Category Archives: Uncategorized

Trouping ever onwards…

• State Senator Burt Jones (R-GA), now running for Lt. Governor of Georgia, was apparently a fake elector, and now Republican strategists are squirming, as his opponent is using this against him in their contest. Why does this matter in an update on Federal Senate races? Because the Republican strategists worry it may cause collateral damage to other races on Election Day – including the Warnock/Walker contest.
• This Alaska Daily News article claims Alaska Democrats are “supporting” Patricia R. Chesbro, who appears to have little political experience. Earlier reporting had Alaska Democrats endorsing incumbent Senator Murkowski (R). I think it’s still Murkowski’s to win or lose. WaPo reports that a recent Alaska Survey Research poll (FiveThirtyEight rating: B/C) shows Murkowski winning in the new Alaska non-partisan primary top four to a RCV (ranked choice voting) system. Trump-endorsed Tshibaka would lead the first two rounds of the RCV, but in the third, as the two more liberal candidates were eliminated and their voters’ second and third choices were counted, Murkowski wins by several points, just as I suspected would happen with RCV – the extremists end up losing. And then she would be deafened by shrieks of outrage from Tshibaka and Trump. Unknown to FiveThirtyEight pollster Ivan Moore has similar results for Murkowski.
• WaPo has a summary of interviews with anonymous GOP strategists here. It looks as if Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) concerns about candidate quality are justified. I did find it interesting that Senator Grassley (R-IA) did not come up as a potential weak candidate, despite his longevity in the Senate. I suspect that is a swamp too far for the strategists, most of whom don’t appear to realize the January 6th televised hearings are happening, with concomitant collateral damage to Trump allies such as Grassley a good possibility.
• Speaking of, the seventh televised meeting of the House Committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection will deal more damage to close Trump allies who happen to be running for the Senate, as well as other positions. Just how much is, of course, hard to say.
• In Florida, a Center Street PAC poll shows incumbent Senator Rubio (R) ahead of likely Democratic challenger Rep Val Demings by 5-8 points, depending on how you want to size it up. Jacob Perry of Center Street PAC thinks Rubio could be in trouble. Let me see Demings making progress up that hill and maybe I’ll agree with him, otherwise its Rubio in November, no matter how tired he looks and incoherent he sounds. Man, it’s like Sauron is munching on his soul or something.
• Jennifer Rubin in WaPo expands on the theme of damage to Trump’s Senate allies by noting that the two former Trump supporters who testified yesterday to the House January 6th investigatory committee serve as examples and warnings to Trump supporters nation-wide. But how many Trump supporters are watching the hearings? Not many, I’d guess. Now, if Fox News happens to put them up on the screen without meddling with them…. nyah. I don’t see this as working out.

Earlier updates here.

Just watch or read:

Kari Lake tonight says her Republican primary opponent is going to try and steal their election by having dead people vote. pic.twitter.com/76QluTwYpV

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 13, 2022

And multiply by many or most of the other primaries, now and in the future. This is an example of the self-centered determined to win at all costs, destroying the very structure they’re determined to climb.

Erick Erickson is really giving the far-right a big target with this post:

I have heard all the excuses for focusing on Hunter Biden. He shows his dad is a bad dad or crooked or on the take. The leaks from his phone show Hunter is using his dad. Conservatives are obsessed with dragging Hunter and using Hunter to take his dad with him.

But Hunter Biden is the quintessential shiny object. He’s something Republicans can fixate on to distract the base from failing to do substantive things and, more importantly, no one outside the rabid base of the GOP gives a crap.

Here he tries to balance on the top rail of the RINO corral:

The base of the GOP will clap like seals and ignore there is no impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas or Attorney General Garland. There are no appropriation bills forged to fight back against the growth of government. There is no budget, just a continuing resolution that perpetually funds the government.

Sure, talk about impeachments for, what? Imaginary scandals, maybe. I dunno. It seems to be a statement of appeasement to the far-right, after riling up the base by calling favorite hate-target Hunter Biden nothing more than a distraction.

But it is a sad statement on the Republicans these days. Erickson is stuck with a Party leader who looks more and more like an unindicted criminal with every televised hearing, an ideological movement that has a self-destroying culture in the form of the RINO maneuver and the allegiance to vote straight ticket, a membership which, with the exit of the top Republicans from the Party, is devolving into a collection of self-righteous and arrogant fourth-raters, and a religious aspect which, regardless of sect name, believes it has the right to impose its theological cant on all the citizens of the United States, and they have the additional misfortune to have a majority on the SCOTUS.

