A Sense of Doubt blog post #1899 - WEEKLY HODGE PODGE FOR 2004.30
Welcome back. Here we are for another weekly hodge podge, the gallimaufry, the stew pot, everything and the kitchen sink included.
I decided not to make this a HEY MOM post as I have for the last few weeks because I am going to do a HEY MOM post tomorrow for entry #1900. I also chose not to run a THROWBACK THURSDAY today for the same reason. I will likely have at least one throwback photo tomorrow.
I just grab the things that catch my attention each week and stuff them into this post. For instance, my wife and I watched the Beastie Boys Story, the documentary by Spike Jonz, which we both loved, so when I found a review by music scholar and well known writer KURT LODER, I had to include the link and an excerpt.
As always, there's going to be comic book content as I found a new channel that I like. I am always appreciative when I find people geekier than me! There's new information from the Navy on unexplained UFOs. There's some Trump sniping because that's the state of our hate nation right now, even though I am not saving this one in that same named category. I am pleased to learn that Trump's poll numbers for re-election are slipping in key battleground states because many swing voters were disgusted at his vitriolic (what the GOP called "combative"), disrespectful, undignified, and unprofessional behavior in his news conferences as he, like all presidents before him, had to take tough questions. What boggles my mind is Trump's utter inability to admit fault. He never does anything wrong! And he cannot take it when journalists try to pin him down on things he did wrong. It's all "Fake News." Comparisons of Trump to a school yard bully have always been apt, but as he deflects blame, misrepresents the truth to make it seem like he did everything right, it's even more obvious. He's emotionally a child and has no progression in his own process of individuation. It would be more sad than maddening and anger-provoking if he wasn't the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
sigh.
But there's more in this post than "Trumpian" nonsense. After the Trump show, there's a great video on the power of women's anger and some great science on the evolution of sex and glowing plants made with mushroom genes (because, of course).
Hubble captured break-up of the Atlas comet, and there's video! Don't you just love the state of tech right now?
I have an interesting story on how what led to Pete Rose's life ban from Baseball started as a joke. There's an interesting study that nicotine may help against COVID-19. There's a great blog post by the same author of Brane Space that provided some of the anti-Trump stuff with a condemnation of people jamming beaches in California and Florida. But around all that, there's a FANTASTIC story of a supreme court chief justice who resigned and blasted the current regime and John Roberts. Read the whole thing because it's great, but here's excerpts:
On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been a member of that bar since 1972.
You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination...The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.
Please remove my name from the rolls.
With deepest regret,
James Dannenberg
AWESOME.And then there's a cool post about dogs and an amusing disclaimer.
This is a good one. I hope you, my reader, all two of you, enjoy it. Someone please let me know in the comments!
As with all our weeks lately, there's COVID-19 news because how can there not be. In fact, each week I am posting the stats, so let's get that out of the way right now.
AND NOW SOME MORE SCIENCE RELATED TO THE PANDEMIC
But first the weekly update on deaths, though I am grabbing the image yesterday (Wednesday 2004.22) but close enough, eh? Data can be found here, as always:
This is also a good data site:
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
1,066,878
Deaths:
61,797
Recovered:
147,473
So, those are the numbers as of today. Elsewhere today, people in my former home state continued to prove that 10% of people in this country are complete dipshits with a show of their "rights" to bear arms and be complete assholes, showing off their grotesque misogyny because Michigan's governor is a woman, and they don't like a matriarchal figure telling them to stay home.
I was disappointed and disgusted before. Now, I am more so.
Armed protesters entered Michigan’s state Capitol during rally against stay-at-home order
Heavily armed men were among a crowd of hundreds protesting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive actions.
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Hundreds of demonstrators — some of them heavily armed — crowded into Michigan’s state Capitol Thursday afternoon to protest against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s shelter-at-home order.
The demonstration began outside the Capitol early in the day in heavy rain, but later in the afternoon, police allowed several hundred protesters — many not wearing masks — inside the building itself.
Protesters stood in the gallery while others attempted to gain access to the House floor, cramming themselves into the entryway chanting “Let us in!” They were held at bay by the chamber’s sergeant at arms.
The “American Patriot Rally” was organized in response to a vote being debated in the state legislature Thursday on whether to continue Michigan’s state of emergency, which was declared on March 10 to address the coronavirus pandemic.
The Republican-held legislature ultimately voted to revoke the emergency declaration Thursday as protesters looked on. Republican state legislators are now preparing to sue the governor over her shelter-at-home order, despite a state court ruling Wednesday that said the order was constitutional.
