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A true conservative supports abortion rights over nanny state control of reproductive choice. A true conservative supports LGBTQ choice and gay marriage over nanny state meddling in the private lives of citizens. There are a number of issues (not as many as some think) that philosophically separate liberals from conservatives, but not these. It's only the right-wing radicals in the GOP and the MSM that use these issues to divide America. I'm glad to see that liberals and conservatives are joining hands at the polls to help secure these fundamental rights. "New Yorkers for Equal Rights said the groups were inspired by the success Michigan Democrats saw in the midterms when voters were presented with a ballot initiative that would codify abortion rights into the state constitution. The amendment passed, Democrats secured a trifecta for the first time in four decades and many vulnerable Democrats held onto their seats. “We’ve learned a ton from our colleagues around the count...

  Affirmative action in college admission I see where a majority of the SCOTUS overturned stare decisis again, this time on affirmative action in college admission. My prediction is that this will have little effect. Universities are chock full of clever and resourceful people who can figure out ways to achieve racial (and gender) balance without being overt about it. Both Harvard and UNC, the universities about which this opinion was delivered, have top law schools that can guide their admissions programs. Having spent over 36 years as a medical school professor, I've had a ring-side seat to watch how post-Bakke medical school admissions can achieve ethnic balance while staying within the law.

As I’ve posted here before, the evidence shows that in humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgment are unlinked. There are many such examples; viz: • Kary Mullis, who won for co-inventing the technique behind PCR testing, went on to deny that HIV causes AIDS, helping to sway South African president Thabo Mbeki into rejecting antiretroviral therapy, costing hundreds of thousands of lives; • Linus Pauling went from two-time Nobelist to full-time quack, a brilliant peace activist and investigator of chemical bonds who became convinced that everything from colds to cancers should be fought with vitamin C; • James Watson co-discovered DNA’s double-helix and turned out to be irreparably racist; • William Shockley co-invented the transistor and became an ardent eugenicist. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, another smart but deeply foolish voice was heard. Michael Levitt, a Nobel Laureate and self-styled viral epidemiologist predicted: • there would be no more th...

"Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that a recording of him talking about sensitive military documents amounted to just “bravado” and claimed he did not show off anything classified when he said on the tape that he was handling “highly confidential” and “secret information” in front of guests." So the Access Hollywood tapes were just "locker room talk," and the classified Iran invasion plan documents were just "bravado." So when all the other excuses fail, Trump says "don't trust what I say." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-bravado-classified-documents-recording_n_649b6ddee4b0cd6f7df0c169

The real news here is the three Supreme Court justices (Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch) actually went along with this cartoonishly stupid theory. A unanimous ruling was the only acceptable outcome. The SCOTUS is completely broken. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme-court-independent-state-legislature-reject

People often ask me "Can you freeze fruit flies?" My answer is "Sure, but when you thaw them out, they're dead." Now, a couple decades back, a couple of research groups developed a cryopreservation technique that enabled successful recovery of fruit fly embryos after freezing. The yield was poor, but at the time, it made flies the most complex organism to undergo this process successfully. As the link below describes, successful cryopreservation of human organs would be transformative for organ transplantation candidates. Hooray for science!! https://www.iflscience.com/organs-have-been-frozen-thawed-and-transplanted-for-the-first-time-69496?fbclid=IwAR1_VmmMgsKa-szCOAUjFP0HMLD-jJRvTWzqU0ai894aofLA4NbTOMhRLmY

Several years ago, I got my genome sequenced at 30-50 fold coverage. For the base price of $199, I got a report that included ancestry and held no surprises. For an additional $100, I got my variant call file, and a friend annotated it, so now I can search for any variants associated with disease risk. Again, so far no surprises. The most common surprise people encounter with personal genomics is the discovery that their custodial father isn't their biological father. Depending on the population, this can be 2-5% of the time. Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to, peeps! https://www.iflscience.com/woman-discovers-father-parents-fertility-doctor-through-ancestry-dna-test-47008?fbclid=IwAR0gg67IgO18IstJNhf9N5xN7xTib7h9Vy3tptVEG9j3j7IN99OzL2bjhQw

