Monthly Archives: July 2017

Michael Mann Did Not Sabotage His Law Suit, But Deniers Are Sabotaging The Planet

Climate Change

It starts with a very simple question: Is global warming real and human caused? It ends with a very simple answer: Yes to both. But in the middle we have, like every other good story, sex, intrigue, and intriguing sex.

In the beginning, there was a strong theory that said, “If we add greenhouse gasses, such as CO2, the byproduct of burning fossil fuels, to the atmosphere, the planet will warm.” But direct observations of this warming actually happening were sketchy. Widespread systematically collected and curated temperature records only went back a few decades, and as we were to learn later, the warming that was indeed happening was undergoing a quiescence. Such slower periods are interspersed with periods of rapid warming as part of the natural variation in the Earth’s climate system. In short, there is a natural component to variation in the Earth’s surface temperature, and a human-caused component, and at the time the human component was not yet the dominating force it would soon become.

Eventually, the record of surface temperatures was pushed back decade by decade through the diligent collection, critical evaluation, and cleaning up of data that had been sitting around in hand written form in myriad locations. The direct measurements of surface temperatures was extended back over a century, and at the same time, because that took a while, a decade or two of actual time passed by, during which thermometer and satellite data were collected. Now, we can look back to 1850 or 1880 (depending on the database) up to the present, and we see a warming trend.

A lot of research was being done those days, in the 1970s and 1980s, in paleoclimate and climatology. In particular, proxyindicators were being developed and contributing significant data. I remember as a young pre-graduate student sitting in a class where the professor was carefully explaining what a “proxy” was, as though no one had ever heard of them before (and we hadn’t). A proxy is a signal obtained from some natural material such as glacial ice, the sediment at the bottom of a pond or an ocean, or the pattern of growth rings of trees. This signal is linked via a model of some sort to a desired measurement (such as sea level, or temperature, or something) to imitate an instrument over the time covered by the proxy.

Just two years later, I remember an impromptu conference organized by my advisor, with a half dozen of the key paleoclimatologists, in which they provided updates to current research coming out of oceanography, and it was pretty amazing. Suddenly, using ocean cores, Oxygen isotopes, and theory, it was possible to make a reliable and remarkably precise estimate of how much water was missing from the ocean at any given time. Since most of that missing water was trapped in glacial ice, this proxy became the first accurate tracking of the comings and goings, and patterns of, Pleistocene ice ages. At first the record only went back 500,000 years. Then 800,00 years. Now, it is being extended back further.

Roughly ten years or so later, by the time 1998 rolled around, the world of climate science was ready for one of those pivotal moments to come along, and it did. This was the publication by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, of research linking long term records of the Earth’s surface temperature with more recent data, showing a clear signal of recent human-caused warming. Subsequently, that result, sometimes referred to as the “Hockey Stick Graph” because it looks somewhat like a hockey stick, has been confirmed over and over again. The best place to get a review of that research and its subsequent verification is in a post by climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf called “Most Comprehensive Paleoclimate Reconstruction Confirms Hockey Stick.”

(Added: See also the reference to Jones et al in this blog post pertaining to the history of all of this, by John Mashey.)

There have always been science deniers. God was a denier (“…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge…”). Galileo was harassed by deniers. I recently read a quote from a late 18th century, of a British soldier, referring with derision to the “bible-faced Americans” and, certainly, the American Christian churches have found anti-science activism and rhetoric to be excellent, um, fertilizer, to enhance their own growth.

The deniers of climate change didn’t just get the gas for their cars from Big Oil; Their entire movement was, and is, fueled by the likes of the Koch Brothers, deep pocketed one percenters and corporations harboring the unfortunate delusion that if we pretend climate change is not caused by the burning of fossil fuels, everything will be fine and they’ll keep getting rich.

The publication of the Hockey Stick research became a focusing point for these deniers, and Michael Man, the lead on that research, became a target on which they have fired continuously since then. No living scientist, no recent deceased scientists, and perhaps no scientist in history, has experienced such a sustained violation by so many deniers over such a period of time as Mike Mann. You can read all about the first phase of this relentless attack in this book by Mann himself.

