Category Archives: Uncategorized

Long time conservative columnist George Will stumbles in his distaste for progressives:

Arick Wierson and Bradley Honan urge an important endorsement of Joe Biden from the only uncommitted former living President:

After the debate and the recent endorsement of Biden by Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain, it’s now time for former President George W. Bush to finally put an end to the Trump presidency by endorsing Joe Biden for President — and in doing so, save the country and the GOP from itself.

And I won’t argue with them. As the only living former Republican President, it’s a little difficult to understand President Bush’s hesitancy as he watches his Party burning in infamy, but perhaps he’s waiting for an opportune moment. If he is, that moment is now.

It’s not difficult to make a case for Bush having made many errors of judgment, but the fact remains that for some portion of the Republican Party, he remains a respected figure – according to the authors of the above opinion piece, 70+%.

If he chooses to endorse Biden, he might be wisest to place all his eggs in one basket, and that’s the peaceful transfer of power basket. This is not a partisan issue; it is part of the bedrock of the nation. That one candidate has not committed to it should be enough to disqualify said candidate, and Bush should eloquently make that the fundamental issue, the reason that Trump should be loathed, politically, by all voters, even those who have gained power by him, and why Biden, who simply Yes! every time he’s asked to commit to it, should be their selection for President.

Come on, President Bush. I didn’t vote for you, and you left so many issues behind that this country is still torn by them. But this is an easy one in which you can swing a mighty big hammer.

The recently introduced legislation to further enable the 25th Amendment certainly has Republicans in an uproar, although it may all be faux-uproar:

Crazy Nancy Pelosi is looking at the 25th Amendment in order to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris. The Dems want that to happen fast because Sleepy Joe is out of it!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020

And it’s not just Trump, as faithful Trump apologist Erick Erickson – yes, Erickson, I know you think you’re an objective observer – also kicks in his echo-opinion in private email to non-subscribers to his newsletter:

That all suggests this is really about making it easier for Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden if he should win. These are not good optics.

Of course, neither Trump nor Erickson address the deeply uncomfortable fact that Biden has, from all reports, come off as competent, knowledgeable, compassionate, and precise in his speeches and debate performance, with little or no propensity for lying through his teeth, unlike Trump. I wouldn’t expect Trump to have the guts to admit to it, of course, but if Erickson were truly an objective analyst, rather than an apologist who has convinced himself that the lies and other Trumpian deep sins are more acceptable than society, like, changing, you know?, then I’d expect some honest analysis from him.

Instead, we get this:

I realize the Democrats believe the Constitution is a living, breathing document, but I didn’t think they’d decide to perform abortions on it.

And then he goes on to analyze the legislation as if it’s already law. But it’s not, it’s up for debate, improvement, and correction in the Senate, and if the Republicans were a functional Party, I’d expect that we’d get a fairly good piece of legislation out of it through contributions from both Parties. You know, how government used to work, which I will now assure the younger members of my reading audience is how American government worked before the Republicans were invaded by religion.

More importantly, Erickson deliberately chooses to use a trigger word, abortion, a word that the right has been trained to associate with evil, and thus associate this legislation with that same idiotic evil, and then slather legislation deliberately permitted under the Constitution with some really dumb innuendo.

I mean, come on, man. If the Democrats want Harris to succeed Biden soon after the inauguration, if it happens, then all Biden has to do is resign.

Resign.

You don’t need anything fancier than that. And if he doesn’t want to resign and he has his faculties, great. Harris gains highly valuable experience working with the VP of the highly successful Obama Administration.

I mean, why doesn’t Erickson acknowledge these simple facts? He can beat his gums all he wants about Obama, but the numbers speak for themselves in terms of economics, crime, scandal-free government, what-have-you. Obama was far more successful and competent than Trump or Bush. But he can’t acknowledge that, can he?

And that’s because Erickson is frantic to retain his reputation as a conservative pundit. Not as an insightful, independent pundit, but as one of those magisterial conservatives, such as populates National Review: they spew out their regal sounding essays that, in my limited experience, fall apart quickly under examination. With just a hint of Rush Limbaugh’s corrupt, lovely voice. Erickson can’t do that by suggesting that his President is incompetent, either in terms of temperament or even core intelligence. His core audience would leave, and he’d be as audience-less as … well, to be brutally honest, myself.

