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A recent discussion thread concerning the “lab leak” hypothesis for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 reminded me of another conspiracy theory involving claims of a bioweapon that also probably had a natural origin. The US government claimed that the Soviet Union was using trichothecene mycotoxins as biological weapons in Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s. In support of this, they pointed to the finding of mycotoxin on leaves and in the blood of people who suffered from seizures, blindness and bleeding, and associated their illness with the appearance of “yellow rain.” A UN investigation was “inconclusive.” No evidence for chemical weapons was discovered, but there was circumstantial evidence for some kind of toxic chemical. The esteemed Harvard molecular biologist, Dr. Matthew Meselson, and his team went to Laos to investigate these claims. The upshot of their research was that “yellow rain” most likely had a natural origin in well-known mass defecation flights by local bees. The feces were yel

I’m a molecular biologist who also has an undergrad degree in microbiology. Those facts and the additional facts that (a) I was in the Moderna phase III trial and (b) my medical school is one of ten NIH designated vaccine testing and evaluation units made me an avid student of the unfolding COVID-19 story. Given everything we know over centuries of experience, the null hypothesis is that any pandemic has a natural origin. But since the COVID-19 pandemic originated in China and the US president saw a political opportunity, the null hypothesis became that the virus came from a Chinese lab. Critical thinking wasn’t helped when some prominent scientists (David Baltimore, Richard Ebright) with arguments from authority weighed in in favor of the lab leak hypothesis. The mountain of data that has accumulated since then points heavily in favor of natural origins, and Baltimore has stated publicly that he regrets his earlier assertions. See my earlier post on AB on arguments from authority vs

"The political action committee that has been paying former President Donald J. Trump’s legal fees requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to the super PAC supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter. "....The refund was sought as the political action committee, Save America, spent more than $40 million in legal fees incurred by Mr. Trump and witnesses in various legal cases related to him this year alone, according to another person familiar with the matter." That's money that he can't spend on his campaign, and many of the donors will be tapped out by the time the convention is over. This is basically the GOP bleeding money to keep Trump out of prison. Can the Democratic Party take advantage of this? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/us/trump-pac-legal-fees.html

Look, I'm no spring chicken, but I'm way younger than Mitch McConnell, Diane Feinstein, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I think the odds are pretty poor for McConnell to finish his term as Senate minority leader after what appear to be several TIAs. Diane Feinstein should have stepped down years ago. Joe Biden is still spry at 80. While I think he's been a good president, I wish the party had someone about 30 years younger to run in 2024. As for Trump, he may be dementing but how would you know? Putin is 70. Netanyahu is 73. Xi Jinping is 70. The good news is that most of these folks will probably not be in power in ten years. But ossified leadership can do a lot of damage in ten years, particularly when the existential threat of our time--global warming--is not being treated seriously. One benefit to being a geezer is that I won't be around to experience the suffering of humanity by 2050. The bad news is that many of the world's leaders won't either and don't c

 I’ve found myself in some online discussion threads discussing risk. • I made a post over at Angry Bear blog about iron fertilization of phytoplankton in the pelagic ocean to increase carbon capture. Some posts in the discussion thread dismissed it as too risky. While I had acknowledged some risks in my post, I pointed out that doing nothing is risky (increasing risk of infectious disease, more expensive food and water, resource wars) and that simply converting to green energy won’t remove the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere; • I made a post on Facebook about the risks of using semaglutide for weight loss. Yes, all drugs have risks, but untreated obesity is risky, too (heart disease, cancer, hip/joint problems). Life is risky. It’s easy to focus on a new and unfamiliar risk and ignore routine and familiar risks. People buy and carry guns out of fear that they will be injured or killed by a stranger with a gun. The data clearly show that if you are going to be injured o

Our daughter only applied to two colleges, Washington University in St. Louis and Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. Tuition wasn’t an issue, since her mom was an employee of Wash U, and the university pays full tuition at Wash U or half of Wash U’s tuition at any other college or university for all its employees. Half of Wash U’s tuition would cover most or all out-of-state tuition at any state university. Some of our St. Louis friends asked me if I was going to make her attend Wash U, since it is a “better school.”  The prestigious reputation of Washington University and other elite universities owes itself in significant degree to their reputation for research. The average undergrad will do little or no research in college, and many of the top researchers spend little or no time teaching undergrads. So in what sense is a research university “better” for the average undergrad? In the event, our daughter went to Colorado State (which is also a research university), mostly to ge

