Dear Mr. President:

’Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.…’

Via Washington Post

’The former CIA director fired back at the president in a fiery op-ed.…’

Via Vox

Ignorance or malice?

’President Donald Trump has to be reminded of differences in time zones on a “constant basis” as he impulsively attempts to call other world leaders, a diplomatic source told Politico in an article published Monday.

According to a former National Security Council official who spoke to Politico, Trump “wasn’t great with recognizing” that an older world leader might not be awake “or in the right place at 10:30 or 11 p.m. their time.”

A White House official said Trump is well aware of how time zones work, especially as someone who has for years worked in international business, but is often too busy to be concerned with such details.

“He’s the president of the United States. He’s not stopping to add up” time differences, the official told Politico.…’

Via Business Insider

Larval blacklegged or deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, the species that spreads Lyme disease in the U.S.

’…[A] recent report released by the lab testing company Quest Diagnostics …suggests that not only have cases of the tick-borne Lyme disease substantially risen in the past few years, they’re happening in all 50 states.…’

Via Gizmodo

The Asian longhorned tick (Haemaphysalis longicornis) has now been spotted in seven states, mostly along the East Coast, the New York Times reported Monday.

’Like many species of tick, the Asian longhorned tick can carry disease-causing pathogens, including bacteria that resemble those that cause Lyme disease in the U.S., the Powassan virus, and the parasite responsible for babesiosis, an infection that goes after red blood cells. In Eastern Asia, the tick is thought to spread a virus that causes an emerging disease known as severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS). People with SFTS have abnormally low platelet levels and can rapidly suffer organ failure. The mortality rate of SFTS can reach as high as 30 percent.

At this point, though, none of the longhorned ticks tested by the CDC have been found to carry any germs themselves. It’s also possible that SFTS might not be a danger that people in the U.S. have to worry about. The disease hasn’t been spotted in other areas of the world where longhorned ticks have invaded, such as Australia and New Zealand, indicating that it might take unique conditions for it to be transmittable to people.…’

Via Gizmodo

New Washington Post study :

’Although standing with Trump may pay off in primary contests where strong Republicans are more likely to turn out, GOP congressional candidates may suffer for this alliance in the midterms, when more moderate Republicans and independents could be the difference between victory and defeat.…’

Via The Washington Post

’It’s more than 12 times the size of the biggest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, has a magnetic field 200 times more powerful, and lives 20 light years outside of our solar system. Yet unlike Jupiter, it has no parent star around which it orbits.

So what is it?

It’s a rogue planet. The newly discovered planet was found drifting alone – no host star in sight – with a glowing aurora that has left scientists with questions.

A study published in the Astrophysical Journal last week evaluated this floating mass in more detail; and although it was discovered in 2016, up until now it was thought to be a brown dwarf,  a failed star dimmer than a red dwarf star but larger than the largest gas giants. . Yet this particular , object turned out ot be younger and less massive than scientists originally thought, which opened the door to the revelation that this cold, wandering sphere may, in fact, be a planet instead.…’

Via Salon.com

’Given their current popularity, you might assume that probiotics—capsules containing a mix of “good” bacteria that are said to rebalance our gut’s bacterial content—would be perfectly harmless. But a team of gastroenterologists from Augusta University in Georgia is challenging that assumption. Their recent study is the latest to suggest some people who take probiotics can develop a strange collection of symptoms, including gas, diarrhea, and “brain fog.”…’

Via Gizmodo

’If you travel frequently and have a stash of miles you haven’t used yet, consider donating them to an organization that can use them to reunite families separated at the U.S.-Mexican border.

Beth Wilensky, a professor at University of Michigan’s law school, tweeted the idea last night, and is encouraging people to get in touch with organizations like Michigan Support Circle and Miles4Migrants.

Michigan Support Circle says it uses the miles to either bring parents to their children, or to unite parent and child with other relatives. You can register your miles here. The organization is requesting money to help pay for school supplies for children whose parents have been detained by ICE.…’

Via Lifehacker

’One of the best—if not THE best—meteor showers of the year is about to kick into high gear, and the timing is perfect; with the new moon occurring at exactly the same time as the Perseid meteor shower, this show could be spectacular at 60-70 meteors per hour and sometimes double or even triple that.…’

Via Big Think

The Hiroshima anniversary:

’Seventy-three years after the first use of the atomic bomb in wartime, commitment to arms control is fading.…’

Via Vox

Japanese Students Recreate Hiroshima Bombing in VR:

’Over two years, a group of Japanese high school students has been painstakingly producing a five-minute virtual reality experience that recreates the sights and sounds of Hiroshima before, during and after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city 73 years ago Monday.

By transporting users back in time to the moment when a city was turned into a wasteland, the students and their teacher hope to ensure that something similar never happens again.…’

Via Time

How Donald Trump hacked the media:

’In his classic 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman wrote of the difference between George Orwell’s and Aldous Huxley’s visions of fascism.

“Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information,” wrote Postman. “Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Postman’s warning rang out in a different era. He worried over the rise of television, not Twitter; he was reacting to Ronald Reagan, not Donald Trump. And yet the facts of our age are more absurd and insulting than anything Postman prophesied.

The point of Amusing Ourselves to Death is that societies are molded by the technologies atop which they communicate. Oral cultures teach us to be conversational, typographic cultures teach us to be logical, televised cultures teach us that everything is entertainment. So what is social media culture teaching us?…’

Via Vox

Jill Abramson:

’F Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: “There are no second acts in American lives.” It might have been a blessing for Rudy Giuliani if that were really true.…’

Via The Guardian

‘If 2006 and 2010 patterns hold, a Democratic midterm wave could appear late in the day as vulnerable GOP House seats become targets.

…A lot of seats that wound up falling weren’t even on the radar a few months earlier. Right now, Cook has 34 Republican-held House seats looking very vulnerable (3 are likely Democratic, 7 lean Democratic, and 24 are toss-ups). But the landscape could get much bluer in a hurry.

What would account for this kind of late trend? In 2006 and 2010 it was not, interestingly enough, any deterioration of the president’s own approval ratings. So Donald Trump’s exceptionally stable approval ratings won’t necessarily serve to limit his party’s losses in the House. Late trends could also reflect intensifying excitement over an approaching win for the “out” party…’

Via New York Magazine

‘Sometimes thinking is a bad idea. Ian Leslie draws on Dylan, Djokovic and academic research to put the case for unthinking…’

Via Economist

Church’s support for abolition of the death penalty will be par of the Catholic Catechism:

‘Pope Francis has declared the death penalty inadmissible in all cases “because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” the Vatican announced on Thursday, in a major shift in Roman Catholic teaching on the issue.

Francis, who has spoken out against capital punishment before — including in 2015 in an address to Congress — added the change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church — the compendium of Catholic beliefs.

He said the church would work “with determination” for the abolition of capital punishment worldwide.

Previously, the catechism allowed the death penalty in some cases, if it was “the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor,” even if in reality “cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender today are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”…’

Via New York Times

‘From cybersecurity issues to administrative problems to a legal drama over a possible citizenship question, there are plenty of reasons to worry about the decennial head count….’

Via The Atlantic

Jason Weinberger on Boing Boing:

‘A quick registration at Donate Life can turn hunks of your soulless cadaver into the greatest gift you’ll ever give.

In 2006 a heart donor gave my Uncle, Lee Krinsky, 12 more years of life. I can not tell you how much those 12 years meant to Lee, his wife Karen, our entire family, and a large community of people who loved him.

My Uncle Lee was the kind of Uncle who was always full of shit. As a kid it was great fun to listen to him tell stories. As an adult it was great fun to smoke a joint with him, and listen to him tell wild stories. One of the best was the story of his transplanted heart. Nothing about being a transplant recipient is easy, but Lee was always grateful, and knew he was living on gifted time. He had worn his old heart out.

You can line up to give that gift to someone else. Be it restoring vision, kidneys, liver or a beating heart — any parts you aren’t using any more are spare. As my Uncle Lee would say “Be a mensch” and sign up….’

A literary agent on why your good story isn’t likely to be a bestseller.

‘Has anyone ever said you should write a book? Maybe extraordinary things have happened to you, and they say you should write a memoir. Or you have an extremely vivid imagination, and they say you should write a novel. Maybe your kids are endlessly entertained at bedtime, and they say you should write a children’s book. Perhaps you just know how everything should be and imagine your essay collection will set the world straight. Everyone has a book in them, right? I hate to break it to you but everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them….’

Via The Outline

‘Scientists have identified a new shape called the scutoid, a discovery that helps explain how cells arrange themselves in tightly packed three-dimensional structures that serve as protective barriers in the body.

The shape was discovered while a team of researchers was studying epithelial cells, which are the safety shields of the body that make up the cell walls lining our blood vessels and organs. As tissues and organs develop, epithelial cells squish together, twisting and turning into highly efficient and complex three-dimensional structures that help block microbes from entering our skin or organs.

But the shape of these cell structures has long been a mystery to scientists. Some have proposed they were shaped like prisms or cylinders, but a new paper published in Nature shows how scientists used computer modeling and imaging to settle the question once and for all….’

Via Big Think

Cohl Furey, a mathematical physicist at the University of Cambridge, is finding links between the Standard Model of particle physics and the octonions, numbers whose multiplication rules are encoded in a triangular diagram called the Fano plane.

Via Wired

‘Water hiding 1.6km below Mars’ south pole will be hard to reach. But when we do, we may finally find out if there’s life on the planet…’

Via Wired UK

Frozen earthworm revived after 42,000 years in the permafrost / Boing Boing

‘Siberian roundworms frozen for millennia were thawed and are happily going about their business again, reports The Siberian Times.

One worm came from an ancient squirrel burrow in a permafrost wall of the Duvanny Yar outcrop in the lower reaches of the Kolyma River – close to the site of Pleistocene Park which is seeking to recreate the Arctic habitat of the extinct woolly mammoth, according to the scientific article published in Doklady Biological Sciences this week.

This is around 32,000 years old.

Another was found in permafrost near Alazeya River in 2015, and is around 41,700 years old….’

Via Boing Boing

‘When you think about fearsome predators in the ocean, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably a shark. Sure, sharks are OK, with their sleek, menacing shape and their gaping jaws with rows of jagged teeth. But if you were a fish living on a coral reef or cruising along the shore over the sands of a tropical island, you would fear a far more terrifying predator….’

Via The Conversation

‘Earlier this month, the non-profit Forecast Foundation launched its Augur protocol on the Ethereum network in a bid to create the first blockchain-based betting platform. Now, Augur is hosting several wagers where users bet on when a public figure will die, with a pot of digital money going to whoever makes the correct guess. This type of betting is referred to as an “assassination market” because it arguably incentivizes someone to guarantee a win by offing the person themselves.

On the Augur marketplace, Motherboard found open bets on the deaths of a number of public figures, including Betty White, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett. Other events were also bet on as well, such as whether SpaceX will complete a crewed flight beyond Earth orbit this year. Most of these betting pools had few or no bets on the books at the time of writing, but some betting pools, including one predicting Donald Trump’s death this year, had dozens of trades.

These prediction pools are called assassination markets because they arguably incentivize bettors to make their predictions come true by taking matters into their own hands. Cryptoanarchist Jim Bell introduced the concept in a paper called “Assassination Politics” in the mid-1990s. Bell imagined that the anonymity afforded by modern encryption techniques and the advent of digital money would allow for political assassinations to be incentivized and carried out anonymously.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have arguably created a perfect environment for Bell’s assassination politics to take shape….’

Via Motherboard

‘It feels like it was only a matter of time before Robert Mueller started investigating Donald Trump’s tweets. And it seems that time has come. The New York Times reports that the special counsel “is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements” from the president about James Comey and Jeff Sessions. Specifically, Mueller reportedly wants to know if Trump’s behavior adds up to obstruction of justice. Boy, there sure are a lot of tweets, too.

The Times report cites three anonymous sources who claim that Mueller is turning to Trump’s relentless remarks about Comey and Sessions, specifically those that relate to the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election. Some of these statements could represent a pattern of intimidating witnesses and pressuring high level officials to stop investigating….’

Via Gizmodo

‘Climate change is a public health crisis from its impacts on air quality to wiping out the healthcare systems we need to stave off sickness. Even the air conditioning we’ll need to beat the heat is likely to make things worse.

A new study published Monday in Nature Climate Change adds to the growing list of climate-related health threats, concluding that rising temperatures are likely to cause more suicides. The study showed that the increased heat could lead to as many as 40,000 additional suicides in the U.S. and Mexico by 2050 if global carbon emissions continue on their current trajectory….’

Via Earther

‘Renowned environmentalist and chimpanzee buddy Jane Goodall has her fingers crossed: she’s entered the lottery to win the right to kill a grizzly bear in the area of Yellowstone Park. That Wyoming’s allowing the bears to be hunted is a big deal. There’s been a moratorium on taking down a grizzly bear in Wyoming for the past 44 years. This year, the state is allowing 22 of them to be killed by hunters.

But, instead of taking down a furry behemoth so that she might eat its steaming heart to celebrate her kill, Goodall, and a growing number of other people, have a better idea of what to do if they win the right to shoot a grizzly: they’re advocating that folks take that shot with a camera instead of a gun.

Shoot ‘em With A Camera is a guerrilla campaign to undermine Wyoming’s bear hunt lottery system. The premise is simple: Apply to the bear hunt lottery for your chance to kill a magnificent creature. Then, should you win, instead of heading to the hills with a rifle, you head out with a camera. It’s a cheeky campaign and according to National Geographic, its gaining momentum, quickly….’

Via Boing Boing

‘Is this art or is the matrix simulation of our society finally breaking down?…’

Via Digg

Century’s longest lunar eclipse:

‘The longest lunar eclipse of the century will be an incredible sight for a good part of the world, and the penumbra and umbra (partial and total eclipse) will be cast to mostly the Middle East, south and eastern Africa, western and southeast Asia, and finally India.

It happens when Earth casts its shadow onto the lunar surface as it passes between the sun and moon.

Alas, none of it will be visible in North America. You can, however, watch it as it happens, online at several locations: TimeAndDate.com has one, as does the Virtual Telescope Project….’

Via Big Think

The Trump-Putin Summit and the Death of American Foreign Policy

‘We are witnessing nothing less than the breakdown of American foreign policy. This week’s extraordinary confusion over even the basic details of the Helsinki summit shows that all too clearly. We may not yet know what exactly Trump agreed to with Putin, or even if they agreed to anything at all; perhaps, it will turn out, Putin and his advisers have sprung another clever disinformation trap on Trump, misleading the world about their private meeting because a novice American President gave them an opening to do so. But, even if we don’t know the full extent of what was said and done behind closed doors in Helsinki, here’s what we already do know as a result of the summit: America’s government is divided from its President on Russia; its process for orderly decision-making, or even basic communication, has disintegrated; and its ability to lead an alliance in Europe whose main mission in recent years has been to counter and contain renewed Russian aggression has been seriously called into question….’

Susan Glasser in The New Yorker

‘Trump and his political action committee spent $274,000 on ads on the social network since early May, outpacing the second-biggest spender, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood spent just over $188,000 on Facebook ads over the same period.

The ads bought by Mr. Trump and his PAC were also seen the most by Facebook’s users, having been viewed by at least 37 million people since May. That compared with 24 million people who saw the second-most viewed group of political ads, which were also from Planned Parenthood.

…Facebook now requires buyers of political ads on its network to be verified as United States citizens or permanent residents, to cut down on foreign interference. That means Facebook’s political ad archive largely provides a portrait of domestic activity, spotlighting both the digital ad buying of Democratic and Republican elected officials and political candidates, as well as nonprofit organizations, for-profit groups and PACs. The archive also shows how much these ads were actually consumed by the social network’s users….’

Via New York Times

‘A new study finds that the scent of coffee alone helped students perform better on the analytical portion of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test, or GMAT, a computer adaptive test required by many business schools. It also increased the participants’ expectations that they would do well on the test.

The findings are published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

“It’s not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting. But they also thought they would do better, and we demonstrated that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance,” said study leader Dr. Adriana Madzharov, a professor at Stevens School of Business.

In short, smelling the scent of coffee, which has no caffeine in it, has an effect similar to that of drinking coffee…’

Via Psych Central

Garrett Graff on how Rob Rosenstein’s behavior is informed by knowing what Mueller knows and where his investigation will lead:

‘Why would anyone put up with the abuse, vitriol, and daily haranguing from the president’s Twitter account that Rosenstein has endured? Why would Rosenstein seemingly set precedents that undermine the core principles of the Justice Department, an institution that he’s devoted nearly his entire career to serving?

…In a world of hedgehogs and foxes, Rosenstein today is the ultimate hedgehog.

Rosenstein knows one very big, monumental, history-shaping thing—how Trump’s presidency will end—and he’s wagered that if he can hang on long enough, justice will be done and the good guys, in his eyes, will win. His early actions, around Comey’s firing, will be vindicated by history when seen by the light of his bravery and personal sacrifice and refusal to be bullied into quitting, a move that would almost surely lead to Mueller’s investigation being shut down or circumscribed by whichever Trump appointee takes over supervising it next….’

Via Wired

‘You’re looking at the center of our galactic home, the Milky Way, as imaged by 64 radio telescopes in the South African wilderness.

Scientists released this image today to inaugurate the completed MeerKAT radio telescope. But these scopes form part of an even more ambitious project: the Square Kilometer Array, a joint effort to build the world’s largest telescope, spanning the continents of Africa and Australia.

This image shows filaments of particles, structures that seem to exist in alignment with the galaxy’s central black hole. It’s unclear what causes these filaments. Maybe they are particles ejected by the spinning black hole; maybe they are hypothesized “cosmic strings;” and maybe they’re not unique, and there are other, similar structures waiting to be found, according to a 2017 release from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics….’

Via Gizmodo

Abortion, family separation, and how the Trump administration uses female pain as punishment.

‘The Trump administration’s policies on family separation and abortion are driven by one view: A woman’s pain is fitting punishment….’

Via Slate

‘In the city of Seattle, Washington there exists a vending machine that over the years has become something of a local landmark amongst residents who are familiar with its mysterious history. Situated on the corner the John Street and 10th Avenue East in the bustling Capitol Hill neighbourhood, the seemingly ancient machine is well known for dispensing random, sometimes rare, cans of soda- a fact that’s made all the more intriguing when you consider that nobody seems to know who stocks the machine or where it came from….’

Via TodayIFoundOut

A neurotoxicologist explains:

‘Novichok has been implicated in the poisoning of two couples in Great Britain, causing the death of one woman. The chemical structures of Novichok agents are not known for sure, but they bind more tightly and rapidly to their enzyme target, called acetylcholinesterase, found in nerves and muscle cells than other nerve poisons such as sarin or tabun. This causes death within minutes by making normal nerve-muscle, nerve-gland, and nerve-heart function impossible.

The deaths have been attributed to Russia, either the country’s intelligence service or a rogue who obtained them illegally. Russia vehemently denies either involvement in the poisonings or development of the Novichok chemicals.

How long these chemical stay active is unknown, largely because they were developed illegally and in secret by Soviet and later Russian chemists as part of a program entitled “Foliant” designed to skirt the guidelines of the Chemical Weapons Convention signed with the United States, and to elude detection by weapons inspectors, according to a classified Pentagon report originally made public by The Washington Times. An article from the BBC speculates that the agent used in the Wiltshire poisonings in Britain could remain active for as long as 50 years.

Several factors make Novichok especially sinister.

First, the chemicals are reported by Soviet chemists to be the most potent agents ever made, with potency between 6-10 times higher than VX, the chemical used to kill the half brother of Kim Jong-Un, or sarin, the prototypical poisonous nerve gas the Iraqi government allegedly used in 1989, and which was used Syria last April. Thus extremely low doses, powder or liquid, the exact concentration of which remains unknown, are lethal.

More disturbing, especially for those living near the poisonings in Britain, is that the Novichok agents were designed to be undetectable by NATO chemical warfare detection methods, and to circumvent any NATO protective gear. This would allow them to be used with impunity by the Soviet Union (or Russia), against NATO troops. Professor Gary Stephens, quoted in the BBC News, concurred that the Novichok agents would be extremely difficult to detect. It would be equally difficult to clean up, because exactly which of the Novichok chemicals was used cannot be definitively determined.

Though Novichok agents have never yet been used on a battlefield, their sole purpose is for chemical warfare. Their mission: kill rapidly, silently and undetectably. Apparently, as seen in Britain, these chemists succeeded in their mission….’

Via The Conversation

Donald Trump, due to arrive in the UK later today, is a racist, a serial liar, and either a sex abuser or someone who falsely brags about being one in the apparent belief that this will impress other men in a metaphorical “locker room”.

To take each of these charges in turn, when black American football players protested against police shootings of innocent people of colour by refusing to stand for the national anthem, Trump said the players “maybe … shouldn’t be in the country”.

And when white supremacists, neo-Nazis and armed militia groups demonstrated in Charlottesville, Virginia, over plans to remove a statue of a Confederate general – and a counter-protester was killed and others injured as a car was driven deliberately into them – Mr Trump claimed there were “very fine people” on both sides.

Trump persistently pushed the lie that Barack Obama, the first African American president, was not born in the US.

He has called for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, claimed Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals, said Nigerians would never go back to “their huts” after seeing the US and described African countries, along with El Salvador and Haiti, as “s***holes”.

Trump also argued that an Indiana-born judge handling a lawsuit against ‘Trump University’ was biased against him and unfit to take the case because he was a “Mexican”.

One of Trump’s favourite pastimes is decrying “fake news”.

But, according to one count by The Washington Post, the president lies an average of 6.5 times a day. The New York Times has also tried to make a definitive list of his numerous falsehoods.

In May, Rex Tillerson, sacked as US Secretary of State in a Trump tweet, warned: “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.”

Before his presidency, Trump was recorded saying he was able to grope women whenever he liked because “when you’re a star they let you do it”.

When the tape emerged, Trump said his boast was untrue and just “locker room” talk. And when several women came forward to say he had done this to them, he insisted they were lying.

So, as British politicians hide their distaste in an attempt to get a much-needed post-Brexit trade deal, we should all remember what kind of man Trump really is.

 

Via The Scotsman

Writer Adam O’Fallon Price riffs on Kurt Vonnegut’s famous admonition against the use of semicolons. Vonnegut felt they are useless for any purpose except demonstrating pretension. Although Price concedes that, strictly speaking, one can make do with commas and periods instead — or, as he favors, the em-dash — he feels that semi-colons serve the useful purpose of connecting two related (“Independent but interdependent”) thoughts, maintaining more “cognitive rhythm” than if they were expressed as discrete sentences. 

The peak usage of the semicolon came between the mid-18th to the late-19th centuries, perhaps unsurprisingly as writing during that era involved long and elaborate sentences that feel too ornate to modern readers. Writers like Melville and Proust seemed to see as a virtue of the semicolon the ability to keep a sentence going. The modern shift toward shorter sentences and economy of storytelling (the “tautness” and “spareness” of prose almost universally touted as virtues by critics), and increasing brevity of personal communication, makes an outlier of anyone with an affection for the semicolon today. 

Via The Millions

I think my writing, especially the clinical notes I write in my psychiatric work, has a higher incidence of semicolons than almost anyone else I know. So am I archaic? Unskilled at clarity and simplicity in my prose? Burdened by tortured complexity? Or merely pretentious? Or do my semicolons help? 

Jan Willis is professor emerita of religion at Wesleyan University and  a visiting professor at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She has studied Buddhism with Tibetan teachers for more than forty years and is the author of the memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist:

‘Being pacifist is not the same as being passive, and being inspired by Buddhist wisdom does not mean that we close our minds and eyes to the rapid changes occurring around us in our society. Whenever anyone proposes to single out any specific category of people—whether by race, or gender, sexual orientation, or religious faith—and to propose a curb on those people’s freedom, that is the beginning of the end of an equitable democracy and the beginning of the slow slide into a loss of freedom for all. To ignore this fact is to deny many of the darkest moments of our history as human beings. On the other hand, a slow but growing acceptance of this state of affairs as being “normal” dooms everyone. It is necessary, therefore, that we keep our eyes opened.

What do we need to do in such dangerous and not-normal times? We need to be vigilant. We need to not normalize what is happening. And we need to not lose hope. If hope seems absent or lacking, we must act to bring it back. In fact, acting, I believe, is the only way to bring hope back. With hope, we can see ourselves as, once again, citizens; as ones with a rightful share in this country, its progress and its stewardship….’

Via Lion’s Roar

The brains of jazz and classical pianists work differently:

A musician’s brain is different to that of a non-musician. Making music requires a complex interplay of various abilities which are also reflected in more strongly developed brain structures. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig have recently discovered that these capabilities are embedded in a much more finely-tuned way than previously assumed—and even differ depending on the style of the music: They observed that the brain activity of jazz pianists differs from those of classical pianists, even when playing the same piece of music. This could give insight into the processes which generally take place while making music and which are specific for certain styles….’

Via Neuroscience Stuff

Daniel Cole (professor of law and public and environmental affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington) and Aurelian Craiutu (professor of political science and adjunct professor of American studies at Indiana University in Bloomington):

‘Scholars and statesmen have been declaring liberalism dead or in deep crisis for at least a century and a half. A review of the many deaths of liberalism might have something to teach us about what, in fact, is happening in the world today….’

Via Aeon

‘Active-duty and retired U.S. military officers and enlisted personnel are
expressing a sense of moral emergency over the Defense Department setting up detention camps for undocumented immigrants on military bases.

“It smacks of totalitarianism,” said Steve Kleinman, a retired Air Force colonel and military intelligence officer.

Raf Noboa, an Iraq War veteran and former Army sergeant, said he was astounded by the “enormous moral offense” the camps represent and which the military will be ordered to support.

“America’s military once liberated people from concentration camps,” Noboa told The Daily Beast. “It beggars the mind and our morality that it might be used to secure them.”…’

Via Daily Beast

‘Some supplements or vitamins may very well help you. The problem with multivitamins is the same with probiotics: loading your body up with a bit of everything is not only often ineffective, but dangerous. If you don’t know what your body is deficient of—the same holds true with your microbiome, hence probiotics—taking these pills, oils, and tinctures are only helping companies profit while potentially harming you in the process….’

Via  Big Think

‘One of the possible roadblocks to discovering extraterrestrial life is that it may be so different we might not recognize it. As recently retired astronaut and biochemist Peggy Whitson put it, “it’s not necessarily going to look the same as us, or be based on the same principles.” We’re so used to the lifeforms on Earth—mind-bogglingly varied as they may be—that it’s difficult for us to imagine beings completely out of our frame of reference, more specifically beyond our senses. Beings made of light or mist, or some kind of matter we can’t see; there’s no end to the possibilities. As we hunt for other life, our limited imaginations amount to an unavoidable form of prejudice that could doom the search. Mindful of this, and to help us practice being more open-minded, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats is about to reveal, in San Francisco, music for aliens who don’t hear. At least as we do. He calls it Omniphonics. He’s even composed a “Universal Anthem” for us to play together with our new acquaintances….’

Via Big Think

‘Consciousness: Where is it? What is it? No one single perspective seems to be able to answer all the questions we have about consciousness. Now Bernardo Kastrup thinks he’s found one. He calls his ontology idealism, and according to idealism, all of us and all we perceive are manifestations of something very much like a cosmic-scale dissociative identity disorder (DID). He suggests there’s an all-encompassing universe-wide consciousness, it has multiple personalities, and we’re them….’

Via Big Think

Heard about ASMR? Have you experienced it?

‘Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is the sensation experienced by some individuals in response to specific sights and soft sounds, such as whispering, tapping or slow hand movements.

These feelings are described as a warm, tingling and pleasant sensation starting at the crown of the head and spreading down the body. The “tingles” are sometimes described as “brain tingles” or “brain orgasms.” They are typically accompanied by feelings of calm and relaxation.

There are more than 13 million ASMR videos on YouTube — including medical examinations, haircuts and massages and folding towel tutorials — which people view to relax, relieve stress or sleep better. Still, research on ASMR has been limited….’

Via Psych Central

The Gorilla, Who Used Sign Language and Befriended Mr. Rogers, Dies at 46:

It’s never been trickier to be the president’s son:

‘All he ever wanted was to make his dad proud, but things have never turned out quite right for Donald Trump Jr. Even now, despite finding his purpose as a bombastic star of the far right, Junior’s personal life is in shambles and the specter of Robert Mueller looms large….’

Via GQ

Brain battle between distrust and reward:

‘At the most fundamental level of biology, people recognize the innate advantage of defining differences in species. But even within species, is there something in our neural circuits that leads us to find comfort in those like us and unease with those who may differ?…’

Via The Conversation

This Solstice, Earth’s Days Are Longer Than Ever:

‘[Geoscientists] recently showed that 1.4 billion years ago, a single “day” lasted only about 18 hours. And changes in the gravitational dance between our planet and the moon are causing Earth’s day to get ever so slightly longer each year….’

Via National Geographic

‘An invasive plant species with an appropriately unappealing name, giant hogweed, has been found growing in Virginia. If its clear sap gets on your skin, exposure to sunlight can cause 3rd degree burns, even years after contact. If the sap gets in your eyes, you could go blind….’

Via Boing Boing

‘Ever looked at a picture of the supercontinent Pangea and wondered where your current address would have been 250 million years ago? A new interactive map provides this very service, allowing you to see modern locations across 750 million years of our planet’s history.

This awesome 3D map is the brainchild of Ian Webster, curator of the supremely impressive Dinosaur Database. It defaults to 240 million years ago, during the Early Triassic, a time when life was rebounding from the Permian mass extinction and early dinosaurs began to make an appearance. Back then, our planet was dominated by the giant Pangea supercontinent, and it makes little sense from our current perspective.

To help, Webster overlays the map with modern political boundaries, and you can even search for present-day addresses to pinpoint specific locations. Using the left or right cursor keys, you can scroll back or forward in time to see the shifting of the continents. In all, the map goes from 750 million years ago to the 21st century, so you can watch how a specific location on Earth changes across the Devonian, Jurassic, Neocene, or whichever period strikes your fancy….’

Via Gizmodo

God is a young white dude who looks like he plays the acoustic guitar, according to a study of more than 500 American Christians.

‘Researchers were surprised to find that despite centuries of art depicting God as an elderly, wizened old white man, people leaned toward a younger, softer visage. And their biases about what he looks like reflected their own political views: Liberals saw a feminine God, while conservatives saw God as more of a hardass….’

Via Motherboard

Nathan Heller in The New Yorker:

‘In “Bullshit Jobs” (Simon & Schuster), David Graeber, an anthropologist now at the London School of Economics, seeks a diagnosis and epidemiology for what he calls the “useless jobs that no one wants to talk about.” He thinks these jobs are everywhere. By all the evidence, they are. His book, which has the virtue of being both clever and charismatic, follows a much circulated essay that he wrote, in 2013, to call out such occupations. Some, he thought, were structurally extraneous: if all lobbyists or corporate lawyers on the planet disappeared en masse, not even their clients would miss them. Others were pointless in opaque ways. Soon after the essay appeared, in a small journal, readers translated it into a dozen languages, and hundreds of people, Graeber reports, contributed their own stories of work within the bullshit sphere….’

Via The New Yorker

‘Here’s something you probably didn’t know you needed to worry about: 

There’s a layer of 300 million-year-old rock under Interstate 95 that’s capable of killing the lights from Washington to Boston and beyond the next time the sun erupts in all its fury.

Sound far-fetched? Perhaps. But not to scientists. A solar storm is now viewed as enough of a risk in fact that grid operators across North America are working on plans to respond to just such a disturbance. And a draft of a soon-to-be-published U.S. Geological Survey report pinpoints the Eastern Seaboard as one of the areas most in danger.

Illustration of events on the sun changing the conditions in Near-Earth space.Source: NASA That’s because this Paleozoic-era rock doesn’t let the energy from a major geomagnetic storm — a once-in-a-100-years kind of event — pass through it but instead acts as a backstop that sends the surge back up above the ground for a second shot at causing mayhem….’

Via Bloomberg

‘SEVENTY YEARS AFTER THE FIRST Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, the steep Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Utah were still giving the Union Pacific Railroad trouble.

Despite having massive steam engines, the Union Pacific, one of the biggest railroads in America, still struggled to move heavy freight trains over the mountains and would often have to use multiple locomotives to get trains to their destination. This practice required more workers and more fuel. In 1940, the Union Pacific’s mechanical engineers teamed up with the American Locomotive Company to build one of the world’s largest steam locomotives, a class of engine simply known as “Big Boy.”

Now, six decades after the last Big Boy was taken off the rails, the Union Pacific is rebuilding one of the famous locomotives in honor of the upcoming sesquicentennial celebration of the first Transcontinental Railroad. It’s a project so ambitious that Ed Dickens Jr, a Union Pacific steam locomotive engineer and the man leading the rebuild, has likened it to resurrecting a Tyrannosaurus rex….’

Via Atlas Obscura

‘Although we greedily consume death at a distance through fiction, drama and the media, we are hamstrung by it up close and personal. In 1955 the commentator Geoffrey Gorer declared that death had become more pornographic than sex. It was, he said, the new taboo and mourning had become “indecent”. Since then, matters have arguably got worse….’

Via Times Literary Supplement

What an utter imbecile:

‘The president’s unofficial ‘filing system’ involves tearing up documents into pieces, even when they’re supposed to be preserved….’

Via Politico

‘Today, in a much-anticipated announcement live-streamed by NASA, it announced both an abundance of organic molecules and seasonal, recurrent releases of methane gas into the atmosphere of planet Mars….’

Via Big Think

‘An immunization for stress created from beneficial bacteria could be on the horizon. The vaccine is said to have long lasting anti-inflammatory effects, making people more resilient to the psychological and physical effects of stress….’

Via Neuroscience News

Hints of a ghosty, “sterile” version of the neutrino:

There are three types of neutrinos in the Standard Model, the blueprint of particle physics. But in past experiments, scientists have thought there could be a fourth, more mysterious type. Results from an experiment called MiniBooNE, combined with data from another called the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector, seem to add even further evidence for the existence of the sterile neutrino.

Neutrinos are perhaps the second most common particle in the universe, after light particles, called photons. Physicists have long known about the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. They’ve also known that the neutrinos can swap identities, or oscillate, between types. And experiments seemed to observe neutrinos disappearing and reappearing, as if they’d swapped into a fourth, more difficult-to-observe identity….’

Via Gizmodo

The best way to explore  “last-of-their-kind patches” might be in the pages of storybooks, or in the chapters of our imagination:

‘in Kay Nielsen’s illustrations for the Brothers Grimm story of Hansel and Gretel, the deep woods are full of secrets. The trees are towering, gnarled, and knotted. Their canopies, crunchy and brown, blot out the sky. On the ground, clusters of ferns unfurl around tree roots; there are patches of grass, and verdant trees studded with blooms. In a glen, of course, sits that devilishly tasty house built from bread and cakes.

The woods are a character in the story. They are thick, tall, and deep—so much so that the young duo could wander them for days. Their allure, and a dash of horror, comes from the fact that they are unknown, and maybe unknowable.

In 2018, they aren’t many truly unknown corners of the globe—few places are pristine and untraveled the way they might be described in a fairytale. Still, dense clusters of primary forests—where trees have grown, for ages, largely undisturbed—exist in patches of the Amazon basin, Southeast Asia, and Canadian and Siberian Taiga. Slivers of Europe are still luxuriant with trees, too, and very old ones at that. But they’re dwindling.

A team of researchers, led by Francesco Maria Sabatini of Berlin’s Humboldt‐Universität, recently set out to map exactly where those oldest, least-disturbed forests are, and how many of them are left….’

Via Atlas Obscura

Matthew Yglesias:

‘A clear and present danger to the rule of law…’

Via Vox

‘The list of serial killers who wore glasses is long and bloody, from Dahmer to BTK to Harold Shipman and his professorial frames; even the Zodiac Killer, never caught, wears a thick-rimmed pair in a police sketch. The aesthetic of “serial killer glasses” is so pervasive that it pops up everywhere from Urban Dictionary (“Eyeglasses with heavy or severe frames that live somewhere between fashionable and creepy”) to TV Tropes (where “a guy who is cold, emotionless … or even a soulless monster” is given glasses “to quickly tip off the audience to his personality”), and countless Tumblr posts in between.

Search for “serial killer glasses” on Amazon and you’ll be directed to the “So In Luxe Aviator Retro Fashion Glasses” – perfect for the manic pixie dream serial killer. Naturally, Spirit Halloween sells a pair, too. It’s a look that signifies “creep” and “outsider” so well that it’s become the punchline to a joke: Amy Schumer and Conan O’Brien have both done skits about how men who favor a certain style of glasses tend to be serial killers, molesters, cult leaders or all of the above.

Of course, the fact that many serial killers wear glasses is simple math: over 60% of Americans use some sort of vision correction, and serial killers are just like the rest of us, at least when it comes to their eyesight. But because these killers are often exhaustively scrutinized and even fetishized in the media, their glasses have become part of the serial killer iconography. A pair of shiny lenses, perched on the bridge of a serial killer’s nose, becomes a subtle metaphor for his walled-off nature, for her sociopath’s aloofness. Glasses become a mask that’s acceptable for the killer to wear in public. They become a threat, too: after all, the serial killer who wears glasses is apparently someone who can see us better than we can see them. Someone who’s always watching….’

Via The Guardian

Tali Sharot and Neil Garrett: 

‘To psychologists interested in the science of lying, Trump’s increasing mendacity presents an interesting question…..’

Via NBC

No so fast:

‘No weapons inspectors or nonproliferation experts were invited to witness the detonation, and now initial assessments indicate that the show was essentially a charade. “The explosions seem to have been too small” for scientists to have discerned any significant geologic activity such as collapsing tunnels, an international arms control official who follows North Korea closely told CNN. “The fact that journalists were reportedly only around 500 meters from the explosions is a good indication that these were small blasts. And the amount of dust leads us to believe that they were quite superficial,” the official said….’

Via CNNPolitics

‘…Trump’s inner circle has solidified, and the president is increasingly acting on his own. Meetings are getting smaller, reducing the number of people with proximity to information. Top officials, some who acted as relatively helpful press gatekeepers, like former communications director Hope Hicks, have left without replacements. And, after back-and-forth hostile leaks between the White House and State Department under Rex Tillerson, reporters are now dealing with National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, kindred spirits who are also more discreet. 

All the while, Trump’s behavior is becoming more and more erratic, and White House reporters say it’s becoming harder to know what’s going on — not like it was ever easy…

The White House, for its part, has continued its quest to find those speaking to the press, particularly after the leak of comments in a private meeting made by White House aide Kelly Sadler that Sen. John McCain’s opinion didn’t matter because he would die soon…’

Via BuzzFeed News