Unsightly Mental Blemishes

As we reach out to Jupiter via the Juno probe, the big planet is reaching out to us, as Spaceweather.com reports:

Yesterday, a series of narrow radio beams from Jupiter reached Earth … but they weren’t from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. They came from Jupiter itself. Natural radio lasers in Jupiter’s magnetosphere send shortwave signals into space and occasionally they sweep past Earth. “I picked them up in broad daylight,” says Thomas Ashcraft, who operates an amateur radio telescope in rural New Mexico.

Spaceweather.com includes a link to an audio interpretation of the received beams, which I’m sure is quite significant to those familiar with the standard signal at 22.4 and 22.2 MHz, but doesn’t mean much to me. But I must say, natural radio lasers on Jupiter – very cool.

Source: NASA, ESA, I. de Pater and M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)

A reader’s interest is piqued by Queen of Blood:

Sounds interesting. Not on Netflix, unfortunately. Plot is a novel idea. But what would be so hard about voluntarily donating blood for her to drink in order to get the first ever (?) alien contact back to earth? Seems worth the effort.

And they use blood plasma, conveniently on board the ship, to keep her alive for a while – but she seems to have a taste for the stuff right from the prey, apparently. Oh, did I mention she burned through her restraint ropes using laser beams from her eyes?

The Wikipedia entry indicates the director, Curtis Harrington, believed the classic Alien drew some inspiration from Queen of Blood. I did not find any corroborating statements from the director of Alien, though.

The title Queen of Blood (1966) might induce the unwary viewer to expect a classic supernatural romp through the countryside – and they’d be wrong. Queen of Blood belongs in the horror-scifi genre. Featuring names John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, and a very young Dennis Hopper, it tells the story of a mission from Earth to save an alien craft from another solar system that has crashed on Mars. Sacrifices are made to finally discover the sole survivor – a green skinned woman who needs to drink blood to survive.  She gradually destroys the crew on the return mission, draining each of them dry. The two remaining survivors finally destroy the green woman with a simple scratch across the back (what?), and deliver her eggs to Mission Control.

The acting was acceptable, the plot was quite restrained and even somewhat logical, although personally I would have chucked the green woman out the airlock after the first casualty. The characters were sketched in, and it was hard to become attached to any of them, an unfortunate problem which may be the most crippling problem in the movie – if you can get beyond some of the special effects.

But the real standout was the title sequence and scenery artwork, which had my Arts Editor commenting several times on its graphic nature and beauty. There’s little of subtlety, but it’s worth a quick watch if you enjoy gaudy scenery.

Apparently the appeals of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is not stopping everyone from working on the equivalent of automated war machines, as Popular Science reports:

A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene “Geno” Lee, and shot him down every time. In a statement, Lee called it “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I’ve seen to date.”

And “Geno” is no slouch. He’s a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He’s controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he’s doing. Plus he’s been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades.

But he says this one is different. “I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.”

While certainly a milepost, it’s not an inflection point. That comes when the AIs battle each other and begin learning in non-linear fashion – that is, exponentially. Then their background capabilities will begin to sharpen, which may then lead to unpredictable other capabilities and motivations – such as self-preservation.

My wife and Arts Editor posted about yesterday’s shooting of Philando Castile here on UMB as well as on FB. As frustrating and personally upsetting as it is to have another police shooting of a black person in the Twin Cities, I must agree with Governor Dayton’s action of asking the Federal DoJ to investigate. The reported protests are necessary as they emphasize the seriousness of this homicide¹, but they do not of themselves prove anything substantial concerning the incident, only that the community is concerned and requires an immediate and thorough investigation. Once the facts are known, then we can classify this as systemic, a flawed process, an overwrought officer, or even infiltration of the law enforcement community by a racist intent on murder. But without the collection and analysis of facts, the frustration shared by the community and myself must be a catalyst to action – but not direct the action in any specific way. Down that path lies ideologues and more injustice.