He’s been trying to beat the drum and blow the bagpipe for the conservatives over the last couple of weeks, and no doubt the far-left’s own arrogance has helped a bit, but quite honestly it’s not convincing. A couple of days ago, he posted this bit of what is, frankly, gibberish.

He may find himself labeled a RINO soon, now. What then?

My favorite of the four pics that are up front on the James Webb telescope site:

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.

Kick ass!

The seventh of the series of televised meetings of the House Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection took place tonight. The first half, or perhaps a bit less, wasn’t quite as interesting as prior hearings, but then two witnesses were brought forth, one a former member of the Oath Keepers, one of the two primary militia groups associated with the insurrection, the other an “everyday” man who showed up at the speech at the Ellipse from his home in Ohio and made the mistake of joining the march

The first guy, Jason Van Tatenhove, was quite interesting. Calling himself an independent journalist and graphics artist, he testified he was hired into the Oath Keepers to work on their web page and do other graphics work. He gives us an insight into Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, a man who, if I’m to believe Tatenhove, has, as his primary goal, power. He sounds, unsurprisingly, like former President Trump, obsessed and unrestrained by standard codes of honor and behavior, willing to lie and even kill to get what he wants.

The other man, Ayers as I recall, functions as the victim, albeit fairly willing, in this little ad hoc vignette. A family man with a job as a supervisor at a local working shop in Ohio, he was, by his own admission, fascinated by politics, but fed off bad news sources. Now deeply regretful, as it’s cost him his job and perhaps his own self-respect for permitting himself to be taken in by the former President and his allies, Ayers was fairly incoherent, but managed to convey to his former fellow victims that “taking the blinders off” when it comes to the news was the most important thing he did after the insurrection. He is no longer a support of the former President.

There were other points made, such as the vague but unsettling speeches of Alex Jones, Roger Stone, and other Trump allies, who worked on pumping up the crowd on January 5th, with precious little but empty rhetoric. The entry of recent witness Pat Cipollone, White House counsel for the Presidency during the Trump Administration, which does not make him Trump’s counsel, via videotape made for some very interesting moments. While capable of lawyer talk, as he demonstrated once or twice, he mostly stuck with simple, easy to understand answers that, once again, cast the former President in the worst possible light.

In the end, the closing statements of Representatives Murphy, Raskin, Cheney, and Thompson were more important than usual, as they defined and asserted the role that officials, appointed and elected, must fulfill in order to safeguard the Republic and the Constitution. As one of them, I forget who, noted that Pence had made all the appropriate phone calls on January 6th, trying to arrange protection for Congress, while Trump did nothing but sit back and enjoy his debacle, all I could think was this:

DERELICTION OF DUTY.

Steve Benen isn’t keen on acknowledging that a liberal reading of candidate for the seat of Senator from Georgia Herschel Walker’s (R) latest statement on climate change isn’t quite completely gibberish:

It’s against this backdrop that the Republican candidate tried to talk about climate change at a recent campaign event:

“Y’know, climate change — I’m gonna help y’all with that real quickly, and I’m gonna do it in the Wrightsville way, so you can understand what I’m saying. We in America have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world. So what we do is, we’re gonna put from the Green New Deal, millions or billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. So all of a sudden — China and India ain’t putting nothing into cleaning that situation up. So all that bad air is still there. But since we don’t control the air, our good air decide to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we got to clean that back up.”

It’s tempting to compare Walker’s comments to a student trying to do a book report about a book he obviously hasn’t read, but that’s not quite right: The way the Senate hopeful spoke, he seemed quite sincere, as if he were genuinely offering a meaningful tutorial about an important issue.

He was not. Walker’s comments were effectively gibberish — or more the point, this was the latest in a series of examples of the Georgia Republican addressing public policy with comments that were effectively gibberish.

In all fairness to Walker, a brief examination of his message is provided:

1. 

   Source: Statista.

   America have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world. We’re certainly doing much better, due to environmental regulations, than we did 50-60 years ago. But the statement is irrelevant, because we’re not talking about pollution overall, but two types of pollution – CO₂ and methane emissions, which are the two molecules that trap solar radiation and that humanity’s technological artifacts emit as they consume fossil fuel energy. At right is a chart of 2020 emissions, and, yes, it shows China as #1, and the United States #2. That makes us a major polluter in this category, and if we don’t clean ourselves up, we’ll be shitting on ourselves – and our children.

