Welcome to the tail end o’ the week: it’s Friday, November 15, 2024 and National Raisin Bran Cereal Day. Below is a video about various forms of this cereal. I used to think this cereal was healthy, but the most popular brand, Kellogg’s, is described like this on Wikipedia:
Raisin bran cereal is commonly referred to as a “healthy” breakfast cereal because of its high fiber content, but according to Consumer Reports, Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, for example, has a low nutrition rating.
In 1991, Kellogg’s complained that the guidelines for the USDA’s supplemental assistance WIC program did not allow for the purchase of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran for containing too much sugar. Currently, with 17 grams of sugar per cup, it has a higher content of sugar than Lucky Charms, Reese’s Puffs, and Cocoa Krispies (all known to be “sugary” cereals).
One ounce of sugar is about 29 grams, so that’s about 60% of an ounce of sugar.
It’s also National Bundt (cake) Day, America Recycles Day, I Love to Write Day, Steve Irwin Day (he was neither born nor died on this day), and National Spicy Hermit Cookie Day.
And there’s a Google Doodle today, celebrating the kayak as part of Native American Heritage Month. Here it is, and click to go to a webpage to which it links:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 15 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
UPDATE: This may be the worst cabinet pick yet: RFK Jr., an anti-vaxer and all-around loon, as secretary of Health and Human Services. Shoot me now!
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, setting up a debate over whether Mr. Kennedy, whose vaccine skepticism and unorthodox views about medicine make public health officials deeply uneasy, can be confirmed.
Mr. Trump is stocking his administration with people whom even some Republicans find alarming, including former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida as attorney general and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, as defense secretary. In choosing Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Trump is picking someone who is at war with the very public health agencies he would oversee.
In a statement on Truth Social, his social media platform, Mr. Trump said Mr. Kennedy would restore the nation’s health agencies “to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Mr. Kennedy, who has railed against the revolving door between industry and government, vowed on social media to “free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth.”
If he is confirmed, Mr. Kennedy would have sweeping control of a department with 80,000 employees across 13 operating divisions that run more than 100 programs. Its agencies regulate the food and medicine that Americans encounter in their daily lives, decide whether Medicare and Medicaid will pay for drugs and hospital treatments, guard against infectious disease, and conduct billions of dollars of medical research into diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
The NYT Morning email added this:
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However, this is no joke.
*Even the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board can’t countenance Pete HegsethPete Hegseth’s appointment as Secretary of Defense. And when the WSJ disses a Trump appointment, you know the appointee isn’t qualified (bolding is mine):
The 44-year-old Mr. Hegseth has combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and has maintained his military ties as an officer in the National Guard. He has been an advocate for veterans, both on TV and as a member of veterans groups. He’s smart and telegenic.
Yet he’s never run a big institution, much less one of the largest and most hidebound on the planet. He has no experience in government outside the military, and no small risk is that the bureaucracy will eat him alive.
Another concern is why Mr. Trump seems to have chosen Mr. Hegseth. The nominee’s focus in recent years has been attacking the Pentagon for its woke policies on transgender and racial equity. He has made a cause of opposing women in combat, though women have shown they can perform well in many roles. Mr. Trump seems to want Mr. Hegseth to wage a culture war against the military brass.
The Biden-era woke excesses need to be cleaned up, not least for recruiting from military families who have long prized the service for its devotion to excellence. Peacetime militaries tend to lapse into promotion based on administrative skill rather than war-fighting capability. But in the context of America’s security challenges, wokeness is a small concern.
The military isn’t Mr. Trump’s enemy, and a purge mentality will court political trouble and demoralize the ranks. The draft executive order, leaked to the press, about forming a group of former officers to rule on the fitness of current generals would be a mistake that smacks of politicizing the officer corps.
Indeed, women are qualified to participate in combat, and it’s unfair to put that burden solely on me. Moreover, some women want a combat role, and why should they be denied it. While I think some of the woke excesses of the last administration need to be corrected (I’m talking to you, title IX), a culture war waged against the Pentagon is deeply misguided.
*Nor do they have good words for Gaetz in the editorial board’s op-ed “Matt Gaetz is a bad choice for Attorney General“. Is there anybody who thinks Gaetz is a good choice? Of course the NYT is fulminating about the Cabinet choices so far, which is why I’m quoting the WSJ, whose op-eds are reliably right-wing. But even they have no use for the incompetent Gaetz. And I was horrified to learn that Gaetz went to law school at my own alma mater, The College of William and Mary:
This is a bad choice for AG that would undermine confidence in the law. Mr. Trump lauded Mr. Gaetz’s law degree from William and Mary, but it might as well be a doctorate in outrage theater. He’s a performer and provocateur, and his view is that the more explosions he can cause, the more attention he can get. “It’s impossible to get canceled if you’re on every channel,” he once said. “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing.”