My parents died as paupers, so there wasn’t anything for me and my four siblings to “inherit” upon their deaths. No matter. I figure I got my inheritance on the front end, because my folks paid for my college education: tuition, room and board. Even correcting for inflation, tuition* at the University of Tennessee was cheap: ca. $160/quarter for a full load. Yes, there’s an opportunity cost associated with college. You could be spending those 4+ years working and earning an income. The business model is that a college degree can position the graduate for a higher lifetime income than a worker without the degree. The data support that, on average. That said, far too many people are getting loans to pay tuition at community colleges and four-year colleges and universities that they struggle to pay off but cannot discharge through bankruptcy. This isn’t happening at most industrialized nations on the planet. Back in the day, Milton Friedman, that paragon of free market economics, propo

In a previous post, I made the point that even if all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions ceased tomorrow, the half-lives of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, together with climate change-driven gas emissions from melting permafrost and methane clathrates doom us to decades more of warming. The only ways to avert this are (1) carbon capture to actively remove gases from the air and/or (2) geoengineering on a planetary scale. It has been suggested that we plant more trees, since trees can sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The problems with that idea are: • the consequences of global warming are coastal flooding, desertification and loss of fresh water; where would all those trees go? • the world’s remaining forests are already being lost to agriculture, and that will only accelerate as arable land is lost to coastal flooding and desertification. Ocean phytoplankton are responsible for ca. 70% of Earth's oxygen production by exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. Thus

Back in the summer of 1985, we spent two weeks in Scotland. Our travels began with three days in Edinburgh, which were chosen to coincide with the Edinburgh Festival. The thing to do at the festival was the Festival Fringe, which were events--mostly theater--that were not part of the festival proper but held in various venues (back rooms of bars and restaurants and other unused spaces) around town. In the morning, you went to the fringe office to pick up the day's schedule of events. Nowadays, I assume that's all online. There were also lots of street performers (musicians, jugglers, etc). One of the most memorable performances for us was a one-man show based on the John Kennedy Toole novel "A confederacy of dunces." The novel is set in New Orleans, with a variety of White and Black characters, both male and female. The actor switched with facility between the various voices and postures, making it easy to forget that there was only one person on stage. I wish I could

We installed rooftop solar on our house in St. Louis ten years ago. Half of the cost was paid by Ameren and we got a 30% tax rebate on the balance. By the time we moved to Rhode Island last year and sold the house, we still hadn’t made back our investment even in nominal dollars. I’m OK with that, since at the time of installation, 80% of our electricity was generated by burning coal. Our donation to the planet. Rooftop solar was a curiosity among my friends. When they asked, I told them that first they should have an energy audit of their house and implement the recommendations, which might save them 10% or more of their energy costs without the investment in solar panels, wiring, etc. People are beguiled by technology, but plain old conservation can make a huge difference. While there’s a lot of discussion about EVs and renewables these days, it’s really too late for the planet now. If all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions ceased tomorrow and all humans switched to green energy

I see where failing GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is trying to salvage his campaign by pivoting to Marxism. He is calling for the state of Florida to investigate Belgium-based AB InBev on the basis of their recent Bud Light advertisements using a trans character. DeSantis seems to believe that AB InBev breached legal duties to shareholders and that as governor of Florida, “all options are on the table.” Ostensibly, the basis for the nanny state intervention into corporate business decision-making is that the AB InBev stock price fell 2.4% in April (back to it’s January trading value) after the Bud Light marketing triggered some beer-drinking snowflakes, and that the Florida pension fund has a small fraction of its money invested in AB InBev. That’s not how red-blooded capitalism works. A real capitalist would just disinvest in AB InBev and buy stock in companies that align with their values. How about MyPillow, Truth Social or Bitcoin? But seriously, this has nothing to do wi

