixon’s 1968 Presidential campaign. Joe McGinnis’s “Selling of the President” captured the idea that someone so unprepossessing could be turned into a marketable political product. The aim was to attach a positive, moderate image to Nixon. But this cautious approach was not wholly successful. The margin of victory was surprisingly narrow.

To read entire article, click here…

Synthetic Biology

A cheese made from human bacteria, part of Selfmade, 

a project by Christina Agapakis and Sissel Tolaas. 

Photograph: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

A ripe round of brie sits next to a block of farmhouse cheddar, emitting a pungent aroma not dissimilar to the musky whiff found at the bottom of a laundry basket. "That one comes from my armpit," says Daisy Ginsberg, pointing to the brie.

"The other one comes from the artist's mouth." There is a third block, labeled Ben's Natural Rind Cheese. I don't want to ask where that comes from.

These cheeses, which you could call edible self-portraits, are grown from human bacteria by American biologist Christina Agapakis, with the help of Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas.

They are one of 25 projects Ginsberg has brought to the Science Gallery in Dublin for Grow Your Own, an exhibition that shows how artists are working with scientists to explore the rapidly expanding field of synthetic biology – the practice of interfering in the design of organic life.

It can perhaps be summed up in an intriguing question raised by one of the artists in this show: would a mouse with Elvis's DNA behave like him?

"It's causing a biotechnical revolution, but most people don't even know what it is," says Ginsberg, who studied architecture before doing a masters in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art.

Headed by the show's co-curator Anthony Dunne, the department has become an incubator of wild thinking, a place where many of the show's exhibitors developed their way of looking at the world, dreaming up compelling near-future scenarios in which design, politics and science collide.

"Synthetic biology is essentially about how we design life," says Ginsberg, "which raises a whole raft of legal and ethical questions that are only just beginning to be addressed. We're hoping this exhibition will help to open up a public debate by asking what we could or should be designing."

Next to the fridges of human cheese stands an anatomical model of a pregnant woman, sliced open to reveal the womb. Yet instead of a human fetus, nestling cozily in the uterine lining is a baby dolphin.

"Wouldn't it be nice to give birth to an endangered species?" says the project's Japanese designer, Ai Hasegawa, a keen scuba-diver whose grandfather was a sushi chef. 

"People are finding it harder to justify having children," she adds, "particularly given the feeling of uncertainty in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and there are moral questions about adding to the Earth's overpopulation.

Mothering a shark or a dolphin could satisfy the maternal urge, while investing in the future food supply." At the end of its natural life, Hasegawa suggests, you could track down your aquatic offspring and eat it.     To read more, click here…

TRUST ME...

Ok…  but, only if you are attractive

Children tend to trust people with attractive faces more than unattractive ones, a new study has found.  32 preschool children were shown pictures of a novel object and two adult faces on either side.

The meaning of trust:  assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something; one in which confidence is placed.

The faces were taken from a pool of 48 photos that had been ranked from most attractive to least attractive by college students.  The scientists then asked the children who they would ask to correctly identify the object.

Researchers found the kids chose the attractive face over the unattractive one.  Then each face would “offer” a different name for the object.

Again the children were more likely to trust the answer of the more attractive person.  Girls had a greater preference for the attractive face than the boys, the study revealed.

“We see from the results that children and especially girls have more trust in attractive faces, even though there are no obvious reasons why people with more attractive faces would be more knowledgeable about object labels,” said study author Igor Bascandziev of Harvard University, quoted in the International Business Times.

The study suggests humans are born with an inherent bias towards more attractive people.  "inherent bias" refers to the effect of underlying factors or assumptions that skew viewpoints a subject under discussion.

Other studies have shown children are more likely to trust someone from their own cultural and ethic backgrounds.  Bascandziev says it would be interesting to see more research along these lines.

New research indicates that by the time they are 9 months old, babies are better able to recognize faces and emotional expressions of people who belong to the group they interact with most, than they are those of people who belong to another race.

