Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Science progress and updates


It's science Wednesday! A report offering proof that we remain a vigorous, exploratory, vividly smart and fact-oriented civilization, despite efforts to crush all of that.

All right, you knew this was coming… if you subscribed to my Psi channel. Scientists Demonstrate Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans, through non-invasive sensors.

News showing all is not hopeless, if we invest (as historian Toynbee demanded) in our “creative castes” –

Better access to hydrogen? Pulsing electric current through a layered molybedenum telluride catalyst has allowed researchers to almost double the amount of hydrogen produced per millivolt of electricity used , helping make clean hydrogen a potentially valid fuel, especially if this can be combined with super-proliferation of things like Elon’s solar roof.

Separately! Another potential game changer – announced last March: solar cells that produce hydrogen as well as electricity.

== What we eat ==

Bear with me – this is all related: Universities starting to ban beef from their campus menus. This is something I’ve long spoken about and portrayed in Earth (1989) And yet, I am actually surprised how quickly the meme is taking hold, this very year. If all of this had come just two years earlier, it might have helped prevent the deliberate fires in the Amazon, this year. 

The campaign will gain steam, faster than any of us expected. Here’s a video denouncing factory farming. And yes, of course I expect to be a convert. Oh, but is a ‘healthy’ diet also better for the planet? It appears so. 

A new algae-based Eos Bioreactor is capable of sucking in as much carbon dioxide as 400 trees. But rather than consuming an acre of forest land, it measures just 63 cubic feet—smaller than a traditional telephone booth. Hypergiant plans to make its design open source, allowing businesses and individuals to build variants for easy integration in homes and offices spaces. The growing algae can be harvested and used as a high-protein food source, biofuel, or textile. Now if this can scale up to use sunlight falling on the south sides of urban buildings, we could see a major game changer!

What could combine all of this? Cities where tall buildings use the sunlight falling upon their entire sunward-facing sides, feeding in CO2 plus agricultural or sanitation effluent, getting hydrogen, algae and clean water. Exactly the technologies we’ll also need in space. If your corporation is planning to build a big edifice soon, consider talking folks into incorporating bio-reactive or urban-farming components along that sunward side.


And meanwhile, despite frenetic assistance from Republicans, the obsolete and poisonous coal industry keeps plummeting as states and power companies find cheaper, cleaner sources. Will Trump’s failure to deliver on this promise hurt him in Appalachia? Not likely. His voters care only about symbolism.

Oh, you cynics who wallow is gloom, will you admit that your snarls are based simply on laziness? How much simpler if there weren’t just tons of good news. Sorry, but there’s kilotons. And if you can’t participate alongside the innovators, at least you can get active politically, and help block the monsters who thwart science at every turn.

Another prediction happening: in Earth (1989), I portrayed Sea State using power-generating kites. Now Google’s “X” team at Makani has moved closer the day when a kite massing far, far less might generate as much power as a massive windmill tower.   One use here is offshore platforms, potentially floating ones, or getting small island nations off diesel generators.  Later, much more.

== Yipe! ==

Remember that nasty nuclear accident in northern Russia, a couple of months back? Here’s an interesting dissection of the kinds of "nuclear rocket” that Russians may have been testing in Archangelsk, before the explosion. And yes, such desperation plus incompetence combinations are really scary.

Note also it was one of three disasters just that month. Watch this amazing footage from the munitions dump going off in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. Mythbusters eat your hearts out. Are we witnessing signs of a “cool war”?  Read the Frederik Pohl novel by that name. Seriously. 

The alternative is that the plague of utter incompetence that brought down the USSR hasn't changed much. Except competence at messing with others... as they are messing with us.

And just as dangerous. More powerful a greenhouse gas than methane, just one kilogram of Sulfur Hexa Flouride SF6 leaking from the electricity industry warms the Earth to the same extent as 24 people flying London to New York return.

== Biology Time! ==

Forget Spider-Man! I want to see Naked-Mole-Rat Queen! These guys (mostly gals)  are… amazing. And what a super-hero title. Say it a few times.

Aaaaand… Scientists in Japan have reported a new method which allows them to separate mouse sperm carrying an X chromosome from those carrying a Y chromosome, meaning that sperm can be selected based on whether they will result in female (XX) or male (XY) offspring when used to fertilize an egg. This is very mixed news. Yes, in culturally macho countries this will exacerbate the male-excess already caused by selective abortion and will be much harder to stop.  The result 20 years later could be a major fertility decline, helping save the planet(?) but also creating a huge pool of frustrated, mateless males. Dangerous… unless technology comes to the rescue. You know what technology I mean.

Bizarrely consistent with the old notion of "recapitulation," anatomists have found one of the oldest, albeit fleeting, remnants of evolution seen in humans -- muscle attachments seen in very early fetuses that we last roughly 250 million years old - a relic from when reptiles transitioned to mammals. Fascinating. And consistent with something else that I theorize may have happened at that same time... speculated in my story "Chrysalis," available in Insistence of Vision.

Why creative experts may be better at imagining the future: Dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC): Involved in social directed thought such as determining or inferring the purpose of others' actions. As part of the default mode network it is primal for “distal” or distant thinking about the future as well as empathy. The medial prefrontal cortex was activated when visualizing proximal  near term events. 

Platinum grains and such support the notion that there was an extraterrestrial impact or comet air burst that caused the Younger Dryas climate event, 12,800 years ago, leading to a mini ice age about the time that giant animals such as mastodons, mammoths, saber-toothed cats and ground sloths disappeared from the Earth. Well, contributed, maybe. But not too long before there had been real ice ages. The suddenness might have amplified the effects. But I still put money on a different kind of stony impacts. Spear-points. 

== Miscellany! ==

From the brilliant Stephen (“Mathematica”) Wolfram -- just published: Adventures of a Computational Explorer (assisted by a blurb from yours truly ;-) “Most of the pieces I wrote in response to some particular situation or event. Their topics are diverse. But it’s remarkable how connected they end up being. And at some level all of them reflect the paradigm for thinking that has defined much of my life.
It all centers around the idea of computation, and the generality of abstraction to which it leads.

One more for the prediction registry? It Slices, It Dices, It Binds, And Stops Bugs: Dental Floss Is Your Secret Multitool.” Yeah. In The Practice Effect, my hero uses dental floss to tear down a wall and escape from prison.



93 comments:

jim said...

Once again the democrats in the house voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act. 219 Democrats voted to keep empowering the National Security State proving that elected Democrats in the house are very similar to elected Republicans. The global war of terror is a bipartisan project.

Larry Hart said...

Democrats vote for things like that because they think they'll look weak on defense and therefore lose elections to Republicans otherwise. If voters would make it clear that they are against the USAPATRIOT Act and invasions of Iraq and stuff like that, then Democrats wouldn't feel as if they had to vote for such things.

So your issue is with the voters.

Jim Lund said...

While the Eos Bioreactor is a cool prototype, there's no need to copy and paste the hype. 63 cubic feet?! Apparently that doesn't count the part that collects light, or the processing plant next to it for the HARVESTING & SEPARATION. It would be great if the tech finds a market and gets used.

Are the sunny sides of building a problem (too much light & heat?) that needs solving or a scarce resource with views & sunlight? Space in cities is expensive.

jim said...

Yeah Larry you are probably right. Much of the American public loves its forever wars, thinks torture is fine and has no problem with unaccountable national security state.