You can disagree with a scientist. In fact, please do. Maybe the scientist is wrong about something. Chances are, if you are not a scientist and your disagreement is about something the scientist is an expert on and you are not, there is a different problem. Perhaps the science has not been explained clearly, and that is a problem, a reasonable thing to ask about. That can also be fixed. If, however, the science has been explained, and you maintain your disagreement not because the scientist is wrong, but because you want the scientist to be wrong, or because it is in your financial or political interest to disagree or cause confusion or sow doubt then … well, you can still do that because this is a free country.

In America, you can be an asshole.

But, if you publicly claim of anyone, in this country, that they have committed a crime, and they didn’t, especially if you make this claim with nefarious intent, then it is you who have potentially committed an offense, perhaps a civil offense, perhaps libel. In Canada they have similar rules. Lots of countries have that rule.

As the number one target of climate deniers world wide and for decades, Michael Mann has been defamed a number of times. On a couple of those occasions, with the support of various groups, Mann has pursued his legal and ethical right to fight back, and has filed suit.

I know Michael Mann well enough to know that this is not libel tourism. This is not Mann trying to make a fast buck. Mann would probably be fine in each case if the defendants had simply withdrawn the libel. (Given the nature of court costs and such, and the tenacious and obnoxious nature of the defense pretty much universally as I’ve seen it, I have no idea what the status of possible settlement is at this time and I’m sure everyone involved is under legal recommendation to not speak of such things at this time.)

One of these cases is against Tim Ball. Who is Tim Ball?

Ball has a PhD from the University of London (1982). According to the DeSmogBlog database on climate deniers,

Tim Ball was a professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1988 to 1996. He is a prolific speaker and writer in the skeptical science community.

He has been Chairman to the now-defunct Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), “Consultant” to the Exxon-funded Friends of Science (FoS), senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP), and has connections to numerous other think tanks and right-wing organizations.

Tim Ball is member of Climate Exit (Clexit), a climate change denial group formed shortly after the UK’s decision to leave the EU. According to Clexit’s founding statement (PDF), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.”

…

Ball and the organizations he is affiliated with have repeatedly made the claim that he is the “first Canadian PhD in climatology.” Ball himself claimed he was “one of the first climatology PhD’s in the world.”

Many have pointed out that there have been numerous PhD’s in the field prior to Ball.

Ball was a former professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1988 to 1996. The University of Winnipeg never had an office of Climatology. His degree was in historical geography and not climatology. [12]

…

A search of 22,000 academic journals shows that over the course of his career Ball published four pieces of original research in peer-reviewed journals on the subject of climate change.

According to Google Scholar, his most recent peer-reviewed article on climate change was published in 1986, titled “Historical evidence and climatic implications of a shift in the boreal forest tundra transition in central Canada.”
…
Tim Ball is a prolific writer of newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor questioning the existence of climate change. [51]

Ball is also a lead author of Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, a book published in 2011.

In 2011, Michael Mann filed suit against Ball and a Canadian think tank for claiming that Mann carried out criminal fraud. The nature of the fraud claim is a little complex and muddled, but it was part of the ongoing attack on Mann discussed in the above mentioned book. Ultimately this has to do with a bunch of innocuous private emails that had been exchanged among colleagues, then stolen by nefarious actors, cherry picked to make it look like bad things had happened, and widely publicized. In relation to this alt-news now known as “climategate” Ball said, “Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the State Pen, not Penn State.”

This is not the only law suit against Tim Ball. He has made similar accusations against others as well.

Now, that is all very interesting. But here is where it starts to get strange.

Libertarian Bisexual Prostitutes In My Blog

I am happy to have a wide range of commenters on my blog, and I trust my regular readers to handle those with racist, sexist, or anti-science tendencies. But I was a little shocked the other day to get a comment by someone I had never heard of before, ranting about Michael Mann and making claims about the Mann vs. Ball lawsuit that I knew were false.

The commenter used the name “Starchild.” I’d heard of Starchild, but I was suspicious that an alien hoax was commenting on my blog. So, I contacted this Starchild chap and asked if he was for real. Turns out, his real life name is none other than Starchild, and he is a famous San Francisco based bi-sexual sex worker Libertarian. Like this:

Starchild, in his comments, was essentially parroting a guy named John O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan runs a really nasty anti-science blog, and is well known for a wide range of shenanigans.

Sullivan was making legal claims about the Mann vs. Ball law suit, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, who is John O’Sullivan?