2. So what we do is, we’re gonna put from the Green New Deal, millions or billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. So all of a sudden — China and India ain’t putting nothing into cleaning that situation up. This is an appeal the listeners’ prejudices, based on what they might do – cheat, given the chance. But China has a recent history of both cleaning their air and water up, and of polluting some more, and India recognizes its problems, although my impression. But, in the end, 13% is 13%, and just as atmosphere is shared, atmosphere can also stay in place – that is, entropy, to which Walker is appealing, is not a quick process. It can be a very slow process. Which means us cleaning up our emissions doesn’t mean the emissions of China will be immediately and substantially diluted.

Walker’s not just gibbering here, he’s just not right. His statements on other issues really are gibberish. Meanwhile, his opponent, Senator Warnock (D), talks sense.

NASA has, with the help of President Biden, released the first picture taken by the James Webb telescope.

From the accompanying description:

This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

More from NASA tomorrow!

Over the weekend there was somewhat perplexing news that former President Trump was “withdrawing” his claims of executive privilege with regards to Steve Bannon’s potential testimony to the January 6th committee. Readers may recall that Bannon did not agree to talk to the committee upon receiving a subpoena, claiming he was under executive privilege to the former President, who confirmed it. His story was so much baloney, as he wasn’t employed by the government or by Trump personally at the time under discussion. The committee set in motion the wheels to send a note to the DoJ suggesting a crime had been committed, and the DoJ chose to indict Bannon. His trial is coming up. [Update: it’s in a week or so.]

The news that Trump was withdrawing his claim of executive privilege was met by guffaws from the center and left wing punditage, but I think it’s worth understanding the maneuver a bit more deeply. First, I suspect Bannon is unwilling to spend time in prison for contempt of Congress, and he hopes that, by finally agreeing, that can be avoided; I’ve already seen speculation that it won’t work.

Second, I rather think that Bannon informed Trump of his decision. At this juncture, the appearance-conscious former President, who is not entirely unjustified for concerning himself with appearances, realized that a trial ending in Bannon’s conviction would make Trump look weak; Bannon testifying to the existentially dangerous January 6th investigatory committee, despite Trump’s claims of non-existent executive privilege, would also make him look weak, maybe even weaker.

Caught in a squeeze play of his own making, and facing an unforgiving reality, Trump decided to go with the least-weak, most-puzzling move available: he “gave” Bannon the freedom to testify.

And he can continue to beat his chest and claim to be strong.

What does this mean?

Chinese authorities on Sunday violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who sought in vain to demand their life savings back from banks that have run into a deepening cash crisis.

Since April, four rural banks in China’s central Henan province have frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers in an economy already battered by draconian Covid lockdowns.

Anguished depositors have staged several demonstrations in the city of Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, over the past two months, but their demands have invariably fallen on deaf ears. [CNN/Business]

I’m not really sure. The article continues:

Police in Xuchang, a city neighboring Zhengzhou, said in a statement late Sunday they recently arrested members of an alleged “criminal gang,” who were accused of effectively taking control over the Henan rural banks starting from 2011 — by leveraging their shareholdings and “manipulating banks executives.”

The suspects were also accused of illegally transferring funds through fictitious loans, the police said, adding that some of their funds and assets had been seized and frozen.

Made up story? True facts?

Is the Chinese banking system beginning to fold under the strain of Covid and, perhaps, the CCCP economic system?

Or is this just a hiccup, not to be noticed?

From a couple of days ago:

I sure wish it had been sunny.

Ever hear of space bubbles?  MIT thinks they might be used to mitigate, or even reverse, climate change. It seems like a real blunt object approach that may really mess up the climate in unpredictable ways, but it’s a kinda cool presentation.