Larry Hart said...

@jim,

It was more true back in the day that it was political suicide to vote against something like the Iraq War. You'd be painted as soft on terrorism or hating our troops or some such. Hillary Clinton, as a Senator voted "aye", and she was somewhat-rightly reviled for that vote years later, but at the time, I'll bet she was thinking something like, "I wish I could vote against this, but it would kill my chances of ever being president." Whether that assessment was correct or not, it was conventional wisdom at the time.

W might have inadvertently done us a favor by making America tired of wars. I honestly think we would have bombed Iran by now had not the national attitude soured on such things during the Bush administration.

David Brin said...

Right now dems have their priorities right. First defeat the putsch and eject the confederacy from power in Washington. When they have actual power, then try judging them. I've offered my list of imperative things they must accomplish at that point. Do you have alist, jim? No? If you did, would it rank order your wishes in order they can be done rapidly by a wide coalition, saving the coalition splitter issues for year #2?

No, you would not do that. Sanctimony purity first!

jim said...

I think Senator Clinton was thinking something like
"sure the Iraqis did not attack us on 911, but I want to be president and that pathway is over a mountain of dead Iraqi men, women, and children."

I do find it ironic that she probably lost because she supported that act of evil. (that and the whole Libya disaster which proved she learned nothing and was too dangerous to be in the white house.)

scidata said...

No opinion on your Patriot Act. However, her TPP reversal was a disaster for the West.

Jon S. said...

Ground area in cities is expensive. That's why the buildings are so tall. As far as I can tell, with development there's no real reason why a bioreactor would have to take up that valuable ground space. OTOH, it would have been a great thing to do with that Death Ray casino in Vegas, where the curved building was concentrating the reflected sunlight to a dangerous degree. Stop reflecting the light and start using it!

Larry Hart said...

jim,

(that and the whole Libya disaster which proved she learned nothing and was too dangerous to be in the white house)


Then you can thank your lucky stars we got someone more qualified instead.

Larry Hart said...

jim:

I think Senator Clinton was thinking something like
"sure the Iraqis did not attack us on 911, but I want to be president and that pathway is over a mountain of dead Iraqi men, women, and children."


A little perspective, huh?

I was against the war too, even when the war was popular. But, you'd have a better argument if Hillary's was a deciding vote that could have stopped the war. IIRC, almost everyone (Bernie Sanders's exceptionalism noted) in both houses of congress in both parties voted for the war. Every tv station's news broadcast was beating the drums for war. It was like a tide that was going to wash over, no matter what. If any one individual is more to blame, I'd vilify Colin Powell for lending his credibility to the war effort. Hillary couldn't have moved the needle one way or the other.

And at least ostensibly, we were removing someone who had no problem creating a mountain of dead Iraqi men, women, and children himself. In fact, had the war been prevented and Saddam did some horrible thing afterwards, I have no doubt you'd be blaming Hillary for her nay vote.

Oh, and let's not forget that the occupant that we do currently have in the White House is an octillion times worse than Hillary could ever be.

Aside from all that, you've got a point.

Larry Hart said...

The whole op-ed is worth reading...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-law-and-order-party-has-some-peculiar-ideas-about-crime/2019/11/18/83c1687a-0a4b-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html

...

For instance: The Real Crime isn’t that Trump secretly withheld military aid to extort a desperate ally into announcing a sham investigation into a political rival. Heavens no. The Real Crime is that the public knows that this happened

At least so says Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who recently railed against the whistleblower’s decision to “leak” information about Trump’s Ukrainian shakedown by reporting it to the intelligence community’s inspector general. That leak, Johnson complained, “exposed things that didn’t need to be exposed.”

...

Yet another Trump surrogate argued Sunday that the Real Crime was something else entirely: that Democrats continue noticing when Trump does something wrong.

These include Trump’s bullying tweet about his former Ukraine ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, which Trump fired off as she was testifying before Congress. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) read the tweet aloud during the hearing, and later said it should be viewed as part of a “pattern” of witness intimidation and obstruction of justice.

Republicans condemned this scurrilous pattern-spotting.

...

Again, the Real Crime isn’t the growing number of new possibly impeachable offenses; it’s that Democrats are cataloguing them.

...

Then finally there’s the Realest Crime of all: that Democrats might deign to hold Trump accountable through impeachment when an election is just a year away, as Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) and other Republicans have complained. Trump has claimed it’s a “coup” or an attempt to “steal” an election. Sometimes he seems to mean the 2016 election, sometimes 2020.

If Democrats truly believe Trump did something wrong, Republicans argue, the right way to test that thesis is at the ballot box.

There’s a bit of a Merrick-Garlandian-angle to this argument – i.e., that Congress’s constitutional duties disappear with some arbitrary degree of proximity to a presidential election. And, of course, waiting for the 2020 election to settle the matter seems particularly dodgy when the 2020 election is the very thing Trump has been trying to compromise through assistance from Ukraine, China and who knows what other countries.

...

David Brin said...

Moreover, despite differences of opinion and policy, it was always behooved on oppoosition senators to give a siting president and his officials the benefit of the doubt, when saying "our intelligence community perceives a threat."

It was obvious to all that the WMD thing was inflated and exaggerated. What no one, certainly HC, never expected was that it would be an all-out lie.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

W might have inadvertently done us a favor by making America tired of wars.

Honestly, I think Americans get tired of particular wars and want brief periods of rest, but we ARE war-like. Quite barbaric actually, but not necessarily the movie type of barbarian. Just the type that says "I'm right and you BETTER believe it" while holding the club they'll use to enforce their view in clear sight.

Still, we are a gentler barbarian than previous ones.
"Join us... or else" instead of "Offer me tribute... or die".


This might get my 'libertarian' card revoked, but...

I'd rather we had not fought the second Iraq war, but I was all in favor of having Saddam's sons assassinated. I have no regrets about the later opinion.

I'd rather we got out of Afghanistan, but with an EXPLICIT message that when they f*ck it up again, we will be back with a rain of blood and death. VERY EXPLICIT. Very undiplomatic.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry, (from last thread)

GPS is great, but I never want to get to where I'm helpless to get somewhere without it.

You already in trouble then. If GPS fails, many processes that depend on it will fail and you don't know which ones they are let along how the dominoes will fall.

Okay. Maybe you meant GPS failing for you personally? That's not so bad, right? I put to you that you still don't know which processes will fail or how your personal dominoes will tumble. I agree it wouldn't be as bad, but your comfort is probably born of ignorance. (Mine too.)

The first episode of Connections (James Burke) covered this issue using a grid-level power failure as the example. What would break? Could you manage for a while? Could you survive if it lasted longer? That particular example still looms on our threat horizon, but we can use it to teach the differences between processes that are fragile, robust, and anti-fragile.

The big lesson from that episode besides our dependence? Our ignorance of just how dependent we already are. What have we learned since the late 70's when that series came out? We are a lot more anti-fragile than we thought back then. Think about it. Shouldn't we already be dead from starvation, disease, or one of the many other dependency threats we can imagine?

Okay. A big CME that hit us square on would be a *ing disaster. So would a Yellowstone eruption. Failures in software for self-driving and co-piloted cars? Not so much. We'd collectively flinch and then move on with better ideas.

Zepp Jamieson said...

