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Here's an interesting commentary in Nature about climate change predictions. In a nutshell, the authors lament what they perceive as an over-reliance on worst-case scenarios, which they regard as highly unlikely. I don't share their confidence, but the time horizon under discussion is 2100, and I won't be around to evaluate their prophecies. Read the whole thing. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20200130&utm_source=nature_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200130&sap-outbound-id=71F260FE673D5B0619D166CFD8E99C8A604CCF7B&mkt-key=005056B0331B1EE7838101D3C93B3000

As a PhD geneticist, I'm sufficiently conversant with the literature on evolution to recognize that creationism and its silly sibling "intelligent design" are unscientific and useless as a way to understand the world.  Remarkably, there are some folks who take it upon themselves to rebut creationist bafflegab. Some of them post on the Panda's Thumb blog. The math jargon is often above my pay grade, but this post made intuitive sense to me, at least: "A sticking point among a  lot of ID/Creationists seems to be whether information can be generated by a non-intelligent process. Computer chess provides a very dramatic example. Previously, chess-playing algorithms were designed by software developers in concert with strong human players. In 2017, however, the AlphaZero program was created by initializing a neural net with the rules of chess, and then having it play millions of games against itself, updating its neural net with each game. After 24 hours of suc...

We're used to thinking of conditions like obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer as being noncontageous. But increasing evidence from rodent models and from demographic studies in humans suggest a role for gut bacteria that can be shared between individuals. In the human studies, confounding factors like diet and lifestyle make the magnitude of the postulated effects unclear. I remember when peptic ulcers were treated with a bland diet and were blamed on type A personalities. Now we know that gut infection with Helicobactor pylori explains most cases of peptic ulcers (which may progress to stomach cancer). There is also good evidence that gum disease can result in heart disease, as mouth bacteria can enter the circulation. With regard to cardiovascular disease and the gut microbiome: " These modified postulates can be applied to CVD (heart attacks and strokes), the most prevalent NCD worldwide. There are strong correlations with the prevalence of particular gut micr...

The GOP trope for the impeachment is the Democrats are trying to undo a democratic election. Setting aside the fact that Trump was not democratically elected (he was appointed by the electoral college against the results of a democratic vote), the Democrats are asserting the checks and balances woven into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. We are already well on our way to losing our Republic to a despotic executive. " When the President was found to have pressured President Zelensky of Ukraine into opening an investigation into Joe Biden, his presumed chief political rival, it was clear that the post-Nixon safeguards were no longer effective. And then the House of Representatives started investigating and issuing subpoenas, which were met with total and complete stonewalling. This showed the Founders’ vision of checks and balances was also under severe threat. In plain terms, Trump had started behaving like a King. More and more he appears incapable of separating personal ...

Ever since we could afford it, we've always flown to our vacation destinations rather than drive. This is because we take two-week vacations, and I didn't want to spend four days or more simply driving to and from (not to mention recovering from the long driving days). Recently, I've seen some claims that air travel is far more damaging to the climate than driving. There are other reasons to fly instead of drive (flying is *way* safer), but this certainly got my attention. Turns out, the math is far from clear, especially when you include the externalities of infrastructure to support air vs ground travel: Want guidance on whether to fly or drive? Differences in vehicles, number of passengers, and individual preferences mean there is no one-size-fits-all answer. YALECLIMATECONNECTIONS.ORG Evolving climate math of flying vs. driving » Yale Climate Connections Want guidance on whether to fly or drive? Differences in vehicles, number of pas...

I'm on my second e-reader. I had a Kindle for years, and read a few dozen books on it. But I couldn't read it in the dark, so now I have a lighted Samsung e-reader. The manufacture of e-readers has an environmental footprint. How does it stack up against dead tree readers? " A single e-reader’s total carbon footprint is approximately 168kg, and for a book, this figure is somewhere in the range of 7.5kg; the book’s length and type can lead this figure to vary. 1   Using an average of 7.5kg, we can conclude it would take reading about 22-23 books on an e-reader to reach a level in which the environmental impact is the same as if those books had been read in print." https://theecoguide.org/books-vs-ebooks-protect-environment-simple-decision Of course, the most environmentally friendly choice is a library book!

