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  This is the future of a Republican judiciary. Fair and impartial justice? LOL! There will be lots more of this, now that GOP hacks have lifetime judicial appointments. What is to be done? " There is no reason that government officials should obey flagrantly lawless courts. The doctrine of judicial supremacy promulgated in Marbury v. Madison is just that: a judicially created doctrine, not found in the Constitution, and never formalized via legislation. Like all judicially created doctrines, its justification is normative and prudential, not formal and descriptive.   The strong form of judicial review found in the United States is very unusual in comparative terms: Most developed legal systems feature nothing like it. Claiming that it’s an essential feature of “the rule of law” is a ridiculously parochial argument, based on an ideology of American exceptionalism that is by now completely discredited in the eyes of all rational observers. Judicial supremacy, in other words, is...

  Another blow against natural herd immunity: "Some survivors of Covid-19 carry worrying signs that their immune system has turned on the body, reminiscent of potentially debilitating diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, a new study has found. At some point, the body’s defense system in these patients shifted into attacking itself, rather than the virus, the study suggests. The patients are producing molecules called “autoantibodies” that target genetic material from human cells, instead of from the virus. This misguided immune response may exacerbate severe Covid-19. It may also explain why so-called “long haulers” have lingering problems months after their initial illness has resolved and the virus is gone from their bodies." No, it's not like the flu, people. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/health/covid-antibodies-autoimmunity.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR2m1g6aZvf9oJONGkf0WBQ60FKT989F9vbIPJIwjlcMVRD-GPPfWuJwrP8

  The sheer immensity (size) of the Trump Administration's dishonesty is difficult to comprehend. And we have yet to fully experience the sheer enormity (great evil) of the consequences. Data are what separate our response to pandemic from the Black Death of the Middle Ages. The Trump Administration has actively interfered with the collection, application and even acceptance of data on which the lives of millions depend. This is criminal. "The administration has failed on so many different fronts in its handling of the coronavirus, creating the overall impression of sheer mayhem. But there is a common thread that runs through these government malfunctions. Precise, transparent data is crucial in the fight against a pandemic—yet through a combination of ineptness and active manipulation, the government has depleted and corrupted the key statistics that public health officials rely on to protect us." https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/article/disappearing-data/index.html?...

 " Advocates of the war on terror believed that nationalist chauvinism, which sometimes travels under the name “American exceptionalism,” could be stoked at a controlled burn to sustain American hegemony. Instead, and predictably, toxic ultranationalism burned out of control. Today, the greatest security threat to the United States comes not from any terrorist group, or from any great power, but from domestic political dysfunction. The election of Donald Trump as president was a product and accelerant of that dysfunction—but not its cause. The environment for his political rise was prepared over a decade and a half of xenophobic, messianic Washington warmongering, with roots going back into centuries of white supremacist politics." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-10-22/us-foreign-policy-never-recovered-war-terror

  "Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed. Uncontrolled transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity and mortality across the whole population. In addition to the human cost, this would impact the workforce as a whole and overwhelm the ability of healthcare systems to provide acute and routine care." "Furthermore, there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection and the endemic transmission that would be the consequence of waning immunity would present a risk to vulnerable populations for the indefinite future. Such a strategy would not end the COVID-19 pandemic but result in recurrent epidemics, as was the case with numerous infectious diseases before the advent of vaccination. It would also place an unacceptable burden on the economy and healthcare workers, many of whom have died from COVID-19 or experienced trauma as a result of having to practise...

  As any student of Soviet history can tell you, all scientific decisions were controlled by the party, not by scientists. The Trump administration is using Stalinism as its governing strategy: politics before science. It endangers us all. Shame. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/wh-installs-political-operatives-at-cdc-in-effort-to-muzzle-agency?fbclid=IwAR0E38ZvHiyBCB-hfGr7B4Ar4AFI_CiHiL62i1thxjwYmiV2uhKypgJ6LNQ

" . . .  advocates of climate action are focused on another landmark ruling they fear is in danger due to the deep stamp Trump is seeking to put on the court before he faces voters this fall. Environmental law scholars believe that with Barrett on the bench, there will be little remaining support on the nation’s highest court for upholding what is arguably its most important environmental ruling—Massachusetts v. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29092020/amy-coney-barrett

Bill Gates never got a college degree. Neither did Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. Most American high school grads won’t get a degree from a four-year college or university. What will they do? I was on a FB thread yesterday that supported vocational training and listed about a dozen jobs that don’t require a college degree. Among them were plumbing, carpentry and truck driving. And that’s true today. But the interesting question is whether those jobs will still be around in 40 years or replaced by automation or robots. Long haul trucking looks to be the first on that list. There are already autonomous vehicles on the road. In 10 years, it is very likely that most long haul trucking will be done by autonomous vehicles—they don’t get tired or sick, they don’t have families and they don’t take weekends or holidays or amphetamines. A lot of new housing is pre-fab, with walls and roof fabricated at a central location by robots and then trucked out and assembled on site. The assembly may stil...