Or so says the software engineer in me. At the risk of addressing separate issues, I was a little frustrated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement when they loudly disagreed with the County, and later the Federal, prosecutors in the Jamar Clark incident. I watched the video evidence presented at the first press conference with DA Freeman, and I was unable to draw any firm conclusions as to whether the officers should be exonerated or placed on trial. DAs are required to pursue legal action when they believe it’ll be successful, and in this case I can easily understand how Freeman, based on that video, the only neutral record of the incident made public of which I’m aware, could not, in good conscience, move forward with such a case.

I’m aware that BLM protested that certain evidence, consisting of eyewitness accounts, was ignored. But there’s a couple of problems, as I understand it. First, there was some confusion between accounts; indeed, the witness in the ambulance later recanted her on-the-spot remarks, leaving any analysis doubtful. If the accounts had not changed nor clashed, then Freeman might have something to work with.

Secondly, eyewitness accounts are often untrustworthy. Not to impugn any eyewitness anywhere, but it’s a simple matter of poor processing by our brains when they’re stressed. This has been, and continues to be, investigated by psychologists; here’s a source. The point here is that eyewitness accounts must be considered carefully before they are used. A neutral, technological source that has not been compromised is far preferable to eyewitness accounts. In the Castile case, the reported smartphone feed will no doubt be invaluable, although as I understand the matter, it only came online just after the shooting. I do not know if the police had body cameras or not.

Taking those two points together, it seems clear that the eyewitness reports had to be discounted. Why didn’t any more videos surface? That would have been far more useful.

My final thought with respect to the Jamar Clark incident is this:

Suppose Freeman had taken the officers to criminal court.

Suppose the State then lost.

That jurisdiction would now be exhausted. Perhaps the Feds could still prosecute under civil rights laws, but they might be discouraged by the first loss.

And then suppose new evidence came to light.

Mr. Freeman chose not to prosecute – at this time. In terms of likelihood, he and his successors probably never will. But they have the option to do so if something new comes to light.

And that’s important.

¹ A homicide is defined as “occur[ing] when one human being causes the death of another human being.” It does not imply murder, and by using homicide I merely wish to be accurate without casting premature aspersions upon anyone.

Philando Castile: You know, we tell ourselves that we’re better than this. That stuff like this only happens in North Minneapolis or Chicago or LA.

Hue and I stood on the sidewalk at Larpenteur and Snelling last night watching the flashing lights of seven police cars, ambulance and fire truck. An officer with a high-power rifle turned cars back that wanted to drive west on Larpenteur. Another officer kept onlookers at bay. We saw no sign of a traffic accident or natural disaster, and from a block away, we speculated with the other bystanders as to what had happened.

What had happened was that yet another person of color was killed by police. In our quiet little neighborhood. Where police are still seen as being courteous and helpful. Well… were, maybe.

At first report, it seems that Castile, his companion and her child had been pulled over for a broken taillight. He informed the officers that he had a concealed carry license, and that he was reaching for his wallet to get out his license. And then he was shot. Four times. His companion started filming the scene just after he was shot. We don’t see what happened leading up to the shooting, but we hear the aftermath in stark detail. Castile died later that night.

I can speculate a lot of what-ifs, but what does that really get us? But I can say this with utter certainty: THIS HAS TO STOP. Right here, right now. If that means a total ban on firearms in the US, I’m all for that. No handguns, no rifles, no shotguns. No firearms. Period. None for the police. None for the general populace. None for game hunters. At least then, we all have a fighting chance of staying alive long enough to resolve our differences with nonlethal force.

I know a lot of folks reading this will vehemently disagree, stating that it’s their right to own firearms. To that, I can only say: sometimes, we have to impose limits for the common good. That’s how a society works. That’s what making and enforcing laws are all about. If you no longer get to go out to the range or into the woods to fire your weapons, well, too bad for you. Find another hobby that doesn’t endanger yourselves and everyone around you. And that goes for law enforcement, too. No guns. Find another way to do your job that doesn’t involve shooting first, then never asking questions later.

We don’t need or want this kind of “law enforcement”.  We’re better than this.

