Up From Facebook

Growing up in Oak Ridge in the ‘60s, terms like “homogeneous reactor,” “molten salt reactor” and “breeder reactor” were frequently used, although I couldn’t have explained them at the time. Research into nuclear power became the mission of Oak Ridge National Labs after the war under the direction of Alvin Weinberg. A few years ago, I came across a guy on FB named Charles Barton Jr, an addiction counselor by training and a stalwart advocate for thorium molten salt reactors. His dad had done some pioneering work in the ‘50s on the technology. We became Facebook friends and I learned a little about molten salt reactors. Then, I happened to mention that we had rooftop solar and he started attacking me. Turns out, he wasn’t a reactor geek, he was a thorium tribalist, and any form of green energy other than thorium molten salt reactors was a betrayal and an adversary of his dad’s legacy. I had to block him. Charles Barton Jr makes a couple of cameo appearances in “Superfuel,” a book about th...

Speaking in Rome, SCOTUS justice Alito said: "Religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power. It also probably grows out of something dark and deep in the human DNA -- a tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves." Humans are a tribal species. We instinctively sort others into in-groups and out-groups. Alito isn't wrong here, but the same could be said of organized religions as well (see, e.g., The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition). The irony is especially precious coming from Alito, who dislikes and distrusts women who believe in reproductive choice. Yes, let's have religious liberty and freedom from religious persecution. But Alito should also humbly recall this advice: "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5). https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/politics/samuel-alito-r...

Rupert Murdoch, through his right-wing media empire, has finally admitted the truth: Trump is unfit for office. The majority of American voters figured this out in 2016 and again in 2020, but there was money to be made on the Trump brand, so Murdoch was all in, willing to overlook the puerile behavior and dangerous decisions. Although the New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages have made this explicit, Fox has so far been more subtle, by not covering recent Trump rallies and giving air time to Trump's smarter mini-me, Ron DeSantis. Murdoch doesn't care about good government, national security or Constitutional order. He has only just come to finally accept that the Trump brand has gone stale and that Trump--always a confection of greed, grievance and vengeance--cannot change. While one might appeal to Luke 15:1-7 and the parable of the lost sheep, Murdoch hasn't reformed, he's only following the money. And he's right about that. https://www.huffpost.co...

My FB peeps know I'm a big fan of genomics. While we still have a long way to go, genomics does have the potential to flag genetic risk factors. Some of those conditions can be mitigated. In other cases, increased testing (e.g., colonoscopy, serum cholesterol) can catch problems early, when a good outcome is more likely. Then there's forensic genomics. Increasingly, courts have come around to accepting genomics data as evidence. As the databases grow, there are fewer places for criminals to hide. I count that a good thing. https://www.iflscience.com/coffee-cup-in-trash-can-leads-to-arrest-over-murder-in-1975-64558?fbclid=IwAR3-jGCp3aDr4klyu9LZ9JDDoBpLx753vmn1uCfQRIupOluOcoqRgueMWbE

Kevin Drum has a graph over at jabberwocking.com of married couples as a percent of households in the US. It was inspired by an article in National Review the predictably blamed the Obergefell decision. On casual inspection, it appears that marriage in the US has been in decline since a peak in 1949, and that Obergefell actually may have *stopped” that decline.Some folks speculate that the decline was the result of all the women who entered the workforce in WWII and realized they enjoyed the freedom and independence of a paying job more than the safety of domesticity. Others point to the Griswold decision (1965) that nationalized access to contraception, unmooring marriage from child-rearing. There’s also no distinction between divorced and never-married My anecdotal observation is that a lot of folks are better off single and society is better off if fewer people end up in unhappy marriages. A FB friend pointed out that the federal gov’t only recognizes joint tax filing for married c...

The purpose of the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is to show that Jesus expects us to love everyone, including our enemies. It is difficult to love those who may harm or hurt us, but that's what Jesus calls us to do in that parable. It is important to understand that to the Jews of Jesus' time, a Samaritan was more revolting than a Gentile (pagan); Samaritans were half-breeds who defiled the true religion. Jesus chose an object of hatred for his story of human compassion. In the recent shooting in Indianapolis, a man who was randomly shooting people was himself killed by an armed civilian who happened to be nearby. The police and others have referred to the man who stopped the killer as a good Samaritan. We may be relieved that more deaths were prevented by killing the perp, but it is a perversion of the parable--and frankly obscene--to compare a person who kills someone to the good Samaritan, an object of contempt who rescued someone from suffering.

Most of the earths oxygen doesn't come from forests or jungles but from ocean plankton. A recent survey found an alarming drop in Atlantic plankton levels, likely due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and resulting ocean acidification. "Plankton is a blanket term for the billions of tiny sea organisms living close to the surface of the oceans, which are eaten by krill, small crustaceans, which are in turn eaten by fish and whales. No plankton, little or no marine life. "And while trees hog all the credit, plankton generate 70% of our oxygen. "Howarth reports that the GOES team just sampled the ocean water surface along the French and Portuguese coasts before heading across the Atlantic to Colombia. They and volunteers gathered 500 data points. "They expected to find five patches of plankton in every ~2.5 gallons (10 liters) of ocean water. "They found an average of one. "So in 1982 there would have been 10 patches of plankton in every 2.5 gallons...