And we enter the phrase of the proceedings when @NYGovCuomo gives the federal government the finger pic.twitter.com/9QDit4IU1A— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) April 29, 2020
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Pentagon Formally Releases 3 Navy Videos Showing 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena'
The Pentagon on Monday formally released three unclassified videos taken by Navy pilots that have circulated for years showing interactions with "unidentified aerial phenomena." CBS News reports:One of the videos shows an incident from 2004, and the other two were recorded in January 2015, according to Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman. The 2004 incident occurred about 100 miles out in the Pacific, according to The New York Times, which first reported on the video in 2017. Two fighter pilots on a routine training mission were dispatched to investigate unidentified aircraft that a Navy cruiser had been tracking for weeks. The Navy pilots found an oblong object about 40 feet long hovering about 50 feet above the water, and it began a rapid ascent as the pilots approached before quickly flying away. "It accelerated like nothing I've ever seen," one of the pilots told The Times. The pilots left the area to meet at a rendezvous point about 60 miles away. When they were still about 40 miles out, the ship radioed and said the object was at the rendezvous point, having traversed the distance "in less than a minute," the pilot told The Times.
The two other videos of incidents in 2015 include footage of objects moving rapidly through the air. In one, an object is seen racing through the sky and begins rotating in midair. Five Navy pilots who spotted the objects in 2015 told The Times in 2017 that they had a series of interactions with unidentified aircraft during training missions in 2014 and 2015 along the East Coast from Virginia to Florida. The episodes prompted the Navy to clarify how pilots should report experiences with "unidentified aerial phenomena," which had been studied under a Pentagon program from 2007 to 2012.
The two other videos of incidents in 2015 include footage of objects moving rapidly through the air. In one, an object is seen racing through the sky and begins rotating in midair. Five Navy pilots who spotted the objects in 2015 told The Times in 2017 that they had a series of interactions with unidentified aircraft during training missions in 2014 and 2015 along the East Coast from Virginia to Florida. The episodes prompted the Navy to clarify how pilots should report experiences with "unidentified aerial phenomena," which had been studied under a Pentagon program from 2007 to 2012.
And now a peek at what Trump does when off camera... LOTS OF EGO-SCANNING TV WATCHING.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/
by P.M. Carpenter | April 25, 2020 - 7:06am | permalink
After his Oval Office appearance, there's lunch, after which he avoids the task force meetings held in preparation for the White House coronavirus briefings, where he spends two hours rhetorically strutting before the television cameras. Then dinner, perhaps with Melania.
Trump then "turns back to his constant companion, television. Upstairs in the White House private quarters — often in his own bedroom or in a nearby den — he flicks from channel to channel, reviewing his performance."
Excerpt:
After a brutal day of criticism over his Thursday remarks suggesting an injection of disinfectant could potentially help treat COVID-19 — a frankly ludicrous and dangerous suggestion that experts roundly warned against — the president cut Friday’s coronavirus press briefing short without taking questions.
It was a welcome change. Trump has turned the daily briefings into psychological replacements for his campaign rallies — now postponed until the pandemic subsides — and they frequently feature strings of falsehoods and lies along with attacks on the media. Networks have been harshly criticized for airing the festivals of disinformation live, so no one should complain that Friday’s spectacle was cut short.
Excerpt:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might not have realized the firestorm he was inviting when he uttered the words "blue state bailout," and said the states would just have to declare bankruptcy rather than get any federal assistance. It's not just blue state governors up in arms, either.
"That's a ridiculous statement that the states 'should go bankrupt,'" New Hampshire's Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told WMUR Thursday. "Anyone who's saying that in the Senate doesn't know what's going on in the states, doesn't know the pressures that states are under, and the sacrifices we've had to make," he continued. "To say that states should just go bankrupt is a dangerous statement," Sununu said.
Excerpt:
Mass mortality spiked on my watch” is hardly the most fetching campaign slogan. Thus, the great question, whomever dismal Dems pick: “What critical mass of Trump-tied fatalities will doom his second term?” Not managing, let alone worsening the pandemic is bad enough; but must we now leverage human die-off as election shape-shifter?
Let's propose a new, riveting motto — MADA: “Make America Desolate Again.” And the most painful joke is on Trump himself, for only he -- and his unstable pathologies — are to blame. The viral spread that America's least capable doctor dismissed as a “hoax” keeps battering the world's most transparent purveyor of snake oil.