And incidentally, exactly what law was being enforced here? Is a broken taillight worth a man’s life? I’m sure more of the story will be heard, but at the moment, I see an innocent person displaying a lethal weapon that he had no intention of using, and an officer too scared to assess the situation before using lethal force. Erase the guns from the mix, and we’re left with a $75 ticket and four people whose lives have not just been ruined.

Enough is enough.

Further commentary on the gas line:

Actually, I live way the heck too close to that, now that you tell me where it is! Yikes. Why isn’t that gas line on the national registry? Maybe it’s smaller than that camel’s complexity seems to suggest.

Registry?

Yep. https://www.npms.phmsa.dot.gov

I can’t decide if this is a good or bad idea.

Here we have some flowers that like to live close the ground… so we’ll take you on the ant-view.

Pansies.

A begonia of delicate coloration.

OK, the poppies are tall and proud.

The Manster (1959, aka The Split aka Doktor Satan) builds up an unexpectedly impressive number of positive assets, including the unusual title, before wasting them in a vague climax. Peter Dyneley plays Larry Stanford, a foreign correspondent based in Japan who is faced with his final assignment before returning home to his wife: an interview with a reclusive scientist with unknown research interests. He visits the scientist, a Doctor Suzuki, as his lab on a volcano, and Suzuki drugs Larry and uses him in his latest research experiment: an attempt to split man into his basic good side and bad side (a possible inspiration for a later Star Trek episode?). Larry knows nothing, and is released by the smiling doctor Suzuki as if nothing had happened.

Larry rapidly becomes a grumpy curmudgeon, no longer the cheerful professional looking forward to spending time with his wife, but rather carousing with the scientist’s amoral assistant. Then events take a turn for the worse, bodies begin to pile up, and reluctant suspicion is focused on the foreigner who has frequent temper tantrums. As his transformation begins …

… we acknowledge and admire the general level of acting quality. In particular, one of the failed experiments manages to “chew the scenery” with particularly good effect. The regular people are well-played, and if the wife doesn’t stand out as much as she might, she could have used some better lines as well. And the scientist, whose motivations are never elaborated, is a mysterious character right to the end, pursuing obtuse goals and experiencing regrets of strange character that leaves us wondering if he’s really as different as he seems – or if the scriptwriter imbibed even more than Larry, who seems to live on booze.

The special effects range from the absolutely worst volcanic explosion committed to film to quite creditable makeup jobs on the victims of the experiments. It was actually not hard to buy into the results depicted.

But the story … oh the story … woe is the story. Although it gets off to a good start, showing us enough to hook us without overdoing it, it loses its way as Larry devolves more and more. Logic is lost as it should have shown Larry ingesting all the food he could possibly eat, given what’s happening to him, but instead he indulges in aimless murders. In much the same way, the story runs off into a series of aimless events, along with minor titillation, and finally a dreary chase of the monster Larry which drags on and on. And, predictably (the dread foe of good stories), all the bad and even ambiguous characters meet their fate, while Larry miraculously survives, scrubbed of his sins and united with his wife. A promising beginning is wasted on an inorganic and pat ending, a pity given some of those assets they had constructed.

2 inches of rain in 20 minutes. Heavy winds,  heavy enough that half a tree went down 5 houses down, and our street to the west is impassable. Sirens multitudinous. Probably a lightning strike in St. Paul, just to our south.

A reader asks about my faux-camel sighting:

Where abouts? I’m hoping I live nowhere near that thing

Edina, MN, a block or two east of France and 50th.

A rejoinder from my reader concerning GMOs:

Feeding corn to ruminants (cattle) is dumb. They’re meant to eat grasses and the things growing in a meadow. We end up with unhealthy cattle, and unhealthy meat and dairy products as a result. And we grow way too much corn. It’s a horribly inefficient crop, especially from a water usage stand point. Worse, there’s some evidence that we get more humid days in areas of large corn tillage, so it’s altering the local climate in what I’d call an adverse way.