Babies don't start out this way; younger infants appear equally able to tell people apart, regardless of race.

"These results suggest that biases in face recognition and perception begin in preverbal infants, well before concepts about race are formed. It is important for us to understand the nature of these biases in order to reduce or eliminate [the biases]," said study researcher Lisa Scott, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in a statement. 

In the study, 48 Caucasian infants were given the task of differentiating between faces of their own race and faces that belonged to another, unfamiliar, race. 

In another experiment, sensors placed on the babies' heads detected brain activity when the babies saw images of faces of Caucasian or African-American races expressing emotions that either matched or did not match sounds they heard, such as laughing and crying.

The Little Black Box

As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

Several states are not waiting on Congress to make a decision. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

"This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something we might choose to do," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by 2025. "There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes. The technology is there to do it."

The push comes as the country's Highway Trust Fund, financed with taxes Americans pay at the gas pump, is broke. Americans don't buy as much gas as they used to. Cars get many more miles to the gallon. The federal tax itself, 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn't gone up in 20 years. Politicians are loath to raise the tax even one penny when gas prices are high.

"The gas tax is just not sustainable," said Lee Munnich, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. His state recently put tracking devices on 500 cars to test out a pay-by-mile system. "This works out as the most logical alternative over the long term," he said.

It is no surprise that the idea appeals to urban liberals, as the taxes could be rigged to change driving patterns in ways that could help reduce congestion and greenhouse gases, for example. California planners are looking to the system as they devise strategies to meet the goals laid out in the state's ambitious global warming laws. 

Without Violence

Spreading rumors and mocking someone's appearance may seem like schoolgirl behavior, but new research finds women can also bring that attitude into the adult world. The study calls this type of action "indirect aggression."

Tracy Vaillancourt, the study's author, recently told the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts that this type of hostility is used without getting caught; it is underhanded and not direct.

"We do things like we exclude people from the peer group, we give the silent treatment - you know that customary I won't speak to you for three weeks and then you have to figure out why I'm mad at you," said Vaillancourt. "We'll spread rumors about the person, so we'll disparage their appearance, we'll suggest that they're promiscuous, those sorts of things."

She explained that while men may use "indirect aggression," they do not do it as much as women.

"When we aggress against somebody, we do it indirectly," she said. "When men aggress against others, a lot of times it's direct, it's verbal."

An authoritative study published by the Royal Society has explored the scientific basis for “competition and aggression” between women, and found that they have most likely evolved to be mean to one another.

Dedicating a whole journal issue to the theme and inviting international evidence from across disciplines, the research found that the “constraints of offspring production and care” meant that it favored the female of the species to resort to low-risk forms of aggression.

Scientists said that since Darwin first put forward his theories on reproductive competition, extensive research has been done on how more expendable men developed larger body size, use of weaponry and ritualised displays of aggression.

Little work has gone into the equivalent for women, however, with studies more likely to focus on more direct reproductive traits such as mate selection.

“Despite a history of being largely overlooked, evidence is now accumulating for the widespread evolutionary significance of female competition,” the report’s authors Paula Stockley and Anne Campbell explained.

Writing in the introduction to December’s issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, they described their work as a first step in “a new expansion of interest in female competition”.

“Females compete for resources needed to survive and reproduce, and for preferred mates,” Dr Stockley said.

“Although female aggression takes diverse forms, under most circumstances relatively low-risk competitive strategies are favored.”

The scientists added that they found “coalitions or alliances may reduce risk of retaliation” – a theory to explain why groups of women gang up on others – as famously documented in the 2004 Lindsay Lohan film Mean Girls.

Professor Campbell, an evolutionary psychologist at Durham University, nonetheless told the website LiveScience that while meanness has traditionally been seen as a female weapon, it can be used in just the same way by men.