Next year, my department celebrates 100 years since its founding by Edward A. Doisy*. Doisy shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Henrik Dam in 1943 for the discovery of vitamin K and the determination of its chemical structure. Vitamin K is an essential cofactor in clotting. Bizarrely, in the third decade of the 21st century, there are people who believe that vitamin K doesn't exist: "There is a rising trend of people in health misinformation circles on the internet claiming that vitamin K does not exist and therefore babies should not be given this injection at birth, despite it being standard practice approved by the CDC." *it will also celebrate my retirement https://www.iflscience.com/some-people-dont-believe-vitamin-k-exists-what-does-it-do-and-why-is-it-important-for-babies-69498?fbclid=IwAR1KVC52axkitNftTQRyK_zB1AnFeAxFKekDwtGiT6oi2zSptL_QhmNbubw

"But the Republican lawmaker claimed the international search effort appeared to be a case of “epic failure in leadership,” possibly stretching into the White House and upper echelons of the Coast Guard and Navy. “I have been hearing a lot of concerning things from people, the civilian side who are involved in this,” Crenshaw said Thursday in a statement to reporters. “You know, we’ve got to look into it, see what’s true and what isn’t. … What appears to be the case is epic failure in leadership. Where exactly that leadership failure is, I don’t know. Is it the White House, Coast Guard, Navy? I’m not sure.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dan-crenshaw-titan-submersible-leadership-failure_n_6494f4a5e4b0aec6b7ffbee6

"James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 film "Titanic" and has made 33 dives to the wreckage, said he saw some similarities between the Titan tragedy and the sinking of the famous ship it was bound for. "I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result," Cameron told ABC News Thursday. "He added, "And with a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going on all around the world I think it's just astonishing. It's really quite surreal." https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/titanic-missing-sub-oceangate-06-22-23

This isn't really news, since most of the GOP supports the 6 January riots that attempted to overthrow a national election and the former president who hid (and is probably still hiding) American military secrets. Still, this is disgraceful: "The open appeal to apologists for those who seceded from the Union in 1861 and took up arms against the United States — the actual definition of treason — continues the history of Republican outreach to white Southerners who oppose the Civil Rights Movement that began in the 1960s. It also continues the defense of honoring literal traitors pushed by former President Donald Trump, who just weeks before his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt vetoed an annual defense bill because it required that military bases honoring Confederates be renamed. "“These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage,” Trump wrote in a statement posted to Twitter in 2020." Shame. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-confederat...

There has never been a time in my life when someone wasn't predicting the "end times." And, of course, these predictions have been made for centuries. They were all wrong. Deeply silly people. https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-bolling/newsmaxs-eric-bolling-suggests-were-approaching-end-times

Yep, I'm aging. So are you, if you're reading this. None of us are getting out of this alive, but we can make some choice about *how* we age. If your goal is just longevity, the key to longevity in every animal it's ever been tested in is caloric restriction. That's not just skimping on dessert, that's living with 40% of the calories you're accustomed to. How is that "living?" But if your goal is to live as long as possible, that's what the data say. If you don't want to go the full caloric restriction Monty, what do you do? Exercise body and mind. Maintain a healthy weight (get rid of visceral fat!). Get most of your calories from fruits and vegetables. Don't smoke. Check your basement for radon. Wear sunscreen. Maintain a community of friends. And choose your parents carefully. Yes, I know. But my point is that genetics also has a lot to do with it. 

You should be. "We’re only halfway through 2023 and so many climate records are being broken, some scientists are sounding the alarm, fearing it could be a sign of a planet warming much more rapidly than expected. "In a widely shared tweet, Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, called rising ocean and air temperatures “totally bonkers.” "He added, “people who look at this stuff routinely can’t believe their eyes. Something very weird is happening.”" https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/17/world/four-climate-charts-extreme-weather-heat-oceans/index.html

Just finished reading “A spy in plain sight: The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen―America's Most Damaging Russian Spy” by Lis Wiehl. While this book continues my diet of history, it’s a bit of a departure from my usual fare of economic and military history. Hanssen recently died in prison, so I was interested in the backstory, and this is certainly an interesting tale. Hansson not only betrayed national secrets to the USSR and Russia, but he named sources, which got at least a couple of them killed. A lot of the book is focused on how he got away with it for so long while working for the FBI. Partly, it was because he was computer-savvy and partly because he exploited a culture that didn’t believe FBI agents and employees could be spies. That was CIA stuff, confirmed by the Aldrich Ames case. Hansson was able to trade secrets for KGB money on and off for 20 years before he was caught. Hansson himself was a bundle of contradiction. A political conservative and devout Roman...