Prolapse:

A vaginal prolapse is a dropping of your vagina from its normal location in the body. The vagina, also called the birth canal, is the tunnel that connects the uterus to the outside of a woman’s body. Your vagina is one of several organs that rests in the pelvic area of your body. These organs are held in place by muscles and other tissue. These muscles come together to create a support structure. Throughout your life, this support structure can start to weaken. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but the result is a sagging of your organs. When your organs sag or droop out of their normal position, this is called a prolapse. [Cleveland Clinic]

Noted in “The good news: Johnson’s on the way out. The bad news: look who’s on the way in,” Marina Hyde, The Guardian:

Boris Johnson is leaving office with the same dignity he brought to it: none. I’ve seen more elegant prolapses. Having spent 36 hours on the run from what other people know as consequences, Downing Street’s Raoul Moat was finally smoked out of his storm drain on Thursday, having awoken that morning with what one aide described portentously as a “moment of clarity”. I mean, he’d lost 57 ministers? And been booed everywhere from the steps of St Paul’s to the cricket? Hard to know how much more clarity could have been offered to this big-brain, short of a plane flying over Downing Street trailing a banner reading U WANT PICKING UP IN THE MORNING PAL? This is the version of Jaws where the shark eats the mayor, and the entire beach is rooting for the shark.

But tell us how you really feel.

I see George Will is being his usual superior self:

In 2008, Americans were being inundated by journalism performing anticipatory sociology. “Techno-cheerleaders” — Mark Bauerlein’s term — predicted that millennials (born 1981-1996), the first generation suckled by their digital devices, would dazzle the world with the sublime personal and social consequences of their mind-melds with those devices. And their emancipation from the dead hand of everything prior. Bauerlein, Emory University professor of English, dissented.

Fourteen years ago, in “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)” he anticipated that millennials were going to become “unsatisfied and confused” adults, bereft of the consolations of a cultural inheritance, which is unavailable to nonreaders. They would be gripped by the furies of brittle people bewildered by encounters with disagreement, which they find inexplicable. And by the apocalyptic terrors that afflict frustrated utopians, the only kind there is.

Immersed in social media that have “contracted their horizon to themselves, to the social scene around them,” unable to “think beyond the clique and the schoolyard,” they pay the severe “opportunity costs of digital diversions” — “mind-maturing activities” forgone, such as learning a language, mastering a musical instrument, following the real politics of governance. Books are the best “reprieve from the bombardment” of the digital age, but the bombardment makes young people “bibliophobes,” drawing them into “the maelstrom of youth amusements.” [WaPo]

I’m not a big fan of Will. He often strikes me as that extraordinary teenage prodigy who, fifty years later, still hasn’t rid himself of the ‘tude.

But what he talks about here has some correlation with other observations. For example, when he says,

The stage was set for the “overproduction of elites,” churning out college graduates who, flattered since middle school, felt themselves of historic importance because they lacked knowledge of history. Which is a chastening record of the wreckage of egalitarian utopias imagined by people boundlessly pleased with themselves for being the first to understand “social justice.”

It reminds me of Andrew Sullivan’s occasional observation that the advocates of the transgenders seem completely oblivious to the observed and lived history of the gay community, which I unfortunately have not bookmarked – The Weekly Dish has a link on the right, a ways down, in case you’re interested. It may be behind a paywall.

But in a very odd way this connects to an article I ran across on ghosting, the practice of dropping out of a relationship without warning or explanation:

IT WAS 2015 when Jennice Vilhauer’s clients started telling her ghost stories. The Los Angeles-based psychotherapist had more than 10 years of experience helping people with their depression, anxiety and relationship issues – but suddenly, clients began telling her about a new problem, one that left them extremely distressed.

They were victims of ghosting, where one person ends all communication with another, disappearing like a phantom. Messages are ignored and just like that, the person you had a connection with – typically a romantic partner, but sometimes a friend or colleague – chooses to disengage with no explanation. But when Vilhauer searched for more information, she found little research on this phenomenon. So she started publishing her own observations online and was soon inundated with emails from people who had been ghosted. “There’s been an enormous explosion of interest in this because it’s happening so frequently,” she says.

Which begs the question, what is uniquely painful about ghosting? [“What psychology is revealing about ‘ghosting’ and the pain it causes,” Amelia Tait, NewScientist (23 April 2022, paywall)]

I copied that last line only to clarify that the article focuses on the pyschology of the pain, while, for my sensibilities, I’m more interested in the Why now? question.

And it connects to the Internet and social media. The modern social media, unlike the antiquated social media of the very late 1970s – mid 1990s, has a vast geographical reach, a monstrous network effect.

And the production of a huge number of social groups within which to form relationships.

Prior to generally available social media, people typically formed relationships within geographically restricted areas. Sure, you can find plenty of exceptions, but that’s all they are – relationships formed during wartime, or during long trips by certain privileged classes. But for the vast majority of people, their relationships were close to where they lived. And what did that mean?