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, the notional Democratic presidential candidate, made himself even more foolish than he already was recently by speculating that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered to protect people of Chinese and Jewish descent. Setting aside the fact that there is zero evidence that the virus was engineered and most evidence points to an animal origin, the notion that a virus could be reliably engineered to target specific ethnicities is risible. RFK, Jr, isn’t interested in virology or viral epidemiology, he’s interested in sowing ethnic strife. He deserves our scorn and contempt. Why anyone would believe anything RFK, Jr, has to say about science or medicine is beyond me. He has been a long-time anti-vaxxer who subscribes to the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism. He is willing to repeat lies if it gets him votes and press coverage. It’s certainly true that direct-to-consumer genomics companies like 23AndMe, Ancestry and Veritas (among others) can tell whether you

My response is that I wouldn't want to have lived before antibiotics, clean water and sanitary sewers. I don't want to be alive when global warming triggers resource wars and immiserates humanity. So I guess I want to have lived in the times I've lived. https://www.iflscience.com/people-are-debating-the-best-time-in-history-to-be-alive-69870?fbclid=IwAR2GpQMU1b0yPmun31ECatcMbeBPbcP_Gwp9lj2bnKryb04F6JgbsGArDos  

"In the email, the trooper said medics “were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico” and were also ordered not to give water to the migrants. The email is a report of weekly events and operational concerns from June 24 to July 1 while the officer worked as a trooper-medic. The email was first reported by the Houston Chronicle on Monday. In one seven-hour period late last month, according to the email, two medics from the state Department of Public Safety said they treated: A 4-year-old girl passed out in 100-degree heat after Texas (National) Guard personnel pushed the group she was in back toward Mexico A man with a significant laceration on his leg, suffered when he tried to rescue his child from razor wire placed on a deterrence buoy in the Rio Grande A 15-year-old boy with a broken leg, suffered when he tried to cross a more dangerous part of the river away from the buoys A 19-year-old woman trapped in the wire having a miscarriage." Jesus wee

When I was in high school and college, I had an extended flirtation with Victorian art. Prose, in the form of Thomas Hardy and Thomas Love Peacock, poetry in the form of Alfred Lord Tennyson and painting in the form of the pre-Raphaelites. I left that behind when I got married and went to grad school. With that background, I read a favorable review by Facebook friend  Steve Pick of “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins and was intrigued enough to add it to my “books to read” list. The Woman in White is a mystery written in 1959 and is set in 1849-50 England. Stylistically, the prose is very Victorian. Structurally, the novel is unusual in that it is organized as a series of narratives written by different characters describing events as they saw them. Collins does a great job with the distinct voices of the narrators. The book is quite slow to start. As accustomed as I am to Victorian writing, I found the first 20% or so (this was an ebook, so the progress is measured in percent

I was raised Roman Catholic. Weekly church attendance is required in the RCC, as are certain holy days of obligation, like Christmas and Good Friday. I had an English teacher in high school who went to mass every day, as did my former chairman. How many Americans actually go to church every week? My favorite blogger has posted the data, based on cell phone tracking. The result wasn't surprising to me. What was remarkable, in a comical way, is the gulf between how many people *say* they attend church weekly and how many verifiably do.* "A quarter of Americans say they attend church weekly, but in reality fewer than 3% of them do. That's about 8 million regular weekly churchgoers. "That's . . . not very many." *note that the cell phone chart ends in Feb 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic began. https://jabberwocking.com/how-many-people-really-attend-church/

Just when you thing Republicans in Florida couldn't be more insane: "Members of the Brevard County leadership committee adopted a resolution, calling on the governor to make the COVID-19 vaccines illegal. Other GOP chapters in Seminole, Lake, St. John's, Santa Rosa, Hillsborough and Lee Counties have passed similar resolutions. "There was heated discussion before the vote, and the majority believes the vaccine is very likely a biological weapon. "The pharmaceutical companies committed crimes and pushed fraud on the public about the effectiveness of the vaccines and downplayed the risks and side effects, they argued. "The Brevard Republican party’s controversial letter will be sent to DeSantis and other state leaders asking to outlaw the vaccines in the Sunshine State." https://cbs12.com/news/local/brevard-county-gop-covid-19-vaccine-bioweapon-gov-ron-desantis-florida-attorney-general-ashley-moody-treasure-coast-july-13-2023