Mr. Gaetz has no interest in governing. When Republicans took control of the House in 2022, it was with a small margin. Rather than work to get things done, Mr. Gaetz sabotaged Speaker Kevin McCarthy before finally leading a rebellion to oust him. Eight Republican malcontents plunged the GOP into weeks of embarrassing paralysis, since Mr. Gaetz had no alternative that could command a majority. Finally Speaker Mike Johnson emerged.
Mr. McCarthy has intimated at times that he thinks Mr. Gaetz is primarily motivated by personal grudges related to an investigation into his conduct. According to an ABC News report from April, the House Ethics Committee obtained a sworn statement from a woman who says in 2017 she “attended a party in Florida that Gaetz also attended,” where there was cocaine and “bedrooms that were made available for sexual activities.”
The Justice Department investigated possible sex trafficking but didn’t bring charges against Mr. Gaetz. This summer the ethics committee said its preliminary subpoenas and witnesses suggest “certain” allegations “merit continued review.” It is looking into claims that Mr. Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations.”
As the committee added: “Representative Gaetz has categorically denied all of the allegations.” Mr. Gaetz deserves due process. Some Republicans suspect his resignation was timed to head off a public report by the ethics committee that was expected soon. If he is no longer in Congress, the ethics probe ends. The Senate will have questions about all this if he is nominated as chief America’s law-enforcement officer.
The larger objections to Mr. Gaetz concern judgment and credibility. The U.S. Attorney General has to make calls on countless difficult questions of whom to investigate and indict. Mr. Gaetz’s decisions simply wouldn’t be trusted. He’s a nominee for those who want the law used for political revenge, and it won’t end well.
That’s for sure. We can expect Gaetz to use his power to start going after Democrats, doing Trump’s will as the most powerful law-enforcement officer in the land. The man is tainted, incompetent, and the only worse choices I can imagine from the House are Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
*Speaking of Gaetz, the WaPo reports that Dick Durbin, the Senate Majority Whip (my senator!), has called for the House Ethics Committee to preserve its report and supporting documents on Gaets (it investigated him for several criminal allegations). Given that Gaetz resigned, he was no longer subject to the House’s jurisdiction, and the abrupt resignation is itself suspicious:
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the House Ethics Committee to preserve its report and documents about former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) after he abruptly resigned from the chamber Wednesday.
Gaetz did so following President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Gaetz to be attorney general.
Gaetz resigned days before the House Ethics Committee is set to vote on releasing its findings from an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illegal drug use and accepting improper gifts. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
Durbin, who also serves as Senate majority whip, said Thursday that the timeline of Gaetz’s resignation “raises serious questions” about what could be in the report.
“We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” Durbin said in a statement. “Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.”
Trump’s choice of Gaetz to head the Justice Department surprised many lawmakers in both parties. Hours afterward, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) revealed to reporters that Gaetz had submitted his resignation “effective immediately.”
The House Ethics Committee is made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. The chairman is Rep. Michael Guest (R-Mississippi).
I’m guessing that the report, which is rumored to be “critical” of Gaetz, has enough stuff in there to sink him when he comes up for Senate confirmation. Even Republican Senators were taken aback by this wrongheaded nomination, and two GOP Senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, have already come out against that nomination.
*Michael Shermer does his own postmortem on the election on his Skeptic website and points out six areas where the Democrats could have done better. I’ll take excerpts from the first three:
1. Podcasts. Harris should have gone on Rogan, especially after her disastrous town-hall meeting with Anderson Cooper on CNN, in which she babbled incoherently about the errors she made in life that she could not seem to remember, or on The View in which when asked how she differs from Biden could only sputter “nothing comes to mind,” which was quickly turned into a social media meme with her picture. Think about the power of that image: a picture of Kamala Harris with the words over her face “nothing comes to mind.” I watched all three hours of Trump on Rogan, and then of JD Vance on the same show. They both came off as much more likeable than they are on the campaign trail endlessly repeating political slogans and talking points. You can’t do that for three hours (well, maybe Trump could, but he didn’t on Rogan).
I had read JD Vance’s bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy when it was published, and I loved it. But after he shifted ever rightward when he ran for (and won) a Senate seat for Ohio, I began to dismiss him as a kook, an extremist, a woman-hating pro-life anti-abortionist, etc. But three hours on Rogan made me realize that he’s a really decent guy with whom I happen to disagree on a number of issues, but nevertheless a reasonable person with whom I could have a beer and talk politics. On abortion, for example, Joe is pro-choice and pushed JD on his pro-life stance, and Vance immediately acknowledged that the “autonomy” argument that women should have control over their bodies was totally understandable—even reasonable—even though in his case Vance places the life of the fetus over that of the mother.