Yeah, the chances of encountering someone you had ghosted, or their family and friends, was inescapably high.

That sort of blowback can be a bitch for a would-be ghoster.

And, in a weird sort of way, that same long, long reach of the Internet, combined with humanity’s near-universal urge to scale the social ladder and occupy its top rungs, regardless of the content of the ladder^[1], results in, well, what Will complains of. And why does that happen?

In 2010, with 15-year-olds averaging eight hours of media a day (42 percent more minutes in lower-income than in higher-income households), children were constantly absorbed in youth culture and peer pressure, all of it flooding “the pleasure centers of the developing brain.”

Humanity, by and large, competes with what it can reach, competes relentlessly, and in countless niches, whether it’s to be the best professional video game player – or the best fan of same. And we’ll dedicate years of our lives to it, to the negligence of other subjects that have no impact on our standing in the social ladder.

In this regard, the adult classes, at least of Western Civ, may be regarded as having failed to direct the restless energy of the non-adults properly. From those who setup global social media, generally in the relentless search for profits, to the parents who didn’t realize that social media is a monumental time suck until their kids had sunk their competition-fangs into it, they failed.

Don’t confuse this with blame. New things bring unpredictable new challenges for adults, and the mythology of the profit is thick and deeply believed by us. But what will it cost us?

George Will and his sources may be on to something.

¹ I think I just stretched my metaphor permanently out of shape.

This should be causing concern in Ohio among responsible people – especially parents:

State politicians advanced an effort Tuesday to place anti-vaccination language onto a general election ballot, which would leave the fate of vaccine mandates in Ohio in voters’ hands.

If passed, Ohio would become the only state in the nation with an explicit ban of vaccine mandates in its constitution. It would mark a major step backward for public health, dampen an already sluggish COVID-19 vaccination effort in Ohio, and nix a practice of mandating vaccination that traces back through early American history. …

The proposal covers all vaccines, not just COVID-19. [Ohio Capital Journal]

Well. If I were running a large company in Ohio, I’d have to ask myself: Do I want my company to be in an environment where people are healthy, or where they have unhinged “discussions” about their rights, not about their responsibilities, and are potentially carriers of various fatal or badly damaging diseases like TB, polio, and many others?

If this becomes an item on the Ohio ballot, I suspect those big companies that are capable of moving out will immediately begin making noises about moving out, and why. But they must also lead the conversation about why this is about responsibilities and not rights, and why my right to not be threatened by the negligence of my neighbors outweighs their right to threaten me. If you’re wondering, that all boils down to responsibility again.

Later observations.

• The GOP decides to hold hostage America’s future in the semiconductor business, or at least so it’s portrayed by a left of center blog. Is this a big ol’ club for the Democrats or the Republicans? The Democrats have a more difficult message to convey, but potentially more devastating. I thought about writing a hypothetical thank you letter for the Democrats to Senator McConnell (R-KY), who is the lead hostage-taker, but thought better of it.
• Herschel Walker’s (R-GA, or what state is he from anyways?) campaign in Georgia for incumbent Senator Warnock’s (D-GA) Senate seat was already struggling, so this isn’t going to help matters at all, if these alleged campaign leaks are not fiction: “He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,” the person said, adding that aides have “zero” trust in the candidate. Three people interviewed for this article independently called him a “pathological liar.” [Daily Beast] But will the independents and Republicans of Georgia pay attention to the feet of clay? Meanwhile, a new poll from Data for Progress, a ‘B’ performer in FiveThirtyEight’s book, has Walker up by two points. The previous poll showing Warnock up by ten was by ‘A-‘ performer Quinnipiac University Poll.
• New pollster Center Street PAC, which appears to be a non-partisan, but maybe Republican, anti-extremist organization, has a poll out showing Rep Tim Ryan (D) leading J. D. Vance (R) by 9 points, 43-34, in the race for Ohio’s open Senate seat, to be vacated in January by retiring Senator Portman (R-OH). As Center Street PAC is new, it’s hard to know if this is significant or not. FiveThirtyEight has no listing for them in its slightly-out-of-date ratings of pollsters. I’ll take it with a grain of salt and a chaser of liquid egg, please. Another poll by Impact Research, commissioned by Rep Ryan’s campaign, shows Ryan with a two point lead, or a statistical tie. Once known as ALG Research, Impact gets a B/C rating from FiveThirtyEight. Another shot and some liquid egg, again.
• NeverTrumper conservative Chris Truax recommends the Democrats ignore the overturning of Roe v. Wade, due to the moral ambiguity of abortion in the minds of some citizens. Instead, he suggests that there is a leaning towards banning contraception by the GOP, and that could be the winning issue for the Democrats. There is not enough evidence, yet, to support or refute his view concerning abortion, but early polls suggest refutation. Nevertheless, in some districts contraception may be a better issue, and in some or even most districts these two issues could constitute a 1-2 punch. If the GOP is truly interested in banning contraception, this would be more evidence of their essential failure to understand democracy, as I discussed previously here.
• A Franken-sponsored poll shows the retired Admiral Franken, a Democrat, within five points of incumbent Senator Grassley (R) in Iowa. The same article supplies the information that Grassley’s average margin of victory is 35 points, which makes Franken’s poll results impressive, if accurate. That said, 49% of respondents say they’re voting Grassley, which makes the hill in front of Franken quite steep. The conductor of the poll, Change Research, is unknown to FiveThirtyEight.