Which is reminiscent of the mad cow disease that afflicted the UK 20-30 years ago, blamed on quite unnatural feeding processes involving the remains of cows entering the food stream. Not that I mean to suggest the same may occur with corn, but it’s an interesting – if flawed – parallel.

I don’t confuse scientist with their employers, but if billions are spent on developing GMOs and only a couple million are spent on neutral third party testing (if there is any at all), what do you think most of the results are going to say? Scientists are human, too. They have to make a living, they’re subject to all the usual human perception problems, like confirmation bias. So yeah, I pretty much don’t trust Monsanto scientists telling me that their employer’s products are safe. Why should I?

But they’re also scientists, which means they are interested, even fascinated, by the truth. For a counter-example, consider the ozone hole incident, in which the problem was detected by the industry, and who didn’t conceal it, but instead began the investigation that eventually led to the banning of CFCs. But I shan’t make the mistake of generalizing a single incident to a general rule; the tobacco industry symbolizes the worst of the private sector.

So, as you say, third party testing is necessary, agencies with no vested interest – much like Consumer Reports. (I’d also like to point out that taking amounts invested vs amounts spent to test the products are not particularly relevant, although certainly something must be spent on testing!) That may be the best approach, with the Ag firms paying for the testing.

Here we feature some of the odder color combinations so beloved of the Arts Editor, including Amaranth.

Here comes the amaranth, supposedly you can pop their seeds in a skillet…

This one’s still a little disturbing.

The recent independent film release Weiner (2016) allows a glimpse into the peculiar mind of a man, Anthony Weiner, which is fascinating if you are something other than a politician. This fly-on-the-wall documentary of his NYC Mayoral run chronicles his ups – and then big downs – of his  campaign.  He begins the race as front-runner and becomes a victim of his own base urges, as new pictures from his Congressional career-ending sexting scandal emerge and the electorate reacts.

But he’s not a quitter. In the teeth of voter disapproval, Weiner continues his campaign, and we get to see most of that – his frustration and dissatisfaction with himself, his wife’s exhaustion, his attempts to address the issues of the City, rather than letting his private misadventures define his campaign. The film forces you to ask yourself questions: should this man’s private behavior be a factor in evaluating him for public office? Does the fact that his wife has forgiven him have an influence? How much of the voter’srejection of him had to do with his behavior, and how much was related to his marriage to a Muslim (he is Jewish), i.e., racism?

For a man with a lesser public service record, it might be hard to disentangle these questions, but he served 7 terms in the US House of Representatives, and the documentary makes clear that he had a largeimpact in embarrassing the GOP on several occasions.  The debates for his mayoral contest make clear that he has passionately held positions and experience that could have benefited the City. It brings into sharp relief a real question of if, and how, a politician’s private life should influence their public position. An unrelated example of this was seen when recent House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s pedophilic actions came to light.  When does information concerning private matters – and perhaps criminal, in Hastert’s case, although statute of limitations has run out – transition into the public sphere to become part of our evaluation criteria?

And what of the media? Is the invasive and vindictive behavior of at least one NYC publication appropriate for a supposed journalistic institution? Does that sort of crucible produce more honestpoliticians, or just those who are better at covering up? And the woman who came forward the last week of Weiner’s mayoral campaign with damningly explicit pictures – was she manipulated by anti-Weiner forces into destroying his campaign? Or did she really do this all on her own?

And then there’s the final question: Would you vote for him? There’s a certain grudging admiration that builds up during the film, for a flawed man who continues to fight even when the odds are longer than can be measured, a man who can take personal attacks and return them in a substantive manner, such as the incident in which he says, “Yes, it’s your right to say I shouldn’t be running – but it’s NOT your right to take away the opportunity for others to vote for me!”

The documentary surprises not in the mistakes made by Anthony Weiner. We know what these are. The surprise comes in the subtle questions raised to the viewer; questions about forgiveness, questions about when enough public castigation is enough, questions about whether a man’s flaws should be all that defines him.  And questions about whether a person’s good ideas should be discounted because of his bad actions.

The film has a lot going for it.  It’s definitely worth your time to see.