I don’t watch podcasts, but tons of people (especially young people) do. But with their limited attention span, how can they sit through three hours of Joe Rogan, no matter how entertaining he is?
2. Trans Matters. Harris should have distanced herself from the radical trans activists by taking the position that every medical establishment in Europe and the UK, and some medical associations in some U.S. states have already adopted: no hormone treatments or surgeries for minors, watchful waiting for troubled teens suffering from a variety of issues like anxiety, depression, cutting, and suicidal ideation (for which they’re wrongly told that if they transition to the other sex those negative thoughts and emotions will magically disappear), and, to be blunt about it, she should have publicly stated that as a life-long Democrat, feminist, and defender of women’s rights, as President she would protect women’s privacy, women’s spaces, women’s prisons, women’s rape centers, and women’s sports from the men violating them by pretending to be women. Trans women are not women. They are men. Men cannot get pregnant, unless by “men” you mean “women”, and such distortion of language is so egregious that it only alienates potential voters. And Harris should have renounced her idiotic stance on the government funding sex change operations for imprisoned illegal aliens. How many of these are there? Next to none. And yet because she could not renounce this barking-mad trans ideology, it hurt her in the election. (See the special issue of Skeptic on Trans Matters that covers all this in detail.)
Related to this, our Skeptic Research Center data that we collected over the summer (3,000 people, randomly selected, and surveyed by a professional data-collection company called Qualtrics and that cost us nearly $20,000)—special thanks to Anondah Saide and Kevin McCaffree who run the Center and analyze the data (both are former graduate students of mine)—found very strong opinions by nearly everyone, including Democrats, against supporting the trans movement, especially transitioning minors and biological males competing in women’s sports. For example, while we found that just over 1 in 5 “very liberal” women say it is “true” that “men can get pregnant,” outside of the “very liberal” cohort, roughly 90% of Americans across the political spectrum agree that men cannot, in fact, get pregnant. (Duh!) When undecided voters hear that, their indecision goes away. Harris’ campaign should have paid attention to our data.
See Pamela Paul’s NYT column yesterday, which agrees with the above.
3. Economics. Harris should have countered Trump’s insistence that economically the United States is in a hell-hole and about to collapse. Nothing could be further from the truth, and all she had to do is repeat over and over and over again all the positive stats, such as the stock market being at an all-time high…nearly every week for the past year!, or the rate of inflation collapsing over the past year, or unemployment numbers at near-record lows, or how strong the dollar remains around the world. And more. And she could have lied—like Trump and every president before him going back to the Eisenhower administration—and said she planned to lower the deficit by cutting expenses and government waste. None of them (save Clinton) do it. Every party grows the government, and along with it the deficit, but she could have at least nodded to the problem of the run-away debt, or perhaps even invoked the trendy economy theory called Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that the government can print all the money it wants because it is not like an individual or a business. Yes, many economists think this is pure voodoo economics, but not all of them do, so Harris could have at least sounded like she did some research on the problem.
The other three areas are immigration, crime and academia, and you can read about them for yourself. But the laws of physics determined that I post the following cartoon from the Elder of Ziyon site, which shows the illiberalism of college “liberals” (it’s under “academia,” of course). EoZ is worth following if you keep up on matters of Israel and Palestine.
*AT LAST, some science. A very bizarre species of nudibranch has been discovered in the depths of Monterey Canyon, where the four-year-brooding octopus lived that I described the other day. It was so weird the researchers at first didn’t even know what it was, though some lab work and DNA sequencing revealed that, yes, it was a nudibranch, a group of marine sea slugs that are gastropod molluscs. The NYT article is archived free here.
Bruce Robison, a marine biologist, has long used robotic vehicles to explore the Monterey Canyon off California — a gargantuan rift of the Pacific seabed that descends rapidly from coastal shallows to a depth of more than two miles. In early 2000, he stumbled on a strange creature he had never seen before.
“We had no idea what it was,” Dr. Robison recalled.
The gelatinous blob had a giant hood at one end, fingerlike projections at the other and colorful internal organs in between. Baffled, Dr. Robison and a colleague at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute set out to discover what it was.
Now, a quarter-century later, having studied 157 of those enigmatic organisms in their dark habitats as well as in the laboratory, the two scientists are making their conclusions public. The newly identified creature, they report in a public release on Tuesday, turns out to represent a whole new family of living things that reside in the midnight world of the ocean’s vast midwaters — the largest and least explored part of the planet’s biosphere. Moreover, it looks and behaves unlike any of its closest relatives on the tree of life.
The discoverers say the creature is a surprising new kind of nudibranch, or sea slug. Nudibranchs (Latin for “naked gills”) get their name from that fact that they’re nude, unlike their snail cousins on land.