  Trying to debunk all of Trump's lies is playing whack-a-mole. But there is one recent lie that was new to me. His claim: "California is going to have to ration water. You know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific, because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish that aren't doing very well without water, to be honest with you." First of all, whenever Trump says "to be honest with you," it's a tell. He's not being honest with you. And no, fish in the sea are not without water. In fact, sea levels are rising, not falling. What is this bafflegab about? Turns out that a small amount of fresh water is being diverted to freshwater estuaries to prevent saltwater intrusion that is fatal to endangered delta smelt and other fish. But it also protects farmland. "Though many believe that the increase of freshwater flow through the delta is a waste of water to protect smelt, the main reason for the fr...

  Not to put too fine a point on it, CRISPR technology emerged from a mechanistic understanding of how certain bacteria evade infection by bacteriophage. This is a basic research question that promised no therapies or connection to human disease. The same with restriction endonuclease, that were sine qua non to recombinant DNA/cloning in the '70s. There are many other examples of scientific discoveries that were made purely in the quest of better understanding and later found practical applications to human health. As the NIH has shifted increasingly to applied and clinical research, this sort of science is endangered. The NSF still funds basic research, but the budgets are much smaller and the awards are even more competitive than the NIH.

 I don't really think much about high school. Most of the people I knew then, I parted ways with after graduation or within a few years after. The most significant impact was a relationship that began with the person who later became my wife, but that owes nothing to the school or its curriculum. I began high school with a bad case of acne, which made me a pariah to most girls and taught me how to blame the victim. Eventually, my parents let me go to a dermatologist, who explained that it wasn’t due to bad diet or indifferent hygiene, but to hormones. Apart from outliving neuroses, high school is supposed to be about learning stuff. I wasn’t a strong student in high school, but here are the classes and teachers I can recall as having had a notable effect on me from 8 th   to 12 th   grade: Ed Smith and Algebra I: I learned math the old-fashioned way, by rote. Ed Smith was my first experience in math that demanded thinking. I’ve since come to appreciate that the teacher is...

 From the comment thread over at MoJo: When did Trump first test positive?  In all likelihood, sometime between Saturday and Monday last week.    How can we tell?  Look no further than the contrast between two events in the same venue, the Rose Garden.     Saturday, Sept. 26 Scotus nomination announcement   https://youtu.be/fBcsZMzmc_U    -Trump walks in with A.C. Barrett & her family inc. kids   -Barrett stands beside Trump during his remarks from the podium   -When Barrett begins to speak, Trump steps in to adjust her microphone   -Takeaway: no social distancing     Monday, Sept. 27   WH update on coronavirus testing   https://youtu.be/gJcu-4X0vSM    -Trump speaks from main podium where he stands alone   -Other speakers speak from a second podium at least 20 feet away   -Trump makes weak joke introducing admiral "hope you don't test positive"   -Takeaway: visible (and for ...

 Just a little reminder that Boris Johnson had COVID-19. Tested positive on 27 March, and had mild to moderate symptoms until 6 April. That afternoon found him in intensive care. He was eventually discharged six days later. 16 days. We'll see if Trump can improve on that. We're not out of the woods yet, peeps. Meanwhile, Trump's senior campaign advisor Jason Miller says Biden wears a face mask as a "prop." Honestly, where do they mint these idiots? I wonder if we'll hear anything like this from Trump: In a video statement Johnson, in suit and tie, says the “NHS has saved my life, no question”. He added: “We will win because our  NHS  is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.” He paid tribute to the astonishing care he received from nurses and thanked, in particular, the “two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. They’re Jenny from New Zealand …...

https://twitter.com/AugustJPollak/status/1312426889626214402  "I have lived my entire life in a media narrative that Republicans are simply not supposed to face any consequences for their actions and what we have been witnessing for the last 48 hours is the result of a media completely unequipped to handle exactly that happening. I think that’s why there’s such a cognitive dissonance between how punditry is reacting to this versus, well, basically the rest of the planet. Look at the backlash to that pathetic Twitter announcement. People are done. They are fucking done with this bullshit. The pieces are rapidly fitting together to the conclusion that the administration, their existing ignorance to all of this aside, likely went to the debate knowing they may be exposed, hid it, and then didn’t tell Biden. I know I’m screaming at a brick wall when I say this, but how is there a partisan debate about something like that. That is criminal recklessness. That is at best incompetence and...

  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay By the time I tackled this book, I’d read two other books by Michael Chabon: “Telegraph Avenue” and “Manhood for Amateurs.” The latter is a personal meditation on guydom which I quite enjoyed, and the former a sprawling and (to me) tangled and confusing exercise in linguistic prolixity. Chabon can write. Boy, can he write! The metaphors and similes just keep tumbling out, each more exotic and unexpected than the last. And descriptive minutia are like those tiny medieval paintings you sometimes see in out-of-the-way museums in France or Spain. He sometimes seems to do it just to show off: for instance, chapter 3 of “Telegraph Avenue,” which goes on for a couple dozen pages, is really just one sentence. There is only a single period, marking the end of the chapter.  Zany and slapstick are two words that I think capture my reaction to the novel. It was entertaining, but I was done. I was backed into Kavalier and Clay. I agreed to lead...

 Trump has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and is at Walter Reed, getting experimental antibody therapy and remdesivir. He has at least two major co-morbidities that worsen his odds with COVID-19: advanced age and obesity.  Age I get. Older folks have weaker and more poorly regulated immune systems. And, of course, older people collect other well-know co-morbidities like diabetes, high blood pressure, clotting disorders and obesity. Why obesity? Here's an article from the 11 September issue of Science that summarizes our current understanding. Again, obesity brings with it other co-morbidities like diabetes, clotting disorders and immune dysfunction. More details here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1280#:~:text=The%20biology%20of%20obesity%20includes,obesity%20may%20avoid%20medical%20care.

  While I’m waiting for the FB bully block to expire, I’m reading yet again posts about how Congress needs to “pay back” Social Security. Here’s a short tutorial. Social Security is a pay-go system. When you are working and a fraction of your compensation goes to payroll taxes, that money doesn’t go into a bank or drawer with your name on it, waiting until you retire. It goes to one of two places: (1) it pays the retirement checks of current retirees and/or (2) it goes into the trust fund. I assume everyone knows that (1) is burn money. Gone. The trust fund (2) is any money that is over and above what is required to pay for current retirees, and is required, by law, to be invested in US treasuries. Yes, these are loans (just like they are to any one who buys treasuries) and are subject to repayment from the general fund. But just like the US dollar, treasuries are backed by the full faith and credit of the government. What does that mean? Well, most “dollars” are not pieces of rag ...

 I awoke this morning to the news that Trump has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and will quarantine. I don't know what to make of this. Trump has told tens of thousands of lies since inauguration, so this could just be another lie. It would be a facile excuse to cancel the debates. On the other hand, his rallies are his lifeblood and quarantine would require him to cancel rallies for the next two weeks, a month before the election. It seems implausible to me that Trump would give up two weeks of in-person rallies just to avoid further debates.  So this is where we are. His age and obesity place him at high risk for pathology, and even "mild" cases of COVID-19 can leave victims will long-term health problems. If Trump goes back on the trail within the two-week quarantine period, I'll call this a hoax. If he stays in the WH for the next two weeks, I'll believe it's real.

  The premise that “human life begins at fertilization” has never made sense. Human sperm and human oocytes are human life and they are alive prior to fertilization. Human life is a continuum, made possible by the continuity of the human germ line. Sometimes, the defenders of the fertilization add “unique human life,” but thanks to meiotic recombination and independent assortment, every sperm and every egg is unique, human and alive. Biological ignorance nowithstanding, the “human life begins at fertilization” argument has two practical consequences: (1) it renders in vitro fertilization impractical and (2) it makes any woman who terminates a pregnancy at any point after fertilization an accessory to first degree murder.   In the case of IVF, the practical reality is the multiple fertilization products, each potentially capable of implantation and gestation to birth, are generated and frozen. At this point, hundreds of thousands if not millions of these “babies,” in the parlan...

  I still recall being in high school when I learned of the creationist argument that evolution—that all life on earth is the product of descent with modification—violates the 2 nd   law of thermodymics, since it posits an increase in order over time. The creationist point is that the existence of a Creator is necessitated to override this iron law of physics.    As my father patiently explained, this argument treats planet earth as a closed energy system, which it decidedly is not. The earth is continuously flooded with generous amounts of solar energy, much of which is then transferred to outer space. The sun is continuously losing entropy and space is gaining entropy, and puny little earth is essentially in global entropic homeostasis. At the time, and even until now, this has always satisfied me intuitively. But over at the evolution blog Panda’s Thumb, a creationist has been recycling the tired old violation of the 2 nd  law trope. Reading through the discu...