Elon Musk lied. Children are not immune from coronavirus. https://t.co/Q5zDouOy4v— Xeni Jardin 😷🏠 (@xeni) April 25, 2020
Not that we need more proof of what a colossal asshole Trump is, but this next news item (even though he thinks it's good business)...
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/04/24/2046229/trump-threatens-to-block-aid-for-us-post-office-if-it-does-not-raise-prices
Trump Threatens To Block Aid For US Post Office If It Does Not Raise Prices
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to block federal aid for the U.S. Postal Service unless it raises shipping rates for online companies like Amazon.com, prompting criticism that the move would hurt consumers relying more than usual on packages during the coronavirus outbreak.
The president has long accused the post office of charging too little for packages, saying that deliveries for Amazon and others cost the service money. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post newspaper, which Trump has accused of unfair coverage of his administration. "The Postal Service is a joke. Because they're handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies, and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "The Post Office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times." The president also accused post office officials of being "very cozy" with big online merchants.With the U.S. Postal Service slated to run out of money this summer, the U.S. Congress authorized the Treasury Department to lend it up to $10 billion as part of an earlier $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said his team was meeting with post office officials "and actually, we are going to put certain criteria for a postal reform program as part of the loan."
Trump told Mnuchin at the event he would not support aid unless the postal service raised its rates. "If they don't do it, I'm not signing anything and ... I'm not authorizing you to do anything," Trump said. Later on Friday, Trump said: "I will never let our Post Office fail. It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology. The people that work there are great, and we're going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!"
The president has long accused the post office of charging too little for packages, saying that deliveries for Amazon and others cost the service money. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post newspaper, which Trump has accused of unfair coverage of his administration. "The Postal Service is a joke. Because they're handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies, and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "The Post Office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times." The president also accused post office officials of being "very cozy" with big online merchants.With the U.S. Postal Service slated to run out of money this summer, the U.S. Congress authorized the Treasury Department to lend it up to $10 billion as part of an earlier $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said his team was meeting with post office officials "and actually, we are going to put certain criteria for a postal reform program as part of the loan."
Trump told Mnuchin at the event he would not support aid unless the postal service raised its rates. "If they don't do it, I'm not signing anything and ... I'm not authorizing you to do anything," Trump said. Later on Friday, Trump said: "I will never let our Post Office fail. It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology. The people that work there are great, and we're going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!"
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-insights-but-dont-forget.html
And yes it's either criminal negligence or much worse. For example: the National Security Council gave Donald Trump a 69-page pandemic plan three years ago — he ignored it. Snopes has verified: “The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.” And that's just one of maybe fifty culpable failures.
Finally, a Republican-led Senate review unanimously supported the conclusion of the intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, undercutting claims by President Trump and his allies that the findings were those of a “deep state” seeking to undermine his victory. Demand wagers from your MAGAs, now that every GOP senator agrees with the Deep State.
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| https://www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/2017/06/30/trump-and-twitter/ |
== Twitter metrics ==
And now some other analytics that could help you convince someone about the emperor’s non-clothes…
The New York Times analyzed Trump's 11,390 tweets since becoming president, and found he praised himself 2,026 times
Stylistic variation on the Donald Trump Twitter account: A linguistic analysis of tweets posted between 2009 and 2018.
A Text Analysis of Trump's Tweets - an Online Project.
Twitter Analysis shows How Trump Tweets Differently About Nonwhite Lawmakers.
Do not let Covid distract you from what's important -- saving the Western Enlightenment Experiment and the American dynamic progress toward better horizons. This crisis should make you more determined than ever.
Do not let Covid distract you from what's important -- saving the Western Enlightenment Experiment and the American dynamic progress toward better horizons. This crisis should make you more determined than ever.
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| https://twitter.com/dcagle |
A student shared this next video with me, and I said: "Hey, Wait Soraya Chemaly!! This is on my short list of things to check out already."
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/769450229/soraya-chemaly-whos-allowed-to-get-angry
PART OF THE TRANSCRIPT, THE ENDING:
I am sick and tired of the women I know being sick and tired. Our anger brings great discomfort, and the conflict comes because it's our role to bring comfort. There is anger that's acceptable. We can be angry when we stay in our lanes and buttress the status quo. As mothers or teachers, we can be mad, but we can't be angry about the tremendous costs of nurturing. We can be angry at our mothers. Let's say, as teenagers -- patriarchal rules and regulations -- we don't blame systems, we blame them. We can be angry at other women, because who doesn't love a good catfight? And we can be angry at men with lower status in an expressive hierarchy that supports racism or xenophobia. But we have an enormous power in this. Because feelings are the purview of our authority, and people are uncomfortable with our anger. We should be making people comfortable with the discomfort they feel when women say no, unapologetically. We can take emotions and think in terms of competence and not gender. People who are able to process their anger and make meaning from it are more creative, more optimistic, they have more intimacy, they're better problem solvers, they have greater political efficacy.
