Marissa Harris (UCLA):
’In a time of borderline hysteria over the effects of technology on sleep and brain development, little attention goes to the fundamental elements of good sleep in adolescents. Ensuring they have comfortable bedding may help improve sleep in all adolescents, particularly among poorer families. And it’s a lot easier to convince parents and teens to invest in pillows than to bicker over phone privileges.…’
Via The Conversation
’When Ted Kaptchuk was asked to give the opening keynote address at the conference in Leiden, he contemplated committing the gravest heresy imaginable: kicking off the inaugural gathering of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies by declaring that there was no such thing as the placebo effect. When he broached this provocation in conversation with me not long before the conference, it became clear that his point harked directly back to Franklin: that the topic he and his colleagues studied was created by the scientific establishment, and only in order to exclude it — which means that they are always playing on hostile terrain. Science is “designed to get rid of the husks and find the kernels,” he told me. Much can be lost in the threshing — in particular, Kaptchuk sometimes worries, the rituals embedded in the doctor-patient encounter that he thinks are fundamental to the placebo effect, and that he believes embody an aspect of medicine that has disappeared as scientists and doctors pursue the course laid by Franklin’s commission. “Medical care is a moral act,” he says, in which a suffering person puts his or her fate in the hands of a trusted healer.…’
’Could this be the long-awaited solution to economic inequality?…’
Via Big Think
’Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf says Trump’s days in the White House are numbered. In a blistering Twitter thread, Rothkopf makes the case that any high-quality people Trump had supporting him have either fled or are getting ready to, and now that the House is under control of Democrats, Trump’s inner circle of bottom-of-the-barrel crooks and buffoons won’t be able to protect him from his sordid history of sleazy dealings and self-destructive narcissism.…’
Via Boing Boing
Can it become a sort of bullshitting itself?
’Calling bullshit has a venerable intellectual pedigree. Plato first carved out a space for philosophy by distinguishing the philosopher’s search for knowledge from the persuasive speech of the sophists, the bullshit artists of antiquity. These wandering debate coaches instructed the Greek political class in the art of making the weaker argument the stronger. The rhetoric of the sophists is just fancy talk that creates the impression of wisdom, Plato tells us, but philosophy offers the genuine article.
In recent years, calling bullshit has become its own cottage industry. Debunkers like Michael Shermer and James Randi make a healthy living by exposing pseudoscience, and Harry Frankfurt scored an unlikely best seller when Princeton University Press managed to package his essay “On Bullshit” into a very small book. The mathematician Alan Sokal landed a blow against postmodern pretension by publishing a sham article in the journal Social Text in 1996, and when a more ambitious act of pomo-baiting surfaced about a month ago—a team of three pranksters had successfully submitted seven sham articles to journals peddling in what they derisively called “Grievance Studies”—the hoax came to be known as “Sokal Squared.”
Bullshitting has its obvious incentives and pleasures: you get all the kudos of saying interesting and important things without any of the work of actually thinking interesting and important things. As Frankfurt notes, there’s even an enjoyable play in concocting bullshit. Less obvious are the incentives and pleasures of calling bullshit. And yet they’re pretty much the same: you get all the kudos of asserting your intellectual superiority to the bullshitters, and it brings a certain aesthetic enjoyment with it as well. Just saying “bullshit” is deeply satisfying, its rich soup of consonants opening with an aggressive plosive and then sliding into the disdainful slurred hiss of “shit.” Where the bullshitter gets to bask in the glow of unearned wisdom, the bullshit-caller gets to strike the pose of the undeceived straight-talker bravely swimming against a rising tide of baloney.…’
Akim Reinhardt writing in 3 Quarks Daily:
’Donald Trump is not a fascist. He’s far too stupid to be a fascist, or to coherently advocate for any complex national political doctrine, evil or otherwise. He is, however, a would-be tin pot dictator. And his largely failed but still very dangerous attempts to establish himself as a right wing autocrat need to be countered, not just by opposition politicians and the press, but also by responsible citizens.
It has been the case for a while now that the proper reaction to Trump’s presidency is frequent public protest. As responsible citizens, we need to engage in not just one or two massive protests per year, but rather in a steady diet of public protests that sends a strong, clear message to the body politic: We the people reject Donald Trump’s would be totalitarianism. That while his very limited abilities and profound incompetence may prove to be our saving grace, it is not enough to quietly accept his likely ultimate and embarrassing failure as reasonable consolation. Instead we must make certain that the power elite in government, corporations, and the media understand our collective revulsion at and resistance to Trump’s failing autocracy. Here are the reasons why.…’
Andrew Sullivan writes:
‘Tuesday, if you step back, was an ordinary election in an extraordinary time. The swing against the president’s party in the first midterm election was not far off the historical range. The average loss for the president’s party in the House two years into a first term over the last century is 29. Trump’s GOP, at last estimate, lost 37. For some recent perspective: In 1982, Reagan’s GOP lost 26 seats; in 1990, George H.W. Bush’s GOP lost 8; in 1994, Clinton’s Democrats lost 54; in 2002, W.’s GOP gained 8 (but in the context of 9/11); in 2010, Obama’s Democrats lost a devastating 63 seats. In terms of the popular vote in the House, the Dems’ share — 51.7 percent — is also very close to the norm for the opposition in a first-term midterm.
There was, in other words, no blue wave. It was rather a familiar blue tide (which nonetheless looked more impressive by Thursday night than it did in the wee hours of Wednesday morning). If you just looked at the data, and knew nothing about the last two years, you’d think it was a conventional, even boring, election.
I wrote last week that the midterms would finally tell us what this country now is. And with a remarkable turnout — a 50-year high for a non-presidential election, no less — we did indeed learn something solid and eye-opening. We learned that the American public as a whole has reacted to the first two years of an unfit, delusional, mendacious, malevolent, incompetent authoritarian as president … with relative equanimity. The net backlash is milder than it was against Clinton or Obama (and both of them went on to win reelection). …’
Source: New York Magazine
The public “deserve to know”:
’Long-term studies certainly suggest that a substantial population of people are affected by a burdensome, recurrent form of the disorder. But Rottenberg’s team cite three studies finding that an average of 40 to 50 per cent of people who suffer an episode of depression don’t go on to experience another (for example, this study in Sweden) – but overall these individuals have been little studied. “This omission, and the field’s lack of focus on good outcomes after depression more broadly, virtually guarantees an unduly pessimistic impression of depression’s course”, Rottenberg and co write – and this is an impression they would like to see changed.…’
Via Big Think
’When the world gets its act together, it can actually solve big problems. Case in point: The ozone hole, which if everything goes according to plan could be healed up by the 2060s, according to a new report from the United Nations.…’
Via Gizmodo
’The Mediterranean region, colloquially called the cradle of civilization, may not be able support much of that civilization within the next 50 years. For starters, it’s poised to suffer from the changing climate much worse than many other locales, according to a paper published by an international network of scientists who worked together to synthesize the predictions and risks for the region.