Such is the result of not adhering to Party kant, eh?

So, instead, we get brainless caterwauling over proposed legislation that pertains to future incompetent Executives. The Dems do the responsible thing and Trump loses his mind, because he’s aware there’s an implied insult in it, and because Trump loses his mind, Erickson has to ape him.

It’s too bad.

From Canada’s New Leaf Project:

In partnership with the University of British Columbia, Foundations for Social Change launched the world’s first direct cash transfer program to empower people to move beyond homelessness in Canada.

Specifically, our New Leaf project (NLP) distributed a one-time cash transfer of $7,500 to people experiencing recent homelessness in the Vancouver area.

While many would balk at the thought of disbursing large sums of cash to people living in homelessness, our approach was based upon scientific evidence and our bold action has paid off. By preventing people from becoming entrenched as homeless, NLP helps individuals to maintain dignity and regain hope. At the same time, community resources can be spent in other urgent areas.

Cash transfers provide choice, control and purchasing power at a critical time in people’s lives. This is not merely a gesture of help, it is a signal that society believes in them.

CNN summarizes:

Researchers gave 50 recently homeless people a lump sum of 7,500 Canadian dollars (nearly $5,700). They followed the cash recipients’ life over 12-18 months and compared their outcomes to that of a control group who didn’t receive the payment.

The preliminary findings, which will be peer-reviewed next year, show that those who received cash were able to find stable housing faster, on average. By comparison, those who didn’t receive cash lagged about 12 months behind in securing more permanent housing.

People who received cash were able to access the food they needed to live faster. Nearly 70% did after one month, and maintained greater food security throughout the year.

The recipients spent more on food, clothing and rent, while there was a 39% decrease in spending on goods like alcohol, cigarettes or drugs.

Keeping in mind that 50 subjects barely makes this study statistically significant, the subjects were carefully selected, and the study is not peer-reviewed, it does make a lot of sense once we discard the mindset that poverty and homelessness are symptoms of, well, sin and bad judgment. As we become more and more overpopulated, the societal surges become more and more a symptom of the pathologies of a society struggling with inequities, failures of morality in the corporate world, and a failure to consider the communal good in favor of the Me-Me-Me world that seems to pervade the political spectrum, if unevenly. The individual failures are less symptomatic of bad choices and more of hopeless situations, or of choices made in the face of the maelstrom that could not have easily been improved upon.

This also inclines me more favorably towards experimenting with Universal Basic Income (UBI), as this study can be seen as a temporary UBI. I don’t see UBI as a panacea for hopelessness and homelessness (H&H), yet it’s difficult to deny that a lack of income can contribute to institutional H&H. Can UBI alleviate that and improve societal mental health? The corporate world might well back UBI, once it realizes that better mental health leads to improved productivity, although it also leads to more worker mobility – a problem for businesses who are, to summarize some thoughts, poorly run.

I hope we hear more about this study in the future.

Steve Benen has a go:

After the vice presidential debate, Trump described Sen. Kamala Harris as a “monster,” and repeatedly said she’s a “communist.” (Fact check: the senator is neither.)

Given Trump’s tendency to project his own sins, acts, and contemplated acts on his opponents, it sorta makes me wonder…

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) is a tightly plotted murder mystery, full of beautiful cinematography, wonderful costumes, well-drawn characters, captions, and a theme having to do with the sacrifices principle can demand of you.

During the Chinese Tang Dynasty, a scruple-free, ambitious woman of the royal family has found her way to the edge of becoming the first Empress of China, and, towards this end, she has commissioned the creation of a great statue, a colossus. A tremendous achievement, it stands before the coronation stand, an integral part of the upcoming installation of the empress.

A ceremony imperiled when a member of the royal household, on an inspection tour, suddenly bursts into flames, dying in a most horrible manner. Of course, such people are somewhat rife in all royal households – it’s like dead bodies and maggots – but when the chief penal officer meets a similar fate, the imminent empress decides a formal investigation must take place, as performed by the best.

And that would be Detective Dee.

The traitor, Detective Dee.

Dee is immediately at hazard, as he is assaulted in his place of imprisonment, but escapes unharmed, accepts his assignment from this woman he had revolted against, and sets off to discover who can cause people to burst into flames, and how.

