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Those are the last four words of “Origins,” by Lewis Dartnell. I recently read Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and before that “Guns, Germs and Steel,” Jared Diamond’s excellent account of how human societies succeeded or failed based on the accidents of plant, animal and climate distributions. “Origins” is the story of life on earth told from the point of view of geology, plate tectonics and global climate. I was aware that the cradle of our species lay in the rift valley of Eastern Africa, but I didn’t connect “rift” with the movements of tectonic plates, let alone how that particular geology brought together just the right climate conditions at just the right time to drive our ancestors out of the forest and into the grassy plains. Similarly, I knew about the recent ice age and the peopling of the Americas by travel across the Bering land bridge, but I didn’t realize that horses and camels originated in the Americas and traveled the opposite direction into Eurasia before going extin...

  Every few weeks, I see a meme on FB to the effect that SS is bankrupt or will go bankrupt, and that Congress stole money from SS. This is nonsense. It is impossible for SS to be bankrupt. As long as people are working for wages, there will be money coming in to SS. When the trust fund runs out in around 2034, benefits will drop to about 80% of projected benefits. As for Congress stealing, any excess SS must, by law, be used to purchase treasuries, which are loans backed by the full faith and credit of the US (the same guarantee that backs the US dollar). By law, those treasuries have to be redeemed at face value when they mature. Congress no more stole SS money than your bank steals your deposits when they lend the money for interest. Undocumented workers have been subsidizing SS for decades. Fake SS numbers means employers are sending money to SS on behalf of workers who will never claim benefits. This is immoral, of course, but if you're worried about SS, encouraging undocument...

  The study asked Americans to rate their support for these three QAnon ideological pillars: “The government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.” “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” While those who identify as Republicans indicated the highest support for each of these three statements, Americans as a whole do embrace some of these beliefs: 15 percent think the “Satan-worshipping pedophiles” conspiracy theory has merit, one in five support the belief that the “elite” will soon be destroyed and, perhaps most troubling, 15 percent think that violence is the right option for saving the country. https://www.prri.org/research/qanon-conspiracy-american-politics-report/

  When I was on the high school cross country team, we’d have Saturday morning races in Knoxpatch against kids from area schools. I say “kids” because it wasn’t uncommon to see some girls in the race. Indeed, some of these girls beat some of my teammates. I don’t know whether any of the girls were transgender, but given that this was in the early 1970s in East Tennessee, I kinda doubt it. The latest fake distraction from the extremist right is that transgender girls are a threat to girl’s sports. Sorry, that doesn’t pass the sniff test. For one thing, there just aren’t many transgender girls and most of them aren’t interested in varsity sports (just like most cis-gender girls and boys aren’t). And for another, I seriously doubt that boys who can’t cut it in boy’s sports are going to claim transgender status just so they can win as girls. Finally, there’s no evidence that cis-gender girls can’t win in competitions that include transgender girls. But don’t take my work for it, here’s...

  For the unvaccinated, the SARS-CoV-2 variants popping up in England, India and elsewhere are a grave concern. They seem to be more contagious and cause more serious disease than the first strains to make it out of China. But what about those of us who are vaccinated? Well, the latest story seems to be that, while some of these variants are somewhat less sensitive to antibodies raised by current vaccines, the level of protection seems sufficient. The next-gen mRNA vaccines are already being developed by Pfizer and Moderna. Since I was fully vaccinated eight months ago, I'm interested in getting a booster later this year, but since I'm in the Moderna Phase III trial, I don't know if I can do that and stay in the trial. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01222-5?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20210520&utm_source=nature_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210520&sap-outbound-id=3D2DBCD742587E98A96FCC3BC213E225BD60CBDB&fbclid=IwAR0HrSY1tWKRhOnj53CwuU-AI6Bt5Tvh8CO...

If you've been following the COVID-19 pandemic news from India, you know that there are variants that appear to be more contagious, more deadly and more resistant to the vaccines. Here's a recent update. The nut grafs: " . . . the vaccines are likely to remain effective against B.1.617 and to limit severe disease. “The vaccine is still working,” says Yadav. “If you get vaccinated, you will be protected, and the severity will be less.” Nevertheless, “the surge in cases in India and scenes witnessed there is of grave concern internationally”, Nick Loman, a microbial genomicist and bioinformatician at the University of Birmingham, UK, told the Science Media Centre in London after the United Kingdom declared B.1.617.2 a variant of concern. “This variant will now be one to watch."" https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-021-01274-7/d41586-021-01274-7.pdf  

  Failing to get the COVID-19 vaccine endangers everyone, even if vaccinated people mostly don't carry or transmit the virus. The pool of infected people represents a feedlot for the proliferation of SARS-CoV-2. It is in this reservoir that new variants occur. Variants that (a) are more infectious and (b) are less sensitive to existing vaccines will be selected. This will render the current vaccinated population vulnerable and create a new surge. Donorcycle riding, donut eating and rock climbing are not contagious. SARS-CoV-2 is.

  "In 1996 Fox News started up and for its first few years mostly toed a moderate conservative line. Then, starting around 2000, they adopted a much more right-wing format and their viewership rose as they became available on more cable channels. And guess what? As their viewership expanded, the Republican Party became less and less committed to democratic norms. Correlation is not causation blah blah blah. By itself, this isn't proof of the baneful effects of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. However, there's plenty of other evidence and this is one more straw on the camel's back. Fox News is responsible more than any other single entity for the destruction of American politics over the past two decades." https://jabberwocking.com/chart-of-the-day-fox-news-republicans-and-the-destruction-of-democracy/?fbclid=IwAR0_NboroLheL3qW7D7_i53JMdYy3kTHzrg1QEuSirCr1z_hAb211zCYeEI

  Fake news didn't begin with Donald Trump, Fox and QAnon. Ronald Reagan was full of fake news, which he cheerfully repeated over and over. One of his most famous was the myth of the Welfare Queen. Of course, she was Black in his legend. He gave her a specific name and the fable included details about 12 Social Security cards and 80 bogus names to lend verisimilitude. Of course, reporters at the time determined there was no such person, but Reagan just kept repeating the myth, just like Trump's continued lies about the pandemic and the 2020 election. According to this link, though, the GOP hasn't revived the myth against Biden--so far. I hope this particular lie has finally been buried. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/16/politics/biden-welfare-queen-blake/index.html?fbclid=IwAR38wpfhSfNyXFrtRjGEqJIIB1B_iSsvLbw1LTtEaOGdOWTnQjhwStyMq9E

  The CDC now says fully vaccinated people can go unmasked indoors. This seems to have bewildered some people, but they shouldn't be. Contra the GOP and Fox (but I repeat myself), masking and social distancing was not Stalinist control. Masking and social distancing were always intended as temporary measures to control the virus until vaccinations took hold. While I think the relaxation of indoor masking may turn out to be premature in some areas, events have changed sufficiently to warrant a change of mind. That's how science works, peeps. Science doesn't make claims of eternal truth or demand belief in dogma. That's religion. Science is always provisional and relies on the weight of evidence. https://jabberwocking.com/no-the-science-around-masks-hasnt-changed-recently/?fbclid=IwAR2ZvBjfnr64qy9LnvYvx0UfBNn3K2Du5MyLbaawqhkBljCZkpMii27LQ1o

  Fighting infectious diseases is hard. Our toolkit includes drugs and vaccines. But there's an arms race between the bugs and the drugs (and with COVID-19 and flu, the vaccines). In some diseases, the transmission requires an insect or mammalian vector. Recent advances in genome editing have enabled so-called "gene drives" that are, in principle, capable of driving to extinction a host species, at least in a region of the planet. Gene drives to extinguish the anopheles and aedes mosquito vectors for malaria, yellow fever, zika and others have been in development for years, and now one has been released in Florida. From the link: "The genetically engineered males carry a gene that passes to their offspring and kills female progeny in early larval stages. Male offspring won’t die, but instead will become carriers of the gene and pass it to future generations. As more females die, the A. aegypti population should dwindle." The decision to release a GMO animal is c...