Future warming in the Mediterranean region will likely surpass global rates by 25 percent, with summer temperatures increasing at a pace 40 percent larger than the global mean, the paper notes. Precipitation will decrease but heavy rainfalls will intensify, with possibly destructive outcomes. Heat waves will get more severe. While the 2003 summer European heat wave was deemed as one of the worst on record, responsible for 22,000 to 35,000 human deaths, as well as killing thousands of birds and fish, the future will bring harsher and more frequent spikes. Droughts and heat waves will spark more wildfires. In warmer weather more disease-carrying pests will survive, spreading West Nile virus, Dengue, and chikungunya further north. During the hot summer of 2017, outbreaks of chikungunya happened in France and Italy and recently, dengue fever was reported in Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain.…’
Via JSTOR Daily
Pioneer of American Zen dies at 79
’The Zen master, spaceship engineer, social entrepreneur, interfaith activist, and clown devoted his life to “penetrating mysteries” and immersing himself in the unknown.…’
Via Lion’s Roar
’Climate scientists are still scrapping over the details, but the increased ferocity, unpredictability and spread of tropical storms is in line with predictions…’
Via New Scientist
What’s driving America’s mental health crisis:
’Beyond trigger warnings and safe spaces lies an entire population that espouses victimhood in all walks of life.…’
Via Big Think
Trumpeter Who Gave Jazz a Jolt of Youth Dies at 49
’Roy Hargrove, a virtuoso trumpeter who became a symbol of jazz’s youthful renewal in the early 1990s, and then established himself as one of the most respected musicians of his generation, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 49.
His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was caused by cardiac arrest brought on by kidney disease, according to his manager, Larry Clothier. He said Mr. Hargrove had been on dialysis for 13 years.
Beginning in his high school years Mr. Hargrove expressed a deep affinity for jazz’s classic lexicon and the creative flexibility to place it in a fresh context. He would take the stock phrases of blues and jazz and reinvigorate them while reminding listeners of the long tradition whence he came.
“He rarely sounds as if he stepped out of a time machine,” the critic Nate Chinen wrote in 2008, reviewing Mr. Hargrove’s album “Earfood” for The New York Times. “At brisk tempos he summons a terrific clarity and tension, leaning against the current of his rhythm section. At a slower crawl, playing fluegelhorn, he gives each melody the equivalent of a spa treatment.” In the late 1990s, already established as a jazz star, Mr. Hargrove became affiliated with the Soulquarians, a loose confederation of musicians from the worlds of hip-hop and neo-soul that included Questlove, Erykah Badu, Common and D’Angelo. For several years the collective convened semi-regularly at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, recording now-classic albums. Mr. Hargrove’s sly horn overdubs can be heard, guttering like a low flame, on R&B classics like “Voodoo,” by D’Angelo, and “Mama’s Gun,” by Ms. Badu.
“He is literally the one-man horn section I hear in my head when I think about music,” Questlove wrote on Instagram after Mr. Hargrove’s death.…’
W. B. Yeats 1865-1939
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
’
Perhaps because they are running scared, the Trump family—and Republicans in general—are going all-in on a campaign of overt racism and white supremacist dog whistles to rally MAGA voters across the country as Tuesday’s midterm elections approach.
And in a continual effort to please his racist daddy, Donald Trump Jr. is doing his part to spread the hate. On Saturday, Don Jr. tweeted an attack against independent Maine Sen. Angus King that could have come straight from the white supremacist Iowa Republican congressman Steve King. It had the standard fearmongering of the “other,” in this case, Syrian and “Somalian” refugees; it criticized Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish; and for good measure, it included the dog whistle term “88,” which neo-Nazis use as code for “Heil Hitler.”
And no, it wasn’t a typo.
“Angus King is a Fake Independent who votes with Schumer 88% of the time. Angus wants to repopulate Maine with Syrian and Somalian refugees. Support @SenatorBrakey who fights for secure borders and Better Jobs for Maine. #me #maine,” Don Jr. tweeted.
“Repopulate.” Where have we heard that concept, which is linked to the myth of “white genocide,” before? Oh, that’s right—Steve King.
As BuzzFeed’s Hayes Brown pointed out, that 88% statistic is wrong. King voted in agreement with Schumer 83% of the time in the 115th Congress, according to ProPublica. But Don Jr. knew that.
“Let’s be clear about what happened here — Donald Trump Jr misstated statistics so he could attack Angus King with a neo-Nazi dogwhistle,” ThinkProgress journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted.
Republican Senate candidate Eric Brakey, currently a state senator from Maine, was elated with the message. “Thank you, we support your family!” Brakey tweeted back at Jr.
Less than a week ago, Brakey tweeted out a similar message, claiming the “left” has a “new strategy” of “mass importation of new voters to transform our political culture.”
Tuesday can’t come fast enough.…’
Via Splinter News
’A careful reading of court filings suggests the special counsel hasn’t been quiet. Far from it.…’
A reprise of my traditional Hallowe’en post of past years:
It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time.
With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve.
All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
English: A traditional Irish turnip Jack-o’-lantern from the early 20th century.
Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North America, given how plentiful they were here. The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
Nowadays, a reported 99% of cultivated pumpkin sales in the US go for jack-o-lanterns.
Folk traditions that were in the past associated with All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition, and liminality.
The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards
The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (You may be familiar with the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.)
Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well. As this article in The Smithsonian reviews, ‘In the United States, Halloween is mostly about candy, but elsewhere in the world celebrations honoring the departed have a spiritual meaning…’
Reportedly, more than 80% of American families decorate their homes, at least minimally, for Hallowe’en. What was the holiday like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has now become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? Before the era of the pay-per-view ’spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from several years ago [via walker] put it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like? One issue may be that, as NPR observed,
‘“Adults have hijacked Halloween… Two in three adults feel Halloween is a holiday for them and not just kids,” Forbes opined in 2012, citing a public relations survey. True that when the holiday was imported from Celtic nations in the mid-19th century — along with a wave of immigrants fleeing Irelands potato famine — it was essentially a younger persons’ game. But a little research reveals that adults have long enjoyed Halloween — right alongside young spooks and spirits.’
Is that necessarily a bad thing? A 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Hallowe’en?”, argues as I do that reverence for Hallowe’en is good for the soul, young or old.
“Maybe at one time Hallowe’en helped exorcise fears of death and ghosts and goblins by making fun of them. Maybe, too, in a time of rigidly prescribed social behavior, Hallowe’en was the occasion for socially condoned mischief — a time for misrule and letting loose. Although such elements still remain, the emphasis has shifted and the importance of the day and its rituals has actually grown.…(D)on’t just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child, that your own children look forward to months in advance, and that helps preserve our sense of fellowship and community with our neighbors in the midst of all this madness.”
That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Hallowe’en certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Hallowe’en errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.
The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).
