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RFK Jr attacks Dunkin' Donuts

There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts around nearly every corner here in Rhode Island, or so it seems. And there’s a cemetery just a block away from our house. Coincidence? We report, you decide. But the mortality rate here doesn’t seem markedly higher than anywhere else I’ve lived. But RFK Jr is coming for your Dunkin’, Rhode Island! “We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it,’” Kennedy told the applauding audience. “I don’t think they’re gonna be able to do it.” OK, not the donuts, just the sweetened coffee. But all sugar? Or just above a certain amount? Who pays for the sugar police? Pick up any bottle of prepared salad dressing, soda, soups or ketchup and read the ingredients. Many prepared foods on the grocery shelf have added sugar, either in the form of sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup. That’s not going away. And of course, there isn’t an atom of evidence that it...
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The company you keep

During my 37 years on the faculty (I’m emeritus now) of Saint Louis University, I never expected to find my university included on a list of elite and Ivy League research universities. And yet, here we are: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is  cutting academic ties  between the Pentagon and 13 leading universities in a performative campaign against “wokeness” and alleged anti-Americanism. The disfavored schools, according to a Feb. 27  memo  from Hegseth’s office, currently educating are:   Harvard University Saint Louis University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Tufts University Georgetown University Carnegie Mellon University Brown University Columbia University Yale University Middlebury College Princeton University The George Washington University College of William and Mary   Kinda makes me proud. On the other hand, among the “favored” universities are my alma maters University of Tennessee and University ot North Carolina, a distinction they share...
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Schrödinger's nukes

There’s absolutely no evidence that Iran has, or has ever possessed, nuclear weapons. Indeed, the Obama Administration negotiated an agreement whereby Iran agreed not to develop nuclear weapons or even enrich uranium to the purity necessary to create a fission bomb. Trump tore up that agreement, but there’s no evidence that Iran made any progress toward an atom bomb since then. Still, last June Trump claimed to have obliterated Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program. Now he’s claiming that his attack on Iran was justified because their nuclear weapons posed an immanent existential threat. So is the Iranian atom bomb dead or alive? “Speaking from the East Room at the start of a ceremony to award the Medal of Honor to a trio of U.S. Army soldiers who’d served in the Second World War, the Vietnam War and Afghanistan, the president said Iran’s ballistic missile capability would have “soon” been able to reach beyond hitting American bases in the Middle East and Europe to hit “our beauti...
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Review of “Sitting Bull’s War”

I just finished reading  Sitting Bull’s War: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fight for Buffalo and Freedom on the Plains  by Paul L. Hedren. Several years ago, I read “Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne, which is a history of the Cheyenne people, so I was passingly familiar with the clash of the plains Indians and White settlers in all its violence, tragedy and inevitable outcome. Sitting Bull’s War is unusual in telling the history largely through the lens of the Indian experience. The time period is basically from 1870 to the mid 1880s, and largely involves the Hunkpapa Sioux, Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne, although many other smaller tribes appear. The clashes begin with the surveying of the northern buffalo country for the Northern Pacific railroad. Small skirmishes ensued as the Indians tried to drive off the White men, who then returned with military protection. In several battles, Indians noted the poor marksmanship of the soldiers. Gradually, the buildup of Am...
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Here we go again

During the Vietnam war, we were told Americans were fighting and dying because of the domino theory—that if the dictatorship in South Vietnam fell, the communists would take over all of Southeast Asia and India. It was a lie. During the US invasion and military occupation of Iraq, we were told that Americans were fighting and dying because Saddam (a) was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and (b) had WMDs that threatened the United States. It was a lie. Now, the US has, with Israel, embarked on what appears to be a sustained war in Iran, justified by a need for regime change, something Trump came to office repudiating. Is this war necessary? Is it worth the loss of lives and the suffering it will necessarily cause? Here’s Timothy Snyder: “A war is a time when we will be told not to ask questions. But a war is actually when questions must be asked. And they must be asked in light of what we already know. The presumption created by the surrounding evidence is that this war could very well be ...
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The peace president goes to war

The overclocked 8 th   grader in the White House has decided that the path to the Nobel Peace Prize lies through war. “The strikes opened a stunning new chapter in U.S. intervention in Iran and marked the second time in eight months that the Trump administration has used military force against the Islamic Republic. They came after tensions soared in recent weeks as American warships moved into the region, and Trump said he wanted a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program at a moment when the country is  struggling at home  with  growing dissent  following  nationwide protests .” With months to plan, the US and Israel no doubt selected high-value targets. “Airstrikes killed five students at a girls’ school, the first confirmed fatalities in Iran in the operation, according to the state-run IRNA news agency." Your tax dollars at work.   https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-iran-us-attack_n_69a29565e4b00f9077394f34?origin=home-latest-news-unit
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AI gumshoe

“ Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage. “Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in  Southampton  in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am. “Thames Valley police had used automated facial recognition software which matched him with footage of a suspect of a £3,000 burglary 100 miles away in  Milton Keynes , according to documents shared with the Guardian by Liberty Investigates. “But the CCTV footage showed a noticeably younger man with different features apart from similar curly hair, said Choudhury, who was left confused about why he had been arrested.” Apparently, they already knew this was the ChatGPT of surveillance. “ But the technology was revealed in December to produce a far higher rate...
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