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Beginning as a postdoc, I developed a fascination with 20th century history, and in particular, Cold War history. It’s not just morbid curiosity, but because I believe the world we live in today is very much a relict of the Cold War and Cold War thinking. I’ve been to Moscow twice, and to Halle Germany three times. Halle is not far from Leipzig and was part of the GDR after WWII. My friend Gunter Reuter grew up in Halle during the GDR time and has told me many stories and jokes from that time. He even owned a Trabbie, which required considerable patience. The GDR state police, the Stasi, spied relentlessly on the East German citizens, cultivating an army of informants from among the citizenry. Thus, as a GDR citizen, you couldn’t trust anyone because they might inform on your and your could lose your job and even go to prison. The Stasi kept meticulous records, some of which have been released for people who request their files. Many more files were destroyed as the Wall fell. It is sa...

When I was a graduate student at UNC-CH, the Biology department recruited a new assistant professor. She had gotten her PhD at Yale, then did a postdoc at the Medical Research Council labs in the UK and a second postdoc at the Harvard Biolabs. Some time after she had settled in, several of us were hanging out on a Friday afternoon, and one of the students asked her how she compared the students at UNC with the ones she knew at Yale. Her answer was “at Yale, we knew we were good.” She wasn’t saying Yale students are better. She was saying that being at Yale was a kind of solvent that dissolved the miasma of insecurity that striving people feel, the anxiety that leads to imposter syndrome. That story has always stayed with me because of what it says about the power of society to hijack our self-image. What I learned is to pay attention to the values and myths of society, but not to be enslaved by them. And similarly, to avoid judging others by their credentials.

Kevin Drum is spot on here. I'll just give him the floor: "Putin says he wants NATO to agree to stop expansion on Russia's border. That primarily means Finland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia . . . Naturally, the NATO position is that it's up to us who we invite to join our club, but the weird thing is that Russia's position really ought to be perfectly acceptable to the NATO states. I've always supported the post-1991 expansion of NATO, but it's gone as far as it should. The farther away from the core NATO countries we get, the farther we are from countries that truly have any kind of strategic value or cultural connection to us. How serious are we about having, say, a treaty obligation to defend Ukraine if Belarus gets frisky?" https://jabberwocking.com/the-ukraine-crisis-has-entered-the-annals-of-the-bizarre/

Supreme Court was supposed to be the “apolitical” branch of the government. The framers of the Constitution intended the Court to be insulated from the chaotic process of politics and so granted lifetime appointments. The unfortunate truth is that the apolitical firewall, if it ever existed, was breeched long ago. Other nations have rejected the fiction of an apolitical court, and instead incorporated the recognition that a human process is fraught with human frailties: • France’s Constitutional Council has nine permanent members, of which one-third are replaced every three years by the executive branch. • Switzerland’s top judges get six-year terms before facing reelection. • In Germany, a committee of 12 members representing all parties in Parliament selects a nominee behind closed doors. The parties take turns in proposing candidates, a mechanism that ensures even smaller parties with as little as five percent of popular support can propose a nominee every few years, usually without...

I've always figured that I got my inheritance from my parents after high school. They paid for tuition, room and board for four years of college.* I graduated with a degree, debt-free. It's the gift that keeps on giving! *yes, I did work-study for three years, but it was mostly spending money and savings we used to buy household stuff before the wedding.

The GOP is fine when St. Ronnie says this: “I am announcing today that one of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration will be filled by the most qualified woman I can possibly find. … It is time for a woman to sit among the highest jurists.” ~Ronald Reagan The GOP is outrages when Joe Biden says this: The person I will nominate will be somebody of extraordinary qualifications, character and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It is long overdue.” ~Joe Biden Can you spot the difference?