John O’Sullivan: Not a lawer

Sometimes John O’Sullivan claims to be a lawyer, but sometimes he backs off that claim.

According to himself, John O’Sullivan is not lawyer, but “… just some Brit with a brain who can go live with his American wife in her country and kick ass big time around a courtroom.”

He is the author of “Vanilla Girl: a Fact-Based Crime Story of a Teacher’s Struggle to Control His Erotic Obsession with a Schoolgirl.” This is an online book of some kind (I looked, it is not on Amazon).

O’Sullivan was successful in winning an acquittal when he was personally charged in England as a high school teacher accused of sending lewd text messages and assaulting a 16-year-old female. Given the acquittal, it would not generally be appropriate to bring up this sordid and unproven bit of history, except that O’Sullivan himself went on to write an “erotic” “novel” with a startlingly similar storyline: Vanilla Girl: a Fact-Based Crime Story of a Teacher’s Struggle to Control His Erotic Obsession with a Schoolgirl.

[source]

O’Sullivan claimed that he was an experienced attorney with an excellent record in New York and US federal courts. He isn’t. He identified a major law firm that he worked for. He didn’t work for them. He claims a fairly imporessive writing resume including some major outlets such as Forbes. None of that was true. He claims to be a member of the American Bar association but isn’t. He may or may not have a fake law degree from an on line alt-degree mill.

(See this for background.)

Starchild Speaks

To focus this line of thoughtlessness on the issue at hand, I’ll replicate Starchild’s comments here (combined into one):

Now that Michael Mann is in danger of being held in contempt of court for failing to release his research data, who’s the climate science “denier”? Hmm…

In his blog entry at http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/08/15/electronic-frontier-foundation-messes-up/ , Greg Laden wrote, “I’ll add that Mann’s research is all open source or open access with respect to data, methods, software, and results.”

It is, is it? Maybe that’s what he wanted you to think, until the time came when he actually had to produce:

“Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination…

“(Climatologist Dr. Tim) Ball explains, ‘We believe he [Mann] withheld on the basis of a US court ruling that it was all his intellectual property. This ruling was made despite the fact the US taxpayer paid for the research and the research results were used as the basis of literally earth-shattering policies on energy and environment. The problem for him is that the Canadian court holds that you cannot withhold documents that are central to your charge of defamation regardless of the US ruling.’”

Let’s begin right away with the data that is supposedly being held secret. They are HERE They have always been there. Anytime anyone says “where’s the data, Michael Mann” just send them there, where the data are.

Regarding the rest of O’Sullivan’s claims as echoed by Starchild, this is a statement by Michael Mann’s attorney:

Contrary to the nonsensical allegations made by John O’Sullivan in his July 4 posted on climatechangedispatch.com and elsewhere, plaintiff Michael Mann has fully complied with all of his disclosure obligations to the defendant Tim Ball relating to data and other documents.

No judge has made any order or given any direction, however minor or inconsequential, that Michael Mann surrender any data or any documents to Tim Ball for any purpose.

Accordingly it should be plain and obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that Mann could not possibly be in contempt of court.

Just to be clear: Mann is not defying any judge. He is not in breach of any judgment. He is not, repeat not, in contempt of court. He is not in breach of any discovery obligations to Ball.

In this context, O’Sullivan’s suggestion that Ball “is expected to instruct his British Columbia attorneys to trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions” against Mann is simply divorced from reality.

Finally, a word about the actual issues in the British Columbia lawsuit.
If O’Sullivan had read Ball’s statement of defence, he would immediately see that Ball does not intend to ask the BC Court to rule that Mann committed climate data fraud, or that Mann in fact did anything with criminal intent.
O’Sullivan would have noticed that one of Ball’s defences is that the words he spoke about Mann (which are the subject of Mann’s lawsuit) were said in “jest.”

The BC Court will not be asked to decide whether or not climate change is real.
So there is no chance whatsoever that any BC Court verdict about Mann’s libel claims against Ball will vindicate Donald Trump’s perspective on climate change.

Roger D. McConchie

Also, the data are here.

Starting from scratch, creating a complete pox virus

Biology, , ,

People talk about resurrecting the Mammoth, the Dodo, the Quagga, or the Tasmanian devil, or any number of extinct (or mostly extinct) creatures. I’m all for that. I suggest removing cattle farming in Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and adjoining areas of Canada, and repopulating the region with extinct megafauna. That would just be cool.