So I wrote a review of Polemic Judo for my fiction site. It'll go up tomorrow, but this is an opportunity to address any errors of fact I may have committed. PS: Yes, I liked it.
Polemical Judo
David Brin
November 20th 2019

This is the same David Brin who is widely known as a futurist and award-winning science fiction author. He’s always been an outspoken voice for accountability from authority, strong reliance by society on the knowledge to be gained from science, openness of knowledge and data, and deprecation of social policy based on conspiracy theories and superstitions. He also tries to point out that even in these most polarized of times, people across the political spectrum have much more in common than the shouting suggests.
The last was backed by a list of “core conservative values” in Chapter Six, “Credibility? How Often the Right Has Just Been Wrong”. Brin begins with a list of 19 political stances that he considers core conservative values that have merit. Paraphrasing, these include reducing bureaucratic burdens, control the debt, avoiding dogma or partisanism, responsible gun ownership, voluntary service, investment in R&D, investment in education, infrastructure, R&D and the environment. I had to chuckle reading the list, including Brin’s challenge to liberals to dispute the value of the items on the list. Of the 19 items, I’ve espoused 18 of them—and been called a liberal for it. It does buttress one of Brin’s strongest points: that we have more in common than the right-left gap suggests.
I may be a wild-eyed 2019 social democrat, but that description is based upon the same opinions and values that would have made me a 1950s moderate. Brin (a registered Republican too lazy to switch his registration) and I are both within shouting distance of the policies Eisenhower stood for.
Polemical Judo is a somewhat cobbled-together collection of Brin’s thoughts drawn mostly from discussions on his blog, Contrary Brin. I’m a participant on that blog, where I enjoy a sometimes- contentious relationship with Brin.
Polemical Judo is meant as a road map to a better-informed, more focused, and less fractious society. Prior to reading it, I thought the timing was just awful: the US is at one of those points in history that are literally crucial—major turning points where the very existence of the nation is at severe threat. Think April 1861, or March 1933. The fall of 2019 seems to be the same sort of national and social precipice. A “why can’t we all get along” manual for society seemed strange when nobody is quite sure we will have a recognizable country by this time next year. It seemed a bit like working on a town beautification plan for Pompeii as Vesuvius is erupting.
But here’s the thing: no matter what happens, even a worst-case scenario where the US is a captive state of an authoritarian Russia where criticizing authority courts execution, there will still be a human society, and Brin’s recommendations are not unique to any particular government or economy, but to a functional and just human society, and the large majority of them will remain valid no matter what happens. Maybe if enough people implement correlates of his suggestions now we can avoid that worst-case scenario. Even a casual reader is going to recognize nearly all the suggestions and ideas as things they have encountered before, with little that is startling or extreme. But they are ideals and attitudes that are absolutely necessary to help heal a society and make it functional.
The political crisis is (hopefully) ephemeral. Brin’s nostrums are well-thought-out, supported by history and experience. No matter what happens in the immediate future, his ideas retain their validity.

Available through http://www.davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.html.

Phaedrusnailfile said...

Watching the hearings the past few days it struck me that one side is playing checkers and the other is playing chess but rather than quibble over which side is which one thing i am certain of is that in the metaphor Trump is the proverbial chicken that knocks over all the pieces shits on the board and declares himself the winner.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

"GPS is great, but I never want to get to where I'm helpless to get somewhere without it."

You already in trouble then. If GPS fails, many processes that depend on it will fail and you don't know which ones they are let along how the dominoes will fall.


You're talking about something much more complex than I was. I simply meant that I know people who have no idea how to navigate from any point A to point B without plugging the addresses into a GPS device. And I'm not interested in having my natural ability to plot a course atrophied to that level. That doesn't mean I'll never use a GPS device, but it's my last resort, not my first one.

David Brin said...

Geez see the lid of this Starship prototype propelled 500 ft from pressurized cryogens.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/20/spacex-starship-pressure-test/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAaY2SbHmcKlXEhnzfOBKWgaNwZrEUHrFzps6A_r-y70pYn9cG12DMsIQzyCn7otXKqMPD7qLySzpjZbnmlBR_s6mo9laKCNtGRkNmMmQvkfV03WYnXYOkd5geObljwMgBa7aMTW-hbuFtIEqBv8xSSKlTKVC5CgiGGlzD0plmRM

Alfred Differ said...

Heh. Let's check in with you again in 10 years. 8)

I felt much the same with my map books. They collect dust on my shelves now. I'd toss them, but I know I might need offline access and I don't have a solution for that on my phone just yet.

That's fine, though. Keep up your navigation skills. I don't intend to relinquish my compass sense or knowledge of how to use the stars at night to orient myself. That night skill helped save the lives of two of my friends, so I'm rather fond of it. Chances are I have something on my phone that would do it, though. Let's see... ah. I DO have a compass app and it does not require network connection. Just moving electrons.

David Brin said...

Thanks Zepp. Cogent stuff... though I think 75% of the book is about weapons for defeating the mad right and only a quarter of it is about reaching out to Residually Sane Republicans.

"I'd rather we got out of Afghanistan, but with an EXPLICIT message that when they f*ck it up again, we will be back with a rain of blood and death. VERY EXPLICIT. Very undiplomatic."

Yes, exactly. We've proved that we can topple any regime with a little finger and without breaking a sweat, but quagmires are calamities. Hence blatantly the thing to do is negotiate with the Taliban for them to get a Pashtunistan for the Pasthun peoples, along the Pakistan border but under loose sovereignty of Kabul. Conditions are simple:

1- leave the rest of afghanistan in peace.
2- A basic structure of laws that includes idependent courts and secret ballot elections.
3- Anyone - including women and their children - may leave. There's a bus station in every city and if they show up there, they can get aboard, under neutral protection, and leave.

Agree to all of that and go ahead have your Taliban state. And know that if you tick us off, we'll just come and kill all your leaders and take it away in a day. They won't be able to resist having a state and preening as heads of it, even knowing we can shampoo and rinse and repeat.

gregory byshenk said...

David Brin wrote...
It was obvious to all that the WMD thing was inflated and exaggerated. What no one, certainly HC, never expected was that it would be an all-out lie.

I want to push just a bit harder on this aspect.

It was obvious (to anyone that was actually paying attention and thinking) that there was no good evidence support the WMD claims - and indeed a fair bit of evidence against them. Which indicates that those claims were - if not outright lies - then pure wishful thinking and pretext. I am not the only one who noted such at the time.

I can't claim to know anyone's reasons for voting in favor of the Iraq invasion, and I can certainly understand someone thinking: "It won't make any difference, so why should I commit (likely) political suicide with a vote against it?" But I think we should be honest and accept that any such vote cannot have been fact- or evidence-based.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

Chances are I have something on my phone that would do it, though. Let's see... ah. I DO have a compass app and it does not require network connection. Just moving electrons.


Again, I'm considering two distinct cost/benefit ratios. What's the value of the new tech relative to the cost of the loss of old skills? Separately, what's the cost of a failure mode in the new tech relative to the likelihood of that failure mode? If the failure mode is catastrophic enough, it might behoove us to avoid relying on that failure not happening, even if it is not likely to happen very often.

It's not a simple question of liking things the way they are vs liking new things. It depends very much on what we're specifically talking about.

Knowing how to navigate around a city without using GPS is my own thing. I don't claim that an inability to do so is life-threatening or anything. I just personally don't care to lose that ability. An example of something old that I really wish was still around are manual cranks for car windows. To me, the convenience of opening or closing a window with a button is not worth the fact that when your engine dies in a snowstorm, it is impossible to close the window.