I admit it. I'm a food addict. If I stopped eating, I'd die. I've lived with this reality all my life. "Despite its apparent prevalence, food addiction hasn’t been officially recognized as a real addiction, disorder or diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook used by health care professionals as the authoritative guide to diagnosing mental disorders. "The body of research on food addiction has only recently gotten to the point where it can support a proposal for inclusion in the DSM, Gearhardt said, but she’s currently working on one she expects to submit within the year. “If you simply just look at the studies, they’re still at the place where they’re saying, ‘We need more research,’ but if we use these criteria that are similar to what we have for (addictions to) tobacco and alcohol, they’re seeing a lot of similar correlations,” Kirkpatrick said." https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/...

"The group of 42 people, including eight children, that Abbott bussed arrived in LA after a 23-hour bus ride without food, Jorge-Mario Cabrera, director of communications for immigrant rights group CHIRLA, told the Los Angeles Times." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/abbott-busses-migrants-to-los-angeles-continuing-effort-to-out-maga-desantis

From talkingpointsmemo.com: The marvel of the moment for me is how Joe Biden can simultaneously be: • A doddering old man but also running the most corrupt crime family in the history of the universe; • Barely able to stay upright on his own two feet but an evil genius who has orchestrated a vast conspiracy with the Deep State to take down his chief political rival; • Inept and bungling but somehow managed to defeat the incumbent MAGA president, haul the United States into Marxism, and seize dictatorial powers. This Biden guy is pretty amazing when you think about it. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/doj-espionage-act-donald-trump-arraignment

I grew up with stick shift cars. That's all my parents had. Yeah, drivers ed was automatic, but I had to learn to use a clutch at home. I didn't get my first car until I was 26, and that and all the cars we've owned have been stick shifts. Rebecca learned on stick shifts, of course, and her Honda is a stick. Turns out, there's enough of us out there that Toyota wants to market their EVs to us: "Toyota’s latest engineering feat is an electric vehicle that behaves as if it has a stick shift, complete with revving sounds and faux gear shifts. "Engineers who worked on the vehicle system said they wanted to preserve a driving experience that is appreciated by some car enthusiasts and older drivers—and might otherwise die out in the shift to EVs." As Kevin Drum notes, ". . . if Toyota's EV accelerates from 0-60 in 4 seconds, like a lot of EVs, even experienced stick shift drivers will have to be pretty fast on the clutch." https://www.wsj.com/art...

"To summarize: (a) CAI [Commercially Available Information] is widely available, (b) it can be deanonymized so that it identifies specific individuals, (c) among many other things, it offers tracking data on individuals, and (d) no warrant is required to use it." https://jabberwocking.com/intelligence-agencies-can-track-your-every-move-and-they-can-do-it-without-a-warrant/

In St. Louis, a common form of introduction is to mention where you went to high school. Apparently, cultural stratification is so strong there that this information alone tells you about a person's socioeconomic status, religion, politics and parentage. Of course, in St. Louis, there are Catholic high schools, secular college prep high schools, public high schools and even a yeshiva. Where I grew up, there was only one high school in town. While there were certainly cultural strata (jocks, geeks, freaks, theater), we all funneled into the same school. Three years, 1800 students. I have some fond memories of high school. Most of them revolve around the relationship with my future wife. Some of them revolve around track and cross country. A few revolve around yearbook staff. And yes, I had many friends among my high school contemporaries; a couple of them live within an hour of us now. Ultimately, I lived in Oak Ridge for about 15 years, and somewhere in Tennessee for four years a...