As a research scientist for most of my adult life, I can assure you that any scientist who discovered incontrovertible evidence that global warming isn't happening or that the earth is only a few thousand years old or that all life on earth isn't related by descent would be awarded the Nobel Prize and would be financially secure for the rest of their lives. Science isn't a religion or a cult. Scientists are always competing with one another and searching for data that will transform their field. Overturning the consensus is the dream of every serious research scientist.

By now, everyone's heard about the Ohio girl who was raped shortly before her 10th birthday and had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. You've probably also seen the panicked efforts by right wing media and politicians to discredit the story and then when a suspect in the rape was arrested, to pivot to attack the girl's physician and/or the girl's immigration status. There will be many, many more of these attacks on girls and women, because forced-birth laws cannot be wrong, they can only be wronged. After decades, the forced-birth right finally has to confront the enormity of the nanny state taking control of female bodies and denying females agency over their own lives. "Before Dr. George Tiller was murdered in 2009, gunned down in his Kansas church, the abortion provider was known for wearing a button that read, ‘Trust Women.’ The slogan conveyed perhaps the most important tenet in reproductive health care: When it comes to abortion, no one is better suited...

It is obvious that Earth is facing a climate crisis. But long before humans are baked off the planet, resource wars will kill hundreds of millions. That process has already commenced in the Middle East. And there are antecedents. "There is a major debate among historians as to how much climate change has contributed to civilization collapse – one that has become hotter as it becomes more relevant for us. We don't know why Mesopotamia dried out during this period, but it seems it took down one civilization, and severely affected two others." https://www.iflscience.com/a-stalagmite-may-have-just-revealed-what-caused-the-fall-of-a-mesopotamian-empire-51033?fbclid=IwAR1_s7olxEv5vEixQUFRg4S2y-KyWEU8VDjwo7yjJccXMYhaL1gwCj1reMM

People around us are catching COVID. Everyone we know is vaxxed and boosted and so staying out of the hospital and the morgue. One thing I've been asking them is about the recovery and any evidence for long COVID. So far, I don't know anyone with long COVID. So how common is long COVID? Claims vary, but the problems include the definition of long COVID and the choice of a control group, since many long COVID symptoms can occur in uninfected people as well. Here's an explainer. BTW, I used to meet with Dr. Al-Aly regularly back when I was Associate Dean for Research. Very energetic guy. "Researcher Ziyad Al-Aly and his colleagues have been able to rely on a unique and large source of data to work around some of these issues: people who get their health care covered by the federal government through Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health care system in the U.S. Last November, his team published a study trying to gauge the burden of long covid symptoms on patient...

  Most of us are justifiably outraged by Russian bombing of civilian targets—hospitals, schools, malls—in Ukraine. Of course, civilians were targeted by the US in the Vietnam and Iraq wars, so American hands aren’t clean, either. Also outrageous is the conduct of American ally Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Here, the US has been supplying the military aid that enables Saudi slaughter of civilians. Although formal US policy forbids use of American military aid against civilian targets, the Saudis flaut this policy and our government does nothing to prevent it or punish it. It’s kinda hard to hold the moral high ground when you’re AWOL yourself. https://www.juancole.com/2022/07/questions-accounting-civilian.html

The right-wing and libertarians have been pushing for years to control local school boards and town councils. More recently, the right-wing has been systematically moving to control election boards. Enabling this is the apathy of liberals, centrists and real conservatives. Here an example in a small town in New Hampshire. Libertarians managed to get a 20-14 vote to slash the public school budget in half (that’s 34 votes in a town of about 800). Fortunately, saner heads prevailed. Under New Hampshire law, citizens could petition for a special meeting where the budget cut could be overturned — if at least half the town’s voters were present and cast ballots. After an aggressive GOTV campaign, They needed at least 283 voters. On the day of the vote, they had a turnout of 379. The vote to overturn the cuts was 377 to 2. Unsurprisingly, the local libertarian leader referred to this exercise in pure American democracy as “mob rule.” This is an example of why I call libertarianism the politic...

Like many patriotic Americans, I've been frustrated that the DOJ hasn't indicted Trump for promoting the violent invasion and occupation of the Capitol and attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Obviously, I don't know what's in Garland's head, but he has a history of caution and deliberation. I'm sure he knows, too, that if Trump is exonerated in a trial, it will only strengthen him and his apologists by (in their minds) validating their sense of grievance and persecution. So I have to hope that Garland is weighing the alternatives, knowing that the consequences of failure to convict will be worse than the consequences of failure to indict. https://www.juancole.com/2022/07/smoking-indict-trump.html

There's a long tradition of telling history through folk music. I was first awakened to this tradition as a kid in the 1960s by recordings of the singer/songwriter Jimmy Driftwood. I still have a Driftwood LP. Last night, I was playing the "Most Perfect Harmony" CD by The Discovery String Band. It is a compilation of traditional and original tunes and songs honoring the Lewis and Clark expedition. There's a song on the CD, "Through the Garden," written and performed by Missouri's own Bob Dyer. Dyer first came to my attention from an LP by Kathy Barton and Dave Para, and in particular, his song "Ballad of Boonslick." Becka Eissenova and I used to sing the chorus together when she was a child. Here's Bob's recording of his song. I like the Barton/Para version better, but I can't find a Youtube of that version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhJrfwbAqU

Several states, not content to just outlaw abortion within their borders, are pursuing laws to criminalize crossing state lines to obtain an abortion. Colorado's governor just signed an executive order blocking state agencies from cooperating in any fashion with such laws (except for a court order). Connecticut previously passed a law with the same effect. Free and open state borders and federal regulation of interstate commerce are enshrined explicitly in the Constitution. Biden should issue an executive order asserting the federal nullification of state laws that encroach on interstate travel for reproductive health care. Let the states sue up to the SCOTUS. Are these laws attempting to nationalize state laws unconstitutional? As we've seen, (1) the Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it means, and (2) the Roberts Court is capable of a breathtaking versatility of conviction in order to assert its right-wing agenda. It's time for Biden to stand up for Am...

Analogies are tricky things. Historical analogies, in particular, demand a deep understanding of historical context, not superficial comparisons. The downfall of Argentina certainly has lessons for all developed nations. These days, we would be well-served to understand how a large, modern nation collapsed under the weight of corrupt leadership and institutions. It could happen here. It may already be happening. "Argentina’s story reminds us that there can be such a thing as a formerly developed country. Its decline teaches other countries clear lessons: educate your citizenry, trade with everyone, and promote scientific research. Also: Don’t let your institutions, especially the Supreme Court, become politicized. Finally: Resist the siren call of political demagogues. That way, as Argentines know, lies perdition." https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/01/opinion/yes-there-is-such-thing-formerly-developed-country/?fbclid=IwAR16I3nhJL3x4Jpd59fr5ut9mgjO1haB4wnXPOrkeh89-5YQsi5VlP...

I’ve only seen one person die. One afternoon when we were in graduate school, a knock came on the door and the wife of the couple across the hall asked me to see about her husband, that something was wrong with him. I found Steve on their bed, convulsing. I slid him away from the headboard, against which he was banging his head and held him until he stilled. At that point, he stopped breathing and I couldn’t find a pulse, so I moved him onto the floor and commenced mouth-to-mouth, as I was trained to do in Red Cross lifesaving class until the ambulance arrived. Later, I heard that Steve was DOA and that he had some kind of undiagnosed congenital heart problem. Both of my parents died a few years ago, in upstate NY. I was hundreds of miles away. My dad had been in a nursing home with dementia and his death wasn’t unexpected. My mom’s death followed surgery for a femur fracture after she fell while dancing with my dad. I realize that I don’t have many years left, and so when I stumbled a...

  I'm not a big consumer of liturgical music. I still listen to Handel's Messiah on Christmas. So it surprised me when I found myself enjoying a boxed set of LPs of Bach's St. Matthew Passion recorded about 50 years ago. It's in German, of course, so I'm not following the libretto, just the voices and instruments. There's a theme that will be familiar to those, like me, who have attended a church that features Christian hymns. The title varies, but is sometimes rendered as “O Sacred head, sore wounded.” The German text is by Paul Gerhardt after a poem attributed to either Arnulf of Leuven or Bernard of Clairvaux, one a medieval sacred poet and the other a Cistercian abbot. Surprisingly, the melody comes from a secular song by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600. Its title is “Mein Gmüth ist mir verwirret” which translates as “My mind is confused” and the cause is having seen a beautiful young woman. Paul Simon’s “American Tune” is also based on the same melody...

  Since the COVID pandemic began, My Lovely And Talented Wife® and I have played a prophecy game. One of us would make a prediction and sign it, then we would revisit it when the deadline passed. Yesterday, one of my prediction papers was retired: "Roe will be overturned in 2022." I'm not claiming any special genius, but there were certainly many pundits, paid well for their opinions, bloviating about stare decisis and how even the Trump right-wing justices who were expressly selected for their desire to overturn Roe wouldn't dare follow through. There's a lot of BS out there. It's important to rely on arguments from evidence, not arguments from authority. But if you must cling to arguments from authority, read this link and remember which authorities to ignore in the future. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/30/roe-wade-supreme-court-commentary/

 A friend sent me a link to a Substack article (URL below) about BS. Herewith was my email reply: Interesting. Thanks for sharing. We got Newsweek at our house when I was growing up, and after I got married, we subscribed for a decade or two. Eventually, we stopped the subscription, as we later did the dead tree newspaper, because I could get faster news and better analysis on the intertubes. Time and Newsweek are zombies. Humanity has always been awash in BS. Hundreds of millions died because of the BS of the popes, the various European empires and their colonies, the Confederacy, Stalinism, Maoism, Naziism and other manifestations of tribal BS. In my time, Wm F Buckley Jr was one of the more erudite American BS purveyors, both through the National Review and on TV. But there was the John Birch Society, Fr. Coughlin, and eventually, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. Fox News has taken BS to a whole new level. I used to have hope for the internet as the sterilizing sunlight to exter...