Larry Hart said...

gregory byshenk:

I can't claim to know anyone's reasons for voting in favor of the Iraq invasion, and I can certainly understand someone thinking: "It won't make any difference, so why should I commit (likely) political suicide with a vote against it?" But I think we should be honest and accept that any such vote cannot have been fact- or evidence-based.


Oh, I wish Hillary had been as insightful as Bernie Sanders in realizing that eventually a vote against the war would be a positive thing. I don't deny that her yes vote signifies a calculating politician in the bad sense. I just contend that it was part of a herd mentality that gripped much of the American public and most of congress at the time, not something that marks Hillary as particularly bad.

What I was pushing back against was the argument that Hillary was unqualified to be president because she was responsible for killing Iraqi babies, and the implication that Donald Trump's election was preferable because of that.

jim said...

OK Larry I agree Clinton was too power hunger and morally weak to resist the peer pressure to go to war against people who did not attack us. And she made the calculation that her presidential ambitions were more important than the lives of hundred of thousands of innocent men women and children.

And Joe Biden and many other democrats made that same evil calculation, if he gets the nomination fuck the democrats.

Larry Hart said...

@jim,

Then I hope you'll be happy with four more years of Trump. Because no one else will.

Larry Hart said...

Seriously, Republicans lie us into war, and the Democratic minority's sin it that they failed to stop them. And for that, f*** the Democrats, thereby allowing the Republicans to rule unopposed?

You're reminding me of the Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob campaigned against Mayor Quimby, telling people to vote for Sideshow Bob because Mayor Quimby was so soft on crime that he even let Sideshow Bob out of prison.

Larry Hart said...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Nov21.html#item-4

Snarky line of the night: From Klobuchar: "I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends. And I'd like to point out, it is not an expanding base." That brought down the house.

jim said...

No Larry the problem is that most elected democrats voted for the war.

And that most non elected democrats don't seem to care that they did that.

The good thing about Trump is that he is making it clear to every nation on the earth that the US an unhinged dangerous hegemon and they need to reevaluate their approach to rest of the world. The US system is too unreliable to trust their future to.

jim said...

Larry,
I am not blaming the Democrats for failing to stop the Iraq war I am blaming them for voting for it.

You know, they are not the same thing, as a matter of fact they are opposite things.

Larry Hart said...

jim:

I am not blaming the Democrats for failing to stop the Iraq war I am blaming them for voting for it.


Yet curiously not blaming Republicans for voting for it and instigating it.

I get that you want maximum harm caused to the US and world in order to make a point. I get that you care so much about Iraqi babies but not about American citizens or Enlightenment civilization. You're entitled, of course, but I don't share your values or your righteous indignation, and that won't change no matter how much sarcasm you throw my way.

Larry Hart said...

#ThereAreNoGoodRepublicans

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/opinion/gordon-sondland-impeachment-hearings.html

...
I suspect that by the time anyone reads this, Republicans will have cooked up talking points pretending that nothing Sondland said actually matters.

But at this point, all they can do is obfuscate. About the push for investigations, Sondland said, “Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.” This administration is rotten to the core and fundamentally disloyal to the country it purports to serve. So is every politician who still tries to explain its corruption away.

scidata said...

Re: Republicans

It's painfully obvious that the GOP is now a cult. Evidence and inference are entirely wasted on them. Indeed, as others have pointed out, their base actually revels in the shock and horror of rational citizens. That's why providing sincere policy is so important. People (voters) are hungry for sanity, especially those with children or future plans. Sway the swayable.

jim said...

I haven’t been bitching about republicans because I expect them to act in support of war, torture, the oligarchs, globalization and destroying ecosystems.

I hoped that Democrats were different, that hope changed under Obama.

He continued the global war of terror (remember the surge? All the drone death?)

The torture center in Guantanamo Bay continued its practices under Obama.

Protected the banksters from prosecution and provided them with trillions in subsidies.

Pushed a mandatory, shitty, for profit health insurance system on the American people – who surprise, surprise hated it.

Kept trying to push globalization.

Had an All of the Above energy strategy that poured money into fracking and the monstrous long term damage that fracking is causing.

David Brin said...

I am done arguing with the dogmatic fanatic 'jim.' He doesn't give a damn about improving the world, just his preening-pompous puritanism, by which standards I very much doubt that he lives his life.

A pragmatic world saver would say
"The Dems are the best vehicle for ending a worldwide takeover by feudalist oligarchy. Their coalition of sincere socialists and corporate-stained 'moderates' turns my stomach, but it will stop the big Orwellian push, restoring democratic processes, empowering about 50 million under-enfranchised citizens, and enact about twenty major to medium scale reforms right away.

"Yes, they are infested with menshevik compromisers and excuse-makers for capitalism and Hillary-pols who will then try to restrain and hobble further reforms down to a pace that compromises way too much with capitalism... and I'll fight them THEN, after the coalition eviscerates the oligarchy."

But that would behoove him to lift a finger. To get involved in the fight right now. And we can't have that. That's... INCREMENTALISM!

Never mind that history shows that's exactly how to push forward with revolution. Heck, he never answered the 5 challenges to splitters. Because he knows he can't. How much better to yowl.

Larry Hart said...

@Dr Brin,

I have wondered after the consequences of the 2000 and 2016 elections whether anyone still argues with a straight face that the candidates of the two parties are "just as bad." Now, I guess we know.

@jim,

Yes, Democrats are similar to Republicans in too many ways. I still blame voters for that. Bernie Sanders will never be president because voters prefer a sociopath to a socialist. I'm not making that up.

The ways in which the parties are similar drops out of the equation. Their differences matter much more. Under a Democratic president, we'd have rule of law, maintain our alliances, not suck up to murderous dictators, not appoint judges who make any excuse to favor corporations over people, not be cruel and inhuman to refugees, not suppress votes, not treat the president as an all-powerful king, and so on. If you can't see the difference between failed attempts at being the good guys vs outright attempts at being cartoon supervillains--if your attitude really is "fuck the good guys"--then you might as well hope the spaceship returns to take you home to your planet, because life on this one is going to be a continual disappointment.


All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?



jim said...

I have already answered your silly splitter questions.

I have a question for you -- Why should I trust the democrats?

Are they really failing at being good guys (like Larry says) or are they bad guys with appealing rhetoric?

Zepp Jamieson said...

Dr. " though I think 75% of the book is about weapons for defeating the mad right "

Quite so. I'll make a note of that before posting.

Larry Hart said...

Deomcrats are like the X-Men. "Hated and feared by the people they're sworn to protect."

Treebeard said...

Jim, imperial democrats like Hillary Clinton, Biden, Madeleine Albright (“500,000 dead Iraqi children was worth it”) and our host (who likes to twirl his mustache and fantasize about telling societies on the other side of the planet how to run their affairs or annihilate them with his little finger) are clearly bad news, no less than the neocon republicans. They’re all drunk on the same arrogance, exceptionalism and imperialism, and really believe that America has a special mission to remake the world in its image. The democrats’ main argument seems to be “we’re more competent imperialists than the republicans, who are crude bunglers”. Whereas actual non-imperial conservatives and liberals believe in minding their own business, which is why they are so vilified by the imperials. It sounds like you are awake to this deception; good for you. I would suggest that non-imperial conservatives and liberals have quite a bit in common, and should make common cause to get the imperials out of our lives, because like every other empire in history, this one ain’t gonna last.

TCB said...

Got my paperback of Polemical Judo, and just started reading it. Good stuff!

TCB said...

Dr. Brin linked above: "Geez see the lid of this Starship prototype propelled 500 ft from pressurized cryogens."

Well, here's a technical explanation of what went wrong.

Larry Hart said...

Treebeard:

Whereas actual non-imperial conservatives and liberals believe in minding their own business,


I haven't met many non-imperial conservatives lately. The Trumpists who vote for him because he'll bring our boys home from Syria don't seem to mind sending them to Saudi Arabia instead. They also insist on fighting to protect Israel in the same breath that they condemn the international Jewish conspiracy for tricking us into doing so.

Nevertheless, I give you credit for acknowledging liberals who want to mind our own business. Most on your side of the aisle seem to think liberalism is defined as wanting to control everybody while taxing them to death.

jim said...

Yep Treebeard there probably is potential coalition that is not represented in our current choices of major parties.

You can divide up the American public into a 2 by 2 matrix with one axis ranging from economic conservative to economic liberal and the other axis ranging form social conservative to social liberal.

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond

The socially and economically conservative quadrant has a bunch of people in it and has been represented by the republican party.

The socially liberal but economically conservative has the least number of people in it, but those people fund the democratic party and set it’s policy agenda.

The economically liberal and socially liberal quadrant has lot of people in it and provides the democratic party with a lot of its rhetoric but doesn’t set the policy agenda.

Then there is the economically liberal and socially conservative – although this is a quite large segment of the population, this is really a forgotten quadrant (one that I think Trump was able to tap into).

There is a real possibility for a party that is actually economically liberal and finds a way to compromise on the social side (maybe find a way to send the social issues back to the states?)

David Brin said...

"I have already answered your silly splitter questions."

You lie. You utterly lie. You completely and delusionally lie.

I expect it from fascist idiots like the ent: "our host (who likes to twirl his mustache and fantasize about telling societies on the other side of the planet how to run their affairs or annihilate them with his little finger..."

Har! Enjoy the entirely hysterical-delusional strawman waaaaaay over there, fool.

But you are a disappointment. Your adoption of a drooling insipid 2D axis that mis remembers even what the word "liberal" means shows that we are simply dealing with a deeply inferior intelligence here.

jim said...


Blogger David Brin said...
"I have already answered your silly splitter questions."

You lie. You utterly lie. You completely and delusionally lie.



Dude, check out your the Into the Light post on November 2
I answered your "challenges" you responded.

I am not lying but are you having memory problems?

(I honestly and truly hope you just being a little forgetful and that it is not a sign of a deeper problem. )

Treebeard said...

Larry, there are a lot of non-imperial conservatives, they just don’t get any airtime on imperial media, except maybe as the targets of derision.

Right jim, Trump’s genius was realizing that the economically liberal, socially conservative group is very large and very underrepresented. The imperial Deep State is working overtime to ensure that it stays that way. There are other useful axes you could add, like "imperial - non-imperial" and maybe "spiritual - material".

As for the denials of our host, ever notice how often speaks like a supervillain when he gets defensive, with his “deeply inferior”, “imbecile”, “I do more in a day than you do in a lifetime” language? I think this reveals a lot about his nature, but of course you can all draw your own conclusions.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

To me, the convenience of opening or closing a window with a button is not worth the fact that when your engine dies in a snowstorm, it is impossible to close the window.

Though I understand you are making a general point with a particular example, there is an easy solution to that particular example. I carry around with me (now) an extra battery (lithium type) for my electronics should I be caught off-grid. The battery I carry with the most energy in it isn’t advertised for that use, though. Its primary use is to jump-start your car in a pinch. If it can do that, I’m sure I could use it to close my car windows. (I haven’t tried to use it to jump start my car. Haven’t needed it yet. I won it in a raffle.)

Gregory,

there was no good evidence support the WMD claims

I’ve always had to hem and haw when people say this, but I think enough time has passed now for me to say I’m not sure of this. I overheard stuff mentioned by folks in the intelligence arena concerning evidence. They had no reason to lie to me because they didn’t realize I could hear them. I kept my mouth shut to avoid getting them into trouble. The evidence mentioned (if released) would have spoken to our methods for acquiring it, so it was the kind of thing intelligence folks would quietly suppress even if that meant we spent the next 50 years believing they lied or were incompetent. It was also the kind of evidence that could have been planted or simply the result of erroneous tests, so it’s still possible they WERE in error.

Anyway, I came away from that experience believing that some of them actually DID believe there was indirect WMD evidence and that they wouldn’t talk about it openly.

Doesn’t matter much now. The deed is done.

A.F. Rey said...

FiveThirtyEight has been averaging the polls on whether people believe Trump should or should not be impeached. For some inexplicable reason, after Sondland stating there was quid pro quo, etc. the pro-impeachment numbers have dropped in the last few days.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/?ex_cid=rrpromo

Democrats will impeach; there is no avoiding it now. But is this going to bite us come next November??

David Brin said...

My answer to jim at the time was that no, he clearly did NOT read, comprehend or answer the splitterism posting.

And to claim that "socially conservative + economically liberal" covers any part of today's mad right is jibbering proof of utter incomprehension.

Not... worth... expenditure... of lifespan...

TheMadLibrarian said...

Regarding the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, every time someone comes up with something they consider to be definitive proof (pollen grains, soot layers, rearranged archaeological sediments, lakes in SC), someone else comes up with a reason that the 'proof' isn't all that definitive. I've seen a lot of the infighting on my meteorite-list newsgroup. Right now, the jury is still leaning towards no real proof. This may change with discovery of something like the Alvarez crater (although an impact on a now-melted ice sheet might be hard to find evidence of).

Larry Hart said...

@A.F.Rey,

Further down, the breakdown by party is even more interesting. Support from both Democrats and Independents hit a high point in early November. Independents then trend slightly downward, while Dems plateau and have a downward tick right toward the past few days, But Republicans tick slightly upward at that same time.

Not at all sure how to interpret that,

Larry Hart said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Larry Hart said...

TheMadLibrarian:

Regarding the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, every time someone comes up with something they consider to be definitive proof (pollen grains, soot layers, rearranged archaeological sediments, lakes in SC), someone else comes up with a reason that the 'proof' isn't all that definitive.


Sounds a lot like the impeachment hearings.

:)

Alfred Differ said...

TheMadLibrarian,

Last I heard there was a candidate impact site in NW Greenland.
78°42'54"N 66°16'20"W

Zepp Jamieson said...

" the pro-impeachment numbers have dropped in the last few days."

Silver's polls have a lag time of 5-10 days, so what you're seeing is the start of the public hearings. No honest person can say the public hearings helped Trump in the least, and I suspect a lot of rational Republicans and right-leaning Independents have a whole crowd of misgivings they didn't have last week.
Nunes looked like he was giving birth to a cow.

Ilithi Dragon said...

Hey, guys!

1. I'm still alive! (Seriously, no jokes!)

2. I am now in Hawaii. Still have a few things to unpack, some special order furniture hasn't arrived yet, and I've got more things to figure out where to put in the new apartment, but I'm mostly settled.

3. I AM CONTRIBUTING TO THE DISCUSSION TOPIC! HERE IS A NEW SCIENCE THING! Apparently, we've developed medical suspended animation.

It's not gonna work for cryostorage, or to send people to the edges of, or beyond the solar system (though I'm sure we'll learn a lot of important and valuable things that will help build that technology), but it does promise to revolutionize medical technologies, and redefine "mortal wound," at least within relatively quick access to major medical support (and could also be used to greatly expand the range of that access).

4. Work has been very busy. I am now senior enough, trusted enough, and considered reliable enough, to now be the "Hey, this major program is borked and there's a major audit next week, and another one the week after. Have fun!" guy of choice, apparently... @_@

5. I'm also still writing! I just posted Episode 10 of Retreat, Hell on Reddit, and I've even created a Patreon for it, too!

6. Also, Dr. Brin, you got mentioned on the HFY subreddit I've been posting to! I made a few other recommendations of my favorites, and noted that most of your works are pretty HFY.

7. I'm on a bulleted numbers kick tonight. I don't know why.

gregory byshenk said...

Alfred Differ said...

I’ve always had to hem and haw when people say this, but I think enough time has passed now for me to say I’m not sure of this. I overheard stuff mentioned by folks in the intelligence arena concerning evidence. They had no reason to lie to me because they didn’t realize I could hear them. I kept my mouth shut to avoid getting them into trouble. The evidence mentioned (if released) would have spoken to our methods for acquiring it, so it was the kind of thing intelligence folks would quietly suppress even if that meant we spent the next 50 years believing they lied or were incompetent. It was also the kind of evidence that could have been planted or simply the result of erroneous tests, so it’s still possible they WERE in error.

Anyway, I came away from that experience believing that some of them actually DID believe there was indirect WMD evidence and that they wouldn’t talk about it openly.


It isn't so much a question of whether anyone happened to believe anything, but of whether there was good reason to believe it.

Six (? or so) months before the invasion, one might be excused for believing that there was at least some evidence. There were reports (at least presumed credible) from various sources. But as the succeeding months passed, and the weapons inspectors began to check out those reports, it pretty quickly became clear that they were not well founded. Indeed, every claimed report of WMD activity turned out to be false, when checked.

If the shepherd tells you that a wolf has come, presumably you will believe him. But after he has told you of twenty supposed instances of wolves, just none of which have turned out to be accurate, you can no longer presume that his reports are credible. Quite the opposite, in fact.

And that is the state of the "evidence" in the month (or so) preceding the decision to invade.

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:

No honest person can say the public hearings helped Trump in the least,


True, but they also don't seem to have hurt Trump much. Supporters are just doubling down on the notion that the whole thing is a partisan witch hunt, that nothing Trump did is actually wrong, and that Trump was legitimately concerned with corruption in Ukraine.

The hope I cling to is that we're seeing a variation on the "Bradley effect". In 2016, it was said that polls skewed against Trump because voters were ashamed to admit to pollsters that they intended to vote for him. I hope that now we're seeing Trumpists who are ashamed to admit that they may not vote for him this time around.

jim said...

Bah ha ha
So you have gone from calling me a liar to saying I am too stupid to understand your ridiculous “splitter challenges”. I am not going to support more corrupt corporate democrats, still feeling the burn form the last time I trusted them.

Obama was just as corrupt as Trump is, he was just a lot more smooth about it.
Obama was bought and paid for by the banksters.
He funneled trillions in subsidies to the big banks.
Made sure they kept their ill-gotten bonuses.
Insured that none of the banskters would go to jail.
(compare that to your worst president in the 20 th century G Bush, who’s justice department sent more than a 1,000 banksters to prison, for a scandal that was about one tenth as big .)

And he made sure that the poor folks in the Occupy movement were met with billy clubs, tear gas and arrests.

So you can keep your oligarch support team.

Larry Hart said...

Paul Krugman pulls no punches!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/opinion/trump-republicans-corruption.html

Formally, the House of Representatives is holding an inquiry into the question of whether Donald J. Trump should be impeached. In reality, we’ve known the answer to that question for a long time. In a different era, when both parties believed in the Constitution, Trump’s abuse of his position for personal gain would have led to his removal from office long ago.

No, what we’re actually witnessing is a test of the depths to which the Republican Party will sink. How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party’s elected representatives stand for?

And the result of that test seems increasingly clear: There is no bottom. The inquiry hasn’t found a smoking gun; it has found what amounts to a smoking battery of artillery. Yet almost no partisan Republicans have turned on Trump and his high-crimes-and-misdemeanors collaborators. Why not?

The answer gets to the heart of what’s wrong with modern American politics: The G.O.P. is now a thoroughly corrupt party. Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under dire threat even if and when he’s gone.

...

scidata said...

Paul Krugman should rekindle his Asimovian roots. Great solace can be taken from the long view, especially when augmented not by trillions of bullets, but by quintillions of transistors.

Unknown said...

Living through history is not a comfortable situation. The events between now and Election Day 2020 will have a significant effect on the course of the rest of this century.

The Futurists used to plot out possible courses, incorporating different types of leadership. Thy generally assumed that the Muddling Through type - distracted leaders trying to do the right thing, with most of their attention on current problems - was the most likely.

Right now, Muddling Through looks like The Impossible Dream.

Pappenheimer

Larry Hart said...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Nov22.html#item-2

...
And so, as CNN notes, "Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working with the White House to prepare for the likely Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump."

Let us pause for a moment to reflect on how extraordinary that statement is. In any other trial in the United States, if the jury and the defendant were communicating before the trial (much less coordinating strategy), that would result in an immediate mistrial. In the current political environment, however, it barely raises eyebrows when we learn that the President and his jury are cooperating.
...

David Brin said...

Thanks for proof: " your ridiculous “splitter challenges”" proves that jim has no interest in detailed appraisals and comparisons of goals and outcomes. Actual goals. Actual outcomes. Many of which would EMPOWER his socialist wing, by enhancing the political power of minorities and the young/elderly/disenfranchised.

All of the constituencies he claims to defend (without lifting a finger, but yowling a lot) would see their situations and their power enhanced by victory for the DP coalition, even if it includes hated corporatists. That one pragmatic outcome, from which the purists might then build is inarguable, direct and the most important thing he should want.

But he doesn't want it. Because it would serve as a lightning rod sapping belocved sanctimony.

David Brin said...

Welcome back Ilithi Dragon! How nice that your new posting evades another winter on the Great Lakes. I'll look at your links.

Now someone find Tacitus/Tim and drag him back here. Seriously, I think we should have blog buddies who know each others' true names.

My family is dealing with an awful tragedy at the moment... Got to go now. But Thrive on... Persevere.

Zepp Jamieson said...

Larry, a friend of mine directed me to the American Thinker website this morning, and my gaw. I remember when they were a semi-legitimate news outlet. Now it's just an insane collection of conspiracy theories, efforts to dismiss the charges against Trump as "democrat madness" and flat-out lies. There is no bottom to these people. Krugman is right.

jim said...

If Trump had done for the banksters what Obama did you would be shouting it at the top of your lungs about how corrupt and self serving he is , the fact that you give Obama a complete pass over his corrupt support for the banksters just shows that you are nothing but a democratic partisan blinded by rage.

Larry Hart said...

If President Obama had used his position to coerce supplicants into patronizing his businesses in order to curry favor, put his daughters in charge of policy, fired officials for telling the truth, openly valued arms sales at the expense of those the buyers tortured and murdered, praised dictators, ruined alliances with democracies, intentionally caused divisions in the populace and encouraged his supporters to violence against the rest, and asserted that Article II said he could do anything he wanted including shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, then yes, I would be as enraged at him as I am at Trump.

Caving to special interests that every politician before him also caved to doesn't even come close. It's something I wish he had done differently--and plenty of liberals beginning with Thom Hartmann and Norman Goldman said so at the time--but hardly the deal-breaker you make it out to be.

That's what's wrong with your arguments. It's not that you fail to condemn Republicans (because you already know they suck). It's that you condemn Democrats for specific issues that pale in comparison to the perfidy that is the modern Republican Party, and then conclude that the two are equally bad so we might as well elect Trump. You obviously couldn't stand the notion of a Hillary presidency, but how happy are you with the result we got instead? We didn't get someone who voted for the Iraq war--instead we got someone who is destroying our civilization with malice aforethought. And you're like "Either way is bad." Really?

David Brin said...

Moreover, the "caving" is a flat out lie. If jim had read the splitter posts, instead of skim-cringeing from them, he'd realize the dems had actual actual power for 72 days, during which they were frenetically busy and did what they could is such a short span. He'd have glanced at what dems do where they DO hav e power, like CA, OR, WA, where reforms pour forth. He'd concentrate on getting on a federal level what is happening in those states.

Instead, he masturbates to magical incantations about "banksters!!!" Uh. Uh. Uuuuuuuuh!!!!

THE reason why brif DP power in 92 and 2008 was lost in 94 and 2010 was becaus eof stay-at-home prissy-pompous preening purists. You ARE the Putin-confederate 5th column. And a lot of propaganda pouring from Kremlin basements is designed exactly to accomplish that.

If nothing else, after a DP Big Win in 2020, 20 million disenfranchised poor people and minorities would get meaningful votes that socialists might then try to persuade. jim cannot deny that, so he yammers and DISTRACTS and then "banksters!!!" Uh. Uh. Uuuuuuuuh!!!!

David Brin said...

Ilithi I loved your nice words re HFY. You might be interested to know that a young writer did a mighty fine script for "The Loom of Thessaly"! He posted it on The Blacklist and got good feedback.

Don Gisselbeck said...

If we serially choose the lesser of two evils, eventually we will get someone tolerably decent.

TheMadLibrarian said...

Hey, Ilithi Dragon -- welcome to the Sandwich Isles!

Alfred Differ said...

Gregory,

And that is the state of the "evidence" in the month (or so) preceding the decision to invade.

There is one sticky way in which this might not be the case. It sounds a bit conspiratorial, but it isn't beyond what intelligence folks might do if they feel the need.

Imagine a scenario in which the bad guy gets WMD tech... from us. [Remember who his opponent was in the 80's.] The intelligence folks would likely know this and keep quiet up until there was a chance the secret might get out. At that point, they'd be motivated to swoop in and grab whatever evidence they could find to bury it. Who cares if we look stupid about a later invasion? They won't. It would be far worse to look like we were potentially violating proliferation treaties.

Even more interesting would be if the tech originated with the Israelis. The scenario is a bit more complex with multiple players, but they'd have roughly the same motivations. Bury it, suck it up, and face the smaller embarrassment.

This is NOT unheard of. Ike sat on a secret for ages involving our 'late' entry into the space race. Sitting on it made him and his people look incompetent and behind the Soviets, but it also let the Soviets set precedents we leveraged to the hilt later. The biggest of them occurred when they flew the first Sputnik. They effectively declared LEO as international waters. Had we flown first, they might have objected and geared up to shoot things down. Imagine how different the world would be today had they done that. In this choice, Ike won for the US our current space dominance and the international legal regime we need to make it acceptable... without firing a shot. All he had to do was look incompetent.

Is that how it actually went down with Ike? Maybe the historians can piece more of it together as classified docs come out into the open. Is that how it went down with W? Maybe we can put this possibility to bed around the middle of this century. 8)

Alfred Differ said...

jim,

you give Obama a complete pass over his corrupt support for the banksters

mmm...

One problem with that statement. I used to work for one of those banks and they were ripped to shreds by the regulators on Obama's watch. Literally. They don't exist anymore. Neither do my retirement funds they managed. Poof.

I get it. You (and I) wanted to see a number of others in jail for what happened. Yup. They certainly deserved it. The problem was that these things had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to juries. Lots of cheaters get away with crimes because that last step is actually quite difficult. It's not a President's fault that is so. Nor the AG. WE choose to have our justice system set up this way. Innocent until PROVEN guilty.

In the meantime, many of the other banks were forced into selling themselves off to a former competitor. That doesn't punish the people who did stuff much, but it did kill some of their ability to organize. Will they be back? Probably.

still feeling the burn form the last time I trusted them.

This is stupidly predictable. I don't know why y'all fell for the election hype. The truth is our Presidents don't have anywhere near as much power as the hopeful like to believe.

Vote for ME! I'll fix it all and kiss your boo-boo's until you feel better!

Look yourself in the mirror and ask your reflection whether gullibility is ever curable. Some of us here know a partial remedy born from old-school liberalism, but it won't save you from yourself.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

but it also let the Soviets set precedents we leveraged to the hilt later. The biggest of them occurred when they flew the first Sputnik. They effectively declared LEO as international waters. Had we flown first, they might have objected and geared up to shoot things down.


In a way, I see the same dynamic taking place between Republicans and Democrats. I wonder if Republicans quite realize that they're in the process of legitimizing the kingly powers of the next President Obama.

duncan cairncross said...

I wonder if Republicans quite realize that they're in the process of legitimizing the kingly powers of the next President Obama.

But they aren't
Different rules will apply to Democrat Presidents - the GOP is very clear about THAT

Lorraine said...

I didn't wanna see bankers behind bars I just wanted to see GLB repealed and GS reinstated.

Larry Hart said...

duncan cairncross:

Different rules will apply to Democrat Presidents - the GOP is very clear about THAT


I've been singing that song for a long time myself, but I'm hoping that Democrats will have longer memories after being burned multiple times. Republicans only get away with that s*** because Democrats allow them to change the narrative on the fly. Remember all the Obama court nominees that were allowed to be filibustered because "You'll want the rule in place when you're in the minority again." Even when Harry Reid finally said "Enough!" and broke the filibuster for cabinet appointments, he left it in place for Supreme Court nominees. Republicans just showed that they were willing to eliminate any impediment when their turn came. Hopefully, we won't be fooled again.

Zepp Jamieson said...

LH: " I wonder if Republicans quite realize that they're in the process of legitimizing the kingly powers of the next President Obama."

They figure if they get one more election, they can stop worrying about ever having a real election ever again.

Larry Hart said...


Oh, Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see.
The morning will come when the world is mine.
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs to me!

...

"Do you still think you can control them?"

David Brin said...

Ilithi Dragon. Enjoyed this chapter of Retreat, Hell, though it was a bit of a long data dump. A few quibbles:

“but there job’s not done” —> their

“It was the most he had moved since he had flopped down against the wall.” —> always minimize use of “had.” “It was the most he had moved since flopping down against the wall.”

“Meyers and Staff Sergeant Rickles stepped out. A pair of MPs stepped out behind” —> try to avoid repetition. Emerged. Exited.

Confusion over who was talking here: “One of them got through, didn’t they, sir?”

Great concept. Solid mechanics. Keep at it.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

I wonder if Republicans quite realize that they're in the process of legitimizing the kingly powers of the next President Obama.

Heh. Worse than that. Both sides enable a path to a larger state whether it involved Kings or Commissioners.

I know which side bugs more more at the moment, but there is direct evidence of the two-sided nature of the problem in… of all places… Piketty's big book. Neatly done too. All those 'safe' investments for rich people to milk that earn a little more than the growth rate come from somewhere, right? Treasury bonds and notes and their equivalent issued by nation-states. Consistent engine generating inequality. Who asks to have those issued in the first place, hmm?

Duncan,

Different rules will apply to Democrat Presidents - the GOP is very clear about THAT

Of course. So are the Democrats, though. It's not really a left vs right thing. It's an us vs them thing. Humans DO apply different standards for people inside their trust boundary. It ALWAYS sucks to be on the outside of such a boundary, so we adopt another team or mental flex until another adopts us.


Except some libertarians it seems. There is something wrong with us that way? We can barely stand each other. 8)

Alfred Differ said...

Lorraine,

That's very kind of you, but some of our folks who worked in the sub-prime industry that employed me should have done time for the immoral things they did. I got fired in 2004, so I can duck some of the blame for enabling bad behavior in the final years before the bust, but I was rather clueless during my time in the industry. I learned more later. 8)

Here's a clue. When insurance policies on credit defaults are being priced at around the same rate as government bonds, run for the hills. That means the insurance people have priced in an expectation of government saving their debtors or buying the loans. Maybe a bit of both. That means the defaults will land on the tax payer who will likely do some irrational voting shortly afterward. Think about it. Our GOP hasn't really recovered its sanity since the bust.

gregory byshenk said...

Alfred Differ said...

There is one sticky way in which this might not be the case. It sounds a bit conspiratorial, but it isn't beyond what intelligence folks might do if they feel the need.

Imagine a scenario in which the bad guy gets WMD tech... from us. [Remember who his opponent was in the 80's.] The intelligence folks would likely know this and keep quiet up until there was a chance the secret might get out. At that point, they'd be motivated to swoop in and grab whatever evidence they could find to bury it. Who cares if we look stupid about a later invasion? They won't. It would be far worse to look like we were potentially violating proliferation treaties.


The problem with this scenario is that it has to be based on the idea that the US (or Israel) was providing this tech following the first Gulf War - because it is no secret that the US provided assistance to Iraq in the previous decade, during the Iran-Iraq war (and it is no secret that some of this technology was used to produce WMDs).

The idea that the US (or an ally) was continuing to provide such assistance to Iraq after the first Gulf War, during a time of open hostility (including, in the case of Israel, acts of war against Iraq, such as the bombing of their facilities), stretches credibility well beyond the breaking point.

I suppose that one non-absurd scenario is a sort of double-game, in which the US provides assistance (via plausibly deniable channels) precisely in order to use Iraqi weapons programs as a pretext for war - but then, of course, the whole point would be to find the evidence to provide that pretext. (The whole point of "planting" evidence is for it to be found.) But this falls apart because it is clear (and, I submit, was clear beyond any reasonable doubt at the time) that there was no such evidence.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

"Different rules will apply to Democrat Presidents - the GOP is very clear about THAT"

Of course. So are the Democrats, though. It's not really a left vs right thing. It's an us vs them thing. Humans DO apply different standards for people inside their trust boundary. It ALWAYS sucks to be on the outside of such a boundary, so we adopt another team or mental flex until another adopts us


No, here I'll take issue with you, Alfred. I mean, sure human beings are inclined to do what you say. But the whole point of Constitutional democracy and the rule of law--the characteristics that really make America great--is to constrain the ability of the rulers to apply that sort of subjective distinction. Both Trump and Obama, and even W and Clinton before them, probably tried to get away with as much as they could.

But (at least so far) they are not able to establish a legal doctrine that says Article II gives a Republican president king-like powers, but not a Democratic president. Oh, they can nod-nod-wink-wink that sort of understanding with their followers, but the opposition still has a say.

Do they really think the governors of New York, Illinois, and California, and the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and NYC are going to consider themselves subordinate to the whims of a federal government which is blatantly cheating in order to claim power? I know this bothers Ilithi, but the time is coming soon where those of us who are inclined will recognize a shadow government in exile, and (per Game of Thrones), "Fuck the king!"

David Brin said...

I agree with LH. There are those who grasp the nature of our civilization and those who do not. I'd wager the ratio is 80-20 among Democrats (though blatantly not 'jim'_ and the reverse among Republican=confederates, who have always felt a need to kowtow to some strongmen who were emblematic of their own 'deeply endangered' self- identity.

It would never have occured to Carter, Clinton or Obama to try to over-rule the process that would remove them forever from further power.

==

Ilithi Dragon, one thing to work on. Point Of View. Pick one per scene - like Sergeant Bradford - and give us plenty of internal thoughts so we stay in her POV, looking out through her eyes, her emotions.

Good stuff! Keep at it. Everybody say yay Dragon!

scidata said...

Dr. Brin: grasp the nature of our civilization

I see great value in books that aim only to catalog the major steps along the path of life, humanity, and civilization instead of trying too hard to push any specific argument. If people could just agree on the facts, it would be a quantum leap forward. Examples include H.G. Wells' "A Short History of the World" and Harari's "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". Ideology can come later.

My paternal grandfather was a very simple man, who worked with his hands in unsafe, low-paying jobs. When I found a well-worn, pocket copy of Wells' book amongst his belongings, it made me very proud.

Alfred Differ said...

For Larry and David,

One doesn't have to require that both sides contribute to the problem equally. We all know they don't at any one time. The problem is that both sides DO feel inclined to use the state to accomplish social deeds. Both argue for making things better and in acting, they set precedents the other side uses. They do this not because they are monsters, but because they are human and WANT things to improve.

The precedents Two Scoops is trying to set are obviously... unprecedented. It would be as Larry suggested. President as King. If one is going to sit on the sideline for smaller escalations and act only when the big ones are tried, now is the time to act. All I point out is that what Two Scoops is doing is 'just' a matter of degree in difference from what other Presidents have tried. Congresses too. Divided power protects us to some degree, but it only really works well when we recognize the smaller ones and find them irritating enough to act in a proportional manner.

Larry Hart said...

scidata:

My paternal grandfather was a very simple man, who worked with his hands in unsafe, low-paying jobs. When I found a well-worn, pocket copy of Wells' book amongst his belongings, it made me very proud.


Some time, get a look at the level of sophistication of questions that regular housewives were expected to--and regularly did--answer on daytime game shows in the 50s and 60s. I'm afraid we've already lost something as a civilization.

duncan cairncross said...

Hi Guys

Re- Trump

The problem is that the model the founders used was the French model of a KING - with limits to his power

Rather than the Parliamentarian model with Parliament having the power and the King just being a figurehead

IMHO there are two problems with the US system
(1) It gives an individual too much power
(2) - Controversially - I'm coming to the conclusion that we should NOT elect the LEADER
We should elect the legislature and THEY should elect one of their members to be "Leader"

David Brin said...

onward

onward

Zepp Jamieson said...

LH: I look at the political speeches from the 50s and 60s. Eisenhower was at the time viewed as simplistic, but his speeches are several grades above the most erudite of the politicians we have now. How did we go from RFK to Donald Trump in just two generations?