In lieu of typing, which currently hurts, is this wildlife photo collected today.

Evolution has been getting wonky of late.

Some slender breath-stoppers. C’mere, Mr. Bee, just another step closer…

Ignore the less than pristine back porch and just take in … the orange!

Let’s get a closeup of that last one.

A reader doesn’t trust analyses of GMOs so far:

Experts have been frequently, horribly wrong through out history. Now, I do not think for one moment that the ignorant masses’ opinions on scientific facts are as valid as educated scientists. But with GMOs, the story is quite a bit muddier and different. First, there’s not been any valid test of their safety — and by that, I mean at a minimum it has to be a long term test, because effects are likely subtle. And because any error will adversely affect billions of people, unlike say drugs which were withdrawn from the market when it was discovered they were injuring and killing people. Secondly, because large industrial agriculture is built on GMOs and other such marketable “technologies”, there are a bunch of very large, very wealthy companies doing their best to skew the science and common belief about GMOs. So when I read “many scientists believe them to be safe”, I’m skeptical that that’s a valid sample or a valid statement. Monsanto, Bayer, ConAgra, Syngenta, Dupont, Dow Chemical, BASF and Cargill make billions of dollars on the system using GMOs. They are not going to stand by idly while consumers ask for information and safety, if it’s going to slow their profits.

I note a subtle confusion of scientists with their (potential) employers. Do scientists spout the company line? As people devoted to finding the truth, you’d hope not – but no doubt some do, through fear or epistemological confusion.

And absent the direct effects of GMOs on human digestion and health, there’s systemic effects: most GMO drops are GMO precisely to give them herbicide and pesticide resistance or characteristics. And those things have their own harmful effects. For instance, Monsanto’s huge line of “Roundup-ready” GMO crops: corn, beans, etc. Roundup is claimed to be “safe” because one main ingredient, glyphosate, does not interfere with human metabolism. However, it kills plants, which have a different metabolic pathway quite well. And it also kills bacteria, which have that same metabolic pathway as well. Bacteria, like the necessary and helpful bacteria in your gut. You’d die without them. Injuring them cannot be good for your health, but since science is only just beginning to scratch the surface on gut bacteria, we don’t really know what the heck we’re doing to ourselves, with so many chemicals added to our diet, intentionally and accidentally.

So even if GMO corn itself will not harm me — and again, that has not been proven via a multi-decade study — all of that corn has been saturated repeatedly with glyphosate. Any trace amounts remaining are bad for my health.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to see how much of the corn supply goes directly to humans. From Jonathan Foley, the director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, comes this via Scientific American and Ensia.com:

Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop, with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.

Yes, the corn fed to animals does produce valuable food to people, mainly in the form of dairy and meat products, but only after suffering major losses of calories and protein along the way. For corn-fed animals, the efficiency of converting grain to meat and dairy calories ranges from roughly 3 percent to 40 percent, depending on the animal production system in question. What this all means is that little of the corn crop actually ends up feeding American people. It’s just math. The average Iowa cornfield has the potential to deliver more than 15 million calories per acre each year (enough to sustain 14 people per acre, with a 3,000 calorie-per-day diet, if we ate all of the corn ourselves), but with the current allocation of corn to ethanol and animal production, we end up with an estimated 3 million calories of food per acre per year, mainly as dairy and meat products, enough to sustain only three people per acre. That is lower than the average delivery of food calories from farms in Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam.

Incidentally, the article is entitled, “It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System.” I must finish reading it later today, it’s interesting. Due to a wrist injury, I must curtain my response (not that I had much of one, although the reader raised a host of interesting points). I also wonder if corn is as nutritious as other crops…

These were found at a scenic overlook stop. Some nice contrasts here.

And then the tragedy of the tree.

University of Florida professor Brandon McFadden and Oklahoma State University professor Jayson Lusk conduct and publish research on GMOs and the public. From the introduction:

The seemingly high level of public opposition is puzzling given the views of most scientists on the issue. It could be argued that gaps between science and the public has always existed (4) and is increasing (5). However, the gap is extraordinarily large regarding the safety of GM foods. Only 37% of US consumers believe GM food is safe to eat; by sharp contrast, 88% of scientist members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) believe GM food is safe to eat (6).