The Carfax Abbey Horror Films and Movies Database includes best-ever-horror-films lists from Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Showbiz and Hollywood.com. I’ve seen most of these; some of their choices are not that scary, some are just plain silly, and they give extremely short shrift to my real favorites, the evocative classics of the ’30’s and ’40’s when most eeriness was allusive and not explicit. And here’s what claims to be a compilation of links to the darkest and most gruesome sites on the web. “Hours and hours of fun for morbidity lovers.”
Boing Boing does homage to a morbid masterpiece of wretched existential horror, two of the tensest, scariest hours of my life repeated every time I watch it:
‘…The Thing starts. It had been 9 years since The Exorcist scared the living shit out of audiences in New York and sent people fleeing into the street. Really … up the aisle and out the door at full gallop. You would think that people had calmed down a bit since then. No…’
Meanwhile, what could be creepier in the movies than the phenomenon of evil children? Gawker knows what shadows lurk in the hearts of the cinematic young:
‘In celebration of Halloween, we took a shallow dive into the horror subgenre of evil-child horror movies. Weird-kid cinema stretches back at least to 1956’s The Bad Seed, and has experienced a resurgence recently via movies like The Babadook, Goodnight Mommy, and Cooties. You could look at this trend as a natural extension of the focus on domesticity seen in horror via the wave of haunted-house movies that 2009’s Paranormal Activity helped usher in. Or maybe we’re just wizening up as a culture and realizing that children are evil and that film is a great way to warn people of this truth. Happy Halloween. Hope you don’t get killed by trick-or-treaters.’
In any case: trick or treat! …And may your Hallowe’en soothe your soul.
’It is not hyperbole to wonder if the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election in Brazil is a planetary game over when it comes to climate change.…’
Via Gizmodo
Humans, as a new paper published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows, have been consuming chocolate for a very long time.
’New archaeological evidence suggests humans were cultivating and consuming cacao—the crop from which chocolate is produced—as long as 5,300 years ago, which is 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. What’s more, cacao was initially domesticated in the equatorial regions of South America, and not Central America.…’
Via Gizmodo
Jewish leaders to Trump: until you denounce white supremacy, stay out of Pittsburgh / Boing Boing:
’After this weekend’s anti-Semitic mass-shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, President Donald Trump blamed the victims, implying that if they didn’t want to get murdered, they should have paid for armed guards.
What Trump has notably not said is that the white supremacist movement he has legitimized and fueled with his anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican, anti-disabled, anti-LBGT statements, is connected to anti-Semitic violence — from the “good people” who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style demonization of George Soros.
Trump’s omission is not subtle. People have noticed. Among them is a coalition of Pittsburgh’s Jewish leaders who have published an open letter to the President telling him that he is “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism,” “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities,” “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees” and “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us.”…’
Via Boing Boing
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:
’George Washington, in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., told Jews they would be safe in the new nation.
“The government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” he wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Though that assurance has been tested, the United States has endured as a safe haven for Jews.
Now President Trump has violated Washington’s compact. He has given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution. After the shooting in Pittsburgh, which the Anti-Defamation League believes is the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, there is no longer safety under the vine and fig tree…
Consider some of the many times Trump gave sanction to bigotry before 11 worshipers were shot dead at the Tree of Life…’
’Physicians are killing themselves at a higher clip than even military veterans, but their careers depend on denying this sad fact…’
Via MEL Magazine
’Brain activity doesn’t tell us what someone is experiencing…’
Via The Verge
Parul Sehgal writes:
‘Literature — the top-shelf, award-winning stuff — is positively ectoplasmic these days, crawling with hauntings, haints and wraiths of every stripe and disposition. These ghosts can be nosy and lubricious, as in George Saunders’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” which followed a group of spectral busybodies in purgatory, observing the arrival of Abraham Lincoln’s newly deceased young son. They can be confused by their fates, as in Martin Riker’s new novel, “Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return,” in which a man is unsettled to discover that his essence has migrated into the body of the man who killed him. Spirits crop up in fiction about migration (Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Refugees”; Wayétu Moore’s “She Would Be King”) and complicate what might have been straightforward portraits of relationships (Ben Dolnick’s “The Ghost Notebooks,” Laura van den Berg’s “The Third Hotel,” Lauren Groff’s “Florida,” Helen Sedgwick’s “The Comet Seekers”). They terrify, instruct and enchant — sometimes all in the same book (Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection, “Her Body and Other Parties,” features a veritable taxonomy of the type). …’
Source: The New York Times
’Communes have gotten a reputation for being flaky or cultish. But intentional communities have a long history, and many have been successful.…’
Via JSTOR Daily
’Republicans fought tooth and nail to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in spite of serious allegations of sexual misconduct in his past (which he denies) and questions of his character and truthfulness under oath.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich just explained why: If Democrats take back control of the House and try to investigate President Donald Trump, they might subpoena Trump’s tax returns, and Gingrich predicts the fight would go all the way to the Supreme Court.
“We’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it,” Gingrich said in an interview with the Washington Post. With Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the Supreme Court is the most ideologically conservative it has been in a generation.…’
Via Vox
’Roughly 108 billion people have ever been alive on planet Earth. If humanity survives another 50 million years (a reasonable length of time compared to other species’ tenures), then the total number of people who will ever live is about 3 quadrillion, or 3 million billion.
If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions of lives rather than the comparatively small number of people alive today. The 7.6 billion people now living, after all, amount to less than 0.003 percent of the population that will live in the future. It’s reasonable to suggest that those quadrillions of future people have, accordingly, hundreds of thousands of times more moral weight than those of us living here today do.
That’s the basic argument behind Nick Beckstead’s 2013 Rutgers philosophy dissertation, “On the overwhelming importance of shaping the far future.” It’s a glorious mindfuck of a thesis, not least because Beckstead shows very convincingly that this is a conclusion any plausible moral view would reach.…’
Via Vox
More Than a Graveyard Smash:
’We all know the story—some guy was working in a lab, late one night, when he begins to see several movie monsters doing a fancy dance. Sung with a perfect Boris Karloff impression by the one and only Bobby “Boris” Pickett, “The Monster Mash” really did become the hit of the land. Since its debut in 1962, the seriously goofy novelty song has been a perennial hit, scaring its way onto the airwaves and into the hearts of generation after generation. There’s more to the song and its singer than one might expect.…’
Via Tedium
’Spaceflight is exciting, inspirational, unifying—and unfortunately tough on the human body. Now, new research shows that long-duration space missions also affect the human brain by reducing the amount of grey matter and increasing the volume of cerebrospinal fluid.…’
Via Motherboard
Cybersecurity and Russian hacking remain a major concern:
’An investigation into the US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level.…’
Via Vox
’[T]here is … a very specific thing happening in the current American political environment that is driving the elevated level of concern. And that thing is not just a nameless force of “division.”
It’s a deliberate political strategy enacted by the Republican Party, its allies in partisan media, and its donors to foster a political debate that is centered on divisive questions of personal identity rather than on potentially unifying themes of concrete material interests. It’s a strategy whose downside is that it tends to push American society to the breaking point, but whose upside is that it facilitates the enacting of policies that serve the concrete material interests of a wealthy minority rather than those of the majority.
That’s what’s going on, and it’s time to say so.…’
Via Vox
’“There’s a fear of a Benghazi-type situation, that Americans might be targeted.”…’
Via Vox
’In English, there are no words to describe the existential pain of watching the catastrophic impact of climate change on the world around you. How do we explain how we feel when we hear about rising sea levels, burning forests, tornadoes and tsunamis ravaging coastlines, or animals going extinct?
Fortunately, a retired professor has coined a term for this ecological grief: “solastalgia,” or the feeling of being homesick while still at home and the landscape you love changes, often for the worse.
Glenn A. Albrecht, a self-described “farmosopher” for his love of gardening and philosophy, imagines a post-Anthropocene epoch (Anthropocene is the current geological age of negative human impact on the environment) where human beings live in symbiosis with nature for mutual benefit. In his forthcoming book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Albrecht is creating language not only for the emotional consequences of climate doom, but also for a future world in which we regain harmony with the environment.…’
Via Motherboard
’English is a phenomenal language, but there are circumstances where words seem to fail us. Often, other languages have already found a solution to expressing the complicated ideas that can’t be succinctly conveyed in English. If you’ve ever wanted to describe the anguish of a bad haircut, the pleasure of walking in the woods, or the satisfaction of finding your life’s purpose, read on.…’
Via Big Think
’Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know. The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits.…’
Via Big Think
’Writing for The Guardian, Professor John Lennon explains that “Our motivations are murky and difficult to unravel: a mix of reverence, voyeurism and maybe even the thrill of coming into close proximity with death.” Professor Lennon wrote the aptly named book Dark Tourism in an effort to explain what it is about death and tragedy that so many of us find compelling.…’
Via Big Think
Why nothing in the universe may be real:
’The paradox of the Boltzmann Brain can really pull the rug from under you if you follow it to all of its logical and illogical extents. This mind-churning idea proposes that the world is quite possibly just an effect of your disembodied consciousness and doesn’t really exist. And your sense of self is just a statistical fluctuation. It’s something that is more likely to come into existence by chance than the Universe that would have had to produce it.…’
Via Big Thlnk
’Zombies may still be a thing of fiction, but some parasites more or less turn their hosts into the walking dead.
These masters of mind control manipulate their hosts from within, causing them to act in self-destructive ways that ultimately benefit the parasite.…’
’“We can try to understand it, but there’s nothing we can do to affect it in any way,” Katie Mack, North Carolina State University assistant professor currently writing a book on the end of the universe, told Gizmodo. “We have no legacy in the cosmos, eventually. That’s an interesting concept.”…’
Via Gizmodo
’How conceivable is this? Trump loses the 2020 US presidential election. But he refuses to concede, claiming that results in the swing states of Ohio and Florida were invalid due to voter fraud and crooked election officials. Fox News, other right-wing media and the Republican controlled congress go along with this. So Trump remains president until, in the words of Senate leader Mitch McConnell, “we are able to clear up this mess.” Clearing up the mess, it turns out, could take some time–even longer than it takes for Trump to fulfill his promise to release his tax returns. Law suits are brought, but guess what? By a 5 to 4 majority, the supreme court refuses to hear them.
Couldn’t happen, you say. The constitution and all that. To which I would say just two words: Merrick Garland. When the Republican-controlled senate refused to hold confirmation hearings for Garland after he had been nominated by Obama for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, they effectively suspended–some would say “trampled underfoot”–the constitution. Nothing more clearly exposes the hypocrisy of the Republican call for judges who will “uphold” the constitution than that cynical maneuver.
I’m not saying that the above scenario is likely. But I am saying that is quite conceivable. And for anyone who cherishes conventional democratic values, its mere conceivability has to be alarming.
The key player in bringing things to this pass is not Donald Trump but Mitch McConnell–a name that one hopes will live in infamy. As is well known, the key to many conjuring tricks is to divert the audience’s attention, to have them looking away from where the real action is taking place. And this is how Trump and McConnell operate. Trump attracts all the attention, grabbing the headlines every day with some fresh liberal-baiting vulgarity. Meanwhile, off to the side, McConnell’s senate proceeds to stack the federal courts with relatively young conservative judges; appointed for life. Technically, the judges are nominated by Trump. But it’s fairly clear that he has outsourced this task to right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society.
Meanwhile, Republicans around the country use every tactic they can think of to co-opt the infrastructure of American democracy to their cause: erecting obstacles to voter registration; purging the electoral rolls of voters who are more likely to vote democratic; making voting more difficult in certain areas by reducing the number of polling station or the time available for voting; gerrymandering districts; removing restrictions on campaign financing.…’
Via 3 Quarks Daily
’The Halloween experience in 2018 is less spooky and more selfies.…’
Via Vox
’If climate change increases the transmission of these diseases, we need to take all necessary steps to understand how this occurs with a view to preventing it. Otherwise, the American dream of home ownership in the suburbs is threatened, and climate change may soon be added to the long list of injustices and challenges that have undermined this American dream.…’
Via The Conversation
’THE Trump Administration is considering whether to grant a South Carolina request that would effectively allow faith-based foster care agencies in the state the ability to deny Jewish parents from fostering children in its network. The argument, from the state and from the agency, is that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act should not force a Protestant group to work with Jewish people if it violates a tenet of their faith.
The case being made by South Carolina is an extension of the debate around RFRA, which is more commonly associated with discrimination against LGBTQ people, but by no means applies exclusively to that group.
If granted, the exemption would allow Miracle Hill Ministries, a Protestant social service agency working in the state’s northwest region, to continue receiving federal dollars while “recruiting Christian foster families,” which it has been doing since 1988, according to its website. That discrimination would apply not just to Jewish parents, but also to parents who are Muslim, Catholic, Unitarian, atheist, agnostic or other some other non-Protestant Christian denomination.…’
Via The Intercept
How would we recognise an alien if we saw one?
’What would convince you that aliens existed? The question came up recently at a conference on astrobiology, held at Stanford University in California. Several ideas were tossed around – unusual gases in a planet’s atmosphere, strange heat gradients on its surface. But none felt persuasive. Finally, one scientist offered the solution: a photograph. There was some laughter and a murmur of approval from the audience of researchers: yes, a photo of an alien would be convincing evidence, the holy grail of proof that we’re not alone.
But why would a picture be so convincing? What is it that we’d see that would tell us we weren’t just looking at another pile of rocks? An alien on a planet orbiting a distant star would be wildly exotic, perhaps unimaginably so. What, then, would give it away as life? The answer is relevant to our search for extraterrestrials, and what we might expect to find.…’
Via Aeon Ideas
’In the face of enormous, apparently intractable social problems, individual action can seem puny and inconsequential. (And indeed, just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which can make your rinsing out your tuna cans seem like an absurd bit of private theater.) But collectively we actually can slow climate change: “The first thing that someone can do,” says Michael Brune, the executive director for the Sierra Club, “is to remember that you have power. As a citizen, a consumer, an investor, as a human being, you have the power to effect really great change.” Here’s how to get started.…’
Via Lifehacker
…and It’s Our Fault:
’The heaviest organism on Earth isn’t a whale or an elephant. It’s a tree—or rather, a system of over 40,000 clonal trees, all connected by their roots. Pando, a 13 million pound organism in central Utah, is believed to have sprouted toward the end of the last Ice Age.