Now I am a woman writing about women and feelings, so very few men with power are going to take what I'm saying seriously, as a matter of politics. We think of politics and anger in terms of the contempt and disdain and fury that are feeding a rise of macho-fascism in the world. But if it's that poison, it's also the antidote. We have an anger of hope, and we see it every single day in the resistant anger of women and marginalized people. It's related to compassion and empathy and love, and we should recognize that anger as well.
The issue is that societies that don't respect women's anger don't respect women. The real danger of our anger isn't that it will break bonds or plates. It's that it exactly shows how seriously we take ourselves, and we expect other people to take us seriously as well. When that happens, chances are very good that women will be able to smile when they want to.
Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-sex-biologists-find-new-explanations-20200423/Why did sex evolve? Theories usually focus on the diversity of future generations, but some researchers find compelling explanations in the immediate benefits to individuals.
EXCERPT:
Instead of asking why same-sex behaviors would evolve, McDonough and their colleagues “flipped the question on its head” and asked why the behaviors wouldn’t. When they did this, they realized it’s possible and maybe even likely that same-sex behaviors have occurred all along; they just aren’t costly enough to be selected against. After all, the separation of truly distinct sexes — distinct individuals that produce different-size gametes — probably came about after the evolution of meiosis and the fusion of gametes. Organisms might then have benefited from hedging their bets and attempting to reproduce with any member of their species, as the team explained in their Nature Ecology & Evolution paper last year.
It may even be that, if the fitness costs of the sexual act are low enough and the benefits are high enough, it’s not always worth searching for a suitable mate of another sex. Individuals might ultimately live longer and pass on more of their genes by having sex early and often with any member of their species they come across, or even by frequently engaging in masturbation. Such hypotheses have likely gone unexplored because our views on sex in other species are shaped by our views on sex in our own.
But as more research is conducted on how sex affects different organisms, scientists are shedding that bias and discovering that sex can have myriad positive effects, any of which might subtly shape how a species does it. “Absolutely anything that has even a modicum of benefit in terms of the number of offspring that can be produced or the quality of offspring that could be produced will be selected for by natural selection,” Worthington said.
It makes sense for the evolution of sex to be guided at least somewhat by these upsides. “Having diverse offspring is not incompatible with there being a direct benefit to going through that [sexual] process,” McDonough said. The pervasiveness of sex would make a lot of sense if the act increases reproduction both directly and indirectly, such as by increasing longevity — a win-win, you could say, in terms of evolution.
Review: Beastie Boys Story
Ad-Rock and Mike D. remember.
https://reason.com/2020/04/24/review-beastie-boys-story/
Wow. KURT LODER!! Here's some excerpts....
In Beastie Boys Story, the new documentary directed by longtime Beasties collaborator Spike Jonze, now airing on Apple TV+, Michael Diamond looks back on that dissolute period with a mixture of fondness and mild regret. "Our big idea was that we should be as rude and as awful onstage as possible," he says. "We'd be memorable—memorable fuckin' jerks." Jonze's film is a chronicle of how the Beasties' party-monster stage act took over their lives and how they eventually managed to outgrow it.
This is not a story that will be entirely new to fans (or to anyone who owns the 2018 Beastie Boys Book). But the film format lends it an engaging freshness. The picture captures a near-two-hour multimedia stage show, filmed at Brooklyn's venerable King's Theatre, in which surviving Beasties Diamond and Horovitz (Yauch died of cancer in 2012) pace the stage like the b-boy elders they are, recounting their rap-to-riches journey with the aid of vintage photos, film clips, and of course resoundingly big beats. It all feels very loose and breezy, although the show has been painstakingly written and rehearsed by Horovitz, Diamond and Jonze.
Launching the story, Diamond remembers being turned on to the Clash in 1981, then hooking up with bassist Adam Yauch at a Bad Brains gig and starting a band that included downtown pal Kate Schellenbach on drums, with Diamond as lead singer. Horovitz stepped in on guitar soon after and the group set up as a hardcore-punk unit (although, as Horovitz notes, "We were as much Monty Python as Black Flag").
....and....