Turns out there are some significant errors in my early post about the new TerraPower nuclear plant that Bill Gates is co-funding in Wyoming. Here is a more accurate version: Nuclear power is back Usually, discussions of decarbonizing energy production involve solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. But nuclear power generation doesn’t generate greenhouse gas (though the large amount of concrete in conventional nuclear power plants does). Nuclear power generation has gotten a bad name with Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. While there is debate about whether the famous nuclear power reactor accidents to date have really endangered many lives, there’s no doubt that solid fuel light water nuclear power reactors have an image problem. Bill Gates is hoping to overcome that image problem by co-funding a next generation nuclear power reactor. Gates’ company, TerraPower, has announced the siting of a 345 MW demonstration plant in Kemmerer WY. The plant will be a Natrium plant design, wh...

Usually, discussions of decarbonizing energy production involve solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. But nuclear power generation doesn’t generate greenhouse gas (though the large amount of concrete in nuclear power plants does). Nuclear power generation has gotten a bad name with Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the waste products from nuclear power and decommissioning nuclear reactors need to be stored for millions of years before they decay to safe levels. While there is debate about whether the famous nuclear power reactor accidents to date have really endangered many lives, there’s no doubt that solid fuel light water nuclear power reactors have an image problem. Fortunately, there’s an alternative to current nuclear power reactor design on the shelf, pioneered in the 1960s in Oak Ridge: molten salt reactors. There are a number of advantages to molten salt reactors over conventional solid fuel light water reactors: Fission products can be removed or added while the pl...

  I see where the rock singer "Meat Loaf" has died of COVID. I wasn't a fan, although his performance in Rocky Horror Picture Show was fun and the line "Oh, no, Meat Loaf again!" was fun for audience participation. But my sympathy is tempered by the fact that he opposed vaccine mandates, which makes him part of the problem, not part of the solution. I have been a long-time fan of Van Morrison, and I'm sad to see that he is also part of the anti-health pandemic movement. Shame. "The singer and actor, real name Michael Lee Aday, had been outspoken about COVID, specifically railing against vaccine mandates, the outlet said. In May, he posted a clip of Eric Clapton and Van Morrison’s anti-lockdown song, “Stand & Deliver,” writing, “Listen and Learn.” It was not clear if he had been vaccinated. Reps for the star did not immediately return requests for comment early Friday." https://nypost.com/2022/01/21/meat-loaf-was-ill-with-covid-days-before-his...

"Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is drawing criticism for comments he made shortly before the GOP blocked a federal elections bill, when he said that “African American” voters cast ballots at similar rates to “Americans.” The minority leader made the remark at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, when he was asked about concerns that people of color have about voting rights. “The concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell said." https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/20/nation/mitch-mcconnell-says-black-people-vote-similar-rates-americans/?event=event12

If you actually read this article, the findings are completely consistent with random mutation, but that the mutations are repaired (or not) by a non-random mechanism. So, no, the key assumptions of evolution are *not* violated. https://www.livescience.com/non-random-dna-mutations?fbclid=IwAR135AEn3dUcrm0zshbAxaNzGBTaU81bwMwmPk6MPKfJk59bx_ndtC0DW-8

In my various media interviews and articles on direct-to-consumer genomics, I make a point of emphasizing that one of the most common findings is that one's custodial father isn't one's biological father. And now, it's sometimes possible to identify the biological father, too. If you read the link, you'll see that claim that some docs were just trying to help infertile couples conceive. But my guess is that they didn't expect to be caught. With DNA testing, that hope flies out the window. I'm thinking that there will be lots o' lawsuits spawned by this technology. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/fertility-doctors-using-their-own-sperm-is-a-surprisingly-widespread-problem/?fbclid=IwAR3a1QctuRl_0s2TB-5XKzmNVErSzBamq0_jGzI-jvGqwZp0IlgtsLCVvGk

When Joan Didion died recently, I had to think back on whether I’d read any of her books. I’m pretty sure I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but the fact that I’m uncertain tells you it didn’t make much of an impression. I read Tom Wolf’s Electric Koolaid Acid Test in college; it covers the same time period, but I recall much more of his book. I decided to give Didion another chance, after reading the fulsome praise heaped on her after her passing. I settled on The Year of Magical Thinking because the idea of the book resonated. You can read perfectly good reviews online, so I won’t give a detailed plot synopsis. Suffice to say that it is her account of the death of her husband after nearly 40 years of marriage and her struggles to come to grips with the loss. Didion and her husband were together most days of their marriage and Didion was emotionally dependent on her husband as a sounding board for decisions large and small. The picture she paints of herself looks to me like someone w...