The one certainty in right-wing political culture is that whatever the right accuses others of is what they are doing. Including "grooming" children for pedophilia. "A review of the right’s hypocrisy on pedophilia and abuse found that conservative media personalities have repeatedly made comments promoting the sexualization of children, while others have defended figures who have been accused of abuse or pedophilia — and several reported abusers have even worked in right-wing media themselves." https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/right-wing-medias-shameful-history-defending-pedophilia-and-sexualizing

 "Within hours of former President Donald Trump being federally indicted, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) was already fundraising off of the news ― for Trump, but almost entirely for herself." But it gets worse: "It’s pretty tacky to raise money off of a former president being indicted, but that’s not the worst of it. Stefanik uses a sneaky tactic in her fundraising email to try to get as much money from people as possible, even if they may not realize what they’re agreeing to. "Her email is set up so that if you click through to donate money to Trump, the website automatically checks a little box making your donation a monthly recurring donation. You have to be paying attention to notice this." And here's the biggest grift: "A $250 donation to the “OFFICIAL TRUMP DEFENSE FUND,” for example, breaks down to $247.50 for Stefanik and $2.50 for the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee. "A $500 donation translates to $...

Anyone indicted for a crime should be considered innocent until proven guilty. That includes Donald Trump. The idea that we should reserve judgment until after the judicial system has completed its process is, or at least ought to be, the American way. But the idea of reserving judgement applies both to those who suspect guilt and those who suspect innocence. Those Republicans who are attacking the judicial process because of Trump's indictment dishonor America and our system of government. They need to stand down.

 Most of the MSM coverage of the latest trump indictments concerns outrage from Trump, his attorneys, and various GOP political figure. The supposedly "left-wing" media is falling all over itself to hand the megaphone to Trump's defenders. Which is why I don't watch TV and mostly avoid the MSM. Here's the sober voice of Prof. Juan Cole over at his "Informed Comment" blog: "The insular American television news media keeps calling this indictment “unprecedented.” But lots of heads of state have been indicted, even indicted more than once, and tried and jailed. The U.S. has been peculiar in the degree to which it has neglected to treat ex-presidents the way ordinary citizens are treated. "In fact, in this case Trump was given enormous latitude, since he was allowed the opportunity to return the purloined classified documents. An ordinary person found with classified documents in their home would have been arrested on the spot." https://www.ju...

  I don't usually speak ill of the dead, but this news reminds me of what Christopher Hitchens said about Jerry Falwell's passing: "If they'd given him an enema, they could have buried him in a matchbox." https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/us/pat-robertson-death/index.html

There's an old saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. I don't endorse that personally. I don't know how many folks are taking semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic) to get thin, but there are certainly reasons not to be obese besides aesthetics. Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and joint problems. The epidemiological evidence is incontestable. What's also incontestable is that overweight and obesity isn't necessarily a moral failing. All thinking people should welcome the development of drugs to prevent obesity. Even if these drugs have side effects (and all drugs have side effects), obesity has side effects, too, and the obesity epidemic imposes a societal burden just as surely as COVID. I don't believe most people on semagutides are doing it for body sculpting. And like many or most drugs, the costs of such drugs are still outweighed by the alternatives. Like statins and antihypertensives, I welcome semaglutides and their deriva...

"The capacity of publicly available AI to mass-produce and deliver misleading messages and news-like articles will make 2016 seem like child’s play. “From my perspective, I think we’re entering an incredible era of bullshit,” Stamos said. “The marginal cost has gone effectively to zero for content creation. That was not true before. And as bad as everything is on the Internet [today], I think we are entering an incredible era of things that you can’t trust.” https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/06/06/ai-can-make-you-believe-russian-propaganda/

The dam, located in Russian-controlled Ukraine, was destroyed, with concomitant destruction of lives, homes, farmland, livestock and ecological habitat. Only Russia had the wherewithal to do this. It was not Ukranian self-sabotage. This is another Russian war crime. From Timothy Snyder over at his substack site "Thinking about . . .": "Armies that are attacking do not blow dams to block their own path of advance. Armies that are retreating do blow dams to slow the advance of the other side. At the relevant moment, Ukraine was advancing, and Russia was retreating."