What sets the organism apart from its marine relatives — and what makes the discovery so astonishing — is that it swims. Up to now, most nudibranchs known to science were described as inching their way over coral reefs, sea grass beds, kelp forests, the deep seafloor and rocky tide pools.
By contrast, Dr. Robison and his colleague, Steven Haddock, found that the newly identified creature is neutrally buoyant — that is, it can float effortlessly underwater, not sinking or rising. Striking video footage shows how, from that weightless state, it moves gracefully through its dark habitat, slowly undulating its entire body up and down.
Here’s a 4-minute video showing this nudibranch. It is plenty weird, and can even light itself up!
And you can read the original paper and download the publication by clicking on the original paper’s title below:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili gives a stink-eye to AI:
Hili: Artificial intelligence opens new horizons.A: What new horizons?Hili: It liberates humanity from the temptation of critical thinking.
Hili: Sztuczna inteligencja otwiera nowe horyzonty?Ja: Jakie?Hili: Wyzwala ludzkość od pokusy samodzielnego myślenia.
*******************
From Diana:
From Things with Faces:
From Bizarre and Wonderful World, four weird photos:
From Masih; an Iranian protester commits suicide in protest against the detainment of four political prisoners. He had already been arrested, put in solitary confinement, and tortured. This is part of the tweet:
These were his last words: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their beliefs. Protesting is the right of every Iranian citizen. My life will end after this tweet, but let us not forget that we have sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice, for the love of life, not for death. I am ending my life in protest against the dictatorship of Khamenei and his partners.”
A Life Sacrificed in Protest Against @khamenei_ir and his dictatorship
Yesterday, Iranian activist Kianoosh Sanjari issued a desperate ultimatum to the Islamic Republic. He tweeted that if four political prisoners he named were not released, he would take his own life. Today,… https://t.co/Xkg9f9Wvfn pic.twitter.com/E3tH71vzzu
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 13, 2024
Meanwhile, there’s a Māori haka in New Zealand’s Parliament (h/t Luana):
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Parliament: pic.twitter.com/ocgP7H62ia
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 14, 2024
From Simon, a visualization of the sun through the earth using neutrinos, which go right through our planet!
The Sun. Taken at night. Not looking up at sky but down through 8000 miles of the Earth. Not with light but neutrinos
— Marcus Chown (@marcuschown.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T08:22:59.771Z
I can’t remember where I found this, but people are getting their knickers in a twist because a Jewish actor (Noa Cohen) plays Mary (a Jewish woman) in a soon-to-be-released eponymous Netflix movie about Jesus’s mom. And you may recognize Anthony Hopkins as King Herod.
BREAKING:
Jewish woman Mary is played by a Jewish actress in the new Netflix Original.
This has upset the 65 IQ 🔻🍉 brigades greatly, because they’re too stupid to realise Arabs didn’t live in the Holy Land back then.
— 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) November 13, 2024
From my thread; a beautiful owl mom and her family:
Snowy owl mum protecting her chicks from snow
📹AI
pic.twitter.com/FfDX36Oe2P— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 13, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:
Killed with cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz. This Dutch boy was six years old. https://t.co/YcuWKhstuv
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 15, 2024
Two “skeets” from Dr. Cobb on Bluesky. First, a mummified sabertooth tiger!
This is not a drill, a mummified sabretooth cat has been published from the #Pleistocene permafrost of Russia. It's a Homotherium cub! The team (Lopatin et al.) reckon it's Homotherium latidens. It's too young to have enlarged upper canines. Paper is OA … http://www.nature.com/articles/s41… cont…
— Darren Naish (@tetzoo.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T18:08:28.447Z
Matthew calls this “sad but inevitable”. Indeed, our Sun is about halfway through its life:
High definition image of a dead star.This is Cassiopeia A, a star that died 320 years ago.This image was presented today on AAS Nova (ApJL).aasnova.org/2024/11/12/t…🔭 🧪
— Jwst Feed (@jwstfeed.bsky.social) 2024-11-12T20:08:11.606Z
There were reports that Kamala Harris decided not to go on Rogan because some of her team considered that Rogan is not left-wing enough to be seen with. They need to learn: Elections are always won by whoever best appeals to the centre-ground, not who best appeals to their own activists.
In other news, and a hopeful sign, AOC no longer has pronouns in her Twitter bio!
Also, here’s a worthwhile article by Roland Fryer on truth-seeking in academia.
Gotta love it when a discovery is made.
No mention about The Onion buying InfoWars? I thought that was hilarious.
The trouble with saying things like Harris should have distanced herself from the trans brigade is, first of all, that she might not have wanted to. Secondly, if she had, would anyone have considered it sincere, especially since it would have come very late in the election cycle? As for the economy, inflation is what it is (whether or not the rate of inflation has changed).
