When they’re used well, graphs can help us intuitively grasp complex data. But as visual software has enabled more usage of graphs throughout all media, it has also made them easier to use in a careless or dishonest way — and as it turns out, there are plenty of ways graphs can mislead and outright manipulate. Lea Gaslowitz shares some things to look out for.
8 July 2017
Haaretz: New Study Reveals How Secular Israelis Have Eroded the Religious Status Quo
“The status quo on matters of religion and state is imaginary, but that’s also its advantage,” says the editor of the forthcoming research, Shuki Friedman, the director of the Center for Religion, Nation and State at the Israel Democracy Institute, who is also a member of the law faculty at the Peres Academic Center. “Each side can see in it what it wants, so over the years, the status quo has become a magic term that politicians and even the court have relied on to describe the relationship between religion and state,” Friedman says. “The arrangement between religion and state in Israel, which is included in the imaginary status quo, has constantly changed in every field. The service provided by the state is becoming increasingly superfluous and the arrangement establishing it is becoming emptied of content.” [...]
It is the secular side, at least the study asserts, that is behind the status quo’s erosion. Perhaps the best example is the Shabbat observance issue. Although public transportation in Israel on Shabbat is very limited, there has been a major shift regarding everything related to what is open on Shabbat. There has been a certain distinction in most of the country between places of entertainment, many of which have remained open, and retail establishments, which have traditionally been closed. The study found that 98 percent of movie theaters, 65 percent of museums, and 83 percent of cultural institutions are open on Shabbat. But the study also found that 20 percent of shopping malls are open. [...]
When it comes to Shabbat, not only entertainment complexes have changed but also the street scene. Over the years, Jerusalem’s Bar-Ilan Street had been closed to vehicular traffic on Shabbat. After a bitter battle in the 1990s, the High Court ordered it opened to traffic. The right of the individual and freedom of movement took precedence over religion. “The ruling in the Bar-Ilan Street case constitutes an important landmark in casting aside the value of Shabbat, eroding the status quo, and preferring liberal values,” writes Friedman. “It’s a sign indicating what the trend is.” [...]
So, for example, the high court has accorded recognition to civil marriages performed abroad. The Central Bureau of Statistics reported that by 2013, about 20 percent of couples registered as married had had civil ceremonies abroad. That is in addition to couples who arrange their own private weddings in Israel and forgo state recognition that they are married, though they can be recognized as partners in a civil union (“yeduim batzibur,” in Hebrew).
In addition, in recent years, Israelis have increasingly married abroad in non-Orthodox Jewish ceremonies. In Israel, a breach in the rabbinate’s monopoly on Orthodox weddings was opened through organizations such as Tzohar. “The power of the marketplace is working,” says Rabbi David Stav, Tzohar’s chairman, who acknowledges that the status quo has dramatically eroded. Stav doesn’t view that as necessarily a bad thing. “The idea that we need to get into the veins of secular people over everything and that in the process we are serving Judaism, I think is a mistake.”
Politico: How China misread Donald Trump
But one of those bad problems isn’t going anywhere, and as a result, Trump’s view of China is quickly turning sour. The reason for his dwindling patience is Beijing’s failure to rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program and escalating series of missile tests, the latest being an intercontinental ballistic missile that might someday carry a nuclear payload that could hit the continental United States. “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try!” [...]
The Chinese miscalculated with Trump in two ways related to North Korea. First, China failed to take significant concrete steps for which Trump could claim credit. China’s announced suspension of coal imports from North Korea, a substantial punishment of North Korea, took place before the Mar-a-Lago summit and in response to U.N. resolutions — and this is a president who needs to be able to take personal credit for concrete things. [...]
The two entities are small, so China would not have lost face by cracking down on them. Most important, going after them would not have brought into play China’s most fundamental strategic concern regarding North Korea: that tightening the screws enough to freeze its nuclear program and bring it to the bargaining table would jeopardize the survival of what Beijing views as a buffer state. The unusual step of going after some Chinese nationals for money laundering that helps finance North Korea would have responded to Trump’s overtures at little cost to China and demonstrated that China was prepared to put new pressure on the North Korean regime.
The second Chinese miscalculation was to assume that President Trump would be patient in waiting for concrete steps and results from China on North Korea. One of China’s finest international relations scholars, Professor Shi Yinhong, was quoted the other day as saying, “The latest situation [has] illustrated that Trump is a leader without patience.” Indeed. But this lesson should have been learned long ago. Not only has President Trump said repeatedly that “the era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed” — he is characteristically an impatient person. Chinese diplomats are exquisitely skilled in tactics of delay, but the more valuable skill in dealing with Trump is managing his impatience.
Motherboard: We’re a Cheap Battery Away From Phasing Out Fossil Fuels
A study published in January in the Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment predicts that the combination of battery storage with renewable energy will make fossil fuels increasingly obsolete. The driving forces of this disruption include the "decline in retail renewable electricity prices," along with plummeting costs of batteries, in which technological efficiencies are improving exponentially.
Fossil fuels are the most widely used source of energy because of base load power, which means they provide energy at all times, night and day. In contrast, renewables have faced the 'intermittency' challenge—the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow.
But authors Jemma Green and Peter Newman of Curtin University in Australia show that as storage gets cheaper, renewables will become more competitive with fossil fuels on costs and reliability. By 2050, these irresistible technological and market forces could make oil, gas and coal seem too costly and cumbersome, leading renewables to account for "100 percent of global energy demand." [...]
In three years, he said, it will "begin to transform" the electricity infrastructure of major cities. "Solar storage is pitched to become so cheap it will make relying on natural gas peaker plants pointless…It will lead to rapid adoption of solar by businesses, local governments, and households—not because people are environmentally conscious, but simply because it will make more economic sense." [...]
The next stage in this process will come when these solar households start buying lithium-ion battery systems. The combined price of solar storage, say Green and Newman, could guide us toward grid parity—equal to or less than the price of purchasing electricity from the national grid. When this happens, solar storage "will flood the market, increasing supply and creating a lower market price for electricity," Mayor said. [...]
Another issue is whether the solar storage disruption will survive growing hostility from the fossil fuel industries, and the governments protecting them. The Trump administration, for instance, has openly declared war on clean energy. I asked Mayor whether this will throw a giant spanner in the works of the "new electricity ecosystem".
Politico: Merkel may be leading, but who’s following?
Internationally, Berlin has increased its engagement — in Mali, the Mediterranean and elsewhere — stepping up where others have stepped down. Perhaps ironically, the nation responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century has — for many — become the defender of global progress in the 21st. [...]
Take the never-ending eurozone crisis. Merkel’s dictum — “if the euro fails, Europe fails” — has remained Berlin’s tautological reply to a perpetual crisis in Greece and beyond. She certainly deserves credit for defending the euro; not every call for reforms is objectionable. But Berlin’s single-minded insistence on austerity and structural reforms is as one-sided as it is self-referential.
“Germans tend to view economics as part of moral philosophy,” former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti liked to quip. The consequences for Europe, however, have been anything but amusing. The German obsession with the thrifty “Swabian housewife” has condemned a Continent in dire need of investment to years of economic stagnation.
Irrespective of its intentions, Berlin’s leadership in managing the crisis has not united the European Union but only deepened its fault lines. Even as southern member countries struggle with record unemployment and waves of populist unrest, Germany is booming. [...]
But there is a difference between political leadership and dogmatic isolation. In the two years since Merkel’s optimistic “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”), Berlin has not only failed to bring about a common European response to the challenges of migration; it has stopped pretending to try. [...]
Merkel’s view is, in fact, shared by her fellow citizens, whose appetite for global leadership remains limited. Berlin’s de facto dominance in Europe notwithstanding, Germans are as reluctant as ever to embrace a prominent international role. According to recent polls, only 42 percent support increasing the country’s minute defense budget, 41 percent favor a more robust engagement abroad, and only 38 percent would like to take a stronger military stance against the Islamic State.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)