"The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggested that as the viral particles leave the relatively moist and carbon dioxide-rich conditions of the lungs, they rapidly lose water and dry out, while the transition to lower levels of carbon dioxide is associated with a rapid increase in pH. Both of these factors disrupt the virus’s ability to infect human cells, but the speed at which the particles dry out varies according to the relative humidity of the surrounding air. When this was lower than 50% – similar to the relatively dry air found in many offices – the virus had lost around half of its infectivity within five seconds, after which the decline was slower and more steady, with a further 19% loss over the next five minutes. At 90% humidity – roughly equivalent to a steam or shower room – the decline in infectivity was more gradual, with 52% of particles remaining infectious after five minutes, dropping to about 10% after 20 minutes, after which these was no difference...

A contributor over at angrybear blog posts: "I am temporarily banned by Twitter for “Violating our rules against hateful conduct.” because of the attached tweet. I don’t know if “all men must die” was interpreted as a threat rather than a simple statement of fact by the algorithm or if calling deontological reasoning confused or fanatical was considered hate speach [sic]." I started this blog after having been put in FB jail for similarly silly reasons. Once I was blocked for a week for observing that "Americans are innumerate." It turns out that, according to FB community standards, “Americans” are a protected group and “innumerate” is hate speech. Who knew? I'm glad that twitter and FB are policing their platforms for hate speech. But for some reason, they allow right-wing hate speech (pace Trump and MTG) while assiduously censoring liberal speech. I'm not on twitter. I suspect that my problems on FB were because my posts were reported by a right-wing FB ...

In the wake of the first anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, I've read a number of posts by defenders of violent overthrow of our government claiming that the 2nd Amendment was intended by the Founding Fathers as a suicide pact. This is the sort of sophistry used by Scalia and others to decouple the "right to bear arms" from membership in a "well-regulated militia." There's no question from the history of that time that the Founding Fathers expected that private ownership of firearms was intended as an extension of the government's use of force for self-defense, not to arm the public against the government. Here's a well-written article that examines the history and intent of the 2nd Amendment and falsifies the claim that its purpose was to arm civilians to commit treason. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1774&context=concomm

The Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson famously acknowledged in a Meet the Press interview: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” This observation applies to the advice from medical authorities such as the CDC and WHO during the COVID pandemic. Some members of the public are fond of pillorying these agencies for having published different guidelines at different times, as though health officials are in the business of issuing ex cathedra dogma rather than responding to incomplete and ambiguous information. Science doesn’t deal in proof, it deals with the weight of evidence. A scientific hypothesis is one that is capable of being tested and falsified by experiment. I get it. I used to teach problem-based learning to first year medical students, and they often struggled with what to do with incomplete and ambiguous information, which is what physicians in clinics do every day. Sometimes, one cannot wait for all the tests to be completed and all the data analyz...

In 1998, I went to Moscow for the first time to speak at a summer course sponsored by the Russian Academy. The week before I went, we were on vacation and one morning, I heard the NPR reporter say: “Today, the Ruble lost 100% of its value.” That, of course, would mean that the Russian currency was completely worthless. The next day, she apologized and explained that the Ruble had lost 50% of its value, not 100%, which was only slightly less alarming. I went anyway, and had a good time. I brought a couple hundred dollars worth of Deutchmarks that I had lying around from a previous trip and were useless in America, and exchanged them for Rubles. The whole thing was an introduction to the fiction that is money. This idea is imbedded in the title of Jacob Goldstein’s book “Money: The true story of a made-up thing.” The book is a rapid romp through the history of money in human society, from cowrie shells, through metal coins, to paper and digital currency, to Bitcoin. Goldstein is a breezy...