After drifting in new directions for a while (Horovitz tried acting, Diamond pursued an interest in drugs), the group reassembled in LA to record its second album, Paul's Boutique, which was released to the sound of crickets. They discovered they had gone broke, had to start over, then made a major return with the 1994 Ill Communication, which featured the terrific "Sabotage." The Beasties were back.
Eventually, the group ended its eight-year Los Angeles residency and returned to New York. Here the film takes on an elegiac tone, with Horovitz and Diamond expressing various regrets—especially their treatment of original drummer Kate Schellenbach, who was cast out of the group because of her inability to be a snotty young guy. ("It's shitty the way it all went down," says Horovitz.) Then comes the end—the 2009 Bonnaroo Festival, where the Beastie Boys played what turned out to be their last show. Three years later, Adam Yauch was dead and the band was over. You can feel Horovitz trying not to choke up at this point. Maybe yourself too.
SOME really COOL science news...
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| Bioluminescence could help scientists explore the inner workings of plants. Photograph: Planta/MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences |
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/04/29/2320241/scientists-create-glowing-plants-using-mushroom-genes
Scientists Create Glowing Plants Using Mushroom Genes (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:Emitting an eerie green glow, they look like foliage from a retro computer game, but in fact they are light-emitting plants produced in a laboratory. Researchers say the glowing greenery could not only add an unusual dimension to home decor but also open up a fresh way for scientists to explore the inner workings of plants. "In the future this technology can be used to visualize activities of different hormones inside the plants over the lifetime of the plant in different tissues, absolutely non-invasively. It can also be used to monitor plant responses to various stresses and changes in the environment, such as drought or wounding by herbivores," said Dr Karen Sarkisyan, the CEO of Planta, the startup that led the work, and a researcher at Imperial College London. "We really hope to bring this to the market in a few years from now, once we make them a bit brighter, once we make the ornamental plants with this new technology, and once of course they pass all the existing safety regulations," he added.
Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Sarkisyan and a team of colleagues based in Russia and Austria report how they inserted four genes from a bioluminescent mushroom called Neonothopanus nambi into the DNA of tobacco plants. These genes relate to enzymes that convert caffeic acid, through a series of steps, into a luciferin that emits energy as light, before turning the resulting substance back into caffeic acid. The upshot is plants that glow with a greenish hue visible to the naked eye. "They glow both in the dark and in the daylight," said Sarkisyan, adding that the light appeared to be 10 times brighter than that produced by using bacterial genes. The team found the site of the luminescence changed as the plants grew, and luminescence generally decreased as leaves aged and increased where leaves became damaged. Flowers produced the most luminescence, the team report.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/04/29/2327245/hubble-captures-breakup-of-comet-atlas
Hubble Captures Breakup of Comet ATLAS (phys.org)
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the breakup of Comet ATLAS, a.k.a. C/2019 Y4. "The telescope resolved roughly 30 fragments of the fragile comet on April 20 and 25 pieces on April 23," reports Phys.Org. From the report:The Hubble Space Telescope's new observations of the comet's breakup on April 20 and 23 reveal that the broken fragments are all enveloped in a sunlight-swept tail of cometary dust. These images provide further evidence that comet fragmentation is probably common and might even be the dominant mechanism by which the solid, icy nuclei of comets die. [...] Because comet fragmentation happens quickly and unpredictably, reliable observations are rare. Therefore, astronomers remain largely uncertain about the cause of fragmentation. One suggestion is that the original nucleus spins itself into pieces because of the jet action of outgassing from sublimating ices. As this venting is likely not evenly dispersed across the comet, it enhances the breakup. [...] Hubble's crisp images may yield new clues to the breakup. The telescope has distinguished pieces as small as the size of a house. Before the breakup, the entire nucleus may have been no more than the length of two football fields.
The disintegrating ATLAS comet is currently located inside the orbit of Mars, at a distance of approximately 145 million kilometres from Earth when the latest Hubble observations were taken. The comet will make its closest approach to Earth on 23 May at a distance of approximately 115 million kilometres, and eight days later it will skirt within 37 million kilometres of the Sun.You can view an animation of Hubble's observations on YouTube.
The disintegrating ATLAS comet is currently located inside the orbit of Mars, at a distance of approximately 145 million kilometres from Earth when the latest Hubble observations were taken. The comet will make its closest approach to Earth on 23 May at a distance of approximately 115 million kilometres, and eight days later it will skirt within 37 million kilometres of the Sun.You can view an animation of Hubble's observations on YouTube.
Can Nicotine Treat COVID-19? French Researchers Think So.