  Being anti-trans isn't "conservative." A true conservative would want the nanny state out of the private lives of citizens. Being anti-trans isn't "Christian." Christ was silent on the subject of transgender. Being anti-trans isn't about pedophilia--that's churches. Being anti-trans is all and only about immiserating a small, defenseless population who people hate because they're different. If you really want to protect children, support gun control. https://jabberwocking.com/republicans-have-now-introduced-over-500-anti-trans-bills/?fbclid=IwAR1B_uHv58MgxN-WKlnJxXFJKaVWIpwbrOda4hm8V7QmqUbRBbeXK5pAht4

Back when I was a Boy Scout, I learned about sassafras and sassafras tea. You know that flavor of "root beer?" Sassafras root. I learned to recognize the plant, and would dig up the roots and make sassafras tea on camping trips. Years later, I learned that sassafras is classified as a carcinogen. Am I worried? No. First of all, the dose makes the poison, and I might have had sassafras tea two or three times in my life. Secondly, relative to the carcinogenicity of X-rays (dental and others), cosmic ray exposure from dozens of airline flights, and UV-B from sunburns, the sassafras risk was trivial. One of the things most people don't understand is risk. Every time you get in a car as a driver or passenger, you accept risk of injury or death. If you have a gun in the house, your statistical risk of premature death is higher than in households without firearms. If you are overweight or obese, your risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes is higher than if you have a BMI of...

Yesterday evening, we attended a lecture at the East Providence public library on the history of pirates and privateers in Rhode Island. It was mildly informative and entertaining. One thing I learned is how democratic pirate ships were. The crews signed a contract, agreed on how to share the spoils, voted for the captain. Only during actual combat did the captain become the dictator. The crews were multiracial and multiethnic. In some respects, this resembled whaling ships at the time. The presenter was a local* middle school teacher. During the Q&A, one audience member asked the teacher if Rhode Island history was taught at his middle school. He replied that it wasn't. I remarked to Linda that Rhode Island history wasn't taught at our junior high, either. Indeed, if you'd asked me back then to name the 50 states, I'm not sure I would have even remembered Rhode Island. *I suppose you might say that everything in Rhode Island is "local" since the state is ...

About 20 years ago, I went through a period of watching the Sunday talk shows (Meet the Press, The McLaughlin Group, etc), thinking to catch up on current events. I eventually realized that I wasn't being informed, I was being entertained. I stopped watching the teevee soon after and never went back. I see on CNN online that Chuck Todd is stepping down. I've never seen the show with him as host, and I'm surprised the thing has lasted this long. There's obviously still a market for entertainment masquerading as serious discourse. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/04/media/meet-the-press-chuck-todd/index.html

Of course, for anyone sincerely interested in interest on the debt, we could pay that sucker down by raising taxes on top 20% and cutting the "defense" budget by 50%. "The previous postwar record was set during the Reagan era and peaked at 3.1% of GDP. CBO estimates that interest payments will attain that level again in 2028 and then keep climbing until they reach 3.7% by 2033." https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-interest-on-the-national-debt-2/

"Senate Bill 81, which was signed into law on March 31 by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and goes into effect in August, will require libraries and bookstores to remove any material considered “harmful to minors” from their children’s sections and place it in a separate area for adults. "The “harmful to minors” designation applies to content featuring “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse,” the law says." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/arkansas-book-restrictions-lawsuit_n_647a5a86e4b091b09c32ade7

 Years ago, we had a PhD student who was schizophrenic. He could be lucid, but during committee meetings, he'd sometimes veer off into his visions. He self-published a book based on his visions of battles between celestial powers. He was under psychiatric care, but he was eventually dismissed for lack of progress. My chairman feared he might one day show up armed, too. I've been aware of schizophrenia from the days when my mom took courses in abnormal psychology and I'd read some of her books. These people seemed tragically beyond help. Turn out that some of them can be cured. Not clear how many cases can be traced to autoimmunity, but it's long been believed that brain inflammation is part of the etiology. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/01/schizophrenia-autoimmune-lupus-psychiatry/