I was catching up on the back issues of New Yorker accumulating on the coffee table, and read an article about the rise and decline of libertarianism in the GOP. The idea that anything resembling libertarianism was actually popular in the Republican Party is a joke. Ostensibly, libertarians want to shrink big government. OK, lets talk about that. The US military is (1) one of the largest government programs, and (2) the most transparently socialist of any government enterprise. Name the GOP politicians who were elected to office demanding steep cuts in military spending in the name of shrinking big government. Some other observations: • libertarians want the nanny state out of the private lives of citizens; ergo, no libertarian supports any law criminalizing abortion, gender transformation therapy or drag shows; • libertarians want open immigration; consistent with this principle, they oppose laws that forbid or regulate “undocumented” workers; • libertarians oppose public schools

"We’re pretty late into the cycle for any real new candidate to get into the race. People talk about late entries. But in practice they don’t work. Or they haven’t worked. The only candidate whose pulling more than trivial support in the race is Mike Pence of all people. Soon we’re likely to see more evidence of DeSantis’s downfall and more evidence of the multiple felony indictments Trump faces in multiple jurisdictions. Perhaps that will focus people’s attention or prompt a Youngkin or other Jebbite-type figure to come off the sidelines. But for the moment it looks like the centers of power in the GOP who aren’t all in for Trump have given up looking for an alternative and begun focusing on accepting Trump is their guy once again." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/will-there-be-a-new-gop-presidential-memestock

The existential risks associated with global warming include coastal flooding, loss of fresh water, desertification, life-threatening temperatures and loss of ocean fisheries. Another risk is the spread of infectious diseases that are normally restricted to tropical latitudes. While the prospect of eliminating insect vectors such as Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes, tsetse flies and triatomine bugs using CRISPR gene drives offers some hope, viruses and other parasites are notoriously resourceful and able to adapt to new hosts. One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic was how resourceful humans are in resisting behaviors that will protect themselves and others from infection, disability and death. Protection in the form of social distancing and vaccines was fervently resisted by people who preferred their personal beliefs over scientific data. “Herd immunity” was a panacea promoted by many. Yes, herd immunity worked to constrain the spread of the plague in the middle ages, but at the c

 I've never been a republican. I'm not especially liberal, but I've never seen the appeal of any republican since I reached voting age. I'm old enough to remember Dick Nixon and Ronald Reagan when they were the faces of the GOP, and I found them both obviously repellant. From a comment thread over at jabberwocking.com: "Trump is a 21st Century Ronald Reagan. The hatred is there, but his followers see him as a misunderstood good guy who only wants what’s best for the country. They can support him because he makes them feel good about their hatred. It’s not hatred at all, just a righteous defense of their values. He puts up a fun house mirror and they look in it and see patriots fighting for freedom. "DeSantis is a 21st Century Nixon. The hatred is there for all to see. It is unvarnished. DeSantis makes them see their own hatred for what it actually is. He puts the mirror up and they look in it and see the monsters they actually are." Apparently Rupert Murd

 In early 1973, my mom drove me to Clinton TN to register for the draft. I still have that draft card somewhere. The following year, my draft number was picked. In the event, the draft ended shortly after and so my draft number wasn't relevant. This experience permanently colored my thinking about when and where I'd place my life on the line. 50 years later, my belief is the same: the US shouldn't send troops to fight and die unless there's an existential threat. Today, the debate is over Ukraine membership in NATO. That membership binds all members to defend each member militarily as though it is a threat to their own homeland. Look, I believe Russia is wrong to prosecute a war against Ukraine. I'm glad to see the US and NATO allies sending weapons to aid Ukraine. But if Ukraine were to be a NATO member, that would be a commitment of US lives and treasure to defend a country halfway around the globe. Would I volunteer? No. Would I volunteer your kids or grandkids?