Plus: abortion bans defeated again, Peter Thiel company gets contact tracing contract, and more...
https://reason.com/2020/04/24/can-nicotine-treat-covid-19-french-researchers-think-so/
New study will test whether nicotine patches can keep the coronavirus away. The more we find out about COVID-19, the less sense it makes. Originally seen as a standard respiratory ailment that primarily affected the lungs, there's mounting evidence that COVID-19 can cause serious damage to the heart, neurological system, and kidneys, too. In young people, it's been shown to sometimes cause sudden strokes, even absent other symptoms. Doctors are also reporting COVID-19 patients with blood clots.
One particularly weird element is conflicting reports on whether cigarette smokers are more or less likely to get COVID-19 and whether they have worse cases if they do.
Now, in France, they're testing whether nicotine may help prevent COVID-19 infections.
A member of the Supreme Court Bar resigns and tells John Roberts off. Wow, on target and apropos of this era’s John Taney.
On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from
the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been a member of
that bar since 1972. In his letter, reprinted in full below, Dannenberg
compares the current Supreme Court, with its boundless solicitude for the
rights of the wealthy, the privileged, and the comfortable, to the court that
ushered in the Lochner era in the early 20th century, a period of profound
judicial activism that put a heavy thumb on the scale for big business,
banking, and insurance interests, and ruled consistently against child labor,
fair wages, and labor regulations.
The Chief Justice of the
United States
One First Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20543
March 11, 2020
Dear Chief Justice Roberts:
I hereby resign my membership
in the Supreme Court Bar.
This was not an easy
decision. I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer
than you have, and appeared before the Court, both in person and on briefs, on
several occasions as Deputy and First Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii before
being appointed as a Hawaii District Court judge in 1986. I have a high regard
for the work of the Federal Judiciary and taught the Federal Courts course at
the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and
1990s. This due regard spanned the tenures of Chief Justices Warren, Burger,
and Rehnquist before your appointment and confirmation in 2005. I have not
always agreed with the Court’s decisions, but until recently I have generally
seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or
conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected– that of, for example,
Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel or Paul Bator– at a minimum enshrined
the idea of stare
decisis and eschewed the idea of radical change in legal
doctrine for political ends.
I can no longer say that with
any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and
strikes.” You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an
administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your
leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent.
Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by
hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious
liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and
discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery
beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate
it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned
established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the
majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is
radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Without trying to write a law
review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has
become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the
Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society. Yes, politics has always
been a factor in the Court’s history, but not to today’s extent. Even routine
rules of statutory construction get subverted or ignored to achieve
transparently political goals. The rationales of “textualism” and “originalism”
are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals; sheer casuistry.
Your public pronouncements
suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the Court in today’s
polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few
bromides about objectivity, say otherwise.
It is clear to me that your
Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and
even Plessy. The
only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those
useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and
the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
I predict that your legacy
will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who
presided over both Plessy and Lochner. It still could
become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan the elder, an honest
conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The Supreme Court of the
United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has
often been said, you are infallible because you are final, but not the other
way around.
I no longer have respect for
you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out
of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever
insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.
Please remove my name from
the rolls.
With deepest regret,
James Dannenberg
The harmless practical joke that changed baseball
How Yaz’s farewell led to the Reds hiring Pete Rose to manage
excerpt:
So, to recap: Vern Rapp retires. He gets a job managing the Reds because of a joke a Boston radio station made to mock Yaz hero worship. The players dislike him so much that he’s fired in place of a manager they do love. That manager is Pete Rose. And then Rose is banned from baseball for betting on games he managed for the Reds. That little radio show changed baseball history forever.
Until I spoke to him, Cornblatt did not know who replaced Rapp as manager of the Reds. “Oh my God,” he says. “That is downright scary. Wow. What a thing. This is like a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. Did I … did I get Pete Rose banned? Am I responsible for that?” Cornblatt laughs, but only a little. “What a coda to the story. Our little radio show. Wow.”
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2020/04/quarantine-fatigue-give-me-freakin-break.html
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
"Quarantine Fatigue"? - Give Me A Freakin' Break!
Numskulls & Shutdown "fatigued" wimps crowding Huntington Beach Sunday 
Even bigger crowd of numskulls and quarantine wimps at Newport Beach, CA, eager to prove Darwinian theory's culling of the dumbest and most reckless.
"The whole point of the shutdown was to buy ourselves time so we could do it right the second time after we muffed the first response. It's not only important to avoid opening up too aggressively but if you don't have a good amount of testing, tracing and isolation, you won't be able to keep infected people away from susceptible people. The basic biology then is the infection is just going to take off again. So unless the biology has changed we're going to end up in the same place and that is what we're all worried about." - Dr. Ashish Jha, Professor of Global Health, Harvard University
Have the last remaining sane and intelligent citizens finally been converted into morons by the raging Trumpie protesters? That is what we initially considered upon watching the scenes of crowded beaches on the nightly (NBC) news yesterday. an hour or so later, we were gratified - if not entirely convinced - when Rachel Maddow announced on her MSNBC show: "The vast majority of Americans remain committed to shelter in place guidelines". Well, we certainly hope so! But seeing the crawlers on the earlier newscast ("Quarantine Fatigue strikes Americans") was definitely not encouraging.
We ought to all, at least the higher IQ subset of the population, be able to agree on some general propositions:
1) The SRS- Cov-2 virus has spread as an unseen stealth agent among us, causing illness and death- the various forms of which (e.g. strokes in the young) are still not widely understood.
2) Despite the yen to reopen to business, at least 31 states according to Harvard researchers--have still not met even minimal standards of testing. These states will have to significantly step up testing to even mildly loosen 'stay at home' orders. As Harvard Prof. Ashish Ja noted on All In last night, barely 2% testing is being done per day - which needs to be 10-20 times higher.
3) Given we have a vast "naive" population (with no immunity) and no vaccine, or treatment that works, it is pie-eyed foolish in the extreme to rush to reopen unless vastly more tests are run - up to 500,000 per day. Minus that testing, shutdowns are the only protection for a vulnerable populace (elderly, those with severe health issues).
None of this ought to be rocket science, so one is left to wonder why there is this "quarantine fatigue". Are Americans such pathetic and entitled wimps an whiners that can't at least be content to remain locked down until June? For the sake of our hospitals, heroic health workers- many at the end of their tether? Or must we again be reminded of Trauma nurse Amy Pacholk's words:
"All I keep hearing is that the curve is flattening, the curve is flattening. So that may be true but all the ICUs are still full. The sickest are still there. People are waiting to be intubated. We're full we can't handle anything more. We can't open this country. If you want to live you stay home. My God, don't open up this country. It needs to be closed until at least June."
Given we know the virus is a stealth assailant, it is highly plausible that amidst the tens of thousands packing Florida and California beaches Sunday there may well have been lesser thousands of infected roaming amidst the unknowing masses. As an epidemiologist friend of ours at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados put it: "If any one of those beaches in the U.S. had 10,000 beach goers, you can be sure at least 1,000 were Covid-infected. If the R nought is 3.0 that means each one of the infected could have spread the virus to 3 others, and each of those to three others in turn, i.e. 9 - and so on."
As I've written before in other posts, no one fancies an ongoing shutdown. Hell, I'd like nothing better than to get back to my BK breakfasts and reading the papers in the nearest BK, but I can't. Our Gov. Polis has made it clear that even if some businesses can open seniors have to remain in lockdown mode for the time being. So no appearing at any packed venues, or inside dining. So, I am content just to pick up a bagel a few days a week at the nearby bagel place.
As the NBC News showed, tens of thousands of people packed southern California beaches over the weekend, reigniting fears that large crowds in public spaces could reverse progress on containing Covid-19 in the U.S. Photos of the crowds in Newport Beach, Orange county, during the weekend rightly sparked intense backlash and comparisons with Florida, where images of beachgoers raised alarms about the state’s coronavirus strategy. In recent days, beach and park reopenings have also prompted debates and public health concerns in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and other regions looking to re-emerge from lockdowns.
But none of these impatient fools get that the virus is an unseen (stealth) killer and disabler) and it can be infecting the most healthy looking person. That person can spread it to you just by talking at close distance. This is why California’s governor Gavin Newsom chastised those who crowded the beaches, saying “this virus doesn’t take the weekends off”. No, and it doesn't pay any attention to human circulated memes like "the Covid can't take the heat!"
As Newsome went on to say:
“This virus doesn’t go home because it’s a beautiful, sunny day along our coast,”
The governor, who last week urged beach-goers to practice physical distancing, added at his daily news briefing yesterday:
The governor, who last week urged beach-goers to practice physical distancing, added at his daily news briefing yesterday:
“We can’t see the images like we saw, particularly on Saturday in Newport Beach and elsewhere,”
As usual there is no unified plan. Local officials in Los Angeles and the surrounding region have been deeply divided on the merits of allowing beach visitors. Many popular beaches have remained fully closed to the public due to Covid-19, though a handful have taken steps to permit visitors in a limited capacity while adopting a range of restrictions, enforcement plans and recommendations.