But after thousands of years of thriving, Pando has run into trouble. A study published in PLOS One Wednesday features the first comprehensive examination of the entire 106 acres of clonal aspen forest, and it concludes that Pando isn’t growing. In fact, the forest has been failing to self-reproduce since at least 30 to 40 years ago.
“People are at the center of that failure,” said co-author Paul Rogers, the director of the Western Aspen Alliance at Utah State University who authored a similar study last year on a smaller portion of the Pando.
People have allowed the local deer and cattle population to thrive, Rogers said. Their voracious grazing has resulted in fewer saplings and a whole lot of old, dying trees. During its analysis, the team couldn’t find any sapling-size trees that didn’t have the tops eaten off.…’
Via Gizmodo
Via Boing Boing
’In Puerto Rico’s rainforest, scientists have observed an astounding loss of life at the very base of the food web. It’s the insects.
As an alarming new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines, between 1976 and 2013, the number of invertebrates (like insects, spiders, and centipedes) in the Luquillo rainforest caught in survey nets plummeted by a factor of four or eight. When measured by the number caught in sticky traps, invertebrates declined by a factor of 60. These dramatic drops occurred despite the fact that the forest is a protected wildlife area.
The researchers note that this loss of invertebrates — which serve as food for many other forms of life in the ecosystem — has also coincided with losses of birds, lizards, and frogs. “The food web appears to have been obliterated from the bottom,” the Washington Post’s Ben Guarino reported on the study. Guarino’s story quotes one invertebrate expert who called the research “hyper alarming.”…’
Via Vox
A Sociologist Examines the “White Fragility” That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism
’In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they “were taught to treat everyone the same,” that they are “color-blind,” that they “don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.” They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more “salient” issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged—and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it?
In a new book, “White Fragility,” DiAngelo attempts to explicate the phenomenon of white people’s paper-thin skin. She argues that our largely segregated society is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort, so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress—such as, for instance, when someone suggests that “flesh-toned” may not be an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness (more than unused to it—racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace and deference), they lack the “racial stamina” to engage in difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to “racial triggers”—the show “Dear White People,” the term “wypipo”—with “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt,” DiAngelo writes, “and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.”…’
Via The New Yorker
‘In just 50 years, we will witness dozens of mammals going extinct unless we make major global changes, says a new study published Tuesday. And it will take up to 5 million years before evolution recovers a similar level of diversity on Earth, according to the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.…’
Via Motherboard
’The upper chamber has become far more undemocratic than the Constitution’s framers could ever have imagined. What would American government look like without it?…’
Via GQ
’Eddie, one of the dogs that participated in the study, poses in the fMRI scanner with two of the toys used in the experiments, “Monkey” and “Piggy.”…’
Via Gizmodo
’During the solar eclipse of August 21st, 2017, bees did not buzz at all.…’
Via Big Think
Master the regional idiom.
’And what the Grey Lady can still do to find an audience for its Trump tax story.…’
’The delightful, if theoretical, answer is: Yes—yes, they can.
As Gizmodo reports, this particular scientific inquiry began with a question from Juna Kollmeier’s son. Kollemeier, who works at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, recruited Sean Raymond, of the University of Bordeaux, to help her answer the question.
In a paper posted on arXiv, they lay out their case that moons can have moons. The conditions have to be right—the primary moon has to be big enough and far away enough from the planet it’s orbiting for the smaller, secondary moon to survive. But, even given these caveats, they found that moons in our very own solar system could theoretically have their own smaller moons. Two of Saturn’s moons and one of Jupiter’s are candidates. So is our favorite moon—the Earth’s moon.…’
Via Atlas Obscura
‘Brett Kavanaugh (already officially the least popular Supreme Court justice ever)’s Senate confirmation will likely turn many Americans against the Court itself.…’
Via Vox
D’yuh think??
Henry Cowles, assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan, currently finishing a book on the scientific method and starting another one on habit:
’As a wise man once put it: ‘Who said “the customer is always right?” The seller – never anyone but the seller.’…’
Via Aeon Ideas
“Dan Rather, a longtime American television news anchor was returning from dinner at a friend’s Manhattan apartment on this day in 1986 when a man demanded, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”
Told he had the wrong person, the man punched and kicked Mr. Rather, still yelling the question. Mr. Rather dashed into a building and was rescued by a doorman and building superintendent.
The police chalked it up to mistaken identity. Some people wondered if Mr. Rather had imagined it. It was unclear if one or two men had attacked.
Meanwhile, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” became a U.S. pop catchphrase. The band R.E.M. wrote a song by that name.
In 1997, it emerged that William Tager, a North Carolina man in prison by then, was Mr. Rather’s assailant. In 1994, Mr. Tager had shot and killed a television stagehand, saying the media was beaming messages into his brain. Shown photographs, Mr. Rather recognized him.
Mr. Tager was released from prison in 2010. His whereabouts is unknown…”
Retired Federal judge Nancy Gertner writes:
‘Kavanaugh’s performance at that hearing alone should be disqualifying. His behavior and affect, the pointed and partisan nature of his accusations, resonated with this President’s incivility and name calling. He was consumed with rage at his Democrat interlocutors, fairly spitting out his answers. He treated them with disrespect, interrupting, repeating his talking points rather than answering question. When Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont asked him if he would call for an FBI investigation, to make the process more fair, he did not answer. He showed himself to be a zealot determined to get on the high court, at all costs.
With this performance, Kavanaugh became Trump’s version of what a judge should be, not unlike Trump’s version of what his attorney general should be. They were both supposed to be Trump partisans, not neutrals, and above all, ready for central casting. Trump reportedly was unhappy with Kavanaugh’s performance on “Fox News” several evenings before; Kavanaugh was “wooden,” he said, insufficiently assertive. So Kavanaugh changed his tune. Now, fully a Trump judge, he was playing to his base — President Trump. And it worked. Trump tweeted minutes after the hearing completed: ”Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him.”
I had never heard a judge speak like that to a public audience, let alone during a confirmation hearing.
A judge is not only supposed to be unbiased, he is also to reflect the appearance of impartiality, avoiding situations in which reasonable people can believe he is partisan. How can Kavanaugh possibly meet that requirement given what we all saw on Thursday?
Consider this: Kavanaugh is confirmed is immediately sworn in by Justice John Roberts in the chambers of the Supreme Court. And on the docket is a challenge to gerrymandering brought by Democrats in one state; or another involving accusations of voter suppression against Republicans in a swing state. What about the cases that directly challenge presidential power, like the enforceability of a subpoena brought by special counsel Robert Mueller against Trump in the Russia investigation? How can he even appear remotely impartial in these cases when his presentation so fully and completely reflected the Republican party’s rage? He cannot. He is not.
Kavanaugh will not get his reputation back whether or not he is confirmed. These accusations, that performance, scotched all such hopes. But if he cared about the Supreme Court as an institution, he would withdraw now. Of course he will not; he wants this position, no matter what the cost, so stunning is his ambition. His body of work has been the functional equivalent of a 20-year application. He was a zealot in the Kenneth Starr investigation of President Bill Clinton, and then, when it suited him to be more neutral, wrote a law review article changing his tune; no president should be subject to the treatment, the very treatment he visited on Clinton. Serious issues were raised with respect to his truthfulness in his confirmation hearings concerning his role in the Bush administration.
He categorically denied Ford’s accusations again — even when he and others confirm at least part of it. He was the thinly-disguised Bart O’Kavanaugh in Mark Judge’s book, “Wasted,’’ passed out in a car. He joined a Yale fraternity famous for its wild drunken parties. At Yale Law School, my alma mater, he touted the all night parties, broken tables, etc. most recently in a 2014 speech. It was not such a leap to Ford’s account of drunken adolescents preying on a younger woman …’
Source: The Boston Globe
’New research shows that people can die simply because they’ve given up, believing life has beaten them and they feel defeat is inescapable…
It usually follows a trauma from which a person thinks there is no escape, making death seem like the only rational outcome, explains Dr. John Leach, a senior research fellow at the University of Portsmouth.
“Psychogenic death is real,” he said. “It isn’t suicide, it isn’t linked to depression, but the act of giving up on life and dying, usually within days, is a very real condition often linked to severe trauma.”
In the study, he describes the five stages leading to progressive psychological decline.…’
Via Psych Central
The study describes the psychological stages of such giving up but does not suggest the mechanism by which it brings about death. Others have talked about, literally, dying of a broken heart. At least some cases involve what is referred to medically as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, apical ballooning syndrome or stress cardiomyopathy.
’Kavanaugh didn’t just DARVO his way through yesterday’s hearing: his bluster, tears, rage, and blame-shifting also allowed him to dodge a remarkable number of questions raised by the senators.
Ford, by contrast, answered virtually every question put to her.…’
Via Boing Boing
’Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh contributed $10,000 to a GoFundMe campaign benefitting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her family. A representative for Lesh confirmed to Rolling Stone that the bassist did make the donation, though Lesh declined to provide further comment. Lesh ostensibly made his donation last Sunday, September 23rd, though it wasn’t until Thursday – the day Ford testified in front of the Senate Judiciary committee about the time Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulted her – that several websites spotted the contribution
The GoFundMe campaign for Ford and her family is no longer accepting donations after raising $528,315. A note on the page reads, “A statement of gratitude from the family will be forthcoming in the next 48 hours with a fuller explanation, but in the meantime, do keep your comments coming. I am sharing them with her.”…’
Via Rolling Stone
Jefferson Airplane Co-Founder Dead at 76
’Jefferson Airplane vocalist-guitarist Marty Balin, who co-founded the San Francisco psychedelic rock band in 1965 and played a crucial role in the creation of all their 1960s albums, including Surrealistic Pillow and Volunteers, died Thursday at the age of 76. Balin’s rep confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone, though the cause of death is currently unknown. “RIP Marty Balin, fellow bandmate and music traveler passed last night,” Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady said in a statement. “A great songwriter and singer who loved life and music. We shared some wonderful times together. We will all miss you!!!!”…’
Via Rolling Stone
First Paul Kantner, then Marty Balin, gone on to a better place from one of the all-time greatest soaring psychedelic rock bands ever. (And, Marty, you are fully forgiven for Starship.) Playing some Airplane LOUD now.
’The tactic is DARVO, which stands for: Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender. It’s a term coined by Dr. Jennifer Freyd at the University of Oregon.…’
Via Daily Kos
’Impeachment isn’t just for presidents. The Constitution allows other officials to be impeached, including Supreme Court justices. No justice of that court has been successfully removed through impeachment—yet.
The process has the same two steps as for presidents. The House of Representatives can vote, with a simple majority, to impeach a justice or other federal official. Then the Senate holds proceedings similar to a trial, then votes on whether to convict. If two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict, the justice is removed from office.…’
Via Lifehacker
’A new Danish-German study suggests that all malevolent aspects of the human personality, including narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, spitefulness and others, appear to share a common “dark core” and are essentially just flavored manifestations of a single common underlying disposition: extreme selfishness.
According to the theory, if you have a tendency to show one dark personality trait, you are more likely to display others.
The common denominator of these traits, known as the dark core factor or “D-factor,” can be defined as the general tendency to maximize one’s own benefit over the benefit of others. This often includes creating justifications for one’s own hurtful actions and thus avoiding any feelings of guilt, regret or shame; or disregarding, accepting, or even malevolently provoking disadvantage for others.
In the journal Psychological Review, researchers Dr. Ingo Zettler, Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, and two German colleagues, Drs. Morten Moshagen from Ulm University and Benjamin E. Hilbig from the University of Koblenz-Landau, demonstrate how the D-factor is present in nine of the most commonly studied dark personality traits:
- Egoism: an excessive preoccupation with one’s own advantage at the expense of others and the community;
- Machiavellianism: a manipulative, callous attitude and a belief that the ends justify the means;
- Moral disengagement: cognitive processing style that allows behaving unethically without feeling distress;
- Narcissism: excessive self-absorption, a sense of superiority, and an extreme need for attention from others;
- Psychological entitlement: a recurring belief that one is better than others and deserves better treatment;
- Psychopathy: lack of empathy and self-control, combined with impulsive behavior;
- Sadism: a desire to inflict mental or physical harm on others for one’s own pleasure or to benefit oneself;
- Self-interest: a desire to further and highlight one’s own social and financial status;
- Spitefulness: destructiveness and willingness to cause harm to others, even if one harms oneself in the process.…’
Via Psych Central
’Over the past few days, the mathematics world has been abuzz over the news that Sir Michael Atiyah, the famous Fields Medalist and Abel Prize winner, claims to have solved the Riemann hypothesis.
If his proof turns out to be correct, this would be one of the most important mathematical achievements in many years. In fact, this would be one of the biggest results in mathematics, comparable to the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem from 1994 and the proof of the Poincare Conjecture from 2002.
Besides being one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics and therefore garnishing glory for the person who solves it, the Riemann hypothesis is one of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s “Million Dollar Problems.” A solution would certainly yield a pretty profitable haul: one million dollars.…’
Via The Conversation
’The fight against Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is facing a “perfect storm” that could help an outbreak spin out of control, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday.