As my FB peeps know, I've been an avid consumer of history for the past 35 years. One reason is to understand how we got to where we are. Another reason is to look for historical parallels to current events to anticipate the future. These days, there are frequent invocations of Nazi Germany in the discussion of Trumpistan and 6 January. I get their point, but going Godwin on the Trump GOP and MAGA overlooks the facts that (a) Germany had only been a single country beginning in the 1880s and had little experience with democracy, and (b) Germany had recently lost a major war followed by hyperinflation. None of those apply to 21st Century America. I saw today where Juan Cole is drawing historical parallels between the right-wing GOP and 6 January and the events surrounding the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh. While he certainly knows his 20th century Iranian history, the analogies are fraught here too. Mosaddegh was appointed prime minister by the Shah in a country that had only recen...

I was never in the military. Both my dad and father-in-law served in the US Navy. I've known plenty of people who served in the military and I've read over 100 histories and biographies that were focused on military history. I get where people who were in the military have a special loyalty to military service. Indeed, military training is specifically designed to inculcate that loyalty, just like private colleges and universities cultivate their alumni and sports teams cultivate their fans. I grew up during the Vietnam War and still have my draft card (1H) from 1973. I know enough about the military and I know enough about myself to know that I would not be a good fit for the level of conformity and external control that is military culture. That's not a critique of the military or of service people or veterans. Not everyone is a good fit to be a medical school professor either.

It is nothing short of obscene that people who took out student loans cannot have recourse to bankruptcy, which is available for other lending. Look, the idea of profit in lending is that you earned that profit by taking a risk. In a real market, lenders have to eat their mistakes, but with student loans, lenders are shielded by government protection, and only the borrowers are exposed to risk. This needs to stop. In student loans as in other loans, the lender needs to shoulder the risk. I know--there's no collateral to be repossessed with student loans. But that's no excuse for lifetime indenture (up to and including garnishing SS payments). They don't do this in other industrialized nations.

  The COVID pandemic and the Mann Gulch fire The Mann Gulch Fire of 1949 stands as a legend in the history of firefighting. Out of 16 firefighters, only three survived. Two slipped through a crevice in the rocks blocking the escape route, and one, the team leader Wagner Dodge, set an escape fire in which he laid down as the fire swept around him. I'm feeling like Wag Dodge during the latest Omicron episode of COVID-19. I'm vaccinated and boosted, and able to work safely from home while others are exposed to a deadly viral wildfire burning on all sides, fueled by the unvaccinated, anti-vax rebellious behavior and a timid government. Like Dodge, I watch with sadness and horror as others die avoidable deaths. I see where Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal Twitter account has been permanently suspended for her repeated COVID disinformation. At least one source of fuel in this inferno has been removed. https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_int/int_gtr299.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3xQP4-7ITP7wzzIBO...

For Christmas 2021, Linda gave me a copy of “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland” by Mark Kruger. The title certainly grabbed my attention. Having read it, there’s somewhat less than meets the eye here. The reason I never heard of this before is that the “commune” was very brief and poorly organized, and the history has been mostly ignored, since the historical impact on St. Louis government and labor was minimal. But I did learn some worthwhile things from the book, and it helped me better understand why socialism and communism failed in this country, and why labor has always struggled. A significant driver of labor unrest leading to the St. Louis Commune was the explosive growth of railroads in post-Civil War America. Railroads were dangerous places to work, the work was long and hard and poorly compensated. With time, the railroad companies addressed overbuilding and competition by cutting pay for unskilled laborers and recruiting poor Blacks and immigrants to ...