California’s statewide shelter-in-place order remains in effect, and police at the open Orange county beaches have attempted to enforce distancing rules. But there have been growing concerns over the weekend that the crowds were too dense, and the Newport Beach city council is now considering closing the beaches for the next three weekends or possibly blocking roads to the most popular destinations.
At Newport Beach, where temperatures were close to 90F (32C), residents compared weekend crowds to the Fourth of July holiday, and lifeguards reminded people to stay apart if they were in groups of six or more. Police officials told the Los Angeles Times the department did not issue any citations for violations of stay-at-home orders.
Neighboring Huntington Beach in Orange county also saw big gatherings, despite the closure of parking lots along the highway. Sitting on a bench by the beach, Robin Ford surveyed the crush of visitors with concern. Ford told the Orange County Register.:
“Unless all these people are in one household, it does look like they are not social distancing,”
Meanwhile, Los Angeles city and county beaches, trails and playgrounds were closed, and officers on horseback were patrolling those areas to enforce social distancing rules. The city also opened cooling centers for people who might not be able to survive the heat wave at home, according to LA mayor, Eric Garcetti.
Barbara Ferrer, the head of the LA county health department, urged LA residents not to crowd the neighboring beaches that remain open.
Further north in California, police in Pacific Grove said they had to close the picturesque Lovers Point park and beach at the southern end of Monterey Bay due to lack of social distancing.
The question of beach access is likely to become more contentious as the U.S. heads into summer. Some experts have argued that governments should find ways to allow people to visit beaches while strongly encouraging distancing and other safety measures.
This isn't a remote issue in Barbados which has enforced a 24 hour lockdown now for weeks, with penalties of up to a year in prison and $50,000 fine for scofflaws. See e.g.
This isn't a remote issue in Barbados which has enforced a 24 hour lockdown now for weeks, with penalties of up to a year in prison and $50,000 fine for scofflaws. See e.g.
Janice's take as usual is no nonsense on the comparison: "Bajans have more sense than Americans and more self-discipline. They don't whine and cry and act like brats if they don't get their way. They sacrifice for the greater good."
But not only Bajans. 75 years ago Americans also self-sacrificed with limited gas, food rationing and other curfew limits during World War II. But then our people were tougher, more resilient and not so entitled - i.e. made soft by too many conveniences and a social media environment that weakened brains. They - like my parents - put on their big boy pants and toughed it out for YEARS, not just months. Moreover, the sacrifice was uniform and universal across the nation, not just practiced in certain regions, states. Contrast that with the nonsense we behold now, including a moron president who actually believes injecting disinfectant like Lysol can be a treatment. (Or embedding a UV light into the body). Compare Trump to FDR who was a real leader during the trying times of the Second World War and you have all you need to know about how and why this nation has gone off the path of being a beacon for the rest of the world. And will likely cease to be the world's foremost superpower within the next ten years.
As of Monday, California has had 43,464 positive cases and 1,755 deaths.. Here in Colorado we have over 13,500 cases and nearly 600 deaths. Look for those numbers to explode as the morons - such as shown in the images- keep having their tantrums about "quarantine fatigue". and claiming (as the Gridlock nuts are here in Colo., e.g. Denver Post, p. 1A yesterday) "It's my choices and my body and I will do what I want with it even if I die!"
But not only Bajans. 75 years ago Americans also self-sacrificed with limited gas, food rationing and other curfew limits during World War II. But then our people were tougher, more resilient and not so entitled - i.e. made soft by too many conveniences and a social media environment that weakened brains. They - like my parents - put on their big boy pants and toughed it out for YEARS, not just months. Moreover, the sacrifice was uniform and universal across the nation, not just practiced in certain regions, states. Contrast that with the nonsense we behold now, including a moron president who actually believes injecting disinfectant like Lysol can be a treatment. (Or embedding a UV light into the body). Compare Trump to FDR who was a real leader during the trying times of the Second World War and you have all you need to know about how and why this nation has gone off the path of being a beacon for the rest of the world. And will likely cease to be the world's foremost superpower within the next ten years.
Totally oblivious to the fact that i he's a stealth carrier he can spread the virus to possibly hundreds of others. As I said, all entitlement, no sense of sacrifice for the common good.
FROM - https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2019/10/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-1189-sod.html
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| Amazing picture of seven-year-old Satchel at WSU Vancouver seeing the Corpse Flower.Just us; No Ellory. 1907.17 |
Wynne: Dog is Love
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2004.30 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1762 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