The storm’s main ingredient: insecurity brought on by war. The outbreak response is based in North Kivu, a conflict zone that borders Rwanda and Uganda. More than a million people are displaced there, and armed opposition groups have been carrying out deadly attacks on civilians. The conflict even forced the WHO to halt its response in one epicenter for a week.…’
Via Vox
’What might alien music sound like? Would it be structured hierarchically as our music is with verses and a chorus? Would we even be able to appreciate it? Vincent Cheung, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, thinks the answer would be yes, assuming it was predicated on local and non-local dependencies. His research published this week in Scientific Reports explains what exactly that means.…’
Via Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
’The concept of truth is under assault, but our troubles with truth aren’t exactly new.
What’s different is that in the past, debates about the status of truth primarily took place in intellectual cafes and academic symposia among philosophers. These days, uncertainty about what to believe is endemic – a pervasive feature of everyday life for everyday people.
“Truth isn’t truth” – Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, famously said in August. His statement wasn’t as paradoxical as it might have appeared. It means that our beliefs, what we hold as true, are ultimately unprovable, rather than objectively verifiable.…’
Mysterious Evacuation Of Solar Observatory Overlooking White Sands Smells Like Espionage:
’A bizarre, unexplained situation has unfolded in and around the tiny enclave of Sunspot, New Mexico. A week after U.S. federal government officials ordered the evacuation of the National Solar Observatory facility there, as well as a nearby post office, the first site remains closed due to a “security issue” and no one can or will say what it is.
Members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and potentially other federal government agencies, arrived in Sunspot on or about Sept. 7, 2018, at which point they ordered everyone out of the National Solar Observatory site, which is technically at Sacramento Peak, situated above the tiny town. They also told the clerk in the Sunsport Post Office to evacuate.…’
’Mueller has been seeking this for nearly a year. Now he’s got it. What’s next?…’
Via Vox
’…new research shows that doctors failed to list a
good reason for why they prescribed opioids in nearly a third of cases over a 10-year period.…’
Via Big Think
Much of medical prescribing is irresponsible, unprincipled and knee-jerk. Opioid prescribing in the face of the opioid crisis is the prime example.
’Our recent studies of several replacements suggest effects on the production of eggs and sperm similar to those induced by BPA.…’
Via The Conversation
’It’s easy for casual observers to watch President Donald Trump stumble over words, stop mid-thought to wave at passing boats, ramble about “snakes everywhere” and to conclude to themselves that yes, this guy is definitely losing it. That said, it’s something altogether different when the people who work closest with the president actually ask a professional mental health expert to step in because he’s freaking them the fuck out.
That, however, is exactly what Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee claims has happened.
In an interview with Salon published Thursday, Lee, editor of 2017’s The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, claims that several White House staffers approached her to address the president’s declining faculties.…’
Via Splinter News
Common Antidepressant Might Help Bacteria Become Superbugs:
’Fluoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), a class of drug that prevents certain neurons in the brain from reabsorbing serotonin, a neurotransmitter. People with clinical depression often have less serotonin freely available, and SSRIs boost these levels, helping treat the condition to some extent.
In recent years, though, there’s some research showing that SSRIs such as fluoxetine can also kill off bacteria and other microbes, sparking interest in them being used as a new type of antimicrobial. But the flip side to this realization is the theoretical worry that fluoxetine can foster antibiotic resistance in the environment, since some of the drug ends up in our sewers after it flushes through our bodies.
The current study is touted as the first to test out that theory.…’
Via Gizmodo
Erik Johansson via Instagram
’When you open a packet of a synthetic cannabinoid like K2 or Spice and pour the dried vegetation into your hand, it looks like marijuana. These dried leaves and stems can be inert or come from psychoactive plants like Wild Dagga. Some of these plants are contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides, mold or salmonella.
However, synthetic cannabinoids are anything but natural. They are mass-produced overseas and then shipped in bulk to the U.S., where they are dissolved and then mixed with dried vegetation, which absorbs the liquid. This process is very imprecise, so the dose in one packet can differ greatly within or between batches.
There are several hundred synthetic cannabinoids in existence, and they all stimulate cannabinoid type 1 receptors (CB1), just like the active component in natural marijuana, THC, that provides the high. But they do so with different intensities and for differing periods of time. Some incorporate the central ring structure of the THC molecule before laboratory modification, but many others do not. More problems arise because some of the synthetic cannabinoids stimulate non-cannabinoid receptors and can cause unanticipated effects as well. There is no way to know which synthetic cannabinoids are actually in the product you purchased.
The molecular structure of THC, the active component of marijuana. Many chemists producing synthetic cannabinoids in the lab use the three hexagonal rings as the scaffold to generate new molecules that produce a similar high. Lifestyle discover/Shutterstock.com Natural marijuana does not comprise only THC. The other constituents in natural marijuana such as cannabidiol actually help to temper the negative impact of THC but are absent in synthetic cannabinoids. In addition to these myriad risks, there is also a risk that synthetic cannabinoids can be adulterated with other chemicals, ranging from opioids to rat poison.…’
Via The Conversation
’A new form of misinformation is poised to spread through online communities as the 2018 midterm election campaigns heat up. Called “deepfakes” after the pseudonymous online account that popularized the technique – which may have chosen its name because the process uses a technical method called “deep learning” – these fake videos look very realistic.So far, people have used deepfake videos in pornography and satire to make it appear that famous people are doing things they wouldn’t normally. But it’s almost certain deepfakes will appear during the campaign season, purporting to depict candidates saying things or going places the real candidate wouldn’t.
Because these techniques are so new, people are
having trouble telling the difference between real videos and the deepfake videos. My work, with my colleague Ming-Ching Chang and our Ph.D. student Yuezun Li, has found a way to reliably tell real videos from deepfake videos. It’s not a permanent solution, because technology will improve. But it’s a start, and offers hope that computers will be able to help people tell truth from fiction.…When a deepfake algorithm is trained on face images of a person, it’s dependent on the photos that are available on the internet that can be used as training data. Even for people who are photographed often, few images are available online showing their eyes closed. Not only are photos like that rare – because people’s eyes are open most of the time – but photographers don’t usually publish images where the main subjects’ eyes are shut.
Without training images of people blinking, deepfake algorithms are less likely to create faces that blink normally. When we calculate the overall rate of blinking, and compares that with the natural range, we found that characters in deepfake videos blink a lot less frequent in comparison with real people. Our research uses machine learning to examine eye opening and closing in videos…’
’
Via The Conversation
’In some forests, trees grow in a manner that keeps their branches from touching one another. Despite decades of study, scientists aren’t exactly sure why.…’
Via JSTOR Daily
Alexandra Samuel writes:
’…I have found one personal rule that keeps my grudge-holding in check: Once I have forgotten the details of the original offence, I strictly forbid myself from maintaining my grudge. I may not be much good at forgive and forget, but once I forget, I require myself to forgive.
Thanks to the internet, however, I fear that forgetfulness is no longer a spiritual hall pass. How forgiving can any of us be, now that the internet logs all our online misdeeds forever?…’
Via JSTOR Daily
Katie Heaney writes:
’What does it really mean to be a psychopath? A psychological researcher and a woman diagnosed as a psychopath break down the reality behind the psycho-killer movie clichés.…’
Via The Cut
Nicholas Grossman writes:
’An attempted assassination-by-drone of Venezuela’s president reflects the growing use of the tools by non-state actors. From ISIS recruiting videos to new bombing methods, drones have the potential to become a weapon of choice for militants without a military budget.…’
The end of glorious martyrdom?