“There is virtually no sex difference in indirect aggression,” Professor Campbell said. “By the time you get to adulthood, particularly in work situations, men use this too.”

Religious Suspension

The still-under-construction residence of the Catholic bishop of Limburg, 

Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, in Limburg, Germany.(Photo: Fredrik von Erichsen, EPA)

Pope Francis has suspended a German bishop caught in a furor over a $42 million renovation to his residence that features lavish fixtures and artwork and a reported $20,000 bathtub.

Bishop of Limburg Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, derided here in newspapers as the "Bishop of Bling," waited eight days in Rome before being granted an audience Monday with Francis.

Francis has been extolling the virtues of humility and modesty among the clergy since being named pope. He put Tebartz-van Elst on leave pending an audit into the diocese's expenditures, the Vatican said Wednesday.

German media, citing official documents, said the residence in the small city of Limburg in western Germany has a conference table that cost $34,000 and a private chapel that cost $4 million. The residence includes offices, private apartments, living quarters for nuns and a museum.

Tebartz-van Elst has defended the expenditures, saying that the bill was actually for 10 projects and that there were additional costs because of regulations on buildings under historical protection, according to the broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Germany's main lay Catholic group, the Central Committee of German Catholics, praised the pope's action as creating "the necessary space to clear up completely and firmly the events in Limburg," said the group's head, Alois Glueck.

"Pope Francis' decision offers the chance of a first step toward a new beginning in the Limburg Diocese, because the situation had become an increasing burden for the faithful there and in all of Germany over recent weeks," Glueck said.

The German bishops' conference will investigate. Franz-Josef Bode, bishop of Osnabrueck, told the German newspaper Die Welt that there is doubt whether Tebartz-van Elst will return to duties in Limburg.

"I continue to think that the bishop returning to the Limburg Diocese and a new beginning there with Tebartz-van Elst are very difficult," Bode said. "There is a fundamental crisis of confidence in Limburg. The situation there is a mess."

Tebartz-van Elst has been under intense scrutiny in Germany since it emerged in court documents and news stories that the renovation of the building complex that serves as the seat of the diocese went tens of millions of dollars over budget.

The bishop tasked architect Michael Frielinghaus with creating a house of God that would "still be full of dignity in a century," the architect told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The clergyman put no limits on Frielinghaus' spending, the architect said.

Sunday Funnies

Caturday

...Too, too many...

T. G. I. F. Solitude

Let the light in...

Soothes the Soul

More than 40 percent of people say listening to music can help alleviate pain, with songs by Elton John, Robbie Williams and Simon and Garfunkel among the favorites, a new British survey out Thursday said.

Music seems to have an even bigger impact for younger people, with two-thirds those questioned aged 16 to 24 claiming it helps them manage pain, according to the study by Lloyds Pharmacy group.

Pop music is the most popular genre for sufferers, helping to alleviate pain for 21 percent of people, followed by classical 17 at percent and then rock or indie at 16 percent.

The company is currently trying out the use of music within the pain relief service it provides.

The survey found that the top five most helpful songs selected by people living with persistent pain are:

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel)
2. Angels (Robbie Williams)
3. Albatross (Fleetwood Mac)
4. Candle In The Wind (Elton John)
5. Easy (The Commodores)

An estimated 10 million people in Britain experience some pain most days, Lloyds Pharmacy said.

The company based its research on responses from over 1,500 people living with persistent pain.

"There are lots of different ways of managing pain, not only with medicines but also with lifestyle changes such as moderate exercise and relaxation," said Andrew Mawhinney, a Lloyds Pharmacy pharmacist and pain expert.

"After speaking to many people who are living with pain, we were interested to learn just how many found music beneficial".

David Bradshaw, a Research Assistant Professor at The University of Utah Pain Management Center said: "People in pain should try to find some activity to get fully engaged in.

"Listening to favorite music is excellent for that because it can involve both thoughts and feelings."