In Revelation 13:18, 666 is the number of “the beast.” "This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666." What does this mean? • The Romans had a tradition of making the numerical symbols in a name significant. When the Is, Vs, Xs, Cs, Ds, etc. were added up, it was supposed to have significance. The pope's crown is emblazoned with the Roman "Vicar of Christ". Add up the numerals in this title and it becomes 666; • if you take the Greek form of the name of the Emperor Nero, the Roman emperor around the time of Revelation, and write it in Hebrew, the letters, which can also have numeric values, “add up” to—you guessed it—666! • But my favorite is: we're carbon-based life forms. Carbon has six protons, six neutrons and six electrons--666!

"How much do you need to feel financially secure? How much would you need to feel rich? "More than 2,500 US adults said they would need to earn, on average, $233,000 a year to feel financially secure and $483,000 annually to feel rich or to attain financial freedom, according to a new survey from Bankrate. "Just for comparison’s sake, the median earnings for a full-time, year-round worker in 2021 was $56,473, according to the US Census Bureau." The phrase "financially secure" is obviously doing all the work in that question. If you're the sole breadwinner for a family of four in Manhattan, I could kinda get that. But to someone making the median income (means 50% of people earn less), that's got to look pretty foreign. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/success/how-much-to-feel-rich/index.html

"On July 1, Idaho becomes the only state without a legal requirement or specialized committee to review maternal deaths related to pregnancy. "The change comes after state lawmakers, in the midst of a national upsurge in maternal deaths, decided not to extend a sunset date for the panel set in 2019, when they established the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee, or MMRC. "The committee is composed of a family medicine physician, an OB-GYN, a midwife, a coroner, and a social worker, in addition to others who track deaths in Idaho that occur from pregnancy-related complications. Wyoming studies its maternal deaths through a shared committee with Utah. All other states, as well as Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, and Puerto Rico, have an MMRC, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group." https://www.juancole.com/2023/07/mortality-abolishes-investigating.html

An important reason to read history is to gain a perspective on current events. If you watch exclusively mainstream media television, particularly Fox News, you might be forgiven for the belief that things in this country are the worst they have ever been in history. “1877: America’s Year of Living Violently” by Michael Bellisiles is one effective antidote to that impression. The panic of 1873, when a post-Civil War speculative bubble burst, launched a depression that lasted until 1879. By Christmas of 1876, whatever centennial spirit there was had mostly dissipated. The litany of complaints would be familiar to viewers of Fox News today: “In Chicago, the journalist Mark “Brick” Pomeroy, a man not known for temperate behavior, published a laundry list of disasters facing the nation: the political parties were “manipulating” election returns, the nation “is filling up with tramps,” “bankruptcies are the order of the day,” the people elsewhere afraid to defend their rights, the prison

In principle, the GOP has a great shot at control of the Senate in 2024. But between Trump and Dobbs, what should have been low-hanging fruit could be slipping away. November 2024 is a very long way off, so reading the tea leaves (or entrails) is still dicy prophecy, but trends are not good for Republicans. "Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more. "Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization's stewardship. He says he doesn't agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it's "ludicrous" to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state. "I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well," he said. "The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the hi

“[A]ll men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.“ Handing down judgements unmoored from stare decisis or judicial reasoning is inviting a reconsideration of SCOTUS, its structure and powers.

When I was a kid, my parents paid me an allowance. In exchange, I was tasked with some domestic chores. In the summer, that included yard work. This arrangement taught me the rudiments of managing money and the relationship between work and money was transparent. Parents should be free to inculcate the value of work in their children. But that doesn't imply drafting businesses in doing the work of parents for them. Want your children to work? Give them jobs to do. Want your children to subsidize your family budget by taking jobs outside the home? Now you're no longer talking about parental responsibility, you're exploiting society, and at that point, society has every right to impose criteria and limitations. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/are-new-conservative-push-to-weaken-child-labor-protections-is-gaining-steam

Today begins my final year of gainful employment. Next year on this day, I'll be emeritus professor. I'm glad my university gave me the option of phased retirement. Now I feel ready. One year ago today was Linda's last day on the job. She retired on July 1st in order to get one more month of health insurance coverage. We're having dinner with her former boss and his family in Boston in a couple of days. "I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." ~T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"