’How is this even possible? You can barely move in the United States of America but for all the flags. Flags on the walls, on posters and books. Flags on poles outside schools, like the one he had to walk past to get to this classroom.
The President has colored his flag wrong.…’
Via Boing Boing
’The awful news that all but two penguin chicks have starved to death out of a colony of almost 40,000 birds is a grim illustration of the enormous pressure Antarctic wildlife is under. …’
Via The Guardian
’On Thursday, T-Mobile confirmed that some of its customer data was breached in an attack the company discovered on Monday. It’s a snappy disclosure timeframe, and the carrier said that no financial data or Social Security numbers were compromised in the breach. A relief, right? The problem is the customer data that was potentially exposed: name, billing zip code, email address, some hashed passwords, account number, account type, and phone number. Pay close attention to that last one.…’
Via WIRED
Meghan Flaherty at The Paris Review:
‘As the black-and-white photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once said to the color photographer William Eggleston: “You know, William, color is bullshit.” In the realism of the black-and-white, gray is every color—without the tartness. The understudies take the stage, and not one seems to miss the headliners. We see the world without distraction. Andre Gide called gray the color of the truth.
Look at enough black-and-white photography and color comes to feel like an intrusion. Eggleston’s photos seem too vital to be real, as though depicting an alternate reality. Each image is delirious with hue, spectacular, delicious, but a little bit too much. The eye craves rest—and mystery, the kind of truth that can be searched only in subtlety. Dorothy may tumble, tornadic, into Technicolor, but still she always wishes to go home.…’
Via 3 Quarks Daily
Michael Cohen has already flipped on Donald Trump:
’Michael Cohen’s guilty plea does not require him to cooperate with federal prosecutors or special counsel Robert Mueller. But a veteran criminal defense attorney told Quartz that it’s clear Cohen is already snitching:
“Everyone made a big deal at first that he wasn’t cooperating, but I actually think he didn’t have to. He told the judge that he made payments ‘with the direction and coordination of the candidate.’ That means he was a co-conspirator with Donald Trump. That’s fucking cooperating!”
What’s more, by pleading guilty Cohen has waived his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, so he could always be subpoenaed by prosecutors if Trump is ever charged.
“It’s sort of a cute maneuver, and I’m guessing the government came up with it. Or maybe he did to make it look like he’s not a snitch,” said the lawyer, who requested anonymity to offer a more candid assessment of the situation. “Call it what you want, but he snitched.”
Cohen is due to be sentenced in December, leaving plenty of time for him to work with prosecutors from Mueller’s team and the Southern District of New York, racking up credits that would reduce the time he serves in prison. Under his current deal, he faces a sentence of up to 57 months.…’
’10 legal experts who are largely in agreement that pardoning Manafort would actually help prosecutors nail him to the wall that much faster.…
Highlights:
“If the president issues a pardon in order to influence a witness and impede the investigation, that would also be a further act of obstruction.” — Lisa Kern Griffin, law professor, Duke University
“If the president pardons anyone involved in the Russian investigation, it may prove to be one of the stupidest things he has yet done.” —Julie O’Sullivan, Georgetown University
“The threat of state prosecution is enough to force Kushner, Flynn, Manafort, etc. to become cooperating witnesses, regardless of whether Trump secretly promises to pardon them.” —Jed Shugerman, Fordham University
If President Trump pardons subjects of Mueller’s investigation, they will be unable to claim their Fifth Amendment rights if they are asked to testify under oath. — Asha Rangappa, associate dean, Yale Law School
With each abnormal, unbecoming, or dishonorable act, President Trump makes it harder for his appointees to defend him, harder for traditional Republicans to maintain their uneasy power alliance with him, and easier for Democrats to take the moral high ground and secure political advantage. President Trump is in danger of snuffing out his candle in the first year of his presidency. — Andy Wright, law professor, Savannah Law School…’
Via Boing Boing
’Recent research suggests that experiencing not-so-happy feelings actually promotes psychological wellbeing.…’
Via Big Think
’According to this research, the more intelligent we are in our late teens and early 20s, the younger we will feel in our 70s – and this may also be reflected in various markers of biological ageing.…’
Via Big Think
’Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. “This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire’s ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services.” Bowden’s declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The government agencies are seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit they filed against the Federal Communications Commission in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.…’
Via Slashdot
Radiant Purple Sky Ribbon Defies Explanation:
’You may have met people named Steve in your life, but have you met the radiant ribbon of colorful light in the night sky named Steve? This unexplained phenomenon looks deceptively similar to an aurora and is observed at the same high latitudes in both hemispheres where you’d expect to see magnetic light shows.
Named by Calgary-based photographer Chris Ratzlaff—it’s a nod to the 2006 film Over the Hedge, which classifies “the unknown” as “Steve”—this ribbon appears to be made of hot gas, in the range of 3,000°C (5,430°F). It forms 450 kilometers (280 miles) above Earth’s surface.
Once scientists started studying Steve in 2016, they gave it an official backronym: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. Despite its visual similarity to auroras, research published Monday in Geophysical Research Letters confirms that Steve is generated by a different, unexplained process.…’
Via Motherboard
The most elevated display of wit?
’Humor me please, and consider the pun. Though some may quibble over the claim, the oft-maligned wordplay is clever and creative, writer James Geary tells Quartz. His upcoming book Wit’s End robustly defends puns and tells the distinguished history of these disrespected witticisms.
“Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time,” Geary writes. “And the pun’s primacy is demonstrated by its strategic use in the oldest sacred stories, texts, and myths.”…’
Via Quartz
Paul Krugman in The New York Times:
’The real news of the past few weeks isn’t that Trump is a wannabe Mussolini who can’t even make the trains run on time. It’s the absence of any meaningful pushback from Congressional Republicans. Indeed, not only are they acquiescing in Trump’s corruption, his incitements to violence, and his abuse of power, up to and including using the power of office to punish critics, they’re increasingly vocal in cheering him on.
Make no mistake: if Republicans hold both houses of Congress this November, Trump will go full authoritarian, abusing institutions like the I.R.S., trying to jail opponents and journalists on, er, trumped-up charges, and more — and he’ll do it with full support from his party.
But why? Is Trumpocracy what Republicans always wanted?
Well, it’s probably what some of them always wanted. And some of them are making a coldblooded calculation that the demise of democracy is worth it if it means lower taxes on the rich and freedom to pollute.
But my guess is that most Republican politicians are spineless rather than sinister — or, more accurately, sinister in their spinelessness. They’re not really ideologues so much as careerists, whose instinct is always to go along with the party line. And this instinct has drawn them ever deeper into complicity.
The point is that once you’ve made excuses for and come to the aid of a bad leader, it gets ever harder to say no to the next outrage…’
Via 