  Diamonds are not rare in the earth's crust, like gold is. What has made diamonds precious and valued is hoarding and marketing, led by the DeBeers corporation. This artificial pricing has led to the phenomenon of "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds," diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, or a warlord's activity. So the replacement of mined diamonds with synthetic diamonds is good news. They are indistinguishable from natural diamonds--both are just carbon crystals. But in principle, they can be made cheaply, driving down the cost of diamonds and reducing the illicit benefits. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/pandora-is-ditching-mined-diamonds-moving-to-sustainable-labmade-alternatives-only/?fbclid=IwAR165sITWtHakg3SHcu-m7Y6k1rg9VDqPMPcuNEFHY1vmQbK95LfKQ5lc0E

  "So here's what happens: Everyone notices that bacon, apples, ground beef, and whole chickens are noticeably more expensive than they used to be. But they don't notice that bananas and butter and tomatoes are less expensive. Homo sapiens being what we are—i.e., bad at on-the-run arithmetic—we conclude that prices are skyrocketing. Did you see what I had to pay for a pound of bacon! (And even that's a mirage. Remember that these prices are artificially high because the base year for comparison is 2020. A closer look using 2019 as the base year reveals that bacon is actually up only 3.5% annually over the past two years. The entire category of food at home is up 2.2% annually over the past two years, about the same as overall inflation.)" https://jabberwocking.com/the-price-of-bacon-is-up-8-1/

  "Biden’s electoral college win was only certified because enough Republican secretaries of state and county election board officials did their duty to democracy and resisted pressure to thwart the will of the voters. Every lever of Republican power has since been wielded to punish them. Minor county board officials have been receiving organized harassment and death threats. Secretary of state Raffensperger in Georgia is not only facing a major primary challenge, he was also stripped of his power to certify the election in the future. Every Republican not already committed to preserving their power by any means necessary has been put on notice that if they do not cooperate they will be physically threatened and politically replaced. So what happens in 2024 if President Biden or Vice President Harris win the Electoral College, but local Republicans on county boards with majority Democratic votes refuse to certify the election; when state legislatures who have seized control of ce...

Tax cuts pay for themselves. The wealthy are the job creators. People won't work because of jobless benefits. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/commerce-secretary-raimondo-unemployment-relief-job-growth?fbclid=IwAR3s-Gb6cK6EhPuAbXe4zX0YY7OJ4SvLnYzOp0K8i76Oop61JgOTc6jMiK8

  Actually, the GOP can't grow *with* Trump. Trump lost the popular vote twice, the only president in history to do so. And he lost it by a larger percentage the second time. During his single term, he presided over the GOP loss of the House and the Senate. The GOP, like any political party, can only grow through advocating popular policies. The only policy pursued by Trump is animus: political, racial and personal. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cassidy-graham-gop-cant-grow-without-trump?fbclid=IwAR0653-5TuaPY1csn_4AtoX2qBglyYzioTM768OWnVDkXcZjNdLyE7uJ5dc

  What to say about the pearl clutching around Liz Cheney's pending demotion from the GOP leadership? Basically, she's a bog ordinary right-wing extremist, she just doesn't worship Donald Trump in public. This is forbidden by the GOP cancel culture, so they'll be defenestrating her shortly and replacing her with someone equally as extreme but tethered to Trump. I can't see anything good coming out of this for the GOP. Trump never polled above 48% approval at any time during his presidency. He's the only president to lose the popular vote twice, and he lost it by more the second time, so the trend is down. He presided over the GOP loss of the House and Senate. If he were a stock, I'd have sold it years ago. So no tears for Liz from me. And I don't weep for the Republican Party. I do wonder why so many Republicans hate America, though. Sad.

  Just saw a FB post complaining about undocumented immigrants and saying the federal government should be paying more benefits to Social Security recipients. Folks, those undocumented workers are subsidizing Social Security. They are paying billions into a retirement insurance system that they will never be able to claim benefits from. Instead, their payments go to current retirees and they are on their own when or if they retire. https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/28/undocumented-immigrants-quietly-pay-billions-social-security-and-receive-no/?fbclid=IwAR0WEB5W0fm0LZHSrWZBtcbnCWUEWOGz_CZ9VHLx0KtNbMsovUhFbV6_NM8