Health care is easy. Just show your M4A card when you see a doctor and you’re done. No fighting with insurance companies. Everyone is covered from the day they’re born. You don’t lose your coverage if you lose your job. Your coverage doesn’t change whenever your employer decides to save some money by switching insurance companies. Every doctor and hospital is paid via M4A, so you can see any doctor you want. You don’t have to worry about whether your doctor is part of your insurance company’s network. No surprise billing ever. All great goals, but how to pay for it? Numbers matter. My favorite blogger, Kevin Drum, breaks them down for you. It won't be easy, but it is possible. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/01/medicare-for-all-is-not-a-pipe-dream/

Remember Spiro Agnew, the corrupt former governor of Maryland who had to resign as VPOTUS because of his corruption as governor? Looks like things haven't really changed in Maryland. " Larry Hogan is crooked. Larry Hogan is popular. Being crooked doesn’t matter. So long as he’s good for our property values, he can graft his way to the apocalypse." https://newrepublic.com/article/156183/popular-crook-america?utm_content=bufferddf52&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Remember back in '89 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the bipolar world resolved in favor of the west? Remember thinking that all those trillions of dollars that purchased this new world order could now be re-directed to making our lives better instead of positioning the world for mutually assured destruction? Whatever happened to that? " In sum, from our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter. Restoring the American compass to working order won’t occur until we recognize those illusions for what they are. Step one might be to revise what “this idea called America” truly signifies." https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/miseries-america-squandered.html

“ If you   live to be one hundred , you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. ” ~George Burns When I was a graduate student, a new book appeared in the Zoology library called “The Genetics of Aging.” Although I hadn't aged that much, I was a student in the genetics program, so I figured I’d better read it. At the time (around 1980), there really wasn’t that much that could be said about mechanism, but the book made a strong case that there were key genes and pathways to be discovered and hinted at where to look for them. One of the curiosities of aging for me is how large psitticine birds (parrots, macaws) are so long-lived (50-75 years) while similar-sized mammals only live a decade or less. I get why tortoises (cold-blooded, slow-moving) could live 100 years or more, or whale sharks (cold blooded, live in pelagic oceans at near freezing temperatures) could live for hundreds, but bird heart rates and metabolisms are far faster than mammals. There’s an int...

One of the greatest challenges to decarbonizing the world's economy is transportation. And the only real long-term solution is public transportation. Not one or two people in a car. Dozens of people on buses and hundreds of people on subways and other types of trains. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is undermining this goal with his grift. Shame! https://www.curbed.com/2020/1/8/21046929/elon-musk-ces-vegas-boring-company

I took physics in high school and intro physics in college. These courses were a hodge-podge of different topics, none treated in any depth. Recently, I've been re-introduced to physics via Youtube. A couple years ago, my brother Mike and I made a cloud chamber and visualized charged particles. Here's a youtube about quantum tunneling of photons. I wish physics had been this interesting when I was a kid. https://www.facebook.com/theactionlabofficial/videos/2267012850186114/UzpfSTY3MDE2NDE4MzoxMDE1Nzc5NDExNDQ1NDE4NA/

Vaccinate yourself against war propaganda, as the Trump administration drags us into another middle east war. Read this. All of it. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/how-to-avoid-swallowing-war-propaganda?fbclid=IwAR1HqqNHVnFUTYHaOPO4ur9sKmLht4chLReOM54DntEZI6n-RCOzTzSFcgM

“Whatever” is the bleat of the adolescent. It is meant to convey disdain while acknowledging the antecedent comment. When Rebecca was approaching her teenage years, I realized that this would be a trigger word for me, so I decided to drain it of all meaning by using it myself at any opportunity. Of course, raising a child is an experiment without a control, so I’ll never know whether my plan actually worked. Maybe she didn’t use “whatever” because it was “dad’s word” or maybe I became so inured to it that I didn’t notice when she did use it. Now I mostly notice when adults use it. I don’t know whether they realize what they sound like or even if they care. But like artificial hair coloring on a 60-year-old head, I don’t find it so much irritating as anachronistic and sad.

" The sad fact of the matter is that the world is a scary place. Powerful people lie, including about important matters. They sometimes don’t get caught, and even when they do, they don’t always suffer for it. I hope there was some kind of good reason to bomb that Baghdad airport and some kind of plan to deal with the aftermath. But all we really know is that the people in charge of explaining to us what happened and why aren’t worthy of our trust." There's something about the sound of a clock striking 13 that calls into doubt everything that follows. https://www.vox.com/2020/1/3/21048079/trump-pompeo-iran-lies

One of the storied figures in American popular music of the 1960s was Gram Parsons. He pioneered the country rock movement. Believe it or not, he attended Harvard. Parsons was the force behind the Byrds album “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” He was a founder of the band “Flying Burrito Brothers.” You may have heard his songs “Sin City” and “Hickory Wind,” or heard his covers of “Streets of Baltimore” and “Love Hurts.” Parsons is credited with launching the career of Emmylou Harris, who he discovered performing in a Washington DC bar. Like several of his contemporaries, including Elvis who he mocked in “Return of the Grievous Angel,” Parsons couldn’t manage his substance abuse and died at 26 of an overdose. The poignant Bill Danoff/Emmylou Harris song “Boulder to Birmingham” is a memorial to Gram Parsons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTry1yKvxZM

I have two recordings of Bach’s Goldberg variations. One is on LP, Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording. The other is on CD, Keith Jarrett’s 1989 harpsichord recording. Of course, Gould recorded on piano, so comparing the recordings is fundamentally unfair as the instruments are so different. The harpsichord key drives a mechanism that plucks the strings, so there is no dynamic range. The piano mechanism hammers the strings, the pressure on the key creates a large dynamic range. I just dusted off the Gould album and am listening to it now. Apart from the distinctive Gould precision, speed and interpretive touch, the piano recording is just more interesting to listen to. Not how Bach would have heard it, not authentic performance practice, but a real pleasure for the ears.

Facebook friends will recall Pixel, the pearl cockatiel hen who hatched nearly four years ago. They say pets and their owners come to resemble each other. Here's photographic evidence.

Theme song for retirement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0AAVKIMPI

" Of course  we’re not going to hit 1.5°C. We left that in the rear-view mirror years ago. It would take a miracle for us just to hit 2°C. Realistically, we  might  manage to top out below 2.5°C, but only if we (a) get lucky and invent something spectacular or (b) give up and start spraying sulfates in the atmosphere. Is this really so hard to admit?" https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/01/yes-1-5-degrees-celsius-is-long-gone-as-a-climate-change-target/

Mine was a three-year high school: 10 th , 11 th and 12 th grades. There were ca. 530 students in my graduating class, and so over 1500 kids in the building on any given day. I doubt I knew more than a third of the kids in my class, maybe less. Students were tracked in math, so if you were on the advanced track (which started back in 7 th grade), you didn’t see many classmates in math class. And most kids only took one foreign language, so as a student in French, I didn’t see the kids who took Spanish or German. The only classes where students really mixed were health class and gym. My sophomore health class teacher was the basketball coach, who later that year impregnated one of my classmates and was sent down to teach elementary school. My sophomore gym coach was an old guy who was clearly demented and would fall asleep taking roll call. I had a few good teachers: Judy Busse in English and journalism, Jackie Jacoby in physics and Jo Henderson in Biology II com...

As of 1 January 2020, I became the oldest faculty member in my department. As recently as six years ago, there were five faculty members older than me. Now, everyone older than me has retired. When I hired on as an assistant professor in 1987, I was the youngest faculty member at the age of 32. I remained the youngest for another six years or so, and for years after, was among the youngest. It seems odd to me to think of myself as the oldest at 64. And I plan to stay on for at least another couple of years. But biomedical research is a young person’s gig, and I’m ready to transition out. I just need to figure out what to do next.

Make no mistake, the Trump-directed assassination in Iraq of Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in Iraq, is an effort to seize the news cycle by distracting from the latest emails implicating Trump in the Ukraine scandal. But Iran isn’t Albania and this isn’t a movie. This is an act of war. Soleimani was the guy in charge of all operations in the Middle East. An analogy would be if Iran had assassinated Gen. Petraeus on his way to Heathrow back when he was in charge of USCENTCOM. Look, Iran is larger, more populous and better armed than Iraq. There are US troops stationed throughout the Middle East already who are vulnerable. Not to mention oil fields in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and tankers in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian leadership will retaliate in a time and manner of its own choosing. Who benefits if the US goes to war against Iran? Putin and Russia. Russian natural gas becomes more valuable with Middle East i...

Lifted from a comment thread on a favorite blog (Angry Bear): “ In 7th grade the shop classes started. Wood the first semester, metal the second. I took one look at a band saw and refused to get near it. My teacher said I would fail. I told him OK by me. Same thing happened in metals. My other grades were good enough that those F’s never stopped me from graduating. The problem jumped up in high school. By that time I was one of the best athletes in my class, starting in all three sports (they only had three in my day). So my football coach comes up to me the first day in class and asks me how I am going to do in shop. I told him I was going to fail. He said you could not play sports with any F’s, and I said I just couldn’t do it. He found a solution though. He put me in the home economics class. While I struggled with sewing, I was fine with cooking. I took a lot of ribbing by my teammates the first couple of weeks of school. But that changed pretty quickly. They noticed I w...

A character in the novel I’m currently reading says “Everybody hates their job. That’s why it’s called a job.” First, let's distinguish between work and toil. Work is effort towards some meaningful sense of personal fulfillment. While the effort may be uncomfortable and unpleasant at times, the goal of work should be a sense of accomplishment and personal growth. Toil is meaningless effort; a dead-end job with routine and/or stressful tasks that don’t permit learning or growth is toil. So everyone may well hate a job that amounts to toil. By the time I finished my junior year in college, I’d set my sights on a career in academic research. I wanted to be a tenured full professor at a university. There was much work to do to reach that goal. Grad school was hard and filled with opportunities for failure (most of the work in my dissertation was done in my final year). Postdoctoral fellowship was hard, usually working 60+ hrs/week. Being an untenured assistant pro...

I posted earlier about allegations that Corelleware contains lead that could be harmful to human health. There’s no doubt that lead is a dangerous neurotoxin when ingested or inhaled in sufficient quantity. But we ingest dangerous substances all the time. Acrylamide is a neurotoxin that forms in some foods as a by-product of high-temperature frying, roasting and baking. Benzo[a]pyrenes are carcinogens that form as result of, e.g., grilling meat. The nitrite and nitrate preservatives in processed meats (bacon, ham, hot dogs) are known carcinogens. Arsenic, a well-known poison, concentrates at higher levels in rice than in other food crops and is the biggest food source of inorganic arsenic. Fluoride, which in low concentration is beneficial for oral health (fluoridated water and toothpaste), is toxic at high levels. Ethanol, the alcohol found in beer, wine and spirits, is a risk factor for various cancers. The old adage in toxicology is “the dose makes the poison.”...

2020 promises to be a turbulent time in America. As the Trump impeachment moves to an inevitable non-conviction in the Senate and the campaigns for the POTUS, 100% of the House and 1/3 of the Senate ramp up, the divisions among Americans will be exploited by the press and by the White House. For this reason, Rebecca and Anna’s Christmas gift of “Leadership in Turbulent Times” by Doris Kearnes Goodwin is timely. It is a reminder of how leaders can emerge in times of anxiety and crisis and can do the right thing. The book consists of the stories of four American presidents, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and LBJ, and how their respective biographies provided the tempering crucibles from which they derived their strength of conviction, vision, tenacity and zeal to turn the power of government to the benefit of the most vulnerable in society. I read the Edmund Morris Theodore Roosevelt trilogy, as well as “River of Doubt,” the story of Roosevelt’s adventures in South America after leav...

My parents owned Corelle dishes, coffee cups and cookware. Eventually, most or all of these pieces found their way to my siblings. Now, I’m reading that Corelleware of that vintage has dangerous levels of lead. Now, there’s no question that lead in sufficient amounts, ingested or inhaled, is neurotoxic. It is especially dangerous during fetal and child development, when the central nervous system is developing. Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones, has published excellent research with convincing evidence that combustion of leaded gasoline was a major driver in the elevated crime rates in the US in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and its discontinuation was a major contributor to the dramatic drop in crime since then. But Corelleware? Seriously? The primary driver of the Corelleware/lead scarelore is Tamara Rubin. She has a son who suffers the permanent effects of lead poisoning and is understandably concerned about sources of lead poisoning in the environment. However, she has never publi...