Deeper in:

Public concern about the safety of GM food is often expressed by demands for mandatory labeling, however, the public may prefer to default to experts for decisions related to biotechnology if they are uncertain or believe themselves unknowledgeable. Respondents were asked several questions to determine preferences for labeling (see Fig.4). While 84% of respondents supported mandatory labeling for food containing GM ingredients (fig. 4A), there was also overwhelming support for mandatory labeling food containing deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (fig. 4D). Eighty-percent of consumers supported a label for food indicating the presence or absence of DNA, an absurd policy that would apply to the vast majority of foods in a grocery store.

Rather than asking whether consumers want mandatory labeling, a more instructive question might be how they believe such an issue should be decided. A question similar to that posed by (21) was applied to the case of labeling, and results indicate only 35% thought decisions about mandatory labeling should mainly be based on the views of average Americans, with the remainder believing the issue should be decided by experts (fig. 4B). Furthermore, only 8% thought the issue of mandatory labeling should be decided by ballot initiative, and the majority, 58%, thought the issue should be decided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (fig. 4C). Therefore, although most consumers support a mandatory label for GM food, most consumers also thought the decision should be made experts with more knowledge. Indeed, as previous results suggest, consumers had little knowledge of basic genetics.

I’ve omitted the references and figures. The ignorance concerning the prevalence of DNA in the food supply is unsurprising and not particularly grievous; it’s a big world out there and I know very bright software engineers who aren’t really aware of the contents of the solar system.

As the authors themselves note, the more interesting question concerns who should be making decisions, and quite clearly the respondents felt that the experts in the field should be in charge of making such decisions. This is quite reasonable, even reassuring on its face, although I think there will be, depending on the field, legitimate questions concerning who’s an expert and who’s not.

I think there is a delicate incongruity in this particular example in that deciding whether or not mandatory labeling is appropriate should be one for the experts, but if the answer is ‘yes’, then the vast majority of the responsibility for understanding the issues of GMOs shifts right back to the consumers. It leads back to the question of democracy and science, as we discussed in a political context here. It’s a kinky problem – there’s a shared responsibility for what we eat, between ourselves and the suppliers. But will mandatory labeling help when most consumers do not realize DNA is deeply intertwined with our food supply? Is more education the panacea, or are most consumers just too busy making a living to really have the time to care about this sort of thing? And after all that study, what if they choose to believe the GMO analog of Jenny McCarthy, the anti-vaxxer queen who does terrible damage to the efforts to extirpate many diseases from the world? It’s a head-scratcher.

(h/t NewScientist’s delicious Feedback column, 18 June 2016, paywall)

Sometimes your spouse says just the right thing.

Today, it was, “The GOP has become the National Enquirer of politics.” Then she paused. “I take that back. They’re worse. They’re the Weekly World News.”

Ironically, WWN’s tag is:

 THE WORLD’S ONLY RELIABLE NEWS

A winsome plant.

As if I knew what “winsome” meant.

Steve Benen @ Maddowblog reports on the latest remarks of former Governor and former candidate for Vice President Sarah Palin regarding the Republicans Against Trump movement:

“That gang, they call themselves Never hashtag, whatever, I just call ‘em Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short,” the former governor of Alaska told attendees of the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, ahead of Trump’s address. […]

“[T]he ‘splodey heads keep ‘sploding over this movement because it seems so obvious,” she said. “[Colorado Republican Senate candidate] Darryl [Glenn] wins, Trump wins, America will win because voters are so sick and tired of being betrayed.”

She added, in reference to Trump’s GOP critics, “At such a time as this, you cannot be lukewarm. We’re going to take our country back, and you are either with us or against us.”