There are difficulties with this, including figuring out exactly how to piece together the genome for the extinct animal, how to get a good level of genetic diversity in the neo-founding population, and how to raise the critter up from a zygote. For all these reasons, I’ve always thought we should start by resurrecting something that already exists. We normally do this sort of dry run or practice run with things we do. In baseball, golf, and other ball sports, athletes take pre-swings. We went “to” the moon a couple of times before landing “on” the moon. Etc. So, let’s start by resurrecting a fruit fly, them maybe a chicken, then a dog. That sort of thing.

A potentially important public health concern is the re-emergence, one way or another, of small pox or something like small pox. In order to manage that, we would like to see more research involving vaccines. An ideal way to carry out vaccine research without risking the release of full blown small pox (which may or may not be frozen somewhere) on the population is to create a small pox virus (small pox is a virus) from scratch, using a known genetic code. In so doing, the parts of the virus that allow it to spread could be denatured, and the parts of the virus that allow research for vaccines or cures could be left in place.

In essence, creating such a Frankensteinian life form is like resurrecting an extinct species. And, some Canadian scientists stole my idea and went ahead and resurrected a non-extinct species in order to test out the plausibility of the method. The research is not published and likely won’t be, because it would be too easily misused by nefarious actors. But, the results were discussed at a meeting several months ago, and now there is something new about it in Science:

Eradicating smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases in history, took humanity decades and cost billions of dollars. Bringing the scourge back would probably take a small scientific team with little specialized knowledge half a year and cost about $100,000.

That’s one conclusion from an unusual and as-yet unpublished experiment performed last year by Canadian researchers. A group led by virologist David Evans of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says it has synthesized the horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, from genetic pieces ordered in the mail. …

The story is also covered by the Washington Post.

And, here is a previously released press release:

Tonix Pharmaceuticals Announces Demonstrated Vaccine Activity in First-Ever Synthesized Chimeric Horsepox Virus

Pre-Clinical Smallpox-Preventing Vaccine Candidate TNX-801 May Qualify for Priority Review Voucher if FDA-Approved Under Provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act

NEW YORK, March 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. (Nasdaq:TNXP) (Tonix), a company that is developing innovative pharmaceutical products to address public health challenges, working with researchers from the University of Alberta, a leading Canadian research university, today announced the successful synthesis of a potential smallpox-preventing vaccine. This vaccine candidate, TNX-801, is a live form of horsepox virus (HPXV) that has been demonstrated to have protective vaccine activity in mice.

“Presently, the safety concern of existing smallpox-preventing vaccines outweigh the potential benefit to provide immunization of first responders or the general public. By developing TNX-801 as a horsepox vaccine to prevent smallpox infection, we hope to have a safer vaccine to protect against smallpox than is currently available,” stated Seth Lederman, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Tonix. “Vaccines are a critical component of the infrastructure of global public health. Vaccination protects those who are vaccinated and also those who are not vaccinated, by decreasing the risk of contagion.”

“Our goal is to improve on current methods that protect the public from possible viral outbreaks,” said Professor David Evans, Ph.D., FCAHS, Professor and Vice-Dean (Research), Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and principal investigator of the TNX-801 research project.

HPXV was synthesized by Professor Evans and Research Associate Ryan Noyce, Ph.D., at the University of Alberta, with Dr. Lederman as co-investigator of the research and co-inventor of the TNX-801 patent. Under their research and development agreement, Tonix wholly owns the synthesized HPXV virus stock and related sequences. Professor Evans and Dr. Noyce also demonstrated that HPXV has protective vaccine activity in mice, using a model of lethal vaccinia infection. Vaccine manufacturing activities have been initiated by Tonix to support further nonclinical testing of TNX-801.

Dr. Lederman stated, “Our research collaboration is dedicated to creating tools and innovative products that better protect public health.”

About Horsepox (HPXV) and Smallpox

Horsepox, an equine disease caused by a virus and characterized by eruptions in the mouth and on the skin, is believed to be eradicated. No true HPXV outbreaks have been reported since 1976, at which time the United States Department of Agriculture obtained the viral sample used for the sequence published in 2006 that allowed the synthesis of TNX-801. In 1798, Dr. Edward Jenner, English physician and scientist, speculated that smallpox is a human version of pox diseases in animals. Jenner had a strong suspicion that his vaccine began as a pox disease in horses and went on to show that it could be used to vaccinate against smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated as a result, and no cases of naturally occurring smallpox have been reported since 1977. Jenner’s vaccine appears to have evolved considerably in the vaccinia stocks maintained in different countries around the world, since vaccinia was mostly selected for growth and production. Being able to provide safe and effective smallpox-preventing vaccines remains important and necessary for addressing and protecting public health.

About the Material Threat Medical Countermeasures Provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act

In 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act (Act) was signed into law to support ongoing biomedical innovation. One part of the Act, Section 3086, is aimed at “Encouraging Treatments for Agents that Present a National Security Threat.” This section of the Act created a new priority review voucher program for “material threat medical countermeasures.” The Act defines such countermeasures as drugs or vaccines intended to treat biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents that present a national security threat, or to treat harm from a condition that may be caused by administering a drug or biological product against such an agent. The priority review vouchers are awarded at the time of FDA approval and are fully transferrable and may be sold to other companies to be used for priority review of any New Drug Application (NDA) or Biologic Licensing Application (BLA).

About Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp.

Tonix is developing innovative pharmaceutical products to address public health challenges, with TNX-102 SL in Phase 3 development for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). TNX-102 SL is designed for bedtime use and is believed to improve overall PTSD symptoms by improving sleep quality in PTSD patients. PTSD is a serious condition characterized by chronic disability, inadequate treatment options especially for military-related PTSD and overall high utilization of healthcare services creating significant economic burden. TNX-102 SL was recently granted Breakthrough Therapy designation by the FDA for the treatment of PTSD. Other development efforts include TNX-601, a clinical candidate at Pre-IND (Investigational New Drug) application stage, designed for daytime use for the treatment of PTSD, and TNX-801, a potential smallpox-preventing vaccine.

*TNX-102 SL (cyclobenzaprine HCl sublingual tablets) is an investigational new drug and has not been approved for any indication.

This press release and further information about Tonix can be found at www.tonixpharma.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “forecast,” “estimate,” “expect,” and “intend,” among others. These forward-looking statements are based on Tonix’s current expectations and actual results could differ materially. There are a number of factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, substantial competition; our need for additional financing; uncertainties of patent protection and litigation; uncertainties of government or third party payor reimbursement; limited research and development efforts and dependence upon third parties; and risks related to failure to obtain FDA clearances or approvals and noncompliance with FDA regulations. As with any pharmaceutical under development, there are significant risks in the development, regulatory approval and commercialization of new products. Tonix does not undertake an obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. Investors should read the risk factors set forth in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on March 3, 2016, and future periodic reports filed with the SEC on or after the date hereof. All of Tonix’s forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by all such risk factors and other cautionary statements. The information set forth herein speaks only as of the date hereof.

Faking explosive evidence to discredit the legit press to protect Trump

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Part of the active effort to defend Trump and his administration and campaign against accusations that they directly engaged with the Russians to alter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election appears to be the faking of explosive documents, sent to news agencies. When these fake documents are then used, and subsequently discredited, the news agency, the reporters, the specific story at hand, and the entire investigation against Trump and his people all lose credibility.

Here, Rachel Maddow reports on a document sent to “Send it to Rachel.”

Who is behind this attack? I assume someone who would lose if actual involvement between Trump and Putin’s people became known. This might even strengthen the argument that such involvement happened, otherwise why go through all this trouble to throw the American press off the scent? Also, as you’ll see from Rachel Maddow’s reporting of this, the individual, individuals, or organization involved in this probably has some limitations on their understanding of certain aspects of security. The job they’ve done in the two known instances is good but not that good.

We have no way of knowing at the moment if similar attacks have happened against Congress or the Special Council’s office.

It seems to really be a thing, and in some ways this is not really unexpected. This is a fascinating story.

Also, printers are not anonymous.

These heat waves are global warming connected

Uncategorized, , , , ,

It really is true that global warming has made heat waves more common and more severe. The heat wave last month that affected the American southwest was one of these. Yet, of the 433 local broadcast events in local TV affiliates in Phoenix and Las Vegas to mention the heatwave (which was current news at the time) only one event mentioned a climate change connection, and that was to downplay it.

Similarly, governments are ignoring the connection.

This is the people who are supposed to help or at least disseminate correct information, letting everyone down for, I assume, political reasons. Shame on them.

Media Matters has a more detailed analysis here.

Science and the Fourth of July

Other

Science and The American Experiment

Click here to find out how attacking science is attacking the Declaration of Independence.

Read this book to discover the link between science and democracy.

We have Three Years to safeguard our climate, and the world probably needs America to take part in that.

From the Striving to Kill Civilization Department

Let’s maintain all those racist symbols in America’s national parks!

A few hundred armed militia group members, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Ku Klux Klaners, supporters of President Donald Trump, and other self-described patriots descended upon the Gettysburg battlefield Saturday to defend the site’s Confederate symbols from phantom activists with the violent far-left group Antifa

In a related story, a group of yahoos supporting racist iconography in public parks met at Gettysburg. One of them had a gun in a holster, and the gun went off randomly and shot him in the thigh. Later, when the police were trying to unload the firearm, the gun went off again. Pro tip: Don’t have a gun that fires itself whenever it feels like it. Pro tip #2: Don’t put racist iconography in public parks.

Meanwhile, down in Florida, City Commissioners in Hollywood FL have voted to unname several streets after Confederate war generals. These streets are concentrated in black neighborhoods. Read all about it.

South Park and other immaturities


South Park has decided to ignore Trump.Fora culture-shaping anti-authoritian entity like South Part to ignore trump can only mean a couple of things. One of those tings is that the producers/writers of South Park like Trump, the other is that Trump got to them. I’ll leave it to you’all to enter your alternative explanations in the comments below.

When Trump tweets a doctored video of himself beating the crap out of journalist, this guy gets a hard-on:

Political Science

I know this is fake news, since it is from CNN, but still: Forty-four states have refused Kobach’s request for voter information

Best Chris Christie Beach Meme:

A loved one just died, and today is her birthday. #Sad

Uncategorized, , , , ,

I speak, of course, of America.

America became very ill early last year when one of the two main political parties seriously embraced a fake candidate for the most important job in the land.

America was given a very poor prognosis in August when that party endorsed this clown for president. Then, in November, the fatal blow happened, but as is the case with many fatal things — being sentenced to death, being told you have incurable cancer, etc. — it took a while before the death throes.

From some point in time, around January, though the late winter and spring, we gained the full realization that the country’s election had been hacked (already suspected), but that the people who voted for the clown didn’t care. Then the leaders of the world singly or in small groups wrote off America and its leader, and so on. The last moments of life consisted of this or that horrific tweet or tweet storm, perhaps yesterday morning’s short video of the clown pretending to beat the crap of the press at a boxing match was the moment.

Unlike in the movies, it is sometimes hard to tell exactly when death happens. We understand it as a range of time.

Now, there is still life in this country. But it is not the essential life. It is the life we find in a dead carp washed up on a stinking muddy bank. The maggots, the bacteria, the bits of still greenish water plant stuck to the gills. Life, yes, but not the life. There are those who had wished the clown would be elected so that he could destroy America and we can start over. They got the first part of their wish. The second part is unlikely to be realized in their benighted lifespans. Today the stinking carp-clown is putting together a list and we all know what he is going to use that list for.

Do you, America, have the understanding you need, the bravery you need, and the commitment you need to renew the revolution? I think not. You’ve shown no evidence that you do.

There are advantages to living in a third world country. But those advantages come only after the fall has completed, and that will take some decade or two worth of misery, and those advantages will only pertain to the richest of the rich. They, the richest of the rich, have taken, finally, what they want.

The bad news is this: The hyper-privileged have won. The good news: They won a stinking dead carp. Enjoy, suckers.

A fish rots from the head.

This pertains:

Tesla Model 3 is Breakthrough Technology

Uncategorized

The Tesla Model 3 will have a 215 mile range. Zero to sixty in 6 seconds, in case you ever have to do that. Seats five adults. Five star safety rating. Uses supercharging (so, if supercharged, charges in something like the time it takes to fill up a gas car IF you also use the bathroom, pick up a candy bar, there’s a few people in line …).

It cost the same as a lot of cars a lot of people buy: $35,000.

It is 100% electric.

You can’t have one yet, but if you really one one and work on it you might be able to get one by the end of the year. The first ones out will be distributed to their new owners Friday.

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Unless you live in Florida

Uncategorized, , ,

This is disturbing, but since civilization is ending as we speak, I suppose it is not surprising. From the Washington Post:

Any resident in Florida can now challenge what kids learn in public schools, thanks to a new law that science education advocates worry will make it harder to teach evolution and climate change.

The legislation, which was signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) this week and goes into effect Saturday, requires school boards to hire an “unbiased hearing officer” who will handle complaints about instructional materials, such as movies, textbooks and novels, that are used in local schools. Any parent or county resident can file a complaint, regardless of whether they have a student in the school system. If the hearing officer deems the challenge justified, he or she can require schools to remove the material in question….

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Council for Science Education, said that affidavits filed by supporters of the bill suggest that science instruction will be a focus of challenges. One affidavit from a Collier County resident complained that evolution and global warming were taught as “reality.” Another criticized her child’s sixth-grade science curriculum, writing that “the two main theories on the origin of man are the theory of evolution and creationism,” and that her daughter had only been taught about evolution.

“It’s just the candor with which the backers of the bill have been saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to go after evolution, we’re going to go after climate change,'” that has him worried, Branch said.

Here is the original

Affluence Without Abundance

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

My father in law is an excellent amateur mixologist. I don’t drink alcohol very often, but we’re all up at the cabins, so last night I had a paper plane. And I believe this is what led to a night of strange and extensive dreams, and in my dreams was my recently deceased PhD adviser, Irv DeVore. (Irv was not dead in the dream.) DeVore is famous for having initiated, with Richard Lee, the first scientific study of extant living foragers, and they worked with the Ju/’Honasi of Botswana/Namibia/South Africa.

So, it was strange to have the lingering dream on my mind as I opened the latest Science magazine to see a review, by Alan Barnard, of a recent and interesting book on those people: Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen.

A vibrant portrait of the “original affluent society”–the Bushmen of southern Africa–by the anthropologist who has spent much of the last twenty-five years documenting their encounter with modernity.

If the success of a civilization is measured by its endurance over time, then the Bushmen of the Kalahari are by far the most successful in human history. A hunting and gathering people who made a good living by working only as much as needed to exist in harmony with their hostile desert environment, the Bushmen have lived in southern Africa since the evolution of our species nearly two hundred thousand years ago.

In Affluence Without Abundance, anthropologist James Suzman vividly brings to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, and telling the story of the collision between the modern global economy and the oldest hunting and gathering society on earth. In rendering an intimate picture of a people coping with radical change, it asks profound questions about how we now think about matters such as work, wealth, equality, contentment, and even time. Not since Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s The Harmless People in 1959 has anyone provided a more intimate or insightful account of the Bushmen or of what we might learn about ourselves from our shared history as hunter-gatherers.

Barnard says:

The book is full of illuminating observations from the Bushmen themselves. In one passage, for example, Suzman relates an encounter with ?Oma, one of the resettlement community’s most established residents, who once served as a foreman when Skoonheid was still a working farm: “If you are foreman,” ?Oma tells Suzman, “then you are the eyes and the ears of the baas [boss] on the farm. You are the chief of the workers and are in charge when the baas is away.” Despite better pay and greater social standing among the white farm owners, ?Oma never entirely succeeded in securing the respect and deference he demanded from his fellow Ju/’hoansi. Today’s Bushmen are part of two worlds, one guided by the group’s traditional commitment to egalitarianism and the other based on subjugation.

In general, anthropological commentary is kept to a minimum, but Suzman’s descriptions are full of insight. “To them everything in the world is natural and everything cultural in the human world is also cultural in the animal world, and ‘wild’ space is also domestic space,” he writes, for example, in chapter 7. “So while Ju/’hoansi consider the litter to be an irritation, few see it as pollution—at least in the way the tourists do.”

Suzman’s frequent reflexivity (e.g., “I never hunted with /I!ae. I was too clumsy, loud, and slow.”) makes the book far more interesting than typical accounts full of statistical detail, academic references, and the like. The book offers few references, and details are limited to those that make for good reading. There are, however, several useful (albeit simple) maps of the areas described and a brief explanation of how to pronounce clicks.

The review is here, but I’m not sure if you can see it without a subscription.

Your Summer Novel Reading List

Uncategorized, ,

I’m avoiding books that are recent so you can get a deal on price, and to bring books from the past that you didn’t read but should have back into focus. Each of these, I’ve either read (most of them) or have a recommendation from top notch sources. You should be able to finish then all by the end of summer, easily, and you can report back. Meanwhile, if you have other suggestions, let me know and I’ll periodically add them to the main post unless I think they are bogus.

Happy reading!

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

EVERY DAY THE SAME
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

UNTIL TODAY
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author.

Called “a tour de force”by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain.

When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history….

Late one night, exploring her father’s library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor,” and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe.

In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler’s dark reign-and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions-and evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad’s ancient powers-one woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil. Elizabeth Kostova’s debut novel is an adventure of monumental proportions, a relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful-and utterly unforgettable.

The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang

Charles Wang, a brash, lovable businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, has just lost everything in the financial crisis. So he rounds up two of his children from schools that he can no longer afford and packs them into the only car that wasn’t repossessed.

Together with their wealth-addicted stepmother, Barbra, they head on a cross-country journey from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the Upstate New York retreat of the eldest Wang daughter, Saina. The trip brings them together in a way money never could.

The Underground Railroad: A Novel by Colson Whitehead

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the #1 New York Times bestseller from Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear.

That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive.

But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

Three books by by Mary Doria Russell:

The Sparrow: A Novel
Children of God (The Sparrow series)

These two books go together. I’ve written about them before. For the above books I supplied the usual text given by the publisher, but for these two, that is inadequate.

These two novels are a four-field anthropologist’s take on what happens when a) civilization, such as it is, advances to the point where religion is gone, governments don’t exist, but that’s OK, everything is being run by giant corporations; and b) a group of people including a child prostitute and a Jesuit missionary fly in a space-ship retrofitted asteroid to a planet with two forms of sentient life, both somewhat resembling, in my mind, Barney the Friendly Dinosaur, but without his attitude or weird little friends. These two sentient species have a symbiotic(ish) relationship. The interaction between the Earthlings and the others is long and complex and plays out over several years, complexified by the fact that the relationship between the Earthlings and their own people back on earth plays out over many years affected by relativistic time slow down.

And so on. Anyway, two of the best books I’ve ever read, just go read them, your enjoyment is guaranteed.

Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral

Mary Doria Russell, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Sparrow, returns with Epitaph. An American Iliad, this richly detailed and meticulously researched historical novel continues the story she began in Doc, following Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to Tombstone, Arizona, and to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands. . . .

That was America in 1881.

All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26 when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and thirty bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.

Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.

Epitaph tells Wyatt’s real story, unearthing the Homeric tragedy buried under 130 years of mythology, misrepresentation, and sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimate, this novel gives voice to the real men and women whose lives were changed forever by those fatal thirty seconds in Tombstone. At its heart is the woman behind the myth: Josephine Sarah Marcus, who loved Wyatt Earp for forty-nine years and who carefully chipped away at the truth until she had crafted the heroic legend that would become the epitaph her husband deserved.

The Sympathizer: A Novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as six other awards, The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year.

With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal.

The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

Trump went full on dictator this morning

Uncategorized, , , ,

I’ve made the point several times now. We live in a constitutional democracy, but many of the first line (and last line) protections are not enforceable laws, but rather, agreements made among people who all want to live in and respect a constitutional democracy.

But if a large enough cadre of members of Congress, a gaggle of highly placed judges, or a President decide to act in a way that conflicts with those conventions, they can actually get away with quite a bit.

The US Congress is run by such a cadre, pretending to engage in a democracy but willing to break the non-enforceable laws whenever that suits them. Since the Congress is a key check on the President, this lets the President get away with whatever he wants. In this case, this means that the Congressional overisight of the Executive is non existent or hampered, faked, or even compliant with the Executive’s agenda. We are seeing that now with Congress attacking the investigators.

Over the last few months it has become apparent that the only powerful force, other than the people themselves (and they are powerful) putting a check on Trump is the press, and Trump has been acting to wear that down. Plus, women. The women were the first to march against Trump, and he’s going to put them down too.

And so, this morning’s tweets:

And, on a related and very disturbing parallel path, Trump is working on getting a list of Democrats, via voter data, in order to … do what?

This is what a dictatorship looks like, people. They are coming for you.