As for Trump’s picks, it’s hard to say whether they are good or bad, because Trump is looking to clean house, which is not the standard job description for any of these positions. In that regard Gaetz may be a perfect pick. People may not like that, but it is part of Trump’s mandate.
It seems easy to say whether they are good or bad. You look at past performance and make an assessment. After that, you can easily and confidently say they are bad.
Thus far, Trump’s picks are a veritable clown car of sycophants, ideological fanatics, and outright loons. Hopefully enough Senate Republicans can summon sufficient guts to stop some of them.
One could say the same thing about Biden’s cabinet.
Certainly about Richard “Rachel” Levine.
I didn’t see anything in her bio to justify serious criticism. She is highly qualified Dr. and administrator. If it’s just because she’s transgender, isn’t that a weak criticism?
To Rick,
Given that trans has become a Title IX focus of the Administration and he has said same ideologically motivated medically false statements that harm children, yes it is a disqualification for him to stay on. There are a few people who say things like that who aren’t trans, but he is, and he needs to take off his HMS Pinafore uniform and go.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg qualifications:
-Likes trains
-Gay
” , , , sycophants, ideological fanatics, and outright loons.”
Is that why Quiet Skies federal air marshals – at what ideological neocons’ behest? – have been surveilling Tulsi Gabbard? (Which one reasonably likely wouldn’t know about except for two air marshal whistle blowers who found it outrageous.)
RFK seems like a pretty bad pick.
The AI owls are adorable. Speaking of which, have you seen the AI baby peacocks that are replacing real “baby peacocks” in image searches?
https://petapixel.com/2024/10/10/ai-is-muddying-google-image-search-results-people-arent-happy/
It can’t be denied that if you put AI versus Nature, AI wins the cute contest hands down.
Such a cute baby peacock—even if it’s just a chimera.
Obviously, the folks at Netflix who cast Mary as a Jew should have consulted with those who cast the character of Cleopatra for that Netflix movie….
The IT news web site The Register has an article today about UK mobile (cell) phone network O2 developing an AI-powered system that will engage telephone fraudsters in conversation. Apparently it’s so convincing that one call lasted 40 minutes before the scammer gave up.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/15/o2_ai_granny/
Finally, an application of AI that I can get behind!
Hear hear
+1000
Regarding the twitter competitor Bluesky. I’ve been looking at it all week, and it seems to be full of people who have left “X” for political purposes. Having the left withdraw into an even more intense echo-chamber isn’t going to help.
Yeah, I’ve been scanning it all week too. Looks like a lot of BlueAnon stuff, Republicans are so dumb, Trump is literally Hitler or mango Mussolini, look at me I left X!, and some cool space and cat pics.
The overall impression I got is that the party that puts up “In This House We Love” yard signs sure knows how to hate.
+1
“…Vance places the life of the fetus over that of the mother.”
Hey, JD, guess what? If the mother dies THE FETUS DIES TOO.
Also, in the Vance formulation, if the mother dies and the baby survives, some other WOMAN will step forward to care for it. Maybe, maybe not. But I’d like to be a fly on the wall when someone has to tell her other surviving children that we let their mother die even though we could have saved her, and oh, yeah, btw, Jeebus loves you!
And also don’t forget to tell those kids that their sibling killed their mother.
L
Yes. Podcasts, anything over 20-30 minutes, try even my attention span. I do find increased comprehension from you tube videos which the word podcast seems to include these days. (I recall the old days when a pioneering colleague of mine offered some of the early ten-minute audio podcasts from his desk using what looked like a 1950’s Walter Cronkite CBS microphone). In any case the combination of hearing and seeing works well for me, but still, thirty minutes seems to be my sweet spot for a single sitting.
Thus it was with great trepidation that I tackled Bari’s two-hour and eleven minutes plus some seconds Honestly video interview with Peter Thiel yesterday. It took me three swings: before dinner, after dinner, and just before turning in. But I made it and, so that you need not bother, here is simply what I found:
Thiel has opposed the dems for quite a while because he saw that they were a business as usual party, unwilling to bring real innovation to gubmint. While not in love with Trump, he was less afraid of what Trump might do than he was of Harris’ continued pandering to the Woke. And I think that he pointed out that that must have been what many moderates who flipped to Trump this time also felt. Otherwise, I ground through the more than two hours watching and trying to understand a man who seemed unable to put complete sentences together…gee fella, it only takes a subject and predicate in the same breath. As best as I could discern, he was pretty non-specific in his babbling responses to Bari’s questions. Maybe I really missed something and would be happy to be corrected by anyone who has more knowledge of his actual thinking.
I skipped that episode because I don’t take Peter Thiel seriously. Anyone who would spend 10 million dollars to avenge being outed as gay has probably got mental issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Gawker_lawsuit:~:text=%5B86%5D-,Gawker%20lawsuit,-Main%20article%3A
How much less than $10M would Thiel have had to spend that mental issues would not come to mind?
As I recall, the NY Times got all bent out of shape about how Thiel chose to spend his money. Obviously, the Times needed to become Thiel’s legal guardian or conservator. (Did the Times offer any financial or legal support to Gawker?)
My net worth is about 1/10000 of Peter Thiel’s net worth. If a muckraking website with hundreds of employees writing thousands of articles a year put my personal life on blast to ridicule me, would I spend $1000 to put them out of business? Yes, absolutely. Do I have mental issues? Meh.
I think that in discussing education budget, he complained about the 40% overhead costs that are part of uni grants. Grants in STEM areas from NSF were originally born from Vannevar Bush’s post WW2 “The Endless Frontier” as a funnel to universities to continue wartime scientific and technical research in the interest of the Nation. Other departments and agencies followed this path. Actually NASA’s predecessor agency, the NACA, paid for university research before its own labs and wind tunnels were built in the early 1920’s and 30’s. I guess that the Thiel types think that strangling the grant awards will lead to a reduction in overhead staffing such as department deans and their assistants. But my guess is that certainly as a first response, nobody will be fired, tuition and fees might increase to support them, but the bureaucracy will hold. As a sponsor of NASA grants over the years, I saw the main support being to the PI prof for a few weeks on task, and to his grad students for full-time sometimes on task, but also, I think I recall that the 40% dollars could be used by the university to support some summer research by humanities profs…i may recall wrong. In any case, there is good reason to support basic and even applied research at the unis.
I think Thiel’s point that the Dems don’t tolerate independent thinking hits the mark.
A good example is J.K. Rowling. I’m sure she is reliably left wing on every issue except one, but because she disagrees on this one issue they treat her like the enemy.
Tulsi Gabbard was run out of the Democratic party because she endorsed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. RFK Jr. and Dean Phillips were run out of the Democratic party because they dared to primary Joe Biden. Musk became the enemy because he favors free speech.
The inability of the Dems to tolerate anyone who thinks differently is probably their biggest weakness.
Don’t forget Kyrsten Sinema who was reviled by the Democrats because she opposed removing the filibuster. Now that she’s gone the Democrats can work with the Republican leadership to propose that again. Maybe they’ll have better luck now.
“Musk became the enemy because he favors free speech.” I will agree that Musk favors free speech in the same way that RFK Jr. favors good health.
Yup, JK Rowling is very definitely reliably left wing. Opposition to the transgender issue cuts across the left/right political divide, though it’s likely that the reasons behind that opposition differ on the left and right.
The one thing that I thought the Trump administration did right was Operation Warp Speed. If I were on the Senate confirmation panel, I’d as Mr. Kennedy what his position would be if we encountered such a national pandemic emergency.
Would he: A) Block the effort to make a vaccine altogether; B) Still develop the vaccine but follow the normal slow but thorough testing and approval process; or C) Support the OWS effort and work with the CDC and drug companies to ensure that the vaccine was developed and sent out as expediently as possible but with increased transparency as to the potential side effects and actual efficacy by age or other demographic factors.
That’s a good question to ask at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing. Trump indeed made the right call regarding Operation Warp Speed, and we had a vaccine at, well, warp speed.
+1
One glimmer of hope for RFK…he spent many years as an environmental lawyer going after polluters, and once said in an interview (I believe in the last decade) that he wishes there were a law to “punish” people who are skeptical of or deny global warming.
So unless he’s flipped entirely, there’s still some green under that new coat of red MAGA paint….
But will Trump go along with him if he treats climate change as real? I would guess he’ll treat it as real and get fired or keep silent on the matter and keep his job. Assuming he gets approved…
I hope there’s not a mass exodus from HHS because of RFK Jr. The late night hosts are becoming irrelevant because their viewership is dropping. Am I the only one here that still watches their opening monologues? I don’t stay up late, but DVR them and watch the next day. This blog may be my only source for thoughtful news and commentary for a long time. That Snowy Owl pic is truly awesome. I followed the link to Michael Shermer’s postmortem and wish he would have said more about immigration.
The New Zealand Parliament video is Nucking Futs. If that’s an expression of the “Maori way of knowing” Things are crazy here politically, but thank goodness we’re at least spared from that nonsense here…for now.
Agree. Late night (too late for me) is a business more than a comedy and I guess that I and my views do not sit in their focus demographic. I do very much appreciate pcc(e) filtering and making available on this site, some Bill Maher highlights on occasion.
In my opinion, the Maori haka in the NZ parliament was an entertaining bit of political theatricality – an attention-grabbing performance that ‘said’ the Maori reps rejected the legislation with contempt but without using violence or threats. I liked it.
(That’s not to say that I agree with the attempts to insert indigenous beliefs into education and government – I emphatically do not.)
“ …without using violence or threats. I liked it.”
Maybe. A haka can also be an act of intimidation. Not shown very clearly in the video is that the three
parliamentary performers approached the seated, principal author of the disputed legislation and stood over him. When a member of the opposition approached and berated a member of the opposition in May this year, she was much criticised and issued an apology the next day, IIRC.
Rational debate the haka was not.
Performative gestures are all the rage today, quite apparently across the globe. I am curious what the presumably objectionable legislation was intended to address. What enraged the Maori contingent to such a degree that they decided to engage in this performance? I don’t know much about Maori culture, but this does look like a confrontational version of a haka, rather than just a ceremonial observance.
I think the lawmaker who tore up the document (whatever it was about) deserves a Tony or Oscar nomination.
Yeah. President-elect Trump’s cabinet picks are, well, unconventional. And if even the WSJ thinks the picks are strange—or worse—they are.
Michael Shermer is, yet again, a voice of reason. 🙂
I was a gastropod specialist when I was actively doing science. Nudibranchs were on my radar, but as a paleontologist I focused primarily on gastropods with shells (which leave fossil records). But nudibranchs really are amazing, as the above-cited video attests.
The new nudibranch paper is cool but I’m puzzled they had trouble figuring out what it was: other nudibranchs swim and have a big hood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melibe_leonina
Also it was malpractice by the authors to create a new taxonomic family for that new species. They had hundreds of specimens but only produced a few new DNA sequences, and most of the DNA data put the new species as close to another genus (maybe within that genus). No justification to make up a new genus and family.
https://x.com/nikkei/status/1857378280359264465 🇯🇵🗞💱
Here is an article from the biggest economic newspaper in Japan. 🇺🇸🌀😔
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might well have a point about ultra-processed foods (I didn’t click through on the link), but I doubt that his boss will agree.
He’s probably right about some things. But at one point he believed that vaccines cause autism. That’s been proven false.
There was a case in Samoa where two babies died from an improperly mixed vaccine. RFK then flooded the area with anti-vaccine publicity. Vaccination rates fell and some 80 youngsters ended up dying of measles.
https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/fact-checking-presidential-candidate-robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-vaccines-autism-and-covid-19/
Yup, I’m not denying he’s a nutcase! Just that ultra-processed foods might not be such a great thing.
True.
Donald Rumsfeld was one of the most skilled bureaucratic infighters that Washington DC has seen in the last 50 years. He had his hands full at the Pentagon.
I know little about Hegseth, but I’ll push back a bit against the WSJ. Culture war has already embroiled the Pentagon. The generals and admirals work for civilian leadership; if that leadership wants to infuse the Pentagon with ideology, then the generals will either resign or jump on board. Few resign. While I would not fault those who simply carry out legal orders, there have been a fair number of opportunists in the senior ranks who have trumpeted their support for all things trans, feminist, and DEI—perhaps with an eye on their post-military careers. Guys like Hegseth see themselves as being on a mission to recover lost ground.
As to the question of women in the combat specialties (as opposed to women being present in combat zones). If you are thinking about this, as most liberals do, from the position of the individual, you already signify that you know nothing about military culture and the focus on 1) the mission, 2) the team. Individual desires rank very low in the hierarchy. Now, let’s set that aside. Here is a thought experiment: if a military force that is 100% female must go up against an adversary that is comparably equipped and battle-tested but 100% male—the fight will involve air, land, and sea—to which military would you trust your nation and your life? What if the force were only 85% female against an all-male force? Does it change your mind? 50%? Where is the line at which you feel comfortable?
All but the most zealous of political idealogues understand that an all-female force, particularly if drafted, would get annihilated against an all-male force in extended combat. It isn’t only about physical size and strength; risk taking, aggressiveness, and other characteristics come into play. Whenever you introduce unqualified men or women into direct combat roles, you risk diminishing combat effectiveness in pursuit of some other goal. The question becomes: how many women can you introduce (or how much can you lower the standards for both men and women) before you degrade combat effectiveness of a given unit? The answer will vary depending on the job. Our nuclear missile force could be 100% women with no ill effect. Here, women perform at least as well as the men, perhaps better, given the nature of that job: highly regimented; demands conscientiousness and technical competence, not physical strength; risk-taking and aggression play no role. Navy Seals? Army Delta Force? Different question. Different answer.
Guys like Hegseth believe that NO diminishing of combat effectiveness is acceptable. They wouldn’t allow a weak man in the field anymore than they would a woman. Their chief complaint is that the military did not allow women to compete against men using existing standards. They lowered the standards—and the standards (mostly) weren’t lowered for being irrelevant to combat effectiveness. They were lowered to admit women because that is what the political leadership demanded, so that is what the generals and admirals delivered. If you want to argue effectively with Hegseth and others, you must show how women in certain jobs either increase or, at a minimum, don’t degrade combat effectiveness. The individual desires of a given man or woman will carry no weight with them—and rightly so.
I have a question for any physicists among us. From what I know of neutrinos, they are spectacularly bad at interacting with pretty much anything. Despite trillions of them passing through us every second we have to construct enormous underground water tanks to see just a handfull every year. Even then, we only see them indirectly by detecting the cherenkov radiation generated by electrons that get hit by one.
So, how the blazes can enough of them be detected at the density required to form an image with that level of resolution?
I think that this article explains it:
http://www.livescience.com/63908-most-detailed-picture-sun-neutrinos.html
Three contributions:
1) The large volume of the detecting substance.
2) More efficient detectors.
3) Probably most important: the ability to detect a wide range of energies instead of the narrow range of previous detectors.
Hegseth is a Christianist far-rightist, who has (among other things) “Deus Vult” (“God wants it”) tattooed on his arm, which was the battle cry of the medieval Christian crusaders. His understanding of the political corresponds to the notorious one of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
“We the People must understand this moment. You feel it. I feel it. We all feel it. The other side—the Left—is not our friend. We are not “esteemed colleagues,” nor mere political opponents. We are foes. Either we win, or they win—we agree on nothing else.”
(Hegseth, Pete. American Crusade: Our Fight To Stay Free. New York: Center Street, 2020. p. 1)
“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.
…
The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.”
(Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. 1932. Exp. ed. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. pp. 26-7)
Carl Schmitt: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/
Hegseth makes no bones about his “crusade”:
“We have no choice but to fight, and our weapon is American nationalism. It’s Americanism. The Left has tried, and succeeded on many fronts, to intimidate us into thinking that nationalism is a relic of a bygone era. How dare you fly the flag, wear it on your hat, or ink it on your arm? To combat globalism, we need a resurgence of patriotic display, along with vocal support for the fact that the United States is the greatest nation which has ever existed. We must overwhelm the invading forces with waves of red, white, and blue.” (p. 116)
“The American Crusade can be won, but not through “negotiation.” Stale thinking and bipartisan “consensus” have betrayed us. This moment requires a total commitment to victory, which includes co-opting the successful tactics the Left has used for years. We must be smart, tough, proactive, and bold.” (p. 303)
“[H]ere is a glimpse of what winning will look like:
– Our borders will be secured, our citizenship valued, and our flag respected. Globalism, defeated.
– Our boys will become strong, patriotic men, and our girls will become strong, patriotic women. Their differences will be elevated, not blurred. Genderism, defeated.
– Our free-market economy will flourish, while China will not be able to cheat and compete—just like the Soviet Union. Socialism, defeated.
– God will be revered and embraced, returning His blessing to America. Secularism, defeated.
– Our birds will still chirp, rain will still fall, and crops will still flourish. And yes, the quality of our air and water will continue to improve because of American innovation Environmentalism, defeated.
– Our speech will be liberated and common sense restored. Elites will go back to just dressing better than the rest of us—or at least telling us they do. Elitism, defeated.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream will be achieved: content of character before color of skin. Shared values, not diversity, will rule. Multiculturalism and division, defeated.
– Overseas Islamism will be crushed (as ISIS was), and at home Islam will be forced to choose Americanism or go somewhere else. Islamism, defeated.
– Power will be restored to We the People, empowering individuals over bureaucrats and states’ rights over the federal government. Leftism, defeated.
– The First Amendment will be broad and bold and the Second Amendment unfettered. Abortion will finally and forever be illegal and our government schools either abandoned or fully transformed. Prayer will be accepted in the public square. Education will be rigorous, not ideological. History and civics—not “social studies”—will spread the factually true story of American exceptionalism.
– America will soar. Leftists will be relegated to the pedal-powered clown car, where they have been for most of American history. A more moderate, and pro-American, Democrat Party will emerge—restoring the balance that, prior to the twentieth century, was healthy for America. Rather than a messy national divorce, a new dawn will ensue for America.
– Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years. Europe will still surrender, but pockets of freedom-loving resisters will remain. Islamists will never get a nuclear weapon but will be preemptively bombed back„ to the 700s when they try. Israel and America will form an even tighter bond, fighting the scourge of Islamism and international leftism that will never fully abate.” (pp. 309-11)
(Hegseth, Pete. American Crusade: Our Fight To Stay Free. New York: Center Street, 2020.)
https://x.com/calbee_frugra/status/1843513456034783633 🇯🇵🌾🍓🍎🥛
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yudsGaSpmFU
I’ve been eating this lately. 🥣🐱