So she’s thinking voters will vote against those who betray them. Fair enough. Here’s a few statements from her own allies, a year ago, courtesy Right Wing Watch (and via Steve Benen):

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, for example, said there would be an anti-gay “revolution” that would “just break this nation apart” if marriage bans were overturned, warning that such a ruling would “literally split this nation in two and create such political and cultural turmoil that I’m not sure we could recover from it.” …

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson warned that the U.S. could witness a second civil war over a same-sex marriage decision and televangelist Rick Joynerpredicted that the court would “start an unraveling where our country fractures like it hasn’t since the Civil War.” …

“It is just a question of how soon the wrath of God is going to come on this land,”televangelist Pat Robertson warned. Florida-based pastor Carl Gallups, now a staunch Donald Trump ally, maintained that “this ruling may prove to be the final death knell of divine judgment upon our once great nation.” …

[Former House Speaker Tom] DeLay warned that the ruling would pave the way for a secret government plan to legalize “12 new perversions, things like bestiality, polygamy [and] having sex with little boys.” Ben Carson, then a GOP candidate for president, suggested that NAMBLA would benefit from the ruling. …

Mike Huckabee said that America was witnessing “the criminalization of Christianity” and that any pastor who didn’t want to officiate a wedding for a same-sex couple would be liable to face criminal charges :

If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says ‘I can’t perform that wedding’ will now be breaking the law. It’s not just saying, ‘I’m sorry you have a preference.’ No, you will be breaking the law subject to civil for sure and possible criminal penalties for violating the law…. If you do practice biblical convictions and you carry them out and you do what you’ve been led by the spirit of God to do, your behavior will be criminal.

That last one is clearly a deliberate attempt to confuse theological marriage with civil marriage, which can then be used to push the damaging Christian nation meme. However, the real point I’m making is that the right-fringe leadership persistently uses hysterical predictions to frighten their followers into obedience. But as Palin inadvertently clarifies, voters and followers do pay attention, even if it’s at the prompting of, let us say, competing leaders.

So, as the realization hits that Palin, Dobson, et al, are merely lying every time they want something, what will these “betrayed” voters do? Will they head even further right, perhaps into the waiting arms of the KKK and White Supremacist groups? Or will that prove too repugnant? Given the dominance of Fox News and further right radio channels, it’s a little hard seeing them returning to the neighborhood of reasonable conservatives, such as the GOP of 30 years ago – which doesn’t exist in organized form anyways? The prejudices and false information that informs their thought processes are firmly in place; interesting historical information that dismantle their mythos won’t penetrate (such as this fascinating piece on the history of abortion by CNN). What can be done?

Start a service to rehabilitate regretful extreme-right conservatives?

The signs and symptoms of climate change can be seen everywhere, even at the edge of space. On Spaceweather.com, Dr. Tony Phillips writes about the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds and how their increasing brilliance may signal changes in the atmospheric composition:

They appear with regularity in summer months, shining against the starry sky at the edge of twilight. Back in the 19th century you had to go to Arctic latitudes to see them. In recent years, however, they have been sighted from backyards as far south as Colorado and Kansas.

Noctilucent clouds are such a mystery that in 2007 NASA launched a spacecraft to study them. The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite (AIM) is equipped with sensors specifically designed to study the swarms of ice crystals that make up NLCs.  Researchers call these swarms “polar mesospheric clouds” (PMCs).

Source: National Weather Service

It’s a fascinating story, discovering that climate change means the mesosphere actually becomes icier, as he notes here from a 36 year long data record:

At altitudes where PMCs form, temperatures decreased by 0.5 ±0.2K per decade. At the same time, water vapor increased by 0.07±0.03 ppmv (~1%) per decade. …

These results are consistent with a simple model linking PMCs to two greenhouse gases. First, carbon dioxide promotes PMCs by making the mesosphere colder. (While increasing carbon dioxide warms the surface of the Earth, those same molecules refrigerate the upper atmosphere – a yin-yang relationship long known to climate scientists.) Second, methane promotes PMCs by adding moisture to the mesosphere, because rising methane oxidizes into water.

Speaking of CO2, how is it doing? From the Mauna Loa station: