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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...