Earlier updates can be found here, against my better judgment.

I haven’t seen much on the lack of antibiotic research by big pharma recently, but apparently it’s still a thing. Fortunately, there are sometimes alternatives to using drugs to counter bad bacteria, such as bacteriophages:

Structural model of a bacteriophage.

A bacteriophage (/bækˈtɪərioʊfeɪdʒ/), also known informally as a phage (/ˈfeɪdʒ/), is a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea. The term was derived from “bacteria” and the Greek φαγεῖν (phagein), meaning “to devour”. Bacteriophages are composed of proteins that encapsulate a DNA or RNA genome, and may have structures that are either simple or elaborate. Their genomes may encode as few as four genes (e.g. MS2) and as many as hundreds of genes. Phages replicate within the bacterium following the injection of their genome into its cytoplasm. [Wikipedia]

It sounds like the basis of treatment for those bacterial infections which are immune to known antibiotics – and it’s true, as this CNN/Health article on the survival of a victim of a “superbug” makes clear:

The purified cocktail from Young’s lab was the first to arrive in San Diego. [Dr. Steffanie] Strathdee watched as doctors injected the Texas phages into the pus-filled abscesses in [her husband Tom] Patterson’s abdomen before settling down for the agonizing wait.

“We started with the abscesses because we didn’t know what would happen, and we didn’t want to kill him,” Schooley said. “We didn’t see any negative side effects; in fact, Tom seemed to be stabilizing a bit, so we continued the therapy every two hours.”

Two days later, the Navy cocktail arrived. Those phages were injected into Patterson’s bloodstream to tackle the bacteria that had spread to the rest of his body.

“We believe Tom was the first person to receive intravenous phage therapy to treat a systemic superbug infection in the US,” Strathdee told CNN.

“And three days later, Tom lifted his head off the pillow out of a deep coma and kissed his daughter’s hand. It was just miraculous.”

This is an interesting footnote:

A phone call later, Strathdee discovered phage treatment was well established in former Soviet bloc countries but had been discounted long ago as “fringe science” in the West.

Which is not to condemn modern medicine, but to note that occasionally the “discounted” should be reevaluated. Quite probably, back then the mechanisms were unknown or poorly understood, and along with an origin in always-suspect Soviet science (see the notorious Dr. Trofim Lysenko, head of the Institute of Genetics in the USSR, who, well, let’s just say ruined Soviet biological science with his pseudo-scientific theories and his approach, which was basically about accumulating power and prestige and little else), they may have been questionable enough not to waste limited resources on.

This rescue of Tom Patterson occurred six years ago, and apparently phage research is now underway at American medical research facilities. If, in the future, your doc brandishes a needle and says he’s going to use phage therapy on you, just nod brightly and ask to see summary of the research on it.

If, of course, you’re still conscious.

I like it when science is just out and out clever.

A couple of days ago a tourist attraction in Elberton, GA, was blown up by person or persons unknown.

The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will no doubt stir up the far-right for at least a dozen reasons. The gun-rights absolustists absolutists (make of that typo what you will, which I’ve left in on purpose) should probably quit the hyperventilating, though, as CNN notes:

[The assassin] used a homemade gun in the shooting, and authorities confiscated several handmade pistol-like items from his apartment, police said.

Due to stringent gun control, as you can find at the same link, this disgruntled person was forced to make his own gun. Police haven’t said, but I doubt it was useful for more than a couple of shots.

Incidentally, in the recent past attempted Japanese political assassinations have involved the use of swords.

Do Japanese gun control laws work?

Gun violence is extremely rare in Japan.

In 2018, Japan, a country of 125 million people, only reported nine deaths from firearms — compared with 39,740 that year in the United States.

Measuring the non-existent is always a tricky business, but the numbers are noteworthy.

The Organization of American Historians has issued an important statement regarding Dobbs, the decision overturning Roe v. Wade:

In September 2021, the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association submitted an amicus curiae brief to the US Supreme Court presenting the relevant history to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. We are dismayed that the Court declined to take seriously the historical claims of our brief. Instead, the court adopted a flawed interpretation of abortion criminalization that has been pressed by anti-abortion advocates for more than thirty years. The opinion inadequately represents the history of the common law, the significance of quickening in state law and practice in the United States, and the nineteenth-century forces that turned early abortion into a crime.

Historians might note that the Court’s majority opinion refers to “history” sixty-seven times, claiming that “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” Our brief shows plentiful evidence, however, of the long legal tradition, extending from the common law to the mid-1800s (and far longer in some American states, including Mississippi), of tolerating termination of pregnancy before occurrence of “quickening,” the time when a woman first felt fetal movement. The majority of the court dismisses that reality because it was eventually—although quite gradually—superseded by criminalization. In so doing the court denies the strong presence in US “history and traditions” at least from the Revolution to the Civil War of women’s ability to terminate pregnancy before the third to fourth month without intervention by the state.

These misrepresentations are now enshrined in a text that becomes authoritative for legal reference and citation in the future. The Court’s decision erodes fundamental rights and has the potential to exacerbate historic injustices and deepen inequalities in our country. We expect that historians will continue to correct the Court’s misinterpretation about the history of legalized abortion in the US in their own research, teaching, and public speaking, while also addressing the multifaceted dilemmas presented by this decision.

Which correlates in my own notes regarding the history of abortion.

But this really clarifies the need, the legal requirement, that those portions of Dobbs dependent on this specious version of history must be retracted, and immediately. Information that masquerades as true facts, when it is, in fact, false, has been observed to impact other cases, as not only are the false facts cited, but additionally the relaxing of the strict requirements of accurate information means that other false information will be introduced, and accepted, into other cases.

This will foil the mission of proper law enforcement in the courts, not to mention the case for actual justice.

If these Justices recognize these errors mean the case needs reconsideration, and act on it by withdrawing the decision, all well and good.

But if the Justices who voted to overturn Roe plunge onwards, heedless of the damage they do to their own institution, as well as the nation, then they must, in all honor, resign, or be impeached and removed en masse. We cannot tolerate this corruption of the institution.

Truth is often buried deep, but is vital.

I haven’t had time to monitor the situation at GERD, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and the anxieties it causes downstream in Egypt and Sudan, but now comes word of a new alliance for Egypt – Saudi Arabia:

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia officially declared its support for Egypt’s position in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) crisis, backing all measures taken by Cairo to protect its national security regarding this crisis.

Riyadh has strong economic influence in Addis Ababa and highly values Egypt’s cooperation on many issues, including the confrontation with Iran. …

The Saudi stance on the GERD comes in light of Emirati-Saudi competition especially for obtaining investments and buying assets in Egypt. For its part, Cairo is tapping into Saudi support on the GERD crisis to counter the United Arab Emirates’ stance, which seems to have taken a neutral stance. [AL-Monitor]

Egypt’s goal?

Observers believe the Saudi support is a trump card Egypt can use to encourage the UAE [United Arab Emirates] to play an influential role in resolving the GERD crisis and breaking its neutrality. This is especially true in light of Abu Dhabi’s attempts to overcome its predicament with Cairo and broker a deal between the three GERD countries, namely Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.

And then get the United States to get involved by pressuring Ethiopia. I am not aware of any particular leverage the United States may have on Ethiopia, but maybe we do.

Petroform:

A shape or pattern made by arranging large rocks and boulders over a relatively wide area. [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Letter from Georgia: Soaring With Stone Eagles,” Eric A. Powell, Archaeology (July/August 2022):

“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” says [Johannes Loubser of the archaeology firm Stratum Unlimited]. He notes that piled-stone features, also known as petroforms, have often been a source of controversy among archaeologists who study the southeastern United States, many of whom assume they were left by European-American farmers clearing their fields of stones. But, like [Jackson County deputy sheriff Kevin Thomas], Loubser’s first thought on visiting the site was that it was unusual and that at least the largest stone mound had very likely been made by Native Americans, not by farmers removing stones before plowing.

Another loathsome addition to this line of classics …

• There’s both worry and action concerning the candidacy of disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens for the GOP nomination to the open Missouri Senate seat, as the Missouri Stands United PAC, controlled by former Missouri Senator John Danforth (R), is spending heavily in support of the independent run of John Wood. It’s interesting that Danforth is ignoring the other Republicans in the primary race and is going with Wood. Are the Republicans simply too far-right for the retired Senator? He has no obvious entry in On The Issues, so a graphic representation of his own standing is not available. The Missouri race is rapidly becoming an unexpected bonfire in this Republican stronghold. Personally, I’d like to see Greitens win the nomination and then get his butt kicked by Wood or the Democratic nominee, as that would expose the far-right extremism that has taken hold of the GOP. However, that would not expose the underlying toxic culture of the GOP, and I’m not sure anything would. Processes are hard to expose.
• Arizona Republicans appear to lean far to the right, unlike, say, the Colorado GOP, as young, inexperienced, Trump-endorsed, and Thiel-funded Blake Masters has a big lead in a weekend poll among Republicans. This may be good news for incumbent Senator Kelly (D).
• Speaking of Colorado, an early June poll is now available and shows Senator Bennet (D) leads his GOP challenger, John O’Dea, by 12 points, but 28% of the respondents were undecided.
• Trump remains a popular bit of kitsch for the GOP, as many unendorsed candidates, at all levels of government, are sending out campaign literature referencing the former President, to the extent that Trump’s lawyers are being kept busy calling campaigns and sending out cease & desist letters. Will this continue if he’s indicted? If he looks worse and worse in the televised January 6th Committee hearings? Are these campaigns inadvertently attaching anchors to their candidates’ ankles? So far, I think the lack of good judgment will continue in the MAGA base, and so the misleading advertisements will also continue, even if this article claims small-dollar donations are dropping off, a trend attributed to inflation pressures and exhaustion. They’re probably right.
• When I wasn’t looking New York canceled its GOP primary for the US Senate, leaving pundit Joe Pinion as the survivor for whom everyone else presumably withdrew. His political experience appears scant, consisting of a single failed run for a State Assembly seat a few years back. While the The Buffalo News likes him, I do not think incumbent Senator Schumer (D) need worry about losing this race. And that’s how it starts, sometimes, not worrying.

Tomorrow at Seven (1933) gets off to a smart start, even if it seems a bit artificial, as novelist Neil Broderick notes a woman reading one of his books on the train. He blandly asks how it is, and gets quite the nasty review in riposte. Revealing himself to be Broderick, he opens himself up for a similar situation as he criticizes a rich man’s secretary, who happens to be the woman’s father.

His reverse ingratiation pays off in that he’s present when the rich man, Thornton Drake, receives a highly credible death threat, which only suffers in that it’s incorporated quite unrealistically into a jigsaw puzzle; only poetic license kept us from throwing up.

But this marks the beginning of the end for this plot, for a dated trope of the era, the clownish cop duo, arrive to check out the threat. When the woman’s father, Austin Winters, is killed, rather than Drake, the cop duo endeavour to control the situation, but are merely ineffectual and unfunny while another possible suspect, a pilot named Simons, also gets offed. The latter was probably just as well as Simons didn’t seem to have a real part to play here.

The plot is game, despite its burdens: why, after a flight to Louisiana from Chicago, is Broderick surreptitiously signaling with his lighter out the window? How did that coroner find that letter so fast, and why didn’t he finish his job? Why are the cops still trying to assert authority when they’re out of their jurisdiction? Was there a point in making the housekeeper a mute?

And how does the killer manage to turn off the lights so easily without being spotted?

It’s not a bad story, but some reworking would have done wonders for it.

How did I miss this for the last sixty years?

Bonus! My source for this, Annalee Newitz in NewScientist (25 June 2022, paywall), remarks:

Most of the pitches I get for NFTs and crypto-coins sound like they are coated in prefabulated amulite. As long as we stay thirsty for scammy tech that promises us the world but gives us empty wallets instead, the encabulator will never get old.

Yep.