And that’s only if he can survive royal intrigue himself. Because, I’ll tell you, his assistants, as able as they are, find themselves under almost-constant assault. Dee makes progress, but at costs both tangible and intangible, and it’s the latter that make this a good story, bringing into sharp relief the individual costs of honor. But, as Dee discovers, there’s more going on here than just a few murders.

There’s the rupture of tradition.

In terms of negatives, I only identified one definite scene which I thought was unlikely within the context of the story, as it delivered to Dee a key clue but didn’t make sense for the antagonist to indulge in. I must also add there’s a fair bit of magical kung fu shit, but it’s manageable and even fun. The real point of this movie is the story it tells, the themes it explores, and not the wild ‘n crazy fight scenes. In some ways, they function like humor in a horror movie, accentuating the theme, rather than obscuring it.

If you like a tight plot and don’t mind reading captions, or if you speak Mandarin, take a couple of hours and a bowl of popcorn and enjoy this one.

Ossicone:

Reticulated giraffe ossicones. Source: Wikipedia

Ossicones are horn-like or antler-like protuberances on the heads of giraffes, male okapis, and their extinct relatives, such as Sivatherium, and the climacoceratids, such as Climacoceras. It has been argued that these extinct species did not have true ossicones; however, later research has revealed their ossicones to be in line with those of giraffids. Ossicones are located dorsally of the frontal bone and fuse to the skull later in life. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The horn-like knobs on a giraffe’s head can be a deadly lightning rod,” Joshua Rapp Learn, NewScientist (26 September 2020):

Rockwood ranger Frans Moleko Kaweng went out to investigate and it quickly became apparent what had happened. The oldest and tallest giraffe of the herd, the matriarch, was lying dead with a wound on top of her head. It appeared as if one of her ossicones – the horn-like knobs on a giraffe’s head – may have acted as a lightning rod in the storm.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you evolution leads to perfection. It’s a collection of tradeoffs.

This tickled my fancy:

In 2018, on the Red Sea’s Mar Mar Island, Matthew Tietbohl, a coral reef ecologist at King Abdullah University of Science & Technology in Saudi Arabia, was surveying a beach for sea turtle tracks with some colleagues. The team heard loud splashing at the water’s edge.

“We turned to see this triggerfish launching itself into the shallows and stranding itself,” recounts Tietbohl.

It soon became clear that the fish was attempting to feed on ghost crabs that were grazing on algae-covered rocks at the water’s edge. The triggerfish would slowly stalk the crabs from the water, turning on its side and lunging out of the shallows like a crocodile. At one point, the fish successfully gripped a crab, pulling it back into the water. [NewScientist]

I feel like we’re seeing evolution in action.

From WaPo:

“There is a long way to go and there is a pent-up Trump vote that I believe is underreported,” former Trump campaign adviser Ed Brookover said. “The president has his pulse on the country and a lot of America is going to get out there and make sure he has four more years.”

Let’s take this apart.

1. Trump has been running his reelection campaign from the day he filed papers with the FEC – and that was the day he was inaugurated. Voters have already begun sending in their ballots, and they cannot be retracted. We’re down to the last 3.5 weeks. Dude, you don’t know how to measure time, do you?
2. Underreported? He wasn’t in 2016, the polls were accurate, but failed to take the oddities of the Electoral College into account – Clinton won by several million votes. In 2018, the last nationwide & official measurement of voter’s sentiment, Trump and the Republicans were stomped into the ground.
3. Just about every recent poll and survey I’ve seen makes it clear that all but the Trump cult members have realized, and really quite quickly, that Trump’s a faker and a taker. Name your polling service, it’s there. Hell, Fox News has Trump down 10 points – and that’s Fox News.

A prime example of magical thinking, saying what he wishes – or his employers wish – were true. These are the sort of people that lead to disaster.

In the arena of trying to take control of their political fates, I see Senator Graham (R-SC) is going to try the scary task of separating himself from President Trump by just a small hair:

Strongly recommend all my colleagues and President @realdonaldTrump look at the House Problem-Solvers bipartisan $1.5 trillion stimulus relief package.

It has many good things for individuals and businesses.
https://t.co/M7HvwCv9MS

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 7, 2020

Is that President Trump once again signing blank sheets of paper? I wonder if Senator Graham is employing some sort of sly dig – which this illness of mine doesn’t permit me to discern – in order to tell his constituent that he is really independent of the President.

And not just my second-favorite lickspittle.

In government, a first rate civil servant, besides being good at their job, understands the importance of following rules.

A third-rater?

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows hosted a lavish wedding for his daughter in Atlanta this May, despite a statewide order and city of Atlanta guidelines that banned gatherings of more than 10 people to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The wedding took place May 31 at the Biltmore Ballrooms in Midtown Atlanta. The 70 or so guests, including U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, donned tuxedos and ball gowns for the indoor affair, but no masks, as Meadows walked his daughter, Haley, down the aisle through a path of soft white flower petals. [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

The rules don’t apply to them if they’ve achieved a position of power. It’s a mindset deriving from how they see their position: not as a position of service, but as a position of command and power.

Hopefully, this recounting of recent poll results by Steve Benen will remain accurate up to Election Day:

Not its best video, but effective: The Lincoln Project.

13WOWK reports on a West Virginia political poll:

In the race for U.S. president, President Donald Trump (R) holds a 56% to 38% lead over Democratic nominee Joe Biden, according to the poll. 4.8% said they were still unsure of which candidate they would be voting for on Election Day.

Impressive, yeah? West Virginia voters aren’t paying attention, yeah?

No.

According to Wikipedia, Trump beat Clinton by 42 points in 2016.

And I want to know is if that 56% in the poll realize that a substantial portion of their former political colleagues have switched their party allegiance, and if they wonder if perhaps there’s something they’re missing in the current political climate.

Does self-doubt gnaw at them?

Or do they just merrily march on, certain that Trump is the way to go?

I’m going to guess the epistemic bubble echos the phrase You’re right! to them.

Woodrow Wilson, two nights before Election Day, 1916, wrote a letter in which he communicates a plan in case he loses his reelection campaign. Professor Matthew Waxman explains on Lawfare:

In his early life as a scholar, Wilson had written about the structural defects of the U.S. constitutional system for managing crises. So it should be no surprise that he thought about them as president. What is surprising are the actions he planned. Assuming that they went along with this move, in the interim between Hughes’s election and inauguration, Wilson would appoint Hughes to replace Robert Lansing as his secretary of state. Once Hughes was in that office, Wilson and Vice President Thomas Marshall would resign, whereupon, according to succession rules at the time, Hughes would become president early.

Wilson had his flaws, but at least he was prepared to sacrifice for his country. Should we expect the same from President Trump, if he fails to perform a miracle and win reelection?

And it’s a lovely little story.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), finding himself in an unexpectedly difficult reelection fight, and perhaps worried that with roughly four weeks left, MJ Heggar (D-TX) may be able to make up the gap, whatever it is (I’m not finding any recent polls), in that time, is starting to put some separation between himself and the President, much like these incumbents. Here he is, critiquing the President’s take on the coronavirus:

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Monday that President Donald Trump “let his guard down” on the coronavirus and that the president’s rhetoric has created “confusion” as the country has struggled to get the pandemic under control.

“I think he let his guard down, and I think in his desire to try to demonstrate that we are somehow coming out of this and that the danger is not still with us — I think he got out over his skis and frankly, I think it’s a lesson to all of us that we need to exercise self discipline,” Cornyn told the Houston Chronicle editorial board.

The comment came as he was asked about Trump rarely wearing a mask, holding Make America Great Again rallies and hosting a Supreme Court nomination ceremony at the White House attended by at least eight people, including two senators, who have since tested positive for the virus. [Houston Chronicle]

Cornyn’s TrumpScore? As of this writing, 95.1%.

Cornyn’s selection of the coronavirus as his divergence point from President Trump may have been inevitable, as Hegar has been attacking him on the subject (see above link), but it’s not without risks. I think that one of the key linkages between Trump and his base is his public embrace of magical thinking, which he has put on display repeatedly since the coronavirus became a pandemic.

That linkage validates the central identity of his supporters, as evidenced by their indulgence in such beliefs as claiming Covid-19 is a hoax, it’s only as bad as the flu, it’s a weapon, and several other false tropes that I might expect to hear from barstool blowhards, but not from serious people.

When Cornyn suggests that Trump is wrong, he is taking a risk that avid Trump supporters, sensing their central identities are not being validated by Cornyn, will turn on him in disgust. Through Trump, they have achieved a visceral power, a position on the prestige ladder, at least in their own eyes; Cornyn’s betrayal is an attack on their position.

It’ll be interesting to see if my hypothesis is correct. If he wins in November, I’ll have been wrong.

And if he loses?

Not only will I be right, it’ll be evidence that indulging in magical thinking isn’t merely a weird little habit of some people, but a road into a swamp from which there is no escape.

I’ve been saying this for years, as have many other pundits, but in a nation that thinks religious liberty is – somehow – under attack, it’s worth emphasizing that magical thinking, infectious in its own way, often has unsightly consequences, as Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent point out in The Plum Line:

Republicans always feared this day would come, when Trump would become not just an erratic, divisive president but someone whose manifest unfitness for office would result in full-blown catastrophe.

They decided they had no choice but to stand behind him, and convinced themselves that it might work out well. It would be a crazy four years, but maybe Trump would grow into the job, and maybe retaining the support of a dwindling constituency would be enough to squeak out another election win or two.

The incompetence and bigotry of the Trump Administration is, in a way, symbolic of the very phrase magical thinking. It symptoms include denial and disbelief in the observations and analysis of people who study reality; a belief that, with enough will, reality will bend to the needs, religious and political, of the magical thinker who can’t tolerate reality; a willingness to deny anything that makes reality less than their ideal.

Especially if that ideal includes such concepts as power, prestige, and wealth.

There are many obvious examples: Anthropogenic climate change deniers lead the way, even as storms worsen, tides creep in further and further. Next in line is Covid-19 denial, QAnon, and the list goes on.

But the roots are deeper than we sometimes realize. Think of the Scopes Trial of 1925, in which whether or not evolution should be taught in public schools was on trial, followed by Creationism, and, when that could not be sustained in the nation’s courts, Intelligent Design (ID), the foul child of the Discovery Institute. This deeper root to magical thinking is not often mentioned outside of the Skeptics community, although some of the latest defenses of ID’s magical thinking has led their “thinkers” down truly odd and pathological paths that might be clues as to how far the adherents of ID have wandered from rationality.

But now we’re seeing the fruit of persistent magical thinking.

Plenty of them went further and eagerly embraced Trump and Trumpism, too, while actively working to insulate him from accountability for all of his degradations. Now a new possibility has emerged: that this election could be not just bad for Republicans, but positively cataclysmic.

Cataclysmic? You know those horrifying pictures of California burning, fire storms consuming all in their path?

That’s what’s happening to the Republican Party, and magical thinking is the accelerant, the substance that is making the fire unquenchable. Until magical thinking is banished from the Republican Party, it will be the Party of Kooks. Indeed, it may remain the Party of Kooks for decades, and a new conservative party that, if it is wise, does not tolerate the kooks, will form to be a home for real conservatives.

And if you’re a Republican whose tender religious sensibilities are offended at having this blamed on you, tough shit. That’s how it is.

[From, IIRC, the Gilligan’s Island preamble.]

The latest from Erick Erickson’s email barrage of non-subscribers to his newsletter:

Let’s set aside the NBC News poll that shows Biden up 14 points. Instead, look at the polling average. It has Biden up 8 points. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1% and the polling average was Clinton head by 3.2%.

In 2016, there were multiple well funded third party challengers as well and Trump ultimately only won by 70,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If Biden is really ahead by 6 points, he has a lead that will be reflected within the Electoral College.

This is why, if you know where to look, panic is starting to set in with Republicans. The public polling now is reflecting internal Republican polling from last week. Multiple campaign strategists and pollsters from states as diverse as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and even South Carolina are starting to see the bottom falling out.

Senior citizens, suburban women, and white men from up north are drifting to Biden.

Wait, what? ... and white men from up north are drifting to Biden.

It took a moment – or two – to remember that Erickson’s located in Georgia. That must mean that, uh, I suppose in Erickson’s parlance Us Northern White Men, a remark I find mildly annoying, are abandoning the President.

And I suppose there’s some value to partitioning the voters for analysis. However, the way Erickson is using it, it feels faintly as if a Great Traitorhood to Trump is being formed up here. Which makes me grumpy.

Because, to be honest, I have been continually dismayed that white men are more or less supporting Trump in the same proportions – something like 56%, although I don’t have a recent number, or link, handy – as they did in 2016. Most other groups that supported Trump in substantial numbers in 2016 have reversed course, such as the suburban white women who have gotten much of the credit for Democratic resurgence in the 2018 midterms. They’ve recognized their error, whether it was Trump support or just Clinton non-support, and are trying to make up for it.

But the white guys? Not much movement, last I saw. But perhaps that’s finally changing. I’d been thinking of calling for a Lysistrata maneuver, which my five readers would no doubt laugh at it. But maybe that won’t be necessary.

Maybe the dysfunctional Republican Party can be burned to the ground this election cycle, and replaced with something more moderate, and operationally less insane. But it would help – me with my sanity – if Erickson could acknowledge the madness that has infected the Republican Party, and how it is much, much worse than the general Democrat inclination to let women decide on their own morality vis a vis abortion, rather than inflict a religious neurosis upon them.

Locally, in fact just up the road from our place, we have a Bible college named Bethel University. My Arts Editor informs me that Bethel, or Beth-El, means Of God.

So what am I supposed to make of this California based school, named … wait for it … Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM)?

Is this, like, where you go to learn how to minister to … the supernatural? Evangelize the ghosts? How to negotiate those prickly conversations with Shiva about the Christian God?

I just boggle at the thought of missionaries heading out for wherever angels live.

And it really makes you wonder about this scene from Lord Of The Rings (2001):

I didn’t realize Gandalf was a graduate of BSSM! But my Arts Editor says Gandalf was a poor student and only earned an Associate’s Degree. That might explain the negative outcome.

I sure hope breakfast will be ready soon. I suspect a lot of folks have had a good laugh over that name.

Aaaaand … it’s a Covid-19 hot spot.

Not really. Although I have a friend who has made her living as a writer, who says her illness nightmares generally consist of her running down the street, pursued by letters from the alphabet.

Ahem. Sorry. It’s one of my favorite tidbits of a story. Anyways. Ever wonder just what statistics the government collects? Here’s the main agencies dedicated to the task:

1. Bureau of the Census
2. Bureau of Economic Analysis
3. Bureau of Justice Statistics
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics
5. Bureau of Transportation Statistics
6. Economic Research Service
7. Energy Information Administration
8. National Agricultural Statistics Service
9. National Center for Education Statistics
10. National Center for Health Statistics
11. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
12. Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics
13. Statistics of Income

This comes from Considerations for the Structure of the Bureau of Cyber Statistics on Lawfare, by Chas Kissick and Paul Rosenzweig, analyzing a proposal for a new statistical gathering and analysis agency, of obvious purpose. They also note there are embedded statistics gathering entities.

But if you’re looking for statistics on something, it’s worth consulting this list first. I’ve used the Energy Information Administration statistics several times myself.

Commonweal:

“My generation doesn’t have a lot to be proud of,” says Harry Bryans, 74, a retired lawyer. “The commonweal is really threatened,” he says, using an archaic term for the public welfare. “If we fail in this — keep going down this path — there’s no turning back.”

– “Older voters may turn out to be the Democrats’ 2020 heroes,” Karen Heller, WaPo.

Skralyx on The Daily Kos says the physicists are on schedule.

Physicists? Not vote counting managers?

No, physicists. Specifically, the fusion energy folks, the ones who’ve been telling us fusion energy was 20 years away for all of my lifetime.

It’s hard to overstate how much the world would be changed by success in net energy generation by nuclear fusion.  A mini-Sun, on Earth, on demand.  But every time you hear about nuclear fusion, it seems the timeline for it just got extended again.  It’s always 20 or 30 years away, isn’t it?

Well, here’s a refreshing change, to say the very least:  The Journal of Plasma Physics has just released a special issue stating, via 7 papers, involving 12 different research teams, that due to recent advances in theory, design, and materials, the first working demonstration of net energy production by nuclear fusion, with no need to add external heat once it gets going, has been moved up by a decade.  It’s now projected for 2025.

Whether this turns out to be a panacea for our dirty energy pains is another question, though. How long does a fusion power plant stay in future? How often does it have to go down for maintenance? How much does it cost to build one or more of these such that they supply a substantial portion of the power grid?

What are the risks of catastrophic failure?

Still, this is an exciting time in fusion research – and maybe for future generations.

In Nature, Alexander C. Lees, Simon Attwood, Jos Barlow and Ben Phalan discuss the latest instances of science denialism, this time in the area of the loss of entire species, in “Biodiversity scientists must fght the creeping rise of extinction denial“:

Denial of scientific evidence and rejection of scientific methods are not new phenomena, but represent an increasingly serious problem, especially when driven by politically well-connected and well-funded antagonists seeking to sabotage evidence-based policy for political and/or financial gain. Terms such as ‘science denial’ and ‘science denialism’ are employed as monikers for such anti-scientific enterprises, seeking to discredit, for example, the health impacts of smoking, climate science, the teaching of evolution in schools and vaccination campaigns. There is an emerging body of literature characterizing the nature of these activities, and the personal, organizational and economic interlinkages between them.

The rise of organized denial of the biodiversity crisis was foreseen by conservation biologists and the growing wave of denial finally broke following the release of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) summary for policymakers which generated substantial media coverage. In its wake, a swathe of opinion pieces criticized the report and attacked both the reputations of the report’s authors and the process of estimating the total number of species threatened with extinction.

Their three categories of denial:

Literal denial: ‘Species extinctions were predominantly a historical problem’.

Extinction deniers often downplay the extinction crisis by framing it as a historical problem and a trivial contemporary challenge (Supplementary Table 1). By focusing attention on the loss of megafauna in prehistory owing to overhunting and rapid loss of island biodiversity in historic times, it is suggested we have passed through these extinction filters and reached the ‘other side’ of the crisis. …

Interpretive denial: ‘Economic growth alone will fix the extinction crisis’.

Extinction denialists often invoke an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) response of biodiversity to development (Supplementary Table 1 [omitted]), arguing that pressures on the environment eventually decrease with rising income levels. …

Here’s a link to a definition of Kuznets Curve, which hypothesizes “graphs the hypothesis that as an economy develops, market forces first increase and then decrease economic inequality.

And their third category:

Implicatory denial: ‘Technological fixes and targeted conservation interventions will overcome extinction’.

Extinction denialists are often selective, choosing to highlight only a subset of factors causing contemporary extinctions, such as overharvesting and predation by non-native species, while choosing not to mention habitat loss that affects the majority of species on the Red List.

This is strongly reminiscent of my time reading libertarian rags: the spreading of doubt about science and the concomitant belief that development is always good. At least for someone’s pocket book.

The director doesn’t like your work, dude. Now he’ll have a yell at you.

As The Earth Turns (1938) is a surprisingly charming silent movie which postulates a world war (note the release date, although calling it a release date is problematic) taking place in the near future, in which a mystery entity, displaying immense power and ability to destroy, still cannot make the fighting stop. Two journalists, who happen across information received by US Naval Telegraph, pinpoint the headquarters of the mysterious adversary, and charge in to investigate.

I liked this film a lot. In most silent films, the performs overact outrageously, but not here; likewise, the placards are displayed for just long enough to read. The plot is clever and moves right along, not letting the important step of building empathy with the protagonists slow down the plot. It may have a nearly all-powerful antagonist, but he has his limitations as well, and the plot uses them nicely. The plot has a point: mankind cannot be stopped from fighting by force. The special effects are cheesy, but cheesy in that way that you laugh and joyfully accept them for what they’re trying to achieve.

If you want to see what was apparently a work of love, and not released until after the director died decades later, this might be right up your alley.

Like, how you learn about the mascot for a sports team:

… [director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission Meagan Wolfe] said Wisconsin’s ban on “electioneering” at polling sites applies to campaigning for candidates and issues. It doesn’t apply to general pushes to encourage people to vote, she said.

The issue has surfaced because the state Republican Party has warned Milwaukee officials that it believes athletes, the Bucks mascot Bango and the Brewers’ Racing Sausages cannot be present at Fiserv Forum and Miller Park when they are used as voting sites. [milwaukee journal sentinel]

The Racing Sausages. I’d never heard of them. They sound better than the St. Paul Saints‘ pig, whatever it’s called.

See, being a student of the election can lead to all sorts of revelations! Well, at least laughter – on my part.